Chapter 4

Very well, you liberals, And navigators into realms intellectual, You sailors through heights imaginative, Blown about by erratic currents, tumbling into air pockets, You Margaret Fuller Slacks, Petits, And Tennessee Claflin Shopes— You found with all your boasted wisdom How hard at the last it is To keep the soul from splitting into cellular atoms. While we, seekers of earth’s treasures Getters and hoarders of gold, Are self-contained, compact, harmonized, Even to the end.

Ida Chicken

After I had attended lectures At our Chautauqua, and studied French For twenty years, committing the grammar Almost by heart, I thought I’d take a trip to Paris To give my culture a final polish. So I went to Peoria for a passport— (Thomas Rhodes was on the train that morning.) And there the clerk of the district Court Made me swear to support and defend The constitution—yes, even me— Who couldn’t defend or support it at all! And what do you think? That very morning The Federal Judge, in the very next room To the room where I took the oath, Decided the constitution Exempted Rhodes from paying taxes For the water works of Spoon River!

Penniwit, the Artist

I lost my patronage in Spoon River From trying to put my mind in the camera To catch the soul of the person. The very best picture I ever took Was of Judge Somers, attorney at law. He sat upright and had me pause Till he got his cross-eye straight. Then when he was ready he said “all right.” And I yelled “overruled” and his eye turned up. And I caught him just as he used to look When saying “I except.”

Jim Brown

While I was handling Dom Pedro I got at the thing that divides the race between men who are For singing “Turkey in the straw” or “There is a fountain filled with blood”— (Like Rile Potter used to sing it over at Concord). For cards, or for Rev. Peet’s lecture on the holy land; For skipping the light fantastic, or passing the plate; For Pinafore, or a Sunday school cantata; For men, or for money; For the people or against them. This was it: Rev. Peet and the Social Purity Club, Headed by Ben Pantier’s wife, Went to the Village trustees, And asked them to make me take Dom Pedro From the barn of Wash McNeely, there at the edge of town, To a barn outside of the corporation, On the ground that it corrupted public morals. Well, Ben Pantier and Fiddler Jones saved the day— They thought it a slam on colts.

Robert Davidson

I grew spiritually fat living off the souls of men. If I saw a soul that was strong I wounded its pride and devoured its strength. The shelters of friendship knew my cunning For where I could steal a friend I did so. And wherever I could enlarge my power By undermining ambition, I did so, Thus to make smooth my own. And to triumph over other souls, Just to assert and prove my superior strength, Was with me a delight, The keen exhilaration of soul gymnastics. Devouring souls, I should have lived forever. But their undigested remains bred in me a deadly nephritis, With fear, restlessness, sinking spirits, Hatred, suspicion, vision disturbed. I collapsed at last with a shriek. Remember the acorn; It does not devour other acorns.

Elsa Wertman

I was a peasant girl from Germany, Blue-eyed, rosy, happy and strong. And the first place I worked was at Thomas Greene’s. On a summer’s day when she was away He stole into the kitchen and took me Right in his arms and kissed me on my throat, I turning my head. Then neither of us Seemed to know what happened. And I cried for what would become of me. And cried and cried as my secret began to show. One day Mrs. Greene said she understood, And would make no trouble for me, And, being childless, would adopt it. (He had given her a farm to be still.) So she hid in the house and sent out rumors, As if it were going to happen to her. And all went well and the child was born— They were so kind to me. Later I married Gus Wertman, and years passed. But—at political rallies when sitters-by thought I was crying At the eloquence of Hamilton Greene— That was not it. No! I wanted to say: That’s my son! That’s my son.

Hamilton Greene

I was the only child of Frances Harris of Virginia And Thomas Greene of Kentucky, Of valiant and honorable blood both. To them I owe all that I became, Judge, member of Congress, leader in the State. From my mother I inherited Vivacity, fancy, language; From my father will, judgment, logic. All honor to them For what service I was to the people!

Ernest Hyde

My mind was a mirror: It saw what it saw, it knew what it knew. In youth my mind was just a mirror In a rapidly flying car, Which catches and loses bits of the landscape. Then in time Great scratches were made on the mirror, Letting the outside world come in, And letting my inner self look out. For this is the birth of the soul in sorrow, A birth with gains and losses. The mind sees the world as a thing apart, And the soul makes the world at one with itself. A mirror scratched reflects no image— And this is the silence of wisdom.

