Show I 1 ca az V 60 AOL q men jho knew james whitcomb m rite riley y and his work in intimately 1 I I 1 A I 1 ti matel y tell something about rj holh 4 vp agn 0 f the great hoosier Jho played x 1 A upon the heartstrings heart strings of a 1 1 tit jr nation aith 70 ith his songs of 1 l 1 common folk and manners A 41 r 4 a poetic genius look like one on the street you might guess him to be a business man or a lawyer or a preacher or a photographer not since the time of edgar allan poe have real poets worn their hair long as in the comic pictures or affected the soulful expression nowadays when a man wears his hair like spanish moss on a florida oak he Is suspected of being hard up and if he exhibits what Is supposed to be his soul by certain tain shifting and staring of his eyes he la Is pitied as one whose mental gearing has sand in it bliss carman former editor of the independent and a poet of note was one of james whitcomb wileys rileys closest friends after the indiana songsters song death on july 23 carman told much about riley alley to ajr mr joyce kilmer of the new york times magazine and mr air kilmer in turn told it to the public some SO years ago carman was introduced to the already famous hoosier Ho osler wileys rileys keen birdlike eyes surveyed the talf frame of the new and young acquaintance gosh youre a stalwart aint ye he remarked grinning 1 I guess your parents must have trained you on a trellis then as reported by mr allmer carman went on to say the next next time I 1 saw riley was in philadelphia I 1 went to read before the browning society and I 1 dont mind telling you that 1 I 1 was scared to death when I 1 got out all alone on the stage and saw a thousand people staring up at me me I 1 felt more like running away than doing anything else but when I 1 saw riley down in the audience looking at me in his quaint friendly way then I 1 felt feli all aft right I 1 afraid to read my poetry to ruey after the belding was over riley tucked me under his arm and said now lets get around to the hotel and well take off our shoes and get a chew of tobacco and be comfortable you know such remarks as this were all the more piquant because riley was so very punctilious and scrupulous in all his personal habits he always was immaculately dressed I 1 never in knew him even to make so BO much of a conces slon t to 0 comfort as to put on a smoking jacket jackei or a lounge coat but he liked to go to his room and stretch himself on his bis bed and talk and he never talked about anything but literature chiefly poetry riley had a great fund of knowledge of poetry and knew lots of out of the way homely verse he he delighted particularly in ridiculously bad newspaper verse riley liked to read poetry aloud when I 1 went to his house of an evening lie he generally was waiting for me with some favorite book ready to read aloud 1 what sort of poetry did he prefer his tastes covered a wide range two poets to whom he was especially devoted were longfellow and ailley liked Long fellows direct directness ne ss and alm simplicity city the things that pleased him in swin burnes work were the music and the deft craftsmanship after riley had received his degrees from some of the col colleges leies he seemed to feel that he ought to be known as a poet rather than as a humorist and writer of dialect verse ile he tried hard to live up to the name of poet and wanted his nonsense rhymes rhyme of his vagabondage forgotten yet Ms his vernacular verse or ids as ho he called it if his bis dialect verse was his bis chief contribution to literature riley was just juet a poet that was all he ever cared to be he was not interested in anything but poetry he L knew nothing of politics he had not voted for or 30 years and as for philosophy he hod had nothing but contempt for the modern thinkers there wag was something very pathetic and charming about wileys rileys tenacity in holding the serious poet pose his nonsense was just one of his buys of writing which happened to prove popular when he got a chance to write in another way vay how eagerly he seized it if and how bow persistently he clung to it I 1 his last years were the happiest of his life I 1 think he had his own car and rode around indianapolis and its suburbs every day generally taking with him some friend ile he was honored imd and loved and I 1 think he be fe felt lt that life had boa been good to him wileys rileys Rl Ri leys father was a lawyer ills his grandfather came to indiana from pennsylvania his grandmother on his mothers side was pennsylvania i dutch his father was irish juley had harmany in many any prejudices he disliked poe very much he disliked poes character so much that be could hardly read his poetry of course he must have liked poes goei music and splendid metrical effects ok of course coarse you yon know the story of wileys rileys famous imitation of poet poe re he had bad taken a position on the staff of an anderson ind paper and the editor of a rival paper kept ridiculing him attley j la at W J R t A X oai C ar r ay ff f wanted to get even with him so he wrote hla his imitation of poe foe and had it published in a paper in another part of the state with an elaborate story about the discovery of the manuscript at once it made a great sensation all over the country it made so great a sensation that riley was terrified and feared that he be would be accused of literary forgery meanwhile the editor of the rival paper wrote INo no doubt our young friend riley will belittle this poem and say it Is not the work of poe but it Is poe and poes best manner the sensation grew to such proportions that riley had to confess that he had bad written the poem and then the editor of the paper discharged riley because he had bad not published it in his paper then the indianapolis journal gave him a job which he be held for years he wrote reams of nonsense verse and wrote up in verse the shops of the merchants who advertised in the journal wileys rileys Rl Ri leys first book was called the old swim min hole and leven more poems ile he published it himself it sold so well that it was war soon taken over by a publisher and passed through ma many editions RIl cys exquisite penmanship showed the care with which