The^buthof 
 JamesWhitcomb Rilqy 
 
 Marcus Dickey 
 
THE YOUTH OF 
 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
THE RILEY YOUTH AT FOURTEEN 
 Pencil dm wing by himself 
 
THE YOUTH OF 
 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 Fortune s way with the Poet from 
 Infancy to Manhood 
 
 By 
 MARCUS DICKEY 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS PAINTED 
 UNDER THE POET S DIRECTION 
 
 By WILL VAWTER 
 
 AND REPRODUCTIONS OF PHOTOGRAPHS 
 
 DAGUERREOTYPES. LETTERS AND 
 
 RARE DOCUMENTS 
 
 INDIANAPOLIS 
 
 THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
COPYRIGHT 1919 
 THE BOBBS-MERHILL COMPANY 
 
 Printed m the United States of America 
 
 OF 
 
 BRAUNWORTH & CO. 
 
 BOOK MANUFACTURERS 
 
 BROOKLYN. N. V. 
 
A /J 
 
 Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel, 
 
 Turn thy wild wheel 
 
 Through sunshine, storm and cloud; 
 
 Smile and we smile f 
 
 The lords of many lands; 
 
 Frown and we smile. 
 
 The lords of our own hands; 
 
 For man is man 
 
 master of his fate. 
 
 ALFRED TENNYSON". 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 When Cromwell sat to Sir Peter Leley, he said, "I desire 
 you will use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me, 
 and not flatter me at all; but remark all those roughnesses, 
 pimples, warts, and everything as you see me." 
 
 This famous injunction Eiley quoted to a reporter who 
 sought his opinion on biography. The poet had read it, for 
 the first time, when a youth, in the preface to a rare and much 
 loved set of old books entitled British Painters and Sculptors. 
 To a writer who came to him for a sketch of his life, he 
 said, "Don t take sides with conflicting opinions about me; 
 don t strive to write me up or down ; tell the facts." He went 
 on to talk of Boswell. "They have called him a conceited 
 fool," said he, "but he was of as much benefit to literature as 
 Johnson himself. He put things down as they were, and for 
 once we have the charming chronicle of a life without the 
 weakness of apology." 
 
 To the author of this volume, the poet said: "There is a 
 Chemistry in Nature that is making the worst good and the 
 best better. To this end a biographer may give scars the 
 treatment distance gives them in the landscape; he may 
 soften or spiritualize them but never ignore them." In a 
 word, the golden rule was this : speak the truth in love. 
 
 Evidently the above observations suggest a sympathetic, 
 lovable book; but it is one thing to receive suggestions, an 
 other and altogether different thing to carry them out. The 
 author does not claim to have done this, but he does claim 
 while doing his work to have had the poet s ideals uppermost 
 in mind. By breaking away, to some extent, from "the dull 
 
FOKEWORD 
 
 order of chronology" and by the liberal use of anecdote, he 
 hopes the narrative has gained in variety and interest. In 
 ways incalculable he is indebted to others, and chiefly to the 
 poet, who made numerous corrections in the records and cor 
 dially approved all efforts to arrive at the truth through them. 
 To all who have thus generously assisted him, the gratitude 
 of the author is given without reservation. 
 
 The poet s life, as he saw it, was divided into two periods : 
 Youth and Maturity the latter carrying with it the idea of 
 wrestling with and solving manhood s problems the former 
 roughly covering the first thirty years of his life, but often 
 mantling with its fervor the period far beyond. Youth was 
 the spring and summer of his fortunes ; Maturity the autumn 
 and winter. Age was unnecessary. "Youth," he was wont 
 to repeat, "is the mainspring of the world." If he could be 
 enrolled among the Eternal Boys, that was fame enough. 
 
 Out of college halls, city workshops, and wayside cottages, 
 have come hosts of Kiley readers who have thought and who 
 still think of him as a living friend because he sang of living 
 things. Eecalling the tribute of their love, the author can 
 not conceal the lively hope that this chronicle of their friend 
 by their friend may find a genial corner in their good opinions. 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 Heart of the Highlands, 
 
 Nashville, Indiana, 
 June, 1919. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I A GLIMPSE OF THE EARLY DAYS .... 1 
 
 II THE EHYME OF CHILDHOOD 19 
 
 III SALAD DAYS A CRISIS AND A TRADE . . 48 
 
 IV THE ARGONAUT AMONG OLD BOOKS ... 84 
 V OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY . . . . 105 
 
 VI WITH THE GRAPHIC COMPANY 132 
 
 VII WHILE THE MUSICIAN PLAYED . . . , . 158 
 
 VIII ATTORNEY AT LAW 181 
 
 IX WITH THE WIZARD OIL COMPANY . . . . 193 
 
 X SCRIBBLING IN GRUB STREET 216 
 
 XI THE STRANGE YOUNG MAN 235 
 
 XII IN THE DARK 252 
 
 XIII VISION OF His MISSION 271 
 
 XIV THE GOLDEN GIRL 283 
 
 XV LIGHT AND COUNSEL FROM THE WISE . . 312 
 
 XVI ON THE TRIPOD OF THE DEMOCRAT .... 331 
 
 XVII THE LITERARY TORPEDO 359 
 
 XVIII WEATHERING THE STORM 401 
 
 INDEX 419 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 THE RILEY YOUTH AT FOURTEEN .... Frontispiece 
 THE POET S MOTHER, ABOUT 1860 . . . Facing page 12 
 
 His FIRST SCHOOLHOUSE "13 
 
 LOG CABIN ON THE NATIONAL ROAD WHERE 
 
 THE POET WAS BORN " "34 
 
 RILEY HOMESTEAD IN GREENFIELD, 1856 . " 35 
 THE POET S HANDWRITING THE YEAR OF 
 
 His VISION , 60 
 
 His HANDWRITING TWENTY YEARS LATER " M 60 
 THE POET S PENMANSHIP IN His SCHOOL 
 DAYS "61 
 
 THE POET S FATHER, CAPTAIN REUBEN A. 
 
 RILEY , " " 94 
 
 OLD SHOE-SHOP ........ "95 
 
 THE MOTHER S GIRLHOOD HOME ON THE 
 
 MISSISSINEWA "120 
 
 STANDARD REMEDY TRADE-MARK . . . " 121 
 "LOGAN S" SPEECH TO THE FISHERMEN . " 146 
 GRAPHIC COMPANY BUSINESS CARD . . " 147 
 RILEY & MCCLANAHAN BUSINESS CARD . " " 147 
 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY AGE TWENTY- 
 TWO , ... , " 178 
 
 OLE BULL, THE MASTER MUSICIAN . . ; ., " " 179 
 
 THE WIZARD OIL COMPANY ,. ,. . ,., ... " " 212 
 
 DONALD GRANT MITCHELL .... w " 213 
 
 THE SIGN ON THE COUNTRY BARN . ... " " 248 
 
 New YORK STORE SIGN AT ANDERSON w 349 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Continued 
 
 FACSIMILE LETTER FEOM HEARTH AND 
 
 HOME Facing page 274 
 
 HEADING OF HEARTH AND HOME ... " " 275 
 
 "THAT SIGN IN THE POST OFFICE" ... " " 275 
 
 HER BEAUTIFUL HAND " "304 
 
 WHEN THE POET WAS TWENTY-FIVE . . " " 305 
 
 THE SECOND LETTER FROM LONGFELLOW . " " 320 
 
 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW ... 340 
 
 JOHN TOWNSEND TROWBRIDGE .... " " 341 
 
 ANDERSON DEMOCRAT OFFICE .... " " 380 
 
 OLD COTTAGE ON BOLIVAR STREET ... 331 
 
 THE POET AT THE AGE OF TWENTY-EIGHT " " 406 
 
 OLD COUNTY COUBT HOUSE . - " " 407 
 
THE YOUTH OF 
 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
The Youth of 
 James Whitcomb Riley 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 A GLIMPSE OF THE EARLY 
 
 IT WAS the tide of migration: what the Red Man 
 called the White Man s Flood youth, commerce 
 and trade, visions of wealth, the arts, sowing and 
 reaping, faith, hope and love, following the Great 
 Western Pioneer, the sun. Rising from the shores of 
 the British Isles and the continent of Europe, it crossed 
 the Atlantic and fringed the seaboard of a new world 
 with cities and farms. It ascended the eastern slopes 
 of the mountains, poured through the gates of the Blue 
 Ridge and the Alleghanies, and swept through the 
 forests and over the prairies of the Ohio Valley. 
 
 What was its character? Who were the emigrants? 
 They were not one people, not a family of single 
 extraction from one motherland. They were French 
 men and Englishmen, Dutch, Irish, and Scotch 
 men, descendants of Puritans and cavaliers, gen 
 tlemen from Virginia, artisans from Pennsylvania 
 and students from New England. There were 
 woodmen, sturdy swains, and delvers with the spade; 
 pedestrians, riders, and revelers and felons, not mul 
 titudes of them such as the motherland once sent to 
 Australia, but a sufficient number to be an important 
 
 1 
 
2 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 factor in the structure of states. There were soldiers 
 ever ready to hurry to the charge, and orators who 
 swayed the multitude with impassioned speech. There 
 came also musicians. In the new land as in the 
 old, the four essentials were food, clothing, shelter and 
 recreation. Over the mountains "with the cooking 
 pots and pails" came the fiddle and banjo. There were 
 the forefathers of sculptors and painters, and 
 
 Of poets pacing to and fro, 
 Murmuring their sounding lines" ; 
 
 particularly the ancestors of a poet of simple life, 
 the central figure in the succeeding chapters of this 
 volume. It was a race of men with their backs turned 
 upon the sea, "civilization frayed at the edges," a 
 master historian has said, "taken forward in rough 
 and ready fashion, with a song and a swagger, by 
 woodsmen and drovers, with axes and whips and rifles 
 in their hands." Hundreds among the thousands who 
 came were disappointed. Many returned, but the large 
 majority remained, "built cabins, planted crops, culti 
 vated farms, founded towns and cities, and established 
 a new empire." 
 
 Of the land to which they came it may be said that 
 in expanse and grandeur it surpassed all other won 
 derlands of the temperate zone. The Forest of Arden 
 in which the imagination of Shakespeare reveled was 
 a brushwood in comparison. Such mammoth trees the 
 eye of man had seldom seen. It was a rich land. 
 Daniel Boone, looking out over it, was "richer than 
 the owners of cattle on a thousand hills." But its 
 wealth could not be measured by the hunter s eye. It 
 was a primeval region many hundred leagues in cir 
 cumference. From east to west it equaled the distance 
 
A GLIMPSE OF THE EARLY DAYS 3 
 
 traversed by Stanley in his march to the Mountains of 
 the Moon. But how great the contrast. The Stanley 
 region was in the darkest corner of the earth, brood 
 ing under the eternal storm-clouds of the equator. The 
 masses of forest vegetation suggested mystery and awe. 
 Not so the American woods. As the African explorer 
 said of them, "There was poetic seclusion, graceful dis 
 order, bits of picturesque skies, and the sun shedding 
 softened streams of light on scenes of exhaustless 
 beauty and wonder." The scenes were vocal with the 
 songs of streams and birds. Breezes whispered their 
 gentle mysteries to the trees, and mighty winds made 
 music in the forest like 
 
 "The roar of Ocean on his winding shore." 
 
 It was a midway region, exempt alike from the se 
 verity of the Canadian winters and the enervating 
 summer heat of the Gulf coast. The kingdom of nature 
 the seasons, morning, noon, evening, and the silence 
 of night surpassed the splendors of the Orient; and 
 when Indian summer came to fold the land in sym 
 pathetic sleep, there came with it a vision of per 
 fection that rivaled dreams of the Golden Age. 
 "The world of childhood," wrote William Dean 
 Howells, whose boyhood was a part of it, "the child 
 hood of that vanished West, which lay between the 
 Ohio and the Mississippi, and was, unless memory 
 abuses my fondness, the happiest land that ever there 
 was under the sun." 
 
 In such a land it was less difficult for men and 
 women to order their lives on a comprehensive scale, 
 and they began to do that. Their dreams and deeds, 
 in part, corresponded to their surroundings. They 
 loved youth. "They lived freely with powerful unedu- 
 
4 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 cated persons. They loved the earth, the sun and the 
 animals; despised riches, hated tyrants, and took off 
 their hats to no man nor any number of men." They 
 were transformed by the rough fortunes of the fron 
 tier, and in the passing of the years a poet was born to 
 celebrate the transformation a poet of the people with 
 poems, said Mark Twain, "as sweet and genuine as 
 any that his friends, the birds and bees, make about 
 his other friends, the woods and flowers." 
 
 There was another side to the picture of the West, 
 the West as seen one lovely April by Charles Dickens, 
 then a young novelist of thirty, who came down the 
 Ohio River in a steamboat and hurried through the re 
 gion from Cincinnati to Lake Erie, in a stage-coach. 
 Ohio and Indiana were in the making; Cincinnati, 
 lying in its amphitheater of hills, commended itself to 
 the novelist favorably and pleasantly. The way out of 
 the city led through a beautiful, cultivated country 
 rich in the promise of an abundant harvest. Soon 
 however the scene changed. Roadside inns were dull 
 and silent. There were the primitive worm-fence, the 
 unseemly sight of squalid huts, wretched cabins, 
 broken-down wagons, and shambling, low-roofed cow 
 sheds. Villagers stared idly at the passengers and 
 sent up a silly shout when the coach bumped against 
 the stumps in the street. Loafers lounged around the 
 country stores, the climate was pernicious and every 
 where were signs of ill health and depression. 
 
 Beyond were miles upon miles of forest solitudes 
 "unbroken by any sign of human life or any trace of 
 human footsteps" then to come suddenly upon a 
 clearing" with black stumps strewn about the field, to 
 find settlers burning down the trees, the charred and 
 blackened giants of the wood lying like so many "mur- 
 
A GLIMPSE OF THE EARLY DAYS 5 
 
 dered creatures" on the earth it was a scene to excite 
 the traveler s compassion. His mind reverted to a 
 former age when mighty forest trees spread their roof 
 over a land enchanted, an aboriginal age when men 
 lived pleasantly in blessed ignorance of the destruction 
 and miseries of the White Man s Flood. 
 
 That branch of the tide of migration which Dickens 
 saw lacked diversity of character. The emigrants 
 were hollow-cheeked and pale, silent, joyless and un 
 social. The women were drowsy; the men seemed 
 "melancholy ghosts of departed bookkeepers." Had 
 he left the stage-coach and lived for a space with 
 the settlers, had he gone with them to husking- 
 bees, barn-raisings and log-rollings, he would have 
 found robust constitutions and an abundance of joy and 
 laughter. Among those who lived on corn bread, boiled 
 ham and cabbage, he would have found many who saw 
 the beauty in the rainbow, in the thunder-storm and 
 the sunset. And gratitude for literature he would 
 have found also. John Hay relates that early settlers 
 in Kentucky saddled their horses and rode from neigh 
 boring counties to the principal post-town whenever a 
 new Waverley novel was expected. Among the old 
 books scattered here and there in the log cabins of In 
 diana and Ohio, Dickens would have found a new one, 
 Master Humphrey s Clock, which then contained the 
 story of Little Nell, whose life found an echo in the 
 brief histories of domestic joys and sorrows of the 
 frontier. Among those who idolized this heroine of 
 fiction was Elizabeth Marine, who a few years later 
 became the mother of a child of song whose mission 
 was to make glad the people with poetry wrought from 
 the very things that had filled the heart of Dickens 
 with discontent. As the south wind warms winter 
 
6 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 into spring, as the sun turns the sod to violets, so was 
 this child of song to transmute the homeliness of those 
 early days into beauty. Things were unsightly when the 
 novelist passed. There was to be loveliness and har 
 mony when the singer came. 
 
 It was a desire of Sir Walter Scott to stand in the 
 midst of a wild original American forest "with the 
 idea of hundreds of miles of untrodden forest around 
 him," in the vast region stretching westward from the 
 Alleghanies, for example. Such was the good fortune 
 of those families who first settled in the woods of Ran 
 dolph County, Indiana. Geographically they were in 
 the very heart of the region. Leading back from those 
 settlements, as indeed from settlements in every 
 county, were threads of genealogy, which, if not para 
 mount in importance, nevertheless gave color to sub 
 sequent life. They played a part in the youth of the 
 nation. History does not omit them from those days 
 of hope and discovery. They belong to "the great 
 story of men." One of those threads led back to Bed 
 ford, Pennsylvania, where Reuben Alexander Riley, 
 father of the poet, was born in the year 1819. 
 
 "I know when my father was born, at any rate," 
 once remarked the poet, crowing over the one date in 
 history he could remember. 
 
 "When?" he was asked. 
 
 "The year Queen Victoria was born." 
 
 "And what year was that?" 
 
 "I don t know." 
 
 Reuben Riley was the fifth in a family of fourteen 
 children. His father, Andrew Riley, and his mother, 
 Margaret (Sleek) Riley, were born and reared in 
 Pennsylvania. "My grandfather Riley," said Reuben, 
 
A GLIMPSE OF THE EARLY DAYS 7 
 
 "was an Irishman and my grandfather Sleek, a Ger 
 man. Both grandmothers were English." 
 
 In 1825 Andrew Riley moved with his family to west 
 ern Ohio, and a few years later across the Indiana line 
 to a knoll on Stony Creek, Randolph County, where he 
 built a log cabin near a cluster of giant trees known as 
 the "sugar orchard." On the way from Pennsylvania, 
 a distance of four hundred miles, the family experi 
 enced many hardships. The father had sold all his 
 belongings for thirty dollars except a horse, a "carry 
 all" and some clothing. He and the older sons walked 
 while the mother drove the wagon and cared for the 
 youngsters. They lived in the open, building camp-fires 
 in the woods at night. Through the foothills of the 
 Alleghanies, their food was chiefly chestnuts and gin 
 gerbread. In Ohio they had such luxuries as Indian 
 corn, apples and sweet potatoes. 
 
 After reaching the woods of Indiana, so tradition 
 says, "they lived on the fat of the land." There were 
 grains, venison, squirrels and plenty of vegetables. 
 There were wild animals to trap and wild turkeys to 
 shoot; red deer came to Stony Creek daily and black 
 bear were abundant. 
 
 Andrew Riley, certainly, had enough and to spare. 
 One season when there was a scarcity of grain, desti 
 tute Miami Indians came to him and he loaded their 
 ponies with corn. Another year, a stockman insisted 
 on buying all the corn he had at seventy-five cents a 
 bushel. The offer was refused. "My neighbors need 
 it," said he, "for seed and bread." He sold to them for 
 twenty-five cents a bushel. 
 
 Such a man was naturally happy in his declining 
 years, and, above all, at peace with himself and the 
 
8 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 world. A few days before he died, he said, "I have 
 never intentionally wronged any man. I have not been 
 vulgar or profane. I have tried to do right. I do not 
 fear to die." 
 
 Another line of genealogy led back to Rockingham, 
 North Carolina, where Elizabeth (Marine) Riley, 
 mother of the poet, was born in 1823. She was the 
 tenth in a family of eleven children. Her father. 
 John Marine, and her mother, Fanny (Jones) Marine, 
 were reared in the South. Her family lineage, on 
 the paternal side, could be traced back to the 
 year 1665. Her grandfather Marine was born in Wales, 
 being a descendant of the French Huguenots, "those 
 refugees that brought art and the refinements of civili 
 zation wherever they came." His wife was a perse 
 cuted Quaker from England. On coming to Americs 
 they first settled among the Indians in Maryland, bul 
 later sought the warmer climate of the Carolinas. Ir 
 1825, having lost his little fortune by speculating ir 
 weaver-sleighs, John Marine moved with his family t( 
 Indiana, crossing the Ohio River at North Bend- 
 Among the incidents of the journey was the halt for a 
 few days on the Ohio, and the joy at finding the new 
 country all agog over the visit of the Great Lafayette. 
 For years the story was a favorite in the Marine 
 family, how the friend of Washington had ascended the 
 river, and after spending a day with Henry Clay under 
 the great trees at Ashland, had come to be the guest oi 
 the Queen City, his emotions when he beheld the fron 
 tier host on the hills of a city that two score years be 
 fore was but a cluster of log huts by the river; how 
 the Stars and Stripes rippled from steamboats and 
 buildings, and the applause echoed from both shores 
 while the venerable hero was conveyed across the river 
 
A GLIMPSE OF THE EARLY DAYS 9 
 
 in a barge, how the alleys and commons were blockaded 
 with ox teams and country wagons, how it had rained 
 in torrents for a week, and how the artillery splashed 
 through the muddy streets a big story it was of pa 
 triotism in the backwoods, and the Marines were radi 
 ant with it when they reached Indiana. 
 
 After a transient residence at New Garden and one 
 or two other points in Wayne County, they settled 
 permanently on the Mississinewa River in Randolph 
 County, where they built a cabin on a high bank at a 
 bend in the river a few miles below Ridgeville. To 
 the south was a white oak grove, a favorite retreat for 
 Elizabeth Marine. "She often went there," said her 
 brother James, "to commune with the big oak." Thus 
 the moral influence of nature began to sink into her 
 soul. 
 
 The Marines were flat-boat builders, millers, and 
 verse-makers. About the first thing they did on reach 
 ing a new country was to establish a mill site and 
 write a poetic narrative of their wanderings. "John 
 Marine," so said his gifted grandson, "wrote his auto 
 biography in rhyme. He would sit by the fireplace and 
 write heavy turbid poetry on scientific and Biblical 
 subjects. The tendency was to the epic." He laid out 
 the town of Rockingham on the Mississinewa and ad 
 vertised the lots in rhyme. The town, according to an 
 old record, had so small a growth and so early a death, 
 that settlers of a later period could not find the faint 
 est trace of its location. All that now remains on 
 the site are a few unmarked graves in the far corner 
 of a cow pasture, among them the grave of Elizabeth 
 Marine s mother. 
 
 John Marine was not only a boat-builder and rhymer, 
 but a teacher and preacher as well. He preached to 
 
10 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 neighbors in his cabin on Sunday. He wrote a book 
 advocating the union of the churches a suicidal thing 
 to do in his day which in part is said to have been in 
 rhyme. The manuscript was kept many years in a 
 trunk, but "one winter," to quote his grandson again, 
 "six mice reduced it to confetti. On the first ballot the 
 jury was divided, but at last the vote was unanimous 
 for destruction." 
 
 As a preacher John Marine had more than a local 
 reputation. He and the poet s grandmother, Margaret 
 Riley, were leaders in the Methodist camp-meetings of 
 Randolph and Delaware Counties. There were no wan 
 dering eyes when they addressed the meetings, particu 
 larly when the latter spoke. 
 
 "Elizabeth Marine," said William A. Thornburg, an 
 old resident of Randolph County, "was remarkably 
 pure-minded. I never saw any one so beautiful in a 
 calico dress. She belonged to a large family. They 
 lived in a one-story log house. It had a clay and stick 
 chimney. She went to school, but her chief delight 
 was to play along streams and wander in the green 
 woods. She was always seeing things among the 
 leaves." 
 
 Except that her eyes were blue instead of brown, 
 Longfellow might have chosen Elizabeth Marine for 
 his portrait in "Maidenhood." Her nature was poetic. 
 One of her girlhood friends remembered her ascending 
 Muncie hill on the Mississinewa to get a view of clear 
 ings in the valley, and how happy she was at the sight 
 of the blue smoke curling up from cabins in the morn 
 ing air. The friend added that "she adored her garden 
 and the cultivation of small fruits. When she stood 
 in the hollyhocks she seemed to be in a trance." She 
 loved to listen to the sound of woodchoppers, and the 
 
A GLIMPSE OF THE EARLY DAYS 11 
 
 crunch of wagons dragged wearily by oxen along the 
 road. At dusk sweet to her was 
 
 "The clinking of bells on the air 
 Of the cows coming home from the wood." 
 
 The scenery that was uninteresting to Dickens was 
 fair and comely to her. She saw the "orange in the eve 
 ning sky." Bright colored birds were "flying flowers." 
 Peering through the trees she caught the glimpse of 
 Pan although it was not her gift to adorn the scene 
 with the vines of verse as did her illustrious son. 
 
 Pomona would have envied this maiden of the Missis- 
 sine wa her enjoyment of the wild orchards of that 
 period. To listen to "Johnny Appleseed," the eccen 
 tric wanderer who planted them, was one of her 
 happy opportunities. She remembered his telling of 
 his first visit to the Indiana forest, how he had brought 
 a sack of apple seeds on the back of an ox. His narra 
 tive pleased her because it was novel. His peculiarities 
 were captivating like a bird he was, roosting where 
 night overtook him always wearing ragged clothes 
 never carrying a gun never sleeping in a bed never 
 having any place he called home, yet always happy, 
 
 "While he was walking by day or lying at night in the 
 
 forest, 
 
 Looking up at the trees, and the constellations beyond 
 them." 
 
 She recalled that he was a Swedenborgian, and how 
 deeply she was impressed with his belief that "grow 
 ing old in Heaven is growing young." James Marine, 
 her brother, long afterward said that this was his 
 sister s vision of Heaven as long as she lived. 
 
 Among the influences that came through the moun 
 tain passes with the tide of migration, was the breath 
 
12 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 of love love, as the poet has said, fresh with the youth 
 of the world, old and yet ever new, and always beau 
 tiful. "We had to reckon with it on all occasions, " said 
 a county pioneer; "it swayed young hearts at picnics 
 and camp-meetings as the breeze swayed the green 
 tree-tops." In a settlement on Cabin Creek (to which 
 point the Marines had come after Elizabeth s mother 
 had died and the home had been broken up on the 
 Mississinewa) was a slender young woman twenty 
 years old, lovely as the maiden of Plymouth, and like 
 her, too, in that she was familiar with the hum of the 
 spinning-wheel. Over in the Stony Creek settlement 
 was a young man twenty-four years old. He was lithe, 
 straight and tall, had black eyes, black hair and a 
 radiant face. He was known for his eloquence in de 
 bating clubs, had taught school, studied law in a neigh- 
 boring county-seat, been admitted to the bar, and had 
 had a limited practice in a prairie village in Iowa. 
 
 "Now it happens in this country/ said Abraham 
 Lincoln, "that, for some reason or other, we meet once 
 every year, somewhere about the Fourth of July. 
 These Fourth of July gatherings, I suppose, have 
 their uses." Indeed, they do, and quite the first 
 of the uses of the Fourth of July gathering in Neeley s 
 Woods, near the village of Windsor, Randolph County, 
 1843, was that Reuben A. Riley might meet Elizabeth 
 Marine and fall a victim to her beauty. It was a day 
 for family reunions a barbacue day, the "roast" con 
 sisting of several pigs, an ox, and five lambs. Stony 
 Creek laughed through the wood, and there, too, played 
 those other streams, "the life-currents that ebb and 
 flow in human hearts." There was the confusion of 
 wagons, the "herd of country boys," babies tumbling 
 on the ground, and men and maidens making merry. 
 
A GLIMPSE OF THE EARLY DAYS 13 
 
 As the afternoon wore on, the rounds of pleasure 
 continued, the last year s leaves were swept from a 
 spot in the woods, and, to paraphrase Tennyson, 
 
 "men and maids 
 
 Arranged a country dance, and flew through light 
 And shadow, while the twanging violin 
 Struck up with Yankee Doodle, and lofty beech 
 Made noise with bees and breeze from end to end." 
 
 Here Reuben Riley and Elizabeth Marine met for the 
 first time and their dancing feet went forward with 
 the rest. "It was love at first sight," said James 
 Marine. "I am an old man now and have seen many 
 days of pleasure, but none like that one in Neeley s 
 Woods. I think I never saw my sister dance so 
 happily." 
 
 As usual, Lincoln, the master interpreter of men 
 and events, was right. A young lawyer came to that 
 forest jubilee free as an eagle. He met a young woman 
 he had not seen before, and left the woods that night 
 a captive for life. Truly, "these Fourth of July gath 
 erings have their uses." 
 
 Although the crowd assembled at the behest of Lib 
 erty, it did not march in procession with banners. A 
 few flags hanging from the trees paid tribute to "the 
 day we celebrate." There were no giant fire crackers, 
 nor Roman candles, no pyrotechnic display except the 
 flames from a log-heap and a few shell-bark hickory 
 fires, which illumined the woods at nightfall. There 
 were no fairy-balloons but there were fairies, on the 
 authority of James Marine and his friend William 
 Thornburg, who remembered that Elizabeth pointed 
 to them in the flickering shadows above her. 
 
 " Love," according to the old saw, " keepeth its cap 
 tive awake all night," So Reuben Riley, after losing 
 
14 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 his heart that July day, had his repose sadly disturbed. 
 There was an Indian pony trail some six miles long 
 between Stony Creek and Cabin Creek, which he trav 
 eled frequently by the light of a lantern. Eagerly he 
 
 "Followed the pathway that ran through the woods to 
 the house of Priscilla," 
 
 but unlike John Alden he was not led thither by de 
 ceptive fancy. He went always on the errand of love. 
 Love "was spinning his life and his fortune" and the 
 life and fortune of a son of song. All thought of 
 returning to the far-away town on the prairies for 
 the practice of law came to an end. His reflections 
 fashioned a home in Indiana. February 20, 1844, 
 he and his sweetheart Elizabeth were married at 
 Unionport on Cabin Creek and thus the pony path 
 was turned into a bridal path. 
 
 For a time previous to her marriage, Elizabeth had 
 lived with her brother at Unionport. "We made them 
 a pretty wedding," said her sister-in-law. "Her brother 
 Jonathan and Emily Hunt stood up with them. They 
 looked nice. Her wedding dress was a pale pink silk. 
 She wore a long white veil and white kid gloves and 
 shoes. Her infair dress was gray poplin. She looked 
 beautiful in her leghorn bonnet the next day when she 
 rode away on horseback with Reuben through the 
 woods." 
 
 After the honeymoon, which in those days did not 
 include a trip to the Mediterranean, the young hus 
 band brought his bride in July, 1844, to live in Green 
 field, a village of three hundred inhabitants, on Brandy- 
 wine Creek, Hancock County, Indiana. It being the 
 usual thing to do then, he moved into a log cabin 
 
m 
 
 THE POET S MOTHER, ABOUT 1860 
 
His FIRST SCHOOLHOUSE 
 The little Dame Trot dwelling of three rooms 
 
A GLIMPSE OF THE EARLY DAYS 15 
 
 "Upon the main street and the main highway 
 From East to West historic in its day 
 Known as the National Road." 
 
 Greenfield was fifteen years old. Like the settle 
 ments in Randolph County, it was neighbor to the 
 primeval forest. That forest had "multiplicity and 
 richness of tinting," and there was no "sad poverty of 
 variety in species" among the trees. "The county 
 is heavily timbered," said an early record, "as largely 
 covered with beech, sugar maple, oak, ash, elm, walnut, 
 buckeye, and hickory as any county in the State." A 
 report of a Mass Convention refers to settlers "emerg 
 ing from the beech woods around our peaceful village." 
 The humorist smiles at the size of that Mass Conven 
 tion. It was held in a courtroom which was then the 
 upper floor of a log house about twenty feet long. 
 
 The population was sparse. There were tangled 
 solitudes in the county that challenged the courage of 
 the bravest immigrant. Roads were few and winding. 
 Settlers consumed days in going to mill, although one 
 is inclined to believe they did other things on the 
 way, for one settler is said to have returned in his 
 ox-cart with "four deer, a half dozen fox and wolf 
 skins, and seven wild turkeys." Less than two score 
 years before Reuben Riley came to Greenfield, the 
 Delaware Indians were tramping up and down Brandy- 
 wine, to and from their hunting grounds, then located 
 in the wilderness, now known as Shelby and Bartholo 
 mew Counties. So far as the records show there was 
 no poet in the tribe who 
 
 "Heard the songs divine, 
 Up and down old Brandywine." 
 
 The young couple promptly took a prominent 
 
16 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 place in the life of the community; in its labors and 
 its pleasures. Soon after their coming, the first 
 newspaper was printed, the Greenfield Reveille, and 
 the husband announced himself in its business directory 
 as "Attorney at Law, Office at my residence." He was a 
 favorite from the first, and there was a demand for his 
 eloquence on public occasions. He took a lively interest 
 in the national campaign, becoming a champion of 
 
 "Polk and Annexation 
 
 against 
 The Bank and High Taxation." 
 
 "His bride Elizabeth also was a favorite* She 
 was the joy of the neighborhood, and there was 
 a melody in her voice on moonlit evenings that 
 those who heard could not forget. On public occa 
 sions she was remembered for "the bloom and grace 
 of womanhood." Old residents recalled how beautiful 
 she looked among friends on the front porch of the old 
 National Hotel. They remembered her charming man 
 ners and how lovingly she waved her hand to her hus 
 band in a procession that passed by. She contributed 
 verse to the weekly Reveille and later to the Greenfield 
 Spectator and other county papers, among them The 
 Family Friend and the American Patriot. What she 
 wrote did not pass muster, but there was a poetic 
 impulse in the heart, none the less. She was a link in 
 the Marine genealogy, and as destiny designed, the 
 last in that succession of verse-makers, who, for a 
 century or more, in their humble way, had foretold 
 the coming of a poet, whose pen would one day trans 
 figure the simple beauty of simple things and thereby 
 make 
 
A GLIMPSE OF THE EARLY DAYS 17 
 
 "Rude popular traditions and old tales 
 Shine as immortal poems." 
 
 Once for all it may be said that Greenfield was no 
 mean village. Notwithstanding the neighboring Black 
 Swamp and the marsh lands on Brandywine, it had a 
 charmingly romantic setting. Locust trees and sugar 
 maple saplings stood irregularly along the sidewalks. 
 Beech, ash and walnut, left standing when the ground 
 was cleared, gave variety and shade to backyards and 
 byways. The dwellings were cabins and frame cot 
 tages. The business rooms were for the most part 
 one-story buildings, though an occasional two-story 
 one gave promise of more pretentious blocks in days 
 to come. 
 
 As Reuben and Elizabeth Riley took their place in the 
 community, so Greenfield took its place in "the great 
 psalm of the republic." It was the gathering place for 
 life currents from southern climes, and from the farm 
 lands and cities of the East. There were students with 
 a record of things done under the elms at Yale, and 
 neighbor to these, now and then, a squire of birth and 
 distinction, who pointed with pride to his huge Carolina 
 wagon and his four-horse team, which he had driven 
 from his plantation on the Great Pedee. This blending 
 of the East and South meant in the next generation "a 
 peculiar people" a population untrammelled by the 
 artifice of fashion and formality. It meant independ 
 ence and simplicity of character. An acre of earth 
 near Greenfield dilated with "the grandeur and life of 
 the universe," as did an acre in the vicinity of Boston 
 or Savannah. There was a school of experience, 
 ample opportunity for diversity of endeavor. There 
 were love, courtship and marriage, and devotion to 
 home and country. The region grew robust men, and, 
 
18 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 none the less, mothers of large families, whose opinions 
 on men and affairs compared favorably with the judg 
 ments of their husbands. There was a native fresh 
 ness that made even the illiterate interesting. Village 
 statesmen talked profoundly of their country s possi 
 bilities and perils, and hunters and woodmen were not 
 strangers to books or the calls of culture. 
 
 "We had our dreary days," remarked an early set 
 tler, "but were not cast down. We were up with the 
 lark and down with rheumatism but seldom beyond the 
 reach of the lark s song." Nature nourished the poetic 
 impulse, whatever the station in life, state of health, 
 or degree of intelligence. 
 
 A peaceful village surrounded by beech woods with 
 a little "willow brook of rhymes" flowing through it, 
 the beech woods a part of a primeval forest diversified 
 with neighborhoods of men, women and children 
 all in all, as happy a land and time for the birth of 
 a poet as "ever there was under the sun." 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE RHYME OF CHILDHOOD 
 
 I HAVE no doubt that somewhere in the wilds of 
 this western land the wind, whispering through 
 the chinks of some log cabin, is ruffling the curls 
 upon the brow of a future son of fame." 
 
 Such were the words of an Indiana orator in a speech 
 delivered in the forties of the last century. The proph 
 ecy was not made in vain. Several sons of fame were 
 born in that decade, but the birth of one particularly 
 concerns these pages. One day in October, 1849, a 
 fortnight after that birth, Fortune singled out a run 
 away boy to find the cradle of future greatness. Hurry 
 ing away from discontentment at his home in Indian 
 apolis, the boy ran eastward along the old Plank 
 Road. It was Sunday morning. The woods were 
 yellowing and orchard boughs were bending with 
 ripened fruit. When he grew hungry he filled his linen 
 coat pockets with apples. Occasionally a farm wagon 
 going to or from church gave him a lift and for a time 
 he was accompanied by a stranger who listened suspi 
 ciously to the tale of his woes. 
 
 The forenoon was long, the afternoon longer, but just 
 as the sun was sinking behind the notorious Black 
 Swamp the toll-gate burst upon the runaway s tired 
 vision, and a few moments later he saw in the deepen 
 ing twilight the village of Greenfield, the end of his 
 day s flight. At the edge of town he fell in with 
 a boy who had been driving cows to pasture. The 
 
 19 
 
20 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 lad directed him to the home of one Reuben A. Riley 
 a young lawyer, thirty years of age, and a leading citi 
 zen of the little county-seat. 
 
 "There the lawyer lives," said the boy as they entered 
 Main Street, pointing to a little, unpainted, half-frame, 
 half-log house in the southeast corner of its lot. At the 
 gate the boys parted and soon a timid knock brought the 
 lawyer to the door and the runaway stood speechless 
 in the presence of his brother. Not meeting in the stern 
 dark eye of the lawyer the welcome he hoped for, the 
 young brother covered his face with his hands and sat 
 down on the door-step. At the same moment he heard 
 the rustle of a dress and the voice of a gentle wife 
 and mother. She stood for an instant, "saintly and 
 sad as the twilight," and then led the boy through 
 the front room to the kitchen the frame structure at 
 the rear of the cabin. 
 
 Now that the runaway is in the arms of the mother, 
 it is good to listen to his story in his own words 
 as it was told half a century later. "Within her 
 arms," said he, "I had the feeling of utter security. 
 She combed my hair and seated me on her knee. As 
 the story of my running away proceeded, I looked up 
 and there inside the kitchen door stood the swarthy 
 form of the lawyer, his arms folded and his eyes bent 
 severely upon us. Lifting her soft blue-gray eyes to 
 his, with tears shining on their fringes like dew on 
 the grass, she pled my cause. Let him stay and be a 
 companion to our children/ said she. At this, the black 
 eyes softened. Laying his hand on my head and look 
 ing longingly into her face, he said, There, Lizzie, it is 
 settled ; he can stay ; I will inform the folks to-morrow/ 
 
 "Then came supper and such a supper the Prodigal 
 Son never feasted upon. Everything pie, cake, pre- 
 
THE RHYME OF CHILDHOOD 21 
 
 serves, milk and bread white as snow and all the 
 time the mother standing behind my chair, filling my 
 plate as often as I could clear it. After supper we went 
 to the front room. I have something pretty to show 
 you/ she said ; something you have never seen. Lead 
 ing me to an old-fashioned box cradle, near the window 
 where the Queen of the Prairie shed its fragrance on 
 the night breeze, she gently lifted a snowy little cover 
 and showed me the sleeping face of a babe. I stooped 
 and kissed its dainty lips and thus I entered a Child- 
 World." 
 
 The baby had been born Sunday morning, October 
 7, 1849, and a week later christened James Whitcomb 
 Riley in response to the father s admiration for Gov 
 ernor James Whitcomb of Indiana. "At no period in the 
 history of the State," said the Governor, in his Thanks 
 giving message, "has the bounty of God In the control 
 of the seasons been so signally manifested towards us 
 as during the year now drawing to a close." He was 
 thinking of material blessings, but Heaven was not 
 unmindful of the new birth of poesy in the box cradle 
 at Greenfield. 
 
 True to the instincts of child-nature, the boy started 
 from his cradle on a voyage of discovery. "The first 
 thing I remember," said Riley, "was my father s riding 
 up to the woodhouse door with a deer hanging from the 
 pommel of his saddle; and about the second thing I 
 remember was the bugler who galloped west on the 
 National Road with news of the death of President 
 Taylor." Before he could walk the Riley child learned 
 that his by-name was "Bud," and that he had been thus 
 lovingly distinguished by his Uncle Mart, Martin Whit- 
 ten Riley, the runaway who had discovered him in the 
 box cradle. The uncle, a few years "Bud s" senior, was 
 
22 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 himself a youth of "poetic symptoms/* and, next to 
 the mother, had the greatest influence on her boy 
 in that morning of childish glee. He could 
 invent stories for boys almost as interesting as 
 those he remembered from books. He built a playhouse 
 for the children in the apple trees, and sometimes when 
 summer days were hot and long he climbed to it him 
 self "to moon over a novel" or to ease his heart of 
 "hopeless verse." In springtime, when the hired hand 
 went to the country to plant and plow corn, he took 
 his place in the yard and garden. He pruned the apple 
 trees, and it was often his fortune to sniff "alluring 
 whiffs of the dear old-fashioned dinners the children 
 loved." He was also the hired girl when the mother 
 had more than she could do, as was often the case. At 
 meal-time he seated 
 
 "The garland of glad faces round the board 
 Each member of the family restored 
 To his or her place, with an extra chair" 
 
 for the farmer the father brought in from the street, or 
 a state politician who came from afar on the long high 
 way for a conference with the lawyer at the noon hour. 
 Uncle Mart inspired the little "Bud" with his first 
 ambition, the desire to be a baker, and at divers times 
 took the place of the mother or the hired girl when 
 they were too busy to give lessons in cooking. "Bud" 
 spent much of the time in the kitchen, rolling dough 
 and making pies, which at first were little more than 
 fragments. After a while he improved so that he 
 "could build pies of legitimate size. My joy" (to quote 
 from his own memory of them) "was complete when 
 I could fashion a custard pie and then came the feat, 
 worthy of a slight-of-hand performer, of getting it 
 
THE RHYME OF CHILDHOOD 23 
 
 into the oven without spilling." His ambition was not 
 a childish whim. For several years he felt a twinge of 
 disappointment that he had not realized it. He really 
 thought he would make a success as a baker. 
 
 The kitchen being a world far too small for a boy of 
 "Bud s" possibilities, the circle of his discoveries soon 
 extended to the garden and stable lot ; in short, he began 
 to distinguish himself by an eminent degree of curios 
 ity. "Then," as he observed when older, "was the flood- 
 tide of interrogation points. I could ask more questions 
 than grandfather in Paradise could answer in a year" 
 why bears steal pigs from the pen why they carry 
 bee gums on their arms where go the wagons on the 
 Plank Road what the leaves say when they whisper 
 why the grass is green why the rain drools down the 
 window-pane why the moon is low and the stars are 
 high never an end of questions and never an end of 
 questing. One day the mother discovered that "Bud" 
 was a poet, when he came running from the yard, all in 
 a flutter, with a story of an apple shower. "Uncle 
 held the basket," he prattled, 
 
 "Old Aunt Fanny wuz shaking em down, 
 And Johnny and Jimmy wuz picking em up." 
 
 The lines lacked the touch of the trained lyrist, but as 
 Uncle Mart said, "they tinkled." The hint of a tune 
 ful future may be taken for what it is worth, but there 
 is testimony to the effect that the poetic impulse dawned 
 in the Riley heart very early. He did not, like Bryant, 
 "contribute verse to the county paper before he was 
 ten years old," but he was a poet in feeling before 
 that date. One spring morning Uncle Mart led him 
 away for a whole-day ramble up a stream that rose in 
 the hills and came prattling through the village "the 
 
24 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 little willowy Branch of rhymes," it was, "that split 
 the town" and mingled its current 
 
 "With the limpid, laughing waters 
 Of the Classic Brandywine." 
 
 As Riley remembered, he was about six or seyen 
 years old. For him it was a day of blooming cheeks 
 and open brow a day of discovery. He recalled that 
 Uncle Mart talked of the stream and the thick woods as 
 a stage. He and "Bud" were stage-hands lifting cur 
 tains for views of scenery. "And not a great while 
 after," said Riley, recalling the enchantment of that 
 childish hour, "I learned that the world is a stage and 
 that Fortune is the stage-hand that lifts the curtain." 
 Back of Uncle Mart and "Bud" was a fairy impulse 
 from the mother. The uncle credits her with "build 
 ing and formulating the happiest programs that were 
 ever placed upon the boards of her home stage." The 
 ramble along the Branch was the beginning of a period 
 that sparkled with joy akin to that of the dancing 
 stream. Often "Bud" was drawn to its banks to listen 
 to its limpid waters. Its pebbles, glittering in 
 the ripples, looked up to him "like the eyes of 
 love." They did not kindle the poetic impulse in 
 him as it was kindled a few years later by Tharpe s 
 Pond, a "little mirror of the sky" in the woods, but 
 there were "poetic symptoms" unmistakably. While 
 he sought the play-place of his childhood, Nature 
 planted in his heart the germs of "The Brook-Song," a 
 lilting melody that rivals the music of the stream that 
 inspired it. It was no fleeting influence that sparkled 
 in his vision 
 
 "Till the gurgle and refrain 
 
 Of its music in his brain 
 Wrought a happiness as keen to him as pain." 
 
THE RHYME OF CHILDHOOD 25 
 
 A playmate of his age (now Mrs. Rose Mitchell 
 Gregg) gives a village portrait of the Riley boy, such 
 a picture as a friend once gave of Tennyson paddling 
 in the sandy shallows of his boyhood stream. "I saw 
 Eiley once," she writes, "when he was about eight 
 years old, down in our neighborhood wading in the 
 Branch with his trousers rolled up above his knees. 
 Holding them high as he could with his hands, he was 
 kicking the water and looking for the deep places. He 
 wore a little blue roundabout and a soft, white felt hat 
 without band or lining. His hair was very light and cut 
 short, his eyes big and blue and his face freckled. He 
 was a slight little fellow, but keen and alert. I won 
 dered why he had wandered so far from home. Wad 
 ing in the Branch was a joyous pastime for Greenfield 
 children." Smiling back on the incident Riley gave it 
 the flavor of a rhyme 
 
 "My hair was just white as a dandelion ball, 
 My face freckled worse than an old kitchen wall." 
 
 His love of the brook reveals at that very early date 
 what became for him a primary motive of life: 
 passion for the beautiful that something that sends 
 children to the fields for flowers, the sense that delights 
 in singing birds, the colors of sunset, and the rustle of 
 leaves in October woods. "I remember," said Riley, 
 "when that passion became a controlling influence, how 
 it incited me to an act that does not now flame with 
 the color it had then. I wanted a pair of boots with red 
 tops. I slipped away from home to a shoe store where 
 my father bought on credit. After looking in vain for 
 them I selected a pair with green tops and told the 
 clerk to charge them. At home I stole upstairs to my 
 bedroom and there wore them all alone with great joy. 
 
26 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 I strode around the room proud as a knight with a spur 
 on his heel. When any one came up the stairway I 
 quickly pulled them off and hid them under the feather 
 bed. Thus I enjoyed them for two weeks before my 
 purchase was discovered. My father insisted on re 
 turning them, but my mother s love prevailed, and after 
 that I was permitted to wear them in public." 
 
 A similar instance was Riley s purchase of a cake 
 of toilet soap with pennies he had saved for the pur 
 pose. "I was probably eight years old," said he. "I 
 wanted to pace back and forth in front of the show 
 case just look at it for a while before I bought. When 
 a clerk came toward me I looked at something else till 
 he gave attention to another customer. For weeks 
 after I bought it I kept the cake in my pocket just 
 pleased to my finger-tips with its transparent beauty. 
 I shall not grow old so long as I enjoy a show case of 
 toilet soap." 
 
 As runs the proverb, God oft hath a large share in a 
 little house. In the present history, His share is in the 
 log cabin that stood at the side of the old National Road 
 in Greenfield. In the human as well as the divine order 
 of things, the day arrived for it to be torn down the 
 family having moved to a new homestead and Uncle 
 Mart and the children came with the hired man to that 
 end. Having lived in it for a decade, the mother was 
 pensive, but the children were altogether happy. 
 
 In that cabin home originated an influence that 
 was as far-reaching as it was beautiful the faith 
 in fairies. Night after night. Uncle Mart had tucked 
 little "Bud" in his trundle bed and lulled him to sleep 
 with fairy tales. That was the beginning. The faith 
 in fairies never died. When "Bud" became a man, 
 it was modified, but never forsaken. "Earth out- 
 
THE RHYME OF CHILDHOOD 27 
 
 grows the mystic fancies," sang Mrs. Browning. As 
 Riley saw it, the outgrowth was a fatal day for the 
 earth. He held with Schiller and Wordsworth that in 
 the overthrow of mythology the world had lost more 
 than it had gained. As the image-making power in the 
 mind of the race was busy with the marvelous things 
 of old, so should it be busy with the marvelous things 
 of now. Hence the Arabian Nights remained his 
 favorite book. To the last, he held unalterably to the 
 sentiment of the "Natural Educationists," that there 
 are fairies in the hearts of all good and great people 
 "that fairies whisper to us to do good deeds that 
 fairies are the creative power which has caused the 
 building of great structures, the painting of great pic 
 tures, the composition of great music, and the produc 
 tion of great poems." His lead pencil, a candlestick, 
 wicker baskets and other objects about the room were 
 fairies in disguise. Every thought that kindled his 
 heart into rapture came to him on fairy wings from 
 the shores of mystery, and whenever anything he did 
 fell below the plane of fairy endeavor, "was reduced," 
 as he said, "by the tyranny of conditions to the level of 
 a humdrum existence," he was unhappy. The fairies 
 were absent. The fire in his heart was low. Like 
 Lowell, he mourned the loss of Aladdin s lamp and the 
 beautiful castles in Spain. But this was never so when 
 he could maintain a fairy interest in his work. When 
 ever his faculties were quickened to the fervor he ex 
 perienced in childhood, when visions of pure joy rav 
 ished his heart, his fevered sight was cooled. Then 
 all was love 
 
 "The chords of life in utmost tension 
 With the fervor of invention."- 
 
28 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 The Marines traced a line of genealogy back to de 
 scendants of the Celts in Wales, the people, said by 
 some authorities, to have had the most poetic child 
 hood of all the races. Who knows? Perhaps Riley s 
 adorable faith in fairies, and his mother s before him, 
 were after all the faith of the little people that once 
 lived in the obscure islands and peninsulas of western 
 Europe. Who knows? His charming simplicity, his 
 delicacy of feeling, and his desire to penetrate the un 
 known may have had a Celtic origin, may have been 
 traceable to "the race that above all others was fitted 
 for family life and fireside joys." It is certainly a 
 Celtic picture we have of Riley as a child in the log 
 cottage. In the cabin, after twilight, while the apples 
 sputtered on the hearth and the light from the fireplace 
 flickered on the walls, stories reeled from Uncle Mart s 
 fancy as brightly as the flames laughed up the chim 
 ney ; and best of all, the mother approved the harmless 
 fictions and laughed heartily with the flames and the 
 children. "Bud" once noted the absence of katydids 
 and crickets could not understand it. They were 
 the fairies of summer-time, the mother had explained 
 
 "Only in the winter-time 
 Did they ever stop, 
 In the chip-and-splinter-time 
 When the backlogs pop." 
 
 As the cabin walls were lowered, other incidents were 
 recalled. The children remembered the jolly winters, 
 and particularly the coldest night of the year when the 
 mother held the lamp and little "Bud" a candle, while 
 they chinked the cracks where the wind blew through 
 the floor. And just outside the front door, like a senti 
 nel, the old Snow-Man had stood for weeks in "lordly 
 
THE RHYME OF CHILDHOOD 29 
 
 grandeur," the masterpiece that had surpassed the art 
 of classic Greece. Uncle Mart was reminded of shelter 
 from the rain. He distinctly remembered the "rever 
 ential shade" on the mother s face when listening to 
 distant thunder, and her smile of gratitude when she 
 heard the refrain of the rain on the roof. The mother 
 recalled a rainy day when the father was away and 
 the other children had gone a-visiting, how little "Bud" 
 in a state of breathless anticipation, stood by the win 
 dow, marking the teams as they approached and van 
 ished on the National Road : 
 
 "And there was the cabin window* 
 Tinkle, and drip, and drip! 
 The rain above, and a mother s love, 
 And God s companionship!" 
 
 All in all, winter and summer, the log cottage was a 
 thing of blessed memory. The poet was born there 
 who, when grown, was to save from the ruins a picture 
 of its simplicity and beauty the young mother throned 
 in her rocking-chair with a work-basket on the floor, 
 the laughter and call of the children across the way, 
 the summer wind luring the fragrance of roses from 
 her window, the while her dreamy boy, lying near her, 
 face downward, was bending 
 
 "above a book 
 
 Of pictures, with a rapt ecstatic look 
 Even as the mother s, by the self -same spell, 
 Was lifted with a light ineffable 
 As though her senses caught no mortal cry, 
 But heard, instead, some poem going by." 
 
 T One autumn the log cabin had received a coat of 
 weather-boarding, but the exact year is indefinite, some 
 claiming it was the year the poet was born, others the 
 year following. Even the poet s father, who drew a 
 
30 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 sketch of the cottage in his old age, was not sufficiently 
 definite on the point to be historic. But all agree that 
 the young married couple, on coming from the Ran 
 dolph County woods, to live in Greenfield, occupied the 
 cabin. All agree that the poet was born there, and 
 that it stood snugly at the corner of the lot in the shade 
 of trees that grew on the edge of the street. 
 
 Prior to the birth of his famous son, Reuben A. Riley 
 had served one term in the state legislature with credit 
 to himself and his constituency. There he had met 
 Governor James Whitcomb, whom to meet was to honor 
 and love. A few years later he zealously discharged the 
 duties of county prosecuting attorney. He took great 
 interest in politics, and on several occasions distin 
 guished himself for his eloquent defense of freedom. He 
 was a leader in the Democratic party of Indiana and 
 so remained till the Fremont campaign when he with 
 Oliver P. Morton and others espoused the cause of the 
 Republican party. In those stormy years he was in 
 the full strength of his young manhood. Republican 
 leaders, Morton among them, placed a high estimate 
 on his services "in moulding the sentiments of the 
 young men of the State," who later responded to the 
 call of President Lincoln. "In the political campaigns 
 from 1852 to 1860," to quote from a political opponent, 
 "there was ho orator more in demand than Reuben A. 
 Riley, or one who more uniformly satisfied the de 
 mand. He expounded the principles of the new party 
 as did no other orator in Indiana. His joint debates 
 were the talk of campaigns. Men referred to his 
 speeches as finished orations." 
 
 All the while he was succeeding in the practice of 
 the law. His public services brought him clients, 
 brought him financial success. Prosperity came down 
 
THE RHYME OF CHILDHOOD 31 
 
 the National Road and tipped the horn of plenty at his 
 door, and that meant the means for a larger Riley 
 homestead, 
 
 "The simple, new frame house eight rooms in all 
 Set just one side the center of the small 
 But very hopeful Indiana town." 
 
 While the father was absent campaigning, the mother 
 and children at home worked with Mother Nature. 
 They had a grape-arbor built like a covered bridge over 
 the pathway to the garden. A row of currant bushes 
 grew near. Bees murmured in hives at the side of the 
 lot. Lilacs and flowering vines grew lavishly in the 
 front yard. Apple trees stood here and there between 
 the street and the garden, and 
 
 "Under the spacious shade of these, the eyes 
 Of swinging children saw the soft-changing skies." 
 
 In that family of the Long Ago, were two brothers 
 and two sisters each, in the gracious afterwhiles, 
 happily recalled by the gifted brother in the Child- 
 World. A third sister, Martha Celestia Riley, born 
 February 21, 1847, died in childhood. Oldest of the 
 brothers was John Andrew Riley, born December 11, 
 1844. He was the grave leader among them. He had 
 a quick observant eye and a keen retentive memory. 
 Although inclined to serious duties, he nevertheless 
 could forget the gravity of life and kindle fires 
 of delight. For a season he would make tame 
 incidents sparkle with lively mirth, and then (the chil 
 dren could never just quite tell why) there almost in 
 variably followed an interval of seeming remorse that 
 made him undesirable company. Nevertheless he was 
 loved for his love of others : 
 
32 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 "So do I think of you alway, 
 
 Brother of mine, as the tree, 
 Giving the ripest wealth of your love 
 To the world as well as me." 
 
 The youngest brother, Humboldt Alexander Riley, 
 was born October 15, 1858. He was specially remem 
 bered for his insistence on truth in his elders. They 
 recalled his peach-bloom complexion and particularly 
 his love of father and mother. Freaks of temper were 
 yoked in him to uncommon aspirations and affections. 
 He was the lorn child, 
 
 "Whose yearnings, aches and stings 
 Over poor little things" 
 
 were as poignant and pitiful as the sorrow of the family 
 over his death in early manhood. 
 
 The second daughter, Elva May Riley, born Janu 
 ary 14, 1856, was the "little lady" with golden curls. 
 She had the blue of the skies in her eyes. She never 
 romped up and down stairs. She was 
 
 "thoughtful every way 
 
 Of others first The kind of a child at play 
 That gave up/ for the rest, the ripest pear 
 Or peach or apple in the garden there." 
 
 The third and youngest daughter, Mary Elizabeth 
 Riley, the only member of the family living at the time 
 these words are written, was born October 27, 1864. 
 With a touch of fancy (in the child book) her eminent 
 brother recalled a little girl with a "velvet lisp on 
 elfin lips" 
 
 "Though what her lips missed, her dark eyes could say 
 With looks that made her meaning clear as day." 
 
 As she grew to womanhood, she manifested many of 
 
THE RHYME OF CHILDHOOD 33 
 
 his characteristics, his subtle recognition of and affec 
 tion for the fairy wonderland of days gone by, love 
 of nature, and the harmless eccentricities of human 
 kind. 
 
 It may seem to some that the Riley lad neglected the 
 schoolroom, and in one sense he did. "Omit the school 
 room from my history entirely," he once said, "and the 
 record of my career would not be seriously affected." 
 The remark was not made in criticism of the public 
 school, but rather to show that he had not been edu 
 cated in the conventional manner. In ways innumer 
 able, before he entered the schoolhouse, he was getting 
 an education. He was taught to read at home. From the 
 very first he seems to have practised "the art of think 
 ing, .the art of using his mind." His little system of 
 opinions was- not faultless, but he dared to uphold it. 
 He strove for the useful side of things and was 
 just as vigorous in contending against what he thought 
 was useless. He compassed the First Reader while 
 other children struggled with its opening pages. In a 
 few days he had reached the end of the book the lesson 
 in which Willy, Katy, Carry and their mother go to the 
 seaside. The children were digging in the sand with 
 wooden spades, when they threw them down to look at 
 a ship sailing by. Soon the ship will be out of sight, 
 according to the lesson, and the children will go home. 
 "They will do nothing of the sort," said Riley, recall 
 ing his youthful dream ; "they will sail with the ship 
 to foreign lands for tea, sugar, pineapples and cocoa- 
 nuts. The wind will transport them to far-away gar 
 dens of happiness, at least it did me, and I believe all 
 children will be so transported if parents would begin 
 aright to develop in them the imaginative faculty. Of 
 course children do not have the poetic vision Long- 
 
34 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 fellow had when he lay down and listened to the sound 
 of the waves, but they do have in their little hearts a 
 picture of 
 
 Spanish sailors with bearded lips 
 And the beauty and mystery of the ships, 
 And the magic of the sea/ " 
 
 The reason for "Bud s" special interest in the sea 
 side was this. He had been taught his letters and 
 Primer by his mother and Uncle Mart, but the art of 
 comprehending what he read was chiefly taught him by 
 a careless-haired boy, Almon Keefer, whose "interest 
 ing and original ways with children," said Riley, 
 "fairly ignite the eye of memory with rapture." Al 
 mon had an open, honest countenance and a joyous in 
 terest in nature but his chief merit, as far as the Riley 
 nursery was concerned, was his interest in books, and 
 his skill in reading aloud to children. One of the books 
 he read was Tales of the Ocean, an old book of stories, 
 in character much like Tales of the Wayside Inn. 
 Of the early books it was quite near if not the first of 
 the list. 
 
 "Its back was gone, 
 But its vitality went bravely on 
 With its delicious tales of land and sea." 
 
 When therefore "Bud" was sent to school, it was 
 natural that he should protest against the foolish 
 repetitions in the First Reader and hurry on through 
 it to kernels of interest. He was a little rebel at the 
 end of the second lesson : 
 
 "Is it an ax? 
 It is an ax. 
 It is my ax. 
 Is it by me? 
 My ax is by me. 
 So it is," 
 
LOG CABIN ON THE NATIONAL ROAD WHERE THE POET WAS BORN 
 
RILEY HOMESTEAD IN GREENFIELD, 1856 
 
THE RHYME OF -CHILDHOOD 35 
 
 "How criminal," said Riley, commenting on the 
 schoolboy experience, "to cramp the imagination: of a 
 child in a barren back-lot like that when a world of 
 ships and singing birds and meadow fields may be had 
 for the asking. The secret of the. whole matter is this, 
 whether it be the lesson for the child or the book for 
 the man it must be interesting." A vital opinion, 
 paralleled by the observation of Herbert Spencer, that 
 too often our system of education drags the child away 
 from the facts in which it is interested. "Bud" Riley 
 was Spencer s self-taught London gamin gathering out- 
 of-school wisdom for himself. 
 
 When Riley became associate editor of a county 
 paper, he reiterated his protest in a half -column, "To 
 Parents and Preceptors": 
 
 "We will shortly issue," he wrote in humorous vein 
 in the first paragraph, "a little educational work, which 
 we design shall take the place of McGuffey s First 
 Reader. We have nothing against McGuffey, but we 
 love the institutions of our country, moral and educa 
 tional, and by the publication of the little volume we 
 are at present compiling, we confidently expect to meet 
 a long-felt want of our public schools, and by its pres 
 entation to our bright-eyed little friend, the school 
 boy, with shining morning face, creeping like a snail, 
 unwillingly to school/ we expect to take the initial step 
 toward a general revolution of the educational system 
 as it stands to-day." 
 
 Save for his first school Riley seldom recalled his 
 school-days pleasantly. "My first teacher," said he, 
 "Mrs. Frances Neill, was a little, old, rosy, roily-poly 
 woman looking as though she might have just come 
 rolling out of a fairy story, so lovable she was and so 
 jolly and so amiable. Her school was kept in a little old 
 
36 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 one-story dwelling of three rooms, and like a bracket 
 on the wall a little porch in the rear, which was part 
 of the playground of her scholars/ for in those days 
 pupils were very affectionately called scholars. Her 
 very youthful school was composed of possibly twelve 
 or fifteen boys and girls. I remember particularly the 
 lame boy, who always had the first ride in the swing 
 in the locust tree at recess/ 
 
 "This first teacher was a mother, too, to all her 
 scholars/ When drowsy they were often carried to an 
 inner room a sitting-room where many times I was 
 taken with a pair of little chaps and laid to slumber 
 on a little made-down pallet on the floor. She would 
 ofttimes take three or four of us together; and I can 
 recall how my playmate and I, having been admonished 
 into silence, grew deeply interested in looking at her 
 husband, a spare old blind man sitting always by the 
 window, which had its shade drawn down. After a 
 while we became accustomed to the idea, and when our 
 awe had subsided we used to sit in a little sewing chair 
 and laugh and talk in whispers and give imitations of 
 the little old man at the window." 
 
 Riley recalled that Mrs. Neill wore a white cap with 
 ribbands and that she also wore a mole on her face 
 "right where Abraham Lincoln wore his, and that it 
 had eye-winkers in it, for when she kissed him they 
 tickled his nose." Occasionally a large boy came up 
 from town and during recess beat a tenor drum to drive 
 the mice away, but the "scholars" never saw any mice. 
 When a boy was guilty of swearing Mrs. Neill 
 wrapped a rag round a pen holder, dipped it 
 in ashes and cleansed his mouth. If he had 
 kicked another boy she whipped him on the foot. 
 Her whippings were so softly administered that the 
 
THE RHYME OF CHILDHOOD 37 
 
 "scholars" rather enjoyed them, particularly the sequel, 
 when she led the penitent to a little Dame Trot 
 kitchen and gave him a piece of fried chicken, or a big 
 slice of white bread buttered with jam or jelly. When 
 the time came to call the children to their books, she 
 tied a yellow bandana to a switch and cheerily waved 
 it at the door. Occasionally one "scholar" (the reader 
 infers his name) came tardily from the yard wearily 
 repeating, "By Double, it s Books! By Double, it s 
 Books !" The outside of the schoolhouse was his fav 
 orite side ; he preferred to climb the apple trees in the 
 schoolhouse lot. There was a Harvest tree at home, 
 a few doors away, on which the apples "fairly hurried 
 ripe for him." As he happily said, "they dropped to 
 meet me half-way up the tree." The school yard was 
 the place for happiness: 
 
 "Best, I guess, 
 
 Was the old Recess 
 No tedious lesson nor irksome rule 
 When the whole round World was as sweet to me 
 As the big ripe apple I brought to School." 
 
 The little school world was not unlike other worlds 
 of its kind except, perhaps, that it had a larger meas 
 ure of freedom. As to signs in it of future greatness, 
 there was none. "The Big Tree sprout," a wit lat 
 terly observed, "was not bigger than any other sprouts. 
 It was the ordinary thing ; it made no show ; it did not 
 suggest a future son of fame." Though small, the 
 world was nevertheless big enough to grow a large 
 tree of gratitude. Like the log cabin in which the Riley 
 child was born, the little schoolroom was a thing of 
 blessed memory. The "scholar" always remembered 
 his first teacher as "a very dear old woman, so old 
 she was," he said, "that she died one afternoon just 
 
38 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 like falling asleep. She was so tired, so worn and old. 
 Who knows?" he asked, when age approached his own 
 footsteps. "She may be rested now. Somewhere she 
 may be waiting for all the little boys and girls she 
 loved to come romping in again." 
 
 Usually, when prompted to write, Riley looked back 
 ward for material. The pioneer past was a rich land 
 scape for him. It was beautifully blended with the 
 hope of the future. The Long Ago was one with the 
 golden meadow of the Great To Be. He would find a 
 rustic frame on the walls of memory and make a pic 
 ture for it that sometimes surpassed the art of the 
 painter. Such a picture is the popular poem, "Out to 
 Old Aunt Mary s." Fortune made the frame for it 
 one summer in his childhood days. On condition that 
 they were good school children, the mother had prom 
 ised "Bud" and his elder brother, John, a holiday with 
 relatives a few miles away on Sugar Creek, and then a 
 week s visit with uncles and aunts some fifty miles dis 
 tant in Morgan County. Passing the toll-gate with its 
 well-sweep pole, the boys began to realize their dream 
 in the sunshine of the old National Road, the long high 
 way that was lost somewhere in the wilderness of the 
 West. Near Sugar Creek they left the highway for a 
 winding road past fields and clearings in the back 
 woods. The elder brother often recalled the welcome 
 they received from a family of children who came 
 romping through the barn lot to the end of the long 
 lane, up which he and "Bud" hurried on the wings of 
 joy. As the poetic brother remembered it, 
 
 "They pattered along in the dust of the lane, 
 As light as the tips of the drops of the rain." 
 
 Riley gives briefly his own account of the visit to 
 
THE RHYME OF CHILDHOOD 39 
 
 Morgan County. "In a vague way," said he, seeking a 
 tangible basis for the poem, "I had in mind a visit to 
 Mooresville and Martinsville, when Cousin Rufus 
 (Judge William R. Hough of Greenfield) and my 
 mother drove there with my brother and me and my 
 sister Elva, then a child in her mother s arms. My 
 brother and I sat on a seat that unfolded from the 
 dashboard in the manner of old-fashioned vehicles of 
 the time. It was a joyous journey, for Cousin Rufus 
 was the j oiliest, cheeriest young man that ever lived 
 and there was always a song on his lips. We drove 
 from Greenfield to Indianapolis, where we stopped for 
 a midday meal. At Mooresville we visited Uncle James 
 and Aunt Ann Marine, and at Martinsville, Uncle 
 Charles and Aunt Hester Marine." At both places, 
 "Bud s" keen appetite was satisfied with bountiful old- 
 fashioned dinners coffee so hot it spangled his eyes 
 with tears, honey in the comb, quince "preserves," 
 juicy pies, and jelly and jam and marmalade. 
 
 There were several other visits, so that the poem is 
 truly a composite one. There was no particular Aunt 
 Mary, but the little journey to Sugar Creek and the 
 longer one to Morgan County formed the rustic frame 
 for the picture. "The simple, child-felt joy of those 
 visits," to quote Riley s words, "was as warm in my 
 memory when I wrote the poem as when a boy I jogged 
 back on the dusty road to Greenfield." 
 
 Citizens of Greenfield maintained what was com 
 monly termed a Select School supported by subscrip 
 tion, a spring and summer term of twelve weeks, 
 "chiefly," said an old resident, "for the purpose of 
 keeping idle children off the streets." "It is desir 
 able," said the school notice, "that all scholars com 
 mence with the school, as it will be to their material 
 
40 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 advantage, as well as an accommodation to the teacher." 
 "Bud" Riley saw in it no "material advantage." He 
 was not disposed to "accommodate the teacher" in that 
 way. School in June and July was a violation of nat 
 ural laws. Holidays, alas, were rare, with intolerable 
 periods between : "Fourth of July Circus Day and 
 Decoration Day but give him Saturday, .when he 
 could play and play and play." As might be expected, 
 the humdrum of the school made a runaway out of 
 him. "I made a break," said he, "for the open world." 
 One day he hurried away in his bare feet down a dusty 
 lane to a cornfield; another day across an orchard to 
 Brandywine to listen to the splashing of the swimmers. 
 Another day he waded through the tall grass to an old 
 graveyard. Every boy knew of such a spot in the 
 early days. Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn ran 
 to one a mile or two from the village, an old-fashioned 
 western kind, "with a crazy board fence around 
 it." Such a cluster of pioneer graves the Riley lad 
 and his shabby companions found in their rambles, 
 "save," said Riley, "that it was enclosed with a zigzag 
 rail fence which the cows pushed down for grazing 
 purposes." Be it known, since the lads played Robin 
 Hood among the broken headstones and i:i the "Sher 
 wood Forest" near, that their little souls were not 
 steeped in melancholy. Hard by stood the wide-spread 
 ing beech with its lower boughs touching the earth, 
 the great baobab tree of Riley s childhood. How allur 
 ing it was. Made magical by the soft summer atmos 
 phere and the enchanting vista of open fields, to a boy 
 it seemed in the distance a gigantic mound of verdure, 
 over which he might roll and tumble as he would roll 
 in beds of blue-grass on the hillside. 
 
 Another day, smiling and laughing with his little 
 
THE RHYME OF CHILDHOOD 41 
 
 friends, he ran away from school to the mulberry 
 tree. Was there ever anything more pathetic to a child 
 than that boy sitting at his desk in hot weather, waiting 
 for a holiday to come ? And anything more poetic than 
 his anticipation of that tree? The thought of it as he 
 ran onward with the boys* down the long highway was 
 as balmy as the breeze that powdered his path with the 
 blossoms from the locust trees. "The dust in the 
 road," said Riley, "was like velvet. The odor from 
 ragweed and fennel was sweet as* the scent of lilies 
 in the Garden of Eden." 
 
 Several mulberry trees stood in fields round Green 
 field, a venerable one in the edge of a meadow, east of 
 the Old Fair Ground, near Little Brandywine. 
 "I vividly recall," said Riley, "how we used to scram 
 ble across the meadow to that tree. Not until we were 
 directly beneath it did the birds, voraciously feeding on 
 the berries, see us, and then they flew away in a whir 
 of confusion. And the fruit of that tree! It had a 
 strange deliciousness. Simply it was to all other 
 fruits as maple syrup is to all other syrups." 
 
 A rail was placed in the fork of the tree for boys to 
 climb. That rail led to Fame for one of them but 
 how blissfully ignorant they were of all her trumpets 
 and temples ; 
 
 "What were all the green laurels of Fame unto me, 
 With my brows in the boughs of the mulberry tree ?" 
 
 Some forty years after the poet s boyhood, Judge 
 David S. Gooding found a truant youth stealing down 
 the back ways of Greenfield, who tried to excuse his 
 truancy to the Judge on the ground that James Whit- 
 comb Riley ran away from school to a mulberry tree. 
 "Yes, sir," returned the Judge, with his usual Doctor 
 
42 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 Johnson air, "yes, sir and when you, my lad, promise 
 to write as fine a poem as The Mulberry Tree/ you 
 may run away from school. The Riley boy was wide 
 awake ; he played Robin Hood ; he saw the leafy shade ; 
 he heard the flutter of birds ; you play nothing, you see 
 nothing, hear nothing; you are skulking, hiding along 
 the creek here like a burglar. Go back to school! 
 read your books!" 
 
 Whatever may be said in behalf of modern school 
 days with all their conveniences and improvements, 
 one fact is not disputed by those who recall the golden 
 glory of days gone by: that the children of the 
 present do not find the paradise in their surroundings 
 that many children of the pioneer day found in theirs. 
 Boys and girls had their sorrows then, it is true, but 
 they also had something the modern child too often 
 does not have a Child-heart nourished with heaven- 
 born visions and realizations of joy and beauty. Too 
 often the modern Child-heart is dwarfed and smothered 
 by the glitter of deception, show and sham. "The 
 Child-heart," the poet often said, and the older he 
 grew the more fervidly he said it : 
 
 "The Child-heart is so strange a little thing 
 So mild so timorously shy and small 
 When grown-up hearts throb, it goes scampering 
 Behind the wall, nor dares peer out at all 
 
 but could it peer out, could it come to us from the dark 
 ness, could it light up this dull thing we call maturity, 
 could we become children in trust, in truth, in love, 
 then civilization would enter the kingdom of Heaven as 
 Jesus said and that kingdom would be here and now. 
 I know," the poet continued, "the Bible says to put 
 away childish things, but we are not to put away the 
 Child-heart, the soul-reposing belief in things, the pure, 
 
THE RHYME OF CHILDHOOD 43 
 
 heavenly absence of all pretension we are not to put 
 that away. Why is it I can not read mythology to 
 day? Because I have lost faith in it. Why, when I 
 read Pilgrim s Progress, I could see the whiskers on 
 Giant Despair as plain as day. But I could not have 
 read it had I known it was an allegory. All of these 
 fancies of my childhood have made it possible for me 
 to understand children now-a-days, and to portray them 
 more perfectly. When I come across a fanciful child, 
 just about as superstitious as I was, I know how to talk 
 to it and better how to write about the things it loves." 
 
 It was Riley s boyhood fortune to vibrate between 
 town and country. "I was not quite a country boy," 
 said he; "I lived in a little village, just across the alley 
 from the country. I associated with country boys and 
 girls. I was always on hand at the country gather 
 ings. When I went to see my little friends in the coun 
 try I stayed all night. I have slept four-in-a-bed after 
 a boisterous hunt with the boys for watermelons in 
 the cornfields. In all my associations with country peo 
 ple there was always enough distinction for me to see 
 the better side of them as a visitor." 
 
 It is literally true that the poet in the morning- 
 tide of life realized the happiness of childhood 
 he so lovingly describes in his poems. In the 
 vicinity of Greenfield, that village of three or 
 four hundred inhabitants, he found a wondrous 
 world. He had his little share of disappointments, 
 of course, but they did not fill his childish cup 
 with bitterness. Within wandering distance of the 
 town he found the Paradise of Childhood. There in 
 season, the songs of orchard-birds dripped daily from 
 whispering trees. There was the green earth and the 
 infinite heavens above it he called the Child-World. 
 
44 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 The blossom-time of existence," he wrote, recalling 
 his boyhood excursions; 
 
 "How always fair it was and fresh and new 
 How every affluent hour heaped heart and eyes 
 With treasures of surprise." 
 
 Rapture infinite, mysteries unriddled but retaining 
 their primitive enchantment still such the Riley lad 
 found in and around Greenfield. 
 
 After the poet had passed his fiftieth mile-stone he 
 frequently speculated on what Heaven would be like, 
 and the sort of life one would live there. "We dream 
 of Heaven," said he; "we were in Heaven when we 
 were children and did not know it. The field is not 
 limited," he went on; "you can imagine that anything 
 can take place in Heaven; anything, anything. For 
 instance, you might imagine that things would go on 
 there as in frontier times they did here on earth. 
 Restore the rapture and rhythm of my childhood days 
 and I can not think of many improvements. In Heaven 
 each one of us might be assigned certain things to do, 
 certain daily tasks; and betimes we might ourselves 
 choose to do the thing we desire to do most of all. 
 Think of it! Suppose I was permitted to drop on my 
 knees again and inhale the fragrance of crushed penny 
 royal permitted to go back to a day in my childhood, 
 the day I first wandered away with my little friends 
 to the mulberry tree permitted to have the whole, 
 long joyous day before me again: be happy, ragged, 
 barefooted, with everything back as it used to 
 be even to the stone-bruise on my heel. To have 
 over again one of those dewy mornings of fifty years 
 ago!" 
 
 The gracious smile of those days of old! To 
 Riley it was the glitter of the sun in tropic lands. 
 
THE RHYME OF CHILDHOOD 45 
 
 Joyous winds winnowed cares from life as chaff from 
 the wheat. His blood was warm as wine. All things 
 throbbed with the pulse of spring. 
 
 In those days of obscure beginnings the recluse 
 who had lived in the cabin by Walden Pond 
 published- his Story of Life in the Woods. "The 
 finest qualities of our nature," he wrote, "like the bloom 
 of fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate 
 handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one 
 another thus tenderly. We have no time to be any 
 thing but machines. We lay up treasures where moth 
 and rust corrupt and where thieves break through and 
 steal. Wasting our substance in blind obedience to 
 blundering oracles, we contract ourselves in a nutshell 
 of frivolous employment and creep down the road of 
 life." 
 
 Thus the recluse made his protest against the 
 vanities of civilized life. Soon after he made 
 it, there slipped away to the woods near 
 Greenfield a lad ten or twelve years of age, who 
 was destined to make a similar protest not as a 
 recluse, not harshly, but gently, so deftly indeed that 
 the people began to nourish the finer qualities of their 
 nature without marking the precise moment when the 
 sunlight came to warm them into being. Alone 
 in the solitude, the lad stood on the shore 
 of a little "lake of light," whose wine-colored waters 
 were as transparent as the inland sea in Walden 
 Woods, although its homely name, Tharpe s Pond, 
 lacked the euphony of the classic New England name. 
 It was a balmy summer day. Wading into the warm, 
 "winey waters" up to his waist, he gazed through a 
 sky-window in the roof of the woods, What were his 
 thoughts? 
 
46 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 "Did he sleep? Did he dream? 
 
 Did he wonder and doubt? 
 Were things what they seem? 
 Or were visions about?" 
 
 Forward from that day, he was never wholly alone in 
 the world never just James Whitcomb Riley. There 
 was always beside him the lad of Used-To-Be, what he 
 called "the quivering, palpitating spirit of youth." 
 Sometimes the spirit was a vague, sometimes a vivid 
 presence. Whenever it was vivid, whenever he stood 
 before an unexplored world with the rapture of the 
 lad who stood before the deep, pathless forest, then 
 he could think the thoughts, live the hopes, and suffer 
 the tragedies of little folks. He could write verse for 
 children. "Often," said Riley, recalling his lost youth, 
 "I stood on the shore of the pond and gazed into the 
 interminable mystery of the woods. Every tree was a 
 fabulous consideration. Deer came with their antlers 
 up to question the approach of civilization. There 
 was a pigeon roost near. It was glorious at twilight 
 to see the pigeons drop down in swarms from the 
 clouds. The sky was full of fairies." Sometimes he 
 went alone to the pond. In the early morning, he said, 
 borrowing the dewy lines from Tennyson, the trees 
 were wrapped in a happy mist 
 
 "Like that which kept the heart of Eden green 
 Before the useful trouble of the rain." 
 
 The day the Riley lad waded into the sylvan waters, 
 that day "the poet was born in his soul." For the first 
 time mysterious voices seemed to be talking to him. 
 They were feeble, indistinct, it was true ; nevertheless, 
 he was certain their murmur had a personal meaning. 
 The leaves tried to whisper to him. When the breeze 
 
THE RHYME OF CHILDHOOD 47 
 
 wandered out of the thicket and stirred the waters, he 
 began to wonder what the ripples were saying. There 
 was a "deep, purple wine of shade" in the forest, but 
 he did not see it then, not for a fortnight of years. 
 It was enough as the seasons came and went that he 
 could distinctly recall the dawn of poetic perception. 
 Whenever he could vividly remember the boy he was 
 then, whenever he could wade through "the lake of 
 light" in the woods, whenever he could translate the 
 song of the birds, whenever he could match the music 
 of lisping leaves with the harmony of human emotions, 
 whenever he could bask in the sun of Memory and 
 feel around him the invisible atmosphere of Love, he 
 could write poetry. 
 
 Such was the heavenly land of childhood for which 
 the poet could never find jewels enough to diamond 
 with his praise. The green earth vibrated with love 
 and wonder. There was ever a song of dewy morn 
 ings, fragrant meadows, and joyous children. Others 
 might sing of Heaven he rejoiced that they did but 
 he would sing 
 
 "The praises of this lower Heaven with tireless voice 
 
 and tongue, 
 Even as the Master sanctions while the heart beats 
 
 young." 
 
CHAPTER III 
 SALAD DAYS A CRISIS AND A TRADE 
 
 MY SALAD days when I was green in judgment," 
 says Cleopatra in the play "and soaked as a 
 sponge with love-sickness," added Riley, re 
 peating her lines. "My salad days," said he, "began 
 when I first fell in love with a schoolgirl and lasted 
 till my majority. If it is a question of verdancy, they 
 lasted longer. They were supposed to be school-days, 
 but since the schoolroom was a secondary matter, I call 
 them salad days. I was uncommonly green in judg 
 ment." 
 
 The story of a school-day love appears in his 
 "Schoolboy Silhouettes," written at a later period for 
 the Indianapolis Herald, and reiterates the opinion 
 expressed in his early poem, "Friday Afternoon," that 
 
 "The old school-day romances 
 Are the dearest after all." 
 
 "Mousing about in a garret, among odds and ends, 
 in search of a boot-leg for a garden hinge," Riley 
 comes upon an old McGuffey Reader, and promptly 
 there is blown to him "a gust of memory from the Long 
 Ago." He finds on a fly leaf a schoolboy couplet: 
 
 "As sure as the vine doth the stump entwine 
 Thou art the lump of my saccharine." 
 
 "And who was the Lump?" he asks. "Let me see 
 and in memory there suddenly blossoms into life the 
 shy, sweet face of Lily no matter what the other 
 
 48 
 
SALAD DAYS 49 
 
 name, since a long while ago it was thrown aside like 
 the rubbish in the garret. But Lily, my Lily, comes 
 back and reigns again; and all the wine of love that 
 ripens in the musty bins of my old heart, boils up and 
 bubbles o er. We were such friends, you know such 
 tender, loving friends. I really believe our teacher (an 
 old maid with green spectacles, who had been suffering 
 with neuralgia for a week, and was heartless as a 
 hack-driver) I really believe she hated us at least 
 she always kept our desks far apart as the narrow 
 limits of the schoolroom would allow, and even at 
 recess invariably kept one of us in and sometimes 
 both for some real or fancied misdemeanor." The boy 
 had thrown "a kiss at Lily and she had blushed as rosy 
 as the apple she threw him in return." Miserere 
 domine! he failed to catch it, and it "went bumping and 
 rattling among the slates and desks, tattling all the 
 tale of love." After a scuffle with the teacher, the 
 schoolboy lover was cornered in the woodbox, 
 savagely punched with the wrong end of the 
 broom and made to stand with his face to 
 the wall all afternoon. After dismissal he was 
 "dressed down in the good old-fashioned method of the 
 time," and sent home. On leaving the schoolhouse the 
 boy stole a hasty glance through the window and was 
 astonished to discover "the green-eyed dame bending 
 serenely over her desk eating an apple." 
 
