A Caller from Boone. Benj. F. Johnson Visits the Editor by James Whitcomb Riley

It was a dim and chill and loveless afternoon in / the late fall of eighty-three when I first saw / the genial subject of this hasty sketch. From time / to time the daily paper on which I worked had been / receiving, among the general literary driftage of / amateur essayists, poets and sketch-writers, some / conceits in verse that struck the editorial head as / decidedly novel; and, as they were evidently the / production of an unlettered man, and an OLD man, / and a farmer at that, they were usually spared the / waste-basket, and preserved -- not for publication, / but to pass from hand to hand among the members / of the staff as simply quaint and mirth-provoking / specimens of the verdancy of both the venerable / author and the Muse inspiring him.

Letters as quaint as were the poems invariably accompanied / them, and the oddity of these, in fact, had first called / attention to the verses. I well remember the general / merriment of the office when the first of the old / man's letters was read aloud, and I recall, too, some / of his comments on his own verse, verbatim. In / one place he said: "I make no doubt you will find some purty SAD / spots in my poetry, considerin'; but / I hope you will bear in mind that I am a great / sufferer with rheumatizum, and have been, off and / on, sence the cold New Years. In the main, however," / he continued, "I allus aim to write in a cheerful, / comfortin' sperit, so's ef the stuff hangs fire, / and don't do no good, it hain't a-goin' to do no / harm, -- and them's my honest views on poetry."