Winesburg, Ohio : intimate histories of everyday people

PJESBURG
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ER OD ANDERSON

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\ STUOIA IN

THE LIBRARY

of
VICTORIA UNIVERSITY

Toronto

Winesburg Ohio

Intimate Histories of Every-day People

Sherwood Anderson

Author of Toor White, etc.

Jonathan Cape
Eleven Gower Street, London

First Published 1922
All Rights Reserved

532.12
20-1 (-33

Printed in the United States of America

TO THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHER

EMMA SMITH ANDERSON
Whose keen observations on the life about her
first awoke in me the hunger to see beneath
the surface of lives, this book is dedicated.

SOME OF THE EPISODES IN THIS BOOK WERE PRINTEB
IN THE SEVEN ARTS, THE MASSES AND THE LITTLE
REVIEW TO WHICH MAGAZINES THE AUTHOR MAKES
DUE ACKNOWLEDGMENT.

THE TALES AND THE PERSONS

PAGE

1 THE BOOK OF THE GROTESQUE.

7 HANDS— concerning WING BIDDLEBAUM.

18 PAPER PILLS — concerning DOCTOR REEFY.

24 MOTHER — concerning ELIZABETH WILLARD.

38 THE PHILOSOPHER — concerning DOCTOR PARCIVAL.

49 NOBODY KNOWS — concerning LOUISE TRUNNION.

55 GODLINESS (PARTS i AND 11) — concerning JESSE BENTLEY.

88 SURRENDER (PART HI) — concerning LOUISE BENTLEY.

102 TERROR (PART iv) — concerning DAVID HARDY.

110 A MAN OF IDEAS— concerning JOE WELLING.

123 ADVENTURE — concerning ALICE HINDMAN.

135 RESPECTABILITY — concerning WASH WILLIAMS.

145 THE THINKER— concerning SETH RICHMOND.

166 TANDY — concerning TANDY HARD.

171 THE STRENGTH OF GOD — concerning THE REVEREND CURTIS

HARTMAN.

184 THE TEACHER — concerning KATE SWIFT.

197 LONELINESS — concerning ENOCH ROBINSON.

213 AN AWAKENING— concerning BELLE CARPENTER.

228 "QUEER" — concerning ELMER COWLEY.

244 THE UNTOLD LIE — concerning RAY PEARSON.

254 DRINK — concerning TOM FOSTER.

268 DEATH — concerning DOCTOR REEFY and ELIZABETH WILLARD.

285 SOPHISTICATION — concerning HELEN WHITE.

299 DEPARTURE — concerning GEORGE WILLARD.

THE BOOK OF THE GROTESQUE

THE writer, an old man with a white mus-
tache, had some difficulty in getting into
bed. The windows of the house in which
he lived were high and he wanted to look at the
trees when he awoke in the morning. A carpen-
ter came to fix the bed so that it would be on a
level with the window.

Quite a fuss was made about the matter. The
carpenter, who had been a soldier in the Civil
War, came into the writer's room and sat down
to talk of building a platform for the purpose of
raising the bed. The writer had cigars lying
about and the carpenter smoked.

For a time the two men talked of the raising
of the bed and then they talked of other things.
The soldier got on the subject of the war. The
writer, in fact, led him to that subject. The car-
penter had once been a prisoner in Andersonville
prison and had lost a brother. The brother had
died of starvation, and whenever the carpenter
got upon that subject he cried. He, like the old
writer, had a white mustache, and when he cried
he puckered up his lips and the mustache bobbed

l

2 WINESBURG, OHIO

up and down. The weeping old man with the
cigar in his mouth was ludicrous. The plan the
writer had for the raising of his bed was for-
gotten and later the carpenter did it in his own
way and the writer, who was past sixty, had to
help himself with a chair when he went to bed at
night.

In his bed the writer rolled over on his side
and lay quite still. For years he had been beset
with notions concerning his heart. He was a
hard smoker and his heart fluttered. The idea
had got into his mind that he would some time die
unexpectedly and always when he got into bed he
thought of that. It did not alarm him. The
effect in fact was quite a special thing and not
easily explained. It made him more alive, there
in bed, than at any other time. Perfectly still he
lay and his body was old and not of much use
any more, but something inside him was altogether
young. He was like a pregnant woman, only that
the thing inside him was not a baby but a youth.
No, it wasn't a youth, it was a woman, young, and
wearing a coat of mail like a knight. It is ab-
surd, you see, to try to tell what was inside the 'old
writer as he lay on his high bed and listened to
the fluttering of his heart. The thing to get at is
what the writer, or the young thing within the
writer, was thinking about.

The old writer, like all of the people in the

BOOK OF THE GROTESQUE 3

world, had got, during his long life, a great many
notions in his head. He had once been quite
handsome and a number of women had been in
love with him. And then, of course, he had
known people, many people, known them in a
peculiarly intimate way that was different from
the way in which you and I know people. At
least that is what the writer thought and the
thought pleased him. Why quarrel with an old
man concerning his thoughts?

In the bed the writer had a dream that was not
a dream. As he grew somewhat sleepy but was
still conscious, figures began to appear before his
eyes. He imagined the young indescribable
thing within himself was driving a long proces-
sion of figures before his eyes.

You see the interest in all this lies in the figures
that went before the eyes of the writer. They
were all grotesques. All of the men and women
the writer had ever known had become grotesques.

The grotesques were not all horrible. Some
were amusing, some almost beautiful, and one, a
woman all drawn out of shape, hurt the old man
by her grotesqueness. When she passed he made
a noise like a small dog whimpering. Had
you come into the room you might have supposed
the old man had unpleasant dreams or perhaps
indigestion.

For an hour the procession of grotesques passed

4 WINESBURG, OHIO

before the eyes of the old man, and then, al-
though it was a painful thing to do, he crept out
of bed and began to write. Some one of the
grotesques had made a deep impression on his
mind and he wanted to describe it.

At his desk the writer worked for an hour.
In the end he wrote a book which he called "The
Book of the Grotesque." It was never published,
but I saw it once and it made an indelible impres-
sion on my mind. The book had one central
thought that is very strange and has always re-
mained with me. By remembering it I have been
able to understand many people and things that
I was never able to understand before. The
thought was involved but a simple statement of
it would be something like this :

That in the beginning when the world was
young there were a great many thoughts but no
such thing as a truth. Man made the truths
himself and each truth was a composite of a great
many vague thoughts. All about in the world
were the truths and they were all beautiful.

The old man had listed hundreds of the truths
in his book. I will not try to tell you of all of
them. There was the truth of virginity and the
truth of passion, the truth of wealth and of
poverty, of thrift and of profligacy, of careless-
ness and abandon. Hundreds and hundreds were
the truths and they were all beautiful.

BOOK OF THE GROTESQUE 5

And then the people came along. Each as he
appeared snatched up one of the truths and som j
who were quite strong snatched up a dozen of
them.

It was the truths that made the people gro-
tesques. The old man had quite an elaborate
theory concerning the matter. It was his notion
that the moment one of the people took one of
the truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried
to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and
the truth he embraced became a falsehood.

You can see for yourself how the old man, who
had spent all of his life writing and was filled with
words, would write hundreds of pages concern-
ing this matter. The subject would become so
big in his mind that he himself would be in danger
of becoming a grotesque. He didn't, I suppose,
for the same reason that he never published the
book. It was the young thing inside him that
saved the old man.

Concerning the old carpenter who fixed the bed
for the writer, I only mentioned him because he,
like many of what are called very common people,
became the nearest thing to what is understand-
able and lovable of all the grotesques in the
writer's book.

Winesburg, Ohio

HANDS

UPON the half decayed veranda of a small
frame house that stood near the edge of a
ravine near the town of Winesburg, Ohio,
a fat little old man walked nervously up and
down. Across a long field that has been seeded
for clover but that had produced only a dense
crop of yellow mustard weeds, he could see the
public highway along which went a wagon filled
with berry pickers returning from the fields. The
berry pickers, youths and maidens, laughed and
shouted boisterously. A boy clad in a blue shirt
leaped from the wagon and attempted to drag
after him one of the maidens who screamed and
protested shrilly. The feet of the boy in the
road kicked up a cloud of dust that floated across
the face of the departing sun. Over the long
field came a thin girlish voice. "Oh, you Wing
Biddlebaum, comb your hair, it's falling into your
eyes," commanded the voice to the man, who was

7

8 WINESBURG, OHIO

bald and whose nervous little hands fiddled about
the .bare white forehead as though arranging a
mass of tangled locks.

Wing Biddlebaum, forever frightened and be-
set by a ghostly band of doubts, did not think
of himself as in any way a part of the life of
the town where he had lived for twenty years.
Among all the people of Winesburg but one had
come close to him. With George Willard, son
of Tom Willard, the proprietor of the new Wil-
lard House, he had formed something like a
friendship. George Willard was the reporter on
the Winesburg Eagle and sometimes in the eve-
nings he walked out along the highway to Wing
Biddlebaum's house. Now as the old man walked
up and down on the veranda, his hands moving
nervously about, he was hoping that George
Willard would come and spend the evening with
him. After the wagon containing the berry
pickers had passed, he went across the field
through the tall mustard weeds and climbing a
rail fence peered anxiously along the road to the
town. For a moment he stood thus, rubbing his
hands together and looking up and down the
road, and then, fear overcoming him, ran back
to walk again upon the porch on his own house.

In the presence of George Willard, Wing
Biddlebaum, who for twenty years had been the
town mystery, lost something of his timidity, and

HANDS 9

his shadowy personality, submerged in a sea of
doubts, came forth to look at the world. With
the young reporter at his side, he ventured in the
light of day into Main Street or strode up and
down on the rickety front porch of his own house,
talking excitedly. The voice that had been low
and trembling became shrill and loud. The bent
figure straightened. With a kind of wriggle,
like a fish returned to the brook by the fisherman,
Biddlebaum the silent began to talk, striving to
put into words the ideas that had been accumulated
by his mind during long years of silence.

Wing Biddlebaum talked much with his hands.
The slender expressive fingers, forever active, for-
ever striving to conceal themselves in his pockets
or behind his back, came forth and became the
piston rods of his machinery of expression.

The story of Wing Biddlebaum is a story of
hands. Their restless activity, like unto the beat-
ing of the wings of an imprisoned bird, had given
him his name. Some obscure poet of the town
had thought of it. The hands alarmed their
owner. He wanted to keep them hidden away
and looked with amazement at the quiet inex-
pressive hands of other men who worked beside
him in the fields, or passed, driving sleepy teams
on country roads.

When he talked to George Willard, Wing
Biddlebaum closed his fists and beat with them

10 WINESBURG, OHIO

upon a table or on the walls of his house. The
action made him more comfortable. If the desire
to talk came to him when the two were walking
in the fields, he sought out a stump or the top
board of a fence and with his hands pounding
busily talked with renewed ease.

The story of Wing Biddlebaum's hands is
worth a book in itself. Sympathetically set forth
it would tap many strange, beautiful qualities in
obscure men. It is a job for a poet. In Wines-
burg the hands had attracted attention merely
because of their activity. With them Wing Bid-
dlebaum had picked as high as a hundred and
forty quarts of strawberries in a day. They
became his distinguishing feature, the source of
his fame. Also they made more grotesque an
already grotesque and elusive individuality.
Winesburg was proud of the hands of Wing
Biddlebaum in the same spirit in which it was
proud of Banker White's new stone house and
Wesley Mover's bay stallion, Tony Tip, that had
won the two-fifteen trot at the fall races in Cleve-
land.

As for Geoirge Willard, he had many times
wanted to ask about the hands. At times an
almost overwhelming curiosity had taken hold of
him. He felt that there must be a reason for
their strange activity and their inclination to keep
hidden away and only a growing respect for

HANDS II

Wing Biddlebaum kept him from blurting out
the questions that were often in his mind.

Once he had been on the point of asking. The
two were walking in the fields on a summer after-
noon and had stopped to sit upon a grassy bank.
All afternoon Wing Biddlebaum had talked as
one inspired. By a fence he had stopped and
beating like a giant woodpecker upon the top
board had shouted at George Willard, condemn-
ing his tendency to be too much influenced by the
people about him. "You are destroying your-
self, " he cried. uYou have the inclination to be
alone and to dream and you are afraid of dreams.
You want to be like others in town here. You
hear them talk and you try to imitate them."

On the grassy bank Wing Biddlebaum had tried
again to drive his point home. His voice became
soft and reminiscent, and with a sigh of content-
ment he launched into a long rambling talk, speak-
ing as one lost in a dream.

Out of the dream Wing Biddlebaum made a
picture for George Willard. In the picture men
lived again in a kind of pastoral golden age.
Across a green open country came clean-limbed
young men, some afoot, some mounted upon
horses. In crowds the young men came to gather
about the feet of an old man who sat beneath
a tree in a tiny garden and who talked to them.

Wing Biddlebaum became wholly inspired.

12 WINESBURG, OHIO

For once he forgot the hands. Slowly they stole
forth and lay upon George Willard's shoulders.
Something new and bold came into the voice that
talked. "You must try to forget all you have
learned," said the old man. "You must begin to
dream. From this time on you must shut your
ears to the roaring of the voices."

Pausing in his speech, Wing Biddlebaum looked
long and earnestly at George Willard. His eyes
glowed. Again he raised the hands to caress the
boy and then a look of horror swept over his
face.

With a convulsive movement of his body, Wing
Biddlebaum sprang to his feet and thrust his
hands deep into his trousers pockets. Tears came
to his eyes. "I must be getting along home. I
can talk no more with you," he said nervously.

Without looking back, the old man had hurried
down the hillside and across a meadow, leaving
George Willard perplexed and frightened upon
the grassy slope. With a shiver of dread the boy
arose and went along the road toward town.
"I'll not ask him about his hands," he thought,
touched by the memory of the terror he had seen
in the man's eyes. "There's something wrong,
but I don't want to know what it is. His hands
have something to do with his fear of me and
of everyone."

And George Willard was right. Let us look

HANDS 13

briefly into the story of the hands. Perhaps our
talking of them will arouse the poet who will tell
the hidden wonder story of the influence for which
the hands were but fluttering pennants of promise.

In his youth Wing Biddlebaum had been a
school teacher in a town in Pennsylvania. He
was not then known as Wing Biddlebaum, but
went by the less euphonic name of Adolph Myers.
As Adolph Myers he was much loved by the boys
of his school.

Adolph Myers was meant by nature to be a
teacher of youth. He was one of those rare,
little-understood men who rule by a power so
gentle that it passes as a lovable weakness.
In their feeling for the boys under their charge
such men are not unlike the finer sort of women
in their love of men.

And yet that is but crudely stated. It needs
the poet there. With the boys of his school,
Adolph Myers had walked in the evening or had
sat talking until dusk upon the schoolhouse steps
lost in a kind of dream. Here and there went
his hands, caressing the shoulders of the boys,
playing about the tousled heads. As he talked his
voice became soft and musical. There was a
caress in that also. In a way the voice and the
hands, the stroking of the shoulders and the
touching of the hair was a part of the school-
master's effort to carry a dream into the young

14 WINESBURG, OHIO

minds. By the caress that was in his fingers he
expressed himself. He was one of those men in
whom the force that creates life is diffused, not
centralized. Under the caress of his hands doubt
and disbelief went out of the minds of the boys
and they began also to dream.

And then the tragedy. A 'half-witted boy of
the school became enamored of the young master.
In his bed at night he imagined unspeakable
things and in the morning went forth to tell his
'dreams as facts. Strange, hideous accusations
fell from his loose-hung lips. Through the Penn-
sylvania town went a shiver. Hidden, shadowy
doubts that had been in men's minds concerning
Adolph Myers were galvanized into beliefs.

The tragedy did not linger. Trembling lads
were jerked out of bed and questioned. "He put
his arms about me," said one. "His fingers were
always playing in my hair," said another.

One afternoon a man of the town, Henry Brad-
ford, who kept a saloon, came to the schoolhouse
door. Calling Adolp'h Myers into the school
yard he began to beat him with his fists. As his
hard knuckles beat down into the frightened face
of the schoolmaster, his wrath became more and
more terrible. Screaming with dismay, the chil-
dren ran here and there like disturbed insects.
"I'll teach you to put your hands on my boy, you
beast," roared the saloon keeper, who, tired of

HANDS 15

beating the master, had begun to kick him about
the yard.

Adolph Myers was driven from the Pennsyl-
vania town in the night. With lanterns in their
hands a dozen men came to the door of the house
where he lived alone and commanded that he dress
and come forth. It was raining and one of the
men had a rope in his hands. They had intended
to hang the schoolmaster, but something in his
figure, so small, white, and pitiful, touched their
hearts and they let him escape. As he ran away
into the darkness they repented of their weakness
and ran after him, swearing and throwing sticks
and great balls of soft mud at the figure that
screamed and ran faster and faster into the dark-
ness.

For twenty years Adolph Myers had lived alone
in Winesburg. He was but forty but looked sixty-
five. The name of Biddlebaum he got from a
box of goods seen at a freight station as he hurried
through an eastern Ohio town. He had an aunt
in Winesburg, a black-toothed old woman who
raised chickens, and with her he lived until she
died, He had been ill for a year after the ex-
perience in Pennsylvania, and after his recovery
worked as a day laborer in the fields, going
timidly about and striving to conceal his hands.
Although he did not understand what had hap-
pened he felt that the hands must be to blame.

16 WINESBURG, OHIO

Again and again the fathers of the boys had
talked of the hands. "Keep your hands to your-
self," the saloon keeper had roared, dancing with
fury in the schoolhouse yard.

Upon the veranda of his house by the ravine,
Wing Biddlebaum continued to walk up and down
until the sun had disappeared and the road be-
yond the field was lost in the grey shadows. Go-
ing into his house he cut slices of bread and spread
honey upon them. When the rumble of the
evening train that took away the express cars
loaded with the day's harvest of berries had
passed and restored the silence of the summer
night, he went again to walk upon the veranda.
In the darkness he could not see the hands and
they became quiet. Although he still hungered
for the presence of the boy, who was the medium
through which he expressed his love of man, the
hunger became again a part of his loneliness and
his waiting. Lighting a lamp, Wing Biddlebaum
washed the few dishes soiled by his simple meal
and, setting up a folding cot by the screen door
that led to the porch, prepared to undress for the
night. A few stray white bread crumbs lay on
the cleanly washed floor by the table; putting the
lamp upon a low stool he began to pick up the
crumbs, carrying them to his mouth one by one
with unbelievable rapidity. In the dense blotch
of light beneath the table, the kneeling figure

HANDS 19

looked like a priest engaged in some service of his
church. The nervous expressive fingers, flashing
in and out of the light, might well have been mis-
taken for the fingers of the devotee going swiftly
through decade after decade of his rosary.

i6

PAPER PILLS

HE was an old man with a white beard and
huge nose and hands. Long before the
time during which we will know him, he
was a doctor and drove a jaded white horse from
house to house through the streets of Winesburg.
Later he married a girl who had money. She had
been left a large fertile farm when her father died.
The girl was quiet, tall, and dark, and to many
people she seemed very beautiful. Everyone in
Winesburg wondered why she married the doctor.
Within a year after the marriage she died.

The knuckles of the doctor's hand were extraor-
dinarily large. When the hands were closed they
looked like clusters of unpainted wooden balls as
large as walnuts fastened together by steel rods.
He smoked a cob pipe and after his wife's death
sat all day in his empty office close by a window
that was covered with cobwebs. He never
opened the window. Once on a hot day in
August he tried but found it stuck fast and after
that he forgot all about it.

Winesburg had forgotten the old man, but in
Doctor Reefy there were the seeds of something

18

PAPER PILLS 19

very fine. Alone in his musty office in the Heff-
ner Block above the Paris Dry Goods Company's
Store, he worked ceaselessly, building up some-
thing that he himself destroyed. Little pyra-
mids of truth he erected and after erecting
knocked them down again that he might have the
truths to erect other pyramids.

Doctor Reefy was a tall man who had worn one
suit of clothes for ten years. It was frayed at
the sleeves and little holes had appeared at the
knees and elbows. In the office he wore also a
linen duster with huge pockets into which he con-
tinually stuffed scraps of paper. After some
weeks the scraps of paper became little hard round
balls, and when the pockets were filled "he dumped
them out upon the floor. For ten years he had
but one friend, another old man named John
Spaniard who owned a tree nursery. Sometimes,
in a playful mood, old Doctor Reefy took from
his pockets a handful of the paper balls and threw
them at the nursery man. "That is to confound
you, you blithering old sentimentalist," he cried,
shaking with laughter.

The story of Doctor Reefy and his courtship
of the tall dark girl who became his wife and left
her money to him is a very curious story. It is
delicious, like the twisted little apples that grow
in the orchards of Winesburg. In the fall one
walks in the orchards and the ground is hard with

20 WINESBURG, OHIO

frost underfoot. The apples have been taken
from the trees by the pickers. They have been
put in barrels and shipped to the cities where they
will be eaten in apartments that are filled with
books, magazines, furniture, and people. On the
trees are only a few gnarled apples that the pickers
have rejected. They look like the knuckles of
Doctor Reefy's hands. One nibbles at them and
they are delicious. Into a little round place at
the side of the apple has been gathered all of its
sweetness. One runs from tree to tree over the
frosted ground picking the gnarled, twisted ap-
ples and filling his pockets with them. Only the
few know the sweetness of the twisted ap-
ples.

The girl and Doctor Reefy began their court-
ship on a summer afternoon. He was forty-five
then and already he had begun the practice of
filling his pockets with the scraps of paper that
became hard balls and were thrown away. The
habit had been formed as he sat in his buggy
behind the jaded grey horse and went slowly
along country roads. On the papers were writ-
ten thoughts, ends of thoughts, beginnings of
thoughts.

One by one the mind of Doctor Reefy had made
the thoughts. Out "of many of fhem he formed
a truth that arose gigantic in his mind. The
truth clouded the world. It became terrible and

PAPER PILLS 21

then faded away and the little thoughts began
again.

The tall dark girl came to see Doctor Reefy
because she was in the family way and had become
frightened. She was in that condition because
of a series of circumstances also curious.

The death of her father and mother and the
rich acres of land that had come down to her had
set a train of suitors on her heels. For two years
she saw suitors almost every evening. Except
two they were all alike. They talked to her of
passion and there was a strained eager quality
in their voices and in their eyes when they looked
at her. The two who were different were much
unlike each other. One of them, a slender young
man with white hands, the son of a jeweler in
Winesburg, talked continually of virginity. When
he was with her he was never off the subject.
The other, a black-haired boy with large ears,
said nothing at all but always managed to get her
into the darkness where he began to kiss her.

For a time the tall dark girl thought she would
marry the jeweler's son. For hours she sat in
silence listening as he talked to her and then she
began to be afraid of something. Beneath his
talk of virginity she began to think there was a
lust greater than in all the others. At times it
seemed to her that as he talked he was holding
her body in his hands. She imagined him turn-

22 WINESBURG, OHIO

ing it slowly about in the white hands and staring
at it. At night she dreamed that he had bitten
into her body and that his jaws were dripping.
She had the dream three times, then she became
in the family way to the one who said nothing at
all but who in the moment of his passion actually
did bite her shoulder so that for days the marks
of his teeth showed.

After the tall dark girl came to know Doctor
Reefy it seemed to her that she never wanted to
leave him again. She went into his office one
morning and without her saying anything he
seemed to know what had happened to her.

In the office of the doctor there was a woman,
the wife of the man who kept the bookstore in
Winesburg. Like all old-fashioned country prac-
titioners, Doctor Reefy pulled teeth, and the
woman who waited held a handkerchief to her
teeth and groaned. Her husband was with her
and when the tooth was taken out they both
screamed and blood ran down on the woman's
white dress. The tall dark girl did not pay any
attention. When the woman and the man had
gone the doctor smiled. "I will take you driving
into the country with me," he said.

For several weeks the tall dark girl and the
doctor were together almost every day. The
condition that had brought her to him passed in
an illness, but she was like one who has discovered

PAPER PILLS 23

the sweetness of the twisted apples, she could not
get her mind fixed again upon the round perfect
fruit that is eaten in the city apartments. In the
fall after the beginning of her acquaintanceship
with him she married Doctor Reefy and in the
following spring she died. During the winter he
read to her all of the odds and ends of thoughts
he had scribbled on the bits of paper. After he
had read them he laughed and stuffed them away
in his pockets to become round hard balls.

MOTHER

ELIZABETH WILLARD, the mother of
George Willard, was tall and gaunt and
her face was marked with smallpox scars.
Although she was but forty-five, some obscure
disease had taken the fire out of her figure. List-
lessly she went about the disorderly old hotel
looking at the faded wall-paper and the ragged
carpets and, when she was able to be about,
doing the work of a chambermaid among beds
soiled by the slumbers of fat traveling men. Her
husband, Tom Willard, a slender, graceful man
with square shoulders, a quick military step, and
a black mustache, trained to turn sharply up at
the ends, tried to put the wife out of his mind.
The presence of the tall ghostly figure, moving
slowly through the halls, he took as a reproach to
himself. When he thought of her he grew angry
and swore. The hotel was unprofitable and for-
ever on the edge of failure and he wished him-
self out of it. He thought of the old house and
the woman who lived there with him as things de-
feated and done for. The hotel in which he had
begun life so hopefully was now a mere ghost of

24

MOTHER 25

what a hotel should be. As he went spruce and
businesslike through the streets of Winesburg, he
sometimes stopped and turned quickly about as
though fearing that the spirit of the hotel and
of the woman would follow him even into the
streets. "Damn such a life, damn it!" he sput-
tered aimlessly.

Tom Willard had a passion for village politics
and for years had been the leading Democrat in
a strongly Republican community. Some day, he
told himself, the tide of things political will turn
in my favor and the years of ineffectual service
count big in the bestowal of rewards. He
dreamed of going to Congress and even of be-
coming governor. Once when a younger member
of the party arose at a political conference and
began to boast of his faithful service, Tom Wil-
lard grew white with fury. "Shut up, you," he
roared, glaring about. "What do you know of
service? What are you but a boy? Look at
what I've done here ! I was a Democrat here in
Winesburg when it was a crime to be a Demo-
crat. In the old days they fairly hunted us with
guns."

Between Elizabeth and her one son George
there was a deep unexpressed bond of sympathy,
based on a girlhood dream that had long ago
died. In the son's presence she was timid and
reserved, but sometimes while he hurried about

26 WINESBURG, OHIO

town intent upon his duties as a reporter, she
went into his room and closing the door knelt by
a little desk, made of a kitchen table, that sat near
a window. In the room by the desk she went
through a ceremony that was half a prayer, half
a demand, addressed to the skies. In the boyish
figure she yearned to see something half forgot-
ten that had once been a part of herself re-
created. The prayer concerned that. "Even
though I die, I will in some way keep defeat
from you," she cried, and so deep was her de-
termination that her whole body shook. Her
eyes glowed and she clenched her fists. "If I am
dead and see him becoming a meaningless drab
figure like myself, I will come back," she declared.
4 'I ask God now to give me that privilege. I de-
mand it. I will pay for it. God may beat me
with his fists. I will take any blow that may be-
fall if but this my boy be allowed to express some-
thing for us both." Pausing uncertainly, the
woman stared about the boy's room. "And do
not let him become smart and successful either,"
she added vaguely.

The communion between George Willard and
his mother was outwardly a formal thing without
meaning. When she was ill and sat by the win-
dow in her room he sometimes went in the evening
to make her a visit. They sat by a window that
looked 'over the roof of a small frame building

MOTHER 27

1

into Main Street. By turning their heads they
could see, through another window, along an al-
leyway that ran behind the Main Street stores and
into the back door of Abner Groff's bakery.
Sometimes as they sat thus a picture of village
life presented itself to them. At the back door of
his shop appeared Abner Groff with a stick or an
empty milk bottle in his hand. For a long time
there was a feud between the baker and a grey cat
that belonged to Sylvester West, the druggist.
The boy and his mother saw the cat creep into the
door of the bakery and presently emerge followed
by the baker who swore and waved his arms about.
The baker's eyes were small and red and his black
hair and beard were filled with flour dust.
Sometimes he was so angry that, although the cat
had disappeared, he hurled sticks, bits of broken
glass, and even some of the tools of his trade
about. Once he broke a window at the back of
Sinning's Hardware Store. In the alley the grey
cat crouched behind barrels filled with torn paper
and broken bottles above which flew a black
swarm of flies. Once when she was alone, and
after watching a prolonged and ineffectual out-
burst on the part of the baker, Elizabeth Willard
put her head down on her long white hands and
wept. After that she did not look along the alley-
way any more, but tried to forget the contest be-
tween the bearded man and the cat. It seemed

28 WINESBURG, OHIO

like a rehearsal of her own life, terrible in its
vividness.

In the evening when the son sat in the room
with his mother, the silence made them both feel
awkward. Darkness came on and the evening
train came in at the station. In the street below
feet tramped up and down upon a board sidewalk.
In the station yard, after the evening train had
gone, there was a heavy silence. Perhaps Skin-
ner Leason, the express agent, moved a truck the
length of the station platform. Over on Main
Street sounded a man's voice, laughing. The
door of the express office banged. George Wil-
lard arose and crossing the room fumbled for the
doorknob. Sometimes he knocked against a
chair, making it scrape along the floor. By the
window sat the sick woman, perfectly still, list-
less. Her long hands, white and bloodless, could
be seen drooping over the ends of the arms of
the chair, "I think you had better be out among
the boys. You are too much indoors," she said,
striving to relieve the embarrassment of the de-
parture. "I thought I would take a walk," re-
plied George Willard, who felt awkward and con-
fused.

One evening in July, when the transient guests
who made the New Willard House their tempo-
rary homes had become scarce, and the hallways,
lighted only by kerosene lamps turned low, were

MOTHER 29

plunged in gloom, Elizabeth Willard had an ad-
venture. She had been ill in bed for several days
and her son had not come to visit her. She was
alarmed. The feeble blaze of life that remained
in her body was blown into a flame by her anxiety
and she crept out of bed, dressed and hurried
along the hallway toward her son's room, shaking
with exaggerated fears. As she went along she
steadied herself with her hand, slipped along the
papered walls of the hall and breathed with dif-
ficulty. The air whistled through her teeth. As
she hurried forward she thought how foolish she
was. "He is concerned with boyish affairs," she
told herself. "Perhaps he has now begun to walk
about in the evening with girls."

Elizabeth Willard had a dread of being seen
by guests in the hotel that had once belonged to
her father and the ownership of which still stood
recorded in her name in the county courthouse.
The hotel was continually losing patronage be-
cause of its shabbiness and she thought of herself
as also shabby. Her own room was in an ob-
scure corner and when she felt able to work she
voluntarily worked among the beds, preferring
the labor that could be done when the guests were
abroad seeking trade among the merchants of
Winesburg.

By the door of her son's room the mother
knelt upon the floor and listened for some sound

30 WINESBURG, OHIO

from within. When she heard the boy moving
about and talking in low tones a smile came to her
lips. George Willard had a habit of talking
aloud to himself and to hear him doing so had
always given his mother a peculiar pleasure. The
habit in him, she felt, strengthened the secret bond
that existed between them. A thousand times she
had whispered to herself of the matter. "He is
groping about, trying to find himself," she thought.
"He is not a dull clod, all words and smartness.
Within him there is a secret something that is
striving to grow. It is the thing I let be killed in
myself."

In the darkness in the hallway by the door the
sick woman arose and started again toward her
own room. She was afraid that the door would
open and the boy come upon her. When she had
reached a safe distance and was about to turn a
corner into a second hallway she stopped and
bracing herself with her hands waited, thinking to
shake off a trembling fit of weakness that had
come upon her. The presence of the boy in the
room had made her happy. In her bed, during
the long hours alone, the little fears that had vis-
ited her had become giants. Now they were all
gone. "When I get back to my room I shall
sleep," she murmured gratefully.

But Elizabeth Willard was not to return to her
bed and to sleep. As she stood trembling in the

MOTHER 31

darkness the door of her son's room opened and
the boy's father, Tom Willard, stepped out. In
the light that streamed out at the door he stood
with the knob in his hand and talked. What he
said infuriated the woman.

Tom Willard was ambitious for his son. He
had always thought of himself as a successful
man, although nothing he had ever done had
turned out successfully. However, when he was
out of sight of the New Willard House and had
no fear of coming upon his wife, he swaggered
and began to dramatize himself as one of the
chief men of the town. He wanted his son to suc-
ceed. He it was who had secured for the boy
the position on the Winesburg Eagle. Now, with
a ring of earnestness in his voice, he was advis-
ing concerning some course of conduct. "I tell
you what, George, youVe got to wake up/1 he said
sharply. "Will Henderson has spoken to me
three times concerning the matter. He says you
go along for hours not hearing when you are
spoken to and acting like a gawky girl. What
ails you?" Tom Willard laughed good-natur-
edly. "Well, I guess you'll get over it," he said.
"I told Will that. You're not a fool and you're
not a woman. You're Tom Willard's son
and you'll wake up. I'm not afraid. What you
say clears things up. If being a newspaper man
had put the notion of becoming a writer into your

32 WINESBURG, OHIO

mind that's all right. Only I guess you'll have
to wake up to do that too, eh?"

Tom Willard went briskly along the hallway
and down a flight of stairs to the office. The
woman in the darkness could hear him laughing
and talking with a guest who was striving to wear
away a dull evening by dozing in a chair by the
office door. She returned to the door of her
son's room. The weakness had passed from her
body as by a miracle and she stepped boldly along.
A thousand ideas raced through her head. When
she heard the scraping of a chair and the sound
of a pen scratching upon paper, she again turned
and went back along the hallway to her own room.

A definite determination had come into the
mind of the defeated wife of the Winesburg Hotel
keeper. The determination was the result of long
years of quiet and rather ineffectual thinking.
"Now," she told herself, "I will act. There is
something threatening my boy and I will ward it
off." The fact that the conversation between
Tom Willard and his son had been rather quiet
and natural, as though an understanding existed
between them, maddened her. Although for
years she had hated her husband, her hatred had
always before been a quite impersonal thing. He
had been merely a part of something else that she
hated. Now, and by the few words at the door,
he had become the thing personified. In the dark-

MOTHER 33

ness of her own room she clenched her fists and
glared about. Going to a cloth bag that hung on
a nail by the wall she took out a long pair of sew-
ing scissors and held them in her hand like a dag-
ger. "I will stab him," she said aloud. "He has
chosen to be the voice of evil and I will kill him.
When I have killed him something will snap with-
in myself ,and I will die also. It will be a release
for all of us."

In her girlhood and before her marriage with
Tom Willard, Elizabeth had borne a somewhat
shaky reputation in Winesburg. For years she
had been what is called "stage-struck" and had
paraded through the streets with traveling men
guests at her father's hotel, wearing loud clothes
and urging them to tell her of - life in the
cities out of which they had come. Once she
startled the town by putting on men's clothes
and riding a bicycle down Main Street.

In her own mind the tall dark girl had been in
those days much confused. A great restlessness
was in her and it expressed itself in two ways.
First there was an uneasy desire for change, for
some big definite movement to her life. It was
this feeling that had turned her mind to the stage.
She dreamed of joining some company and
wandering over the world, seeing always new faces
and giving something out of herself to all people.
Sometimes at night she was quite beside herself

34 WINESBURG, OHIO

with the thought, but when she tried to talk of
the matter to the members of the theatrical com-
panies that came to Winesburg and stopped at her
father's hotel, she got nowhere. They did not
seem to know what she meant, or if she did get
something of her passion expressed, they only
laughed. "It's not like that," they said. "It's
as dull and uninteresting as this here. Nothing
comes of it."

With the traveling men when she walked about
with them, and later with Tom Willard, it was
quite different. Always they seemed to under-
stand and sympathize with her. On the side
streets of the village, in the darkness under the
trees, they took hold of her hand and she thought
that something unexpressed in herself came forth
and became a part of an unexpressed something in
them.

And then there was the second expression of
her restlessness. When that came she felt for a
time released and happy. She did not blame the
men who walked with her and later she did not
blame Tom Willard. It was always the same,
beginning with kisses and ending, after strange
wild emotions, with peace and then sobbing re-
pentance. When she sobbed she put her hand
upon the face of the man and had always the
same thought. Even though he were large and
bearded she thought he had become suddenly a

MOTHER 35

little boy. She wondered why he did not sob
also.

In her room, tucked away in a corner of the old
Willard House, Elizabeth Willard lighted a lamp
and put it on a dressing table that stood by the
door. A thought had come into her mind and
she went to a closet and brought out a small
square box and set it on the table. The box
contained material for make-up and had been
left with other things by a theatrical company that
had once been stranded in Winesburg. Elizabeth
Willard had decided that she would be beautiful.
Her hair was still black and there was a great
mass of it braided and coiled about her head.
The scene that was to take place in the office
below began to grow in her mind. No ghostly
worn-out figure should confront Tom Willard, but
something quite unexpected and startling. Tall
and with dusky cheeks and hair that fell in a mass
from her shoulders, a figure should come striding
down the stairway before the startled loungers in
the hotel office. The figure would be silent — it
would be swift and terrible. As a tigress whose
cub had been threatened would she appear, coming
out of the shadows, stealing noiselessly along and
holding the long wicked scissors in her hand.