Roger Heston

Oh many times did Ernest Hyde and I Argue about the freedom of the will. My favorite metaphor was Prickett’s cow Roped out to grass, and free you know as far As the length of the rope. One day while arguing so, watching the cow Pull at the rope to get beyond the circle Which she had eaten bare, Out came the stake, and tossing up her head, She ran for us. “What’s that, free-will or what?” said Ernest, running. I fell just as she gored me to my death.

Amos Sibley

Not character, not fortitude, not patience Were mine, the which the village thought I had In bearing with my wife, while preaching on, Doing the work God chose for me. I loathed her as a termagant, as a wanton. I knew of her adulteries, every one. But even so, if I divorced the woman I must forsake the ministry. Therefore to do God’s work and have it crop, I bore with her So lied I to myself So lied I to Spoon River! Yet I tried lecturing, ran for the legislature, Canvassed for books, with just the thought in mind: If I make money thus, I will divorce her.

Mrs. Sibley

The secret of the stars—gravitation. The secret of the earth—layers of rock. The secret of the soil—to receive seed. The secret of the seed—the germ. The secret of man—the sower. The secret of woman—the soil. My secret: Under a mound that you shall never find.

Adam Weirauch

I was crushed between Altgeld and Armour. I lost many friends, much time and money Fighting for Altgeld whom Editor Whedon Denounced as the candidate of gamblers and anarchists. Then Armour started to ship dressed meat to Spoon River, Forcing me to shut down my slaughter-house And my butcher shop went all to pieces. The new forces of Altgeld and Armour caught me At the same time. I thought it due me, to recoup the money I lost And to make good the friends that left me, For the Governor to appoint me Canal Commissioner. Instead he appointed Whedon of the Spoon River Argus, So I ran for the legislature and was elected. I said to hell with principle and sold my vote On Charles T. Yerkes’ street-car franchise. Of course I was one of the fellows they caught. Who was it, Armour, Altgeld or myself That ruined me?

Ezra Bartlett

A chaplain in the army, A chaplain in the prisons, An exhorter in Spoon River, Drunk with divinity, Spoon River— Yet bringing poor Eliza Johnson to shame, And myself to scorn and wretchedness. But why will you never see that love of women, And even love of wine, Are the stimulants by which the soul, hungering for divinity, Reaches the ecstatic vision And sees the celestial outposts? Only after many trials for strength, Only when all stimulants fail, Does the aspiring soul By its own sheer power Find the divine By resting upon itself.

Amelia Garrick

Yes, here I lie close to a stunted rose bush In a forgotten place near the fence Where the thickets from Siever’s woods Have crept over, growing sparsely. And you, you are a leader in New York, The wife of a noted millionaire, A name in the society columns, Beautiful, admired, magnified perhaps By the mirage of distance. You have succeeded, I have failed In the eyes of the world. You are alive, I am dead. Yet I know that I vanquished your spirit; And I know that lying here far from you, Unheard of among your great friends In the brilliant world where you move, I am really the unconquerable power over your life That robs it of complete triumph.

John Hancock Otis

As to democracy, fellow citizens, Are you not prepared to admit That I, who inherited riches and was to the manor born, Was second to none in Spoon River In my devotion to the cause of Liberty? While my contemporary, Anthony Findlay, Born in a shanty and beginning life As a water carrier to the section hands, Then becoming a section hand when he was grown, Afterwards foreman of the gang, until he rose To the superintendency of the railroad, Living in Chicago, Was a veritable slave driver, Grinding the faces of labor, And a bitter enemy of democracy. And I say to you, Spoon River, And to you, O republic, Beware of the man who rises to power From one suspender.

