The Kansas City sun. (Kansas City, Mo.) 1908-1924, 1916-09-09

minded masters. These Hoosiers, these wild bards
and prancing, long-legged lovers of the moon, are
often captured and broken and tanned to trade
and industry by the more sordid citizenry. They
are yoked to the handle end of the pillow,
chained to the desk by the hundreds and thou
sands they become clerks and statesmen and rail-
road presidents and novelists and business men
of all sorts,
James Whitcomb Riley was n Hoosier who
happily escaped; he was never captured, never
enslaveG; the things hidden from the rest of US,
or revealed only in flashes, remembered but
vaguely from the days of our own happy Hoosier-
dom, he continued to see steadily he lived among
them familiarly to the end, and until the end
was their interpreter to us.
bud come here to your uncle a SPELL says
Riley in effect, and I'll show you not only a fairy,
but a fairy who has for the moment chosen to be
just as much of a Hoosier as the Raggedy Man,
or Orphant Annie, or Old Kingry, or the folks at
Griggsby Station
1.-THE critics and the learned doctors of liter
allure are already debating as to whether Riley
had imagination or only fancy. lit would be a
terrible calamity to some of them If they said
it was Imagination and it was officially declared
later to be merely fancy; that is the sort Of
mistake that damns a critic and makes the sons
and grandsons of critics meek, hacked, apollo
getic young menu And doubtless the point is ex-
c~eedingly important. For If n poet has imagi-
nation they say his work is significant. And If
he has only fancy his work is not significant.
'The chief merit of Riley's dialect verse
which is the most popular part of his production
and the part with which the critics chiefly con-
Germ themselves-is its effectiveness as a medium
for character portrayal. Whimsical, lovable,
homely, racy, quaint, salty, pathetic, humorous,
tender are his dialect poems; essentially, he has
shown us life as a superior writer of prose
sketches might do, adding the charm of his lyri-
cism.
"But, personally. we never like him so we'll as
when he is writing sheer moonlight and music
Probably no poet who ever wrote English-cer-
tainly no American poet-got more luscious Ian
guage than Riley. A sweetness that is not so
sugary that it clogs, having always a why tang.
For instance, from The Flying Islands of the
Night
:. in lost hours of lutte and song,
When he was but a prince- but a mouth
For him to lift up sippingly and drain
To his most ultimate of stammering sobs
And maudlin wanderings of blinded breath, .
"There is no better evidence of the genuine
ness of Riley's sentiment, particularly in the dial
lect poems, than the discretion with which he
touches the pathetic chord when he touches it
at all. One of the most popular poems he ever
wrote was 'Old-Fashioned Roses and one word
too much, one pressure the least bit too insistent
would have made the thing as offensive as a
vaudeville ballad. The taste which told him to
be simple and the sincerity which begat the
taste save the verses from the reproach.
"His verses for children and about children
could only have been written by a man whose
love and understanding of children was real. for
children are quick to detect and ~repudiate any
thing of the sort that is pumped up for effect.
and they contributed enormously to the general
feeling OF affection for him. The regard of the
children was In a way a testimonial to his per-
sisting youthfulness of spirit; he was still their
playmate; perhaps it is an earnest of immor-
tally II immortality can be. Certainly love en-
dures longer than anything else, and this man
with the childllke sweetness In his soul goes
from us loved as few men have been"