Spoon River Anthology | Page 9

coming of Christ.
Then Christ came
to me and said,
"Go into the church and stand before the congregation

And confess your sin."
But just as I stood up and began to speak

I saw my little girl, who was sitting in the front seat--
My little girl
who was born blind!
After that, all is blackness.
Aner Clute
OVER and over they used to ask me,
While buying the wine or the
beer,
In Peoria first, and later in Chicago,
Denver, Frisco, New
York, wherever I lived
How I happened to lead the life,
And what
was the start of it.
Well, I told them a silk dress,
And a promise of
marriage from a rich man--
(It was Lucius Atherton).
But that was
not really it at all.
Suppose a boy steals an apple
From the tray at
the grocery store,
And they all begin to call him a thief,
The editor,
minister, judge, and all the people--
"A thief," "a thief," "a thief,"
wherever he goes
And he can't get work, and he can't get bread

Without stealing it, why the boy will steal.
It's the way the people
regard the theft of the apple
That makes the boy what he is.
Lucius Atherton
WHEN my moustache curled,
And my hair was black,
And I wore
tight trousers
And a diamond stud,
I was an excellent knave of
hearts and took many a trick.
But when the gray hairs began to
appear--
Lo! a new generation of girls
Laughed at me, not fearing
me,
And I had no more exciting adventures

Wherein I was all but
shot for a heartless devil,
But only drabby affairs, warmed-over
affairs
Of other days and other men.
And time went on until I lived
at
Mayer's restaurant,
Partaking of short-orders, a gray, untidy,

Toothless, discarded, rural Don Juan. . . .
There is a mighty shade

here who sings
Of one named Beatrice;
And I see now that the
force that made him great
Drove me to the dregs of life.
Homer Clapp
OFTEN Aner Clute at the gate
Refused me the parting kiss,
Saying
we should be engaged before that;
And just with a distant clasp of the
hand
She bade me good-night, as I brought her home
From the
skating rink or the revival.
No sooner did my departing footsteps die
away
Than Lucius Atherton,
(So I learned when Aner went to
Peoria)
Stole in at her window, or took her riding
Behind his
spanking team of bays
Into the country.
The shock of it made me
settle down
And I put all the money I got from my father's estate

Into the canning factory, to get the job
Of head accountant, and lost it
all.
And then I knew I was one of Life's fools,
Whom only death
would treat as the equal
Of other men, making me feel like a man.
Deacon Taylor
I BELONGED to the church,
And to the party of prohibition;
And
the villagers thought I died of eating watermelon.
In truth I had
cirrhosis of the liver,
For every noon for thirty years,
I slipped
behind the prescription partition
In Trainor's drug store
And poured
a generous drink
From the bottle marked "Spiritus frumenti."
Sam Hookey
I RAN away from home with the circus,
Having fallen in love with
Mademoiselle Estralada,
The lion tamer.
One time, having starved
the lions
For more than a day,
I entered the cage and began to beat
Brutus
And Leo and Gypsy.
Whereupon Brutus sprang upon me,

And killed me.
On entering these regions

I met a shadow who
cursed me,
And said it served me right. . . .
It was Robespierre!
Cooney Potter

I INHERITED forty acres from my Father
And, by working my wife,
my two sons and two daughters
From dawn to dusk, I acquired
A
thousand acres.
But not content,
Wishing to own two thousand
acres,
I bustled through the years with axe and plow,
Toiling,
denying myself, my wife, my sons, my daughters.
Squire Higbee
wrongs me to say
That I died from smoking Red Eagle cigars.

Eating hot pie and gulping coffee
During the scorching hours of
harvest time
Brought me here ere I had reached my sixtieth year.
Fiddler Jones
THE earth keeps some vibration going
There in your heart, and that is
you.
And if the people find you can fiddle,
Why, fiddle you must,
for all your life.
What do you see, a harvest of clover?
Or a meadow
to walk through to the river?
The wind's in the corn; you rub your
hands
For beeves hereafter ready for market;
Or else you hear the
rustle of skirts
Like the girls when dancing at Little Grove.
To
Cooney Potter a pillar of dust
Or whirling leaves meant ruinous
drouth;
They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy
Stepping it off,
to "Toor-a-Loor."
How could I till my forty acres
Not to speak of
getting more,
With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos

Stirred in my brain by crows and robins
And the creak of a
wind-mill--only these?
And I never started to plow in my life
That
some one did not stop in the road
And take me away to a dance or
picnic.
I ended up with forty acres;
I ended up with a broken
fiddle--
And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories,
And not a
single regret.
Nellie Clark
I WAS only eight years old;
And before I grew up and knew what it
meant
I had