Anthony Findlay

Both for the country and for the man, And for a country as well as a man, ’Tis better to be feared than loved. And if this country would rather part With the friendship of every nation Than surrender its wealth, I say of a man ’tis worse to lose Money than friends. And I rend the curtain that hides the soul Of an ancient aspiration: When the people clamor for freedom They really seek for power o’er the strong. I, Anthony Findlay, rising to greatness From a humble water carrier, Until I could say to thousands “Come,” And say to thousands “Go,” Affirm that a nation can never be good. Or achieve the good, Where the strong and the wise have not the rod To use on the dull and weak.

John Cabanis

Neither spite, fellow citizens, Nor forgetfulness of the shiftlessness. And the lawlessness and waste Under democracy’s rule in Spoon River Made me desert the party of law and order And lead the liberal party. Fellow citizens! I saw as one with second sight That every man of the millions of men Who give themselves to Freedom, And fail while Freedom fails, Enduring waste and lawlessness, And the rule of the weak and the blind, Dies in the hope of building earth, Like the coral insect, for the temple To stand on at the last. And I swear that Freedom will wage to the end The war for making every soul Wise and strong and as fit to rule As Plato’s lofty guardians In a world republic girdled!

The Unknown

Ye aspiring ones, listen to the story of the unknown Who lies here with no stone to mark the place. As a boy reckless and wanton, Wandering with gun in hand through the forest Near the mansion of Aaron Hatfield, I shot a hawk perched on the top Of a dead tree. He fell with guttural cry At my feet, his wing broken. Then I put him in a cage Where he lived many days cawing angrily at me When I offered him food. Daily I search the realms of Hades For the soul of the hawk, That I may offer him the friendship Of one whom life wounded and caged.

Alexander Throckmorton

In youth my wings were strong and tireless, But I did not know the mountains. In age I knew the mountains But my weary wings could not follow my vision— Genius is wisdom and youth.

Jonathan Swift Somers (Author of the Spooniad)

After you have enriched your soul To the highest point, With books, thought, suffering, The understanding of many personalities, The power to interpret glances, silences, The pauses in momentous transformations, The genius of divination and prophecy; So that you feel able at times to hold the world In the hollow of your hand; Then, if, by the crowding of so many powers Into the compass of your soul, Your soul takes fire, And in the conflagration of your soul The evil of the world is lighted up and made clear— Be thankful if in that hour of supreme vision Life does not fiddle.

Widow McFarlane

I was the Widow McFarlane, Weaver of carpets for all the village. And I pity you still at the loom of life, You who are singing to the shuttle And lovingly watching the work of your hands, If you reach the day of hate, of terrible truth. For the cloth of life is woven, you know, To a pattern hidden under the loom— A pattern you never see! And you weave high-hearted, singing, singing, You guard the threads of love and friendship For noble figures in gold and purple. And long after other eyes can see You have woven a moon-white strip of cloth, You laugh in your strength, for Hope overlays it With shapes of love and beauty. The loom stops short! The pattern’s out You’re alone in the room! You have woven a shroud And hate of it lays you in it.

Carl Hamblin

The press of the Spoon River _Clarion_ was wrecked, And I was tarred and feathered, For publishing this on the day the Anarchists were hanged in Chicago: “I saw a beautiful woman with bandaged eyes Standing on the steps of a marble temple. Great multitudes passed in front of her, Lifting their faces to her imploringly. In her left hand she held a sword. She was brandishing the sword, Sometimes striking a child, again a laborer, Again a slinking woman, again a lunatic. In her right hand she held a scale; Into the scale pieces of gold were tossed By those who dodged the strokes of the sword. A man in a black gown read from a manuscript: “She is no respecter of persons.” Then a youth wearing a red cap Leaped to her side and snatched away the bandage. And lo, the lashes had been eaten away From the oozy eye-lids; The eye-balls were seared with a milky mucus; The madness of a dying soul Was written on her face— But the multitude saw why she wore the bandage.”

Editor Whedon

To be able to see every side of every question; To be on every side, to be everything, to be nothing long; To pervert truth, to ride it for a purpose, To use great feelings and passions of the human family For base designs, for cunning ends, To wear a mask like the Greek actors— Your eight-page paper—behind which you huddle, Bawling through the megaphone of big type: “This is I, the giant.” Thereby also living the life of a sneak-thief, Poisoned with the anonymous words Of your clandestine soul. To scratch dirt over scandal for money, And exhume it to the winds for revenge, Or to sell papers, Crushing reputations, or bodies, if need be, To win at any cost, save your own life. To glory in demoniac power, ditching civilization, As a paranoiac boy puts a log on the track And derails the express train. To be an editor, as I was. Then to lie here close by the river over the place Where the sewage flows from the village, And the empty cans and garbage are dumped, And abortions are hidden.

