{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/shack-dye",
 "title": "Shack Dye",
 "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": 171,
 "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": 20,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 53,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "The white men played all sorts of jokes on me.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They took big fish off my hook",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And put little ones on, while I was away",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Getting a stringer, and made me believe",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I hadn’t seen aright the fish I had caught.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When Burr Robbins circus came to town",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They got the ring master to let a tame leopard",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Into the ring, and made me believe",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I was whipping a wild beast like Samson",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When I, for an offer of fifty dollars,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Dragged him out to his cage.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One time I entered my blacksmith shop",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And shook as I saw some horse-shoes crawling",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Across the floor, as if alive⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Walter Simmons had put a magnet",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Under the barrel of water.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet every one of you, you white men,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Was fooled about fish and about leopards too,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And you didn’t know any more than the horse-shoes did",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What moved you about Spoon River.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}