A “Jack of All Trades” Masters One and Becomes the Poet of the People.
JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY and I were at breakfast together, and the
appearance of his cup of steaming coffee, into which he hastened to
drop four full-sized blocks of sugar, threw the “Hoosier” poet into a
train of reflections, for which he presently found expression. “They
don’t make coffee any more,” he observed, in an almost aggrieved tone.
“It is a lost art. You don’t see any more the clear, transparent
beverage that mother used to make. It’s thick and murky, and, worse
than all, it does no good to protest.”
It was a fortunate circumstance, however, this recalling a youthful
remembrance, for it led him at once into a lively discussion of
that part of his career,—his early struggles,—which possess for the
average person, and often for the subject himself, far more interest
and fascination than any later triumphs, no matter how complete. It
is doubtful if there is in the literary world, to-day, a personage
whose boyhood and young manhood can approach in romance and unusual
circumstances that of the author of “The Old Swimmin’ Hole.” It
was almost as if it were all a chapter from a fairy tale, to see
the poet sitting there, calm and dignified, and to listen to his
slow speech, in well-modulated voice, and still attempt to realize
of what circumstances he had been a factor, what experience he had
passed through. All tradition was against his accomplishing anything
in the world. How, indeed, said the good folks of the little town of
Greenfield, Indiana, could anything be expected of a boy who cared
nothing for school, and deserted it at the first opportunity, to take
up a wandering life.
It is a wonder of wonders that from such a beginning should spring a
poet whose ideals are among the noblest in American literature. “Ike
Walton’s Prayer,” it would seem, must have been spoken from the poet’s
heart.