“What did you say?” “Is this Mr. Riley?” “Riley, oh! yes.” “I knew your father.” “No bother.” “I knew your father.” “What?” “I knew your father!” “Oh, so did I.” And in a few moments the farmer heard Nye and Riley talking in ordinary tones of voice. Imagine his chagrin! In an article published in the Sunday newspapers, Nye paid his gentle respects to James Whitcomb Riley as his “old comrade and partner in the show business.” Remarking that some admirer gave Riley “the place left vacant by Doctor Holmes,” he suggested that “we must pause to think how different the two men were.” While the Hoosier poet could “compare with Holmes in the size of audiences, the doctor’s humor was of a more strictly Massachusetts character. He would be content with a pun or conundrum, while Riley enjoyed _practical_ humor.” He proceeded to give an example by narrating how, upon one occasion, the manager warned the hotel man that nothing “but clean shirts and farinaceous food” was to be sent up to “No. 182.” The poet, with “his keen sense of humor,” as Nye termed it, found that the room communicated with No. 180, and that the man who was domiciled there had gone out for the evening. He stepped in and “at odd times used the bell of No. 180 with great skill, thereby irritating his manager so much that he returned to New York on the following day. “Holmes,” continued Nye, “had none of this dry, crisp humor, but cared more for a subtle and delicate play upon words than for a play upon a lecture manager or a hotel proprietor.” The letters which follow bring to me laughter, with the memory, also, of suffering which echoes behind the mirth. Nye caught the motes as they danced in the sunlight and held them up before us for common amusement. Their antics made him laugh, and he wished others to laugh also; but he kept the sunshine. Within its rays might be seen the dust and the rain; but the glow was always there. No human mote was ever hurt by impalement on his pen. Always humorous, he never failed in human kindliness. He made men laugh out of sheer sense of fun, never by a single shaft of malice. His “heart-easing mirth” was wrung quite often from personal suffering. Writing each week for a public that broadened with the enjoyment he gave, there was but little room for permanence in Nye’s works, though his books still continue to sell. He always gave a great deal of credit to Mrs. Nye for the successful management of his business affairs. Some investments caused reverses, but the result was perhaps unavoidable under general business conditions at the time. Mrs. Nye was once taken in by a real estate operator who secured confidence by assuming a religious character. Nye never ceased to joke about it. The lots were found to be under water, and the humorist suggested the use of a diving bell in locating them.