James Whitcomb Riley, who was possibly the most widely read native poet of his day, was born October 7, 1849, in Greenfield, Indiana, a small town twenty miles from Indianapolis, where he spent his later years. Contrary to the popular belief, Riley was not, as many have gathered from his bucolic dialect poems, a struggling child of the soil; his father was a lawyer in comfortable circumstances and Riley was not only given a good education but was prepared for the law. His temperament, however, craved something more adventurous. At eighteen he shut the heavy pages of Blackstone, slipped out of the office and joined a traveling troupe of actors who sold patent medicines during the intermissions. Riley's functions were varied: he beat the bass-drum, painted their flaring banners, wrote local versions of old songs, coached the actors and, when occasion arose, took part in the performance himself.

Even before this time, Riley had begun to send verses to the newspapers, frank experiments, bits of homely sentiment, simple snatches and elaborate hoaxes-the poem "Leonainie," published over the initials "E. A. P.," being accepted in many quarters as a newly discovered poem by Poe. In 1882, when he was on the staff of the Indianapolis Journal, he began the series of dialect poems which he claimed were by a rude and unlettered farmer, one 'Benj. F. Johnson, of Boone, the Hoosier poet"printing long extracts from Boone's ungrammatical and badly-spelt letters to prove his find. A collection of these rustic verses appeared, in 1883, as The Ole Swimmin' Hole; and Riley leaped into widespread popularity.

Other collections followed rapidly: Afterwhiles (1887), OldFashioned Roses (1888), Pipes o' Pan at Zekesbury (1889), Rhymes of Childhood (1890). All met an instant response; Riley endeared himself, by his homely idiom and his childlike ingenuity, to a countryful of readers, adolescent and adult.

But Riley's simplicity is not always as artless as it seems. Time and again, one can see him trading wantonly on the emotions of his unsophisticated readers; he sees them about to smile and broadens the point of his joke; he observes them on

the point of tears—and pulls out the sobbing tremolo stop. In many respects, he is patently the most artificial of those poets who claim to give us the stuff of the soil. He is the poet of obtrusive sentiment rather than of quiet convictions; of lulling assurance, of philosophies that never disturb his readers, of sweet truisms rather than searching truths.

That work of his which may endure, will survive because of the personal flavor that Riley often fused into it. Such poems as "When the Frost is on the Punkin'," "The Raggedy Man," "Our Hired Girl" are a part of American folk literature; "Little Orphant Annie" is read wherever there is a schoolhouse or, for that matter, a nursery. In 1912 the schools throughout the country observed his birthday.

Riley died in his little house in Lockerbie Street, Indianapolis, July 22, 1916.

"WHEN THE FROST IS ON THE PUNKIN 99 1

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock,

And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin' turkey-cock,

And the clackin' of the guineys, and the cluckin' of the hens,

And the rooster's hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence; O, it's then the time a feller is a-feelin' at his best, With the risin' sun to greet him from a night of peaceful

rest,

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1 From the Biographical Edition of the James Whitcomb Riley. Copyright, 1913. mission of the publishers, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

As he leaves the house, bareheaded, and goes out to feed the stock,

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.

They's something kindo' harty-like about the atmusfere When the heat of summer's over and the coolin' fall is

here

Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossoms on the

trees,

And the mumble of the hummin'-birds and buzzin' of

the bees;

But the air's so appetizin'; and the landscape through the

haze

Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days Is a pictur' that no painter has the colorin' to mockWhen the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.

The husky, rusty russel of the tossels of the corn,
And the raspin' of the tangled leaves as golden as the

morn;

The stubble in the furries-kindo' lonesome-like, but still A-preachin' sermuns to us of the barns they growed to fill; The strawstack in the medder, and the reaper in the shed; The hosses in theyr stalls below-the clover overhead!— O, it sets my hart a-clickin' like the tickin' of a clock, When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the

shock.

Then your apples all is gethered, and the ones a feller keeps

Is poured around the cellar-floor in red and yaller heaps; And your cider-makin's over, and your wimmern-folks is through

With theyr mince and apple-butter, and theyr souse and sausage too! . .

I don't know how to tell it--but ef such a thing could be As the angels wantin' boardin', and they'd call around

on me

I'd want to 'commodate 'em-all the whole-indurin'

flock

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.

A PARTING GUEST1

What delightful hosts are they—
Life and Love!
Lingeringly I turn away,

This late hour, yet glad enough
They have not withheld from me
Their high hospitality.

So, with face lit with delight

And all gratitude, I stay

Yet to press their hands and say,
"Thanks. So fine a time! Good night."

1 From the Biographical Edition of the James Whitcomb Riley. Copyright, 1913.

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mission of the publishers, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

Although born (September 3, 1850) in St. Louis, Missouri, Eugene Field belongs to the literature of the far West. Colorado and the Rocky Mountain region claimed him as their own and Field never repudiated the allegiance; he even called most of his poetry Western Verse."

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Field's area of education embraced New England, Missouri, and what European territory he could cover in six months. At twenty-three he became a reporter on the St. Louis Evening Journal, the rest of his life being given, with a dogged devotion, to journalism. Driven by the demands of his unique daily columns (those on the Denver Tribune [1881-1883] and the Chicago Daily News [1883-1895] were widely copied), Field first capitalized and then standardized his high spirits, his erudition, his whimsicality, his fondness for children. He wrote so often with his tongue in his cheek that it is difficult to say where true sentiment stops and an exaggerated sentimentality begins. "Field," says Fred Lewis Pattee, in his detailed study of American Literature Since 1870, more than any other writer of the period, illustrates the way the old type of literary scholar was to be modified and changed by the newspaper. Every scrap of Field's voluminous product was written for immediate newspaper consumption. He patronized not at all the literary magazines, he wrote his books not at all with book intent-he made them up from newspaper fragments. . . . He was a pioneer in a peculiar province: he stands for the journalization of literature, a process that, if carried to its logical extreme, will make of the man of letters a mere newspaper reporter."

Though Field still may be overrated in some quarters, there is little doubt that certain of his child lyrics, his homely philosophic ballads (in the vein which Harte and Riley popularized) and his brilliant burlesques will occupy a niche in American letters. Readers of all tastes will find much to surprise and delight them in A Little Book of Western Verse (1889), With Trumpet and Drum (1892), A Second Book of Verse (1893) and those remarkable versions (and perversions)