RILEY 



5019 



RIMOUSKI 



schools were successful, and he became promi- 

 nent in the movements for securing greater 

 purity in the city water supply, parks in the 

 congested districts of lower New York, and 

 well-equipped playgrounds for the poor chil- 

 dren. 



Riis's friendship and sympathy were particu- 

 larly extended towards the immigrants of the 

 lower classes. He was executive officer of the 

 Good Government clubs, and became secretary 

 of the New York Small Parks Commission in 

 1897. After serving as reporter for twenty-seven 

 years on various New York papers, he resigned 

 and devoted his time to lecturing and writing. 

 At the time of his death on May 26, 1914, at 

 his summer home in Barre, Mass., he was gen- 

 erally recognized as among the foremost social 

 workers of America. Among his writings are 

 his famous How the Other Ha'f Lives, a book 

 for which he was at first unable to find a pub- 

 r; also The Children of the Poor; The 

 Making of an American (his autobiography) ; 

 The Battle with the Slum; Children of the 

 Tenements; Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen; 

 The Old Town and Hero Talcs of the Far 

 North, 



RILEY, ri'li, JAMES WHITCOMB (1853-1916), 

 an American poet who is known to countless 

 readers as the exponent of the common things 

 of life. He was born in Greenfield, Ind , Octo- 

 ber 7, 1853. His father's profession, the law, 

 did not appeal to him, and after receiving a 

 common school education he worked for a time 

 as a sign painter and then became a traveling 

 actor. His spare hours he spent in composing 

 songs and revising plays for the show company, 

 'and he gained an intimate knowledge of the 

 country folk of Indiana, their dialect and their 

 peculiarities, of which he later made pood use. 

 Becoming, in 1873, a reporter for the Indianap- 

 olis Journal, he be^an to contribute poems to 

 that paper and others, sirnin <, them 'Benjamin 

 F. Johnson, of Bconc." His dialect vcr3C3 soon 

 became very popular, and the ' Hoosicr Poet," 

 as he was called, won a wide reputation. In 

 1877, by a clever literary hoax, he deer 

 editors and readers all over the country. He 

 published in the Kokomo Dispatch a poem 

 called Lconainie, which he signed "E. A. P.," 

 and which a statement of the editor's declared 

 to be a newly discovered poem by Poc. Even 

 critics were interested, and not unt.l the Dis- 

 patch itself explained the joke was the decep- 

 tion known. 



For a time, with Edgar W. (Bill) Nye, Rilcy 

 traveled about the country lecturing and read- 



ing from his poems, and his wonderful power 

 of mimicry made him very successful in this. 

 His first collection, The Old Swimmin' Hole 

 and 'Levcn More Poems, was followed by Old- 

 Fashioned Roses, Neighborly Poems, Rhymes 

 of Childhood, An Old Sweetheart of Mine, Out 

 to Old Aunt Mary's and A Child World. The 

 pathos and humor of these simple poems 01 





JAMKS WIIITCOM3 RILEY 

 The bert l~veJ and most widely read poet of 

 his generation. 



Indiana life have made their appeal very gen- 

 eral, and few poets of the present day have 

 been so widely read. An intimate knowledge 

 of child life, too, is shown in much of his work. 

 Not everything which he has done has been in 

 the Ind'ana dialect; he has written some beau- 

 tiful selections in pure English. 



In 1D13, on his sixtieth birthday, a unique 

 celebration was held in his home on Lockerbie 

 Street, Ind anapolis. Thousands of school chil- 

 dren paraded before him, some of them carry- 

 ing flowers, and the most prominent men of his 

 state, as well as many of the poorer classes, 

 :i and <!.<! homage to his genius and 

 his understanding love for nature and for hu- 

 manity. 



RIMOUSKI, rcc moos' kcc, the county town 

 cf Rimouski County, Quebec. It is on the 

 south bank of the Saint Lawrence River, and 

 on the Inters v, 183 miles north- 



cast of Quebec and 342 miles nort hcu>t of Mont- 

 real. It is the last port of call for outgoing 

 transatlantic steamers on the Saint Lawrence. 



