" Nobody has ever had a more numerous or loving clientage
of friendship among the ministers of this city than the author of "The
Holy Cross" and "The Little Yaller Baby." Those of this number who were
closest to the full-hearted singer know that beneath and within all his
exquisite wit and ludicrous raillery--so often directed against the
shallow formalist, or the unctuous hypocrite--there were an aspiration
toward the divine, and a desire for what is often slightingly called
"religious conversation," as sincere as it was resistless within him. My
own first remembrance of him brings back a conversation which ended in a
prayer, and the last sight I had of him was when he said, only four days
before his death, "Well, then, we will set the day soon and you will come
out and baptize the children."
Some of the most humorous of his letters which have come under the
observation of his clerical friends, were addressed to the secretary of
one of them. Some little business matters with regard to his readings and
the like had acquainted him with a better kind of handwriting than he had
been accustomed to receive from his pastor, and, noting the finely
appended signature, "per ---- ----," Field wrote a most effusively
complimentary letter to his ministerial friend, congratulating him upon
the fact that emanations from his office, or parochial study, were "now
readable as far West as Buena Park.
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