Explore "Mrs. Purkapile" by Edgar Lee Masters on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
He ran away and was gone for a year.
When he came home he told me the silly story / Of being kidnapped by pirates on Lake Michigan / And kept in chains so he could not write me.
I pretended to believe it, though I knew very well / What he was doing, and that he met / The milliner, Mrs. Williams, now and then / When she went to the city to buy goods, as she said.
But a promise is a promise / And marriage is marriage, / And out of respect for my own character / I refused to be drawn into a divorce / By the scheme of a husband who had merely grown tired / Of his marital vow and duty.