{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/justice-arnett",
 "title": "Justice Arnett",
 "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": 52,
 "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": 44,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "It is true, fellow citizens,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That my old docket lying there for years",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "On a shelf above my head and over",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The seat of justice, I say it is true",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That docket had an iron rim",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which gashed my baldness when it fell⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(Somehow I think it was shaken loose",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By the heave of the air all over town",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When the gasoline tank at the canning works",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Blew up and burned Butch Weldy)⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But let us argue points in order,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And reason the whole case carefully:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "First I concede my head was cut,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But second the frightful thing was this:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The leaves of the docket shot and showered",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Around me like a deck of cards",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the hands of a sleight of hand performer.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And up to the end I saw those leaves",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Till I said at last, “Those are not leaves,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Why, can’t you see they are days and days",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the days and days of seventy years?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And why do you torture me with leaves",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the little entries on them?”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}