His humor--both as expressed in his writings, and as we knew it who lived neighbor to him--was of the same _genre_ as Mark Twain’s. And it is not surprising that Mark Twain and Riley should have met on grounds of common sympathy and understanding. What the Mississippi was to the Missourian, the Old National Road that bisected Greenfield was to Riley. The larger adventure of life that made Clemens a cosmopolitan did not appeal to Riley, with his intense loyalty to the State of his birth and the city that for thirty-eight years was his home. It gave him the greatest pleasure to send his friends books that he thought would interest them. Among those he sent me are Professor Woodberry’s selections from Aubrey de Vere, whose “Bard Ethell” Riley thought a fine performance; Bradford Torrey’s _Friends on the Shelf_ and, a few weeks before his death, a copy of G. K. Chesterton’s poems in which he had written a substitute for one of the lines. If in these gifts he chose some volume already known to the recipient, it was well to conceal the fact, for it was essential to the perfect course of his friendships that he be taken on his own terms, and no one would have had the heart to spoil his pleasure in a “discovery.” He was most generous toward all aspirants in his own field, though for years these were prone to take advantage of his good nature by inflicting books and manuscripts upon him. I once committed the indiscretion of uttering a volume of verse, and observed with trepidation a considerable number of copies on the counter of the bookstore where we did much loafing together. A few days later I was surprised and for a moment highly edified to find the stock greatly depleted. On cautious inquiry I found that it was Riley alone who had been the investor--to the extent of seventy-five copies, which he distributed widely among literary acquaintances. In the case of another friend who published a book without large expectations of public favor, Riley secretly purchased a hundred and scattered them broadcast. These instances are typical: he would do a kind thing furtively and evince the deepest embarrassment when detected.