Explore "Eugene Carman" by Edgar Lee Masters on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Rhodes' slave! Selling shoes and gingham, / Flour and bacon, overalls, clothing, all day long / For fourteen hours a day for three hundred and thirteen days / For more than twenty years.
Saying "Yes'm" and "Yes, sir" and "Thank you"
A thousand times a day, and all for fifty dollars a month.
Living in this stinking room in the rattle-trap "Commercial."
And compelled to go to Sunday School, and to listen / To the Rev. Abner Peet one hundred and four times a year / For more than an hour at a time, / Because Thomas Rhodes ran the church / As well as the store and the bank.
So while I was tying my neck-tie that morning / I suddenly saw myself in the glass:
My hair all gray, my face like a sodden pie.
So I cursed and cursed: You damned old thing!
You cowardly dog! You rotten pauper!
You Rhodes' slave! Till Roger Baughman / Thought I was having a fight with someone, / And looked through the transom just in time / To see me fall on the floor in a heap / From a broken vein in my head.