Explore "Aner Clute" by Edgar Lee Masters on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Over and over they used to ask me, / While buying the wine or the beer, / In Peoria first, and later in Chicago, / Denver, Frisco, New York, wherever I lived, / How I happened to lead the life, / And what was the start of it.
Well, I told them a silk dress, / And a promise of marriage from a rich man --
(It was Lucius Atherton).
But that was not really it at all.
Suppose a boy steals an apple / From the tray at the grocery store, / And they all begin to call him a thief, / The editor, minister, judge, and all the people --
"A thief," "a thief," "a thief," wherever he goes.
And he can't get work, and he can't get bread / Without stealing it, why, the boy will steal.
It's the way the people regard the theft of the apple / That makes the boy what he is.