Spoon River Anthology

Excerpt: ...a sty.   I helped to give this heritage   To generations yet unborn, with my vote   In the House of Representatives,   And the lure of the thing was to be at rest   From the never-ending fright of need,   And to give my daughters gentle breeding,   And a sense of security in life.   But, you see, though I had the mansion house   And traveling passes and local distinction,   I could hear the whispers, whispers, whispers,   Wherever I went, and my daughters grew up   With a look as if some one were about to strike them;   And they married madly, helter-skelter,   Just to get out and have a change.   And what was the whole of the business worth?   Why, it wasn't worth a damn! Lillian Stewart   I WAS the daughter of Lambert Hutchins,   Born in a cottage near the grist-mill,   Reared in the mansion there on the hill,   With its spires, bay-windows, and roof of slate.   How proud my mother was of the mansion   How proud of father's rise in the world!   And how my father loved and watched us,   And guarded our happiness.   But I believe the house was a curse,   For father's fortune was little beside it;   And when my husband found he had married   A girl who was really poor,   He taunted me with the spires,   And called the house a fraud on the world,   A treacherous lure to young men, raising hopes   Of a dowry not to be had;   And a man while selling his vote   Should get enough from the people's betrayal   To wall the whole of his family in.   He vexed my life till I went back home   And lived like an old maid till I died,   Keeping house for father. Hortense Robbins   MY name used to be in the papers daily   As having dined somewhere,   Or traveled somewhere,   Or rented a house in Paris,   Where I entertained the nobility.   I was forever eating or traveling,   Or taking the cure at Baden-Baden.   Now I am here to do honor   To Spoon River, here beside...