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!
Where this text comes from
First published in Spoon River Anthology (1916). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1]
Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-20.
Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/edgar-lee-masters_spoon-river-anthology, spoon-river-anthology.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).
Earlier sources (2)
This poem as JSON or plain text . Line anchors #L1–#L8.
Cite this poem
Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950).
““Ace” Shaw.” First published in Spoon River Anthology (1916).
Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/edgar-lee-masters/ace-shaw/.
Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.
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