The Domesday Book Author:Edgar Lee Masters CONTENTS PAGE DOMESDAY BOOK THE BIRTH OF ELENOR MURRAY 4 FINDING OF THE BODY 9 THE CORONER 3 HENRY MURRAY 23 MRS. MURRAY 36 ALMA BELL TO THE CORONER 5 GREGORY WENNER 59 MRS. GREGORY WENNER 7 1 DR. TRACE TO THE CORONER IRMA LEESE 84 MIRIAM FAY S LETTER 94 ARCHIBALD LOWELL 101 WIDOW FORTELKA REV. PERCY FERGUSON 118 DR. BURKE CHARLES WARREN, THE SH... more »ERIFF 138 THE GOVERNOR 152 JOHN 80 HO 126 SCOFIELD 158 GOTTLIEB GERALD 163 LILLI ALM 73 FATHER WHIMSETT 179 JOHN CAMPBELL AND CARL EATON 188 AT FAIRBANKS 210 ANTON SOSNOWSKI CONSIDER FREELAND CONTENTS PAGE GEORGE JOSLIN ON LA MENKEN 237 WILL PAGET ON DEMOS AND HOGOS 247 THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT 254 JANE FISHER 270 HENRY BAKER, AT NEW YORK 277 LOVERIDGE CHASE 286 AT NICE THE MAJOR AND ELENOR MURRAY AT NICE 305 THE CONVENT 3I2 BARRETT BAYS ELENOR MURRAY 35 6 THE JURY DELIBERATES THE VERDICT 219 229 289 3 9 377 395 DOMESDAY BOOK DOMESDAY BOOK Take any life you choose and study it It gladdens, troubles, changes many lives. The life goes out, how many things result Fate drops a stone, and to the utmost shores The circles spread. Now, such a book were endless, If every circle, riffle should be traced Of any life and so of Elenor Murray, Whose life was humble and whose death was tragic. And yet behold the riffles spread, the lives That are affected, and the secrets gained Of lives she never knew of, as for that. For even the world could not contain the books That should be written, if all deeds were traced, Effects, results, gains, losses, of her life, And of her death. Concretely said, in brief, A man and woman have produced this child What was the child s pre-natal circumstance How did her birth affect the father, mother What did their friends, old women, relatives Take from the child in feeling, joy or pain to DOMESDAY BOOK What of her childhood friends, her days at school, Her teachers, girlhood sweethearts, lovers later, When she became a woman What of these And what of those who got effects because They knew this Elenor Murray Read how the human secrets are exposed In many lives because she died not all Then she dies. Lives, by her death affected, written here. The reader may trace out such other riffles As come to him this book must have an end. Enough is shown to show what could be told If we should write a world of books. In brief One feature of the plot elaborates The closeness of one life, however humble With every life upon this globe. In truth I sit here in Chicago, housed and fed, And think the world secure, at peace, the clock Just striking three, in Europe striking eight And in some province, in some palace, hut, Some words are spoken, or a fisticuff Results between two brawlers, and for that A blue-eyed boy, my grandson, we may say, Not even yet in seed, but to be born A half a century hence, is by those words, That fisticuff, drawn into war in Europe, and lies Shrieks from a bullet through the groin, Under the sod of France. But to return To Elenor Murray, I have made a book Called Domesday Book, a census spiritual Taken of our America, or in part Taken, not wholly taken, it may be. For William Merival, the coroner, Who probed the death of Elenor Murray goes As far as may be, and beyond his power, In diagnosis of America, While finding out the cause of death. In short Becomes a William the Conqueror that way In making up a Domesday Book for us. ... Of this a little later...« less