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OWADAYS a poetic genius doesn’t
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 shifting and staring of his
eyes he 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
•Riley's closest friends. After the Indiana
songster’s death on July 23, Carman told much
about Riley to Mr. Joyce Kilmer of the New York
Times Magazine and Mr. Kilmer in turn told it
to the public.
Some 30 years ago Carman was introduced to
the already famous Hoosier. Riley’s keen bird
like eyes surveyed the tall frame of the new and
young acquaintance: “Gosh, you’re a stalwart,
ain’t ye?” he remarked, grinning. “I guess your
parents must have trained you on a trellis.”
Then, as reported by Mr. Kilmer, Carman went
on to say:
“The next time I saw Riley was in Philadelphia.
I went to read before the Browning society, and
I don’t mind telling you that I was seared to
death. When I got out all alone on the stage and
saw a thousand people staring up at me I felt
more like running away than doing anything else.
But when I saw Riley down in the audience,
looking at me tn his quaint, friendly way, then
I felt all right. I wasn’t afraid to read my
poetry to Riley.
“After the reading was over Riley tucked me
under his arm and said: ‘Now, let’s get around
to the hotel and we’ll 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 punc
tilious and scrupulous in all his personal habits.
He always was immaculately dressed. I 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 liked to go to his room
and stretch himself on his 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 delighted particularly in ridiculously
bad newspaper verse.
“Riley liked to read poetry aloud. When I went
to his house of an evening, he generally was wait
ing for 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 wh o 3fe fie was especially devoted were Long
_ -fellow and Swinburne.
“Riley liked Longfellow’s directness and sim
plicity. The things that pleased him in Swin
burne’s work were the music and the deft crafts
manship.
“After Riley had received his degrees from
some of the colleges, he seemed to feel 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 vagabondage forgot
ten. Yet his vernacular verse, or, as he called it,
his dialect verse, w r as his chief contribution to
literature.
“Riley was just a poet. That was all he ever
cared to be. He was not Interested in anything
but poetry. He knew nothing of politics—he had
not voted for 30 years. And as for philosophy,
he had nothing but contempt for the modern
thinkers.
“There was something very pathetic and charm
ing about Riley’s tenacity in holding the serious
poet pose. His nonsense was just one of Ins ways
of writing which happened to prove popular;
when he got a chance to write in another way
how eagerly he seized it, and how persistently he
clung to itl
“His last years were the happiest of his life,
I think. He had his own car and rode around
Indianapolis and its suburbs every day, generally
taking with him some friend. He was honored
hnd loved, and I think he felt that life had been
'good to him.
“Riley’s father was a lawyer. His grandfather
came to Indiana from Pennsylvania. His grand-
Imother on his mother’s side was Pennsylvania
Dutch. His father was Irish.
“Riley had many prejudices. He disliked Poe
'very much. He disliked Poe’s character so much
that he, could hardly read his poetry. Os course,
'he must have liked Poe’s music and splendid
Metrical effects.
“Os course, you know the story of Riley's fa
mous imitation of Pee? He had taken a position
on the staff of an Anderson, Ind., paper, and. the
jeditor of a rival paper kept ridiculing him.’ 'W
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wanted to get even with him, so he wrote his
imitation of Poe, 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 would be
accused of literary forgery. Meanwhile the edi
tor of the rival paper wrote: ‘No doubt our young
friend Riley will belittle this poem and say it is
not the work of Poe. But it is Poe, and Poe’s
best manner.’ The sensation grew to such pro
portions that Riley had to confess that he had
written the poem. And then the editor of the
paper discharged Riley because he had not pub
lished 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 merchants who advertised in the Journal.
“Riley’s first book was called ‘The Old Swim
min’ Hole and ’Leven More Poems.’ He pub
lished 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. Originally he wrote a care
less and rather illegible script, but he had 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 re
membered, I suppose, by some of his habitual
gestures and expressions.’ I remember Riley as
very deliberate in his motions, especially in his
last years. 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 Riley and his poetry from an entirely
different angle.
"James 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 kept always the vision of hidden
things.”
With these prefatory remarks the writer goes
on with his essay:
“There are two sorts of Indianan —the ordinary
Indianan, who is not so very different from the
Ohioan or the Illinoisan, and the Hoosier.