With a little broken sob in her throat, Eliza-
beth Willard blew out the light that stood upon
the table and stood weak and trembling in the

36 WINESBURG, OHIO

darkness. The strength that had been as a
miracle in her body left and she half reeled across
the floor, clutching at the back of the chair in which
she had spent so many long days staring out over
the tin roofs into the main street of Winesburg.
In the hallway there was the sound of footsteps
and George Willard came in at the door. Sitting
in a chair beside his mother he began to talk.
"I'm going to get out of here," he said. "I don't
know where I shall go or what I shall do but I am
going away."

The woman in the chair waited and trembled.
An impulse came to her. "I suppose you had
better wake up," she said. "You think that?
You will go to the city and make money, eh? It
will be better for you, you think, to be a business
man, to be brisk and smart and alive?" She
waited and trembled.

The son shook his head. "I suppose I can't
make you understand, but oh, I wish I could," he
said earnestly. "I can't even talk to father about
it. I don't try. There isn't any use. I don't
know what I shall do. I just want to go away
and look at people and think."

Silence fell upon the room where the boy and
woman sat together. Again, as on the other eve-
nings, they were embarrassed. After a time the
boy tried again to talk. "I suppose it won't be
for a year or two but I've been thinking about it,"

MOTHER 37

he said, rising and going toward the door.
"Something father said makes it sure that I shall
have to go away." He fumbled with the door
knob. In the room the silence became unbear-
able to the woman. She wanted to cry out with
joy because of the words that had come from the
lips of her son, but the expression of joy had
become impossible to her. "I think you had bet-
ter go out among the boys. You are too much
indoors," she said. "I thought I would go for
a little walk," replied the son stepping awk-
wardly out of the room and closing the door.

THE PHILOSOPHER

DOCTOR PARCIVAL was a large man with
a drooping mouth covered by a yellow
mustache. He always wore a dirty white
waistcoat out of the pockets of which protruded
a number of the kind of black cigars known as
stogies. His teeth were black and irregular and
there was something strange about his eyes. The
lid of the left eye twitched ; it fell down and snap-
ped up; it was exactly as though the lid of the
eye were a window shade and someone stood in-
side the doctor's head playing with the cord.

Doctor Parcival had a liking for the boy,
George Willard. It began when George had
been working for a year on the Winesburg Eagle
and the acquaintanceship was entirely a matter of
the doctor's own making.

In the late afternoon Will Henderson, owner
and editor of the Eagle, went over to Tom
Willy's saloon. Along an alleyway he went
and slipping in at the back door of the saloon
began drinking a drink made of a combination of
sloe gin and soda water. Will Henderson was
a sensualist and had reached the age of forty-five.

38

THE PHILOSOPHER 39

He imagined the gin renewed the youth in him.
Like most sensualists he enjoyed talking of
women, and for an hour he lingered about gossip-
ing with Tom Willy. The saloon keeper was a
short, broad-shouldered man with peculiarly
marked hands. That flaming kind of birth-
mark that sometimes paints with red the faces of
men and women had touched with red Tom
Willy's fingers and the backs of his hands. As
he stood by the bar talking to Will Henderson he
rubbed the hands together. As he grew more and
more excited the red of his fingers deepened. It
was as though the hands had been dipped in blood
that had dried and faded.

As Will Henderson stood at the bar looking
at the red hands and talking of women, his assist-
ant, George Willard, sat in the office of the Wi^es-
lourg Eagle and listened to the talk of Doctor
Parcival.

Doctor Parcival appeared immediately after
Will Henderson had disappeared. One might
have supposed that the doctor had been watching
from his office window and had seen the editor
going along the alleyway. Coming in at the front
door and finding himself a chair, he lighted one of
the stogies and crossing his legs began to talk.
He seemed intent upon convincing the boy of the
advisability of adopting a line of conduct that
he was himself unable to define.

40 WINESBURG, OHIO

"If you have your eyes open you will see that
although I call myself a doctor I have mighty few
patients," he began. "There is a reason for that.
It is not an accident and it is not because I do
not know as much of medicine as anyone here.
I do not want patients. The reason, you see,
does not appear on the surface. It lies in fact in
my character, which has, if you think about it,
many strange turns. Why I want to talk to you
of the matter I don't know. I might keep still
and get more credit in your eyes. I have a desire
to make you admire me, that's a fact. I don't
know why. That's why I talk. It's very amus-
ing, eh?"

Sometimes the doctor launched into long tales
concerning himself. To the boy the tales were
very real and full of meaning. He began to
admire the fat unclean-looking man and, in the
afternoon when Will Henderson had gone, looked
forward with keen interest to the doctor's coming.

Doctor Parcival had been in Winesburg about
five years. He came from Chicago and when he
arrived was drunk and got into a fight with Albert
Longworth, the baggageman. The fight con-
cerned a trunk and ended by the doctor's being
escorted to the village lockup. When he was re-
leased he rented a room above a shoe-repairing
shop at the lower end of Main Street and put out
the sign that announced himself as a doctor. Al-

THE PHILOSOPHER 41

though he had but few patients and these of the
poorer sort who were unable to pay, he seemed to
have plenty of money for his needs. He slept
in the office that was unspeakably dirty and dined
at Biff Carter's lunch room in a small frame
building opposite the railroad station. In the
summer the lunch room was filled with flies and
Biff Carter's white apron was more dirty than his
floor. Doctor Parcival did not mind. Into the
lunch room he stalked and deposited twenty cents
upon the counter. "Feed me what you wish for
that," he said laughing. "Use up food that you
wouldn't otherwise sell. It makes no difference
to me. I am a man of distinction, you see. Why
should I concern myself with what I eat."

The tales that Doctor Parcival told George
Willard began nowhere and ended nowhere.
Sometimes the boy thought they must all be inven-
tions, a pack of lies. And then again he was
convinced that they contained the very essence of
truth.

"I was a reporter like you here," Doctor Par-
cival began. "It was in a town in Iowa — or was
it in Illinois? I don't remember and anyway it
makes no difference. Perhaps I am trying to
conceal my identity and don't want to be very
definite. Have you ever thought it strange that
I have momey for my needs although I do nothing?
I may have stolen a great sum of money or been

42 WINESBURG, OHIO

involved in a murder before I came here. There
is food for thought in that, eh? If you were a
really smart newspaper reporter you would look
me up. In Chicago there was a Doctor Cronin
who was murdered. Have you heard of that?
Some men murdered him and put him in a trunk.
In the early morning they hauled the trunk across
the city. It sat on the back of an express wagon
and they were on the seat as unconcerned as any-
thing. Along they went through quiet streets
where everyone was asleep. The sun was just
coming up over the lake. Funny, eh — just to
think of them smoking pipes and chattering as
they drove along as unconcerned as I am now.
Perhaps I was one of those men. That would be
a strange turn of things, now wouldn't it, eh?"
Again Doctor Parcival began his tale: "Well,
anyway there I was, a reporter on a paper just
as you are here, running about and getting little
items to print. My mother was poor. She took
in washing. Her dream was to make me a Pres-
byterian minister and I was studying with that end
in view.

"My father had been insane for a number of
years. He was in an asylum over at Dayton,
Ohio. There you see I have let it slip out! All
of this took place in Ohio, right here in Ohio.
There is a clew if you ever get the notion of look-
ing me up.

THE PHILOSOPHER 43

UI was going to tell you of my brother. That's
die object of all this. That's what I'm getting at.
My brother was a railroad painter and had a job
on the Big Four. You know that road runs
through Ohio here. With other men he lived in
a box car and away they went from town to town
painting the railroad property — switches, crossing
gates, bridges, and stations.

"The Big Four paints its stations a nasty orange
color. How I hated that color! My brother
was always covered with it. On pay days he used
to get drunk and come home wearing his paint-
covered clothes and bringing his money with him.
He did not give it to mother but laid it in a pile
on our kitchen table.

"About the house he went in the clothes covered
with the nasty orange colored paint. I can see
the picture. My mother, who was small and had
red, sad-looking eyes, would come into the house
from a little shed at the back. That's where she
spent her time over the washtub scrubbing people's
dirty clothes. In she would come and stand by
the table, rubbing her eyes with her apron that
was covered with soap-suds.

" 'Don't touch it! Don't you dare touch that
money,' my brother roared, and then he himself
took five or ten dollars and went tramping off to
the saloons. When he had spent what he had
taken he came back for more. He never gave my

44 WINESBURG, OHIO

mother any money at all but stayed about until he
had spent it all, a little at a time. Then he went
back to his job with the painting crew on the rail-
road. After he had gone things began to arrive
at our house, groceries and such things. Some-
times there would be a dress for mother or a pair
of shoes for me.

"Strange, eh? My mother loved my brother
much more than she did me, although he never
said a kind word to either of us and always raved
up and down threatening us if we dared so much
as touch the money that sometimes lay on the
table three days.

uWe got along pretty well. I studied to be a
minister and prayed. I was a regular ass about
saying prayers. You should have heard me.
When my father died I prayed all night, just as I
did sometimes when my brother was in town drink-
ing and going about buying the things for us. In
the evening after supper I knelt by the table where
the money lay and prayed for hours. When no
one was looking I stole a dollar or two and put it
in my pocket. That makes me laugh now but
then it was terrible. It was on my mind all the
time. I got six dollars a week from my job on
the paper and always took it straight home to
mother. The few dollars I stole from my
brother's pile I spent on myself, you know, for
trifles, candy and cigarettes and such things.

THE PHILOSOPHER 45

"When my father died at the asylum over at
Dayton, I went over there. I borrowed some
money from the man for whom I worked and went
on the train at night. It was raining. In the
asylum they treated me as though I were a
king.

"The men who had jobs in the asylum had
found out I was a newspaper reporter. That
made them afraid. There had been some negli-
gence, some carelessness, you see, when father was
ill. They thought perhaps I would write it up in
the paper and make a fuss. I never intended to
do anything of the kind.

"Anyway, in I went to the room where my
father lay dead and blessed the dead body. I
wonder what put that notion into my head.
Wouldn't my brother, the painter, have laughed,
though. There I stood over the dead body and
spread out my hands. The superintendent of the
asylum and some of his helpers came in and stood
about looking sheepish. It was very amusing.
I spread out my hands and said, 'Let peace brood
over this carcass.' That's what I said."

Jumping to his feet and breaking off the tale,
Doctor Parcival began to walk up and down in
the office of the Winesburg Eagle where George
Willard sat listening. He was awkward and, as
the office was small, continually knocked against
things. "What a fool I am to be talking," he

46 WINESBURG, OHIO

said. "That is not my object in coming here and
forcing my acquaintanceship upon you. I have
something else in mind. You are a reporter just
as I was once and you have attracted my atten-
tion. You may end by becoming just such another
fool. I want to warn you and keep on warning
you. That's why I seek you out."

Doctor Parcival began talking of George Wil-
lard's attitude toward men. It seemed to the
boy that the man had but one object in view, to
make everyone seem despicable. "I want to fill
you with hatred and contempt so that you will be a
superior being," he declared. "Look at my
brother. There was a fellow, eh? He despised
everyone, you see. You have no idea with what
contempt he looked upon mother and me. And
was he not our superior? You know he was.
You have not seen him and yet I have made you
feel that. I have given you a sense of it. He is
dead. Once when he was drunk he lay down on
the tracks and the car in. which he lived with the
other painters ran over him."

One day in August Doctor Parcival had an
adventure in Winesburg. For a month George
[Willard had been going each morning to spend
an hour in the doctor's office. The visits came
about through a desire on the part of the doctor
to read to the boy from the pages of a book he

THE PHILOSOPHER 47

was in the process of writing. To write the book
Doctor Parcival declared was the object of his
coming to Winesburg to live.

On the morning in August before the coming of
the boy, an incident had happened in the doctor's
office. There had been an accident on Main
Street. A team of horses had been frightened by
a train and had run away. A little girl, the
daughter of a farmer, had been thrown from a
buggy and killed.

On Main Street everyone had become excited
and a cry for doctors had gone up. All three of
the active practitioners of the town had come
quickly but had found the child dead. From the
crowd someone had run to the office of Doctor
Parcival who had bluntly refused to go down out
of his office to the dead child. The useless cruelty
of his refusal had passed unnoticed. Indeed, the
man who had come up the stairway to summon him
had hurried away without hearing the refusal.

All of this, Doctor Parcival did not know and
when George Willard came to his office he found
the man shaking with terror. "What I have done
will arouse the people of this town," he declared
excitedly. "Do I not know human nature? Do
I not know what will happen? Word of my
refusal will be whispered about. Presently men
will get together in groups and talk of it. They
will come here. We will quarrel and there will

48 WINESBURG, OHIO

be talk of hanging. Then they will come again
bearing a rope in their hands."

Doctor Parcival shook with fright. "I have a
presentiment," he declared emphatically. "It may
be that what I am talking about will not occur this
morning. It may be put off until to-night but
I will be hanged. Everyone will get excited. I
will be hanged to a lamp-post on Main Street."

Going to the door of his dirty little office, Doc-
tor Parcival looked timidly down the stairway
leading to the street. When he returned the
fright that had been in his eyes was beginning
to be replaced by doubt. Coming on tip-toe
across the room he tapped George Willard on the
shoulder. "If not now, sometime," he whispered,
shaking his head. "In the end I will be crucified,
uselessly crucified."

Doctor Parcival began to plead with George
Willard. "You must pay attention to me," he
urged. "If something happens perhaps you will
be able to write the book that I may never get
written. The idea is very simple, so simple that
if you are not careful you will forget it. It is
this — that everyone in the world is Christ and they
are all crucified. That's what I want to say.
Don't you forget that. Whatever happens, don't
you dare let yourself forget."

NOBODY KNOWS

\

LOOKING cautiously about, George Willard
arose from his desk in the office of the
Winesburg Eagle and went hurriedly out
at the back door. The night was warm and
cloudy and although it was not yet eight o'clock,
the alleyway back of the Eagle office was pitch
dark. A team of horses tied to a post somewhere
in the darkness stamped on the hard-baked ground.
A cat sprang from under George Willard's feet
and ran away into the night. The young man was
nervous. All day he had gone about his work
like one dazed by a blow. In the alleyway he
trembled as though with fright.

In the darkness George Willard walked along
the alleyway, going carefully and cautiously.
The back doors of the Winesburg stores were open
and he could see men sitting about under the store
lamps. In Myerbaum's Notion Store Mrs.
Willy the saloon keeper's wife stood by the coun-
ter with a basket on her arm. Sid Green the clerk
was waiting on her. He leaned over the counter
and talked earnestly.

George Willard crouched and then jumped
49

50 WINESBURG, OHIO

through the path of light that came out at the
door. He began to run forward in the dark-
ness. Behind Ed Griffith's saloon old Jerry
Bird the town drunkard lay asleep on the ground.
The runner stumbled over the sprawling legs.
He laughed brokenly.

George Willard had set forth upon an adven-
ture. All day he had been trying to make up
his mind to go through with the adventure and
now he was acting. In the office of the Wines-
burg Eagle he had been sitting since six o'clock
trying to think.

There had been no decision. He had just
jumped to his feet, hurried past Will Henderson
who was reading proof in the print shop and
started to run along the alleyway.

Through street after street went George Wil-
lard, avoiding the people who passed. He
crossed and recrossed the road. When he passed
a street lamp he pulled his hat down over his
face. He did not dare think. In his mind there
was a fear but it was a new kind of fear. He was
afraid the adventure on which he had set out
would be spoiled, that he would lose courage and
turn back.

George Willard found Louise Trunnion in the
kitchen of her father's house. She was washing
dishes by the light of a kerosene lamp. There
she stood behind the screen door in the little shed-

NOBODY KNOWS 51

like kitchen at the back of the house. George
Willard stopped by a picket fence and tried to
control the shaking of his body. Only a narrow
potato patch separated him from the adventure.
Five minutes passed before he felt sure enough
of himself to call to her. "Louise 1 Oh Louise !"
he called. The cry stuck in his throat. His
voice became a hoarse whisper.

Louise Trunnion came out across the potato
patch holding the dish cloth in her hand. "How
do you know I want to go out with you," she said
sulkily. "What makes you so sure?"

George Willard did not answer. In silence the
two stood in the darkness with the fence between
them. "You go on along," she said. "Pa's in
there. I'll come along. You wait by William's
barn."

The young newspaper reporter had received a
letter from Louise Trunnion. It had come that
morning to the office of the Winesburg Eagle.
The letter was brief. "I'm yours if you want
me," it said. He thought it annoying that in
the darkness by the fence she had pretended there
was nothing between them. "She has a nerve!
Well, gracious sakes, she has a nerve," he mut-
tered as he went along the street and passed a
row of vacant lots where corn grew. The corn
was shoulder high and had been planted right
down to the sidewalk.

52 WINESBURG, OHIO

When Louise Trunnion came out of the front
door of her house she still wore the gingham dress
in which she had been washing dishes. There was
no hat on her head. The boy could see her stand-
ing with the doorknob in her hand talking to
someone within, no doubt to old Jake Trunnion,
her father. Old Jake was half deaf and she
shouted. The door closed and everything was
dark and silent in the little side street. George
Willard trembled more violently than ever.

In the shadows by William's barn George and
Louise stood, not daring to talk. She was not
particularly comely and there was a black smudge
on the side of her nose. George thought she
must have rubbed her nose with her finger after
she had been handling some of the kitchen pots.

The young man began to laugh nervously.
"It's warm," he said. He wanted to touch her
with his hand. "I'm not very bold,1' he thought.
Just to touch the folds of the soiled gingham dress
would, he decided, be an exquisite pleasure. She
began to quibble. "You think you're better than
I am. Don't tell me, I guess I know," she said
drawing closer to him.

A flood of words burst from George Willard.
He remembered the look that had lurked in the
girl's eyes when they had met on the streets and
thought of the note she had written. Doubt left
him. The whispered tales concerning her that

NOBODY KNOWS 53

had gone about town gave him confidence. He
became wholly the male, bold and aggressive.
In his heart there was no sympathy for her.
"Ah, come on, it'll be all right. There won't be
anyone know anything. How can they know?"
he urged.

They began to walk along a narrow brick side-
walk between the cracks of which tall weeds grew.
Some of the bricks were missing and the sidewalk
was rough and irregular. He took hold of her
hand that was also rough and thought it delight-
fully small. "I can't go far," she said and her
voice was quiet, unperturbed.

They crossed a bridge that ran over a tiny
stream and passed another vacant lot in which corn
grew. The street ended. In the path at the side
of the road they were compelled to walk one be-
hind the other. Will Overton's berry field lay
beside the road and there was a pile of boards.
"Will is going to build a shed to store berry crates
here," said George and they sat down upon the
boards.

• • • . • • •

When George Willard got back into Main
Street it was past ten o'clock and had begun to
rain. Three times he walked up and down the
length of Main Street. Sylvester West's Drug
Store was still open and he went in and bought a
cigar. When Shorty Crandall the clerk came

54 WINESBURG, OHIO

out at the door with him he was pleased. For
five minutes the two stood in the shelter of the
store awning and talked. George Willard felt
satisfied. He had wanted more than anything
else to talk to some man. Around a corner to-
ward the New Willard House he went whistling
softly.

On the sidewalk at the side of Winny's Dry
Goods Store where there was a high board fence
covered with circus pictures, he stopped whistling
and stood perfectly still in the darkness, attentive,
listening as though for a voice calling his name.
Then again he laughed nervously. "She hasn't
got anything on me. Nobody knows," he mut-
tered doggedly and went on his way.

GODLINESS

A TALE IN FOUR PARTS
PART ONE

THERE were always three or four old people
sitting on the front porch of the house or
puttering about the garden of the Bentley
farm. Three of the old people were women and
sisters to Jesse. They were a colorless, soft-
voiced lot. Then there was a silent old man with
thin white hair who was Jesse's uncle.

The farmhouse was built of wood, a board
outer-covering over a framework of logs. It was
in reality not one house but a cluster of houses
joined together in a rather haphazard manner.
Inside, the place was full of surprises. One went
up steps from the living room into the dining room
and there were always steps to be ascended or de-
scended in passing from one room to another. At
meal times the place was like a beehive. At one
moment all was quiet, then doors began to open,
feet clattered on stairs, a murmur of soft voices
arose and people appeared from a dozen obscure
corners.

55

56 WINESBURG, OHIO

Beside the old people, already mentioned, many
others lived in the Bentley house. There were
four hired men, a woman named Aunt Gallic
Beebe, who was in charge of the housekeeping, a
dull-witted girl named Eliza Stoughton, who made
beds and helped with the milking, a boy who
worked in the stables, and Jesse Bentley himself,
the owner and overlord of it all.

By the time the American Civil War had been
over for twenty years, that part of Northern Ohio
where the Bentley farms lay had begun to emerge
from pioneer life. Jesse then owned machinery
for harvesting grain. He had built modern
barns and most of his land was drained with care-
fully laid tile drain, but in order to understand
the man we will have to go back to an earlier
day.

The Bentley family had been in Northern
Ohio for several generations before Jesse's time.
They came from New York State and took up
land when the country was new and land could
be had at a low price. For a long time they, in
common with all the other Middle Western
people, were very poor. The land they had
settled upon was heavily wooded and covered with
fallen logs and underbrush. After the long hard
labor of clearing these away and cutting the
timber, there were still the stumps to be reck-
oned with. Plows run through the fields caught

GODLINESS 57

on hidden roots, stones lay all about, on the low
places water gathered, and the young corn turned
yellow, sickened and died.

When Jesse Bentley's father and brothers had
come into their ownership of the place, much of
the harder part of the work of clearing had been
done, but they clung to old traditions and worked
like driven animals. They lived as practically
all of the farming people of the time lived. In
the spring and through most of the winter the
highways leading into the town of Winesburg were
a sea of mud. The four young men of the family
worked hard all day in the fields, they ate heavily
of coarse, greasy food, and at night slept like
tired beasts on beds of straw. Into their lives
came little that was not coarse and brutal and out-
wardly they were themselves coarse and brutal.
On Saturday afternoons they hitched a team of
horses to a three-seated wagon and went off to
town. In town they stood about the stoves in
the stores talking to other farmers or to the store
keepers. They were dressed in overalls and in
the winter wore heavy coats that were flecked with
mud. Their hands as they stretched them out
to the heat of the stoves were cracked and red.
It was difficult for them to talk and so they for
the most part kept silent. When they had bought
meat, flour, sugar, and salt, they went into one of
the Winesburg saloons and drank beer. Under

58 WINESBURG, OHIO

the influence of drink the naturally strong lusts of
their natures, kept suppressed by the heroic labor
of breaking up new ground, were released. A
kind of crude and animal-like poetic fervor took
possession of them. On the road home they stood
up on the wagon seats and shouted at the stars.
Sometimes they fought long and bitterly and at
other times they broke forth into songs. Once
Enoch Bentley, the older one of the boys, struck
his father, old Tom Bentley, with the butt of a
teamster's whip, and the old man seemed likely to
die. For days Enoch lay hid in the straw in the
loft of the stable ready to flee if the result of his
momentary passion turned out to be murder.
He was kept alive with food brought by his
mother who also kept him informed of the in-
jured man's condition. When all turned out well
he emerged from his hiding place and went back
to the work of clearing land as though nothing
had happened.

The Civil War brought a sharp turn to the
fortunes of the Bentleys and was responsible for
the rise of the youngest son, Jesse. Enoch, Ed-
ward, Harry, and Will Bentley all enlisted and
before the long war ended they were all killed.
For a time after they went away to the South,
old Tom tried to run the place, but he was not

GODLINESS 59

successful. When the last of the four had been
killed he sent word to Jesse that he would have
to come home.

Then the mother, who had not been well for a
year, died suddenly, and the father became alto-
gether discouraged. He talked of selling the
farm and moving into town. All day he went
about shaking his head and muttering. The work
in the fields was neglected and weeds grew high
in the corn. Old Tom hired men but he did not
use them intelligently. When they had gone
away to the fields in the morning he wandered
into the woods and sat down on a log. Sometimes
he forgot to come home at night and one of the
daughters had to go in search of him.

When Jesse Bentley came home to the farm
and began to take charge of things he was a slight,
sensitive-looking man of twenty-two. At eighteen
he had left home to go to school to become a
scholar and eventually to become a minister of the
Presbyterian Church. All through his boyhood
he had been what in our country was called an
"odd sheep" and had not got on with his brothers.
Of all the family only his mother had understood
him and she was now dead. When he came home
to take charge of the farm, that had at that time
grown to more than six hundred acres, everyone
on the farms about and in the nearby town of
Winesburg smiled at the idea of his trying to

60 ^INESBURG, OHIO

handle tht work that had been done by his four
strong brothers.

There was indeed good cause to smile. By the
standards of his day Jesse did not look like a man
at all. He was small and very slender and wom-
anish of body and, true to the traditions of young
ministers, wore a long black coat and a narrow
black string tie. The neighbors were amused
when they saw him, after the years away, and they
were even more amused when they saw the woman
he had married in the city.

As a matter of fact, Jesse's wife did soon go
under. That was perhaps Jesse's fault. A farm
in Northern Ohio in the hard years after the Civil
War was no place for a delicate woman, and
Katherine Bentley was delicate. Jesse was hard
with her as he was with everybody about him in
those days. She tried to do such work as all the
neighbor women about her did and he let her go
on without interference. She helped to do the
milking and did part of the housework; she made
the beds for the men and prepared their food.
For a year she worked every day from sunrise
until late at night and then after giving birth to a
child she died.

As for Jesse Bentley — although he was a deli-
cately built man there was something within him
that could not easily be killed. He had brown
curly hair and grey eyes that were at times hard

GODLINESS 6l

and direct, at times wavering and uncertain. Not
only was he slender but he was also short of stat-
ure. His mouth was like the mouth of a sensitive
and very determined child. Jesse Bentley was a
fanatic. He was a man born out of his time and
place and for this he suffered and made others
suffer. Never did he succeed in getting what he
wanted out of life and he did not know what he
wanted. Within a very short time after he came
home to the Bentley farm he made everyone there
a little afraid of him, and his wife, who should
have been close to him as his mother had been,
was afraid also. At the end of two weeks after
his coming, old Tom Bentley made over to him
the entire ownership of the place and retired into
the background. Everyone retired into the back-
ground. In spite of his youth and inexperience,
Jesse had the trick of mastering the souls of his
people. He was so in earnest in everything he
did and said that no one understood him. He
made everyone on the farm work as they had never
worked before and yet there was no joy in the
work. If things went well they went well for
Jesse and never for the people who were his de-
pendents. Like a thousand other strong men who
have come into the world here in America in
these later times, Jesse was but half strong. He
could master others but he could not master him-
self. The running of the farm as it had never

62 WINESBURG, OHIO

been run before was easy for him. When he came
home from Cleveland where he had been in
school, he shut himself off from all of his people
and began to make plans. He thought about the
farm night and day and that made him successful.
Other men on the farms about him worked too
hard and were too tired to think, but to think of
the farm and to be everlastingly making plans for
its success was a relief to Jesse. It partially satis-
fied something in his passionate nature. Imme-
diately after he came home he had a wing built on
to the old house and in a large room facing the
west he had windows that looked into the barn-
yard and other windows that looked off across the
fields. By the window he sat down to think.
Hour after hour and day after day he sat and
looked over the land and thought out his new place
in life. The passionate burning thing in his
nature flamed up and his eyes became hard. He
wanted to make the farm produce as no farm in
his state had ever produced before and then he
wanted something else. It was the indefinable
hunger within that made his eyes waver and that
kept him always more and more silent before
people. He would have given much to achieve
peace and in him was a fear that peace was the
thing he could not achieve.

All over his body Jesse Bentley was alive. In
his small frame was gathered the force of a long

GODLINESS 63

line of strong men. He had always been extraor-
dinarily alive when he was a small boy on the
farm and later when he was a young man in school.
In the school he had studied and thought of God
and the Bible with his whole mind and heart. As
time passed and he grew to know people better, he
began to think of himself as an extraordinary man,
one set apart from his fellows. He wanted
terribly to make his life a thing of great import-
ance, and as he looked about at his fellow men and
saw how like clods they lived it seemed to him
that he could not bear to become also such a clod.
Although in his absorption in himself and in his
own destiny he was blind to the fact that his
young wife was doing a strong woman's work
even after she had become large with child and
that she was killing herself in his service, he did
not intend to be unkind to her. When his father,
who was old and twisted with toil, made over to
him the ownership of the farm and seemed con-
tent to creep away to a corner and wait for death,
he shrugged his shoulders and dismissed the old
man from his mind.

In the room by the window overlooking the
land that had come down to him sat Jesse think-
ing of his own affairs. In the stables he could
hear the tramping of his horses and the restless
movement of his cattle. Away in the fields he
could see other cattle wandering over green hills.

64 WINESBURG, OHIO

The voices of men, his men who worked for him,
came in to him through the window. From the
milkhouse there was the steady thump, thump of
a churn being manipulated by the half-witted girl,
Eliza Stoughton. Jesse's mind went back to the
men of Old Testament days who had also owned
lands and herds. He remembered how God had
come down out of the skies and talked to these
men and he wanted God to notice and to talk
to him also. A kind of feverish boyish eagerness
to in some way- achieve in his own life the flavor
of significance that had hung over these men took
possession of him. Being a prayerful man he
spoke of the matter aloud to God and the sound
of his own words strengthened and fed his eager-
ness.

"I am a new kind of man come into possession
of these fields," he declared. "Look upon me, O
God, and look Thou also upon my neighbors and
all the men who have gone before me here ! O
God, create in me another Jesse, like that one of
old, to rule over men and to be the father of
sons who shall be rulers I" Jesse grew excited as
he talked aloud and jumping to his feet walked up
and down in the room. In fancy he saw himself
living in old times and among old peoples. The
land that lay stretched out before him became of
vast significance, a place peopled by his fancy
with a new race of men sprung from himself. It

GODLINESS 65

seemed to him that in his day as in those other and
older days, kingdoms might be created and new
impulses given to the lives of men by the power of
God speaking through a chosen servant. He
longed to be such a servant. "It is God's work I
have come to the land to do," he declared in a
loud voice and his short figure straightened
and he thought that something like a halo of
Godly approval hung over him.

It will perhaps be somewhat difficult for the
men and women of a later day to understand Jesse
Bentley. In the last fifty years a vast change
has taken place in the lives of our people. A
revolution has in fact taken place. The coming
of industrialism, attended by all the roar and rattle
of affairs, the shrill cries of millions of new voices
that have come among us from over seas, the
going and coming of trains, the growth of cities,
the building of the interurban car lines that weave
in and out of towns and past farmhouses, and
now in these later days the coming of the auto-
mobiles has worked a tremendous change in the
lives and in the habits of thought of our people
of Mid-America. Books, badly imagined and
written though they may be in the hurry of our
times, are in every household, magazines circulate
by the millions of copies, newspapers are every-
where. In our day a farmer standing by the

66 WINESBURG, OHIO

stove in the store in his village has his mind filled
to overflowing with the words of other men. The
newspapers and the magazines have pumped him
full. Much of the old brutal ignorance that had
in it also a kind of beautiful childlike innocence is
gone forever. The farmer by the stove is brother
to the men of the cities, and if you listen you will
find him talking as glibly and as senselessly as the
best city man of us all.

In Jesse Bentley's time and in the country dis-
tricts of the whole Middle West in the years after
the Civil War it was not so. Men labored too
hard and were too tired to read. In them was no
desire for words printed upon paper. As they
worked in the fields, vague, half-formed thoughts
took possession of them. They believed in God
and in God's power to control their lives. In the
little Protestant churches they gathered on Sun-
day to hear of God and his works. The churches
were the center of the social and intellectual life
of the times. The figure of God was big in the
hearts of men.

And so, having been born an imaginative child
and having within him a great intellectual eager-
ness, Jesse Bentley had turned wholeheartedly
toward God. When the war took his brothers
away, he saw the hand of God in that. When his
father became ill and could no longer attend to

GODLINESS 67

the running of the farm, he took that also as a sign
from God. In the city, when the word came to
him, he walked about at night through the
streets thinking of the matter and when he had
come home and had got the work on the farm well
under way, he went again at night to walk through
the forests and over the low hills and to think of
God.

As he walked the importance of his own figure
in some divine plan grew in his mind. He grew
avaricious and was impatient that the farm con-
tained only six hundred acres. Kneeling in a
fence corner at the edge of some meadow, he sent
his voice abroad into the silence and looking up
he saw the stars shining down at him.

One evening, some months after his father's
death, and when his wife Katherine was expecting
at any moment to be laid abed of childbirth,
Jesse left his house and went for a long walk.
The Bentley farm was situated in a tiny valley
watered by Wine Creek, and Jesse walked along
the banks of the stream to the end of his own
land and on through the fields of his neighbors.
As he walked the valley broadened and then nar-
rowed again. Great open stretches of field and
wood lay before him. The moon came out from
behind clouds, and, climbing a low hill, he sat
down to think.

68 WINESBURG, OHIO

Jesse thought that as the true servant of God
the entire stretch of country through which he had
walked should have come into his possession. He
thought of his dead brothers and blamed them
that they had not worked harder and achieved
more. Before him in the moonlight the tiny
stream ran down over stones, and he began to
think of the men of old times who like himself had
owned flocks and lands.

A fantastic impulse, half fear, half greediness
took possession of Jesse Bentley. He remem-
bered how in the old Bible story the Lord had
appeared to that other Jesse and told him to send
his son David to where Saul and the men of Israel
were fighting the Philistines in the Valley of Elah.
Into Jesse's mind came the conviction that all of
the Ohio farmers who owned land in the valley
of Wine Creek were Philistines and enemies of
God. "Suppose," he whispered to himself, "there
should come from among them one who, like
Goliath the Philistine of Gath, could defeat me
and take from me my possessions." In fancy he
felt the sickening dread that he thought must have
lain heavy on the heart of Saul before the coming
of David. Jumping to his feet, he began to run
through the night. As he ran he called to God.
His voice carried far over the low hills. "Jeho-
vah of Hosts," he cried, "send to me this night
out of the womb of Katherine, a son. Let thy

GODLINESS 69

grace alight upon me. Send me a son to be called
David who shall help me to pluck at last all of
these lands out of the hands of the Philistines and
turn them to Thy service and to the building of
Thy kingdom on earth."

B«tv»«*f «* indene -farm

A -*

. Had

(X

GODLINESS

PART TWO

DAVID HARDY of Winesburg, Ohio was
the grandson of Jesse Bentley, the owner
of Bentley farms. When he was twelve
years old he went to the old Bentley place to live.
His mother, Louise Bentley, the girl who came
into the world on that night when Jesse ran
through the fields crying to God that he be given
a son, had grown to womanhood on the farm and
had married young John Hardy of Winesburg
who became a banker. Louise and her husband
did not live happily together and everyone agreed
that she was to blame. She was a small woman
with sharp grey eyes and black hair. From
childhood she had been inclined to fits of temper
and when not angry she was often morose and
silent. In Winesburg it was said that she drank.
Her husband, the banker, who was a careful,
shrewd man, tried hard to make her happy.
When he began to make money he bought for her
a large brick house on Elm Street in Winesburg
and he was the first man in that town to keep a
manservant to drive his wife's carriage.

70

GODLIN ESS 71

But Louise could not be made happy. She
flew into half insane fits of temper during which
she was sometimes silent, sometimes noisy and
quarrelsome. She swore and cried out in her
anger. She got a knife from the kitchen and
threatened her husband's life. Once she delib-
erately set fire to the house, and often she hid her-
self away for days in her own room and would
see no one. Her life, lived as a half recluse, gave
rise to all sorts of stories concerning her. ft was
said that she took drugs and that she hid herself
away from people because she was often so under
the influence of drink that her condition could
not be concealed. Sometimes on summer after-
noons she came out of the house and got into her
carriage. Dismissing the driver she took the
reins in her own hands and drove off at top speed
through the streets. If a pedestrian got in her
way she drove straight ahead and the frightened
citizen had to escape as best he could. To the
people of the town it seemed as though she wanted
to run them down. When she had driven
through several streets, tearing around corners
and beating the horses with the whip, she drove
off into the country. On the country roads after
she had gotten out of sight of the houses she let
the horses slow down to a walk and her wild,
reckless mood passed. She became thoughtful
and muttered words. Sometimes tears came into

72 WINESBURG, OHIO

her eyes. And then when she came back into
town she again drove furiously through the quiet
streets. But for the influence of her husband and
the respect he inspired in people's minds she would
have been arrested more than once by the town
marshal.

