Roscoe Purkapile

She loved me.Oh! how she loved me I never had a chance to escapeFrom the day she first saw me.But then after we were married I thoughtShe might prove her mortality and let me out,Or she might divorce me. But few die, none resign.Then I ran away and was gone a year on a lark.But she never complained. She said all would be wellThat I would return. And I did return.I told her that while taking a row in a boatI had been captured near Van Buren StreetBy pirates on Lake Michigan,And kept in chains, so I could not write her.She cried and kissed me, and said it was cruel,Outrageous, inhuman! I then concluded our marriageWas a divine dispensationAnd could not be dissolved,Except by death.I was right.

He ran away and was gone for a year.When he came home he told me the silly storyOf being kidnapped by pirates on Lake MichiganAnd kept in chains so he could not write me.I pretended to believe it, though I knew very wellWhat he was doing, and that he metThe milliner, Mrs. Williams, now and thenWhen she went to the city to buy goods, as she said.But a promise is a promiseAnd marriage is marriage,And out of respect for my own characterI refused to be drawn into a divorceBy the scheme of a husband who had merely grown tiredOf his marital vow and duty.

Mr. Kessler, you know, was in the army,And he drew six dollars a month as a pension,And stood on the corner talking politics,Or sat at home reading Grant’s Memoirs;And I supported the family by washing,Learning the secrets of all the peopleFrom their curtains, counterpanes, shirts and skirts.For things that are new grow old at length,They’re replaced with better or none at all:People are prospering or falling back.And rents and patches widen with time;No thread or needle can pace decay,And there are stains that baffle soap,And there are colors that run in spite of you,Blamed though you are for spoiling a dress.Handkerchiefs, napery, have their secrets—The laundress, Life, knows all about it.And I, who went to all the funeralsHeld in Spoon River, swear I neverSaw a dead face without thinking it lookedLike something washed and ironed.