The Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley, vol 1 | Page 8

north or south particularly distinguished for poor railroad
connections. At different times, I shared the program with Mark Twain,
Robert J. Burdette and George Cable, and for a while my gentlest and
cheeriest of friends, Bill Nye, joined with me and made the dusty
detested travel almost a delight. We were constantly playing practical
jokes on each other or indulging in some mischievous banter before the
audience. On one occasion, Mr. Nye, coming before the foot-lights for

a word of general introduction, said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, the
entertainment to-night is of a dual nature. Mr. Riley and I will speak
alternately. First I come out and talk until I get tired, then Mr. Riley
comes out and talks until YOU get tired!' And thus the trips went
merrily enough at times and besides I learned to know in Bill Nye a
man blessed with as noble and heroic a heart as ever beat. But the
making of trains, which were all in conspiracy to outwit me, schedule
or no schedule, and the rush and tyrannical pressure of inviolable
engagements, some hundred to a season and from Boston to San
Francisco, were a distress to my soul. I am glad that's over with.
Imagine yourself on a crowded day-long excursion; imagine that you
had to ride all the way on the platform of the car; then imagine that you
had to ride all the way back on the same platform; and lastly, try to
imagine how you would feel if you did that every day of your life, and
you will then get a glimmer--a faint glimmer--of how one feels after
traveling about on a reading or lecturing tour.
"All this time I had been writing whenever there was any strength left
in me. I could not resist the inclination to write. It was what I most
enjoyed doing. And so I wrote, laboriously ever, more often using the
rubber end of the pencil than the point.
"In my readings I had an opportunity to study and find out for myself
what the public wants, and afterward I would endeavor to use the
knowledge gained in my writing. The public desires nothing but what is
absolutely natural, and so perfectly natural as to be fairly artless. It can
not tolerate affectation, and it takes little interest in the classical
production. It demands simple sentiments that come direct from the
heart. While on the lecture platform I watched the effect that my
readings had on the audience very closely and whenever anybody left
the hall I knew that my recitation was at fault and tried to find out why.
Once a man and his wife made an exit while I was giving The Happy
Little Cripple--a recitation I had prepared with particular enthusiasm
and satisfaction. It fulfilled, as few poems do, all the requirements of
length, climax and those many necessary features for a recitation. The
subject was a theme of real pathos, beautified by the cheer and
optimism of the little sufferer. Consequently when this couple left the
hall I was very anxious to know the reason and asked a friend to find
out. He learned that they had a little hunch-back child of their own.

After this experience I never used that recitation again. On the other
hand, it often required a long time for me to realize that the public
would enjoy a poem which, because of some blind impulse, I thought
unsuitable. Once a man said to me, 'Why don't you recite When the
Frost Is on the Punkin?' The use of it had never occurred to me for I
thought it 'wouldn't go.' He persuaded me to try it and it became one of
my most favored recitations. Thus, I learned to judge and value my
verses by their effect upon the public. Occasionally, at first, I had
presumed to write 'over the heads' of the audience, consoling myself for
the cool reception by thinking my auditors were not of sufficient
intellectual height to appreciate my efforts. But after a time it came
home to me that I myself was at fault in these failures, and then I
disliked anything that did not appeal to the public and learned to
discriminate between that which did not ring true to my hearers and
that which won them by virtue of its truthfulness and was simply heart
high."
As a reader of his own poems, as a teller of humorous stories, as a
mimic, indeed as a finished actor, Riley's genius was rare and beyond
question. In a lecture on the Humorous Story, Mark Twain, referring to
the story of the One Legged Soldier and the different ways of telling it,
once said:
"It takes only a minute and a half to tell it in its comic form; and it isn't