 Thus a schoolboy romance was brought to a tragic 
 end, which accounts for his clinging some fifteen years 
 after to a folded leaf from the girl s copy-book, with its 
 quaint old axiom, "There is no ship like friendship." 
 Lily s slender hand had traced the lines. It gave him 
 pleasure to dream tenderly of the school-day episode, 
 while 
 
50 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 "The echo of a measured strain 
 Beat time to nothing in his head, 
 From an odd corner of the brain." 
 
 His interest in the frivolities of sentiment declined 
 slowly. Up to the advent of his bachelor days, he car 
 ried love ditties in his pocket, one in particular by his 
 friend, John Hay, which, he said, "dripped a sticky 
 kind of sweetness that made the society of young girls 
 interesting." Love ditties made the company of maid 
 ens "more intoxicating than things that delight the 
 palate." 
 
 The real tragedy of the schoolroom however was not 
 the trivial woes of school-day love. It was being 
 indoors. The Riley lad sat near a window and 
 just beyond it was the border-line of the Great 
 Out-of-Doors, which by all the laws of heart and mind 
 he considered his schoolhouse. He was in sight of the 
 National Road. At that particular time, the long 
 highway swarmed with evidences of the Pike s Peak ex 
 citement. In summer and autumn there were all sorts 
 of animals in the cavalcade, horses, oxen, mules and 
 donkeys, crazy vehicles of every description, and men 
 with dogs driving hogs and turkeys to market. Riley 
 remembered that there was a cow hitched to a prairie 
 schooner. "Lightning Express" was painted in large 
 letters on the outside of the tent cloth to keep the emi 
 grant s spirits up and the spectators smiling. With 
 such a lively procession passing the window daily it 
 was asking the impossible that a schoolboy should be 
 solemn or even studious. It was as natural for him to 
 laugh at things in that cavalcade as it was for lambs 
 to bleat or the chat to whistle. 
 
 His eyes fell one day on a picture that would kindle 
 the interest of the dullest youth. "I recall it as vividly," 
 
SALAD DAYS 51 
 
 he wrote in the "Silhouettes," "as if the pic 
 ture were before me now a bareheaded man, 
 perhaps fifty years old, a fanatic of the time, 
 harnessed like a horse, drawing a two-wheeled 
 cart along the street. He was a well-made man 
 of fifty years, perhaps, rugged as the horse he so oddly 
 represented. He was smoothly shaven as a priest and 
 pink-faced as a country girl. His hair was light and 
 clipped closely to the scalp, as if his brains had grown 
 too warm and needed cooling off. He seemed wholly 
 unconscious of the sensation he was creating in our 
 little village. Flocks of wondering women filled the 
 doors and windows as he passed, while the men-folks 
 dropped their garden tools and stood staring in amaze 
 ment. Good St. Anthony himself could not have re 
 pressed a smile at the antics of the two-legged centaur 
 as he cantered along, clucking to himself and shying 
 occasionally at an oyster-can, or an old boot lying by 
 the sidewalk. Following at his heels, the rag-tag and 
 bob-tail of the town completed the procession. The 
 man halted opposite the schoolhouse where he un 
 hitched himself frisked out of the harness snorted 
 and kicked lay down and rolled over a time or two 
 shook himself and then abruptly began an incoherent 
 harangue on the subject of religion, interspersing his 
 remarks with love songs composed by himself, printed 
 copies of which he offered to the music-loving public 
 at the rate of five cents per ballad." 
 
 Now it is readily seen that here was cause for merri 
 ment. The child of the doldrums must admit that such 
 an outbreak would seriously damage the discipline of a 
 schoolroom. "Our thrills of laughter and excitement," 
 said Riley, "should have shaken the walls and rafters ; 
 instead, the school had to smother its mirth and put 
 
52 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 its merry features to sleep." His favorite teacher, Lee 
 0. Harris, would have let the children have their way 
 for one hour at least. "The schooldame," he rhymed 
 pleasantly, 
 
 "Should have promptly resigned her position 
 Let them open a new Pandemonium there 
 And set up a rival Perdition." 
 
 Instead of doing that, she was vexed beyond endur 
 ance. "Any further manifestation of this uncalled-for 
 levity," she stormed, "will be promptly met with the 
 punishment it richly merits." 
 
 Lessons in arithmetic and geography were reviewed 
 and then the class came in the Fifth Reader to Irv- 
 ing s "Bobolink." At the same instant the fanatic 
 across the way "burst into an eruption of song." To 
 the Riley youth there was a striking similarity in the 
 happiness of the two strange birds. The man in the 
 street was a bobolink, too, "overcome with the ecstasy 
 of his own music." The lad envied him his freedom 
 as the Irving schoolboy had envied the bobolink 
 the freedom of the meadows. "No lessons, no task, 
 no school: nothing but holiday, frolic, green fields 
 and fine weather." While the class recited the lesson, 
 the youthful Riley gave wings to his imagination. He 
 was enchanted with his foolish fancies. Among them 
 was the frame-work of "a fairy tale, in which 
 a naughty bobolink should be transformed into a great 
 wingless man, who had to work like a donkey, and bray 
 songs for a living." 
 
 The street entertainment was fleeting, but beyond it 
 in the fields and woods was a lodestar that drew the 
 lad s affections every day. Rather than "run the gaunt 
 let of cross-examination," he ran to that. "In the 
 
SALAD DAYS 53 
 
 woods," he said, "flinty, two-edged problems of arith 
 metic do not zip round my ears." "The lad got his edu 
 cation," said his friend Bill Nye, "by listening to the 
 inculcation of morals and then sallying forth with other 
 lads to see if Turner s plums were ripe. What glorious 
 holidays he took without consent of the teacher 
 rambling in the woods all day, gathering nuts and paw 
 paws and woodticks and mosquito bites." How in 
 scrutable to the Riley schoolboy were the punishments 
 the teacher inflicted, and they were still inscrutable 
 when he became a man. How pitiless "the melancholy 
 tribunals of visitors," whose way was to look reproach 
 fully upon the ignorance of boys at the blackboard. 
 "Never a sigh," he wrote, "for the forty gipsy-hearted 
 children, panting in vain for 
 
 The feeling of the breeze upon the face 
 The feeling of the turf beneath the feet ; 
 And no walls but the far-off mountain-tops. " 
 
 Boyhood visions of jolly seclusion on creek bottoms 
 school books and schoolmasters could not rob the "luck 
 less urchin" of these. "How the sunlight," Riley wrote 
 again, "laughed on afternoons, and danced about the 
 desks, and fluttered up and down the walls on wings of 
 gold ; and how it glided with its mystic touch each new 
 born leaf that trembled on the trees and filled and 
 flooded all the happy world beyond, until the very 
 atmosphere seemed drunken with delight." It is mani 
 fest that Riley in his youth had a soul-hunger for free 
 dom. 
 
 "His heart no formal schools would brook; 
 But to himself the world he took." 
 
 "My school life," said he, "was a farce all the way 
 through. My Second Reader said: Some little boys do 
 
64 JAMES WIIITCOMB RILEY 
 
 not love their books/ I did not love mine. I never 
 heartily learned a school-book lesson in my life. When 
 I did answer a question the answer was whispered in 
 my ear by some one. I copied my blackboard work 
 from the classmate next to me. I could have learned 
 had I tried, but my obstinate nature could not brook 
 the fact that I was sent to school. My nature was full 
 of perversity. I tried McGuffey s Speller but the 
 author was so incoherent in his thought I gave up in 
 despair. The book showed haste in preparation and 
 was doubtless an answer to the call of a greedy pub 
 lisher. I seldom saw the inside of a grammar, nor 
 have I any desire to see one now." (He was forty 
 years old when he said it.) "Language came to me 
 naturally. When I was a boy," he went on, "schools 
 were run on the principle that the hardest method of 
 learning was the best. Flogging was still in favor as 
 was also the stupid old system of forcing boys to learn 
 by rote. My father was an old-fashioned man, very 
 strict in his rule over his children. One of his rules 
 applied to certain books they were forbidden to read. 
 Naturally I wanted to read those books. I did not care 
 a rap for the books he and my teachers prescribed. I 
 read the forbidden books, although I had to steal them 
 from the library to do it. That was my introduction to 
 mythology." 
 
 Evidently these are not the words of a dissimulator. 
 He tells the truth about himself, and is not overmuch 
 concerned about the consequences. It happened that 
 way and what had happened could not be recalled. 
 
 "I was born thirty years ago," he once said to an 
 interviewer, "and reared at Greenfield a motherly 
 little old town, at whose apron-strings I am still tied. 
 I was sent to school at a very early age and then sent 
 
SALAD DAYS 55 
 
 back again. At the very beginning I conceived a dis 
 like for its iron discipline, whose sole object seemed 
 to be to harness every mental energy into brute-like 
 subjection, and then drive it wherever old bat-eyed 
 Tyranny might suggest. I could barely balance myself 
 on one leg when I began to kick in the traces and was 
 speedily labeled a bad boy. 
 
 "There was but one book at school in which I found 
 a single interest McGuffey s Fourth Reader." (Love 
 for the Fifth Reader came after his school-days.) "It 
 was the tallest book known and to boys of my size it 
 was a matter of eternal wonder how I could belong to 
 the big class in that Reader. At sixteen I could seldom 
 repeat the simplest schoolboy speech without breaking 
 down." Once, after hesitating with the usual awkward 
 repetition, he had to sit down "in wordless misery 
 among the unfeeling and derisive plaudits of the 
 school." After that, rather than repeat the harrowing 
 experience, he deliberately chose punishment. Some 
 times he practised his declamation half an hour before 
 the ringing of the bell, but his heart failed him when 
 he thought of appearing before the school. Once he 
 prepared to entertain the school with the story of 
 "Casabianea," the gallant youth of thirteen, who stood 
 on the burning deck of a ship-of-war in a battle off 
 the mouth of the Nile. He trained for an old-time 
 Friday afternoon exercise, was told by his teacher to 
 speak out clear and full not to hang his head not to 
 let his arms hang down like empty sleeves but to 
 stand up like a king and look everybody in the face 
 in short, take "Casabianea" for his model, be brave 
 and speak out like a man. 
 
 "All in vain," said Riley. "When Friday afternoon 
 came I failed to appear. There was my hero of the 
 
56 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 Nile, hinged to his post like Corporal Doubledick, firm 
 as a rock and brave as Mars : 
 
 Beautiful and bright he stood, 
 As born to rule the storm ; 
 A creature of heroic blood, 
 A proud, though child-like form. 
 
 There he stood while sailors deserted the sinking ship 
 and here was I in Greenfield, the most incurable coward 
 that ever had the honor of birth on Hoosier soil; a 
 timid, backward boy as I have been a bashful man. In 
 some way, unaccountable to me, I was bereft of choice. 
 The schoolroom seemed a little firmament, all bright 
 with gleaming eyes. I could not keep from blanching. 
 Doom came unbidden." 
 
 One of the Fourth Reader incidents borders on the 
 pathetic. "My eccentricities," he observed long years 
 after the incident when all had been forgiven, "were 
 not only the dismay of the schoolroom, but a source of 
 great torment to my father whom I loved and respected, 
 for all I dodged about a great deal to avoid obeying 
 him. We were just beginning the new Reader, and as 
 usual I had finished it before the class had read ten 
 lessons. There were several poems in the book and 
 one of these, The Dying Soldier/ I read over and over 
 again. I had to cry when I read it." 
 
 Old schoolboys and schoolgirls remember it still a 
 
 Blue soldier and a Gray, who would never again see 
 "the daylight s soft surprise" 
 
 "Two soldiers, lying as they fell 
 
 Upon the reddened clay 
 In day-time, foes ; at night, in peace, 
 Breathing their lives away." 
 
 Fate only had made them foes. Death leveled all. 
 
SALAD DAYS 57 
 
 Under the midnight moon and stars brought face to 
 face before God s mercy-seat, a softened feeling rose: 
 
 "Forgive each other while we may; 
 
 Life s but a weary game, 
 And, right or wrong, the morning sun 
 Will find us, dead, the same." 
 
 So the sun did find them. The Angel of Love came to 
 the battle-plain and mantled their lifeless forms with 
 the vesture of peace : 
 
 "And a little girl with golden hair, 
 And one with dark eyes bright, 
 On Hampshire s hills, and Georgia s plain, 
 Were fatherless that night." 
 
 "Well," Riley continued, "the class came to those 
 pathetic lines. I knew my place in the class and also 
 knew I could not read them before the class without 
 tears. I resolved not to cry in public, and since there 
 was only one way out of it, I ran away. While the 
 teacher s back was turned I slipped through the door 
 into the street and had hardly left the schoolhouse when 
 I met my father, who of course had immediately to 
 know what I was doing away from school. I had just 
 read the life of Washington and concluded I would try 
 the cherry-tree act. I told the truth, explained to my 
 father that I did not want to cry before the school. 
 His eyes flashed wrath like sparks from a furnace fire 
 I thought that was punishment enough, but when he 
 severely whipped me, I experienced a revulsive feeling 
 and for several years after I seldom thought of him 
 kindly. I don t blame him now. His nature was such 
 that he could not appreciate the situation. He doubt 
 less thought my explanation an excuse to get out of 
 school. But the injustice of it I could not forget." 
 The ways of moral mentors, the youthful Riley could 
 
58 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 not understand. Indeed, it puzzled him when he grew 
 to manhood. Why (in substance) he asked, should a 
 schoolmaster be thrown into a state of suspense because 
 the boy Audubon devoted more time to birds in the 
 garden than to books on his desk? What is it in the 
 wayward and impulsive natures of boys and girls that 
 their elders can not brook? Why is it that fathers and 
 mothers so covetously cherish the divine command, 
 "Children, obey your parents," and yet find no warm 
 nook within the breast for that houseless truth, the old 
 Lapland song, that goes wailing through the world : 
 
 "A boy s will is the wind s will, 
 And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts"? 
 
 The sequel to this estrangement from his father oc 
 curred twenty years later. After drifting about here 
 and there for a decade, Riley came to try his fortune 
 in Indianapolis. "I began to write poetry," said he, 
 "and in time became rather notorious for that. The 
 people of the city made a great deal of me, and now 
 and then rumors of my reputation reached the little 
 town where my father lived. He could not see what 
 the people saw in those things of mine, no more than 
 Mark Twain s father could appreciate the humorous 
 antics and stories the author related of himself in Tom 
 Sawyer. He could not see why my dialect was worth 
 so much money, and finally gave up trying to under 
 stand it. I went out to see him frequently, and one 
 day persuaded him to return with me. When we 
 reached the city, we went to a clothing store. He was 
 pretty well dressed for a country lawyer but not quite 
 as well as I thought he ought to be for the city. I 
 bought him a new outfit from hat to shoes, and then 
 took him home with me to the Denison Hotel. I told 
 the landlord we wanted the best room in the house. 
 
SALAD DAYS 59 
 
 After dinner we walked about the city together. He 
 was pointed out to friends as my father. I tell you 
 that did me good. It was another proud day in my life. 
 Neither of us recalled the misunderstanding of long 
 ago." 
 
 The schoolboy s Fourth Reader period was followed 
 by the interval of "worthless accomplishments" he 
 called his "Dime-novel-and-Byronic-verse age." Both 
 home and school forbade those pleasures. In the "Sil 
 houettes" he tells of successful ventures with novels 
 in the schoolroom. He attributed his artifice to an old 
 desk-mate, but he himself was the "unreadable char 
 acter" he describes. He could secrete things in his desk 
 and have them, as he said, "handy as good morning. 1 " 
 He had nerve and was the leader on truant excursions, 
 as well as the hero of commotions in the schoolroom 
 when he returned with a bottle of grasshoppers in his 
 pocket. If boys got into dilemmas their "old desk- 
 mate" could not get them out of, the case was indeed 
 hopeless. He knew all sorts of turns to make and 
 "wore his conscience as carelessly as he did his cap." 
 He was proud of all emergencies which required his 
 advice, and, when enforcing his opinions, had a pecu 
 liar way of impressing his clients on the breast with 
 his fore-finger. 
 
 For a while he read novels quite successfully during 
 school hours in the manner of Irving s enjoyment of 
 Robinson Crusoe, by snatching hasty moments for read 
 ing under the shelter of his desk. He eluded the teach 
 er s eye, he says in the "Silhouettes," by holding the 
 tabooed pamphlet on his geography, and that on his 
 knee with one hand ever ready to shove the story in 
 his desk, leaving his eyes apparently on his lesson. 
 One day the movement of his arm or the guilty look on 
 
60 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 his face led to discovery, and he was waylaid by the 
 teacher and punished. Since he defied all rules of time 
 and place, he forthwith provided his need with a 
 clothes-pin (one of the spring variety) and a rubber 
 band attached. Fastening the band to the back 
 of his desk inside, he clamped the novel in the spring, 
 stretched the band forward for the convenience of the 
 eye, and read the alluring pages without fear of detec 
 tion. When the teacher came peaking around, all he 
 had to do was to raise his thumb and the rubber 
 hid the little old "Prairie Flower" in a jiffy. 
 
 Riley really desired an education, but could not 
 find in " the schoolroom the nourishment his 
 heart required. He envied the pupils of an 
 older time, whose fortune it was to go to school 
 to Chiron, who taught them horsemanship, how to cure 
 diseases, how to play on the harp, and other branches 
 of knowledge, instead of giving instruction in grammar 
 and arithmetic. And particularly he envied Jason, the 
 athletic youth, who resolved to seek his fortune in the 
 world without asking the teacher s advice or telling 
 him anything about it. 
 
 Such a failure as Riley s in arithmetic has seldom 
 been recorded. "I could not," said he, "tell twice ten 
 from twice eternity." History was his bete noir. He 
 knew nothing of Columbus, or "the glorious country 
 expressly discovered for the purpose of industry and 
 learning," as his teacher would have him believe. He 
 did not have, as he wrote in one of his prose sketches, 
 "the apt way of skimming down the placid rills of 
 learning." But he did possess the "extraordinary 
 knack of acquiring such information as was not taught 
 at school," and, as he was told, had no place in the busy 
 hive of knowledge. He knew all about Captain Kidd 
 
THE POET S HANDWRITING THE YEAR OF His VISION 
 
 His HANDWRITING TWENTY-THREE YEARS LATER 
 
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SALAD DAYS 61 
 
 could sing the history of the pirate from A to Izzard, 
 sing it with more interest than his schoolmates sang 
 geography. He knew how to slip a chip under the 
 corner of the school clock in order to tilt it out of bal 
 ance and time, how to ride a horse face backward, and 
 sometimes his story of a gallop to the woods had a de 
 moralizing effect on the "Industrial Hive." 
 
 As might be expected, Nemesis crossed his path. 
 The horse ran away and brought his reckless riding 
 to an end. As Riley remarked when older, flavoring 
 his thought with the humor from "Peter Bell" : "Old 
 Retribution came down the highway and left me in a 
 half -conscious heap at the roadside with 
 
 . . . . dim recollections 
 Of pedlers tramping on their rounds ; 
 Milk-pans and pails; and odd collections 
 Of saws and proverbs : and reflections 
 Old parsons make in burying-grounds. " 
 
 Nemesis was present at other times. One winter 
 day she was with George Kingry, a burly youth, 
 and a half-dozen smaller boys, including the Riley 
 lad, while skating on a cranberry marsh. Like so many 
 links in a chain, the boys were holding on to coat-tails 
 when they crashed through the ice into nine feet of 
 water. After floundering about, Kkigry caught hold 
 of a willow bough and brought his strand of urchins 
 to shore. 
 
 "You seem to have repaired to other shrines besides 
 Tharpe s Pond," said his clergyman friend, Myron 
 Reed, to whom Riley told the incident. "Oh," returned 
 Riley, "I was not Apollo s ward all the time." He once 
 compared notes with Joe Jefferson. "There are certain 
 facts of our boyhood yours and mine," said 
 Jefferson, "about which there can be no mis- 
 
G2 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 take. Evidently we were bad boys and hard 
 to manage." On various occasions Riley openly 
 admitted he was not a Model Boy. "Symptoms 
 of evil," he said, "broke out early on me." He was no 
 more a Model Boy on the banks of Brandywine than 
 was Mark Twain on the banks of the Mississippi. The 
 latter s allusion to that character is too good for omis 
 sion: "If the Model Boy," says Twain, "was in the 
 Sunday-school, I did not see him. The Model Boy of 
 my time we never had but one was perfect : perfect 
 in manners, perfect in dress, perfect in conduct, per 
 fect in filial piety, perfect in exterior godliness ; but at 
 bottom he was a prig; and as for the contents of his 
 skull, they could have changed place with the contents 
 of a pie, and nobody would have been the worse off 
 for it but the pie." 
 
 From Mark Twain to Montaigne Riley once ob 
 served there is invariably independence of thought 
 and action in the youth of men who have left the im 
 press of greatness on their time. Montaigne was 
 brought up without rigor or compulsion, brought up, 
 as he said, "in all mildnesse and libertie." There was a 
 lack of discipline during his impressionable years, and 
 that, according to Riley, gave charm to the old French 
 man s life and work. 
 
 In those days of dissatisfaction and rambling 
 endeavor, there was one exception, that in con 
 trast to his woes of the schoolroom was as sun 
 light unto lamplight, the influence upon the Riley 
 youth of a friend whose heart and hand were 
 ever warm and sympathetic, the "Schoolmaster and 
 Songmaster" enshrined in grateful memory, the benign 
 monitor of old Masonic Hall and Greenfield Academy. 
 
SALAD DAYS 63 
 
 It was not in the Hall or Academy however that the 
 influence was generative. 
 
 The Schoolmaster became the author of such delect 
 able verse as "The Bonny Brown Quail," "Along the 
 Banks of Brandywine," "Moonlight in the Forest," 
 and "Crooked Jim." To the youth with "poetic symp 
 toms" he was from the first a positive inspiration. The 
 scene of that inspiration was chiefly the Schoolmaster s 
 home and vicinity, some two miles from town on Little 
 Brandywine. There the pupil found refuge from 
 grammar and arithmetic. There he was welcome at 
 all hours of the day and the night, too, for he often 
 remained over, that he might have more abundantly 
 the inspiration he coveted. He was in the academy of 
 outdoor life. He found there, to a large degree, the 
 counterpart of the school he had read about in mythol 
 ogy. He had a singer for a schoolmaster, one who 
 talked about the birth of Time, the wondrous earth, the 
 treasures of the hills, the language of birds, of health 
 and the mission of life, and of mysteries that too long 
 had been hidden from the knowledge of mankind. In 
 that outdoor school, Nature played on "a harp of gold 
 with a golden key." Like the lads of old, the youthful 
 Riley could lie on the dry leaves of the woods and think 
 and dream, and return to the house at night and sleep 
 a wholesome sleep. No waste of time in remorse, 
 with which life in the town sometimes afflicted him. 
 He could grow up to the full height of manhood as 
 Jason had grown under the excellent direction of 
 Chiron. Alas! the Schoolmaster s instruction did not 
 wholly correspond to Chiron s training. It was not 
 ideal. Nevertheless, it was sufficiently enchanting to 
 make the pupil eternally grateful. 
 
64 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 The Schoolmaster was a wise guide in reading. He 
 gave the youth Cooper s novels and thus lifted the cur 
 tain on American scenery and adventures on the 
 frontier of civilization. Bret Harte told him stories 
 of dare-devil, impulsive, courageous men, toiling in the 
 morning-time of a state "Bret Harte," the pupil said, 
 "the subtlest manipulator of English on the face of the 
 earth." Dickens enchanted him. The Master thought 
 the pupil should know something of the Waverley 
 novels. 
 
 "Read Ivarihoe," said he. 
 
 "I don t like Scott," returned the pupil. 
 
 "Then try Middlemarch." 
 
 "Too sad; I don t like heavy things; I want to be 
 interested." 
 
 As the seasons came and went there was communion 
 with field and woodland. Hints of a coming poet were 
 plentiful bits of verse here and there on scraps of 
 paper and the fly leaves of old books. Often Master and 
 pupil strolled together through the "sugar orchards" 
 and beyond them into the depths of the wild ; often (as 
 the Master wrote) 
 
 "They heard the great fond heart of Nature beat, 
 And felt an impulse in the solitude 
 To cast themselves in homage at her feet." 
 
 When the pupil became ecstatic over the vales of the 
 Elburz Mountains, and the golden prime of old Bagdad 
 days, as told in the Persian tale he was reading, the 
 Schoolmaster pointed to the enchanted land of the 
 present, "right here where we stand," said he, "richer 
 fruited than anything Aladdin ever found in the 
 wizard s cave. A mightier power than slave of lamp or 
 ring waves her wand above the American woods." 
 
SALAD DAYS 65 
 
 When the pupil became a poet he did not neglect the 
 early lesson. "My realm is at home," he wrote; 
 
 "Go, ye bards of classic themes 
 Pipe your songs by classic streams; 
 
 I will sing of black haws, May-apples, and pennyroyal ; 
 of hazel thickets, sycamores, and shellbark hickories 
 in the pathless woods." 
 
 Longfellow walking with his favorite teacher amid 
 the groves of Brunswick did not love him more affec 
 tionately than Riley loved the Schoolmaster. Both 
 praised their teachers in prose and verse. Riley s 
 tributes in prose were summed up in a brief address 
 before an Indiana State Teachers Assembly, after he 
 had passed the meridian of life. There was no diminu 
 tion of gratitude : 
 
 "My last teacher," he said, "I remember with an 
 affection no less fervent than my first. He was a man 
 of many gifts, a profound lover of literature and a 
 modest producer in story and in song, in history, and 
 even in romance and drama, although his life-effort 
 was given first of all to education. To him I owe pos 
 sibly the first gratitude of my heart and soul, since, 
 after a brief warfare, upon our first acquaintance as 
 teacher and pupil, he informed me gently but firmly 
 that since I was so persistent in secretly reading novels 
 during school hours he would insist upon his right to 
 choose the novel I should read, whereupon the 
 Beadle and Munro dime novels were discarded for 
 masterpieces of fiction ; so that it may be virtually re 
 corded that the first study of literature in a Hoosier 
 country school was (perhaps very consciously) intro 
 duced by my first of literary friends and inspirers, Cap 
 tain Lee O. Harris of Greenfield." 
 
66 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 Notwithstanding the humdrum of his school-days, 
 Riley was inclined to think of his teachers as a "long 
 list of benefactors." He pleasantly remembered John 
 W. Lacy, his teacher in rhetoric. Even "the rigid 
 gentleman with green goggles" who lifted him from 
 the desk by the ears when he was a boy, and whom he 
 resolved to thrash when he became a man even he was 
 given a fraction of his gratitude. 
 
 Riley had a brief schoolroom experience after his 
 "reconstruction period" with Captain Harris so brief 
 and incoherent indeed that he seldom honored it with 
 consideration. In January, 1870, the new school build 
 ing "was ready for occupation," said the county paper. 
 "School opened with 236 pupils." Among them was 
 "James W. Riley." Here seems to have been the first 
 time he was dignified with so long a name. He chose 
 reading, rhetoric and arithmetic. Doctor William M. 
 Pierson, a classmate and lifelong friend, observed that 
 in rhetoric Riley "did not study figures of speech and 
 style ; he delved in the beauties of literature found in 
 the quotations." Things went fairly well for six weeks 
 when he received a weekly report which brought his 
 public school-days to an end. There was a black line on 
 the report, "the Black Line of Latitude," said Riley, 
 "that ran across my world on the sixtieth parallel. 
 Below it was the Pit of Failure, the dark discreditable 
 region of reproach and misdemeanors, that kept me in 
 a state of suspense from the hour the bell rang till 
 dismissal. One day I dropped so perilously near the 
 black line in Arithmetic, I quit school forever." Like 
 Herbert Spencer, "he could not pass the examination." 
 Like Edison, "he did not have the apparatus." 
 
 Prior to quitting school Riley had been chosen editor 
 of The Criterion, a school paper to which he gave 
 
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68 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 the ambitious motto: "Veni, vidi, vici." It "had 
 struggled into existence," he wrote, "under grievous 
 disadvantages." The second issue (and the last), two 
 dozen pages of foolscap, written with lead pencil and 
 bound tastefully in pamphlet form, appeared March 14, 
 1870, and as customaiy was read by its editor before 
 a school society. "It was my first venture in the news 
 paper field," said he, in humorous vein years after, 
 "but I didn t see anything nor conquer anything. I 
 strangled the infant with a dose of verbosity." 
 
 On the last page appeared "A Fragment," which, he 
 sportively said, "was my first poetic effort to see the 
 light of publication." The "Fragment" mourned the 
 decease of the rival school paper, The Amendment, 
 whose fate also was to die prematurely: 
 
 "Swiftly and surely 
 With a frenzied cry, demurely 
 Into the valley of death 
 
 Crossed The Amendment. 
 
 "Quick, like a f o -hoss team, 
 With a Shawnee warrior scream 
 Into the boiling stream 
 
 Dove The Amendment. 
 
 "Still down and down they pass 
 Green o er their graves the grass 
 Down in the valley of death 
 
 Lies The Amendment." 
 
 The subject of these pages had now passed into his 
 twentieth year. He had come to a crisis in his life. 
 Indeed the previous summer, while hoeing in a garden 
 with his father one hot evening, he had profited by 
 what may seem to some a crisis of minor significance ; 
 but it was not a minor incident to him. His faculties 
 
SALAD DAYS 69 
 
 hungered for expansion in other fields of labor. For 
 the first time his father discovered there was granite 
 in the son s will. "My father," said Riley, recalling 
 the incident, "had moved to the edge of town and was 
 tending a garden. He was a good gardener. I was 
 poor. Like Rumty Wilfer, I had never yet obtained 
 the modest object of my ambition, which was to wear a 
 complete new suit of clothes, hat and boots included, 
 at one time. I desired to go into society/ and one 
 evening resolved to make the attempt. I stood before 
 the glass, in an old suit and was putting on a paper 
 collar and a butterfly tie. My big toe was coming 
 through my shoe, and to give my white sock the color 
 of the shoe at that point I stained my toe with ink. 
 With his usual contempt for fashion/ my father looked 
 at me from the tail of his eye and said with the curl 
 of the lip, Well, my son, now that you are ready to go 
 into society, we ll go into the garden and hoe weeds. 
 I followed him. After we had hoed a little while, I 
 fell behind and grew melancholy and saucy. You 
 don t seem to like work said my father sarcastically. 
 No! I thundered. Seizing the end of my hoe-handle 
 with both hands, I flung it into a neighbor lot, leaped 
 the fence and walked down-town, leaving my father 
 white with rage. In about an hour I came back. 
 Leaning against the fence, I said, Father, I am here, 
 not to hoe weeds, but to tell you I am sorry I spoke to 
 you in anger. He gazed at me in astonishment. The 
 silence was painful. Then he said in a tone of tender 
 ness I had not heard before, My son, come down to 
 the office to-night. I want to talk to you. At the office 
 we came to an understanding. He went his way and I 
 went mine." 
 
 Tradition has it that he ran down an alley from the 
 
70 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 garden muttering to himself "The Farewell to the 
 Farm," a country poet s fiery resolve, 
 
 "Not to be a farmer, 
 Not to plow the sod, 
 Nor hop another clod." 
 
 "Was it tradition?" he was asked some thirty years 
 after. "Fact and tradition," he promptly returned ; "I 
 used language that would sear the walls of a synagogue. 
 I resolved never to work with a hoe again and I never 
 did." For several years following, his paternal rela 
 tions were strained strained at times to a tension that 
 was painful by just such a grievance as that which 
 beset Mark Twain and his father. They were almost 
 /always on distant terms as Twain said, they were in a 
 state of armed neutrality. 
 
 Riley s garden resolution may. seem to some an ab 
 rupt disapproval of farming. Nothing could be more 
 foreign to truth. In his sight, a thrifty cornfield was as 
 essential to the progress of man as a poem. But there 
 were men designed of Heaven for the agricultural pur 
 suit. He was not one of them. He had labored in his 
 little solitude long enough. There was budding within 
 him "a desire to tread a stage on which he could take 
 longer strides, and speak to a larger audience." Or to 
 say it as Myron Reed said it: "You can not make a 
 prosperous farmer out of Robert Burns. One line of 
 power is enough for one man." 
 
 In the spring of 1870, Riley went to work for 
 "a shoemaker of renown," affectionately known 
 about town as old Tom Snow. He had clerked in the 
 store but a few weeks when its proprietor was laid in 
 the grave, the store taken for debt, and the clerk thrown 
 out of employment. The greatest trial however in that 
 
SALAD DAYS 71 
 
 year of shadbw, the trial that most deeply affected his 
 future, was the loss of his mother, who died suddenly 
 one Tuesday morning in August. The bereavement 
 caused a complete change in his life. It sent him into 
 the world to make his own living, and in numerous 
 ways it was a forlorn road he had to travel. 
 
 A few hours after her death he walked alone 
 through a cornfield to a favorite retreat south of 
 the railroad, an old clearing, where on a later 
 day (as will be seen) he received his message from 
 the South Wind and the Sun. But on that particular 
 forenoon he looked straight up from the tall iron- 
 weeds into God s great lonesome sky, 
 
 "Bowed with silence vast in weight 
 As that which falls on one who stands 
 For the first time on ocean sands, 
 Seeing and feeling all the great 
 Awe of the waves as they wash the lands.". 
 
 "I was alone," said he, "till as in a vision I saw my 
 mother smiling back upon me from the blue fields of 
 love when lo ! she was young again. Suddenly I had 
 the assurance that I would meet her somewhere in 
 another world. I was gathering the fruit of what had 
 been so happily impressed on me in childhood. I had 
 seen that the world is a stage. Now I saw that the 
 universe is a stage. Another curtain had been lifted. 
 My mother was enraptured at the sight of new scen 
 ery. It was the dream of Heaven with which Johnny 
 Appleseed had impressed my mother in the Missis- 
 sinewa cabin." 
 
 Forward from that lonely hour there was a light 
 on Riley s path that ever seemed the refulgence of his 
 mother s smile. When the memory of the vision had 
 been hallowed by length of years, he left a transcript 
 
72 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 of it in two delicate stanzas he entitled "Transfigured." 
 Childhood and immortal youth were synonymous : 
 
 "A stately figure, rapt and awed, 
 
 In her new guise of Angelhood, 
 Still lingered, wistful knowing God 
 Was very good ; 
 
 "Her thought s fine whisper filled the pause, 
 
 And, listening, the Master smiled, 
 And lo! the stately Angel was 
 A little child." 
 
 From his cradle his mother s voice had ever been a 
 living song of sympathy. There was a poetic charm 
 in her name Elizabeth. Its cadence lingered as tune 
 fully on his lips as the music of love in his heart. Re 
 calling stories of her joy and heroism in days of poverty 
 and suffering, her "perseverance under all doubts and 
 dangers," he thought of her as the "Little Nell" of the 
 frontier "Little Nell" she was, with the additional 
 crown of marriage and motherhood. Like the heroine 
 of fiction, she had lead a wandering life. Her parents 
 had brought her through a wilderness of wild animals 
 and pioneer settlements. From the "Old North State" 
 up through the Blue Ridge solitudes she had come, 
 through Cumberland Gap and on through the wilds of 
 Kentucky a journey of some seven hundred miles in 
 a one-horse wagon. The son dearly loved the tradition 
 of his mother s girlhood days in Randolph County. 
 He saw her strolling away from her cabin home 
 to new scenery in the forest. From her he had 
 inherited the spirit of investigation. As her chief 
 delight was to trace tributaries and rivulets to 
 their sources, so was he joyous when tracing 
 threads of thought and action back to their foun- 
 
SALAD DAYS 73 
 
 tainheads. Her maidenhood on the Mississinewa 
 was to him an ideal life. The stream was for her the 
 "Beautiful Kiver" that rose somewhere in the Great 
 Buckeye Woods and ran merrily by her door. As she 
 stood there in the light of morning skies, she was his 
 dream of the "Golden Girl," the idyllic Muse that came 
 to accompany him the year he caught the vision of his 
 mission. 
 
 To have been loved, it has been finely said, is better 
 than to have built the Parthenon. Elizabeth Marine 
 Riley was loved. She was the heroine of trials which 
 are not chronicled in earthly records, but in all ways 
 she was upheld and sustained by the ties of friend 
 ship. She was as hopeful as Spring. She augured the 
 harvest of universal good. In old Persian phrase (to 
 repeat what her son often repeated) , "taking the first 
 step with the good thought, the second with the good 
 word, and the third with the good deed, she entered 
 Paradise." 
 
 A turn in the road had really come. The invisible 
 Messenger had passed, the mother had gone to a land 
 where there are no tears, and home ties had been 
 broken. He was no longer a schoolboy but J. W. 
 sometimes James W. Riley. Fate had denied him a 
 clerkship in a store, and he had been, to quote a school 
 mate, "the most celebrated failure in arithmetic in 
 the county." Old folks prophesied life failure. "They 
 did not think I would amount to much at home," said 
 Riley, recalling the days. "Being a lawyer my father 
 believed in facts. He had little use for a boy who could 
 not learn arithmetic. There were others of the same 
 opinion. My schoolmates had an aptitude for figures 
 and stood well in their classes. The result was half 
 the town pitied me. Again and again I was told I 
 
74 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 would have to be supported by the family. Something 
 had to be done. I knew it and my father knew it. 
 So I went over to Rushville to sell Bibles." The father 
 was doubtful of the issue, as is shown in the following 
 letter: 
 
 Greenfield, Indiana, 
 
 December 19, 1870. 
 My Dear Boy: 
 
 I have been patiently waiting for a letter from you 
 and have received none. Scarcely an hour passes with 
 out my thinking of you and wondering how you are 
 getting along? how you are doing? and how you are 
 managing? I have had much more experience in the 
 world than you. It is all important that you associate 
 with none but those of good character, that you be 
 self-reliant and aim high, and suffer no stain to at 
 tach to your conduct. I would like to counsel and ad 
 vise with you. Please write me fully and confidently, 
 and all reasonable assistance in my power I will render. 
 We are all well, and have been anxiously looking and 
 waiting for you to come home. Somehow I don t think 
 your book business is paying but I may be mistaken. 
 I hope I am, and would like to know more about it, 
 and more about the man who is with you. Don t fail 
 to write immediately. I will be absent until Wednes 
 day or Thursday in Hamilton County, defending two 
 men charged with murder. 
 
 With a Father s deep solicitude for you, 
 I am very truly and affectionately, 
 
 R. A. RILEY. 
 
 "It turned out," said Riley, "that citizens of Rush 
 ville had all the Bibles they needed ; they had not time 
 to read those they had." So in the first weeks of 1871 
 he found himself with a Number 5 paint brush and a 
 bucketful of paint under the eaves painting a house in 
 Greenfield. "I was not quite so melancholy as Tom 
 Sawyer," said he, "but the walls of that house did have 
 
SALAD DAYS 75 
 
 a far-reaching look like a continent, just as the long, 
 unwhitewashed fence looked to Tom." 
 
 Riley had learned house-painting on hot summer 
 days a year or so before. "Painting frame houses was 
 my vacation," said he. Having become an efficient 
 house-painter, he and two associates contracted with 
 the trustees to paint the new Public School building. 
 The dome," said Riley, "looked two hundred feet high. 
 Being the most nimble, I had to paint it. We attached 
 a rope to the pinnacle and with brush and bucket I 
 scaled it over the cornice. It was perilous, suspended 
 there between heaven and earth. I did not stop then 
 to write a couplet. I did not revel in the Rollo Books." 
 A friend wrote him that his climbing the paint ladder 
 was "typical of the coming man on the ladder of fame. 
 There is not much danger," said the friend, gently re 
 ferring to his habits, "while standing on the lower 
 round, but beware when your feet stand on the rounds 
 near the top. I am anxious to see the day when the 
 world will appreciate you for what you are worth, 
 but I do not want you to fly the track. Put on plenty 
 of sand, and reverse on the down grade." 
 
 His house-painting was the attainment of one or 
 two summer vacations. The sign-painting trade re 
 quired more time. Symptoms of his ability in that line 
 were seen in his school-days. Very early he developed a 
 "knack for drawing." School books, scraps of paper 
 and old envelopes bore evidence of his gift. Cunning 
 borders and clever tail-pieces were found on almost 
 every page. He made sketches with a goose-quill pen. 
 With no outside aid, he surpassed the efforts of many 
 students under the guidance of masters. He aspired 
 to be a portrait painter, "improvised a studio," and at 
 the age of fourteen drew a creditable sketch of his 
 
76 JAMES WHITCOMB EILEY 
 
 father sitting by the fireside. Standing before a mir 
 ror he made a crayon drawing of himself. His sister 
 Elva remembered crayons of George and Martha Wash 
 ington, and with what pride he pointed to them on his 
 "studio" wall. 
 
 Various suggestions for drawings came from 
 Montieth s Geography. One illustration in particular 
 he remembered "Daniel Boone with the melan 
 choly hounds and a deceased deer at his feet." Another 
 was the picture of the Hoosier State seal. What the 
 lad did with that drawing was afterward worked up 
 for amusement into a prose sketch. The pioneer in the 
 picture, a stalwart man in shirt-sleeves, was hacking 
 away at a tree without deigning to notice the stam 
 peding buffalo. Riley took his "graphic pen and 
 mounted each plunging buffalo with a daring rider 
 holding a slack bridle-rein in one hand, and with the 
 other swinging a plug hat in the most exultant and 
 defiant manner." 
 
 Riley learned sign-painting within a year under the 
 rambling instruction of a veteran of the trade. His 
 father paid the tuition in the hope that it would 
 develop into something better for the son, since he 
 was making such hopeless progress in the schoolroom. 
 To some it seemed a step down the ladder from the 
 Academy to a paintshop. The shop, a ramshackle 
 establishment near the railroad, was a group of old 
 granaries, with their walls full of knot-holes. There 
 was an adjoining apartment filled with a family of 
 noisy negro children whose father, as Riley phrased 
 it, "was the most competent stutterer in the 
 county." Riley s course in painting included graining, 
 penciling and a few short lessons in landscape. He 
 did not "block out" as did the other beginners. He 
 
SALAD DAYS 77 
 
 simply did the work offhand with an artistic efficiency 
 peculiar and pleasing to himself. He measured with 
 the eye, but he was as painstaking and exacting as he 
 was afterward in the preparation of manuscripts. 
 When lettering he often made capitals from graceful 
 patterns which he himself had designed. 
 
 That he was soon beyond the aid of his instructor 
 was proved by a picture of a greyhound on a sign 
 which he painted that "was so perfect, children going 
 by were afraid of the dog." Riley s native town began 
 to take notice of him. His drawings and his accidental 
 jingles were quoted by friends as "proofs of his 
 inspiration," though the little circle of skeptics around 
 him still prophesied failure. He bestowed on them, it 
 is said, something more than the contempt of silence, 
 and resolved to prove to his native town that it had 
 wronged a man who deserved to succeed. 
 
 Having learned his trade, and having quit school, 
 Bible-selling, and house-painting, Riley established him 
 self in a shop of his own. Customers would find him 
 "at the head of the stairs, over the drug store." He 
 advertised on a large card with pictorial designs, 
 which he was permitted to hang in the post-office. This 
 caught the attention of the county papers. "Our 
 young friend, J. W. Riley," said the Democrat, 
 "has a sign for himself that is a credit to him." 
 "That sign in the post-office," said the Com- 
 mercial, "is attracting considerable attention and 
 much merriment." A feature of the sign was 
 a silhouetted figure, a lad standing with two 
 fingers upraised and outspread the signal among the 
 boys that there was a good time coming at the Old 
 Swimmin Hole. "While waiting for the turn of for 
 tune," said Riley, "I covered all the barns and fences 
 
78 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 with advertisements. All the while I was nibbling at 
 the rhyme-maker s trade, and this was a source of irri 
 tation to my father. The outlook was not encouraging. 
 He thought I should devote my time exclusively to paint 
 ing." That the painter made some money by the way 
 is shown by memoranda and receipts. These also show 
 a demand for him away from home. 
 
 MEMORANDA 
 
 Go to Palestine to-morrow at twelve o clock to letter 
 wagon for L. H. Clayton. Terms $2.50 and expenses. 
 
 Greenfield, Indiana. 
 For painting signs for Poulson & Jones, as follows : 
 
 3 doors $5.00 
 
 1 gilt sign, 2 sides $5.00 
 
 1 gilt sign, 1 side $2.50 
 
 1 window blind $2.00 
 
 Total $14.50 
 
 Received payment, 
 
 J. W. Riley. 
 
 "It was holding the wolf by the ears," said he, refer 
 ring to "the time that tried his soles." "Like Jason, 
 I had but one sandal to my foot." He went on to tell 
 how he was pursued by creditors, but there was more 
 humor than insolvency in what he said. "I kept a 
 lookout at every alley and corner. If any one looked at 
 me I fled like quicksilver. I shifted from place to place, 
 like George Morland. I was acquainted with every 
 spot of secrecy in Center Township." 
 
 As he drew a worn memorandum book from his 
 pocket, a chum asked, "Is that to remind you of a sign 
 to paint in Fountaintown ?" "Not exactly," replied 
 Riley, "I enter in this book the names of creditors 
 
SALAD DAYS 79 
 
 whose door I can not pass any more. This dinner we 
 have enjoyed on credit to-day at the Guymon House 
 closes Main Street. I bought a pair of pumps on State 
 Street last week which forbids more buying in that 
 quarter. There is but one avenue open South Street 
 and I shall have to stop that to-night with a bag of 
 meal. The roads are closing in all directions and un 
 less my uncle in the Lone Star State sends me a remit 
 tance soon, I shall have to go round by Tailholt to get 
 home." 
 
 It has been said that "no background of poverty or 
 early hardships can be provided for this poet of the 
 people." But this assertion is not supported by the 
 facts. "We were poor," said Riley, referring to the loss 
 of his father s law practice after the Civil War, "so 
 poor we had to move into a cheerless house in the edge 
 of a cornfield, our homestead having been lost in a 
 luckless trade for land on the prairies." He went on in 
 a jocular way to recount his experience with old-time 
 house parties, how he had folded his overcoat on his 
 arm to hide the rents in the lining, and how he had 
 worn his Derby hat wrong side foremost to make less 
 conspicuous a hole in the brim. 
 
 In explanation of property losses it is due the father 
 to add that he suffered injuries for life from the ex 
 plosion of a shell at the battle of Rich Mountain. The 
 consequent loss of power was followed by the loss of 
 prestige and property. He had what Goethe s father 
 had, "a bent for puttering," but this could not be said 
 of him before his injury on the battle-field. 
 
 The poverty of those days must not be construed into 
 a state of indigence. As Riley observed on another 
 occasion, "We were poor but not pitifully poor. When 
 I was a boy there were no very rich nor very poor. We 
 
80 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 drive through the country in a carriage. A tousled, 
 barefooted, bareheaded boy in overalls steps into the 
 dog fennel at the side of the road to let us pass, and 
 some one remarks, Poor child ! Poor? he is rich; every 
 day three meals of potatoes and corn bread and milk 
 freedom, fresh air, miles of landscape, blackberries and 
 watermelons in season and walnuts for Christmas. One 
 summer while my father was gone to war, we were so 
 poor my mother had to pin on my clothing. After a 
 splash in the Old Swimmin Hole, it took the help of 
 two boys to pin it on. Yet I was rich. The lads of 
 to-day have no such shady bower for splashing as I 
 had. Lincoln had a rich boyhood. To be born in a 
 log cabin is to be rich. I came within an ace of missing 
 it. Had Lincoln been born amid a wilderness of brick 
 and lath and nails and mortar, he never would have 
 become the Savior of his Country. I once heard a 
 speaker say of the cabin in Kentucky that it is now 
 lifted and set on one of the shining summits of the 
 world and so it is. Lincoln was a rich man. He lived 
 in the American woods. They said it was a mental 
 wilderness. It was a mental university. How rich he 
 was with that handful of seven books by the cabin fire. 
 What value he attached to his visit to this world, every 
 day a day of discovery, a new survey of facts and prin 
 ciples, every day reaching out like the wide-spreading 
 trees around him for soil and water. I would rather 
 see what he saw and loved than see the sky-line of a 
 great city." 
 
 Riley always made it clear that he would rather have 
 the Lincoln experience than suffer the blight of pros 
 perity. Once after hearing David Swing he contem 
 plated a lecture on "The Sunny Side of Poverty." We 
 all have known, Swing had said, some poor girl to 
 
SALAD DAYS 81 
 
 bend over her sewing and sing far into the night, not 
 because sewing and poverty are sweet, but because the 
 cares and sorrows of life had been baptized in the 
 great flowing river of love. "My mother-," said Riley, 
 "was baptized in that river. That baptism revealed 
 the heroic in her 
 
 Only those are crowned and sainted 
 Who with grief have been acquainted. 
 
 In days of prosperity she was beautiful. She was 
 heroic and saintly during the war and after, in the 
 days of adversity." 
 
 "The poet of the people should wear overalls," Riley 
 remarked to a wealthy friend, while winning his way 
 to distinction. The remark was not made in jest. 
 It was no vain pretense of sympathy for those in 
 straightened circumstance. He had met the require 
 ments. He was entitled to his prosperity. He had 
 not capitalized his hardships. He had not bewailed 
 his fate. He had accepted what the wheel of fortune 
 brought him, not always contentedly, but never in a 
 vindictive spirit. He observed with much glee 
 that it was the loss of a sandal that sent Jason on 
 the quest for the Golden Fleece. Thus by joking about 
 his lot, the sign-painter endeared himself to his friends 
 and ultimately to the American people. "Poverty," he 
 affirmed, "is the north wind that lashes men like Mark 
 Twain and Lincoln into Vikings women like May Al- 
 cott, it makes a queen of the earth. She was enshrined 
 in the heart of mankind, not because she had to do 
 second work including washing at two dollars a week 
 not that. Her history is inspiring because she rose 
 above two dollars a week. She smiled at the thumping 
 of fate. It made her, as she herself said, a sweet, ripe 
 old pippin before she died." 
 
82 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 Though the seasons brought hard times to Riley, his 
 signs brought prosperity to others. Like the rustic 
 in As You Like It, he was shepherd to other men, and 
 did not shear the fleece he grazed. 
 
 "Hart and Thayer 
 Hart and Thayer 
 
 All the wool 
 You have to spare 
 
 Take it along 
 To Hart and Thayer." 
 
 Thus ran the homely jingle on sign-boards nailed up 
 on the highways leading into town "the first rhyme," 
 said a thrifty farmer, "that ever stimulated sheep 
 growing in Hancock County." It proved to be 
 such a hit and brought so much business to the 
 firm that other signs appeared on roads farther 
 away from the center of trade. "Shilling poetry," 
 the farmers called it, and well they might, for it 
 raised the price of wool. Rhyme-spinning was 
 vying with the song of the loom. Greenfield drew 
 trade from neighboring counties to the extent that the 
 wool industry assumed the appearance of "smuggling," 
 by which was meant the sale of wool in Greenfield that, 
 by the unwritten laws of trade, belonged to merchants 
 in Newcastle and Shelbyville. Loss to those towns 
 seemed to require legislation, or the attention of a mon 
 arch like Edward III to prohibit the exportation of wool 
 "under pain of life and limb." "Wool was not a drug 
 on the market," a merchant humorously remarked. 
 "Flemish weavers began to look our way. Business 
 vied with trade from Argentina and the Falkland 
 Isles." 
 
 The sign-painter, it may be observed parenthetically, 
 was beginning the search for a Golden Fleece, but he 
 
SALAD DAYS 83 
 
 had not dreamed of his efforts affecting trade in pure 
 bred merinos and Silesian wools. It may also be said 
 that his profession was not wholly modern, although 
 many features of it were peculiar to his time, several 
 originating with him. Nor was the occupation wholly 
 commonplace, and certainly it was not menial, even 
 though Kiley "had but one coat to his back, and that 
 had frazzled sleeves and patches on the elbows." Sign 
 boards had been painted by such great artists as Ho 
 garth, Wilson and Correggio. A few years before Riley 
 climbed to the roof of the Greenfield school building, 
 Archibald Willard, famous for his painting, "The 
 Spirit of 76," was gilding wheels and axletrees in a 
 carriage factory in Ohio. 
 
 All in all, in this transitional period, Riley was not 
 in bad company. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 THE ARGONAUT AMONG OLD BOOKS 
 
 HE WAS fresh and vigorous; he was animated 
 with hope ; he was incited by desire ; he walked 
 swiftly over the valleys and saw the hills grad 
 ually rising before him." 
 
 This paragraph from an old school Reader gave Riley 
 elemental pleasure. "Just to repeat it," said he, "gives 
 delight like the music of warblers or the fragrance of 
 May-apples." It was from a lesson entitled "A Pic 
 ture of Human Life." He approved the picture, 
 drawing the line only on the counsel of the hermit who 
 discouraged the indulgence of pleasure. There were, to 
 be sure, pleasures that brought dissatisfaction in the 
 wake of the disasters attending them ; but there was a 
 universe of pleasure that did not end in prostration, 
 remorse and suffering. The hermit scorned enjoy 
 ment. He limited travelers to the main road. They 
 were not to forsake the common track, which was the 
 dusty, uneven way of the plain. They were to forego 
 the pleasure derived from the music of birds, the 
 sparkle of fountains and the murmur of water-falls. 
 To mount a hill for a fresh prospect, or trace the course 
 of a gentle river among the trees was to overspread the 
 sky with clouds and invite the tempest. 
 
 Riley promptly disregarded the hermit s counsel. 
 Poetic natures the world over, he thought, should create 
 and discover scenes of happiness. This meant for the 
 discoverers release from custom. Without such release 
 
 84 
 
THE ARGONAUT AMONG OLD BOOKS 85 
 
 the light of their lives was lost. To travel the main 
 highway exclusively as the hermit advised, was to 
 court mediocrity. It was to impoverish human re 
 sources. The main road for the indifferent, those who 
 lost themselves in the crowd; but when a young man 
 had in his heart something that distinguished him from 
 the common run of men, he necessarily had to depart 
 from the beaten path. The very law of his existence 
 meant a new road, to travel onward along which meant 
 gardens of pleasure. To enjoy these gardens was not, 
 in consequence, to lose the happiness of innocence, not 
 to forsake the paths of virtue. One could make life 
 picturesque without indulging evil passions. 
 
 Thus it was, as a young man entering "the arena of 
 the firmament," that Riley made his own picture of 
 human life. In reality there were two pictures. As he 
 grew to manhood, these took definite form and became 
 paramount in importance, the one blending with the 
 other. He divided the world into prose and poetry. 
 Whenever what he thought or did related to the prosaic 
 side of existence, he was a Pilgrim. From early man 
 hood he desired to write a narrative poem of consider 
 able length to be entitled "The Mayflower Voyage," the 
 mission of the poem being to make it a little clearer 
 to the readers that his life was just such a voyage. By 
 idealizing incidents of courage and self-sacrifice he 
 hoped to develop a dramatic narrative that would en 
 noble the perseverance, refresh the faith, and stimulate 
 the hope of the people. Although he failed to write the 
 poem, he did not fail to experience the Pilgrim s fate, 
 "the fate of all men," said he, "who grapple courag 
 eously with the problems of human progress. All 
 citizens worthy the name make the Pilgrim voy 
 age, and it is a piece of good fortune that they 
 
86 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 have to make it. Trial grows character. The lives 
 of our statesmen were foreshadowed in the stormy 
 passage of the Mayflower. Necessarily they were men 
 of sorrows. The Ship of State gave them many sleep 
 less nights. Now, paradoxical as it seems, there are in 
 the experience of the poet as in the lives of statesmen, 
 days dark as night. His bark, like the Ship of State, is 
 often driven through perilous waters. Like the Pil 
 grim, the poet is buffeted by billows within and without. 
 He is destined to follow his star in the pathless way 
 through fogs and blinding rain. It does not strain the 
 truth to say that he is tossed on frozen shores bleak and 
 drear as the coasts of death." 
 
 "Such is life," said Riley, "when yoked to the prosaic 
 side of human existence." But there was another pic 
 ture and with it he was enraptured. He was a Pil 
 grim, but chiefly he was an Argonaut in search of a 
 Golden Fleece. The glow of feeling in the man in the 
 spring days of his genius when he found what he called 
 "a wisp of the Fleece," and within it the thread of gold 
 for a poem (the climax in the last stanza as all Riley 
 readers know), when he found that, his rapture was 
 as heavenly as the divinity of youth. Sometimes the 
 work of a single night sparkled with jewels, and when 
 daybreak came he had the threads for several poems. 
 They were the gifts of the gods. Lest he lose them, he 
 wrote the stanza immediately, which accounts for the 
 singular fact that he often wrote the last stanza first 
 when building a poem. 
 
 His Argonautic dream dates back to boyhood when 
 he first began to think of life as a voyage of discovery, 
 back to the days when Uncle Mart and Almon Keefer 
 held the children captive with fairy stories, when little 
 "Bud" lay on his back in the shade of 
 
THE ARGONAUT AMONG OLD BOOKS 87 
 
 "The red-apple-tree, with dreamy eyes 
 And Argo-fancies voyaging the skies." 
 
 The particular book that gave birth to the dream of the 
 Golden Fleece was Hawthorne s Tanglewood Tales, 
 which just then was coming over the Alleghanies in its 
 first edition. "This enterprise, you will understand," 
 Uncle Mart read from the Tales, "was of all others, the 
 most difficult and dangerous in the world. In the first 
 place, it would be necessary to make a long voyage 
 through unknown seas. There was hardly a hope, or a 
 possibility, that any young man who should undertake 
 the voyage would either succeed in obtaining the Golden 
 Fleece, or would survive to return home and tell of the 
 perils he had run." In simple English, writing poetry, 
 to say nothing of the quest for Golden Fleece in other 
 fields, was one of the most difficult things to do under 
 the sun. The youthful Riley however saw not the diffi 
 culties attending the voyage. Children then as now 
 were "blessedly blind" to facts such as these. His inter 
 est centered in the galley and the heroes with helmets 
 and shields who were willing to row him, if need be, 
 "to the remotest edge of the world." Not the least 
 among his heroes being Orpheus the harper, who played 
 upon the lyre so sweetly that the beasts of the fields 
 capered to the music. The dangers and difficulties were 
 reserved for the school of experience. 
 
 Tales of other heroes, the Argonauts of Forty-Nine, 
 were heard in those days. These kindled in the Riley 
 youth the spirit of adventure. His earliest recollec 
 tions were of the gold-fever excitement. Soon after 
 1849, the National Road became a westward stream 
 of vagrants. The stream passed his childhood door. The 
 Overland Route through the South Pass to San Fran 
 cisco was advertised in Indiana communities. Young 
 
88 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 men having packs and good animals were asked to fall 
 into the ranks and cross the continent. They could 
 reach gold in one hundred and twenty days. They 
 were told the land by the sundown sea was "the 
 finest new country of which the human race has any 
 knowledge." The lure of the Far West was very great. 
 It had drawn Bret Harte to the Golden Gate at the age 
 of seventeen. A few years later Mark Twain had gone 
 bounding in a stage-coach over the Great Divide to 
 Nevada. "It was an assemblage of young men," said 
 Twain, referring to the driving population of the min 
 ing regions "not simpering, dainty kid-gloved weak 
 lings, but stalwart, muscular, dauntless young braves, 
 brimful of push and energy, and royally endowed with 
 every attribute that goes to make up a peerless and 
 magnificent manhood. No women, no children, no gray 
 and stooping veterans none but erect, bright-eyed, 
 quick-moving, strong-handed young giants the most 
 gallant host that ever trooped down the startled soli 
 tudes of an unpeopled land." 
 
 When a spectacle like that smites the vision of a 
 young man, he is likely to lift his moorings and follow 
 the adventuring crowd. But the ways of Fortune do 
 not all lie to westward. It turned out that the Golden 
 Fleece which Riley sought was not on the hillsides of 
 the American Fork, nor was California to be his "Land 
 of the Afternoon." 
 
 Soon after leaving Greenfield to try his fortune in 
 other Hoosier towns, he chanced to hear Bret Harte 
 lecture on "The Argonauts of Forty-Nine." After 
 that for several years he was dominated by the spirit 
 of adventure, although it never led him to distant 
 lands. The Hoosier world was large enough. The 
 humorous Moral to Roughing It he took seriously: 
 
THE ARGONAUT AMONG OLD BOOKS 8d 
 
 "// you are of any account, stay at home and make your 
 way by faithful diligence" 
 
 As he looked out over his native state, he was filled 
 like Orpheus with a desire to sing of a wondrous world, 
 and how all things spring from love. He talked 
 extravagantly of the Golden Fleece. His heart was 
 aflame in The Argonaut," one of his early poems, a 
 copy of which he carried from town to town in his 
 pocket till it was worn threadbare and lost. He read 
 it aloud when he could find a friendly listener. One 
 stanza was decidedly Argonautic: 
 
 "And mistily as through a veil, 
 
 I catch the glances of a sea 
 Of sapphire, dimpled with a gale 
 From Colchis blowing, where the sail 
 Of Jason s Argo beckons me." 
 
 As he bowled through the country, he was "a Forty- 
 Niner the blessedest creature on the earth" but 
 never when he thus thought of himself was he a Cali 
 fornia gold-seeker. Always he had in mind the joyous 
 year of his birth, and how he had started from the box 
 cradle on his life voyage of discovery. 
 
 Riley was a Pilgrim when hampered with the routine 
 and cares of business, when struggling with 
 debt, when the day was a series of banalities 
 and distractions. But he was an Argonaut from 
 the cradle, and that picture of human life, like the 
 fairy interest in his work, was always with him 
 when he was doing what Heaven designed him to do. 
 Since he was chiefly an Argonaut, the reader is asked 
 to think of him as such in the following chapters and 
 first to follow him in his quest for Golden Fleece among 
 old books. 
 
 The records of a Greenfield Sunday-school once in- 
 
90 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 eluded a report by J. W. Riley, secretary pro tempore. 
 He and his companions had wandered into the church 
 out of the rain. In the absence of the regular secretary, 
 he was asked to write the minutes and if so inclined to 
 make some remarks. His report was a rare departure 
 from custom, his language being an alarm to the "an 
 cient worthies," the dismay of the ignorant, and a sur 
 prise to all. Never before had those church walls 
 echoed a phraseology so verbose and unaccountable. 
 On leaving the church, a wide awake member of the 
 flock seized the secretary pro tern, cordially by the 
 arm and requested him to come again. "You serve 
 us," said he, "and sleep-worship in this sanctuary will 
 write over the door of its departure the days that are 
 no more." It seems that Riley had by design or acci 
 dent found a collection of good old English books. 
 Having browsed at will on "that fair and wholesome 
 pasturage," he was on that Sunday morning, as on 
 other occasions, eager to exercise his new vocabulary. 
 It was Riley s fortune to love the beauty and knowl 
 edge he gathered from books for their own sake. 
 Like most boys, he began by reading light novels. 
 Though they were trashy, he gleaned from them more 
 or less information and a knowledge of words. 
 Happily, there lived near, a wise mother, Rhoda Hough- 
 ton Millikan, who had her own method of lur 
 ing boys and girls to good books. She was not 
 alarmed when they began to devour dime novels. She 
 placed a copy of The Sketch Book on the center table 
 where her son and the "Riley boy" might find it. "Let 
 them nibble at it," said she, "and they will come to the 
 good books by and by." And they did. After reading 
 The Sketch Book, Riley called for more and was given 
 The Alhambra, and Irving s biography of Oliver Gold- 
 
THE ARGONAUT AMONG OLD BOOKS 91 
 
 smith. Thus he ascended the Catskills with Rip Van 
 Winkle, thus he was lured to castles in Spain, and thus 
 did the author of The Traveller kindle Riley s passion 
 for wandering, and acquaint him with the pleasures 
 and miseries of the scribbling tribe. 
 
 It was fortunate for Riley that Mrs. Millikan was a 
 friend of the best literature. He had once been her 
 pupil. She was a woman of heroic type, having reared 
 her family of five children after her husband 
 had been lost with other Argonauts in the Cali 
 fornia gold fields. In her youth she had lived 
 near the Green Mountains. Irving was her patron 
 saint. When she said, "I love him dearly," the boys 
 knew she did. After Riley s first poem had been 
 printed in a local paper, she spoke to him of his future, 
 recalling what she had read in an old prospectus of 
 the first edition of The Sketch Book. "Irving," she 
 said, "did not aspire to high honors; it was the dear 
 wish of his heart to have a secure and cherished though 
 humble corner in the good opinion and kind feelings of 
 his countrymen. This, James, was a worthy ambition. 
 You can have a similar corner in the hearts of your 
 countrymen." 
 
 To Mrs. Millikan (and a London shoemaker, as the 
 reader will see elsewhere) is due the credit for opening 
 to Riley the door to good literature. She was the first 
 of the Greenfield prophets, the first to see in "the 
 strange young man" the possibilities of authorship, and 
 it was her happy fortune to see him rise to the summit 
 of his fame. 
 
 About the middle of the last century a New Har 
 mony philanthropist established in Greenfield the 
 McClure Township Library, a collection of three hun 
 dred volumes, including a series on Success in Life, the 
 
92 JAMES WHITCOMB PJLEY 
 
 Queens of England, Macaulay s England, the Works of 
 Washington Irving, the Rollo Books, Cooper s Novels, 
 Prescott s Histories, and a full line of the poets. The 
 Library had a precarious existence. From its first 
 home in the county Court House, it drifted successively 
 into the schoolhouse, a boot and shoe store, a grocery 
 store, until finally it was scattered among fami 
 lies of the town. But wherever its home, it was 
 a Mecca for young Riley. A few histories he read, 
 but with little interest. His taste ran to fiction 
 and poetry. He read Weem s Life of Washington, 
 which in spite of the fables, he said, "is a better 
 book than the later lives with the fable left out. 
 Lincoln grew up with that book. It is more nutritious 
 than the dull chronicle of juiceless facts." 
 
 It may be observed in passing that Riley did not limit 
 truth to fact. He liked immensely what Thomas 
 Brackett Reed said about it. "Why," asked Reed, "are 
 stories of great men invented? Because the truth is 
 deeper than the fact." "Truth," said Riley, "is a lim 
 itless realm ; it is universal ; it lies back, around, above 
 and below our feeble expression of it and the expression 
 great men give it. A thing need not necessarily hap- 
 pen in order to be a fact. If it is told exactly the way 
 it would happen if it did happen, it is as absolutely true 
 as if it had already happened. We are told that there 
 was no such Washington as we fable and it is true. 
 In other words we have made and are still making our 
 Washington. The Washington the people love is not 
 solely the Washington of history, but the larger Wash 
 ington, the cumulative dream of the National Mind." 
 
 In the Township Library Riley also found the Life of 
 Daniel Boone, the Swiss Family Robinson, Don Quixote, 
 Robin Hood, Robinson Crusoe, and what was to him 
 
THE ARGONAUT AMONG OLD BOOKS 93 
 
 dearest of all, the Arabian Nights. "Its author was no 
 pessimist," he remarked in after years, "although far 
 away in the Persian desert. He was the Robert Louis 
 Stevenson of his time; he fed the hungry, put a coat 
 on the world s back, built a warm fire for its comfort 
 and bade it be of good cheer. I can never efface from 
 memory the scenes of that book. They have been theme 
 and inspiration to me. To this day when I sniff coal- 
 oil, it is sweet as violets, for I think of Aladdin and 
 the Wonderful Lamp. I see the huge iron door at my 
 feet. It is raised for me; I descend the narrow steps 
 and pass through the caves of riches and find jewels 
 on the trees." 
 
 - But the leaven from the Library, the most generative 
 and far-reaching in its effect was The Lives of Eminent 
 British Painters and Sculptors, five leather-bound vol 
 umes with a long title, which, as Bill Nye might remark, 
 was simplified for talking purposes. "Where s Riley?" 
 some one asked. "Oh," answered an old-timer, "he s 
 up there readin them British Books." Thus the vol 
 umes were designated, and affectionately, too, when it 
 was known how dearly the young Argonaut loved them. 
 They were 
 
 "The pleasant books, that silently among 
 
 The household treasures, took familiar places, 
 And were to him as if a living tongue 
 
 Spake from the printed leaves or pictured faces." 
 
 When the remnant of the old Library was scattered 
 among the Greenfield patrons, by common consent the 
 "British Books" became Riley s property, and thus it 
 was that he read them again and again. Almost all that 
 he accomplished in those years of growing manhood 
 was directly or indirectly traceable to the influence of 
 those books, and even after his fame was assured, still 
 
94 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 those household treasures spoke to him from their 
 printed pages. In them he found excuses for his con 
 ceits and eccentricities. His interest in grotesque com 
 binations, his sympathy for illiterate people, his love of 
 seclusion, his scorn of extravagance, his freedom from 
 the shackles of imitation, his determination to reach 
 the goal on an individual road all had a parallel in the 
 lives of those British artists. 
 
 "Fair Britannia/ a waggish rhymer once wrote, 
 
 "Flung to her right and her left, 
 
 Funny people with wings, 
 Among elephants, Roundheads, 
 And Cataba kings" ; 
 
 but the funniest, the oddest, the most whimsical of all, 
 the wag averred, were her children of genius known as 
 painters and sculptors. Riley agreed with the wag. As 
 he saw it, the artists touched life at almost every con 
 ceivable point. "They were erratic men, hot-tem 
 pered," said he ; "they were headstrong and presumptu 
 ous, they manifested early proofs of inspiration, they 
 were divinely interesting, they were good, they were 
 bad, they were weak, they were strong, wise, foolish 
 so are men of genius in all times." 
 
 In the "British Books" Riley found Sir Thomas Law 
 rence, who taught that a man should be on good terms 
 with himself, the prudent artist who veiled his pros 
 perity that he might have the applause of his friends. 
 
 There was Sir Joshua Reynolds, who held that 
 drudgery lay on the road to genius, the painter 
 who drew excellence from innumerable sources, 
 paid attention to all opinions, and obtained valuable 
 hints from the rudest minds. And Cosway, who 
 formed good resolutions by day and broke them when 
 the lamps were lighted; and Northcote, who had no 
 
THE POET S FATHER, CAPTAIN REUBEN A. RILEY 
 

 
 OLD SHOE-SHOP 
 
 Wherein the y.mth Ir.-inu-il ),, i ( ,vc I>i.-UMis 
 
THE ARGONAUT AMONG OLD BOOKS 95 
 
 first out-flashings of genius, but grew slowly up into 
 eminence year by year the artist who all his life was 
 afflicted with "false spelling" the youth whose interest 
 in Jack the Giant Killer never diminished the man 
 who could never open the book without his eyes filling 
 with tears. 
 
 There was Gainsborough, the son of the cloth- worker, 
 the "father of modern landscape," and Mortimer, 
 frequenting sequestered places on the seacoast 
 amid smugglers. And Copley, who refused to offer 
 up his time and money on the altar of that expen 
 sive idol, a wife ; and John Flaxman, the little sculptor, 
 who showed that wedlock is for an artist s good rather 
 than his harm. 
 
 There was William Hogarth, who taught that the 
 study of nature is the short and safe way to knowledge 
 Hogarth, the painter of the Distressed Poet, an artist 
 famed for his humorous insight, his power of story 
 telling, a genius of the first order, who proved that 
 entertainment and information are not all that is 
 required of genius, that the public wish to be elevated 
 by contemplating what is noble, warmed by the pres 
 ence of the heroic, and charmed and made happy by 
 the sight of purity and loveliness. 
 
 So the list continued. There were Harlow, Romney, 
 Bird, and Opie and West, whose fame, though great, 
 was not purchased by trials, and hence was not endur 
 ing. There were Bonnington and Blake and Barry 
 all in all, a goodly company for a young man in search 
 of a Golden Fleece. The books were stories of good old 
 English pluck and heroism, full of folly, of heart- 
 sorrow, of obstacles surmounted, of rectitude and re 
 nown. 
 
 The poet s friend, Myron Reed, was always able to 
 
96 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 see primary significance in obscure incidents that had 
 been cast aside by the historians and biographers. 
 "Abraham Lincoln," said he, "had some excellent com 
 pany at New Salem a village loafer, a dry-goods box 
 whittler, and an expert black bass fisherman, who knew 
 the best books on earth. There is at least one such man 
 in every village. Whitcomb Riley had such a man. 
 They do not make or wreck railroads, but they help boys 
 to know what to read and what not to read. One of 
 them is a small Socrates in a small town." 
 
 The Greenfield Socrates was a jolly Englishman, old 
 Tom Snow, "the first man of letters," said Riley, "the 
 town ever knew" a rare old shoemaker who knew 
 what elders often do not know, that it is not wise for 
 "October to be always preaching at June." Riley 
 traced his literary lineage back to the Englishman s 
 ancestry in London. Tom Snow was Riley s Old Man 
 with a chronic supply of family troubles, who, despite 
 them, never grew old, never became "stale, juiceless, 
 or unpalatable." His was the roguish face with smiles 
 hidden behind a solemn masquerade, 
 
 "While his eyes were wet as dry 
 Reading novels on the sly." 
 
 He was the oracle enshrined in the affections of the 
 children, the sponsor for good in everything, who kin 
 dled the smiles of youth and the smile of a poet; the 
 hale old heart that brimmed and overran 
 
 "With the strange enchanted sights, 
 And the splendors and delights 
 Of the old Arabian Nights." 
 
 He was the cobbler of lasting fame, who "seeketh soles 
 to save," the jovial shoemaker who was hailed 
 
THE ARGONAUT AMONG OLD BOOKS 97 
 
 "For all his goodly deeds 
 Yea, bless him free for booting thee 
 The first of all thy needs." 
 
 "In a little side-show of existence," said Riley at a 
 banquet, "Tom Snow was the old man who was always 
 worth the full price of admission." He had been a 
 member of London literary clubs and had, for those 
 days, a vast knowledge of English authors. He was a 
 superior reader, having been employed for thirteen 
 years to read to "a flock of English shoemakers," his 
 chief duty being to explain the text while books were 
 discussed. His experience on coming to America was 
 similar to that of Martin Chuzzlewitt. He was the 
 unfortunate owner of a spongy tract of swamp-land 
 near Greenfield. "Standing in the middle of it," said 
 Riley, "he could wobble and shake the whole farm, and 
 I was always glad that he could ; nature never made him 
 for an existence of trials and privations like that." 
 Finding that nothing but calamus would grow on the 
 land, the Englishman opened a shoe-shop in Greenfield 
 and later established himself in a bookstore, gathering 
 under his roof the driftwood of the Township Library, 
 which had been first secured through his efforts. 
 
 Rain or shine, hot or cold, the Shoe-Shop was head 
 quarters for all sorts and conditions of village life, par 
 ticularly for young fellows inclined to reading. The 
 discussion of books continued as in London. Some 
 times the lads came together to loaf and chatter over 
 scraps of town fiction or history; at other times for 
 games. It was not unusual to see the Argonaut 
 humped up with an antagonist in the corner over a 
 checkerboard, marching his platoon of wooden war 
 riors to and fro, and at intervals crooning the silence 
 with a "little wind-through-the-keyhole-whistle, while 
 
98 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 looking for a place where he could swap one man for 
 two." 
 
 The youthful Riley s affection for his old English 
 guide and instructor deserves to become as proverbial 
 as the love of Telemachus for the faithful Mentor. 
 Tom Snow was the children s Peter Pindar, and in 
 those days boys and girls were children till they were 
 twenty. Hogarth would have been charmed at the sight 
 of the modern Mentor telling the Riley boy the story 
 of Gog and Magog, the last two of a race of giants 
 who were brought to London and chained to the king s 
 palace, how the king made them serve as porters, how 
 their effigies stood in front of Guildhall, and how when 
 the clock on St. Paul s struck twelve they descended 
 from their pedestals to go into the Hall for dinner, and 
 how they were destroyed in the Great Fire. "That 
 story," said Riley, "embellished by his quaint varia 
 tions, gave the Old Man a parquet seat in my affec 
 tions." And the Shoe-Shop, too, was enshrined in his 
 love. That was a rare picture of the dear Long Ago, 
 when the Old Man read the story of Little Nell, when he 
 
 . . . "arose and from his pack s scant treasure 
 
 A hoarded volume drew, 
 
 And games were dropped from hands of listless leisure 
 To hear the tale anew." 
 
 The Greenfield Socrates was a lover of old saws, 
 but the foe of all he thought untrue. "Good beginning, 
 bad ending : Boys," he exclaimed, accenting the remark 
 with his hammer, "it is false. A good beginning is 
 half the battle ! Better yet good beginning, good end 
 ing. Now in reading begin right read Dickens." He 
 had brought from London a full set of his favorite 
 author, and the Argonaut, having arrived at the read 
 ing age of discretion, was introduced to the "greatest 
 
THE ARGONAUT AMONG OLD BOOKS 99 
 
 novelist of the world." He immediately began to satisfy 
 his hunger for life as it is. He had not gone far be 
 fore he met the beloved Tiny Tim with his cheery "God 
 bless us every one." He was soon aware that Dickens 
 knew every street and alley in London, and that his 
 novels cover every phase of Anglo-Saxon life. "He is 
 the showman of literature," Riley remarked >when 
 older; "he draws the curtain and there are the per 
 formers." Thus was the youth lured among thieves; 
 thus he heard the cries of the mob. On he went past 
 Toby Veck and Master Humphrey s Clock, down with 
 the author into the most degraded corners of the 
 Metropolis, among the vilest creatures, through "the 
 dirtiest and darkest streets of the world." 
 
 "Hold!" cried the Old Man, "you are reading too 
 fast. Take this," handing him Old Curiosity Shop; 
 "memorize this," referring to the death of Little Nell. 
 " When I die, put me near something that has loved 
 the light and had the sky above it always/ where do 
 you find anything in books so full of feeling as that? 
 Master that and I will teach you to recite it." 
 
 Without knowing it the Shoemaker was extending a 
 hand to an American audience a hundred thousand 
 strong. The youth to whom he spoke was to rise to a 
 shining summit on the platform. He was to rival 
 Dickens public readings in their palmiest days. The 
 Shoemaker had been an actor in London ; he knew the 
 rostrum requirements, knew when an author was a 
 failure in reading from his own works. One of his 
 dreams was to take the youthful Riley to hear Dickens 
 on the last American tour, and one readily imagines 
 the disappointment in the Shoe-Shop when the author 
 came no farther west than Buffalo. "We will hear 
 Dickens," repeated the Shoemaker, "we will hear him 
 
100 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 if we have to walk to the Academy of Music through 
 a snowstorm." 
 
 For several years after the Shoemaker moved to 
 Greenfield, the space round his shop was used as a 
 hitching ground for country teams. As a meeting- 
 place it rivaled the space round the Court House. There 
 from cabins and clearings gathered a company of pio 
 neers to hear the news of the week unselfish and some 
 times eccentric types of Hoosier life and character. It 
 was a fallow feeding ground for a hungry youth, afford 
 ing an opportunity for education seldom equaled in 
 the annals of frontier life. There were the "Riley 
 Folks," 
 
 "The hale, hard-working people 
 The kindly country people 
 That Uncle used to know"; 
 
 the Loehrs and the Hammonds, Tubb Kingry and Tugg 
 Martin, the Griggsby family, the Local Politician, Old 
 John Henry, and Squire Leachman, "as honest a 
 farmer as ever drew the breath of life," these and 
 a score of others who were later enshrined in the 
 poet s verse upright, reliable freeholders, or men and 
 women striving to be such. That there were excep 
 tions to uprightness goes without argument on off 
 days, and rally days, for instance, when the Hominy 
 Ridge Clan appeared "with plumes and banners gay." 
 Once when the old town happened to have its face 
 turned the other way, and the barefoot fellows were 
 feeling the worse for their wild oats, they rode their 
 prancing steeds up and down the sidewalks, the chief 
 of the Clan riding savagely through the front door into 
 a hardware store thereby supplying the community 
 
THE ARGONAUT AMONG OLD BOOKS 101 
 
 with excitement for a week, and affording loafers an 
 opportunity to witness a fine exhibition of English 
 wrath when the Clan rode past the Shoemaker s door. 
 The Shoemaker deserves our thanks for directing 
 Riley to the best literature. When he introduced the 
 lad to Oliver Twist, he conferred a favor on posterity. 
 What he did added to the happiness of innumerable 
 future homes. It meant cheer for the heart-breaking, 
 smiles and laughter for firesides in generations to 
 come. 
 
 "Creeping on where Time has bee,n, 
 A rare old plant is the Ivy greert" - 
 
 thus the gray haired Mentor repeated the couplet, 
 gently, "trippingly on the tongue" as the London play 
 ers did little dreaming that fame would cling to him 
 and his Shoe-Shop as the ivy to ruins little dreaming 
 that the Riley youth in the dear afterwhiles would 
 voice in "The Enduring," a poem that would add charm 
 to life wherever the English tongue is spoken. For 
 Mentor and pupil it is a loving illustration of what 
 Dickens had told them that nothing beautiful and good 
 sees death or is forgotten. 
 
 Riley began to read Dickens before he quit school . 
 indeed, he neglected the schoolroom for a course in 
 literature at the Shoe-Shop. The influence of the 
 novels upon him at that impressionable age is incom 
 putable. He appropriated their language and used it 
 till it seemed his own. He was so fascinated with the 
 stories that as he grew to maturity, their humor and 
 pathos became part and parcel of his character and 
 conversation. 
 
 From the Shoe-Shop forward, reading became a re- 
 
102 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 quirement so essential that Riley seldom left home 
 without an old satchel and a half dozen books "my 
 reticule," he phrased it, when a bird of passage. 
 
 While visiting once in a neighboring town he 
 found a broken-backed copy of The Task, which held 
 him within its grasp for the whole of an April day. 
 It contrasted the charms of rural life with the novelty 
 and allurements of the town. He learned that Nature 
 deceives no student and that wisdom is to be won by 
 slow solicitation. He was warned of the fatal habit 
 o>f swallowing -what he read without pause or medita 
 tion. -As she lay there, face downward, on the bare floor 
 of a* -scantily furnished room, he was fully persuaded 
 that he was not "the victim of luxurious ease." "I was 
 poor," he said, "not a poor vagrant but a poor bird of 
 passage who was rich without knowing it, poor as the 
 truant Cowper was poor, rambling on the banks of the 
 Thames, subsisting on scarlet-hips and blushing crabs." 
 
 It may seem to some a trifling affection for a genius 
 who grew by feeding on Irving, Dickens, Harte, and 
 Cowper to care deeply for a series of school readers. 
 But so Riley did. No other series of books, in 
 his opinion, had so affected the morals and the 
 happiness of children. He appreciated to the ut 
 most the sentiment Frances Willard expressed when 
 she offered a hundred dollars for a set of the first edi 
 tion. "The compiler," he remarked, "was a genius, and 
 deserves a monument from the generation he so signally 
 nourished and elevated." His favorite of the series 
 was the Fifth Reader, a book many old boys and girls 
 will remember, compiled by Professor William H. 
 McGuffey of Miami University. Riley loved the book 
 chiefly for its poems. "I liked to memorize them," he 
 remarked when fifty years old. "If I had the Reader 
 
THE ARGONAUT AMONG OLD BOOKS 103 
 
 now you would find the pages of poetry turned down 
 at the corners, the verses underlined, and the margins 
 decorated with sketches crags, cliffs, landscapes and 
 faces." In his latter days it was once permitted him to 
 see an old copy of the second edition. He gazed upon 
 the homely treasures of its pages with feelings that 
 were tenderly retrospective, "feelings that resembled 
 sorrow," he said, "as mist resembles rain." 
 