Young David Hardy grew up in the house with
this woman and as can well be imagined there
was not much joy in his childhood. He was too
young then to have opinions of his own about
people, but at times it was difficult for him not to
have very definite opinions about the woman who
was his mother. David was always a quiet or-
derly boy and for a long time was thought by
the people of Winesburg to be something of a
dullard. His eyes were brown and as a child
he had a habit of looking at things and people
a long time without appearing to see what he was
looking at. When he heard his mother spoken of
harshly or when he overheard her berating his
father, he was frightened and ran away to hide.
Sometimes he could not find a hiding place and that
confused him. Turning his face toward a tree or
if he were indoors toward the wall, he closed his
eyes and tried not to think of anything. He had
a habit of talking aloud to himself, and early in
life a spirit of quiet sadness often took possession
of him.

On the occasions when David went to visit his

GODLINESS 73

grandfather on the Bentley farm, he was alto-
gether contented and happy. Often he wished
that he would never have to go back to town and
once when he had come home from the farm after
a long visit, something happened that had a lasting
effect on his mind.

David had come back into town with one of the
hired men. The man was in a hurry to go about
his own affairs and left the boy at the head of the
street in which the Hardy house stood. It was
early dusk of a fall evening and the sky was over-
cast with clouds. Something happened to David.
He could not bear to go into the house where his
mother and father lived, and on an impulse he
decided to run away from home. He intended
to go back to the farm and to his grandfather,
but lost his way and for hours he wandered weep-
ing and frightened on country roads. It started
to rain and lightning flashed in the sky. The
boy's imagination was excited and he fancied that
he could see and hear strange things in the dark-
ness. Into his mind came the conviction that he
was walking and running in some terrible void
where no one had ever been before. The dark-
ness about him seemed limitless. The sound of
the wind blowing in trees was terrifying. When
a team of horses approached along the road in
which he walked he was frightened and climbed
a fence. Through a field he ran until he came

74 WINESBUBG, OHIO

into another road and getting upon his knees felt
of the soft ground with his fingers. But for the
figure of his grandfather, whom he was afraid.he
would never find in the darkness, he thought the
world must be altogether empty. When his cries
were heard by a farmer who was walking home
from town and he was brought back to his fath-
er's house, he was so tired and excited that he did
not know what was happening to him.

By chance David's father knew that he had dis-
appeared. On the street he had met the farm
hand from the Bentley place and knew of his son's
return to town. When the boy did not come
home an alarm was set up and John Hardy with
several men of the town went to search the coun-
try. The report that David had been kidnapped
ran about through the streets of Winesburg.
When he came home there were no lights in the
house, but his mother appeared and clutched him
eagerly in her arms. David thought she had sud-
denly become another woman. He could not be-
lieve that so delightful a thing had happened.
With her own hands Louise Hardy bathed his
tired young body and cooked him food. She
would not let him go to bed but, when he had put
on his nightgown, blew out the lights and sat down
in a chair to hold him in her arms. For an hour
the woman sat in the darkness and held her boy.
All the time she kept talking in a low voice.

GODLINESS 75

David could not understand what had so changed
her. Her habitually dissatisfied face had become,
he thought, the most peaceful and lovely thing he
had ever seen. When he began to weep she held
him more and more tightly. On and on went her
voice. It was not harsh or shrill as when she
talked to her husband, but was like rain falling on
trees. Presently men began coming to the door
to report that he had not been found, but she
made him hide and be silent until she had sent
them away. He thought it must be a game his
mother and the men of the town were playing
with him and laughed joyously. Into his mind
came the thought that his having been lost and
frightened in the darkness was an altogether un-
important matter. He thought that he would
have been willing to go through the frightful ex-
perience a thousand times to be sure of finding at
the end of the long black road a thing so lovely
as his mother had suddenly become.

During the last years of young David's boy-
hood he saw his mother but seldom and she be-
came for him just a woman with whom he had
once lived. Still he could not get her figure out
of his mind and as he grew older it became more
definite. When he was twelve years old he went
to the Bentley farm to live. Old Jesse came into
town and fairly demanded that he be given charge

76 WINESBURG, OHIO

of the boy. The old man was excited and de-
termined on having his own way. He talked to
John Hardy in the office of the Winesburg Sav-
ings Bank and then the two men went to the house
on Elm Street to talk with Louise. They both
expected her to make trouble but were mistaken.
She was very quiet and when Jesse had explained
his mission and had gone on at some length about
the advantages to come through having the boy
out of doors and in the quiet atmosphere of the
old farmhouse, she nodded her head in approval.
"It is an atmosphere not corrupted by my pre-
sence," she said sharply. Her shoulders shook
and she seemed about to fly into a fit of temper.
"It is a place for a man child, although it was
never a place for me," she went on. "You never
wanted me there and of course the air of your
house did me no good. It was like poison in my
blood but it will be different with him."

Louise turned and went out of the room, leav-
ing the two men to sit in embarrassed silence. As
very often happened she later stayed in her room
for days. Even when the boy's clothes were
packed and he was taken away she did not appear.
The loss of her son made a sharp break in her
life and she seemed less inclined to quarrel with
her husband. John Hardy thought it had all
turned out very well indeed.

And so young David went to live in the Bentley

GODLINESS 77

farmhouse with Jesse. Two of the old farmer's
sisters were alive and still lived in the house.
They were afraid of Jesse and rarely spoke when
he was about. One of the women who had been
noted for her flaming red hair when she was
younger was a born mother and became the boy's
caretaker. Every night when he had gone to bad
she went into his room and sat on the floor until
he fell asleep. When he became drowsy she be-
came bold and whispered things that he later
thought he must have dreamed.

Her soft low voice called him endearing names
and he dreamed that his mother had come to him
and that she had changed so that she was always
as she had been that time after he ran away. He
also grew bold and reaching out his hand stroked
the face of the woman on the floor so that she
was ecstatically happy. Everyone in the old
house became happy after the boy went there.
The hard insistent thing in Jesse Bentley that had
kept the people in the house silent and timid and
that had never been dispelled by the presence of
the girl Louise was apparently swept away by the
coming of the boy. It was as though God had
relented and sent a son to the man.

The man who had proclaimed himself the only
true servant of God in all the valley of Wine
Creek, and who had wanted God to send him
a sign of approval by way of a son out of

78 WINESBURG, OHIO

the womb of Katharine, began to think that at last
his prayers had been answered. Although he was
at that time only fifty-five years old he looked
seventy and was worn out with much thinking and
scheming. The effort he had made to extend his
land holdings had been successful and there were
few farms in the valley that did not belong to
him, but until David came he was a bitterly dis-
appointed man.

There were two influences at work in Jesse
Bentley and all his life his mind had been a battle-
ground for these influences. First there was the
old thing in him. He wanted to be a man of
God and a leader among men of God. His walk-
ing in the fields and through the forests at night
had brought him close to nature and there were
forces in the passionately religious man that ran
out to the forces in nature. The disappointment
that had come to him when a daughter and not a
son had been born to Katherine had fallen upon
him like a blow struck by some unseen hand and
the blow had somewhat softened his egotism. He
still believed that God might at any moment make
himself manifest out of the winds or the clouds,
but he no longer demanded such recognition. In-
stead he prayed for it. Sometimes he was alto-
gether doubtful and thought God had deserted
the world. He regretted the fate that had not
let him live in a simpler and sweeter time when

GODLINESS 79

at the beckoning of some strange cloud in the sky
men left their lands and houses and went forth
into the wilderness to create new races. While he
worked night and day to make his farms more
productive and to extend his holdings of land, he
regretted that he could not use his own restless
energy in the building of temples, the slaying of
unbelievers and in general in the work of glorify-
ing God's name on earth.

That is what Jesse hungered for and then also
he hungered for something else. He had grown
into maturity in America in the years after the
Civil War and he, like all men of his time, had
been touched by the deep influences that were at
work in the country during those years when mod-
ern industrialism was being born. He began to
buy machines that would permit him to do the
work of the farms while employing fewer men
and he sometimes thought that if he were a
younger man he would give up farming altogether
and start a factory in Winesburg for the making
of machinery. Jesse formed the habit of read-
ing newspapers and magazines. He invented a
machine for the making of fence out of wire.
Faintly he realized that the atmosphere of old
times and places that he had always cultivated in
his own mind was strange and foreign to the
thing that was growing up in the minds of others.
The beginning of the most materialistic age in the

8o WINESBURG, OHIO

history of the world, when wars would be fought
without patriotism, when men would forget God
and only pay attention to moral standards, when
the will to power would replace the will to serve
and beauty would be well-nigh forgotten in the
terrible headlong rush of mankind toward the
acquiring of possessions, was telling its story to
Jesse the man of God as it was to the men about
him. The greedy thing in him wanted to make
money faster than it could be made by tilling the
land. More than once he went into Winesburg
to talk with his son-in-law John Hardy about it.
"You are a banker and you will have chances I
never had," he said and his eyes shone. "I am
thinking about it all the time. Big things are go-
ing to be done in the country, and there will be
more money to be made than I ever dreamed of.
You get into it. I wish I were younger and had
your chance." Jesse Bentley walked up and down
in the bank office and grew more and more ex-
cited as he talked. At one time in his life he had
been threatened with paralysis and his left side
remained somewhat weakened. As he talked his
left eyelid twitched. Later when he drove back
home and when night came on and the stars came
out it was harder to get back the old feeling of
a close and personal God who lived in the sky
overhead and who might at any moment reach out
his hand, touch him on the shoulder, and appoint

GODLINESS 8l

for him some heroic task to be done. Jesse's
mind was fixed upon the things read in newspapers
and magazines, on fortunes to be made almost
without effort by shrewd men who bought and
sold. For him the coming of the boy David did
much to bring back with renewed force the old
faith and it seemed to him that God had at last
looked with favor upon him.

As for the boy on the farm, life began to reveal
itself to him in a thousand new and delightful
ways. The kindly attitude of all about him ex-
panded his quiet nature and he lost the half timid,
hesitating manner he had always had with his
people. At night when he went to bed after a
long day of adventures in the stables, in the fields,
or driving about from farm to farm with his
grandfather he wanted to embrace everyone in
the house. If Sherley Bentley, the woman who
came each night to sit on the floor by his bedside,
did not appear at once, he went to the head of
the stairs and shouted, his young voice ringing
through the narrow halls where for so long there
had been a tradition of silence. In the morning
when he awoke and lay still in bed, the sounds that
came in to him through the windows filled him
with delight. He thought with a shudder of the
life in the house in Winesburg and of his mother's
angry voice that had always made him tremble.
There in the country all sounds were pleasant

82 WINESBURG, OHIO

sounds. When he awoke at dawn the barnyard
back of the house also awoke. In the house peo-
ple stirred about. Eliza Stoughton the half-
witted girl was poked in the ribs by a farm hand
and giggled noisily, in some distant field a cow
bawled and was answered by the cattle in the
stables, and one of the farm hands spoke sharply
to the horse he was grooming by the stable door.
David leaped out of bed and ran to a window.
All of the people stirring about excited his mind,
and he wondered what his mother was doing in
the house in town.

From the windows of his own room he could
not see directly into the barnyard where the farm
hands had now all assembled to do the morning
chores, but he could hear the voices of the men
and the neighing of the horses. When one of the
men laughed, he laughed also. Leaning out at
the open window, he looked into an orchard where
a fat sow wandered about with a litter of tiny pigs
at her heels. Every morning he counted the pigs.
"Four, five, six, seven," he said slowly, wetting
his finger and making straight up and down marks
on the window ledge. David ran to put on his
trousers and shirt. A feverish desire to get out
of doors took possession of him. Every morn-
ing he made such a noise coming down stairs that
Aunt Sallie, the housekeeper, declared he was try-
ing to tear the house down. When he had run

GODLINESS 83

through the long old house, shutting doors behind
him with a bang, he came into the barnyard and
looked about with an amazed air of expectancy.
It seemed to him that in such a place tremendous
things might have happened during the night.
The farm hands looked at him and laughed.
Henry Strader, an old man who had been on the
farm since Jesse came into possession and who be-
fore David's time had never been known to make
a joke, made the same joke every morning. It
amused David so that he laughed and clapped his
hands. "See, come here and look/' cried the old
man, "Grandfather Jesse's white mare has torn
the black stocking she wears on her foot."

Day after day through the long summer, Jesse
Bentley drove from farm to farm up and down
the valley of Wine Creek, and his grandson went
with him. They rode in a comfortable old phae-
ton drawn by the white horse. The old man
scratched his thin white beard and talked to him-
self of his plans for increasing the productiveness
of the fields they visited and of God's part in the
plans all men made. Sometimes he looked at
David and smiled happily and then for a long time
he appeared to forget the boy's existence. More
and more every day now his mind turned back
again to the dreams that had filled his mind when
he had first come out of the city to live on the
land. One afternoon he startled David by letting

84 WINESBURG, OHIO

his dreams take entire possession of him. With
the boy as a witness, he went through a ceremony
and brought about an accident that nearly de-
stroyed the companionship that was growing up
between them.

Jesse and his grandson were driving in a distant
part of the valley some miles from home. A
forest came down to the road and through the
forest Wine Creek wriggled its way over stones
toward a distant river. All the afternoon Jesse
had been in a meditative mood and now he began
to talk. His mind went back to the night when
he had been frightened by thoughts of a giant that
might come to rob and plunder him of his pos-
sessions, and again as on that night when he had
run through the fields crying for a son, he became
excited to the edge of insanity. Stopping the
horse he got out of the buggy and asked David
to get out also. The two climbed over a fence
and walked along the bank of the stream. The
boy paid no attention to the muttering of his
grandfather, but ran along beside him and won-
dered what was going to happen. When a rab-
bit jumped up and ran away through the woods, he
clapped his hands and danced with delight. He
looked at the tall trees and was sorry that he was
not a little animal to climb high in the air without
being frightened. Stooping, he picked up a small
stone and threw it over the head of his grand-

GODLINESS 85

father into a clump of bushes. "Wake up, little
animal. Go and climb to the top of the trees,"
he shouted in a shrill voice.

Jesse Bentley went along under the trees with
his bead bowed and with his mind in a ferment.
His earnestness affected the boy who presently
became silent and a little alarmed. Into the old
man's mind had come the notion that now he could
bring from God a word or a sign out of the sky,
that the presence of the boy and man on their
knees in some lonely spot in the forest would make
the miracle he had been waiting for almost in-
evitable. "It was in just such a place as this that
other David tended the sheep when his father
came and told him to go down unto Saul," he
muttered.

Taking the boy rather roughly by the shoulder,
he climbed over a fallen log and when he had come
to an open place among the trees, he dropped
upon his knees and began to pray in a loud voice.

A kind of terror he had never known before
took possession of David. Crouching beneath a
tree he watched the man on the ground before
him and his own knees began to tremble. It
seemed to him that he was in the presence, not
only of his grandfather but of someone else, some-
one who might hurt him, someone who was not
kindly but dangerous and brutal. He began to
cry and reaching down picked up a small stick

86 WINESBURG, OHIO

which he held tightly gripped in his fingers.
When Jesse Bentley, absorbed in his own idea,
suddenly arose and advanced toward him, his
terror grew until his whole body shook. In the
woods an intense silence seemed to lie over every-
thing and suddenly out of the silence came the old
man's harsh and insistent voice. Gripping the
boy's shoulders, Jesse turned his face to the sky
and shouted. The whole left side of his face
twitched and his hand on the boy's shoulder
twitched also. "Make a sign to me, God," he
cried, "here I stand with the boy Davjd. Come
down to me out of the sky and make Thy pres-
ence known to me."

With a cry of fear, David turned and shaking
himself loose from the hands that held him, ran
away through the forest. He did not believe that
the man who turned up his face and in a harsh
voice shouted at the sky, was his grandfather at
all. The man did not look like his grandfather.
The conviction that something strange and terrible
had happened, that by some miracle a new and
dangerous person had come into the body of the
kindly old man took possession of him. On and
on he ran down the hillside sobbing as he ran.
When he fell over the roots of a tree and in
falling struck his head, he arose and tried to run
on again. His head hurt so that presently he
fell down and lay still, but it was only after

GODLINESS 87

Jesse had carried him to the buggy and he awoke
to find the old man's hand stroking his head ten-
derly, that the terror left him. "Take me away.
There is a terrible man back there in the woods,"
he declared firmly, while Jesse looked away over
the tops of the trees and again his lips cried out
to God. "What have I done that Thou doest not
approve of me," he whispered softly, saying the
words over and over as he drove rapidly along the
road with the boy's cut and bleeding head held
tenderly against his shoulder.

SURRENDER

PART THREE

THE story of Louise Bentley, who became
Mrs. John Hardy and lived with her hus-
band in a brick house on Elm Street in
Winesburg, is a story of misunderstanding.

Before such women as Louise can be under-
stood and their lives made livable, much will have
to be done. Thoughtful books will have to be
written and thoughtful lives lived by people
about them.

Born of a delicate and overworked mother, and
an impulsive, hard, imaginative father, who did
not look with favor upon her coming into the
world, Louise was from childhood a neurotic, one
of the race of over-sensitive women that in later
days industrialism was to bring in such great num-
bers into the world.

During her early years she lived on the Bentley
farm, a silent, moody child, wanting love more
than anything else in the world and not getting it.
When she was fifteen she went to live in Wines-
burg with the family of Albert Hardy who had

88

SURRENDER 89

a store for the sale of buggies and wagons, and
who was a member of the town board of educa-
tion.

Louise went into town to be a student in the
Winesburg High School and she went to live at
the Hardy's because Albert Hardy and her father
were friends.

Hardy, the vehicle merchant of Winesburg,
like thousands of other men of his times, was an
enthusiast on the subject of education. He had
made his own way in the world without learning
got from books, but he was convinced that had
he but known books things would have gone bet-
ter with him. To everyone who came into his
shop he talked of the matter, and in his own
household he drove his family distracted by his
constant harping on the subject.

He had two daughters and one son, John
Hardy, and more than once the daughters threat-
ened to leave school altogether. As a matter of
principle they did just enough work in their classes
to avoid punishment. "I hate books and I hate
anyone who likes books," Harriet, the younger of
the two girls, declared passionately.

In Winesburg as on the farm Louise was not
happy. For years she had dreamed of the time
when she could go forth into the world, and she
looked upon the move into the Hardy household
as a great step in the direction of freedom. Al-

90 WINESBURG, OHIO

ways when she had thought of the matter, it had
seemed to her that in town all must be gaiety and
life, that there men and women must live happily
and freely, giving and taking friendship and affec-
tion as one takes the feel of a wind on the cheek.
After the silence and the cheerlessness of life in
the Bentley house, she dreamed of stepping forth
into an atmosphere that was warm and pulsating
with life and reality. And in the Hardy house-
hold Louise might have got something of the
thing for which she so hungered but for a mistake
she made when she had just come to town.

Louise won the disfavor of the two Hardy
girls, Mary and Harriet, by her application to her
studies in school. She did not come to the house
until the day when school was to begin and knew
nothing of the feeling they had in the matter. She
was timid and during the first month made no
acquaintances. Every Friday afternoon one of
the hired men from the farm drove into Wines-
burg and took her home for the week-end, so that
she did not spend the Saturday holiday with the
town people. Because she was embarrassed and
lonely she worked constantly at her studies. To
Mary and Harriet, it seemed as though she tried
to make trouble for them by her proficiency. In
her eagerness to appear well Louise wanted to
answer every question put to the class by the

SURRENDER 91

teacher. She jumped up and down and her eyes
flashed. Then when she had answered some
question the others in the class had been unable to
answer, she smiled happily. "See, I have done
it for you," her eyes seemed to say. "You need
not bother about the matter. I will answer all
questions. For the whole class it will be easy
while I am here."

In the evening after supper in the Hardy house,
Albert Hardy began to praise Louise. One of
the teachers had spoken highly of her and he was
delighted. "Well, again I have heard of it," he
began, looking hard at his daughters and then
turning to smile at Louise. "Another of the
teachers has told me of the good work Louise is
doing. Everyone in Winesburg is telling me how
smart she is. I am ashamed that they do not
speak so of my own girls." Arising, the mer-
chant marched about the room and lighted his
evening cigar.

The two girls looked at each other and shook
their heads wearily. Seeing their indifference the
father became angry. "I tell you it is something
for you two to be thinking about," he cried, glar-
ing at them. "There is a big change coming here
in America and in learning is the only hope of the
coming generations. Louise is the daughter of a
rich man but she is not ashamed to study. It

92 WINESBURG, OHIO

should make you ashamed to see what she does."
The merchant took his hat from a rack by the
door and prepared to depart for the evening. At
the door he stopped and glared back. So fierce
was his manner that Louise was frightened and
ran upstairs to her own room. The daughters
began to speak of their own affairs. "Pay at-
tention to me," roared the merchant. "Your
minds are lazy. Your indifference to education
is affecting your characters. You will amount to
nothing. Now mark what I say — Louise will be
so far ahead of you that you will never catch up."
The distracted man went out of the house and
into the street shaking with wrath. He went
along muttering words and swearing, but when
he got into Main Street his anger passed. He
stopped to talk of the weather or the crops with
some other merchant or with a farmer who had
come into town and forgot his daughters alto-
gether or, if he thought of them, only shrugged
his shoulders. "Oh, well, girls will be girls," he
muttered philosophically.

In the house when Louise came down into the
room where the two girls sat, they would have
nothing to do with her. One evening after she
had been there for more than six weeks and was
heartbroken because of the continued air of cold-
ness with which she was always greeted, she burst
into tears. "Shut up your crying and go back to

SURRENDER 93

your own room and to your books," Mary Hardy
said sharply.

• ••••••

The room occupied by Louise was on the second
floor of the Hardy house, and her window looked
out upon an orchard. There was a stove in the
room and every evening young John Hardy car-
ried up an armful of wood and put it in a box that
stood by the wall. During the second month
after she came to the house, Louise gave up all
hope of getting on a friendly footing with the
Hardy girls and went to her own room as soon
as the evening meal was at an end.

Her mind began to play with thoughts of mak-
ing friends with John Hardy. When he came
into the room with the wood in his arms, she pre-
tended to be busy with her studies but watched
him eagerly. When he had put the wood in the
box and turned to go out, she put down her head
and blushed. She tried to make talk but could
say nothing, and after he had gone she was angry
at herself for her stupidity.

The mind of the country girl became filled with
the idea of drawing close to the young man. She
thought that in him might be found the quality she
had all her life been seeking in people. It seemed
to her that between herself and all the other peo-
ple in the world, a wall had been built up and that
she was living just on the edge of some warm

94 WINESBURG, OHIO

inner circle of life that must be quite open and
understandable to others. She became obsessed
with the thought that it wanted but a courageous
act on her part to make all of her association with
people something quite different, and that it was
possible by such an act to pass into a new life as
one opens a door and goes into a room. Day
and night she thought of the matter, but although
the thing she wanted so earnestly was something
very warm and close it had as yet no conscious
connection with sex. It had not become that
definite, and her mind had only alighted upon the
person of John Hardy because he was at hand
and unlike his sisters had not been unfriendly to
her.

The Hardy sisters, Mary and Harriet, were
both older than Louise. In a certain kind of
knowledge of the world they were years older.
They lived as all of the young women of Middle
Western towns lived. In those days young women
did not go out of our towns to eastern colleges
and ideas in regard to social classes had hardly
begun to exist. A daughter of a laborer was in
much the same social position as a daughter of a
farmer or a merchant, and there were no leisure
classes. A girl was "nice" or she was "not nice."
If a nice girl, she had a young man who came to
her house to see her on Sunday and on Wednes-
day evenings. Sometimes she went with her

SURRENDER 95

young man to a dance or a church social. At
other times she received him at the house and was
given the use of the parlor for that purpose. No
one intruded upon her. For hours the two sat
behind closed doors. Sometimes the lights were
turned low and the young man and woman em-
braced. Cheeks became hot and hair disarranged.
After a year or two, if the impulse within them
became strong and insistent enough, they married.

One evening during her first winter in Wines-
burg, Louise had an adventure that gave a new
impulse to her desire to break down the wall that
she thought stood between her and John Hardy.
It was Wednesday and immediately after the eve-
ning meal Albert Hardy put on his hat and went
away. Young John brought the wood and put it
in the box in Louise's room. "You do work hard,
don't you?" he said awkwardly, and then before
she could answer he also went away.

Louise heard him go out of the house and had
a mad desire to run after him. Opening her win-
dow she leaned out and called softly. "John,
dear John, come back, don't go away." The
night was cloudy and she could not see far into
the darkness, but as she waited she fancied she
could hear a soft little noise as of someone going
on tiptoes through the trees in the orchard. She
was frightened and closed the window quickly.
For an hour she moved about the room trembling

96 WINESBURG, OHIO

with excitement and when she could not longer
bear the waiting, she crept into the hall and down
the stairs into a closet-like room that opened off
the parlor.

Louise had decided that she would perform the
courageous act that had for weeks been in her
mind. She was convinced that John Hardy had
concealed himself in the orchard beneath her win-
dow and she was determined to find him and tell
him that she wanted him to come close to her, to
hold her in his arms, to tell her of his thoughts
and dreams and to listen while she told him her
thoughts and dreams. "In the darkness it will be
easier to say things," she whispered to herself, as
she stood in the little room groping for the door.

And then suddenly Louise realized that she was
not alone in the house. In the parlor on the other
side of the door a man's voice spoke softly and
the door opened. Louise just had time to conceal
herself in a little opening beneath the stairway
when Mary Hardy, accompanied by her young
man, came into the little dark room.

For an hour Louise sat on the floor in the dark-
ness and listened. Without words Mary Hardy,
with the aid of the man who had come to spend
the evening with her, brought to the country girl
a knowledge of men and women. Putting her
head down until she was curled into a little ball
she lay perfectly still. It seemed to her that by

SURRENDER 97

some strange impulse of the gods, a great gift
had been brought to Mary Hardy and she could
not understand the older, woman's determined
protest.

The young man took Mary Hardy into his arms
and kissed her. When she struggled and laughed,
he but held her the more tightly. For an hour
the contest between* them went on and then they
went back into the parlor and Louise escaped up
the stairs. "I hope you were quiet out there.
You must not disturb the little mouse at her
studies," she heard Harriet saying to her sister
as she stood by her own door in the hallway above.

Louise wrote a note to John Hardy and late
that night when all in the house were asleep, she
crept downstairs and slipped it under his door.
She was afraid that if she did not do the thing
at once her courage would fail. In the note she
tried to be quite definite about what she wanted.
"I want someone to love me and I want to love
someone," she wrote. "If you are the one for
me I want you to come into the orchard at night
and make a noise under my window. It will be
easy for me to crawl down over the shed and come
to you. I am thinking about it all the time, so
if you are to come at all you must come soon."

For a long time Louise did not know what
would be the outcome of her bold attempt to
secure for herself a lover. In a way she still did

98 WINESBURG, OHIO

not know whether or not she wanted him to come.
Sometimes it seemed to her that to be held tightly
and kissed was the whole secret of life, and then
a new impulse came and she was terribly afraid.
The age-old woman's desire to be possessed had
taken possession of her, but so vague was her
notion of life that it seemed to her just the touch
of John Hardy's hand upon her own hand would
satisfy. She wondered if he would understand
that. At the table next day while Albert Hardy
talked and the two girls whispered and laughed,
she did not look at John but at the table and as
soon as possible escaped. In the evening she went
out of the house until she was sure he had taken
the wood to her room and gone away. When
after several evenings of intense listening she
heard no call from the darkness in the orchard,
she was half beside herself with grief and decided
that for her there was no way to break through
the wall that had shut her off from the joy of
life.

And then on a Monday evening two or three
weeks after the writing of the note, John Hardy
came for her. Louise had so entirely given up
the thought bf his coming that for a long time she
did not hear the call that came up from the or-
chard. On the Friday evening before, as she was
being driven back to the farm for the week-end
by one of the hired men, she had on an impulse

SURRENDER 99

done a thing that had startled her, and as John
Hardy stood in the darkness below and called her
name softly and insistently, she walked about in
her room and wondered what new impulse had
led her to commit so ridiculous an act.

The farm hand, a young fellow with black curly
hair, had come for her somewhat late on that
Friday evening and they drove home in the dark-
ness. Louise, whose mind was filled with thoughts
of John Hardy, tried to make talk but the country
boy was embarrassed and would say nothing.
Her mind began to review the loneliness of her
childhood and she remembered with a pang the
sharp new loneliness that had just come to her.
"I hate everyone," she cried suddenly, and then
broke forth into a tirade that frightened her es-
cort. "I hate father and old man Hardy, too,"
she declared vehemently. "I get my lessons there
in the school in town but I hate that also."

Louise frightened the farm hand still more by
turning and putting her cheek down upon his
shoulder. Vaguely she hoped that he like that
young man who had stood in the darkness with
Mary would put his arms about her and kiss her,
but the country boy was only alarmed. He struck
the horse with the whip and began to whistle.
"The road is rough, eh?" he said loudly. Louise
was so angry that reaching up she snatched his hat
from his head and threw it into the road. When

100 WINESBURG, OHIO

he jumped out of the buggy and went to get it,
she drove off and left him to walk the rest of the
way back to the farm.

Louise Bentley took John Hardy to be her
lover. That was not what she wanted but it was
so the young man had interpreted her approach
to him, and so anxious was she to achieve some-
thing else that she made no resistance. When
after a few months they were both afraid that she
was about to become a mother, they went one
evening to the county seat and were married.
For a few months they lived in the Hardy house
and then took a house of their own. All during
the first year Louise tried to make her husband
understand the vague and intangible hunger that
had led to the writing of the note and that was
still unsatisfied. Again and again she crept into
his arms and tried to talk of it, but always with-
out success. Filled with his own notions of love
between men and women, he did not listen but
began to kiss her upon the lips. That confused
her so that in the end she did not want to be kissed.
She did not know what she wanted.

When the alarm that had tricked them into
marriage proved to be groundless, she was angry
and said bitter, hurtful things. Later when her
son David was born, she could not nurse him and
did not know whether she wanted him or not.
Sometimes she stayed in the room with him all day,

SURRENDER IOI

walking about and occasionally creeping close to
touch him tenderly with her hands, and then other
days came when she did not want to see or be
near the tiny bit of humanity that had come into
the house. When John Hardy reproached her
for her cruelty, she laughed. "It is a man child
and will get what it wants anyway," she said
sharply. "Had it been a woman child there is
nothing in the world I would not have done for

it."

TERROR

PART FOUR

"TIT THEN David Hardy was a tall boy of
y y fifteen, he, like his mother, had an ad-
venture that changed the whole current
of his life and sent him out of his quiet corner into
the world. The shell of the circumstances of his
life was broken and he was compelled to start
forth. He left Winesburg and no one there ever
saw him again. After his disappearance, his
mother and grandfather both died and his father
became very rich. He spent much money in try-
ing to locate his son, but that is no part of this
story.

It was in the late fall of an unusual year on the
Bentley farms. Everywhere the crops had been
heavy. That spring, Jesse had bought part of a
long strip of black swamp land that lay in the
valley of Wine Creek. He got the land at a low
price but had spent a large sum of money to im-
prove it. Great ditches had to be dug and thou-
sands of tile laid. Neighboring farmers shook
their heads over the expense. Some of them

102

TERROR 103

laughed and hoped that Jesse would lose heavily
by the venture, but the old man went silently on
with the work and said nothing.

When the land was drained he planted it to
cabbages and onions, and again the neighbors
laughed. The crop was, however, enormous and
brought high prices. In the one year Jesse made
enough money to pay for all the cost of preparing
the land and had a surplus that enabled him to buy
two more farms. He was exultant and could
not conceal his delight. For the first time in all
the history of his ownership of the farms, he went
among his men with a smiling face.

Jesse bought a great many new machines for
cutting down the cost of labor and all of the re-
maining acres in the strip of black fertile swamp
land. One day he went into Winesburg and
bought a bicycle and a new suit of clothes for
David and he gave his two sisters money with
which to go to a religious convention at Cleveland,
Ohio.

In the fall of that year when the frost came
and the trees in the forests along Wine Creek were
golden brown, David spent every moment when
he did not have to attend school, out in the open.
Alone or with other boys he went every after-
noon into the woods to gather nuts. The other
boys of the countryside, most of them sons of
laborers on the Bentley farms, had guns with

104 WINESBURG, OHIO

which they went hunting rabbits and squirrels, but
David did not go with them. He made himself
a sling with rubber bands and a forked stick and
went off by himself to gather nuts. As he went
about thoughts came to him. He realized that
he was almost a man and wondered what he would
do in life, but before they came to anything, the
thoughts passed and he was a boy again. One
day he killed a squirrel that sat on one of the
lower branches of a tree and chattered at him.
Home he ran with the squirrel in his hand. One
of the Bentley sisters cooked the little animal and
he ate it with great gusto. The skin he tacked on
a board and suspended the board by a string from
his bedroom window.

That gave his mind a new turn. After that
he never went into the woods without carrying
the sling in his pocket and he spent hours shoot-
ing at imaginary animals concealed among the
brown leaves in the trees. Thoughts of his com-
ing manhood passed and he was content to be a
boy with a boy's impulses.

One Saturday morning when he was about to
set off for the woods with the sling in his pocket
and a bag for nuts on his shoulder, his grand-
father stopped him. In the eyes of the old man
was the strained serious look that always a little
frightened David. At such times Jesse Bentley's
eyes did not look straight ahead but wavered and

TERROR 105

seemed to be looking at nothing. Something like
an invisible curtain appeared to have come be-
tween the man and all the rest of the world. "I
want you to come with me," he said briefly, and
his eyes looked over the boy's head into the sky.
"We have something important to do to-day.
You may bring the bag for nuts if you wish. It
does not matter and anyway we will be going into
the woods."

Jesse and David set out from the Bentley farm-
house in the old phaeton that was drawn by the
white horse. When they had gone along in
silence for a long way they stopped at the edge
of a field where a flock of sheep were grazing.
Among the sheep was a lamb that had been born
out of season, and this David and his grandfather
caught and tied so tightly that it looked like a
little white ball. When they drove on again Jesse
let David hold the lamb in his arms. "I saw it
yesterday and it put me in mind of what I have
long wanted to do," he said, and again he looked
away over the head of the boy with the wavering,
uncertain stare in his eyes.

After the feeling of exaltation that had come
to the farmer as a result of his successful year,
another mood had taken possession of him. For
a long time he had been going about feeling very
humble and prayerful. Again he walked alone at
night thinking of God and as he walked he again

106 WINESBURG, OHIO

connected his own figure with the figures of old
days. Under the stars he knelt on the wet grass
and raised up his voice in prayer. Now he had
decided that like the men whose stories filled the
pages of the Bible, he would make a sacrifice to
God. "I have been given these abundant crops
and God has also sent me a boy who is called
David," he whispered to himself. "Perhaps I
should have done this thing long ago." He was
sorry the idea had not come into his mind in the
days before his daughter Louise had been born
and thought that surely now when he had erected
a pile of burning sticks in some lonely place in the
woods and had offered the body of a lamb as a
burnt offering, God would appear to him and give
him a message.

More and more as he thought of the matter,
he thought also of David and his passionate self
love was partially forgotten. "It is time for the
boy to begin thinking of going out into the world
and the message will be one concerning him," he
decided. "God will make a pathway for him.
He will tell me what place David is to take in
life and when he shall set out on his journey. It
is right that the boy should be there. If I am
fortunate and an angel of God should appear,
David will see the beauty and glory of God made
manifest to man. It will make a true man of
God of him also."

TERROR 107

In silence Jesse and David drove along the
road until they came to that place where Jesse
had once before appealed to God and had fright-
ened his grandson. The morning had been bright
and cheerful, but a cold wind now began to blow
and clouds hid the sun. When David saw the place
to which they had come he began to tremble with
fright, and when they stopped by the bridge where
the creek came down from among the trees, he
wanted to spring out of the phaeton and run away.

A dozen plans for escape ran through David's
head, but when Jesse stopped the horse and
climbed over the fence into the wood, he followed.
"It is foolish to be afraid. Nothing will hap-
pen," he told himself as he went along with the
lamb in his arms. There was something in the
helplessness of the little animal, held so tightly
in his arms that gave him courage. He could
feel the rapid beating of the beast's heart and
that made his own heart beat less rapidly. As
he walked swiftly along behind his grandfather,
he untied the string with which the four legs of
the lamb were fastened together. "If anything
happens we will run away together," he thought.