Eugene Carman

Rhodes’ slave! Selling shoes and gingham, Flour and bacon, overalls, clothing, all day long For fourteen hours a day for three hundred and thirteen days For more than twenty years. Saying “Yes’m” and “Yes, sir”, and “Thank you” A thousand times a day, and all for fifty dollars a month. Living in this stinking room in the rattle-trap “Commercial.” And compelled to go to Sunday School, and to listen To the Rev. Abner Peet one hundred and four times a year For more than an hour at a time, Because Thomas Rhodes ran the church As well as the store and the bank. So while I was tying my neck-tie that morning I suddenly saw myself in the glass: My hair all gray, my face like a sodden pie. So I cursed and cursed: You damned old thing You cowardly dog! You rotten pauper! You Rhodes’ slave! Till Roger Baughman Thought I was having a fight with some one, And looked through the transom just in time To see me fall on the floor in a heap From a broken vein in my head.

Clarence Fawcett

The sudden death of Eugene Carman Put me in line to be promoted to fifty dollars a month, And I told my wife and children that night. But it didn’t come, and so I thought Old Rhodes suspected me of stealing The blankets I took and sold on the side For money to pay a doctor’s bill for my little girl. Then like a bolt old Rhodes accused me, And promised me mercy for my family’s sake If I confessed, and so I confessed, And begged him to keep it out of the papers, And I asked the editors, too. That night at home the constable took me And every paper, except the Clarion, Wrote me up as a thief Because old Rhodes was an advertiser And wanted to make an example of me. Oh! well, you know how the children cried, And how my wife pitied and hated me, And how I came to lie here.

W. Lloyd Garrison Standard

Vegetarian, non-resistant, free-thinker, in ethics a Christian; Orator apt at the rhine-stone rhythm of Ingersoll. Carnivorous, avenger, believer and pagan. Continent, promiscuous, changeable, treacherous, vain, Proud, with the pride that makes struggle a thing for laughter; With heart cored out by the worm of theatric despair. Wearing the coat of indifference to hide the shame of defeat; I, child of the abolitionist idealism— A sort of _Brand_ in a birth of half-and-half. What other thing could happen when I defended The patriot scamps who burned the court house That Spoon River might have a new one Than plead them guilty? When Kinsey Keene drove through The card-board mask of my life with a spear of light, What could I do but slink away, like the beast of myself Which I raised from a whelp, to a corner and growl? The pyramid of my life was nought but a dune, Barren and formless, spoiled at last by the storm.

Professor Newcomer

Everyone laughed at Col. Prichard For buying an engine so powerful That it wrecked itself, and wrecked the grinder He ran it with. But here is a joke of cosmic size: The urge of nature that made a man Evolve from his brain a spiritual life— Oh miracle of the world!— The very same brain with which the ape and wolf Get food and shelter and procreate themselves. Nature has made man do this, In a world where she gives him nothing to do After all—(though the strength of his soul goes round In a futile waste of power. To gear itself to the mills of the gods)— But get food and shelter and procreate himself!

Ralph Rhodes

All they said was true: I wrecked my father’s bank with my loans To dabble in wheat; but this was true— I was buying wheat for him as well, Who couldn’t margin the deal in his name Because of his church relationship. And while George Reece was serving his term I chased the will-o-the-wisp of women And the mockery of wine in New York. It’s deathly to sicken of wine and women When nothing else is left in life. But suppose your head is gray, and bowed On a table covered with acrid stubs Of cigarettes and empty glasses, And a knock is heard, and you know it’s the knock So long drowned out by popping corks And the pea-cock screams of demireps— And you look up, and there’s your Theft, Who waited until your head was gray, And your heart skipped beats to say to you: The game is ended. I’ve called for you, Go out on Broadway and be run over, They’ll ship you back to Spoon River.

