Howland 4

JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY.COM

"Where we celebrate the child in us all"

News and of papers in neighboring towns. The general opinion in Greenfield, based largely on the advertising verses, was that Riley's poetry was " awful rot." The young poet's friends were not backward in telling him that such was the case.

"Your verses certainly are awful, Jim," said the editor of the rival paper to him one day.

Riley afterwards numbered that man among his friends, but not at that particular moment.

" If your poetry is so good," they would say to him," why don't the magazines take it? " This was before " Destiny " had been published, and Riley had no way of answering his critics except by falling back on the defense which has been used for time immemorial " that the publishers didn't know good poetry."

" I can write as good poems as good poets have written," Riley declared to his friends. He not only believed it, but he and the two events have been connected as proof that the one caused the other. It is not likely that the morals of a country newspaper were violently offended because one of its employes palmed off a hoax on the literary world. However that may be, Riley was lost to country journalism soon after the episode.
His next venture was in Indianapolis. The real poet had come out of this attempt to prove his equality with the accepted men of letters, and it was beginning to be recognized that a man who could write well enough to deceive critics into believing he was Edgar Allen Poe might write well enough to be accepted as a poet himself.
There had been a few before this, who, reading "What the Wind Said," published in 1877 in the Kokomo Dispatch, had been willing to grant it." Mr. Riley deserves to be considered a poet," said one reviewer when he read the following from this poem:

"I muse today in a listless way,
"In the gleam of a summer land,
"I close my eyes as a lover may
"At the touch of his sweetheart's hand."

This was one of the first real poems of Riley, buried as it was in the columns of the little country newspaper. His first dialect poem, " The Farmer Dreamer," also had appeared by this time, the first of his work to secure recognition outside of his native state.

With these experiences Riley went to Indianapolis, which has been his home ever since and the scene of his literary labor. E. B. Martindale, then proprietor of the Indianapolis Journal, is described by Riley as his "first literary patron."

the city. Half ord; afterwards privy, ecretary to President Harrison, had been made managing editor of the Journal shortly after Riley's appearance on its staff. He decided that a reduction in expenses was necessary, and that the official poet could leave without injury to the paper. He informed Riley of his decision and prospects were not bright.

It happened that a political convention was held in Indianapolis just at this time. One of the men nominated was a big fellow who never had made a speech in his life. When called on to acknowledge the nomination he arose, stammered, blushed and spluttered, finally blurting out :

" The ticket you've nominated here today is going to win when the frost is on the pumpkin and the fodder's in the shock."

The poem containing these lines had been published but a few days before, and the fact that it should have been seized on at a political convention, and that the applause of the crowd should show how largely it had been read, brought the Journal to see that Riley was a man whom it could not afford to lose. Hal-ford reconsidered his decision.

Soon afterwards " The Old Swimmin' Hole and 'Leven More Poems " was published in book form, and Riley's fame was made. His days of fighting against a perverse fate were over. Recognition of his peculiar genius was given freely in all parts of the country.

Each succeeding volume of his poems only increased the hold he had gained on the people. When the " Old Swimmin'

Hole" was published in the Indianapolis Journal it was accompanied by a letter from "Benj. F. Johnson of Boone county," the alleged versifier. Riley chose to have his dialect work go out under the name of this fictitious, illiterate character.

no edjucated man," but that he had " from childhood up tel. old enugh to vote anus wrote more or less poetry," which had been written, he said, "from the hart out."

The comment on the "Old Swimmin' Hole" was so favorable that " Benj. Johnson of Boone" was moved to send another poem with another letter to the editor. The " Swimmin' Hole" was published in the Journal June 17, 1882, Riley having been employed for some time by the paper before this poem appeared.

Most of his work has been done for the Indianapolis Journal and afterwards gathered in book form. He had been a persistent writer when working in the face of discouragement. Now, with success attending him, he became prolific. Some of his critics have said that he wrote too much, and in doing so wrote of trivialities. They bewailed the fact that he chose subjects which did not lend themselves to dignified poetic treatment.

It is this very fact which has placed Riley close to the people and has made him the most popular poet in the country. His "Neighborly Poems," "Rhymes of Childhood," "Green Fields and Running Brooks" treat of intensely human subjects—subjects that have a part in the

Not all is of this character. The poet has shown that he can use the purest English and use it with as great effect as any living writer. No pen ever became famous simply because of dialect and no great work lost value in after years on account of it.

The Hoosier dialect which Riley used in his poems is slowly disappearing, but without effect on the poems. They are understood and appreciated by those who never heard the dialect spoken and will be when all possibility of hearing it has passed out.

His poems will live because they are genuine human documents that speak to people in language which they can understand. So long as there is a remembrance

of the civil war, there will be eyes which will grow moist when they read " Good-by Jim, Take Keer of Yourself," the words spoken by the old Hoosier farmer too old to enlist, to his son, too young to go and yet willing.

