The Days of a Man 1878 



Dr. Prominent among Indianapolis physicians was the 



Fletcher brilliant and original Dr. William B. Fletcher, an 

 expert in mental disorders. Long at the head of 

 the State Hospital for the Insane, located near the 

 city, he there early abolished medieval methods of 

 violent restraint, being thus one of the pioneers in 

 the modern humane treatment of the mentally dis- 

 ordered. In the early summer of 1891, Dr. Fletcher's 

 excellent daughter Lucy, with her capable friend, 

 Eleanor B. Pearson, both from the Harvard Annex, 

 established the first preparatory school for girls 1 in 

 the neighborhood of Stanford University. Both 

 these young women afterward married professors in 

 the institution. 



Among all my Indianapolis friends, none had 

 greater personal charm than James Whitcomb Riley, 

 the poet whose name has since become a household 

 word. Riley was a gentle, lovable man, with a fine 

 sense of humor and a warm heart which for a time 

 threatened to be his undoing. When his gracious 

 and homely poems brought him into general public 

 notice, they opened the door to a profitable career 

 as a reader, for he rendered his own verse in de- 

 lightful fashion. Nothing apparently could ruffle 

 the sweetness of his temper. In 1892 he gave a 

 reading at Stanford University, after which he was 

 fiercely assailed by Ambrose Bierce for "corrupting" 

 the English language by writing in the "Hoosier 

 dialect/' Some one asked Riley why he did not 

 strike back. "I did," said Riley; "I hit him with 

 a great chunk of silence." 



During his brief stay at Stanford he was my guest, 

 and at my request wrote in our visitors' book his 



1 Called Castilleja Hall upon completion of its original building at Palo Alto. 



n 136 : 