he wrote originally he wrote a careless and rather illegible script but he had ia so much difficulty in getting the printers to read re ad it his is writing and printing his dialect verse correctly that he took up the study of penmanship he was careful always to get the dialect of one part of indiana as distinct from the dialect of any other part I 1 any mans character he said Is best remembered 1 I suppose by some of his habitual gestures and expressions I 1 remember riley as very deliberate in his motions especially la in his last years smooth shaven 3 ruddy well groomed he be looked like a benign old Eng english lisit bishop more than anything else mr dow don marquis of the nw new york sun aptly considers riley and his poetry from an entirely different angle james whitcomb riley says he was the companion oft of fairies in Arcady for ahe belongs to a race apart and while some are captured and nd broken to trade the gentle poe boef escaped coped el nod and kept always the vision of hidden things with these prefatory remarks he writer goes on cn with mth his essay there tire two sorts of Ind lanin the ordinary lildia indianan Ind lanan nan who is Is not io so very different from the ohioan or the illinoisan an and d the hoosier Ho osler the hoosier belong not merely to a race apart but to a separate species he Is human but with n difference he Is aware of the kinship between and the so called lower animals and even the plants and streams on the one side and on the other side of the kinship of humanity with the elves when the moon turns the mists to silver and the owls wall and tha th frogs wake up along the creeks and lakes and the fairies saddle and bridle the fireflies and mount them and go whirring and flashing off in search of airy adventures the hoosiers Hoos Hoo lers steal out of the farmhouses and hamlets and creep re ep down to the bottom lands and an d dance and sing and cavort binder r the summer stars they boso doso do so secretly dodging the mere humans for secrecy Is the essence of their midnight whimsical revels in the daytime they pretend they are just ordinary their own brothers and mothers may not realize that they are anre hoosiers Hoos Hoo lers but in indiana as elsewhere there IB business aad the need to attend to ta it there must have been even in areader somebody owned the dorks ond and herds of arcady and turned ithem into butchers ment and genther len ther and tie hp shep herdt only piped on od the ernT of their hicar minded masters these hoosiers Hoos Hoo lers these wild bards and prancing long legged lovers loverson of the moon are often captured and broken and tamed to trade and industry by the more sordid citizenry they are yoked joked to the handle end of the plow chained to the desk by the hundreds and thousands they become clerks and salesmen and railroad presidents and novelists and business men of all sorts james whitcomb riley was a hoosier who happily escaped he was never captured never enslaved the things hidden from the rest of us or revealed only in flashes remembered but vaguely from the days of our own happy he continued to see steadily lie lived among them familiarly to the end and until the end was their interpreter to us bud come here to your uncle a spell says riley in effect land and ill show you not only a fairy but a fairy who has for the he moment chosen to be just as much of a Hoos boosler leras as the raggedy man or annie or old kingry or the folks at griggsby station the critics and the learned doctors of literature are already debating as to whether riley hn had 9 imagination or only fancy it would be a terrible calamity to some of them it if they said it was vas imagination and it was offic officially lalLy declared later to be merely fancy that Is the sort ol of mistake that damns a critic and makes the sons and grandsons of critics meek hacked apologetic young men aad doubtless the point la Is ex cee important for if a poet has imagination they say eay his work Is significant and U H he has only fancy his work Is riot not significant the chief merit of alleys dialect verse which Is the most popular part of his production and the part with which afe critics chiefly concern themselves Is its effectiveness as a medium for character portrayal whimsical lovable homely racy quaint salty pathetic humorous tender are his dialect poems essentially he ha shown us life as a superior writer of prose sketches might do adding the chal charm chalm m of his lyricism aut but personally we never like him so well at a when he Is s writing sheer moonlight and music probably no poet who ever wrote english certainly no american poet goi got more luscious lan ian guage than riley A sweetness that Is not net sc sugary that it cloys having always a winy tang for instance from the flying islands of ahk night in lost hours of lute and song when he heimas was but a prince I 1 but a mouth for him to lift up and drain to his most ultimate of stammering sobs and maudlin wanderings of blinded breath there Is no better evidence of the genuineness nass of alleys sentiment particularly in the dla dia lect elect poems than the discretion with which h touches the pathetic chord when he touches it 11 at all one of the most popular poems he evet wrote was fas old fashioned roses and one wore word too much one pressure the lea least si bit too insistent Insi keni would have made the thing as offen offensive lve as A vaudeville ballad the taste which told him tc be simple and the sincerity which begot begat th the atas te save the verses from tho the reproach ohis I 1 his verses for children and about could only have been written by a man love and understanding of children was real bof fo children are ahre quick to detect and repudiate any thing of the sort that Is pumped up tor for effect and they contributed enormously to jo the general feeling of affection for him the regard ottha children was in a way a testimonial montel to hla his pr pep slating youthfulness of spirit he was still eull theli playmate perhaps it Is an earnest of immor twity if immortality can be certainly love en durs dures longer than anything else and this mar with the childlike sweetness in ma soul BOM from us lorca as alfew few men aen have bemi |