{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/searcy-foote",
 "title": "Searcy Foote",
 "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": 149,
 "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": 28,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 48,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "I wanted to go away to college",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But rich Aunt Persis wouldn’t help me.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So I made gardens and raked the lawns",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And bought John Alden’s books with my earnings",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And toiled for the very means of life.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I wanted to marry Delia Prickett,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But how could I do it with what I earned?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And there was Aunt Persis more than seventy,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who sat in a wheel-chair half alive,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With her throat so paralyzed, when she swallowed",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The soup ran out of her mouth like a duck⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A gourmand yet, investing her income",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In mortgages, fretting all the time",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "About her notes and rents and papers.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That day I was sawing wood for her,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And reading Proudhon in between.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I went in the house for a drink of water,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And there she sat asleep in her chair,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And Proudhon lying on the table,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And a bottle of chloroform on the book,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She used sometimes for an aching tooth!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I poured the chloroform on a handkerchief",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And held it to her nose till she died.⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Oh Delia, Delia, you and Proudhon",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Steadied my hand, and the coroner",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Said she died of heart failure.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I married Delia and got the money⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A joke on you, Spoon River?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}