 The compiler of the Readers had chosen his selec 
 tions from the best in all English literature. It 
 had been his object, as the preface stated, to present 
 "the best specimens of style and especially to exert a 
 decided and healthy moral and religious influence." 
 The child or the savage orator, McGuffey observed, 
 never makes a mistake in inflection, or emphasis, or 
 modulation. The best speakers and readers were those 
 who followed the impulse of nature as felt in their own. 
 hearts. 
 
 Perhaps after all Professor McGuffey did have a 
 monument in the wide, unrivaled influence Riley 
 exerted on the platform. The poet never looked for 
 help to schools of elocution. He followed "the impulse 
 of nature in his own heart," as the old books directed. 
 
 Every reader, as Longfellow remarked, has his first 
 book, that is, one book among all others that fasci 
 nates his imagination and satisfies the desires of his 
 mind. Riley had such a book. Other books were near 
 and dear to him, the "British Books," the Fifth Reader, 
 Oliver Twist, Old Curiosity Shop, and Arabian Nights 
 so that about the Shoe-Shop and Court House he 
 was known as "the lad of nine books," probably in re 
 sponse to the tradition that Lincoln was "the lad of 
 seven books." But none of these twined their pages 
 about his heartstrings as did Longfellow s Poems. It 
 
104 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 was a current saying in Greenfield that Riley knew The 
 Spanish Student by heart. The charm of the poems 
 was never broken. He read them with abiding affec 
 tion. They were among the books carried from place 
 to place in his "reticule." For thirty years the Cam 
 bridge Edition of Longfellow was his traveling com 
 panion. The first thing to do on entering a room at a 
 hotel was to lay the book on the table. It was his mas 
 cot. He did not always read it, but the heavenly 
 monitor was always in sight. Whenever he opened it, 
 like Longfellow opening The Sketch Book, he also 
 opened "the mysterious door which led back into the 
 haunted chambers of youth." 
 
 "Longfellow is my poetry Bible," he said. "To read 
 him is a liberal education. The beauty of his charac 
 ter transcends everything else. Outside of the excel 
 lence of his poems, his is the sweetest human mind that 
 ever existed." 
 
 The Argonaut was now registered among the lovers 
 of good books. He had made a fine start although 
 he was not yet beyond the luring sway of sidetracks 
 and byways. The Golden Fleece was not in sight, but 
 now and again he caught a glimpse of shining sum 
 mits ahead. Guideposts were up and the long distance 
 ones were pointing vaguely through the mist to a de 
 lectable goal. 
 
 "Behind the curtain s mystic fold 
 The glowing future lay unrolled." 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY 
 
 THE tale of the Argonaut now runs to the 
 romantic, up hill and down dale with a vender 
 of "Standard Remedies," Doctor S. B. McCrillus 
 of Anderson, Indiana, the county-seat of a neighboring 
 county, and the reader is invited to think happily of a 
 holiday spirit that was tolerant of mirth and amuse 
 ment. 
 
 Doctor McCrillus was not a stranger to Greenfield. 
 He was cordially interested in Captain Riley, and it 
 is due him and the eloquent Captain to digress a mo 
 ment from the regular narrative. 
 
 "Neighbor Derby, shake hands with Whit Riley, 
 son of Reuben Riley, the Greenfield attorney," said the 
 Doctor to a farmer one day, while touring the country. 
 The farmer manifesting ignorance of the attorney, the 
 Doctor s voice instantly rose to the pitch of fervor. 
 "Don t you know Reuben Riley, Captain Reuben A. 
 Riley ? He is the most eloquent man in the state." 
 
 This was not said in jest. The Doctor had listened 
 to a few celebrated pioneer preachers. He had on 
 several occasions heard Morton, Indiana s "War Gov 
 ernor," Richard Thompson, Dan Vorhees, and other 
 political torch-lights of his time; but "not one of them," 
 said he, "can hold a candle to the eloquence of Captain 
 Riley. I repeat it: Reuben Riley is the most eloquent 
 orator in the state." This may have been an exaggera 
 tion, but it was not one to the Doctor. There were a 
 
 105 
 
106 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 score of old patriots in Greenfield who said the same. 
 As eminent an authority as Horace Greeley, who had 
 heard the fluent Captain in the Fremont campaign, held 
 a similar view. The Doctor had a theory that the great 
 est speeches go unrecorded. "They are traditions," 
 3aid he, "and several Riley speeches belong to that 
 class." He had heard the Captain at a memorial meet 
 ing a few days after Lincoln s assassination. He re 
 called the indefinable poise of the orator, the flash of 
 his dark eye, and the magical effect of his gestures. 
 The eulogy so impressed him that after the lapse of 
 half a lifetime he could recall the solemn images of the 
 occasion as they appeared "in their morning luster." 
 Old residents of Greenfield refer to it as the "Lost 
 Speech." The Doctor remembered that the eulogist 
 prefaced the speech with two texts, one from Cowper 
 and the other from the Bible ; the first 
 
 "God moves in a mysterious way 
 
 His wonders to perform ; 
 He plants his footsteps in the sea, 
 And rides upon the storm" : 
 
 and the second, "I will make judgment the line, and 
 righteousness the plummet: and the hail shall sweep 
 away the refuge of lies and the waters shall overflow 
 the hiding place." "When Captain Riley spoke," added 
 the Doctor, "you knew God moves in a mysterious 
 way. You could see Him in the tempest, in the flames 
 of devouring fire; you could hear Him in the earth 
 quake." 
 
 One brief paragraph of the speech remains ; the re 
 mainder was the gift of inspiration under the spell of 
 the occasion. "Never," the orator wrote on an envelope 
 a moment before rising to speak, "never in the history 
 
OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY 107 
 
 of recorded time has the transition from free, exultant, 
 forgiving, universal joy, been so quick, so sudden, to 
 universal gloom and sorrow. We rejoice with joy un 
 speakable at the realized salvation of our government. 
 We are stricken with horror dumb, with dark fore 
 bodings, almost with despair, at this blackest crime 
 against the nation against humanity the assassi 
 nation of Abraham Lincoln." 
 
 After he had finished, the orator sat down in the 
 silence and wept with the crowd. He had opened the 
 fountains of universal sorrow. A comrade in tears re 
 minded him of a battle-torn flag returned from the war, 
 which was to share the honors of the day. Promptly 
 rising to the occasion, he paid a tribute to the Stars 
 and Stripes that brought the audience to its feet with 
 enthusiasm as uncontrollable as the silence that fol 
 lowed the tribute to the dead President was profound 
 and sorrowful. 
 
 Since the poet s grandmother Riley held the people 
 captive in camp-meetings, and since his father was the 
 peer of the most eloquent men in Indiana, it would 
 seem that Doctor McCrillus had ground for attributing 
 the poet s success on the platform to heredity. "The 
 poet was a descendant of speech-makers," said the 
 Doctor. "Never a pose before the footlights, never 
 a gesture or smile that could not be traced back to the 
 eloquence of his father." 
 
 The Doctor was a man of warm sympathies but in 
 clined at times to eccentricity. His long, white 
 "breezy whiskers" were a part of the landscape. 
 As Mrs. Spottletoe would say, they were the lode 
 star of his existence. "On a clear day," said Riley, 
 "you could see them from Hardscrabble to Point Isa 
 bel." Although widely known for his quaint ways and 
 
108 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 "old-school oddities," he was not an average drug ped- 
 ler by any means. Nor did he make average claims for 
 his "Standard Remedies." He allowed the great public 
 to be the judge. "His marvelous brews and concoc 
 tions," said Riley, "relieved every form of distress 
 from 
 
 The pinch of tight shoes 
 To a dose of the blues." 
 
 Riley started out with the Doctor on the "Standard 
 Remedy" excursions in the summer of 1872 and con 
 tinued with him irregularly for two years. On the road 
 into Greenfield the Doctor had seen some fine 
 examples of sign-painting on the Fair Ground 
 fence, advertising the Farmer s Grocery and other 
 merchants of the town. While he and a young travel 
 ing recruit whom he had already enlisted were stand 
 ing by their wagon near the Court House, they "were 
 approached," said the Doctor, "by a verdant looking 
 young fellow dressed in overalls, who was hunting 
 work. I noticed the overalls for my other sign-painter 
 wore loud clothes." 
 
 "Do you need a sign-painter?" he asked. 
 
 "I have one," replied the Doctor ; "there he is ; shake 
 hands with James McClanahan." 
 
 But the man in overalls was in earnest. He hoped 
 that the outside world would yield him favors his 
 native town denied. 
 
 "Have you seen any of my work?" he continued. 
 
 The Doctor had not seen it. 
 
 "How did you come in?" 
 
 "By the Fair Ground." 
 
 "Did you see some large signs there on the fence?" 
 
 "Yes," answered the Doctor. 
 
OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY 109 
 
 "I made them," said Riley. 
 
 The Doctor now being interested assured him he had 
 never seen work in that line so skilfully done, and in 
 quired his name. 
 
 "James Riley," was the reply, "Jim Riley, they call 
 me round town." 
 
 "Any relation to Reuben Riley?" 
 
 "My father," answered James. 
 
 That he might consider young Riley s proposal a 
 few moments longer, the Doctor turned aside to deliver 
 some "Remedies" to the drug stores while the two sign- 
 painters began a friendship that was never broken. 
 Riley took his new friend to see other samples of his 
 work, among them the large advertising card in the 
 post-office. Before returning to the wagon the Doctor 
 went to the law office of the elder Riley, with whom 
 he talked a few minutes on current issues, not neglect 
 ing to compliment the attorney on the "Lost Speech" 
 and other efforts of like nature. 
 
 "Your son James wants to travel with me," he re 
 marked as he rose to go. 
 
 "My God !" cried the father, not bitterly but sorrow 
 fully; "if you can make anything out of him take him 
 along." 
 
 For two years or more the father had been in doubt 
 about his son s ability to make a living. The Doctor 
 ventured the opinion that the son had merit. "There 
 must be something to him," he said; "you forget; he 
 is the son of Reuben Riley." 
 
 This compliment pleased the father greatly, so they 
 quickly agreed that since the son was of age he 
 should be the architect of his own fortune. The com 
 pact the Doctor made for the son s service was, in part, 
 word for word, Mrs. Jarley s agreement when she em- 
 
110 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 ployed Little Nell to point out her wax-work figures 
 to the spectators. And it was "open air wagrancy," too, 
 although occasionally the Doctor did exhibit his wares 
 in town halls, taverns and vacant store-rooms. As to 
 salary (readers of Dickens will remember) , Mrs. Jarley 
 could pledge herself to no specific sum until she had 
 sufficiently tested Nell s abilities and watched her in 
 the performance of her duties. But board and lodging 
 she bound herself to provide, and she furthermore 
 "passed her word" that the board should always be 
 good in quality, and in quantity plentiful. Precisely 
 such an agreement the doctor made for the services 
 of young Riley. He promised fried chicken at farm 
 houses whenever the "Remedy" show was in the neigh 
 borhood of dinner bells. 
 
 "You are going with us, James," said the Doctor 
 as he approached the wagon ; "we have a few deliveries 
 to make; be ready when we return have your Sun 
 day clothes packed." 
 
 "I haven t an extra coat to my back," was the gay 
 reply. What did Riley care about a change of clothes 
 in June, when he was building a bridge into Wonder 
 land? 
 
 So, a few days later, the three birds of passage 
 climbed to their high seats on the wagon and drove 
 away north on the Pendleton road, behind a glossy 
 span of sorrel horses that "in their perfect beauty and 
 symmetry* high heads and tossing manes," as Riley 
 characterized them years afterward, "looked as though 
 they were just prancing out of an Arabian dream." 
 
 "Instantly," said Riley, recalling the wayfaring days, 
 "I started on my voyage for the Golden Fleece. It 
 was delightful to bowl over the country. My blood ran 
 through me like a gulf-stream. I laughed all the time. 
 
OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY 111 
 
 Miles and miles of somber landscapes were made bright 
 with merry song and when the sun shone and all the 
 golden summer lay spread out before me, it was 
 glorious. I drifted on through it like a wisp of thistle 
 down, careless of how, or when, or where the wind 
 should anchor me." 
 
 He was twenty-two years old, but in habit and 
 appearance several years younger an original young 
 man, full of fire and faith but devoid of the experience 
 which comes from traveling. His neighbors did not 
 take him for a poet, although he looked out of large, 
 thoughtful eyes. He was compactly built, had a full 
 face and fair complexion, reminding one of a way 
 ward college boy whose mind was on pranks instead of 
 books. He was generous to a fault and modest as a 
 girl of fifteen. 
 
 At Anderson there was a halt of three weeks to make 
 preparations for a lengthy excursion. The Doctor had 
 previously vended his "Remedies" only in neighboring 
 counties. Now that he had another sign-painter, and, 
 as was soon discovered, a minstrel and theatrical per 
 former as well, he would carry his message to remote 
 districts. Anderson was to be the hub of his travels, 
 and, as it turned out, for a few years the rival of Green 
 field in claiming the residence of the poet. 
 
 Impressions of Riley s new home on White River very 
 naturally crept into his letters. "Anderson," he wrote 
 a year or so later, "is a very handsome little town of 
 about five thousand inhabitants good people, speaking 
 generally, although of course it takes all kinds of people 
 and so forth. Vice is not as rampant here as in days of 
 old. It grows weaker every day, and religion and law, 
 hand in hand, are fast driving it from the land. If the 
 city has one blight, it is its Court House. That really; 
 
112 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 looks out of place and uncomfortable, surrounded as it 
 is by beautiful business blocks ; and I sometimes think 
 it is a pity it could not attend the Old Settlers meet 
 ing, for it could go farther back than the oldest inhabi 
 tant and tell of the youthful prowess of Indiana, espe 
 cially of the Indian chief, Anderson, for whom the town 
 was named. One can almost hear the old-time war 
 whoop echoes lurking around in its misty, time-dimmed 
 architecture." 
 
 Soon after his arrival in the town, Riley designed a 
 special trade-mark for the "Popular Standard Reme 
 dies," a work which required three days of experiment 
 and ingenuity. "Your Oriental Liniment," said he to 
 the Doctor, "is advertised best on earth/ and your pa 
 trons must be protected against fraud and imposition. 
 Your circular says good for sprains and bruises. Add 
 bee stings. The apiarian disorder was accordingly 
 listed and there resulted an increase in business. 
 
 Riley also won local recognition by painting a huge 
 sign on the Court House fence. Chief interest however 
 centered in a "hummer" in rhyme painted at the 
 corner of Meridian and Bolivar Streets, which drew 
 from the Weekly Herald the opinion that the "Painter 
 Poet" had immortalized a popular jeweler of the town. 
 School children repeated it trippingly: 
 
 "We would advise you all to see 
 The sparkling Gems and Jewelry 
 At John A wait s and be content 
 To know your money s wisely spent 
 At his immense establishment." 
 
 The preparation for the "Standard Remedy" wander 
 ings included a long spring wagon made in Ohio, from 
 which fact it received its name, the "Buckeye." The 
 
OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY 113 
 
 wagon was equipped with buffalo robes for cool days, 
 and three big boxes covered with leather for protection 
 from rain one box under a high seat in front and two 
 larger ones back of it with a small box and seat-pad on 
 top, 
 
 "Where the sign-painters sat 
 To giggle and chat 
 With their feet high and dry 
 And their heads in the sky." 
 
 For that day it was an imposing spectacle with the 
 Doctor s "breezy whiskers" and the merry pair of 
 painters back of him, their hats on one side, spinning 
 down "the grooves of time/ behind a span of horses 
 sniffing the wind. Those fiery steeds possessed the vir 
 tues of Bucephalus. They were as fleet as any 
 
 "That ever cantered wild and free 
 Across the plains of Araby." 
 
 Sometimes the "Buckeye" carried a thousand dollars 
 worth of "Remedies." Usually a trip consumed two 
 weeks and frequently covered a distance of two hun 
 dred miles. One of the first midsummer excursions 
 led out by way of Middletown, Hagerstown and Cam 
 bridge City, on down to the White River Valley, re 
 puted by Riley, and artists after him, to be "the most 
 beautiful spot on God s earth." Another excursion led 
 to the northwest, through Alexandria, Elwood and Ko- 
 komo, to "the banks of Deer Creek." When sales were 
 numerous the Doctor traveled but a few miles a day. 
 Driving into a town he would leave two or three dozen 
 bottles at the drug store and soon thereafter, half a 
 mile out, a new sign appeared: "Go to Manafee s for 
 
114 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 McCrillus Popular Remedies." He also sold to fanners 
 while the sign-painters nailed sign-boards to trees and 
 gate-posts. The company, preferring the farmer s hos 
 pitable board to the hotels, often remained over night 
 in the country. Fried chicken was the rule on crisp au 
 tumn days, if the poet and his chum could find one 
 roosting on the manger when they went out with the 
 farmer early in the morning to feed the stock. 
 
 Cool spring water was also the rule. Sweeter draughts 
 were never quaffed than those which flowed from the 
 mossy brim of the oaken buckets chained to the "well- 
 sweeps" of that time. The presence of giggling coun 
 try girls always afforded merriment. The rural pic 
 tures were never wanting in interest if the travelers 
 could stay their winding pilgrimage, 
 
 "Then go their way, remembering still 
 The wayside well beneath the hill." 
 
 An excursion westward led as far away as the river 
 counties of the Wabash. One day the Doctor became 
 reminiscent. Something reminded him of a rich bach 
 elor he knew, who went to Illinois to buy land of a 
 widow, who, the bachelor discovered on reaching her 
 door, was the girl he had loved when she lived with his 
 mother on a farm in Ohio. Thus the Argonaut found 
 the thread of gold for a ballad, "Farmer Whipple 
 Bachelor," which soon saw the light in the "Original 
 Poetry" column of the Greenfield News. 
 
 Riley did not travel down the river as far as Old 
 Vincennes, but far enough for his fancy, a few years 
 later, in the guise and dialect of a pedler, to canvass 
 the counties for a patent churn. This lively picture 
 from his poem, "Regardin Terry Hut," is mainly per 
 sonal experience: 
 
OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY 115 
 
 "I ve travelled round the grand old State 
 Of Indiany, lots, o late ! 
 I ve canvassed Crawf erdsville and sweat 
 Around the town o Lafayette ; 
 I ve saw a many a County-seat 
 I ust to think was hard to beat : 
 At constant dreenage and expense 
 I ve worked Greencastle and Vincennes 
 Drapped out of Putnam into Clay, 
 Owen, and on down thataway 
 Plum into Knox, on the back-track 
 Fer home ag in and glad I m back! 
 I ve saw these towns, as I say but 
 They s none at beats old Terry Hut!" 
 
 It is interesting to note the poet s play of fancy 
 around the "old churn." It appeared in one of his 
 first poems to receive eastern recognition, then en 
 titled, "A Destiny," in which a farmer chased a scrap 
 of paper over the fence and across the field, and cap 
 turing it, scratched his head and pondered over a rhyme 
 and the pencil-sketch of a dairy maid under it, and then 
 with the complacency of ignorance saw through the 
 whole business of dreaming and poetry : 
 
 "I see the p int to the whole concern 
 He s studied out a patent churn !" 
 
 Strictly speaking the churn was a sieve patented by a 
 ^country poetf of Hancock County, the "corduroy 
 poet," Riley sometimes called him, and at other times, 
 Professor Startailer or the "seersucker poet." The 
 patentee, all aflame with the prospect of a fortune, sold 
 territory for the sale of the sieve, to his friends. "He 
 let us in on velvet," said Riley ; "a friend and I bought 
 two border counties near Ft. Wayne. I still have 
 Adams County," he laughingly averred forty years 
 after. 
 
116 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 In the preface to his first book, Riley pleasantly re 
 called the "country poet/ but he did not pleasantly 
 remember the inventor of the sieve. A few years after 
 buying Adams County, he got his revenge by using the 
 inventor s name as a nom de plume in a weekly paper. 
 
 After the lengthy excursion on the Wabash, the 
 medical troupe made a short one nearer home. The 
 sign-painters ingeniously manifested the "holiday 
 spirit" one evening at Cadiz, a small town in Henry 
 County. Breezes blew from the Blue River hills, wood 
 fires flamed on the edge of the forest, lamps shone 
 dimly from the street corners and tin lanterns hung 
 in the trees. The village that midsummer night was as 
 bewitching to Riley as Cadiz, the city of beauty and 
 love in sunny Spain, was to Longfellow. If the daugh 
 ters of Spain were matchless in grace and figure, so 
 were the bright-eyed maidens of the Hoosier hamlet 
 fair and charming. The little town, surrounded by 
 dense woodlands, was to Riley the Dreamland of the 
 frontier. He was in the mood to enjoy it ; so were the 
 villagers. They were as gleeful as the peasants and 
 cavaliers of Longfellow s Spain. 
 
 The medical troupe revived happy memories. The 
 Doctor had been in Cadiz the previous summer. "I 
 have now returned," said he, "with a menagerie" (re 
 ferring to his two sign-painters) . "They are showmen 
 from the circus just canvassing temporarily for Euro 
 pean Balsam." The "menagerie" summoned a youthful 
 company from every nook and alley. Plowboys and 
 country lassies came from the farms. They were "light 
 of heart and heel," and responded merrily to the music 
 of the French harp and guitar. A side-show was im 
 provised in the middle of the street. Riley strapped an 
 empty soap box to his shoulders, turned a crank in 
 
OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY 117 
 
 imitation of an organ-grinder and played the French 
 harp while his chum called attention to the Wild Girl 
 from the Congo (a local merry-maker), who, in torn 
 garments and long-disheveled hair, at the opportune 
 moment, rose like a phantom from the deep box on the 
 wagon. She was the Savage Wonder, and volubly did 
 the showmen describe her strange ancestry and the 
 African jungles where she had been captured. 
 
 A novel feature of the evening came when Riley 
 wrapped his traveling chum in the buffalo robes and 
 led him on all fours around the wagon and then told the 
 story of a "Little Boy who went out into the woods to 
 shoot a bear." The alarming "Woo-oah," the great big 
 sycamore tree, the four broken legs when the boy 
 chopped off the limb and the bear fell "clean to the 
 ground" all were there, soon to be elaborated into the 
 famous "Bear Story," which in due time became a 
 favorite number in the poet s public readings, and the 
 delight of children who read the "Child-World" a gen 
 eration later. The little crowd chuckled at the men 
 tion of "sycamore tree." Every lad present knew it 
 was all but impossible for boy or bear to climb one 
 a fact which many older heads in the poet s audi 
 ence of a later period did not know. The bear could 
 climb an oak or poplar, but not a sycamore tree and 
 that was the "nub" to the story, which made the inno 
 cent ignorance of the "Little Boy" charming and true 
 to life. 
 
 Up to this point the performance had been crude 
 but about ten o clock the voice of the tenor rose to 
 the realms of art and the joy of the audience to the 
 plane of rapture. Friends brought Riley a guitar, 
 borrowed for the occasion. At last the hour had come 
 for the instrument to respond to the touch of a master. 
 
118 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 Such harmony the Blue River hills had never known. 
 That fellow," said a barber, whose shop was near, 
 "will have to stop playing or I ll have to stop shaving." 
 None there had heard minstrelsy half so sweet. It was 
 clear to them that night, as it was always clear to the 
 performer, that when a master "tangles his fingers in 
 the strings of a guitar there is an indefinable some 
 thing in its tone that is not all of earth." 
 
 One week in autumn the medical troupe found itself 
 far away on the St. Mary s River, near the Ohio 
 state line. "We are going home to-day, boys," said the 
 Doctor. It was eighty miles, but there was something 
 in the speed of the sorrels that said they could make it. 
 Sales had been unusually good, and the Doctor had by 
 trading filled his boxes with dry goods, groceries and 
 hardware. 
 
 On that notable trip, Riley was a veritable Tom Pinch 
 seeking his fortune. Unlike Tom on the London coach, 
 he did not pass "places famous in history and fable" ; 
 but he witnessed new scenes. He made discoveries. He 
 was a spectator of nature and of men s fortunes and 
 how they played their parts. He saw things "as from a 
 common theater." That joyous ride was for years the 
 theme of his narrative. Although his "bump of local 
 ity" was as inefficient then as it was afterward, he saw 
 things and remembered what he saw. John Hay was 
 wont to say that his vision and the vividness and accu 
 racy of his memory were the secrets of his success. If 
 it were a question of vision (omitting the element of 
 place) he could trace back the eighty-mile run link by 
 link. His indefinite purpose added zest to it. "I was 
 driven by the uncertain currents of existence," he 
 said, "yet the novelty and uncertainty of it were posi 
 tively ecstatic." Like Walter Scott, he was makin him- 
 
OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY 119 
 
 self a the time but did na ken maybe what he was 
 about till years had passed. 
 
 They left the river at a place called The Devil s Race 
 Ground. The morning was crisp and bright, and the 
 sorrels were homeward bound. The Doctor held the 
 lines "eighty breezy miles were written in his very 
 whiskers." The sign-painters were at the top-notch 
 of being. As they sped onward the poet s heart "ran 
 riot with the Muse," and his chum accented the pleas 
 ure at every turn in the road. They were two merry 
 boys 
 
 "Full of fancy full of folly- 
 Full of jollity and fun, 
 Like the South Wind and the S.un." 
 
 There was enough medley in the day (in the words of 
 Pope) to "make their souls dance upon a jig to 
 heaven." On they went, voyaging with the thistle 
 down, south by west, a swift Lake Erie wind at their 
 backs, their cheeks flushed like winter apples, sailing 
 away under fleecy clouds, past hedges past country 
 wagons past sinewy woodsmen past rosy-cheeked 
 schoolboys rumbling over culverts over gurgling 
 streams over the "underground railroad" past ducks 
 and geese and the peacock on the sunny side of the barn 
 yard down a steep incline across the Wabash at Buena 
 Vista round the Loblolly Swampland round Sugar 
 Island past prehistoric mounds past morning-glory 
 vines climbing over cabin homes past the dimpled 
 cheeks of babyhood past dog-fennel beds, gravel beds 
 and through spice-brush ravines on to Pennville. There 
 they cooled the horses hoofs in the Salamonie, and there 
 the poet saw 
 
 "The hills slope as soft as the dawn down to noon 
 While the river ran by like an old fiddle-tune." 
 
120 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 Out of town again. Mark Twain, traveling in the 
 stage-coach across the plains to see strange lands and 
 wonderful people, was not more animated. Onward 
 bowled the "Buckeye" past the haymakers, the new- 
 mown clover and the long windrows reaching like mo 
 tionless waves from end to end of the field under the 
 gnarled willow tree where barefooted children fought 
 and clung to the swing, "waitin fer the cat to die" 
 past the raising bee and the log barn springing up "at 
 the wagging of the fiddlestick" past stake-and-rider 
 fences past log huts and their stick-chimneys from 
 Pennville to the Panhandle Route, where the poet saw 
 the "iron horse tugging away at a row of freight cars 
 long as Paradise Lost" then down the line a mile to 
 Red Key to joke with the operator while a farmer 
 thrashed the baggage-smasher across the track for 
 refreshments with the restaurant man whose luscious 
 viands had been the talk of the town ; where (in Riley 
 rhyme) 
 
 "Strawberries blushed with a rosy gleam 
 On islands of sugar in oceans of cream ; 
 And the lips of the maiden were tinged with a glow 
 The kiss of a lover could never bestow." 
 
 Then a detour of the Pioneer Fair, where Riley 
 caught a glimpse of Grandfather Squeers and the old 
 settlers about him, like the trees, repeating their rustic 
 legends to one another. But the crying babies and El- 
 viry at the organ awkwardly feeling her way up and 
 down the keys for the "Vacant Chair" and the "Old 
 Camp Ground" were more than his sense of melody 
 could stand. The sorrels, too, were restless. It was 
 two o clock and they had not reached their half-way 
 point. Westward-ho down the road again by the race 
 track to see the "side-wheelers" pace neck and neck 
 
THE MOTHER S GIRLHOOD HOME ON THE MISSISSINEWA 
 
. 
 
 STANDARD REMEDY TRADE-MARK 
 Designed by Riley 
 
OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY 121 
 
 "twixt the flag and the wire" now gazing on the 
 purple haze that hung over the valley where the river 
 flowed now skirting sunny glens where the bees 
 droned their honey-song in the golden-rods threading 
 the winding seclusion of the river road fording the 
 creek near the rustic bridge of Wonderland alighting 
 a moment at the Indian spring for a draught 
 
 "From the old-fashioned gourd that was sweeter, by 
 
 odds, 
 Than the goblets of gold at the lips of the gods !" 
 
 On down the old Muncie Trail through the sumac 
 thickets with visions of superstitions, powwows, and 
 Red Men smoking the fragrant kinnik-kinnik through 
 the grapevine wilderness known to the oldest inhabitant 
 as the feeding ground of passenger pigeons that then 
 as in the days of Audubon "glided aloft in flocks and 
 spirally descended to sweep like the wind among the 
 trees" on through enchanted aisles 
 
 "Adown deep glades where the forest shades 
 Were dim as the dusk of day 
 On the Mississinewa." 
 
 Magical name for Riley! Long had he cherished it 
 in memory as the girlhood home of his mother. 
 
 The dawn of recollection for him dated from a mem 
 ory of his mother s dewy blue eyes when he stood by 
 her chair near their log-cottage fire while she told him 
 the stories of the long ago on the Mississinewa. Ten 
 derly he alluded to it afterward in his poem, "Envoy": 
 
 "Then the face of a Mother looks back, through the 
 
 mist 
 
 Of the tears that are welling ; and, lucent with light, 
 I see the dear smile of the lips I have kissed 
 As she knelt by my cradle at morning and night." 
 
122 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 There are periods in the life of every poet when the 
 enjoyment of a week is narrowed down to the ecstasy 
 of an hour. Such an interlude was Riley s while thread 
 ing the wonderland of the Mississinewa. From that 
 hour until midnight his heart was athrill at the ease 
 with which his ideas found birth and expression. The 
 trees were harps of melody. The very fence panels 
 flowed along the wayside in poetic meter. On he went 
 
 "Down the current of his dreams, gliding away 
 To the dim harbor of another day," 
 
 the jingle of his rhymes keeping time with the jingle 
 of the bridles past the wake of the hurricane where 
 "the voice of the Lord had broken the cedars" through 
 the mellow gloom through the smoke where the wood 
 peckers hammered the dead limbs in the clearing past 
 cow-bells clinking sweeter tunes than "Money Musk" 
 past squadrons of wild turkeys gobbling in the woods 
 past red and yellow tomatoes on the garden fence past 
 the campaign grove where the candidate squandered his 
 spread-eagle rhetoric past the Greeley flagpole with 
 its streamer flying to defeat past bushwhackers 
 past the circuit rider on his way from the basket meet 
 ing down the Bee Line racing with the "cow-catcher" 
 on the Accommodation Train past the cider mill and 
 apple tree, the country frolic which drew obliging fam 
 ilies together when the fruit was to be harvested past 
 the Orchard Lands of Long Ago, 
 
 "Catching the apples faint perfume 
 And mingling with it, fragrant hints of pear 
 And musky melon ripening somewhere." 
 
 "And then the ride," said Riley, "into the saintly twi 
 light, toward the clouds in the west that hid the silver 
 sickle of the moon with their dusky locks. How inex- 
 
OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY 123 
 
 pressibly divine was the drapery of the night that de 
 scended upon us." There were sparks from the horses 
 hoofs as they accelerated their speed. There were mam 
 moth castles and battlements across the fields, for so the 
 woodland shadows seemed. Then came the sudden 
 shower that silenced the katydids, and then the ride 
 through the thunder and the rain 
 
 "And still the way was wondrous with the flash of hill 
 
 and plain 
 The stars like printed asterisks the moon a murky 
 
 stain." 
 
 Eighty breezy miles one hour as the aeroplane flies, 
 but sixteen for the "dazzling speed" of the sorrels. 
 
 An early poem dates back to this eighty-mile run. 
 The sorrels and a little thread of gold from the "En 
 gineer" (a short story by Mary Hartwell in the House 
 hold Magazine) prompted the "Iron Horse," the poem 
 which subsequently drew a note of praise from Long 
 fellow. "The engineer and his iron horse and his row 
 of baggage cars and passenger coaches rushed across 
 the land" so ran the hint in the magazine. Driving 
 through the country the poet bantered the Doctor about 
 his sorrels, challenging him to rival the flaming steed. 
 "You can stir up the dust," said he, "and shoot the 
 rapids at the toll-gates, but the path of my steed 
 
 Spins out behind him like a thread 
 Unravelled from the reel of time." 
 
 The trip to St. Mary s River furnished suggestions 
 for other poems, not that Riley then wrote them, but 
 the incidents were tucked away in memory for future 
 use. One more is interesting for its novelty. When 
 the Doctor was detained a day or more in a town, the 
 
124 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 sign-painters usually became acquainted with the 
 young folks, particularly if they were musically in 
 clined. Thus Riley seldom went to the next town with 
 out leaving behind him a merry circle to praise his 
 music on the guitar. "One evening at Decatur," said 
 his chum, "Riley was foraging about from place to 
 place when his hungry eyes fell upon a picture that lin 
 gered in memory years after other events of the even 
 ing had faded. Strange how a little piece of trimming 
 like that will cling to a fellow. The old town was mak 
 ing a big fuss over its first railroad, and there was 
 something going on every night. There were music 
 and dancing. We played games and told fortunes. 
 Among the visiting friends we saw at a party, was a 
 gay looking girl who wore a Gainsborough hat. See 
 that slender figure there/ said Riley, with a hat tilted 
 up like a butterfly s wing? She looked beautiful with 
 a little knot of roses in her hair." When the sign- 
 painters learned she was from the Queen City, they 
 understood why her dress answered the requirements 
 of fashion. "She was not a Duchess of Devonshire," 
 said Riley, long years afterward, "but I do remember 
 her hat, and I remember too, when we met her again 
 the next day that the sunny locks on her temples looked 
 like a Golden Fleece." Thus the poet received the sug 
 gestion for his poem, "The Discouraging Model." 
 
 One of the many things Riley declined to do was to 
 revisit the Mississinewa. After lumbermen had de 
 stroyed its primeval simplicity, his interest in the 
 locality vanished. For him it remained the wonder 
 land of youth. He clung with loving tenacity to the 
 simple beauty and pathos of days that were no more. 
 Alma Gluck never sang of them more sweetly than he 
 remembered them: 
 
OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY 125 
 
 "Tell me the tales that to me were so dear 
 Long, long ago long, long ago ; 
 Sing me the songs I delighted to hear, 
 Long, long ago L-o-r^g A-g-o." 
 
 Should it be a matter of surprise that this disciple 
 of The Days Gone By, this poet who saw good in every 
 thing, should write of things as he did? Considering 
 the wealth of his experience and his depth of insight 
 the marvel is, not that he found so many jewels in ob 
 scurity, so many diamonds in the dust, but that he 
 did not find more. Before he could write about things 
 he had to live them. In Whitman phrase, he had to 
 absorb his country affectionately before the people 
 would absorb him. To him his native state was the 
 fairest picture in Columbia s gallery. He saw 
 
 "Within the forest gloom 
 
 His Indiana burst in bloom 
 A broad expanse of fair and fertile land, 
 Like some rich landscape from the master s hand." 
 
 He saw the polar frost on the "punkin" and the clover ; 
 he was driven against the blinding flakes of the snow 
 storm. Like the birds he dined out-of-doors. He 
 ranged untraveled fields. Once more, nature 
 
 "Choosing sweet clay from the breast 
 Of the unexhausted West" 
 
 was making a man by breaking away from worn-out 
 plans. She was not shaping a President, not a shep 
 herd of mankind, but a Poet of mankind, a voice to 
 sing of a President and his Silent Victors, a heart to 
 lure lyrics and ballads from the great symphony that 
 lay untouched around him. 
 
 A famous son of Harvard, Joseph H. Choate, is on 
 record as saying that "Mark Twain learned more from 
 
126 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 his post-graduate days as a river pilot on the Missis 
 sippi than he could have got from a course at Harvard" 
 Choate s interesting way of saying that there are 
 other universities besides halls of learning. Facts such 
 as these we are to remember as Riley bowls through 
 the counties and towns of Indiana and western Ohio. 
 
 In the winter season the Doctor confined his "Rem 
 edy" sales to points nearer the Hub. Time was chiefly 
 given to work in the office and laboratory. Most of 
 the time the sign-painters had to shift for themselves, 
 and a thriftless piece of shifting it was for the "Painter 
 Poet." While board, lodging and expenses were paid 
 by the Doctor, all went merrily enough. Paying 
 his own expenses was different. The art of writ 
 ing verse was a gift and he was never happier than 
 when exercising it, but the art of making money was 
 foreign to him. "This thing of making odds and ends 
 meet," said he, "who but the devil can understand 
 that." All of which accords with a bit of ancient phi 
 losophy, that we all are working together to one end, 
 farmers, merchants and poets, some with knowledge 
 and design, and others without knowing what they do. 
 
 As the weeks passed, the old story-and-a-half board 
 ing house, corner Jackson and Bolivar Streets, at which 
 Riley was at intervals to go in and out for the next 
 five years, became a lively spot. When there was a 
 dollar to pay the board bill, he was jovial. There was 
 music on the guitar; the world was agog with merri 
 ment. When his purse was empty the bills were un 
 paid tradition says some were never paid. He man 
 aged however to be always on good terms with the 
 landlady. "Your board bill," she would remind him. 
 "Yes, yes," he would smile, "I must pay that bill" 
 and thus gaily the delay went on to the end of another 
 
OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY 127 
 
 week, the landlady as happy in waiting for her money 
 as he was uncomfortable in his inability to pay it. 
 He was always rhyming; at the dinner table there 
 was "catapeller" for saltcellar, "pig-jowl" for sugar 
 bowl, and so forth. According to the landlady, Mrs. 
 H. E. Whitmore, he gave "a world of attention to dress 
 provided/ she said, "some one would furnish the 
 clothing. He did not wear glasses, but believe me, he 
 wore a mustache, a long, jaunty one which he was 
 always curling." The poor little waif of a mustache 
 (according to its owner) was just two years old. He 
 shuddered when he passed a barber shop lest by some 
 strange ungovernable impulse he should be constrained 
 to enter it and sacrifice the waif for the relief of his 
 friends. 
 
 One snowy day he went into the kitchen with a 
 "blacksnake" whip in his hand. (He had found it in the 
 street.) "Won!" he shouted, impersonating a farmer 
 who had a load of wood to sell. "Woh, there ! you bare- 
 boned broadsides, didn t ye have no fodder fer break 
 fast? Madam," addressing the landlady, "I must sell 
 some wood. My board bill is three weeks overdue; 
 sell it I must or be sued for debt. What kind did you 
 say? Well, mostly beech, sugar and elm water-elm, 
 Madam, will make a fire hot nough to roast bear. 
 How old air you, little girl?" addressing a daughter. 
 "W y, child, not twelve ? Like apples ? No ? Hickory 
 nuts? There s a wagon load on my farm. Woh!" 
 It took but a few moments for interest to rise to a fever 
 pitch. The oven waxed hot and scorched the pie crust. 
 Coffee bubbles ran over the brim and danced on the 
 stove lid, while mother and daughter sank into their 
 chairs in sheer exhaustion from laughter. Thus genius 
 paid a board bill. 
 
128 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 Other echoes came from the boarding house. Riley 
 wrote and bound a book in the kitchen, a little book of 
 tea leaves, to which he gave the title, "Nursery Rhymes 
 for Children." His chum loaned it about until it was 
 worn to a frazzle and the rhymes lost. Friends referred 
 to it as his first book. An incident, more particularly 
 for those interested in the poet s public readings, was 
 the coming to the dining-room one week of an "educa 
 tionist," who had been engaged to do institute work for 
 the Madison County teachers. He was abnormally 
 affected and never lost an opportunity to dilate on his 
 favorite topic the object lesson. "Butter plates and 
 teaspoons," said he primly, "are charming illustra 
 tions." 
 
 "A peanut, I suppose," said Riley across the table, 
 "would detract from the dignity and profundity of 
 the subject." 
 
 "Quite the contrary," was the return, "super-excel 
 lent, a very clever suggestion." 
 
 A few weeks after, Riley entertained a company of 
 friends at a private house. Among his quaint selec 
 tions was "The Object Lesson," by no means the 
 unrivaled specimen of humor it was afterward, but the 
 beginning. 
 
 January, 1873, found Riley in Grant County, attract 
 ing the attention of farmers, with signs on barnsides ; 
 one, a huge boot and shoe and a colossal figure 4 with a 
 picture of a man by it, advertising the Foreman Com 
 pany. There were at the roadsides, too, funny signs 
 in rhyme for merry-makers, such as 
 
 Arnold & Gunder 
 For Dry Goods by Thunder. 
 
 That he was not financially successful was recorded 
 
OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY 129 
 
 in the Doctor s daybook. He had not enough money to 
 attend the theater. The Doctor bought the tickets for 
 Humpty Dumpty. "The play," said he, "was a fail 
 ure but Riley s comments on it were worth more than 
 the price of admission." The Doctor had advanced 
 money and merchandise for the sign-painting venture, 
 and the result was somewhat discouraging, as seen in 
 the following table: 
 
 J. W. Riley, Dr. 
 1873 
 
 Jan. 8. To Cash (at Marion) $ 3.00 
 
 Jan. 18. To Cash (for paint) 1.00 
 
 Jan. 24. To Cash (for paint) 1.00 
 
 Jan. 24. To white lead 1.00 
 
 Jan. 31. To order on Baums 3.00 
 
 Jan. 31. To Cash 1.00 
 
 Feb. 1. To Cash 3.00 
 
 Feb. 10. To Cash .35 
 
 Feb. 14. To Handkerchief .40 
 
 Feb. 15. To Cash 5.00 
 
 Feb. 20. To Shirt (borrowed) 1.50 
 
 $20.25 
 
 J. W. Riley, Cr. 
 1873 Jan. and Feb. 
 By painting 
 
 By Do 60 Boards $ 6.00 
 
 By Do 10 Boards 2.00 
 
 By Do 2 doz. tin signs 6.00 
 
 By Do sign over door 1.00 
 
 $15.00 
 To Dead Loss 5.25 
 
 $20.25 
 
130 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 "The above," so the Doctor wrote in his diary years 
 after, "is James Whitcomb Riley, the Hoosier Poet of 
 Indiana." The "Painter Poet" was a dead loss in the 
 sign-painting venture, but when, a decade later, he 
 began to gather sheaves from the field of renown, when 
 the Doctor read his poem "Fame," the loss of $5.25 
 was a trifle quite beneath notice. 
 
 The "Hoosier Poet" borrowed a shirt for a return 
 trip to Greenfield, his first lengthy visit home since 
 the afternoon in June 
 
 "he went rolling away 
 
 To the pea-green groves on the coast of day." 
 
 "James W. Riley" (so ran the local in the Greenfield 
 Democrat, February, 1873) "put in his appearance on 
 Saturday last. He looks well." He should look well. 
 He had traveled from side to side of his native state. 
 The excursions had taken the curves and kinks out of 
 his routine existence. He had health. Whoever rode 
 with Doctor McCrillus returned robust and vigorous. 
 The sorrels and the high seat on the "Buckeye" had 
 worked the miracle, although the Doctor attributed the 
 cure to "European Balsam." 
 
 In his latter years Riley was silent about his youth 
 ful wanderings, yet he never ceased to remember them 
 with pleasure. He was so grateful that he once gave 
 the Doctor a "lift" in rhyme. Let no critic fancy he 
 thought of the jingle as poetry. The season it saw the 
 light was his playtime. He was playing with rhymes 
 as a boy plays with quoits or marbles : 
 
 "Wherever blooms of health are blown, 
 McCrillus Remedies are known; 
 Wherever happy lives are found 
 You ll find his medicines around; 
 
OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY 131 
 
 From coughs and colds and lung disease, 
 
 His patients find a sweet release. 
 
 His Oriental Liniment 
 
 Is known to fame to such extent 
 
 That orders for it emanate 
 
 From every portion of the State ; 
 
 His European Balsam, too, 
 
 Sends blessings down to me and you ; 
 
 And holds its throne from year to year 
 
 In every household far and near. 
 
 His Purifier for the Blood 
 
 Has earned a name as fair and good 
 
 As ever glistened on the page 
 
 Of any annals of the age, 
 
 And he who pants for health and ease 
 
 Should try these Standard Remedies." 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 WITH THE GRAPHIC COMPANY 
 
 AS ALREADY intimated, the Argonaut did not 
 work exclusively for the "Standard Remedy" 
 vender. He and his chum sought success in 
 other sign-painting fields. When voyaging alone they 
 were terribly tormented, like the Argonauts of ancient 
 time, with troublesome birds. The ugly harpies, Debt 
 and Failure, came to snatch away their dinner and 
 hamper their pursuit of the Golden Fleece. 
 
 They formed a partnership, the Riley & McClana- 
 han Advertising Company, and made known their pur 
 pose on cards which they distributed in the towns: 
 "ADVERTISE WITH PAINT ON BARNS AND FENCES 
 THAT S THE WAY/ Subsequently the firm was ex 
 panded, three or four partners being taken in, and 
 the name changed to The Graphic Company, so called 
 from the New York Graphic, then popular with de 
 signers. The company went through the country 
 painting signs for clothing firms and other enterpris 
 ing establishments. 
 
 One summer morning Riley was working alone, his 
 chum having gone a short distance away to paint at 
 the roadside. He felicitated himself on his good luck. 
 The haze was purpling the horizon wall. The Ken 
 tucky warbler in the "sugar orchard" near by sang as 
 sweetly as he ever sang for Audubon. Even the barn 
 yard fowls were tuneful. To perfect the picture, chil 
 dren stood by gazing in wide-eyed bewilderment at the 
 
 132 
 
WITH THE GRAPHIC COMPANY 133 
 
 sign as it took shape on the barnside. The sign was a 
 large one and the barn on which he was painting it, 
 exceptionally well located about a mile from town. He 
 was giving his faculties free reign and had the work 
 about half done, being overjoyed at the success of it, 
 when a man on horseback called to him from the road : 
 "Hello, there! you man on the ladder!" Riley looked 
 round and waited a moment for a further bit of infor 
 mation. 
 
 "Get down from that ladder." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Who told you to paint there?" 
 
 "The people who live here." 
 
 "Well, the people who live here rent this farm from 
 me. Down from that ladder and be quick about it, too." 
 
 He who gave the order was a big man on any oc 
 casion, but that morning, after he had dismounted, 
 he stood there like a certain pen portrait of Julius 
 Ceesar "eighteen feet high in his sandals." Riley 
 remembered that the giant accompanied the order with 
 an oath. "It was the oath," said he, "that brought me 
 so suddenly down the ladder. I ran like a reindeer 
 across the field." 
 
 On reaching his chum, all was flutter and misgiving. 
 "What now?" asked the chum. 
 
 "Torn limb from jacket," returned Riley. "Fly! 
 cleave the sky! and the devil take the hindmost." 
 
 They drove hurriedly away, and when they dis 
 covered they were not pursued, Riley became calm and 
 related in detail his harrowing experience. 
 
 The sequel is likewise interesting. Ten years later, 
 after he had published his first book, after, as he re 
 marked, he had "pulled the joints out of his name" so 
 that he was James Whitcomb instead of J. W. Riley, he 
 
134 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 returned to the old town in Grant County to give a 
 public reading. He was the guest at a dinner in his 
 honor. As the hours wore away, he noticed the host 
 eying him sharply. Later in the evening, after the 
 ladies had retired, his host said, "Mr. Riley, it seems 
 to me I have seen you before; I can not remember 
 where ; perhaps it is my imagination, but I can not get 
 it out of my mind that I have met you somewhere." 
 
 Now the poet was an adept in remembering faces, 
 "Well," he replied, "out here a mile away I do not 
 remember on which road there is a barn. Once there 
 was a fellow who started to paint a sign on it and a 
 man from town " 
 
 "Are you the fellow my God ! You are the man I 
 ordered down that ladder." The confusion of the 
 host is readily imagined and further comment use 
 less except to add that they were fast friends there 
 after. The sign at the time was still unfinished. 
 
 The unfinished sign precipitated other woes. The 
 "Advertising Company" had no money. They had to 
 replenish their treasury or go to the wall. Paint tubes 
 and glass for fancy work required cash. In their ex 
 tremity they concluded to try Howard County, and 
 after doing what seemed "a flourishing business" in 
 comparison with previous losses, they rattled across 
 country in an old "quailtrap" to Peru. As they ap 
 proached the county-seat on the Wabash, Riley 
 "sparkled" with memories of an old book he had read. 
 He rallied his partner, half-seriously, about the Con 
 quest of Peru. The royal gardens were in Peru, glit 
 tering with flowers of silver and there were the 
 llamas with the Golden Fleece. He and his chum were 
 Spaniards going to plunder the Peruvian temples, 
 chiefly that one in the heart of the city known as "The 
 
WITH THE GRAPHIC COMPANY 135 
 
 Palace of Gold." They would sack the town and take 
 it but they would not do it by appealing to arms. 
 "Gold," said Riley, using the figurative language of the 
 Incas, "is the tears wept by the sun and we may have 
 to weep for it. Joy or sorrow, we must have it." 
 
 Entering the town, the "Spaniards" decided to draw 
 first on the heartstrings of the Peruvians hoping there 
 by to loosen their purse-strings. Just for the mischief 
 of it, Riley rubbed soap under his eyes, assumed a 
 mournful look and was led into the hotel as a blind 
 sign-painter. Seating himself in the office, his chum 
 went out in search of work. He soon found it and 
 drew up a contract for a large sign on the front of a 
 livery stable, the work to be done the following day by 
 his "blind partner." Returning to the hotel he dis 
 covered a circle of curious folks around Riley, requir 
 ing, on the part of the "Advertising Company," the 
 utmost exercise of self-control. Many were sympa 
 thizing with the "blind man" and a few were skeptical. 
 The confusion and uncertainty continued at the supper 
 table. The "helpless" man spilled gravy on the table 
 cloth while his chum indicated where the dishes were. 
 As the meal proceeded, the waiter grew more curious 
 and the guests more sympathetic. Riley upset his 
 coffee with a trembling hand and at the same instant 
 dropped a saltcellar on the floor. "Look at you!" 
 remonstrated his chum, sharply ; "now we ll have a bill 
 for damages!" 
 
 Being "weary," as they said, "from a long day s 
 journey," they retired early. The truth was they had 
 to screen the transom with newspaper and lock them 
 selves in their room so that their explosions of laughter 
 would not be detected. 
 
 After breakfast Riley was led down the street to the 
 
136 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 livery barn. The crowd was not long gathering, rumor 
 of the blind sign-painter having spread during the 
 night from Canal Street to the Cemetery. The space 
 for the sign was high above the double-door entrance, 
 and ample. Riley was stationed on the sidewalk and told 
 not to move till the ladder was hoisted. With a paint 
 bucket "hinged" to his side, he stepped falteringly to 
 the first round and climbed clumsily to the top. He 
 lifted his brush : "A little more to the left," said his 
 chum from the street below "watch your balance 
 higher a little higher there, that will do proceed." 
 
 When ascending and descending the ladder as he had 
 to do several times, Riley would "slip" a round and 
 once he spilled his paint. "It was great fun," said he, 
 "to hear the crowd talking ; the skeptics and believers 
 were about equally divided." 
 
 "That fellow ain t blind." 
 
 "Yes, he is ; see his eyes." 
 
 "No, he ain t, I tell you; he s playin off!" 
 
 "I tell you he s blind ; didn t you see him fall off the 
 ladder and spill his paint?" 
 
 "Meln Gott!" exclaimed a Dutchman when Riley 
 slipped on the ladder; "I wouldn t be up dere for a 
 coon s age!" 
 
 The work was completed in the afternoon. The 
 crowd dispersed, and the "blind partner" was re 
 turned to the hotel where the "Advertising Company" 
 retired to its room for more explosions of laughter. 
 What the crowd had witnessed was, in its way, as magi 
 cal and unexplainable as was the work of Phidias to 
 the artless Greeks. It should be remembered that the 
 "Painter Poet" was an actor. The "performance" he 
 gave that day was something more than a series of 
 contortions or unnatural posturings. He succeeded as 
 
WITH THE GRAPHIC COMPANY 137 
 
 well as he did with the "Leonainie Hoax" five years 
 later, or even better. 
 
 The next day Riley eluded the public and strolled up 
 and down the river, while his chum secured contracts. 
 After his "introductory" to the merchants, the chum 
 had but to show them the sign on the livery barn to 
 clinch an agreement immediately. Seasons of pros 
 perity dated from that day, although most of them 
 vanished with the rapidity with which they arrived. 
 The Peruvians had been conquered. They gave their 
 gold ungrudgingly. They were happy, most of all that 
 sight had been restored to the "blind sign-painter" 
 glad to the core that they had been so "deliciously hum 
 bugged." "Those Spaniards," so a citizen said, "were 
 bundles of electricity, the queerest, brightest, cleverest 
 fellows that ever climbed over the Peruvian wall." 
 
 Although the blind sign-painter ruse was not re 
 peated in other towns, the Peruvian method of secur 
 ing business became more serviceable every day. It 
 was a proposal that business men advertise their shops, 
 stores and factories in the manner that had hitherto 
 been monopolized by the patent medicine men. "That 
 chum of mine," said Riley, "was a great chap. I fairly 
 worshiped him because he was so successful and he 
 worshiped me because I could da the work after he 
 had secured the business," In selecting their victims, 
 they looked over the county paper for the* most enter 
 prising dry-goods man. Then the solicitor "turned on 
 the current and there was music in the air for many 
 days." Sometimes, for diversion, he worked under an 
 assumed name. "Evidently," he would say to a mer 
 chant, "you are the most wide-awake man in this town. 
 We have been painting advertisements on barns and 
 fences for a medicine firm. We know that such ad- 
 
138 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 vertising is the most remunerative in the world. Once 
 paid for, it lasts for years. Now there are eight roads 
 leading out of this town. We will paint* you along 
 these roads for three miles out" for so much money. 
 
 The merchant usually "squealed" at the price. Then 
 the solicitor drew the county paper from his pocket. 
 "You are paying the editor so much here per inch and 
 he advertises your competitor on the same page. Now 
 we do not take your rival. We handle one man in one 
 line only. By closing a contract with us you monopolize 
 the eight roads. If you do not want it we will try your 
 competitor." The solicitor seldom failed to "bag the 
 game." He also succeeded with the farmers. When 
 desiring space for a display on their barns, he had a 
 way of admiring their horses and cattle. Sometimes 
 he would present the wife with a dress pattern that was 
 "very fetching." 
 
 When paid for their work the Company trod on air. 
 They spent their money freely, and often became 
 the prey of sharpers. As Riley said, they "were jay- 
 hawked and soon compelled to embark again on the 
 broad deep penniless, destitute of necessities for 
 the voyage." If at such a season the weather became 
 inclement, old gaunt Starvation threatened to accom 
 pany them. They waited "with anxious hearts the 
 dubious fate of to-morrow." Once, in the Land of the 
 Delawares (Delaware County), the days were invari 
 ably dreary. "It was mizzle and drizzle," said Riley ; 
 "the week was peevish and fretful as a baby cutting 
 teeth." And then he broke into rhyme: 
 
 "Rain, rain, go away, 
 Come again some other day; 
 The doughty Spaniards want to play 
 In the meadows on the hay." 
 
WITH THE GRAPHIC COMPANY 139 
 
 When the tardy sunshine did finally dawn, they 
 "bounced from bed glad as boys who hear the first gun 
 the Fourth of July." Borrowing a horse and buggy, 
 and engaging to share their gross receipts with a 
 big-hearted stranger who furnished the white lead and 
 backed them for board and lodging at the hotel, they 
 went forth conquering and to conquer. The whole 
 region round the county-seat was ticketed with signs 
 and couplets. "Merchants, not farmers," they were 
 wont to say, "were the salvation of the land. What 
 could plowmen do without the implement store ? How 
 could their daughters be happy without millinery estab 
 lishments ? How .could gooseberries be sweetened with 
 out sugar? How could children be educated without 
 the bookstore?" By such clever tactics, losses were 
 retrieved. 
 
 Riley was invariably congratulating himself on 
 "hairbreadth escapes from Old Starvation." One day 
 especially set apart for thanksgiving he, with other 
 members of the Graphic Company, was celebrating his 
 release with some fishermen on White River near "Mun- 
 cie Town." Not far away were landmarks of Red Men. 
 It was a romantic spot. "There," wrote Riley, "the 
 catfish winks his nimbly fins, 
 
 There all day long the bullfrog cheeps, 
 And yawns and gapes and nods and sleeps; 
 There the woodland rooster crows, 
 And no one knows what the pullet knows." 
 
 The fishermen were near a huge elm, whose trunk 
 inclined horizontally across the stream. Toward noon 
 Riley stole silently away to a farm-house for refresh 
 ments, leaving his friends to wonder what had become 
 of him. An hour later he "mysteriously" stood on the 
 
140 JAMES WHITCOMB PJLEY 
 
 trunk of the tree over the river with a pail of milk in 
 one hand and a pie in the other. Old Starvation had 
 been vanquished. "I appeal to any white man," 
 he began gravely, the fishermen looking up in surprise 
 and glee "I appeal to any white man to say that ever 
 he entered Logan s cabin hungry and he gave him not 
 meat ; that ever he came cold and naked and he clothed 
 him not. For my country I rejoice at the beams of 
 peace. But do not harbor the thought that mine is a 
 joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will not turn 
 on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn 
 for Logan ? Not one !" 
 
 "Hail to the Chief," shouted his chum from the river 
 bank. The fishermen joined in the applause but the 
 Chief seemed not to hear them. All afternoon he lis 
 tened to other voices. His heart was a harp in the 
 wind. The very trees "lifted up their leaves to shake 
 hands with the breeze." Rhymes rippled on as mer 
 rily as the stream over the pebbles. "For a week," 
 said his chum, "it was as easy to paint and jingle as 
 it was for birds to carol." Signs ran to rhyme : 
 
 "Sing for the Oak Tree, 
 The monarch of the woods: 
 Sing for the L M Trees 
 The dealer in dry goods." 
 
 Pegasus even bantered him to ride when passing a 
 spot so unlyrical as a harness shop: 
 
 "Saddles and harness ! O musical words, 
 That ring in our ears like the song of the birds ! 
 But give to Pegasus a saddle from there, 
 And a poet astride, and we venture to swear 
 That the steed will soar up like a vulture and sing 
 To the clouds in the sky without flopping a wing." 
 
 "I am so happy," Riley remarked, "I can hear the 
 
WITH THE GRAPHIC COMPANY 141 
 
 corn and melons growing.^ I could climb a sycamore." 
 His chum, however, the Graphic Chum, as the reader 
 henceforth shall know him, had occasion for disap 
 pointment. For once he had failed as a solicitor. A 
 farmer with a keener sense of the beautiful than his 
 neighbors refused to have his new barn blemished with 
 a sign. It was a conspicuous site "could be seen," it 
 was said, "from Pipe Creek to Kill Buck." The usual 
 "bribes" offered the wife, such as a chromo or a set of 
 dishes or a calico dress, proved futile. The chum 
 painted his regret in a couplet at the roadside : 
 
 "Of all sad words of tongue or pen 
 The saddest are these, It might have been," 
 
 Riley promptly following with, 
 
 "More sad are these we daily see: 
 It is, but hadn t ought to be," 
 
 both couplets terminating in a parody, which Riley 
 wrote with apologies to Whittier, and subsequently 
 printed in a county paper, beginning with, 
 
 "Maud Muller worked at making hay, 
 And cleared her forty cents a day." 
 
 The failure to disfigure the barn had but a momen 
 tary effect on Riley s buoyant spirit. All was sun 
 shine and love as he passed, as is evidenced by his re 
 flections in the early morning on looking out from a 
 window over a new town which he had entered the 
 night before. 
 
 "How pleasant it all was," he wrote, "how fresh, 
 how clearly defined and beautiful a picture from Na 
 ture s hand framed in a halo of golden light the 
 broad streets, and the houses with their cleanly washed 
 faces crowding together, toeing the mark in proper 
 
142 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 order, eager for the business before them; and the 
 voice of the milkman below, a cheery woman s voice 
 in response, mingled with the bow-wow of a dog and 
 the vague, startled exclamation of a rooster that went 
 to scratching up the dirt livelier than ever, carrying on 
 an undertone of conversation with a half dozen pullets. 
 And then the far-off sound of an early train whose 
 whistle pierced the thin air for miles and brought 
 recollections of the hum of busy wheels and multitudes 
 astir in the city far away. The birds in the woods 
 across the common were never so glad before, never in 
 such splendid tune. They breakfasted on music. They 
 seemed to be too full of joy to have an appetite for 
 bugs." 
 
 Although from Peru onward it was up hill and down 
 dale, yet on the whole there was an increase of busi 
 ness, particularly after the Argonaut and his asso 
 ciates were advertised as the Graphic Company. An 
 derson was the hub of their wanderings, as it had 
 been for the "Standard Remedy" vendings. The 
 "Graphics" voyaged with the current. They were 
 
 "Dragon flies that come and go, 
 Veer and eddy, float and flow, 
 Back and forth and to and fro, 
 As the bubbles go" 
 
 cne month, north to Kendallville ; another, west to 
 Crawf ordsville ; cne week, out to Hagerstown ; the next, 
 down to Knightstown. 
 
 Riley had a prosperous season at South Bend the 
 fall of 1873. "I have been flourishing in the Stude- 
 baker settlement," he remarked on returning from the 
 town. "I ranked high with the South Benders." At 
 first he worked with a member of the Graphic Com 
 pany. Later he was employed a few weeks by a local 
 
WITH THE GRAPHIC COMPANY 143 
 
 house (Stockford & Blowney) and turned out, accord 
 ing to his employers, some of the most original work" in 
 the state, "the best west of New York," said they, "and 
 second to none in Chicago." One week inside the 
 shop he enjoyed "the glare and glitter of two 
 hundred and fifty dollars 7 worth of sign work." One 
 of his designs made a decided hit. Its dimensions were 
 astounding. For once he had ample room for the exer 
 cise of his inventive faculty. It was a series of pic 
 tures apparently in one "The Contrast of Forty 
 Years" South Bend in 1833 when a few log cabins 
 stood on the River St. Joe, and South Bend, the 
 prosperous city of 1873. Over against the pioneer 
 surrounded by the crude implements of his time, 
 stood the man of fortune surrounded by modern 
 conveniences. Left and right respectively, were 
 an ox cart and a Studebaker wagon ; a bear and a fat 
 cow; a fur trading post surrounded by Indians and a 
 commercial emporium surrounded by pleased cus 
 tomers ; a well-sweep and a gushing fountain ; a judge 
 holding court in a shanty by the river and a modern 
 stone court house ; a flatboat and a steamboat ; a board 
 ing house and a big hotel; a prairie swamp and a 
 Brussels carpet; a stump and a cushioned rocking 
 chair; an ax and a gold-headed cane; the log hut and 
 the palace ; a family with no news at all and one with 
 books and the daily paper. "It was gigantic," said 
 Riley. "South Benders were surprised to learn of their 
 crude beginning. It took two men a week to paint it." 
 At South Bend there also were rounds of social en 
 joyment and participation in musical programs. There 
 he heard Bret Harte, who had been an inspiration to 
 him since the days he read him in the woods with the 
 Schoolmaster. The lecture renewed his interest in the 
 
144 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 Argonauts. His twenty-fourth birthday had just 
 glided by. After it, he was particularly happy when 
 the Graphic Chum or any other member of the Com 
 pany referred to him as the Forty-Niner in quest of 
 the Golden Fleece. 
 
 As the seasons passed, the "Graphics" grew more 
 spectacular. They were a band of roving, roistering 
 fellows, all young men filled with a desire to see the 
 world. Like Washington Irving when drifting about 
 Europe, all they wished was a little annual certainty 
 wherewith to buy bread and cheese "they could trust 
 to fortune for the oil and the wine." The chief end 
 of their wanderings was amusement. Riley was a kind 
 of prince among them. 
 
 "To hear him snap the trigger 
 Of a pun, or crack a joke, 
 Would make them laugh and snigger 
 Till every button broke." 
 
 His regalia was a thing to remember. "I wore for eve 
 ning dress," said he, "a tall white hat, a pair of speckled 
 trousers, a spectacular coat with gilt buttons, and car 
 ried a cane. We made lots of money." A twenty- 
 dollar bill was a mammoth sum to him then. When 
 doing outdoor work, he did the lettering on windows, 
 painting the letters on the outside of the glass instead 
 of the inside, thus saving the necessity of tracing them 
 backward. He would paint on the sunny side of the 
 street in the heat of July till the perspiration streamed 
 from every pore. Fear of sunstroke never entered his 
 head. There were occasions when a reunion of 
 some sort drew people from the country. The result 
 was a crowd to watch the "Graphics." On special days, 
 for the sake of good advertising, one member of the 
 Company would dress in a spotless frock coat and 
 
WITH THE GRAPHIC COMPANY 145 
 
 trousers, a Derby hat, and patent leather shoes. Riley 
 wore overalls. Sometimes a partner would paint them 
 with vivid stripes and bars. Then would succeed an 
 Indian war dance which soon blocked the street with 
 spectators. However busy the rovers were, whatever 
 the number of contracts for work ahead, there was al 
 ways time to manifest the holiday spirit. There was 
 a dearth of merriment when Riley was absent. His 
 companions hungered for his return. 
 
 "We take pleasure," they wrote while he was so 
 journing a month in Greenfield, "in expressing to you 
 our appreciation of your talents and social qualities, 
 and desire you to make us a visit in behalf of Suffer 
 ing Humanity/ We would respectfully solicit your 
 companionship for a week or so if your business will 
 permit a holiday of that length of time." Signed 
 Very respectfully, F. H. Mack, W. J. Ethell, James 
 Whitmore, James McClanahan (The Original Graphic 
 Advertisers) . 
 
 While his advertising companions predicted a future 
 for Riley, average observers did not regard him as un 
 usual. He was an animated form of good humor but 
 "genius was a long way off." The spectators who stood 
 around him in little towns were not looking for that 
 spark of fire in the fellow who drew pictures on the 
 hotel register and danced with his companions as 
 he went down with the "gang" to the station to see 
 the train come in. Genius did not reside in the man 
 who carried Doctor Pierce s Memorandum Book in his 
 pocket, painted signs for the village baker, and whit 
 tled and told stories in the store on rainy days. There 
 were evidences of sign-painting in the neighborhood of 
 every town from Lafayette to Ft. Wayne, but the genial 
 public did not consider the occupation a stepping stone 
 
146 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 to poetry. It was not to his credit that Riley was often 
 "doggrelling when he should have been daubing." All 
 advertisers however marked one thing : that he was no 
 "humbug of the brush," and later they learned he was 
 no humbug of the pen. To imitate nature, they ob 
 served, artists must not turn their backs on her. They 
 can not paint outdoor scenes indoors. Riley knew this. 
 "The delicacies of light and shade," he read in Christie 
 Johnstone, "can not be trusted to memory. The high 
 est angel in the sky must have his eye upon them and 
 look devilish sharp, too, or he shan t paint them." 
 
 There is evidence along the way from Peru to South 
 Bend that the Argonaut was not in the advertising 
 mood all the time. The "Graphics" held him to his 
 agreement with difficulty. The Golden Fleece he sought 
 was not the almighty dollar. If they made thirty dol 
 lars a day, as they did in periods of prosperity, it was 
 unsafe to tell him before the end of the week. If on 
 Thursday, for instance, he "accidently" learned that 
 the receipts for three days were ninety dollars he was 
 inclined to quit. "That s enough; let s rest." Nor 
 would he be driven. When his associates insisted on 
 work beyond what he thought was a reasonable demand 
 upon him, he would "hide away, loaf and write," and 
 appear as mysteriously as he had disappeared the week 
 before. It was rumored that he shared the time with 
 Cupid. Love (so ran the scrap in his vest pocket) * 
 
 "Love is master of all arts 
 And puts into human hearts 
 The strangest things to say and do." 
 
 There was most certainly a drawing upon his heart 
 strings from home. He had been reconciled to his 
 father. The latter had been courting, too, and at such 
 
LOGAN S " SPEECH TO THE FISHERMEN 
 
GRAPHIC COMPANY BUSINESS CARD 
 
 */ 
 
 \ 
 
 RMSMWH WJNT.ON BA8NS AM 
 
 ftlLEY & Me ( I.A.NAIIA.N I .rsiMss CARD 
 
WITH THE GRAPHIC COMPANY 147 
 
 a season found forgiveness the easiest thing in the 
 world. His letter (omitting irrelevant items) reads 
 as follows: 
 
 Greenfield, Indiana, August 27, 1873. 
 My Dear Boy: 
 
 You can t imagine how anxiously I have been expect 
 ing a letter from you. I wait wait wait with anx 
 ious hope but no James comes home. He writes to 
 others but not to me ; I don t think it exactly right 
 for really I think I am more anxious to hear from you 
 and more desirous you should come than any other. 
 
 I have as you doubtless know, another half in the 
 person of a Quaker lady, who kindly welcomes you also. 
 She often wonders and inquires why you do- not come. 
 I write you with your photograph and its indorsements 
 in my hand. It looks somewhat natural. The hair 
 obscures the upper part of the countenance too much ; 
 and the expression is somewhat sad. The indorsement 
 ("He is dead now") I suppose is irony, for report 
 says you are a very lively corpse; the other ("He was 
 a good boy") is literal I hope. Having passed boy 
 hood years, and glided into manhood, you are, I trust, 
 a very good and prosperous man. That other expres 
 sion ("Oh, my God!") on the back of the photograph 
 I do not know how to interpret that. I hope it is not an 
 exclamation of despair or pain, but a real reverent rec 
 ognition of God, coming from the heart, and with the 
 certainty that He is indeed your God, and will be ever 
 near them that call upon Him in faith, believing. 
 
 Now, my Dear Boy, please write me frequently; let 
 me know how and where you are and how you are 
 doing and come home as soon as your business will 
 allow. Believe me ever and truly 
 
 Your Father, 
 
 R. A. RILEY. 
 
 When the "Graphics" sang "Hail to the Chief," there 
 was financial significance in the strains as well as mel 
 ody. Riley had originated the big sign idea. At his 
 
148 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 suggestion a brother of the brush, said by friends to 
 have been one of the most eccentric sign-painters of 
 his generation, painted "the largest sign in the United 
 States," on a covered bridge over White River. "It 
 took all the white lead in Anderson to paint it," was 
 Riley s word. Newspaper notices of it appeared as 
 far away as Minneapolis. It caught the attention of a 
 well-known threshing machine company in Ohio, who 
 employed its designer to paint their trade-mark on the 
 factory a featherless rooster on a wall sixty-five feet 
 high. 
 
 While his brother of the brush was painting the 
 trade-mark, Riley received a substantial offer from the 
 Howe Sewing Machine Company. He had done the 
 gold lettering on a few sewing machines for the com 
 pany, when in Peru. The time seemed auspicious. 
 "Poetry to the bow-wows," said his Graphic associates. 
 What they desired was to see Riley reap the reward of 
 a growing reputation. That reward meant the loosen 
 ing of purse-strings for their benefit. Riley, however, 
 was not in the least inclined to mass a fortune. 
 
 The period covering his sign-painting adventures was 
 radiant with variety. He touched merriment at all 
 points. One of his partners had once been a deacon 
 and had a letter recommending him to "the brother 
 hood elsewhere as a member in good standing." Noting 
 with amazement the wide contrast between his con 
 duct and the standard set by the church Riley advised 
 him to hold on to the letter. "If you ever put it in a 
 church," said he, "you ll never get it out." 
 
 Prior to the time his friend painted the mammoth 
 sign on the White River bridge, Riley related with 
 great glee his blind-painting experience at Peru, how he 
 had "turned his eyes wrong side out, spilled his paint 
 
WITH THE GRAPHIC COMPANY 149 
 
 on the ladder" and so on. "I ll go you one better some 
 day," said his friend, and he did at the bridge. The 
 river was at the flood. A crowd of farmers and towns 
 men had gathered on the banks to see the sign expand. 
 While painting from the top of a ladder above the mid 
 dle pier, the painter suddenly slipped and fell into the 
 turbid waters and was borne like a porpoise down the 
 stream. He was an expert swimmer and, by diving 
 under floating driftwood, eluded the gaze of the scream 
 ing crowd, passed a river-bend below and came to shore. 
 Scattered here and there in the crowd were friends 
 (secret participants in the ruse) who proposed to drag 
 the river. They had succeeded in awakening anxious 
 sympathy when the "drowning man" appeared, and 
 arm in arm with his friends smothered his laughter 
 and walked away to town, leaving the crowd in utter 
 ignorance of his design. For a long while, say thirty 
 years after, there were Andersonites still living who 
 did not know that the "accident" was planned and 
 executed by a poet and his crafty associates. 
 
 Along with amusement came hardships. Riley had 
 with manifold pleasures what he called a surplus of 
 disappointments. "Although I whined a great deal at 
 the time," said he, "these were not to be deplored 
 since the best rises to the top in extremity. At 
 Warsaw I met a contributor to a local paper 
 (Mr. S. B. McManus), who put spurs on my de 
 termination to win recognition. I carried my poem, 
 The Argonaut in my overalls till it was a confusion 
 of paint spots and ragged edges. It had been declined 
 by every paper on the White Pigeon line from Jones- 
 boro to Michigan. My Warsaw friend liked the poem. 
 The papers had accepted him and he said they would 
 accept me. A simple remark it was a slender rope he 
 
150 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 threw me; doubtless he did not realize the encourage 
 ment he gave, but it was long enough to reach the 
 barque of a lone soul drifting by." As Riley went on 
 from town to town he was cheered by the success 
 of men whose outlook had once been as dismal as his 
 own. He particularly recalled Bret Harte, how after 
 writing and rewriting, he had taken the prize in a 
 thousand-dollar short story contest. Recognition was 
 not an impossible thing. His poem, "The Argonaut," 
 went to rags with his overalls. As he once remarked, he 
 "told but half the tale and lost that ; left the song for 
 the winds to sing." But his hopes were not wrecked. 
 He began to think of other poems, such as "Faith," 
 "Toil," and "Some Day." 
 
 The "White Pigeon" line demanded money for trans 
 portation. The Argonaut had none. At one time he 
 offered a pair of sleeve buttons for a railroad ticket. 
 As the Graphic Chum expressed it, "he was insolvent, 
 had not enough sugar to reach the next town." Some 
 bitter recollections clustered round Marion. He lived 
 in a joyless room, had to spread newspapers on his bed 
 to keep out the cold. Board bills came due and there 
 was no money to pay them. In the coldest weather 
 he was what Robert Burns calls the most mortifying 
 picture in human life, a man seeking work and not find 
 ing it. Outdoor work was impossible and indoor work 
 there was none. He numbered a few post-office boxes, 
 but the remuneration was not sufficient to pay lodging. 
 "My host," said Riley, recalling the days, "proprietor 
 of a little rat-trap of a hotel across the street from 
 the brick church, was also out at the elbows. Together 
 we moved furniture and all to Huntingdon, drove in 
 a wagon through the rain thirty miles and through 
 the night, too; the moon was not a dazzling disk of 
 
WITH THE GRAPHIC COMPANY 151 
 
 brilliancy nor were the stars splintered glitterings of 
 delight." 
 
 Business revived. Soon he bought a forty-dollar 
 overcoat and drifted down stream to meet his chum at 
 Wabash. He was always bringing up with the Graphic 
 Chum, the man of fickle fancies. He had scaled orchard 
 walls with him and made love to melon patches ; 
 
 "Through the darkness and the dawn 
 They had journeyed on and on 
 From Celina to La Crosse 
 From possession unto loss 
 Seeking still from day to day 
 For the Lands of Where-Away." 
 
 They were the Siamese Twins of the sign-painting bus 
 iness, "who had rolled in the game from the time their 
 happy remembrance began." At Wabash they made 
 such a favorable impression on the chief merchant of 
 the town that he proposed to send them to the country 
 to seek work in his family carriage. "We can t use 
 that carriage," remonstrated the chum, "the paint will 
 splash it." "Then we ll go without paint," said Riley; 
 "not every day can sign-painters afford a carriage." 
 
 "Nothing can come from nothing." So Reynolds, the 
 painter to the king, had said in the "British Book." "In 
 vain," he wrote, "painters or poets endeavor to invent 
 without materials on which the mind may work, and 
 from which invention must originate." The Argonaut 
 acted on the suggestion at every turn in the road. He 
 was getting an education. As if sign-painting and 
 many other occupations of those years were insufficient, 
 he joined a baseball club. He did not play "served 
 as a catcher one afternoon only." He did, however, con 
 ceive the idea of getting together the "crack players" 
 of the county. He pitted the "Andersons" against 
 
152 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 the "Muncies," From this came his "Benson Out-Ben- 
 soned," an inferior prose sketch printed later in a 
 county paper, but chiefly remembered for the part it 
 played in an early lecture failure. 
 
 He was acquiring material from books as well as 
 from men and affairs. To the "Graphics" he was a 
 mine of quotation. "Keep to the right quote poetry 
 about that if you dare," said one of them as they were 
 traveling a country road. Instantly the Argonaut re 
 peated the old English Quatrain : 
 
 "The Law of the Road is a paradox quite, 
 
 In riding or driving along : 
 If you go to the left you are sure to go right ; 
 If you go to the right, you go wrong" 
 
 a muddle that was strikingly illustrative of incidents 
 throughout the poet s life. Over and over things he 
 started to do went wrong. The simplest efforts often 
 ended in complexities. 
 
 "The pranks men play live after them." So Riley 
 mused one day while riding on the "Buckeye" with the 
 Standard Remedy vender, who had just received a 
 sharp note from a preacher in a Dunkard settlement. 
 "There is a sign out here," wrote the preacher, "that 
 shocks the neighborhood." The Graphic Company, in 
 cluding one whose name was Ethell, had painted a 
 sign near the Dunkard settlement and had subscribed 
 their names as usual. With a simple twist of the 
 brush, Riley obscured the first two letters in Ethell 
 and capitalized the third, so the signature read, 
 Riley, McClanahan & Hell. This was not done to 
 discredit Ethell, who was one of the most blame 
 less men of the Company. As a farmer remarked, 
 "It was simply the prank of a prankish poet." The 
 sign was changed and the preacher s wrath softened, 
 
WITH THE GRAPHIC COMPANY 153 
 
 but not before the "Graphics" and "Standard Remedies" 
 had suffered injury. Talebearers had been busy. Pious 
 farmers, passing and repassing the sign, had retailed 
 the scandal. In due time the good people of the neigh 
 borhood began to talk about the "Hell Company." A 
 circuit rider, observing the mischievous conduct of the 
 members of the Company around the tavern and de 
 ploring their improvident use of money, remarked that 
 the reproachful name contained more truth than poetry. 
 Riley sings of the joy and pathos of that vagrant 
 time in "Dave Field." Field had shared the happy-go- 
 lucky experience up and down the old "White Pigeon" 
 railroad: 
 
 "Let me write you a rune or rhyme 
 
 For the sake of the past that we knew, 
 ,When we were vagrants along the road, 
 Yet glad as the skies were blue. 
 
 "Let me chant you a strain 
 
 Of those indolent days of ours, 
 With our chairs a-tilt at the wayside inn 
 And our backs in the woodland flowers, 
 
 "Let me drone you a dream of the world 
 
 And the glory it held for us 
 With your pencil-and-canvas dreams 
 And I with my pencil thus. 
 
 "A sigh for the* dawn long dead and gone, 
 
 And a laugh for the dawn concealed, 
 As bravely a while we still toil along 
 To the topmost hill, Dave Field." 
 
 So many poems are traceable to the restless excur 
 sions of the Graphic period that it seems ungracious 
 to berate it. They interpret Riley s life amiss who 
 
154 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 deplord those pleasures and hardships. Whatever may 
 be said of his wanderings and the temptations and 
 delinquencies occasioned by them, the fact is that he 
 regarded them a part of his education. The voice of 
 the "wanderlust" had in it the ring of authority. He 
 answered it and the reward was the experience his 
 genius required. 
 
 One should look with kindly eye upon his first in 
 clination to be a sign-painter, prompted by his reading 
 the Life of George Morland. Of all sketches in the 
 "British Books/ Morland s life was, to Riley, the most 
 fascinating. Morland s career had "the sharp sword 
 of necessity at its back." The youthful Riley sat with 
 him among sailors, rustics, and fishermen while the 
 roof tree rang with laughter and song; he called to the 
 drivers of the coaches; he hallooed to the gentle 
 men of the whip; he rode the saddle horses from 
 the White Lion Livery and went all in a quiver 
 when the artist painted signs. The rapidity of his 
 work surpassed comprehension. As time elapsed Riley 
 manifested some of Morland s characteristics. Like 
 him he became a roving sign-painter, and at times a 
 dispenser of conviviality. Like him he seemed to 
 possess two minds one, the animated soul of genius 
 by which he rose to fame and made himself victorious 
 over many ills of life ; and the other, "a groveling pro 
 pensity," which in his youthful days sought persistently 
 to wreck his fortune and condemn him to the gaiety 
 and folly of dissipation. 
 
 Re-reading the book, Riley noticed Morland s orig 
 inality his style and conception were his own he 
 was always natural he found things to charm the eye 
 in the commonest occurrence he was a painter for 
 
WITH THE GRAPHIC COMPANY 155 
 
 the people, all the people, the good and the bad, the 
 rich and the poor. "Morland s name was on every lip," 
 he remarked in an after time ; "painting was as natural 
 to him as language ; he opened his heart to the multi 
 tude. The mistake he made was not in going among 
 the reptiles, for such his associates of low degree were 
 called, the mistake he made was in lowering his conduct 
 to the level of their debauchery. He had to see them. 
 Did he not paint four thousand pictures? It was 
 genius to make the pictures; it was not genius to de 
 light in degradation." 
 
 Moralists have claimed that Riley should not have 
 read Morland s Life. There were homes in Greenfield 
 where the book was forbidden. The fact, however, 
 remains that Riley repeatedly read the book and never 
 expressed a syllable of regret for having done so. An 
 other thing equally significant is the fact that although 
 he was fascinated with the book, he never wasted his 
 young manhood in the wild, imprudent manner of the 
 British artist. 
 
 When older, Riley always made it clear that a poet 
 had to know the people before he could write verse for 
 the people. He had to be bewildered with living before 
 he could write "A Ballad from April." After he had 
 found "a man for breakfast," as the phrase ran, after 
 he had mingled with the section gang and had seen an 
 Irish mother weep over the mangled form of her 
 son, after he had signed the pledge, talked Temperance 
 and worked right and left in the "blue ribbon move 
 ment," then he could write "Tom Johnson s Quit." 
 
 Here in Riley s erratic days, as in the lives of so 
 many men eminent in art and literature, is the ques 
 tion of the wheat and the tares, the intermingling 
 
156 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 of good and evil. Ruskin cites the instance of 
 an artist, not only tolerating but delighting in the 
 disorder of the lower streets of London, "the web of 
 his work wrought with vices too singular to be for 
 given," yet enough virtue and beauty left in him to 
 make him "supreme in the poetry of landscape/ great 
 and good qualities sufficient to make him the "Shakes 
 peare of painting." In all genius, some one sagely 
 observes, there is a touch of chaos, a strain of the 
 vagabond ; and the admirers of genius in all ages, and 
 particularly the friends of poets have avoided many 
 erroneous and damaging conclusions by remembering 
 this fact. 
 
