{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/sexsmith-the-dentist",
 "title": "Sexsmith the Dentist",
 "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": 67,
 "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": 25,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 51,
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 "site_ready": true,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Do you think that odes and sermons,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the ringing of church bells,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the blood of old men and young men,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Martyred for the truth they saw",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With eyes made bright by faith in God,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Accomplished the world’s great reformations?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Do you think that the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Would have been heard if the chattel slave",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Had crowned the dominant dollar,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In spite of Whitney’s cotton gin,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And steam and rolling mills and iron",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And telegraphs and white free labor?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Do you think that Daisy Fraser",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Had been put out and driven out",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If the canning works had never needed",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Her little house and lot?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or do you think the poker room",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of Johnnie Taylor, and Burchard’s bar",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Had been closed up if the money lost",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And spent for beer had not been turned,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By closing them, to Thomas Rhodes",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For larger sales of shoes and blankets,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And children’s cloaks and gold-oak cradles?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Why, a moral truth is a hollow tooth",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which must be propped with gold.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}