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JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY.COM PRESENTS

By Clara Laughlin

PART 1

     MY acquaintance with Mr. Riley began by correspondence. I began it. A ridiculously young editor, with soaring ambitions and the least money imaginable, I was gravely trying to conduct the literary departments of a Chicago weekly. I had a yearly allowance for my editorial purchases, and so long as I kept within that sum I was permitted to have whatever my eighteen-year-old tastes dictated and my purse would buy.

I decided to have a Riley poem. To this end I skimped and saved until I had amassed the staggering sum of [twenty-five dollars, which, without any preliminary negotia­tions, I sent to Mr. Riley with a polite note requesting twenty-five dollars worth of his very best poetry. I had no idea of the temerity of my request. That twenty-five-dollar check looked big enough to me to buy "In Memoriam" or "Paradise Lost."

I got the poem. How many hun­dreds of dollars many another editor would gladly have paid for that poem I am now ashamed to think. But I wasn't ashamed then. I didn't know enough.

I was appreciative, though; and while Mr. Riley was no stranger to appreciation, he doubtless liked it as well as we all do. So, what with the passing back and forth of proof (Mr. Riley was a most punctilious reader of proof) and grateful acknowledgments, and so on, our correspondence began.

In June following that Christmas when I proudly presented my readers with a Riley poem filling an entire page, there came to me from the poet an urgent invitation to go clown to Winona Lake, Indiana, to attend the annual sessions of  the Western Writers' Association.

Who started this society I do not know, nor have I any idea if it is still in existence. But if it continues, it must be so different from the Association I knew, that I may, perhaps, be pardoned for writing of it in the past tense. It had its genesis in a day before the Indiana School of fiction was famed; in a day when editors and publishers had not yet begun to court the Middle West; when many persons who ought doubtless to have known better, still felt they must have their heroes tailored on Broadway, their heroines costumed on Fifth Avenue, and who tuned their very lyres to sing about New England's coast.  The readiness and heartiness with which James Whitcomb Riley would respond to an invitation from per­sons wishing to associate with Western writers can be imagined. No one needs to be told how earnest he was in his belief that literature should be indigenous; that it should chronicle and illumine the things its writers knew best. He was, to quote his own words, " the first of ten or fifteen vice-presidents" of the Association. He not only at­tended its sessions, but he brought to them a great many persons of distinguished literary achievement, who met the members and addressed them from the platform and who served still another purpose: they gave Mr. Riley fellowship and some brief respites from the palpitating poets and poetesses, who lurked in every clump of shrubbery to waylay him and read to him, as  he ruefully said, "peach-baskets full o' poetry." Every muse of the corn-belt carried the year's product to Winona, and each one hoped to read the whole output to Mr. Riley.

I am afraid that of the persons who were seriously working in a way to bring honor to Western writers, very few went to those sessions at Winona Lake unless Mr. Riley energetically rounded them up and drove them there. And most of the voluntary attendants were rather pathetic. But Mr. Riley was marvelously patient and kind. And I think I understand now, as I did not then, how he felt about those plaintive pipings; how he valued them, not for what they were about to confer on a waiting world, but for what he knew it meant to those various persons to sing or to create unrestricted worlds of fancy and desire. The seats were more than half-way down the long room, facing the door. Shortly after we had begun to eat our supper, I saw Mr. Riley come to the door and look in. Presently a bell-boy came and whispered some­thing in Mr. Marshall's ear. The answer was, "Yes, it is "; and a minute later Mr. Riley was walking down the long center aisle of the dining-room, his face lighted with the peculiarly winning expression I came to know so well as the pre­cursor of his quaint drolleries—the expression Sargent has immortalized in his portrait of Riley.

Not a word did the poet say to me by way of introduction: just looked at me with eyes that were dancing with whimsical humor; then, in that drawl of his which can never be described, much less repro­duced on paper, he demanded: "Where are your corkscrew curls?"

