The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, April 25, 1897, Page 18

e Milton, Milton the majestic, made the | canse she has no heart. Germany? Heart | land from the very first than Riley has devil roar in his stately and stilted meas- ures till “The holiow concave of all heil resounded,” but we have done with the devil; we have done with bell, and we have pretty nearly done with Milton. Burns has more readers, ten to one, than Milton, and Riley has more readers in his own land, at least, than Burns. Why? Heart. That the answer in one word, clesn, pure, single, wholesome heart. Will we ever have an American litera- ture? Yes, we will have. We have it aiready and Riley is at the head of it; not at all because of his dialect, but in spite of it. Yet his dialect 1s penuine, true as that of Burnsis true. The secret of it ailis the heart that is init. Go to the heart, go crosslots, through the | orchard, over the fence, down the lane, any or anyhow, only so you get there. Go straight, quietly and with as few brief, baby words as you can wuse, right into the beart. Make no noise, no show of your- self, or long learned words or high-sound- | ing Miltonese measure, and you will stay in the heart when you get there, as Rilev stays. Thisis tobe the American litera- ture, as against English lLiterature of the Milton, Byron, Macaulay school of words, words, words,” of ruins, devils, bells. The world is weary, wearied unto death with these old deeds and eeds in lurid and lordly and gorgeous garmentings of sounding and resounding words, words, words and words American science has swept aside space and time; American science dashes on at fifty, sixty miles an hour. American literature, under the lead of our littera- teurs and learned men, born of back cen- turies, still i s on lumbering along in the old-fashioned English stagecoach at the old rate of ten miles an hour, and ofientimes with a oat outrider, and he blowing horn! And our trained critics i on sitting in judgment on American literature with the ola, cold, musty and majestic Miltons and Macau- lays as the only law and gospel. Meantime Riley is being more widely and heartily read than all three of them put together. Why is the world turning to pictures and turning so entirely away from the stately writers of and? Because it is abreast with the times. It wants ideas, not words, words, words! If a picture goes to the heart, tells the story at a glance, little ma the heart prefe column of words, If Riley can stand you “knee deep in J .’ with a dozen little of dialect or sawed-off Saxon words, why he is sim- piy in line witk the time; the aew man and the true man, the master of the new American literature, a man with an idea. Great is Lowell, Lo low, Whittier, Whitman, Holmes—great, truly great, and great poets all; but o cat as the going Eovglish poets are great, if we ex- cept some work of the first-named poet. A jewel that depe: etting is a poor jewel. Postry that leans on stately words and war and rage and rain is not i poetr; 1 bave done many books, but I have despised big words and have not written a word of war e of hell. I would starve first. French e? Wer and intrigue, hate and wars, | ter how crude or rude, | square of picture toa | {to the core. And soitis that even her | great, clumsy, lumbering language is often teeming to the lips with poetry. My love of Riley, a discovery, strange or new? Bless you, Lowell was his Co- lumbus, and years ago. And Holmes led into port right along after Lowell. | Says Holmes: | | “James Whitcomb Riley is nothing short of a born poet and a veritable genius. | | Ithink he isalater Hosea Biglow, quite | | as original as the latter and more versatile in certain respects. I own a good deal of | enthusiasm for this latter product of In- | diana soil, this delineator of lowly hu- manity who sings with 80 much fervor, | pathos, humor and grace.” The above | | estimates seem also to be the verdict of | the reading public, as over sixty thousand | of his volumes were sold last year, and | the publication of & new book from him has grown, therefore, to be a literary | event both in Encland and America. | John Boyle O Reilly said long ago: *He is the poet of Nature, of Nature do- mesticated, so to speak, to be the back- | ground of a simple human story, the sym- pathetic accompaniment of unsophisti- cated feeling and speech. The Burns of America.” And Howells said only the other day “Wittout the poetry of James Wh: comb Riley our literature would be so much the poorer that it seems idle to | siate the fact. He has more perfectly mastered his instrument than any writer of dialect verse since Lowell, and I do not | | know why one should not frankly place | him with Lowell as equaily master in that | kind. | “What he hss said of very common aspects of life has enceared bim; you feel, in reading his verse, that there is one of the honestest souls thatever ut- tered itself in that way, and that he is true to what we all know, b-cause he has known it, and not because he has just veritied it by close observation.” | Yet am I in doubt if they all