The boy’s father, like almost all fathers, had aspirations. He wanted
the boy to follow in his footsteps, in the legal profession, and he
held out alluring hopes of the possibility of scaling even greater
heights than any to which he had yet attained. Better still,—from the
standpoint of the restless James,—he took the youngster with him as
he made his circuit from court to court. These excursions, for they
were indeed such to the boy, sowed deep in his heart the seed of a
determination to become a nomad, and it was not long until he started
out as a strolling sign-painter, determined upon the realization of his
ideals. Oftentimes business was worse than dull, and, on one occasion,
hunger drove him for recourse to his wits, and lo, he blossomed forth
as a “blind sign-painter,” led from place to place by a little boy, and
showered with sympathy and trade in such abundance that he could hardly
bear the thought of the relinquishment of a pretense so ingenious and
successful, entered on at first as a joke.
Then came another epoch. The young man fell in with a patent-medicine
man, with whom he joined fortunes, and here the young Indianian, who
had been scribbling more or less poetry ever since he first essayed
to compose a four-line valentine upon a writing table whose writing
surface was almost as high as his head, found a new use for his talent,
for his duties in the partnership were to beguile the people with
joke and song, while his co-worker plied the sales of his cure-all;
and, forsooth, there were many times when, but for his poetic fancy,
Riley might have seen his audience dwindle rapidly away. It was
while thus engaged that he had the opportunities which enabled him
to master thoroughly the “Hoosier” dialect. When the glamour of the
patent-medicine career had faded somewhat, Riley joined a band of
strolling Thespians, and, in this brief portion of his life, after the
wont of players of his class, played many parts. At length he began to
give a little more attention to his literary work, and, later, obtained
a place on an Indianapolis paper, where he published his first poems,
and be it said that they won their author almost instant success.
[Illustration: COURTSHIP]