There had been nothing in those solemn letters of mine to prepare him for the chit of a thing who answered to my name; and the disparity between his preconception of me and the individual I turned out to be amused him more than a little. His mental picture of me had been that of a very spinsterly middle-aged Presbyterian person, whose lack of acquaintance with the world was pathetically evident—just the one to revel in those peach-baskets full of poetry ! He ad­mitted that his disappointment was acute. But he made the best of it and did not allow me to feel too chagrined.

There were programs every day, several of them—morning, after­noon, and evening—all designed to be very improving to persons who did not care who made the nation's laws but sought for_ themselves the higher responsibility of making the nation's songs. Sometimes we attended these; but I am afraid that oftener we played hookey.

Mr. Riley's respect for the earnestness displayed in those programs was genuine and, in a way, profound. But also he could not help knowing how funny they were. I recall one young school teacher from a small Indiana town who had either been assigned or had chosen for her theme, "French Novels "; which, ever was true, it was more incred­ible than the other could have been. It was a season of organdies, and this nice girl, who was Irish, and as modest as perhaps only a sweet Irish maid can be, was a-flutter with pale-blue organdie, ruffled and ribboned in the very best style of the local modiste. She was scared, too—not only because it was an awesome thing to be reading a paper before the Western Writers' Association, but because the sub­ject was so risque. She began by saying, earnestly, that she hoped no one present would think she had ever read any French novels. And then she told us all about them that a nice girl could impart to her literary confreres.

Another speaker who gave us great delight was a very tall, very slender," very superior youth, whom we called "the Kipling stripling." He had just discovered "Barrack Room Ballads," and he told about them with an air Columbus might have worn but probably did not when telling Queen Isabella what he had found overseas. Mr. Riley made some delicious pencil sketches of this missioner, which I ought to have in some dust-laden box or other.

I don't mean to affirm that all  the papers were as funny as these, nor to deny that we should not have liked them better if they had been. Most of them were as deadly dull as "papers" usually are. So, as unostentatiously as possible, we sat down by the lake's reedy bank and talked of shoes and ships and sealing-wax, or cabbages and kings, or went on truant trips to Warsaw, two miles or so away, a gay metrop­olis where one could purchase exe­crable soda water and much worse candy, and lead a lurid life far from the culture-craving crowd.

Once, at Warsaw, milder amuse­ments having palled, we sought a secluded spot—I think it was on the courthouse lawn—and indulged in a game of mumbledypeg, whereat the poet was amazing proficient. He was executing some breathtaking stunt in this and doing it with a gusto that "Buddy" Riley could  never have outmatched in his best Greenfield days, when he was rec­ognized by a Warsaw admirer. Well! As for me, I couldn't see that the admirer was to be pitied that glimpse, probably his only one, of the author of "Little Orphant Annie" and "The Raggedy Man." But Mr. Riley seemed to think it left something to be desired in the manner of meeting a poet. "May never meet another, you know," he complained comically, "and it's likely to color all his ideas of poets. Too bad!" I think we bought a watermelon to revive our drooping self respect. But I remember that it used to be no small problem to sit by the side of a road and eat a watermelon with dignity. And just as surely as we dispensed with the dignity, out of an adjacent corn­stalk or hollow stump would rise as by magic some one saying: "Oh! there's James Whitcomb Riley !"

He was one of the very few literary persons this country has produced who was almost universally rec­ognized when he walked abroad. I am not sure that even Mark Twain was so generally known—at least not before he began wearing white suits. Most writers come and go unnoticed by their fellowmen, unless they, if they are male, hap­pen to resemble a popular prize­fighter or, if they are female, a favorite actress. But Riley was sure to be known and acclaimed, any­where he went. And while he appre­ciated the interest people had in him, he was not inconsiderably irked by it, ofttimes. As, for instance, when I went with him once into a "gents' furnishing store," in a small Indiana town, the proprietor de­lightedly recognized his customer.

