Explore "Conversation" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
We were a baker's dozen in the house-six women and six men / Besides myself; and all of us had known / Those benefits supposed to come from school and church and brush and / pen, / And opportunities of being thrown / In contact with the cultured and the gifted people of the day. / Being the thirteenth one among six pairs / I deemed it wise to keep apart and let the others have their say: / And from my vantage-place upon the stairs, / Or in a corner, where I seemed to read, I listened for some word / That would make life seem sweeter, or cast light / Upon the goal toward which all footsteps wend: and this was what I / heard / Throughout each day and half of every night.
The men talked business, politics, and trade; / They told of safe investments, and great chances / For speculation. (One man who had made / Pleasure his art, described the newest dances / And dwelt upon each chassé, glide, and whirl / As lovers dwell upon the charms of some fair girl.)