"
The charitable optimism of his lines:--
"I would sing of love that lives
On the errors it forgives,"
has touched many human hearts.
Furthermore, he has unusual humor, which is as delightful and as pervasive
as the odor of his clover fields. Humor drives home to us the application
of the optimistic philosophy in these lines:--
"When a man's jest glad plum through,
God's pleased with him, same as you."
"When God sorts out the weather and sends rain,
W'y, rain's my choice."
In poems like _Griggsby's Station_ he shows his power in making a subject
pathetic and humorous at the same time.
Albert J. Beveridge says of Riley, "The aristocrat may make verses whose
perfect art renders them immortal, like Horace, or state high truths in
austere beauty, like Arnold. But only the brother of the common man can
tell what the common heart longs for and feels, and only he lives in the
understanding and affection of the millions."
SAMUEL L. CLEMENS, 1835-1910
[Illustration: MARK TWAIN]
LIFE IN THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY.--The author who is known in every village
of the United States by the pen name of Mark Twain, which is the river
phrase for two fathoms of water, was born in Florida, Missouri, in 1835.
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