In the woods, after they had gone a long way
from the road, Jesse stopped in an opening among
the trees where a clearing, overgrown with small
bushes, ran up from the creek. He was still
silent but began at once to erect a heap of dry

108 WINESBURG, OHIO

sticks which he presently set afire. The boy sat
on the ground with the lamb in his arms. His
imagination began to invest every movement of
the old man with significance and he became every
moment more afraid. "I must put the blood of
the lamb on the head of the boy," Jesse muttered
when the sticks had begun to blaze greedily, and
taking a long knife from his pocket he turned and
walked rapidly across the clearing toward David.
Terror seized upon the soul of the boy. He
was sick with it. For a moment he sat perfectly
still and then his body stiffened and he sprang to
his feet. His face became as white as the fleece
of the lamb, that now finding itself suddenly re-
leased, ran down the hill. David ran also. Fear
made his feet fly. Over the low bushes and logs
he leaped frantically. As he ran he put his hand
into his pocket and took out the branched stick
from which the sling for shooting squirrels was
suspended. When he came to the creek that was
shallow and splashed down over the stones, he
dashed into the water and turned to look back,
and when he saw his grandfather still running
toward him with the long knife held tightly in his
hand he did not hesitate but reaching down,
selected a stone and put it in the sling. With all
his strength he drew back the heavy rubber bands
and the stone whistled through the air. It hit
Jesse, who had entirely forgotten the boy and was

TERROR 109

pursuing the lamb, squarely in the head. With
a groan he pitched forward and fell almost at the
boy's feet. When David saw that he lay still and
that he was apparently dead, his fright increased
immeasurably. It became an insane panic.

With a cry he turned and ran off through the
woods weeping convulsively. "I don't care — I
killed him, but I don't care," he sobbed. As he
ran on and on he decided suddenly that he would
never go back again to the Bentley farms or to
the town of Winesburg. "I have killed the man
of God and now I will myself be a man and go
into the world," he said stoutly as he stopped run-
ning and walked rapidly down a road that fol-
lowed the windings of Wine Creek as it ran
through fields and forests into the west.

On the ground by the creek Jesse Bentley moved
uneasily about. He groaned and opened his
eyes. For a long time he lay perfectly still and
looked at the sky. When at last he got to his
feet, his mind was confused and he was not sur-
prised by the boy's disappearance. By the road-
side he sat down on a log and began to talk about
God. That is all they ever got out of him.
Whenever David's name was mentioned he looked
vaguely at the sky and said that a messenger from
God had taken the boy. "It happened because
I was too greedy for glory," he declared, and
would have no more to say in the matter.

A MAN OF IDEAS

HE lived with his mother, a grey, silent
woman with a peculiar ashy complexion.
The house in which they lived stood in a
little grove of trees beyond where the main street
of Winesburg crossed Wine Creek. His name
was Joe Welling, and his father had been a man
of some dignity in the community, a lawyer and
a member of the state legislature at Columbus.
Joe himself was small of body and in his charac-
ter unlike anyone else in town. He was like a
tiny little volcano that lies silent for days and
then suddenly spouts fire. No, he wasn't like
that — he was like a man who is subject to fits,
one who walks among his fellow men inspiring
fear because a fit may come upon him suddenly
and blow him away into a strange uncanny physi-
cal state in which his eyes roll and his legs and
arms jerk. He was like that, only that the visita-
tion that descended upon Joe Welling was a men-
tal and not a physical thing. He was beset by
ideas and in the throes of one of his ideas was un-
controllable. Words rolled and tumbled from his
mouth. A peculiar smile came upon his lips.

110

A MAN OF IDEAS III^

The edges of his teeth that were tipped with gold
glistened in the light. Pouncing upon a bystander
he began to talk. For the bystander there was
no escape. The excited man breathed into his
face, peered into his eyes, pounded upon his chest
with a shaking forefinger, demanded, compelled
attention.

In those days the Standard Oil Company did
not deliver oil to the consumer in big wagons and
motor trucks as it does now, but delivered instead
to retail grocers, hardware stores and the like.
Joe was the Standard Oil agent in Winesburg and
in Several towns up and down the railroad that
went through Winesburg. He collected bills,
booked orders, and did other things. His
father, the legislator, had secured the job for him.

In and out of the stores of Winesburg went Joe
Welling — silent, excessively polite, intent upon his
business. Men watched him with eyes in which
lurked amusement tempered by alarm. They
were waiting for him to break forth, preparing to
flee. Although the seizures that came upon him
were harmless enough, they could not be laughed
away. They were overwhelming. Astride an
idea, Joe was overmastering. His personality
became gigantic. It overrode the man to whom
he talked, swept him away, swept all away, all
who stood within sound of his voice.

In Sylvester West's Drug Store stood four men

112 WINESBURG, OHIO

who were talking of horse racing. Wesley Mov-
er's stallion, Tony Tip, was to race at the June
meeting at Tiffin, Ohio, and there was a rumor
that he would meet the stiff est competition of his
career. It was said that Pop Geers, the great
racing driver, would himself be there. A doubt
of the success of Tony Tip hung heavy in the air
of Winesburg.

Into the drug store came Joe Welling, brush-
ing the screen door violently aside. With a
strange absorbed light in his eyes he pounced
upon Ed Thomas, he who knew Pop Geers and
whose opinion of Tony Tip's chances was worth
considering.

"The water is up in Wine Creek," cried Joe
Welling with the air of Pheidippides bringing
news of the victory of the Greeks in the struggle
at Marathon. His finger beat a tattoo upon Ed
Thomas' broad chest. "By Trunion bridge it is
within eleven and a half inches of the flooring,"
he went on, the words coming quickly and with a
little whistling noise from between his teeth. An
expression of helpless annoyance crept over the
faces of the four.

"I have my facts correct. Depend upon that.
I went to Sinning' s Hardware Store and got a rule.
Then I went back and measured. I could hardly
believe my own eyes. It hasn't rained you see for
ten days. At first I didn't know what to think.

A MAN OF IDEAS 113

Thoughts rushed through my head. I thought of
subterranean passages and springs. Down under
the ground went my mind, delving about. I sat
on the floor of the bridge and rubbed my head.
There wasn't a cloud in the sky, not one. Come
out into the street and you'll see. There wasn't
a cloud. There isn't a cloud now. Yes, there
was a cloud. I don't want to keep back any facts.
There was a cloud in the west down near the hori-
zon, a cloud no bigger than a man's hand.

"Not that I think that has anything to do with
it. There it is you see. You understand how
puzzled I was.

"Then an idea came to me. I laughed. You'll
laugh, too. Of course it rained over in Medina
County. That's interesting, eh? If we had no
trains, no mails, no telegraph, we would know that
it rained over in Medina County. That's where
Wine Creek comes from. Everyone knows that.
Little old Wine Creek brought us the news.
That's interesting. I laughed. I thought I'd tell
you — it's interesting, eh?"

Joe Welling turned and went out at the door.
Taking a book from his pocket, he stopped and
ran a finger down one of the pages. Again he
was absorbed in his duties as agent of the Stand-
ard Oil Company. "Hern's Grocery will be get-
ting low on coal oil. I'll see them," he muttered,
hurrying along the street, and bowing politely to

114 WINESBURG, OHIO

the right and left at the people walking past.

When George Willard went to work for the
Winesburg Eagle he was besieged by Joe Welling.
Joe envied the boy. It seemed to him that he
was meant by Nature to be a reporter on a news-
paper. "It is what I should be doing, there is
no doubt of that," he declared, stopping George
Willard on the sidewalk before Daugherty's Feed
Store. His eyes began to glisten and his fore-
finger to tremble. "Of course I make more
money with the Standard Oil Company and I'm
only telling you," he added. "I've got nothing
against you, but I should have your place. I could
do the work at odd moments. Here and there
I would run finding out things you'll never see."

Becoming more excited Joe Welling crowded
the young reporter against the front of the feed
store. He appeared to be lost in thought, rolling
his eyes about and running a thin nervous hand
through his hair. A smile spread over his face
and his gold teeth glittered. "You get out your
note book," he commanded. "You carry a little
pad of paper in your pocket, don't you? I knew
you did. Well, you set this down. I thought of
it the other day. Let's take decay. Now what
is decay? It's fire. It burns up wood 4and other
things. You never thought of that? Of course
not. This sidewalk here and this feed store, the
trees down the street there — they're all on fire.

A MAN OF IDEAS 115

They're burning up. Decay you see is always
going on. It don't stop. Water and paint can't
stop it. If a thing is iron, then what? It rusts,
you see. That's fire, too. The world is on fire.
Start your pieces in the paper that way. Just
say in big letters 'The World Is On Fire.' That
will make 'em look up. They'll say you're a
smart one. I don't care. I don't envy you. I
just snatched that idea out of the air. I would
make a newspaper hum. You got to admit
that."

Turning quickly, Joe Welling walked rapidly
away. When he had taken several steps he
stopped and looked back. "I'm going to stick to
you," he said. "I'm going to make you a regular
hummer. I should start a newspaper myself,
that's what I should do. I'd be a marvel.
Everybody knows that."

When George Willard had been for a year on
the Winesburg Eagle, four things happened to
Joe Welling. His mother died, he came to live
at the New Willard House, he became involved
in a love affair, and he organized the Winesburg
Baseball Club.

Joe organized the baseball club because he
wanted to be a coach and in that position he began
to win the respect of his townsmen. "He is a
wonder," they declared after Joe's team had
whipped the team from Medina County. "He

Il6 WINESBURG, OHIO

gets everybody working together. You just
watch him."

Upon the baseball field Joe Welling stood by
first base, his whole body quivering with excite-
ment. In spite of themselves all of the players
watched him closely. The opposing pitcher be-
came confused.

"Now! Now! Now! Now!" shouted the ex-
cited man. "Watch me! Watch me! Watch
my fingers ! Watch my hands ! Watch my feet !
Watch my eyes! Let's work together here!
Watch me ! In me you see all the movements of
the game! Work with me! Work with me!
Watch me ! Watch me ! Watch me I"

With runners of the Winesburg team on bases,
Joe Welling became as one inspired. Before they
knew what had come over them, the base runners
were watching the man, edging off the bases, ad-
vancing, retreating, held as by an invisible cord.
The players of the opposing team also watched
Joe. They were fascinated. For a moment they
watched and then as though to break a spell that
hung over them, they began hurling the ball wildly
about, and amid a series of fierce animal-like cries
from the coach, the runners of the Winesburg
team scampered home.

Joe Welling' s love affair set the town of Wines-
burg on edge. When it began everyone whis-
pered and shook his head. When people tried to

A MAN OF IDEAS 1 1/

laugh, the laughter was forced and unnatural.
Joe fell in love with Sarah King, a lean, sad-look-
ing woman who lived with her father and brother
in a brick house that stood opposite the gate lead-
ing to the Winesburg Cemetery.

The two Kings, Edward the father, and Tom
the son, were not popular in Winesburg. They
were called proud and dangerous. They had
come to Winesburg from some place in the South
and ran a cider mill on the Trunion Pike. Tom
King was reported to have killed a man before
he came to Winesburg. He was twenty-seven
years old and rode about town on a grey pony.
Also he had a long yellow mustache that dropped
down over his teeth, and always carried a heavy,
wicked-looking walking stick in his hand. Once
he killed a dog with the stick. The dog belonged
to Win Pawsey, the shoe merchant, and stood on
the sidewalk wagging its tail. Tom King killed
it with one blow. He was arrested and paid a
fine of ten dollars.

Old Edward King was small of stature and
when he passed people in the street laughed a
queer unmirthful laugh. When he laughed he
scratched his left elbow with his right hand. The
sleeve of his coat was almost worn through from
the habit. As he walked along the street, looking
nervously about and laughing, he seemed more
dangerous than his silent, fierce looking son.

Il8 WINESBURG, OHIO

When Sarah King began walking out in the eve-
ning with Joe Welling, people shook their heads
in alarm. She was tall and pale and had dark
rings under her eyes. The couple looked ridicu-
lous together. Under the trees they walked and
Joe talked. His passionate eager protestations
of love, heard coming out of the darkness by the
cemetery wall, or from the deep shadows of the
trees on the hill that ran up to the Fair Grounds
from Waterworks Pond, were repeated in the
stores. Men stood by the bar in the New Wil-
lard House laughing and talking of Joe's court-
ship. After the laughter came silence. The
Winesburg baseball team, under his management,
was winning game after game, and the town had
begun to respect him. Sensing a tragedy, they
waited, laughing nervously.

Late on a Saturday afternoon the meeting be-
tween Joe Welling and the two Kings, the antici-
pation of which had set the town on edge, took
place in Joe Welling' s room in the New Willard
House. George Willard was a witness to the
meeting. It came about in this way:

When the young reporter went to his room
after the evening meal he saw Tom King and his
father sitting in the half darkness in Joe's room.
The son had the heavy walking stick in his hand
and sat near the door. Old Edward King walked
nervously about, scratching his left elbow with his

A MAN OF IDEAS 119

right hand. The hallways were empty and silent.

George Willard went to his own room and sat
down at his desk. He tried to write but his hand
trembled so that he could not hold the pen. He
also walked nervously up and down. Like the
rest of the town of Winesburg he was perplexed
and knew not what to do.

It was seven-thirty and fast growing dark when
Joe Welling came along the station platform to-
ward the New Willard House. In his arms he
held a bundle of weeds and grasses. In spite of
the terror that made his body shake, George Wil-
lard was amused at the sight of the small spry
figure holding the grasses and half running along
the platform.

Shaking with fright and anxiety, the young re-
porter lurked in the hallway outside the door of
the room in which Joe Welling talked to the two
Kings. There had been an oath, the nervous gig-
gle of old Edward King, and then silence. Now
the voice of Joe Welling, sharp and clear, broke
forth. George Willard began to laugh. He
understood. As he had swept all men before
him, so now Joe Welling was carrying the two
men in the room off their feet with a tidal wave of
words. The listener in the hall walked up and
down, lost in amazement.

Inside the room Joe Welling had paid no at-
tention to the grumbled threat of Tom King. Ab-

120 WINESBURG, OHIO

sorbed in an idea he closed the door and lighting
a lamp, spread the handful of weeds and grasses
upon the floor. "I've got something here," he
announced solemnly. "I was going to tell George
Willard about it, let him make a piece out of it
for the paper. I'm glad you're here. I wish
Sarah were here also. I've been going to come
to your house and tell you of some of my ideas.
They're interesting. Sarah wouldn't let me. She
said we'd quarrel. That's foolish."

Running up and down before the two perplexed
men, Joe Welling began to explain. "Don't you
make a mistake now," he cried. "This is some-
thing big." His voice was shrill with excitement.
"You just follow me, you'll be interested. I
know you will. Suppose this — suppose all of the
wheat, the corn, the oats, the peas, the potatoes,
were all by some miracle swept away. Now here
we are, you see, in this county. There is a high
fence built all around us. We'll suppose that.
No one can get over the fence and all the fruits
of the earth are destroyed, nothing left but these
wild things, these grasses. Would we be done
for? I ask you that. Would we be done for?"
Again Tom King growled and for a moment there
was silence in the room. Then again Joe plunged
into the exposition of his idea. "Things would
go hard for a time. I admit that. I've got to
admit that. No getting around it. We'd be hard

A MAN OF IDEAS 121

put to it. More than one fat stomach would
cave in. But they couldn't down us. I should
say not."

Tom King laughed good naturedly and the shiv-
ery, nervous laugh of Edward King rang through
the house. Joe Welling hurried on. "We'd be-
gin, you see, to breed up new vegetables and fruits.
Soon we'd regain all we had lost. Mind, I don't
say the new things would be the same as the old.
They wouldn't. Maybe they'd be better, maybe
not so good. That's interesting, eh? You can
think about that. It starts your mind working,
now don't it?"

In the room there was silence and then again
old Edward King laughed nervously. "Say, I
wish Sarah was here," cried Joe Welling. "Let's
go up to your house. I want to tell her of this."

There was a scraping of chairs in the room.
It was then that George Willard retreated to his
own room. Leaning out at the window he saw
Joe Welling going along the street with the two
Kings. Tom King was forced to take extraordi-
nary long strides to keep pace with the little man.
As he strode along, he leaned over, listening —
absorbed, fascinated. Joe Welling again talked
excitedly. "Take milkweed now," he cried. "A
lot might be done with milkweed, eh? It's almost
unbelievable. I want you to think about it. I
want you two to think about it. There would be a

122 WINESBURG, OHIO

new vegetable kingdom you see. It's interesting,
eh? It's an idea. Wait till you see Sarah, she'll
get the idea. She'll be interested. Sarah is al-
ways interested in ideas. You can't be too smart
for Sarah, now can you? Of course you can't.
You know that."

ADVENTURE

ALICE HINDMAN, a woman of twenty-
seven when George Willard was a mere
boy, had lived in Winesburg all her life.
She clerked in Winney's Dry Goods Store and
lived with her mother who had married a second
husband.

Alice's step-father was a carriage painter, and
given to drink. His story is an odd one. It will
be worth telling some day.

At twenty-seven Alice was tall and somewhat
slight. Her head was large and overshadowed
her body. Her shoulders were a little stooped
and her hair and eyes brown. She was very quiet
but beneath a placid exterior a continual ferment
went on.

When she was a girl of sixteen and before she
began to work in the store, Alice had an affair with
a young man. The young man, named Ned
Currie, was older than Alice. He, like George
Willard, was employed on the Winesburg Eagle
and for a long time he went to see Alice almost
every evening. Together the two walked under
the trees through the streets of the town and

123

124 WINESBURG, OHIO

talked of what they would do with their lives.
Alice was then a very pretty girl and Ned Currie
took her into his arms and kissed her. He be-
came excited and said things he did not intend to
say and Alice, betrayed by her desire to have
something beautiful come into her rather narrow
life, also grew excited. She also talked. The
outer crust of her life, all of her natural diffidence
and reserve, was torn away and she gave herself
over to the emotions of love. When, late in the
fall of her sixteenth year, Ned Currie went away
to Cleveland where he hoped to get a place on a
city newspaper and rise in the world, she wanted
to go with him. With a trembling voice she told
him what was in her mind. "I will work and you
can work," she said. "I do not want to harness
you to a needless expense that will prevent your
making progress. Don't marry me now. We
will get along without that and we can be together.
Even though we live in the same house no one
will say anything. In the city we will be unknown
and people will pay no attention to us."

Ned Currie was puzzled by the determination
and abandon of his sweetheart and was also deeply
touched. He had wanted the girl to become his
mistress but changed his mind. He wanted to
protect and care for her. "You don't know what
you're talking about," he said sharply; "you may
be sure I'll let you do no such thing. As soon as I

ADVENTURE 125

get a good job I'll come back. For the present
you'll have to stay here. It's the only thing we
can do."

On the evening before he left Winesburg to
take up his new life in the city, Ned Currie went
to call on Alice. They walked about through the
streets for an hour and then got a rig from Wes-
ley Mover's livery and went for a drive in the
country. The moon came up and they found
themselves unable to talk. In his sadness the
young man forgot the resolutions he had made
regarding his conduct with the girl.

They got out of the buggy at a place where a
long meadow ran down to the bank of Wine Creek
and there in the dim light became lovers. When
at midnight they returned to town they were both
glad. It did not seem to them that anything that
could happen in the future could blot out the won-
der and beauty of the thing that had happened.
"Now we will have to stick to each other, what-
ever happens we will have to do that," Ned Currie
said as he left the girl at her father's door.

The young newspaper man did not succeed in
getting a place on a Cleveland paper and went
west to Chicago. For a time he was lonely and
wrote to Alice almost every day. Then he was
caught up by the life of the city; he began to make
friends and found new interests in life. In Chi-
cago he boarded at a house where there were sev-

126 WINESBURG, OHIO

eral women. One of them attracted his attention
and he forgot Alice in Winesburg. At the end
of a year he had stopped writing letters, and only
once in a long time, when he was lonely or when
he went into one of the city parks and saw the
moon shining on the grass as it had shone that
night on the meadow by Wine Creek, did he think
of her at all.

In Winesburg the girl who had been loved grew
to be a woman. When she was twenty-two years
old her father, who owned a harness repair shop,
died suddenly. The harness maker was an old
soldier, and after a few months his wife received
a widow's pension. She used the first money she
got to buy a loom and became a weaver of car-
pets, and Alice got a place in Winney's store. For
a number of years nothing could have induced her
to believe that Ned Currie would not in the end
return to her.

She was glad to be employed because the daily
round of toil in the store made the time of wait-
ing seem less long and uninteresting. She began
to save money, thinking that when she had saved
two or three hundred dollars she would follow her
lover to the city and try if her presence would not
win back his affections.

Alice did not blame Ned Currie for what had
happened in the moonlight in the field, but felt
that she could never marry another man. To her

ADVENTURE 127

the thought of giving to another what she still felt
could belong only to Ned seemed monstrous.
When other young men tried to attract her atten-
tion she would have nothing to do with them. "I
am his wife and shall remain his wife whether he
comes back or not," she whispered to herself, and
for all of her willingness to support herself could
not have understood the growing modern idea of
a woman's owning herself and giving and taking
for her own ends in life.

Alice worked in the dry goods store from eight
in the morning until six at night and on three eve-
nings a week went back to the store to stay from
seven until nine. As time passed and she became
more and more lonely she began to practice the
devices common to lonely people. When at night
she went upstairs into her own room she knelt on
the floor to pray and in her prayers whispered
things she wanted to say to her lover. She be-
came attached to inanimate objects, and because
it was her own, could not bear to have anyone
touch the furniture of her room. The trick of
saving money, begun for a purpose, was carried
on after the scheme of going to the city to find
Ned Currie had been given up. It became a fixed
habit, and when she needed new clothes she did
not get them Sometimes on rainy afternoons in
the store she got out her bank book and, letting it
lie open before her, spent hours dreaming impos-

128 WINESBURG, OHIO

sible dreams of saving money enough so that the
interest would support both herself and her fu-
ture husband.

"Ned always liked to travel about," she
thought. 'Til give him the chance. Some day
when we are married and I can save both his
money and my own, we will be rich. Then we
can travel together all over the world."

In the dry goods store weeks ran into months
and months into years as Alice waited and
dreamed of her lover's return. Her employer,
a grey old man with false teeth and a thin grey
mustache that drooped down over his mouth, was
not given to conversation, and sometimes, on rainy
days and in the winter when a storm raged in
Main Street, long hours passed when no custo-
mers came in. Alice arranged and rearranged
the stock. She stood near the front window
where she could look down the deserted street
and thought of the evenings when she had walked
with Ned Currie and of what he had said. "We
will have to stick to each other now." The words
echoed and re-echoed through the mind of the
maturing woman. Tears came into her eyes.
Sometimes when her employer had gone out and
she was alone in the store she put her head on the
counter and wept. "Oh, Ned, I am waiting,"
she whispered over and over, and all the time the

ADVENTURE 129

creeping fear that he would never come back grew
stronger within her.

In the spring when the rains have passed and
before the long hot days of summer have come,
the country about Winesburg is delightful. The
town lies in the midst of open fields, but beyond
the fields are pleasant patches of woodlands. In
the wooded places are many little cloistered nooks,
quiet places where lovers go to sit on Sunday aft-
ernoons. Through the trees they look out across
the fields and see farmers at work about the barns
or people driving up and down on the roads. In
the town bells ring and occasionally a train passes,
looking like a toy thing in the distance.

For several years after Ned Currie went away
Alice did not go into the wood with other young
people on Sunday, but one day after he had been
gone for two or three years and when her loneli-
ness seemed unbearable, she put on her best dress
and set out. Finding a little sheltered place from
which she could see the town and a long stretch of
the fields, she sat down. Fear of age and ineffec-
tuality took possession of her. She could not sit
still, and arose. As she stood looking out over
the land something, perhaps the thought of never
ceasing life as it expresses itself in the flow of the
seasons, fixed her mind on the passing years.
With a shiver of dread, she realized that for her

130 WINESBURG, OHIO

the beauty and freshness of youth had passed.
For the first time she felt that she had been
cheated. She did not blame Ned Currie and did
not know what to blame. Sadness swept over
her. Dropping to her knees, she tried to pray,
but instead of prayers words of protest came to
her lips. "It is not going to come to me. I will
never find happiness. Why do I tell myself lies?"
she cried, and an odd sense of relief came with
this, her first bold attempt to face the fear that
had become a part of her everyday life.

In the year when Alice Hindman became twen-
ty-five two things happened to disturb the dull un-
eventfulness of her days. Her mother married
Bush Milton, the carriage painter of Winesburg,
and she herself became a member of the Wines-
burg Methodist Church. Alice joined the church
because she had become frightened by the loneli-
ness of her position in life. Her mother's second
marriage had emphasized her isolation. "I am
becoming old and queer. If Ned comes he will
not want me. In the city where he is living men
are perpetually young. There is so much going
on that they do not have time to grow old," she
told herself with a grim little smile, and went res-
olutely about the business of becoming acquainted
with people. Every Thursday evening when the
store had closed she went to a prayer meeting in
the basement of the church and on Sunday eve-

ADVENTURE 131

ning attended a meeting of an organization called
The Epworth League.

When Will Hurley, a middle-aged man who
clerked in a drug store and who also belonged to
the church, offered to walk home with her she did
not protest. "Of course I will not let him make
a practice of being with me, but if he comes to see
me once in a long time there can be no harm in
that," she told herself, still determined in her loy-
alty to Ned Currie.

Without realizing what was happening, Alice
was trying feebly at first, but with growing deter-
mination, to get a new hold upon life. Beside
the drug clerk she walked in silence, but sometimes
in the darkness as they went stolidly along she put
out her hand and touched softly the folds of his
coat. When he left her at the gate before her
mother's house she did not go indoors, but stood
for a moment by the door. She wanted to call to
the drug clerk, to ask him to sit with her in the
darkness on the porch before the house, but was
afraid he would not understand. "It is not him
that I want," she told herself; "I want to avoid
being so much alone. If I am not careful I will
grow unaccustomed to being with people."

During the early fall of her twenty-seventh year
a passionate restlessness took possession of Alice.
She could not bear to be in the company of the

132 WINESBURG, OHIO

drug clerk, and when, in the evening, he came to
walk with her she sent him away. Her mind be-
came intensely active and when, weary from the
long hours of standing behind the counter in the
store, she went home and crawled into bed, she
could not sleep. With staring eyes she looked
into the darkness. Her imagination, like a child
awakened from long sleep, played about the room.
Deep within her there was something that would
not be cheated by phantasies and that demanded
some definite answer from life.

Alice took a pillow into her arms and held it
tightly against her breasts. Getting out of bed,
she arranged a blanket so that in the darkness it
looked like a form lying between the sheets and,
kneeling beside the bed, she caressed it, whisper-
ing words over and over, like a refrain. "Why
doesn't something happen? Why am I left here
alone?" she muttered. Although she sometimes
thought of Ned Currie, she no longer depended
on him. Her desire had grown vague. She did
not want Ned Currie or any other man. She
wanted to be loved, to have something answer the
call that was growing louder and louder within
her.

And then one night when it rained Alice had an
adventure. It frightened and confused her. She
had come home from the store at nine and found
the house empty. Bush Milton had gone off to

ADVENTURE 133

town and her mother to the house of a neighbor.
Alice went upstairs to her room and undressed in
the darkness. For ? moment she stood by the
window hearing the rain beat against the glass
and then a strange desire took possession of her.
Without stopping to think of what she intended to
do, she ran downstairs through the dark house
and out into the rain. As she stood on the little
grass plot before the house and felt the cold rain
on her body a mad desire to run naked through
the streets took possession of her.

She thought that the rain would have some cre-
ative and wonderful effect on her body. Not for
years had she felt so full of youth and courage.
She wanted to leap and run, to cry out, to find
some other lonely human and embrace him. On
the brick sidewalk before the house a man stum-
bled homeward. Alice started to run. A wild,
desperate mood took possession of her. "What
do I care who it is. He is alone, and I will go
to him," she thought; and then without stopping
to consider the possible result of her madness,
called softly. "Wait!" she cried. "Don't go
away. Whoever you are, you must wait."

The man on the sidewalk stopped and stood lis-
tening. He was an old man and somewhat deaf.
Putting his hand to his mouth, he shouted:
"What? What say?" he called.

Alice dropped to the ground and lay trembling.

134 WINESBURG, OHIO

She was so frightened at the thought of what she
had done that when the man had gone on his way
she did not dare get to her feet, but crawled on
hands and knees through the grass to the house.
When she got to her own room she bolted the
door and drew her dressing table across the door-
way.. Her body shook as with a chill and her
hands trembled so that she had difficulty getting
into her nightdress. When she got into bed she
buried her face in the pillow and wept broken-
heartedly. "What is the matter with me? I
will do something dreadful if I am not careful,"
she thought, and turning her face to the wall, be-
gan trying to force herself to face bravely the fact
that many people must live and die alone, even in
Winesburg.

RESPECTABILITY

IF you have lived in cities and have walked in
the park on a summer afternoon, you have
perhaps seen, blinking in a corner of his iron
cage, a huge, grotesque kind of monkey, a crea-
ture with ugly, sagging, hairless skin below his
eyes and a bright purple underbody. This mon-
key is a true monster. In the completeness of his
ugliness he achieved a kind of perverted beauty.
Children stopping before the cage are fascinated,
men turn away with an air of disgust, and women
linger for a moment, trying perhaps to remember
which one of their male acquaintances the thing in
some faint way resembles.

Had you been in the earlier years of your life
a citizen of the village of Winesburg, Ohio, there
would have been for you no mystery in regard to
the beast in his cage. "It is like Wash Williams,"
you would have said. "As he sits in the corner
there, the beast is exactly like old Wash sitting on
the grass in the station yard on a summer evening
after he has closed his office for the night."

Wash Williams, the telegraph operator of
Winesburg, was the ugliest thing in town. His

135

136 WINESBURG, OHIO

girth was immense, his neck thin, his legs feeble.
He was dirty. Everything about him was un-
clean. Even the whites of his eyes looked soiled.

I go too fast. Not everything about Wash
was unclean. He took care of his hands. His
fingers were fat, but there was something sensi-
tive and shapely in the hand that lay on the table
by the instrument in the telegraph office. In his
youth Wash Williams had been called the best
telegraph operator in the state, and in spite of
his degradement to the obscure office at Wines-
burg, he was still proud of his ability.

Wash Williams did not associate with the men
of the town in which he lived. "I'll have noth-
ing to do with them," he said, looking with bleary
eyes at the men who walked along the station plat-
form past the telegraph office. Up along Main
Street he went in the evening to Ed Griffith's sa-
loon, and after drinking unbelievable quantities of
beer staggered off to his room in the New Willard
House and to his bed for the night.

Wash Williams was a man of courage. A
thing had happened to him that made him hate
life, and he hated it whole-heartedly, with the
abandon of a poet. First of all, he hated women.
"Bitches," he called them. His feeling toward
men was somewhat different. He pitied them.
"Does not every man let his life be managed for
him by some bitch or another?" he asked.

RESPECTABILITY 137

In Winesburg no attention was paid to Wash
Williams and his hatred of his fellows. Once
Mrs. White, the banker's wife, complained to the
telegraph company, saying that the office in Wines-
burg was dirty and smelled abominably, but noth-
ing came of her complaint. Here and there a
man respected the operator. Instinctively the
man felt in him a glowing resentment of some-
thing he had not the courage to resent. When
Wash walked through the streets such a one had
an instinct to pay him homage, to raise his hat or
to bow before him. The superintendent who had
supervision over the telegraph operators on the
railroad that went through Winesburg felt that
way. He had put Wash into the obscure office
at Winesburg to avoid discharging him, and he
meant to keep him there. When he received the
letter of complaint from the banker's wife, he
tore it up and laughed unpleasantly. For some
reason he thought of his own wife as he tore up
the letter.

Wash Williams once had a wife. When he was
still a young man he married a woman at Dayton,
Ohio. The woman was tall and slender and had
blue eyes and yellow hair. Wash was himself
a comely youth. He loved the woman with a love
as absorbing as the hatred he later felt for all
women.

In all of Winesburg there was but one person

138 WINESBURG, OHIO

who knew the story of the thing that had made
ugly the person and the character of Wash Wil-
liams. He once told the story to George Willard
and the telling of the tale came about in this
way:

George Willard went t>ne evening to walk with
Belle Carpenter, a trimmer of women's hats who
worked in a millinery shop kept by Mrs. Kate
McHugh. The young man was not in love with
the woman, who, in fact, had a suitor who worked
as bartender in Ed Griffith's saloon, but as they
walked about under the trees they occasionally em-
braced. The night and their own thoughts had
aroused something in them. As they were re-
turning to Main Street they passed the little lawn
beside the railroad station and saw Wash Wil-
liams apparently asleep on the grass beneath a
tree. On the next evening the operator and
George Willard walked out together. Down the
railroad they went and sat on a pile of decaying
railroad ties beside the tracks. It was then that
the operator told the young reporter his story
of hate.

Perhaps a dozen times George Willard and the
strange, shapeless man who lived at his father's
hotel had been on the point of talking. The
young man looked at the hideous, leering face
staring about the hotel dining room and was con-
sumed with curiosity. Something he saw lurking

RESPECTABILITY 139

in the staring eyes told him that the man who had
nothing to say to others had nevertheless some-
thing to say to him. On the pile of railroad ties
on the summer evening, he waited expectantly.
When the operator remained silent and seemed to
have changed his mind about talking, he tried to
make conversation. "Were you ever married,
Mr. Williams?" he began. "I suppose you were
and your wife is dead, is that it?"

Wash Williams spat forth a succession of vile
oaths. "Yes, she is dead," he agreed. "She is
dead as all women are dead. She is a living-dead
thing, walking in the sight of men and making the
earth foul by her presence." Staring into the
boy's eyes, the man became purple with rage.
"Don't have fool notions in your head," he com-
manded. "My wife, she is dead; yes, surely. I
tell you, all women are dead, my mother, your
mother, that tall dark woman who works in the
millinery store and with whom I saw you walking
about yesterday, — all of them, they are all dead.
I tell you there is something rotten about them.
I was married, sure. My wife was dead before
she married me, she was a foul thing come out of
a woman more foul. She was a thing sent to
make life unbearable to me. I was a fool, do
you see, as you are now, and so I married this
woman. I would like to see men a little begin to
understand women. They are sent to prevent

140 WINESBURG, OHIO

men making the world worth while. It is a trick
in Nature. Ugh! They are creeping, crawling,
squirming things, they with their soft hands and
their blue eyes. The sight of a woman sickens
me. Why I don't kill every woman I see I don't
know."

Half frightened and yet fascinated by the light
burning in the eyes of the hideous old man,
George Willard listened, afire with curiosity.
Darkness came on and he leaned forward trying
to see the face of the man who talked. When, in
the gathering darkness, he could no longer see
the purple, bloated face and the burning eyes, a
curious fancy came to him. Wash Williams
talked in low even tones that made his words
seem the more terrible. In the darkness the
young reporter found himself imagining that he
sat on the railroad ties beside a comely young man
with black hair and black shining eyes. There
was something almost beautiful in the voice of
iWash Williams, the hideous, telling his story of
hate.

The telegraph operator of Winesburg, sitting
in the darkness on the railroad ties, had become a
poet. Hatred had raised him to that elevation.
"It is because I saw you kissing the lips of that
Belle Carpenter that I tell you my story," he
said. "What happened to me may next happen
to you. I want to put you on your guard. Al-

RESPECTABILITY 141

ready you may be having dreams in your head.
I want to destroy them."

Wash Williams began telling the story of his
married life with the tall blonde girl with blue
eyes whom he had met when he was a young oper-
ator at Dayton, Ohio. Here and there his story
was touched with moments of beauty intermingled
with strings of vile curses. The operator had
married the daughter of a dentist who was the
youngest of three sisters. On his marriage day,
because of his ability, he was promoted to a posi-
tion as dispatcher at an increased salary and sent
to an office at Columbus, Ohio. There he settled
down with his young wife and began buying a
'house on the installment plan.

The young telegraph operator was madly in
love. With a kind of religious fervor he had
managed to go through the pitfalls of his youth
and to remain virginal until after his marriage.
He made for George Willard a picture of his life
in the house at Columbus, Ohio, with the young
wife. "In the garden back of our house we
planted vegetables," he said, "you know, peas and
corn and such things. We went to Columbus in.
early March and as soon as the days became warm
I went to work in the garden. With a spade I
turned up the black ground while she ran about
laughing and pretending to be afraid of the worms
I uncovered. Late in April came the planting.,

142 WINESBURG, OHIO

In the little paths among the seed beds she stood
holding a paper bag in her hand. The bag was
filled with seeds. A few at a time she handed me
the seeds that I might thrust them into the warm,
soft ground."

For a moment there was a catch in the voice of
the man talking in the darkness. "I loved her,"
he said. "I don't claim not to be a fool. I love
her yet. There in the dusk in the spring evening
I crawled along the black ground to her feet and
groveled before her. I kissed her shoes and the
ankles above her shoes. When the hem of her
garment touched my face I trembled. When
after two years of that life I found she had man-
aged to acquire three other lovers who came reg-
ularly to our house when I was away at work, I
didn't want to touch them or her. I just sent her
home to her mother and said nothing. There was
nothing to say. I had four hundred dollars in
the bank and I gave her that. I didn't ask her
reasons. I didn't say anything. When she had
gone I cried like a silly boy. Pretty soon I had
a chance to sell the house and I sent that money
to her."