"The las ' time I see Mr. Riley," he confided to me, "was when he was a right young fella. He painted me a sign. I got it yet—wouldn't take any money fer it. Like to see it?"

I had heard a great deal about that phase of Mr. Riley's youth when he ran away from home and the study of law, and supported himself in his errantry by painting store-signs. So I thanked the "gents' furnisher " and said I should be glad indeed to see his treasure.

He produced it: an odd little specimen of fancy lettering, in bright blue.

"I 'member," the proud possessor said, "like it was yesterday, the day that sign was painted. Mr. Riley wore kid gloves while he was paintin' it."

At this point Mr. Riley vanished. When I rejoined him, half a block  away, he was fuming and fulminating in his own peculiar, picturesque style.

"The large, gentlemanly pearl-gray ass!" he cried. "He dreamed that fantasy on some dark, moon­less night, and he has told it so many times that he has made himself believe it. 'Why, a man couldn't paint with kid gloves on!"

I remember asking for illumination about the pearl-gray variety of ass.

"Don't know much about asses, do you?" he replied.

I admitted that I didn't.

"Well," he said, "a pearl-gray ass is one that has been an ass a long, long time."

He had a multitude of such ex­pressions. I recollect his saying a man had "hardboiled eyes," and describing a certain woman's mouth as "like a stab in the dark."

II

THE June days at Winona Lake were pleasant; but the evenings were memorable indeed.

There was a small "ordinary" off the main dining room, and there we were wont to gather—four, six, infrequently more of us—and banquet splendidly on crackers and cheese, pickles, sweet chocolate, and cold tea. I have sat at many a table, since, with the keenest and most charming personages of my day; but I have never heard talk so fas­cinating.

Mr. Riley was always the dom­inating spirit, his mood the key in which our pleasure was pitched. His sensibility to^- the moods of others was, at times like those, extraordinary; he seemed to know  infallibly when everybody was in time and tune, and when some one was ever so little off key. In the latter event he would keep the con­versation within the safe bounds of jocularity. He had to feel perfectly assured before he would venture upon any seriousness.

     There was one evening when we were but four at table: Mr. Riley, Mr. Frank L. Stanton, the Atlanta poet, Mrs. Whipple—a little lady into whose chaperonage Mr. Riley had consigned me immediately upon his discovery of my disconcert­ing youth—and I. Mr. Stanton's mind is an inexhaustible storehouse of great poetry, which he recites beautifully. Out under the trees that silvery June night, he had re­peated, on Mr. Riley's continued urging, poem after poem. His memory is particularly rich in Shakespeare; and, bit by bit as the talk ran on, he illumined it with snatches of this immortal scene and of that.

Just how the talk proceeded from Shakespeare to Mrs. Browning, I do not recall, but it was an easy progress. Mr. Riley considered Mrs. Browning's mind the most exquisite that had expressed itself in poetry since Shakespeare. At any rate, we were talking of her when we went indoors; and I, who had my thumbed and much-marked copy of her poems with me, went to my room and fetched it.

We had our bite to eat, still talking of her, and there came up the old, old subject of how much an artist must have lived and suf­fered in order to express himself with passion and authority. Mr. Riley said it was a matter not of extensity but of intensity: that in going to the depths of one great human emotion one reaches a point  of sympathetic understanding where all profound emotions become comprehensible.

In illustration of this he began to read from my copy of Mrs. Browning. First he read "Bianca Among the Nightingales," and oh, how he read it! His was truly a golden voice, comparable to none other that I have ever heard in man; it had extraordinary flexibility and intense, quiet passion.

As he read the ravings of poor, jealousy-mad Bianca, there was such wildness of pain in his tones as made us who listened ache with almost unendurable anguish. Then he read "The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point," and our tears flowed unrestrained.

