| |
| IN Abraham Lincoln’s city, | |
| Where they remember his lawyer’s shingle, | |
| The place where they brought him | |
| Wrapped in battle flags, | |
| Wrapped in the smoke of memories | 5 |
| From Tallahassee to the Yukon, | |
| The place now where the shaft of his tomb | |
| Points white against the blue prairie dome, | |
| In Abraham Lincoln’s city … I saw knucks | |
| In the window of Mister Fischman’s second-hand store | 10 |
| On Second Street. | |
| |
| I went in and asked, “How much?” | |
| “Thirty cents apiece,” answered Mister Fischman. | |
| And taking a box of new ones off a shelf | |
| He filled anew the box in the showcase | 15 |
| And said incidentally, most casually | |
| And incidentally: | |
| “I sell a carload a month of these.” | |
| |
| I slipped my fingers into a set of knucks, | |
| Cast-iron knucks molded in a foundry pattern, | 20 |
| And there came to me a set of thoughts like these: | |
| Mister Fischman is for Abe and the “malice to none” stuff, | |
| And the street car strikers and the strike-breakers, | |
| And the sluggers, gunmen, detectives, policemen, | |
| Judges, utility heads, newspapers, priests, lawyers, | 25 |
| They are all for Abe and the “malice to none” stuff. | |
| |
| I started for the door. | |
| “Maybe you want a lighter pair,” | |
| Came Mister Fischman’s voice. | |
| I opened the door … and the voice again: | 30 |
| “You are a funny customer.” | |
| |
| Wrapped in battle flags, | |
| Wrapped in the smoke of memories, | |
| This is the place they brought him, | |
| This is Abraham Lincoln’s home town. | 35 |
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