Wash Williams and George Willard arose
from the pile of railroad ties and walked along
the tracks toward town. The operator finished
his tale quickly, breathlessly.

"Her mother sent for me," he said. "She

RESPECTABILITY 143

wrote me a letter and asked me to come to their
house at Dayton. When I got there it was eve-
ning about this time."

Wash Williams' voice rose to a half scream.
"I sat in the parlor of that house two hours. Her
mother took me in there and left me. Their
house was stylish. They were what is called re-
spectable people. There were plush chairs and
a couch in the room. I was trembling all over.
I hated the men I thought had wronged her. I
was sick of living alone and wanted her back.
The longer I waited the more raw and tender I
became. I thought that if she came in and just
touched me with her hand I would perhaps faint
away. I ached to forgive and forget."

Wash Williams stopped and stood staring at
George Willard. The boy's body shook as from
a chill. Again the man's voice became soft and
low. "She came into the room naked," he went
on. "Her mother did that. While I sat there
she was taking the girl's clothes off, perhaps coax-
ing her to do it. First I heard voices at the door
that led into a little hallway and then it opened
softly. The girl was ashamed and stood per-
fectly still staring at the floor. The mother
didn't come into the room. When she had pushed
the girl in through the door she stood in the hall-
way waiting, hoping we would — well, you see —
waiting."

144 WINESBURG, OHIO

George Willard and the telegraph operator
came into the main street of Winesburg. The
lights from the store windows lay bright and
shining on the sidewalks. People moved about
laughing and talking. The young reporter felt
ill and weak. In imagination, he also become
old and shapeless. "I didn't get the mother
killed," said Wash Williams, staring up and down
the street. "I struck her once with a chair and
then the neighbors came in and took it away.
She screamed so loud you see. I won't ever have
a chance to kill her now. She died of a fever a
month after that happened."

THE THINKER

THE house in which Seth Richmond of Wines-
burg lived with his mother had been at one
time the show place of the town, but when
young Seth lived there its glory had become some-
what dimmed. The huge brick house which Ban-
ker White had built on Buckeye Street had over-
shadowed it. The Richmond place was in a little
valley far out at the end of Main Street. Farm-
ers coming into town by a dusty road from the
south passed by a grove of walnut trees, skirted
the Fair Ground with its high board fence covered
with advertisements, and trotted their horses down
through the valley past the Richmond place into
town. As much of the country north and south
of Winesburg was devoted to fruit and berry
raising, Seth saw wagon-loads of berry pickers —
boys, girls, and women — going to the fields in the
morning and returning covered with dust in the
evening. The chattering crowd, with their rude
jokes cried out from wagon to wagon, sometimes
irritated him sharply. He regretted that he also
could not laugh boisterously, shout meaningless
jokes and make of himself a figure in the endless

145

146 WINESBURG, OHIO

stream of moving, giggling activity that went up
and down the road.

The Richmond house was built of limestone,
and although it was said in the village to have be-
come run down, had in reality grown more beau-
tiful with every passing year. Already time had
begun a little to color the stone, lending a golden
richness to its surface and in the evening or on
dark days touching the shaded places beneath the
eaves with wavering patches of browns and blacks.

The house had been built by Seth's grandfather,
a stone quarryman, and it, together with the stone
quarries on Lake Erie eighteen miles to the north,
had been left to his son, Clarence Richmond,
Seth's father. Clarence Richmond, a quiet pas-
sionate man extraordinarily admired by his neigh-
bors, had been killed in a street fight with the ed-
itor of a newspaper in Toledo, Ohio. The fight
concerned the publication of Clarence Richmond's
name coupled with that of a woman school teacher,
and as the dead man had begun the row by firing
upon the editor, the effort to punish the slayer
was unsuccessful. After the quarryman's death
it was found that much of the money left to him
had been squandered in speculation and in insecure
investments made through the influence of friends.

Left with but a small income, Virginia Rich-
mond had settled down to a retired life in the vil-
lage and to the raising of her son. Although she

THE THINKER 147

had been deeply moved by the death of the hus-
band and father, she did not at all believe the
stories concerning him that ran about after his
death. To her mind, the sensitive, boyish man
whom all had instinctively loved, was but an un-
fortunate, a being too fine for everyday life.
"You'll be hearing all sorts of stories, but you are
not to believe what you hear," she said to her son.
uHe was a good man, full of tenderness for
everyone, and should not have tried to be a man
of affairs. No matter how much I were to plan
and dream of your future, I could not imagine
anything better for you than that you turn out as
good a man as your father."

Several years after the death of her husband,
Virginia Richmond had become alarmed at the
growing demands upon her income and had set
herself to the task of increasing it. She had
learned stenography and through the influence of
her husband's friends got the position of court
stenographer at the county seat. There she went
by train each morning during the sessions of the
court and when no court sat, spent her days work-
ing among the rosebushes in her garden. She was
a tall, straight figure of a woman with a plain face
and a great mass of brown hair.

In the relationship between Seth Richmond and
his mother, there was a quality that even at
eighteen had begun to color all of his traffic with

148 WINESBURG, OHIO

men. An almost unhealthy respect for the youth
kept the mother for the most part silent in his
presence. When she did speak sharply to him he
had only to look steadily into her eyes to see
dawning there the puzzled look he had already no-
ticed in the eyes of others when he looked at them.

The truth was that the son thought with re-
markable clearness and the mother did not. She
expected from all people certain conventional re-
actions to life. A boy was your son, you scolded
him and he trembled and looked at the floor.
When you had scolded enough he wept and all was
forgiven. After the weeping and when he had
gone to bed, you crept into his room and kissed
him.

Virginia Richmond could not understand why
her son did not do these things. After the se-
verest reprimand, he did not tremble and look at
the floor but instead looked steadily at her, caus-
ing uneasy doubts to invade her mind. As for
creeping into his room — after Seth had passed his
fifteenth year, she would have been half afraid to
do anything of the kind.

Once when he was a boy of sixteen, Seth in com-
pany with two other boys, ran away from home.
The three boys climbed into the open door of an
empty freight car and rode some forty miles to a
town where a fair was being held. One of the
boys had a bottle filled with a combination of

THE THINKER 149

whiskey and blackberry wine, and the three sat
with legs dangling out of the car door drinking
from the bottle. Seth's two companions sang and
waved their hands to idlers about the stations of
the towns through which the train passed. They
planned raids upon the baskets of farmers who
had come with their families to the fair. "We
will live like kings and won't have to spend a
penny to see the fair and horse races,'1 they de-
clared boastfully.

After the disappearance of Seth, Virginia
Richmond walked up and down the floor of her
home filled with vague alarms. Although on the
next day she discovered, through an inquiry made
by the town marshal, on what adventure the boys
had gone, she could not quiet herself. All
through the night she lay awake hearing the clock
tick and telling herself that Seth, like his father,
would come to a sudden and violent end. So de-
termined was she that the boy should this time
feel the weight of her wrath that, although she
would not allow the marshal to interfere with his
adventure, she got out pencil and paper and wrote
down a series of sharp, stinging reproofs she in-
tended to pour out upon him. The reproofs she
committed to memory, going about the garden
and saying them aloud like an actor memorizing
his part.

And when, at the end of the week, Seth re-

150 WINESBURG, OHIO

turned, a little weary and with coal soot in his
ears and about his eyes, she again found herself
unable to reprove him. Walking into the house
he hung his cap on a nail by the kitchen door and
stood looking steadily at her. "I wanted to turn
back within an hour after we had started," he ex-
plained. "I didn't know what to do. I knew
you would be bothered, but I knew also that if I
didn't go on I would be ashamed of myself. I
went through with the thing for my own good.
It was uncomfortable, sleeping on wet straw, and
two drunken negroes came and slept with us.
When I stole a lunch basket out of a farmer's
wagon I couldn't help thinking of his children
going all day without food. I was sick of the
whole affair, but I was determined to stick it out
until the other boys were ready to come back."

"I'm glad you did stick it out," replied the
mother, half resentfully, and kissing him upon the
forehead pretended to busy herself with the work
about the house.

On a summer evening Seth Richmond went to
the New Willard House to visit his friend, George
Willard. It had rained during the afternoon, but
as he walked through Main Street, the sky had
partially cleared and a golden glow lit up the west.
Going around a corner, he turned in at the door
of the hotel and began to climb the stairway lead-
ing up to his friend's room. In the hotel office the

THETHINKER

proprietor and two traveling men were engaged in
a discussion of politics.

On the stairway Seth stopped and listened to
the voices of the men below. They were excited
and talked rapidly. Tom Willard was berating
the traveling men. "I am a Democrat but your
talk makes me sick/' he said. "You don't under-
stand McKinley. McKinley and Mark Hanna
are friends. It is impossible perhaps for your
mind to grasp that. If anyone tells you that a
friendship can be deeper and bigger and more
worth while than dollars and cents, or even more
worth while than state politics, you snicker and
laugh."

The landlord was interrupted by one of the
guests, a tall grey-mustached man who worked for
a wholesale grocery house. "Do you think that
I've lived in Cleveland all these years without
knowing Mark Hanna?" he demanded. "Your
talk is piffle. Hanna is after money and nothing
else. This McKinley is his tool. He has
McKinley bluffed and don't you forget it."

The young man on the stairs did not linger to
hear the rest of the discussion, but went on up the
stairway and into a little dark hall. Something in
the voices of the men talking in the hotel office
started a chain of thoughts in his mind. He was
lonely and had begun to think that loneliness was
a part of his character, something that would al-

152 WINES BURG, OHIO

ways stay with him. Stepping into a side hall he
stood by a window that looked into an alleyway.
At the back of his shop stood Abner Groff, the
town baker. His tiny bloodshot eyes looked up
and down the alleyway. In his shop someone
called the baker who pretended not to hear. The
baker had an empty milk bottle in his hand and an
angry sullen look in his eyes.

In Winesburg, Seth Richmond was called the
"deep one." "He's like his father," men said
as he went through the streets. "He'll break out
some of these days. You wait and see."

The talk of the town and the respect with
which men and boys instinctively greeted him, as
all men greet silent people, had affected Seth
Richmond's outlook on life and on himself. He,
like most boys, was deeper than boys are given
credit for being, but he was not what the men of
the town, and even his mother, thought him to be.
No great underlying purpose lay back of his ha-
bitual silence, and he had no definite plan for his
life. When the boys with whom he associated
were noisy and quarrelsome, he stood quietly at
one side. With calm eyes he watched the gestic-
ulating lively figures of his companions. He
wasn't particularly interested in what was going
on, and sometimes wondered if he would ever be
particularly interested in anything. Now, as he
stood in the half-darkness by the window watching

THE TH IN KER . 153

the baker, he wished that he himself might be-
come thoroughly stirred by something, even by
the fits of sullen anger for which Baker Groff
was noted. "It would be better for me if I could
become excited and wrangle about politics like
windy old Tom Willard," he thought, as he left
the window and went again along the hallway to
the room occupied by his friend, George Willard.

George Willard was older than Seth Richmond,
but in the rather odd friendship between the two,
it was he who was forever courting and the
younger boy who was being courted. The paper
on which George worked had one policy. It
strove to mention by name in each issue, as many
as possible of the inhabitants of the village. Like
an excited dog, George Willard ran here and
there, rioting on his pad of paper who had gone
on business to the county seat or had returned
from a visit to a neighboring village. All day he
wrote little facts upon the pad. "A. P. Wringlet
has received a shipment of straw hats. Ed Byer-
baum and Tom Marshall were in Cleveland Fri-
day. Uncle Tom Sinnings is building a new barn
on his place on the Valley Road."

The idea that George Willard would some day
become a writer had given him a place of dis-
tinction in Winesburg, and to Seth Richmond
he talked continually of the matter. "It's the
easiest of all lives to live," he declared, becoming

154 WINESBURG, OHIO

excited and boastful. "Here and there you go
and there is no one to boss you. Though you are
in India or in the South Seas in a boat, you have
but to write and there you are. Wait till I get
my name up and then see what fun I shall have."

In George Willard' s room, which had a win-
dow looking down into an alleyway and one that
looked across railroad track's to Biff Carter's
Lunch Room facing the railroad station, Seth
Richmond sat in a chair and looked at the floor.
George Willard who had been sitting for an hour
idly playing with a lead pencil, greeted him effu-
sively. "I've been trying to write a love story,"
he explained, laughing nervously. Lighting a
pipe he began walking up and down the room. "I
know what Fm going to do. I'm going to fall in
love. I've been sitting here and thinking it over
and I'm going to do it."

As though embarrassed by his declaration,
George went to a window and turning his back to
his friend leaned out. "I know who I'm going
to fall in love with," he said sharply. "It's
Helen White. She is the only girl in town with
any 'get-up' to her."

Struck with a new idea, young Willard turned
and walked towards his visitor. "Look here,"
he said. "You know Helen White better than I
do. I want you to tell her what I said. You just
get to talking to her and say that I'm in love with

TH E TH IN KER 155

her. See what she says to that. See how she
takes it, and then you come and tell me.1*

Seth Richmond arose and went towards the
door. The words of his comrade irritated him
unbearably. "Well, good-bye," he said briefly.

George was amazed. Running forward he
stood in the darkness trying to look into Seth's
face. "What's the matter? What are you go-
ing to do? You stay here and let's talk," he
urged.

A wave of resentment directed against his
friend, the men of the town who were, he thought,
perpetually talking of nothing, and most of all,
against his own habit of silence, made Seth half
desperate. uAw, speak to her yourself," he
burst forth and then going quickly through the
door, slammed it sharply in his friend's face.
"I'm going to find Helen White and talk to her,
but not about him," he muttered.

Seth went down the stairway and out at the
front door of the hotel muttering with wrath.
Crossing a little dusty street and climbing a low
iron railing, he went to sit upon the grass in the
station yard. George Willard he thought a pro-
found fool, and he wished that he had said so
more vigorously. Although his acquaintanceship
with Helen White, the banker's daughter, was
outwardly but casual, she was often the subject
of his thoughts and he felt that she was some-

156 WINESBURG, OHIO

thing private and personal to himself. "The busy
fool with his love stories/* he muttered, staring
back over his shoulder at George Willard's room,
"why does he never tire of his eternal talking."

It was berry harvest time in Winesburg and
upon the station platform men and boys loaded
the boxes of red, fragrant berries into two express
cars that stood upon the siding. A June moon
was in the sky, although In the west a storm threat-
ened, and no street lamps were lighted. In the
dim light the figures of the men standing upon the
express truck and pitching the boxes in at the
doors of the cars were but dimly discernible.
Upon the iron railing that protected the station
lawn sat other men. Pipes were lighted. Vil-
lage jokes went back and forth. Away in the dis-
tance a train whistled and the men loading the
boxes into the cars worked with renewed activity.

Seth arose from his place on the grass and went
silently past the men perched upon the railing and
into Main Street. He 'had come to a resolution.
"I'll get out of here," he told himself. "What
good am I here ? I'm going to some city and go
to work. I'll tell mother about it to-morrow."

Seth Richmond went slowly along Main Street,
past Wacker's Cigar Store and the Town Hall,
and into Buckeye Street. He was depressed by
the thought that he was not a part of the life in
his own town, but the depression did not cut

THE THINKER 157

deeply as he did not think of himself as at fault.
In the heavy shadows of a big tree before Dr.
Welling' s house, he stopped and stood watching
half-witted Turk Smollet, who was pushing a
wheelbarrow in the road. The old man with his
absurdly boyish mind had a dozen long boards on
the wheelbarrow, and as he hurried along the
road, balanced the load with extreme nicety.
"Easy there, Turk! Steady now, old boyl" the
old man shouted to himself, and laughed so that
the load of boards rocked dangerously.

Seth knew Turk Smollet, the half dangerous
old wood chopper whose peculiarities added so
much of color to the life of the village. He knew
that when Turk got into Main Street he would
become the center of a whirlwind of cries and
comments, that in truth the old man was going far
out of his way in order to pass through Main
Street and exhibit his skill in wheeling the boards.
"If George Willard were here, he'd have some-
thing to say," thought Seth. "George belongs to
this town. He'd shout at Turk and Turk would
shout at him. They'd both be secretly pleased by
what they had said. It's different with me. I
don't belong. I'll not make a fuss about it, but
I'm going to get out of here."

Seth stumbled forward through the half dark-
ness, feeling himself an outcast in his own town.
He began to pity himself, but a sense of the ab-

158 WINESBURG, OHIO

surdity of his thoughts made him smile. In the
end he decided that he was simply old beyond his
years and not at all a subject for self-pity. "I'm
made to go to work. I may be able to make a
place for myself by steady working, and I might
as well be at it," he decided.

Seth went to the house of Banker White and
stood in the darkness by the front door. On the
door hung a heavy brass knocker, an innovation
introduced into the village by Helen White's
mother, who had also organized a woman's club
for the study of poetry. Seth raised the knocker
and let it fall. Its heavy clatter sounded like a
report from distant guns. "How awkward and
foolish I am," he thought. "If Mrs. White
comes to the door, I won't know what to say?"

It was Helen White who came to the door and
found Seth standing at the edge of the porch.
Blushing with pleasure, she stepped forward, clos-
ing the door softly. "I'm going to get out of
town. I don't know what I'll do, but I'm go-
ing to get out of here and go to work. I think
I'll go to Columbus," he said. "Perhaps I'll get
into the State University down there. Anyway,
I'm going. I'll tell mother to-night." He hesi-
tated and looked doubtfully about. "Perhaps you
wouldn't mind coming to walk with me?"

Seth and Helen walked through the streets be-
neath the trees. Heavy clouds had drifted across

THE THINKER 159

the face of the moon, and before them in the deep
twilight went a man with a short ladder upon his
shoulder. Hurrying forward, the man stopped at
the street crossing and, putting the ladder against
the wooden lamp post, lighted the village lights so
that their way was half lighted, half darkened, by
the lamps and by the deepening shadows cast by
the low-branched trees. In the tops of the trees
the wind began to play, disturbing the sleeping
birds so that they flew about calling plaintively.
In the lighted space before one of the lamps, two
bats wheeled and circled, pursuing the gathering
swarm of night flies.

Since Seth had been a boy in knee trousers there
had been a half expressed intimacy between him
and the maiden who now for the first time walked
beside him. For a time she had been beset with
a madness for writing notes which she* addressed
to Seth. He had found them concealed in his
books at school and one had been given him by a
child met in the street, while several had been de-
livered through the village post office.

The notes had been written in a round, boyish
hand and had reflected a mind inflamed by novel
reading. Seth had not answered them, although
he had been moved and flattered by some of the
sentences scrawled in pencil upon the stationery of
the banker's wife. Putting them into the pocket
of his coat, he went through the street or stood by

160 WINESBURG, OHIO

the fence in the school yard with something burn-
ing at his side. He thought it fine that he should
be thus selected as the favorite of the richest and
most attractive girl in town.

Helen and Seth stopped by a fence near where
a low dark building faced the street. The build-
ing had once been a factory for the making of
barrel staves but was now vacant. Across the
street upon the porch of a house a man and
woman talked of their childhood, their voices com-
ing clearly across to the half-embarrassed youth
and maiden. There was the sound of scraping
chairs and the man and woman came down the
gravel path to a wooden gate. Standing outside
the gate, the man leaned over and kissed the
woman. "For old times' sake," he said and,
turning, walked rapidly away along the side-
walk.

"That's Belle Turner," whispered Helen, and
put her hand boldly into Seth's hand. "I didn't
know she had a fellow. I thought she was too
old for that." Seth laughed uneasily. The hand
of the girl was warm and a strange, dizzy feeling
crept over him. Into his mind came a desire to
tell her something he had been determined not
to tell. "George Willard's in love with you,"
he said, and in spite of his agitation his voice was
low and quiet. "He's writing a story, and he
wants to be in love. He wants to know how it

THE THINKER l6l

feels. He wanted me to tell you and see what you
said."

Again Helen and Seth walked in silence. They
came to the garden surrounding the old Richmond
place and going through a gap in the hedge sat on
a wooden bench beneath a bush.

On the street as he walked beside the girl new
and daring thoughts had come into Seth Rich-
mond's mind. He began to regret his decision to
get out of town. "It would be something new and
altogether delightful to remain and walk often
through the streets with Helen White," he
thought. In imagination he saw himself putting
his arm about her waist and feeling her arms
clasped tightly about his neck. One of those odd
combinations of events and places made him con-
nect the idea of love-making with this girl and a
spot he Bad visited some days before. He had
gone on an errand to the house of a farmer who
lived on a hillside beyond the Fair Ground and
had returned by a path through a field. At the
foot of the hill below the farmer's house Seth had
stopped beneath a sycamore tree and looked about
him. A soft humming noise had greeted his ears.
For a moment he had thought the tree must be the
home of a swarm of bees.

And then, looking down, Seth had seen the bees
everywhere all about him in the long grass. He
stood in a mass of weeds that grew waist-high in

162 WINESBURG, OHIO

the field that ran away from the hillside. The
weeds were abloom with tiny purple blossoms and
gave forth an overpowering fragrance. Upon
the weeds the bees were gathered in armies, sing-
ing as they worked.

Seth imagined himself lying on a summer eve-
ning, buried deep among the weeds beneath the
tree. Beside him, in the scene built in his fancy,
lay Helen White, her hand lying in his hand. A
peculiar reluctance kept him from kissing her lips,
but he felt he might have done that if 'he wished.
Instead, he lay perfectly still, looking at her and
listening to the army of bees that sang the sus-
tained masterful song of labor above his head.

On the bench in the garden Seth stirred un-
easily. Releasing the hand of the girl, he thrust
his hands into his trouser pockets. A desire to
impress the mind of his companion with the im-
portance of the resolution he had made came over
him and he nodded his head toward the house.
"Mother'll make a fuss, I suppose," he whis-
pered. "She hasn't thought at all about what
I'm going to do in life. She thinks I'm going to
stay on here forever just being a boy."

Seth's voice became charged with boyish ear-
nestness. "You see, I've got to strike out. I've
got to get to work. It's what I'm good for."

Helen White was impressed. She nodded her
head and a feeling of admiration swept over her.

THETHINKER 1-63

"This is as it should be," she thought. "This boy
is not a boy at all, but a strong, purposeful man."
Certain vague desires that had been invading her
body were swept away and she sat up very straight
on the bench. The thunder continued to rumble
and flashes of heat lightning lit up the eastern sky.
The garden that had been so mysterious and vast,
a place that with Seth beside her might have be-
come the background for strange and wonderful
adventures, now seemed no more than an ordinary
Winesburg back yard, quite definite and limited in
its outlines.

"What will you do up there ?" she whispered.

Seth turned half around on the bench, striving
to see her face in the darkness. He thought her
infinitely more sensible and straightforward than
George Willard, and was glad he had come away
from his friend. A feeling of impatience with
the town that had been in his mind returned, and
he tried to tell her of it. "Everyone talks and
talks," he began. "I'm sick of it. I'll do some-
thing, get into some kind of work where talk
don't count. Maybe I'll just be a mechanic in
a shop. I don't know. I guess I don't care
much. I just want to work and keep quiet.
That's all I've got in my mind."

Seth arose from the bench and put out his hand.
He did not want to bring the meeting to an end
but could not think of anything more to say. "It's

164 WINESBURG, OHIO

the last time we'll see each other,'* he whispered.

A wave of sentiment swept over Helen. Put-
ting her hand upon Seth's shoulder, she started to
draw his face down towards her own upturned
face. The act was one of pure affection and cut-
ting regret that some vague adventure that had
been present in the spirit of the night would now
never be realized. "I think I'd better be going
along," she said, letting her hand fall heavily to
her side. A thought came to her. "Don't you
go with me; I want to be alone," she said. "You
go and talk with your mother. You'd better do
that now."

Seth hesitated and, as he stood waiting, the girl
turned and ran away through the hedge. A de-
sire to run after her came to him, but he only
stood staring, perplexed and puzzled by her ac-
tion as he had been perplexed and puzzled by all
of the life of the town out of which she had come.
Walking slowly toward the house, he stopped in
the shadow of a large tree and looked at his
mother sitting by a lighted window busily sewing.
The feeling of loneliness that had visited him
earlier in the evening returned and colored his
thoughts of the adventure through which he had
just passed. "Huh!" he exclaimed, turning and
staring in the direction taken by Helen White.
"That's how things'll turn out. She'll be like the
rest. I suppose she'll begin now to look at me in

THE THINKER 165

a funny way." He looked at the ground and pon-
dered this thought. "She'll be embarrassed and
feel strange when I'm around," he whispered to
himself. "That's how it'll be. That's how
everything'll turn out. When it conies to loving
some one, it won't never be me. It'll be some
one else — some fool — some one who talks a lot —
some one like that George Willard."

TANDY

UNTIL she was seven years old she lived in
an old unp;imted house on an unused road
that led off Trunion Pike. Her father
gave her but little attention and her mother was
dead. The father spent his time talking and
thinking of religion. He proclaimed himself an
agnostic and was so absorbed in destroying the
ideas of God that had crept into the minds of his
neighbors that he never saw God manifesting
himself in the little child that, half forgotten,
lived here and there on the bounty of her dead
mother's relatives.

A stranger came to Winesburg and saw in the
child what the father did not see. He was a tall,
red-haired young man who was almost always
drunk. Sometimes he sat in a chair before the
New Willard House with Tom Hard, the father.
As Tom talked, declaring there could be no God,
the stranger smiled and winked at the bystanders.
He and Tom became friends and were much to-
gether.

The stranger was the son of a rich merchant
of Cleveland and had come to Winesburg on a

166

TANDY 167

mission. He wanted to cure himself of the habit
of drink, and thought that by escaping from his
city associates and living in a rural community he
would have a better chance in the struggle with
the appetite that was destroying him.

His sojourn in Winesburg was not a success.
The dullness of the passing hours led to his drink-
ing harder than ever. But he did succeed in do-
ing something. He gave a name rich with mean-
ing to Tom Hard's daughter.

One evening when he was recovering from a
long debauch the stranger came reeling along the
main street of the town. Tom Hard sat in a
chair before the New Willard House with his
daughter, then a child of five, on his knees. Be-
side him on the board sidewalk sat young George
Willard. The stranger dropped into a chair be-
side them. His body shook and when he tried to
talk his voice trembled.

It was late evening and darkness lay over the
town and over the railroad than ran along the foot
of a little incline before the hotel. Somewhere
in the distance, off to the west, there was a pro-
longed blast from the whistle of a passenger en-
gine. A dog that had been sleeping in the road-
way arose and barked. The stranger began to
babble and made a prophecy concerning the child
that lay in the arms of the agnostic.

"I came here to quit drinking," he said, and

168 WINESBURG, OHIO

tears began to run down his cheeks. He did not
look at Tom Hard, but leaned forward and
stared into the darkness as though seeing a vision.
"I ran away to the country to be cured, but I am
not cured. There is a reason.** He turned to
look at the child who sat up very straight on her
father's knee and returned the look.

The stranger touched Tom Hard on the arm.
"Drink is not the only thing to which I am ad-
dicted," he said. "There is something else. I
am a lover and have not found my thing to love.
That is a big point if you know enough to realize
what I mean. It makes my destruction inevitable,
you see. There are few who understand that."

The stranger became silent and seemed over-
come with sadness, but another blast from the
whistle of the passenger engine aroused him. "I
have not lost faith. I proclaim that. I have
only been brought to the place where I know my
faith will not be realized," he declared hoarsely.
He looked hard at the child and began to address
her, paying no more attention to the father.
"There is a woman coming," he said, and his voice
was now sharp and earnest. "I have missed her,
you see. She did not come in my time. You may
be the woman. It would be like fate to let me
stand in her presence once, on such an evening as
this, when I have destroyed myself with drink and
she is as yet only a child."

TANDY 169

The shoulders of the stranger shook violently,
and when he tried to roll a cigarette the paper fell
from his trembling fingers. He grew angry and
scolded. "They think it's easy to be a woman, to
be loved, but I know better,'7 he declared. Again
he turned to the child. "I understand," he cried.
"Perhaps of all men I alone understand."

His glance again wandered away to the dark-
ened street. "I know about her, although she has
never crossed my path," he said softly. "I know
about her struggles and her defeats. It is be-
cause of her defeats that she is to me the lovely
one. Out of her defeats has been born a new
quality in woman. I have a name for it. I call
it Tandy. I made up the name when I was a
true dreamer and before my body became vile.
It is the quality of being strong to be loved. It is
something men need from women and that they
do not get."

The stranger arose and stood before Tom
Hard. His body rocked back and forth and he
seemed about to fall, but instead he dropped to
his knees on the sidewalk and raised the hands of
the little girl to his drunken lips. He kissed them
ecstatically. "Be Tandy, little one," he plead.
"Dare to be strong and courageous. That is the
road. Venture anything. Be brave enough to
dare to be loved. Be something more than man
or woman. Be Tandy."

170 WINESBURG, OHIO

The stranger arose and staggered off down the
street. A day or two later he got aboard a train
and returned to his home in Cleveland. On the
summer evening, after the talk before the hotel,
Tom Hard took the girl child to the house of a
relative where she had been invited to spend the
night. As he went along in the darkness under
the trees he forgot the babbling voice of the
stranger and his mind returned to the making of
arguments by which he might destroy men's faith
in God. He spoke his daughter's name and she
began to weep.

"I don't want to be called that," she declared.
"I want to be called Tandy— Tandy Hard." The
child wept so bitterly that Tom Hard was touched
and tried to comfort her. He stopped beneath a
tree and, taking her into his arms, began to caress
her. "Be good, now," he said sharply; but she
would not be quieted. With childish abandon she
gave herself over to grief, her voice breaking the
evening stillness of the street. "I want to be
Tandy. I want to be Tandy. I want to be Tandy
Hard," she cried, shaking her head and sobbing
as though her young strength were not enough to
bear the vision the words of the drunkard had
brought to her.

THE STRENGTH OF GOD

THE Reverend Curtis Hartman was pastor
of the Presbyterian Church of Winesburg,
and had been in that position ten years.
He was forty years old, and by his nature very
silent and reticent. To preach, standing in the
pulpit before the people, was always a hardship
for him and from Wednesday morning until Sat-
urday evening he thought of nothing but the two
sermons that must be preached on Sunday. Early
on Sunday morning he went into a little room
called a study in the bell tower of the church and
prayed. In his prayers there was one note that
always predominated. "Give me strength and
courage for Thy work, O Lord !" he plead, kneel-
ing on the bare floor and bowing his head in the
presence of the task that lay before him.

The Reverend Hartman was a tall man with a
brown beard. His wife, a stout, nervous woman,
was the daughter of a manufacturer of underwear
at Cleveland, Ohio. The minister himself was
rather a favorite in the town. The elders of the
church liked him because he was quiet and unpre-
tentious and Mrs. White, the banker's wife,
thought him scholarly and refined.

171

172 WINESBURG, OHIO

The Presbyterian Church held itself somewhat
aloof from the other churches of Winesburg. It
was larger and more imposing and its minister
was better paid. He even had a carriage of his
own and on summer evenings sometimes drove
about town with his wife. Through Main Street
and up and down Buckeye Street he went, bow-
ing gravely to the people, while his wife, afire with
secret pride, looked at him out of the corners of
her eyes and worried lest the horse become fright-
ened and run away.

For a good many years after he came to Wines-
burg things went well with Curtis Hartman. He
was not one to arouse keen enthusiasm among the
worshippers in his church but on the other hand
he made no enemies. In reality he was much in
earnest and sometimes suffered prolonged periods
of remorse because he could not go crying the
word of God in the highways and byways of the
town. He wondered if the flame of the spirit
really burned in him and dreamed of a day when
a strong sweet new current of power would come
like a great wind into his voice and his soul and
the people would tremble before the spirit of God
made manifest in him. "I am a poor stick and
that will never really happen to me," he mused
dejectedly and then a patient smile lit up his
features. "Oh well, I suppose I'm doing well
enough," he added philosophically.

THE STRENGTH OF GOD 173

room in the bell tower of the church,
where on Sunday mornings the minister prayed for
an increase in him of the power of God, had but
one window. It was long and narrow and swung
outward on a hinge like a door. On the window,
made of little leaded panes, was a design show-
ing the Christ laying his hand upon the head of a
child. One Sunday morning in the summer as he
sat by his desk in the room with a large Bible
opened before him, and the sheets of his sermon
scattered about, the minister was shocked to see,
in the upper room of the house next door, a woman
lying in her bed and smoking a cigarette while
she read a book. Curtis Hartman went on tip-
toe to the window and closed it softly. He was
horror stricken at the thought of a woman smok-
ing and trembled also to think that his eyes, just
raised from the pages of the book of God, had
looked upon the bare shoulders and white throat
of a woman. With his brain in a whirl he went
down into the pulpit and preached a long sermon
without once thinking of his gestures or his voice.
The sermon attracted unusual attention because of
its power and clearness. "I wonder if she is
listening, if my voice is carrying a message into
her soul," he thought and began to hope that on
future Sunday mornings he might be able to say
words that would touch and awaken the woman
apparently far gone in secret sin.

174 WINESBURG, OHIO

The house next door to the Presbyterian
Church, through the windows of which the min-
ister had seen the sight that had so upset him, was
occupied by two women. Aunt Elizabeth Swift,
a grey competent-looking widow with money in
the Winesburg National Bank, lived there with
her daughter Kate Swift, a school teacher. The
school teacher was thirty years old and had a neat
trim-looking figure. She had few friends and
bore a reputation of having a sharp tongue.
When he began to think about her, Curtis Hart-
man remembered that she had been to Europe
and had lived for two years in New York City.
"Perhaps after all her smoking means nothing,"
he thought. He began to remember that when he
was a student in college and occasionally read
novels, good, although somewhat worldly women,
had smoked through the pages of a book that had
once fallen into his hands. With a rush of new
determination he worked on his sermons all
through the week and forgot, in his zeal to reach
the ears and the soul of this new listener, both his
embarrassment in the pulpit and the necessity of
prayer in the study on Sunday mornings.

Reverend Hartman's experience with women
had been somewhat limited. He was the son of
a wagon maker from Muncie, Indiana, and had
worked his way through college. The daughter
of the underwear manufacturer had boarded in

THE STRENGTH OF GOD 175

a house where he lived during his school days and
he had married her after a formal and prolonged
courtship, carried on for the most part by the girl
herself. On his marriage day the underwear
manufacturer had given his daughter five thou-
sand dollars and he promised to leave her at least
twice that amount in his will. The minister had
thought himself fortunate in marriage and had
never permitted himself to think of other women.
He did not want to think of other women. What
he wanted was to do the work of God quietly and
earnestly.

In the soul of the minister a struggle awoke.
From wanting to reach the ears of Kate Swift,
and through his sermons to delve into her soul,
he began to want also to look again at the figure
lying white and quiet in the bed. On a Sunday
morning when he could not sleep because of his
thoughts he arose and went to walk in the streets.
When he had gone along Main Street almost to
the old Richmond place he stopped and picking
up a stone rushed off to the room in the bell tower.
With the stone he broke out a corner of the win-
dow and then locked the door and sat down at
the desk before the open Bible to wait. When
the shade of the window to Kate Swift's room was
raised he could see, through the hole, directly into
her bed, but she was not there. She also had
arisen and had gone for a walk and the hand that

176 WINESBURG, OHIO

raised the shade was the hand of Aunt Elizabeth
Swift.

The minister almost wept with joy at this de-
liverence from the carnal desire to "peep" and
went back to his own house praising God. In an
ill moment he forgot, however, to stop the hole in
the window. The piece of glass broken out at
the corner of the window just nipped off the bare
heel of the boy standing motionless and looking
with rapt eyes into the face of the Christ.

Curtis Hartman forgot his sermon on that Sun-
day morning. He talked to his congregation and
in his talk said that it was a mistake for people to
think of their minister as a man set aside and in-
tended by nature to lead a blameless life. "Out
of my own experience I know that we, who are the
ministers of God's word, are beset by the same
temptations that assail you," he declared. "I
have been tempted and have surrendered to
temptation. It is only the hand of God, placed
beneath my head, that has raised me up. As he
has raised me so also will he raise you. Do not
despair. In your hour of sin raise your eyes to
the skies and you will be again and again saved."

Resolutely the minister put the thoughts of the
woman in the bed out of his mind and began to
be something like a lover in the presence of his
wife. One evening when they drove out together
he turned the horse out of Buckeye Street and in

THE STRENGTH OF GOD 177

the darkness on Gospel Hill, above Waterworks
Pond, put his arm about Sarah Hartman's waist.
When he had eaten breakfast in the morning and
was ready to retire to his study at the back of his
house he went around the table and kissed his wife
on the cheek. When thoughts of Kate Swift
came into his head, he smiled and raised his eyes
to the skies. "Intercede for me, Master," he
muttered, "keep me in the narrow path intent on
Thy work."

