Show hat A X L 7 14 e at P 4 I 1 1 I 1 J rea like jai A Y 0 AAA VIA fury P u 74 me men i tho knew james whitcomb W hit V 01 rite rhey y and his work intimately A 11 ti y tell something about A ex rf 14 r the great hoosier played F upon the heartstrings of a ir 14 nation roith his songs of f e hv h v A V a folk and manners ZO 41 ye I 1 A 4 a poetic genius t look took like one on the street you I 1 might guess him to be a business it man or a lawyer or a preacher or a photographer not since the time of edgar allan poe have real poets worn their hilr hiir long as in t the comic pictures or affected IV 1 the soulful expression nowadays 4 when a man weirs his hair like r A lp V spanish moss on a floridi i oak he Is suspected of being hard up and A 11 if he ech bits whit Is supposed to h way be his soul by certain shifting and staring of his 4 eyes he is pitied pitted as one whose mental gear gearing ln 14 vl p has sand in it 4 4 bliss cirman former editor of the independent 4 ind a poet of note was one of james whitcomb rileys wileys closest friends after the indiana e songsters death on july 23 carman told much T about riley to mr joyce 1 ilmer of the new lork ork z Q times magiline Magi azine zine and mr bilmer in turn told it L to the public some 30 years jears igo carman was introduced to 0 the already famous hoosier been keen bird I 1 ke eyes survey ed the tall frame of the new al and 4 A t young acquaintance gosh youre you re a stalwart sta lwirt amt aint yea he remarked grinning I 1 guess bour our parents must lave ave trained you on a tre lis Us ayls then is reported by mr kilmer carman went on to say the nest next time I 1 saw riley was wag in philadelphia I 1 went to re reid id before the broening Brov ning society and I 1 dont don t mind telling you that I 1 was w as scared seared to death when I 1 got out all alone on the stage and saw a thousand people staring up at me I 1 felt more I 1 ke running away thin 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 all right I 1 afraid to read my poetry to I 1 uey fley after the reiding ret ding was over riley tucked me under Us arm and bald no nov v lets get around to the hotel and we well 11 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 bunc tillous and scrupulous in all his personal habits ile always was immaculately dressed I 1 never knew him even to make so much of a conces sion to comfort as to put on a smoking jacket or a lounge coat but he ilk liked I 1 to go to bis his room and stretch himself on his 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 ly homely verse verge he ile delighted particularly in ridiculously bad newspaper verse riley liked to reid re id poetry aloud when I 1 went to his house of an evening he generally was wilt walt ing foi me with some favorite book ready to read aloud what sort of poetry did he prefer his tastes covered a wide range two poets to whom he was wis especially devoted were long fellow and I 1 hey iley liked longfellow s directness and sim slin the things that pleased him in swin baines work were the music and the deft crafts manship after riley had received his degrees from some of the colleges he seemed to feel feet that he ought to be known as a poet rather than as a humorist and writer of dialect verse he tried hard to live up to the name of poet and wanted his nonsense rhymes of his vagabond vagabondage ige forgot ten let his vernacular verse or as he called it his dialect verse was his chief contribution to literature riley was just a poet that was all he ever cared 0 be he ile was not interested in anything but poetry he knew nothing of politics he had not voted tor for 30 years and as for philosophy phil hy he had nothing but contempt for the modern thinkers there was something very pathetic and charm ing about riley s tenacity in hold n ng the serious poet pose his nonsense was just on one e of his ways of writing which h happened to prove poi pol ular ul ir when aen he got a chance to write in another way how eagerly he seized it and how persistently he clung to it I 1 his last years were the happiest of his life I 1 think he re had his own car and rode mound indianapolis and its suburbs every day generally taking with him some friend he ile was honored and loved and I 1 think he felt that life had been good to him piley s father was wis a lawyer his ills grandfather came to indiana from ills grand grind mother on his mothers side was pennsylvania i dutch his father was lrich piley had many prejudices he ile disliked poe very much he disliked poes character so much that he could hardly read his poetry of couise he must have liked poe s music and splendid metrical effects of course ou know the story of riley ta fa imitation of I 1 oe he ile h had hid id tal en a position on the stuff staff of an anderson An derbon ind paper and the editor of a rival paper hept kept ridiculing him riley wanted to get even with him so go he wrote hia his imitation of poe and had it publish ed in a i paper in another pirt part of the state with an elaborate story about the discovery of the at once it made a great sensation all over the country it made so great a sensation that kiley riley was terrified teni fled and feared that he would be accused of literary forgery meanwhile hile the edi eoll tor ter of the rival piper wrote no Is doubt our young friend riley will belittle tills poem and say it Is not the work of poe but betit it Is poe an 1 I 1 oe s best manner the sensation grew to such pro portions that biley riley I 1 ad to confess that he had written the poem and then the editor of the paper disel arged riley because he had not pub dished it in his paper then the indianapolis journal gave him a job which he held for years he wrote reams of nonsense verse and wrote up in verse the shops of the merth merch who advertised in the journal riley s first book was called the old swim min hole and leven more poems he pub fished it himself it sold so well that it was soon taken over by a publisher and passed through many editions riley s exquisite penmanship showed the care with which he wrote 0 originally rigi nally he wrote a