By 1882 the Middle West was fairly well settled. It was already beginning to find time to cultivate the beautiful, to feed its sensibilities. Early in this year James Whitcomb Riley came out of Indiana to Boston -- unheralded, unknown, totally innocent -- and astounded a sophisticated audience with his enchanting verses. From that date legends began to grow about the Hoosier Poet until now -- 75 years later -- fact and fiction are sometimes inextricable and a sentimental haze surrounds his life. A search for the truth, however, reveals that he was the beau ideal of his time and place, the looking glass in which the Midwest saw its own archetypal reflection. - Prologue.