or any of | them knew that this man Riley meant so | mucii as he really means. Maybe Riley | himself don’t know. May I intrude a few lines to show wh I mean by brief, baby words in work? | Here is something said at the grave of Burns a quarter of a century ag, In men whom men condemn as 1 1 tisst 20 much of goodness still 1n men whom men pronounce divine 1 ind so much of sin and biot, | I hesitate to draw a line ween the two when God has not. | The lines have lived and will live. | Why? Brcause the words are not bigger | than the thought, and the idea depends {on nothing but the simple truth. For | | you must know that the purest truth is | | the purest poetry. | | The poem of all poems, whether human { or divine, is “The Sermon on the Mount. ‘There 1s no debatable ground there. The | | words are the purest and simplest, and | | yet the soliaest, ever laid down in pave- ‘ | ment for the feet of truth to pass over. Riley is not a new American, as his name might imy His lather was a con- | spicuous Judge bere in the capital of In- diana, and Lere Riley read 1aw. The ola | homestead lies a dozen or more miles out | her in hell or out | of town, at the little city of Greenfieid. | | Here is the home in which he was born, | | and here he is, and has been since boy- | lust; and g0, with scarce the exception, | hood, an idol. No other prophet was ever | she has notaline of poetry, simply be- | more honored in his own land or in any | been in his, and in this Indiana entirely and most bravely honors herse | But Riley did not like Blackstone. He ran away from his father and his books and fell in love with a big dream and mar- ried it, and was glad. Riley is a rich man, rides in a carriage and aresses with the care and daintiness of a Bret Harte. These things don't ! mean much of themselves as to this man, but they signify that right he rich country and a generous people retined country and a land whe tion has set foot firmly path of old. Hereabout stand four great cities— Cincinnati, Columbus, Indi apolts and Louieville. These four c | astonish onc with their fine carriares, their refinement, propriety in dress, zood breeding, broad, heart life. These four | Indians’ ,and better than NI cities are tied together by the “‘Biz Four,” | But I had to talk that nightand I had a a name that sounds like one of Harte’s or | manager. Hay’s of old. rich cities of this rich heart of the Union. Ifyou want to go from one of these big towns to any one of these cities you tele- phone to “Big Four” for tickets. All things by telephone, and with flowers in the windows of the palatial farmhouses ali along. JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY. in Boston. nt to soldiers in the Union is ever so much more stately and Trafa gar square, London. et on with Riley. He was pale him and seemed frightened. “Wha's the trouble, Jim?'* “Why, vou see, the Governor’s sent for us; Legislature in session; let’s go out to my old place and let them go, go to —." Publishers? Bigger publishers | gallery or on the floor his friend. Tie finest | face was sad anda his v And so we were soon on the It unites these four, big, | Senate floorand Riley pale as s ghost. 1 took his hand to lead him up be-ide the Lieutenant-Governor and it was like ic*. He was frigutened almost to death, here in his own town, with those who nad known him from boyhood, and every man and woman in tbat densely packed His / 2 trembled as he tried to speak. Men cheered and women waved handkerchiefs, but he could not be thon those to Nelson and Wel- | keard and scon fell into a seat be-ide the | Speager. Then I knew why he had sworn never again to appear in public. | those who have suffered from stage fright can guess how e folt. “Let’s get out,” he whispered. “I think five minutes more of this will kill me."”” They dragged us across the hall from the Senate into the House. Here he hid| ‘Let's getout in the air and walk,” away bebind a mass of women and was I sighed. After a time we turned up at the glad for a spell. But they drageed him | church. I wanted to go into the pastor's up into the Speaker's desk; and, the study. I told nim I believed we had same as before. We got down and out of | friends there and a fire, for it wascold. there into the woods, and I don’t want to “No; no women in there; here.” He sve any one go through that again. Long- | led us into a little side door, a sort of fellow came nearer to Riley in this than | storeroom for the janitor, and nere we sat any one else that I ever saw. Whitman |and shivered as the great cold church did not suffer so, and I heard a man say, | slowly filled. Men kept coming one after as Riley stood on tibe steps wiping his | another with their bicycles. Then two face, “Why, you couldn’t scare Eugene { women came to hand their rubbers in Field or Bill Nye that way with a dozen | throuzh tne door to the janitor. Then cannon.” one came and panged at the door, and as And now, how we walked and talked! Riley shyly opened it six inches she Squirrels, birds, brooxs, snow, red beech | shoved in a poodle dog, with instructions trees and yeilow