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Armazindy / The Poems and Prose Sketches of James Whitcomb Riley cover

Armazindy / The Poems and Prose Sketches of James Whitcomb Riley

Chapter 70: FOLKS AT LONESOMEVILLE
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About This Book

A mixed collection of poems and prose sketches that depicts small‑town and rural life through vernacular narration, sentimental observation, and comic detail. Longer narrative pieces explore personal loss, domestic struggles, and neighborhood intrigues, while shorter lyrics and children’s verses celebrate play, memory, and everyday tenderness. The voice shifts between musical, folksy dialect and plain colloquial phrasing, producing a rhythmic, conversational tone. Recurrent concerns include household labor, family ties, youthful fancy, and the mingled humor and nostalgia of ordinary community experience.

FOLKS AT LONESOMEVILLE

Pore-folks lives at Lonesomeville—
Lawzy! but they’re pore!
Houses with no winders in,
And hardly any door:
Chimbly all tore down, and no
Smoke in that at all—
Ist a stovepipe through a hole
In the kitchen-wall!
Pump ’at’s got no handle on;
And no woodshed—And, wooh!
Mighty cold there, choppin’ wood,
Like pore-folks has to do!—
Winter-time, and snow and sleet
Ist fairly fit to kill!—
Hope to goodness Santy Claus
Goes to Lonesomeville!