America, as has often been said, is a land of homes: of dwellers in villages, on farms, and in small towns. We are common people, middle-class people, conservative, decent, religious, tenacious of old ways, home-keeping and home-loving. We do not thrill to Walt Whitman’s paeans to democracy in the abstract; but we vibrate to every touch on the chord of family affections, of early friendships, and of the dear old homely things that our childhood knew. Americans are sentimental and humorous; and Riley abounds in sentiment—wholesome sentiment—and natural humor, while Whitman had little of either. To all Americans who were ever boys; to all, at least who have had the good luck to be country boys and go barefoot; whether they dwell in the prairie states of the Middle West, or elsewhere, the scenes and characters of Riley’s poems are familiar: Little Orphant Annie and the Raggedy Man, and the Old Swimmin’ Hole and Griggsby’s Station “where we ust to be so happy and so pore.” They know when the frost is on the “punkin,” and that the “Gobble-uns’ll git you ef you don’t watch out”; and how the old tramp said to the Raggedy Man:— You’re a _purty_ man!—_You_ air!— With a pair o’ eyes like two fried eggs, An’ a nose like a Bartlutt pear! They have all, in their time, followed along after the circus parade, listened to the old village band playing tunes like “Lily Dale” and “In the Hazel Dell my Nellie’s Sleeping” and “Rosalie, the Prairie Flower”; have heard the campaign stump speaker when he “cut loose on monopolies and cussed and cussed and cussed”; have belonged to the literary society which debated the questions whether fire or water was the most destructive element; whether town life was preferable to country life; whether the Indian or the negro had suffered more at the hands of the white man; or whether the growth of Roman Catholicism in this country is a menace to our free institutions. And _was_ the execution of Charles the First justifiable? Charles is dead now; but this good old debate question will never die. They knew the joys of “eatin’ out on the porch” and the woes of having your sister lose your jackknife through a crack in the barn floor; or of tearing your thumb nail in trying to get the nickel out of the tin savings bank.