"You see?" he said. "Having plumbed the deeps, in one great emotional experience, that little bit of a bedridden English woman was  equally capable of comprehending the hot jealousy of a passionate Italian girl raving for her faithless lover, and the wild agony of a black mother torn from her child. Yet she had never even seen a black woman. Below a certain depth all suffering is sympathetic."

On another night, Hector Fuller was a member of our little group. He was at that time literary and dramatic critic of the Indianapolis News, and Mr. Riley found much pleasure in his companionship. An Englishman by birth and a cosmopolite by experience, Mr. Fuller has a rich emotional nature, a broad and deep acquaintance with life and with letters. It was one of the absurdities of editorial par­simony that, as if reviewing all the new books and all the plays were not enough work for any one man, or any two, for that matter,

     Mr. Fuller must needs conduct a column of questions and answers, wherein superannuated subscribers might ask a multitude of futile questions about "A says So-and-So is right. B insists that it is Thus­and-So. Please settle dispute." One of Mr. Riley's pastimes was to think up the most preposterous queries, and write them to the News in a feigned hand; or, when in company with Mr. Fuller, to sit pondering things to propound to him. As, for example, with face serious, innocent, questioning: "Fuller, which has the sanction of the best literary usage—them molasses, or those molasses?" And so on.

Mr. Riley loved to "play pretend" as much as any child of whom he ever wrote. Something so struck his fancy, on one evening when Mr. Fuller was with us, as to make him recognize in Fuller an erst while butler, Tompkins, who had stolen his master's good clothes and gone masquerading as a gentleman. Without a second's hesitation, Mr. Fuller pleaded guilty to being indeed Tompkins, begged for mercy, and, having been pardoned the theft, rose from his seat and resumed " butlering."

He is a mime of rare ability; I do not know whether he had, at any time in his varied career, ex­perience on the stage; but he has not only the appearance of an able historian, but the gifts of one. His mien, his manner, as Tompkins, made the characterization as artistic, in its way, as Mr. Gillette's butler in "The Admirable Crichton."

Tompkins' "gentleman" (Mr. Ri­ley) was, it seemed, the Honorable E. Harold Ashby of Hightowers, Newby, Scrapshire, England; and I was Lady Glendower.

Our food, elegantly "butlered," was of the same Warsaw grocery store, paperbag variety; but the service was distinguished, and the occasion had an air of exclusive English aristocracy, except that, in spite of our heroic efforts at aris­tocratic suppression, we were far merrier than any supper party of English aristocrats I have ever known or "heard tell of." Tompkins had lapses of dignity, forgetful moments when he joined in the conversation. But his quick resumption of the Tompkins air, on the Honorable Ashby's incensed reminder, was such clever playing that I am afraid some of us may have encouraged him to forget his place.

I find a letter dated several years later, which begins:

" DEAR LADY GLENDOWER:

I go at once with your message to
Tompkins, who, I learn, has taken service
 

with some titled personage on the staff of one of our daily papers here, and I hasten to assure your Excellency that, even though a serving man, Tompkins is a most loyal adherent of your Ladyship's cause wherever cast, and I have the honor to forecast your faithful servant's continued fealty to any claim upon his services that it might please your Ladyship, through me, to designate to the worthy rascal."

Mr. John Curtis, secretary of the Bobbs-Merrill Company, Mr. Riley's publishers, was very often a member of these supper table groups, and always entered with delightful spirit into the occasion, whether grave or gay. Mr. Riley had a warm 'affection for Mr. Cur­tis, whom he nevertheless teased with rare unction. Another friend of the poet, who came to Winona Lake at his behest, was "Bob" Burdette. I do not remember having seen Mr. Riley in the company of any other man who more perfectly evoked the personality of Riley or more richly responded to it. When they were together, what one didn't think of, t'other did.

