Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1915-10-07
Riley's Success

OTtndTu.
Riley's Success
His career has often been cited as an ex-
ample of success attained after humble be-
ginnings. To interviewer he said: "I
left school when l was 49, and went
in the drawing enunciation once so familiar
to the lecture going public: 'I knew I had
to provide for myself but couldn't settle
anything. At last I hit on painting and
took lessons-thats the way 1 now state it
in the granting of doors and the vanishing
of miscellaneous woodwork" His life has
been full of years and honors. But success?
He has said to a friend: "The world diff
ferentiates happiness and success with cold
sophistry. But they are inseparable." He
knows success in the terms of his deepest
faith:
Long life's a lovely thing to know
And lovely health and wealth, forsooth,
And lovely name and fame-but, oh,
The loveliness of youth!
Though Riley may choose to speak humor-
ously of his ventures as a painter the artist
in him appeared in his boyhood-the artist
and the actor and the poet He used to
make charcoal and brickdust daubs on the
neighborhood fences and barns as very
little boy, receiving, however, no encourage
ment at all. And years afterward this man
with the wonderful need and capacity for
friendship said to one of his friends: Poetry,
music, painting-a song, a sunset or a SYM
phony-is nothing but the expression of
one heart, one soul. In this expression there
may be reflected great universal note; but
it remains primarily the voice of some ego.
And who shall judge your soul or mine, ex-
cept when its expression finds an affinitive
chord?"
The actor in Riley was likewise visible. il
unrecognized, at an early age. Once he
gave a performance to empty soap boxes in
his back yard from beginning to end, even
though his pen and ink posters had failed
to attract any spectators. Like many an
other boy he was ambitious to "go with the
circus" And by and by he went. Not with
the circus, but with a medicine show. His
father had set him to studying Blackstone
in the hope of making him a lawyer; but
Blackstone would not scan, and so he de-
parted from Greenfield, a runaway, with a
Highly Entertaining and Instructive Mu-
sical and Speciality Aggregation" AS the
ghost walked infrequently he came home.
Perhaps there was little of the histrionic
in beating big bass drum, but there was
plenty in the readings which he later gave
on the lyceum platform. He not only acted
the part he read, he was the part. The home
sick man, homesick for the scenes of his
childhood saw back to the old swimmin
hole and the road to old Aunt Mary's The
"show" was very human.
Wasn't it a good time
Long time ago
When all were little tads
And first played "show"?
You know Sir Henry Irving declared that
Riley would have made the greatest actor on
the American stage II he had so chosen.
A Dance of the Rhymes
The rhymester was dominant over the ar
tst and the actor Little Jim made up lin
giles and scribbled them on the walls at
home and even then they were about the
things great in childhood and in the heart
Of all. He scribbled rhymes on the margins
of his Blackstone When he became a paper
man" he turned them in for copy. And his
fame grew. slowly Ilittle by little. in ever
widening circles. and he never knew the
meaning of professional jealousy. He over
flowed with rhyme. II walk / run 1 write
and wrestle, but / cannot shake 1t off. i lie
down TO sleep and all night long II haunts
me. Whole cantos of incoherent rhymes
dance before me-" At last. as he described
these experiences. II wake refreshed and
free from the tolls of my prosecutor. But
some senseless piece Of rhyme is printed
on my mind, and go about repeating It as
| though / had committed 1t from the pages
of some book. / often write these jingles
afterward. though / believe I never could
forget a word OF them"
Rhymes" "jingles." 30 he has always
called them never poems" What matter
what they are called to those who know
my Grandfather Squeers," "Old Aunt
Marys." Little Orphan Annie" doc sifers."
IAN OLD Sweetheart OF Nine" THE Ragged
Man." and. oh. a host OF others? But
"Riley Day" means-partiy-tha poetry Is
appreciated In America. James Russell
Lowell knew Riley for poet as soon as he
had read "Knee Deep In June" It's author
is neither Kipling nor Whittier nor both. but
Riley--"Jim" Riley.
nv coMRADE