 On the whole then, friends of literature are not to 
 deplore the Graphic days. They are to rejoice that 
 Riley 
 
 "Roved the rounds of pleasures through, 
 And tasted each as it pleased him to." 
 
 They are to smile when 
 
 "He joined old songs and the clink and din, 
 Of the revelers at the banquet hall, 
 
 And tripped his feet where the violin 
 Spun its waltz for the carnival." 
 
 They are to be glad, though it is more difficult, 
 
 "That he toiled away for a weary while, 
 Through day s dull glare and night s deep gloom ; 
 That many a long and lonesome mile 
 He paced in the round of his dismal room; 
 That he fared on hunger and drunk of pain 
 As the drouthy earth might drink of rain. 
 
WITH THE GRAPHIC COMPANY 157 
 
 "So the Argonaut came safe from doom, 
 Back at last to his lonely room, 
 Filled with its treasure of work to do 
 And radiant with the light and bloom 
 Of the summer sun and his glad soul, too! - 
 Came to his work with tuneful words 
 Sweet and divine as the song of the birds." 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 WHILE THE MUSICIAN PLAYED 
 
 THE reader is now to consider another phase of 
 a restless life, which in point of years blends 
 with the employment of time in sign-painting. 
 The Argonaut has joined himself to a band of home 
 companions. His excursions are musical and confined 
 chiefly to the streets and highways of his home county. 
 His joyous occasions suggest a season of May-time 
 when he crowded years into a few brief months. The 
 nights were long, deep and beautiful, chiefly the "silent 
 afternoons of the night," as he so finely wrote, "when 
 the heavens poured down upon him their mellow wine 
 of glory." He painted signs by day and reveled in 
 music by night. "With the fiddle and the flute," 
 said one of his home friends, "he and his companions 
 drifted out under the stars and laid the pipes for popu 
 larity with the girls." It was the season of sweet sing 
 ing voices, as he wrote in a fragment on "A Tune" 
 
 "Sweet as the tune that drips 
 From minstrel finger-tips 
 
 That twang the strings 
 Of sweet guitars in June 
 At midnight, when the moon 
 In silence sings." 
 
 Life was a dancing medley and heartily Riley re 
 sponded to its charms as did other young men of the 
 town. He heard the tinkle and drip of the music that 
 
 158 
 
WHILE THE MUSICIAN PLAYED 159 
 
 they heard, but his heart was also responsive to melo 
 dies they did not hear. While sharing the charms of 
 rollicking society, his thought also floated 
 
 "Out on the waves that break 
 In crests of song on the shoreless deep 
 Where hearts neither wake nor sleep/ 
 
 His love of music developed early. There was 
 rhythm in the rock of the cradle. Unlike Whittier who 
 knew little of music and could scarcely distinguish one 
 tune from another, Riley reveled in "the concord of 
 sweet sounds." As he grew older he could repeat any 
 air after once hearing it. At the age of five he heard a 
 violin for the first time at a neighbor s house where 
 children had gathered to listen to a country musi 
 cian. The sensation was delicious ; the child caught his 
 breath as children do in woodland swings. "He danced 
 on the steps," said his mother, "in an ungovernable 
 spasm of delight." The prattle of childhood was blent 
 
 "With the watery jingle of pans and spoons, 
 And the motherly chirrup of glad content, 
 And neighborly gossip and merriment, 
 And old-time fiddle tunes," 
 
 as the poet happily sang in A Child-World. Then 
 followed his boyish interest in the band wagons that 
 glittered with a splendor all their own while he marched 
 with boys of high and low degree in circus-day parades. 
 He had visions of a time when he should travel with a 
 circus and dangle his feet before admiring thousands 
 from the back seat of a golden chariot. A little later, 
 at the age of twelve he was charmed with the music 
 of the Saxhorn Band, the old Greenfield organization 
 that marched away to the war in 1861. A serenade 
 at the farther edge of town one midnight before their 
 
160 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 going, awakened in the youthful Riley heart a rap 
 ture undefined. Few lads would have lain 
 
 "So still in bed 
 
 They could hear the locust blossoms dropping on the 
 shed." 
 
 In his school-days Riley often took more interest in 
 drawing and music than in his books. There was a pic 
 ture in his geography of a herdsman lassoing wild 
 horses on the pampas of South America. Riley drew 
 in place of the lasso, a guitar, with which the rider 
 was beating a horse over the head. "The guitar is a 
 light instrument," he once remarked, "but that was 
 not giving it light treatment. The horseman wore a 
 gaily colored scarf, which reminded me of a Spanish 
 cavalier, and that suggested the guitar." 
 
 What dreamy visions ranged over the "arch of crea 
 tion" in those callow days of youth. The old National 
 Road, blossoming with its "romance of snowy cara 
 vans" ran like a pageant through the town. Along with 
 its ox-carts, its Conestoga wagons and chiming bells, it 
 brought the unriddled mysteries of music and love. 
 "Bright-eyed, plump, delicious looking girls" were not 
 strangers to Greenfield and the long highway that bi 
 sected the town. 
 
 Lovers and poets, according to John Hay, are prone 
 to describe the ladies of their love as airy and delicate 
 in structure, so angelic that the flowers they tread upon 
 are greatly improved in health and spirit by the 
 process. The girls who traveled the National Road 
 were not of this ethereal type. Nevertheless they were 
 beautiful. "Their hair rippled carelessly over their 
 shoulders," said Riley, "and many were graceful as 
 quails." An emigrant with his wife and daughter came 
 
WHILE THE MUSICIAN PLAYED 161 
 
 slowly westward on the Road one sultry evening and 
 camped on the common, the "village green" at the 
 edge of town near the Riley homestead. The arrival 
 of a charming maiden just ten years old, who could 
 play an accordion and sing, was an event and the 
 budding Riley knew it. Her stay was brief, the family 
 "dropping into night again," westward bound to the 
 land beyond the Wabash. But she had remained long 
 enough to teach him how to play the instrument long 
 enough to become his "first love." She also is credited 
 with being the original of the poem, "The Old Wish," 
 suggested by a falling star. When he became a man, 
 Riley remembered himself as the callow lad in love 
 with the little "accordion wonder." "Brief but beau 
 tiful," he said, 
 
 "For my wild heart had wished for the unending 1 
 Devotion of the little maid of nine 
 And that the girl-heart, with the woman s blending 
 Might be forever mine." 
 
 The "village green" was the trysting place a few 
 years later for another musical episode. In those days 
 he did not leave home to find answers to his dreams. 
 They floated to him from distant lands, from the dawn 
 and the unknown and he was happy. "I was not no 
 madic then," he remarked when older, pleasantly allud 
 ing to a merry strain in a McGuffey Reader, 
 
 "Quite contented with my state, 
 I did envy not the great ; 
 Since true pleasure may be seen 
 On a cheerful village green." 
 
 Out of that primitive train of old-fashioned wagons 
 on the National Road there drifted one May morning 
 a "prairie schooner" with a family from New Eng- 
 
162 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 land. It was a long wintry way they had traveled. 
 The horses having dwindled to the ghost of a team, the 
 family halted on the "green" and christened their an 
 chorage "Camp Necessity." It turned out that they re 
 mained for the summer, renting two rooms with a time- 
 worn portico in front where morning-glory vines 
 climbed up the trellis to smile at hollyhocks on the 
 gravel walk. There was a musical daughter in the 
 family, who was 1 known to her new friends as "Anna 
 Mayflower," to celebrate her native Yankee State and 
 the month of her arrival in Greenfield. Her winsome 
 manners and her guitar soon drew a circle of young 
 folks around her. Ere long Riley came, first to take 
 lessons on the guitar and later, lessons in love. One 
 autumn evening as he approached the gravel walk he 
 heard music of a doleful character 
 
 "The long, long weary day 
 Has passed in tears away, 
 And I am weeping, 
 My lone watch keeping." 
 
 "Why that melancholy wail?" he asked on entering 
 her door. 
 
 "I am going away." 
 
 "Away? where to Sugar Creek?" 
 
 "No to the Great North Woods." 
 
 "Promise me," said he, "you ll never sing that dirge 
 again" and so far as the lover knew, she kept her 
 word. 
 
 The next week the transients were westward bound 
 again, and the lad and lassie were "weeping their lone 
 watch keeping." Letters were numerous between 
 Greenfield and the North Woods and tradition has it 
 that they were love letters. Time passed, a few years 
 only, and the music of his soul found expression in 
 
WHILE THE MUSICIAN PLAYED 163 
 
 words. Caressing his recollections of "Camp Neces- 
 ity" and the portico (which for the sake of meter he 
 changed to "balcony"), he wrote "The Old Guitar," 
 cherishing the while 
 
 "A smile for a lovely face 
 That came with the memory 
 Of a flower-and-perfume-haunted place 
 And a moonlit balcony." 
 
 The sequel was an incident that touched his heart 
 tenderly. After the guitar had moldered into decay 
 and the old airs had become pulseless, long after the 
 poet s heart had been bruised by the Bludgeon of 
 Fate, long after "Anna Mayflower s" address had been 
 lost and forgotten, there drifted to his desk one day in 
 the city a letter from the Michigan woods, just as 
 twenty years before the author of it a maiden of six 
 teen had drifted into Greenfield. The maiden was a 
 mother now. She and her children were rejoicing that 
 Fame had come down the National Road and found 
 two books Rhymes of Childhood and Afterwhiles 
 "two books," she wrote, "that will survive the wrecks 
 of type and time two books that will live 
 
 As long as the heart has passions*, 
 As long as life has woes/ " 
 
 When about twenty years old Riley began to think 
 seriously of becoming a musical performer. "I coop 
 ered on the banjo, bass viol, piano and organ," said he, 
 recalling the musical days ; "I could play on anything 
 from a hand-organ up to credulity. I started out with 
 a flageolet. You know that remarkable instrument. It 
 has a goitre in the neck, and swells up like a cobra de 
 capello. You play into one end of it and the performer 
 is often as greatly surprised at the output as the 
 
164 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 hearers." Those were the sleepless days for his neigh 
 bors. They 
 
 "Hopelessly asked why the boy with the horn 
 And its horrible havoc had ever been born." 
 
 "He was the plague of the streets," said a Greenfield 
 resident; "when he played on the porch, the neighbors 
 went in and closed their doors and windows." He 
 could sing, too, especially songs in dialect, although, 
 according to his own opinion, the chief thing about his 
 voice was that it gave variety rather than pleasure. He 
 had friends however kind enough to say his singing 
 was alone worth the price of admission. He was ama 
 teurish enough to thrum such old favorites as "Twenty 
 Years Ago," "Old Kentucky Home," "Rocked in the 
 Cradle of the Deep," and "Come Where My Love Lies 
 Dreaming." He twanged comic songs on the banjo, 
 indeed, wrote two or three himself, the idea literally 
 creeping into his mind that he might some day be a 
 character-song man and compose his own selections. 
 Although possessed of ear, taste and genius, he had 
 neither the inclination nor the persistence to learn the 
 notes. Like Gainsborough he took his first step, but 
 the second was out of his reach and the summit unat 
 tainable. "I don t read music," he said, "but I know 
 the dash and swing of the pen that rained it on the 
 page." No one could so certainly as he detect it in 
 the sound 
 
 "Of dim sweet singing voices, interwound 
 With purl of flute and subtle twang of string 
 Strained through the lattice where the roses cling." 
 
 The one thing his musical years have to offer is 
 variety. Reading between the lines, one discovers that 
 the purpose of the Muse was the education of her child. 
 
WHILE THE MUSICIAN PLAYED 165 
 
 She would have him climb by failures, by experience, 
 by slow degrees. In her eyes the waste basket was as 
 essential as the "Poet s Corner" in the weekly paper. 
 She was content if in a hundred lines she could find one 
 crystal, knowing 1 that as her favorite grew to maturity 
 the crytals would increase. 
 
 "When the Fates," it has been observed, "will that 
 something should come to pass, they send forth a million 
 little circumstances to clear and prepare the way." 
 The Fates decreed that Riley should not be a musician, 
 but it took some time to bring him round to that con 
 clusion. One of the little circumstances was an acci 
 dent while he and a few companions were driving to a 
 village to take part in a musical progranr. A special 
 feature of the evening was "an original poem" by the 
 "Distinguished Poet of Center Township." It was a 
 raw, snowy day. They drove a mule to a "jumper-" 
 sled, an animal that was as perverse and unreliable as 
 the wind. "The mule," said Riley, "scared at an ob 
 ject in the tanyard, ran off and recklessly distributed 
 our musical instruments along the road. Like Brom 
 Bones, we met the devil. My friends found me bruised 
 and unconscious, in a heap astride the bull-fiddle* in 
 a fence corner. Fate was trying to tell me I was not 
 to be a musician." 
 
 The original poem, "Joe Biggsby s Proposal," was 
 the hit of the evening although it made young Riley 
 as nervous as the lover he tried to depict, who in 
 reality was none other than himself. "It s about a 
 fellow," he read, 
 
 "About a fellow that both of us knows 
 It might be Thomas or John 
 The awkwardest fellow, we ll just suppose, 
 That ever the sun shone on ; 
 
166 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 So awkward he stumbled and fell in love 
 With a most pretty girl at that, 
 With a voice as sweet as a turtledove 
 And eyes as black as my hat" 
 
 in all, twelve stanzas about his lady-love, which tho 
 "Distinguished Poet" subsequently consigned to the 
 waste basket. 
 
 It was in those caroling days that he made his debut 
 as a bass drummer in a brass band. "You should 
 have seen him abuse a base drum," remarked a band 
 member. He soon hammered himself into the enviable 
 position of snare drummer, and in the Greeley cam 
 paign became a regular member of the band the Green 
 field Cornet Band, succeeded by the Adelphian Band, 
 to which he gave the name, and "two removes," said 
 he, "from the old Saxhorn Band of the war days," (so 
 named from the band instruments which bore the cele 
 brated Saxhorn label). Technically, the Cornet Band 
 was superior, due largely to the interest Riley awak 
 ened in good music. "A poor brass band," he re 
 marked, "away from home one day can do more damage 
 to a town than twenty enterprising citizens of that 
 place can repair in ten years." He was an irregular 
 member of the Adelphian Band and "glad of it," he 
 said, "for when the notes came due for their extrava 
 gant band wagon, the creditor could not reach me by 
 legal proceedings. Pay a band note? I did not have 
 enough money to liquidate a notary fee." It was with 
 difficulty that the Adelphians saved their wagon from 
 the sheriff s hammer. 
 
 A solace for the Adelphian boys in those insolvent 
 days was a huge marble cake with three pieces espe 
 cially wrapped in fancy paper for the "Poet." The 
 cake was the gift of sweethearts, who thus expressed 
 
WHILE THE MUSICIAN PLAYED 167 
 
 to their lovers their gratitude for a "joy ride" in the 
 new band wagon. Contrary to the ladies expectation, 
 the Muse was languid. "Oh, Muse !" the "Poet" wrote, 
 
 "Inspire our Faber No. 2 
 To dull itself, at least, with something new; 
 Command it hence at Fancy s Fate to chapper 
 On Three Graces in a paper wrapper. 
 
 "The pleasures manifold of this sweet feast 
 Would fill a dozen pages at the least, 
 But, Ladies, we ll inflict you with but one 
 With trifling change we quote from Tennyson : 
 It gentler on digestive organ lies 
 Than tired eyelids on tired eyes. 
 For this entendra you will please excuse 
 A blunt lead pencil and a drowsy Muse." 
 
 The country "joy ride" afforded an enlivening ex 
 perience. While the band boys with their sweethearts 
 were on their way to a Blue River town a storm befell. 
 As Riley remarked, "Old Jupiter Pluvius took part in 
 the performance. The rain beginning to vex the fields, 
 the contents of the band wagon were crowded into a 
 barn, and held there a whole rainy day." As usual, 
 when merriment was required, the Adelphians drew on 
 Riley s fertility of resources. Recalling that the scene 
 in Hogarth s Strolling Actresses was laid in a barn, 
 fitted up like a theater, he resolved to assemble a simi 
 lar company of performers, not for the amusement of 
 mankind, but for the pleasure of a community on Old 
 Brandywine. He improvised a kind of rural opera and, 
 barring the half-dressed figures on the old English 
 playbill, it bore some resemblance to Hogarth s The 
 Devil to Pay in Heaven. Instead of ancient deities 
 for dramatis personse, he had the Adelphians and their 
 
168 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 sweethearts and he saw to it especially that no damsel 
 should represent the "Tragic Muse." 
 
 After feasting on a picnic dinner, the players cleared 
 the barn floor and opened their "Country Drama" with 
 a polka as joyous and wild as the music that struck 
 wonder and applause to the hearts of "The Jolly Beg 
 gars," the whole company dancing to the cornet, violin, 
 guitar and violincello. 
 
 "Wi quaffing and laughing, 
 They ranted and they sang; 
 Wi jumping and thumping, 
 The vera girdle rang." 
 
 Then it was a fandango, a hornpipe, a quadrille, a 
 charade, or masquerade anything to end the day in a 
 carnival of enjoyment. The Adelphians were not want 
 ing in powers of invention, particularly if accompanied 
 by their sweethearts. The program was both musical 
 and theatrical. That night, after the storm, when the 
 moon rose out of the woods to flood the barn floor with 
 light and tangle her beams with dancing feet the Muse 
 found another thread of gold for the Golden Fleece. 
 She was not drowsy in "The Last Waltz" : 
 
 "What happiness we had, 
 When that last waltz went mad 
 And wailed so wildly sad 
 
 So weirdly sweet 
 It seemed some silver tune 
 Unraveled from the moon 
 And trailed, that night of June, 
 
 Beneath our feet! 
 
 "A marriage of glad hands 
 A gleam of silken bands 
 A storm of loosened strands 
 A whirling sea. 
 
WHILE THE MUSICIAN PLAYED 169 
 
 The broken breath the rush 
 Of swift sweet words the flush 
 Of closed lids and the hush 
 Of ecstasy! 
 
 "O Love I long delight! 
 
 music of that night ! 
 The seasons in their flight 
 
 Have not been false; 
 The arms that held you then, 
 Enfold you now as when 
 
 1 kissed you, first of men, 
 In that last waltz." 
 
 War Barnett, a member of the old Saxhorn Band, 
 recalled that Riley s efforts to play on musical instru 
 ments lacked the patience of persistence. The Adel- 
 phians, however, marking Riley s enthusiasm a few 
 years later, noted a beautiful exception his love of 
 the guitar and the violin, chiefly the violin. Leaning 
 over his instrument, the hope in his heart grew 
 sweeter than songs without words. Just as Longfellow 
 embodied the spirit of poetry in the majesty of the sea, 
 the everlasting hills, and the ever-shifting beauty of 
 the seasons, so Riley embodied the spirit of music in 
 objects of simple interest and love, in the old-time 
 fiddler, in the robin teetering on the bough, in a merry 
 boy at play, in the maiden tripping through the meadow 
 grass. "Tilt the Cup," he besought the hunter boy, 
 
 "Tilt the cup 
 Of your silver bugle up, 
 And like wine pour out for me 
 All your limpid melody ! 
 Pouch your happy lips and blare 
 Music s kisses everywhere, 
 Wave o er forest, field and town 
 Tufts of tune like thistledown, 
 And in mists of song divine 
 Fill this violin of mine." 
 
170 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 His desire to play on the violin was quickened into 
 a passion at the age of nineteen. He read stories and 
 legends of Ole Bull, the Master Musician, "who lived 
 in the ideal world, whose language was not speech, but 
 song." To Riley the great Norwegian was a modern 
 Orpheus. Birds came out of the thickets, and 
 dancing streams stayed their onward feet. A fairy 
 throng of elves and spirits whirled in wild delight 
 around him (so he read in Longfellow) and mingled 
 with these were 
 
 "Screams of sea-birds in their flight, 
 And the tumult of the wind at night." 
 
 Ole Bull s violin, too, was the magical harp of gold. 
 The pine and maple from which it was made had 
 rocked and wrestled with the wind in the Tyrolean 
 forest, on the Italian side of the Alps, where sunshine 
 and sea infused melody into the trees. There was 
 something also in the folk-type of the Norwegian land 
 similar to that of Hoosierland. The people were ani 
 mated, enthusiastic and practical "a curious com 
 bination," it was said, "of the prosaic and the ideal." 
 Such a combination made Norway rich in men of 
 genius as like conditions have since produced like re 
 sults in Indiana. 
 
 To hear Ole Bull and to see his violin became a 
 fixed purpose. "I would walk fifty miles," said Riley, 
 "to see the diamonds in his bow." 
 
 Although Riley was forty years the junior of Ole 
 Bull there was a striking similarity in their lives. The 
 ruling passion of each was an abiding love of home 
 country. The poetry in its scenery and the native 
 merit of the people took hold of each from childhood. 
 That of .Norway was reflected in Ole Bull s style of play- 
 
WHILE THE MUSICIAN PLAYED 171 
 
 ing and gave to his selections the charm of originality 
 that never failed to captivate his audience just as the 
 rustic beauty and simplicity of Indiana were afterward 
 reflected in the ballads and public readings of the poet. 
 "Eagerly I devoured all myths, popular melodies, folk 
 tales and ballads these made my music," said Ole 
 Bull. He is a short-sighted student indeed who can 
 not find a similar influence in the development of the 
 Hoosier Poet. 
 
 Stories of Ole Bull were in the air and the effect 
 was to stimulate Riley s enthusiasm to hear him, to 
 the point of determination. There was then no life of 
 the Norwegian. "We ll write one," said Riley. He 
 prepared a sketch which he carried about in his "reti 
 cule" and later laid away for safe keeping in a trunk. 
 "I did not need the sketch," said he, "to quicken a pas 
 sion for music. I already had that. What I needed was 
 assurance and hope. If Ole Bull had wrought great 
 things from humble beginnings, perhaps I could. He 
 was self-taught. He played his own pieces. Coming 
 under the influence of Paganini in Paris, he definitely 
 adopted the career of a violinist. I was hopeful enough 
 call it a foolish dream, if you will to believe a like 
 fortune would attend me." 
 
 To Riley there was something alluring in the Ole 
 Bull testimonials. Many were printed in western 
 papers, "a rattling good one," said he, "by George 
 William Curtis," who had lifted the master violinist 
 to a pedestal beside that of Jenny Lind. "Critics," 
 said Curtis, "might dash their heads against Ole Bull 
 at leisure, the public heart would follow him with ap 
 plause because he played upon its strings as upon those 
 of the violin. His nature sympathized with the mass 
 of men. He was so full of life and overflowing with 
 
172 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY: 
 
 vigor that he would impart that sympathy at all 
 hazards." 
 
 There was "a darling tribute" by Lydia Maria Child. 
 "Ole Bull played four strings at once," she wrote. "The 
 notes were tripping and fairy-like as the song of Ariel. 
 He made his violin sing with a flute-like voice, and 
 accompany itself with a guitar, gentle and musical as 
 the drops of the rain. How he did it I know as little 
 as I know how the sun shines, or the spring brings 
 out its blossoms." 
 
 Such language to the heart of youth was electrical. 
 The purpose to hear the master violinist became a con 
 suming fire. Twice Ole Bull came to large cities of the 
 West, but they were too far away. Riley had not yet 
 solved the problems of dress and long distance trans 
 portation. "His old friend, Poverty," said an Adel- 
 phian, "was sticking closer to him than a brother. He 
 still enjoyed the luxury of borrowed clothing; and the 
 misfits, or tightfits, worn sometimes with a Greeley 
 plug, reminded us of a dandy. Silver and gold he had 
 none. All he had to offer was poetry." Happily he did 
 not have to ride a long distance to hear the Master. 
 
 The winter and spring of 1872 was for Indianapolis 
 a season of platform kings. Wendell Phillips came in 
 January to talk on "Courts and Jails." He was fol 
 lowed by J. G. Holland on "The Social Undertow," and 
 he by Josh Billings on "What I Know about Hotels." 
 Then came Robert Collyer with "The Personality and 
 Blunders of Great Genius," and Mark Twain with 
 "Passages from Roughing It." All these Riley passed 
 by. 
 
 One day when all things were feeling the tonic of 
 the spring, the following announcement appeared un 
 der " Amusements" in the Indianapolis Daily Sentinel: 
 
WHILE THE MUSICIAN PLAYED 173 
 ACADEMY OF Music 
 
 THE WORLD-RENOWNED VIOLINIST 
 
 OLE BULL 
 (Assisted by Eminent Artists) 
 
 IN GRAND CONCERT 
 TUESDAY EVENING, APRIL 16 (1872) 
 
 To Riley the announcement was like the south wind 
 blowing over spring flowers. Outwardly he was happy, 
 but "inwardly," said he, "my life had been a bleak De 
 cember. Something was tugging away at the core of 
 existence and I did not know what it was. I only knew 
 that the mystery of it meant misery to me." His soul 
 was burning within him. He was peering into the 
 darkness, like the author of the "Raven," wondering, 
 fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever 
 dared to dream before. He was yearning for some 
 knowledge of his mission. 
 
 At the Academy of Music, however, the "misery of 
 existence" faded. "Leaning forward to catch the first 
 strains from the harp of gold," said Riley, "I was glad 
 as a lover among the sheaves of harvest meadows. 
 In imagination I saw Ole Bull behind the curtain draw 
 his violin from its ebon case, tune and hold it close to 
 his breast, poising the bow in his outstretched hand 
 like a magician s wand. I could almost squeeze fra 
 grance from the tunes before the curtain was rolled 
 up." It did not matter to Riley that he had an in 
 ferior seat. What did he care? Ole Bull had sold his 
 last shirt to hear Paganini, and had been content 
 with a seat in the topmost gallery in Paris to hear 
 Malibran. 
 
 At last the golden moment came. There on a Hoosier 
 stage the rapt Musician stood, the silver of sixty win- 
 
174 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 ters on his brow, the dew of youth in his heart, stood 
 there just as Longfellow had said: 
 
 "Blue-eyed, his aspect blithe, 
 His figure tall and straight and lithe, 
 And every feature of his face 
 Revealing his Norwegian grace ; 
 A radiance streaming from within, 
 Around his eyes and forehead beamed, 
 The Angel with the violin, 
 Painted by Raphael, he seemed." 
 
 All that Longfellow had said of the Norwegian was 
 only a faint reflex of what he was. His soul was in 
 his music. The violin talked for him. He played it 
 because he loved it. Riley s own interpretation of the 
 hour, a memory written years after, was brief, but 
 charged with feeling: 
 
 "Why it was music the way he stood, 
 So grand was the poise of the head and so 
 Full was the figure of majesty ! 
 One heard with the eyes, as a deaf man would, 
 And with all sense brimmed to the overflow 
 With tears of anguish and ecstasy." 
 
 He played "A Fantasie on Lily Dale," "The Car 
 nival of Venice," and "My Old Kentucky Home" 
 with variations. Chief interest centered in "The 
 Mother s Prayer" which was played and heard with the 
 deepest emotion. What seemed so miraculous was the 
 discovery that the extraordinary man played the most 
 difficult selections "with the ease of a common fiddler 
 playing a jig or hornpipe." And such sustained per 
 fection he played three or four parts without a hint 
 of discordant note. Occasionally his music was ca 
 pricious ; as some said, "he resorted to tricks with his 
 instrument," but never for an instant was it wanting 
 
WHILE THE MUSICIAN PLAYED 175 
 
 in the poetry of his interpretations. The performance 
 was a combination of strength and love and "that," 
 said Riley, "makes a miracle any time in any land." 
 He played as if he had just found a violin, played as 
 Emerson said he played in Boston "the sleep of Egypt 
 on his lips." 
 
 The criticism Riley particularly emphasized was 
 that Ole Bull s music "went to the heart of the musi 
 cally ignorant and carried the educated by storm" 
 just as his own public readings were destined to do in 
 the famous afterwhiles. He felt like calling the grand 
 old artist "the only violinist." The encores (the "Last 
 Rose of Summer," "The Nightingale," and "Home, 
 Sweet Home") were inexpressibly lovely. " The Ar 
 kansas Traveler/ " said the reporter, "was played with 
 such rollicking abandon that the audience broke all re 
 straint and drowned the sound of the instrument with 
 applause. A happier audience never left the Academy 
 of Music." Riley went out "feeling that something 
 beautiful had passed that way something more beau 
 tiful than anything else, like the dream of dawn or the 
 silence of sundown." 
 
 He returned to Greenfield as he said "a gentleman 
 of good family and great expectations." He was flushed 
 and exultant. "Music was the climax of the soul." The 
 great violinist was the sole object of his thoughts. "Did 
 you meet him?" asked his friends. "Why should I?" 
 was the prompt rejoinder. "You don t have to shake 
 hands with a man to know him. Don t you know how 
 friends are made ? Fellowship exists whether we meet 
 or not. I have known Ole Bull all my life." Leaving 
 some of the wiseacres to doubt his sanity, he hastened 
 to his room. He drew the Ole Bull "Sketch" from his 
 "reticule" and read it again. His resolution to be a vio- 
 
176 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 linist had received such impetus that nothing to his 
 way of thinking could break it. "Hope told a flat 
 tering tale." She pointed out the resemblance in his 
 life to the early struggles of Ole Bull for recognition. 
 Similarity ran back to childhood. There was no prom 
 ise for Ole Bull in the schoolroom as there had 
 been none for "Bud" Riley. "Take to your fiddle 
 in earnest, my boy," the old Norway rector had 
 said; "don t waste your time in school." Ole Bull s 
 genius refused positively to go into a straight jacket. 
 How had he learned to play? God had taught him 
 it was said by a process as simple as that of the mock 
 ing bird. When a child he had seen in a meadow a 
 delicate bluebell swinging in the wind ; in his fancy he 
 heard it ring while the soft voices of the waving grass 
 accompanied it. "I know what he heard," said Riley, 
 and so promptly did he accent the value of his opinion 
 by relating incidents in his own experience, that lovers 
 of the beautiful never for an instant doubted his word. 
 After the immediate enthusiasm over the concert had 
 subsided, Riley bethought himself of the road to suc 
 cess. He went back of Ole Bull to Paganini for a 
 motto which he narrowed down to "Work, solitude and 
 prayer." In the "British Books," excellence in paint 
 ing and sculpture was chiefly the result of incessant 
 application and he was convinced that music demanded 
 like concentration. With Ole Bull and Paganini it 
 meant practice twelve hours a day. Neverthe 
 less, he was not intimidated. He would sound the possi 
 bilities of music, and to this end he played on every 
 violin he could borrow. When the owner declined 
 to let him take it away from the house, he remained 
 and played in the kitchen. To use his own words 
 
WHILE THE MUSICIAN PLAYED 177 
 
 he "even accepted Invitations to canter over the 
 strings while dancing feet jarred the china ware 
 and windowpanes." Friends remember that he 
 leaned lovingly over the violin and that the strains were 
 lyrically sweet. "There was a room in the old Dunbar 
 House in Greenfield," said an Adelphian, "where he 
 played hour by hour to drown discordant sounds such 
 as the grist-mill, egg-beaters, and the rattle of the 
 street." To such he opposed "Home, Sweet Home," 
 "The Cottage by the Sea," and "The Suwannee River" 
 with variations of his own improvising. Ole Bull had 
 composed his own music and he would do the same. 
 
 Thus he practised and thus he forecast his future 
 in the musical world with prospect of reward when he 
 was sorrowfully confronted with the result of an acci 
 dent, which, trivial as it seems, can not be overlooked 
 since it actually did turn and alter his career, as trifles 
 frequently do in this world, where a gnat, according 
 to Thackeray, often plays a greater part than an ele 
 phant, where a mole-hill can upset an empire. "Great 
 God!" exclaimed the old Greenfield Commercial, "on 
 what a slender thread hang everlasting things !" The 
 accident was a caprice of the wind. The Commercial 
 further observed that winds are born to be capricious. 
 They ramble at will among trees and poets 
 
 "And love and cherish and bless to-day 
 What to-morrow they ruthlessly throw away." 
 
 What the wind really did to say it curtly was to 
 slam a door on Riley s thumb. "The wind was mad," 
 said he, "stark, staring mad ; running over and around 
 town, howling and whooping like a maniac." 
 
 At first the injury was not considered serious, al 
 though he had to dress it daily and carry his hand in 
 
178 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 a sling. But when afterward he devoted time daily to 
 the violin, the wounded finger complained, the pain 
 increasing as he increased the hours of practice. One 
 night, all alone, it was sadly borne in upon him that he 
 was not to be a violinist. "You say a short thumb is 
 a little thing," he once remarked. "I say it is a big 
 thing it was then." When he fully realized he could 
 never grip the violin as he had seen the Master Musi 
 cian do, the sense of disappointment was akin to that 
 which would come over a man were some familiar 
 mountain-top to sink suddenly and forever from sight. 
 Riley was more sensitive than many of his con 
 temporaries. What others suffered lightly he suffered 
 keenly. It was destiny s way of making him a poet 
 to him then a heavy-laden, shadowy way. A French 
 man remarked with a smile, that the whole face of the 
 world would probably have been changed had Cleo 
 patra s nose been shorter. "That remark should not 
 provoke a smile," said Riley. "The sage should have 
 said it with gravity; it was the truth. Walter Scott, 
 when a child, sprained his foot. Ivanhoe and the other 
 Waverley novels were dependent on that sprain. Had 
 Scott not been lame he would have gone into the army. 
 The gates of great events swing on small hinges." 
 
 Only the few who despise the day of small things 
 will smile at Riley s grief. The many will share it, 
 for reasons made clear to them by turning-points in 
 their own lives. They will perceive what has been 
 often observed, that defects are made useful to men. 
 Ignorant of ourselves, Shakespeare tells us, we often 
 beg our own harms, which the wise powers deny us 
 for our good. Subsequently when Riley began doing 
 his life work with the pen, he saw that the angel of 
 adversity had denied him the realization of one dream 
 
JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 Age twenty-two 
 
OLK r.t i i.. i HI; MASTKK MTSICIAN 
 From photograph Hi Icy carried as a mascot 
 
WHILE THE MUSICIAN PLAYED 179 
 
 that she might bless him with the fulfillment of a 
 greater. Obedient to the angel s prompting, he wrote 
 his popular poem, "Kissing the Rod." Ever after, his 
 letters to sorrowing friends harmonized with the mes 
 sage of that poem. "No mortal condition," he once 
 wrote, "is better than the one God seems to weigh you 
 down with. In my own case I am coming every day to 
 see clearer the gracious uses of adversity. Simply it 
 is not adversity. It is the very kindest tenderest 
 most loving and most helpful touch of the hand Divine." 
 
 Though yielding to the decree of fate, Riley s in 
 terest in music never abated. The man who held that 
 painting is the poetry of color, sculpture the poetry of 
 form, and music the poetry of sound, could not at any 
 time of his career be far from the heart of the musical 
 world. His debt to great composers was always ac 
 knowledged. For years after the concert he idolized 
 Ole Bull, and carried his photograph in his "reticule" 
 on reading tours as an omen of good fortune. No one 
 understood better than he the love of Ole Bull for his 
 instrument. When he escaped from a burning 
 boat on the Ohio, Riley was "happy as a hummingbird." 
 The picture of the Master hugging his violin as he ap 
 proached the Kentucky bank of the river was never 
 effaced from Riley s memory. "I would have thrown 
 up my hands," said he, relating the story to a railroad 
 conductor, "but Ole Bull was a Norseman; he had 
 courage. If ever you have a wreck and find in the 
 debris the unidentified body of a man with a fiddle in 
 his arms, bury it without further inquiry as the re 
 mains of Ole Bull." 
 
 In those days of "strange pale glamour," although 
 the Argonaut did not see it, he was, nevertheless, as 
 cending more rapidly than he dreamed to the niche he 
 
180 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 was destined to fill. Cromwell was not a poet, but he 
 gave to the inscrutable ways of destiny a poetic inter 
 pretation when he remarked that one "never mounts 
 so high as when he knows* not whither he is mount 
 ing." 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 ATTORNEY AT LAW 
 
 THAT the Hoosier Poet ever seriously thought of 
 groping among the technicalities of the law for 
 the Golden Fleece seems to lovers of verse unbe 
 lievable. They are aware (according to the myth) 
 that there was a wild sea to sail over, dragons to fight 
 and gods to assauge before the hero could bring the 
 Fleece home ; but for an Argonaut of the poetic order 
 to pommel felons in court and be pommeled by oppos 
 ing lawyers seems a perversion of gifts. Riley did not 
 practise law, but he had friends who were bent on his 
 doing so. 
 
 As has been seen, his first ambition was to be a baker. 
 At the age of five his joy was complete when he could 
 fashion a custard pie. His father, however, desired 
 him to be a lawyer and that desire preceded the ambi 
 tion to be a baker. It was another one of those erro 
 neous paternal dreams of a profession for a gifted son. 
 To enumerate them would make a book: Schiller 
 forced to study law till his dislike for it approached 
 absolute disgust. Longfellow, writing his father that 
 the legal coat would not fit him and the father insisting 
 that he wear it. "Nature," said the son, "did not de 
 sign me for the bar, or the pulpit, or the dissecting 
 room." The father of Ole Bull striving to make a law 
 yer of a violinist, and Lowell s father exacting a prom 
 ise from his son that he would "quit writing poetry 
 and go to work." For twenty years Reuben Riley 
 
 181 
 
182 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 dreamed of the law for his son Whitcomb. He dressed 
 the boy in a blue coat and trousers, and carried him to 
 the old log court house, lifted him to a seat in a win 
 dow, and was overjoyed when his brother attorneys 
 poked the little fellow in the ribs and called him "Judge 
 Riley." The son tells of the incident in his own inimi 
 table way: "A peculiar man was my father. About 
 the third thing I remember was that he made my first 
 suit of clothes. I was three years old at the time too 
 young, in fact, to be taken out of pinafores, but my 
 father insisted that I should have a pair of pants. My 
 mother protested, but father would have his way. He 
 stepped off quietly to a store and bought the cloth with 
 out saying a word. Then he cut out the suit and made 
 it with his own hands. The coat was a marvel of art. 
 Imagine it, a little three-year-old with long pants, a vest 
 with a red back and buckle, and cut like a man s. Then 
 he took me day after day to the courtroom where at 
 that impressionable age I saw many people with many 
 eccentricities. Imagine the queer figure I must have 
 cut among them with my hair white as milk and my face 
 freckled as a guinea egg." 
 
 "It was my father s ambition," Riley remarked on 
 another occasion, "to make me a lawyer, and I struggled 
 to satisfy his wishes; but bless you, that profession 
 was not my bent. I could not learn the stuff fast enough 
 to forget it." The jumble in his mind was accented by 
 the confusion of tongues in the courtroom. Attorneys 
 might see wisdom in the proceedings but to him all was 
 "dense with stupidity." The charge of a rural justice 
 to the jurymen (a story Riley sometimes repeated) 
 illustrates his confusion: "Gentlemen, if you believe 
 what the counsel for the plaintiff says, you will find for 
 the plaintiff. If you believe what the counsel for the 
 
ATTORNEY AT LAW 183 
 
 defendant says, you will find for the defendant. But if, 
 like me, you believe neither the counsel for the plaintiff 
 nor the counsel for the defendant, the Lord only knows 
 what you will find." 
 
 Riley in a courtroom was an illustration of Schiller s 
 story of Pegasus at the cart and the plow. Nature does 
 not design poets for such employment. But give them 
 range for the exercise of their genius, as Schiller points 
 out, and they will rise kingly, unfold the splendor of 
 their wings and soar toward heaven. What had Riley to 
 do with the wilderness of code and precedent? 
 
 "In the nice sharp quillets of the law, 
 Good faith ! he was no wiser than a daw." 
 
 Washington Irving was an adept in the profession com 
 pared with Riley. A friend, referring to Irving s ad 
 mission to the bar, remarked that "he knows a little 
 law." "Make it stronger," said the attorney "darn 
 little." What a farce, Riley, in substance, once observed 
 (drawling the quotation from a favorite novel), 
 a bench-leg poet among members of the bar, 
 tripping one another up on slippery precedents, 
 groping knee-deep in technicalities, running their 
 goat-hair and horse-hair warded heads against walls 
 of words, and making a pretense of equity with 
 serious faces ; think of me in a fog of bills, cross-bills, 
 answers, rejoinders, injunctions, affidavits, issues, ref 
 erences and reports think of me floundering in a 
 courtroom with that mountain of costly nonsense piled 
 before me! 
 
 To Riley the law seemed a device to pull wires, an 
 effort to dodge, evade and prevaricate "the suppres 
 sion of truth, a juggling with justice." It was the devil 
 take the attorney. As a brother poet expressed it : 
 
184 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 "Here lies John Shaw 
 Attorney at law, 
 
 And when he died 
 
 The devil cried, 
 Give us your paw 
 John Shaw 
 Attorney at law." 
 
 "The epitaph contained more truth than humor" 
 such was Riley s caustic opinion when in an intolerant 
 mood. "The law will never help the race," he was wont 
 to repeat, "till it hangs men, not for what they do, but 
 for what they are." 
 
 "The civil law" screamed Martin Luther, "good 
 God! what a wilderness it is become!" "Mark the 
 words," added Riley, when he read them; "there is a 
 call for house cleaning when a preacher exclaims 
 against it. You can t get truth by cross-examination. 
 An attorney can curl you up on the witness stand like 
 a burnt boot." 
 
 Thus he would go on till some of his friends in the 
 profession would hit back. "Stop your flings at the 
 law," said a notary; "in one week I have seen enough 
 in the life of an author to shame the devil in his palm 
 iest days !" 
 
 "So we plow along," returned Riley, "so we wag 
 through the world, half the time on foot and the other 
 half walking." 
 
 "He never studied law," said one of Riley s early 
 friends. In a sense, that is true. He read but he never 
 studied. He lost interest when he discovered that 
 "Blackstone would not rhyme with Minnesinger." He 
 was never admitted to the bar; he, of course, never 
 had a client. "My chief asset," he once moaned, "con 
 sisted of hopes for the future and hopeless they 
 
ATTORNEY AT LAW 185 
 
 were. I saw myself dwarfed and poor as Daniel 
 Quilp, my office like his, a little dingy box on a 
 side street in Tailholt, with nothing in it but an old 
 rickety desk and two wood blocks for chairs, a hat-peg, 
 an ancient almanac, an inkstand with no ink, and the 
 stump of one pen, and an old clock with the minute 
 hand twisted off for a toothpick." 
 
 "He never studied law!" The following anecdote 
 seems to confirm the observation : When making a new 
 book, Riley sometimes sent out a ferret for fugitive 
 poems. While serving him in this capacity, a stenog 
 rapher, searching through the old files of a newspaper 
 found the poem, "To the Judge," which the poet had 
 entirely forgotten could not recall that he ever wrote 
 it. Two lines of one stanza (as printed) ran as fol 
 lows: 
 
 "Can t you arrange to come down? 
 Pigrouhole Blackstone and Kent!" 
 
 "Pigrouhole ! Pigrouhole !" repeated Riley. "Who is 
 Pigrouhole? I was a May-day failure at the law, I 
 know, but I ought to know who Pigrouhole is." He 
 looked in an English cyclopedia, thinking Pigrouhole 
 was a contemporary of Blackstone. Then he searched 
 a French dictionary, thinking the barrister with the 
 vexatious name might be a Frenchman. At night he 
 called in a lawyer friend. "You are an attorney," said 
 he; "tell me who Pigrouhole is." "Let me see the 
 lines," said his friend, puzzled over the strange name. 
 He read them a second time 
 
 "Can t you arrange to come down? 
 Pigrouhole Blackstone and Kent! 
 Can t you forget you re a Judge 
 And put by your dolorous frown 
 And tan your wan face in the smile of a friend 
 Can t you arrange to come down?" 
 
186 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 "You mean pigeonhole said his friend ; "your word is 
 a verb. Read your poem you are asking the Judge, 
 the friend of your youth, to quit the dust of the town 
 for the country." 
 
 "Let us pray," added Riley. 
 
 The only time Riley ever had "a case in court," he 
 was both defendant and counsel for defendant. It was 
 a farce but deserves a place in his annals for its saving 
 grace of humor. Sometime prior to his study of Black- 
 stone, while returning in a band wagon from a concert, 
 a dispute arose with one of the band boys which ended, 
 said one of them, "in a fair display of courage 
 and violence." His antagonist turned upon him with 
 such scurrilous terms as "thief" and "liar." "I could 
 lick you for saying that," said Riley, "if I could spare 
 the time." It turned out that he had to spare the time. 
 In the scuffle which followed, he pitched his foe out of 
 the wagon. The poet recalls the incident in his lines 
 on "The Strange Young Man." For obvious reasons 
 he calls the wagon a "jumper "-sled, and disguises him 
 self in the chap with the dyed mustache, 
 
 "Who got whipped twice for the things he said 
 To the fellows that told him his hair was red." 
 
 The offense being a sweet morsel for the town marshal, 
 Riley was accused of "assault and battery" and brought 
 before the Mayor for trial. The defendant asked for 
 jury trial, and six "law-abiding freeholders" were 
 selected to decide his fate. He chose for counsel an 
 eccentric young fellow of the county, who had been 
 established in a pretentious looking office with a new 
 library, by his father, a wealthy farmer. The father 
 had placed money to his son s credit in the bank and 
 told him "to cut loose." The "Squire" (for so his 
 cronies called him) like the defendant was short on 
 
ATTORNEY AT LAW 187 
 
 clients as well as knowledge of the law. Riley s was 
 his first case and his last. 
 
 At the trial the spectators consisted chiefly of the 
 "Squire s" friends (so called), loafers around his 
 office, who for some time had dreamed of getting their 
 money s worth from his hour of confusion. When 
 the lank and lean "Squire" appeared with his arms full 
 of law books, they gave him their full measure of ap 
 plause, which was promptly met with the Mayor s 
 threat to "clear the galleries" if repeated. After wit 
 nesses had been examined and counsel for plaintiff had 
 finished, the "Squire" rose to make his maiden speech. 
 "While he was getting himself together for the great 
 est effort of his life," said one of the cronies, "Riley 
 rose before the jury and began the argument." He 
 reversed the situation, made the "Squire" the defend 
 ant and himself the counsel. 
 
 "Sit down," said the "Squire," pulling Riley by the 
 arm; "sit down; I m your lawyer." 
 
 "Never mind, Squire/ " returned Riley soothingly ; 
 "be calm ; I ll clear you all right." Turning again to 
 the jury, Riley was "about to lay the wreath of praise 
 on an untarnished name," when the "Squire" stepped 
 before him more imperative than ever "Sit down," 
 repeated the "Squire," "sit down you re crazy!" 
 
 "Your honor," said Riley, addressing the Mayor, 
 "I do not make a business of insanity. If I did, you 
 would not let me run at large in the streets of Green 
 field." Turning to the "Squire," he was more vehe 
 ment: "Sir, your imputation of lunacy I spurn with 
 loathing. Though American born, the blood of Wallace 
 and Bruce runs in my veins ; 
 
 And if thou said st I am not peer 
 To any lord in Scotland here, 
 Lowland or Highland, far or near, 
 Lord Angus, thou hast lied ! " 
 
188 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 Contrary to all expectations, the "Squire" sat down. 
 Riley continued, deftly directing the thought of his 
 hearers to himself as culprit and defendant: "My 
 Lords and Gentlemen," (turning to the jury) "we have 
 arrived at this awful crisis ; 
 
 Absent thee from felicity awhile, 
 In this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, 
 To hear my story. 
 
 Having bowed to the jury, he made a pretense of 
 addressing them at length by recalling the court lan 
 guage of Sampson Brass in Old Curiosity Shop. "It 
 is my duty, sirs," he said, smiling roguishly, "in the 
 position in which I stand, and as an honorable member 
 of the legal profession the first profession in this 
 country, sirs, or in any other country, or in any of the 
 planets that shine above us at night and are supposed 
 to be inhabitated it is my duty, sirs, as an honorable 
 member of that profession to throw a little light on a 
 disagreeable phase of civilization. I would offer some 
 reflections," he continued solemnly, "on the poor crab- 
 tree of human nature, its weakness and the difficulties 
 attending its obedience to moral perceptions." But 
 scarcely had he launched his argument when, the whole 
 scene ending in an uproar of laughter, the Mayor dis 
 missed the case and cleared the room. 
 
 The poet s "lyre" of after years, Bill Nye, was con 
 vinced this story of "Pegasus in court" was not a tradi 
 tion, "not by a mile," said he, "and a Dutch mile at 
 that. How do I know? Because Riley is so provokingly 
 silent about it. Mention it and he is as dignified as 
 the king of clubs; he is as grave as the private ceme 
 tery of a deaf and dumb asylum." 
 
 Riley entered his father s law office in the spring and 
 
ATTORNEY AT LAW 189 
 
 remained until September, 1875. He gave the law a 
 second trial the year following, "but that," he said, "did 
 not count/ It counted for literature however, as will 
 be seen in a subsequent chapter. Not all the time was 
 devoted to law books "those inexpressive looking 
 books/ as Dickens told him, "that never had anything 
 to say for themselves." An hour or two each day he 
 studied the figures of rhetoric, punctuation and 
 prosody, as taught in Harvey s Grammar. "As to 
 syntax," said he, "there was nothing to it. I soon dis 
 covered that metaphor and hyperbole were my long 
 suit. Prosody was a barren waste dactyls, spondees, 
 iambics and trochaics the acme of confusion. Measure 
 and rhythm I had by nature the names I did not 
 need." What was more significant was the new inter 
 pretation he attached to a familiar quotation, one he 
 had sometimes seen on the blackboard in the school 
 room. The hour had arrived to put it in practice. He 
 began seriously to think for himself: 
 
 .... "One good idea 
 But known to be his own 
 Better than a thousand gleaned 
 From fields by others sown." 
 
 In July the law student s meditations were seriously 
 and tragically interrupted. A negro was captured in 
 the woods near Blue River, brought to Greenfield 
 and hung in the Fair Ground. Riley was not 
 one of the mob but was persuaded the next morning 
 to go out and see the body. "I would give a United 
 States mint," he said, "to efface that picture from my 
 memory. Reynolds was persuaded by Boswell to at 
 tend the execution of a robber at Newgate. The people 
 criticized him and rightly. What has art or poetry 
 
190 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 to do with the murder of a human being!" To 
 make the lesson doubly impressive, Riley went on to 
 recall the hanging of an outlaw in the Red Buck coun 
 try and how an editor had "duly reported it all and 
 sounded a note of warning," as told by Bret Harte. 
 "But the beauty of that mid-summer morning," Harte 
 had added, "the blessed amity of earth and air and sky, 
 the awakened life of the free woods and hills, the joy 
 ous renewal and promise of Nature, and above all, the 
 infinite Serenity that thrilled through each, that was 
 not reported, as not being a part of the social lesson." 
 To Riley s way of thinking, "laws were too 
 frequently made to trap the innocent." The gen 
 tlemen of the courts, as he saw it, were work 
 ing at the wrong end of the problem. "Let the jail go 
 the way of the dungeon. Give men better food; give 
 them better guides, better fathers and mothers, better 
 homes when lying in their cradles." Nor could the 
 people fold their arms under the plea of innocence. 
 "Like Paul," he said, "they stand by, consenting to the 
 death." This view so tragically wrought upon him 
 in those student days was later expressed in "His 
 Mother," a poem he thought Boards of Pardon and 
 others interested in penal institutions had strangely 
 overlooked. Briefly the thought in it is this: The 
 Law takes the life of a wayward boy for a brutal 
 offense, the mother comes for her dead her own son, 
 
 "God s free gift to her alone 
 Sanctified by motherhood. 
 
 "I come not with downward eyes, 
 To plead for him shamedly, 
 God did not apologize 
 When He gave the boy to me." 
 
ATTORNEY AT LAW 191 
 
 Thus in anguish the mother cries out against the "red- 
 handed" crime of the state. Since the Law has killed 
 both mother and son, how will it face the Judge of all 
 the earth in the Hereafter? 
 
 "For days," said Riley, recalling the gloom, "the 
 memory of the lynching hung over the law office like 
 a London fog." His native town had trampled without 
 remorse upon a mother s love the most sacred and 
 precious emotion in life. "A London fog!" he moaned. 
 "The bewildering stages of the law and the staggering 
 roar of human beings when they turn their fury into 
 the screech of the mob w y> a London fog is but mist 
 over a frog pond compared to that!" There was fog 
 everywhere, fog up and down Brandywine, fog on the 
 lowlands and on the heights, fog creeping through the 
 houses, fog above the church steeples, fog in the eyes 
 and hearts and minds of men, fog on the prospect of 
 human improvement. It was the outcry of outraged 
 feeling, the pang of despair and it lasted for a fort 
 night after the lynching. Then succeeded a period of 
 unrest. As the weeks wore away the law student 
 began to sigh again for the unhackneyed existence of 
 outdoor life, something wild and full of adventure. He 
 was ready to spread his sails wherever any vagrant 
 breeze might carry him. "Would that woes might 
 end," he murmured, 
 
 "That life might be all poetry 
 And weariness a name." 
 
 Indoor employment brought a decline in health. The 
 doctors said he could. not live unless he got more sun 
 shine. Friends advised him to travel. "They might 
 as well," said he, "have advised me to promote a rail 
 road. I couldn t buy a ticket to the county line." A 
 
192 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 few wiseacres said, "Stick to the law; it will bring you 
 wealth and fame" ; but health was not to be weighed in 
 the balance with profit from a profession. 
 
 "Health, it beats wealth; 
 And what will fame profit us 
 When the same comes to us 
 In our sarcophagus?" 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 WITH THE WIZAKD OIL COMPANY 
 
 ROMANTIC history in all times has its legends 
 of wandering heroes who delight to make their 
 beds under starry skies. Again and again they 
 beguile the roadsides and airy heights with a scanty 
 supply of provisions and an inexhaustible stock 
 of ballads and songs. They follow "the traveling 
 mountains of the sky." Their hearts respond wildly 
 to the "Song of the Road" - 
 
 "For one and all, or high or low, 
 Will lead them where they wish to go ; 
 And one and all go night and day 
 Over the hills and far away." 
 
 The zestful "Song" was in the air over Green 
 field the last week of summer, 1875. Pegasus, 
 lean, thirsty and hungry, had been unhitched from 
 the post in front of the law office. The gipsy 
 spirit was abroad. There were calls from Fort- 
 ville, Pendleton, Middletown, Newcastle, Farmland, 
 Winchester, Union City, and towns in Ohio, and the 
 law student was eager to answer them. The Argo- 
 nautic propensity returned the desire to wrestle with 
 the ways of the world and give his fancy range in new 
 lands. He literally longed to have no settled place of 
 abode, to live and wander about from place to place, 
 sleeping at night in barns or at the roadside. Nature 
 intended him to be a vagabond. If the worst came to 
 
 193 
 
194 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 the worst, he, like Washington Irving, could turn 
 stroller and pick up a living along the highways. 
 
 "Humanity in its developing stage," an early friend 
 wrote him, "is a good deal like yeast liable to bubble 
 up and boil over without giving you warning." He 
 was in the bubbling stage. The hour had come to go 
 he was resolved on flight. But how fly? Fancies are 
 free but fares cost money. 
 
 "It is my opinion," said Riley, recurring to those 
 days, "that the ways for our feet are found not made. 
 We strut about like peacocks and boast of our achieve 
 ments and fame; 
 
 Is it by man s wisdom that the hawk soareth, 
 And stretcheth her wings toward the south? 
 
 There I was in Greenfield, Uue as the zenith over my 
 head, no money, no way to leave town except walk, 
 and right out on the National Road the dust was flying 
 and the fates fashioning my way of escape. Down 
 that road came the Wizard Oil Company, a band of 
 musicians and comedians in a traveling chariot drawn 
 by horses that cantered and ran as if they were bal 
 lasted with quicksilver. The manager of the company 
 had discharged a man at Knightstown. I took the va 
 cant place, mounted to a seat beside the manager and 
 bowled away to Fortville." 
 
 The company, hailing from Lima, Ohio, had been an 
 annual visitor to Greenfield since 1870. The local 
 Adelphian Band had caught the theatrical spirit and 
 gone straight to the hearts of Greenfielders with an 
 original number entitled "The Wizard Oil Man." The 
 "Wizards" had mingled freely with Greenfield musi 
 cians, sometimes helping out in serenades and playing 
 at socials and church entertainments. They usually 
 
WITH THE WIZARD OIL COMPANY 195 
 
 appeared the week of the Fair, but Riley had no assur 
 ance that they would reappear in 1875. "All was 
 hanging," he remarked, "on what the wind said." 
 
 Lovers of their native heath may be inclined to re 
 proach Riley for leaving Greenfield with such glee. 
 Truth to tell, never before nor afterward did he leave 
 with such satisfaction. He was sick in body but also 
 sick at heart. He was a fugitive from the "London 
 fog." Before leaving he went to bid a chum good-by. 
 "Quit the town," said he half seriously; "stay here 
 and they ll swing you to a tree in the Fair Ground." 
 But the joys of the road soon restored his spirits to a 
 hopeful view of the human species. Within two weeks 
 his affection for the old town was as warm as ever. 
 
 Before he reached Fortville he was in a roguish 
 vein. He was one of "the jolly party of chirping vaga 
 bonds." The Wizard Company gave him a brimming 
 welcome, "smiled all round in a gust of friendship," 
 glad to roam the country with such a merry-maker. 
 "He waded immediately," said one of the comedians, 
 "boot-top deep into our affections. We laughed at his 
 stories; everybody humored him, everybody bet on 
 him." Before nightfall his heart was running riot 
 with pleasure as in the "Standard Remedy" days three 
 years before. He "snapped at verse as ravenously as 
 if he were a crafty lawyer nipping the unguarded ad 
 mission of a witness." His talk was in superlatives. 
 Like Stevenson, he proclaimed himself a bird of Para 
 dise. He was lured forward and backward by an un 
 bridled imagination. He shared the destiny of all the 
 living he chased his favorite phantom. The highway 
 fairly scintillated with jingle. 
 
 Feigning he was a thousand miles from home and 
 calling back down the dusty road to a resident of his 
 
196 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 native town, who had just swished by the wagon like 
 a "highway comet," he craved a special favor: 
 
 "If you ever live to see 
 The sunny town of Greenfield take a message there 
 
 for me, 
 Take a message and a token to some distant friends of 
 
 mine, 
 For I was born at Greenfield, the year of Forty-nine." 
 
 At Pendleton he came from a barber shop with: 
 
 "Greenfield barbers cut my hair 
 And Pendleton and Hewitt 
 But none kin cut it anywhere 
 Like Fortville Frank kin do it." 
 
 Near Newcastle, passing a bareheaded camper at the 
 roadside who was curling his mustache before a 
 broken mirror, he tossed his nomadic brother a sam 
 ple of his dialect 
 
 "I washed my face and combed my hair 
 Keerf ully over the bald place there ; 
 Put on a collar fixed up some, 
 And went to church I did by gum !" 
 
 Pausing a moment near the site of an old trading 
 point where tradition said Red Men had been burnt at 
 the stake, he mourned their fate. However they had 
 not died in vain. It was something that comedians 
 could stand on mother earth where the Red martyrs 
 had perished, 
 
 "Where from their ashes may be made 
 The violets of their native land." 
 
 It was great joy to pen capricious lines. Great pleas 
 ure, too, to make pencil sketches, a row of sunflowers 
 for instance, "chinning the fence" like happy children 
 at the roadside. 
 
WITH THE WIZARD OIL COMPANY 197 
 
 Driving right and left over undulating counties with 
 September skies above it was like a cruise on a bil 
 lowy sea. Fairy isles were ever looming up mistily 
 in the far-away. The Argonaut was steeped in an 
 atmosphere of dreams "such gracious intervals for 
 reflection," he remarked of the time, "such endless 
 hours of languor." He was a lover fanned by the 
 warm winds of the deep ; 
 
 "And so we glide 
 Careless of wave or wind, 
 Or change of any kind, 
 Or turn of any tide. 
 
 Where shall we land?" 
 
 After a cruise of two weeks he landed at Union City, 
 on the state line, "a fussy old-hen-of-a-town," he 
 wrote two years later, "clucking over its little brood 
 of railroads, as though worried to see them running 
 over the line, and bristling with the importance of its 
 charge." The immediate view of the place was almost 
 entirely concealed from him by a big square-faced hotel 
 not an attractive town although it had "one division 
 of the Sons of Temperance, one factory, two news-, 
 papers, two banks, two hotels, three lodges, five 
 churches and nine dry goods stores and groceries." 
 Notwithstanding its unsightly appearance, Union City 
 promptly took a seat in the family circle of Riley an 
 nals. Here, within a few weeks "in the rear of the 
 spacious and brightly illuminated store, Bower s Em 
 porium," he found material for his most popular sketch 
 in prose, "A Remarkable Man." 
 
 On arrival, he immediately took time to answer a 
 letter from his Greenfield chum, J. J. Skinner, who of 
 all the friends left behind was the one most likely to 
 send good news from home. His friend was not living 
 
198 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 on "the shadowy side of the street." The letter, omit 
 ting "foreign items/ is Riley s own account of the 
 two-weeks outing: 
 
 Union City, Sept. 14, 1875. 
 Dear John: 
 
 We have just driven in here and it is good in finding 
 your letter in waiting for me. It is full of news "and 
 that of the very best." I am having first rate times 
 considering the boys I am with. They, you know, are 
 hardly my kind, but they are pleasant and agreeable 
 and with Doctor Townsend for sensible talk occasion 
 ally, I have really a happy time. We sing along the 
 road when we tire of talking, and when we tire of 
 that and the scenery, we lay ourselves along the seats 
 and dream the happy hours away as blissfully as the 
 time honored baby in the sugar trough. I shall not 
 attempt an explicit description of all that I have passed 
 through, but will give a brief outline. We "struck" 
 Fortville first, as you already know stayed over night 
 and came near dying of loneliness. There is where I 
 "squeeled" on street business, that is, that portion of 
 it where I was expected to bruise the bass drum. Well, 
 I have been "in clover" ever since, and do what I 
 please and when I please. I made myself thoroughly 
 solid with "Doxy" (the playful patronymic I have 
 given the Doctor) by introducing a blackboard system 
 of advertising which promises to be the best card out. 
 I have two boards about three feet by four, which 
 during the street concert, I fasten on the sides of the 
 wagon and letter and illustrate during the performance 
 and through the lecture. There are dozens in the crowd 
 that stay to watch the work going on that otherwise 
 would drift from the fold during the drier portion of 
 the Doctor s harangue. Last night at Winchester I 
 made a decided sensation by making a rebus of the well- 
 known lines from Shakespeare 
 
 "Why let pain your pleasures spoil, 
 For want of Townsend s Magic Oil?" 
 
 with a life-sized bust of the author ; and at another time 
 
WITH THE WIZARD OIL COMPANY 199 
 
 a bottle of Townsend s Cholera Balm on legs, and a very 
 bland smile on its cork, making a "Can t come it" jest- 
 ure at the skeleton Death, who drops his scythe and 
 hour glass and turns to flee. Oh! I m stared at like 
 the fat woman on the side-show banner. Sunday night 
 we stayed at Morristown, a little place with two stores 
 and one church, I shan t include hotel, although the 
 proprietor of the coop we lodged in insisted on calling 
 it that. There was nothing left us here but to plunge 
 into the vortex of dissipation the inhabitants, or na 
 tives rather, indulge themselves; and so we went to 
 church, 
 
 "And heard the Parson pray and preach, 
 And heard his daughter s yoice 
 Singing in the village choir, 
 For we had no other choice." 
 
 We gave them a little music in the morning in our glee 
 at leaving the town, and far back in the perspective 
 I caught the flutter of rags on a tow-headed boy. 
 I breathed a silent prayer for my deliverance. Ah, my 
 boy ! the feeling of the breeze on my face. 
 
 We shall stay here during the Fair doing street work 
 at night only in the city. I was here you know some 
 two or three years since and I expect to find a girl 
 or two who will still remember me, but it doesn t really 
 matter whether they do or not, for a smile or two sel 
 dom fails to "bring them down" especially Fair time. 
 I have met several of the boys I used to know. I am in 
 for a good time. You see I have nothing to do but 
 my boards and I sometimes drift away from the wagon 
 for hours and "Doxy, white as snow, never kicks." 
 
 The law student had now been away from home a 
 fortnight. He was returning to pleasures of the road. 
 The relief from the gloomy solitude of the law office 
 how could he sufficiently thank Heaven for that. Little 
 Nell with the dream of fields and woods and riversides 
 ahead was not more joyous. 
 
 "I shall never forget," said Riley, "how ashamed I 
 
200 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 was in Fortville to have a cousin of mine see me beating 
 the bass drum with that show. But that was the 
 blur of a moment. It turned out just as I had fore 
 seen. The Doctor was a good fellow and he helped me 
 amazingly. By the time we struck Ohio I was strong 
 and well. He had a way of giving a healthy moral twist 
 to what we were doing. His black chargers were the 
 apple of his eye. Brave horsemanship, my boy/ he 
 would fondly say as we bowled along, gives rise to 
 sparks of resolution and wakens the mind to noble 
 action. " 
 
 Doctor Townsend was a pioneer in his line, "a gem 
 in the rough," his comedians said, "as loving and kind 
 in heart as any man living." He traveled in good style. 
 In addition to his fine horses, his equipment consisted 
 of a covered wagon with side seats for his company 
 and always an ample supply of the "Cure Alls," the 
 "life savers," such as Magic Oil, Sarsaparilla, Liver 
 Pills, Cholera Balm, and Cough King. Of musical 
 instruments there were the bass drum, the bass horn, 
 banjo, violin, tubia, and B-flat cornet. 
 
 The Doctor was a "proficient B-flat," and a good 
 singer of either bass or soprano. "Riley was a good 
 singer," said a comedian, "but would not risk his voice 
 or reputation in the open air." He was content to 
 teach other members of the company rare old songs 
 such as "Our Uncle Sam," and at the evening perform 
 ance charm his hearers on the violin with such old- 
 timers as "The Devil s Jig," "Fisher s Hornpipe," and 
 "The Arkansas Traveler" on four strings, "with 
 apologies to Ole Bull." 
 
 The company started for the next town in the morn 
 ing, arranging to reach it at noon just as the "scholars" 
 came from school. The toot of a horn woke up the 
 
WITH THE WIZARD OIL COMPANY 201 
 
 farm-houses along the road and circulars were scattered 
 broadcast. At the edge of town the band began to 
 play and parade the streets. The Doctor gave two 
 "lectures" a day, one in the afternoon, but the principal 
 one at night, when they lit the torch lamps and brought 
 out the decorations. In county-seats, when it was Fair 
 week, the people came in throngs. When they crowded 
 the performers, Riley with his blackboards and cartoons 
 was elevated to a position on the wagon to divide 
 honors with the Doctor. In Ohio, Riley was introduced 
 as the "Hoosier Wizard," and the performance he gave 
 with his voice and brush was remembered when other 
 features of the show were forgotten. "He was the 
 center of light," it was said, 
 
 "The weary had life, and the hungry had bliss, 
 The mourners had cheer, and lovers a kiss." 
 
 Fair week; the throng was always interesting. The 
 weather being warm, the women and girls wore white 
 dresses, and, said a spectator, "they were ornamented 
 with the furbelows of fashion." "When the moon rose 
 to blend her light with the decorations and costumes," 
 said Riley, "I was transported to the land of the 
 Arabian Nights. It was an Aladdin show." Sometimes 
 he recited "Tradin* Joe," then entitled "Courting on the 
 Kankakee." Sometimes he appeared in a character 
 sketch, assuming the role of an old man or a school 
 boy. Occasionally, turning up his coat collar and wrap 
 ping a red bandana about his neck, he entertained his 
 hearers from the steps of the wagon, introducing an 
 original ballad, followed by a comic song. "The bal 
 lads," said he, years after, "came from incidents and 
 experiences on the road. They were written on dull, 
 hot Sundays in selfish country towns where the church 
 
202 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 bells barked at strangers while lazy men lolled round in 
 narrow bits of shade." 
 
 At Fort Recovery where the rain drove the come 
 dians to a hall above a drug store, the lads and lassies 
 danced to the music of Riley s violin. At Covington, 
 where they remained several days, entertainments 
 were given on the top floor of the new school building. 
 At another point the Doctor succeeded in renting a 
 church for his show. 
 
 The "Wizards" were the Troubadours of 1875. Like 
 their brothers in sunny France, their wits were sharp 
 ened, their versatility broadened and their store of 
 songs and anecdotes replenished by what they saw and 
 heard. Their merry-making was alluring. "Bright 
 eyes flashed for them and many times picket gates 
 swung softly open as they approached." 
 
 They reached the Magic Oil laboratory the first week 
 in October. For the rest of the season Lima was to 
 be the hub of their travels. Fifty or sixty miles out 
 touched the rim of the wheel. Again Riley cast a 
 backward look to Greenfield. The Forty-Niner was a 
 man in years but in spirit a boy. He was not yet de 
 tached from the influence of his "salad days," as in 
 stanced in extracts from a letter written on his birth 
 day at 
 
 Lima, Ohio, October 7, 1875. 
 Dear John : (To J. J. Skinner.) 
 
 I shall not enter into any particulars with regard to 
 the pleasure with which your letter was received let 
 it suffice you to know that I gorged it "blood raw," I 
 was so hungry to hear from you. What a gust of news 
 it contained ; it almost raised my hair two first class 
 sensations spiced with little breezy notes which I de 
 voured with special relish. I thought this place with 
 out an equal in regard to its "increase in crime," but 
 
WITH THE WIZARD OIL COMPANY 203 
 
 I must knock under for the present for old Greenfield. 
 A saloon keeper was shot here last week and no particu 
 lar stir made about it, nor the man missed. There may 
 be an ordinance though that all saloon keepers be killed 
 when found without muzzles. And just here let me 
 remark that what little prosperity I now enjoy in the 
 shape of a plug hat is an intimation of my estrange 
 ment from the saloon keeper. May God help me on my 
 good way. 
 
 I "stand in" with the best men of the town and am 
 rapidly growing in public favor. I ll be out in book 
 form yet. I wish you were here to room with me at 
 the nobbiest little boarding house in the world every 
 thing is perfect even to the old lady, the hostess, who 
 capers under the jocund patronymic of "Aunt Jane." 
 Speaking of boarding houses, how is the Test House? 
 I would like to strike old 13 to-night with its enchanted 
 bed. I need something of that kind now. I think of 
 you often and of the rare old times we had, and I 
 still nurse a hope that we may have a grand rehearsal 
 of them again. Say to Angie that she haunts me; I 
 saw her in a dream the other night and she had wings 
 seven feet long and I was just going to ask her to fly 
 some when the breakfast bell rang and 
 
 She vanished as slick 
 
 As a slight of hand trick." 
 
 As the Wizard Company moved on through western 
 Ohio, Riley s interest in towns subsided. His want of 
 curiosity, which distinctly characterized his mature 
 years, seems to date from this time. When the com 
 pany made ado over historical things, he remained pas 
 sive. Some said he was in a trance. He was, if by 
 trance is meant (as he wrote) 
 
 The harvest of a quiet eye 
 That broods and sleeps upon the heart." 
 
 Fort Recovery, a center of maneuvers by "Mad 
 Anthony Wayne"; Piqua, or Pickaway, the Indian 
 
204 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 village on Mad River, the birthplace of Tecumseh; 
 Greenville, the site of the Great Indian Treaty where 
 "speeches were made by Red Men," the comedians told 
 him, "that would have done honor to the civilized legis 
 lative assemblies of the world" ; Sidney, Belief ontaine, 
 Van Wert, Findlay all were passed with provoking 
 indifference. "He was listless and drowsy," said his 
 friends, "as the buzzard that swung around upon the 
 atmosphere." But when they reached Upper San- 
 dusky he woke up. "Now," said he, "you have come 
 to a town with history worth recording." It was hal 
 lowed ground. Charles Dickens, on his American tour, 
 had passed that way by stage from Cincinnati to the 
 Lakes. Riley wanted to see the old Log Inn where Dick 
 ens stayed over night, the "large, low, ghostly room in 
 which he slept with his dressing-case full of gold, 
 gleaned from public readings." He wanted to see the 
 Indians with shaggy ponies that reminded the novelist 
 of English gipsies see where the novelist traveled in 
 the thunder-storm at night and the illusions in the 
 black-stump clearings. It was too late to see the cordu 
 roy road where "the ponderous carriage fell from log 
 to log," affording the novelist the sensation he might 
 have in an omnibus if attempting to go to the top 
 of a cathedral. It is good description if read with 
 but half the interest Riley bestowed on it: 
 
 "The stumps of trees," says Dickens, "are a curious 
 feature in American travelling. The varying illusions 
 they represent to the unaccustomed eye as it grows 
 dark, are quite astonishing in their number and reality. 
 Now there is a Grecian urn erected in the center of a 
 lonely field ; now there is a woman weeping at a tomb ; 
 now a very common-place old gentleman in white waist 
 coat, with thumb thrust into each armhole of his coat ; 
 
WITH THE WIZARD OIL COMPANY 205 
 
 now a student poring on a book ; now a crouching ne 
 gro; now a horse, a dog, a cannon, an armed man; a 
 hunch-back throwing off his cloak and stepping forth 
 into the light. They were often entertaining to me," 
 so the novelist continues, "as so many glasses in a 
 magic lantern, and never took their shapes at my bid 
 ding, but seemed to force themselves upon me, whether 
 I would or no ; and strange to say, I sometimes realized 
 in them counterparts of figures once familiar to me in 
 pictures attached to childish books, forgotten long ago. 
 
 "It soon became dark, however. The trees were so 
 close together that their dry branches rattled against 
 the coach on either side, and obliged us all to keep 
 our heads within. It lightened, too, for three whole 
 hours ; each flash being very bright, and blue and long ; 
 and as the vivid streaks came darting in among the 
 crowded branches, and the thunder rolled gloomily 
 above the treetops, one could scarcely help thinking 
 that there were better neighborhoods at such a time 
 than the thick woods. 
 
 "At length," Dickens concludes, "between ten and 
 eleven o clock at night, a few feeble lights appeared 
 in the distance, and Upper Sandusky, an Indian village, 
 where we were to stay till morning, lay before us." 
 
 Upper Sandusky afforded Riley an opportunity for 
 the rambles of imagination. Dickens description of 
 the thunder-storm he enjoyed thoroughly. He could 
 match it with a personal experience while traveling 
 by night through an Indiana forest. The black-stump 
 clearings with their illusions in the twilight (not the 
 identical fields, but others like them) were there in the 
 vicinity of Sandusky, awakening the same sensations 
 in Riley that pleased the novelist. His heart went back 
 to his boyhood days and his unshaken faith in fairies. 
 
206 JAMES WHITCOMB KILEY 
 
 "That faith," said he, when he began to maintain a 
 fairy interest in his work, ""had a great deal to do in 
 turning my mind to poetry. In my poems I have tried 
 to get back into the spirit of those dreams. My father 
 did not have a large library, but a choice one, and 
 among the books were some that he forbade me to read. 
 They were books of fairy tales and mythology. Soon 
 as he was out of sight, however, I was again sporting 
 with the elves and fairies. It was a wonderful world; 
 I was charmed with it because I thought it was real. By 
 reading the tales I developed my imagination. I saw 
 fairies and elves everywhere. I mark this as the hap 
 piest period of my life, and I wish now that I could 
 believe in those little sprites, and that the charm had 
 never been dispelled. Why, I would watch a stump at 
 a distance for hours, as Dickens did, and imagine I 
 could see a little boy like myself running about it, and 
 then he would disappear and I would go and pry around 
 to find the magic stairway which led down to Pluto s 
 realm." 
 
 While Riley grew less enthusiastic over the towns, 
 his interest in the Wizard Company did not diminish, 
 particularly in the proprietor. Each day he and the Doc 
 tor grew more companionable. They cracked jokes, it 
 was said, "with the freedom of the seas." And they 
 recalled fairy tales one with a personal application. 
 The Doctor was the "Puppet Showman," a traveling 
 theater director, and his comedians the puppets whom 
 he called before the curtain after the play and hauled 
 from town to town in his wagon. There was the mys 
 tery about the piece of iron that fell through the spiral 
 and became magnetic (as told in the tale) . "How does 
 it happen ? Nobody knows. The spirit comes upon the 
 iron but whence does it come? It is a miracle. 
 
WITH THE WIZARD OIL COMPANY 207 
 
 So it is with mankind. People are made to tumble 
 through the spiral of this world, and the spirit comes 
 upon them, and there stands a Napoleon or Luther, or 
 a man of that kind. Men are miracles ; the whole world 
 is a series of miracles but we in our pride or ignorance 
 call them every-day matters." 
 
 All ignorantly, seeing all as through a glass darkly, 
 Riley was tumbling through the spiral of events in his 
 own time as Napoleon and Luther in their time. And 
 those events (call it miraculous if you like Riley did) , 
 those events, uncouth, unconventional, rudimental, 
 magnetized him with the spirit of harmony. 
 
 Thus outside the university was he being educated, 
 not for purposes of the law or statesmanship but for 
 flights in the realm of song. Faithful to the Muse, he 
 was obeying impulses received from his favorite 
 "Painters and Sculptors." The old books had lost none 
 of their impelling power. Romney at the same age, 
 twenty-six, was classed among the illiterate, yet knowl 
 edge he certainly had. Like him Riley was gifted with 
 native talents, a keen eye, and a fertile imagination. 
 The Unseen Powers were keeping him in constant touch 
 with people and things. In short, they were passing 
 him through "the spiral of this world." At every 
 street corner and cross-roads he gleaned something 
 from somebody. "There are no common men," he re 
 plied when blamed for association with common folks. 
 "I take notice that Jesus sought out the so-called poor 
 and ignorant. They were just the kind of people He 
 wanted. They were not poor or ignorant in His sight." 
 Like his father, Riley liked few things better than a 
 talk with a blacksmith, carpenter or farmer a section 
 boss or a janitor. He found threads of gold in the 
 riffraff. He never entered a cabin or traveled in a 
 
208 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 farm wagon, never talked with a plowman, or loitered 
 with a weaver at the loom without learning 
 something he did not know. Like Robert Burns, 
 whose genius he rivaled in so many ways, he "was 
 sent into the world to see and observe ; he easily com 
 pounded with any one who showed him mature nature 
 in a different light from what he had seen before. The 
 joy of his heart was to study men, their manners and 
 their ways, and for this darling object he cheerfully 
 sacrificed every other consideration." 
 
 "Riley is out making a fool of himself somewhere," 
 said a wiseacre back in Greenfield; "it is his one ac 
 complishment." But Riley knew what he was about 
 when he joined himself to the Wizard Oil Company. 
 Good companion that he was, he took from them and 
 the people along the way more than he gave. He found 
 opportunity to give expression to the irrepressible flow 
 of joy in his nature. As the days passed, his soul 
 filled with tender sensations. He was "tremblingly 
 alive to the beauty of everything" in nature and human 
 nature, "with faith in all that was good and enthusiasm 
 for all that was lovely." Instead of regrets, the Riley 
 wanderings should occasion rejoicing, for the settled 
 and reposed man (according to Plato) knocks in vain 
 at the gate of Poesy. 
 
 The author of "The Spirit of Poetry," college gradu 
 ate though he was, did not divorce it from the wayward 
 days of youth. Riley prolonged those days. Wherever 
 he found hearts filled with good-will, homely humor 
 and festive enjoyment, there he found poetry. Often 
 times it was crude but poetry nevertheless and he was 
 always happy when he found it in obscure nooks and 
 crevices. The stately garden, cultivated and enhanced 
 by the hand of man, was "a thing of beauty" for a 
 
WITH THE WIZARD OIL COMPANY 209 
 
 time, but who would strip the earth of its tangled for 
 ests and the wild beauty of fields and woodlands? At 
 a subsequent date in his career, recalling his Ohio days, 
 Riley sought to give a transcript of those wanderings, 
 emphasizing in humorous vein, the value of poetry. It 
 is a prose fragment a few names with which he dis 
 guised the "puppet showmen," the title and a begin 
 ning. "The scene," he said, "was the second floor of a 
 food joint in Ohio." He entitled the fragment: 
 
 A Session of "THE SINGING PILGRIMS." 
 
 MEMBERS (Mainly present) 
 T. L. Wilson A. E. Sargeant 
 
 P. B. Miller Chas. Marks 
 
 Robt. McCrea A. Hilton 
 
 D. G. Lewis T. Van Arden 
 
 M. W. Smith J. O. Edgerton 
 
 J. W. Foxcroft L. C. Graves 
 
 Scene Back loft "The Little DORDEMIA" All-Night 
 Restaurant. 
 
 Time, 10 P. M. Spread ordered for 2 A. M. 
 
 MR. LEWIS: somewhat timidly, rising from THE 
 CHAIR and looking painfully at home in his new posi 
 tion as president 
 
 Gentlemen I er that is : The gift of Song is, as 
 you are doubtless aware, a divine gift a sacred gift, 
 I may say; a gift, in fact that in whomsoever s posi 
 tion it may rest, I care not, a gift, I say, that should 
 be regarded by him or her as a hallowed trust, at 
 once elevating and ennobling. We who are met thus 
 together are, as I take it, avowedly of ourselves, at 
 least disciples, and practitioners each in his own 
 humble degree of this glorious art. This Glorious Art, 
 I say, of of Song! (A mild stimulus of applause). 
 
210 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 Now I am not going to trespass upon time which may 
 be much better employed in the discussion of your 
 papers for the evening (cries of "Go on !" and "Come 
 off!" dubiously blended the speaker bowing and con 
 tinuing) , but, giving way to your generous encourage 
 ment, I do want to dwell for a brief moment at least 
 on Poetry and its true mission as, I think, we should 
 most seriously consider it. Now I am, as you know, 
 unable, in this way, to express myself at all times as 
 clearly as I would like I can t, as you know, think on 
 my feet 
 
 MR. VAN ARDEN : 7 could, if I had them ; and would 
 "think on" them very seriously. (Laughter.) 
 
 MR. LEWIS : Yes. The gentleman might even think 
 with them and find it an improvement upon his brain 
 process. (Sensation.) 
 
 (This beginning of what the "Hoosier Wizard" 
 failed to complete provokes a sense of something lost. 
 One breathes a sigh of regret that it remains unfin 
 ished. Humorous literature might have had a prose 
 sketch equal to his caricature of the educator in "The 
 Object Lesson.") 
 
 The crisp days of November found the Wizard Com 
 pany among the upper-tributaries of the Great Miami. 
 Although the nights were icy and the winds sometimes 
 raw and vindictive, Riley was inclined to continue the 
 voyage. He had regained health. 
 
 "Still on they went, and as they went, 
 More rough the billows grew; 
 And rose and fell, a greater swell, 
 And he was swelling, too" 
 
 swelling in size and weight, his heart swelling with 
 gratitude. When the Company left Greenfield, three 
 
WITH THE WIZARD OIL COMPANY 211 
 
 months before, he was called the "Little Man." Now 
 he was not so small. The Doctor considered him a "Big 
 Man" but the comedians were ignorant of the Doc 
 tor s meaning. At Tippecanoe City, Thanksgiving 
 week, they were overtaken by "Squaw Winter" and 
 decided to return to Lima. 
 
 Although off the road, the days at Lima were not 
 monotonous. Riley declined to help the Doctor shingle 
 a house. "You ve tried to make a great many things 
 out of me, Doctor," said he, "but you can t make a car 
 penter." 
 
 "Opposed to manual labor?" asked the Doctor. 
 
 "Constitutionally." 
 
 "How about painting signs?" 
 