“The Hoosier belong not merely to a race apart,
but to a separate species. He is human, but
with a difference; he is aware of the kinship
between humanity and the so-called lower ani
mals (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 wail and the 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 steal out of the farmhouses and ham
lets and creep down to the bottom lands and
dance and sing and cavort under the summer
stars. They do so secretly, dodging the mere hu
mans, for secrecy is the essence of their midnight,
whimsical revels.
“In the daytime they pretend they are just
ordinary Indianans; their own brothers and
mothers may 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 in Arcady—somebody owned the flocks
and herds of Arcady and turned them Into
butcher’s meat and leather, and the shepherds
only piped on the sufferance of their commercial-
THE BULLETIN, IRWINTON, GEORGIA.
minded masters. These Hoosiers, these wild bards
and prancing, long-legged lovers of the moon, are
often captured and broken and tamed to trade
and industry by the more sordid citizenry. They
are yoked to the handle end of the plow,
chained to the desk; by the hundreds and thou
sands they become clerks and salesmen and rail
road 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 Hoosier
dom, he continued to see steadily; he 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, ‘and I’ll show you not only a fairy,
but a fairy who has for the moment chosen to be
just as much of a Hoosier as the Raggedy Man,
or Orphant Annie, or Old Kingry, or the folks at
Grlggsby Station.’
"The critics and the learned doctors of liter
ature are already debating as to whether Riley
had imagination or only fancy. (It would be a
terrible calamity to some of them if they said
It was Imagination and it was officially declared
later to be merely fancy; that is the sort of
mistake that damns a critic and makes the sons
and grandsons of critics meek, hacked, apolo
getic young men.) ' And doubtless the point is ex
ceedingly important. For if a poet has Imagi
nation they say his work is significant. And if
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,
homely, racy, quaint, salty, pathetic, humorous,
tender are his dialect poems; essentially, he has
shown us life as a superior writer of prose
sketches might do, adding the charm of his lyri
. cism.
“But, personally, we never like him so well as
when he is writing sheer moonlight and music.
Probably no poet who ever wrote English—cer
tainly no American poet—got more luscious lan
guage than Riley. A sweetness that Is not so
sugary that it cloys, having always a winy tang.
For Instance, from ‘The Flying Islands of the
Night:’
‘. . .in lost hours of lute and song,
When he was but a prince—I but a mouth
For him to lift up sippingly and drain
To his most ultimate of stammering sobs
And maudlin wanderings of blinded breath.. . .
“There is no better evidence of the genuine
ness of Riley’s sentiment, particularly in the dia
lect poems, than the discretion with which he
touches the pathetic chord when he touches It
at all. One of the most popular poems he ever
wrote was ‘Old-Fashioned Roses,’ and one word
too much, one pressure the least bit too insistent
' would have made the thing as offensive as a
vaudeville ballad. The taste which told him to
be simple and the sincerity which begat the
taste save the verses from the reproach.
“His verses for children and about children
could only have been written by a man whose
love and understanding of children was real, for
children are quick to detect and repudiate any
thing of the sort that is ‘pumped up’ for effect,
and they contributed enormously to the general
feeling of affection for him. The regard of the
children was In away a testimonial to his per
sisting youthfulness of spirit; he was still their
playmate: perhaps It is an earnest of immor
tality, if immortality can be. Certainly love en
dures longer than anything else, and this man
with the childlike sweetness In his soul goes
from us loved as few men have been.”
MIWWIONAL
SIMM
Lesson
(By H O. SELLERS, Acting Director of
the Sunday School Course of the Moody
Bible Institute, Chicago.)
(Copyright, 1916, Western Newspaper Union.) f
LESSON FOR SEPTEMBER 10
THE ARREST OF PAUL.
LESSON TEXT—Acts 21:17-40.
GOLDEN TEXT—Thou shalt be a wit
ness for him unto all men of what thou
hast seen and heard.—Acts 22:15.
No study of the book of Acts Is
complete unless the teacher impresses
upon his pupils the opportunities for
living the Christian life in the normal
environment of the home or school,
at work or play. Deep interest at
taches to every detail leading up to
Paul’s visit to Rome. Therefore let
the teacher trace Paul’s journey from
Mileta to Jerusalem, which occupied
about four weeks, and took place in
the early part of the year A. D. 57.
