Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1916-07-23
James Whitcomb Riley Ex-
 pires While Nurse Goes for Glass of Water.
BEGAN LIFE AS
 AS A SIGN PAINTER
Inheriting Genius from Mother, "Ho0s- fer Poet" and ChiIdrem's Friend Re- fused to Study Law-WOn Fame
 While Making Millions Happy.

Indianapolis, Ind, July 22-James Whitcomb Riley, the Indiana poet, died this evening. Death was due to a stroke of paralysis. MT. Riley suf- fered from the extreme heat all day but was thought to be resting well to- night. He asked his nurse for a drink of water at II o'clock. When she re- turned with it he was dead Sang of Indiana Folk.
 James Whitcomb Riley, born of the Middle West, sang the joys, sorrows, fancies and humors of it's folk, large ly in it's own dialect. The world was so touched by his inspiration and the realism of his homely symbols that he was one of the few that, devoting their lives to poetry, gained fortune. MT. Riley was peculiarly sensitive as to the advance of age, and evaded inquiries as to the date of his birth, but the most accurate information available indicates that he was born | in 184S.
 "Should you ask his age," one of his friends said, Che would answer This side of forty and leave you to guess which side"
 The poet was the son of Reuben A. Riley, lawyer and political speaker of Greenfield, Ind. The boy could not | be brought to the dull routine of school days, but he was wise in the l lore of streams and fields. His mother, who was Elizabeth Marine before her marriage, was writer of verse, and Riley in later life attributed some of his impracticability to her. 1 Instead of preparing for the prac- tice of law, as his father wished, the son turned itinerant sign painter. For 10 years he roved through the Ohio valley, painting signs on fences. He had the trick of the brush and pencil and cleverly drew sketches illustrat- ing the virtues of merchandise. He was naturally musical and shone as a fiddler in the villages at which his | party stopped at night. He played for dances and at concerts in country hotels. He wrote rhymes, which some times found their way into country newspapers.
 The Great Poe" Hoax.
 He led this cheerful, free-and- easy life late in the '70s, then he took en- ployment as a reporter on a news paper at Anderson, Ind In 1877, for the purpose. as he said, of proving that he could write poetry of value, he perpetrated the Poe hoax which for years was literary sensation. He wrote poem in the style of Edgar Allen Poe, to which he gave the char acteristic title of "Leonanie," and it was offered to the public as hitherto unpublished product of the genius of Poe. One of the stanzas was:
 "Leonanie-angels named her,
 And they took the light
 Of the laughing stars and framed her
 In smile of white,
 And they made her hair of gloomy
 Midnight and her eyes of bloomy
 Moonshine and they brought her to me
 In the solemn night"
 Wins L0ngfellOw's Praise.
 In the early sos he began writing verses in "Hoosier" dialect for the old Indianapolis Journal. He sent some of his poems to Henry Wads- worth Longfellow and they received his praise. A volume was published and "the Hoosier poet" began to win a public. He was an excellent reader of his own dialect verses, and for the following 15 years, or until 1898, he made tours of the country, appearing in public with great success, both alone and in association with :he humorist, Bill Nye, who was his in- innate friend.
 Publication of books of poems veal after year brought Riley a fortune and wide recognition of his literary genius, and not only in the genre form. Many of his poems are of imaginative fantasy or gently philoso- phic.
 In 1902 he received the degree of master of arts from Yale university and in 1904 the University of Penn sylvania conferred upon him the de- gree of doctor of letters. Indiana uni versity conferred the honorary degree of IL. D. on him in 1907.
 In July, 1911, the poet presented to the city of Indianapolis property valued at $75, 5000 for site for pub. lie library and school administration building.
 MT. Riley never married, but he was lover of children. whose spirit he divined so intimately, and of family l life. Many of the last years of his life he spent quietly at his home in { secluded section of Indianapolis. Richard Harmon. a civil war vet } aran of Ft. Fairfield, Me, has thre' } chairs that were made in 1916 in Nev } Brunswick. The chairs are made o nine which is nearly three inche