 "Timely suggestion; I will stain, ingrain, illuminate 
 or bedizen paint the town vermillion if you ll muzzle 
 the Grand Jury." 
 
 The upshot was that Riley, once more in overalls, 
 was set to work with a bucket of yellow paint in the 
 laboratory. The signs were fantastic illuminations on 
 glass, and many set afloat the virtues of Magic Oil in 
 verse. When fancies were thick-coming he wrote 
 them in rhyme on the wall. Then he made cartons for 
 bottles. He started in to help the chemists prepare 
 remedies for the coming season, but could not mix com 
 pounds. As a maker of worm lozenges he was a fail 
 ure. He worked when he felt like it. He was humored 
 to a degree that brought criticism from other work 
 men. If the Doctor found Riley sitting by the stove 
 with his legs crossed and his feet higher than his head, 
 he credited him on the books with an hour of medita 
 tion and more verses on the wall. "As a comedian he 
 beats them all," said the Doctor, referring to Riley s 
 success as an entertainer on the road. His opinion of 
 
212 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 him as an advertiser appears in the following testi 
 monial : 
 
 C. M. TOWNSEND 
 
 Wholesale Dealer 
 
 and Proprietor of 
 
 TOWNSEND S MAGIC OIL, WORM CANDY, 
 KING OF COUGHS, and HEADACHE PILLS. 
 
 No. 171 Market Street. 
 (Lima, Ohio.) 
 
 I take great pleasure in saying that James 
 W. Riley is the most efficient Advertiser I have 
 ever had in my employ. Throughout an engage 
 ment of four months duration I have found him 
 ever prompt, industrious and reliable. 
 
 C. M. TOWNSEND. 
 
 In the laboratory Riley formed an attachment for 
 James B. Townsend, the Doctor s son, then a student 
 of law, whom he met in October. It was a friendship 
 at first sight. As he sat with his new friend by the 
 kitchen stove, he became interested in Buckle s History 
 of Civilization, and De Tocqueville s Democracy in 
 America. Just what relation those mighty tomes have 
 to ballads and lyrics does not appear, but the Muse was 
 indulgent. One afternoon while walking and talking 
 together, the autumn leaves whirling round them, they 
 looked seriously into their futures. Each was enter 
 ing the transitional stage of his life. Each saw 
 that he was cut out for something better. "The 
 work they were doing was beneath them. They would 
 quit sign-painting and working on job wagons, for oc 
 cupations more worthy of their talents." They parted 
 in December, one to become mayor of a city, receiver 
 for a railroad, and so forth ; the other, by devious paths, 
 to rise to eminence in literature. 
 

 THE WIZARD OIL COMPANY 
 A crowd the week of the County Fair 
 
DONALD GRANT MITCHELL 
 Editor of Hearth and Home 
 
5VITH THE WIZARD OIL COMPANY 213 
 
 James Townsend was reared in a model American 
 home. While in Lima, Riley was an inmate of that 
 home. Thus he and the family were afforded the mem 
 ory of a rare and genial companionship. Happily the 
 reader has left to him a picture of those days. "Riley 
 was a gentleman," said Mr. Townsend, "a little odd 
 but never meaning any harm. He kept himself scrupu 
 lously clean. He had sandy-colored hair. His mus 
 tache of the same hue was long and heavy and when he 
 played the violin it spread out and mingled with the 
 strings. His music awakened deep feelings. What he 
 did with his hands was done with ease and grace. He 
 handled his feet and legs more awkwardly. I recall 
 the peculiar Abe Lincoln twist he gave his feet when 
 he sat down and crossed them over the back of a 
 chair. He was natural and sun-shiny, then at intervals 
 a little sombre and sad, a perfect manifestation of 
 nature, weaving into each day natural and simple 
 pleasures, his face wreathed in smiles and breaking out 
 into the most intoxicating laughter. Then again he 
 would have long spells of silence. His gifts were mar 
 velous all were there, not yet wide awake. Some 
 times he would read verses to my sister and laugh and 
 blush as he confessed to their authorship. When we 
 read books together, he would amplify and illuminate 
 the author s meaning in a most exceptional manner. 
 To conclude he was a sensitive plant, wholly uncon 
 ventional. He dared not give too much thought and 
 study to the writings of others for fear that his own 
 utterances would take on their peculiar hue. He was 
 strictly individual. He thought best when left alone, 
 untrammelled by the world, or others. My lament is 
 that, owing to his timidity and modesty, his fellowmen 
 
214 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 have not been permitted to look into the great world of 
 prose and philosophy concealed in his heart." 
 
 When they were talking on weighty subjects in the 
 woods, Mr. Townsend remembered that Riley stood 
 with uncovered head, and in an eager, listening atti 
 tude. He had large, lustrous eyes the eyes of "The 
 Remarkable Man" that had that dreamy far-off look, 
 seeing what is described, though it is buried under 
 the pyramids of Egypt. 
 
 "It is not doubted that men have a home in that place 
 where each one has established his heart and the sum 
 of his possessions ; whence he will not depart if nothing 
 calls him away; whence if he has departed he seems 
 to be a wanderer, and if he returns he ceases to wan 
 der." Thus Riley had repeated the words while spin 
 ning along the highway with the Doctor, priding him 
 self on the one thing in "Conditions from Civil Law," 
 he could remember. He had smiled over "the sum of 
 his possessions," and the comedians had heartily en 
 joyed the joke. After working a month in the labora 
 tory he began to think seriously of home. "Greenfield," 
 he said, "had been but a speck on the map of Retrospec 
 tion so novel had been my experience on the road. I 
 had not made haste to return. Like a checker player, 
 I had one fixed purpose in mind and that was to take 
 plenty of time." But with the coming of winter days 
 and calls from home, came also the desire to cease wan 
 dering. One of the calls was from the Sunday-school. 
 The similarity in the illustrations of the golden text 
 was growing monotonous. "Our blackboard," wrote a 
 friend, "does not possess the beauty it did when it re 
 ceived the magic touch of your artistic fingers." The 
 children were sighing for the illustrated "Whisper 
 Songs" and "Lessons for Little People." In the spring 
 
WITH THE WIZARD OIL COMPANY 215 
 
 before leaving Greenfield, he had been a wizard at the 
 blackboard. "What he did with a piece of yellow chalk 
 and the unicorn," said a Sunday-school goer, "was to 
 say the least unorthodox. Such flying colors ! He made 
 the blackboard look like a millinery establishment. To 
 the children it was as good as a magic-lantern show." 
 An added reason for his leaving was that 
 he had become too conspicuous in Lima for per 
 sonal comfort. Of late the "Hoosier," to use his own 
 words, "had been scrutinized by strangers as critically 
 as a splinter in the thumb of a near-sighted man." At 
 Lima Riley had his "seedy overcoat" improved 
 by lining it with astrakhan. That coat, it was 
 said, "made the farmers green with envy; it set 
 the style for fur-lined overcoats in Allen County." 
 The public eye becoming a little too obtrusive, 
 Riley resolved to cross over into "the selvedge of 
 his native state," lift his voice and hat, and shout de 
 liverance from "the land of perpetual strangers." In 
 the early dusk of a December evening, he stepped from 
 the train at Union City, and after a few days with "a 
 remarkable man" boarded the "Bob Tail Accommoda 
 tion" for Hancock County. 
 
 The Greenfield Democrat, which had already begun 
 what proved to be a half-century record of the poet s 
 goings and comings, was awake as usual. For five 
 years it had struck off Riley locals with the fidelity of 
 a clock. December 23, 1875, it struck again: "James 
 W. Riley arrived in the city on Friday last. He is look 
 ing fine and enjoying excellent health." 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 SCRIBBLING IN GRUB STREET 
 
 A POLITE city, according to Dean Swift, should 
 have its Grub Street, a blind alley fitted up at 
 the public expense as an apartment for the 
 Muses. A private street, as Doctor Johnson put it, 
 for writers of small histories, temporary poems, 
 and inferior literary productions. Greenfield had 
 such an alley in the seventies of the last century. Ac 
 cording to Riley, its assets were a garret, a paintshop, 
 two or three gloomy hotel rooms, a lead pencil and the 
 "Respectfully Declined" papers of the Debut Club. Lia 
 bilities unknown not obtainable. He recalled that the 
 alley was a refuge for a writer pursued by the town 
 marshal for debt. "Often," said he, gleefully exag 
 gerating, "I ran down an alley with an officer behind 
 me. Beware of debt," he moaned, mimicking Horace 
 Greeley; "he is a rich man who owes nothing and has 
 a chance to earn his daily bread." Those insolvent days 
 throw light on a bill bearing the date of October, 
 1891, from the proprietor of a hotel in Kentucky, 
 who once was the landlord of the old Dunbar House. 
 "Do you remember," wrote the proprietor, "the fellow 
 who had the old Greenfield Hotel and that you dropped 
 in sometimes to see him away back in the Hayes cam 
 paign? I find on my books a charge of $3.40." 
 
 In 1876 the poet unable to pay for a week s lodging; 
 in 1891, his books and his royalties running into the 
 thousands the author eager to pay all bills, large or 
 
 216 
 
SCRIBBLING IN GRUB STREET 217 
 
 small, old or new, visible or obscure. Here is the con 
 trast of fifteen years. Truly a typical instance of 
 hardships in the literary field, another lesson in small 
 beginnings. 
 
 His Grub Street effusions include embryonic things 
 from all quarters of the sky, a "mass of metrical 
 baubles" that were too frail and futile to last. Within 
 a few years, like dry forest leaves, they went "flying 
 and scurrying God knows where." Among the first 
 was "The Poet s Realm," to which Riley subscribed 
 himself "Edyrn," his first nom de plume ten eight- 
 line stanzas, describing a dreamland somewhere in 
 space where the soul drifts away on the breeze like a 
 fairy wisp of thistledown leaving the heart an empty 
 husk "on the coast of Care and Pain." Sunbeams 
 glanced on the walls of a palace in a garden of vines and 
 flowers and fountains. There was the ebb and flow 
 of music, fair ladies and lords and the rustle of scarfs 
 and plumes, a courtly company and melody going mad 
 at a banquet: 
 
 "Clang the harp in its wildest key, 
 And shatter the bugle s throat ; 
 Fling the flags from the balcony 
 And the bridge across the moat : 
 In his goodly realm so broad and wide, 
 The Poet hath no fear- 
 Ragged, haggard and hungry-eyed 
 He is lord and master here." 
 
 When Riley wrote these lines he was purblind, as he 
 himself admits in a subsequent chapter. "Not there, 
 not there, my child," repeated the Muse; "not in 
 distant space or in foreign lands. It has been done 
 that way before. Your realm is here at home, right 
 under your feet. You are to live on the coast of Care 
 
218 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 and Pain but your heart is not to be an empty husk. 
 You are not to sing of palaces and lords and ladies. You 
 are to sing of log cabins, of children, of common folk in 
 the kitchen, in the shop and at the plow." 
 
 Riley soon tired of "Edyrn" and within a year sub 
 scribed himself "Jay Whit." Some ten years elapsed 
 before that April day in 1881, when, after writing 
 "The Ripest Peach is Highest on the Tree," he pulled 
 the joints out of his name, and first signed himself 
 James Whitcomb Riley. 
 
 After "The Poet s Realm," Riley wrote "A Retro 
 spect," in several stanzas of which he wanders back to 
 the scenes of boyhood, back to the house where he was 
 born, back to the swing under the locust tree, back to 
 the schoolroom, 
 
 "And down through the woods to the swimming hole, 
 Where the big, white, hollow old sycamore grows." 
 
 After "A Retrospect" came "Philiper Flash," ten ten- 
 line stanzas, which Mrs. Rhoda Millikan, who of all the 
 Greenfield mothers had a right to know, said half was 
 his personal experience. Riley said a third, which 
 makes it certain that a fraction at least was biograph 
 ical. 
 
 "Young Philiper Flash was a promising lad, 
 His intentions were good but oh, how sad, 
 For a person to think 
 How the veriest pink 
 And bloom of perfection may turn out bad." 
 
 Young Fiash was the son of a moral father who 
 "shaved notes in a barberous way," and vauntingly 
 prided himself on making the boy do what he was told ; 
 the pet of an excellent mother "with a martyr look," 
 
SCRIBBLING IN GRUB STREET 219 
 
 who loved him so tenderly she could cry when he 
 stumped his toe. 
 
 "She stroked his hair 
 With such mother care 
 When the dear little angel learned to swear." 
 
 The way the fast young man jingled the dollars and 
 dimes and strewed his wealth was the talk of the land. 
 Things went from bad to worse. 
 
 "Young Philiper Flash, on a winterish day, 
 Was published a bankrupt, so they say; 
 
 And as far as I know 
 
 I suppose it was so, 
 For matters went on in a singular way"-^ 
 
 in short, went to smash, and young Philiper Flash had 
 to begin life over again. 
 
 Fortunate, indeed, said Higginson, that poets unin 
 tentionally preserve for us samples of their early crude- 
 ness, and unfortunate indeed, added his friend, that 
 they intentionally preserve samples of their late crude- 
 ness and offer it to the public as poetry. That we have 
 samples of Riley s authorship, early or late, is not 
 directly due to any sense of value he put on them but to 
 a clear, well-defined superstition that he must not de 
 stroy anything he wrote. He was the instrument of the 
 Muses but it was not his function to determine values. 
 To make a book was an affliction. He never could de 
 cide happily or conclusively what to include and what 
 to reject. To him his poems were ventures on an uncer 
 tain sea. "How," he once remarked, "were the sons of 
 poverty and rhyme ever to know what to offer? The 
 wren feeds on what the eagle overlooks." Making a 
 poem, he would say with Burns, was like begetting a 
 son; you can not know whether you have a wise man 
 
220 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 or a fool until you have given him to the world to try 
 him. 
 
 The exception to the foregoing is the emphatic dis 
 count he put on most of his Grub Street productions 
 covering the first five years of the seventies. That they 
 were crude went without saying, and in the front row 
 of these he included that "perfect wrangle of bad gram 
 mar," his first poem to find its way into print, which 
 appeared in the Poet s Column of the Greenfield Com 
 mercial. "Metrical bauble" though it was, on the day 
 of its publication he read it over and over again till 
 the lines actually sounded musical to him. "That con 
 tribution/ said he, "looked larger to me than the big 
 gest sign I ever painted. Why, I was sure sure, mind 
 you that it could be seen across the waters." Since 
 he, in amateurish glee, read it with such fervor, per 
 haps the reader would like to see it : 
 
 POET S COLUMN 
 
 For the Commercial 
 THE SAME OLD STORY TOLD AGAIN 
 
 The same old story told again 
 
 The maiden droops her head. 
 
 The rip ning glow of her crimson cheek 
 
 Is answering in her stead. 
 
 The pleading tone of a trembling voice 
 
 Is telling her the way 
 
 He loved her when his heart was young 
 
 In Youth s sunshiny day. 
 
 The trembling tongue, the longing tone, 
 
 Imploringly asking why 
 
 They cannot be as happy now 
 
 As in the days gone by ? 
 
 And two fond hearts, tumultuous 
 
 With overflowing joy, 
 
 Are dancing to the music 
 
 Which that dear, provoking boy 
 
SCRIBBLING IN GRUB STREET 221 
 
 Is twanging on his bowstring, 
 As, fluttering his wings, 
 He sends his loved-charged arrows 
 While merrily he sings : 
 "Ho ! ho ! my dainty maiden, 
 . It surely cannot be 
 You are thinking you are mistress 
 Of your heart when it is me." 
 And another gleaming arrow, 
 Does the little god s behest 
 And the dainty little maiden 
 Falls upon her lover s breast. 
 The same old story told again, 
 And listened o er and o er, 
 Will still be new, and pleasing, too, 
 Till time shall be no more. 
 
 EDYRN. 
 Sept. 7, 1870. 
 
 Longfellow, shuddering before the windows of the 
 Post-Gazette building while its walls rumbled with the 
 jar of ink-balls and presses, waiting for his "Battle of 
 LovelPs Pond," was not a whit more agitated than was 
 Riley before the door of the Commercial office. Al 
 though the latter had seen twenty-one summers, he was 
 as young at heart as the boy of thirteen in Portland. 
 The desire to write the lines had been stealing over his 
 youthful innocence for some time. After they were 
 written came the mental strain. "The first day," said 
 a Grub Street chum, "he was absent from dinner; the 
 second, when nobody was looking he took the lines to 
 the editor." The state of Riley s mind as he stood by 
 the Commercial office door with the manuscript, is best 
 related in his own words : > 
 
 "A weird atmosphere hung over the office. Strange 
 footsteps through the hall and sounds of muffled voices 
 fell on my half -conscious hearing. No weighty prob- 
 
222 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 lems of finance rolled heavily along the empty corri 
 dors of thought. Down the vista of my dream the 
 Democratic platform vanished like a ghost at daybreak. 
 Something vague, shadowy and indefinable seemed to 
 hang over me. As I tip-toed to the door and listened, 
 I heard distinctly the words, "The Editor. What could 
 they mean? 
 
 " Walk in and tackle him, whispered an invisible 
 monitor. I slowly turned the knob. Listen/ said I, 
 did you not hear something shriek? 
 
 " Suppose you did/ returned my monitor. Why do 
 you tremble? 
 
 " Perhaps he s coming out. 
 
 " Let him come ; you can give it to him here. 
 
 "A chill rippled over me ; I could give it to him any 
 where, I thought, but he was liable to frown and kick. 
 I was at the point, absent-mindedly, of knocking at the 
 door when my monitor said, Go in without knocking ; 
 he s not coming out : go right in ; beard the lion in his 
 den and I went in, told the editor how I had hesi 
 tated and then sank to the floor. Five minutes later 
 I recovered and on leaving the office, cast one look back 
 ward. He was punching and crumpling my manuscript 
 with a blue pencil as if it were a lizard or a spider." 
 
 Just how much of the foregoing is the play of Riley s 
 fancy the reader may determine. Learning his "poem" 
 was to be printed, he got a proof as soon as it was set up 
 but kept all a secret till the day of the paper s issue. 
 The work of his pen in type for the first time earth 
 had no joy like that never had had anything like it! 
 Who "Edyrn" was, was not known for several days. 
 When the secret leaked out, "his friends," said one of 
 them, "rallied round him and filled his head with the 
 usual supply of flattery and nonsense. His father s 
 
SCRIBBLING IN GRUB STREET 223 
 
 comment was not encouraging. Edyrn did not borrow 
 a dollar,- buy extra copies and mail to distant friends. 
 Borrowing was not his forte in those days." 
 
 Riley s first experience with "poetry" antedated his 
 "first poem in print" fifteen years. "It was while I was 
 a small boy," said he, "that I wrote my first rhymes. 
 They were the outcome of what seemed dire necessity 
 to my childish mind. The children in Greenfield were 
 in the habit of sending valentines back and forth. They 
 were of the old-fashioned sort ; the pictures were cari 
 catures, the verses doggerel. They cost but a cent 
 a piece but I was so small that pennies were not given 
 me for valentines. I wanted to send them, all the same ; 
 so with some cheap crayon I sketched pictures on scrap 
 paper as nearly like the boughten pictures as I could, 
 only I tried to make the faces look like those I meant to 
 send them to. After I had colored my crude figures I 
 remembered that my valentines had no mottoes. So I 
 made up rhymes as I went along. It was childish stuff, 
 but it met the approval of my mother from whom I 
 inherited my inclination for drawing. She was so 
 pleased she let me have my own way for a week." 
 . Above his second pen name, "Jay Whit," such "drib- 
 blings" as "Mockery," "Flames and Ashes," "A Bal 
 lad," and "Johnny," appeared in the Indianapolis 
 Mirror in 1872. "The Poet s Wooing," and "Man s De 
 votion," (the former was rejected) were illustrated by 
 himself, thus again exercising the gift inherited from 
 his mother. Writing of the latter two in February to 
 his brother John who was then living in Indianapolis 
 he said: 
 
 "Of late I am startlingly prolific in composing. I 
 could dispose of my productions like brick so much 
 per thousand. 
 
224 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 And say, Dear brother, you will sign Jay Whit/ 
 Providing the paper will publish it. 
 
 And if they should refuse, let me down gently. I have 
 written with a pencil to make it as plain as possible to 
 you don t let them see my manuscript unless you 
 should endeavor to publish it in an illustrated paper 
 you may then submit my illustration to them. Yours 
 obscurely." 
 
 Of "A Ballad/ a sea story, he wrote his brother in 
 May as follows : 
 
 "If you can t get this on the front page, don t put 
 it in, for I consider it the best thing I have ever writ 
 ten and I want to see it occupy a front seat or we ll 
 let it stand till one can be procured. I 
 
 "Try it for this week And feel them a little on a 
 prose sketch for instance (do it this way) : He has 
 written some sketches that I consider good not tire 
 some and so forth but racy original with now and 
 then a little spice of poetry humor wit and quite 
 pathetic occasionally and so forth -understand? Try 
 it and send me the result. 
 
 "Use your best endeavors to send it to the editor this 
 week. If published, I expect there will be some one 
 from Greenfield (referring to his brother) who would 
 like to hand his name down to posterity by having it 
 said that he once brought me from the renovator s, a 
 second-hand coat when I was too poor to even thank 
 him for his trouble. (Exit laughing.)" 
 
 "Johnny," a story of three thousand words, was 
 the first sketch to appear in print. The plot is so 
 simple a child could remember it. The scene 
 is a country town with its surplus of village 
 gossip, barking dogs, and dinner bells. There 
 is the meeting of a bachelor and a widow in 
 
SCRIBBLING IN GRUB STREET 225 
 
 her mourning weeds on an April evening, a fire at 
 midnight and the rescue of the widow s boy from a 
 burning roof by the bachelor and then in swift suc 
 cession the courtship and the marriage. The story was 
 "racy and original" as its author wrote when seeking to 
 have it printed in the county paper, but "dull and tire 
 some" when he grew older and consigned it to the 
 waste basket. 
 
 In 1873, as we have seen, the Argonaut was away 
 from Greenfield with the "Graphics." In the spring 
 and summer of 1874, he sent "Private Theatricals," "At 
 Last," "The Poet s Wooing," "My Jolly Friend s Se 
 cret," "Plain Sermons," "A Summer s Afternoon," and 
 "That Little Dorg" to the Danbury News. All were 
 accepted as the effusions of a "rising litterateur." They 
 lacked the spontaneous felicity of after years but were 
 evidence of merit nevertheless. News of their ac 
 ceptance came to him "like a shower to a fainting 
 strawberry." Montgomery Bailey and his "Danbury 
 News Man" were popular in Greenfield as elsewhere. 
 The incessant flow of humor from his pen had quick 
 ened Riley s sense of drollery for some time, and the 
 editor in turn caught gleams of funny things in "Jay 
 Whit." Of course the contributions were free. It was 
 honor enough to have them accepted. Here was some 
 thing new. Riley had crossed the Hudson. He had 
 penetrated the Icy East: 
 
 "What were his feelings as grave and alone, 
 He sat in the silence, glaring in the grate 
 That stewed and sighed on in an undertone 
 As subtle immovable as fate?" 
 
 What were his feelings? Too numerous and unknow 
 able for consideration here. But one thing was settled 
 settled at that very early date. Hungry as he was 
 
226 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 for eastern recognition, he would not be absorbed by it. 
 "Whenever a writer west of the Alleghany Mountains," 
 said he, "has risen to eminence, the East has absorbed 
 him with greedy haste. By this process his genius 
 loses the tang of its native region, the flavor of the soil 
 from which he sprung, and the soil loses the talent it 
 nurtured and on which it had a claim." 
 
 In February, 1874, "Farmer Whipple Bachelor" 
 was printed in the Greenfield News, and in December, 
 "Tradin Joe" appeared. Both poems were written 
 without thought of publication. Their author tucked 
 them away in his "reticule" for recitation in school- 
 houses and on his country excursions. "Farmer Whip- 
 pie" was one of the popular numbers recited from the 
 steps of the Wizard Oil wagon, 
 
 "In those days," said Riley, "I had a dramatic* 
 friend who was on the rocks as often as I was. When I 
 was begging for bread the idea invariably struck him 
 that I could in some way, unknown to fortune, make 
 ends meet, and promote his schemes however gigantic 
 or unattainable they were." A letter from the friend 
 came from Pendleton in February, 1874. "I have a 
 desire," he wrote, "to go into partnership with you. 
 An idea has just struck me. Perhaps we could buy out 
 the editor who publishes the paper here. I think we 
 could make money out of it. You are a good writer, 
 and would then have something to do. We could save 
 our money and then go into a dramatic company to 
 gether. I mean engage one of our own. If you are 
 willing to be steady and work and save and try, come 
 over and see me and find out if the editor will sell and 
 at what price. The reason I write the above is that I 
 learn that you now have nothing to do" (and so forth) . 
 The letter set "Jay Whit" considering seriously the 
 
SCRIBBLING IN GRUB STREET 227 
 
 newspaper field, as did also a postal card from his 
 Graphic Chum referring to a prospect of employment 
 on the Kokomo Republican, which (in the chum s 
 opinion) the Hoosier Humorist could make a better 
 paper than the Danbury News. Late in the year he 
 applied for work at the office of the Greenfield News. 
 The editor was not able to pay for work. "Sorely as I 
 need it," said the applicant, "it is not money I want but 
 experience." Next week the News appeared with : 
 
 W. T. Walker, Editor 
 
 J. W. Riley, Associate Editor. 
 
 "We now have in our office," (so wrote the Associate 
 Editor, though the News readers imputed the pleas 
 antry to the Editor) "a red-headed devil who loses his 
 hair occasionally by spontaneous combustion. He 
 wears a tiny hat and never considers himself in full 
 dress without a Babcock fire extinguisher on his back. 
 In times past he has contributed to the News under 
 the nom de plume of Jay Whit/ Now as local editor 
 he will doubtless infuse into its columns the spell of his 
 sobriquet without the h. To say that this new member 
 of our staff will make the local columns hum would be 
 placing it mild. Many of his friends think he has 
 struck his proper gait and will develop into a great 
 editor." 
 
 It was the Associate Editor s province to collect 
 items from townspeople and countrymen and "em 
 bellish them for publication." Then it was that the 
 "apprentice-poet of the town, rising to impassioned 
 heights" began 
 
 "To lighten all the empty, aching miles 
 Around with brighter fancies, hopes and smiles." 
 
228 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 He threw in with the Hominy Ridge items local adver 
 tising rhymes such as: 
 
 "Carpets coarse and carpets fine, 
 Rich in color and design, 
 Sold at bargains half divine" 
 (with name of business firm attached.) 
 
 "Has anybody heard of a cure for window panes ?" he 
 asked. An old lady sent full instructions for a liver 
 pad. He did not know about that, "but a half section 
 of number one strawberry shortcake makes a stomach 
 pad that has few equals and no superior." 
 
 To his little comrade in the street : "Now the small 
 boy busies himself collecting pennies for the circus/ 
 ran a local, "but he will probably crawl under the can 
 vas as heretofore. May he have his usual good luck." 
 
 Nor did the local editor neglect his rural neighbors : 
 
 "The farmer works his hired hand 
 From four o clock in the morning light 
 Till eight or nine o clock at night, 
 And then finds fault with his appetite." 
 
 After this he would go after them for delinquent sub 
 scriptions: "The last twenty-five sticks of an editor s 
 woodpile vanish before his eyes like the morning dew." 
 When items were scarce, in corn-planting time, for in 
 stance, he "would go out and look over the Poor Farm 
 and come back with a basketful of abuse, neglect and 
 so on." 
 
 It goes without saying that the Associate Editor sup 
 plied the News liberally with effusions of a literary 
 character. There were such fledglings in verse as 
 "Leloine" (a faint imitation of Poe), "An Autumn 
 Leaf," and "The Ancient Printerman." The paper 
 
SCRIBBLING IN GRUB STREET 229 
 
 almost staggered under the weight of "Babe Mc 
 Dowell," the story of a college student falling in love 
 with a beautiful girl who was training for the stage. 
 "My first story to require serial publication," remarked 
 Riley. "Length was its sole merit." 
 
 In the spring of 1875 he made another bid for east 
 ern recognition. Purchasing a sample copy of Hearth 
 and Home at a news-stand, he concluded to try his luck 
 with the doughty "Ik Marvel," who had charmed him 
 with Reveries of a Bachelor. He sent him "A 
 Destiny," which twenty years later was given the title 
 "The Dreamer" in A Child-World "the poem about a 
 long-haired young man," as Riley expressed it, "who 
 associated much with himself, took to solitude, and 
 walked alone in the woods." It was published April 
 tenth with three quaint illustrations; the first, the 
 strange young man without companions, his hat and 
 book on the ground in the shade of a majestic tree, 
 the dreamer 
 
 "Lying limp, with upturned gaze, 
 Idly dreaming away his days": 
 
 the second and third, the farmer at the pasture bars, 
 who saw the fragment of legal cap paper with the sum 
 mer rhyme thereon, which he chased to the thicket of 
 trees, and there discovered that its author was not a 
 poet but the inventor of a churn. 
 
 When Riley received the issue of Hearth and Home 
 containing his poem and a letter commending his verse, 
 together with a draft for eight dollars, he "proceeded" 
 (to quote his own words) "to build a full-sized air cas 
 tle. At last he had struck the trail to fortune. He walked 
 in the clouds" and likewise walked down to the Green- 
 
230 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 field Banking Company to cash the draft the first he 
 had ever received for a poem. He was rich rich as 
 the parson with forty pounds a year. Louisa May Al- 
 cott did not have fairer visions of fortune when she sold 
 her first story to the newspaper for five dollars. Sev 
 eral days it was humorously whispered round town that 
 "Jay Whit," after waiting- so long and so patiently, 
 would now be able "to liquidate his debts." Alas, for 
 the wide gulf between them and the size of the draft. 
 "He paid no debts," said a Greenfield chum ; "it was a 
 red letter day; we stood on our heads for joy and lived 
 like nabobs while the money lasted." But the game was 
 yet by no means in his own hands. Just when the Asso 
 ciate Editor was making a name for himself and colors 
 were flying, the News was sold, its name changed to 
 Republican and his dreams shattered. The paper went 
 from bad to worse and soon joined the great majority. 
 "I strangled the little thing," said Riley. "Then 
 I continued to grind out poetry for literary depart 
 ments. I more than supplied the foreign demand 
 with plenty left over for home use. When I sent an 
 editor a prose sketch he advised me to try poetry. I 
 did so and scribbled away at the rate of 2 :40 a ream. 
 Then he advised me to try prose again. This was too 
 much. Pursuing the tenor of my own way, I had my 
 hair cut, painted a sign or two and played the guitar." 
 Throughout his Grub Street experience he had always 
 a meager income from his trade. When other ventures 
 failed he could paint a sign. To this end he vibrated 
 between Greenfield and Anderson. 
 
 While he was thus lingering along in doubt, he was 
 handed the following circular from the Western Union 
 Telegraph Company, then located in the old Blackford 
 Block, corner Washington and Meridian, Indianapolis : 
 
SCRIBBLING IN GRUB STREET 231 
 
 Dear Sir: 
 
 Will you please keep me advised promptly by 
 telegraph, of all important news transpiring in your 
 vicinity, such as homicides, suicides, accidents, and 
 matters of moment that may be exciting the public 
 attention. I will pay at the rate of fifty cents a special, 
 settlement to be made at the end of each month. Make 
 the special short as possible. By doing this you will 
 greatly oblige 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 R. T. HOWARD, 
 Manager of Specials. 
 
 "I proceeded," said Riley, "to build another air castle. 
 I recalled a valuable list of fires, suicides and accidents 
 in the past. Remittance for press telegrams would buy 
 shoes and bread. But, strange to relate, not a lax, 
 shabby, villainous thing happened the whole summer. 
 Monotony was a drug on the market. They had lynched 
 the negro the week before the circular came. There 
 were weeks of waiting. I grew ill. The while I tried 
 to study law and if wading through that deplorable 
 stuff (he was quoting from Bleak House), if charging 
 down the middle and up again, if going through that 
 country dance of costs and fees and corruption will not 
 make a man sick, nothing else will. The humdrum 
 days continuing, I proceeded to make a little excite 
 ment of my own. A traveling showman passing by, 
 I climbed on the wagon and shed the town." 
 
 Returning from that "rather lengthy sojourn in 
 the Buckeye State" (with the Wizard Oil Company), 
 he immediately ascended the stairs to the old room in 
 the Dunbar House, which not only sheltered the Grub 
 Street tenant, but had the honor of being the first 
 "literary den" in the town. Up there in room 13 (his 
 superstition about the number was not yet a trouble- 
 
232 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 some factor) , up there he spun political jingles for the 
 Hayes and Wheeler campaign ; up there he had written 
 The Dreamer," and one cold January night while his 
 room-mate sighed over the waste of coal oil he rose 
 from his bed and saved some fragments which he tied 
 together the next day for "My Fiddle." Up there he 
 was wont to "switch the bow and lean back and laugh 
 and wink at every rainy day" ; up there 
 
 "They tell me, when he used to plink 
 And plonk and plunk and play, 
 His music seemed to have the kink 
 Of driving cares away." 
 
 While occupying "old 13" he sent a "bulky envelope," 
 a second sample of his "fancy work," to Hearth and 
 Home. The venture was disastrous. "By the time 
 my effusions reached them," said Riley, "the hand of 
 Fate had closed the institution like a telescope." The 
 verse came back but the sting was taken away some 
 what by the letter from Donald G. Mitchell: 
 
 THE GRAPHIC COMPANY 
 
 The Daily Graphic Hearth and Home 
 
 $12 Per Year $2.50 Per Year 
 
 New York, February 18, 1876. 
 Mr. J. W. Riley, 
 Dear Sir: 
 
 The sudden decision of the Graphic Managers to 
 discontinue the publication of Hearth and Home forth 
 with, compels the return of the accompanying very 
 graceful poem, which I should otherwise publish with 
 pleasure. 
 
 Trusting that you may not be discouraged from 
 further exercise of your literary talent through a 
 more fortunate medium, I remain, 
 Yours respectfully, 
 
 the Ex Editor of "H. & H." 
 
SCRIBBLING IN GRUB STREET 233 
 
 The "very graceful poem" was "A Country Path 
 way," which he had written on the banks of Lick 
 Creek in Madison County, where he was visiting 
 friends for a week at an old-fashioned homestead. 
 One day, after whiling a few hours with wheat 
 thrashers three miles from the homestead, he returned 
 across the fields. At one point he followed a path 
 overhung with willow boughs. "It was a dar 
 ling pathway," he said, recalling the afternoon 
 walk; "I yearned for something to dispel the mist 
 from my future. What would I not give to know 
 that my path of life would lead on through scenes 
 of enchantments and up to the door of a smiling 
 world as my country pathway led me through the 
 valley, and across the orchard to the door of smil 
 ing friends." 
 
 To the "disastrous venture" in Hearth and Home, 
 lovers of Riley verse are largely indebted for "The 
 Shower." There was in connection therewith a 
 touch of rustic beauty and purity in a "British Book" 
 which he recalled with lively pleasure. "A rainbow 
 in the sky, the glittering of the rain upon the leaves ; 
 the dripping poultry under the hedge; the reflection 
 of the cattle on the road, and the girl with her gown 
 over her shoulders," a picture which placed James 
 Burnet in the first rank as a pastoral painter; and it 
 is equally true that "The Shower" and after it "The 
 Sudden Shower" placed Riley in the front rank of 
 lyric poets. 
 
 On receiving the Hearth and Home letter, Riley 
 was more interested in "Ik Marvel" than ever. One 
 day he ran across "A Picture of Rain." "Will any 
 one," asked Mitchell, "give us on canvas, a good, 
 rattling, saucy shower? There is room in it for a 
 
234 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 rare handling of the brush : the vague, indistinguish 
 able line of the hills, the gray lines, slanted by 
 the wind and trending eagerly downward, the swift 
 petulant dash into the little pools, making fairy bub 
 bles that break as soon as they form, the land smok 
 ing with excess of moisture, and the pelted leaves 
 all wincing and shining and adrip." 
 
 "Why don t you try it?" asked his Graphic Chum. 
 
 "You might as well ask the clouds to rain," an 
 swered Riley. However the query did set him think 
 ing and in due time 
 
 "The cloud above put on its blackest frown, 
 And then, as with a vengeful cry of pain, 
 The lightning snatched it, ripped and flung it down 
 In ravelled shreds of rain: 
 
 "While he, transfigured by some wondrous art, 
 
 Bowed with the thirsty lilies to the sod, 
 His empty soul brimmed over, and his heart 
 Drenched with the love of God." 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 THE STRANGE YOUNG MAN; 
 
 DO YOU know Whitcomb Riley?" 
 "Whit Riley? oh, yes, I know him and his 
 folks well. People round these parts don t 
 think much of him. He is sort o flighty and no good." 
 Such was the answer a newspaper correspondent re 
 ceived from an old lady, a resident of Greenfield, who 
 like some of her neighbors had less faith in Riley s 
 future than those who looked on from a distance. She 
 had seen many human riddles in the Carolinas where 
 she once lived, but none, she was quite certain, so mys 
 terious as "that young Riley," none who played at cross 
 purposes so abstrusely. "Just when he seems to be 
 getting a start at sign-painting or the law/ said 
 another neighbor, "he flies the track and over the hills 
 he goes." While collecting items for the Greenfield 
 News, he would be unaccountably seized with a desire 
 to write verse, and so he would hie away "to Fortville 
 or down to Fountaintown, where," he said, "I 
 rented a dingy upstairs room for ten cents a week, 
 and locked the door." Thus he avoided the look of idle 
 curiosity that often confronted him around the Green 
 field post-office. Too often for his comfort "the won 
 dering eyes of the curious rabble" were fastened on 
 box 15, his letter box, with its pamphlets, papers, and 
 magazines, and the numerous letters with mysterious 
 postmarks, ever crowding into it. To old-timers his 
 withdrawal from society was past comprehension. 
 
 235 
 
236 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 Usually, they observed, folks were happy when they 
 were the center of attraction. Not so with Riley. 
 During those intervals of absence from home (to 
 borrow the "corduroy" lines) : 
 
 "He lingered and delayed, 
 And kept his friends away ; 
 Shut himself within his room and stayed 
 A- writing there from day to day ; 
 He kept a-getting stranger still, 
 And thinner all the time, 
 You know, as any fellow will, 
 On nothing else but rhyme." 
 
 "And when after a two weeks vigil he returned," 
 said one of his comrades, "he was still the pale, sad- 
 eyed subject of bewilderment, the problem Fate alone 
 could decipher. He had dreams that he himself but 
 half understood and of course none of his friends 
 understood." He was the man he describes in "Fame," 
 who drew 
 
 "A gloom about him like a cloak, 
 And wandered aimlessly. The few 
 Who spoke of him at all, but spoke 
 Disparagingly of a mind 
 The Fates had faultily designed: 
 Too indolent for modern times 
 Too fanciful and full of whims 
 For, talking to himself in rhymes, 
 And scrawling never-heard-of hymns, 
 The idle life to which he clung 
 Was worthless as the songs he sung!" 
 
 The "strange young man" was not always melan 
 choly. There were days, sometimes weeks, when he 
 was a perfect battery of merriment. He was a droll, 
 ridiculous genius, the gifted, good-for-nothing Bob 
 
THE STRANGE YOUNG MAN 237 
 
 he portrays in the "Gilded Roll" laughing always at 
 everything. 
 
 "How sad he seemed in his wild delight, 
 And how tickled indeed when he wept outright ; 
 What a comical man when he writhed in pain, 
 And how grieved he was to be glad again." 
 
 On rare occasions when he and his companions were 
 hilarious in the old-time charades, he 
 
 "Went round in a coat of pale pink-blue, 
 And a snow-white vest of crimson hue, 
 And trousers purple, and gaiters gray 
 All cut, as the French or Dutch would say, 
 La macht nichts aus, oder decollete." 
 
 Friends declared that he was in almost all respects 
 the Mr. Clickwad of the "Respectfully Declined Papers 
 of the Buzz Club," a fictitious series of opinions, ghastly 
 dreams, impromptu rhymes and literary frivolities, 
 that he wrote a few years later for the Indianap 
 olis Saturday Herald. Often Mr. Clickwad seemed 
 totally oblivious of his surroundings. He would stare 
 blankly at the ragged gas-jet, drumming his pencil 
 against his teeth. Then he would transfer his attention 
 to a mangy manuscript, erase a word here and there, 
 and drop into "a comatose condition of mentality" that, 
 to lively companions, was aggravating in the extreme. 
 Mr. Clickwad was calmly accepted as a bundle of con 
 tradictions. His faculty for pleasing and horrifying in 
 the same breath was simply marvelous, the informali 
 ties of his fancy "being beyond cavil the most diabolic 
 and delightful on record." 
 
 "Notwithstanding his eccentricities," remarked a 
 shrewd Greenfield attorney, "Riley does know the Great 
 Nine. How he came to know them baffles inquiry, but 
 he certainly does enjoy the honor of their friendship." 
 
238 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 With what excess of feeling is shown in a brief 
 message to Lee 0. Harris. He had "a few moments," 
 he said, "to lavish in a dissipation of thought." Signing 
 himself "Troubled Tom," he sends his Schoolmaster 
 a postal card to say, "I have been thinking of you all 
 day and wondering whether the Muse is on good terms 
 with you this misty weather. I have had a perfect 
 night-mare of fine frenzy." Another time he tried to 
 express his frenzy in verse : 
 
 "0 he was a poet weird and sad, 
 And life and love betimes went mad ; 
 He sang such songs as flame and flare 
 Over the wide world everywhere. 
 Famous was he for his wan wild eyes, 
 And his woeful mien and his heaving sighs." 
 
 Though wild and eccentric, though his lips were pale 
 beneath the lamplight, 
 
 "He sang and the lark was hushed and mute, 
 And the dry-goods clerk forgot his flute ; 
 And the night operator at the telegraph stand 
 Smothered his harp in his trembling hand ; 
 The dull and languid as they read his song, 
 Sighed all day and the whole night long 
 For a love like his and the passion warm 
 As the pulsing heart of the thunder-storm." 
 
 At another time, while visiting his Schoolmaster, 
 "Troubled Tom" easily convinced him that genius is a 
 form of insanity, particularly poetic genius. Both 
 agreed that there was eminent authority for the con 
 clusion. Shakespeare had said that the lunatic, the 
 lover, and the poet were of imagination all compact. 
 The Schoolmaster went on to explain that men of 
 genius in all ages were men of strong passions. Riley 
 added that they were necessarily eccentric, and could 
 
THE STRANGE YOUNG MAN 239 
 
 not by dint of any virtue travel the conventional road. 
 Men of average talent touched life on a few sides only. 
 The creative spirit was not in them. Hence they re 
 garded with suspici6n a man of genius who touched life 
 on many sides. Riley had noted in a "British Book" 
 that men dull in comprehending the eccentricities of a 
 great painter, set down what surpassed their own 
 understanding to the account of the painter s stupidity. 
 The Schoolmaster was of the persuasion that genius 
 is little in little things. "The mistake the people 
 make," he said, "is to attribute littleness to genius in 
 all things." Riley complained that the people lacked 
 impartiality of vision. Everybody in his own degree, 
 was drugged with his own frenzy. Why deny the 
 luxury to the poet? It was a matter of gradation. The 
 poet s frenzy was higher on the scale. 
 
 Lunatic, wise man, or poet, "Troubled Tom" had his 
 defenders. By no means were "everything and every 
 body against him," as he once moaned when in a 
 melancholy mood. Young people were for him and 
 occasionally his elders. His near neighbor, Judge Good- 
 ing, defended him as brave Sam Johnson vindicated 
 Sheridan and substantially in the same language: 
 "There is to be sure something in the fellow," said the 
 Judge, "to reprehend and something to laugh at ; *but 
 Sir, he is not a foolish man. No, Sir ; divide mankind 
 into wise and foolish, and he stands considerably with 
 in the ranks of the wise." 
 
 When faultfinders were numerous there was one 
 home where Riley never failed to find encourage 
 ment. Mother Millikan, the first to forecast his liter 
 ary future, had no misgivings. From that day in his 
 teens he crossed the threshold to find the Sketch Book 
 on her center table, her home had been a refuge from 
 
240 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 dejection. Her daughter, Nellie Millikan, was uni 
 formly friendly and helpful. According to the aphor 
 ism, "those who befriend genius when it is struggling 
 for distinction, befriend the world." Such credit be 
 longs to the Millikans. Though the daughter married 
 and moved to another state, her faith and interest in 
 Riley never diminished. Her husband, George Cooley, 
 was equally loyal. "You have a talent," he wrote from 
 his new home in Illinois, "that is sure to meet with just 
 reward. Go on, my boy. I only wish it were in my 
 power to point you to a shorter and easier road to fame 
 than that you have been compelled to travel. My word 
 for it, the time will come when it will not be Whit 
 Riley but James W. Riley, Esquire, one of America s 
 famous poets." 
 
 "Dear James," Mrs. Cooley wrote in the same letter, 
 "you have no one left in Greenfield who takes the same 
 interest in you that I did or who is so proud of you 
 when people write me that you are going to the dogs/ 
 How will they feel when the time comes that all who 
 know you will be so proud to take you by the hand? 
 The world is before you. You are standing well up on 
 the ladder. Grip it with a firm hand, be determined to 
 reach the top. You are young, almost a boy. Take 
 good care of your health. Do not let the late hours 
 that bring only an aching head the next day, steal away 
 your youthful strength and rob you of your brightest 
 thoughts. Keep them to give to the world. God bless 
 you." 
 
 As Riley grew in years and experience he had a great 
 deal to say about the well-meant intentions of friends 
 that were more harmful than helpful. In rhyme he 
 expressed himself this way: 
 
THE STRANGE YOUNG MAN 241 
 
 "Neglected genius truth be said 
 As wild and quick as tinder, 
 The more you seek to help ahead 
 The more you seem to hinder." 
 
 The encouragement Nellie Millikan gave him disproved 
 the allegation. She did not chronicle absurdities. She 
 did not forget what was noble and excellent in a man. 
 She saw that "God twists and wrenches our evil to our 
 good." She saw merit in Riley s irregular, impassioned 
 force. Others urged him to paint signs on country 
 barns. She urged him to stick to his lead pencil. The 
 fidelity of her friendship has seldom been equaled. She 
 admonished her "Troubled Tom" to trust to his heart 
 and to what the world calls illusions. 
 
 His reply to a letter from her was characteristic of 
 him at that time. As usual he indulged in idle rhymes. 
 
 "You want a letter 
 And I ve not a line of prose 
 Wouldn t jingle answer better? 
 I have plenty, Gracious knows! 
 For my mind is running riot 
 With the music of the Muse." 
 
 There was a dearth of glad hearts and no sweet voice 
 to quiet "the restless pulse of care." The "old crowd" 
 was widely scattered. The ties of friendship were 
 tattered and raveled at the ends, and the social circle 
 was dimmer 
 
 "Than a rainy afternoon, 
 And sheds a thinner glimmer 
 Than the ring around the moon." 
 
 The past was like a story to which he had listened in a 
 dream, he went on in a metrical moan. It was vanish 
 ing in the glory of the early morning. Glancing at his 
 shadow he felt the loss of strength while the Day of 
 
242 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 Life was advancing. The flight of time gave him 
 scarcely a moment "to trip it with a rhyme." Never 
 theless he really did believe his "fame was growing 
 stronger" ; 
 
 "And though he fell below it, 
 He might know as much of mirth, 
 To live and die a poet 
 Of unacknowledged worth ; 
 For Fame is but a vagrant, 
 Though a loyal one and brave, 
 And her laurels ne er so fragrant 
 As when scattered o er the grave." 
 
 A friend once remarked that "Riley is one of 
 those men who appear to be born what they are by 
 some accident of nature." Riley was different. To 
 begin with, he refused to be born "according to 
 the tradition of the register books." Following a 
 youthful fancy, he made a little memoir of himself and 
 changed the year of his birth from 1849 to 1853, adopt 
 ing the whim of Henry Fuseli, the eccentric painter, 
 who changed his birth year from 1741 to 1745. At 
 first a mere freak, it became in later years a matter of 
 serious consideration when he grew sensitive on the 
 question of his age. The freak was a source of confu 
 sion to his friends. They wrote for the facts: 
 
 "Mr. James W. Riley, the man of great mirth, 
 Give us the day and the date of your birth ; 
 We are anxious to know when you came to this earth, 
 Of the heavenly planets and the zodiac s girth." 
 
 He dodged the planets, humored his whim and returned 
 an evasive answer. 
 
 He was different. When a boy he refused to be put 
 through the straight jacket system of education. When 
 ever that system gave scope to his individuality 
 
THE STRANGE YOUNG MAN 243 
 
 all too seldom he thought for his advancement he 
 was its willing votary. But when it addressed him 
 exactly in the same manner and with the same stand 
 ards it addressed other boys, his heart organized an 
 insurrection. In the Shoe-Shop he was warned of the 
 danger of reducing education to "the careless, fitful 
 spirit of a gamester who felt that he was a part of a 
 great gaming system." He once remarked of a little 
 flock of visitors, "I can not endure them ; they are all 
 alike all of one order one habit of thought. I feel 
 like a wildcat among them/ "I can remember/ he said 
 when grown to maturity, "when <I, through some 
 strange hallucination that victimized me for a season, 
 had a desire to be just like everybody else. I was 
 afraid somebody would think I was peculiar. I lived 
 down in a little country village and was ashamed to let 
 folks know I lived there. I did not fool anybody. 
 Everybody knew that I was from Greenfield. If I were 
 a countryman and had lived on an eighty-acre farm all 
 my life and had never been off it, I would brag about 
 that farm. I would swear it was the most beautiful 
 piece of property under the light of heaven. If men 
 doubted it I would tell them to live a lifetime on just 
 such a farm and then they would know." 
 
 He was different. At a "skating bee" on the Missis- 
 sinewa River, while the tide of glee slid merrily on, he 
 sat on the bank, all alone. Skaters came to him with 
 their zestful song: 
 
 "0 come with us and we will go 
 And try the winter s cold, sir ; 
 Nor fear the ice, nor fear the snow, 
 For we are tough and bold, sir." 
 
 In vain. He preferred the company of his own 
 thoughts. "Think of it," Bill Nye remarked at a 
 
244 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 later period, "there he was, just a sliver in the great 
 wood-pile of creation, yet fancying he heard music 
 from the breakers far away on the restless, rising sea 
 of ambition." 
 
 He was different unfit for the confusion of the 
 world yet having an intimate knowledge of it. He 
 knew things by intuition. "Speaking of intuitions," he 
 said in an interview of his later years, giving a por 
 trait of himself, "I knew a fellow back in my native 
 town. His name well, he had a law office with a bay- 
 window on the second floor of a building on Main 
 Street. He was a quiet chap ; he used to have intuitions 
 and premonitions and all that sort of thing; he had 
 quite a reputation for them. Time and again when he 
 saw a stranger crossing the street, he would tell exactly 
 to what building and to what office he was going, and 
 his forecast was usually correct. 
 
 "Well, he was sitting in his window one day medi 
 tating, like Mark Twain s frog, when he noticed a crowd 
 of loafers gathering in front of a building across the 
 way. They began to gaze dreamily up at a man on a 
 stepladder, who, with his back to them, was swinging 
 up a shop sign. They ail stood there, quiet and silent, 
 with their hands behind their backs when he remarked 
 to the men in his office that he could cause a stir among 
 the dreamers, yet he would not say anything or do 
 anything other than go over among them for a moment. 
 Then he put himself under his hat, stuffed his hands in 
 his pockets, went down-stairs, crossed the street and 
 lazily slipped in among the gazers. No one moved, no 
 one noticed him ; every one seemed to be in a trance. 
 After a minute he began softly to whistle an old famil 
 iar hymn, Shall We Gather at the River. He stopped 
 at the end of the second line. A man behind him un- 
 
THE STRANGE YOUNG MAK 245 
 
 consciously took up the tune and carried it along and 
 then another caught on, and another, and soon the 
 whole crowd was whistling softly or half humming the 
 me lody the inoculator in the meantime returning to 
 his law office. By and by the man with the sign started 
 to join in unconsciously, but for some reason could not 
 quite catch the thread of the tune. That took his mind 
 off his work, and since his work at that moment con 
 sisted in balancing the heavy sign on one nail and him 
 self on one foot, the result was speedy demoralization. 
 The sign tumbled down, he narrowly escaped death, 
 besides damaging the eye of a spectator." 
 
 Here, in a trivial incident of the street, is a glimpse 
 of Riley s power over the hearts of men. "How did you 
 do that, James?" asked his associates in the office. 
 James did not know. It was a mystery, just as years 
 afterward his power over an audience was a mystery. 
 Nevertheless "the spells of persuasion, the keys of 
 power" were put into his hands. He was so 
 
 "Self-centered, that when he launched the magic word, 
 It shook or captivated all who heard." 
 
 "Robert Collyer," said an Indiana clergyman, "can 
 find abundance of material in Greenfield for his lecture 
 on Blunders of Genius/ " The remark was occasioned 
 by Riley s declining to quit his "literary den" to attend 
 a revival. He was different. He stood alone and thus 
 provoked a sharp criticism from the evangelist, but he 
 fared no better and no worse, it seems, than young Pro 
 fessor Longfellow, whose failure to attend a "pro 
 tracted meeting" met with similar disapproval. "I 
 struck my critic," said Riley, "in the small of the back 
 with a large chunk of silence. I had my pulpit and 
 Brother Doe had his." 
 
246 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 It may be said here parenthetically, that quite early 
 in his career Riley reached the conclusion that a man s 
 greatness did not consist in believing a thing because 
 it was popular. Ofttimes, as he saw it, it was his duty 
 to stand for a thing when "all the cry of voices was on 
 the other side." Soon after he reached his majority, 
 he found a paragraph in Hearth and Home, an editorial 
 note by Ik Marvel, which served him as a standard of 
 living almost two score and ten years. "A man s true 
 greatness," wrote Marvel, "lies in the consciousness 
 of an honest purpose through life, founded on a just 
 estimate of himself and everything else, on frequent 
 self-examination, and a steady obedience to the rule 
 which he knows to be right, without troubling himself 
 about what others may think or say, or whether they 
 do or do not do that which he thinks and says and 
 does." 
 
 "Troubled Tom" was such a strange young man. The 
 more abstruse his lines, the more certainly he charac 
 terized himself : 
 
 "He would chant of the golden wheat 
 And then trill a biscuit-song as sweet 
 
 As poets ever know. 
 Then write a rhyme on theme sublime, 
 And then twirl his pen as of yore 
 And write a lay in his wildest way 
 Of a rival grocery store." 
 
 He unraveled wild and wanton fantasies from most 
 improbable sources. "They were designed," he wrote, 
 
 "By cunning of the spider brain 
 A tangle-work of tissue, wrought 
 And woven, in an hour of pain, 
 To trap the giddy flies of thought." 
 
 The image of himself doing strange things in uncom- 
 
THE STRANGE YOUNG MAN 247 
 
 mon places was startling. Sometimes he was a 
 truant schoolboy with a paper kite in the sky, "unwind 
 ing syllables of gossamer in glimmering threads of 
 speech, and leaving at their ends shadowy thoughts 
 that lost themselves in the fleecy clouds." Sometimes 
 he was a cast-away "unlocking captive lays from the 
 dungeon of his dismal heart that 
 
 Would make the world turn wonderingly around, 
 And slake its thirsty ear with harmony." 
 
 Sometimes he was a desolate dwarf on the coast of a 
 flying island, 
 
 "Where only remorse in pent agony lives 
 To dread the advice that his grandmother gives. 77 
 
 Such a strange young man. He wanted to idle away 
 weeks and write in some obscure hotel room, or in the 
 shade of the Brandywine elms, but such a boon the 
 Fates denied him. "It was not like Hamlet," he said, 
 "just a debate in my mind what to do. I literally had 
 to take up arms against a sea of troubles. I had to 
 suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." 
 The arrows were often nothing more than a confusion 
 of ideas concerning the properties, but the confusion 
 was an affliction to him, and it turned out a plague for 
 life. His clothes were not cut in the latest style. 
 Women thought he should be at their command. 
 He should while away the rosy hours in amuse 
 ment. He should talk sentiment. Not at all, 
 thought he. So he set about doing unaccountable 
 things. He discounted the moon; he forgot to play; 
 he worked at night and slept in the morning. Un 
 willing to countenance his infringements of custom, 
 his companions soon gave him up as an incorrigible. 
 
248 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 To add to his discomfort, he lost control of his temper, 
 when some defiance of his wishes seemed to justify 
 anger, and frequently (as he discovered on reflection) 
 when there was no possible justification. "The extra 
 lemon," said his friend, Myron Reed, "that had been 
 squeezed into the nectar of his disposition damaged 
 its flavor." 
 
 He would pick up slips of paper in stores or offices 
 to keep in his pocket for lead pencil memoranda. He 
 made notes while other men worked and thus was fre 
 quently pointed out as a lounger. When the days were 
 long he sought sequestered places in the thickets and 
 fallen tree-tops, and he once remained hidden away in 
 the woods in spite of the on-coming rain. 
 
 "In those rare odd times, in his better moods 
 Some rustic verses to him were born, 
 That would live, perchance, in their native woods, 
 As long as the crows that pull the corn." 
 
 As the days went by, a lowering shroud of dreams en 
 folded him. There were plaints instead of rejoicing, 
 and "one dismal evening," (he wrote in the gloom) 
 "when the grimy hand of dusk was wiping out the day 
 with spongy clouds, he let the fire die out in his room 
 and refused to light the lamp, declaring that the bur 
 den was heavier than he could bear." What, he won 
 dered, was to keep his heart warm when friends de 
 serted him, when birds declined to sing, when difficulty 
 seemed a mountain and success a foothill, when he 
 sat in silence and gazed at the sky through the window 
 "like one who hears it rain"? 
 
 "Many men," he remarked half-seriously a decade 
 after his dismal experience, "live in a community for 
 years and years, carefully concealing the latent poetry 
 in their hearts, and pass for reputable citizens ; but it 
 
THE SIGN ON THE COUNTRY BARN 
 Painted bv Rilev in 1873 
 
Xi:\v YORK STORE SIGN AT ANDERSON 
 
 The winds came, and the rain fell ; 
 
 The gusty panic blew 
 It mattered not the L. M. Trees 
 
 But strong and stronger grew 
 
THE STRANGE YOUNG MAN 249 
 
 was my fate by an unfortunate current of events very 
 early in my career to be betrayed and branded as a 
 poet." 
 
 In that period of heart-heaviness lie was seeking 
 a friendship that would deeply share his joys and sor 
 rows. He would compass the miracle of true affection. 
 He had a surplus of professional friends whose oblique 
 remonstrations "were deeper injuries than the down 
 right blows of an enemy." Where was the man who 
 would lay down his life, if it be necessary, for his 
 friend? The heroic example of Damon and Pythias 
 was largely fiction. It should be truth, he thought, the 
 common behavior of mankind. He was seeking the 
 Thousandth Man 
 
 "The Thousandth Man will stand your friend 
 With the whole round world ag in you." 
 
 You can show him your feelings. He will bide the 
 shame of mockery and laughter. He will stick closer 
 to you than a brother. Riley s hunger for friendship 
 was the same unsatisfied longing he once attributed to 
 the heart of a woman: 
 
 "Where art thou, Love, still lost to me 
 In unknown deeps of destiny? 
 Thou man of men the fates design 
 For me ! I reach my hands for thine 
 Across the darkness, and I moan 
 My love out all alone alone. 
 
 "But yesterday one blithe of tongue, 
 An heir of fortune, fair and young, 
 Walked with me down the gleaming sands, 
 And of a sudden caught my hands 
 And held them, saying All mine own ! 
 And yet alone alone I walked alone." 
 
250 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 He was not only a strange young man but he 
 was a strange middle-aged man and a strange old 
 man (if it may be said he grew old). There was an 
 other Riley back of the visible one which nobody ever 
 saw; associates saw the smiling face or the "iron 
 mask," but no one ever saw "the light behind the brow." 
 "Away inside of the internal man," said he, "is another 
 man and that man is so superior to the inferior one in 
 front of him that he shades his eyes with his arm to 
 hide the blush and shame. The altitude of the superior 
 man is so great that the inferior can not reach high 
 enough to touch him." 
 
 To Riley s way of thinking, friendship was as inex 
 plicable as poetry. Efforts to explain it were futile. 
 From Cicero to Emerson it was largely a matter of 
 speculation. Who could write the history of love? 
 and friendship without love was as barren as the coast 
 of Enderby Land. A passage attributed to Gail Ham 
 ilton expressed his view with accuracy sufficient for 
 quotation. "There is no such thing," says she, "as 
 knowing a man intimately. Every soul is, for the 
 greater part of its mortal life, isolated from every 
 other. Whether it dwells in the Garden of Eden or the 
 Desert of Sahara, it dwells alone. Not only do we 
 jostle against the street-crowd unknowing and un 
 known, but we go out and come in, we lie down and rise 
 up, with Strangers. Jupiter and Neptune sweep the 
 heavens not more unfamiliar to us than the worlds that 
 circle our hearthstone. Day after day, and year after 
 year, a person moves by our side; he sits at the same 
 table ; he reads the same books ; he kneels in the same 
 church. We speak to him ; his soul comes out into the 
 vestibule to answer us, and returns and the gates are 
 
THE STRANGE YOUNG MAN 251 
 
 shut; therein we can not enter. We were discussing 
 the state of the country ; but when we ceased, he opened 
 a postern gate, went down a bank, and launched on a 
 sea over whose waters we have no boat to sail, no star 
 to guide." 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 IN THE DARK 
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, the son of Harvard 
 and intellectual Cambridge and Boston, could say 
 with royal grace that no man is born into the 
 world whose work is not born with him; that 
 there is always work and tools to work withal, 
 for those who will. But with Whitcomb Riley 
 it was different. His work was born with him, 
 but the tools were not always in sight, and when seen 
 were often unavailable. Like Robert Burns he had 
 "materials to discover ; the metal he worked in lay hid 
 in a wilderness," where few if any before him "guessed 
 its existence. He found himself in deep obscurity, 
 without instruction, without model." Until his twenty- 
 seventh year he was "a man wandering in the dark," 
 waging a continual war with Fortune, and groping his 
 way by the aid of a wandering rather than a fixed 
 star. His genius was little more than "the capacity for 
 receiving discipline." 
 
 It always distressed him that vast numbers of people 
 were unhappy in their occupations. He deplored the 
 vain endeavor of men and women to be what nature 
 never intended, "groping, floundering," he once crudely 
 expressed it, "going round and round and round, never 
 getting any sand on the track." 
 
 He knew of no reason why men should not "sing at 
 their work as merrily as a flock of robins in a cherry 
 tree at sunrise." He was persuaded that each man has 
 
 252 
 
IN THE DARK 253 
 
 an unquestionable right to an unquestionable place, "an 
 aptitude born with him to do easily some feat impos 
 sible to any other. Blessed is the right man in the 
 right place." Do but the tenth part of what you can do, 
 said the old "British Book," and fame and fortune will 
 be the result. 
 
 "The camel s hump is an ugly hump, 
 Which well you may see at the Zoo ; 
 But uglier yet is the hump we get 
 From having too little to do" 
 
 not having the right thing to do, added Riley so em 
 phatically that Kipling most likely would have gladly 
 made the change. 
 
 While riding one day in the "Buckeye" with the 
 "Standard Remedy" vender, Riley came to a blacksmith 
 shop, with a smoky sign above the door : Come In And 
 See Me Work. What he found, on entering the shop, 
 was truly a revelation a man unspeakably happy be 
 cause he had found his place. Farmers loved to hear 
 his bellows blow. Pedlers and children laughed and 
 talked with him as they passed. He was a poet, too. 
 "The smoke from the forge," said he, "is wild ivy. See 
 it creep up the walls and cling to the rafters." He 
 gladly looked the whole country round in the face 
 there was so much honesty and fair play in the world. 
 He was an efficient smithy, but more than that ; he was 
 a success at the "flaming forge of life." The sparks 
 that flew from his anvil envied the smiles on his face; 
 
 "His heart was in his work and the heart 
 Giveth grace unto every Art." 
 
 It is not, thought Riley, musing on his "discovery," 
 that a man must be a poet or an orator, or a geologist 
 in order to be happy. The solution of the problem was 
 
254 % JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 this : "Find the niche nature designed you to fill and 
 enter it with thanksgiving." 
 
 He passed the shop in the summer of 1872. Thence 
 onward for four years, one question incessantly called 
 for an answer: What is my mission? Where is my 
 place? "It was uppermost in my thought," said he 
 "the very dog-fennel at the roadside whispered it as I 
 bowled from town to town." 
 
 "Where are theythe Afterwhiles 
 Luring us the lengthening miles 
 Of our lives ? Where is the dawn 
 With the dew across the lawn? 
 Where the sun that smites the frown 
 Of the eastward-gazer down?" 
 
 "I have been a happy man," said Henry Fuseli, "for 
 I have always been employed in doing what I liked." 
 Riley could not forget the fact that the British painter 
 was eighty years old when he said it. The secret of his 
 joy how did the painter find it? Was it due to Lava- 
 ter s speculations in Physiognomy? There was a "the 
 atrical description" of those speculations which (mirth 
 ful as it seemed afterward) claimed young Riley s 
 serious attention. Lavater held that the human figure 
 signified its nature human features expressed char 
 acter. The history of an individual, future as well as 
 past, could be read in the face as one would read from 
 a printed page. Perhaps the eminent phrenologist had, 
 after all, really helped Fuseli. He had told the painter 
 that his profile indicated energy the mouth 
 promised a spirit of application the nose 
 seemed- to be the seat of intrepid genius 
 and so forth. At any rate, Riley was bent on 
 finding out what a phrenologist thought of his profile. 
 While "sojourning" in Marion, Indiana, in November, 
 
IN THE DARK 255 
 
 1872, the opportunity came at White s Hall. The Emi 
 nent Physiognomist and Delineator of Character, Doc 
 tor James Hedley, came from St. Louis to deliver eight 
 lectures. Riley attended them with what result, he 
 tells us in his jovial way in "An Adjustable Lunatic" : 
 
 "No one ever reads my character" (says the lunatic) 
 "no one ever will. Why, I ve had phrenologists grop 
 ing around among my bumps by the hour to no purpose, 
 and physiognomists driving themselves cross-eyed ; but 
 they never found it and never will. The very things 
 of which I am capable they invariably place beyond my 
 capacity; and, with like sageness, the very things I 
 can t do they declare me to be a master hand at. Why, 
 old Fowler himself (Doctor Hedley) here the other 
 night, thumped my head as mellow as a May-apple, and 
 never came within a mile of it." 
 
 Nor could a man be explained and his place in the 
 world be determined by genealogy. In that uncertain 
 period and on several occasions afterward, Riley ex 
 pressed himself unreservedly on the subject. Doctor 
 S. Weir Mitchell once remarked to him that genius is a 
 glad freak of nature in a good humor. "In a very im 
 portant sense," said the Doctor, "it has neither grand 
 father nor grandchild." "Fishing for a pedigree," 
 Riley added, "does not make a man successful." Family 
 pride, this thing of tracing ancestry back to 
 William the Conqueror there was nothing in 
 it. "Man is his own ancestor." He liked the fig 
 ure which made a great man a mountain with the 
 valley of his ancestors on one side and the depression 
 of posterity on the other. He and John Hay once joked 
 about their nationality. They were not chance children, 
 they said. They could trace their genealogy all the way 
 back to their parents. They were alike in that they 
 
256 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 had back of them a little Scotch, a little English, a little 
 German and a little French, but not enough of any one 
 to make them anything but American. "I am Irish," 
 said Riley, "from the word go. I show it in my tastes, 
 I show it in my face my face is a map of Ireland. 
 My father s grandfather was Irish, and came from 
 Cork or some old place over there, but never, when in 
 my right mind, do I attribute my success to that fact. 
 Did you ever try to count your ancestors?" he asked, 
 while Hay still chuckled over his Irish sally. "W y, 
 I had so many great, great, great, great grandparents 
 they could not crowd through the Alleghanies. Most 
 of them had to remain on the other side." 
 
 In those years of uncertainty, prior to 1876, Riley 
 was at sea without compass. "I was floundering," he 
 said, "from Devil s Den to Dismal Slough" (a figura 
 tive expression based on literal fact, a trip he once 
 made in the "Buckeye" through a swampy region in 
 Tipton County) . "Why is it," he asked, "that mortals 
 in their efforts to find their place in the world have to 
 search for it through the driving rain of blinding tears, 
 
 While put across the deeps of night 
 They lift the sails of prayer ? 
 Why voyage off in quest of light 
 Nor find it anywhere?" 
 
 A less dismal picture presented itself one morning 
 while riding along on an upper tributary of White 
 water. A bobolink pitched from the summit of a tree 
 to the bosom of a meadow just as Riley had seen him 
 pictured in the old McGuffey Reader. The fluttering 
 songster was all sunshine, all sensibility and enjoy 
 ment. He was literally overcome with the ecstasy of 
 his own music. The meadow was his place his home. 
 
IN THE DARK 257 
 
 "The bobolink," remarked Riley, "plays first fiddle all 
 the time." 
 
 While scurrying through the country, "silently and 
 slowly working out the train of indecisions in his 
 mind," Riley was busy with the study of means to 
 ends. While the "Buckeye" wound through a lumber 
 section one day, he caroled the song of the saw-mill : 
 
 "They who turn the whizzing wheel of labor should be 
 blessed 
 
 With such return as life-long efforts earn, 
 And in the arms of Fortune, warmly pressed 
 
 Without a fever-thought of care to burn 
 The peaceful brow that sinks to blissful rest." 
 
 There was the farmer, "the founder of human civiliza 
 tion," who seemed to be solving the problem for all 
 men. The earth provided the soil and tools were also 
 provided. "There were harrows," he jingled, 
 
 "There were reapers and mowers, 
 And patent grain sowers, 
 And drillers and tillers, 
 And cucumber hillers 
 And all the long list of a thousand or more 
 That were found at the old Agricultural Store." 
 
 Why should there not be tools for the artist, or poet? 
 a vast storehouse somewhere on which he might 
 draw forevermore. "Why this floundering!" he ex 
 claimed to his traveling chum, bewailing the sad lot of 
 poets ; "7 can find no more happiness in a hub and spoke 
 factory" and while they drove by a factory at Wabash 
 the jingle dripped from his lips: 
 
 "The hands are as busy 
 As so many bees 
 Who work themselves dizzy 
 In blossoming trees ; 
 
258 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 And all the Jong hours 
 From morning till night 
 Their hearts are as flowers 
 That blossom delight/ 
 
 It was all a question of knowing where to go, what 
 to do and how to do it. 
 
 "Gracious God!" exclaimed Bill Nye, referring to 
 Riley s ignorance of his mission, "he was blind as the 
 fish in Echo River. There he was in the vast store 
 house of the Land of Used-To-Be, the shapeless masses, 
 the tools, the materials all about him. The tinkle of 
 bells and fairy bugles were calling to him, but he was 
 dull of hearing. From day to day capital facts of 
 existence were hidden from his eyes. Suddenly in 
 1876, the mist rolled up and revealed them. He was 
 like a sheep-herder I knew in Wyoming, who had been 
 cooped up in a little eggshell valley for twenty years. 
 One day he concluded to stroll farther away from the 
 corral than he had ever strolled before. He ascended 
 a high hill when lo! the snow-covered summits of the 
 Rockies burst upon his wondering eyes. There stretch 
 ing hundreds of miles from north to south were the 
 blue fields of the sublime." 
 
 In those misty days Riley was far from home. He 
 was the sea-swallow among the rooks and rushes of 
 the land, Robert Louis Stevenson describes : 
 
 "Far from the loud sea-beaches, 
 Where he goes fishing and crying, 
 Here in the inland garden 
 Why is the sea-gull flying? 
 
 "There are no fish to dive for; 
 Here is the corn and lea ; 
 Here are the green trees rustling, 
 Hie away home to the sea. 
 
IN THE DARK 259 
 
 " "Pity the bird that has wandered ! 
 Pity the sailor ashore! 
 Hurry him home to the ocean, 
 Let him come here no more ! 
 
 "High on the sea-cliff ledges, 
 The white gulls are trooping and crying ; 
 Here among rooks and roses, 
 Why is the sea-gull flying?" 
 
 Why should a poet be tossing among paint buckets, 
 sign-boards and concert wagons ? Why should he have 
 to beg for bread in Grub Street? Why hitch Pegasus 
 to a plow, or condemn Apollo to pasture flocks for 
 Admetus? The first consideration for success in any 
 field was this, that a man find real satisfaction, real 
 romance in his work. There were some things, as 
 Ruskin said, men must do for bread, but they were not 
 called upon to do anything into which they could not 
 put their hearts. "See the young men from the halls 
 of learning," wrote Robert Burdette, from his Burling 
 ton sanctum. "Of the twenty-three who recently 
 stepped across the threshold of life from an Eastern 
 college, eleven are clerking in an auction store at four 
 teen dollars a month, one is running a fish-boat, two 
 are learning the house-painting trade, and one is 
 starving to death in a law office." 
 
 "My Funny Fellow," remarked Riley, commenting 
 on the humorous item, "can be meek as a Quaker. When 
 he wrote that he was as solemn as an undertaker. He 
 was jesting, but what he wrote was not a jest. There 
 is something wrong whether a man is self-educated 
 or college-educated when his work is not in harmony 
 with his natural bent." 
 
 While dizzy with uncertainties, Riley went one night 
 to see Peg Woffington played at the old Metropolitan 
 
260 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 Theater in Indianapolis. Scenes in the first and fourth 
 acts the Green Room of the Theater Royal and Con 
 vent Garden were but vaguely remembered ; but what 
 happened in Triplet s lodgings impressed him deeply. 
 The cramped apartment was on a narrow back street 
 in London. "Bricked in on all sides like a tomb, it was 
 always solitary, always shady and sad." Theater pa 
 trons of forty years ago will recall that Triplet was 
 a man ambitious to be a painter, actor and dramatist, 
 but who in reality was a "goose" and had no genius 
 either for writing, painting or acting. He was trying 
 to support an invalid wife and four starving children. 
 He had submitted tragedies to a theatrical manager. 
 They had been returned without a word. The real 
 tragedy came when Triplet realized the full weight of 
 the blow. Then a sigh escaped him. The poor, rejected 
 tragedies fell to the ground and he buried his head in 
 his hands. 
 
 Then the resourceful Wofnngton entered Triplet s 
 apartment with a basket of refreshments. When 
 she had satisfied the hungry family with food, 
 she seized his fiddle and showed him another of 
 her enchantments. She played to the eye as 
 well as to the ear and with such radiance that the 
 children could not sit in their chairs; they could not 
 keep still. She jumped up; so did they. She gave a 
 wild Irish horroo. She put the fiddle in Triplet s 
 hands. He played like Paganini. Woffington covered 
 the buckle in gallant style (said Charles Reade, to 
 whom Riley as well as the actors were indebted for the 
 story). A great sunbeam had come into their home. 
 They put their hands to their hearts; they looked at 
 one another, and then at the goddess who had revived 
 them. A few moments before, they were sorrowful 
 
IN THE DARK 261 
 
 and hopeless. Now joy was in their hearts, and sorrow 
 and sighing were fled. 
 
 "It was magical," said Riley, borrowing the novel 
 ist s thought, "that a mortal could so magnetize the 
 soul of man. To enter the home of the poor and tune 
 drooping hearts to daylight and hope there is no 
 nobler mission than that. Woffington did what she 
 could for Triplet, but the Fates had other things in 
 store. They thumped him some more. The managers 
 rejected other tragedies. He failed in comedy. God 
 knows it took a long while to break his heart, but at 
 last it was broken broken quite broken. The only 
 hit he made was an inheritance of twenty thousand 
 pounds and a somewhat happy exit the year our 
 Great Washington died." 
 
 All through the play and weeks after, one thought 
 was paramount in Riley s mind the tragedy of unrec 
 ognized genius. "Triplet was a goose," said he, "but 
 all are not geese who struggle for recognition. Was 
 I a goose? Or, what is more tragic, was I an im 
 prudent genius? Was I to struggle for years with 
 difficulties and sink at last, as Emerson said, chilled, 
 exhausted and fruitless, like a giant slaughtered by 
 pins? I was in the dark." 
 
 There was Triplet. Nothing that had happened upon 
 the great stage of the world seemed real to him. Was 
 that the way of all the earth? Were there no such 
 things as hearts and firesides and reward for happy 
 endeavor? Was it all paint and paste and diamonds 
 all chance and anarchy? Was it true that "life is a tale 
 told by an idiot" that man is "a walking shadow a 
 poor, poor player, who frets and struts his hour upon 
 the stage, and then is heard no more" ? 
 
 To add to the winter of his discontent Riley was 
 
262 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 afflicted with that insidious Hoosier malady, known as 
 the blues. His plight is best told in his own words : 
 
 "I admit," he wrote Mary Hartwell Catherwood, 
 "that I have long fondled the actual belief that 
 I am a poet, but it pains me to add that I have 
 latterly received such evidence to the contrary that I 
 have no hope of ever proving it to the world. But 
 believe me, I am glad to know that others are succeed 
 ing while I fail. From the very opening remark you 
 make regarding your own productions, I judge that 
 your work commands remuneration, which certainly 
 must be marvelous encouragement. I am sure that all 
 the poems I have ever written, if bundled together, 
 would not bring as much in market value as a bundle 
 of radishes. In fact, I never succeeded in selling but 
 one poem in my life, and I think there must have been 
 some fatal mistake about that, for the editor when I 
 next wrote, gleefully offering him another effort, wrote 
 me saying he regretted that the sudden suspension of 
 the magazine since the publication of my first poem 
 compelled the return of my second. And I have always 
 thought the death of that hitherto prosperous publica 
 tion was on my hands. And so I worry on, but will 
 you forgive me? I meant to write more briefly and say 
 something. I have done neither." 
 
 In that period of confusion, Riley was perplexed, 
 distressed sometimes by relatives and friends giving 
 him advice the complacency of dull old men lecturing 
 fiery youth on plans of study and habits of thought. 
 Like the mysterious lodger in Old Curiosity Shop, he 
 wanted to do as he liked : "I want to go to bed when I 
 like, get up when I like, come in when I like, go out 
 when I like to be asked no questions, and be sur 
 rounded by no spies." 
 
IN THE DARK 263 
 
 Well-meaning friends were innocently in league with 
 the fickle impulses of his own nature, furiously com 
 manding him to do this and do that. Listening to them 
 he fancied himself "poor, orphaned, insignificant. What 
 was he that he should resist their will and think and 
 act for himself? Every week new showers of decep 
 tions to baffle and distract him." There were sign- 
 painting showers that a few years before would have 
 hurried him to the paintshop on wings. One order 
 from an advertising agent for a dozen signs one gro 
 cery one dry goods one drug one sewing machine 
 one clothing one boots and shoes one stoves and 
 tinware : in addition, one jewelry (watches and clocks) , 
 one planing mill representing laths, shingles, dressed 
 lumber, and such material as mills turn out ; one hotel 
 suitable to put in one newspaper column, the rest 
 suitable for two columns in county papers all made 
 in form of a rebus and ready for engraver in ten days. 
 
 Again there came an inquiry from a friend "down 
 in Old Monroe," who wanted to know the price of 
 county cards, barn cards, fence cards and so forth. 
 There were several good sign-painting prospects in 
 Bloomington. "Now, old fellow," said the letter, 
 "come speedily. Telegraph me yes if you can come; 
 if not, telegraph me no. One sign is gold leafing, a 
 prescription case in a drug store; another is a fancy 
 sign for a butcher. Come immediately. I have the 
 rocks in my jeans to pay your board for a month." 
 
 There came also a call from the "Graphics." One of 
 their number had closed a contract in "Old Virginny" 
 to advertise a tobacco company. "I want you for a 
 partner," he wrote. "They guarantee fifty dollars a 
 week and probably one hundred dollars. I can make 
 it sure one hundred and fifty dollars a week for us two. 
 
264 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 They want a sign of a log cabin with a negro in the 
 door, red shirt and so forth. Make it on 8 by 10 
 paper. Make it hot. Send to Lynchburg and I will 
 work up the finest snap of the year." 
 
 These orders and inquiries, and others of like char 
 acter received indifferent attention. The "rising litter 
 ateur" painted an occasional sign, but the business was 
 growing more and more incongruous. Fortune knows 
 he sorely needed the "rocks," but he was disinclined to 
 pursue them at his old trade. "There is a delightful 
 tang to greenbacks," he remarked, "but it is not engrav 
 ing orders I need now. I need a Peg Woffington who 
 will loan me fifty pounds to be paid at Doomsday." 
 
 Fifteen years later, while touring Scotland, Riley 
 reverted to the days when he was distressed with debt. 
 "The most mortifying picture in all experience," he 
 said, "is a man like Robert Burns commissioned of 
 Heaven to write tender human verse, and having at the 
 same time to make a wretched appeal for money, a 
 pitiful cry for a loan to provide against the commonest 
 household necessities. When I entered the house where 
 Burns died, and walked through the kitchen and up 
 the winding stairway to the room where he wrote his 
 songs, I could hear above everything else the echo of 
 his cry. It is fine in Franklin to look back and write 
 pleasantly about the time when he was poor and home 
 less, but I ll wager a town lot that life was not romantic 
 when he had but one loaf of bread in Philadelphia. 
 The sunlight is on the other side of the earth when a 
 man faces a misty future." 
 
 Writing the "Golden Girl," a brilliant young woman, 
 who was then November, 1876 in search of health 
 in the Black River pine woods of Wisconsin, Riley 
 disavowed interest in things that once claimed a large 
 
IN THE DARK 265 
 
 share of his attention. "My going with the Graphics," 
 he said, "seems not to suit you any better than it does 
 me. I don t know that I shall go with them after all. 
 You have no idea how distasteful it is to me. I 
 some way feel as though I were being made a tool of to 
 advance the interests of those who would smile to think 
 what a fool he is. Since my reformation I begin to 
 feel an unusual sense of my importance and if I do 
 lower myself to some uncongenial pursuit, it will be 
 because an adverse fate drives me to it. I have heard 
 nothing further from the Graphics since my last letter 
 to you, and I believe I am happier. I wish I could 
 make my living, for I am tired of the brush. I have 
 been very busily occupied with literary matters. I 
 have had a perfect hemorrhage of inspiration, produc 
 ing quite a number of poems and of better quality than 
 ever. I have written to Longfellow, Trowbridge and 
 two or three lesser literary lights and enclosed them 
 samples of my fancy work; and with every reason 
 to believe I shall have gratifying comments from them 
 all." 
 
 Referring afterward to the "hemorrhage of inspira 
 tion," Riley said he wrote all night "wrote till the 
 rooster went into ecstasy on the subject of daylight." 
 
 One "blue" day in autumn he wrote his friend, 
 B. S. Parker of Newcastle, a letter which occa 
 sioned the latter s reply in October, 1876, the 
 year "Blue Jeans" Williams defeated Benjamin 
 Harrison for governor. "How do you expect 
 one at such a time," asks Parker, "to think of any- 
 think but the blues Blue Jeans/ blue times and 
 blue devils? I think a man who has a soul above but 
 tons, and who occasionally hears the soft whispers of 
 the Muse ought not to allow himself to become inter- 
 
266 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 ested in politics (nor in sign-painting and the law, 
 added Riley parenthetically) . A poet must be a vaga 
 bond in a certain sense if he would not fail to discover 
 the good that is in him. I do not mean that he should 
 travel like a gipsy or play the tramp or starve and 
 freeze by turns, but that he should not feel that exist 
 ence is a thing to which no man has a just right unless 
 he becomes of use to bankers, horse-swappers, curb 
 stone brokers and the like. In other words, if I could 
 live my little life over, I would be content to be a poet 
 and scribbler and only enter the so-called business field 
 just so far as was necessary to life, liberty and the 
 pursuit of happiness." 
 
