Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 May 1885 — THE HORSIER POET. [ARTICLE]

THE HORSIER POET.

An Amusing Chapter in the Early Ufa of ' j James Whitcomb Riley. [Pittebnrg Dispatch.! A little party sat around the grate in the Seventh avenue lobby yesterday afternoon. A traveling man from Boston, with a slight literary turn, presumably absorbed from his native Bostoniau atmosphere, bad just laid down a small volume v>f poems by James Whitcomb Rilev, the Hoosier poet, and was descanting on the great beauties of his dialectic work to a Dispatch representative. Riley has immortalized the Hoosier in charming verse, and embalmed his mannerisms and provincialisms, much as was done by James Russell Lowell for the New England farme’r in the “Bigelow Papers,” and Will Carleton for the Western former in his “Farm Ballads.” The traveling man waxed justly enthusiastic as the circle enlarged. “ Yon are speaking of Jim Riley,” broke in a gentleman with the freedom of fellowship which exists among genteel vagabonds, whose business keeps them on the road and renders them indifferent to formalities and especially that of an introduction. "I knew him welL In fact. I feel a sort of - proprietary interest in his work. I don’t like to claim the honor of discovering him. for a man of his genius and talent is bourn} to come to the front in any event. ” The expression of interest on the faces of the little circle encoifraged him to continue: - — — - “I was running a weekly paper in a small Northern Indiana town at the time I met him. You know how the inhabitants of small places go wild over anything of a freakish nature, and the raging sensation just then was the work of a blind sign painter. A party of advertising f fakirs had just struck the village, who decorated the walls and fences in .the most gaudy way imaginable, by a member of the party who was known as the ‘Only Blind Sign Painter on Earth.’ Business with them was rushing. Every merchant in town came aronnd and wanted work done, for when the blind sign painter, who was none other than Riley, fellhis way up a ladder and dashed off an artistic sign, half the inhabitants of the place turned out to witness the feat. “The scheme of the fakirs, which was an original one and calculated to catch the multitude, all depended on the histrionic ability of the Hoosier poet. He had-large, frank, gray eyes, and the vision of an eagle “When the surface was selected he was brought out and led to the foot of the ladder. A part of his business was to go np a step, carefully feeling his way, then taming, stare into vacancy in an aimless, mconey sort of style, and bring to bear on the crowd a faee fall of pain and pathos. This rarely failed to draw an expression of sympathy, and what was more to the point, - additional advertising contracts. Slowly climbing the ladder he figured the surface, measuring carefully with his hands the dimensions of the letters, and then suddenly seizing the brush, the sign was reeled off much more rapidly than the average painter could do it. “Another catching bit of ‘business’ was to stumble on comiDg down" when one of the party gave him a shoving below, with an imprecation and a brutal order to be more careful. ' ‘Shame, shame! Some one ought to take the poor man away from the crowd on such occasions.* One day, when he was np the ladder, I caught his eye. My suspicions had been aroused, and he saw it in my face. Slowly and deliberately, with owlish solemnity, he winked that great, gray eye of his in a way that spoke whole Übraries. “After that I was taken into his confidence, and, finding that he was a gold mine of talent, induced him to leave the painters and go to work in my office —a task which was not difficult—for he only regarded lha ‘Blind Painter” dodge as a boyish lark, and was getting tired of the fan. That was tin beginning of his newspaper career. He went to Indianapolis, and has been doing excellent work on the press of that city ever since, I understand, and bis book is netting him qnite handsomely, and is a success every way.”

Minor Happening'll. —Eighteen residents of Sellersburg hare left to locate in Kansas. —Gen. Lew Wallace is said to be writing a novel, the scene of which is laid in Turkey. —Patrick Craddock was drawn between the rollers in a rolling-mill at Brazil, and mashed to a pnlp. —Vevay has raised the saloon license from SSO a year to SIOO. This will add S7OO a year to the city treasury. —The death is announced of James Hannahan, an old and respected citizen of Madison. Four children of the deceased reside in Chicago. —Henry Burrell, who swore falsely to the age of Miss Venover, of Seymour, to James Wilhoite, has been captured and put in jail in default of S7OO bail. —A young lady of Moore’s Hill is on the way to a grand fortune through the lucky invention of a piano stool that just fits the weak backs of feeble young women. —George Street, an old citizen of Fayetteville, seven miles east of Bushville, died rather suddenly last week, aged 86, and wag followed by his wife, who died two hours later. —De Panw has presented the university of his name with a collection of geological and anatomical specimens valued at $2,000. The collection has been on exhibition at New Orleans. —Miss Evans, of Sevastopol, on a visit to Bichmond, tried on a pair of rollerskates for the first time. It will probably be her last effort in that direction, as she fell and fractured her arm. —John Melger, a sneak-thief, while plundering the house of Col. John Gathright, at Jeffersonville, was locked up in a room by Mrs. Gathright, who sent for a policeman and had him taken into custody. —The contract for building the free turnpike from Versailles to the county line, to be extended to Bising Sun, has been let for $13,616. Distance, eight and one-third miles. —James Dennis, charged by John Coffee with being his confederate in the murder of the McMullens, was found guilty of murder in the first degree at Crawfordsville, and sentenced to death. —A brass band on skates is the latest novelty. Charles Casa and Charles Dunn, both of Greensbnrg, and counectecTwlth the press, are at the head of it, and several members are compositors. They are creating quite a sensation, and their evolutions to music axe said to be very gracful and unique