And now began the real struggle in the soul of
the brown-bearded minister. By chance he dis-
covered that Kate Swift was in the habit of lying
in her bed in the evenings and reading a book.
A lamp stood on a table by the side of the bed
and the light streamed down upon her white
shoulders and bare throat. On the evening when
he made the discovery the minister sat at the desk
in the study from nine until after eleven and when
her light was put out stumbled out of the church
to spend two more hours walking and praying in
the streets. He did not want to kiss the shoulders
and the throat of Kate Swift and had not allowed
his mind to dwell on such thoughts. He did not
know what he wanted. "I am God's child and
he must save me from myself," he cried, in the
darkness under the trees as he wandered in the
streets. By a tree he stood and looked at the
sky that was covered with hurrying clouds. He

178 WINESBURG, OHIO

began to talk to God intimately and closely.
* 'Please, Father, do not forget me. Give me
power to go to-morrow and repair the hole in
the window. Lift my eyes again to the skies.
Stay with me, Thy servant, in his hour of need."

Up and down through the silent streets walked
the minister and for days and weeks his soul was
troubled. He could not understand the tempta-
tion that had come to him nor could he fathom
the reason for its coming. In a way he began to
blame God, saying to himself that he had tried
to keep his feet in the true path and had not run
about seeking sin. "Through my days as a young
man and all through my life here I have gone
quietly about my work," he declared. "Why
now should I be tempted? What have I done
that this burden should be laid on me?"

Three tiines during the early fall and winter of
that year Curtis Hartman crept out of his house
to the room in the bell tower to sit in the dark-
ness looking at the figure of Kate Swift lying in
her bed and later went to walk and pray in the
streets. He could not understand himself. For
weeks he would go along scarcely thinking of the
school teacher and telling himself that he had
conquered the carnal desire to look at her body.
And then something would happen. As he sat
in the study of his own house, hard at work on a
sermon, he would become nervous and begin to

THE STRENGTH OF GOD 179

walk up and down the room. "I will go out into
the streets," he told himself and even as he let
himself in at the church door he persistently de-
nied to himself the cause of his being there. "I
will not repair the hole in the window and I will
train myself to come here at night and sit in the
presence of this woman without raising my eyes.
I will not be defeated in this thing. The Lord
has devised this temptation as a test of my soul
and I will grope my way out of darkness into the
light of righteousness."

One night in January when it was bitter cold
and snow lay deep on the streets of Winesburg
Curtis Hartman paid his last visit to the room in
the bell tower of the church. It was past nine
o'clock when he left his own house and he set out
so hurriedly that he forgot to put on his over-
shoes. In Main Street no one was abroad but
Hop Higgins the night watchman and in the whole
town no one was awake but the watchman and
young George Willard, who sat in the office of the
Winesburg Eagle trying to write a story. Along
the street to the church went the minister, plow-
ing through the drifts and thinking that this time
he would utterly give way to sin. "I want to look
at the woman and to think of kissing her shoulders
and I am going to let myself think what I choose,"
he declared bitterly and tears came into his eyes.
He began to think that he would get out of the

180 WINESBURG, OHIO

ministry and try some other way of life. "I shall
go to some city and get into business," he de-
clared. "If my nature is such that I cannot re-
sist sin, I shall give myself over to sin. At least
I shall not be a hypocrite, preaching the word of
God with my mind thinking of the shoulders and
neck of a woman who does not belong to me."

It was cold in the room of the bell tower of the
church on that January night and almost as soon
as he came into the room Curtis Hartman knew
that if he stayed he would be ill. His feet were
wet from tramping in the snow and there was no
fire. In the room in the house next door Kate
Swift had not yet appeared. With grim deter-
mination the man sat down to wait. Sitting in the
chair and gripping the edge of the desk on which
lay the Bible he stared into the darkness thinking
the blackest thoughts of his life. He thought of
his wife and for the moment almost hated her.
"She has always been ashamed of passion and
has cheated me," he thought. "Man has a right
to expect living passion and beauty in a woman.
He has no right to forget that he is an animal and
in me there is something that is Greek. I will
throw off the woman 'of my bosom and seek other
women. I will besiege this school teacher. I
will fly in the face of all men and if I am a creature
of carnal lusts I will live then for my lusts."

The distracted man trembled from head to

THE STRENGTH OF GOD l8l

foot, partly from cold, partly from the struggle in
which he was engaged. Hours passed and a
fever assailed his body. His throat began to hurt
and his teeth chattered. His feet on the study
floor felt like two cakes of ice. Still he would
not give up. "I will see this woman and will
think the thoughts I have never dared to think,'*
he told himself, gripping the edge of the desk
and waiting.

Curtis Hartman came near dying from the
effects of that night of waiting in the church, and
also he found in the thing that happened what he
took to be the way of life for him. On other eve-
nings when he had waited he had not been able
to see, through the little hole in the glass, any
part of the school teacher's room except that oc-
cupied by her bed. In the darkness he had waited
until the woman suddenly appeared sitting in the
bed in her white night-robe. When the light was
turned up she propped herself up among the pil-
lows and read a book. Sometimes she smoked
one of the cigarettes. Only her bare shoulders
and throat were visible.

On the January night, after he had come near
dying with cold and after his mind had two or
three times actually slipped away into an odd land
of fantasy so that he had by an exercise of will
power to force himself back into consciousness,
Kate Swift appeared. In the room next door a

l8a WINESBURG, OHIO

lamp was lighted and the waiting man stared into
an empty bed. Then upon the bed before his
eyes a naked woman threw herself. Lying face
downward she wept and beat with her fists upon
the pillow. With a final outburst of weeping she
half arose, and in the presence of the man who
had waited to look and to think thoughts the
woman of sin began to pray. In the lamplight
her figure, slim and strong, looked like the figure
of the boy in the presence of the Christ on the
leaded window.

Curtis Hartman never remembered how he got
out of the church. With a cry he arose, dragging
the heavy desk along the floor. The Bible fell,
making a great clatter in the silence. When the
light in the house next door went out he stumbled
down the stairway and into the street Along
the street he went and ran in at the door of the
Winesburg Eagle, To George Willard, who was
tramping up and down in the office undergoing a
struggle of his own, he began to talk half inco-
herently. "The ways of God are beyond human
understanding," he cried, running in quickly and
closing the door. He began to advance upon the
young man, his eyes glowing and his voice ringing
with fervor. "I have found the light," he cried.
"After ten years in this town, God has manifested
himself to me in the body of a woman." His
voice dropped and he began to whisper. "I did

THE STRENGTH OF GOD 183

not understand," he said. "What I took to be a
trial of my soul was only a preparation for a new
and more beautiful fervor of the spirit. God has
appeared to me in the person of Kate Swift, the
school teacher, kneeling naked on a bed. Do you
know Kate Swift? Although she may not be
aware of it, she is an instrument of God, bearing
the message of truth."

Reverend Curtis Hartman turned and ran out
of the office. At the door he stopped, and after
looking up and down the deserted street, turned
again to George Willard. "I am delivered.
Have no fear." He held up a bleeding fist for
the young man to see. "I smashed the glass of
the window," he cried. "Now it will have to be
wholly replaced. The strength of God was in
me and I broke it with my fist."

THE TEACHER

SNOW lay deep in the streets of Winesburg.
It had begun to snow about ten o'clock in
the morning and a wind sprang up and blew
the snow in clouds along Main Street. The frozen
mud roads that led into town were fairly
smooth and in places ice covered the mud. "There
will be good sleighing," said Will Henderson,
standing by the bar in Ed Griffith's saloon. Out
of the saloon he went and met Sylvester West the
druggist stumbling along in the kind of heavy over-
shoes called arctics. "Snow will bring the peo-
ple into town on Saturday," said the druggist.
The two men stopped and discussed their affairs.
Will Henderson, who had on a light overcoat and
no overshoes, kicked the heel of his left foot with
the toe of the right. "Snow will be good for the
wheat," observed the druggist sagely.

Young George Willard, who had nothing to do,
was glad because he did not feel like working that
day. The weekly paper had been printed and
taken to the post office on Wednesday evening and
the snow began to fall on Thursday. At eight
o'clock, after the morning train had passed, he put

184

THE TEACHER 185

a pair of skates in his pocket and went up to
Waterworks Pond but did not go skating. Past
the pond and along a path that followed Wine
Creek he went until he came to a grove of beech
trees. There he built a fire against the side of a
log and sat down at the end of the log to think.
When the snow began to fall and the wind to blow
he hurried about getting fuel for the fire.

The young reporter was thinking of Kate Swift
who had once been his school teacher. On the
evening before he had gone to her house to get a
book she wanted him to read and had been alone
with her for an hour. For the fourth or fifth
time the woman had talked to him with great
earnestness and he could not make out what she
meant by her talk. He began to believe she
might be in love with him and the thought was
both pleasing and annoying.

Up from the log he sprang and began to pile
sticks on the fire. Looking about to be sure he
was alone he talked aloud pretending he was in the
presence of the woman. "Oh, you're just letting
on, you know you are," he declared. _!lLam going
to find out about you. You wait and see."

The young man got up and went back along the
path toward town leaving the fire blazing in the
wood. As he went through the streets the skates
clanked in his pocket. In his own room in the
New Willard House he built a fire in the stove

186 WINESBURG, OHIO

and lay down on top of the bed. He began to
have lustful thoughts and pulling down the shade
of the window closed his eyes and turned his face
to the wall. He took a pillow into his arms and
embraced it thinking first of the school teacher,
who by her words had stirred something within
him and later of Helen White, the slim daughter
of the town banker, with whom he had been for
a long time half in love.

By nine o'clock of that evening snow lay deep
in the streets and the weather had become bitter
cold. It was difficult to walk about. The stores
were dark and the people had crawled away to
their houses. The evening train from Cleveland
was very late but nobody was interested in its ar-
rival. By ten o'clock all but four of the eighteen
hundred citizens of the town were in bed.

Hop Higgins, the night watchman, was par-
tially awake. He was lame and carried a heavy
stick. On dark nights he carried a lantern. Be-
tween nine and ten o'clock he went his rounds.
Up and down Main Street he stumbled through
the drifts trying the doors of the stores. Then
he went into alleyways and tried the back doors.
Finding all tight he hurried around the corner to
the New Willard House and beat on the door.
Through the rest of the night he intended to stay
by the stove. "You go to bed. I'll keep the

THE TEACHER 187

stove going," he said to the boy who slept on a
cot in the hotel office.

Hop Higgins sat down by the stove and took
off his shoes. When the boy had gone to sleep he
began to think of his own affairs. He intended
to paint his house in the spring and sat by the
stove calculating the cost of paint and labor.
That led him into other calculations. The night
watchman was sixty years old and wanted to re-
tire. He had been a soldier in the Civil War
and drew a small pension. He hoped to find
some new method of making a living and aspired
to become a professional breeder of ferrets. Al-
ready he had four of the strangely shaped savage
little creatures, that are used by sportsmen in the
pursuit of rabbits, in the cellar of his house.
"Now I have one male and three females," he
mused. "If I am lucky by spring I shall have
twelve or fifteen. In another year I shall be able
to begin advertising ferrets for sale in the sport-
ing papers."

The night watchman settled into his chair and
his mind became a blank. He did not sleep. By
years of practice he had trained himself to sit for
hours through the long nights neither asleep nor
awake. In the morning he was almost as re-
freshed as though he had slept.

With Hop Higgins safely stowed away in the

il88 WINESBURG, OHIO

chair behind the stove only three people were
awake in Winesburg. George Willard was in the
office of the Eagle pretending to be at work on the
writing of a story but in reality continuing the
mood of the morning by the fire in the wood. In
the bell tower of the Presbyterian Church the
Reverend Curtis Hartman was sitting in the dark-
ness preparing himself for a revelation from God,
and Kate Swift, the school teacher, was leaving
her house for a walk in the storm.

It was past ten o'clock when Kate Swift set out
and the walk was unpremeditated. It was as
though the man and the boy, by thinking of her,
had driven her forth into the wintry streets.
Aunt Elizabeth Swift had gone to the county seat
concerning some business in connection with
mortgages in which she had money invested and
would not be back until the next day. By a huge
stove, called a base burner, in the living room of
the house sat the daughter reading a book. Sud-
denly she sprang to her feet and, snatching a cloak
from a rack by the front door, ran out of the
house.

At the age of thirty Kate Swift was not known
in Winesburg as a pretty woman. Her complex-
ion was not good and her face was covered with
blotches that indicated ill health. Alone in the
night in the winter streets she was lovely. Her
back was straight, her shoulders square and her

THE TEACHER 189

features were as the features of a tiny goddess on
a pedestal in a garden in the dim light of a sum-
mer evening.

During the afternoon the school teacher had
been to see Dr. Welling concerning her health.
The doctor had scolded her and had declared she
was in danger 'of losing her hearing. It was fool-
ish for Kate Swift to be abroad in the storm, fool-
ish and perhaps dangerous.

The woman in the streets did not remember the
words of the doctor and would not have turned
back had she remembered. She was very cold but
after walking for five minutes no longer minded
the cold. First she went to the end of her own
street and then across a pair of hay scales set in
the ground before a feed barn and into Trunion
Pike. Along Trunion Pike she went to Ned Win-
ter's barn and turning east followed a street of low
frame houses that led over Gospel Hill and into
Sucker Road that ran down a shallow valley past
Ike Smead's chicken farm to Waterworks Pond.
As she went along, the bold, excited mood that had
driven her out of doors passed and then returned
again.

There was something biting and forbidding in
the character of Kate Swift. Everyone felt it.
In the schoolroom she was silent, cold, and stern,
and yet in an odd way very close to her pupils.
Once in a long while something seemed to have

190 WINESBURG, OHIO

come over her and she was happy. All of the
children in the schoolroom felt the effect of her
happiness. For a time they did not work but sat
back in their chairs and looked at her.

With hands clasped behind her back the school
teacher walked up and down in the schoolroom
and talked very rapidly. It did not seem to mat-
ter what subject came into her mind. Once she
talked to the children of Charles Lamb and made
up strange intimate little stories concerning the
life of the dead writer. The stories were told
with the air of one who had lived in a house with
Charles Lamb and knew all the secrets of his
private life. The children were somewhat con-
fused, thinking Charles Lamb must be someone
who had once lived in Winesburg.

On another occasion the teacher talked to the
children of Benvenuto Cellini. That time they
laughed. What a bragging, blustering, brave,
lovable fellow she made of the old artist! Con-
cerning him also she invented anecdotes. There
was one of a German music teacher who had a
room above Cellini's lodgings in the city of Milan
that made the boys guffaw. Sugars McNutts, a
fat boy with red cheeks, laughed so hard that he
became dizzy and fell off his seat and Kate Swift
laughed with him. Then suddenly she became
again cold and stern.

THE TEACHER 191

On the winter night when she walked through
the deserted snow-covered streets, a crisis had
come into the life of the school teacher. Al-
though no one in Winesburg would have sus-
pected it, her life had been very adventurous. It
was still adventurous. Day by day as she worked
in the schoolroom or walked in the streets, grief,
hope, and desire fought within her. Behind a
cold exterior the most extraordinary events trans-
pired in her mind. The people of the town
thought of her as a confirmed old maid and be-
cause she spoke sharply and went her own way
thought her lacking in all the human feeling that
did so much to make and mar their own lives. In
reality she was the most eagerly passionate soul
among them, and more than once, in the five years
since she had come back from her travels to settle
in Winesburg and become a school teacher, had
been compelled to go out of the house and walk
half through the night fighting out some battle
raging within. Once on a night when it rained
she had stayed out six hours and when she came
home had a quarrel with Aunt Elizabeth Swift.
"I am glad you're not a man," said the mother
sharply. "More than once Fve waited for your
father to come home, not knowing what new mess
he had got into. I've had my share of uncer-
tainty and you cannot blame me if I do not want

192 WINESBURG, OHIO

to see the worst side of him reproduced in you."

Kate Swift's mind was ablaze with thoughts of
George Willard. In something he had written
as a school boy she thought she had recognized
the spark of genius and wanted to blow on the
spark. One day in the summer she had gone to
the Eagle office and finding the boy unoccupied
had taken him out Main Street to the fair ground,
where the two sat on a grassy bank and talked.
The school teacher tried to bring home to the
mind of the boy some conception of the difficulties
he would have to face as a writer. "You will
have to know life," she declared, and her voice
trembled with earnestness. She took hold of
George Willard's shoulders and turned him about
so that she could look into his eyes. A passer-by
might have thought them about to embrace. "If
you are to become a writer you'll have to stop
fooling with words,'* she explained. "It would
be better to give up the notion of writing until
you are better prepared. Now it's time to be
living. I don't want to frighten you, but I would
like to make you understand the import of what
you think of attempting. You must not become
a mere peddler of words. The thing to learn is
to know what people are thinking about, not what
they say."

On the evening before that stormy Thursday

THE TEACHER ^193

4

night, when the Reverend Curtis Hartman sat in
the bell tower of the church waiting to look at her
body, young Willard had gone to visit the teacher
and to borrow a book. It was then the thing
happened that confused and puzzled the boy. He
had the book under his arm and was preparing to
depart. Again Kate Swift talked with great ear-
nestness. Night was coming on and the light in
the room grew dim. As he turned to go she spoke
his name softly and with an impulsive movement
took hold of his hand. Because the reporter was
rapidly becoming a man something of his man's
appeal, combined with the winsomeness of the
boy, stirred the heart of the lonely woman. A
passionate desire to have him understand the im-
port of life, to learn to interpret it truly and hon-
estly, swept over her. Leaning forward, her lips
brushed his cheek. At the same moment he for
the first time became aware of the marked beauty
of her features. They were both embarrassed,
and to relieve her feeling she became harsh and
domineering. "What's the use? It will be ten
years before you begin to understand what I mean
when I talk to you," she cried passionately.

On the night of the storm and while the min-
ister sat in the church waiting for her, Kate Swift
went to the office of the Winesburg Eagle, in-
tending to have another talk with the boy. After

194 WINESBURG, OHIO

the long walk in the snow she was cold, lonely,
and tired. As she came through Main Street she
saw the light from the print shop window shining
on the snow and on an impulse opened the door
and went in. For an hour she sat by the stove
in the office talking of life. She talked with pas-
sionate earnestness. The impulse that had driven
her out into the snow poured itself out into talk.
She became inspired as she sometimes did in the
presence of the children in school. A great eager-
ness to open the door of life to the boy, who had
been her pupil and whom she thought might pos-
sess a talent for the Understanding of life, had pos-
session of her. So strong was her passion that it
became something physical. Again her hands,
took hold of his shoulders and she turned him
about. In the dim light her eyes blazed. She
arose and laughed, not sharply as was customary
with her, but in a queer, hesitating way. "I must
be going," she said. "In a moment, if I stay, I'll
be wanting to kiss you."

In the newspaper office a confusion arose. Kate
Swift turned and walked to the door. She was a
teacher but she was also a woman. As she looked
at George Willard, the passionate desire to be
loved by a man, that had a thousand times before
swept like a storm over her body, took possession
of her. In the lamplight George Willard looked

THE TEACHER 195

no longer a boy, but a man ready to play the part
of a man.

The school teacher let George Willard take her
into his arms. In the warm little office the air
became suddenly heavy and the strength went out
of her body. Leaning against a low counter by
the door she waited. When he came and put a
hand on her shoulder she turned and let her body
fall heavily against him. For George Willard
the confusion was immediately increased. For a
moment he held the body of the woman tightly
against his body and then it stiffened. Two sharp
little fists began to beat on his face. When the
school teacher had run away and left him alone, he
walked up and down in the office swearing furi-
ously.

It was into this confusion that the Reverend
Curtis Hartman protruded himself. When he
came in George Willard thought the town had
gone mad. Shaking a bleeding fist in the air, the
minister proclaimed the woman George had only
a moment before held in his arms an instrument
of God bearing a message of truth.

George blew out the lamp by the window and
locking the door of the print shop went home.
Through the hotel office, past Hop Higgins lost in
his dream of the raising of ferrets, he went and up

196 WINESBURG, OHIO

into his own room. The fire in the stove had
gone out and he undressed in the cold. When he
got into bed the sheets were like blankets of dry
snow.

George Willard rolled about in the bed on
which he had lain in the afternoon hugging the
pillow and thinking thoughts of Kate Swift. The
words of the minister, who he thought had gone
suddenly insane, rang in his ears. His eyes stared
about the room. The resentment, natural to the
baffled male, passed and he tried to understand
what had happened. He could not make it out.
Over and over he turned the matter in his mind.
Hours passed and he began to think it must be
time for another day to come. At four o'clock he
pulled the covers up about his neck and tried to
sleep. When he became drowsy and closed his
eyes, he raised a hand and with it groped about in
the darkness. "I have missed something. I
have missed something Kate Swift was trying to
tell me," he muttered sleepily. Then he slept
and in all Winesburg he was the last soul on that
winter night to go CQ sleep,

LONELINESS 199

* "» 4 been drinking and the incident amused

^ against the wall of a building

fhat another man stopped

LONELINfiStwo went away to-

HE was the son of Mrs. Al Robinson who
once owned a farm on a side road leading
off Trunion Pike, east of Winesburg and
two miles beyond the town limits. The farm-
house was painted brown and the blinds to all of
the windows facing the road were kept closed. In
the road before the house a flock of chickens, ac-
companied by two guinea hens, lay in the deep
dust. Enoch lived in the house with his mother
in those days and when he was a young boy went
to school at the Winesburg High School. Old
citizens remembered him as a quiet, smiling youth
inclined to silence. He walked in the middle of
the road when he came into town and sometimes
read a book. Drivers of teams had to shout and
swear to make him realize where he was so that
he would turn out of the beaten track and let them
pass.

When he was twenty-one years old Enoch went
to New York City and was a city man for fifteen
years. He studied French and went to an art
school, hoping to develop a faculty he had for
drawing. In his own mind he planned to go to

197

196 WINESBURG, OHIO

into his own room. The fire in the rlnong the
gone out and he undressed in th* "~u out
got into bed the sheets ^Tut for Enoch Robinson,
'"•ow.,^,^ -nough and he had many odd

delicate thoughts hidden away in his brain that
might have expressed themselves through the
brush of a painter, but he was always a child and
that was a handicap to his worldly development.
He never grew up and of course he couldn't under-
stand people and he couldn't make people under-
stand him. The child in him kept bumping
against things, against actualities like money and
sex and opinions. Once he was hit by a street
car and thrown against an iron post. That made
him lame. It was one of the many things that
kept things from turning out for Enoch Robinson.
In New York City, when he first went there to
live and before he became confused and discon-
certed by the facts of life, Enoch went about a
good deal with young men. He got into a group
of other young artists, both men and women, and
in the evenings they sometimes came to visit him
in his room. Once he got drunk and was taken
to a police station where a police magistrate
frightened him horribly, and once he tried to have
an affair with a woman of the town met on the
sidewalk before his lodging house. The woman
and Enoch walked together three blocks and then
the young man grew afraid and ran away. The

LONELINESS 199

woman had been drinking and the incident amused
her. She leaned against the wall of a building
and laughed so heartily that another man stopped
and laughed with her. The two went away to-
gether, still laughing, and Enoch crept off to his
room trembling and vexed.

The room in which young Robinson lived in
New York faced Washington Square and was long
and narrow like a hallway. It is important to
get that fixed in your mind. The story of Enoch
is in fact the story of a room almost more than it
is the story of a man.

And so into the room in the evening came young
Enoch's friends. There was nothing particularly
striking about them except that they were artists
of the kind that talk. Everyone knows of the
talking artists. Throughout all 'of the known his-
tory of the world they have gathered in rooms
and talked. They talk of art and are passion-
ately, almost feverishly, in earnest about it. They
think it matters much more than it does.

And so these people gathered and smoked cig-
arettes and talked and Enoch Robinson, the boy
from the farm near Winesburg, was there. He
stayed in a corner and for the most part said
nothing. How his big blue childlike eyes stared
about ! On the walls were pictures he had made,
crude things, half finished. His friends talked of
these. Leaning back in their chairs, they talked

200 WINESBURG, OHIO

and talked with their heads rocking from side to
side. Words were said about line and values and
composition, lots of words, such as are always
being said.

Enoch wanted to talk too but he didn't know
how. He was too excited to talk coherently.
When he tried he sputtered and stammered and
his voice sounded strange and squeaky to him.
That made him stop talking. He knew what he
wanted to say, but he knew also that he could never
by any possibility say it. When a picture he had
painted was under discussion, he wanted to burst
out with something like this : "You don't get the
point," he wanted to explain: "the picture you
see doesn't consist of the things you see and say
words about. There is something else, some-
thing you don't see at all, something you aren't
intended to see. Look at this one over here, by
the door here, where the light from the window
falls on it. The dark spot by the road that you
might not notice at all is, you see, the beginning
of everything. There is a clump of elders there
such as used to grow beside the road before our
house back in Winesburg, Ohio, and in among the
elders there is something hidden. It is a woman,
that's what it is. She has been thrown from a
horse and the horse has run away out of sight.
Do you not see how the old man who drives a
cart looks anxiously about? That is Thad Gray-

LONELINESS 2OI

back who has a farm' up the road. He is taking
corn to Winesburg to be ground into meal at Com-
stock's mill. He knows there is something in
the elders, something hidden away, and yet he
doesn't quite know.

"It's a woman you see, that's what it is! It's
a woman and, oh, she is lovely! She is hurt and
is suffering but she makes no sound. Don't you
see how it is? She lies quite still, white and still,
and the beauty comes out from her and spreads
over everything. It is in the sky back there and
all around everywhere. I didn't try to paint the
woman, of course. She is too beautiful to be
painted. How dull to talk of composition and
such things ! Why do you not look at the sky and
then run away as I used to do when I was a boy
back there in Winesburg, Ohio ?"

That is the kind t>f thing young Enoch Robin-
son trembled to say to the guests who came into
his room when he was a young fellow in New York
City, but he always ended by saying nothing.
Then he began to doubt his own mind. He was
afraid the things he felt were not getting expressed
in the pictures he painted. In a half indignant
mood he stopped inviting people into his room and
presently got into the habit of locking the door.
He began to think that enough people had visited
him, that he did not need people any more. With
quick imagination he began to invent his own peo-

202 WINESBURG, OHIO

pie to whom he could really talk and to whom he
explained the things he had been unable to explain
to living people. His room began to be inhabited
by the spirits of men and women among whom he
went, in his turn saying words. It was as though
every one Enoch Robinson had ever seen had left
with him some essence of himself, something he
could mould and change to suit his own fancy,
something that understood all about such things as
the wounded woman behind the elders in the
pictures.

The mild, blue-eyed young Ohio boy was a
complete egotist, as all children are egotists. He
did not want friends for the quite simple reason
that no child wants friends. He wanted most of
all the people of his own mind, people with whom
he could really talk, people he could harangue and
scold by the hour, servants, you see, to his fancy.
Among these people he was always self-confident
and bold. They might talk, to be sure, and even
have opinions of their own, but always he talked
last and best. He was like a writer busy among
the figures of his brain, a kind of tiny blue-eyed
king he was, in a six-dollar room facing Washing-
ton Square in the city of New York.

Then Enoch Robinson got married. He be-
gan to get lonely and to want to touch actual flesh
and bone people with his hands. Days passed
when his room seemed empty. Lust visited his

LONELINESS 203

body and desire grew in his mind. At night
strange fevers, burning within, kept him awake.
He married a girl who sat in a chair next to his
own in the art school and went to live in an apart-
ment house in Brooklyn. Two children were
born to the woman he married, and Enoch got a
job in a place where illustrations are made for ad-
vertisements.

That began another phase of Enoch's life. He
began to play at a new game. For a while he was
very proud of himself in the role of producing
citizen of the world. He dismissed the essence of
things and played with realities. In the fall he
voted at an election and he had a newspaper
thrown on his porch each morning. When in the
evening he came home from work he got off a
street car and walked sedately along behind some
business man, striving to look very substantial and
important. As a payer of taxes he thought he
should post himself on how things are run. "I'm
getting to be of some moment, a real part of
things, of the state and the city and all that," he
told himself with an amusing miniature air of dig-
nity. Once coming home from Philadelphia, he
had a discussion with a man met on a train.
Enoch talked about the advisability of the govern-
ment's owning and operating the railroads and
the man gave him a cigar. It was Enoch's notion
that such a move on the part of the government

204 WINESBURG, OHI

would be a good thing, and he grew quite excited
as he talked. Later he remembered his own
words with pleasure. "I gave him something to
think about, that fellow/* he muttered to himself
as he climbed the stairs to his Brooklyn apart-
ment.

To be sure, Enoch's marriage did not turn out.
He himself brought it to an end. He began to
feel choked and walled in by the life in the apart-
ment, and to feel toward his wife and even toward
his children as he had felt concerning the friends
who once came to visit him. He began to tell
little lies about business engagements that would
give him freedom to walk alone in the street at
night and, the chance offering, he secretly re-rented
the room facing Washington Square. Then Mrs.
Al Robinson died on the farm near Winesburg,
and he got eight thousand dollars from the bank
that acted as trustee of her estate. That took
Enoch out of the world of men altogether. He
gave the money to his wife and told her he could
not live in the apartment any more. She cried and
was angry and threatened, but he only stared at
her and went his own way. In reality the wife
did not care much. She thought Enoch slightly in-
sane and was a little afraid of him. When it was
quite sure that he would never come back, she took
the two children and went to a village in Connecti-
cut where she had lived as a girl. In the end she

LONELINESS 205

married a man who bought and sold real estate
and was contented enough.

And so Enoch Robinson stayed in the New
York room among the people of his fancy, play-
ing with them, talking to them, happy as a child is
happy. They were an odd lot, Enoch's people.
They were made, I suppose, out of real people he
had seen and who had for some obscure reason
made an appeal to him. There was a woman
with a sword in her hand, an old man with a long
white beard who went about followed by a dog, a
young girl whose stockings were always coming
down and hanging over her shoe tops. There
must have been two dozen of the shadow people,
invented by the child-mind of Enoch Robinson,
who lived in the room with him.

And Enoch was happy. Into the room he went:
and locked the door. With an absurd air of im-
portance he talked aloud, giving instructions, mak-
ing comments on life. He was happy and satis-
fied to go on making his living in the advertising
place until something happened. Of course some-
thing did happen. That is why he went back to
live in Winesburg and why we know about him.
The thing that happened was a woman. It would
be that way. He was too happy. Something
had to come into his world. Something had to
drive him out of the New York room to live out
his life, an obscure, jerky little figure, bobbing up

206 WINESBURG, OHIO

and down on the streets of an Ohio town at eve-
ning when the sun was going down behind the roof
of Wesley Mover's livery barn.

About the thing that happened. Enoch told
George Willard about it one night. He wanted
to talk to someone, and he chose the young news-
paper reporter because the two happened to be
thrown together at a time when the younger man
was in a mood to understand.

Youthful sadness, young man's sadness, the
sadness of a growing boy in a village at the year's
end opened the lips of the old man. The sadness
was in the heart of George Willard and was with-
out meaning, but it appealed to Enoch Robinson.

It rained on the evening when the two met and
talked, a drizzly wet October rain. The fruition
of the year had come and the night should have
been fine with a moon in the sky and the crisp
sharp promise of frost in the air, but it wasn't
that way. It rained and little puddles of water
shone under the street lamps on Main Street. In
the woods in the darkness beyond the Fair Ground
water dripped from the black trees. Beneath the
trees wet leaves were pasted against tree roots
that protruded from the ground. In gardens
back of houses in Winesburg dry shriveled potato
vines lay sprawling on the ground. Men who had
finished the evening meal and who had planned to
go uptown to talk the evening away with other

• . . LONELINESS 207

men at the back of some store changed their
minds. George Willard tramped about in the
rain and was glad that it rained. He felt that
way. He was like Enoch Robinson on the eve-
nings when the old man came down out of his
room and wandered alone in the streets. He was
like that only that George Willard had become a
tall young man and did not think it manly to weep
and carry on. For a month his mother had been
very ill and that had something to do with his sad-
ness, but not much. He thought about himself
and to the young that always brings sadness.

Enoch Robinson and George Willard met be-
neath a wooden awning that extended out over the
sidewalk before Voight's wagon shop on Maumee
Street just off the main street of Winesburg.
They went together from there through the rain-
washed streets to the older man's room on the
third floor of the Heffner Block. The young re-
porter went willingly enough. Enoch Robinson
asked him to go after the two had talked for ten
minutes. The boy was a little afraid but had
never been more curious in his life. A hundred
times he had heard the old man spoken of as a
little off his head and he thought himself rather
brave and manly to go at all. From the very be-
ginning, in the street in the rain, the old man
talked in a queer way, trying to tell the story of
the room in Washington Square and of his life in

208 WINESBURG, OHIO

the room. "You'll understand if you try hard
enough," he said conclusively. "I have looked at
you when you went past me on the street and I
think you can understand. It isn't hard. All
you have to do is to believe what I say, just listen
and believe, that's all there is to it."

It was past eleven o'clock that evening when
Old Enoch, talking to George Willard in the room
in the Heffner Block, came to the vital thing, the
story of the woman and of what drove him out
of the city to live out his life alone and defeated
in Winesburg. He sat on a cot by the window
with his head in his hand and George Willard
was in a chair by a table. A kerosene lamp sat
on the table and the room, although almost bare
of furniture, was scrupulously clean. As the man
talked George Willard began to feel that he
would like to get out of the chair and sit on the
cot also. He wanted to put his arms about the
little old man. In the half darkness the man
talked and the boy listened, filled with sadness.

"She got to coming in there after there hadn't
been anyone in the room for years," said Enoch
Robinson. "She saw me in the hallway of the
house and we got acquainted. I don't know just
what she did in her own room. I never went
there. I think she was a musician and played a
violin. Every now and then she came and
knocked at the door and I opened it. In she came

LONELINESS 209

and sat down beside me, just sat and looked about
and said nothing. Anyway, she said nothing that
mattered."

The old man arose from the cot and moved
about the room. The overcoat he wore was wet
from the rain and drops of water kept falling
with a soft little thump on the floor. When he
again sat upon the cot George Willard got out of
the chair and sat beside him.

"I had a feeling about her. She sat there in
the room with me and she was too big for the
room. I felt that she was driving everything else
away. We just talked of little things, but I
couldn't sit still. I wanted to touch her with my
fingers and to kiss her. Her hands were so
strong and her face was so good and she looked at
me all the time."

The trembling voice of the old man became si-
lent and his body shook as from a chill. "I was
afraid," he whispered. "I was terribly afraid.
I didn't want to let her come in when she knocked
at the door but I couldn't sit still. 'No, no,' I said
to myself, but I got up and opened the door just
the same. She was so grown up, you see. She
was a woman. I thought she would be bigger
than I was there in that room."

Enoch Robinson stared at George Willard, his
childlike blue eyes shining in the lamplight. Again
he shivered. "I wanted her and all the time I

210 WINESBURG, OHIO

didn't want her," he explained. "Then I began
to tell her about my people, about everything that
meant anything to me. I tried to keep quiet, to
keep myself to myself, but I couldn't. I felt just
as I did about opening the door. Sometimes I
ached to have her go away and never come back
any more.'*

The old man sprang to his feet and his voice
shook with excitement. "One night something
happened. I became mad to make her understand
me and to know what a big thing I was in that
room. I wanted her to see how important I was.
I told her over and over. When she tried to go
away, I ran and locked the door. I followed her
about. I talked and talked and then all of a sud-
den things went to smash. A look came into her
eyes and I knew she did understand. Maybe she
had understood all the time. I was furious. I
couldn't stand it. I wanted her to understand but,
don't you see, I couldn't let her understand. I
felt that then she would know everything, that
I would be submerged, drowned out, you see.
That's how it is. I don't know why."

The old man dropped into a chair by the lamp
and the boy listened, filled with awe. "Go away,
boy," said the man. "Don't stay here with me
any more.. I thought it might be a good thing to
tell you but it isn't. I don't want to talk any
more. Go away."

LONELINESS 211

George Willard shook his head and a note of
command came into his voice. "Don't stop now.
Tell me the rest of it," he commanded sharply.
"What happened? Tell me the rest of the
story."

Enoch Robinson sprang to his feet and ran to
the window that looked down into the deserted
main street of Winesburg. George Willard fol-
lowed. By the window the two stood, the tall
awkward boy-man and the little wrinkled man-
boy. The childish, eager voice carried forward
the tale. "I swore at her," he explained. "I
said vile words. I ordered her to go away and
not to come back. Oh, I said terrible things. At
first she pretended not to understand but I kept at
it. I screamed and stamped on the floor. I made
the house ring with my curses. I didn't want ever
to see her again and I knew, after some of the
things I said, that I never would see her
again."

The old man's voice broke and he shook his
head. "Things went to smash," he said quietly
and sadly. "Out she went through the door and
all the life there had been in the room followed
her out. She took all of my people away. They
all went out through the door after her. That's
the way it was."

