{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/ida-frickey",
 "title": "Ida Frickey",
 "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": 162,
 "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": 50,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Nothing in life is alien to you:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I was a penniless girl from Summum",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who stepped from the morning train in Spoon River.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All the houses stood before me with closed doors",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And drawn shades⁠—l was barred out;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I had no place or part in any of them.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I walked past the old McNeely mansion,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A castle of stone ’mid walks and gardens",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With workmen about the place on guard",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the County and State upholding it",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For its lordly owner, full of pride.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I was so hungry I had a vision:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I saw a giant pair of scissors",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Dip from the sky, like the beam of a dredge,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And cut the house in two like a curtain.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But at the “Commercial” I saw a man,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who winked at me as I asked for work⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It was Wash McNeely’s son.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He proved the link in the chain of title",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To half my ownership of the mansion,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Through a breach of promise suit⁠—the scissors.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So, you see, the house, from the day I was born,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Was only waiting for me.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}