{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/tennessee-claflin-shope",
 "title": "Tennessee Claflin Shope",
 "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": 214,
 "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": 17,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 62,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "I was the laughing-stock of the village,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Chiefly of the people of good sense, as they call themselves⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Also of the learned, like Rev. Peet, who read Greek",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The same as English.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For instead of talking free trade,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or preaching some form of baptism;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Instead of believing in the efficacy",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of walking cracks⁠—picking up pins the right way,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Seeing the new moon over the right shoulder,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or curing rheumatism with blue glass,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I asserted the sovereignty of my own soul.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Before Mary Baker G. Eddy even got started",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With what she called science",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I had mastered the Bhagavad Gita,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And cured my soul, before Mary",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Began to cure bodies with souls⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Peace to all worlds!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}