1.
I bargained with Life for a penny, and Life would pay no more. However I begged at the evening when I counted my scanty store. For Life is a just employer, he gives you what you ask. But once you have set the wages, why, you must bear the task. I worked for a menial's hire, only to learn, dismayed, that any wage I had asked of Life, Life would have willingly paid.
Jessie Belle Rittenhouse
2.
My debt to you, Belovèd,
Is one I cannot pay
In any coin of any realm
On any reckoning day.
Jessie Belle Rittenhouse
3.
I bargained with Life for a penny,
And Life would pay no more,
However I begged at evening
When I counted my scanty store.
Jessie Belle Rittenhouse
4.
... fain would I turn back the clock and devote to French or some other language the hours I spent upon algebra, geometry, and trigonometry, of which not one principle remains with me. Stay! There is one theorem painfully drummed into my head which seems to have inhabited some corner of my brain since that early time: "The square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides!" There it sticks, but what of it, ye gods, what of it?
Jessie Belle Rittenhouse
5.
I worked for a menial's hire,
Only to learn, dismayed,
That any wage I had asked of Life,
Life would have paid.
Jessie Belle Rittenhouse
