Southern Pacific

Huntington sleeps in a house six feet long.

Huntington dreams of railroads he built and owned.

Huntington dreams of ten thousand men saying: Yes, sir,

Blithery sleeps in a house six feet long.

Blithery dreams of rails and ties he laid.

Blithery dreams of saying to Huntington: Yes, sir.

Huntington,

Blithery, sleep in houses six feet long.

’Boes

I waited today for a freight train to pass.

Cattle cars with steers butting their horns against the bars, went by.

And a half a dozen hoboes stood on bumpers between cars.

Well, the cattle are respectable, I thought.

Every steer has its transportation paid for by the fanner sending it to market,

While the hoboes are law-breakers in riding a railroad train without a ticket.

It reminded me of ten days I spent in the Allegheny County jail in Pittsburgh.

I got ten days even though I was a veteran of the Spanish-American war.

Cooped in the same cell with me was an old man, a bricklayer and a booze-fighter.

But it just happened he, too, was a veteran soldier, and he had fought to preserve the Union and free the niggers.

We were three in all, the other being a Lithuanian who got drunk on payday at the steel works and got to fighting a policeman;

All the clothes he had was a shirt, pants and shoes—somebody got his hat and coat and what money he had left over when he got drunk.

Taking on Suds Men Talk

Taking on suds men talk. One bottle of near-beer

apiece was all Tom and I had. And he told the life

of a woman, his latest hotel find, as she told it to

him. Put short, as no life can be altogether told,

it was like this:

I married a well-off butcher. I didn’t love him nor

hate him when I married him and it’s the same now as

then. I married him because he went to bed and said

he would never eat again unless I married him. He

starved two days. His mother cried to my mother and

to me. So we went and got a license.

Until he died two years ago, the family doctor used

me when he wanted me. He sent letters saying my health

must not run down. I showed these letters to my husband

and then went to the doctor’s office.

A dentist who used me I could never understand. He drilled

one tooth five months and loved me like wild every

time I sat in the big chair and he straightened my knees

and feet on the extensions. Though he went as far as love

could go with me, he always sent bills for services.

Once I was sick three months. I told my mother how I was.

She said it was a baby. I told her it would be terrible to

have a doctor run a knife across my belly. Then my

mother told me there is no knife when a baby is born. She said