I encounter such lost souls again as I read the Spoon River Anthology, in which Edgar Lee Masters gives the dead residents of a small town ten or twenty lines each to describe the lives they have led. Alcoholics, secret affairs, crooked business dealings, old maids, lunatics, as well as some people who didn’t drink, didn’t make crooked deals, who just married this or that neighbor, didn’t lose their minds — but all of them have died, each one a different death. All of that in ten or twenty lines.