Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950). Spoon River Anthology. 1916.

134. Oscar Hummel

I STAGGERED on through darkness,

There was a hazy sky, a few stars

Which I followed as best I could.

It was nine o’clock, I was trying to get home.

But somehow I was lost,

Though really keeping the road.

Then I reeled through a gate and into a yard,

And called at the top of my voice:

“Oh, Fiddler! Oh, Mr. Jones!”

(I thought it was his house and he would show me the way home.)

But who should step out but A. D. Blood,

In his night shirt, waving a stick of wood,

And roaring about the cursed saloons,

And the criminals they made?

“You drunken Oscar Hummel,” he said,

As I stood there weaving to and fro,

Taking the blows from the stick in his hand

Till I dropped down dead at his feet.