 There came also a letter from another friend, the 
 fluent temperance advocate, Luther Benson, who had 
 fought Demon Rum from boyhood. He knew from 
 experience that life can be a nightmare of mockery, 
 as he mournfully expressed it, a black, rayless waste 
 of desolation. "I feel that neither of us," he wrote, 
 "could make a meal on pleasure. I am handcuffed to 
 misery and chained to agony." Riley was painfully 
 conscious of a kindred affliction, but more acute than 
 this was the pain he suffered from the darkness that 
 obscured his choice of an occupation. His father 
 saw no hope of success for him in the literary field. 
 There was a squib in the law office which the father 
 once read aloud in the hope of discouraging his son s 
 literary ambition. That the son might feel its sting 
 he read it in the presence of brother attorneys : 
 
 "What are the poets, take them as they fall, 
 Good, bad, rich, poor, much read, not read at all? 
 Them and their works in the same class you ll find* 
 They are the mere waste-paper of mankind." 
 
 Evidently the attorneys and the father made some 
 
IN THE DARK 267 
 
 impression on the youthful poet, for it is a matter of 
 record that he promised his father he "would not waste 
 his days writing poetry." Almost immediately the 
 Muse turned the promise down. As Longfellow 
 wrote "The Spirit of Poetry" and "The Song of 
 the Birds" in a law office, so Riley wrote "An Old 
 Sweetheart" and "If I Knew What Poets Know." He 
 kept his "law office poems," as he called them, in his 
 desk under lock and key for several weeks, did not have 
 the courage to let his father or the attorneys know 
 what he was doing. The latter poem was written in one 
 forenoon. "I commenced writing," said Riley, "but 
 had great difficulty in getting it under way. While 
 thrumming abstractedly with my pencil, my shoes at 
 tracted my attention and I decided to have them half- 
 soled. I went immediately from the office down the 
 stairway into the street, making directly for the shoe- 
 shop across the way. I remember the street was 
 muddy. Before reaching the shop, I stopped, turned 
 about, retraced my steps to the office and wrote the 
 poem rapidly to its conclusion. I had to labor on it it 
 didn t just make itself, but in a short time it was 
 finished; I had the shoes repaired in the afternoon." 
 
 He yearned for the opinion of friends on "An Old 
 Sweetheart," but was somewhat at a loss to know just 
 how to direct their attention to the poem. He mailed 
 a copy to the "Golden Girl," who from the first 
 had been displeased over his waste of time in the law 
 office. "If you," he asked, referring to the poem, "were 
 sending this fiction of an overwrought brain to friends, 
 what would you say about it?" She promptly put her 
 self in his place and returned the following: 
 
 "In humbly and almost fearfully submitting this 
 last fiction of an overwrought brain to the unappre- 
 
268 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 ciative and ofttimes careless care of the U. S. Mail, 
 I must in confidence confess it is not given to the 
 world to reform public schools change the form of 
 government of our prisons lead to a better state of 
 affairs in our pulpits nor yet to show up spiritualism 
 in its true light but to show conclusively the utterly 
 demoralizing effect of a lawyer in a Green Field of 
 labor." 
 
 The reader should note here that "An Old Sweet 
 heart" perhaps the most popular American poem 
 was the product of what seems to mortal vision un- 
 poetic conditions. It was written in that hour of deep 
 darkness just before the dawn and started on its way 
 to immortality by the fitful winds of uncertainty. At 
 the narrowest part of the defile, says the Persian 
 proverb, the valley begins to open. 
 
 His legal ventures ended peremptorily with his 
 second attempt. "In the dog-days of a summer hot as 
 the hinges of Purgatory," said he, "I tucked my law 
 poems up my sleeve, turned my back on the attorney 
 business, and my face to a future as mysterious and 
 hopeless as a block of mining stock." 
 
 Golden encouragement came from the "Golden Girl." 
 She infused strength in his resolution. He had sent her 
 Bleak House to read. In response she assured him that 
 the law had too many convolutions for poets. "Have 
 little to do with people who are too deep for you," she 
 wrote, in the guise of Mrs. Bagnet. "Be careful of 
 interference with matters you do not understand do 
 nothing in the dark be a party to nothing under 
 handed or mysterious and never put your foot where 
 you can not see the ground." 
 
 The author of "Little Brown Hands," Mary H. Krout, 
 wrote also, in October, 1876, of his dislike of the law 
 
IN THE DARK 269 
 
 as a profession. "That goes to prove," said she, "that 
 you are a gentleman of better judgment than I even 
 supposed you to be." 
 
 In that year of 1876, the Voices called to him again. 
 There seemed at times a deceptive clamor about them, 
 but frequently they were musical. He listened to them 
 and began to sing of them : 
 
 "Down in the night, he heard them 
 The Voices unknown unguessed ; 
 They whispered and lisped and murmured 
 And would not let him rest." 
 
 "Yes, he heard voices," said Myron Reed, "and he 
 was lonesome, lonesome as Joan of Arc in the garden. 
 She heard voices, but nobody else heard them. Each 
 man has his private individual revelation of what he 
 ought to think and say and do." 
 
 There came also the Voice of wisdom from Long 
 fellow, one of the rare providential admonitions of his 
 life. One day he gleaned this from "Morituri Salu- 
 tamus": 
 
 "Study yourself ; and most of all note well 
 Wherein kind nature meant you to excel" 
 
 sovereign lines, and henceforward the key to much that 
 Riley said and did. He saw as never before the signifi 
 cance of YOUTH its illusions, aspirations and dreams. 
 It assured him that all possibilities were in his hands. 
 He was not to hesitate, but with ambitious feet, 
 
 "ASCEND THE LADDER LEANING ON THE CLOUD." 
 
 Henceforth he thought deeply on his mission. As he 
 wrote in one of his "law office poems," hearts in pain 
 
270 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 should be glad again and the false should be true if he 
 knew what poets know: 
 
 "If I knew what poets know, 
 
 I would find a theme 
 Sweeter than the placid flow 
 
 Of the fairest dream: 
 I would sing of love that lives 
 
 On the errors it forgives ; 
 And the world would better grow 
 
 If I knew what poets know." 
 
 In that transitional year, he did not, as Byron in 
 a dream, wander darkling on a rayless, pathless coast. 
 The beacons had not all disappeared. But he did liter 
 ally look up "with mad disquietude into a dull sky and 
 then lie down and hide his eyes and weep." As is seen 
 in lines he then wrote and afterward omitted from his 
 poem, "In the Dark": 
 
 "He moaned with a passionate yearning, 
 
 And a flood of hopes and fears 
 Flowed o er his troubled spirit, 
 And ebbed in a tide of tears. 
 
 "The gleam of a star through the window 
 
 Fell like a soothing touch ; 
 And darkness wore to the dawning 
 For which he longed so much." 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 VISION OF HIS MISSION 
 
 WALKING one April morning through an 
 orchard with a friend, his eyes on the blos 
 soming trees and his thoughts in the sky, 
 Riley suddenly pitched forward into a post-hole. In 
 the twinkling of an eye the Tennysonian sentiment 
 came to his lips: 
 
 "0 let the solid ground 
 Not fail beneath my feet 
 Before my life has found 
 What some have found so sweet; 
 Then let come what come may, 
 What matter if I go mad, 
 I shall have had my day." 
 
 The lines, repeated at random, were an innocent 
 prelude to his "prolific decade" the ten years 
 of poetic effusion, whose natal days, in the 
 providence of Heaven, mantled with rapture the 
 summer of 1876. A glimpse of that rapture is 
 seen in his remarks, three years following, to the 
 Thousandth Man, Myron Reed. One winter night 
 they were talking on the significance of dreams. Riley 
 was in a state of ecstasy over a vision that had crossed 
 his path. "Nor was I on the road to Damascus," said 
 he, "unless all men travel that way. I was vibrating 
 between the woods and the law office, had no com 
 pany except my own thoughts; but my ears were 
 opened; I heard a voice heard it for several days. 
 
 271 
 
272 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 Why it should call, so unexpectedly, to me, an ob 
 scure mortal in a backwoods corner of the world, 
 is beyond my comprehension." 
 
 "Pleasures and visions," returned Reed, "are come 
 upon, or they come upon you. Only one man has seen 
 Niagara Falls, and he was in search of something else 
 something prosaic, something that had work in 
 it; and all of a sudden he heard the steady throb 
 and pound, and a little later saw the blue and white 
 wonder." 
 
 And what was the vision? Just the plain simple 
 fact that he was to write poetry. "Jay Whit," the 
 sign-painter, the Argonaut, was to be the humble in 
 strument for the transmission of song to men ; a voice 
 he was to be for the "inarticulate masses the soiled 
 and the pure the rich and the poor the loved and 
 the unloved." Whence the songs? The Argonaut 
 did not know 
 
 "All hitherward blown 
 From the misty realm, that belongs 
 To the vast Unknown. 
 
 "The voices pursue him by day, 
 And haunt him by night, 
 And he listens, and needs must obey 
 When the Angel says, Write! " 
 
 His fortunate opportunity had come. Not in a mo 
 ment, like Hugh Wynne s, but in a fortnight he had 
 made a decisive resolution, which, once made, con 
 trolled him, and permitted no future change of plan. 
 
 "Then straightway before 
 His swimming eyes, all vividly was wrought 
 A vision that was with him evermore." 
 
 Now that he had a definite object, his character and 
 
VISION OF HIS MISSION 273 
 
 purpose were to be written broadly on his face. No 
 waste of time in platitudes; none of the inexpressive 
 similarity that obscures the men and women who go 
 in public to see and be seen. He was to be an in 
 dividual doing the work Heaven designed him to do, 
 and in doing it, he was to give expression to truth. 
 The vision supplied him with the sides of a ladder, 
 but, as Dickens had told him in the old Shoe-Shop, 
 the cleats were to be made of stuff to stand wear and 
 tear, and the Argonaut was to make and nail them on. 
 His personal reference to the vision was always 
 virile and stimulating. "I had a dream once years 
 and years ago," he wrote a friend after he had tamed 
 the lion of public recognition, "a vision that I should 
 some day be just what I am this minute, and it made 
 me a different person." He was an impatient wind 
 from inland regions come suddenly to the seaside, a 
 wind that had been retarded by tanglewood and 
 ridges. There was a call from the deep; the prospect 
 was divine as his own lines attest: 
 
 "And the swelling sea invited me 
 With a smiling, beckoning hand, 
 And I spread my wings for a flight as free 
 As ever a sailor plans, 
 
 When his thoughts are wild and his heart beguiled 
 With a dream of foreign lands." 
 
 The dream was the more perfect image of the dream 
 he had when the musician played the "fine frenzy" 
 that entranced him while under the sway of Ole Bull s 
 magic wand. 
 
 Writing the "Golden Girl," he was pleased to 
 tell her that he had been busily occupied with 
 literary matters, that he had had (as we have 
 seen) "a perfect hemorrhage of inspiration." 
 
274 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 "Crowding measures" had gushed like a fountain 
 from his heart. He had produced poems of better 
 quality than ever, and had sent "samples of his fancy 
 work" to Trowbridge and Longfellow. The vision was 
 "heaven s own baptismal rite." In the Indianapolis 
 Journal office in after years, he was wont to call it, 
 "My Vision of Summer" : 
 
 " Twas a marvelous vision of Summer* 
 That morning the dawn was late, 
 And came like a long dream-ridden guest 
 Through the gold of the Eastern gate. 
 
 "And back from the lands enchanted, 
 Where my earliest mirth was born, 
 The thrill of a laugh was blown to me 
 Like the blare of an elfin horn." 
 
 The tuneful flame had the fervor of the "poetic rage" 
 that flowed from the heart of Burns when the Scottish 
 Muse came to the clay cottage to bind the holly round 
 his brow. It was the gleam that Tennyson saw in the 
 summer-morn of life. 
 
 As Riley said in "The Shower," he was trans 
 figured; his empty soul brimmed over; he was 
 drenched with the love of God. He was also aware 
 of a happiness in his work hitherto unknown. What 
 he did was interesting "interesting," said he, "be 
 cause I was happy in my thoughts. The more inter 
 esting my thoughts, the happier I was." 
 
 "A vision may beget some wonder and well it may," 
 said Ike Walton, "for most of our world are at present 
 possessed with an opinion that visions and miracles 
 are ceased." "They have not ceased," said Riley. 
 "Again and again I have been guided by an invisible 
 Destiny. There has almost always come to me a fore- 
 
THE GRAPHIC COMPANY. *<"*", 
 
 FACSIMILE OF LETTER FROM HEARTH AND HOME. 
 
HEADING OF HEARTH AND HOME 
 Showing the Editor s cottage at "Edgewood 
 
 A Si ..\ IN mi: POST OFFICE" 
 The silhouette figures spell Riley 
 
VISION OF HIS MISSION 275 
 
 cast of events in my life. I once told my brother that 
 if I put several of my stories and poems together and 
 gave attention to delivery, I could succeed on the plat 
 form. He laughed derisively and for a time that was 
 the end of that dream. My old schoolmaster, Lee 0. 
 Harris, used to send poems to the Indianapolis Sentinel 
 and get beautiful notices. I wondered whether the day 
 would come when I should contribute to the Journal 
 and read praise of my work. I like to believe as the 
 pious men of old that every man has a particular 
 guardian angel his Daemon to attend him in all his 
 dangers, both of body and soul. There have been crises 
 in my life when I was awed by what I saw. Like 
 Job a spirit passed before my face ; my hair stood up ; 
 fear and trembling came upon me, and made all my 
 bones to shake." 
 
 The Argonaut had dreams while drifting about with 
 the "Graphics" not a vision, however; not the clear, 
 decisive disclosure of what he was to do. 
 
 He had a dream when he received a talisman (as he 
 thought) in the letter from Hearth and Home his 
 first check for a poem. An air-castle it was with tissue 
 of riches. He saw himself an Aladdin with the magic 
 ring on his finger, in a garden, among trees with fruits 
 of many colors, their foliage beautifully blended with 
 emeralds, pearls and rubies. In fancy he filled his 
 pockets with diamonds from the trees and afterward, 
 by scattering them right and left in handfuls, gained 
 the affections of the people as the young Aladdin had 
 done. It was dawn, midday and moonlight all in one : 
 
 "A thousand fairy throngs 
 Flung at him, from their flashing hands, 
 The echoes of their songs." 
 
 Throughout his "misty years" his mind was a nur- 
 
276 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 sery for "thick-coming fancies." He pleased his whim 
 sical tendency with one from the "British Book." The 
 gay John Flaxman, fond of merry legends, had invented 
 for the amusement of his family the story of the Chi 
 nese Casket, giving its genealogy, locating the original 
 in the bowers of Paradise and afterward a reproduc 
 tion of it, made of scented wood and precious gems, in 
 China. There it was protected in a sanctuary by a 
 princess, who, understanding the language of the birds, 
 had been taught to prize it by what she heard in the 
 song of the nightingale. The Casket was to contain the 
 verse and maxims of poets and philosophers. There 
 coming a day when the treasure was unsafe in China, 
 being exposed to the malice of magicians, the princess 
 carried it to Mount Hermon and deposited it on "a 
 high and holy hill." There Sadi wrote for the Casket 
 while a guardian angel watched over it. The poet died 
 and Hafiz wrote, but when loose visions floated before 
 his sight and his strains lost their purity and virtue, 
 indignant angels snatched the Casket away, resolved to 
 bear it to a distant isle, where virtuous works of art 
 and virtuous people abound. The angelic keepers 
 floated with their treasure over inland vales toward the 
 Golden West. The Muses saluted the flying pageant 
 as it passed, the Colossus of Rhodes bowed his head and 
 the gods of Greece clapped their hands. The fleets of 
 nations waved their pennants in approval and in due 
 season 
 
 "The godlike genius of the British Isle 
 Received the Casket with benignant smile." 
 
 Flaxman s story ended with Britain but Riley and 
 an early booklover of his native town, whose fancy was 
 capricious like his own, carried the Casket across the 
 
VISION OF HIS MISSION 277 
 
 Atlantic. Longfellow had written his sweetest verse 
 for it and both thanked Heaven the poet had kept it 
 free from the taint of corruption and vice. "My boy," 
 said his friend half -seriously, "the day will come when 
 you will write songs for the Casket." The friend (an 
 intuitive young woman) was not certain that he would 
 succeed Longfellow but certain she was he would do 
 what he could, and that what he did would be musical. 
 "It was the thought of an idle moment," said Riley, "a 
 joke taken seriously" seriously, just as one other time 
 he was capering along the street with some friends, 
 talking about a wondrous casket he had found and his 
 purpose to fill it with verse the friends thinking him 
 in earnest when he was "only joking." 
 
 It may be true that "God hides the germs of every 
 living thing, that no record holds the moment by the 
 clock, of any discovery"; but surely, if mortal ever 
 knew he was born again, ever knew he was face to face 
 with a turning-point in his career, Whitcomb Riley 
 knew it the summer of 1876. A period in his life had 
 come when he lived years in a few weeks. Henceforth 
 his faith seldom failed. Misgivings became less nu 
 merous. The vision was 
 
 "The fountain light of all his day, 
 The master light of all his seeing." 
 
 "I had come through life," he said, "just dallying in 
 the shallow eddies of a brook; now I was a river. I 
 yearned to float and flow out God-ward. Life was rich 
 er than ever I dreamed it could be when I was a trust 
 ful child peering out across the future. There is no 
 rapture like the joy of finding your place and the assur 
 ance that you have found it. It is to be transported 
 from midnight to the rosy light of morning." 
 
278 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 "A great ripe radiance grew at last 
 And burst like a bubble of gold, 
 Gilding the way that the feet danced on 
 And that was the dawn the Dawn!" 
 
 That Riley concealed the particulars of his vision 
 from his friends has since been thought rather too 
 diplomatic for one who usually did things in the open. 
 Whisper it to no one, said the prudent Longfellow 
 keep your plans a secret in your own bosom the mo 
 ment you uncork them the flavor escapes. Riley pro 
 ceeded to act accordingly, not only with reference to 
 the vision but in other ways. His brother, as we have 
 seen, ridiculed an early dream and others had treated 
 his forecasts of a career for himself with similar in 
 difference. Such had been his humiliation that he re 
 solved to go alone. "I did not go round sounding a 
 timbrel in the people s ears," he said, "but clung to my 
 purpose and kept my own counsel" and doubtless he 
 did. Myron Reed seems to have been the first friend to 
 know of the vision as a revelation. And, characteristic 
 ally, he gave the Argonaut another bit of wisdom for 
 his log-book. "The Cunard Line," said Reed, "has never 
 lost a passenger. That is not a matter of good luck; 
 that is a matter of good oak, and good iron, and good 
 seamanship." Fortunately the Argonaut was provided 
 with a shield and boom both made of iron an "iron 
 mask" and an iron will. The former kept him from the 
 intrusions of strangers and friends. With the latter 
 he stuck to his purpose through all kinds of weather, 
 with all sorts and conditions of men. Through all the 
 vicissitudes of his literary fortune, his will, like a Rich 
 ard Doubledick, was his unsleeping companion "firm 
 as a rock, and true as the sun." It was not a blustering 
 will ; rather was it like the steady tug of gravitation. 
 
VISION OF HIS MISSION 279 
 
 With that and a little motto from Bleak House 
 "Trust in Providence and Your Own Efforts" he 
 went forth to transmute the white moments of exist 
 ence into music for the sons and daughters of men. 
 
 He needed the iron will from the beginning. His 
 friends tempted him with "that object of universal de 
 votion, the almighty dollar." Counselors came to per 
 suade him that fame (as they thought of his future) 
 was "the satellite of fashion," that the applause of the 
 crowd was worth more than the silent devotion to an 
 ideal, and his father discouraged his venture in the 
 new field: 
 
 "My son! the quiet road 
 
 Which men frequent, where peace and blessings travel, 
 Follows the river s course, the valley s bending." 
 
 A rover, with whom Riley had once toured a few 
 Indiana towns, was "not making a dollar with 
 his present show in Pittsburg." He was "waiting for 
 something to turn up. We are going to take a Rip 
 Van Winkle Company out in three weeks. We will do 
 the small towns. You can have any part you want 
 except Rip. Rip is the best drawing bill in America." 
 
 The "Golden Girl," a talented musician, who also 
 had dreams of the stage, sought him for a role in 
 "The Star of Mystery Company," or rather the frag 
 ments of the company. There was to be Mirth 
 Music Magic and Mystery. "Should I," she 
 wrote, "secure a position for you with good salary, 
 will you go? That is my hope of seeing you. Won t 
 we have FUN? You will carry my grip and go to 
 breakfast with me and take me to the opera house. 
 Yes, and waltz with me behind the scenes while the 
 orchestra plays The Blue Danube, and people go 
 
280 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 wild with expectation waiting for the show to begin/ 
 and little boys grow impatient and pummel each 
 other on the front seats. And we will go down the 
 street the next day and see the people. You will get 
 mad at everybody I don t like and I ll like everybody 
 you do. Life will be enchantment." 
 
 Nor did the proffers of advice cease with Riley s 
 choice of the literary field. He was annoyed with 
 "overtures from foreign lands," as he phrased his 
 temptations, till the publication of his first book. "The 
 lecture field is the place for you and don t you for* 
 get it," wrote a literary aspirant three years after his 
 vision. "Writing is a starvation process. A fellow 
 is likely to die of inanition. As a friend of mine says, 
 Fate overtakes him so dern sudden ; and it makes no 
 difference how good the writing may be. A writer 
 must run the gauntlet that looks to the beginner like 
 the track of the Union Pacific railway stretching in 
 a straight line clear across the western edge of space, 
 and all the way up hill." 
 
 The Argonaut was unshaken. None of these things 
 moved him, nor others of like nature though ever so 
 numerous and persistent. He gave heart and soul to 
 his poems, thinking about them and writing them while 
 painting signs for his daily bread. 
 
 There was singleness of purpose in the vision. It 
 did not trouble Riley with thoughts of being a great 
 man. Launcelot said it not more humbly than he : 
 
 "In me there dwells 
 
 No greatness, save it be some far-off touch 
 Of greatness to know well I am not great." 
 
 Seldom if ever was a young man of genius more 
 ignorant of his powers. He was not certain that he 
 
VISION OF HIS MISSION 281 
 
 possessed genius. That "gift of God" might be his; 
 time would tell. For many years he had doubts of 
 the value of what he wrote and its reception by the 
 world, but never after the vision had he a shadow 
 of doubt that he was commissioned to sing. 
 
 Kiley had a vision of his mission, but not a vision 
 of the obstacles. Whatever situation in life you ever 
 wish or propose for yourself, said the old poet Shen- 
 stone, acquire a clear and lucid idea of the inconveni 
 ences attending it. Riley acquired no such lucid idea 
 but plunged at once into a sea of troubles or rather 
 some invisible something forced him into it. He did 
 not count the cost. After he had been buffeted on 
 the sea, and his work was practically done, he saw 
 that the vision had shown but one side of the picture. 
 It was significant, he thought, that the Golden Fleece 
 his fanciful name for poetry had been nailed to a 
 tree in the grove of the war-god. The lesson was this, 
 that poetry is an inaccessible thing. "The people think 
 the way of the singer is the way of peace," he remarked 
 after he had practically fulfilled his mission. "They 
 are mistaken. From first to last the poet has to war 
 against discouragement, nightmares, blockades, and 
 other perverse conditions." It was another way of his 
 saying that the poet is a Pilgrim. 
 
 "The peculiar thing about us," wrote his friend Reed, 
 "is our disobedience. We see the light and hear the 
 voice but heed it not. We are woefully afraid of being 
 alone with God and the vision of our province." The 
 advice was timely. Riley had written on the tablet 
 of his being obedience to the light, but like all aspir 
 ing men, his pure mind was refreshed when stirred 
 up by way of remembrance. Thus was he launched on 
 a literary career, looking ever upward and always 
 
282 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 with a true sense of the dignity of his mission, though 
 at intervals he "played with jingle" for relaxation 
 and amusement. True he was to have little rest 
 and less peace; but he was to "enjoy the fiery con 
 sciousness of his own activity." The vision was an 
 abiding comfort. He was twenty-six years old. What 
 a day of rapture had been his had he been permitted 
 to part the veil of the future, and see on the further 
 shore of his career, one of his beautiful books, and 
 read from the author of Pike County Ballads, per 
 haps the most cordial letter he ever received "the 
 finest letter ever penned," was Riley s word. Long 
 fellow wrote him the year of the vision that he had 
 "the true poetic faculty and insight." Then was the 
 daum he was beginning to do the thing. When Hay 
 wrote him, twenty-six years later, he had done it: 
 
 Washington, D. C., Nov. 12, 1902. 
 Dear Mr. Riley 
 
 I thank you most cordially for thinking of me and 
 sending me your "Book of Joyous Children." I was 
 alone last night my joyous little people have grown 
 up and left me. My fine boy is dead my two girls 
 are married, my young son is away at school and so 
 I read, in solitary enjoyment, these delightful lyrics, 
 so full of feeling and easy natural music. It is a 
 great gift you have, and you have not been disobedi 
 ent to the heavenly vision. Long may you live to 
 enjoy it, and share it in your generous way with others. 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 JOHN HAY. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 
 
 WHITCOMB RILEY dreamed of love and mar 
 riage. Not to admit this would be equivalent 
 to denying the qualities of the true poet. In 
 adequately, and sometimes half -seriously, he expressed 
 his dream in verse: 
 
 "And oh my heart lie down! Keep still! 
 If ever we meet, as I pray we will; 
 All ideal things will become fixed facts 
 The stars won t wane and the moon won t wax; 
 And my soul will sing in a ceaseless glee, 
 When I find the woman that rhymes with me." 
 
 That he never found his mate, that he failed to 
 find the nuptial rhyme, is now the "fixed fact." That 
 he strove ardently in his early manhood to find her is 
 also a fact, although in his bachelor days he was wary 
 of talk about it and sometimes slow to admit it. It 
 was his fortune to meet many interesting women, 
 some of them gifted, some divinely fair, but it was 
 not his fortune to meet "the right woman." And if it 
 be true, as a certain philosopher has said, that the 
 best works proceed from unmarried or childless men, 
 perhaps it was Destiny s design he should not meet her. 
 When collecting poems for his first book then a man 
 of three-and-thirty years he reached the conclusion 
 that celibacy was to be his lot and ever afterward 
 stoutly affirmed that his fate was inexorably decreed, 
 sometimes woefully signing himself, "Yours, Fate & 
 
 283 
 
284 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 Co." It was tragic, but he realized that, should he 
 find the "right woman," she would fail to find in him 
 the "right man." He "put a washer on his affections," 
 as he phrased it, and lodged in his bosom an old saying 
 from Thales, the answer to the question when genius 
 should marry: A young genius, not yet; an elder 
 genius, not at all. 
 
 "I know of nothing," said John Fitch, the 
 inventor, "so perplexing and vexatious to a man 
 of feelings as a turbulent wife and steamboat 
 building. For one man to be teased with both 
 is to be looked upon as the most unfortunate man 
 in the world." Riley was aware that the vexation is 
 the same in poem building, but he was not so ungallant 
 as to lay all the blame for domestic infelicity at the 
 door of the wife. As he saw it, Fitch was at fault for 
 going into partnership with a woman that did not 
 rhyme with him. 
 
 "The highest compliment I can pay to a woman," 
 said Riley, at the age of fifty, answering a wise and 
 beautiful married woman who was curious to know 
 why he had not married "the highest compliment I 
 can pay to a woman is not to marry her." He pain 
 fully realized then, as he did not when a lover, that 
 he was, by temperament, at least, disqualified for the 
 obligations of matrimony. 
 
 After he had settled down to hard literary work in 
 Indianapolis, he wrote in a letter to a woman writer: 
 "The season has been one long carnival of enjoyment. 
 The city has been thronged with peerless maidens from 
 all quarters of the globe, and even as I write, a semi 
 circle of them lies at my feet like a rainbow fallen on 
 the grass/ all wanting me to fly with them and be their 
 own. But I am an ambitious sort of prince and shall 
 
THE GOLDEN GIRL 285 
 
 not fly, having registered a vow to wed only an angel 
 without fleck or flaw of earthly imperfection and with 
 a pair of snowy wings leven feet from tip to tip." 
 
 If peradventure his thought wandered to marriage, 
 it was never with the serious consideration of former 
 years. Like the sailor in "Tales of the Ocean," who in 
 fancy was transported to the side of his Nancy Flan 
 ders, he was suddenly disturbed in his dream of 
 "bridal raptures" by the gruff call of the captain : "All 
 hands ahoy !" and as the sailor took to his ropes, so 
 the poet took to his pencil. 
 
 It should be borne in mind that a poet is human 
 so human that he is likely to have many sweethearts. 
 Like those of other men, his love affairs may be the 
 subject of humorous or serious comment. Specula 
 tions about them may even be beneficial. His tender 
 passions, his attachments and endearments may seem 
 sacred, but they should not be wholly outside the pale 
 of public consideration, since they belong to the world 
 of joys and sorrows. Wherever literature has lived, 
 woman has so impressed her beauty and character on 
 the heart of the poet that all aspects of nature the 
 stars and the clouds, the hills and the trees and the 
 motions of the sea have been to him as mirrors and 
 heralds of her luster and love. It seems superfluous to 
 add that she sustains a vital relation to the production 
 of verse. 
 
 In that period of visions and dreams, those intricate 
 years of the seventies, a new love was a great event for 
 the Argonaut; 
 
 "The world was divided into two parts 
 Where his sweetheart was, and where she was not." 
 
 He would experience a few hours or weeks seldom 
 
286 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 longer in dreaming the happy hours away, and then 
 the Fates would afflict him with the woe of hapless love. 
 Often a rival would appear. "Our young friend, 
 J. W. Riley," said a county paper local, "has a poem 
 on The Lost Kiss. That kiss was lost over in Sugar 
 Creek township, and we know the young man who 
 found it." Often an impassable gulf appeared 
 between him and his sweetheart which she could no 
 more cross than he. After several ineffectual efforts 
 to restore communication he would face the other way 
 and, as he said, "wander down the corridors of inclem 
 ency lonesome as a pale daylight moon 
 
 Ah ! lone as a bard may be ! 
 In search of the woman that rhymes with me. 
 
 "In search of what? Of any hand that is no more, 
 of any hand that never was, of any touch that might 
 have magically changed his life." There is nothing so 
 embarrassing as to be a lover, "nothing so harass 
 ing/ said he. "A terrible thing it is, if the girl is not 
 in love with you. She will make a football of your 
 heart and torment you with anguish from Dan to Beer- 
 sheba." Man, he perceived, had weighed the sun; he 
 had determined the path of the stars, and the moment 
 of an eclipse to the fraction of a second, but he had not 
 solved the mystery of love; 
 
 "Its passions will rock thee 
 As the storms rock the ravens on high." 
 
 "I tell you," Riley exclaimed, "there is something 
 tragically wrong with the married state! Rip Van 
 Winkle s fate is not fiction. Little wonder he was 
 driven to drink and the Catskill woods: I love de 
 trees dey keep me from de wind and rain and dey 
 never blows me up." 
 
THE GOLDEN GIRL 287 
 
 Writing to a county paper of a compositor, a printer 
 friend who had married a Greenfield girl, Riley was 
 outwardly facetious, but beneath the surface quite seri 
 ous about it. "We know little of the bride," he wrote, 
 "other than that she is fair and womanly beyond all 
 words ; but as for the compositor we know him and 
 recall with emotions of awe the way he used to tangle 
 up our silken sentences and crush and mangle beyond 
 all hope of recognition the many prattling puns we in 
 trusted to his care. The manifold inflictions he heaped 
 upon us then we bore in mute despair; now we exult, 
 for he is wedded to another, and our schooner of de 
 light f oameth over 
 
 My dear young friend, regaled with love, 
 
 With all your heart ablaze, 
 
 Don t think yourself a lucky dog 
 
 For all your married ways ; 
 
 But learn to wear a sober face ? 
 
 Be hopeful as you can 
 
 Tis really quite a serious thing 
 
 To be a married man." 
 
 There was one sweetheart, the "Golden Girl," who 
 since at least a dozen poems cluster round her 
 merits more than casual mention. The young woman 
 who could prompt her lover to write such a masterpiece 
 as "Fame" is not to be passed lightly by. "Her history," 
 to phrase it in Riley s words, "was as strangely sweet 
 and sad as any you can find in the pages of romance. 
 Her letters evinced a mind far above the common. She 
 was a womanly woman. I recall her unaffectedness 
 and simplicity with the tenderest emotions." 
 
 She was "a dreamer of dreams," another Mary 
 Chitwood, giving expression to her aspiring genius 
 in prose, however, instead of verse, living in 
 
288 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 the woods as "the little singer of Franklin 
 County" once lived in seclusion in Indiana. She was 
 frail the roses in her cheeks were omens of a fatal 
 malady. She was "one of the beads," she wrote, "in 
 that starry circle, that flaming necklace of some kind 
 strung together somewhere in great black space." She 
 was "a soul sea-blown, that knew not of any harbor, 
 one of those unanchored ships," she wrote again when 
 trying her fortune in another state, "that 
 
 Sail to and fro, and then go down 
 
 In unknown seas that none shall know, 
 
 Without one ripple of renown. 
 
 With her, into the unknown, went her lover s letters, 
 which to judge from the fragments left doubtless 
 contained some of the loveliest prose he ever wrote. 
 Honey, they were, "dripping from the comb," she 
 said, "freighted with hope and the brightest bless 
 ings ever dropped carelessly out of Angel fingers upon 
 this earth ; they are the sparkling gems that adorn and 
 diadem my life with happiness." 
 
 Riley s dream of the "Golden Girl," could it be de 
 picted in words, would read like some legend of the 
 tender passion in a Forest of Love. He was another 
 Orlando, hanging verses on the trees for his Rosalind, 
 although her temple of the wood was some five hundred 
 miles away. The trees were books and she was to read 
 them. And as usual there were not wanting Touch 
 stones to mock his effusions, to say that poets are 
 capricious, that lovers are given to poetry, and so on. 
 The first word about her came from the lovable Graphic 
 Chum, James McClanahan. Although he and Riley had 
 dissolved partnership in sign-painting, they had not dis 
 solved their friendship. When on the road, McClana- 
 
THE GOLDEN GIRL 289 
 
 han continued to write of new discoveries. "I have 
 found a golden girl," he said, on one of his return trips 
 to Indiana, "and I have brought you her beautiful 
 hand" (taking a tin-type picture of her hand from his 
 pocket) . "She loves art and poetry ; she writes stories ; 
 and if she writes you I want you to answer with your 
 best. She deserves literary friends." He went on to tell 
 of her other gifts, how she could play the piano, guitar, 
 harp and violin. He talked about her beauty and her 
 suitors, but did not tell that he was one of them. 
 
 McClanahan had first met her at Black River Falls, 
 Wisconsin, just before her decision to seek health in the 
 pine region. One day after acquaintance had ripened 
 into friendship, when genius was the subject of their 
 talk, he said, "I want you to know a friend of mine in 
 Greenfield, Indiana, Whitcomb Riley. He is a coming 
 man in the literary field. I love him better to-day than 
 any one in the world except my mother. He is my 
 ideal : he is the whitest man on earth." He then read 
 to her several Riley poems. Such praise did not fall 
 lightly on the heart of the "Golden Girl." 
 
 "How is it you woo?" asks Riley in a poem: , 
 
 "How is it you woo and you win? 
 Why, to answer you true the first thing that you do 
 Is to simply, my dearest begin." 
 
 So they began, and one result, to say nothing of love, 
 was a correspondence that was as thought-sparkling as 
 it was tender and beautiful. The "Golden Girl" was 
 alone with her mother, young sister, and stepfather in 
 the Black River pinery. Though ill, she was ambitious. 
 She had written a story when sixteen, and the literary 
 impulse was strong in her. Riley thought of her as a 
 lonely wild-flower singing and sorrowing with wood- 
 
290 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 warblers among the giant trees. He sent her a waif 
 of his Grub Street days, "A Poet s Wooing," to find out 
 whether she was "sharper than an eastern wind," and 
 whether he was to march from her or march to her. 
 His chief desire was to cheer her in her loneliness. 
 Other letters were written to that end. 
 
 "What can I do to make you glad * 
 As glad as glad can be, 
 Till your clear eyes seem 
 Like the rays that gleam 
 And glint through a dew-decked tree?" 
 
 One letter was "filled with the most cheerful ideas 
 he could express." He drew grotesque pictures with 
 silly dialogues beneath, representing experiences on the 
 road with the Graphic Company and "Standard Reme 
 dies." He said "funny things till tears of laughter rose 
 to her eyelids." She was "prostrated with the sense 
 of hilarity." When several letters had passed, he fell 
 in love in love with an ideal ; a creature of his imagi 
 nation ; "an echo of his heart" : 
 
 "And, like a lily on the river floating, 
 She shone upon the river of his thoughts." 
 
 Truly, as Riley saw her in his dream, the "Golden 
 Girl" was as Longfellow has it "the creature of his 
 imagination." The woman did not live who could meet 
 the requirements of that dream. Often he saw her 
 floating in her birch bark canoe on Black River. The 
 thought of her quickened his numbers. "It is as easy to 
 write verse," he wrote, "as for the ripples of the river 
 to prattle." He longed to see the light of her smile, 
 
 "To peer in her eyes as a diver might 
 Peer in the sea ere he leaps outright 
 Catch his breath, with a glance above, 
 And drop full-length in the depths of love." 
 
THE GOLDEN GIRL 291 
 
 It was a versatile correspondence, in which their 
 hopes and fears, their perceptions, fancies and 
 witticisms ranged from visions of fortune and 
 fame down to their weight and age. (She, light as a 
 leaf, "possessed the proud dignity of ninety pounds"; 
 he, one hundred and ten ; she was twenty years old ; he, 
 twenty-six.) As interest in her deepened, Riley flat 
 tered himself that he had found "that golden fleece, a 
 woman s love." And he had, but Destiny denied him 
 the joy of taking it to his own cottage not the dream 
 of it, however, which he afterward included in "Ike 
 .Walton s Prayer" 
 
 "Let but a little hut be mine 
 Where at the hearthstone I may hear 
 The cricket sing 
 And have the shine 
 Of one glad woman s eyes to make 
 
 For my poor sake, 
 Our simple home a place divine ; 
 Just the wee cot~-the cricket s chirr i 
 Love, and the smiling face of her." 
 
 "Dame Durden" and "My Little Woman," he called 
 her, while she smiled at his pleasantry and returned 
 with "My King Harold" and "My Little Man," lovingly 
 twitting him on the poverty of his "Graphic" days: 
 
 "Blessings on thee, Little Man, 
 Barefoot Bard with cheek of tan, 
 Run to Love and Nature s store, 
 And go barefoot nevermore." 
 
 The clever "Little Woman" had definite opinions on 
 good blood and the importance of worthy ancestors. 
 She was "proud of the rich old southern blood in her 
 veins proud that she could trace her forefathers back 
 hundreds of years and find honor, riches and fame." 
 
292 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 She had the artistic temperament. "We are kindred 
 spirits," she wrote, "said kinship exposed and ex 
 plained or money refunded." She swept cobwebs from 
 the "Little Man s" mind: 
 
 "Little old woman, and whither so high? i 
 To sweep the cobwebs out of the sky." 
 
 She signally influenced Riley in his decision to quit 
 the law. The law office was the "Growlery." She 
 charged him "to abandon it and nail up the door." It 
 was tragic for genius such as he possessed "to be lost 
 in the mountains of Wiglomeration." In February, 
 1876, soon after he had entered his father s office the 
 second time, she contributed a little sarcasm with her 
 love. "And you are going to be a lawyer," she wrote, 
 "and a famous one, too, I ll be bound ! Why, how con 
 venient. When I want a divorce you will be my coun 
 sel, tell all kinds of stories about my husband s vil 
 lainy, pound your fist on a big book, and rumple up your 
 hair until the jury quails before the breeze of eloquence 
 which fairly takes them off their feet." 
 
 Riley was in happy valley when he could give the 
 "Golden Girl" charming names. Reflecting on "the 
 many hearts she had touched and awakened and the ad 
 miration and love she had won," he thought of her as 
 the lovely Esther Summerson of Bleak House. "I have 
 a new name for you," he wrote, "Dame Burden, and I 
 want you for my sake as well as your own to read the 
 book." One passage in it expressed his sentiment as 
 to what a woman should be : "When a young lady is 
 as mild as she is game, and is game as she is mil d, that 
 is all I ask, and more than I expect. Then she becomes 
 a Queen, and that is about what you are." 
 
 In the spring of 1876 Riley had suffered from her 
 
THE GOLDEN GIRL 293 
 
 long silence. One might explain her silence by citing 
 her love for McClanahan, provided Riley did not know 
 of her love. But he did know of it although he was 
 not aware that she loved his friend deeply. She was 
 still writing Riley in the spirit of a literary correspond 
 ence, and did not then know what she sorrowfully real 
 ized a few weeks later, that the Graphic Chum was a 
 capricious young man, blown hither and thither by baf 
 fling winds. Since 1872 he and Riley had been cruising 
 on a choppy sea. The caprice in each had been about 
 equally distributed. Riley was soon to find a moorage. 
 The lovable chum, alas! was never to find one. The 
 Fates tangled his feet in a skein of ill-fortune and held 
 them in it to the end. In answer to the letter about her 
 silence, the girl in the pine woods assured him of her 
 pride in the possession of his friendship. He was her 
 "dear old philosopher," to be so patient with her. "It 
 is a good thing I am a woman," she wrote, "for if I 
 had to be a man I d want to be Riley. You belong to 
 us," referring to her love for the Graphic Chum. "I 
 love you next to him, he loves you next to me, and you 
 love me after him, and we all love each other. Bless 
 me, what a cobweb! M.mo, Amas, Amat Amarrms, 
 Amatis, Amant. So you have discovered me in a sea 
 of fiction. To know that one has been discovered, that 
 one s dear old friend has formed an opinion at last, 
 and yet be unable to know what it is, because of not 
 having read Bleak House. Too bad. Of course I shall 
 read the book, but my curiosity is aroused ; tell me about 
 her. I wonder if Dickens affects you as he affects me. 
 Do his books ever make you feel hungry? 
 
 "You are very strange. In your bitter, bitter moods 
 I understand you and know you best. Ah, don t I know 
 what they are? How I have fought and fought, bat- 
 
294 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 tling all alone till I knew that they made me older than 
 the years of time. You can t imagine the joy with 
 which I read your words. Your letters are like a mag 
 netic battery. I thank you for the poems. They are 
 beautiful." 
 
 Writing him at another time, her hands trembled as 
 she read his words. His earnestness touched her. She 
 smiled with tears in her eyes to read of the "Higher 
 Power than ours discovering us to each other." He 
 was like a book whose mysteries would not promptly 
 unravel at her bidding. Little by little she followed the 
 thread until she grasped his meaning. "There is a 
 beautiful song," she wrote, " If My Wishes Come 
 True/ Maybe you know it. Learn it and remember 
 Dame Durden when you sing it." Then she discovered 
 to him some of her own moods and confessed to many 
 errors of her way. 
 
 He did not learn the song, but, in part, wrote 
 one of his own, "When My Dreams Come True" 
 or rather, in imagination, made her the author 
 of it. The "Little Woman" must not be cast down be 
 cause of manifold transgressions; she must not sink 
 beneath any weight of woe. Two lines were written 
 expressly to lighten her discouragement: 
 
 "The blossom in the blackest mold is kindlier to the eye 
 Than any lily born of pride that looms against the sky." 
 
 Commenting on the lines and their origin, at a later 
 period, Myron Reed observed that the nectar of song 
 is distilled from the dews of sorrow. "Your well fed, 
 nicely groomed poet," said he, "can not write a song 
 of the people, by the people, and for the people. There 
 must have been mud about the roots of a pond lily." 
 
 In June (1876) a letter came and she ran to the pine 
 
THE GOLDEN GIRL 295 
 
 woods to read it "trembling like a girl of sixteen." 
 She wanted to be alone to thank God over and over for 
 her Robin Adair. He had written "The Silent Victors" 
 in the law office, and by invitation of a committee had 
 read it at Newcastle on the afternoon of Memorial 
 Day i 
 
 "What meed of tribute can the poet pay 
 The Soldiers, but to trail the ivy-vine 
 Of idle rhyme above their graves to-day?" 
 
 In imagination she had seen the dusty twenty miles 
 he had traveled to Newcastle he had ridden half-way 
 on horseback and had walked the remainder. And she 
 had seen the beautiful oak grove in the cemetery where 
 the exercises were held, where the young poet for the 
 first time had stepped before the public on a national 
 holiday. She had heard the band play the sweet varia 
 tions of the old Scottish air, 
 
 "Had seen his trembling hand? 
 Tears in his eyelids stand 
 To greet his native land 
 Robin Adair," 
 
 "I am so proud of you my hero," she wrote ; "you 
 are worthy the laurels you have won, and more, from 
 the stingy world. Had I my way the world would be a 
 flower garden. Fragrant blossoms would pave the 
 pathway your willing feet would tread to fame. How 
 I wish I might have been present to witness your suc 
 cess ! There would have been one soul of that crowd 
 whose joy would have reached your own and whispered 
 the words I could not speak. God has given you gifts 
 He bestows on few of His children. Your words go 
 straight to the heart. I am proud and happy in your 
 love." 
 
296 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 "If I were not so wretchedly impecunious," Riley 
 wrote in November, 1876, "I would come to you in the 
 disguise of a rich uncle from the golden Americas." 
 In the absence of pounds sterling he sent a letter. 
 Dear old Uncle Sam, with "the precious mite of a three- 
 cent stamp had made communication of lovers possible." 
 Referring to a new name he had given her, he said, 
 "There is something crisp and hearty about it. I feel 
 your presence with me, and will all winter. 
 
 "I sent to Longfellow an imitation of his own style 
 entitled In the Dark/ and after the method of what I 
 consider his finest poem, The Day is Done. Are you 
 familiar with it? If not look it up. When you find it, 
 study it closely, and then compare my verses with it, 
 and see if they are not really a clever imitation in lan 
 guage, theme, similes, and so forth. I will send you the 
 poem when it appears ; I know you will like it, for you 
 were in my mind all the time I was composing it, and 
 I have no doubt that truant soul of yours was with my 
 own." 
 
 As was the rage in those old days of love, there was 
 an ample exchange of photographs and tin-types. Like 
 other poets, Riley sent verse with his portrait, the 
 "ghost of a face," said he, in "Lines in a Letter En 
 closing a Picture." There went with them also many 
 cheery words for the girl with the hectic bloom on her 
 cheek : 
 
 "I send you the shadowy ghost of a face 
 To haunt you forever with eyes 
 That look in your own with the tenderest grace 
 Affectionate art can devise ; 
 And had they the power to sparkle and speak 
 In the spirit of smiles and tears, 
 The rainbow of love would illumine your cheek 
 And banish the gloom that appears. 
 
THE GOLDEN GIRL 297 
 
 "The lips would unlock with the key of a kiss 
 And the jewels of speech would confess 
 A treasure of love that is richer than this 
 Poor pencil of mine may express ; 
 O sweeter than bliss were the whispering things 
 I d breathe, and your answering sighs 
 Would hold Cupid on quivering wings 
 In a pause of exultant surprise." 
 
 In one letter she enclosed the picture of her beauti 
 ful hand holding a fan. "I send you the shadow of my 
 hand," she wrote; "it was made on a wager, one day in 
 1875." Riley had seen the picture, a tin-type (it will be 
 remembered), the previous summer when he and Mc- 
 Clanahan had raved over its beauty. Interest in it had 
 not diminished. She had twined a ribbon and a tress of 
 her brown hair around it. His chum could never say 
 enough about the beauty of her hair. Prior to receiv 
 ing her letter, Riley had written his poem, "Her Beau 
 tiful Hands." He had kept the incident of its origin 
 a secret; indeed, throughout life it pleased his fancy 
 to keep it locked in "the round-tower of his heart." It 
 was the hand of his ideal : 
 
 "Marvelous wonderful beautiful hands ! 
 They can coax roses to bloom in the strands 
 Of your brown tresses ; and ribbons will twine, 
 Under mysterious touches of thine 
 Into such knots as entangle the soul 
 And fetter the heart under such a control 
 As only the strength of my love understands 
 My passionate love for your beautiful hands." 
 
 The lock of hair was kept among manuscripts in his 
 trunk. Once afterward when rummaging among by 
 gones he chanced to see this "wisp of sunshine," as he 
 called it. As the girl of the pine woods had married 
 his adorable chum f or .that, after all, was the way it 
 
298 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 happened there came the suggestion for a poem, 
 "A Tress of Hair": 
 
 "Her features keep them fair, 
 Dear Lord, but let her lips not quite forget 
 The love they kindled once is gilding yet 
 
 This tress of hair." 
 
 A British poet sings of the unsolved riddle of exist 
 ence why the bird pipes in the woods why the owl 
 sends down the twilight why the rocks stand still 
 why the clouds fly why the oak groans why the wil 
 lows sigh? 
 
 "How you are you? Why I am I? 
 Who will riddle me the how and the why?" 
 
 Such is the quandary that rises in the mind when one 
 reflects on the poet-lover and the "Golden Girl." Why 
 should their love end in the sad the sweet the 
 strange No More? At first he suffered from her silence, 
 then she suffered from his silence, and then their 
 suffering was mutual. Out of that suffering came sev 
 eral poems three that were strangely sad and sadly 
 sweet "Say Something to Me" "An Empty Song" ? 
 and "Song of Parting." 
 
 "The air is full of tender prophecy," she wrote one 
 Sunday evening. " Say Something to Me went straight 
 to my heart and found an answering thrill for all the 
 pleading tenderness of the words your gracious pencil 
 dropped, though my lips could not speak. I cried when 
 I read it, as once I cried in the darkness that veiled our 
 clasped hands and passion-burdened eyes from the 
 world when you whispered to me, If I Should Die To 
 night. You remember it the darkness that had grown 
 compassionate and pitiful, and veiled the whole world 
 
THE GOLDEN GIRL 299 
 
 in gloom to give us an hour of happiness more bright 
 than hour of daylight ever knew, an hour 
 
 In which the heavy and the weary weight 
 Of all this unintelligible world 
 Was lighted/ 
 
 "I can find no words to tell you of my love, how I 
 treasure your lightest word, for my stumbling pencil 
 is devoid of all the subtle power that hangs about your 
 own. I can not trace the thoughts that wake into newer 
 life at your touch, and set my happy answering heart 
 aglow, for before my stupid fingers have well begun 
 their task, other and yet other thoughts have over 
 thrown the kingdom of the first and left me but the 
 sturdy words, I LOVE You. Tell me My Prophet is 
 that future surely coming to us, whose brilliancy fell 
 in a golden glory that covered up all the gloom on that 
 day of pure gold of which you write? 
 
 Something in our eyes made tears to glisten ; 
 But they were not sad/ " 
 
 Then followed "An Empty Song." As signified in 
 the poem, she was the sun of his heart but she could 
 not shine on both sides of it. He might have said as 
 he did say in another poem that 
 
 "She was the dazzling Shine I, the dark Shade 
 And we did mingle like to these, and thus, 
 
 Together, made 
 The perfect summer, pure and glorious." 
 
 But there was a shadow of the heart, "issue of its 
 own substance," he phrased it, which she could not 
 lighten. Her radiance, all-powerful in beauty and love, 
 could not scatter the night of the soul. 
 
 And then the "Song of Parting." The full signifi- 
 
300 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 cance of the poem is seen in the fact that it was, in 
 spirit, a joint production; the lover speaks in the first 
 and second stanzas, the "Badger Girl," as he sometimes 
 called his sweetheart, in the last. In the original there 
 are such lines as 
 
 "Dp not weep for tears are vain; 
 Little mists of foolish rain. 
 
 "Say farewell, and let me go 
 Since the Fates have planned 
 That your love can only grow 
 In a richer land." 
 
 Before we say farewell, the "Badger Girl" shall have 
 a few words more. She shall tell a little more clearly, 
 though painfully, her own story. We have her lover s 
 story in his poems. Referring to the shadow on his 
 heart, and to the poems of that period, Riley said, "I 
 wrote with my heart s own blood." He was not alone 
 in his despair. She, too, wrote with her heart s own 
 blood. Surely she knew herself better than her lover 
 or any one else knew her. 
 
 At their first meeting there were of course revela 
 tions for each, which the poor power of letters had 
 failed to impart. Riley deftly concealed his sadness at 
 the thought of her declining health. "She was fragile 
 as a lily," he said, "delicate as a snowdrop." But there 
 were other considerations besides health. 
 
 "Each had another life they longed to meet 
 Without which life, their own were incomplete." 
 
 The meeting did not reveal that other life. Whether 
 it would have been revealed had her health been re 
 stored is mere conjecture. There was hope of her 
 recovery, but it was hope with a shadow. One thing 
 
THE GOLDEN GIRL 301 
 
 is clear, if we accept the testimony of each, their meet 
 ing did not diminish their love. They talked of the 
 paths into which their feet had strayed, how they had 
 walked on and on, dreaming, hoping that "one little 
 corner of the curtain that hid the future from their 
 eyes would lift and discover to each the life he longed 
 to live. God s mysterious hand had led them and was 
 still to lead them on." 
 
 Henceforth their letters were candid to a degree that 
 excites sympathy. "Will you understand me I won 
 der," the lover wrote some few weeks later, "if I tell 
 you that I fear I am going to make you unhappy? Will 
 you understand me when I tell you that, should the 
 premonition prove true, your unhappiness would be 
 my own? I fear you never will understand just what 
 a strange paradox I am. I hardly know myself. But 
 you must not think too kindly of me. Not that I do 
 not deserve love, but rather because all the affection I 
 can offer in return is as vain as it is wild and fervid. 
 If I could take your hand and hold it as I say these 
 words, you would know how deeply sad and earnest 
 and most truthful I am in this belief. My life has been 
 made up of disappointments and despairs. This is no 
 fancy with me. It is bitter, bitter truth. I have 
 learned to bear it well. I have learned to expect but 
 little else. I ache, but I grope on smiling in the dark. 
 You are not strong as I am strong. Your tears would 
 overflow your path and sweep you back. And you must 
 not know what I endure. God made you to be glad; 
 so you must not lean too far out of the sunshine to 
 help me. I am not wholly selfish as I struggle down 
 here in the gloom, but I am tired and so worn I can 
 but grasp your hand if proffered only don t don t. 
 Just hail me from the brink with cheery words. That 
 
302 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 will be best for you and as for me why, I will bo 
 stronger knowing I have dragged no bright hopes 
 down with my poor drowning ones. My whole being 
 goes out from me, and I am calling to you through the 
 great distance that divides us. Do you hear? God 
 bless you, little girl, and keep you always glad as you 
 are good. You must write me at once. I dream now 
 that your face is drooped a little, and I lift it with my 
 hand, and it is bright and beautiful. So, set it heaven 
 ward and where the sunlight falls, and I will see its 
 glancing smiles flash back, and that will help me more 
 than words will say." 
 
 "There is an ache in your heart," Riley wrote again, 
 "which can never be conquered or tamed down. Like a 
 prisoned bird, it beats its wings against the bars and 
 makes your life a discord." He had discord in his own 
 life; to wed that to more discord meant disaster that 
 was not all personal. He would shield his sweetheart 
 from such a destiny. He could say with the hapless 
 Poe, "Toward you there is no room in my soul for any 
 other sentiment than devotion. It is fate only which I 
 accuse. It is my own unhappy nature." 
 
 "0, how right you are," she answered ; "I shiver with 
 the jarring sense of discord as I write. I have so many 
 faults, so much pride ; yet I must be earnest with you ; 
 I must say all if you hate me for it. 
 
 I am digging my warm heart 
 Till I find its coldest part ; 
 I am digging wide and low, 
 Farther than a spade can go. 
 
 I am different, so different from your ideal, your Tearl 
 of Pearls/ One day I am satisfied with all the world 
 and want to take it to my arms and caress it the next, 
 
THE GOLDEN GIRL 303 
 
 I feel sure it is full of injustice and misery underneath 
 its smiling exterior, and I descend into my ice-house of 
 rebellion. Then I listen to soft nothings with radiant 
 face and sparkling eyes, smile into faces that smile 
 down into my own, do a happy careless laugh to perfec 
 tion, when flat things are said in the way of compliment 
 that smack of having been committed to memory in 
 some long ago when some one fairer than I had in 
 spired their utterance; and then a miserable conceit 
 takes hold of me like death and I say to myself, I am 
 in shallow water and must wade because these people 
 know no deeper soundings and I pity them, I who so 
 much need forbearance myself." 
 
 "I seem not to make you understand me," she writes 
 at another time. "My life is empty and purposeless or 
 has been and yet underneath it all there pulses a 
 great, strong, unconquerable passion for something 
 higher and better, something that your words make me 
 dare hope is almost within my reach. A sense there is 
 of being cramped into a narrower space of thought and 
 action than God intended. A numbness, too, and un 
 consciousness and inability to use with intrepidity the 
 few gifts I might have had ; but they have so long lain 
 dormant that they are useless and withered as a limb 
 long bandaged from the air and sunshine. I dread to 
 be misunderstood. I have a horror of miscellaneous 
 pity. But you seem to understand me better than the 
 rest; you encourage me to think that this element of 
 well, I can not name it this inside kernel, this 
 knaggy knarl would have made me infinitely more 
 worthy of you had I been rightly, properly kneaded in 
 the first place, for I believe I was put together like a 
 Chinese puzzle and am at present wrong-side-out or up- 
 
304 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 side-down or t other-side-to and need but some skillful 
 hand that understands the machinery to put me right. 
 I think there is a secret spring, if one could only find 
 it, that if suddenly touched would immediately set me 
 straight, like a stove-pipe hat, the theatre hat, made 
 of springs, don t you know. You know what I mean 
 you have seen them. 
 
 "I know you would not give me hope and aspirations 
 if you imagined they would come to naught. I can but 
 fresh courage take from your words and honest convic 
 tions. Do not wonder that my hand trembles as I 
 write, that my heart bounds again with joy a great 
 joy that you think me capable of something better than 
 the poor fluttering moth that I seem to be." 
 
 It is noteworthy that the Little Woman first reached 
 the conviction that they could never marry. Usually 
 insight and foresight are attributed to man. He is wis 
 dom. Woman is love. But love is wisdom also when 
 lodged in the heart of a Dame Durden. By combining 
 wisdom and love, Dickens made her one of the ador 
 able women of fiction and it was lovingly complimen 
 tary in Riley to give his sweetheart the name : 
 
 "My Little Woman, of you I sing 
 With a fervor all divine." 
 
 It was said at the beginning of the chapter, that 
 Kiley was in love with an ideal. It may now be said 
 that there was an uncommon measure of the ideal in 
 the "Golden Girl," and that her influence like an angelic 
 presence remained with the poet through the "ten pro 
 lific years" that succeeded their correspondence the 
 decade that saw the light dawn on his best work. 
 
 "Do you suppose I would spoil my ideal by getting 
 married?" The remark is attributed to Frances Wil- 
 
HER BEAUTIFUL HAND 
 
 From a tintype taken when the Golden Girl was nineteen. 
 Inspiration for the poem : "Her Beautiful Hands" 
 
WJIKN THE POET WAS TWENTY-FIVE 
 
THE GOLDEN GIRL 305 
 
 lard. Whatever may be said of its authenticity, the 
 thought was certainly not far from the heart of the 
 "Golden Girl" when she penned to Riley the following : 
 
 "My Dear Friend, the dearest friend I have on earth, 
 believe me when I tell you your letter has touched me 
 deeper than I have words to express. I am stretching 
 my hands out to you. Take them, crush them till the 
 pain deadens the terrible anguish and pain at my heart. 
 I am coming to you one moment 
 
 One moment that I may forget 
 The trials waiting for me yet. 
 
 There is a great, yawning dark gulf between us a 
 hopeless one. You know not, you can not, dare to guess- 
 it nor can I tell you more now. We are like children 
 groping in the dark. It is as impossible to bridge the 
 gulf or in any way lessen the distance, as it is for me 
 to stifle the moan that rises to my lips when I think of 
 it. That gulf can never be crossed. Mine is the fault, 
 mine alone. I cross to this side, but you can not 
 follow." 
 
 "A brave soul is a thing all things serve," she quotes 
 in another letter and then goes on to marvel at a strange 
 world, hardly knowing what to make of it, or herself, 
 or her lover, or any one. God had some special work 
 for her when He created her, but finding some other 
 hands perhaps more willing, He left her with a half- 
 awakened consciousness of what she had lost no object 
 in life to bid her clamber up the long hill whose rugged 
 steeps then echoed with the footsteps of her lover, for 
 "you," to use her own words, "are slowly, surely making 
 your way with noble energy to the top of the mountain. 
 As you pass me on the path that glitters with the reflex 
 of tears rained from many weary eyes that weep no 
 more forever, you recognize the task before you as you 
 never did before, perhaps, and pity me as I sit silent, 
 
306 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 discouraged, mastered by the first obstacle at the foot 
 of the hill." 
 
 Fragile aimless and hopeless as she thought, per 
 haps after all her influence would follow him. What 
 could he do, she once asked, without the heart of 
 woman ? Her answer to her own question was signifi 
 cant. 
 
 "What could he do indeed ? A weak, white girl 
 Held all his heartstrings in her small white hands ; 
 His hopes, and power, and majesty were hers, 
 And not his own." 
 
 Feeling thus, a new thought was born in her heart a 
 thought that God had meant one day to create her and 
 her lover for each other. "To you," she wrote, "God 
 gave a noble manhood, genius to love and appreciate 
 His holy handiwork, and having well in mind the 
 woman He should send you by and by to make your 
 earth a heaven, He gave you a heart as gentle and 
 kindly as ever allotted to earth s creatures, and set you 
 pure and stainless to await my coming. 
 
 "Alas! some envious hand sullied the brightness of 
 the picture and in punishment God sent me unfinished, 
 far away from you into the maelstrom of the world, and 
 left me groping blindly, longing for the treasure I had 
 lost yet never known. And a dreary sense of the same 
 bitter loss makes you long for the one woman on earth 
 makes you grieve for the incompleteness of her who 
 should have been your ideal, the imperfection of the 
 gem that you hoped to find perfect. God sent us apart 
 and has kept us apart. Will we ever meet? I am sorry 
 for you, sorry for myself. I can love you love you as 
 no mortal yet has loved you when I remember all I 
 might have been for your sake love you with a passion 
 
THE GOLDEN GIRL 307 
 
 God has no time to tone down." With this she asks of 
 her lover in a closing paragraph, if he had read the 
 Two Destinies, and then signs herself, "Yours always." 
 
 In a brief note a few days later, she fears the clouds 
 she and her lover thought would drop in dew might 
 scatter snow. She wished him to know with what a 
 masterly hand he had kindled her "into fire heap of 
 ashes that she was a fire, however, inseparable in its 
 nature from herself, quickening nothing, lighting noth 
 ing, doing no service, idly burning away." 
 
 "A sad story," her friends were heard to say, and 
 doubtless others who read it for the first time will say 
 the same. But let them not rue it as an exceptional 
 fate. True love leads over a rough and thorny way. 
 
 Who believes that the influence of this gifted being 
 ended with death? she who "could lay her fevered 
 cheek against the weeping window pane, close her eyes, 
 and hear in the dripping rain the tread of trembling 
 fairy feet on the roof?" she 
 
 "Who felt sometimes the wish across the mind 
 Rush like a rocket tearing up the skies?" 
 
 Dear Little Woman ! the fire of your love is still burning 
 but not idly burning. Your lover jeweled songs with 
 your tears. The clouds did after all drop dew. 
 
 "From his flying quill there dripped 
 Such music on his manuscript 
 That they who listen to his words 
 May close their eyes and dream the birds 
 Are twittering on every hand 
 A language they can understand." 
 
 By smiting upon the chords of the poet s heart with 
 might, the Little Woman contributed to literature the 
 immortal "Fame," according to his father, the greatest 
 
308 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 poem the son ever wrote. Alas, for the Little Woman ! 
 it did not augur fame for her. 
 
 If the reader desires to know how the "Golden Girl s" 
 courtship ended historically, he will find it in a closing 
 chapter of Bleak House, with a little shade to color it 
 from Enoch Arden. After a grievous misunderstand 
 ing, McClanahan, her former love, "the wreckless, lov 
 able boy with the good heart and extravagant ideas," 
 returned and made amends for his absence and seem 
 ing neglect. Unlike the Tennysonian narrative, she 
 had not married in the meantime, although she had 
 been ardently loved by Riley. True to what befell in 
 Bleak House, Riley assumed the role of the Guardian, 
 restored his friend to the old place in her love, and 
 consented to their wedding, "soothingly, like the gentle 
 rustling of the leaves; genially, like the ripening 
 weather; radiantly and beneficently, like the sun 
 shine." So they were wed. 
 
 "And merrily rang the bells, 
 And merrily ran the years," 
 
 two transient, happy years, a steady decline in the 
 bride s health and then a grave. 
 
 There was truly a song in the parting. All that the 
 future could bestow was welcome now. That Riley 
 worshiped the fair hand seemed for a moment a mis 
 take and thus the poem "Say Farewell and Let Me 
 Go." But it was not a life-long good-by. There 
 was but one remove from her to the Muse of 
 Poesy. Indeed, as the years came with their opulence 
 of joy and sorrow, the memory of her became a sacred 
 presence. When he and his friend McClanahan talked 
 of her, there was pathos in his voice that others never 
 heard and few, had they heard, could understand. The 
 memory of her kept him from "a selfish grave." It was 
 
THE GOLDEN GIRL 309 
 
 "The one bright thing to save 
 His youthful life in the wilds of Time." 
 
 The distance between her and the Muse of Song was so 
 slight that he often more seriously than his friends 
 suspected referred to his favorite goddess as the 
 Little Woman, styling himself the Little Man beside 
 her in his bark, on their poetic way. The fates had 
 woven her into the warp and woof of his destiny. She 
 was the "golden-haired, seraphic child/ whose flying 
 form was ever plying between his "little boat" and the 
 driving clouds. His own version of the Muse seems a 
 dancing phantom. Nevertheless, she was the Queen 
 of "the rosebud garden of girls." She was the "beau 
 tiful immortal figure," she was the "Empress of his 
 listening Soul," 
 
 "The Parian phantomette, with head atip 
 And twinkling fingers dusting down the dews" 
 
 that glittered on the leaves of simple things, he, the 
 wooing Jucklet standing knee-deep in the grass, waiting 
 for the fragrant shower. 
 
 Thinking to disarm the critics, Riley called his por 
 trait of the Muse a monstrosity of rhyme, but time has 
 long since relieved it of that imputation. "The phantom 
 left me at sea," said he a score of years after he had 
 come under the mesmeric spell. "After I had written 
 the lines they worried me a great deal. I did not fully 
 comprehend them then, nor do I now." In "An Adjust 
 able Lunatic" where the lines appear, he says his "mind 
 was steeped in dreamy languor, and yet peopled with a 
 thousand shadowy fancies that came from chaotic 
 hiding-places and mingled in a revelry of such riotous 
 extravagance it seemed a holiday of phantom thought." 
 The music of the Muse rippled mystically from her 
 harp. It was the despair of mortals 
 
310 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 . . . . "the pulse of invoiced melodies 
 
 Timing the raptured sense to some refrain 
 
 That knows nor words, nor rhymes, nor euphonies." 
 
 It belonged to that higher region of poetry of which 
 Longfellow talked when Riley called to see him at the 
 Craigie Mansion. "It is too delicate," said Longfel 
 low, "for the emotions and aspirations of the human 
 heart too fragile for the touch of analysis. The 
 thought like the exquisite odor of a flower, losing all 
 palpable embodiment, is veiled and often lost in the 
 mist of its own spiritual loveliness." 
 
 It was just this impalpable something that Riley saw 
 as in a trance or dream but could not express. Some 
 where, with unseen wings brushing past him, a lawn 
 bespangled with flowers unrolled beneath his feet. On 
 his ear fell a storm of gusty music, 
 
 "And when at last it lulled and died, 
 I stood aghast and terrified. 
 I shuddered and shut my eyes, 
 And still could see and feel aware 
 Some mystic presence waited there; 
 And staring with a dazed surprise, 
 I saw a creature so divine 
 That never subtle thought of mine 
 May reproduce to inner sight 
 So fair a vision of delight. 
 
 "A syllable of dew that drips 
 From out a lily s laughing lips 
 Could not be sweeter than the word 
 I listened to, yet never heard. 
 For, oh, the woman hiding there 
 Within the shadows of her hair, 
 Spake to me in an undertone 
 So delicate, my soul alone 
 But understood it as a moan 
 Of some weak melody of wind 
 A heavenward breeze had left behind." 
 
THE GOLDEN GIRL 311 
 
 There was a tracery of trees in the sky near the horizon 
 toward which the dreamer gazed, a background of 
 dusky verdure for the vision of womanly loveliness that 
 stood beautiful and statuesque before it. She loomed 
 there in the twilight as if the spirit-hand of Angelo 
 had chiseled her to life complete : 
 
 "And I grew jealous of the dusk, 
 To see it softly touch her face, 
 As lover-like with fond embrace 
 It folded round her like a husk: 
 But when the glitter of her hand, 
 Like wasted glory beckoned me, 
 My eyes grew blurred and dull and dim 
 My vision failed I could not see > 
 I could not stir I could not stand, 
 Till quivering in every limb, 
 I flung me prone, as though to swim 
 The tide of grass whose waves of green 
 Went rolling ocean-wide between 
 My helpless shipwrecked heart and her 
 Who claimed me for a worshiper." 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 LIGHT AND COUNSEL FROM THE WISE 
 
 A STOUT champion of scientific thought, whose 
 habit was to deal with the elemental truth 
 of things, adorns English literature with a 
 memorable picture of the game of human life the 
 game which has been played for untold ages, every 
 man and woman of us being one of the two players 
 in a game of his or her own. "The world is a chess 
 board," he says ; "the pieces are the phenomena of the 
 universe, the rules of the game are what we call the 
 laws of Nature. The player on the other side a calm 
 strong angel who is playing with us for love as we say 
 is hidden from us. We know that his play is always 
 fair, just and patient. But also we know to our cost that 
 he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest 
 allowance for ignorance. To the man who plays well, 
 the highest stakes are paid, with that sort of overflow 
 ing generosity with which the strong delight in 
 strength. And the one who plays ill is checkmated 
 without haste, but without remorse." 
 
 . An inspiring conception, provided one sees it as 
 Riley saw it a thing divine. Without that, clouds and 
 mountains, the stars spinning through space were but 
 vanishing dust and vapor. Back of physical splendor 
 and terror, below, within and above the law of Nature, 
 this side and beyond the Calm Angel, the poet saw 
 the sublime miracle of the Infinite All-in-All, of which 
 the chessboard of the world is the manifestation. 
 
 312 
 
LIGHT AND COUNSEL FROM THE WISE 313 
 
 Education is learning the rules of this mighty game 
 man in loving communication with Nature and the 
 God of Nature : "the study of men and their ways the 
 fashioning of the affections and of the will," that he 
 may live in harmony with universal laws. Not an easy 
 task, not now idly dreaming in an empty day. Riley 
 has had the vision of his mission: he has chosen a 
 passenger for his "little boat," the lively Muse of 
 Song. How will he play the mighty game? Some 
 have said he played it foolishly, but they say this in 
 ignorance of the facts. 
 
 "As in a game ov cards," his friend Josh Billings 
 once remarked, "so in the game ov life, we must play 
 what iz dealt tew us; and the glory konsists not so 
 much in winning as in playing a poor hand well." A 
 college training and superior opportunities of culture 
 were not dealt to the Poet of the People. Sometimes 
 he whined over his lot ; sometimes he talked back. Nev 
 ertheless he became human and lovable. He played 
 a poor hand well. 
 
 Among the first things he did after his vision was to 
 seek light and counsel from eminent litterateurs and 
 it took courage to do it. Distinguished authors in their 
 books had been profitable company, but to approach 
 them directly concerning himself was different. Never 
 then, and seldom, if ever, in his maturer years, did he 
 "run the risk of becoming proud of his powers and 
 abilities." He was modest. His timidity was painful. 
 To write about genius was to assume that he had 
 genius, and of this he was not at all certain. Nor was 
 he certain any one could tell him. At the last it was 
 "Trust in Providence and his own efforts." 
 
 Then, too, it was perhaps a burden on older authors 
 which young writers should not inflict. It is one of the 
 
314 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 penalties of eminence, Reynolds had said, to be obliged, 
 as a matter of courtesy, to give opinions upon the at 
 tempts of the dull. Mark Twain would not do it. "No," 
 he wrote in the old "Galaxy" magazine, where Riley 
 first learned to love him, "no, I will not venture any 
 opinion whatever as to the literary merit of a young 
 writer s productions. The public is the only critic 
 whose judgment is worth anything at all.- If I honestly 
 and conscientiously praise his manuscript, I might thus 
 help to inflict a lingering and pitiless bore upon the 
 public ; if I honestly and conscientiously condemn it, I 
 might thus rob the world of an undeveloped Dickens or 
 Shakespeare." 
 
 Writing the eminent for encouragement was the rage 
 among aspiring Hoosiers in the seventies. There was 
 an occasional skeptic, who considered it a sleeveless 
 errand "whistling jigs to a mile-stone" but the cur 
 rent sentiment favored it. Aldrich, when a young 
 man, had received a letter from Hawthorne warmly 
 praising his early poems, and had kept "the pearl of 
 great price" among his autographic treasures to the 
 end of his days. Mark Twain had been warmly com 
 plimented on his first book, in a letter from Oliver 
 Wendell Holmes. Henry George had a letter from John 
 Stuart Mill, which sent him to his study and to fame. 
 Longfellow had been signally helped at the age of 
 eighteen. Jared Sparks had shown him that "his style 
 was too ambitious; his thoughts and reflections were 
 good, but wanted maturity and betrayed a young 
 writer." 
 
 Among the first of the "rising Hoosiers" to receive 
 one of the coveted letters was the Schoolmaster, Lee 0. 
 Harris. His friends encouraged him. That man was 
 a poet, they thought, who 
 
LIGHT AND COUNSEL FROM THE WISE 315 
 
 "saw the Morn arise 
 
 Like Venus from a sea of mist, 
 And blushes redden all the skies 
 When Night and Morning kissed. " 
 
 Authors were certain to take notice of such verse. 
 Whittier wrote of the "rhythmical sweetness" in the 
 teacher s poems. Trowbridge thought "they showed a 
 sufficient mastery of language to warrant obedience to 
 any literary impulse." Longfellow liked "Sunset Be 
 hind the Clouds" and suggested a few changes with 
 the hope that the young pedagogue would not think him 
 hypercritical: "the real merit of the poem made him 
 speak frankly." 
 
 Maurice Thompson, more ambitious than the rest, 
 sought counsel in foreign lands, and received the fol 
 lowing from Victor Hugo: "Young man, hold your 
 head right! The stars are not really in clear water. 
 Those are shams. Look up always as you do now. 
 Labor Limae sic itwr ad astra. (Labor to the end: 
 such is the way to immortality.) I reach across the 
 ocean to you. I hope the young men coming after me 
 will do strongly what I have feebly begun." 
 
 After a restless period of hesitation and deliberation, 
 Riley wrought his courage up to the sticking point. 
 That done, the rest was easy. First of all, he would 
 write his patron saint Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 
 And that was to be expected. "When a boy," he said, 
 "I giggled on hearing the name Longfellow* but it soon 
 became positively poetical and musical to me." When 
 quite a young man he considered it "a liberal education 
 for a poet just to read Longfellow." At the poet s 
 grave he said, "The touch of his hand was a prayer and 
 his speech a blessed psalm." As early as 1868, at young 
 
316 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 Riley s suggestion, the Greenfield Commercial, an ob 
 scure county paper, followed the poet on his tour 
 through Europe, there appearing as late as October 
 such locals as, "Longfellow at last accounts was doing 
 the Paris picture galleries." 
 
 Prior to writing Longfellow, Riley had had the let 
 ter from Donald G. Mitchell about a "very graceful 
 poem," with the accompanying hope that he would 
 "not be discouraged from further exercise of his liter 
 ary talent." This was followed with one from the 
 Danbury News: "Let me say," wrote the editor, "that 
 you are a good writer and a promising one, and bye 
 and bye, if you keep on improving as you have, you 
 will acquire what is everything to the scribe fame; 
 and this secured your writing will command remunera 
 tion of your own figuring. At the moment it is up-hill 
 work. Perseverance is your best ammunition. More 
 wounded than killed in the great battle of pen-and- 
 ink." 
 
 One "dapperling of comfort" from Lee 0. Harris, 
 Riley remembered in love long after the applause of the 
 world had become uninteresting. "Dear old friend," 
 wrote the Schoolmaster in October, 1876, "and fellow 
 convict on the chain gang of phantasy. I have taken 
 upon myself the task of trying to find a publisher." 
 (Collaborating with B. S. Parker, the literary 
 fledglings were feebly attempting something in book 
 form. All three "confessed to two of the oddest infirm 
 ities in the world" : one, that they had no idea of 
 time ; the other, that they had no idea of money.) "Un 
 less we do find a publisher," Harris continues, "I do 
 not see what we can do. Parker has no money and I 
 expect you have about half as much as he has and I 
 have less than both of you. Your August* is good ; 
 
LIGHT AND COUNSEL FROM THE WISE 317 
 
 The forest stands in silence, drinking deep 
 Its purple wine of shade/ 
 
 was written by a true poet." 
 
 Other testimonials have passed into oblivion, but 
 that one stands the test of time. When recalling it, 
 Riley was once reminded of what Emma Abbott said 
 to her friend Reed. The young singer had been 
 stranded on the road and Reed had paid her fare to the 
 next town. "Myron Reed," she said, calling at his 
 home in the noontide of her fame, "I have come to 
 thank you for the ten dollars you loaned me. Ten 
 dollars, when one must have it, is worth more than one 
 hundred thousand dollars when one does not need it." 
 So Riley thought of the little postscript of praise from 
 the Schoolmaster. 
 
 Having written two letters to eminent authors, Riley 
 was suddenly confronted with the loss of their ad 
 dresses. It was the dawning of his lifelong distress 
 over his inability to find things he had so carefully put 
 away "A place for everything," he would repeat when 
 hopelessly seeking letters in his desk, "a place for 
 everything and everything some place else." 
 
 "I should be handled by the Grand Jury," said he, 
 "for not knowing the address of Longfellow." But he 
 did not know it; hence the following to the School 
 master, who was then teaching in Lewisville, Indiana : 
 
 Greenfield, November 20, 1876. 
 Dear Harris 
 
 I intended to take down the addresses of those two 
 celebrities while you were here. Will you furnish them, 
 please, by mail and any others you may know of? 
 
 I have my letters "calked and primed" and only await 
 your kindness. Yours, 
 
 J. W. R. 
 
318 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 The addresses (answered his Schoolmaster) are, 
 Henry W. Longfellow, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and 
 John T. Trowbridge, Arlington, Massachusetts. 
 
 Having addressed the envelopes, Riley hastened to 
 the post-office. "I approached the letter box with 
 trembling," said he, "held my letter in my hand, hesi 
 tating and turning it over, wondering whether I had 
 omitted something or had written something I should 
 not write. I had enclosed three poems, In the Dark/ 
 A Destiny (now entitled A Dreamer*), and If I 
 Knew What Poets Know. Should I have enclosed 
 others, or were they my best ? I did not know." The 
 letter he dropped in the box was as follows : 
 
 Greenfield, Indiana, November 20, 1876. 
 Mr. Henry W. Longfellow 
 
 Dear Sir: I find the courage to address you as I 
 would a friend since by your works you have proven 
 yourself a friend to the world. I would not, however, 
 intrude upon you now did I not feel that you alone could 
 assist me. 
 
 For a few weeks I have been gaining some praise 
 for poems written with no higher ambition than to 
 please myself and friends ; but as many of them have 
 been copied through the country and the fascination of 
 writing has grown upon me, I would like to enter the 
 literary field in earnest, were I assured I possessed real 
 talent. I have sometimes thought so, and again have 
 been very doubtful in that regard. About two years 
 since I sent a poem to Hearth and Home, and it was 
 received and published with illustrations. I had given 
 them the poem, but they paid me for it, a small though 
 handsome sum to me, and I was encouraged to send 
 another, which I did, but the journal was just suspend 
 ing as it reached them. My manuscript was returned, 
 with a kindly note from Donald G. Mitchell, the retiring 
 editor, advising me to continue the exercise of what he 
 was pleased to term "my literary talent." 
 
LIGHT AND COUNSEL FROM THE WISE 319 
 
 I enclose for your inspection two or three of my 
 better efforts, hoping to elicit from you a word of com 
 ment and advice. If without merit or promise, your 
 telling me so will make me happy, and if the contrary, 
 encouragement will give me strength to do as you may 
 be pleased to advise. 
 
 With profound respect, I remain your humble servant 
 and admirer, J. W. RILEY. 
 
 Having mailed the letter there followed a ten days 
 suspense. Time hung heavily over Greenfield. "Ten 
 days !" said Riley, drawling out the words ; "it was 
 ten weeks. Every hour I grew more doubtful of an 
 answer from Longfellow. I was told the last thing he 
 wanted to do was to give an opinion of other people s 
 poems. My head was full of suspicions my letter 
 might not reach him he might be sick, and so forth. 
 The opiate for my perturbation was The Spanish 
 Student. It was soothing to read it. I was in love 
 and like the Student confronted with the awful mystery 
 of Life." 
 
 There was another cause for his perturbation. He 
 was wrestling with his new poem, "Fame." Many 
 waves broke upon the "seashore of his mind." One 
 night 
 
 "The loud and ponderous mace of Time 
 Knocked at the golden portals of the day," 
 
 before he slept. Recalling the night, he talked of phan 
 toms that filled the air, and how the silence was 
 haunted by the ghosts of sound. There were "strange 
 cracks and tickings, the rustling of garments that have 
 no substance in them, and the tread of dreadful feet, 
 that would leave no mark on the sea-sand or the winter 
 snow." He had a vision of fame, but it did not "make 
 
320 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 the night glorious with its smile." What he saw was 
 the fame of a man 
 
 "Who journeyed on through life, unknown, 
 Without one friend to call his own ; 
 No sympathetic sob or sigh 
 Of trembling lips no sorrowing eye 
 Looked out through tears to see him die." 
 
 It seems relevant to note here that "Fame" was not 
 written in a night. There was time for suggestions 
 from the "Golden Girl." "The poem," he said, "re 
 quired the revision and reconstruction of weeks." 
 Changes occurred up to the very month of its publica 
 tion in the Earlhamite of Earlham College, February, 
 1877. 
 
 Riley had been blessed with the vision of his mis 
 sion, but poets, like other mortals, if they do their 
 work, must have their crust of bread. It was literally 
 true that he had less money than his Schoolmaster 
 who had none for he was in debt. In his extremity, 
 he had decided to replenish his exchequer by favor 
 ably answering another call from the Graphic Com 
 pany, when, like a breath from Araby, came a letter 
 from the "Golden Girl," which made it more than a 
 mere fancy of hers that she held in her "weak white 
 hands" his hopes and fortune. Gaunt starvation must 
 be vanquished, but not by wasting time with the 
 "Graphics." The wandering desire for travel and 
 money was fatal. In those doubtful weeks she gave 
 him courage. "Her mirth," he said, "was like a zephyr 
 challenging the East Wind." As she saw it, the new 
 poet could do anything. "I say," she wrote, rallying 
 him on his fertility of resources, "did you ever teach 
 school or sell sewing machines?" Then she grew seri 
 ous; her love "reached over the endless sea of 
 
rO^t lLfint. 
 