Mickey M’Grew

It was just like everything else in life: Something outside myself drew me down, My own strength never failed me. Why, there was the time I earned the money With which to go away to school, And my father suddenly needed help And I had to give him all of it. Just so it went till I ended up A man-of-all-work in Spoon River. Thus when I got the water-tower cleaned, And they hauled me up the seventy feet, I unhooked the rope from my waist, And laughingly flung my giant arms Over the smooth steel lips of the top of the tower— But they slipped from the treacherous slime, And down, down, down, I plunged Through bellowing darkness!

Rosie Roberts

I was sick, but more than that, I was mad At the crooked police, and the crooked game of life. So I wrote to the Chief of Police at Peoria: “I am here in my girlhood home in Spoon River, Gradually wasting away. But come and take me, I killed the son Of the merchant prince, in Madam Lou’s And the papers that said he killed himself In his home while cleaning a hunting gun— Lied like the devil to hush up scandal For the bribe of advertising. In my room I shot him, at Madam Lou’s, Because he knocked me down when I said That, in spite of all the money he had, I’d see my lover that night.”

Oscar Hummel

I staggered on through darkness, There was a hazy sky, a few stars Which I followed as best I could. It was nine o’clock, I was trying to get home. But somehow I was lost, Though really keeping the road. Then I reeled through a gate and into a yard, And called at the top of my voice: “Oh, Fiddler! Oh, Mr. Jones!” (I thought it was his house and he would show me the way home. ) But who should step out but A. D. Blood, In his night shirt, waving a stick of wood, And roaring about the cursed saloons, And the criminals they made? “You drunken Oscar Hummel,” he said, As I stood there weaving to and fro, Taking the blows from the stick in his hand Till I dropped down dead at his feet.

Josiah Tompkins

I was well known and much beloved And rich, as fortunes are reckoned In Spoon River, where I had lived and worked. That was the home for me, Though all my children had flown afar— Which is the way of Nature—all but one. The boy, who was the baby, stayed at home, To be my help in my failing years And the solace of his mother. But I grew weaker, as he grew stronger, And he quarreled with me about the business, And his wife said I was a hindrance to it; And he won his mother to see as he did, Till they tore me up to be transplanted With them to her girlhood home in Missouri. And so much of my fortune was gone at last, Though I made the will just as he drew it, He profited little by it.

Roscoe Purkapile

She loved me. Oh! how she loved me I never had a chance to escape From the day she first saw me. But then after we were married I thought She might prove her mortality and let me out, Or she might divorce me. But few die, none resign. Then I ran away and was gone a year on a lark. But she never complained. She said all would be well That I would return. And I did return. I told her that while taking a row in a boat I had been captured near Van Buren Street By pirates on Lake Michigan, And kept in chains, so I could not write her. She cried and kissed me, and said it was cruel, Outrageous, inhuman! I then concluded our marriage Was a divine dispensation And could not be dissolved, Except by death. I was right.

Mrs. Purkapile

He ran away and was gone for a year. When he came home he told me the silly story Of being kidnapped by pirates on Lake Michigan And kept in chains so he could not write me. I pretended to believe it, though I knew very well What he was doing, and that he met The milliner, Mrs. Williams, now and then When she went to the city to buy goods, as she said. But a promise is a promise And marriage is marriage, And out of respect for my own character I refused to be drawn into a divorce By the scheme of a husband who had merely grown tired Of his marital vow and duty.

Mrs. Kessler

Mr. Kessler, you know, was in the army, And he drew six dollars a month as a pension, And stood on the corner talking politics, Or sat at home reading Grant’s Memoirs; And I supported the family by washing, Learning the secrets of all the people From their curtains, counterpanes, shirts and skirts. For things that are new grow old at length, They’re replaced with better or none at all: People are prospering or falling back. And rents and patches widen with time; No thread or needle can pace decay, And there are stains that baffle soap, And there are colors that run in spite of you, Blamed though you are for spoiling a dress. Handkerchiefs, napery, have their secrets— The laundress, Life, knows all about it. And I, who went to all the funerals Held in Spoon River, swear I never Saw a dead face without thinking it looked Like something washed and ironed.

Harmon Whitney