Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 177, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 July 1916 — Thousands Pay Tribute To Dead Poet Riley. [ARTICLE]

Thousands Pay Tribute To Dead Poet Riley.

35,000 people passed the casket of James Whitcomb Riley Monday afternoon at his home on Lockerbie street in Indianapolis to gaze for tihi last time upon tihe face of Indiana’s favorite Son. People from all walks of life paid their last respects to this wonderful man. In the crowd were business men, school girls, matrons carrying market baskets, mothers with little children, clergymen, -foreigners, frequently colored men and women, old women Laborers, young men in well cut clothes, farmers and workmen. Each man and woman went forward, eager f-or a glimpse of tihe poet and a chance to toll him goodbye. Hundreds of children were in the crowd. Perhaps Mr. Riley would have been glad -had he known that many of tihe children there Monday made their first acquaintance with death through the man who was always the children’s best friend; the children could have had no better introduction to the great mystery. There was the man whom -they loved and the man who loved them, and who had written so many dear, funny poems for them —-there he was, -peaceful, almost smiling—and not clad in the somber black clothes that make of .death a -dreary .tilling, but in fine white serge, his head pillowed upon white satin, and surrounded by flowers, heaps and masses of beautiful flowers. So the children told him their last good-bye. Some of them were so small that their heads barely came to the top of tihe casket and they had to raise tiheimseivcs on tip-

toe and peer over; others were even smaller and had to be raised upon the arms of policemen who guarded each corner of tihe casket, or in the arms of some relative.