394 FAMOUS LIVING AMERICANS When Mr. Riley began to write for the Journal his produc- tions were of a more ambitious sort than the light jingles he had been accustomed to turn out for the country papers or for recitation from the tail of the advertising wagon as it stopped in the Uttle towns and the gay young firm of sign painters sang or played flute or fiddle ,or otherwise made merry in order to draw a crowd. He once said that he was really obUged to write things to recite; what he found in print was not natural or human enough. Some of the poems now best known were written in these early days of his Indianapolis life. Besides his frequent poems in the Journal^ he contrib- uted to the weekly Mirror, published in Indianapolis, his Fly- ing Islands of the Night appearing there — a rather weird composition, but wonderfully imaginative and original Its merit and peculiar quality have perhaps never been generally appreciated. At the same time he bombarded Eastern mag- azines with his offerings, but for a long time to no effect. 13ja work being out of the ordinary and the dialect verses, at least, unconventional, the editors, after the manner of their kind, regarded the contributions with distrust and promptly re- jected them. His first recognition came from the Century Magazine, whose associate editor, Robert Underwood John- son, himself a native Indianian, doubtless recognized the ac- curacy of the speech and the character drawing of Riley's metrical folk lore. After that the pages of the Century were always open to him. Mr. Riley made many contributions to the Journal before he mustered courage to ask for remuneration or before it oc- curred to the editor that he was entitled to it by reason of the merit of his offerings. Finally illumination came to the ed- itorial mind and to-day there exists a list of poems for which a lump sum was paid to the author. The list includes some of his most familiar and now famous verses, but what was paid for them is the author's own secret, for no memorandum is made on the list and the ledger recording it has long since vanished. Then it was proposed that Mr. Riley join the Journal ed- itorial staff at a fixed salary, which he did. His duties were
