Raleigh High School - Excelsior Yearbook (Raleigh, IN)

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his day. His taste was for variety, for dipping into hooks here and there, for reading more interesting literature than text-books, for wandering at will. Where over the meadow is sunshine and shadow, The meadow larks trill and the bumble bees drone. Echoes come down from that bygone time which indicate that he was something of a trial to his teach- ers, who did not comprehend that this child-mind that would not be interested in the lesson of the text- book was feeling its way to more important things and storing up a folk lore and absorbing nature 's secrets that were afterward transmuted into song and story by the alembic of his fancy. For all of his boy companions he must have been a lonely little fellow, certainly one who took few into his confidence. His mother was sympathetic and comprehending, but she died while he was yet a child and no one ever took her place. To that mother he has paid many a tender tribute in his verse. Of her he says: Oh rarely soft the touches of her hands, As drowsy zephyrs in enchanted lands. But this boy of many gifts, stumbling his Way as best he could along the road to manhood, and find- ing it sometimes a difficult and bewildering path, found in one teacher an appreciative friend. Mr. Lee O. Harris. a teacher of many years, was a type none too common in the educational field at any time. He was a man of fine quality, with a love for literature and a poetic ability of his own that no doubt made him the quicker to discover signs of intellectual promise in others. At all events, he was discerning enough. to see that young Riley could not be pressed into the same mold into which his companions litted, and was wise enough to allow him much latitude in his school pursuits. He proved to be guide, philosopher and friend, to the lad and in later years a valued companion. Riley no doubt gained much inspiration from him. Another educational influence was the village newspaper office, whose fascinations were early dis- covered, and about which he loved to linger. A country newspaper is an excellent school, and it was perhaps in the dingy office that his first lit- erary ambition was born. Though he developed a writing and rhyming knack early, he was, after all, slow in 'fiinding him- self. He made various ventures--a trip with a company of strolling players, another with a travel- ling doctor for whom he painted signs and adver- tisements, and a tour as a sign painter with a part- ner or two being the chief undertakings. One reason for these wanderings was the verdict of the family doctor that he, ought to be out of doors a good deal because of his poor health. He had tried reading law with his father, but the under- taking soon came to an end. He had a distinct talent for painting or drawing and thought of being a portrait painter, his experiments in that line being on the back of wall paper, which he bought for the purpose. Then he descended in the artistic scale and learned ornamental sign painting from an old German. These travels, which were in the company of young men like himself, of good habits and good family, continued for several years. They widened his acquaintance with all sorts and conditions of men, and his insight into character, and his quick eye for originality in others must have caused to Page thirteen

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'51 V l i Page twelve James Whitcomb Riley AMES WHITCOMB RILEY is a distinguished il- lustration of the truth of the saying, for he is emphatically not a poet of the schools, though many of his productions are of classic beauty and perfection. Biographical dictionaries have fixed 1853 as the date of his birth, but people who have known him long dispute the correctness of the date, some insist- ing that he opened his eyes on the world three or four years earlier. As it is, because of the poet's whim not to satisfy curiosity on this point, he lightly remarks, I'm on this side of liftyfl and by not knowing which side that is, 1853 will probably stand in the books. Unkind time has interfered with his physical activity in recent days, but the alert mind, wise with its accumulations of life 's experiences, is ready to forget its knowledge and he has.within him the deathless spirit of the child-greatest gift of the gods. What he once wrote of another can be truly said of him: Turn any chapter that we will, Read any page, in sooth, VVe find his glad heart owning still The freshness of his youthf' The place of the poetls birth was Greenfield, In- diana, a thriving little city now, but back in the mid- century it must have been a typical country village. The little fiaxen-haired, bare-footed youngster, ab- sorbed with the sports of childhood, did not give much promise then of his later career, but back to that life the inspiration of many of his poems can be traced. Did he have Greenfield in mind when he wrote of Griggsby's Station, 'tBack where we used to be so happy and so pore ? Did he mean Green- field when he wrote The little town of Tailholt is good enough for men? It was there that he knew the delights along the bank of Deer Creek , there he went up and down the Brandywine , from there that he went Out to Old Ant Mary's. Again and again his childhood is recalled: VVhen life was like a story holding neither sob nor sigh, In the olden, golden glory of the days gone by. Mr. Riley spent his boyhood and young manhood in Greenfield, following the pursuits common to the youth of the town, finding companionship in his two brothers and two sisters-only one of whom, a sister, beside himself now survives of the family and among the boys who appear in the verse of his later yearsg atttending school and indulging in the pranks and practices known to all village youngsters. This freckle-faced, fair-haired lad was by no means a model pupil in school, but was what a mod- ern teacher would class as a problem, Yet, even then, his peculiar characteristics were manifesting themselves. He was shy, sensitive, self-conscious, lacking certain qualities that people call practical as skill in mathematics and an adaptability to rou- tine, and possessing some traits that people did not understand and shook their heads over-a disposi- tion to dream and idle the days away and an uncon- querable distaste for the fixed school system of

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be etched upon his memory many of the portraits afterwards presented to the public and to fame. It was perhaps on those journeys that he met Jap Miller. Of Jap he writes: He,ll talk you down on tariifg er he'll talk you down on tax, And prove the pore man pays 'em all-and them's about the fans!- Religiou, law, er politics, prize fightin' er baseball- .Tes tech Jap up a little and he'll post you 'bout 'em all. In the course of his ramblings over Indiana, his propensity to write asserted itself and he found his way to country newspaper offices. With at least two of these, one an Anderson and the other a Koko- mo papers, he established more than casual relations, forming lasting friendships with the editors and contributing many of his earliest productions to their columns. In them, he iirst tried his poetical wings. It was when he began to contribute to the India- napolis Journal, however, that his literary career really began. The Journal, an old, well-established paper, had always given more or less attention to matters not strictly of a news character, and was especially hospitable to writers of the state. On its st-aif at that time were several men who were keenly appreciative of literary merit and quick to discern originality. Meanwhile, Mr. Riley himself was a frequent visitor to the Journal oiiice, coming over from his home in Greenfield and before many months taking up his residence in Indianapolis, which city has since been his permanent home, and with which he is closely identified. He made the Journal office his headquarters, and from that time, in the middle Page fourteen seventies, until 1904, when the Journal was sold and merged with the Star, a desk there was assigned to his use, and there he wrote perhaps the greater number of his poems. But he was not a methodical regular worker He was never one of the authors of whom it is re- lated that they produce a certain number of words each day and accomplishing the task at fixed hours. He wrote when the spirit moved him, when the in- spiration came. He fell into the ways of the morn- ing newspaper and formed a habit of dropping into the editorial rooms at midnight and later, some- times iinding the late hours a favorable time for writing. Once he came after twelve o'clock with a bit of manuscript in his hands. I want this, printed in the morning, he said. But Riley, said the editor in charge, running his eye over the lines, the poem 's all right and we'll use it, but it 's too late to get it in in the morning. We 'll use it next day. It can 't be too late. You've got more news to set and you can set this. I had gone to bed and this thing got into my head and I had to get up and write it or I couldn't have slept. I want to see it in type. 'tBut the editorial page where such things go is already made up, objected the editor. I don 't care where it goes. Put it on the market page or among the advertisements. The editor did as he was asked. The poem was The Song of the Bullet. What inspired the lines in that time of peace he does not himself know. It might have been accounted for had it been produced at the time of the writing of this sketch, when all America stands aghast at the sudden transformation