Riley was known as the Hoosier poet. He was at various times a traveling actor, a sign painter, and a newspaperman. Under the name Benjamin F. Johnson of Boone, he began to write verse in the Hoosier dialect for the Indianapolis Journal . These were first collected in The Old Swimmin-Hole and Leven More Poems . Riley’s verse was popular because of its humor, pathos, simplicity, and sentimentality.