There was an evening, during that first visit of mine to Winona, when our supper party included Mr. Riley, Mr. Burdette, Mr. Curtis, Mr. Wil­liam E. English of Indianapolis, Mrs. Whipple, and me. Mr. Riley's brother-in-law and sister, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Eitel, may have been there, and the poet's other sister, Mary Riley Payne. I am not sure. But I remember the menu, perfectly. It was: cracknels, leathery American cheese, German sweet chocolate, a kind of sweet pickled cauliflower—out of a barrel in the Warsaw grocery—and a very thin lemonade, which Mr. Riley made and for which we had only three lemons. But Mr. English, who has sat at many tables where the nation's cleverest  talk 'is supposed to flow, said he had never heard, anywhere, the equal of the table talk that night.

That fall Mr. Riley wrote me:

" Mr. Burdette was here two days ago—from here went to Chicago, where he was to meet Mr. Curtis. By this they've called upon you, doubtless, as Mr. B. told me he meant to write some Christmas verse for you. Wish it had been possible for me to have gone with the lovely man—then I know you'd 'a' saw him. Speakin' o' language, do you recall the inspired blind wood sawyer's lines?‑

` He was a sawyer—blind from birth,
Tho' otherwise without a flaw,

While no one ever saw him see, Many have seen him saw.' "

III

     In the winter following my first visit to Winona, I went down to Southern Indiana to spend a weekend with Mrs. Whipple: who lives in Rockville, near Terre Haute. On Monday morning we took an early train—oh, a very early train; at six o'clock, or thereabouts—for Indianapolis, where I had never been. Mr. Curtis met us at the depot (Mr. Riley loathed trains, depots, and—as he would have said —"all appurtenances thereof ") and escorted us to the Denison Hotel, where he left us, saying that he and Mr. Riley would call at one o'clock to take us to luncheon. Mr. Riley was very proud of Indianapolis. He loved the spirit that characterized it in those days.He reveled in its homeliness (I use the word as the English do, and not as we prostitute it) and its standards of aristocracy and democracy. He told me, rhapsodically, how ex-Presidents and Vice-Presidents of these United States, might be seen, daily, on the beautiful, broad, superbly shaded residence streets of Indianapolis, jogging downtown in the backseat of the modest family surrey, driven by the colored man-of-all-work, and bound for the big market to select chickens and fresh vegetables, before going to their law offices. He told me how, at evening gatherings in those fine, old-fashioned homes where the best of everything was cultivated and appreciated, one might meet a young lady who had that day sold one something over a counter downtown. He believed that Indianapolis was a city where gentleness and fineness of spirit, of mind, rated one—not money in bank, or opulent possessions. I am afraid he felt some changes before he died. But in those days, at any rate, it was as fine-flavored a com­munity as one could wish to be in.

Mr. Riley expatiated on this, as we set forth from the Denison that cold winter noonday, to go to lunch. I was interested,: of course; but I had breakfasted about five, and I had another interest which was—I may as well confess—paramount just then.

After we had walked about the snowy streets for some time, we halted and Mr. Riley and Mr. Cur­tis debated where they would take us to lunch. We listened politely, but hoped it was nearby. Their argument grew spirited, then acri­monious. At length they com­promised on some place, and we  went thither. On the very threshold their disagreement broke out afresh. We assured them that we were sure this place would do. But, no ! Mr. Curtis discovered in himself an un­conquerable aversion to it. We resumed our quest. But the next place proved to be one where Mr. Riley had been cavalierly treated, and he would not have me get my first impression of Indianapolis there. I wanted to tell him that no place which contained real food would impress me as less lovely than the very courts of Heaven. But I didn't. About two o'clock we halted before a tall office building. The gentlemen, who by that time were scarcely on speaking terms with one another, assured us that the Indianapolis Commercial Club had its quarters on the top floor of this building, and that the club owned a portrait of Riley which I might like to see. I have never been less eager to see any portrait; but we went up to the Commercial Club. We discussed the portrait. I mean, somebody discussed it; I am sure I didn't.

