{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/mrs-williams",
 "title": "Mrs. Williams",
 "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": 71,
 "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": 26,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 56,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "I was the milliner",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Talked about, lied about,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Mother of Dora,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whose strange disappearance",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Was charged to her rearing.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My eye quick to beauty",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Saw much beside ribbons",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And buckles and feathers",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And leghorns and felts,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To set off sweet faces,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And dark hair and gold.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One thing I will tell you",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And one I will ask:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The stealers of husbands",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wear powder and trinkets,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And fashionable hats.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wives, wear them yourselves.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hats may make divorces⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They also prevent them.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Well now, let me ask you:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If all of the children, born here in Spoon River",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Had been reared by the County, somewhere on a farm;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the fathers and mothers had been given their freedom",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To live and enjoy, change mates if they wished,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Do you think that Spoon River",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Had been any the worse?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}