Riley was quoted by Mark Twain, and Rudyard Kipling composed a poem in his honor called simply "J.W.R.". President Woodrow Wilson honored him on his 66th Birthday with this statement, "Affectionate appreciation for the many pleasures [Riley] has given me, along with the rest of the great body of readers of English."
When Riley was a very young boy, Mary Alice "Allie" Smith, an orphan, came to live with the Riley family; Allie was a friend of the family and they took her in to help with the household chores. On her first night in their home James heard her downstairs talking to herself and came down to see her patting the beautiful old staircase and steps. She told him, while leaning her ear to the smooth wooden steps, that fairies lived under each step and that each step had a name. She named them for him; Clarabelle, Annabelle, and Florabelle.
Other names she gave the steps are lost in time now, but on a silent night in that old house, I bet they all answer to Allie's names! Allie and the hired hand used to entertain James with stories of olden times and fairies. Many of his poems get their origin from the memory of those tales told him by the hired help.
Little Orphant Annie was written in memory of the beloved "Allie", who was so loved by the boy who wrote about her when he became a man. Who can ever forget the words to Little Orphant Annie, The Raggedy Man, Out To Old Aunt Mary's and Bud's Fairy Tale?
To all the little children:--The happy ones; the sad ones;
The sober and the silent ones; the boisterous and the glad ones;
The good ones - Yes, the good ones, too; and the lovely bad ones.
Little Orphant Annie's come to our house to stay,
An' wash the cups and saucers up, an' brush the crumbs away,
An shoo the chickens off the porch, an' dust the hearth, an' sweep,
An' make the fire, an' bake the bread, an' earn her board-an'-keep;
We set around the kitchen fire an' has the mostest fun
A-list'nin' to the witch-tales 'at Annie tells about.
An' the Gobble-uns 'at gits you'
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