Finally, Mr. Riley said : " Perhaps you're hungry? " .

I pleaded guilty. Thereupon Mr. Curtis disappeared, to see if we could get lunch at the club. He came back from his tour of inquiry and reported that while the regular luncheon was over, we could get a cold "snack." By that time I was reconciled to anything that could even optimistically be called food. So we repaired to one of the private dining rooms—where we found a perfect bower of American Beauty roses, and a luncheon which had been ordered days before and included every delicacy in and out of season.

We sat there until six p.m. I cannot definitely recall any of Mr.Riley's table talk that day. But I remember that two colored waiters were in attendance, and so great was their delight in Mr. Riley's stories that neither of them was willing to leave the room to fetch a new course from the kitchen, an argument which promised to be­come at any moment a "scrap," ensuing each time the . necessity arose.

Afterwards I went often to Indian­apolis, and had many memorable times. Usually I stayed with Mr. Riley's elder sister, Mrs. Eitel, a rarely lovely woman 'who idolized her brother Jim and never tired telling me stories of his boyhood. We made several excursions to Greenfield, the little town twenty miles or so from Indianapolis where the poet and his brothers and sisters were born and grew to adult years.

To visit Greenfield with the Rileys was an event indeed. We went to their old home, which sits back from the National Road along which the picturesque prairie schooners used to pass with Em­pire's westering star, while Buddy Riley hung on the gate watching them out of wondering big blue eyes. We saw "Th' Ole Swimmin' Hole"; walked "Up and Down Old Brandywine"; called upon the apple-cheeked, sweet-souled old gen­tleman, Captain Lee 0. Harris, who had_been Jim Riley's school­teacher; and took due note of the schoolhouse where Riley, like the bard of Stratford, got not only his first principles of learning, but also his first taste of the drama's delights. It was there, he told me, that he saw his first play, "The Corsican Brothers." The rapture of that occasion left an ineffaceable memory. Years later he saw Henry

Irving in the same play. He sat in Irving's own box at the Lyceum Theatre in London, but he found the play "strangely altered," and for the worse, despite Irving's talents as player and producer.

That Greenfield did not suffice to hold Jim Riley was not to be won­dered at; but he always loved it tenderly, and I am sure he was much gratified by the way it loved him.

Among his townsfolk, two who particularly engaged his interest were Mr. Will Vawter, an artist, and his sister, Miss Clara Vawter, a delicate, sweet girl with a mind rich in pretty whimsies and quaint childlore.

Mr. Riley encouraged Miss Vawter to write. And in a letter to me he says:

. . . Just now I've another glory for you,—a bran'-new, shore-fer-certain Child-40

author—or, rather, a truly gifted writer of children and for them. In proof of which I proudly enclose a sketch by Miss Clara Vawter—a young sister of the artist of my last book. And now I want you not only to be rejoiced over this deliciously original and wholesome little story, but to send its most deserving author an ' appreciation ' —only, don't use that word—they've overworked it, East, so the sweat fairly stands out on its fureed !—What a joy and what a help it will be to her! Possibly you may have met her at my sister's. If so, you'll not have forgotten her. Indeed you should know each other steadfastly. Do send her a cheery hail."

And when I gladly complied, he wrote:

" Oh, I knew our Genius would appre­ciate a hail from you. Her letter is pure nigh so good I don't know which of you ort to feel most proudest of th' other'n! There's where such real letters as you can't help writing aren't wasted—and I do want you two signed friends for all your blessed literary lives. I have only mainly known  her as a child, and now—while it's a be­wildering thing to realize—she is a brilliant young woman every way, save, I fear, in promise of robust health. That, how­ever, might be a condition happily bettered by cheery, wholesome friends and their heartening influence and advice. Not that I gather an impression of a melancholy temperament or tendency—but the con­trary,—so that sound health, to her, would be more the result of wholesome mental food than that of the bread and butter variety. Lord! how I'd like, just now, to be a glitteringly keen and subtle-minded, diplomatic C. E. L.! Then what a lovely, lovable task were mine of developing this like gifted sister—and how proud I'd be of the prompt result of that gracious interest, seeing her surely coming into her own. . . . But here! I'm not only preaching but writing you a letter. For­give both, and know always I mean better than I do."