So will they when they read "Armazindy "—the story of the small Indiana girl who struggles to fill the place of her soldier father, killed by an accident coming home from the war.

"Jes' a child, one minute—nex' "A woman grown, in all respec's "And intents and purposuz

Riley intended this poem, which was placed in a collection with seventy others and published in 1894, to be a sort of Hoosieric epic, and such it is.

Riley's poetry naturally divides itself into three classifications—dialect, childhood and so-called serious poems. It cannot be an arbitrary division, as a number of poems may be shifted from one class to the other. Under dialect might be grouped those works which deal with the life of the Hoosier farmer. The Hoosier

boy is the subject of the second. The third class are well illustrated by "That Old Sweetheart of Mine," " The Song I Never Sing" and " The Voices."

It may be believed easily that the poet himself would prefer that his name were made by the last class rather than the dialect poems and some of his best work has been done in a vein entirely free from humor.

As a tender bit of sentiment, "That Old Sweetheart of Mine" is as delicate as anything in the language. Simplicity and directness were two qualities earnestly and systematically sought by Riley, and in this little poem he has proved his success in finding them.

After Riley had been working for fifteen years in Indianapolis, he was persuaded to give a reading of his poems in Greenfield. This little poem was one among those he chose for the occasion. Before beginning it he said to his townspeople :

I want you to fancy the speaker a gentleman in his study in the evening, smoking his pipe, and, as the smoke rolls up and away, conjuring up many pleasant memories, he talks about his old sweetheart."

In that brief introduction, Riley did his own work an injustice. No one needs to be told anything of what the verses intend to convey. It all is written in them. Four lines give a complete description :

There is a note of Longfellow in the "Voices." Riley occasionally feigned the characteristics of other poets—not in imi‑

tation, simply a touch that recalled another man's art. Such a touch has ban found in :

"The voices- unknown— unguessed — " That whisper, that lisp, and murmur, ^"And will not let me rest."

The characteristic which Riley and Poe had in common have ban mentioned. Without them it is possible that Riley would not have found it an easy matter to have deceived the country with "Leonainie." A study of this resemblance has been made in the case of Poe "Black Cat" and Riley "Tale of a Spider."

One critic asserted that if a reader not familiar with either Poe or Riley were given the "Scenes from Politan" by the former and the "Flying Island" by the latter, he would pronounce both to be of the nine author. "The same similarity in conception and treatment is found in "The Black Cat" by Poe and the "Tale of a Spider" by Riley. There is one fundamental difference. Poe destroys the eye of the cat with fiendish glee. Riley destroys an arm of the spider by

accident. The maimed cat and the maimed spider annoy the authors of their misfortune on earth after that. Then Poe burns the cat and Riley crushes the spider.

That is an explanation, credited to Riley, which relates how he was prompted to adopt a "homely"styk of versification. It is said thas he had been away from home and was returning when an inspiration came to him. He looked up at the sky and decided that it was just as blue as that of Italy. The purling brooks "purled" just the same in Indiana as they did in France. The trees were just as green as they were in England. It came to the poet that it was not necessary to get away front the plain people to find the poetry of life.

There is greater likelihood that Riley's style was the result of a life study rather than the product of an inspiration. He himself has said that it resulted from his efforts to secure direct expression. As a child he too had an interest in home entertainments. He found objections to most of the standard selections adapted for such purposes then. He wanted a natural expression and he found this impossible in most cases on account of the inverted construction used by the writers. To remedy matters he wrote his own verses but concealed the ownership from the audiences. He feared that the selection, if known as his, would fail to meet appreciation.

He wanted his characters to say things naturally, and it required hard work to bring this result. He has disclaimed praise for invention.

material which he has gathered since his real work began. He never was in direct and daily contact with the farmers, but yet in close enough association to have his mind impressed by their characteristics. Quaint and curious sayings have been reported to him by friends, and he has made it a system to go in and out among the farmers, getting their viewpoint and method of expression.

The results of this study are shown in his dialect poems. The homely philosophy acquired in this way is well exemplified in the "Thoughts fer the Discouraged Farmer."

This farmer has the usual forboding about the weather and the possibility of crops being ruined, but he looks at the fields and the sky, the birds and the beasts, and his philosophy is contained in the lines:

"On the Banks o' Deer Creek" is another poem containing this philosophy of life—a picture of laziness and happiness

"And rag weed and fennel and rass is as sweet as
the scent of the lilies of Edon cf old."

A separate class under the dialect poems might be made, including those in which Riley treated subjects and places which were a part of his life in Greenfield. "Jap Miller," for instance, is living near Greenfield now, still" down at Martinsville," just as he was when Riley wrote the poem. He still "talks you down on tariff."