maple. Itisadull, level | to the janitor. Riley without a word land about here, but Riley sees wondrous | prompily passed the dog out and bolted change and color and “go” in it all, and | the door. We sat down close together, says =0 in the fewest, briefest, best-chosen | for we were shivering, shivering, and it | words in the world. | was dark in that den of bicycles and coal Now Iam not eager to proclaim with | scuttles and old rubber boots, and cold, so Lowell, Hoimes and Howells that Riley | cold! Only | | is entirely great. He is greatas Warren | 1t was then that he gave vent to this Diséovery of a New Indian Poet A few years ago, while rambling about | was much given to ventilating the opinion in the northwestern corner of Oudh, I came into possession of certain bundles of manuscript written by one Achmet Fazl-cod-deen, Jersadarof Aligunj, one of the villages of Oudh, which nestles in a | clearing of the Terai—the great jar, that ekirts the foothills of the Himala vas. The MS., which was written in flowing ACHMET, THE BARD. Shagist (the Urdu caligraphy used by men of clerkly attainments), proved on exam- ination 1o be the journal of the said Achmet, who began his career as & hum- ble acoiyte of the viliage mosane, the Moolah of which tavent him Urdu and Persian and Arabic. He early developed a faculty for writing verse, some three- score specimens of which are scattered through the MS. in my possession, for he | deference to the popularity and fame that /" | of e “bard who stirred within him’'—to use his own expression—on every possible occasion. | The people of Aligunj seemed to have | entertained a half-amused contempt for | Achmet, which was not to be wondered at in a community of bucolics; but in his verses had begun to acquire in the metropolitan city of Lucknow, they gave him rather more than the modicum of support thata prophet obtains in his own country, and at one time, when he sud denly blazed into an exhibition of courage that was hardly to be expected from a mere poet, he was in a fair way of earn- ing the munificent sum of 5 rupees a month—more tkan a competence for a | frugal scrivener with simyle tas‘es. i At this juncture, and when his lucky ! star seemed to be 1n the ascendant, the pestiferous vanity which affects all poets, | more or less, and is a part of the poeticel temperament, led him to fall in love with | the daughter of the Thanadar (the chief of police) of Aligunj, whose pride was greatly affronted by the presump! of the scrivener and bard. Achmet’s “bub- ble reputation” soon collapsed in his native village and te was on the verge of starvation, when he attracted the atte tion of a kindly Yankee who was “tour- ing” India in search of the secrets of Hindoo mugic. { By the wandering American he was | made acquainted with the fascinating, but | forbidden, savors of swine’s flesh and strong waters, thereby becoming *‘an | alien to his mother’s children,” and from | this period many of bis poems were of a bacchanalian character. He rapidiy de- | veloped into an Evicurean like his great | prototype, Omar Khayyam, with whose noble poem he was well acquainted, and on whose preserves he unconsciously en- croaches in the manuscripts before me. By bis newly fonnd friend he was taken to San Francisco, and during the voyage his irrepressible bardic temuerament led | him to fall in love with & native daughter of the Golden West, who must have had a | great deal of fun with him according to his ow3 naive confession. | While in San Francisco he won a cori- siderable prize in a lottery, which eri- abled him 1o return to Aligunj by way of | Mecca. The pilzrimage thus performed | made him a Hadji; and, thus white- | washed, with money in his purse, he was | welcomed with open arms to his native village, where he was adopted by the | Jemadar, and was recenily accepted by the Thanadar as a suitor for hisdaughter’s hand. On the death of his adopted father he became the Jemadarof Aligunj, a position | that he still enjoys. | Whatever may be the fate of his verses done into Eoglish they have already made him famovs in bis native province, aituough they are of a sort that does not appeal to such popular taste as we uave in this country, which is caught by tne careless songs of Eugene Field and James Whitcomb Riley. The Oriental has far finer instincts in matters yertaining to art than we of the Occident, with all our science and boasted civilizaiion. In the following metrical transiations T | have aitempted to render the spirit of | Achmet’s muse rather than his mere | words. I need hardly say thatmuch of | the bloom of his verses is lost in the rough hanaling of translation : The following dithyrambics were de- claimed directly after his first introduc- i | master. tion to Bourbon and a light wine, proba bly hock, which he said “was sweeter than the w sherb s of Shiras’: Oh, swe Wit nails of is the breath of the houri in Para- miling and waiting blin her her f es, and keana staining the With d-ciasps that torill without sating. sweeter, my lord, to the hungry is the eam of savory meat. Bu How pr petals how gay! How