{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/aner-clute",
 "title": "Aner Clute",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Edgar Lee Masters",
 "poet_slug": "edgar-lee-masters",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Spoon River Anthology",
 "book_slug": "spoon-river-anthology",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 54,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1916,
  "venue": "Spoon River Anthology (1916)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/spoonriveranthol021mast"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/edgar-lee-masters_spoon-river-anthology",
  "file": "spoon-river-anthology.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://web.archive.org/web/20080723131115/http://spoonriveranthology.net/spoon/river/originalOrder/",
   "https://archive.org/details/spoonriveranthol021mast"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 19,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 53,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Over and over they used to ask me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While buying the wine or the beer,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In Peoria first, and later in Chicago,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Denver, Frisco, New York, wherever I lived,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How I happened to lead the life,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And what was the start of it.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Well, I told them a silk dress,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And a promise of marriage from a rich man⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(It was Lucius Atherton).",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But that was not really it at all.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Suppose a boy steals an apple",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From the tray at the grocery store,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And they all begin to call him a thief,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The editor, minister, judge, and all the people⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“A thief,” “a thief,” “a thief,” wherever he goes.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And he can’t get work, and he can’t get bread",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Without stealing it, why, the boy will steal.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It’s the way the people regard the theft of the apple",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That makes the boy what he is.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}