| 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” | 5 |
| 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, | 10 |
| 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. | 15 |
| 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 some one, | |
| And looked through the transom just in time | 20 |
| To see me fall on the floor in a heap | |
| From a broken vein in my head. | |
