Excerpt from The Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley, Vol. 1 of 10 On Sunday morning, October seventh, 1849, Reuben A. Riley and his wife, Elizabeth Marine Riley, rejoiced over the birth of their second son. They called him James Whitcomb. This was in a shady little street in the shady little town of Green field, which is in the county of Hancock and the state of Indiana. The young James found a brother and a sister waiting to greet him - John Andrew and Martha Celestia, and afterward came Elva May -mrs. Henry Eitel - Alexander Humbolt and Mary Elizabeth, who, of all, alone lives to see this collec tion of her brother's poems. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.