Spoon River Anthology | Page 8

away

To the jail at Peoria.
And yet I was going peacefully home,

Carrying my jug, a little drunk,
When Logan, the marshal, halted me

Called me a drunken hound and shook me
And, when I cursed him
for it, struck me
With that Prohibition loaded cane--
All this before
I shot him.
They would have hanged me except for this:
My lawyer,
Kinsey Keene, was helping to land
Old Thomas Rhodes for wrecking
the bank,
And the judge was a friend of
Rhodes And wanted him to
escape,
And Kinsey offered to quit on
Rhodes For fourteen years
for me.
And the bargain was made.
I served my time
And learned
to read and write.
Jacob Goodpasture
WHEN Fort Sumter fell and the war came
I cried out in bitterness of
soul:
"O glorious republic now no more!"
When they buried my
soldier son
To the call of trumpets and the sound of drums
My heart
broke beneath the weight
Of eighty years, and I cried:
"Oh, son who
died in a cause unjust!
In the strife of Freedom slain!"
And I crept
here under the grass.
And now from the battlements of time, behold:

Thrice thirty million souls being bound together
In the love of
larger truth,
Rapt in the expectation of the birth
Of a new Beauty,

Sprung from Brotherhood and Wisdom.
I with eyes of spirit see the
Transfiguration
Before you see it.
But ye infinite brood of golden
eagles nesting ever higher, Wheeling ever higher, the sun-- light
wooing
Of lofty places of Thought,
Forgive the blindness of the
departed owl.
Dorcas Gustine
I WAS not beloved of the villagers,
But all because I spoke my mind,


And met those who transgressed against me
With plain
remonstrance, hiding nor nurturing
Nor secret griefs nor grudges.

That act of the Spartan boy is greatly praised,
Who hid the wolf under
his cloak,
Letting it devour him, uncomplainingly.
It is braver, I
think, to snatch the wolf forth
And fight him openly, even in the
street,
Amid dust and howls of pain.
The tongue may be an unruly
member--
But silence poisons the soul.
Berate me who will--I am
content.
Nicholas Bindle
Were you not ashamed, fellow citizens,
When my estate was probated
and everyone knew
How small a fortune I left?--
You who hounded
me in life,
To give, give, give to the churches, to the poor,
To the
village!--me who had already given much.
And think you not I did
not know
That the pipe-organ, which I gave to the church,
Played
its christening songs when Deacon Rhodes,
Who broke and all but
ruined me,
Worshipped for the first time after his acquittal?
Harold Arnett
I LEANED against the mantel, sick, sick,
Thinking of my failure,
looking into the abysm,
Weak from the noon-day heat.
A church
bell sounded mournfully far away,
I heard the cry of a baby,
And
the coughing of John Yarnell,
Bed-ridden, feverish, feverish, dying,

Then the violent voice of my wife:
"Watch out, the potatoes are
burning!"
I smelled them . . . then there was irresistible disgust.
I
pulled the trigger . . . blackness . . . light . . .
Unspeakable regret . . .
fumbling for the world again.
Too late! Thus I came here,
With
lungs for breathing . . . one cannot breathe here with lungs, Though one
must breathe
Of what use is it To rid one's self of the world,
When
no soul may ever escape the eternal destiny of life?
Margaret Fuller Slack

I WOULD have been as great as George Eliot
But for an untoward
fate.
For look at the photograph of me made by Penniwit,
Chin
resting on hand, and deep--set eyes--
Gray, too, and far-searching.

But there was the old, old problem:
Should it be celibacy, matrimony
or unchastity?
Then John Slack, the rich druggist, wooed me,

Luring me with the promise of leisure for my novel,
And I married
him, giving birth to eight children,
And had no time to write.
It was
all over with me, anyway,
When I ran the needle in my hand
While
washing the baby's things,
And died from lock--jaw, an ironical death.

Hear me, ambitious souls,
Sex is the curse of life.
George Trimble
Do you remember when I stood on the steps
Of the Court House and
talked free-silver,
And the single-tax of Henry George?
Then do
you remember that, when the Peerless Leader
Lost the first battle, I
began to talk prohibition,
And became active in the church?
That
was due to my wife,
Who pictured to me my destruction
If I did not
prove my morality to the people.
Well, she ruined me:
For the
radicals grew suspicious of me,
And the conservatives were never
sure of me--
And here I lie, unwept of all.
"Ace" Shaw
I NEVER saw any difference
Between playing cards for money

And selling real estate,
Practicing law, banking, or anything else.

For everything is chance.
Nevertheless
Seest thou a man diligent in
business?
He shall stand before Kings!
Willard Fluke
MY wife lost her health,
And dwindled until she weighed scarce
ninety pounds.
Then that woman, whom the men
Styled Cleopatra,
came along.

And we-- we married ones
All broke our vows, myself

among the rest.
Years passed and one by one
Death claimed them
all in some hideous form
And I was borne along by dreams
Of
God's particular grace for me,
And I began to write, write, write,
reams on reams
Of the second