Eugene Field A Study in Heredity and Contradictions Volume II
(This collection of literature attempts to compile many of...)
This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.
The Humbler Poets. A collection of newspaper and periodical verse, 1870 to 1885, by S. Thompson.
(Mark Twain once famously said "there was but one solitary...)
Mark Twain once famously said "there was but one solitary thing about the past worth remembering, and that was the fact that it is past and can't be restored." Well, over recent years, The British Library, working with Microsoft has embarked on an ambitious programme to digitise its collection of 19th century books.
There are now 65,000 titles available (that's an incredible 25 million pages) of material ranging from works by famous names such as Dickens, Trollope and Hardy as well as many forgotten literary gems , all of which can now be printed on demand and purchased right here on Amazon.
Further information on The British Library and its digitisation programme can be found on The British Library website.
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Eugene Field A Study in Heredity and Contradictions Volume I
(This collection of literature attempts to compile many of...)
This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.
Slason Thompson was a journalist, author, railroad statistician, and press-agent.
Background
Slason was born in Fredericton, New Brunswick, in 1849, only son and third of the four children of George and Charity Sobieski (Slason) Thompson, also natives of New Brunswick. On his father's side he was great-grandson of a soldier with Braddock from the north of Ireland, who pioneered in the Mohawk Valley and in 1783 accompanied a band of Loyalists to St. John to settle crown lands. In the same migration was his maternal grandfather, Jedediah Slason, later a member of the provincial parliament, whose family name, spelled indifferently Slauson, Slosson, and Slawson, was prominent in Stamford, Connecticut, as early as 1645. The boy's father was successively a wheelwright, farmer, groceryman, and chief clerk for the provincial board of education.
Education
After attending private school, a Baptist seminary, and the University of New Brunswick's preparatory department, Slason was articled in fulfilment of a parental wish as a working student in the law office of the clerk of the legislative council.
Career
Admitted to the New Brunswick bar at the age of twenty-one, he qualified as the law and engrossing clerk of the General Assembly. He held this post through four sessions and gained valuable experience in drafting bills for the legislators. Not satisfied with the usual slow start of a legal career, he emigrated in 1873 to California. In San Francisco he became a law-office clerk, but in less than a month he began to write news and theatrical notes for the Golden Era, celebrated weekly on which Mark Twain and Bret Harte had worked. He was admitted to the California bar on January 13, 1874.
His increasing interest in the theatre led to his employment in 1876 as temporary dramatic critic of the Morning Call. Working almost around the clock, he handled this assignment along with his legal duties. On the regular critic's return, Thompson not only continued to write for the Call but also began to contribute to the San Francisco Chronicle and the weekly Argonaut. Eight months later he was made commercial editor of the Call and sea-receipts reporter for the San Francisco Bulletin.
Although he reveled in San Francisco and especially enjoyed its Bohemian and Olympic clubs, after five years he removed to New York to become a reporter on the New York Tribune. Here his writing, which paid him an average of fourteen dollars a week, included information on a variety of sports. On October 14, 1879, he transferred to the New York Times as a step to further his ambition for a place on the Sun. But in two weeks he had accepted the Western agency for the New York Associated Press at Cincinnati, a post which was to prepare him for the transfer of the Western office to Chicago four months later. After reporting the national political conventions of 1880 and otherwise establishing the New York Associated Press in the West, Thompson, in June 1881, joined in the founding of the four-page Chicago Herald, becoming its night editor and paragraphist.
A costly libel suit soon brought a change in the struggling Herald's management, and with this change Thompson accepted the invitation of Melville E. Stone to head the staff of the new Chicago Morning News, soon after called the Chicago Daily News. Its crusades were much to his liking and his vigorous editorials against boodlers, ballot-box stuffers, and criminals were an important factor in its campaigns. He covered the Haymarket Square killings in 1885 and the subsequent executions, which he stoutly supported.
His warmest friend at the News was Eugene Field, to whom Thompson's purse was always open. Popular interest in The Humbler Poets: A Collection of Newspaper and Periodical Verse: 1870 to 1885 (1886), which Thompson assembled, led him to publish, for Field, the latter's first two volumes, A Little Book of Western Verse (1889) and A Little Book of Profitable Tales (privately printed, 1889, published, 1890). He edited The Writings in Prose and Verse of Eugene Field (12 vols. , 1896 - 1901), the last two volumes of which, "Sharps and Flats, " were a major addition to Field's published works. He wrote two biographies of the poet, Eugene Field: A Study in Heredity and Contradictions (2 vols. , 1901) and Life of Eugene Field: The Poet of Childhood (1927).
When Thompson married, the present from Field was a personally copied and decorated book of eighty-six of Field's verses, the start of Thompson's notable collection of Field manuscripts. In this period he wrote, with Clay M. Greene, several plays including M'liss (1878), an adaptation of Bret Harte's story, and Sharps and Flats (1880), in which William H. Crane played Dullstone Flatt. From April 7, 1888, to September 24, 1891, Thompson was coeditor of America, a weekly journal of opinion in Chicago, which first printed Field's "Little Boy Blue" and other important contributions, including cartoons by Thomas Nast.
Among policies which Thompson advocated were restriction of immigration, adoption of educational qualifications for voting, and increased use of public schools (America, September 24, 1891). Acquiring a minority interest in the Chicago Journal in 1891, he became its leading editor and in the succeeding four years promoted the Columbian Exposition, opposed the Pullman strikers, and fought bimetallism. He wrote in his autobiography that although financially these years "cost me dearly" they were "in many ways the most satisfactory of my newspaper experience. "
His final connection in daily journalism was with Herman H. Kohlsaat on the associated Chicago Evening Post, Chicago Times-Herald, and Chicago Record-Herald (1895 - 1902), much of the time as editorial-page director. At the outbreak of the Spanish-American War he declined a tender from the New York World to be its correspondent in Cuba. In 1903 he began an entirely new career. At the invitation of the General Managers' Association of Chicago he established the Bureau of Railway News and Statistics, and as its director at $10, 000 a year became one of the country's first important industrial press-agents.
For the next thirty-two years he studied railroading in all its phases, compiled statistics, and issued frequent reports and bulletins, which were collected at intervals and published as The Railway Library (7 vols. , 1910 - 16). Among his separate titles were Cost, Capitalization and Estimated Value of American Railways (1907) and A Short History of American Railways (1925). He strongly opposed government ownership of railroads, recommending instead consolidations and other management changes to increase efficiency. One result of his work was to speed up the issuance of official statistics.
With his wife and their three daughters, Julia, Barbara, and Margaret, he was on his way to France at the outbreak of the First World War. Soon after their arrival they went to England and from there returned to the United States. Injuries suffered in a fall when he was eighty-six caused him to close his railroad news bureau in May 1935. Survived by his family, he died eight months later at his Lake Forest, Ill. , home and was buried in Lake Forest Cemetery. His Way Back When: Recollections of an Octogenarian, 1849-1929 (privately printed, 1930) is a pleasant, frequently nostalgic, survey of his long, busy, and varied life.
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Interests
Sport & Clubs
An enthusiastic participant in many sports, Thompson performed the remarkable feat of playing 144 holes of golf in one day (August 5, 1903) at the age of fifty-four.
Connections
He married Julia D Watson of Evanston, IL and had three daughters: Margaret, Mrs. LeBaron Turner, and Mrs. Barbara Mecham, wife of John C Mecham, VP of the First National Bank of Chicago.