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

can not imagine what
prophetic impulse took possession of me and made me forego the
ginger cakes and the candy that usually took every cent of my youthful
income. The slender little volume must have cost all of twenty-five
cents! It was Francis Quarles' Divine Emblems,--a neat little affair
about the size of a pocket Testament. I carried it around with me all day
long, delighted with the very feel of it.
" 'What have you got there, Bub?' some one would ask. 'A 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