 THE SECOND LETTER FROM LONGFELLOW 
 (OVER) 
 
. : 
 
 & 
 
 vf 
 
 trUiL* 
 
 +J 
 
LIGHT AND COUNSEL FROM THE WISE 321 
 
 absence." She wanted to feel the presence of the hand 
 that had fashioned so many beautiful messages. "And 
 you are going away with the Graphics ? I am sorry. 
 
 I can t quite make it clear, 
 It seems so horrid queer/ 
 
 I wish I might whisper to you all the rare diamonds of 
 thought Hope flings at my feet to-day." 
 
 While struggling with his new poem and doubting in 
 himself what to do for a living, Riley was prompted to 
 call at the post-office and this is what he found : 
 
 Cambridge, Nov. 30, 1876. 
 My Dear Sir : 
 
 Not being in the habit of criticising the productions 
 of others, I can not enter into any minute discussion of 
 the merits of the poems you send me. 
 
 I can only say in general terms that I have read 
 them with great pleasure, and think they show the true 
 poetic faculty and insight. 
 
 The only criticism I shall make is on your use of the 
 word prone in the thirteenth line of "Destiny." Prone 
 means face-downward. You meant to say supine, as 
 the context shows. 
 
 I return the printed pieces, as you may want them 
 for future use, and am, my Dear Sir, with all good 
 wishes, Yours very truly, 
 
 HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. 
 
 But one result could follow. To borrow his own 
 words, he was "in a perfect hurricane of delight." He 
 walked away from the post-office, not through the 
 streets of Greenfield, but "through some enchanted 
 city, where the pavements were of air; where all the 
 rough sounds of a stirring town were softened into 
 gentle music; where everything was happy; where 
 there was no distance and no time." 
 
322 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 "Gently his pathway turned from night ; 
 The hills swung open to the light ; 
 And on his fortune s farther side 
 He saw the hilltops glorified." 
 
 The hour had arrived for that old faithful clock, the 
 Greenfield Democrat, to strike again. Under the cap 
 tion, Our Poet, the editor printed the Longfellow letter 
 and commented upon "the poetic merits of our young 
 fellow townsman, James W. Riley. We are gratified 
 to learn that his poetic talent has not only been appre 
 ciated by his friends at home, but has received the 
 recognition of America s most eminent poet. The 
 Democrat is proud of having one among us whose 
 brilliant future is almost assured, and by way of en 
 couragement reminds our young friend that 
 
 Poets have undoubted right to claim, 
 
 If not the greatest, the most lasting name. " 
 
 The Schoolmaster rejoiced that his "winter of dis 
 content was made glorious summer by this sun of the 
 Muses. Do you recall the days," he asks Riley, "we 
 used to spend together under the beech trees at the old 
 schoolhouse, when we were several years younger than 
 now, the days we strayed like the breeze among the 
 blossoms ? 
 
 When Hope clung feeding, like a bee, 
 And Love and Life went a-Maying 
 With Nature, Faith and Poesy ?" 
 
 He then warns Riley that Pegasus is frequently 
 refractory. "You may have," he added, "a whole 
 week of jubilant exultation a week of con 
 stant dashing hither and thither upon your 
 winged steed sometimes among the clouds, some 
 times above the stars a hand upon the rein and 
 
LIGHT AND COUNSEL FROM THE WISE 323 
 
 he obeys, a touch with the heel and he flies, until the 
 whole earth lies beneath you, and all its inexhaustible 
 wealth of beautiful imagery is at your command and 
 then a balk a halt a fall and Helicon a mole-hill 
 Hippocrene a mud puddle and Pegasus *a mule, 
 braying for his fodder." 
 
 His friend, B. S. Parker, sent congratulations, but 
 warned Riley not to "feel too much flattered, but to 
 proceed discreetly, to cultivate the acquaintance of 
 other distinguished and influential men of letters." Nor 
 must he "feel greatly grieved or disheartened if some 
 should snub him." Parker had had gratifying letters, 
 but "they had done him no further good than the mo 
 mentary bliss they had occasioned." 
 
 It is a great event, it has been said, for a young 
 writer to receive his first letter from a great man. 
 "He can never receive letters enough from famous men 
 afterward to obliterate that one, or dim the memory 
 of the pleasant surprise it was and the gratification it 
 gave him. Lapse of time can not make it common 
 place or cheap." As to the memory of it, this was true 
 of Riley. The Longfellow letter was his pearl of great 
 price, but, unlike Aldrich, he did not caress it as an 
 autographic treasure to the end of his days. He 
 carried it in his "reticule" a year or so, then laid 
 it away and saw it no more. Again it was "Trust 
 in Providence and in his own efforts." The con 
 viction was borne in upon him that there is but 
 one straight road to success and that is merit. 
 Capacity lacked not opportunity. It could not 
 forever remain undiscovered. Letters from the dis 
 tinguished never had made a young writer great and 
 never could. God would not have it so. Each writer, 
 with fear and trembling, had to work out his own lit- 
 
324 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 erary salvation. Some have thought that had Long 
 fellow written Riley that his poems were without merit 
 or promise, his literary ambitions would have come 
 suddenly to an end. Reporters have made him say: 
 "I made up my mind if Longfellow said No/ I would 
 quit all that kind of thing forever." He never said it. 
 One adverse criticism could not have overcome his na 
 tive tendency. The impulse to write was so powerful 
 that escape from it was inconceivable. As late as 1879, 
 while painting a sign to earn his daily bread, this im 
 pelling force was sufficient to bring him down the 
 ladder to write a poem. 
 
 Among other lessons he learned from the letter was 
 the value one should attach to words. Henceforth he 
 would study their use and abuse. When his poem, 
 "A Vision of Summer," "warmed him through and 
 through with tropical delight," he lay supine thanks 
 to Longfellow not prone. 
 
 "On grassy swards, where the skies, like eyes, 
 Look lovingly back to mine." 
 
 Almost immediately he made use of the letter to 
 thaw out the icy East. He wrote and illustrated a 
 "serio-humorous poem," "The Funny Little Fellow," 
 and sent it to Scribner s. He felt certain his illustra 
 tions were as good as the average found in "Bric-a- 
 Brac" of that monthly. It was a good idea to combine 
 both poet and artist. "I backed up my ability with my 
 Longfellow letter," said he. "You can imagine my 
 chagrin when I received their Respectfully Declined. 
 
 The first letter to Longfellow was a legitimate per 
 formance, but the second, in Riley s own words, "was 
 unwarranted and inexcusable. I made the mistake 
 most writers make; having received a good letter, I 
 
LIGHT AND COUNSEL FROM THE WISE 325 
 
 must, forsooth, have another. They say Longfellow 
 was grim when they came to steal his time. Grim? 
 When maidens came with their manuscripts in blue 
 velvet, and young men with carpetbags full of poems, 
 he should have frowned till they heard Thor hurling 
 thunder!" 
 
 Riley never could be quite penitent enough when he 
 grew older and realized what the infliction meant for 
 having been so stupid as to send another carpetbagf ul. 
 To enclose "The Iron Horse" and one or two other 
 short poems would not have been so bad, but with them 
 to send "A Remarkable Man," "Tale of a Spider," and 
 "Flying Islands of the Night," was a Grub-Street 
 offense for which there was no pardon. Nevertheless, 
 he sent them, although, as he said, "two years elapsed 
 before I was stupid enough to do it." The following 
 letter accompanied them, which received a prompt 
 answer : 
 
 Greenfield, Ind., Sept. 2, 1878. 
 Henry W. Longfellow 
 
 Dear Sir : Emboldened by a very kind and encourag 
 ing letter received from you some two years since, I 
 take the liberty of enclosing to you some of my later 
 work. And I desire again to express to you my warm 
 est thanks for the great good both your influence and 
 kind words have done me. While I have not been 
 recognized by the magazines, I have a reputation in my 
 own state of which I am proud, and through it I am not 
 only making progress but money as well. 
 
 The poetical drama I enclose, as you will see, is with 
 out ambition, yet for all that I most certainly trust you 
 will find in it something pleasurable. Regretting to 
 afflict you with the additional trouble of returning the 
 scraps, I am 
 
 Most Truly and Gratefully yours, 
 
 J. W. RILEY. 
 
326 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 Cambridge, Sept. 5, 1878. 
 
 My Dear Sir : 
 
 I have received the poems you were kind enough to 
 send me, and have read the lyric pieces with much 
 pleasure. 
 
 "The Flying Islands of the Night" I have not yet 
 read, being very busy just now with many things. As 
 you say I may keep it, I will do so, and read it care 
 fully at some favorable moment. 
 
 The other poems I return as you desire, and am, my 
 Dear Sir, .. Yours very truly, 
 
 HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. 
 
 P. S. Among these poems the one that pleased me 
 much as any, if not more than any, was "The Iron 
 Horse." 
 
 The letter that could prompt the beautiful sonnet to 
 Longfellow was not a mistake after all. One still hears 
 the trees whispering to him and the winds talking with 
 him confidingly: 
 
 "His verse blooms like a flower, night and day; 
 Bees cluster round his rhymes ; and twitterings 
 Of lark and swallow, in an endless May 
 Are mingling with the tender songs he sings." 
 
 What effect Riley s letters and poems had on Long 
 fellow is largely conjecture. Reviewers have thought 
 his "Possibilities" was the result. It may be true, for 
 it is a matter of record that the sonnet was written in 
 1882, after Riley s call at the Craigie House in January 
 of that year. "Come into my study," said the poet, 
 "it is more like freedom here; we can talk and be 
 content." At his request Riley read "Old Fashioned 
 Roses." "Delightful ! delightful !" repeated Longfellow. 
 They talked of "our native poets and their work." 
 Longfellow knew them all and "loved them all even 
 
LIGHT AND COUNSEL FROM THE WISE 327 
 
 the humblest." They talked particularly of "western 
 characteristics and dialects and the possibilities of the 
 West for song." 
 
 "Where are the Poets?" asks Longfellow in the son 
 net; 
 
 "Perhaps there lives some dreamy boy, untaught 
 In schools, some graduate of the field or street, 
 Who shall become a master of the art, 
 An admiral sailing the high seas of thought, 
 Fearless and first, and steering with his fleet 
 For lands not yet laid down in any chart." 
 
 Riley never claimed to be an admiral sailing the 
 high seas, but he was untaught of the schools. Without 
 any chart he steered fearless and first into a new field 
 of song. The whole of twenty years, beginning with 
 the year of his vision, was a constant fight with the 
 critics for the rights and merits of that field. 
 
 Letters from celebrities, with one exception, made lit 
 tle impression on him. No answer came from Whit- 
 tier, but that disappointment was soon softened by the 
 sympathy of Trowbridge. "Sympathizingly Yours" 
 stayed with him to the year of his departure (1916) 
 and Trowbridge with his four score and ten years 
 was permitted to see the dawn of the same year. 
 
 Arlington, Mass., Dec. 1, 1876. 
 Mr. J. W. Riley, 
 
 Dear Sir: I recognize touches here and there in 
 these little pieces, which indicate a good deal of fancy 
 & sympathy prime requisites in the writing of verse ; 
 but neither of them seems to have that original force 
 necessary to conceive & complete a really striking poem. 
 This may be in you yet, though your 26 years may not 
 have enabled you so far to master it. With what 
 talent these pieces show, you may undoubtedly write 
 
328 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 pleasing and perhaps popular pieces; but to be mar 
 ketable & to make its mark, poetry must nowadays be 
 in some respect striking. 
 I am Sympathizingly Yours, 
 
 J. T. TROWBRIDGE. 
 
 Trowbridge as "Paul Creyton" with his popular tales 
 for the young, had caught the attention of Greenfield 
 several years prior to his letter to Riley. As editor of 
 Our Young Folks, he drew Riley s attention to the lit 
 erary significance of the Child-World. Longfellow had 
 given but a hint of its riches. There was a call for 
 some one to take up the theme where he left it. Some 
 one should try his genius on childhood. Children should 
 lisp and whisper their messages to us, tell us 
 
 "What the birds and the winds are singing 
 In their sunny atmosphere." 
 
 Trowbridge had also set Riley reflecting on the im 
 portance of frontier material for poetry. Some one, 
 Trowbridge thought, should seek it in the Backwoods 
 Enchanted, go back among old armchairs, old-fash 
 ioned spinning-wheels and dismantled looms, search 
 among dusty cobwebs, find 
 
 "Far under the eaves, the bunch of sage, 
 The satchel hung on its nail, amid 
 The heirlooms of a bygone age." 
 
 But let him beware! "Facts are facts," said Trow 
 bridge, "but if not clothed with grace and the warm tis 
 sues of human sympathy, they are no more the truth 
 than a skeleton is a living body." 
 
 The first to direct Riley s attention to the wonderland 
 of poetry in his immediate surroundings was his 
 schoolmaster, Lee 0. Harris. Trowbridge was the 
 second. There was a third. 
 
LIGHT AND COUNSEL FROM THE WISE 329 
 
 One afternoon in October, 1876, while Riley was 
 aglow with the vision of his mission, there came to 
 Greenfield a man who as an orator had few peers in 
 his generation, Robert G. Ingersoll. His speech a 
 political one in the heat of a national campaign 
 was embellished with poems in prose, which seemed 
 to Riley the gift of the gods. He listened for 
 two hours to eloquence that remained golden in mem 
 ory for forty years. Extolling the splendor of the new 
 day, the orator said : "Nothing is more marvelous than 
 the common everyday facts of everyday life. The age 
 of wonders is not in the past. There are millions of 
 miracles under our feet. In the lives of the people, here 
 and now, are all the comedy and tragedy they can com 
 prehend." Before closing, the orator touched upon 
 another important fact : that the luster of noble quali 
 ties shines alike in the plainest workman and the most 
 accomplished gentleman. Indeed it had shone under 
 a rough exterior and had been wanting in the polished 
 scholar. The hairy, unsocial savage who knew how to 
 get things done, and got them done, was a better serv 
 ant of his country than one who, without the positive 
 qualification, happened to be intellectually eminent. 
 
 It was a center shot ; it went straight to Riley s heart. 
 Scales fell from his eyes. He saw his field. Better yet, 
 he saw as never before the glory of the imperfect and 
 the commonplace. He attached greater value to his 
 surroundings. Referring to the orator he said, bor 
 rowing the familiar lines, 
 
 "I know not what this man may be, 
 Sinner or saint; but as for me, 
 One thing I know, that I am he 
 Who once was blind and now I see !" 
 
 That day he saw what his friend John Burroughs 
 
330 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 wrote at a later period, that the lure of the distant is 
 deceptive ; that the great opportunity is where we are : 
 "Every place is under the stars, every place is the 
 centre of the world" his native town with its neigh 
 boring county-seats, Anderson, Newcastle, Rushville, 
 Shelbyville and Indianapolis, encircled a kingdom large 
 enough for the exercise of his powers. That contracted 
 circle was also wide enough for a degree of rapture he 
 never experienced in the heyday of fame. Yearning 
 for the hilltops glorified, "lacking everything save 
 faith and a great purpose," he was in a hundred ways 
 happier than he was in later years, when success show 
 ered upon him applause and gold. 
 
 It is a literal fact that within a radius of forty miles 
 of Greenfield, Riley found all the material for his poems. 
 What he found outside the circle was accidental and 
 had its counterpart within it. Here were all the com 
 edy and tragedy of human life ; here a million miracles 
 under his feet ; here the center of the world. Since he 
 touched the heartstrings in his own community, since 
 the history of the nation is the history of communities 
 written large, and since human nature is the same the 
 world over, his songs were destined to be universally 
 loved. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 ON THE TRIPOD OF THE DEMOCRAT 
 
 ONCE more the lights of his native streets had 
 become feeble tapers once more the Argonaut 
 sought his fortune in Anderson not on the 
 "Buckeye," but on a county paper. 
 
 "Beneath the lamplight s scorching shade, 
 With eyes all wild, and lips all pale, 
 He courts the Muse. Read from his pen, 
 THE DEMOCRAT. This tells the tale." 
 
 His purse-strings were contracted and Greenfield 
 could not relax them. "Why an appetite," he quiz 
 zically asked ; "what is the good of cutting your wisdom 
 teeth when there is nothing to eat in the house but a 
 butcher s bill and a dun for rent?" 
 
 The yearning of this man for freedom from the bond 
 age of debt is one of the many pathetic phases of his 
 existence. Other artists, the "British Book" said, 
 painted to live, but John Opie lived to paint, and that 
 was identically the relation Riley desired to sustain to 
 poetry not to write poems to live, but live to write 
 poems. 
 
 Perhaps, after all, the bitter experience was the way 
 of Destiny to bruise his heart, that its door of sympathy 
 might be always open to the need and distress of the 
 world. He never sought money for ignoble ends, never 
 bowed the knee before it as a worshipper, but he craved 
 it for personal benefit that he might thereby do a work 
 of universal benefit. At Greenfield and for years after 
 
 331 
 
332 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 he moved to the city, Riley often talked to friends in 
 the guise of the light-hearted Skimpole, overwhelming 
 them with money "in his expansive intentions." 
 "He had no more idea of wages than a bluebird," 
 said his friend Reed. "Money was a mystery." It 
 had the color of magic. In the folk tales, the caps of 
 fairies and musicians were red and gold was red. 
 As late as the year of his first book (1883), he sighs 
 for the "red ruddocks." "You must not forget," he 
 wrote his friend Parker, "that in the pecuniary aspect 
 I present the picturesque outlines of the typical poet 
 merry, at times, thank God, as Chispa describes the 
 Serenaders who enjoy hunger by day and noise by 
 night." There were gloomy days but never a 
 moment for surrender. "Merry," he sometimes 
 repeated when at work, "merry as old Skimpole." 
 Creditors "might pluck his feathers now and then, and 
 clip his wings, but all the same he would work and 
 sing." "Afterwhile," he merrily wrote another friend, 
 
 "Afterwhile the poet-man 
 Will do better when he can 
 Afterwhile, with deep regrets, 
 He will even pay his debts; 
 And by drayload, cart and hack, 
 Will take borrowed volumes back, 
 And will gibber, shriek and smile 
 When he brings em afterwhile !" 
 
 There were occasions at night however when he was 
 really blue, when he had to sing himself to sleep with 
 some such "rhythmical tumult" as, 
 
 "I am weary of waiting, and weary of tears, 
 And my heart wearies, too, all these desolate years, 
 Moaning over the one only song that it knows-, 
 The little red ribbon, the ring and the rose." 
 
ON THE TRIPOD OF THE DEMOCRAT 333 
 
 Prior to employment on the Anderson Democrat, he 
 made several fruitless attempts to secure a place in 
 some editorial room. Painting signs was not the only 
 way to make a living. "I had once," he writes Parker 
 of the Newcastle Mercury, late in 1876, "a few weeks 
 experience as the local editor of our little paper. I 
 liked it better than anything I ever tried to do, and I 
 write to say that I would like to be with you in that 
 capacity. I would be willing and glad to work for 
 whatever you were able to pay for such help, if help is 
 desired. Please revolve it around your brain a time or 
 two and tell me your conclusion." It turned out that 
 the Mercury was "a bankrupt organ without a copper 
 for contributors." 
 
 "The long winter months, and the glare of the snows, 
 With never a glimmer of sun in the skies," 
 
 wore on to the following "WORD" in the Democrat-^ 
 the last week in April, 1877 : 
 
 It is our endeavor to serve the best interests of our 
 patrons, and with this in view, we have secured the 
 services of Mr. J. W. Riley, who has attained quite a 
 reputation as a poet and writer. His productions have 
 already attracted the attention of such men as Long 
 fellow, Whittier, Trowbridge and many other notables ; 
 and being convinced of the high order of the talent he 
 possesses in that direction, we believe we not only 
 benefit ourselves and patrons by the acquisition of his 
 services, *but that he is also supplied with a congenial 
 position, and one in which he will develop the highest 
 attributes of his nature. Feeling that we already have 
 the hearty endorsement of a kindly public, we leave Mr. 
 Riley to close the homily. 
 
 TODISMAN & GROAN (Proprietors). 
 
334 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 In making my salam to the Anderson public, I desire 
 first to extend my warmest thanks to those who have 
 interested themselves in my behalf, and whose kindly 
 influence has assisted me to an office I will ever feel a 
 pleasure in occupying 1 . And in the fulfillment of the 
 duties that devolve upon me, it shall be my earnest en 
 deavor to merit the trust and confidence that has been 
 so generously reposed. That the position is one that is 
 fraught with a thousand trials and vexations, shall not 
 deter me from the steadfast purpose of right and jus 
 tice ; and while I shall at times exercise the lighter attri 
 butes which go to make up the interest of a weekly, it 
 shall be my care as well, to weed away all petty slurs 
 that choke the growth of dignity, and in fact, to nurture 
 jealously the character of the paper, and assist in my 
 humble way in giving to its individuality the stamp 
 which "bears without abuse the grand old name of gen 
 tleman." Trusting the kindly indulgence of the public 
 for any discrepancy of inexperience, I am, 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 J. W. RILEY. 
 
 There were doubtless many cups of happiness in An 
 derson, but none quite so full as that which Riley held 
 when he entered the Democrat office. For the first 
 time in his life he was under contract at a regular sal 
 ary forty dollars a month. When at the end of the 
 first month, the circulation was doubled and his salary 
 raised to sixty, his cup ran over. That was unmistak 
 able testimony to the merit of the "acquisition." (The 
 "thousand trials and vexations" had not yet arrived.) 
 There came also exchanges with their compliments. 
 "One of the best writers among the young litterateurs 
 of the west," said the Indianapolis Herald. "A good 
 thing for the Democrat," said the Newcastle Mercury. 
 The Earlhamite, which had given wings to his poem, 
 "Fame," sent its best wishes and hoped "he would find 
 many roses in the pathway of life." "Our rising Indiana 
 
ON THE TRIPOD OF THE DEMOCRAT 335 
 
 poet," said the Richmond Independent, "hails us from 
 the tripod of the Anderson Democrat, a newsy, bright- 
 faced paper, which will grow under the spell of his ver 
 satile genius. A capital, illustrated burlesque, Maud 
 Muller/ adorns the first page, the artistic and poetical 
 production of the new aspirant to editorial honors." 
 
 The merriment "Maud Muller" created was consid 
 erable. There was a ripple among the exchanges when 
 
 "The sweet girl stood in the sun that day, 
 And raked the Judge instead of the hay." 
 
 And a ripple was all Riley intended. "It was a mere 
 bagatelle," he said. That any one should consider it a 
 poetical production was to "steep his mirth in chagrin." 
 The original "Maud Muller" had been dramatized and 
 Whittier had "utterly disowned her," which fact sug 
 gested the little diversion at the Quaker Poet s expense. 
 
 Very soon the man beneath the lamplight s scorching 
 shade was known around town as the "Perspiring 
 Poet." And truly the work he accomplished from April 
 to September, 1877, was extraordinary. He was liter 
 ally an eagle-eyed Argus, meditating, playing, working, 
 and perspiring by day and by night on his weekly 
 tripod. If there was anything in Anderson or Madison 
 County that escaped his telescopic or microscopic vi 
 sion, his fellow citizens failed to find it. 
 
 Among the manifold things he did was to "embellish 
 the news." Trowbridge s counsel bore fruit from the 
 first. The bare facts sent in from Kill Buck, Poliwag, 
 and Weasel Prairie, were not the truth till clothed with 
 his sparkling humor. Country correspondents scarcely 
 recognized their prosy items, after they had passed 
 through the Democrat s "humorous mill." They read 
 them with inconceivable surprise and glee. 
 
336 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 Brightwood, for example, was "the little station 
 down the Bee Line that did not possess enough dignity 
 to stop a train." 
 
 A carpenter, shingling a barn at Prosperity, "slipped 
 from the roof and shot over the eaves like a bull-frog." 
 
 Captain Doxey s "mocking bird" was a "twittering 
 pilgrim, and when properly wound up played three 
 tunes; but the ratchet slipped occasionally and Cap 
 tain Jinks and Molly Darling flew into each other 
 with a vehemence that was blood-curdling." 
 
 "Our Editor is running round the country like a 
 water-bug, and a perfect nebula of new subscribers be 
 spangles our subscription list; 
 
 The lark is up to meet the sun, 
 
 The bee is on the wing; 
 The Democrat it has begun 
 
 To go like everything." 
 
 A team ran away at Perkinsville. "The horses got 
 down to their work and for a time 
 
 Beneath their spurning feet the road 
 Like an arrowy Alpine river flowed. 
 
 "While with joy akin to rapture we cluster round the 
 glowing grate and settle comfortably to the entrancing 
 task of our Ode to May, let us not forget the anguish 
 of our unfortunate neighbor as he buries himself in the 
 bleak and barren basement of his heart and wonders 
 bitterly what his fussy old consort meant by having him 
 take down the sitting room stove so soon." 
 
 "If the young man who sends us the poetry begin 
 ning How beautiful iz the birds will bring us the 
 address of his parents, we will see that his remains 
 reach home in safety." 
 
 The sweet Goddess of Spring had been coquetting, 
 
ON THE TRIPOD OF THE DEMOCRAT 337 
 
 but now "she has unrolled her emerald carpet over the 
 world ; thrown to the winds her leafy banners ; touched 
 with her mystic wand the folded bud, and wooed it into 
 bloom. She has scattered, too, with lavish hand the 
 feathered seeds of song and called to life the glad voice 
 of the brook; the sunshine is a gleaming smile of gold 
 throughout the day; and in the night, whose strange 
 weird beauty awes us like a gipsy maiden s eyes, the 
 ebon back of the Thomas cat is arched, and his quiver 
 ing tail points to the solemn stars." 
 
 These and scores of other items equally humorous, 
 accompany the following lines that appeared in his 
 "invocation" column to the business public 
 
 "Come to the sanctum board to-night, 
 And friendship there will be your gain, 
 For where the Democrat is found 
 No sorrow can remain." 
 
 There was a passage in the Life of the "Cornish Won 
 der," John Opie, that appealed to Riley with special sig 
 nificance. According to Opie, he who wishes to be a 
 painter must not overlook any kind of knowledge, and, 
 as Riley saw it, the law is the same for the poet. 
 
 On entering the Democrat office, he immediately put 
 "the painter s injunction" into practice. Wide-awake 
 as a lamp-lighter he went down the streets and up the 
 alleys, through the highways and byways for materials. 
 Nor did he have to stare at things to know what and 
 where they were. It was current opinion that "he 
 could look down the shelves of a hardware store and 
 see at a glance everything on them." In June the 
 Democrat began to mass materials. For weeks it 
 harped on "practical things" three to five columns an 
 issue. It made its bow in 
 
SSS JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 AN IDYL OF TO-DAY 
 
 The Blunt Blade of Business 
 Ground to an Ethereal Edge. 
 
 OUR POET AT THE CRANK 
 
 Motto : "Grind till the last armed foe expires." 
 
 INVOCATION 
 
 Courteous Muse, you have served me so long 
 As guide through the devious highways of song ; 
 And ever have led me with willingest hand 
 Adown the dim aisles of that fanciful land, 
 Where even Aladdin the luckiest scamp 
 
 That ever was spared by a kerosene lamp 
 
 Not happier was or more burdened with bliss 
 
 Than the poor, impecunious writer of this. 
 
 And as I recall with rapturous thrill 
 
 The ripe fruits of rhyme which I gathered at will 
 
 The lush, juicy clusters on Poesy s tree 
 
 That weighed down the limbs to accommodate me, 
 
 The jet of my thanks flashes into a blaze 
 
 That will brighten my life all the rest of my days. 
 
 And so, as the gas glimmers over my brow 
 
 And gleams on the pencil I m writing with now 
 
 And glances from that with a jocular flash 
 
 To redden my already ruddy mustache ; 
 
 1 can but give over all yearnings for fame, 
 To write a few lines with the singular aim 
 Of pleasing the world with an idyl that rings 
 The music of business and practical things. 
 
 It was a bid for business to open its alcoves for the 
 poet s inspection. "There is no cessation of the ardu 
 ous labors of my position," he wrote his Schoolmaster 
 in July, "and I am grateful for it, for I think the news 
 paper school an excellent one and filled with most valu 
 able experience. I am still at the crank, but even with 
 
ON THE TRIPOD OF THE DEMOCRAT 339 
 
 that I have daily acquired some new proficiency. I 
 have written many poems that I have laid away the 
 kind I publish are only intended for the casual reader, 
 as you know. The better ones I reserve for better dis 
 tinction." 
 
 The casual reader saw such "literary atrocities" as 
 "Craqueodoom" and "Wrangdillion," such inferior 
 fruits of labor as "The Frog," which he termed his 
 batrachian idyl, "A Man of Many Parts," "A Test of 
 Love," "George Mullen s Confession," "Wash Lowry s 
 Reminiscence" and "Now We Can Sleep, Mother," the 
 latter a parody on the old familiar "Rock Me To Sleep," 
 celebrating the expiration of the sewing machine pat 
 ent. The drudgery of millions of poor women was at 
 an end. "Broken was the sewing machine monopoly 
 snapped the last thread of tyranny that bound a starv 
 ing people hand and foot ; 
 
 "Backward, throw backward the curtain to-night, 
 Open the window and let the glad light 
 Of the round moon shimmer over the scene 
 Where we at last own a sewing machine." 
 
 The casual reader also saw, and muddled his wits 
 with such incoherent prose effusions as "The Duck 
 Creek Jabberwock," "Unawangawawa ; or The Eyelash 
 of the Lightning," "Trillpipe s Boy on Spiders," and 
 "The Anderson Mystery," the first, the story of "a 
 strange animal of the basket-backed species in a neck 
 of the woods where they never read the Bible or take 
 the Democrat"; the last, the tale of a Healthy Ghost, 
 "facts without fancy about a mysterious lodger that 
 sheltered its goblin head" within the walls of a haunted 
 house, some such mystery as the echoes of footsteps on 
 the Ghost s Walk when the dusky wings of solitude sat 
 
340 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 brooding upon Chesney Wold. The "Perspiring Poet" 
 had searched the house "from turret to foundation 
 stone, gone through the floor like the genii in some en 
 chanted palace, had peeped under the sleepers and 
 emerged in a coil of cobwebs with the unfathomable 
 mystery and hoped the day would soon dawn when he 
 could give his readers a full biography of the ghostly 
 visitor, with pen-portrait, including stature, weight, 
 color of eyes and hair." 
 
 The "Jingling Editor" began his "idyl on business" 
 with a curtsy to the main-floor room under his office, 
 where the clangor of iron-ware contrasted painfully 
 with the silence he craved when the Muse was indul 
 gent: 
 
 "Here on the balcony, a sign 
 Somewhat marred by the rain and the shine 
 Of a dozen years, still checks the stare 
 Of the passer-by with the word Hardware ! 
 While a portly man in the door below 
 Making the sign more apropos 
 Stands, in a loosely-fitting sack, 
 With his legs wide out and his hat set back, 
 But an open face and a genial air 
 Shows that his heart is a softer ware 
 Than the goods he keeps in the store-room there. 
 Stretching along on either side 
 Of the walls of the warehouse long and wide, 
 The shelving sags with the heavy weight 
 Of hinges, hoes, and the chains that grate 
 Their tinkling links on the gleaming blades 
 Of the scythes below, and the rakes and spades ; 
 And the thousand nameless instruments 
 That the tireless mind of man invents 
 For the tradesman s use, or the farmer s hand, 
 Or the sportman s need, or the smith s demand ; 
 Till even the eye as it looks on these 
 Dazzled is it with the sight it sees." 
 
HENRY WADSWOKTH LONGFELLOW 
 1868 
 
JOHN TOWNSEND TROWBRIDGE 
 From a photograph taken in 1872 
 
ON THE TRIPOD OF THE DEMOCRAT 341 
 
 "The huge appetite of the public for wonders re 
 quires daily food." "The Poet at the Crank" knew it 
 and supplied the demand in cargoes. No weekly editor 
 reached the rural districts as did Riley. Farmers called 
 to see him. They came with their families and 
 brought gifts from their gardens and orchards. Bou 
 quets "blossomed on his table while their fragrance 
 hovered on odorous wings about the dusty crannies of 
 his office." Once when the street in front of his bal 
 cony was congested with wagons that had brought 
 families with their applause from the country, he was 
 reminded of huzzas for the "Cornish Wonder." "These 
 coaches of nobility," he jestingly observed, "are be 
 come a nuisance to the neighborhood." 
 
 The keynote of his success lay in this, the establish 
 ment of a friendly relation between town and country 
 and he was about the first man in America to do it. 
 "Without the farmer," he said, "the town can not flour 
 ish. Ye men of the streets, be cordial to our rustic 
 brethren. They are more potent than bankers and law 
 yers, more essential to the public good than poets and 
 politicians. Do all you can for them. Farmers should 
 vibrate wisely and heartily between the Public Square 
 and the farm and we of the town should do the same. 
 The golden mean escapes the plagues that haunt the 
 extremes. 
 
 Could I pour out the nectar the gods only can, 
 
 I would fill up my glass to the brim 
 
 And drink the success of the Suburban Man." 
 
 Said a matronly mother, the idol of a happy family, 
 "The poet just threw his arms around our county and 
 took it to see the sights. He regaled us with the wit 
 that had been the talk of his sign-painting. Such 
 
342 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 cleverness in versifying, our town had never known." 
 "The mock seriousness," says a writer, "with which 
 he took himself and the Democrat made it for a time 
 a more welcome sheet in Anderson than would have 
 been a comic almanac." 
 
 "Dear ever indulgent and generous Muse, 
 You may give me occasional lifts if you choose 
 If not I shall stagger along all the same, 
 And so, if I falter, why, yours is the blame." 
 
 Down the streets and up the lanes he went with the 
 public in his "Rhyme Wagon" and the magical thing 
 about it was that the public could ride in it and at the 
 same time sit by the lamplight of home. 
 
 " Make way for Liberty ! (he said) 
 Made way for Liberty, and led 
 A grateful people on to where 
 A ceaseless clamor filled the air ; 
 And countless hammers beat and banged 
 And iron echoes clanked and clanged 
 As if new worlds were just begun 
 By workingmen at Anderson." 
 
 He took the curious gaze of worldly eyes to the new 
 Machine Shop where the pulse of labor 
 
 "Gilded bands and polished steel, 
 And strange machines whose works reveal 
 The master minds that have resigned 
 Their thoughts to benefit mankind." 
 
 Then through "cinder alley" to the Repair Shop, 
 where the off-hand mare had kicked the end gate out 
 of the wagon, splintered the single-tree 
 
 "And sprung the tongue, till I declare! 
 Twas enough to make a preacher swear." 
 
 Then across the railroad (with apologies to Byron 
 and his "Waterloo") to hear the sound of ripplery in 
 
ON THE TRIPOD OF THE DEMOCRAT 343 
 
 the Planing Mill. There artisans had gathered in noisy 
 array ; 
 
 "A hundred hearts beat happily; and when 
 Sawdust arose with its voluptuous smell. 
 Red eyes looked work to eyes as red again 
 And all went merry as a married belle. 
 But hush ! hark ! a deep sound strikes like a 
 rising knell/ 
 
 Did ye not hear it? It was not the wind, nor the car 
 rattling o er the stony street. It was the roar of the 
 Mill on a rampage with the whistles that spilled dis 
 cordant shrieks from their brazen throats, sweet to the 
 hungry men at twelve o clock as melody to the heart of 
 a poet. 
 
 Then to the Retail District, where the Babel of busi 
 ness was bewildering, where clerks were caroling gay 
 and 
 
 "The chorus ever echoes on and on, 
 And swells in volume till the glee 
 Is wafted over land and sea." 
 
 To the corner room of the hotel where the jeweler 
 blossoms like a Persian king in affluence: 
 
 "Who but he 
 
 Could read a watch s pedigree? 
 A Chieftain to the Highlands bound, 
 Who missed the Accommodation, 
 Pulled out his watch and took it round 
 To Shirk for reparation. 
 
 And Shirk squints sharply through the glass 
 He took a pair of pinchers/ 
 And raised a little wheel of brass 
 And nipped it with his clinchers, 
 And put it back, and oiled the works, 
 And cleaned the graven border; 
 And watch and man went out of Shirk s 
 In perfect running order." 
 
344 JAMES WHITCOMB PJLEY 
 
 Oh, that mammoth stock of shoes gaiters, carpet 
 slippers, and red-top boots with copper-tips for the 
 children ! 
 
 " What boots it? Shakespeare asks 
 We answer Conwell s Store ; 
 For never boots were better made, 
 Or sold as cheaply to the trade 
 In Anderson before." 
 
 "And don t forget some cash to pay the pedler" 
 scan those bright faces behind the glass at the Citizen s 
 Bank, 
 
 "Walk up to the counter and lay down a check, 
 And see the cashier lightly curving his neck 
 Evincing that he s not a moneyless wreck." 
 
 Feast the eye on the tints of fashion, the reds, and 
 the blues and modest hues, and the flowers that light 
 the gloom of the millinery room, 
 
 "Where the goods are all new 
 And as fresh and as pure as the pearliest dew 
 That jewels the jasmine in jauntiest May. 
 
 The ties and cuffs 
 
 And laces and ruffs, 
 And all the little fancy stuffs 
 
 Are too sublime 
 
 For idle rhyme 
 To ever dare the heights to climb." 
 
 Stop at the Bon Ton Shaving Parlor where the mus 
 tache is made as soft and fair as silks of the corn in 
 the summer air ; see the barber 
 
 "Strop his razor till it gleams 
 Brighter than the light that beams 
 From the moon on winter snow 
 When the sleighbells come and go." 
 
ON THE TRIPOD OF THE DEMOCRAT 345 
 
 Up a winding stair a lunge and a jerk a thump 
 and a bump a rough road for the "Rhyme Wagon" to 
 go, up to ring a little bell, up to the Gallery "to see 
 the picture of the man with an album in his hand"; 
 and before descending, a pause on the balcony in the 
 shade of the catalpa tree to see if the world, morbid 
 and turbid in its greed for pelf, wears the color of 
 romance it wore in youth : 
 
 "Twitter me something low and sweet, 
 Over the din of the noisy street, 
 Coax a sound from the ivory keys, 
 And fling it out on the fevered breeze 
 Like a spray of dew on a drooping flower 
 That blooms again at the magic power, 
 And the restless hearts that beat below 
 Perchance may dream of the Long Ago, 
 And sigh with a rapture of bliss 
 For an era more refulgent than this 
 And feel again in some sweet refrain, 
 Release from the chafing strife for gain." 
 
 Pegasus was on the brink of a flight from the bal 
 cony when the "blunt blade of business" re-hitched 
 him to the "Rhyme Wagon" and he descended to the 
 Corner Store 
 
 "Just across the street 
 Where foreign fruits, and pineapples 
 And oranges are sweet 
 And fresh as when in Tropic climes 
 They ripened in the sun, 
 And never dreamed of better times." 
 
 Farther down the street to the store where the 
 "Giant Boot fills a space on the sidewalk as large as 
 any man in town" ; on to the Palace where wool-delaines 
 and calicoes are kept; upstairs again to the Dentist 
 where moans are spiced - 
 
346 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 "With writhings, shriek and shout 
 While the shrew has her teeth jerked out." 
 
 Down the Main street again to the Merchant who would 
 not advertise, whose name, mysteriously known to 
 fame, was never seen in the Democrat; 
 
 "And hence the Muse was prone to balk 
 With sorrow-moistened eyes, 
 And sigh to think she could not talk 
 Of tact and enterprise." 
 
 Across the way to the Druggist who has the "rinktum" 
 for the stomach when Old Man Ague comes around 
 "shaking hands with everybody, shaking legs, and feet, 
 and toes, till his wracked and wretched victims long to 
 shake his acquaintance." 
 
 See the "crowd of customers happy as a circus-band 
 come to town." History sings of the virtues and 
 Verse carols 
 
 "The praise of the Grocery men 
 Who have built them a notable name, 
 Their faces bright as Prosperity s when 
 She toots on the trumpet of Fame." 
 
 Then to the Book Store for croquet sets, rustic 
 brackets, fancy paper and the news and photographic 
 views ; to the Furniture Store where the farmer pulled 
 out his pocketbook and bought his wife a parlor set ; 
 
 "And when she still insisted 
 That she knew no end of cares, 
 His money roll untwisted, 
 For a set of sofa chairs." 
 
 From Bacchus who crushed "the sweet poison from 
 the purple grape" to Tennyson who spiced the ban 
 quet with "drinking songs and the dust of death," 
 poets have sung the praise or blame of wine. And 
 
ON THE TRIPOD OF THE DEMOCRAT 347 
 
 since, in a wild frenzy, the "Crank was flaunting every 
 thing aloft like a flag," rhyming of sulkies, gristmills, 
 mattress springs, undertakers, public jokes, the Public 
 Purse, cigars, potatoes, fish and fowl, and "everything 
 the market affords from East to West," since it was 
 thus and so, there slipped from his pen a fragment for 
 "the juice that drippeth from the grape." 
 
 "And now the jolly Muse, with rosy lip 
 Bedecked with crimson dew, must sing the praise 
 Of wines that heaven knows have caught the fire 
 Of some forgotten sun and kept it through 
 A hundred years of gloom still glowing in 
 A heart of ruby." 
 
 There was a rare assortment ripe vintages of all de 
 scriptions : Old Port Rye ; Kentucky Bourbon 
 
 "Liquors that so strangely lubricate 
 The grooves of life that all the world slides by 
 Without a jar or care of discontent, 
 Proof brandies that the doctors recommend 
 In feverous times, when skeleton disease, 
 In trailing robes of pestilence bedight, 
 Stalks grimly through the land, and feeds the grave 
 with mortals." 
 
 Lest the "Crusaders" protest too vehemently, he 
 hastened the next week to praise the "stream" that 
 eloquently flowed from the Town Pump. Men might 
 draw the cork and tip the decanter "father Adam 
 might founder on apples" but liquor was neither boon 
 nor luxury in the Garden of Eden 
 
 "When the heart like a plummet resounds in the dumps, 
 hasten to Platter & Batterall for pumps 
 That will draw up the ale of old Adam, and make 
 Your thirsty soul happy for charity s sake. 
 They have all appliances ever ordained 
 To handle elixirs, both dug-for and rained: 
 So here s to the pumps that will jerk up success 
 And splash satisfaction all over your dress." 
 
348 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 "The way to do a thing is to do it" and there is 
 another saying "Do the thing and you shall have 
 the power." So it was with the "Poet at the Crank." 
 He had been a minstrel, a sign-painter, a vagabond, 
 a scrub reporter, a "lawyer," a rabid reader of novels 
 and a clever imitator of old poets. There was danger 
 of his becoming Jack of all trades and master of none. 
 On entering the Democrat office that danger vanished. 
 He became "master of rhymes." With singleness of 
 purpose he cherished the art of making verse. He 
 made rhymes (no end of them the mere shavings 
 of the shop), rhymes of every conceivable kind 
 about every conceivable thing made them till his task, 
 from the metrical side of poetry, was as easy as for 
 winds to blow or brooks to murmur. Having mastered 
 that, the next and all-commanding thing was to foster 
 ideas. Though he rhyme with the tongues of angels, if 
 he had not ideas he were a tinkling cymbal. To origi 
 nate ideas was not his province they were gifts but 
 once he had them, he was to nourish and fondle them as 
 a mother the new-born child. "When I neglect that 
 mandate, may my tongue cleave to the roof of my 
 mouth." 
 
 The "Jingling Editor" especially endeared himself 
 to the public heart by his abounding "exercise of the 
 lighter attributes that go to make up a weekly." Since 
 
 "Kings sometimes unbend, 
 And Kings may jovial be," 
 
 said he, "the poet likewise may let Pegasus frisk and 
 caper through the fall oats of wit and ridicule." It 
 was said that he could "coax more laughter out of an 
 ink bottle into the Democrat than any two papers in 
 the state could hold." "Why take the Danbury News 
 
ON THE TRIPOD OF THE DEMOCRAT 349 
 
 or the Burlington HawJceye," wrote a subscriber 
 "when you can get the Democrat? The poor sigh to 
 read it." The humor in his "sappy locals" made Old 
 Sobersides clap his thighs. 
 
 "Local! Local! Beware of the day 
 When the Democrat snatches you out of the way." 
 
 i 
 
 A farmer "staggered into the office yesterday and 
 laid a watermelon big as a barrel on our dissecting 
 table." 
 
 The picnic at Blacklidge Hills, with dainties spread 
 on the green grass "has moored itself away in a golden 
 port of memory, and there rides at anchor like a fairy 
 galleon in the harbor of our dreams." 
 
 Glancing along the table of a cheap boarding house 
 where "a dozen herbivorous cannibals were performing 
 on roast n-ears as if they were so many French harps," 
 the "Crank" was thrilled with "musical emotions a 
 buttonwood orchestra could not produce." 
 
 May glides onward into June; "the price of straw 
 berries is on the market ; each is worth a watermelon ; 
 we have saved our money to pay off a mortgage." 
 
 Last week the new patent jail broke again "seven 
 prisoners dripped out before the hole was discovered." 
 
 "Give us the log jail with two rooms interfused, 
 No friends but the darkness, no windows to loot, 
 The old-fashioned jail that our grandfathers used." 
 
 The pump on the east side of the Square that "for 
 weeks has suffered from a throat affection, has been 
 relieved and now wears a wind-pipe second to none in 
 the county." 
 
 The contents of the street sprinkler fell like a bless 
 ing on the thirsty street. "0 papa," said a little girl, 
 
350 JAMES WIIITCOMB PJLEY 
 
 "Her cheek against the window-pane 
 Yonder goes a man a-haulin rain/ 
 
 To a band of serenaders: "Tackle the office again 
 and we will give you a local long as the Moral Law." 
 For a band of Bulgarians, however, the "Jingling 
 Editor" had nothing but "a pan of hot pitch: come 
 again and we ll drop a harrow on you." 
 
 The weekly was humming. "Last week we counted 
 twenty-three articles in an Exchange which had been 
 taken from the Democrat without credit. We are con 
 sidering the propriety of sending out advanced sheets 
 for clipping purposes. We printed six hundred extras 
 for our last issue and fondly hoped to appease the pub 
 lic appetite ; but as the supply was ravenously gobbled 
 by Saturday noon, we made a note, and will this week 
 stretch our elastic capacity to its utmost tension. The 
 Democrat is indeed nutritious." 
 
 The "Poet at the Crank" seems to have been the 
 agent of prosperity. In four months the circulation 
 increased from four hundred to twenty-four hundred 
 subscribers a fact as mysterious to him as the ma 
 neuvers of the Muse. By June business round the 
 Public Square was "flourishing in a soil of industry 
 and enterprise." Townsmen and countrymen were 
 scrambling on the "Rhyme Wagon" ; 
 
 "On this side and on that 
 They grapple with success 
 Till smiling Fortune pets them 
 With her tenderest caress." 
 
 "We are assuming stately proportions," the "Crank" 
 wrote the Schoolmaster; "we are almost certain of 
 the highest journalistic success. Yours always, Jay 
 Whoop." 
 
 In addition to a shower of jingles for the merchants, 
 
ON THE TRIPOD OF THE DEMOCRAT 351 
 
 the first week of June the poet coaxed from his ink 
 bottle a breezy advertising column for the Democrat: 
 
 THE ANDERSON DEMOCRAT 
 
 is a 
 Good Little Paper 
 
 and you 
 Ought to be Kind to it! 
 
 
 
 It ain t "the best paper in the State," or if 
 it is, it won t acknowledge it, for it someway 
 feels that the market is already glutted with 
 that brand. No, it is simply 
 
 GOOD! 
 
 and you ought to love it as you would a great, 
 fat, laughing baby with a bunch of jingling 
 keys. 
 
 *.. 
 
 Its editors are all so gentle and artless! 
 Their features are invariably wreathed in 
 smiles, and their noble hearts hammer away 
 at the blissful hours like a sheepskin band in 
 a Fourth o* July delegation. Everybody seems 
 impressed with the editors, and their amiable 
 disposition is a perpetual sermon for the evil- 
 disposed. 
 
 
 
 The circulation of The Democrat is as large 
 
 as any other county paper, and is increasing 
 with a degree of velocity that lifts the hat of 
 the oldest inhabitant. 
 
 
 
 The Democrat makes a specialty of news, 
 
 and has a knack of securing more items of 
 interest than it can possibly publish. In con 
 sequence, much of worth is unavoidably lost to 
 the public, to say nothing of the thousand 
 gems of purest ray serene that hide their bril 
 liance in the dark, unfathomed caves of the 
 waste basket. 
 
352 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 The Democrat is the farmer s friend and 
 never tires of telling him what he already 
 knows throwing in occasionally some hints 
 of a simple device that will keep rats from 
 climbing up the legs of his corn crib, or a 
 recipe that will knock hog cholera higher than 
 Kilgore s kite. Our recipes for botts are much 
 sought after, and are alone worth the price of 
 subscription. 
 
 The Democrat s market reports are always 
 lovely. This department is under the manage 
 ment of a lightning calculator. Occasional 
 glimpses of the gifted gentleman may be 
 caught through the periphery of figures in 
 which he is constantly enveloped. He is the 
 boon companion of the grain merchant the 
 confidential adviser of the stock buyer, and 
 the bosom friend of the butcher, the baker 
 and candlestick maker. 
 
 And lastly, The Democrat is full to the 
 brim of the creamiest literature of the day, 
 and ever replete with the soul-searing utter 
 ances "Hist! the blood-hounds are on me 
 trail" and " Twas but the work of a mo 
 ment," and so forth, and so forth. 0, it s 
 bully! And poetry! The Democrat keeps a 
 poet constantly on hand who writes anything 
 from Paradise Lost down to a candy-kiss 
 verse. Odes, however, seem to be his strong 
 est inclination in fact, he Ode so much when 
 The Democrat employed him, that they had to 
 advance his first month s salary. But he s 
 frugal now and can wear a collar longer with 
 out turning than any other of his species in 
 the State. 
 
 SUBSCRIBE NOW 
 
 AND MOURN AT LEISURE. 
 
ON THE TRIPOD OF THE DEMOCRAT 353 
 
 While the Democrat was "going like everything," 
 the poet wrote "Some Observations on Decoration 
 Day" and printed his "Silent Victors." This and 
 Henry Watterson s address at Nashville, Tennessee, 
 the exchanges heralded as the chief "Memorial" events 
 of the year. The printing of "poems of mark" how 
 ever was exceptional ; he was writing and saving them 
 "for better distinction." 
 
 The work he did on the Democrat staggers imagina 
 tion. What he accomplished on the "Rhyme Wagon," 
 conservative judges considered a full summer s work. 
 But that was secondary in quality if not in quantity. 
 Formerly his poetic effusions were concealed with a 
 few favorite books in his "reticule." When filled, its 
 contents were transferred to a "telescope." Now he 
 dignified his room with a trunk. Verily that trunk 
 was the "Chinese Casket," save that its contents did 
 not consist solely of the best that he wrote. Its con 
 fusion and disorder were beyond belief. It contained 
 everything he wrote jingle, normal English, doggerel 
 and dialect; pathos and humor, both prose and verse; 
 and show-bills and letters, and trinkets innumerable 
 all locked away in its musty confines, to drift perilously 
 about, in the years to come, from hotel to hotel, from 
 attics to job printing rooms and dark basements as the 
 Fates decreed. No Chinese princess guarded the "Cas 
 ket" while Riley wrote for it unless she did it art 
 fully in the guise of one of his numerous superstitions : 
 namely that "he should destroy nothing he wrote." In 
 moments of inspiration he was aware of some force 
 other than his own guiding his pen. It was not for 
 him in those seasons of rapture to determine values. 
 Save all, and let the public judge. 
 
 The trunk contained the Golden Fleece of the seven- 
 
354 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 ties, original manuscripts of verse that a decade later 
 first saw the light in book form in Neghborly Poems, 
 Afterwhiles, and Rhymes of Childhood. Like the 
 Koran, portions of those books "were written in frac 
 tions and flung pellmell into a casket." 
 
 While on the staff of the Democrat, Riley s room 
 "No. 19 North Main Street Up Stairs In the Rear" 
 like its successors in Greenfield and Indianapolis 
 was little more than a repository for what he wrote. 
 It was his second "literary den." Callers commented 
 on its vacant appearance, the meager supply of furni 
 ture, and the absence of pictures on the wall. He was 
 the "Crank" in the daytime and usually wrote his 
 jingle in the Democrat office the front room on the 
 same floor. At night he was the poet, and when sere- 
 naders came they had to tackle the silence under the 
 window in the rear. 
 
 Here in his second "literary den" notable contribu 
 tions to Child Literature had their origin. Here the 
 real child received "a just hearing in the world of 
 letters." Among the first of the child poems to appear 
 in the Democrat was "Willie" not a pretentious 
 poem, perhaps not intended by its author as a poem 
 at all. But it contained enough merit to be revamped 
 for the first child book (Rhymes of Childhood), 
 in which it was entitled "Prior to Miss Belle s 
 Appearance," and when the poet with such magical 
 effect began to breathe the innocence of childhood 
 across the footlights, "Willie" was given the last place 
 on the program and for a long time retained that 
 distinction in his public readings. "That child-sketch," 
 said his comrade Nye, "makes him the best entertainer 
 in the universe." 
 
 In July the "vexations" began and by the end of 
 
ON THE TRIPOD OF THE DEMOCRAT 355 
 
 August were hatching in such swarms that it took a 
 lightning calculator to keep a record of them. Occa 
 sionally an exchange struck the "Crank" between the 
 eyes with a pellet like this : "The Anderson Democrat 
 complains that its neighbors are stealing its original 
 poetry. The man who would steal Riley s poetry (in 
 the language of General Dix) should be shot on the 
 spot." 
 
 "Complying with the request of numerous citizens," 
 the "Jingling Editor," accompanied by his genial 
 friend, William M. Croan of the Democrat, visited the 
 Poor Farm "for the purpose of determining the real 
 condition of the institution that had so long been the 
 subject of unfavorable comment." What the "Crank" 
 said in his editorial, headed in "Over the Hills 
 to the Poor House," was "in utter disregard of all 
 affectation and in strict adherence to facts. That the 
 County of Madison should pay out seven thousand 
 dollars a year to support an institution in such degrad 
 ing style was a blot on her escutcheon years could not 
 erase." 
 
 The indictment brought the Poor Farm overseer to 
 town with a "gun" in his pocket. He met the "Crank" 
 at the foot of the stairs, who, 
 
 "Quaking like an aspen leaf 
 Referred him to his journal Chief." 
 
 Fortunately the chief editor was "somewhere down the 
 street." When the overseer found him the sign in the 
 zodiac was unfavorable for shooting and he returned 
 to the Farm to let the sun set on his wrath. Mean 
 time the "Crank," like a thief in the night, had fled 
 through an alley to the White River thickets, there to 
 remain till Old Granny Dusk 
 
356 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 "With, her cluckety shoes, and her old black gown 
 Came to pilot his shadow back into town." 
 
 The anti-liquor "Crusaders" began to buzz about 
 the "Jingling Editor" soon after the jolly Muse sang 
 the praise of wine, though the production that gave 
 particular offense was a burlesque on baseball. They 
 saw more in it than the ridicule of a popular game. 
 It was a libel on their favorite Temperance advocate, 
 Luther Benson, whose arraignment of drink was as 
 unforgetable as it was eloquent. From "the green 
 and holy morning of life" he had one long struggle 
 with the demon Rum. A specimen of his eloquence 
 throws light on his friend s "imitation" : "In winning 
 men from evil," says Benson, in one of his brilliant 
 periods, "send me to the blasphemer of the holy Mas 
 ter s name ; send me to the forger, who for long years 
 of cunning has defrauded his fellowmen; send me to 
 the murderer, who lies in the shadow of the gallows, 
 with red hands dripping with the blood of innocence ; 
 but send me not to the lost human shape whose spirit is 
 on fire, and whose flesh is steaming and burning with 
 the flames of hell. And why? Because his will is en 
 thralled in the direst bondage conceivable his man 
 hood is in the dust, and a demon sits in the chariot of 
 his soul, lashing the fiery steeds of passion to maniacal 
 madness." 
 
 Now the fact is that no son of misfortune was 
 more fully aware of the truth in Benson s words than 
 Riley. He, too, was in bondage ; he, too, was fighting 
 a good fight. The last thing in the world he would 
 have done would have been to give offense to a man 
 "whose passion for liquor could slumber for weeks 
 and then manifest itself with the force of a hurricane." 
 
 As has been seen, Riley was a clever imitator, and 
 
ON THE TRIPOD OF THE DEMOCRAT 357 
 
 he only intended, in his "imitation" of Benson, to 
 praise the orator s eloquence. But participants in the 
 "Murphy Movement" would not have it so and, 
 strange to say, there was a buzz of criticism among 
 baseball zealots, too. The flaming caption in the 
 Democrat, "BENSON OUT-BENSONED" with such 
 sub-heads as "BASEBALL CATCHER HOPELESSLY INSANE" 
 
 and "STRANGE HALLUCINATION OF A MADMAN" Were to 
 say the least unfortunate. 
 
 "Are you going to fill an umpire s grave or are 
 you going to quit and be a man?" Baseball fans did 
 not like it. 
 
 With implied apologies to Benson his clever imitator 
 poured a stream of eloquence through the lips of "a most 
 remarkable specimen of lunacy, Tod Geary, the famous 
 baseball catcher, who it will be remembered has, since 
 May, been suffering mentally from an injury received 
 on the head by the careless batting of Cy Thatcher." 
 The way Geary "poured forth the stream" was rather 
 dramatic. Taking his position, according to Riley, on 
 a little square zinc that was tacked on the uncarpeted 
 floor of the asylum, and unbuttoning his collar, and 
 rolling up his sleeves, his "startling invective" (in 
 part) fell on the ear as follows: 
 
 "Talk to me of whisky!" he exclaimed; "Why, I 
 tell you, men, if every crazy, crawling, writhing, hiss 
 ing serpent of the curse were let loose upon me now, I 
 could take them to my bosom here, and fondle them and 
 pet them and love them like so many rosy babies, if 
 it would for one minute free me from the bloody fangs 
 of the inflaming passion for Baseball. 
 
 "Away far back along the dusky shadows of the 
 past, as far away as History, the eagle-eyed, can fathom 
 with her far-reaching vision, we find the charred and 
 
358 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 blackened symbols of the game of sport, that in old 
 Babylonish days coaxed lazy laughter from the lips of 
 kings, and tickled royal ribs with senseless mirth. The 
 curse of this debasing appetite in man has been pam 
 pered, fed and fostered for so long, that to-day, two 
 thousand millions of human beings are bound in loath 
 some bondage with the rustless chains of habit, and 
 fettered and fastened down forever to a vice as hope 
 lessly damnable as that which first brought sin and 
 death into the world, and locked with relentless bars of 
 fate the gilded gates of Paradise. 
 
 "No, I tell you, Baseball is a snare and a delusion. 
 To-day the whole wide world writhes and blisters under 
 the incandescent fury of this fiery element condensed 
 and focused into a white-heat of passion that would 
 hiss and boil and bubble over a slack tub of morality 
 as wide and deep as the Atlantic Ocean." (A raking 
 fire for the fans.) , 
 
 While lesser vexations were exchanging shots with 
 the "Perspiring Poet," a more violent tempest was 
 brewing. The baseball episode and the "hip pocket 
 gun" were breezes in comparison with the storm that 
 rose out of the unknown when the spirit of "the late 
 lamented Poe" began to walk abroad. Since that was 
 a blast of huge proportions, it is reserved for a chap 
 ter of its own. It was the sky-rocket that brought the 
 "exercises" on the Democrat to a close. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE LITERARY TORPEDO 
 
 THE "Jingling Editor" of the Democrat was wont 
 to strain what usage terms poetic license. He 
 did so in that racy sample of metrical porridge, 
 "Thanksgiving Day at Henchley s." Gleefully ran the 
 metrical stream: 
 
 "And this is how it happened some discrepancies befell 
 At the late midsummer meeting in front of the hotel, 
 Where, it seems, the folks assembled were concurring 
 
 more to be 
 In keeping with contention than the laws of harmony. 
 
 "For there among the number were two rivals of the 
 press, 
 
 Who had photographed each other with prolonged ma 
 liciousness ; 
 
 Who in their respective columns had a thousand words 
 to spare 
 
 For the other fellow just across the county Public 
 Square. 
 
 "And cheek by jowl together were two members of the 
 
 bar, 
 
 Politically, legally, and socially at war, 
 Who denounced each other daily, and in every local 
 
 phrase 
 
 That could make the matter binding all the balance 
 of their days. 
 
 359 
 
360 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 "And an ordinary actor, and an artist of renown, 
 Whose cue, it seemed, for smiling was the little actor s 
 
 frown ; 
 And the most loquacious author my remembrance can 
 
 recall, 
 And a little bench-leg poet that couldn t talk at all." 
 
 Riley fancied the notable occasion as at some little 
 town on the "Bee Line." The little town was the big 
 town of Anderson. The originals of the characters 
 had participated in a series of discussions, serious and 
 otherwise, which culminated in a whirlwind of criti 
 cism, the "shadowy disaster" (to borrow his friend 
 Nye s figurative words) "wherein the Jingling Edi 
 tor s feelings gave way beneath his feet and his heart 
 broke with a loud report." 
 
 The "bench-leg poet" was the "Poet at the Crank" ; 
 the "loquacious author," an average chap about town 
 with ambitions a trifle higher than the mediocrity of 
 his performance. The "artist of renown" was the in 
 dustrious Samuel Richards, the Artist Comrade, who 
 from week to week illustrated the jingling verse on the 
 Democrat. His paintings caught the attention of John 
 Ruskin. His "Evangeline," now in possession of the 
 Detroit Art Museum, was exhibited in many cities. 
 The "little actor" was "the twittering pilgrim from 
 Oshkosh, v the Graphic Chum, who, after discovering 
 the "Golden Girl" and wandering under moonless heav 
 ens with a "Rip Van Winkle Company," had returned to 
 Anderson to enter a law office. Of the "two members of 
 the bar," one was the late Captain W. R. Myers, who 
 served his country as a soldier, and his commonwealth 
 as secretary of state. He could spin a good story. He 
 was not a stranger to eloquence. His voice was the 
 envy of all who heard him, the eminent author of Ben- 
 
THE LITERARY TORPEDO 361 
 
 Hur once remarking that he "would consider his for 
 tune made if he possessed it." The "two rivals of the 
 press" were, first, William M. Groan, the life-long 
 friend to whom credit is due for Riley s employment on 
 the Democrat; and, second, William Kinnard, the editor 
 of the rival paper, the Anderson Herald. He was a 
 young man of literary taste, had a subtle sense of 
 humor ; and he could strike hard when he thought the 
 offense demanded it. 
 
 "Sing Ho! for the Herald, that popular sheet! 
 The friend of the honest, the foe of the beat, 
 The pride of the good, the dread of the hard/ ; 
 The dissonant ring of metallic Kinnard." 
 
 There were also, on occasion, "two disciples from the 
 medical fraternity" and, now and then, a "thankful 
 pastor." The bone of contention was the recognition 
 of young writers. The club usually met at Richards 
 Gallery, or the Democrat office and rarely under the 
 trees in the Court House yard. At the time "some dis 
 crepancies befell," there was a full attendance seated in 
 the chairs near the sidewalk in front of the hotel, where 
 the temperature of the night blended fervently with 
 the heat of contention. 
 
 "0 Stilwell House! Thou royal palace hall 
 Whose arching doorway and inviting stair, 
 To all who cast a happy anchor there, 
 Is gracious boon and benison We fall 
 Upon our knees in thanks for all 
 The culinary dainties of thy fare" 
 
 but most of all we thank thee for the nervous bush- 
 fighting that preceded the great newspaper war known 
 to literature as the "Leonainie Controversy." 
 
 "Quit pushing your pencil and go to painting signs," 
 
362 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 said the rival editor, prodding the poet on his failure 
 to receive eastern recognition. 
 
 "I am not accepted by the magazines because I have 
 no reputation," returned the poet. 
 
 "You are not accepted because you do not write 
 poetry the people want to read !" 
 
 "No," continued the poet, focusing the fire of his eye 
 on his rival, "I tell you, all that is required to make a 
 poem successful and popular is to prove its author a 
 genius known to fame." 
 
 "The plausible opinion of a young writer," said the 
 Captain, giving the editor a lift ; "you are wrong ; merit, 
 not the name, makes a poem pass muster. Without 
 name or credit, it travels like a gold piece on its in 
 trinsic worth, as valuable in New England as in Indi 
 ana. Taddle Your Own Canoe has been sung thread 
 bare, and yet not one in a thousand knows its author 
 is an Indiana woman. Who cares for the mint, so the 
 jingle is genuine. Take the John Brown battle song 
 his soul goes marching on the impetuous music that 
 swept over battlefields in a night ; did that kindle with 
 in the heart of armies the swift desire for action be 
 cause its author bore an illustrious name? Or take the 
 popular Rain on the Roof 
 
 Listen to the sweet refrain 
 That is played upon the shingles 
 By the patter of the rain/ 
 
 Was the author of that known to fame ? Did he have 
 to wait for the stamp of magazine approval before his 
 poem received public recognition? Who is the author? 
 Nobody knows." 
 
 "Coates Kinney," answered the poet. 
 
 "Well, nobody cares." 
 
THE LITERARY TORPEDO 363 
 
 "I care!" 
 
 "There is the poem," pursued the Captain sagely; 
 "it sang itself straight into the public heart." 
 
 "Not straight," returned the poet; "it had to take the 
 jog-trot route via the weeklies. Had the signature 
 been Longfellow instead of Kinney, the poem would 
 have flown on the wings of the wind." 
 
 "The wisdom of Nestor!" exclaimed the loquacious 
 author, approvingly. 
 
 "You mean Tom Noddy !" retorted the editor. 
 "A few years ago," continued the poet, diverting 
 thought from the editor s rebuff, "Robert Bonner of 
 the New York Ledger paid Henry Ward Beecher 
 twenty-five thousand dollars for Norwood that fabu 
 lous sum simply for a name. Had some anonymous 
 author submitted the manuscript, the first five pages 
 would have consigned it to the waste basket." 
 
 "And the same Robert Bonner," added the artist, 
 rallying to the aid of the poet, "paid Longfellow three 
 thousand dollars for the Hanging of the Crane/ Had 
 the author been unknown he would not have paid thirty 
 dollars for it." 
 
 "It would have been declined," said the poet. 
 
 "Who reads the Hanging of the Crane ?" asked the 
 actor, derisively. 
 
 "I do," answered the Captain. 
 
 "Flapdoodle!" snapped the little actor, who, a loyal 
 employee in the law office, was nevertheless that par 
 ticular night the Captain s antagonist. 
 
 "An empty shell," added the loquacious author, but 
 whether he meant the Captain or the poem was not ex 
 actly clear. 
 
 "Beg your pardon, gentlemen," said the tranquil 
 Captain ; "you fly the mark. At heart, the truth is this : 
 
364 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 the merit of a poem wins, whether its author be Long 
 fellow or Kinney, known or unknown. Permit me to 
 quote a line from a poem some of you, perhaps, have 
 read. Its author sees the azure eyes of children, 
 dreamy and 
 
 " Limpid as planets that emerge 
 Above the ocean s rounded verge, 
 Soft shining through the summer night. 
 
 Do you say that has no merit? Do you call that flap 
 doodle?" 
 
 "Heaven forbid!" interrupted the artist. 
 
 "Beautiful !" returned the actor. 
 
 "The gentleman is quite safe in that opinion," said 
 the Captain; "it is beautiful. He will find it in the 
 Hanging of the Crane, " on which a titter of con 
 fusion went round the circle at the little actor s ex 
 pense. 
 
 "You gentlemen claim," continued the Captain, 
 warming up to the subject, "that a young writer does 
 not receive the recognition he deserves. I claim he 
 does. Nothing can keep talent down. The real 
 trouble with the literature of to-day is that the stand 
 ard of criticism is not more severe. The way to liter 
 ary celebrity is made easy and smooth, not narrow and 
 hard as in the days of the Scottish Reviewers the 
 result being this, that Father Time has to kill off car 
 goes of imitators and pretenders that never should 
 have been permitted to afflict the public." 
 
 "We are wandering," said the poet. "Hear me : I 
 tell you the trade-mark does influence the public, though 
 the thing sold may be as juiceless and insipid as a 
 sucked lemon. A poem over the signature of Bryant, 
 Whittier or Tennyson has the preference though it may 
 
THE LITERARY TORPEDO 365 
 
 be inferior to The Rain on the Roof/ and a thousand 
 other gems that fail to receive the golden opinion of 
 the magazines. Established houses in the world of 
 business have preference with the people. Reputation 
 goes as far in literature as in commerce." 
 
 Yes," broke in the artist, emphatically, "and poems 
 have been lauded to the skies in the heyday of a poet s 
 fame that fell dead from the press when he was in 
 obscurity." 
 
 "Why," continued the artist, "does the publisher call 
 to eminent authors for more when there is no more? 
 When a well is pumped empty it would seem to accord 
 with common sense to go where there is water fresh 
 water, if you please, gushing from a hitherto unknown 
 spring. Hundreds of productions are flaunted daily in 
 our faces because celebrated authors wrote them, copied 
 and reproduced by the press till the market is choked 
 with literary rubbish." 
 
 "Unfit for the scrap-heap," interrupted the actor, 
 swinging merrily from one side of the question to 
 the other. "The stuff ought to be bucked and gagged, 
 and rolled up like a ball of stale popcorn and thrown 
 out of the car window." 
 
 "At which unhappy juncture came a journalistic gust, 
 Which the rival designated as a most atrocious thrust." 
 
 "Where is the Red-eyed Law?" shrieked the loqua 
 cious author. 
 
 "And the Grand Jury?" added the actor. "Con 
 spiracy!" the editor cries. On which the actor asks, 
 "Who says so?" "Anybody! I say so!" cries the 
 editor. To which the artist adds sarcastically, "Oh, 
 indeed!" Followed by the actor s blunt retort, "Yes, 
 
366 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 indeed!" And then to give figurative meaning to 
 the lines 
 
 "There was a shadowy remembrance of a group of 
 
 three or four 
 Who were seemingly dissecting another on the floor." 
 
 By which time the sidewalk and the hotel lobby were in 
 such a combustible state that it took an adjournment 
 and the remainder of the night to cool things down. 
 
 Such in substance (with a little spice from Dickens) 
 is an epitome of the contention that gave birth 
 to that curiosity known to literary history as the 
 Toe Poem" the clash of words, so to speak, that 
 preceded Riley s resolution to test his dictum, that 
 a poem to be successful and popular must have as its 
 author a genius known to fame. Things were happen 
 ing to justify his position. The graceful poem, "A 
 Country Pathway," had recently been returned to its 
 author a second time. Already Myron Reed was send 
 ing a Riley poem to a New York magazine. Once a 
 year for six years the magazine declined the poem. Its 
 author was unknown. The seventh year it was ac 
 cepted. Riley had then published his first book; he 
 was at the door of an auspicious future. 
 
 The Poe-Poem venture was an innocent collusion 
 with deception. It never entered Riley s head 
 to prolong the deceit. As soon as he had won 
 his point, he would explain all to the satisfac 
 tion of all. "I wanted," said he, "to chuck the 
 poem in the face of my opponents as proof of my 
 position." When older he usually evaded the subject 
 but, if pressed for comment, was sometimes reminded 
 of an innocent pioneer farmer, who had been haled be 
 fore a country squire for larceny. "I was arrested for 
 
THE LITERARY TORPEDO 867 
 
 Btealin shoats," said the f amer, "and the wust of it wuz, 
 the prosecution come darn near provin it." Riley was 
 innocent of any desire to deceive the public perma 
 nently, "but the critics," said he, "came darn near prov 
 ing me a crafty Pecksniff." 
 
 Riley was not the first in that hapless field. Authors 
 before him had feigned the literary style of 
 other writers. One hundred years before, Thomas 
 Chatterton had published certain poems, which he 
 claimed had been written by a monk in the fifteenth 
 century. Riley celebrated the centenary of the event 
 by a little counterfeit of his own. William Ireland, a 
 London author, as told in his Confessions, had pro 
 duced a tragedy, purported to have been written by 
 Shakespeare, which drew a crowded house at Drury 
 Lane, Kemble playing the principal part. 
 
 Nor was it Riley s first offense. He had been a party 
 to jolly stratagems from his youth. In his school-days, 
 as editor of the Criterion, he connived with the editor 
 of the Amendment, the rival school paper, and wrote 
 editorials for it in abuse of himself and the 
 Criterion "the badly bruised and shattered Criterion 
 is now sinking lower and lower in the corrosive scale 
 of self-esteem," and so forth. As the reader has seen, 
 he was party to a big-sign ruse when his crafty confed 
 erate while painting the bridge at Anderson, fell from 
 the ladder into the river. 
 
 Having decided on the literary ruse, the first thing 
 was the choice of an author. One of Reynolds pleasant 
 delusions was the fancy that the divinity of Michael 
 Angelp inspired him in his productions "he was ever 
 calling on his name invoking him by his works." 
 Similar delusions haunted Riley s fancy; indeed, had 
 been a source of diversion ever since he had read the 
 
368 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 "British Books." When he wrote a "clever imitation" 
 he invoked the influence of the author he was attempt 
 ing to reflect. "Looking over the list of the dead poets," 
 said Riley, "I selected Poe because I thought he would 
 enjoy the joke. He had been a little in the hoaxing 
 line himself his Balloon Hoax* for instance and 
 would not care if I took some liberty with his name." 
 
 A second reason for choosing Poe for the ruse was 
 Riley s fellow-feeling for the author and his style. He 
 liked Poe s insistence upon "an even, metrical flow in 
 versification." He thought of him as "one looking from 
 an eminence rather than from the ordinary level of 
 humanity." There was something he had not experi 
 enced it to Poe s pitch of frenzy something by which 
 he more fully comprehended the true proportions of 
 "that marred and broken individuality, that nature so 
 sensitively organized and so rarely developed, under 
 circumstances exceptionally perilous and perverting." 
 He sympathized with Poe s hopeless despair. 
 
 The "Jingling Editor" was interested in the fact that 
 "The Bells" had been composed and finished in the year 
 of his birth. While "grinding business to an edge," he 
 had had a little fun, at Poe s expense, with some dry 
 goods merchants, the Bell Brothers. (Doubtless Poe 
 did not enjoy the joke, but the "Crank" was not con 
 sidering that phase of it then.) 
 
 HAPPY BELLS ! 
 
 What a list of rare inducements their advertising tells ! 
 
 How they dance adown the gamut 
 
 To the lowest of the less, 
 
 And crowd it on and ram it 
 
 Through the gangway to success ! 
 
 And unrivaled in low prices, 
 
THE LITERARY TORPEDO 369 
 
 How they lift and loom alone 
 
 Far above the low devices 
 
 And the tricks the trade has known ; 
 
 And even mounting higher 
 
 Up the ringing rounds of fame, 
 
 How they lift the eager buyer 
 
 To an altitude the same, 
 
 Till the customers transported 
 
 With the glory they have courted, 
 
 Throw their happy-haunted hats 
 
 To the bats bats bats 
 
 And hop and whoop and howl 
 
 And prance around and yowl 
 
 Till they drive the chorus crazy with their suicidal yells 
 
 To the tintinnabulations of the Bells! Bells! Bells! 
 
 Choosing an author for the ruse was one thing, writ 
 ing a poem for it a different and more difficult thing. It 
 was "writing to order," a thing that Riley seldom suc 
 cessfully did. It was a mad venture. 
 
 In April, soon after his arrival in Anderson, he had 
 written "Orlie Wilde." He thought of that "fanciful 
 fishermaid." 
 
 .... "He saw her fly 
 
 In reckless haste adown a crag, 
 Her hair a-flutter like a flag 
 Of gold that danced across the strand 
 In little mists of silver sand." 
 
 The marine myth however scarcely met the require 
 ments. It was Poe-ish, in a way, Poe-ish in theme, but 
 he could not make it Poe-ish in poetic structure. After 
 wrestling with the poem several nights in the Democrat 
 office, Riley spent a night at the home of his Graphic 
 Chum, the old boarding house on Bolivar Street, where 
 in originated "The Object Lesson" and other bantlings 
 of his Graphic days. "On that solemn summer night" 
 (Saturday, July 7, 1877) "I could not sleep," said he. 
 
370 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 "I fancied a man idly walking about in the darkness 
 waiting for the birth of his child then the birth and 
 the murmur of something from the Heaven-sent 
 visitor, followed by the father s interpretation of the 
 murmur as a message to him. While my chum snored 
 away in peace, I rose, seating myself in my bed-gown 
 by a window. I made a rough draft of the poem that 
 had been floating like nebula in the chaos of my 
 thought. From the sky over Anderson there came the 
 idea to make the little lisper float away as a dream on 
 the wings of night." He entitled the poem "Leonainie" 
 and made few changes in the first draft. 
 
 "Leonainie Angels named her ; 
 And they took the light 
 Of the laughing stars and framed her 
 In a smile of white." 
 
 In this Poe mystery there was more than appeared 
 on the face of it. "Leonainie" was not only mysterious 
 to the public but to its author as well. 
 
 "How I found it, caught it, or came by it, 
 What stuff tis made of, whereof it is born, I am to 
 learn." 
 
 A rival editor, quoting a Riley remark, said it was 
 a "poetical fungus which sprang from the decay of high 
 thoughts." 
 
 That it was phrased in the morbid, fantastic vein, 
 characteristic of Poe, impartial judges conceded 
 from the first. That the poem had defects was also 
 conceded. "The measure is faulty," said its author, 
 "and there are faulty lines in it there purposely to 
 chafe the intolerable conceit of the critics, for example, 
 
 Heaven s glory seemed adorning 
 Earth with its esteem." 
 
THE LITERARY TORPEDO 371 
 
 "If Poe wrote that," said a Cincinnati critic after 
 "Leonainie" was printed, "it was when he was in pina 
 fores." Other critics made similar comments, one ob 
 serving that "esteem ruined Leonainie. It is a fatal 
 word in every poem where it is made to rhyme." Mean 
 while the author chuckled to himself as did the author 
 of the "Raven" when he confused the critics of Boston. 
 
 "Leonainie" contained one line that covered a multi 
 tude of literary sins; that the critics could not decry. 
 A host of readers saw imperishable beauty in "God 
 smiled and it was morning." Many hazarded the 
 prophecy that that line would live with such immortal 
 verse as "God is sifting out the hearts of men before 
 His judgment seat," or "The paths of glory lead but 
 to the grave." 
 
 Although "Leonainie" was practically finished, the 
 venture was still in doubt. One day the poet was for 
 it, another day against it. 
 
 But his ambition called to him. If his verse had 
 merit, it should have recognition. He would take the 
 risk: 
 
 "I have set my life upon the cast, 
 And I will stand the hazard of the die." 
 
 Meantime he was considering a vehicle for the ruse. 
 To print it in the Democrat, where there had already 
 appeared a surplus of curiosities, meant that the pub 
 lic would immediately declare the poem a fake. A few 
 days prior, the editor of the Kokomo Dispatch, John 0. 
 Henderson "had fretted himself to the verge of insan 
 ity," according to an exchange, in a mad endeavor to 
 decipher the incomprehensible jingle in "Craque- 
 odoom," whose tattoo on the roof of the dusk, the Artist 
 Chum made more abstruse by a spectral illustration 
 
372 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 representing the crankadox, a ghoulish reptile with a 
 mammoth fin and a loop in its tail, standing with one 
 foot on the horn of the moon. 
 
 "The quavering shriek of the fly-up-the-creek 
 Was fitfully wafted afar 
 
 To the queen of the Wunks as she powdered her cheek 
 With the pulverized rays of a star." 
 
 "What does it mean?" asked Henderson, commenting 
 in the Dispatch on "the gifted" J. W. Riley. "It is the 
 most weird piece of poetic thought we have ever read. 
 It reads like an effusion of some poetic genius of the 
 fable age in which Mother Goose wrote her melodies." 
 The comment pleased the "Jingling Poet" immensely, 
 and he promptly thanked the editor for "the first 
 friendly hand extended him in that period of impene 
 trable gloom." The result was the choice of the Ko- 
 komo Dispatch for the ruse and the following letter 
 breaking the news to the editor: 
 
 OFFICE OF THE ANDERSON DEMOCRAT 
 Todisman & Groan, Proprietors 
 
 Anderson, Indiana, July 23, 1877. 
 Editor Dispatch Dear Sir : 
 
 I write to ask a rather curious favor of you. The 
 dull times worry me, and I yearn for something to stir 
 things from their comatose condition. Trusting to find 
 you of like inclination, I ask your confidence and as 
 sistance. 
 
 This idea has been haunting me: I will prepare a 
 poem carefully imitating the style of some popular 
 American poet, deceased, and you may "give 
 it to the world for the first time" through the 
 columns of your paper, prefacing it in some ingenious 
 manner, with the assertion that the original manu 
 script was found in the album of an old lady living 
 in your town and in the handwriting of the poet 
 
THE LITERARY TORPEDO 373 
 
 imitated together with signature, etc., etc. you 
 can fix the story only be sure to clinch it so as to 
 defy the scrutiny of the most critical lens. If 
 we succeed, and I think sheer audacity sufficient 
 capital to assure that end, after "working up" the 
 folks, and smiling over the encomiums of the Press, 
 don t you know; we will then "rise up William Riley," 
 and bu st our literary balloon before a bewildered and 
 enlightened world ! ! ! 
 
 I write you this in all earnestness and confidence, 
 trusting you will favor the project with your valuable 
 assistance. It will be obvious to you why I do not use 
 our paper here. Should you fall in with the plan, write 
 me at once, and I will prepare and send the poem in 
 time for your issue of this week. Hoping for an early 
 and favorable response, I am 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 J. W. RILEY. 
 
 Had the letter dropped from a balloon the Dispatch 
 had not been more surprised. Its editor, an energetic, 
 enthusiastic young man, was about Riley s age. He 
 appreciated good literature, and particularly the poetic 
 gifts of his new friend, so his prompt answer was to be 
 expected: 
 
 THE DISPATCH 
 
 Kokomo, Indiana, July 23, 1877. 
 J. W. Riley, 
 My Dear Sir: 
 
 Your favor of this date is just received. Your ide^ 
 is a capital one and is cunningly conceived. I assure 
 you that I "tumble" to it with eagerness. You arc 
 doubtless aware that newspaper men, as a rule, would 
 rather sacrifice honor, liberty, or life itself, than to 
 deviate from the paths of truth but the idea of getting 
 in a juicy "scoop" upon the rural exchanges, causes me 
 to hesitate, consider, yea, consent to this little act of 
 journalistic deception. Yes, my dear Riley, I am with 
 you boots and soul. But hadn t I better forestall the 
 
374 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 poem by a "startling announcement" or something of 
 the sort one week before its publication? The public 
 would then be on the tiptoe of expectancy and so forth. 
 I merely offer this as a suggestion. We would be hardly 
 able to publish the poem, if of any length, this week. 
 Copy is well in for Thursday s issue now, save local 
 paragraphs. Send copy as soon as you can and we can 
 print next week. If you like, you may also write the 
 preface as you have indicated. Perhaps you could do 
 it better than I. I enclose this letter in a plain envelope 
 to disarm suspicion. Let me hear from you. 
 
