'
"'Indeed,' I exclaimed, 'are you that Job whom we were taught to revere
as the most patient being in the world?'
"'The same,' he said, with a shadow of hesitation; 'I did have quite a
reputation for patience once, but I hear that there is a woman now on
earth, in Chicago, who has suffered more than I ever did, and she has
endured it with great resignation.'
"'Why,' said I, 'that is curious. I am just from earth, and from
Chicago, and I do not remember to have heard of her case. What is her
name?'
"'Mrs. Eugene Field,' was the reply.
"Just then I awoke," ended Field.
The success of Field's paragraph engaging Bok to Miss Pinkham stimulated
the poet to greater effort. Bok had gone to Europe; Field, having found
out the date of his probable return, just about when the steamer was
due, printed an interview with the editor "at quarantine" which sounded
so plausible that even the men in Bok's office in Philadelphia were
fooled and prepared for his arrival. The interview recounted, in detail,
the changes in women's fashions in Paris, and so plausible had Field
made it, based upon information obtained at Marshall Field's, that even
the fashion papers copied it.
All this delighted Field beyond measure. Bok begged him to desist; but
Field answered by printing an item to the effect that there was the
highest authority for denying "the reports industriously circulated some
time ago to the effect that Mr.
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