George Willard turned and went out of Enoch
Robinson's room. In the darkness by the win-

212 WINESBURG, OHIO

dow, as he went through the door, he could hear
the thin old voice whimpering and complaining.
"I'm alone, all alone here," said the voice. "It
was warm and friendly in my room but now I'm
all alone."

AN AWAKENING

BELLE CARPENTER had a dark skin, grey
eyes and thick lips. She was tall and
strong. When black thoughts visited her
she grew angry and wished she were a man and
could fight someone with her fists. She worked
in the millinery shop kept by Mrs. Nate McHugh
and during the day sat trimming hats by a window
at the rear of the store. She was the daughter
of Henry Carpenter, bookkeeper in the First Na-
tional Bank of Winesburg, and lived with him in
a gloomy old house far out at the end of Buckeye
Street. The house was surrounded by pine trees
and there was no grass beneath the trees. A rusty
tin eaves-trough had slipped from its fastenings
at the back of the house and when the wind blew
it beat against the roof of a small shed, making
a dismal drumming noise that sometimes persisted
all through the night.

When she was a young girl Henry Carpenter
made life almost unbearable for Belle, but as she
emerged from girlhood into womanhood he lost
his power over her. The bookkeeper's life was
made up of innumerable little pettinesses. When

213

214 WINESBURG, OHIO

he went to the bank in the morning he stepped into
a closet and put on a black alpaca coat that had
become shabby with age. At night when he re-
turned to his home he donned another black al-
paca coat. Every evening he pressed the clothes
worn in the streets. He had invented an arrange-
ment of boards for the purpose. The trousers to
his street suit were placed between the boards and
the boards were clamped together with heavy
screws. In the morning he wiped the boards with
a damp cloth and stood them upright behind the
dining room door. If they were moved during
the day he was speechless with anger and did not
recover his equilibrium for a week.

The bank cashier was a little bully and was
afraid of his daughter. She, he realized, knew
the story of his brutal treatment of her mother
and hated him for it. One day she went home at
noon and carried a handful of soft mud, taken
from the road, into the house. With the mud she
smeared the face of the boards used for the press-
ing of trousers and then went back to her work
feeling relieved and happy.

Belle Carpenter occasionally walked out in the
evening with George Willard. Secretly she loved
another man, but her love affair, about which no
one knew, caused her much anxiety. She was in
love with Ed Handby, bartender in Ed Griffith's
Saloon, and went about with the young reporter

AN AWAKENING 215

as a kind of relief to her feelings. She did not
think that her station in life would permit her to
be seen in the company of the bartender and
walked about under the trees with George Wil-
lard and let him kiss her to relieve a longing that
was very insistent in her nature. She felt that
she could keep the younger man within bounds.
About Ed Handby she was somewhat uncer-
tain.

Handby, the bartender, was a tall, broad-shoul-
dered man of thirty who lived in a room upstairs
above Griffith's saloon. His fists were large and
his eyes unusually small, but his voice, as though
striving to conceal the power back of his fists, was
soft and quiet.

At twenty-five the bartender had inherited a
large farm from an uncle in Indiana. When sold,
the farm brought in eight thousand dollars which
Ed spent in six months. Going to Sandusky, on
Lake Erie, he began an orgy of dissipation, the
story of which afterward filled his home town with
awe. Here and there he went throwing the
money about, driving carriages through the
streets, giving wine parties to crowds of men and
women, playing cards for high stakes and keeping
mistresses whose wardrobes cost him hundreds of
dollars. One night at a resort called Cedar
Point, he got into a fight and ran amuck like a
wild thing. With his fist he broke a large mirror

2l6 WINESBURG, OHIO

in the wash room of a hotel and later went about
smashing windows and breaking chairs in dance
halls for the joy of hearing the glass rattle on the
floor and seeing the terror in the eyes of clerks
who had come from Sandusky to spend the eve-
ning at the resort with their sweethearts.

The affair between Ed Handby and Belle Car-
penter on the surface amounted to nothing. He
had succeeded in spending but one evening in her
company. On that evening he hired a horse and
buggy at Wesley Mover's livery barn and took her
for a drive. The conviction that she was the
woman his nature demanded and that he must get
her settled upon him and he told her of his de-
sires. The bartender was ready to marry and to
begin trying to earn money for the support of his
wife, but so simple was his nature that he found
it difficult to explain his intentions. His body
ached with physical longing and with his body he
expressed .himself. Taking the milliner into his
arms and holding her tightly in spite of her strug-
gles, he kissed her until she became helpless. Then
he brought her back to town and let her out of the
buggy. "When I get hold of you again I'll not
let you go. You can't play with me," he de-
clared as he turned to drive away. Then, jump-
ing out of the buggy, he gripped her shoulders
with his strong hands. "I'll keep you for good
the next time," he said. "You might as well

AN AWAKENING 217

make up your mind to that. It's you and me for
it and I'm going to have you before I get through.1'
One night in January when there was a new
moon George Willard, who was in Ed Handby's
mind the only obstacle to his getting Belle Car-
penter, went for a walk. Early that evening
George went into Ransom Surbeck's pool room
with Seth Richmond and Art Wilson, son of the
town butcher. Seth Richmond stood with his
back against the wall and remained silent, but
George Willard talked. The pool room was
filled with Winesburg boys and they talked of
women. The young reporter got into that vein.
He said that women should look out for them-
selves, that the fellow who went out with a girl
was not responsible for what happened. As he
talked he looked about, eager for attention. He
held the floor for five minutes and then Art Wil-
son began to talk. Art was learning the barber's
trade in Cal Prouse's shop and already began to
consider himself an authority in such matters as
baseball, horse racing, drinking, and going about
with women. He began to tell of a night when he
with two men from Winesburg went into a house
of prostitution at the county seat. The butcher's
son held a cigar in the side of his mouth and as he
talked spat on the floor. "The women in the
place couldn't embarrass me although they tried
hard enough," he boasted. "One of the girls in

2l8 WINESBURG, OHIO

the house* tried to get fresh, but I fooled her. As
soon as she began to talk I went and sat in her lap.
Everyone in the room laughed when I kissed her.
I taught her to let me alone."

George Willard went out of the pool room and
into Main Street. For days the weather had been
bitter cold with a high wind blowing down on the
town from Lake Erie, eighteen miles to the north,
but on that night the wind had died away and a
new moon made the night unusually lovely.
Without thinking where he was going or what he
wanted to do, George went out of Main Street and
began walking in dimly lighted streets filled with
frame houses.

Out of doors under the black sky filled with
stars he forgot his companions of the pool room.
Because it was dark and he was alone he began to
talk aloud. In a spirit of play he reeled along
the street imitating a drunken man and then im-
agined himself a soldier clad in shining boots that
reached to the knees and wearing a sword that
jingled as he walked. As a soldier he pictured
himself as an inspector, passing before a long line
of men who stood at attention. He began to ex-
Jmine the accoutrements of the men. Before a
tree he stopped and began to scold. "Your pack
\s not in order," he said sharply. "How many
times will I have to speak of this matter? Every-
thing must be in order here. We have a difficult

AN AWAKENING 219

task before us and no difficult task can be done
without order."

Hypnotized by his own words, the young man
stumbled along the board sidewalk saying more
words. "There is a law for armies and for men
too," he muttered, lost in reflection. "The law
begins with little things and spreads out until it
covers everything. In every little thing there
must be order, in the place where men work, in
their clothes, in their thoughts. I myself must be
orderly. I must learn that law. I must get my-
self into touch with something orderly and big that
swings through the night like a star. In my little
way I must begin to learn something, to give and
swing and work with life, with the law."

George Willard stopped by a picket fence near
a street lamp and his body began to tremble. He
had never before thought such thoughts as had
just come into his head and he wondered where
they had come from. For the moment it seemed
to him that some voice outside of himself had
been talking as he walked. He was amazed and
delighted with his own mind and when he walked
on again spoke of the matter with fervor. "To
come out of Ransom Surbeck's pool room and
think things like that," he whispered. "It is bet-
ter to be alone. If I talked like Art Wilson the
boys would understand me but they wouldn't un-
derstand what IVe been thinking down here."

220 WINESBURG, OHIO

In Winesburg, as in all Ohio towns of twenty
years ago, there was a section in which lived day
laborers. As the time of factories had not yet
come, the laborers worked in the fields or were
section hands on the railroads. They worked
twelve hours a day and received one dollar for
the long day of toil. The houses in which they
lived were small cheaply constructed wooden af-
fairs with a garden at the back. The more com-
fortable among them kept cows and perhaps a pig,
housed in a little shed at the rear of the garden.

With his head filled with resounding thoughts,
George Willard walked into such a street on the
clear January night. The street was dimly
lighted and in places there was no sidewalk. In
the scene that lay about him there was something
that excited his already aroused fancy. For a
year he had been devoting all of his odd moments
to the reading of books and now some tale he had
read concerning life in old world towns of the
middle ages came sharply back to his mind so that
he stumbled forward with the curious feeling of
one revisiting a place that had been a part of some
former existence. On an impulse he turned out
of the street and went into a little dark alleyway
behind the sheds in which lived the cows and
pigs.

For a half hour he stayed in the alleyway,
smelling the strong smell of animals too closely

AN AWAKENING 221

housed and letting his mind play with the strange
new thoughts that came to him. The very rank-
ness of the smell of manure in the clear sweet air
awoke something heady in his brain. The poor
little houses lighted by kerosene lamps, the smoke
from the chimneys mounting straight up into the
clear air, the grunting of pigs, the women clad in
cheap calico dresses and washing dishes in the
kitchens, the footsteps of men coming out of the
houses and going off to the stores and saloons of
Main Street, the dogs barking and the children
crying — all of these things made him seem, as he
lurked in the darkness, oddly detached and apart
from all life.

The excited young man, unable to bear the
weight of his own thoughts, began to move cau-
tiously along the alleyway. A dog attacked him
and had to be driven away with stones, and a man
appeared at the door of one of the houses and
swore at the dog. George went into a vacant lot
;and throwing back his head looked up at the sky.
He felt unutterably big and remade by the simple
experience through which he had been passing and
in a kind of fervor of emotion put up his hands,
thrusting them into the darkness above his head
and muttering words. The desire to say words
overcame him and he said words without meaning,
rolling them over on his tongue and saying them
because they were brave words, full of meaning.

222 WINESBURG, OHIO

"Death," he muttered, "night, the sea, fear, love-
liness."

George Willard came out of the vacant lot and
stood again on the sidewalk facing the houses.
He felt that all of the people in the little street
must be brothers and sisters to him and he wished
he had the courage to call them out of their houses
and to shake their hands. "If there were only a
woman here I would take hold of her hand and
we would run until we were both tired out," he
thought. "That would make me feel better."
With the thought of a woman in his mind he
walked out of the street and went toward the
house where Belle Carpenter lived. He thought
she would understand his mood and that he could
achieve in her presence a position he had long
been wanting to achieve. In the past when he
had been with her and had kissed her lips he had
come away filled with anger at himself. He had
felt like one being used for some obscure purpose
and had not enjoyed the feeling. Now he thought
he had suddenly become too big to be used.

When George got to Belle Carpenter's house
there had already been a visitor there before him.
Ed Handby had come to the door and calling
Belle out of the house had tried to talk to her.
He had wanted to ask the woman to come away
with him and to be his wife, but when she came
and stood by the door he lost his self-assurance

AN AWAKENING 223

and became sullen. "You stay away from that
kid," he growled, thinking of George Willard, and
then, not knowing what else to say, turned to go
away. "If I catch you together I will break your
bones and his too," he added. The bartender
had come to woo, not to threaten, and was angry
with himself because of his failure.

When her lover had departed Belle went in-
doors and ran hurriedly upstairs. From a win-
dow at the upper part of the house she saw Ed
Handby cross the street and sit down on a horse
block before the house of a neighbor. In the dim
light the man sat motionless holding his head in
his hands. She was made happy by the sight,
and when George Willard came to the door she
greeted him effusively and hurriedly put on her
hat. She thought that, as she walked through the
streets with young Willard, Ed Handby would
follow and she wanted to make him suffer.

For an hour Belle Carpenter and the young
reporter walked about under the trees in the sweet
night air. George Willard was full of big words.
The sense of power that had come to him during
the hour in the darkness in the alleyway remained
with him and he talked boldly, swaggering along
and swinging his arms about. He wanted to
make Belle Carpenter realize that he was aware of
his former weakness and that he had changed.
"You'll find me different," he declared, thrusting

224 WINESBURG, OHIO

his hands into his pockets and looking boldly into
her eyes. "I don't know why but it is so. You've
got to take me for a man or let me alone. That's
how it is."

Up and down the quiet streets under the new
moon went the woman and the boy. When
George had finished talking they turned down a
side street and went across a bridge into a path
that ran up the side of a hill. The hill began at
Waterworks Pond and climbed upwards to the
Winesburg Fair Grounds. On the hillside grew
dense bushes and small trees and among the
bushes were little open spaces carpeted with long
grass, now stiff and frozen.

As he walked behind the woman up the hill
George Willard's heart began to beat rapidly and
his shoulders straightened. Suddenly he decided
that Belle Carpenter was about to surrender her-
self to him. The new force that had manifested
itself in him had, he felt, been at work upon her
and had led to her conquest. The thought made
him half drunk with the sense of masculine power.
Although he had been annoyed that as they walked
about she had not seemed to be listening to his
words, the fact that she had accompanied him to
this place took all his doubts away. "It is dif-
ferent. Everything has become different," he
thought and taking hold of her shoulder turned

AN AWAKENING 225

her about and stood looking at her, his eyes shining
with pride.

Belle Carpenter did not resist. When he
kissed her upon the lips she leaned heavily against
him and looked over his shoulder into the dark-
ness. In her whole attitude there was a sugges-
tion of waiting. Again, as in the alleyway,
George Willard's mind ran off into words and,
holding the woman tightly he whispered the words
into the still night. "Lust," he whispered, "lust
and night and women."

George Willard did not understand what hap-
pened to him that night on the hillside. Later,
when he got to his own room, he wanted to weep
and then grew half insane with anger and hate.
He hated Belle Carpenter and was sure that all
his life he would continue to hate her. On the
hillside he had led the woman to one of the little
open spaces among the bushes and had dropped to
his knees beside her. As in the vacant lot, by the
laborers' houses, he had put up his hands in grat-
itude for the new power in himself and was wait-
ing for the woman to speak when Ed Handby
appeared.

The bartender did not want to beat the boy,
who he thought had tried to take his woman away.
He knew that beating was unnecessary, that he had
power within himself to accomplish his purpose

226 WINESBURG, OHIO

without using his fists. Gripping George by the
shoulder and pulling him to his feet, he held him
with one hand while he looked at Belle Carpenter
seated on the grass. Then with a quick wide
movement of his arm he sent the younger man
sprawling away into the bushes and began to bully
the woman, who had risen to her feet "You're
no good," he said roughly. "I've half a mind
not to bother with you. I'd let you alone if I
didn't want you so much."

On his hands and knees in the bushes George
Willard stared at the scene before him and tried
hard to think. He prepared to spring at the man
who had humiliated him. To be beaten seemed
to be infinitely better than to be thus hurled igno-
miniously aside.

Three times the young reporter sprang at Ed
Handby and each time the bartender, catching him
by the shoulder, hurled him back into the bushes.
The older man seemed prepared to keep the ex-
ercise going indefinitely but George Willard's
head struck the root of a tree and he lay still.
Then Ed Hanby took Belle Carpenter by the arm
and marched her away.

George heard the man and woman making their
way through the bushes. As he crept down the
hillside his heart was sick within him. He hated
himself and he hated the fate that had brought
about his humiliation. When his mind went back

AN AWAKENING 227

to the hour alone in the alleyway he was puzzled
and stopping in the darkness listened, hoping to
hear again the voice outside himself that had so
short a time before put new courage into his heart.
When his way homeward led him again into the
street of frame houses he could not bear the sight
and began to run, wanting to get quickly out of
the neighborhood that now seemed to him utterly
squalid and commonplace,

"QUEER"

FROM his seat on a bcr in the rough board
shed that stuck like a burr on the rear of
Cowley & Son's store in Winesburg, Elmer
Cowley, the junior member of the firm, could
see through a dirty window into the printshop
of the fPinesburg Eagle. Elmer was putting
new shoelaces in his shoes. They did not go
in readily and he had to take the shoes off.
With the shoes in his hand he sat looking at a
large hole in the heel of one of his stockings.
Then looking quickly up he saw George Willard,
the only newspaper reporter in Winesburg, stand-
ing at the back door of the Eagle printshop and
staring absent-mindedly about. "Well, well, what
next 1" exclaimed the young man with the shoes in
his hand, jumping to his feet and creeping away
from the window.

A flush crept into Elmer Cowley' s face and his
hands began to tremble. In Cowley & Son's store
a Jewish traveling salesman stood by the counter
talking to his father. He imagined the reporter
could hear what was being said and the thought
made him furious. With one of the shoes still

228

"QUEER7 229

held in his hand he stood in a corner of the shed
and stamped with a stockinged foot upon the
board floor.

Cowley & Son's store did not face the main
street of Winesburg. The front was on Maumee
Street and beyond it was Voight's wagon shop
and a shed for the sheltering of farmers' horses.
Beside the store an alleyway ran behind the main
street stores and all day drays and delivery
wagons, intent on bringing in and taking out
goods, passed up and down. The store itself was
indescribable. Will Henderson once said of it
that it sold everything and nothing. In the win-
dow facing Maumee Street stood a chunk of coal
as large as an apple barrel, to indicate that orders
for coal were taken, and beside the black mass of
the coal stood three combs of honey grown brown
and dirty in their wooden frames.

The honey had stood in the store window for
six months. It was for sale as were also the coat
hangers, patent suspender buttons, cans of roof
paint, bottles of rheumatism cure and a substitute
for coffee that companioned the honey in its patient
willingness to serve the public.

Ebenezer Cowley, the man who stood in the
store listening to the eager patter of words that
fell from the lips of the traveling man, was tall
and lean and looked unwashed. On his scrawny
neck was a large wen partially covered by a grey

230 WINESBURG, OHIO

beard. He wore a long Prince Albert coat.
The coat had been purchased to serve as a wed-
ding garment. Before he became a merchant
Ebenezer was a farmer and after his marriage he
wore the Prince Albert coat to church on Sundays
and on Saturday afternoons when he came into
town to trade. When he sold the farm to become
a merchant he wore the coat constantly. It had
become brown with age and was covered with
grease spots, but in it Ebenezer always felt dressed
up and ready for the day in town.

As a merchant Ebenezer was not happily placed
in life and he had not been happily placed as a
farmer. Still he existed. His family, consisting
of a daughter named Mabel and the son, lived
with him in rooms above the store and it did not
cost them much to live. His troubles were not
financial. His unhappiness as a merchant lay in
the fact that when a traveling man with wares to
be sold came in at the front door he was afraid.
Behind the counter he stood shaking his head.
He was afraid, first that he would stubbornly re-
fuse to buy and fhus lose the opportunity to sell
again; second that he would not be stubborn
enough and would in a moment of weakness buy
what could not be sold.

In the store on the morning when Elmer Cow-
ley saw George Willard standing and apparently
listening at the back door of the Eagle printshop,

"QUEER" 231

a situation had arisen that always stirred the son's
wrath. The traveling man talked and Ebenezer
listened, his whole figure expressing uncertainty.
"You see how quickly it is done," said the travel-
ing man who had for sale a small flat metal sub-
stitute for collar buttons. With one hand he
quickly unfastened a collar from his shirt and then
fastened it on again. He assumed a flattering
wheedling tone. "I tell you what, men have come
to the end of all this fooling with collar buttons
and you are the man to make money out of the
change that is coming. I am offering you the ex-
clusive agency for this town. Take twenty dozen
of these fasteners and I'll not visit any other store.
I'll leave the field to you."

The traveling man leaned over the counter and
tapped with his finger on Ebenezer's breast. "It's
an opportunity and I want you to take it," he
urged. "A friend of mine told me about you.
'See that man Cowley,' he said. 'He's a live

one.'

The traveling man paused and waited. Tak-
ing a book from his pocket he began writing out
the order. Still holding the shoe in his hand
Elmer Cowley went through the store, past the
two absorbed men, to a glass show case near the
front door. He took a cheap revolver from the
case and began to wave it about. "You get out
of here!" he shrieked. "We don't want any col-

232 WINESBURG, OHIO

lar fasteners here." An idea came to him.
"Mind, I'm not making any threat," he added.
"I don't say I'll shoot. Maybe I just took this
gun out of the case to look at it. But you better
get out. Yes sir, I'll say that. You better grab
up your things and get out."

The young storekeeper's voice rose to a scream
and going behind the counter he began to ad-
vance upon the two men. "We're through being
fools here!" he cried. "We ain't going to buy
any more stuff until we begin to sell. We ain't
going to keep on being queer and have folks
staring and listening. You get out of here !"

The traveling man left. Raking the samples
of collar fasteners off the counter mtq a black
leather bag, he ran. He was a small man and
very bow-legged and he ran awkwardly. The
black bag caught against the door and he stumbled
and fell. "Crazy, that's what he is — crazy!" he
sputtered as he arose from the sidewalk and hur-
ried away.

In the store Elmer Cowley and his father stared
at each other. Now that the immediate object of
his wrafh had fled, the younger man was em-
barrassed. "Well, I meant it. I think we've
been queer long enough," he declared, going to
the showcase and replacing the revolver. Sitting
on a barrel he pulled on and fastened the shoe he
had been holding in his hand. He was waiting

"QUEER" 233

for some word of understanding from his father
but when Ebenezer spoke his words only served to
reawaken the wrath in the son and the young man
ran out of the store without replying. Scratching
his grey beard with his long dirty lingers, the
merchant looked at his son with the same wa-
vering uncertain stare with which he had con-
fronted the traveling man. "I'll be starched,"
he said softly. "Well, well, I'll be washed and
ironed and stardied!"

Elmer Cowley went out of Winesburg and
along a country road that paralleled the railroad
track. He did not know where he was going or
what he was going to do. In the shelter of a deep
cut where the road, after turning sharply to the
right, dipped under the tracks he stopped and the
passion that had been the cause of his outburst in
the store began to again find expression. "I will
not be queer — one to be looked at and listened
to," he declared aloud. "I'll be like other people.
I'll show that George Willard. He'll find out.
I'll show him!"

The distraught young man stood in the middle
of the road and glared back at the town. He did
not know the reporter George Willard and had
no special feeling concerning the tall boy who ran
about town gathering the town news. The re-
porter had merely come, by his presence in the
office and in the printshop of the Winesburg Eagle,

234 WINESBURG, OHIO

to stand for something in the young merchant's
mind. He thought the boy who passed and re-
passed Cowley & Son's store and who stopped to
talk to people in the street must be thinking of him
and perhaps laughing at him. George Willard,
he felt, belonged to the town, typified the town,
represented in his person the spirit of the town.
Elmer Cowley could not have believed that
George Willard had also his days of unhappiness,
that vague hungers and secret unnamable desires
visited also his mind. Did he not represent pub-
lic opinion and had not the public opinion of
Winesburg condemned the Cowleys to queerness?
Did he not walk whistling and laughing through
Main Street ? Might not one by striking his per-
son strike also the greater enemy — the thing that
smiled and went its own way — the judgment of
Winesburg?

Elmer Cowley was extraordinarily tall and his
arms were long and powerful. His hair, his eye-
brows, and the downy beard that had begun to
grow upon his chin, were pale almost to white-
ness. His teeth protruded from between his lips
and his eyes were blue with the colorless blueness
of the marbles called "aggies" that the boys of
Winesburg carried in their pockets. Elmer had
lived in Winesburg for a year and had made no
friends. He was, he felt, one condemned to go

"QUEER" 235

through life without friends and he hated the
thought.

Sullenly the tall young man tramped along the
road with his hands stuffed into his trouser
pockets. The day was cold with a raw wind, but
presently the sun began to shine and the road be-
came soft and muddy. The tops of the ridges of
frozen mud that formed the road began to melt
and the mud clung to Elmer's shoes. His feet
became cold. When he had gone several miles he
turned off the road, crossed a field and entered a
wood. In the wood he gathered sticks to build
a fire by which he sat trying to warm himself, mis-
erable in body and in mind.

For two hours he sat on the log by the fire and
then, arising and creeping cautiously through a
mass of underbrush, he went to a fence and looked
across fields to a small farmhouse surrounded by
low sheds. A smile came to his lips and he began
making motions with his long arms to a man who
was husking corn in one of the fields.

In his hour of misery the young merchant had
returned to the farm where he had lived through
boyhood and where there was another human
being to whom he felt he could explain himself.
The man on the farm was a half-witted old fellow
named Mook. He had once been employed by
Ebenezer Cowley and had stayed on the farm

236 WINESBURG, OHIO

when it was sold. The old man lived in one of
the unpainted sheds back of the farmhouse and
puttered about all day in the fields.

Mook the half-wit lived happily. With child-
like faith he believed in the intelligence of the ani-
mals that lived in the sheds with him, and when he
was lonely held long conversations with the cows,
the pigs, and even with the chickens that ran about
the barnyard. He it was who had put the ex-
pression regarding being "laundered" into the
mouth of his former employer. When excited or
surprised by anything he smiled vaguely and mut-
tered: "I'll be washed and ironed. Well, well,
I'll be washed and ironed and starched."

When the half-witted old man left his husking
of corn and came into the wood to meet Elmer
Cowley, he was neither surprised nor especially
interested in the sudden appearance of the young
man. His feet also were cold and he sat on the
log by the fire, grateful for the warmth and
apparently indifferent to what Elmer had to
say.

Elmer talked earnestly and with great freedom,
walking up and down and waving his arms about.
"You don't understand what's the matter with me
so of course you don't care," he declared. "With
me it's different. Look how it has always been
with me. Father is queer and mother was queer,
too. Even the clothes mother used to wear were

"QUEER" 237

not like other people's clothes, and look at that
coat in which father goes about there in town,
thinking he's dressed up, too. Why don't he
get a new one ? It wouldn't cost much. I'll tell
you why. Father doesn't know and when mother
was alive she didn't know either. Mabel is dif-
ferent. She knows but she won't say anything.
I will, though. I'm not going to be stared at any
longer. Why look here, Mook, father doesn't
know that his store there in town is just a queer
jumble, that he'll never sell the stuff he buys.
He knows nothing about it. Sometimes he's a
little worried that trade doesn't come and then
he goes and buys something else. In the evenings
he sits by the fire upstairs and says trade will come
after a while. He isn't worried. He's queer.
He doesn't know enough to be worried."

The excited young man became more excited.
uHe don't know but I know," he shouted, stop-
ping to gaze down into the dumb, unresponsive
face of the half-wit. "I know too well. I can't
stand it. When we lived out here it was different.
I worked and at night I went to bed and slept. I
wasn't always seeing people and thinking as I am
now. In the evening, there in town, I go to the
post office or to the depot to see the train come
in, and no one says anything to me. Everyone
stands around and laughs and they talk but they
say nothing to me. Then I feel so queer that I

238 WINESBURG, OHIO

can't talk either. I go away. I don't say any-
thing. I can't."

The fury of the young man became uncontrolla-
ble. "I won't stand it," he yelled, looking up at
the bare branches of the trees. "I'm not made to
stand it."

Maddened by the dull face of the man on the
log by the fire, Elmer turned and glared at him as
he had glared back along the road at the town
of Winesburg. "Go on back to work," he
screamed. "What good does it do me to talk to
you?" A thought came to him and his voice
dropped. "I'm a coward too, eh?" he muttered.
"Do you know why I came clear out here afoot?
I had to tell some one and you were the only one
I could tell. I hunted out another queer one, you
see. I ran away, that's what I did. I couldn't
stand up to some one like that George Willard.
I had to come to yo«. I ought to tell him and I
will."

Again his voice arose to a shout and his arms
flew about. "I will tell him. I won't be queer.
I don't care what they think. I won't stand it."

Elmer Cowley ran out of the woods leaving the
half-wit sitting on the log before the fire. Pres-
ently the old man arose and climbing over the
fence went back to his work in the corn. "I'll be
washed and ironed and starched," he declared.
"Well, well, I'll be washed and ironed." Mook

"QUEER" 239

was interested. He went along a lane to a field
where two cows stood nibbling at a straw stack.
"Elmer was here," he said to the cows. "Elmer
is crazy. You better get behind the stack where
he don't see you. He'll hurt someone yet, Elmer
will."

At eight o'clock that evening Elmer Cowley
put his head in at the front door of the office of
the Winesburg Eagle where George Willard sat
writing. His cap was pulled down over his eyes
and a sullen determined look was on his face.
"You come on outside with me," he said, stepping
in and closing the door. He kept his hand on the
knob as though prepared to resist anyone else
coming in. "You just come along outside. I
want to see you."

George Willard and Elmer Cowley walked
through the main street of Winesburg. The
night was cold and George Willard had on a new
overcoat and looked very spruce and dressed up.
He thrust his hands into the overcoat pockets and
looked inquiringly at his companion. He had
long been wanting to make friends with the young
merchant and find out what was in his mind.
Now he thought he saw a chance and was de-
lighted. "I wonder what he's up to? Perhaps
he thinks he has a piece of news for the paper.
It can't be a fire because I haven't heard the fire
bell and there isn't anyone running," he thought.

240 WINESBURG,OHIO

In the main street of Winesburg, on the cold
November evening, but few citizens appeared and
these hurried along bent on getting to the stove
at the back of some store. The windows of the
stores were frosted and the wind rattled the tin
sign that hung over the entrance to the stairway
leading to Doctor Welling's office. Before
Hearn's Grocery a basket of apples and a rack
filled with new brooms stood on the sidewalk.
Elmer Cowley stopped and stood facing George
Willard. He tried to talk and his arms began
to pump up and down. His face worked spas-
modically. He seemed about to shout. "Oh,
you go on back," he cried. "Don't stay out here
with me. I ain't got anything to tell you. I
don't want to see you at all."

For three hours the distracted young merchant
wandered through the resident streets of Wines-
burg blind with anger, brought on by his failure
to declare his determination not to be queer. Bit-
terly the sense of defeat settled upon him and he
wanted to weep. After the hours of futile sput-
tering at nothingness that had occupied the after-
noon and his failure in Che presence of the young
reporter, he thought he could see no hope of a
future for himself.

And then a new idea dawned for him. In the
darkness that surrounded him he began to see a
light. Going to the now darkened store, where

"QUEER" 241

Cowley & Son had for over a year waited vainly
for trade to come, he crept stealthily in and felt
about in a barrel that stood by the stove at the
rear. In the barrel beneath shavings lay a tin
box containing Cowley & Son's cash. Every
evening Ebenezer Cowley put the box in the bar-
rel when he closed the store and went upstairs to
bed. "They wouldn't never think of a careless
place like that," he told himself, thinking of rob-
bers.

Elmer took twenty dollars, two ten dollar bills,
from the little roll containing perhaps four hun-
dred dollars, the cash left from the sale of the
farm. Then replacing the box beneath the shav-
ings he went quietly out at the front door and
walked again in the streets.

The idea that he thought might put an end to
all of his unhappiness was very simple. "I will
get out of here, run away from home," he told
himself. He knew that a local freight train passed
through Winesburg at midnight and went on to
Cleveland where it arrived at dawn. He would
steal a ride on the local and when he got to Cleve-
land would lose himself in the crowds there. He
would get work in some shop and become friends
with the other workmen. Gradually he would be-
come like other men and would be indistinguish-
able. Then he could talk and laugh. He would
no longer be queer and would make friends. Life

242 WINESBURG, OHIO

would begin to have warmth and meaning for him
as it had for others.

The tall awkward young man, striding through
the streets, laughed at himself because he had been
angry and had been half afraid of George Wil-
lard. He decided he would have his talk with
the young reporter before he left town, that he
would tell him about things, perhaps challenge
him, challenge all of Winesburg through him.

Aglow with new confidence Elmer went to the
office of the New Willard House and pounded
on the door. A sleep-eyed boy slept on a cot in
the office. He received no salary but was fed at
the hotel table and bore with pride the title of
"night clerk." Before the boy Elmer was bold,
insistent. "You wake him up," he commanded.
"You tell him to come down by the depot. I got
to see him and I'm going away on the local. Tell
him to dress and come on down. I ain't got
much time."

The midnight local had finished its work in
Winesburg and the trainsmen were coupling cars,
swinging lanterns and preparing to resume their
flight east. George Willard, rubbing his eyes and
again wearing the new overcoat, ran down to the
station platform afire with curiosity. "Well,
here I am. What do you want? YouVe got
something to tell me, eh?" he said.

Elmer tried to explain. He wet his lips with

"QUEER" 243

his tongue and looked at the train that had begun
to groan and get under way. "Well, you see,1*
he began, and then lost control of his tongue.
"I'll be washed and ironed. I'll be washed and
ironed and starched," he muttered half incoher-
ently.

Elmer Cowley danced with fury beside the
groaning train in the darkness on the station plat-
form. Lights leaped into the air and bobbed up
and down before his eyes. Taking the two ten
dollar bills from his pocket he thrust them into
George Willard's hand. "Take them," he cried.
"I don't want them. Give them to father. I
stole them." With a snarl of rage he turned and
his long arms began to flay the air. Like one
struggling for release from hands that held him
he struck out, hitting George Willard blow after
blow on the breast, the neck, the mouth. The
young reporter rolled over on the platform half
unconscious, stunned by the terrific force of the
blows. Springing aboard the passing train and
running over the tops of cars, Elmer sprang down
to a flat car and lying on his face looked back,
trying to see the fallen man in the darkness.
Pride surged up in him. "I showed him," he
cried. "I guess I showed him. I ain't so queer.
I guess I showed him I ain't so queer."

THE UNTOLD LIE

RAY PEARSON and Hal Winters were
farm hands employed on a farm three
miles north of Winesburg. On Saturday
afternoons they came into town and wandered
about through the streets with other fellows from
the country.

Ray was a quiet, rather nervous man of perhaps
fifty with a brown beard and shoulders rounded
by too much and too hard labor. In his nature
he was as unlike Hal Winters as two men can be
unlike.

Ray was an altogether serious man and had a
little sharp featured wife who had also a sharp
voice. The two, with half a dozen thin legged
children, lived in a tumble-down frame house be-
side a creek at the back end of the Wills farm
where Ray was employed.

Hal Winters, his fellow employee, was a young
fellow. He was not of the Ned Winters fam-
ily, who were very respectable people in Wines-
burg, but was one of the three sons of the old man
called Windpeter Winters who had a sawmill near
Unionville, six miles away, and who was looked

244

THE UNTOLD LIE 245

upon by everyone in Winesburg as a confirmed
old reprobate.

People from the part of Northern Ohio in
which Winesburg lies will remember old Wind-
peter by his unusual and tragic death. He got
drunk one evening in town and started to drive
home to Unionville along the railroad tracks.
Henry Brattenburg, the butcher, who lived out
that way, stopped him at the edge of the town and
told him he was sure to meet the down train but
Windpeter slashed at him with his whip and drove
on. When the train struck and killed him and
his two horses a farmer and his wife who were
driving home along a nearby road saw the acci-
dent. They said that old Windpeter stood up on
the seat of his wagon, raving and swearing at the
onrushing locomotive, and that he fairly screamed
with delight when the team, maddened by his in-
cessant slashing at them, rushed straight ahead to
certain death. Boys like young George Willard
and Seth Richmond will remember the incident
quite vividly because, although everyone in our
town said that the old man would go straight to
hell and that the community was better off without
him, they had a secret conviction that he knew
what he was doing and admired his foolish cour-
age. Most boys have seasons of wishing they
could die gloriously instead of just being grocery
clerks and going on with their humdrum lives.

246 WINESBURG, OHIO

But this is not the story of Windpeter Winters
nor yet of his son Hal who worked on the Wills
farm with Ray Pearson. It is Ray's story. It
will, however, be necessary to talk a little of young
Hal so that you will get into the spirit of it.

Hal was a bad one. Everyone said that.
There were three of the Winters boys in that
family, John, Hal, and Edward, all broad
shouldered big fellows like old Windpeter him-
self and all fighters and woman-chasers and gen-
erally all-around bad ones.

Hal was the worst of the lot and always up to
some devilment. He once stole a load of boards
from his father's mill and sold them in Wines-
burg. With the money he bought himself a suit
of cheap, flashy clothes. Then he got drunk and
when his father came raving into town to find him,
they met and fought with their fists on Main Street
and were arrested and put into jail together.

Hal went to work on the Wills farm because
there was a country school teacher out that way
who had taken his fancy. He was only twenty-
two then but had already been in two or three of
what were spoken of in Winesburg as "women
scrapes." Everyone who heard of his infatuation
for the school teacher was sure it would turn out
badly. "He'll only get her into trouble, you'll
see," was the word that went around.