care less and rather illegible script but he had bad so much difficulty in getting the printers to read his 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 any man s character he said Is best remembered I 1 suppose by some of his habitual gestures and expressions I 1 remember riley as very deliberate in his motions especially in hia his last ysais smooth shaven ruddy well groomed he looked like a benign old english bishop more than anything else mr don marquis of the new york sun aptly considers riles and his poetry from an entirely dlf different feren angle jamas whitcomb riley says he was the companion of fairies in arcady for the hoosier belongs to a race apart and while some are captured and broken to trade the gentle poet escaped and I 1 apt lpt pt always the vision of hidden things with these prefatory remarks the writer goes on with w ith I 1 Is essay there are fire two sorts of Ind indianan lanan the ordinary in alinan who is not so very different from the ohioan or the illinoisan Illin and the hooser the flo boosler osler belong not merely to a nee rice apart but to a separate species he ile Is human hut but with a difference he is aware of the kinship between human humanity ltv and the so called calle df lower ani mals an I 1 even tl e pl ints and streams st Rt reims on the one side and on the other side of the kinship of human ty v w th the elves when the moon turns the mists to silver and the 0 vis wall N all and the frogs wake up along the creeks in I 1 lal if es and the fairies saddle and bridle the fireflies and mount them and go whirring and fl flashing off in search of airy a ventures the hoosiers ste steal steil il out of the farmhouses and ham lets and creep down to the I 1 ottom lands and dance and sing and c cavort under tinder the summer stars chev do so secretly lodging the mere hu mans for secrecy Is the essence of their midnight al n asli s 1 revels in the daytime they pretend they are fire just ordin ordinary iry Ind indianans finans the r 0 brothers and mothers m may ay iy not realize that they are hoosiers but in indiana as elsewhere there Is business and the need to attend to it there must have been even een in arcala area iv some holy owned the flocks and berls her Is of arenia area iv ani them into I 1 utcher tut chers s meat an ani I 1 IP fp ta tier er i nd the sl RI ep hertig only piped on ta tie e suffer ii ce of their coi minded masters these hoosiers Hoos lers these wild bards and prancing long legged lovers of the moon are often captured and brol en and tamed to trade and industry by the more sordid citizenry they are joked to the handle end of the plow chained to the desk ha h the hundreds and thou sands they become clerks and salesmen and rail rall road presidents and novelists and business men of all sorts james whitcomb riley was a hoosier IIo osler who happily escaped he was never captured never enslaved the things hidden from the rest of us or reNe revealed aled only in flashes remembered but vaguely from the days of our own happy hoosier IIo osler dom doin he continued to see steadily be he lived among them f to the end and until the end was their interpreter to us pud rud come here to your uncle a spell says kiley in effect and show you not only a fairy but a fairy who has for the moment chosen to be just as much of a hoosier IIo osler as the raggedy man alan or annie or old kingry or the folks at a griggsby station the critics and the learned doctors of liter are already debating as to whether riley rile had imagination or only vincy it would be a terrible calamity to some of them if they said it wag a imagination and it was officially declared later to be merely fancy that Is the sort ol 01 mistake that damns a critic and macres the sons son and grandsons of critics meek hacked apolo getic gette young men and doubtless the point Is ex important for if a poet has image nation they bay his work Is significant and 11 he has only fancy his work Is not significant the chief merit of riley s dialect verse which Is the most popular part of his production and the part with which the critics chiefly con cern themselves Is its effectiveness as a medium for character portrayal whimsical lovable homel racy quaint salty pathetic humorous tender are bis his dialect poems essentially he ha hao shown us life as a superior writer of prost prose sketches might do adding the charm of his cyri cism but personally we never like him so well a when he Is writing sheer moonlight and music probably no poet who ever wrote english no american poet got more luscious lan ian guage thin riley A sweetness that Is not sc sugary that it cloys having always a winy tang for instance from the plying islands of th the night in lost hours of lute and sonin song when hen he was wag but a prince I 1 but a mouth for him to lift up s and drain to his most ultimate of stammering sobs and maudlin m wanderings of blinded b eath there is 1 no better evidence of the genuineness of or rileys wileys sentiment particularly in the dia lect elect poems than the discretion with which he h touches the pathetic pi chord when he touches if at all one of the most popular poems he evel wrote was old fashioned roses and one wort word too much one pressure the least bit too insistent would have made the thing as offensive as e van vaudeville leville ballad the taste which told him tc be simple and the sincerity which begat th the taste tiste sive save s ive the verses from the reproach his ills verses for children and about childr childree er could only have been written by a man whose love loe ind anderst noling of children was real fa foi ch eh dren ire quick to detect and repudiate any thing ot of the sort that Is pumped up for effect and they contributed enormously to the genera feeling of affection for him the regard of th thi children was in a way a testimonial to his pr p r youthfulness of spirit he was still theli theft playmate perhaps it Is an earnest of immor if immortality can be certainly love en dures longer than anything else and this mat with the childlike sweetness in his bis soul g e from us loved as few men have been |