It was my personal happiness and editorial good fortune to publish in our weekly a number of Miss Vawter's stories of children, which were soon thereafter collected between covers and brought out as a book.

" Have seen Miss Vawter's prospective book," Mr. Riley wrote me, " very beautiful in type press and paper,—also her brother's design for cover, no less superb, alluring and original. . . . Did you name the book? It sounds so, as it's a happy title. Mr. Eitel tells me they hear from her and that she writes cheerily of her being improved and of final recovery, which, pray God, will be brought about."

But she went Away—that sweet-hearted, brave souled girl. I am rich in a score of charming memo­ries of her, which must not narrate here, since these are reminiscences of her friend and mine. But one little flash of her spirit is so like him as well as like her, that I will give it. We had gone to a "show" given by some children, a sort of "Billy Miller's Circus Show" such as Riley wrote about. At the entrance we were told that admission for two would be ten pins. Miss Vawter and I could not muster that number—not even by being reckless of consequences. "Could you," she earnestly asked the door­keeper, "could you change a hat­pin?" He was not sure what the current rate of exchange for hat­pins was; but after some grave consultation about it, we were ad­mitted.

I ventured, about that time, to ask Mr. Riley's opinion of some verses written by a friend of mine. This girl had had a pretty severe struggle against poverty and other adverse circumstances. She wrote well enough so that it seemed a great pity she should not write better. Dr. John Finley, then pres­ident of Knox College, made it pos­sible for this girl to go there, at no expense, for a special course in  studies she needed. And it was my happiness to help her get together a wardrobe suitable for col­lege life; some articles of this modest outfit had been mine, and to a cer­tain woman in Galesburg they looked far too modish "for a girl every­body knows is here on charity." The remarks of this woman so stung the sensitive spirit of my friend that she was of a mind to flee Galesburg and forego all that Knox College offered her. I thought that if I could assure her Mr. Riley found her talent worthy, she would stay and endure the unjust crit­icism of her clothes. I explained the situation to the poet, who re­plied as follows:

" Truly you deserve all praise and wor­ship for your righteous championship of the gifted girl. Her poetry is genuine—both the serious and dialect. Only, she must not be celebrating herself (indirectly) as she seems to be doing. If her present position be such as to hamper her inde­pendence, let her accept the condition thankfully—not combat it petulantly. In other words, let her give the true evidence of her divine endowments by cheerfully taking what the gods allow—smiling at the small measure, but not conceitedly. It seems to me, had I, as she, the large, gentlemanly, arrogant, pearl-gray-ass-of-a­woman in ostensible charge of my immortal soul, that I'd simply have fun with her by seeming to be influenced and controlled by her. That's the way to extract her fangs and render her utterly harmless. Of course, with all the fervor of my heart I damn such a woman and wonder at God's lapse–evident in her creation—but only let our genius think how she herself has escaped being such a personality—giving, thrusting upon God her thanks by the hand­ful!

" This morning I couldn't write—as I so wanted—knowing and fully sympathizing with the spirit of your last, and its enclos­ure. Spare yourself all you can, I would say, in this regard. We all have inescapable worries, as God means it,—but we get ' out o' plumb' assuming those which belong to others. We think we help, but, nine times out o' ten, we simply hurt. This is not a doleful way of looking at things —it's a fact. When you are old—as I am --then at last—centuries beyond your present youth—you will realize the stark, bleak fact of this unlovely text.

