Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950). Spoon River Anthology. 1916.

162. Ida Frickey

NOTHING in life is alien to you:

I was a penniless girl from Summum

Who stepped from the morning train in Spoon River.

All the houses stood before me with closed doors

And drawn shades—I was barred out;

I had no place or part in any of them.

And I walked past the old McNeely mansion,

A castle of stone ’mid walks and gardens,

With workmen about the place on guard,

And the County and State upholding it

For its lordly owner, full of pride.

I was so hungry I had a vision:

I saw a giant pair of scissors

Dip from the sky, like the beam of a dredge,

And cut the house in two like a curtain.

But at the “Commercial” I saw a man,

Who winked at me as I asked for work—

It was Wash McNeely’s son.

He proved the link in the chain of title

To half my ownership of the mansion,

Through a breach of promise suit—the scissors.

So, you see, the house, from the day I was born,

Was only waiting for me.