"He's the comicalist feller ever tilted back a cheer "And tuck a chew of tobacker kinder like he didn't keen"

They say in Greenfield that "Jap Miller aint worn $9 worth of clothes since that poem was written. Wants to stay jest like the character."

There also is "I Want to Hear the Old Band Play," which Riley wrote after a return from one of his trips from Greenfield when he found that the "old band" had been supplanted by a new organization, the "Ade 1phians," with better instruments and brighter uniforms.

No poem of Riley's is better known than the "Old Swimmin' Hole." He could not have chosen a theme which would find readier response in every man's heart than this, which pictures the delights of the cool river, spreading out a little to form a basin under the trees, reached by tramping down the dusty lane and across the fields.

"He jest natcherly pined, night and day, "Per a sight of the woods, cv a acre of ground "Where the trees wasent all cleared away."

poems of Riley which makes the reader live in their atmosphere. No one ever read "When the frost is on the pumpkin and the fodder's in the shock" without getting a breath of crisp Autumn that sent a tingling to the toes.

Riley and Eugene Field have considerable in common in their child poems—Field being the dreamer and Riley the realist in this field. The little poem which describes the delights of the small boy taken for a visit to his grandmother is complete in its appreciation of boyish joys.

There is the most delicate of pathos in the little poem of the boy with " Curv'ture of the spine "—in the story of how he sits in the window and watches the children at play; how they pretend to fight the "Little Man."

Riley also has used the negro dialect in the happiest manner. He has never been known in this class of work as he has been in the Hoosier dialect., "A Noon Lull" illustrates his ability in this line—the noon lull when the:

In whatever line Riley has essayed to work he has adhered closely to his original purpose to seek directness and the things which are naturaL And, being natural, his poems have taken the direct route to the hearts of the people.

WHEN Riley came to prosperity he purchased the home in Greenfield in which his family had lived—not the home in which he was born. This has been remodeled and is used, but not by the poet himself. He has remained a bachelor.

Time is doing a great deal to remove the landmarks which are portrayc4 in his poems. Visitors still can find the old swimming hole. The town has grown

The old one has been abandoned. The boys who go swimming have found a larger basin a hundred yards from the one of Riley's day, but the Brandywine is dwindling, and, sorrowful as it may seem to a lover of Riley's poetry, the boys of his native town soon may have no place for swimming.

The national road, the great artery along which the nation pumped strength into the west, has become the Main street of Greenfield, as it has in many of the towns through which it passed. Electric cars have taken the place of the prairie schooners with which Riley was familiar in boyhood.

Both the old band and the new band have gone. The old Masonic hall, the scene of many of Riley's amateur efforts in drama and recitation, stands at one corner in the town.

Four miles out of the town is the Sugar Creek ford, associated with Armazindy. It is related that Riley refused to have this poem illustrated, although the publishers wanted a frontispiece. Hepreferred that it be "plain readin? The difficulty was solved by a friend who happened to catch a snap shot of a country girl, just such a girl in appearance as Armazindy might have been, coming across the stepping stones of the ford, steadying herself with a pole.

people who are in his books are or were living. They were the people whose characteristics he had studied, with whose ways and manners of speech he was familiar.

It has been said that those who have not heard Riley recite his own poems have not appreciated them to their high-at. His ability as a reader has been proved. When he finally consented to appear before an audience in his native town the people came by the hundreds, packing the audience hall to hear him.

"Shucks, we don't really appreciate Riley," said a citizen there. "We all call him Jim,' and we all know him, and maybe we don't really know how great a poet he is. But there's one thing certain. He doesn't get out a book that everybody here doesn't read."

There has been great kindness shown on both sides, between Riley and his townspeople. In his younger days he found willing, helping friends among them. He in turn, now that he has reached prosperity, has not forgotten these friends. There is many a man in Greenfield who can tell of a ready hand held out in trouble. Riley has seen some of his old acquaintances through expensive sickness, has paid physicians' bills and has provided the necessities of life.

Riky's lecturing tours of recent have not been numerous. Neither has his literary activity been so great. As he still is a man in the flush of his genius, it may well be accepted that he has yet his work to do. He is not a burned-out fire which has displayed all the brilliance intended that it should.

The work of the poet in the future may be depended on to rival and excel that which he has given the world in the past. He is not a poet that people forget He would not have to write another line to remain constant in their hearts as the popular American poet.

However, it is assured that this popularity will be increased by the future product of his pen. Riley will always be the poet of the man who remembers that once he was a boy; of the city dweller who remembers that once his life was in the country; of the unfortunate

who recall that once their lives were prosperous; of the prosperous who recollect that once they were unhappy."So friends of my barefooted days on the farm, "Whether truantin city er not,

"God rover you same as he's prosperin' me, " While your past haint despised et fagot.'