" But how shall I write the poet in praise of her work, unless she invites my comment? Most gladly will I testify in her behalf, but think the motive should be sagely considered and provided by her. Wouldn't the really effective way be for her to ask my opinion? Then, with feasible occasion, I might offer the same without it seeming gratuitous. In any event be assured I am yours to command even as you will . . . And so, in the face o' the sun by day

Or the face o' the moon by night,
I am yours—yours—yours to command alway‑
As you shall desire so I shall obey,
Till you'll be amused and, smiling, say,­' Now isn't he polite! ' "

IV .

MY first published book—for I had written books since I was ten—was a yearbook or, as it used to be called, a birthday book, compiled from Riley's poems.

" Tennyson's idyl, ' The Golden Year,' Mr. Riley wrote, " suggests what seems to me a lovely and apt name for your new book. Credit, too, for same may be in­directly given the master by some stanza of his poem to lead off with—as the en­closed, for instance, hastily set down last night. Get poem and look it over musingly. And do agree it's a be-you-tiful title! "

I did agree. And "The Golden Year" it was, and is. For a number of months his letters were full of allusions to the momentous work; if it had been the Century Diction­ary or the tenth edition of the EnCyclopdia Britannica, Mr. Riley could not have treated my editor­ship with more respect.

Now it was: " The Golden Year rounds on—and is going into ' proofed ' type­script ere it's trusted to the printers over­seas."

And so on, until: " Just got sight of your new book, and find it so beautiful a volume—so fine of dignity and character—that I must write you my instant con­gratulations. Ah! but the book is ex­quisite! "

But later, the inevitable! " I somewhat grimly smile, calling your attention to pages 56 and 118, where you've placed one and the identical stanza—i t was so unearthly beautiful! "

Nevertheless, I became at once his "favorite author," and so re­mained for some years, during which I was, as he said, " the sole living author whose only book is all about me." His letters are addressed oftener to "My Dearest F. A.,"

"Dear Author Mine," "Dear My Favorite Author," than in any other way. Once it was, " Dear F. A. of the Universal World! " pref­acing a letter which began: "Now you are simply a supernal being, beatified in your opulence of grace and loveliness. Of course you're inspired—'nothing short!' " I don't remember what I had done, but it seems to have been something, for "two certainly highly gifted young people" whom Mr. Riley was trying to help unto their own.

It must have been the valuable experience of transcribing so much lovely poetry that emboldened me to my one and only venture in verse. I wrote a birthday sonnet to Mr. Riley. This was not re­markable—but my temerity in sending it to him was.

" How can I ever answer your last letter? " he wrote. " And the poem! Iam still dazed with the revelation of this peerless gift of Song in your already overbrimmed possession, and yet mechanically must cry out to you:

"Ware shoal! 'ware shoal! 'ware shoal! ' not by any means that it isn't good, but that it is."

Yet, when I inscribed for him a copy of "The Golden Year" with some of his own lines, he chided me:

" Why didn't you inscribe it with lines of your own verse? which same I know you can do with both force and grace. And here again I charge you not to neglect your serious exercise of that poetic gift, for you know not to what high worth it may develop in your chosen field of letters—indeed, that expression might in time come to be your best,—as, see vol. ' In this Our World,' by Charlotte Perkins Stetson,— a truly ' mighty line ' she has just given the world, and which I've been trying to give you, but the booksellers can't secure even one copy of it. If you can do so there in Chicago, swoop down upon it with wildest beak, talons, and rush of wings!

Later,- some time, then, I may tell you how, four or five years ago, I met the then unknown poet in Oakland, California, where she was one of our happy party on a visit to Joaquin Miller, with whose old mother and himself we joyously dined. So, whatever you do (since I can't) get at once a copy of Mrs. Stetson's poems: ' In This Our World."

Two weeks later he urges: " See at once splendid character comment in Feb. Current Literature' of our Stout Stetson, as with eagle-eye she looks on the Pacific,' holding the proud World o'er it by the tail! Do find where she's to be found and write her, and send her address to me."

TO CONTINUE TO PART 2