The Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley, vol 1 | Page 5

book,' I would reply. 'What kind of a book?' 'Poetry-book.' 'Poetry!' would be the amused exclamation. 'Can you read poetry?' and, embarrassed, I'd shake my head and make my escape, but I held on to the beloved little volume."
Every boy has an early determination--a first one--to follow some ennobling profession, once he has come to man's estate, such as being a policeman, or a performer on the high trapeze. The poet would not have been the "Peoples' Laureate," had his fairy god- mother granted his boy-wish, but the Greenfield baker. For to his childish mind it "seemed the acme of delight," using again his own happy expression, "to manufacture those snowy loaves of bread, those delicious tarts, those toothsome bon-bons. And then to own them all, to keep them in store, to watch over and guardedly exhibit. The thought of getting money for them was to me a sacrilege. Sell them? No indeed. Eat 'em--eat 'em, by tray loads and dray loads! It was a great wonder to me why the pale-faced baker in our town did not eat all his good things. This I determined to do when I became owner of such a grand establishment. Yes, sir. I would have a glorious feast. Maybe I'd have Tom and Harry and perhaps little Kate and Florry in to help us once in a while. The thought of these play-mates as 'grown-up folks' didn't appeal to me. I was but a child, with wide-open eyes, a healthy appetite and a wondering mind. That was all. But I have the same sweet tooth to-day, and every time I pass a confectioner's shop, I think of the big baker of our town, and Tom and Harry and the youngsters all."
As a child, he often went with his father to the court-house where the lawyers and clerks playfully called him "judge Wick." Here as a privileged character he met and mingled with the country folk who came to sue and be sued, and thus early the dialect, the native speech, the quaint expressions of his "own people" were made familiar to him, and took firm root in the fresh soil of his young memory. At about this time, he made his first poetic attempt in a valentine which he gave to his mother. Not only did he write the verse, but he drew a sketch to accompany it, greatly to his mother's delight, who, according to the best authority, gave the young poet "three big cookies and didn't spank me for two weeks. This was my earliest literary encouragement."
Shortly after his sixteenth birthday, young Riley turned his back on the little schoolhouse and for a time wandered through the different fields of art, indulging a slender talent for painting until he thought he was destined for the brush and palette, and then making merry with various musical instruments, the banjo, the guitar, the violin, until finally he appeared as bass drummer in a brass band. "In a few weeks," he said, "I had beat myself into the more enviable position of snare drummer. Then I wanted to travel with a circus, and dangle my legs before admiring thousands over the back seat of a Golden Chariot. In a dearth of comic songs for the banjo and guitar, I had written two or three myself, and the idea took possession of me that I might be a clown, introduced as a character-song-man and the composer of my own ballads.
"My father was thinking of something else, however, and one day I found myself with a 'five-ought' paint brush under the eaves of an old frame house that drank paint by the bucketful, learning to be a painter. Finally, I graduated as a house, sign and ornamental painter, and for two summers traveled about with a small company of young fellows calling ourselves 'The Graphics,' who covered all the barns and fences in the state with advertisements."
At another time his, young man's fancy saw attractive possibilities in the village print-shop, and later his ambition was diverted to acting, encouraged by the good times he had in the theatricals of the Adelphian Society of Greenfield. "In my dreamy way," he afterward said, "I did a little of a number of things fairly well--sang, played the guitar and violin, acted, painted signs and wrote poetry. My father did not encourage my verse-making for he thought it too visionary, and being a visionary himself, he believed he understood the dangers of following the promptings of the poetic temperament. I doubted if anything would come of the verse-writing myself. At this time it is easy to picture my father, a lawyer of ability, regarding me, nonplused, as the worst case he had ever had. He wanted me to do something practical, besides being ambitious for me to follow in his