1. The Arrival (vv 17-26). The Spirit
revealed to the disciples and to proph
ets that if Paul went to this city he
would be in great danger, and the
Spirit was not forbidding but only
teaching him for he knew Paul had
a great work to do in Jerusalem, and
that he only could do it. Everywhere
Paul went he “searched for” (v. 7)
disciples, with whom he tarried and
whom he enlightened in the way of
truth. Arriving in Jerusalem, he ap
pears to have made his home with
Mnason, outside of the crowded city,
thus being less exposed to danger and
finding a place of rest. At a public
reception (v. 18) Paul reports of his
work, and no doubt he laid his strong
est emphasis on what God had
wrought through him, among the
churches of Asia. The leaders of the
Jerusalem church received the gifts
Paul brought from the Gentile
churches, glorified God for what he
had accomplished, but saw clearly
that, to accomplish his statesmanlike
purpose, something must be done to
make clear that the false reports as
to Paul’s teaching were discredited
(vv. 20-22). They therefore resorted
to diplomacy (vv. 23-26). To the
many thousands of Jews gathered on
this festival occasion in the city,
some of whom were zealous for the
law, they declared first that Paul
taught all the Jews which were among
the Gentiles not to forsake Moses;
second, that he had not taught them
not to walk after the customs of
Moses. The facts were Paul obeyed
the Jewish ceremonial laws person
ally, as a matter of race, not as a
condition of salvation.
11. The Arrest (vv. 27-36). Paul's
attempt at conciliation resulted not
in peace but in more discord. Every
true servant of God is sure to be mis
represented, and it will not do always
to attempt to set straight all the lies
that are told about him. God will
take care of the lies and of our repu
tations. Most of the charges that
men, even Christians, bring against
one another are based upon “sup
position” (v. 29). It was not a new
experience for Paul to be mobbed. As
the maddened Jews dragged him out
of the temple he must have recalled
the treatment of Stephen in which he,
himself, had had a hand (7:57, 58).
How frequent it is that tve, ourselves,
are in due time treated in the same
way in which we have treated others
(Gal. 6:7). It was the intention of
the Jews to kill Paul at once without
a trial (26:9, 10). They fancied they
were doing God’s service (John 16:2).
This lesson is a striking example of
the utter folly and wickedness of mob
law. Paul’s time had not yet come,
and all the mobs on earth could not
kill him until God permitted it.
IH. The Arraignment (vv. 37-40).
Tidings of the riot came to the chief
captain, equivalent to our colonel
(Acts 23:26). Paul was bound with
two chains, one from each of his arm?
to a soldier, secured, yet left free to
walk with his guards, thus fulfilling
the prophecy of Agabus (v. 21). Mobs
usually have great respect for sol
diers, for they are Inwardly cowardly.
No sooner was Paul on the stairs
which led to the top of the fortress
than the mob, afraid that they were
about to be balked of their vengeance,
made a mad rush at him, with cries
of “Kill him; kill him 1” and Paul,,
unable in his fettered condition to
steady himself, was carried off his
feet and hurried off in the same path
his Master had trod (John 19:15)
and he was again to hear that cry.
(Ch. 22:22). During all this tumult
Paul had but one thought, how he
might witness for his Master, and
bring some of his blinded accusers to
a saving knowledge of Christ. Thus
it was that he asked for the privilege
of speaking, and most courteously did'
he make his request. He spoke to
the captain in the Greek tongue, not
in Hebrew, and great was the surprise
of the captain.
Practical Application. When we are
attacked, no matter for what cause, if
we confidently look for deliverance
and exercise self-control, God will
take care of us.
Such conduct is disconcerting to our
enemies.
Diplomacy is often dangerous and
misunderstood.
Circumstantial evidence is never of
great value.
There is, however, a desirable form
of diplomacy as when Paul addressed
the soldiers In his native tongue.
Paul’s principle was in essentials
firmness; in non-essentials, liberty.
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Don't Forget Ideals.
Don’t judge a man altogether by his
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THIS IS THE AGE OF YOUTH.
You will look ten years younger if you
darken your ugly, grizzly gray hairs by
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Begin to Plan Now.
The most of success lies in the plan
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WOMAN’S CROWNING GLORY
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Indeed It Does.
“Telephones are great time savers,
aren’t they?”
“Well, that depends upon who calls
you up.”
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“Do you know how the world goes
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“By the sun’s attraction.”
“Not quite. It is kept going be
cause every crank in it has a turn.”
Sties, Granulated Eyelids, Sore and Inflamed
Eyes healed promptly by the use of ROMAN
EYE BALSAM.—Adv.
His Characteristic.
“That Villa person seems deter
mined to make all the mischief he
can.”
“Yes, he’s just dying to make trou
ble.”
Skin-deep beauty is all right—if
the girl has the money.
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