Home

    One of the poems attributed to James Whitcomb Riley was never included in his published works.  It was called “The Passing of the Outhouse.”

     The older generations know what an outhouse is but perhaps the younger do not.  It is an outdoor toilet.  Every country home had an outhouse. 

     James Whitcomb Riley, being a humorist as well as a poet with a human touch, could not leave such a subject alone.

     An early “Preface” to a small pamphlet containing this poem says, “As a bachelor, he spent many of his leisure hours in hotels and clubs and was in no sense known as a stern or “straight-laced” moralist.”
     This little poem is not included in his books of poetry. “There were those among his more or less prudish friends who denied him the honor of its authorship,” according to one of the publishers of this poem in pamphlet form.  Others have made claim to it.  “However, there is little question about it because his cronies have told of the manner in which he would recite it – with all the humor and touching pathos which as a consummate author, he so ably displayed.”

(Illustrations from an early edition of the poem. Illustrator not identified.)

THE PASSING OF THE OUTHOUSE

James Whitcomb Riley

We had our posey garden

That the women loved so well.

I loved it too but better still

I loved the stronger smell

That filled the evening breezes

So full of homely cheer

And told the night-o’ertaken tramp

That human life was near.

On lazy August afternoons:

It made a little bower

Delightful, where my grandsire sat

And whiled away an hour.

For there the summer morning

Its very cares entwined.
And berry bushes reddened

In the teeming soil behind.

All day fat spiders spun their webs

To catch the buzzing flies.

That flitted to and from the house

Where Ma was baking pies.

And once a swarm of hornets bold

Had built a palace there.

And stung my unsuspecting aunt –

I must not tell you where.

Then father took a flaming pole

That was a happy day –

He nearly burned the building up

But the hornets left to stay.

When summer bloom began to fade

And winter to carouse,

We banked the little building

With a heap of hemlock boughs.

But when the crust was on the snow

And the sullen skies were gray,

In sooth the building was no place

Where one could wish to stay.

We did our duties promptly;

There one purpose swayed the mind.

We tarried not nor lingered long

On what we left behind.

The torture of that icy seat

Would made a Spartan sob,

For needs must scrape the gooseflesh

With a lacerating cob.

That from a frost-encrusted nail

Was suspended by a string –

My father was a frugal man

And wasted not a thing.

When grandpa had to “go out back”

And make his morning call,

We’d bundled up the dear old man

With a muffler and a shawl.

I knew the hole on which he sat

‘Twas padded all around,

And once I dared to sit there;

‘Twas all too wide, I found.

My loins were all too little

And I jack-knifed there to stay;

They had to come and get me out

Or I’d have passed away.

Then father said ambition

Was a thing small boys should shun,

And I must use the children’s hole

Till childhood days were done.

But still I marvel at the craft

That cut those holes so true;

The baby hole and the slender hole

That fitted Sister Sue.

That dear old country landmark!

I’ve tramped around a not

And in the lap of luxury

My lot has been to sit,

But ere I die I‘ll eat the fruit

Of trees I robbed of yore,

Then seek the shanty where my name

Is carved upon the door.

I ween the old familiar smell

Will soothe my jaded soul;

I’m now a man, but none the less

I’ll try the children’s hole.