{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/felix-schmidt",
 "title": "Felix Schmidt",
 "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": 164,
 "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": 22,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 46,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "It was only a little house of two rooms⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Almost like a child’s play-house⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With scarce five acres of ground around it;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I had so many children to feed",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And school and clothe, and a wife who was sick",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From bearing children.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One day lawyer Whitney came along",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And proved to me that Christian Dallman,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who owned three thousand acres of land,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Had bought the eighty that adjoined me",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In eighteen hundred and seventy-one",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For eleven dollars, at a sale for taxes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While my father lay in his mortal illness.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So the quarrel arose and I went to law.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But when we came to the proof,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A survey of the land showed clear as day",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That Dallman’s tax deed covered my ground",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And my little house of two rooms.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It served me right for stirring him up.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I lost my case and lost my place.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I left the court room and went to work",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As Christian Dallman’s tenant.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}