{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/hannah-armstrong",
 "title": "Hannah Armstrong",
 "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": 206,
 "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": 23,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 51,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "I wrote him a letter asking him for old times’ sake",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To discharge my sick boy from the army;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But maybe he couldn’t read it.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then I went to town and had James Garber,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who wrote beautifully, write him a letter;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But maybe that was lost in the mails.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So I traveled all the way to Washington.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I was more than an hour finding the White House.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And when I found it they turned me away,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hiding their smiles. Then I thought:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Oh, well, he ain’t the same as when I boarded him",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And he and my husband worked together",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And all of us called him Abe, there in Menard.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As a last attempt I turned to a guard and said:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Please say it’s old Aunt Hannah Armstrong",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From Illinois, come to see him about her sick boy",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the army.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Well, just in a moment they let me in!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And when he saw me he broke in a laugh,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And dropped his business as president,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And wrote in his own hand Doug’s discharge,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Talking the while of the early days,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And telling stories.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}