A COLLEGE EDUCATION IS AN ADVANTAGE.

Answering other questions, the poet said: “A college education for the aspirant for literary success is, of course, an advantage, provided he does not let education foster a false culture that will lead him away from his true ideals and the ideals he ought to cling to. There is another thing that the young man in any artistic pursuit must have a care for, and that is, to be practical. This is a practical world, and it is always ready to take advantage of this sort of people, so that if he wishes what we might call domestic happiness, he might as well make up his mind to a dual existence, as it were, and must try to cultivate a practical business sense, as well as an artistic sense. We have only a few men like Rudyard Kipling and F. Hopkinson Smith, who seem to combine these diverse elements of character in just the right proportions, but I believe that it is unfortunate for the happiness and peace of mind of our authors and artists and musicians that we have not more of them.”

Riley’s poetry is popular because it goes right to the feelings of the people. He could not have written as he does, but for the schooling of that wandering life, which gave him an insight into the struggle for existence among the great unnumbered multitude of his fellow men. He learned in his travels and journeys, in his hard experience as a strolling sign-painter and patent-medicine peddler, the freemasonry of poverty. His poems are natural; they are those of a man who feels as he writes. As Thoreau painted nature in the woods, and streams, and lakes, so Riley depicts the incidents of everyday life, and brightens each familiar lineament with that touch that makes all the world kin. One of his noblest poems is “Old Glory.” It speaks the homely, sterling patriotism of the common people.

“The Little Coat” illustrates his wonderful power to touch the heart.

THE LITTLE COAT.

Here’s his ragged “roundabout,”

Turn the pockets inside out;

See: his pen-knife, lost to use,

Rusted shut with apple-juice;

Here, with marbles, top and string,

Is his deadly “devil-sling,”

With its rubber, limp at last,

As the sparrows of the past!

Beeswax—buckles—leather straps—

Bullets, and a box of caps,—

Not a thing of all, I guess,

But betrays some waywardness—

E’en these tickets, blue and red,

For the Bible verses said—

Such as this his memory kept—

“Jesus wept.”

* * * * * *

Here’s the little coat—but O!

Where is he we’ve censured so!

Don’t you hear us calling, dear?

Back! come back, and never fear.

You may wander where you will,

Over orchard, field and hill;

You may kill the birds, or do

Anything that pleases you!

Ah, this empty coat of his!

Every tatter worth a kiss;

Every stain as pure instead

As the white stars overhead;

And the pockets—homes were they

Of the little hands that play

Now no more—but, absent, thus

Beckon us.

XXIV
A Farm Boy Who Devoured Books Writes One of the Greatest Poems of the Century.

THE international discussion of “The Man with the Hoe” had hardly subsided, when popular interest was revived by the remarkable declaration of the author, Mr. Edwin Markham, that he had spent ten years in its production.

Who is this magician of the pen, this man of mystery, who carries his readers, in a single sentence, through “a storm of stars,” and, in another, kneels with them in dreamy sympathy beside “the brother to the ox,”—who mixes up the critics in a hopeless tangle of doubt, and puzzles the public by the erratic chronology of his mental processes?

The widespread interest in the personality of the poet may justify the attempt of the writer to get at the “true inwardness” of his life-story. This has not yet been told.

This handsome dreamer, whose eyes are softer than a fawn’s, and whose gray-tinged locks give an unwonted majesty to his mien, is only about fifty years old. Yet, in his span of life, he has been engaged in half a score of vocations, ranging from the exciting and strenuous to the peaceful and poetic. The discovery that he was once a village blacksmith promises to lend interest to a new phase of his distinguished career.