 Fraternally, 
 
 J. 0. HENDERSON. 
 Mum s the word. 
 
 For a fortnight events happened rapidly. ! July 
 twenty-seventh, the editor acknowledged receipt of 
 the poem with suggestions for its publication. "It is 
 really Poe-etical," he wrote, "a matchlessly conceived 
 poem. It certainly would not detract from Poe s genius 
 to father the fugitive. I assure you it is withal a 
 marvelous and rare creation, honoring you and the 
 State as well. Have not yet matured my story, but will 
 have it in due time." 
 
 Riley s mind did indeed brim with "startling an 
 nouncements," but scarcely had he prepared one when 
 he weakened and tried another. The thought of after- 
 claps took the granite out of his courage. At the last 
 he asked the Kokomo editor to "weave the fabric in his 
 own loom. Select the most feasible plan," he added, 
 "and nip it at once; were I to prepare the story, the 
 trick might be betrayed in some peculiarity of compo 
 sition." 
 
 He first thought of an old washerwoman, who should 
 have an old album or an old book of some kind from 
 which a blank leaf could be torn. Then he remembered 
 
THE LITERARY TORPEDO 375 
 
 that an old woman could not keep a secret. When in 
 terviewed by the curious she was likely to speak out at 
 the wrong time and let the ruse down prematurely. To 
 avert this danger he suggested an old wood-sawyer. If 
 the old chap did not have an old book, the editor was 
 to get one, and when the curious called to see it, as they 
 most certainly would, they were to be told that it had 
 been sent to W. D. Ho wells of the Atlantic, or some 
 other eminent critic, for inspection. 
 
 But the most "startling announcement" of all was 
 this: In a dark corner of a walnut woods, some 
 where in the neighborhood of Cornstalk Post Office, 
 on Wild Cat Creek, Howard County, obscured by 
 the rocks of the Devonian Age, the editor of the Dis 
 patch was to find a cave in the side of a hill. (It has 
 been remarked there is not a hill in the county big 
 enough for a prairie dog; there is, however.) The edi 
 tor while out hunting was to get lost in a terrific storm 
 and grope his way through the dismal darkness to a 
 faint light in the cave, where he was to find a hunch 
 backed dwarf, who grudgingly was to give him shelter 
 from the storm. While the hermit prepared a meal 
 over a bed of coals on the rocky floor, the editor was 
 to find an old book on a rickety table, and turning 
 through it was to espy on a fly leaf the lines in manu 
 script of an old poem signed E. A. P. The hermit, very 
 uncommunicative at first, was at last to inform the edi 
 tor the book had been brought from Virginia. 
 
 A very spectacular tale, but not at all plausible, in the 
 opinion of the editor. He was to be the hero and go 
 out hunting he "had never handled a gun in his life." 
 He was to get lost in a storm in his own county, and 
 take refuge in a hermit s den another impossible 
 thing. The editor promptly rejected the scheme as 
 
376 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 "a dead give-away of the plot," and instead took into 
 his confidence a meat merchant of Kokomo. Having 
 eliminated the impossible plans, they determined on 
 the following story, which was printed with the poem 
 in the Dispatch, August 2, 1877: 
 
 POSTHUMOUS POETRY 
 
 A Hitherto Unpublished Poem of the Lamented Edgar 
 
 Allan Poe Written on the Fly Leaf of an Old 
 
 Book Now in Possession of a Gentleman of 
 
 This City. 
 
 The following beautiful posthumous poem from the 
 gifted pen of the erratic poet, Edgar Allan Poe, we be 
 lieve has never before been published in any form, 
 either in any published collection of Poe s now extant, 
 or in any magazine or newspaper of any description; 
 and until the critics shall show conclusively to the con 
 trary, The Dispatch shall claim the honor of giving it 
 to the world. 
 
 That the poem has never before been published, and 
 that it is a genuine production of the poet whom we 
 claim to be its author, we are satisfied from the circum 
 stances under which it came into our possession, after 
 a thorough investigation. Calling at the house of a 
 gentleman of this city the other day, on a business 
 errand, our attention was called to a poem written on 
 the blank fly leaf of an old book. Handing us the book 
 he observed that it (the poem) might be good enough 
 to publish, and that if we thought so, to take it along. 
 Noticing the initials, E. A. P., at the bottom of the 
 poem, it struck us that possibly we had run across a 
 "bonanza," so to speak, and after reading it, we asked 
 who its author was, when he related the following bit 
 of interesting reminiscence : He said he did not know 
 who the author was, only that he was a young man, 
 that is, he was a young man when he wrote the lines 
 referred to. He had never seen him himself, but heard 
 his grandfather, who gave him the book containing the 
 
THE LITERARY TORPEDO 377 
 
 verses, tell of the circumstances and the occasion by 
 which he, the grandfather, came into possession of the 
 book. His grandparents kept a country hotel, a sort of 
 a wayside inn, in a small village called Chesterfield, 
 near Richmond, Va. One night, just before bedtime, a 
 young man, who showed plainly the marks of dissipa 
 tion, rapped at the door and asked if he could stay all 
 night, and was shown to a room. When they went to 
 his room the next morning to call him to breakfast, he 
 had gone away and left the book, on the fly leaf of 
 which he had written the lines given below. 
 
 Further than this our informant knew nothing, and 
 being an uneducated, illiterate man, it was quite nat 
 ural that he should allow the great literary treasure to 
 go for so many years unpublished. 
 
 That the above statement is true, and our discovery 
 no canard, we will take pleasure in satisfying anyone 
 who cares to investigate the matter. The poem is writ 
 ten in Roman characters, and is almost as legible as 
 print itself, although somewhat faded by the lapse of 
 time. Another peculiarity in the manuscript which we 
 notice is that it contains not the least erasure or a 
 single interlineated word. We give the poem ("Leo- 
 nainie") verbatim just as it appears in the original. 
 
 Nearly a score of years later the poet included the 
 poem in his volume, Armazindy. 
 
 "Dear, dear Henderson and I have a notion to call 
 you darling/ wrote Riley on reading the Dispatch. 
 "The Leonainie introductory is superb. As for the 
 leading paragraph, a neater, sweeter lie was never ut 
 tered. I fancy Poe himself leans tiptoe over the walls 
 of Paradise and perks an eager ear to listen and be 
 lieve." Again he cautioned the Dispatch to guard "the 
 imposition with jealous care. Let no one know it 
 not even your mother-in-law, if you possess so near and 
 dear a relative. I shake your hand in silence and in 
 tears. In the language of Artemus Ward I am here 
 * I think so Even of those/ " 
 
378 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 All the Dispatch had to do was to smile inwardly, 
 with "a lack-lustre, dead blue eye," and await the un 
 folding of a curious future. Have faith in the "orphan 
 venture." Await developments. Eventually the 
 "euchred public would not only forgive, but render 
 homage." 
 
 "Mum was the word" at Anderson. The author of 
 "Leonainie" did not chalk things on the walls, nor cry 
 them on the streets. He was a sort of Mr. Tulkinghorn, 
 the "Sphinx," knowing all sorts of things and never 
 telling them. July twenty-fifth, he admitted to the 
 "circle of secrecy" Mrs. D. M. Jordan of the Richmond 
 Independent "that charming child of song whose 
 melody ripples round a happy world." And he did 
 wisely. Throughout the gloom then gathering just 
 beyond the horizon, she was his steadfast champion. 
 Her pen, as well as her eyes, was capable of great 
 expression. 
 
 Good Friend (Riley wrote) : I write not in answer 
 to your letter, for I haven t time to do that justice 
 now but to ask of you a very special favor. 
 
 I have made arrangements with the editor of the 
 Kokomo Dispatch that he shall publish the poem "Leon 
 ainie," under the guise of its being the work of Poe 
 himself. He, Henderson, is to invent an ingenious 
 story of how the original manuscript came into his pos 
 session, and when it appears with a hurrah from the 
 Dispatch I shall copy and comment upon it in the Demo 
 crat in a way that will show that I have no complicity, 
 and I want you to review it, if you will, favorably, in 
 the Independent I don t want you to really admire it 
 but I do want you to pretend to, and eulogize over it 
 at rapturous length, and as though you were assured 
 it was in reality the work of Poe himself as the Dis 
 patch will claim. Our object is to work up the "Press" 
 broadcast if possible, and then to unsack the feline, and 
 
THE LITERARY TORPEDO 379 
 
 let the "secret laughter that tickles all the soul" erupt 
 volcanically. The "Ring" around the literary torpedo 
 as it now lies includes but four persons, including your 
 self, and it must be the unwavering resolve of every 
 member to hold the secret safely fastened in the bosom 
 quartette till time shall have ripened the deception, and 
 the slow match has reached the touch-hole of success. 
 
 Now will you do this for me? Write at once, for I 
 shall not be thoroughly happy till the answer which I 
 believe, in your great kindness, you will give, reaches 
 me. 
 
 How are you, anyway? Happy, I trust, as am I to 
 sign myself 
 
 Your friend, 
 
 J. W. RlLEY. 
 
 The original "ring around the torpedo" (persons to 
 be intrusted with the secret) included thirteen names. 
 Riley discovering the unlucky number, reduced it, but 
 the sequel shows he failed to eliminate the right man. 
 
 Immediately on printing and distributing the 
 "Leonainie" issue, the Dispatch editor reprinted 
 the poem with a notice calling attention to 
 it on small slips of paper which he mailed to 
 newspapers and magazines (including Scribner s, 
 Harper s, and the Atlantic) with request that they 
 print the poem and give credit to the Dispatch. He 
 added that the old book containing the manuscript was 
 in his possession, and further that he would give ex 
 perts in chirography the privilege of examining it. 
 That was the clever stroke that "excited the comment 
 of the newspaper world." "Leonainie" would not have 
 gone "the rounds of the press like wildfire," had the 
 enterprising editor not mailed the slips to "every State 
 in the Union." 
 
 The second day after publication came an inquiry 
 from the "Sphinx" at Anderson: 
 
380 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 Editor Dispatch, 
 Dear Sir- 
 Some literary thug has gobbled our Dispatch contain 
 ing your Poe discovery. Please send me two or three 
 extra copies. What does it mean? Are you in ear 
 nest? I would like to enter into a correspondence with 
 you regarding it, for even though you be the victim of 
 a deception I would be proud to know your real author. 
 Do I understand from your description that the manu 
 script is written like printed letters? Write me full 
 particulars and I will serve you in response in any way 
 in my power. 
 
 yery truly, 
 
 J. W. RILEY. 
 
 The "Sphinx" might be garrulous and propose rid 
 dles outside the "circle of secrecy" but never a word 
 within it. At first he was content to say (editorially 
 in the Democrat) that the Kokomo Dispatch of yester 
 day "startles the nation and the hull creation" by pub 
 lishing a posthumous Poe Poem, "clamorously claiming 
 the honor of its first presentation to the world. Lack of 
 space prevents us from further remark; but we will 
 say, however, that of all the Nazareths now at large, 
 Kokomo is the last from which we would expect good to 
 come." 
 
 While "things were developing" Riley bethought him 
 self of a mistake Walter Scott had made in not prais 
 ing the Waverley novels. Scott s silence was proof to 
 Edinburgh that he wrote them. To avert a like 
 mistake Riley appeared at length editorially in 
 his own paper, not however till the knowing 
 had begun to think upon his silence with suspicion, 
 particularly the editor of the rival paper, the Herald, 
 who expected "a rhapsody of jealous censure from 
 the jaunty sheet across the way." Under the caption, 
 "The Poet Poe in Kokomo," Riley considered in detail 
 
rt 
 
 DEMOCRAT OFFICE 
 
 ANDERSON DEMOCRAT OFFICE 
 
OLD COTTAGE ON BOLIVAR STRKKT 
 Where "Leon:iinie" and "The Object Lesson" first saw the light 
 
THE LITERARY TORPEDO 381 
 
 the merits and the faults of "Leonainie," occasionally 
 deriding the "Poe-ish pretensions" and their claim to 
 verity. He quoted from the "juicy introduction" (in 
 the Dispatch) and then paid his compliments to the en 
 raptured editor who had gone into "voluminous detail 
 on the chance discovery of the manuscript in an old 
 book now in possession of an illiterate resident of Ko- 
 komo. That gentleman states that his grandpa gave 
 him the book and that it came into the grandpa s pos 
 session while in Chesterfield, Virginia. According to 
 the story, a wild-eyed, dissipated young man had 
 stopped in a tavern over night and by morning had 
 flown, having scrawled in the old book over the initials 
 E. A. P., a curious poem. Only this and nothing 
 more. " 
 
 Riley frankly admitted, editorially, that on reading 
 the Dispatch he was inwardly resolved not to be start 
 led. He had thought to ignore "Leonainie" entirely; 
 but "a sense of justice due if not to Poe, to the poem" 
 induced him to let slip a few remarks. 
 
 "We have given the matter," he continued, "not a 
 little thought ! and in what we shall have to say regard 
 ing it, we will say with purpose far superior to preju 
 dicial motives, and with the earnest effort of beating 
 through the gloom a pathway to the light of truth." 
 
 Passing by "the many assailable points regarding the 
 birth and late discovery of the poem," he considered 
 first the authenticity of its authorship. "That a poem 
 contains some literary excellence," he said, "is no as 
 surance that its author is a genius known to fame, for 
 how many waifs of richest worth are now afloat upon 
 the literary sea, whose authors are unknown, and whose 
 nameless names have never marked the graves that hid 
 their hidden value from the world. Let us look deeper 
 
382 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 down, and pierce below the glare and gurgle of the sur 
 face and analyze the poem and Poe s work at its real 
 worth." 
 
 And this, Riley proceeded to do. The theme was one 
 that Poe would not likely select. "Poe had a positive 
 aversion to children, and especially to babies." The 
 second stanza contained Poe s peculiar bent of thought 
 but in addition "that weird faculty of attractively com 
 bining with the delicate and beautiful, the dread and 
 repulsive a power most rarely manifest, and quite be 
 yond the bounds of imitation." The third stanza was 
 secondary in thought and the fourth in part mediocre. 
 It was fair to conclude, since "Poe avoided the name of 
 Deity," that he did not write the last stanza. 
 
 "To sum up the poem as a whole we are at some loss," 
 Riley concluded. "It most certainly contains rare at 
 tributes of grace and beauty ; and although we have not 
 the temerity to accuse the gifted Poe of its authorship, 
 for equal strength of reason we cannot deny that it is 
 his production ; but as for the enthusiastic editor of the 
 Dispatch we are not inclined, as yet, to the belief that 
 he is wholly impervious to the wiles of deception." 
 
 There was a flourish of county paper trumpets in 
 that first fortnight of August, 1877. The two innocent 
 deceivers were kept wide awake. It was hurry and 
 hurrah. As Riley put it : 
 
 "On with the ruse ! let fakes be unconfmed : 
 No sleep till morn when bards and critics meet 
 To chase the flaming hours with flying feet." 
 
 In a brief note, he hopes the Dispatch is not losing 
 faith. "God bless us, we are certainly at the very 
 threshold of success. Hold the fort ! If we could talk 
 for one square hour we could make ourselves believe it." 
 
THE LITERARY TORPEDO 383 
 
 August thirteenth brought another letter from the Dis 
 patch. "Your two letters of Saturday received," wrote 
 the editor. "I would like to visit you but cannot get 
 away. Have you seen notice in New York World, Tri 
 bune, Post; Chicago Tribune, Inter-Ocean; Cincinnati 
 papers, Courier Journal? I am saving all notices and 
 will publish them next week. Your notice in the Demo 
 crat is capital ; so is Herald s but it sounds like you all 
 over." (The editor made a good guess; the plot was 
 thickening. It was Riley all over: one editor of the 
 Herald had been admitted to the "ring around the tor 
 pedo.") "Our plot is developing rapidly," the Dispatch 
 editor continued ; "the ball is fairly in motion and will 
 not stop until it has reached every state in the Union. 
 No article was ever published in a country paper in 
 this State that has had such a run as this has and will 
 have. The end is not yet. I am anxious to see A tlantic, 
 Scribner s, and so forth. They are the critics. Send 
 all extracts you find." 
 
 August sixteenth the Dispatch had just received a 
 letter from William F. Gill of Boston, who had written 
 a new life of Poe. Gill had the manuscript of "The 
 Bells" and could identify the Kokomo manuscript by it. 
 "What shall I write him ?" asks the Dispatch. "Where 
 is the original manuscript? Notices still come from the 
 South. Send me all your clippings." 
 
 Where was the original manuscript, indeed ? In the 
 issue of August sixteenth, the Dispatch referred to the 
 old book containing the manuscript, inadvertently say 
 ing that "the book the property of a gentleman of this 
 city is now in our possession." This, Riley good- 
 naturedly considered "the fatal blunder of the Dispatch 
 editor." Within a week the editor discovered that 
 Riley, swayed by an old tie of friendship rather than 
 
384 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 by good judgment, had admitted to the "circle of 
 secrecy" one who could not keep a secret. That was 
 Riley s "fatal blunder," and as the sequel proved, the 
 "more fatal of the two." 
 
 The consequences of the editor s mistake were visited 
 on him immediately. There was no manuscript. Poe s 
 biographer offered to deposit any amount in Boston 
 for its safe return. The editor turned a deaf ear to 
 his plea. Representatives from the city dailies wrote 
 about it and "literary folks called in droves to see it." 
 "What shall we do?" wailed the editor. "Hold them off 
 a few days more," wrote Riley. "It certainly is as easy 
 to make a manuscript as it was to write the poem that 
 creates the sensation." 
 
 Then there was a stir in Anderson. Two friends, W. 
 J. Ethell and Samuel Richards, who were never far 
 from their "jingling" comrade when he was driven into 
 a corner, worked unceasingly on a manuscript, imitat 
 ing Poe s handwriting from a facsimile of the original 
 manuscript of "The Bells." The facsimile did not con 
 tain all the letters required and Richards, who made 
 the final draft, had necessarily to do some inventing. 
 And he did it well. "In some way," said Riley, "my 
 friend caught the spirit of the whole vocabulary, fur 
 nishing a result that bewildered many notable and ex 
 acting critics." Edmund Clarence Stedman remarked 
 that it was the best imitation of Poe he had seen. Rich 
 ards copied the lines on the fly leaf of an old Ainsworth 
 Dictionary procured from a law office and bought origi 
 nally at a second-hand bookstore on Delaware Street, 
 Indianapolis. This done, Riley deftly concealed the old 
 book in brown wrapping paper and boarded the Pan 
 Handle accommodation for Kokomo. "That accommo 
 dation," said he, "never carried a more restless pas- 
 
AN 
 
 ABRIDGMENT 
 
 OP 
 
 AINSWORTH S DICTIONARY, 
 
 aatfn, 
 
 DESIGNED FOR THE USE OF SCHOOLS. 
 
 THOMAS MORELL, D. D. 
 
 COBBECTED AND IMPROVED FROM THE LAST 
 E.ONDON QUARTO EDITION BY JOHN CARET, LL. D. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 PUBLISHED BY URIAH HUNT & SON, 
 JVb. 44 JV. Fourth Street, 
 
 AM9 FOK SALS BY BOOKSELLERS GENERALLY THBOUGHOUT ZHS 
 STATES. 
 
286 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 senger. I was so fearful of detection, a shadow scared 
 me. I was even destitute of Dutch courage. 
 
 Like one that on a lonesome road 
 
 Doth walk in fear and dread, 
 
 And having once turned round walks on 
 
 And turns no more his head, 
 
 Because he knows a frightful fiend 
 
 Doth close behind him tread/ 
 
 A thousand things I thought might happen. A wag 
 might snatch the dictionary from me. I might drop 
 dead of apoplexy. The train might be ditched by the 
 Jabberwock and my name might be found among the 
 dead. The brakeman and train-boy might bury me and 
 my old book on the spot. There was some consolation 
 in that. That would be a bona fide secret. Never yet, 
 so history shows, has the grave unsacked a feline." 
 
 On that trip to Kokomo Riley began to note what 
 the car wheels were saying. He called it the "agony 
 of the rails." All the way over they repeated the du 
 bious refrain, "How fur is it ? how fur is it ? how fur 
 is it?" Sometimes that refrain, "stoical and relentless 
 as fate, grew so agonizing that it would lift him from 
 his seat and drag him up and down the aisle." 
 
 "Thirty-five miles," said Riley, recalling the experi 
 ence, "and every mile a reach of torment." Riley had 
 doubts that the ruse would succeed even after his 
 friend had written in imitation of Poe s hand. This 
 accounts for his gloomy state of feeling on the way 
 to Kokomo. 
 
 "One day," said Mr. Henderson, long years after, 
 when serving his commonwealth as auditor of state, 
 "one day I was well-nigh crazy worrying over the ab 
 sence of the manuscript. It was a hot evening and I 
 was alone in the Dispatch office, when a red-mustached, 
 
THE LITERARY TORPEDO 387 
 
 rough-looking young fellow, far from the sleek literary 
 man he is to-day, came in and introduced himself as 
 J. W. Riley. That was our first meeting. The surprise 
 was mutual. Both expected to meet an older man. The 
 burden is fallen from me ! I exclaimed, when I saw that 
 dictionary. Well, we held a council of war. Things 
 were moving along swimmingly. I remained at my 
 desk ; Riley went for a few days rest to Greenfield." 
 
 Before leaving Kokomo Riley made a call on his 
 young friend of the Kokomo Tribune, Charles Phillips. 
 
 "What are you doing here ?" asked Phillips. 
 
 "Over to see that manuscript." 
 
 "Bloomy moonshine!" returned Phillips, contemp 
 tuously. "They have no manuscript. Got it under 
 lock and key, I suppose!" he added with withering 
 irony. 
 
 Riley was disinclined to talk where others could 
 hear. "Have you a room where we could be alone?" 
 he whispered. They went upstairs, where, on entering 
 a room, Riley cautiously looked round, peeped into the 
 closet and locked the door and windows. Each moment 
 Phillips curiosity grew less controllable. "I don t like 
 these flickerings of light on the wall," said Riley. 
 "They seem to take the shape of letters and words. 
 Are you sure no one can hear? Are there no cracks 
 in the wall?" 
 
 Being assured, a solemn silence followed it seemed, 
 an hour to Phillips while Riley still kept peeping here 
 and there about the room. Finally, leaning against the 
 wall "a picture of despair with tears brimming over 
 his eyelids," he said, "I came I came all the way 
 from Anderson to see that manuscript." Phillips 
 thought from the tone of disappointment in his voice 
 that the Dispatch had refused to let him see it. Sud- 
 
388 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 denly advancing to Phillips, he whispered with meas 
 ured breath and slow "They have they have yes, 
 sir they have the manuscript." 
 
 Then he went into details concerning the authentic 
 ity of the poem. The Dispatch should guard it with 
 jealous care. "The dear old book/ he said, "is kept 
 under double lock and key. It was only after tearful 
 pleadings that I was permitted a sight of it. I heaved 
 a sigh of relief when the faded volume was once more 
 locked in the safe." 
 
 "Leoloony Leoloony," repeated Phillips, as they de 
 scended the stairs. "Leoloony," repeated his guest at 
 parting. On the train to Greenfield "Leoloony" came 
 prancing from Riley s fancy in foolish jingle: 
 
 "Leoloony, angels called her; 
 And they took the bloom 
 Of the tickled stars and walled her 
 In her nom de plume." 
 
 "How this world is given to lying !" remarked Phil 
 lips, a few days later when he discovered the real 
 situation. Recalling those artificial tears, and the 
 night and the noiseless presence of invisible spectators, 
 he thought Riley should seek his fortune on the stage. 
 "He could make," said Phillips, "one of the matchless 
 actors of his time." 
 
 While Riley was recruiting at Greenfield, the Dis- 
 .patch was living in clover. The editor had full pos 
 session of the field. Each day brought "fresh evidence 
 of success. The New York Herald had nibbled, and 
 the New York Sun. Sailing before the wind, Leonai- 
 nie was destined to see and be known in distant lands." 
 Whether favorably or unfavorably known was not 
 nearly so important as to make the "big dailies stand 
 on their heads and bark furiously." "A new-found 
 
THE LITERARY TORPEDO 389 
 
 poem," said the Nashville American, "has been charged 
 to Edgar A. Poe. If that gentleman ever wanders any 
 where in spirit, he will surely pay his respects to the 
 scalp of the Indiana man that wrote it." "The poem 
 bears no internal evidence of Poe s paternity," said the 
 Indianapolis News. "Romantic enough," said the 
 Brooklyn Eagle, "looks altogether like romance. The 
 story is wild enough to have been written under the 
 influence of Egyptian whiskey." "The unfortunate 
 Poe," said the Baltimore American, "was doubtless 
 guilty of many indiscretions, but it is hard to suppose 
 that in his most eccentric moods he would have at 
 tempted to foster upon his fame the name of Leonai- 
 nie. " "A poem is going the rounds of the press," said 
 the Philadelphia Commonwealth, "having been discov 
 ered among the rubbish of a Hoosier literary club by 
 a lunatic of Kokomo. Two or three lines will show its 
 spirit and style : 
 
 And they made her hair of gloomy 
 Midnight, and her eyes of bloomy 
 Moonshine, and they brought her to me 
 In the solemn night/ 
 
 The gin mills of Maryland and the Old Dominion never 
 turned out liquor bad enough to debase the genius of 
 Poe to the level of that verse. It is a libel on his 
 memory to hint of such doleful idiocy." 
 
 The big dailies did "bark furiously" no doubt of 
 that. From Boston through Washington to Mobile and 
 New Orleans, and back through Richmond and across 
 the continent to San Francisco, the comment was about 
 equally divided between hisses and applause. 
 
 "Abusive, insinuating, malevolent," observes the 
 reader. Precisely so, and precisely the thing required. 
 The hammering process is as essential in the evolution 
 
390 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 of a poet as in the making of a soldier. "We say words 
 in the moonlight," said the soldierly Myron Reed, "that 
 we do not stand up to in the daytime. When the band 
 plays and there is cheering and the girls are waving 
 handkerchiefs, it is easy to enlist f or three years or the 
 war ; but afterwards, south of the Ohio, plugging along 
 in the mud that is different." It was one thing for 
 Riley to receive applause, but hisses were different. 
 Nevertheless they were decisive factors. They were 
 the test. If he could withstand them he might be 
 worthy of renown. The author of "Leonainie" had 
 much to say about the "sublime satisfaction and proud 
 complacency" of the critic. Yet that despised critic 
 was a means of making him serviceable to mankind. 
 The critic hammers the self-sufficiency out of young 
 writers. 
 
 While gathering poems for another book, he was 
 inclined to rewrite "Leonainie" before including it 
 in the volume; but, "since the nimbus round it," as 
 he said, "is historical rather than poetical," he finally 
 permitted the lines to remain as they were originally 
 written. 
 
 Many newspapers charged the paternity of "Leo 
 nainie" to the editor of the Dispatch. "They 
 do me too much honor," retorted the editor. "The 
 furor is in its incipiency," he said editorially 
 August twenty-third. "The poem is traveling 
 on the wind. The ablest critics of the land have 
 leveled their lenses upon it. If we have been the 
 victim of a deception, we are willing as anybody to 
 know it. We believe in the paternity of the poem and 
 can wait with complacency the verdict of the reading 
 public. The original manuscript together with the book 
 from which the leaves were torn is now in our posses- 
 
THE LITERARY TORPEDO 391 
 
 sion. The book is one of an old edition of Ainsworth s 
 Dictionary, considerably time-worn. The poem is writ 
 ten in pale ink of a bluish tinge on the fly leaf taken 
 from the back of the book. The chirography is remark 
 ably clear and can be read as easily as print. Of course 
 it is somewhat dimmed by time and exposure. It is 
 written on both pages of a single leaf. The manuscript 
 will be sent East to critics for examination and judg 
 ment. The poem is indeed remarkable, and its acci 
 dental discovery is a valuable contribution to Ameri 
 can literature." 
 
 While Riley was resting at Greenfield things were de 
 veloping over at Anderson. An event there that con 
 cerns the issue of the Poe-Poem venture was the con 
 versation of two men on Sunday night, August 19, 1877. 
 They had entered the corner of the Court House yard 
 and seated themselves under a Carolina poplar. They 
 had been talking very earnestly at the restaurant. 
 As Riley said, "they had thawed their grief with 
 steaming coffee and their hearts had grown warm over 
 their woes." He went on to describe their surround 
 ings and the night. "The people," he said, "were home 
 from church with the supreme satisfaction that attends 
 tired pilgrims at the close of the sweet day of rest. 
 Lovers were cooing quietly in pleasant hiding-places 
 and old folks were dreaming of toll-gates and splint- 
 bottomed chairs. The alleys were fragrant with tin 
 cans and virtuous herbs. The leaves and flowers, birds 
 and beasts, and creeping things in the grass and on 
 the back porch were performing their functions in the 
 usual manner. At the edge of town the broad expanse 
 of cornfields stretched away to the purple woods, and 
 in the distance the solar system worked respectfully at 
 its appointed task." 
 
392 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 The two men under the Carolina poplar were James 
 McClanahan and Stephen Metcalf, one of the proprie 
 tors of the Anderson Herald. "The time has come for 
 this bubble to burst," said McClanahan, referring to 
 the Poe Poem nine simple words but they were 
 charged with the constituents of gunpowder. They 
 were uttered by the man who again and again had 
 signed himself, "Yours forever, European Balsam." He 
 had been admitted to the "circle of secrecy" around the 
 literary torpedo and could no longer keep the secret. 
 "The dear boy !" how came he to break the seal of con 
 fidence ? How came he to drop a firebrand on the path 
 of "the dearest friend he had on earth" he who had 
 found that friend a luckless disconsolate in overalls 
 and bowled away with him to a legendary world who 
 had wandered with him up hill and down dale in search 
 of the Golden Fleece who had drifted away to the 
 Wisconsin woods and brought him tidings of the 
 "Golden Girl" how came he in the tense moments of 
 a hapless venture to be disobedient to a trust? "No 
 body knows," said an intimate friend, "but him and 
 the Sphinx and neither is saying anything." It is an 
 unraveled riddle. There was a ratchet loose somewhere 
 but certain it is that the Graphic Chum did not disobey 
 his trust maliciously. Riley was not embittered by the 
 part he played. "We are friends," he said, "and will 
 be in the Dim Unknown." 
 
 The hour had struck for the Anderson Herald. For 
 weeks it had been chaffing over the success of the 
 Democrat. Its subscription list had suffered from the 
 popularity of the "Jingling Editor." At last it had a 
 journalistic "scoop" with dimensions. The time had 
 come for it to "lash its rival with its lighting." Mon- 
 
THE LITERARY TORPEDO 393 
 
 day morning the "secret" was walking up and down 
 the streets. There was an envious chatter among com 
 positors in the Herald composing room 
 
 "Sockety hockety wockety wump 
 Pillikum pollikum plumpty pump." 
 
 "Your Poe Poem has assumed a new phase here," 
 wrote the faithful William M. Groan of the Democrat. 
 "The Herald has just got wind of it and swears it will 
 expose the entire thing in coming issue. I write you 
 as a friend warning you of the danger." 
 
 Groan s warning reached Riley Monday night. At 
 first he was dizzy over the threatened revelation. He 
 could not realize it. "And this is life, I believe. Oh, 
 certainly. Why not?" he muttered to himself in the 
 mock-heroic way of Dick Swiveller. As the hours 
 wore on to midnight the complications over 
 whelmed him. He and his friends had striven 
 strenuously. He thought of the two weeks past as 
 a perilous chariot drawn by a double span of 
 horses and driven by an orphan. A master hand 
 would have driven a winning race. Now the horses 
 legs were outside the traces and they were pulling and 
 twisting every which way. Just my luck, thought he ; 
 "the cat s away and the mice they play; the frost 
 breaks up and the water runs. Edgar Allan Poe" he 
 moaned dolefully "just thirteen letters unlucky for 
 Poe unlucky for everything connected with him." 
 
 The opportune moment having arrived, the expose 
 was sprung, but not in the Herald, as the Democrat 
 expected. The Herald proprietor could not make 
 his threat good. One of his associates the "rival 
 editor" in the war of words that preceded Riley s de- 
 
394 JAMES WHITCOMB PJLEY 
 
 cision to test his theory in some unaccountable man 
 ner had been admitted to the "ring around the torpedo." 
 While he freely hammered the "Jingling Poet," he 
 would not carry his cudgeling to the breach of a trust. 
 Though "cold and metallic in face," said Riley, "his 
 heart was soft and warm as the heart of youth." The 
 Herald therefore had to content itself with sending the 
 expose to its friendly neighbor, the Kokomo Tribune, 
 which, according to its rival, the Dispatch, "jumped 
 for the sensation as a bullfrog would leap for a red 
 flannel bait." 
 
 The Herald quoted its friendly contemporary with 
 ghoulish glee: "Upon our first page," it said editori 
 ally, "we present the Tribune s exposure of the poetical 
 fraud Leonainie. We are sorry that Mr. J. W. Riley 
 should have proven himself so mendacious, and s.orrier 
 still that he is the author of the poem. We might have 
 forgiven him his want of veracity but it is hard to 
 condone Leonainie. " 
 
 The expose was of course a feat for the newspapers. 
 It was not "the little stir among the state exchanges," 
 which Riley anticipated when he launched the venture. 
 The critics began to "erupt volcanically." 
 
 The exchanges had a great deal to say about "a lit 
 erary forgery," and the dead Poe, the "chief victim," 
 who was powerless to avenge the wrong done his name 
 and honor. As they saw it, the Poe Poem and the 
 "verse carpenter" who wrote it, deserved the oppro 
 brium heaped upon them. Saucy weeklies talked volu 
 bly about "a great fraud," "insufferable nonsense," the 
 "unscrupulous young man," and "an exceedingly fool 
 ish piece of criminality." A Detroit daily regretted that 
 the American people had been deluded into the idea 
 that there really does exist in Indiana a place by the 
 
THE LITERARY TORPEDO 395 
 
 name of Kokomo. "The poem," said a New York daily, 
 "effectually sets at rest whatever suspicion there may 
 have been that the author had the material out of which 
 a poet is made." Many journals saw "an impassable 
 gulf" between Riley and fame. "A brilliant career had 
 been blighted and forever lost to the literary world." 
 
 When abuse had run its course, the Kokomo Dispatch 
 summed up the situation as follows : 
 
 "Our object in the ruse was two-fold, both of which 
 have been accomplished: First, to perpetuate a quiet 
 pleasant joke, which we would afterward explain; sec 
 ond, to give Mr. Riley s genius as a poet a fair, full 
 and impartial test before the ablest critics in the land, 
 uninfluenced by local prejudice or sectional bias. The 
 only fiction about the transaction was the Poe story. 
 The poem possesses a vast deal of merit, and would do 
 no violence to the reputation of our more pretentious 
 bards of today. Although it has been roughly criticized 
 in certain quarters, it has been praised as the work of 
 genius in others. No poem ever passed through a more 
 relentless gauntlet of criticism. None has ever had a 
 more general reproduction by the press. Mr. Riley is 
 a young poet of great promise and will we predict yet 
 make his mark as one of the sweetest singers of the 
 age." 
 
 In the hopeful meantime although it seemed hope 
 less what was the fate of the "Verse Carpenter" ? To 
 give a fanciful turn to a fanciful incident, as related by 
 his comrade Nye, the literary fledgling had leaned from 
 his high chair far out to catch a dainty, gilded butter 
 fly, and lost his footing and with a piercing shriek had 
 fallen headlong to the gravel walk below ; and when he 
 was picked up, he was he was a poet. But he was a 
 poet caught in the arms of doom. Instead of drifting 
 
396 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 away from him like a dream, "Leonainie" had returned, 
 the enfant terrible. 
 
 The depth of despair into which the poet was 
 plunged by the wave of criticism and reproach and its 
 effect on his conduct and literary output are reserved 
 for the next chapter. 
 
 Said Riley, years after the exposure, "The tirade 
 and outcries are all smiling material now, but then 
 they were pathos from away-back." 
 
 "That fly leaf !" he once protested, plucking the nettle 
 from his past, "how the woof of my destiny has been 
 warped around that. When a schoolboy I wrote my 
 name on a fly leaf of an old reader with enough extra 
 flourish at the bottom for a lasso, wrote it with dreamy 
 speculations of the sensation it would some day create 
 beneath a picture of myself in a cocked hat, a plume, 
 and a ruffled collar such as Sir Walter Raleigh wore, 
 don t you know. Well, the extra flourish and sensation 
 came when the Famous Fake* went bounding through 
 the land. I came so perilously near losing my pelt then 
 that I have been scared from A. to Izzard ever since." 
 
 After the whirlwind of comments on "Leonainie," 
 "posthumous poetry" was the talk of the time. Re 
 porters went prowling round neighborhoods in search 
 of clues to mysteries, and when they could not find 
 them, they invented them. An unpublished poem by 
 Bret Harte was found at Effingham, Illinois, while car 
 penters were tearing down an old schoolhouse. The 
 poem, it was said, was written on narrow strips of 
 manila wrapping paper, in Harte s well-known femi 
 nine hand. The author had passed that way while 
 walking from San Francisco to New York, and de 
 posited the poem in the schoolhouse wall. Another 
 posthumous production was found on a headstone in 
 
THE LITERARY TORPEDO 397 
 
 Iowa. Still another in Virginia "a poetic fragment 
 written with chalk on the inside of a barn door." Puck 
 entertained its readers with "some more bloomy moon 
 shine poetry by the late author of the Raven/ " A 
 fisherman with a magnifying-glass described strange 
 hieroglyphics on a turtle shell on the banks of the 
 Wabash "unquestionably the last work of the gifted 
 but erratic Poe." 
 
 "My friends want to know my feelings," said Riley 
 in later years. "I refer them to Mr. Jobling, who 
 saw the storm break on the Western Road out of 
 London. It was the most dismal period of my life. 
 The Democrat said I was rusticating a few days at 
 Greenfield. I was abdicating. My tinsel throne was 
 crumbling. Friends stood aside went round the other 
 way. I went out on the porch and sighed like a wet 
 forestick. Even the pump was disinclined to welcome 
 my return. Over at Anderson I saw myself walking 
 alone around the Court House square at night through 
 the drizzle and rain, peering longingly at the dim light 
 in the office where I sometimes slept. Hearts in there 
 were as hard and dark and obdurate as the towel in 
 the composing room. In those hot silent nights I saw 
 the lightning quiver on the black horizon ; I heard hol 
 low murmurings in the wind. Within a week I was 
 encysted in pitchy darkness. The lightning was not an 
 optical illusion. It was at hand, crooked, dazzling and 
 resentful. The rain poured down like Heaven s wrath. 
 Every trembling, vivid, flickering instant I breathed 
 in horror of impending doom." 
 
 When traveling with his friend Nye, a decade later, 
 time had so mollified his heartache that Riley could joke 
 about it. He once drew a pen and ink sketch of himself 
 chasing his hat in the wind. With one hand he clutched 
 
398 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 his "reticule" of poems ; with the other he clung to an 
 umbrella turned wrong side out by the gale. Both man 
 and hat were pursued by the wrath of critics and the 
 rain. "Oh the rain !" he would solemnly repeat to Nye, 
 
 "The rain ! the rain ! the rain ! 
 Pouring with never a pause, 
 Over the fields and green byways - 
 How beautiful it was !" 
 
 In the midst of all the noise and distraction of his 
 Poe-Poem days, there was one thing if nothing else that 
 was perfectly clear and that was that the detractors 
 who prophesied oblivion for the "Verse Carpenter," 
 knew nothing about it. His future was not in their 
 keeping. In those hours of darkness, the winds alone 
 were his messengers. Occasionally he was soothed by 
 the whisperings of a gentle zephyr, but for the most 
 part the visitations came in squalls. "I am the Wind," 
 he made the wind say in a poem he was then writing 
 for the Kokomo Dispatch, 
 
 "I am the Wind, and I rule mankind, 
 And I hold a sovereign reign 
 Over the lands as God designed, 
 And the waters they contain : 
 Lo ! the bound of the wide world round 
 Falleth in my domain." 
 
 There came the last week of August a ray of com 
 fort from an accomplished young woman of Anderson, 
 Miss Jessie Fremont Myers afterward Mrs. William 
 M. Groan a prediction that, in the light of subsequent 
 events, may be set over against all the mouthings 
 of his detractors. "I am indeed sorry," she wrote, 
 "that your plan, contrived without a single dishonor 
 able thought or motive, has received such an unmanly 
 
THE LITERARY TORPEDO 399 
 
 blow just as it is smiling into perfection. But I can 
 not agree with the Tribune that it will result in any 
 serious damage to you for I still believe that the true 
 votaries of genius will still yield you homage and that 
 the laurel wreath fame was twining for your brow, will 
 adorn it as if Leonainie had never been written." 
 
 At Anderson also there was a whisper of hope from 
 the Artist Comrade and a bit of wisdom from a 
 banker, John W. Pence. "There, Little Man," said the 
 banker, "don t cry; the future is before you; go to 
 work." "The day is coming," said the artist to a 
 friend, "when we will be proud we were friends of 
 Riley. His poems have the true ring he is bound to 
 come to the front." Mrs. Jordan of the Richmond In 
 dependent wrote some hopeful words about the poetic 
 waif born in the corner of an obscure paper, that was 
 being so mysteriously wafted to periodicals beyond the 
 sea. "Count me an ardent admirer of the lamented 
 Poe," she said. "Let us do what we can to honor the 
 genius of the great departed." 
 
 "After sorrowing and parboiling for a fortnight," 
 said Riley, "I resolved to make a clean breast of the 
 whole thing." Accordingly the following : 
 
 Greenfield, Indiana, August 29, 1877. 
 Editor of Indianapolis Journal, 
 Dear Sir : 
 
 Will you do me the especial favor of publishing the 
 enclosed in your issue of to-morrow? Very truly, 
 
 J. W. RILEY. 
 
 The enclosure was his "Card to the Public." The 
 Journal, however, like all other papers, after the ex 
 pose, was not certain of the card s authenticity. Riley s 
 own handwriting was questioned. On the morrow they 
 published the request as : 
 
400 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 THE ALLEGED POE-POEM CARD FROM MR. J. W. RILEY. 
 To the Public: 
 
 Having been publicly accused of the authorship of 
 the poem, "Leonainie," and again of the far more griev 
 ous error of an attempt to falsely claim it, I deem it 
 proper to acknowledge the justice of the first accusa 
 tion. Yes, as much as I regret to say it, I am the 
 author; but in justice to the paper that originally pro 
 duced it, and to myself as well, I desire to say a few 
 words more. 
 
 The plan of the deception was originally suggested to 
 me by a controversy with friends, in which I was fool 
 ish enough to assert that "no matter the little worth of 
 a poem, if a great author s name was attached, it would 
 be certain of success and popularity." And to establish 
 the truth of this proposition I was unfortunate enough 
 to select a ruse, that, although establishing my theory, 
 has been the means of placing me in a false light, as 
 well as those of my friends who were good enough to 
 assist me in the scheme ; for when we found our literary 
 bombshell bounding throughout the length and breadth 
 of the Union we were so bewildered and involved we 
 knew not how to act. Our only intercourse had been 
 by post, and we could not advise together fairly in that 
 way ; in consequence, a fibrous growth of circumstances 
 had chained us in a manner, and a fear of unjust cen 
 sure combined to hold us silent for so long. To find 
 at last a jocular explosion of the fraud, we thought 
 lessly employed a means both ill-advised for ourselves 
 and others. And now, trusting the public will only con 
 demn me for the folly, and hold me blameless of all 
 dishonorable motives wherein I have feigned ignorance 
 of the real authorship of the poem, and so forth, and 
 so forth, 
 
 I am yours truly, 
 
 J. W. RILEY. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 WEATHERING THE STORM 
 
 THERE is a classic allusion to Arion which typi 
 fies Riley s fate the first fortnight of September, 
 1877. Most provident in peril, says Shake 
 speare in praise of his hero, 
 
 "He bound himself 
 
 (Courage and hope both teaching him the practice) 
 To a strong mast that liv d upon the sea ; 
 Where like Arion on the dolphin s back, 
 He held acquaintance with the waves, 
 So long as I could see." 
 
 The Foe-Poem ruse had failed and the expose* had 
 plunged Riley into a sea of despair. He was literally 
 holding acquaintance with waves and winds. He had 
 been the victim of one of those vulgar accidents of life, 
 according to Lord Beaconsfield, that should be borne 
 without a murmur. He did not bear it without a mur 
 mur, but he did bear it. He did not sink beneath the 
 weight of woe. 
 
 It was all laughing material years after when the 
 experience was "dramatized" in a cartoon for Nye and 
 Riley s Railway Guide the Hoosier Poet riding on 
 the dolphin s back, with a golden wreath on his brow, 
 a lyre in his arms and a tunic flowing in the wind from 
 his shoulders all merry-making then, but at the time 
 the ordeal, in Riley s words, "was a fortnight of woe for 
 the infernal gods." All that remained of his fatal ven 
 ture seemed a barren waste surrounded by desolation. 
 
 401 
 
402 JAMES WIIITCOMB RILEY 
 
 The "fortnight of woe" explains the allusion to Riley 
 as the "Arion of Grief." His fate did indeed rhyme 
 with the narrative in the Age of Fable. Like Arion he 
 was a musician and a great favorite. He longed for 
 recognition in the East. Friends besought him to be 
 content : 
 
 "Stay where you are." 
 
 "Stay on the Democrat." 
 
 "Paint signs." 
 
 His answer tallied substantially with that in the 
 fable. He longed to make his gift a source of pleasure 
 to others, and the conviction had been borne in upon 
 him that he could do it with song. 
 
 That period of gloom like many other seasons of 
 darkness, was brimming with possibilities proof once 
 more that "man s extremity is God s opportunity." 
 Out of it came a lyric "We Are Not Always Glad 
 When We Smile" that in beauty of pathos has few 
 rivals in the English tongue another instance that 
 our laughter 
 
 "With some pain is fraught; 
 
 Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest 
 thought." 
 
 How could Riley be so gay while his heart was in 
 mourning? How could he smile and even laugh when 
 he felt that, for him, the end of all earthly happiness 
 had come? Hear him 
 
 "We are not always glad when we smile, 
 For the heart in a tempest of pain, 
 May live in the guise 
 Of a smile in the eyes 
 As a rainbow may live in the rain : 
 And the stormiest night of our woe 
 
WEATHERING THE STORM 403 
 
 May hang out a radiant star 
 
 Whose light in the sky 
 
 Of despair is a lie 
 As black as the thunderclouds are. 
 
 "We are not always glad when we smile : 
 Though we wear a fair face and are gay, 
 
 And the world we deceive 
 
 May not ever believe 
 We could laugh in a happier way. 
 Yet, down in the deeps of the soul, 
 Oftymes with our faces aglow, 
 
 There s an ache and a moan 
 
 That we know of alone, 
 And as only the hopeless may know." 
 
 Such is a glimpse of his woe in verse. He also writes 
 of it in the following letter to a woman he dearly 
 loved, the Lady of Tears he sometimes called her when 
 he thought of the sorrow in her life, Miss Eudora Kate 
 Myers of Anderson afterward Mrs. William J. 
 Kinsley 
 
 Greenfield, Indiana, September 15, 1877. 
 Dear Woman: 
 
 Your letter of yesterday does me a world of good, for 
 although it hurt in many ways, it showed me still the 
 great strength of your love, and with so great a treas 
 ure in my keeping must I not be strong and brave to 
 meet all the ills with true manliness, and not with the 
 coward heart I have shown for so long. You find fault 
 with me for not telling you my trouble, and saying I 
 am not satisfied with your love. You do me wrong 
 indeed you do ! My love for you is so great that I have 
 tried to hold from you only that which would give 
 you extra pain to know and God knows I give you 
 misery enough. Look up here in my face and read the 
 last week s misery I have passed and you will not offer 
 me a chiding word. I have walked down down in 
 hell so far that your dear voice had almost failed to 
 reach me, but thank God I can hear you, though I 
 
404 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 may not touch your hand till I have washed my own 
 in tears of repentance. My steps are turning gladly 
 toward the light, and it seems to me sometimes I al 
 most see God s face. I have been sick sick of the 
 soul, for had so fierce a malady attacked the body, I 
 would have died with all hell hugged in my arms. I 
 can speak of this now because I can tell you I am 
 saved, and my noble woman will be filled with joy to 
 know that God bends down and listens to her prayers. 
 In fancy now my arms cling round you as the pilgrim 
 to the cross, and through a storm of tears the sunshine 
 of your smiles breaks on me, as I say, 
 
 "The burden has fallen from me 
 It is buried in the sea, 
 And only the sorrow of others 
 Throws its shadow over me." 
 
 I will not now talk longer of myself there is no end 
 of that, and I shall not be selfish any more but hum 
 ble very, very humble. You must never say again 
 you are not worthy of my love. You could not hurt 
 me deeper. My worth compared with yours, I tell you 
 truly, for I know, "Is as moonlight unto sunlight and as 
 water unto wine." I m growing better though and 
 humbly pray that God may brighten up the poor dim 
 remnant of my worth that it at last may shine a jewel 
 of one lustre with your own. 
 
 How inexpressibly sorrowful were those autumn 
 weeks of 1877, when alone Riley walked among the 
 great elms on the banks of Brandywine, when 
 
 "The long black shadows of the trees 
 Fell o er him like their destinies." 
 
 The leaves "dropped on him their tears of dew." At 
 times he seemed to stand on a beach with its waste of 
 sands before him. "I could hear the roar of breakers," 
 he said; "low clouds brushed by me just solitude, 
 wreck and ruin nothing more." 
 
WEATHERING THE STORM 405 
 
 It does seem that his fate was to be "fanged with 
 frost and tongued with flame." His station was not 
 to be the tripod of the Democrat, nor the grind of any 
 other journalistic field. Like his King of Slumberland, 
 his dais was to be woven of rays of starlight and 
 jeweled with gems of dew, and sometimes he was to 
 occupy a throne wrought of blackest midnight. He was 
 destined to hold communion with those mighty phan 
 toms, Our Ladies of Sorrow. In some way unknown 
 to the average mortal the poet was to be kept in touch 
 with the deep silence that reigns in their kingdoms. 
 One shudders at the sound of their mysterious words : 
 "Suffer not woman and her tenderness to sit near him 
 in his darkness. Banish the frailties of hope; wither 
 the relenting of love ; scorch the fountain of tears. So 
 shall he be accomplished in the furnace ; so shall he see 
 the things that ought not to be seen, sights that are 
 abominable, and secrets that are unutterable. So shall 
 he read the elder truths, fearful truths. So shall he 
 rise again before he dies. And so shall our commis 
 sion be accomplished which from God we had, to 
 plague his heart until we had unfolded the capacities 
 of his spirit." 
 
 "Every man," said Riley, "has his dragon as well as 
 his Daemon; in this, sinner and saint are alike. The 
 shining figure of the Dsemon precedes him, the dragon 
 dogs his footsteps. I have my dragon and thereby is 
 established my relation to mankind. Doctor Johnson 
 had his and I take it that is one reason for the abiding 
 interest of the race in what he said and did." In that 
 fortnight immediately following the expose, the poet 
 was not only suffering from the torture of critics and 
 the shattered hope of literary recognition. His heart 
 
406 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 was also breaking over a lapse from sobriety. His 
 dragon seized and shook him as a mastiff. As he ex 
 pressed it, he was "fighting another battle with the blue 
 flame." The channels of his thought had been obscured 
 and his progress imperiled by his "besetting sin." 
 "Friends offered sympathy," he said ; "how could they 
 sympathize when their souls had not been bruised with 
 adversity? They had not been steeped to the lips in 
 misery; they had not seen their fondest hopes perish; 
 they had not bared their faces on the earth at night; 
 they had not suffered the pangs of humiliation. What 
 could they know 
 
 Of the frenzy and fire of the brain, 
 That grasps at the fruitage forbidden ? 
 
 There are hours in the battle with this disease when a 
 man can breathe no prayer, nor utter a cry, hours 
 when he 
 
 Bends and sinks like a column of sand 
 In the whirlwind of his great despair. 
 
 Carlyle points out that David, the Hebrew King, was 
 a man of blackest crimes, "no want of sins, yet he was 
 the man according to God s own heart." He had 
 learned the significance of sackcloth and ashes. "Of all 
 acts," says the author, "is not, for a man, repentance 
 the most divine ? What are faults," he asks, "what are 
 the outward details of a life ; if the inner secret of it, 
 the remorse, temptations, true, often-baffled, never- 
 ended struggle of it, be forgotten?" What is a man s 
 life if he is not touched with a feeling of our infirmi 
 ties? 
 
 Repentance is the word that looms large on the 
 poet s horizon after the Poe-Poem episode. 
 

 THE POET AT THE AGE OF TWENTY-EIGHT 
 
OLD COUNTY COURT HOUSE 
 
 First home of the Township Lil.r.-iry 
 
WEATHERING THE STORM 407 
 
 "Pitilessly, year by year 
 From the farthest past to here, 
 Fate had fallen like a blight 
 On the blossoms of delight," 
 
 and he realized as never before that he was chiefly re 
 sponsible for that fate. Now God was bending down 
 and listening to his prayers and the prayer of his 
 Lady of Tears. Thus it seemed he "could almost see 
 God s face." Had he left no other record of himself 
 than this, he would deserve the homage of fallen hu 
 manity everywhere. In that "storm of tears" he mas 
 tered himself and made "his torture tributary to his 
 will." In that eventful time there began "the faithful 
 struggle of an earnest human soul towards what is 
 good and best" a struggle often baffled but never 
 abandoned. Face to face with the picture of his woe 
 he clung to his purpose. He resolved "not to fade away 
 in the darkness of alcoholic night" and he kept his 
 word. "The Lord is my shepherd," he prayed ; "surely 
 goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my 
 life" and they did. The day he was not tempted 
 to drink, which he so fervently anticipated, never 
 came; but the day did come when he could resist the 
 temptation. 
 
 Men and women have never withheld their love from 
 the man who rises superior to misfortune. If while ris 
 ing he fall, they mantle the fall with their compassion. 
 If he have a besetting sin, their interest in him never 
 flags so long as he strives manfully to detach himself 
 from it. "Who," asks the old monk Thomas a Kempis, 
 "hath a harder battle to fight than he who striveth for 
 self-mastery?" After all, the great victory is to whip 
 the offending Adam out of life, and this Riley pro 
 ceeded to do, beginning with a strong hand the fall of 
 
408 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 1877. Henceforth as hitherto, the people were with 
 him. They gave him freely of their sympathy and 
 love. 
 
 It is refreshing to note a cause of the people s sym 
 pathy. In those notable years of the seventies, a re 
 markable man, Robert Collyer, came from his Chicago 
 pulpit to Indiana towns with his lecture on "Clear 
 Grit." Few speakers surpassed him in the power to 
 mould public sentiment. Riley dearly loved him be 
 cause of his large-hearted incentives. "Collyer had 
 been through the crucible," said Riley. "He knew what 
 it meant to grapple a great temptation by the throat." 
 
 "A man may have all sorts of shining qualities," said 
 Collyer in the lecture; "he may be as handsome as 
 Apollo, as plausible as Mercury, and as full of fight as 
 Mars, and yet be a bit of mere shining paste no dia 
 mond at all. On the other hand, a man s faults and 
 failings may be an everlasting regret to those who love 
 him best, as they are in a man like Robert Burns. But 
 because there s Clear Grit in him, because there s a bit 
 of manhood running through his life as grand and good 
 as ever struggled through this world of ours toward a 
 better ; a heart that could gather everything that lives 
 within the circle of its mighty sympathy, from a mouse 
 shivering in a furrow, to a saint singing in Heaven; 
 because there s a heart like that in him, we cling to his 
 knees, we will not let him go ; sin-smitten, but mighty, 
 manful man, as he is, we gather him into our heart, 
 everyone of us, and love him with an everlasting love." 
 
 It was the Burns quality in Riley s songs and the 
 discovery of Clear Grit in his character back there in 
 the latter seventies that endeared him to the people of 
 Indiana. They had found a man who was touched with 
 a feeling for their infirmities. Thus finding him they 
 
WEATHERING THE STORM 409 
 
 were not unmindful of his sorrows. Nor did they dis- 
 prize his songs because he was the victim of the blue 
 flame 
 
 "For his tempted and wandering feet, 
 Were the songs of David less pure and sweet?" 
 
 There was a dragon between the poet and the Golden 
 Fleece but that did not deter him. He would have the 
 Fleece at all hazards and it was this determination that 
 deepened the people s love. They would not "throw 
 away a pineapple because it had a rough coat." Here 
 and there were friends who had witnessed Riley s 
 rapture after his release from the Beast, as he 
 sometimes called the blue flame. The depth of grati 
 tude spiritualized and transfigured in his face was 
 unforgetable. It was evident to them that he had not 
 yielded to the tempter without inwardly protesting 
 against him. "Release from the clutches of the Beast," 
 Riley once said, "is as sweet to me as the vision of peace 
 to a nation after war. I dreamed once I was a country 
 besieged by a foreign foe. I never could tell when or 
 where the foe would strike, nor could I ever compass 
 his strength. Sometimes I was able to repel him at 
 the first blow; at other times he would march inland 
 and leave desolation and grief in his path before I 
 was able to defeat him and drive him from my king 
 dom. Not a silly dream either," he added. "Man en 
 larged, with his passions, possibilities and perils, is 
 the nation ; and the nation diminished is the man." 
 
 The struggles of the poet with adverse fate revealed 
 him a man of uncommon order. They manifested the 
 heroic endurance of agonies. He had capacities for 
 infinite pain, and, growing out of these, fertility of re 
 sources. His "sufferings being of an immortal nature," 
 
410 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 his knowledge of the invisible world the world so near 
 us we can not comprehend it his knowledge of that 
 world reached far beyond the ken of average thought, 
 and that meant jewels of song that otherwise had not 
 enhanced the joy of mankind. 
 
 The Poe Poem with its numerous complications was 
 succeeded by what Riley called an "era of prosperity," 
 a period of two years wherein, from the standpoint of 
 pure genius, he did his greatest work. They were the 
 second and third years of his "Prolific Decade." In 
 cluding good, bad and indifferent, one thousand poems 
 are credited to his pen. Two hundred of these, to 
 gether with many sketches in prose, were written the 
 two years following September, 1877. That two-year 
 period of untrammelled endeavor was a heavenly con 
 trast to the ten years of rough traveling that preceded 
 it. He was blessed with the smile of thirty moons, 
 "a total abstinence turnpike," he phrased it, "which 
 glancing back over he found as true as the sights 
 of a level." 
 
 Riley never credited artificial stimulants with 
 a single poem or story although there were occa 
 sional rumors to the contrary. "There is a 
 theory abroad," said he, "that writers succeed 
 by wooing the means of weakness and debility; as 
 Shakespeare has it, by applying hot and rebellious 
 liquors in their blood. They succeed, not by such a 
 course, but in spite of it. From ancient times, men 
 have sacrificed mind and money at the shrine of Bac 
 chus; in the phrase of the street, become vassals of 
 King Booze ; millions have gone down to defeat ; others, 
 some of them great and mighty men, have fought and 
 won their way to fame. They did not win because of 
 drink but in spite of it. Rum does, strangely enough, 
 
WEATHERING THE STORM 411 
 
 lubricate the grooves of life, and under its gloze the 
 world of care becomes a harmless jest, but nothing 
 worth saving was ever written then. A maudlin effort 
 is always a weak effort. I can imagine a poet under the 
 pretense of intoxication, reeling to the door of a friend 
 at midnight. After being admitted and pitied, I hear 
 him say, Give me some paper I want to write a poem. 
 The next morning the friend relates the incident to his 
 neighbors and says the fellow wrote Bells Jangled. He 
 had not done so. The pretender had thought on the 
 poem for two weeks and had every line of it at his 
 command when he entered his friend s house. Some 
 authors think it an honor to have the fame of writing 
 under the influence of wine. I want no such reputation. 
 A man must be in his right mind if he writes poetry 
 worth reading. Once in Indianapolis there lived a 
 poet who was always posing as one who wrote poetry 
 on the spur of the moment. It was not true. Previous 
 ly he had worked for days on a poem which his idolaters 
 supposed he wrote at a desk in ten minutes while they 
 looked on in open-eyed wonder." 
 
 "When you reckon up nature," Myron Reed once 
 said to Riley, "it is not fair to take one side 
 only, and add together June mornings, and bird 
 songs, and rainbows, and the gladness of the grass 
 and grain. There is another very serious set of 
 items that must come in somewhere. The air of the 
 June morning that plumes the feathers of the robin may 
 be twisted before night into a cyclone. We are in a 
 world where the devil, mountain lions and silver-tipped 
 bears are loose. Our enemies are not in a cage. Pleas 
 ant it is to see the sun, pleasant to lean out of your 
 window on moonlight nights to hear the bugle and lis 
 ten to The Campbells Are Coming ; but to be a Camp- 
 
412 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 bell in a pair of wet horse-hide boots wrinkled at the 
 ankles that is different. It is a slow process," con 
 cluded Reed, smiling at Riley s dream of spotless de 
 portment, "a slow process training a river, a tiger and 
 a man. There is the inclination to return to the old 
 way." Mark Twain had said, "Habit is habit and not 
 to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed 
 down stairs a step at a time." 
 
 It was a slow process the formation of character. 
 Resolutions were necessary to that end, and back there 
 in the fall of 1877 Riley made some. He got a cue 
 from the saying of a wise old Indianapolis lawyer, 
 Calvin Fletcher, who had also been a successful farmer, 
 banker and railroad promoter. "If I have business re 
 lations with a man," said the lawyer, "and he gets 
 angry at me or does not act right, it is my fault. My 
 business is to see that everybody with whom I deal shall 
 do right. I charge myself with the responsibility." 
 Riley promptly saw the wisdom of the law 
 yer s course. If I am not upright in thought and 
 conduct, he reasoned, it is my fault. If I do not 
 have friends and health it is my fault. If others do not 
 love me it is my fault. If the critics do not praise my 
 poems, if I do not reach the goal, it is my fault. Thus 
 he made a map of the country through which he was 
 to travel, put up guide-posts, all pointing to a rosy 
 triumph. And it was good for him to do so, although 
 he did not always travel in the forward direction. 
 From his youth he had had a sharp eye for outward 
 things, but he had been a hazy student of himself. 
 Now, however, self-study became an absorbing subject, 
 the unlocking of hidden faculties, the searching anal 
 ysis of his powers and their relation to the place he 
 was to occupy in the world. Knowledge of all men 
 
WEATHERING THE STORM 413 
 
 meant, first, self-knowledge ; the control of others, self- 
 control, and so forth. 
 
 "Are there not some exceptions to this doctrine of 
 personal responsibility?" asked a reporter some years 
 after Riley had made his resolution. "Exceptions? 
 Lord, no!" was the prompt reply. "It will work all 
 the way up the scale. If I am not President of the 
 United States, it is my fault." There were some ex 
 ceptions but the conquering spirit of YOUTH in the poet 
 would not tolerate them. 
 
 Perhaps the most valuable lesson that Riley learned 
 from the Poe-Poem experience was the wise con 
 struction he put on the use of adversity. "If some 
 misfortune can befall him all will be well." This 
 seems a heartless remark and some can not forgive 
 Emerson for making it. Riley saw wisdom in it. 
 Through the mist of tears he perceived that the ugly 
 and venomous toad we call adversity does truly wear 
 a precious jewel in its head. There was such a thing 
 as thriving on misfortune. "By going wrong things 
 had come right." A friend wrote to ask if he was dis 
 couraged over the "Leonainie Downfall." 
 
 "Discouraged? God bless you, no," was the homely 
 reply. "It has fattened me like a Thanksgiving 
 turkey." 
 
 Now that he has surmounted what for a while seemed 
 an insurmountable obstacle, it may be said in the true 
 sense of the word that Riley was a poet. He had a 
 new conception of his mission. Since his vision, his 
 attitude had been that of a listener. "In hours of in 
 spiration," he said, "I was a lover listening to an utter 
 ance that flowed in syllables like dewdrops from the 
 lips of flowers." The listening attitude was to con 
 tinue, but he was not only to listen, he was to 
 
414 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
 
 work. It was one thing to be favored with the sylla 
 bles, another and equally important thing to seize 
 them and record them. They had to be caressed 
 and polished and occasionally hammered that the 
 reader might have, in a measure, the sense of beauty 
 that ravished the poet s heart when he first heard 
 them. After the syllables had been recorded he had to 
 set the poem up, and then "walk around it," he said, 
 "as Benjamin Harrison walked around a law case." 
 Of a poem that had required a day and a night s effort 
 he remarked, "you can track me round it a hundred 
 times." Poems were his children good bad in 
 different. To curb, train and direct them demanded 
 the patience of an educator. When in a jocular mood 
 Riley was wont to call an unfinished poem a "Caira- 
 wan." At such times he would play the Dwarf in 
 Christmas Stories to perfection : "Ladies and Gentle 
 men," he would say when taking leave of friends to 
 work on a poem, "the Little Man will now walk three 
 times around the Cairawan and retire behind the cur 
 tain." Thus he sometimes uttered the words on enter 
 ing his room at night. The next morning there would 
 be a new poem on his table. 
 
 And here also the reader comes to the exit of the 
 Little Man in this volume. Having been before the 
 footlights for a season not from any wish of his own 
 but in response to the call of his friends he looks 
 back a moment on the rare pictures of his boyhood and 
 forward for a glimpse of his future and then makes his 
 bow and retires behind the curtain. 
 
 It is the first year of his "Prolific Decade" and the 
 last day of the year 1877. The Little Man is twenty- 
 eight years old. As his favorite Ik Marvel wrote, 
 "Clouds were weaving the summer into the season of 
 
WEATHERING THE STORM 415 
 
 autumn; and YOUTH was rising from dashed hopes 
 into the stature of a man." There being little doubt 
 among his friends, less in himself, and none in the 
 mind of the Calm Angel, that he is a poet, he settles 
 down to his work in Greenfield. The "wanderlust" 
 calls to him in vain. The past with its cloud and sun 
 shine is like a story. In a way, it seems years back to 
 his vision although it is less than twenty moons. It 
 was a long way back to the old County Court House 
 with its Township Library, and the Shoe-Shop where 
 he received his first impulse to a literary life farther 
 yet back to the little willow brook of rhymes that war 
 bled through his native town, a score and more years 
 back to the day in childhood when he and his Uncle 
 Mart ascended the stream and lifted the curtains on its 
 winding scenery a long, tortuous way it was back to 
 these mile-stones. 
 
 At last he has fairly set sail on a literary sea, and 
 for him that sea has the charms that envelop the mari 
 ner on his first voyage to foreign lands. Sky and 
 atmosphere are brimmed and overflowing. All things 
 are elate with buoyancy. There is the breath of morn 
 ing in the sea air. Before him in the hazy kingdoms 
 of the unknown are the Fortunate Isles and somewhere 
 beyond them 
 
 "The shores of an eternity 
 In the calms of Paradise." 
 
INDEX 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abbott, Emma, 317. 
 
 Adelphian Band, 166. 
 
 Adjustable Lunatic, motif of, 255. 
 
 Alcott, Louisa May, 81. 
 
 Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 314. 
 
 Alleghany Mountains, 1, 6. 
 
 Along the Banks of Brandywine, 63. 
 
 Amendment, The, Riley s school paper, 68, 367. 
 
 American Patriot, The, 16. 
 
 Anderson Democrat, 333, 342, excerpt from, 351-2. 
 
 Anderson Mystery, The, 399. 
 
 Arabian Nights, 27, 73. 
 
 Argonauts of 49, 86. 
 
 At Last, 225. 
 
 Autumn Leaf, An, 228. 
 
 Anecdotes : Benson Out-Bensoncd, 356-58 ; Bill at Greenfield Hotel, 
 216; cake of soap, 26; creditors, 79; Discouraging Model, 
 124; drowning painter, 149; Dying Soldier, 56-57; end of 
 Riley s career as musician, 165; end of Riley s career as 
 violinist, 178; first boots, 25; first suit of clothes, 182; 
 grandfather s book, 10; leaving the farm, 69-70; 
 Leonainie, 368-400; Lily, 49; McCrillus, Dr., engages Riley, 
 108; Martin Riley runs away, 19; Out to Old Aunt Mary s, 
 motif, 38 ; Peg Woffington, 260-61 ; picnic of the Adelphians, 
 166-68; progress of South Bend, 143; Riley, Andrew, sells 
 corn, 7; Riley and Anna Mayflower, 161-63; Riley and the 
 irate farmer, 132-34 ; Riley as Bible seller, 74 ; Riley as blind 
 painter, 135-36; Riley as editor of Greenfield Criterion, 66; 
 Riley as painter of signs and houses, 74-78 ; Riley as secre 
 tary of the Sunday-school, 90; Riley at the bar, 181-88; 
 Riley s choice of profession, 212 ; Riley s first valentine, 223 ; 
 Riley in Magic Oil Laboratory, 211; Riley s intuition, 244- 
 45; Riley, McClanahan and Hell, 152; reading Robinson 
 Crusoe in school, 50-60; Reciting Casablanca, 55; Riley 
 sends letters and poems to Longfellow, 234-36, 318; Riley 
 skating, 61 ; Riley takes his first poem to the Greenfield 
 Commercial, 221-22; Riley s trip with his father to Indian 
 apolis, 58-59 ; side-show at Cadiz, 117 ; Thanksgiving Day at 
 Henchley s, 359-64. 
 
 Bailey, Montgomery, 225. 
 Ballad, A, 224. 
 Barnett, War, 169. 
 Bartholomew County, 15. 
 Battle of LoveWs Pond, 221. 
 Bedford, Pa., 6. 
 
 419 
 
420 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Beecher, Henry Ward, 363. 
 
 Benson, Luther, 266, 356. 
 
 Benson Out-Bensoned, 152. 
 
 Billings, Josh, 172. 
 
 Bonny Brown Quail, 63. 
 
 Brandy wine Creek, 14, 40, 62. 
 
 Brightwood, 335. 
 
 British Books, influence on Riley, 93-5. 
 
 Brook Song, 24. 
 
 Bull, Ole, Norwegian violinist, 170-75. 
 
 Burlington Hawkeye, 349. 
 
 Cabin Creek, 12, 14. 
 
 Capt. Kidd, 60. 
 
 Chatterton, Thomas, 367. 
 
 Child, Lydia Maria, 172. 
 
 Child World, The, 31, 159. 
 
 Choate, Joseph H., 125. 
 
 Cincinnati, 4. 
 
 Clay, Henry, 8. 
 
 Clayton, L. H., 78. 
 
 Collyer, Robert, 172, 245, 408. 
 
 Cooley, George, 240. 
 
 Country Pathway, A, 233, 366. 
 
 Craqueodoom, 339. 
 
 Croan, William M., 355, 361, 393. 
 
 Crooked Jim, 63. 
 
 Curtis, George W., 171. 
 
 Danbury News, 225, 227, 316, 349. 
 
 Dave Field, 153. 
 
 Delaware County, 10. 
 
 Denison Hotel, 58. 
 
 Destiny, A, 229. 
 
 Dickens, Charles, 4, 5, 11, 64, 98, 99, 101, 204-206. 
 
 Duck Creek Jabberwock, 339. 
 
 Earlhamite, The, 334. 
 Edyrn, 217-218. 
 Empty Song, An. 298-299. 
 Ethell, J. W., 145, 384. 
 
 Fame : 130 ; quoted, 236, 307, 320. 
 
 Family Friend, 16. 
 
 Farmer Whipple Bachelor, 114-226. 
 
 Fitch, John, 284. 
 
 Flames and Ashes, 233. 
 
 Flaxman, John, 276. 
 
 Fletcher, Calvin, 412. 
 
 Fragment, quoted, 68. 
 
 Frog, The, 39. 
 
 Funny Little Fellow, 324. 
 
 Fuseli, Henry, 254. 
 
INDEX 421 
 
 George, Henry, 314. 
 
 George Mullen s Confession, 339. 
 
 Gill, W. F., 383. 
 
 Golden Girl: letter to Riley about OH Sweetheart of Mine, 267; 
 
 273, 279, 283-311, 370. 
 Gooding, Judge David S., 41. 
 Graphic Company, 132-157. 
 Graphics, 144, 225. 
 Great Pedee, 17. 
 
 Greenfield, 14, 15, 17, 19, 30, 41, 62, 82. 
 
 Greenfield Commercial: Riley as a musician, 177; 220, 221, 316. 
 Greenfield Democrat, 77, 215, 322. 
 Greenfield News, 114, 226, 227. 
 Greenfield Reveille, 16. 
 Greenfield Spectator, 16. 
 Guymon House, 79. 
 
 Hancock County, 82. 
 
 Happy Bells, 368. 
 
 Harris, Lee O., 52, 62-66, 238, 275, 314, 316, 32S. 
 
 Harte, Bret, 64, 88 143, 190. 
 
 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 314. 
 
 Hay, John : 5, 50, 160, 225 ; letter to Riley, 282. 
 
 Hearth and Home, 229. 
 
 Hedley, James, 255. 
 
 Henderson, John O., 371-72. 
 
 Her Beautiful Hands, quoted, 297. 
 
 His Mother, quoted, 190. 
 
 Holland, J. G., 172. 
 
 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 314. 
 
 Hough, Judge William R., 39. 
 
 Howells, William Dean, 3, 375. 
 
 Hunt, Emily, 14. 
 
 // I Knew What Poets Know, 267. 
 
 Indiana, 4, 6, 7, 8. 
 
 Indianapolis Herald, 48, 234, 277. 
 
 Indianapolis Journal, 274. 
 
 Indianapolis Mirror, 223. 
 
 Indianapolis Sentinel, 172, 275. 
 
 Ingersoll, Robert G., 329. 
 
 In the Dark, 296. 
 
 Ireland, William, 367. 
 
 Iron Horse, The, 123. 
 
 Irving, Washington : as a lawyer, 183 ; influence on Riley, 90. 
 
 Jay Whit, 23, 25, 218. 
 
 Jefferson, Joseph, 61. 
 
 Joe Biggsby s Proposal, quoted, 165. 
 
 Johnny Appleseed, 11, 77. 
 
 Johnny, a short story by Riley, 224. 
 
 Jordan, Mrs. D. M., 378. 
 
422 INDEX 
 
 Keefer, Almon, 34, 86. 
 Kingry, George, 61. 
 Kinnard, William, 361. 
 Kinney, Coates, 363. 
 Kokomo Dispatch, 371-72. 
 Kokomo Republican, 227. 
 Krout, Mary H., 268. 
 
 Lacy, John W., 66. 
 
 Lafayette, Gen., 8. 
 
 Lake Erie, 4. 
 
 Last Waltz, quoted, 168. 
 
 Lavater, 254. 
 
 Leloine, 228. 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham, 12, 30, 80, 81, 106. 
 
 Lines in a Letter Enclosing a Picture, quoted, 296. 
 
 Little Brandywine, 63. 
 
 Little Nell, 72, 98, 199. 
 
 Longfellow, Henry Wadswortb : 10, 33, 65; influence on Riley, 103- 
 
 104, 174, 221, 269, 274, 282, 310, 314, 315, 316; letter to 
 
 Riley, 321, 322, 324, 327-28, 363. 
 Lost Kiss, The, 286. 
 Lowell, James Russell, 27, 181, 252. 
 
 McClanahan, James, 108, 145, 288, 308. 
 
 McClure Township Library, 91-94. 
 
 McCrillus, Dr. S. B., 105-31. 
 
 McDowell, Babe, 229. 
 
 McGuffey, William H., 102-03. 
 
 McManus, S. B., 149. 
 
 Mack, F. H., 145. 
 
 Man of Many Parts, 339. 
 
 Man s Devotion, 223. 
 
 Marvel, Ik, 229, 233, 246, 414. 
 
 Masonic Hall of Greenfield, 62. 
 
 Mass Convention, 15. 
 
 Master Humphrey s Clock, 5. 
 
 Maud Muller, burlesque, 235. 
 
 Metcalf, Stephen, 392. 
 
 Metropolitan Theatre, 260. 
 
 Mill, John Stuart, 314. 
 
 Millikan, Rhoda Houghton, 90-91, 218, 239. 
 
 Mississinewa River, 9-11, 121-22, 234. 
 
 Mitchell, Donald G., 316. 
 
 Mitchell, S. Weir, 255. 
 
 Mockery, 223. 
 
 Moonlight in the Forest, 63. 
 
 Morelnnd, George, influence upon Riley, 154-55. 
 
 Morton, Oliver P.. 30. 
 
 Mountains of the Moon, 3. 
 
 Myers, Eudora Kate, 403. 
 
INDEX 423 
 
 Myers, Jessie F., 398. 
 
 Myers, Capt. W. R., 360. 
 
 My Jolly Friend s Secret, 225. 
 
 National Hotel, 16. 
 
 National Road, 31, 50, 86, 160. 
 
 Neghborly Poems, 354. 
 
 Neill, Mrs. Frances, 35. 
 
 Newcastle, 82. 
 
 Newcastle Mercury, 333. 
 
 New Garden, 9. 
 
 Now We Can Sleep, Mother, 337. 
 
 Nursery Rhymes for Children, 128. 
 
 Nye, Bill, 53, 188, 233. 
 
 Old Fashioned Roses, 326. 
 
 Old Sweetheart of Mine, 267. 
 
 Old Swimmin Hole, 77, 80. 
 
 Old Wish, motif, 161. 
 
 Orlie Wild, 369. 
 
 Out to Old Aunt Mary s, 38. 
 
 Overland Route, The, 87. 
 
 Over the Hills to the Poor Farm, 355. 
 
 Pamona, 11. 
 
 Parker, B. S., 265, 323. 
 
 Pence, John W., 399. 
 
 Peter Bell, 61. 
 
 Philiper Flcuh, 218-19. 
 
 Phillips, Charles, 387. 
 
 Phillips, Wendell, 172. 
 
 Pierson, William M., 66. 
 
 Pioneer Days : activities, 5 ; characteristics of people, 1-6 ; food, 7 ; 
 
 land conditions, 2-3 ; philosophy of the pioneer, 4. 
 Plain Sermons, 225. 
 Plank Road, 19. 
 Poet s Realm, 217. 
 Poet s Wooing, 223, 225. 
 Post-Gazette, 221. 
 
 Queen City, 8. 
 Queen Victoria, 8. 
 
 Randolph County, 6, 7, 9, 10. 
 
 Railway Guide, 401. 
 
 Reed, Myron, 61, 70, 95, 218, 248, 269, 271, 278, 274, 317, 366, 390, 
 
 411. 
 
 Rhymes of Childhood 1 , 354. 
 Richards, Samuel, 360, 384. 
 Richmond Independent, 334. 
 Ridgeville, 9. 
 Riley: family, 6-9. Mother, Elizabeth Marine, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12; 
 
 character, 13; marriage, 14, 16, 17, 21; death, 71; influence 
 
424 INDEX 
 
 on Riley, 72-73. Father, Reuben Riley, 6; description, 12, 
 13, 15, 17, 20; in politics, 30; at war, 79, 105-07; ambition 
 for J. W., 181-82. Grandfather, Andrew Riley, 7. Grand 
 mother, Margaret Sleek Riley, 6, 10. Brothers and sisters: 
 Elva May Riley, 32; Humboldt Alexander Riley, 32; John 
 Andrew Riley, 31; Martha Celestia Riley, 31; Mary Eliza 
 beth Riley, 32. Uncle Martin Riley, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 28 ; in 
 fluence on Riley s imagination, 34, 86, 87. Marine ancestry : 
 occupation, 9; grandfather, John Marine, 8, 9; grandmother, 
 Fanny Jones Marine, 9, 11, 13. James Whitcomb Riley: 
 birth, 21; association with Dr. McCrillus, 108; association 
 with Home Sewing Machine Co., 148 ; association with Wiz 
 ard Oil Co., 193-215 ; description of Riley by J. B. Townsend, 
 212-14; education, 33-38, 39, 42, 50-58, 60-67; early reading, 
 90; 103; enters law, 188; enters newspaper business, 227; on 
 friendship, 250; growth in imagination, 28; in poetic spirit, 
 203-10; influence of Forty-Niners on Riley, 87-89; love of 
 nature, 40-47, 50, 51 ; love of music, 159, 170; as lawyer, 181- 
 192; as musician, 158-180; philosophy in early life, 84-87; 
 publishes first poem, 58; on private theatricals, 225; Riley, 
 McClanahan Advertising Co., 132 ; Riley s vision, 272, 
 
 Ripest Peach is on the Highest Tree, 218. 
 
 Robinson Crusoe, 59. 
 
 Rockingham, N. C., 8. 
 
 Romney, 207. 
 
 Rushville, 74. 
 
 Same Old Story Told Again, quoted, 220. 
 
 Saxhorn Band, 159. 
 
 Say Farewell and Let Me Go, 308. 
 
 Say Something to Me, 298. 
 
 Schoolboy Silhouettes, 48, 51, 59. 
 
 Schoolmaster and Songmaster, 62. 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 6, 64. 
 
 Shelbyville, 82. 
 
 Shower, The, 233, 274. 
 
 Silent Victors, 295, 353. 
 
 Singing Pilgrims, The, 209-10. 
 
 Skinner, J. J., 197. 
 
 Snow, Tom, 70, 96-102. 
 
 Some Observations on Decoration Day, 353. 
 
 Song of Parting, 298. 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, 35. 
 
 Stedman, Edmund Clarence, 384. 
 
 Stockford and Blowney Co., 143. 
 
 Stony Creek, 7, 12, 14. 
 
 Story of Life in the Woods, 45. 
 
 Strange Young Man, motif, 87, 186. 
 
 Summer Afternoon, 225. 
 
 Swing, David, 80. 
 
 Tailholt, 79. 
 
INDEX 425 
 
 Tales of the Ocean, 34. 
 
 Tanglewood Tales, influence on Riley, 87. 
 
 Tennyson, Alfred, 13. 
 
 Test of Low, 339. 
 
 Thanksgiving Day at Henchley s, quoted, 359. 
 
 Thorpe s Pond, 24, 45, 61. 
 
 That Little Dorg, 225. 
 
 Thompson, Maurice, 315. 
 
 Thornburg, William A., 10. 
 
 Tilt the Cup, quoted, 169. 
 
 Tom Johnson s Quit, 155. 
 
 To the Judge, 185. 
 
 Townsend, James B., 212-14. 
 
 Tradin Joe, 226. 
 
 Transfigured, quoted, 72. 
 
 Tress of Hair, 298. 
 
 Trillpipe s Boy on Spiders, 339. 
 
 Tune, quoted, 158. 
 
 Twain, Mark, 4, 58, 62, 70, 81, 88, 125, 172, 314, 412. 
 
 Unawangawawa, 339. 
 Union City, 197. 
 Unionport, 14. 
 Upper Sandusky, 204-05. 
 
 Vision of Summer, quoted, 274, 324. 
 
 Walden Pond, 45. 
 
 Walton, Ike, 274. 
 
 Wash Lowry s Reminiscence, 339. 
 
 Watterson, Henry, 353. 
 
 Wayne County, 9. 
 
 When My Dreams Come True, 294. 
 
 Whitcomb, James, 21, 30. 
 
 White Man s Flood, 1, 5. 
 
 Whitmore, Mrs. H. E., 127. 
 
 Whitmore, James, 145. 
 
 Wilfer, Rumty, 69. 
 
 Willard, Archibald, painter, 83. 
 
 Willie, or Prior to Miss Belle s Appearance, 354. 
 
 Windsor, 12. 
 
 Wordsworth, 27. 
 
 Wrangdillion, 339. 
 
LAST 
 
 THISE ^jtfCPED *** ^^ 
 
GENERAL LIBRARY -U.C. BERKELEY 
 
 -. - ; 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA UBRARY