refreshing the sound of the brook as it laushs o'er i's murmuring tas t is more precious the rosc-red Wine th its wit and iis play she lord, to the thirsty is the gurgling of long-neeked flask. Lo! Hunger ana Thirst are kind demons, ap- peased with meat and with wine; Aud o healthy appetite’s, surely, the only admissible pricst make due sacrifice, and libations to pour at their shrines; But hearken, my lord, in your ear—“To- bacco's the crown of the feast!" The following has a quaint flavor about it of Herrick and Horace: God gave the gifts of youth and wine, And frolic thoughts and love divine, Then, spurn them not. Before the clouds of old age lowe Oh, let us warm us for an hour, ‘Whilst youth is hot. Come, kiss the wine-cup while you may; The fire of youth /asts but & da; Too s00n we're old; The light goes out, the fagot burns, And soon to dust and ashes turns, And all 15 cold. The following verses were sung as he | sailed out of the Hoogli, with no hope of returning 10 his native land: O Aligunj, O Aligunj Thee and tay loveiy daughters, Still in my memory shail I bear Beyond these pathless waters. The tinkle of returning flocks, The lowings of thy kine, Seem with the setting sun to come Across these leaguos of brine, 'Tis now the hour when crickets chirp Their first uneasy stralns, And lengthening shades the cattle throw Athwart the dusty plains; The nigh muezzid’s call is neatd, Toe faithiul turn their eyes T'ward Mecca, s00n as on the ear “Aliah—Li—oollah!” dies. The wild fowl’s flying wedge is seen, Secking its sedgy nest: The bixds their elamorous conclaves hold Ere they retire to rest; The sun nas set, the pleasant eve Now lays her dewy hand, 0 Aligunj, upon thy brow, And on'thy weary land. He visited Stevenson at Vailima, and fell under the spell of the mighty The following tribute was writ- ten on hearinz of the great author’s death, and is not any worse than so much of the verse that has been written about bim: ters of Z:m-Zem and surpassed the | cious the color of amber! the rose’s | l From the least of tne least of all singers, to the last of the Mighty Dead,— Greeting, and love, and due reverence. for all you have written and said. Oh, had I the treasures you garnered of wor ds and the meanings they hold, Iwould crowu you with jewels of utterance, and wrap you in verses of gold! For Allah, who sent you, was weary; he yearned for your speech and your soug: His banquets without you were burdens, his houris had missed you too long; S0 they st you a couch by Firdusi; great Omar will crown you with g Once more they'll be happy in heaven tell them some magical story. He breaks into tumultaous utterance on bearing that Golab, the Thanadar's daughte turns to Aligunj: Go, frolic winds, and these my kisses bear To where, In some coul, dark retreat, Withdrawn from midnoon heat, My mistress wreaths her hair With marigold and jessamine, \And in its jetty twine The rose enfolds. Oh! that were mine Your unfelt privilege to kiss her feet, To fan her face, and mingle with her breath, Hear all she saith, And trom her neck unfurl And 1ift each dainty curl. But do not rufile her with wantonness, Or with too rude caress Her virgin thought distress, And—list! When you her lips have kissed Then swilt return to me, With usury, These kisses that I send to her by ye. He had never seen the face of his be- loved, and this is how his fancy plays about it: As falls the dew upon the rose Unfolded to the night, And on each leaf a gefh bestows That beautifies the light, 8o fail my though 8 upon thy face And on thy sleeping eyes. And clothe thee with a hourl's grace, Who blooms in paradise. The supreme moment having arrived when he should unveil his bride’s face, she, fearful lest he should ve disappointed with her, tries to persuade him to leave her veiled, and be contented with sight only of her eyes, whica alone he bad looked upon. “For answer,” he says, “I put forth my hand and slowly uncoverea the face of Allsh’s most beautilul houri, whom he had bestowed upon me because I loved his wouderfal works, and ‘was a hadj, and because the bard within me had ever sought to find paradise in this world of beauty.” - The manuscript finishes with a prayer that there should be no unchaste thoughts in the minds of its readers! What would some of our women writers who are pro- ducing *‘novels with a purpose’” say to the ambition of this “heathen in bis blind- ness,” who keeps his own mind perfectly pure, as set forth in his “short and simple annals”? J. Laep. is still unwedded when he re- | | was great at Bunker Hill. Warren fell, we | lesson: A | lost t. e fightand the ground where he fell; | *Ob, do not touch liquor. It will hit then a long war, Washington, and for all | you hard some day; hit you hard when that we were never quite emancipated till | you are looking the other way. Lincoln. We may have even a longer | We stilishiverea, and I wanted to go in { and harder fight for freedom, emacipa-| Where the women were, in the pastor's ‘ tion, than that which lasted from Warren | comfortatle study. to Lincoln, but we will be emancipated | *'No. noj; no, no.” from words, words, sooner or later. The “Jim, tell me; you never married; tell greatness of Riley is in his contempt for | me wiy. Who was she? What became words; in his showing that great men use | of her?” { small words, and, by inference, taat small | He took my hand in his as we sat still ( men use big woras. | closer together and said, in the solemnest, Please compare a state paper of the | SWeetest voice Iever Leard, and as if to Great Emancipator with a recent state | himself: ' paper of a man who lately left the White | ‘‘She was only a little seminary girl, the incoln could ana would | sweetest little seminary girl that ever was | have put a whole column of Cleveland in |seenin a dream; and she went to the, a single paragraph. | seminary and never cume back. You see | When the Messiah of American litera- | 1 bardiy knew her, only saw her a little, | ture comes he will come :inging, so far as | 9nly two or three times, and I only held | may be, in monosyllable-. And there is | ber hands once, and then only for a sec- | no reason why, in this republic, a state | Ond, as she got in the sleigh by her father | paper may not be, as Lincoln indicated, as | and then I, I leaned over and kissed her | tresh, plain and simple as a song. The |little hands. That's all, thats all.”” { man who intrudes a big word, or a new | Andthen he slowiy, lowly, so tenderly | word, or an obsolete word when a simple, | Fepeated these next lines and was only | brief word will do, is to that extent a rob- | ending them when the audience impa- ber of my time. Hais doing it, too, not | tiently calied us from the dark and cold, to teach or tell me anything. He is doing | Yet mind you, these lines, while written A | it toair his own-vanity and fancied im- | his youth, are not characteristic. It is or | portance. in dialect or baby verses that he1sat his | " Riiey, the law student, must have ever | best, is Jim Riley. bad a whole-army-of words at beck, buthe | Marvelous—wonderful—beautiful Liands! blade. The Romans fought on foot, nearly | yitier myaterions sonshes of tbire, 4 naked and with only the short Roman | Intosuch knotsasentancle the sou', sword; the barbarians fought on horse-| And fetter tae heart under such a control back, a-glitter with gold and steel, and | ASonly the strenzth of my love understands— with tHe'long, tasseled lanca! in the air. | My passionate love for your beautitul bands. But it was the short Roman sword that | Juremember tho first fairiouch =~ < went to the heart and won the world. 15 xesimte usiines Rinenwashaneds - And yet shall’ I say I have not adored | Kissing the glove thus I found uniilicd— { and¢ do not still revel in luxuriant litera- | When I met your gaze, and the queen y bow, ture? Ilove it, but it is the love of wine; | 430U sail tome. laughis, op 15 dfow £ St -5 | Anddazel and alone in a dream I stand | a delirious intoxication that is not for the | g e SN TR 1o TOb R . | best unless it be wine of the very best. | # | When I first lo n the long ago, {And we bhave more dealers in bad Words | o netd your nand as T to.a vas so— and bad wine. [Kknow of but one man in | Pre.ses nud caressed It and g.ve it a kiss, California whom I would license 1o use | Andsad. *i couid dle for n hand ke this?" words entirely as he pieases. L L N ey | it was dark. We had to dress for the shoW. | For one warm touch of y our beausitul hand. | I was to talk in achurchand he was 0 in- | poo i Hanast 0 Beautiful Hands! troduce me. He came promptly, to the | Could you reach out of the alien lands | minute, most elaborately dressed and | Where you are lingering, and give me, to-night, | pale, so pale, his black dress suit and | OBl¥atouch—were it ev.T 0 light— shining patent leathers and black silk | (¥ heart were soothed, and my weary braln stockings making his white face seem &5 | kor there is no solace the world commands | white as his linen, | Like the caress of your beautiful hands. € Wueens Jubliee. The loyal Briton who watches from a comfortable seat the passing through Lon- don’s streets of the pageant that will be one of the main features of the coming Queen’s Jubilee will have to pay a pretty penny for his pleasure. M. M. Stern, local passenger agent of the Canadian Pacific Railroad, has just re- ceived from London a schedule of prices for seats in windows and on roofs that make the prices charged at the rccent great fistic carnival, great as they were, pale into in- | significance. The enterprising firm that sent out the circular bought up months ago hundreds 1 of choice Iocations and is now reaping the Yet the circular reads thus: *QUEEN VICTORIA'S ‘We are now offering some of the finest Seats ou first floor at £1 Seats on second floor at ing $25 for a seat on the roof or $500 for a window on the first floor! benefit of its for:though-. JUBILEE PROCESSION." positions for viewing the procession, 0, £12 und £15. £8, £10 and £12. Windows on first floor at £50. £75 and £100. Windows on second floor £40, £50 and £60. Seats on upper floors and roofs from £2 to £5. Book early with remitiance to secure good positions.