And so these two men, Ray and Hal, were at

THE UNTOLD LIE 247

work in a field on a day in the late October.
They were husking corn and occasionally some-
thing was said and they laughed. Then came si-
lence. Ray, who was the more sensitive and al-
ways minded things more, had chapped hands and
they hurt. He put them into his coat pockets and
looked away across the fields. He was in a sad
distracted mood and was affected by the beauty of
the country. If you knew the Winesburg country
in the fall and how the low hills are all splashed
with yellows and reds you would understand his
feeling. He began to think of the time, long ago
when he was a young fellow living with his father,
then a baker in Winesburg, and how on such days
he had wandered away to the. woods to gather
nuts, hunt rabbits, or just to loaf about and smoke
his pipe. His marriage had come about through
one of his days of wandering. He had induced a
girl who waited on trade in his father's shop to go
with him and something had happened. He was
thinking of that afternoon and how it had affected
his whole life when a spirit of protest awoke in
him. He had forgotten about Hal and muttered
words. "Tricked by Gad, that's what I was,
tricked by life and made a fool of," he said in a
low voice.

As though understanding his thoughts, Hal
Winters spoke up. "Well, has it been worth
while,? What about it, eh? What about mar-

248 WINESBURG, OHIO

riage and all that?1* he asked and then laughed.
Hal tried to keep on laughing but he too was in
an earnest mood. He began to talk earnestly.
"Has a fellow got to do it?" he asked. "Has he
got to be harnessed up and driven through life
like a horse?"

Hal didn't wait for an answer but sprang to his
feet and began to walk back and forth between the
corn shocks. He was getting more and more
excited. Bending down suddenly he picked up an
ear of the yellow corn and threw it at the fence.
"I've got Nell Gunther in trouble," he said. "I'm
telling you, but you keep your mouth shut."

Ray Pearson arose and stood staring. He was
almost a foot shorter than Hal, and when the
younger man came and put his two hands on the
older man's shoulders they made a picture. There
they stood in the big empty field with the quiet
corn shocks standing in rows behind them and the
red and yellow hills in the distance, and from be-
ing just two indifferent workmen they had become
all alive to each other. Hal sensed it and be-
cause that was his way he laughed. "Well, old
daddy," he said awkwardly, "come on, advise me.
I've got Nell in trouble. Perhaps you've been in
the same fix yourself. I know what every one
would say is the right thing to do, but what do you
say? Shall I marry and settle down? Shall I
put myself into the harness to be worn out like

THE UNTOLD LIE 249

an old horse ? You know me, Ray. There can't
any one break me but I can break myself. Shall
I do it or shall I tell Nell to go to the devil?
Come on, you tell me. Whatever you say, Ray,
I'll do."

Ray couldn't answer. He shook Hal's hands
loose and turning walked straight away toward
the barn. He was a sensitive man and there were
tears in his eyes. He knew there was only one
thing to say to Hal Winters, son of old Wind-
peter Winters, only one thing that all his own
training and all the beliefs of the people he knew
would approve, but for his life he couldn't say
what he knew he should say.

At half-past four that afternoon Ray was put-
tering about the barnyard when his wife came up
the lane along the creek and called, him. After
the talk with Hal he hadn't returned to the corn
field but worked about the barn. He had already
done the evening chores and had seen Hal, dressed
and ready for a roistering night in town, come out
of the farmhouse and go into the road. Along
the path to his own house he trudged behind his
wife, looking at the ground and thinking. He
couldn't make out what was wrong. Every time
he raised his eyes and saw the beauty of the coun-
try in the failing light he wanted to do something
he had never done before, shout or scream or hit
his wife with his fists or something equally unex-

250 WINESBURG, OHIO

pected and terrifying. Along the path he went
scratching his head and trying to make it out. He
looked hard at his wife's back but she seemed all
right.

She only wanted him to go into town for grocer-
ies and as soon as she had told him what she
wanted began to scold. "You're always putter-
ing," she said. "Now I want you to hustle.
There isn't anything in the house for supper and
you-ve got to get to town and back in a
hurry."

Ray went into his own house and took an over-
coat from a hook back of the door. It was torn
about the pockets and the collar was shiny. His
wife went into the bedroom and presently came
out with a soiled cloth in one hand and three sil-
ver dollars in the other. Somewhere in the house
a child wept bitterly and a dog that had been sleep-
ing by the stove arose and yawned. Again the
wife scolded. "The children will cry and cry.
Why are you always puttering?" she asked.

Ray went out of the house and climbed the fence
into a field. It was just growing dark and the
scene that lay before him was lovely. All the
low hills were washed with color and even the lit-
tle clusters of bushes in the corners by the fences
were alive with beauty. The whole world seemed
to Ray Pearson to have become alive with some-
thing just as he and Hal had suddenly become

THE UNTOLD LIE 251

alive when they stood in the corn field staring into
each other's eyes.

The beauty of the country about Winesburg
was too much for Ray on that fall evening.
That is all there was to it. He could not stand it.
Of a sudden he forgot all about being a quiet old
farm hand and throwing off the torn overcoat be-
gan to run across the field. As he ran he shouted
a protest against his life, against all life, against
everything that makes life ugly. "There was no
promise made," he cried into the empty spaces
that lay about him. "I didn't promise my Min-
nie anything and Hal hasn't made any promise to
Nell. I know he hasn't. She went into the
woods with him because she wanted to go. What
he wanted she wanted. Why should I pay? Why
should Hal pay? Why should any one pay? I
don't want Hal to become old and worn out. I'll
tell him. I won't let it go on. I'll catch Hal be-
fore he gets to town and I'll tell him."

Ray ran clumsily and once he stumbled and fell
down. "I must catch Hal and tell him," he kept
thinking and although his breath came in gasps he
kept running harder and harder. As he ran he
thought of things that hadn't come into his mind
for years — how at the time he married he had
planned to go west to his uncle in Portland, Ore-
gon— how he hadn't wanted to be a farm hand,
but had thought when he got out west he would

252 WINESBURG, OHIO

go to sea and be a sailor or get a job on a ranch
and ride a horse into western towns, shouting and
laughing and waking the people in the houses with
his wild cries. Then as he ran he remembered
his children and in fancy felt their hands clutch-
ing at him. All of his thoughts of himself were
involved with the thoughts of Hal and he thought
the children were clutching at the younger man
also. "They are the accidents of life, Hal," he
cried. "They are not mine or yours. I had noth-
ing to do with them."

Darkness began to spread over the fields as
Ray Pearson ran on and on. His breath came
in little sobs. When he came to the fence at the
edge of the road and confronted Hal Winters, all
dressed up and smoking a pipe as he walked jaunt-
ily along, he could not "have told what he thought
or what he wanted.

Ray Pearson lost his nerve and this is really
the end of the story of what happened to him.
It was almost dark when he got to the fence and
he put his hands on the top bar and stood staring.
Hal Winters jumped a ditch and coming up close
to Ray put his hands into his pockets and laughed.
He seemed to have lost his own sense of what had
happened in the corn field and when he put up a
strong hand and took hold of the lapel of Ray's
coat he sho'ok the old man as he might have shaken
a dog that had misbehaved.

THE UNTOLD LIE 253

"You came to tell me, eh?" he said. "Well,
never mind telling me anything. I'm not a cow-
ard and I've already made up my mind." He
laughed again and jumped back across the ditch.
"Nell ain't no fool," he said. "She didn't ask
me to marry her. I want to marry her. I want
to settle down and have kids."

Ray Pearson also laughed. He felt like laugh-
ing at himself and all the world.

As the form of Hal Winters disappeared in the
dusk that lay over the road that led to Winesburg,
he turned and walked slowly back across the fields
to where he had left his torn overcoat. As he
went some memory of pleasant evenings spent with
the thin-legged children in the tumble-down house
by the creek must have come into his mind, for he
muttered words. "It's just as well. Whatever I
told him would have Keen a lie," he said softly,
and then his form also disappeared into the dark-
ness of the fields.

DRINK

TOM FOSTER came to Winesburg from
Cincinnati when he was still young and
could get many new impressions. His
grandmother had been raised on a farm near the
town and as a young girl had gone to school there
when Winesburg was a village of twelve or fifteen
houses clustered about a general store on the
Trunion Pike.

What a life the old woman had led since she
went away from the frontier settlement and what
a strong, capable little old thing she was! She
had been in Kansas, in Canada, and in New York
City, traveling about with her husband, a me-
chanic, before he died. Later she went to stay
with her daughter who had also married a me-
chanic and lived in Covington, Kentucky, across
the river from Cincinnati.

Then began the hard years for Tom Foster's
grandmother. First her son-in-law was killed by
a policeman during a strike and then Tom's
mother became an invalid and died also. The
grandmother had saved a little money, but it was
swept away by the illness of the daughter and by

254

DRINK 255

the cost of the two funerals. She became a half
worn-out old woman worker and lived with the
grandson above a junk shop on a side street in
Cincinnati. For five years she scrubbed the floors
in an office building and then got a place as dish
washer in a restaurant. Her hands were all
twisted out of shape. When she took hold of a
mop or a broom handle the hands looked like the
dried stems of an old creeping vine clinging to a
tree.

The old woman came back to Winesburg as
soon as she got the chance. One evening as she
was coming home from work she found a pocket-
book containing thirty-seven dollars, and that
opened the way. The trip was a great adventure
for the boy. It was past seven o'clock at night
when the grandmother came home with the pocket-
book held tightly in her old hands and she was so
excited she could scarcely speak. She insisted on
leaving Cincinnati that night, saying that if they
stayed until morning the owner of the money
would be sure to find them out and make trouble.
Tom, who was then sixteen years old, had to go
trudging off to the station with the old woman
bearing all of their earthly belongings done up in
a worn-out blanket and slung across his back. By
his side walked the grandmother urging him for-
ward. Her toothless old mouth twitched nerv-
ously, and when Tom grew weary and wanted to

256 WINESBURG, OHIO

put the pack down at a street crossing she
snatched it up and if he had not prevented would
have slung it across her own back. When they
got into the train and it had run out of the city
she was as delighted as a girl and talked as the
boy had never heard her talk before.

All through the night as the train rattled along,
the grandmother told Tom tales of Winesburg
and of how he would enjoy his life working in the
fields and shooting wild things in the wood there.
She could not believe that the tiny village of fifty
years before had grown into a thriving town in her
absence, and in the morning when the train came
to Winesburg did not want to get off. "It isn't
what I thought. It may be hard for you here,"
she said, and then the train went on its way and
the two stood confused, not knowing where to
turn, in the presence of Albert Longworth, the
Winesburg baggage master.

But Tom Foster did get along all right. He
was one to get along anywhere. Mrs. White, the
banker's wife, employed his grandmother to work
in the kitchen and he got a place as stable boy in
the banker's new brick barn.

In Winesburg servants were hard to get. The
woman who wanted help in her housework em-
ployed a "hired girl" who insisted on sitting at
the table with the family. Mrs. White was sick
of hired girls and snatched at the chance to get

DRINK 257

hold of the old city woman. She furnished a
room for the boy Tom upstairs in the barn. "He
can mow the lawn and run errands when the
horses do not need attention," she explained to her
husband.

Tom Foster was rather small for his age and
had a large head covered with stiff black hair that
stood straight up. The hair emphasized the big-
ness of his head. His voice was the softest thing
imaginable, and he was himself so gentle and quiet
that he slipped into the life of the town without
attracting the least bit of attention.

One could not help wondering where Tom Fos-
ter got his gentleness. In Cincinnati he had lived
in a neighborhood where gangs of tough boys
prowled through the streets, and all through his
early formative years he ran about with tough
boys. For a while he was messenger for a tele-
graph company and delivered messages in a neigh-
borhood sprinkled with houses of prostitution.
The women in the houses knew and loved Tom
Foster and the tough boys in the gangs loved him
also.

He never asserted himself. That was one
thing that helped him escape. In an odd way he
stood in the shadow of the wall of life, was meant
to stand in the shadow. He saw the men and
women in the houses of lust, sensed their casual
and horrible love affairs, saw boys fighting and

258 WINESBURG, OHIO

listened to their tales of thieving and drunkenness
unmoved and strangely unaffected.

Once Tom did steal. That was while he still
lived in the city. The grandmother was ill at the
time and he himself was out of work. There was
nothing to eat in the house, and so he went into a
harness shop on a side street and stole a dollar and
seventy-five cents out of the cash drawer.

The harness shop was run by an old man with a
long mustache. He saw the boy lurking about
and thought nothing of it. When he went out
into the street to talk to a teamster Tom opened
the cash drawer and taking the money walked
away. Later he was caught and his grandmother
settled the matter by offering to come twice a week
for a month and scrub the shop. The boy was
ashamed, but he was rather glad, too. "It is all
right to be ashamed and makes me understand
new things," he said to the grandmother, who
didn't know what the boy was talking about but
loved him so much that it didn't matter whether
she understood or not.

For a year Tom Foster lived in the banker's
stable and then lost his place there. He didn't
take very good care of the horses and he was a
constant source of irritation to the banker's wife.
She told him to mow the lawn and he forgot.
Then she sent him to the store or to the post of-
fice and he did not come back but joined a group

DRINK 259

of men and boys and spent the whole afternoon
with them, standing about, listening and occasion-
ally, when addressed, saying a few words. As in
the city in the houses of prostitution and with the
rowdy boys running through the streets at night,
so in Winesburg among its citizens he had always
the power to be a part of and yet distinctly apart
from the life about him.

After Tom lost his place at Banker White's he
did not live with his grandmother, although often
in the evening she came to visit him. He rented
a room at the rear of a little frame building be-
longing to old Rufus Whiting. The building
was on Duane Street, just off Main Street, and
had been used for years as a law office by the old
man who had become too feeble and forgetful for
the practice of his profession but did not realize
his inefficiency. He liked Tom and let him have
the room for a dollar a month. In the late after-
noon when the lawyer had gone home the boy had
the place to himself and spent hours lying on the
floor by the stove and thinking of things. In the
evening the grandmother came and sat in the law-
yer's chair to smoke a pipe while Tom remained
silent, as he always did in the presence of every
one.

Often the old woman talked with great vigor.
Sometimes she was angry about some happening
at the banker's house and scolded away for hours.

260 WINESBURG, OHIO

Out of her own earnings she bought a mop and
regularly scrubbed the lawyer's office. Then
when the place was spotlessly clean and smelled
clean she lighted her clay pipe and she and Tom
had a smoke together. "When you get ready to
die then I will die also," she said to the boy lying
on the floor beside her chair.

Tom Foster enjoyed life in Winesburg. He
did odd jobs, such as cutting wood for kitchen
stoves and mowing the grass before houses. In
late May and early June he picked strawberries in
the fields. He had time to loaf and he enjoyed
loafing. Banker White had given him a cast-off
coat which was too large for him, but his grand-
mother cut it down, and he had also an overcoat,
got at the same place, that was lined with fur.
The fur was worn away in spots, but the coat was
warm and in the winter Tom slept in it. He
thought his method of getting along good enough
and was happy and satisfied with the way life in
Winesburg had turned out for him.

The most absurd little things made Tom Foster
happy. That, I suppose, was why people loved
him. In Hern's grocery they would be roasting
coffee on Friday afternoon, preparatory to the
Saturday rush of trade, and the rich odor invaded
lower Main Street. Tom Foster appeared and
sat on a box at the rear of the store. For an hour
he did not move but sat perfectly still, filling his

DRINK 261

being with the spicy odor that made him half
drunk with happiness. "I like it," he said gently.
"It makes me think of things far away, places and
things like that."

One night Tom Foster got drunk. That came
about in a curious way. He never had been drunk
before, and indeed in all his life had never taken a
drink of anything intoxicating, but he felt he
needed to be drunk that one time and so went and
did it.

In Cincinnati, when he lived there, Tom had
found out many things, things about ugliness and
crime and lust. Indeed, he knew more of these
things than any one else in Winesburg. The mat-
ter of sex in particular had presented itself to him
in a quite horrible way and had made a deep im-
pression on his mind. He thought, after what he
had seen of the women standing before the squalid
houses on cold nights and the look he had seen in
the eyes of the men who stopped to talk to them,
that he would put sex altogether out of his own
life. One of the women of the neighborhood
tempted him once and he went into a room with
her. He never forgot the smell of the room nor
the greedy look that came into the eyes of the
woman. It sickened him and in a very terrible
way left a scar on his soul. He had always be-
fore thought of women as quite innocent things,
much like his grandmother, but after that one ex-

262 WINESBURG, OHIO

perience in the room he dismissed women from his
mind. So gentle was his nature that he could not
hate anything and not being able to understand he
decided to forget.

And Tom did forget until he came to Wines-
burg. After he had lived there for two years
something began to stir in him. On all sides he
saw youth making love and he was himself a youth.
Before he knew what had happened he was in
love also. He fell in love with Helen White,
daughter of the man for whom he had worked,
and found himself thinking of her at night.

That was a problem for Tom and he settled it
in his own way. He let himself think of Helen
White whenever her figure came into his mind and
only concerned himself with the manner of his
thoughts. He had a fight, a quiet determined lit-
tle fight of his own, to keep his desires in the chan-
nel where he thought they belonged, but on the
whole he was victorious.

And then came the spring night when he got
drunk. Tom was wild on that night. He was
like an innocent young buck of the forest that has
eaten of some maddening weed. The thing be-
gan, ran its course, and was ended in one night,
and you may be sure that no one in Winesburg
was any the worse for Tom's outbreak.

In the first place, the night was one to make a
sensitive nature drunk. The trees along the resi-

DRINK 263

dence streets of the town were all newly clothed
in soft green leaves, in the gardens behind the
houses men were puttering about in vegetable gar-
dens, and in the air there was a hush, a waiting
kind of silence very stirring to the blood.

Tom left his room on Duane Street just as the
young night began to make itself felt. First he
walked through the streets, going softly and
quietly along, thinking thoughts that he tried to
put into words. He said that Helen White was
a flame dancing in the air and that he was a little
tree without leaves standing out sharply against
the sky. Then he said that she was a wind, a
strong terrible wind, coming out of the darkness
of a stormy sea and that he was a boat left on the
shore of the sea by a fisherman.

That idea pleased the boy and he sauntered
along playing with it. He went into Main Street
and sat on the curbing before Wracker's tobacco
store. For an hour he lingered about listening to
the talk of men, but it did not interest him much
and he slipped away. Then he decided to get
drunk and went into Willy's saloon and bought a
bottle of whiskey. Putting the bottle into his
pocket, he walked out of town, wanting to be
alone to think more thoughts and to drink the
whiskey.

Tom got drunk sitting on a bank of new grass
beside the road about a mile north of town. Be-

264 WINESBURG, OHIO

fore him was a white road and at his back an ap-
ple orchard in full bloom. He took a drink out
of the bottle and then lay down on the grass. He
thought of mornings in Winesburg and of how the
stones in the graveled driveway by Banker White's
house were wet with dew and glistened in the
morning light. He thought of the nights in the
barn when it rained and he lay awake hearing the
drumming of the rain drops and smelling the
warm smell of horses and of hay. Then he
thought of a storm that had gone roaring through
Winesburg several days before and, his mind go-
ing back, he relived the night he had spent on the
train with his grandmother when the two were
coming from Cincinnati. Sharply he remembered
how strange it had seemed to sit quietly in the
coach and to feel the power of the engine hurling
the train along through the night.

Tom got drunk in a very short time. He kept
taking drinks from the bottle as the thoughts vis-
ited him and when his head began to reel got up
and walked along the road going away from
Winesburg. There was a bridge on the road that
ran out of Winesburg north to Lake Erie and the
drunken boy made his way along the road to the
bridge. There he sat down. He tried to drink
again, but when he had taken the cork out of the
bottle he became ill and put it quickly back. His
head was rocking back and forth and so he sat on

DRINK 265

the stone approach to the bridge and sighed. His
head seemed to be flying about like a pin wheel and
then projecting itself off into space and his arms
and legs flopped helplessly about.

At eleven o'clock Tom got back into town.
George Willard found him wandering about and
took him into the Eagle printshop. Then he be-
came afraid that the drunken boy would make a
mess on the floor and helped him into the alley-
way.

The reporter was confused by Tom Foster.
The drunken boy talked of Helen White and said
he had been with her on the shore of a sea and
had made love to her. George had seen Helen
White walking in the street with her father during
the evening and decided that Tom was out of his
head. A sentiment concerning Helen White that
lurked in his own heart flamed up and he became
angry. "Now you quit that," he said. "I won't
let Helen White's name be dragged into this. I
won't let that happen." He began shaking Tom's
shoulder, trying to make him understand. "You
quit it," he said again.

For three hours the two young men, thus
strangely thrown together, stayed in the print-
shop. When he had a little recovered George
took Tom for a walk. They went into the coun-
try and sat on a log near the edge of a wood.
Something in the still night drew them together

266 WINESBURG, OHIO

and when the drunken boy's head began to clear
they talked.

"It was good to be drunk," Tom Foster said.
"It taught me something. I won't have to do it
again. I will think more clearly after this. You
see how it is."

George Willard did not see, but his anger con-
cerning Helen White passed and he felt drawn to-
wards the pale, shaken boy as he had never before
been drawn towards any one. With motherly so-
licitude, he insisted that Tom get to his feet and
walk about. Again they went back to the print-
shop and sat in silence in the darkness.

The reporter could not get the purpose of Tom
Foster's action straightened out in his mind.
When Tom spoke again of Helen White he again
grew angry and began to scold. "You quit that,"
he said sharply. "You haven't been with her.
What makes you say you have? What makes
you keep saying such things? Now you quit it,
do you hear?"

Tom was hurt. He couldn't quarrel with
George Willard because he was incapable of quar-
reling, so he got up to go away. When George
Willard was insistent he put out his hand, laying it
on the older boy's arm, and tried to explain.

"Well," he said softly, "I don't know how it
was. I was happy. You see how that was.
Helen White made me happy and the night did

DRINK 267

too. I wanted to suffer, to be hurt somehow. I
thought that was what I should do. I wanted to
suffer, you see, because every one suffers and does
wrong. I thought of a lot of things to do, but
they wouldn't work. They all hurt some one
else."

Tom Foster's voice arose, and for once in his
life he became almost excited. "It was like mak-
ing love, that's what I mean," he explained.
"Don't you see how it is? It hurt me to do what
I did and made everything strange. That's why
I did it. I'm glad, too. It taught me something,
that's it, that's what I wanted. Don't you under-
stand ? I wanted to learn things, you see. That's
why I did it."

DEATH

THE stairway leading up to Dr. Reefy' s of-
fice, in the Heffner Block above the Paris
Dry Goods Store, was but dimly lighted.
At the head of the stairway hung a lamp with a
dirty chimney that was fastened by a bracket to
the wall. The lamp had a tin reflector, brown
with rust and covered with dust. The people who
went up the stairway followed with their feet the
feet of many who had gone before. The soft
boards of the stairs had yielded under the pres-
sure of feet and deep hollows marked the way.

At the top of the stairway a turn to the right
brought you to the doctor's door. To the left
was a dark hallway filled with rubbish. Old
chairs, carpenter's horses, step ladders and empty
boxes lay in the darkness waiting for shins to be
barked. The pile of rubbish belonged to the
Paris Dry Goods Co. When a counter or a row
of shelves in the store became useless, clerks car-
ried it up the stairway and threw it on the
pile.

Doctor Reefy' s office was as large as a barn.
A stove with a round paunch sat in the middle of

268

DEATH 269

the room. Around its base was piled sawdust,
held in place by heavy planks nailed to the floor.
By the door stood a huge table that had once been
a part of the furniture of Herrick's Clothing Store
and that had been used for displaying custom-
made clothes. It was covered with books, bottles
and surgical instruments. Near the edge of the
table lay three or four apples left by John Span-
iard, a tree nurseryman who was Doctor Reefy's
friend, and who had slipped the apples out of his
pocket as he came in at the door.

At middle age Doctor Reefy was tall and awk-
ward. The grey beard he later wore had not yet
appeared, but on the upper lip grew a brown mus-
tache. He was not a graceful man, as when he
grew older, and was much occupied with the prob-
lem of disposing of his hands and feet.

On summer afternoons, when she had been
married many years and when her son George was
a boy of twelve or fourteen, Elizabeth Willard
sometimes went up the worn steps to Doc-
tor Reefy's office. Already the woman's nat-
urally tall figure had begun to droop and to drag
itself listlessly about. Ostensibly she went to see
the doctor because of her health, but on the half
dozen occasions when she had been to see him the
outcome of the visits did not primarily concern her
health. She and the doctor talked of that but
they talked most of her life, of their two lives and

270 WINESBURG, OHIO

of the ideas that had come to them as they lived
their lives in Winesburg.

In the big empty office the man and the woman
sat looking at each other and they were a good
deal alike. Their bodies were different as were
also the color of their eyes, the length of their
noses and the circumstances of their existence,
but something inside them meant the same thing,
wanted the same release, would have left the same
impression on the memory of an onlooker. Later,
and when he grew older and married a young wife,
the doctor often talked to her of the hours spent
with the sick woman and expressed a good many
things he had been unable to express to Elizabeth.
He was almost a poet in his old age and his no-
tion of what happened took a poetic turn. "I
had come to the time in my life when prayer be-
came necessary and so I invented gods and prayed
to them," he said. "I did not say my prayers in
words nor did I kneel down but sat perfectly still
in my chair. In the late afternoon when it was
hot and quiet on Main Street or in the winter when
the days were gloomy, the gods came into the office
and I thought no one knew about them. Then I
found that this woman Elizabeth knew, that she
worshipped also the same gods. I have a notion
that she came to the office because she thought the
gods would be there but she was happy to find her-
self not alone just the same. It was an experi-

DEATH 271

ence that cannot be explained, although I suppose
it is always happening to men and women in all
sorts of places."

On the summer afternoons when Elizabeth and
the doctor sat in the office and talked of their two
lives they talked of other lives also. Sometimes
the doctor made philosophic epigrams. Then he
chuckled with amusement. Now and then after a
period of silence, a word was said or a hint given
that strangely illuminated the life of the speaker,
a wish became a desire, or a dream, half dead,
Sared suddenly into life. For the most part the
words came from the woman and she said them
without looking at the man.

Each time she came to see the doctor the hotel
keeper's wife talked a little more freely and after
an hour or two in his presence went down
the stairway into Main Street feeling renewed and
strengthened against the dullness of her days.
With something approaching a girlhood swing to
her body she walked along, but when she had got
back to her chair by the window of her room and
when darkness had come on and a girl from the
hotel dining room brought her dinner on a tray,
she let it grow cold. Her thoughts ran away to
her girlhood with its passionate longing for ad-
venture and she remembered the arms of men that
had held her when adventure was a possible thing

2J2 WINESBURG, OHIO

for her. Particularly she remembered one who
had for a time been her lover and who in the mo-
ment of his passion had cried out to her more than
a hundred times, saying the same words madly
over and over: "You dear! You dear! You
lovely dear!" The words she thought expressed
something she would have liked to have achieved
in life.

In her room in the shabby old hotel the sick
wife of the hotel keeper began to weep and put-
ting her hands to her face rocked back and forth.
The words of her one friend, Doctor Reefy, rang
in her ears. "Love is like .a wind stirring the
grass beneath trees on a black night/' he had said.
"You must not try to make love definite. It is
the divine accident of life. If you try to be defi-
nite and sure about it and to live beneath the trees,
where soft night winds blow, the long hot day of
disappointment comes swiftly and the gritty dust
from passing wagons gathers upon lips inflamed
and made tender by kisses."

Elizabeth Willard could not remember her
mother who had died when she was but five years
old. Her girlhood had been lived in the most
haphazard manner imaginable. Her father was
a man who had wanted to be let alone and the
affairs of the hotel would not let him alone. He
also had lived and died a sick man. Every

DEATH 273

day he arose with a cheerful face, but by ten
o'clock in the morning all the joy had gone out of
his heart. When a guest complained of the fare
in the hotel dining room or one of the girls who
made up the beds got married and went away, he
stamped on the floor and swore. At night when
he went to bed he thought of his daughter growing
up among the stream of people that drifted in and
out of the hotel and was overcome with sadness.
As the girl grew older and began to walk out in
the evening with men he wanted to talk to her, but
when he tried was not successful. He always for-
got what he wanted to say and spent the time com-
plaining of his own affairs.

In her girlhood and young womanhood Eliza-
beth had tried to be a real adventurer in life. At
eighteen life had so gripped her that she was no
longer a virgin but, although she had a half dozen
lovers before she married Tom Willard, she had
never entered upon an adventure prompted by de-
sire alone. Like all the women in the world, she
wanted a real lover. Always there was something
she sought blindly, passionately, some hidden
wonder in life. The tall beautiful girl with the
swinging stride who had walked under the trees
with men was forever putting out her hand into
the darkness and trying to get hold of some other
hand. In all the babble of words that fell from

274 WINES BURG, OHIO

the lips of the men with whom she adventured she
was trying to find what would be for her the true
word.

Elizabeth had married Tom Willard, a clerk in
her father's hotel, because he was at hand and
wanted to marry at the time when the determina-
tion to marry came to her. For a while, like most
young girls, she thought marriage would change
the face of life. If there was in her mind a doubt
of the outcome of the marriage with Tom she
brushed it aside. Her father was ill and near
death at the time and she was perplexed because
of the meaningless outcome of an affair in which
she had just been involved. Other girls of her
age in Winesburg were marrying men she had al-
ways known, grocery clerks or young farmers. In
the evening they walked in Main Street with their
husbands and when she passed they smiled hap-
pily. She began to think that the fact of marriage
might be full of some hidden significance. Young
wives with whom she talked spoke softly and
shyly. "It changes things to have a man of your
own," they said.

On the evening before her marriage the per-
plexed girl had a talk with her father. Later she
wondered if the hours alone with the sick man
had not led to her decision to marry. The father
talked of his life and advised the daughter to
avoid being led into another such muddle. He

DEATH 275

abused Tom Willard, and that led Elizabeth to
come to the clerk's defense. The sick man be-
came excited and tried to get out of bed. When
she would not let him walk about he began to
complain. "I've never been let alone," he said.
"Although I've worked hard Fve not made the
hotel pay. Even now I owe money at the bank.
You'll find that out when I'm gone."

The voice of the sick man became tense with
earnestness. Being unable to arise, he put out
his hand and pulled the girl's head down beside
his own. "There's a way out," he whispered.
"Don't marry Tom Willard or any one else here
in Winesburg. There is eight hundred dollars in
a tin box in my trunk. Take it and go away."

Again the sick man's voice became querulous.
"You've got to promise," he declared. "If you
won't promise not to marry, give me your word
that you'll never tell Tom about the money. It
is mine and if I give it to you I've the right to
make that demand. Hide it away. It is to make
up to you for my failure as a father. Some time
it may prove to be a door, a great open door to
you. Come now, I tell you I'm about to die, give
me your promise."

In Doctor Reefy's office, Elizabeth, a tired
gaunt old woman at forty-one, sat in a chair near
the stove and looked at the floor. By a small

276 WINESBURG, OHIO

desk near the window sat the doctor. His hands
played with a lead pencil that lay on the desk.
Elizabeth talked of her life as a married woman.
She became impersonal and forgot her husband,
only using him as a lay figure to give point to her
tale. "And then I was married and it did not
turn out at all," she said bitterly. "As soon as I
had gone into it I began to be afraid. Perhaps
I knew too much before and then perhaps I found
out too much during my first night with him. I
don't remember.

"What a fool I was. When father gave me the
money and tried to talk me out of the thought of
marriage, I would not listen. I thought of what
the girls who were married had said of it and I
wanted marriage also. It wasn't Tom I wanted,
it was marriage. When father went to sleep I
leaned out of the window and thought of the life
I had led. I didn't want to be a bad woman.
The town was full of stories about me. I even
began to be afraid Tom would change his mind."

The woman's voice began to quiver with excite-
ment. To Doctor Reefy, who without realizing
what was happening had begun to love her, there
came an odd illusion. He thought that as she
talked the woman's body was changing, that
she was becoming younger, straighter, stronger.
When he could not shake off the illusion his mind
gave it a professional twist. "It is good for both

DEATH 277

her body and her mind, this talking," he mut-
tered.

The woman began telling of an incident that
had happened one afternoon a few months after
her marriage. Her voice became steadier. "In
the late afternoon I went for a drive alone," she
said. "I had a buggy and a little grey pony I
kept in Mover's Livery. Tom was painting and
repapering rooms in the hotel. He wanted
money and I was trying to make up my mind to
tell him about the eight hundred dollars father
had given to me. I couldn't decide to do it. I
didn't like him well enough. There was always
paint on his hands and face during those days and
he smelled of paint. He was trying to fix up the
old hotel, make it new and smart."

The excited woman sat up very straight in her
chair and made a quick girlish movement with her
hand as she told of the drive alone on the spring
afternoon. "It was cloudy and a storm threat-
ened," she said. "Black clouds made the green
of the trees and the grass stand out so that the
colors hurt my eyes. I went out Trunion Pike a
mile or more and then turned into a side road.
The little horse went quickly along up hill and
down. I was impatient. Thoughts came and I
wanted to get away from my thoughts. I began
to beat the horse. The black clouds settled down
and it began to rain. I wanted to go at a terri-

278 WINESBURG, OHIO

ble speed, to drive on and on forever. I wanted
to get out of town, out of my clothes, out of my
marriage, out of my body, out of everything. I
almost killed the horse, making him run, and when
he could not run any more I got out of the buggy
and ran afoot into the darkness until I fell and
hurt my side. I wanted to run away from every-
thing but I wanted to run towards something too.
Don't you see, dear, how it was?"

Elizabeth sprang out of the chair and began to
walk about in the office. She walked as Doctor
Reefy thought he had never seen any one walk be-
fore. To her whole body there was a swing, a
rhythm that intoxicated him. When she came
and knelt on the floor beside his chair he took her
into his arms and began to kiss her passionately.
"I cried all the way home," she said, as she tried
to continue the story of her wild ride, but he did
not listen. uYou dear I You lovely dear! Oh
you lovely dear !" he muttered and thought he held
in his arms, not the tired out woman of forty-one
but a lovely and innocent girl who had been able
by some miracle to project herself out of the husk
of the body of the tired-out woman.

Doctor Reefy did not see the woman he had
held in his arms again until after her death. On
the summer afternoon in the office when he was
on the point of becoming her lover a half gro-
tesque little incident brought his love-making

DEATH 279

quickly to an end. As the man and woman held
each other tightly heavy feet came tramping up
the office stairs. The two sprang to their feet
and stood listening and trembling. The noise on
the stairs was made by a clerk from the Paris
Dry Goods Store Co. With a loud bang he threw
an empty box on the pile of rubbish in the hallway
and then went heavily down the stairs. Eliza-
beth followed him almost immediately. The
thing that had come to life in her as she talked to
her one friend died suddenly. She was hysterical,
as was also Doctor Reefy, and did not want to
continue the talk. Along the street she went with
the blood still singing in her body, but when she
turned out of Main Street and saw ahead the
lights of the New Willard House, she began to
tremble and her knees shook so that for a
moment she thought she would fall in the
street.

The sick woman spent the last few months of
her life hungering for death. Along the road of
death she went, seeking, hungering. She person-
ified the figure of death and made him, now a
strong black-haired youth running over hills,
now a stern quiet man marked and scarred by
the business of living. In the darkness of her
room she put out her hand, thrusting it from under
the covers of her bed, and she thought that death
like a living thing put out his hand to her. uBe

280 WINESBURG, OHIO

patient, lover," she whispered. "Keep yourself
young and beautiful and be patient."

On the evening when disease laid its heavy hand
upon her and defeated her plans for telling her son
George of the eight hundred dollars hidden away,
she got out of bed and crept half across the room
pleading with death for another hour of life.
"Wait, dear ! The boy ! The boy ! The boy I"
she pleaded as she tried with all of her strength
to fight off the arms of the lover she had wanted
so earnestly.

• *••••«

Elizabeth died one day in March in the year
when her son George became eighteen, and the
young man had but little sense of the meaning of
her death. Only time could give him that. For
a month he had seen her lying white and still and
speechless in her bed, and then one afternoon the
doctor stopped him in the hallway and said a few
words.

The young man went into his own room and
closed the door. He had a queer empty feeling
in the region of his stomach. For a moment he
sat staring at the floor and then jumping up
went for a walk. Along the station platform
he went, and around through residence streets
past the high school building, thinking almost en-
tirely of his own affairs. The notion of death
could not get hold of him and he was in fact a

DEATH 281

little annoyed that his mother had died on that
day. He had just received a note from Helen
White, the daughter of the town banker, in answer
to one from him. "Tonight I could have gone to
see her and now it will have to be put off," he
thought half angrily.

Elizabeth died on a Friday afternoon at
three o'clock. It had been cold and rainy in
the morning but in the afternoon the sun came out.
Before she died she lay paralyzed for six days
unable to speak or move and with only her mind
and her eyes alive. For three of the six days she
struggled, thinking of her boy, trying to say some
few words in regard to his future, and in her eyes
there was an appeal so touching that all who saw
it kept the memory of the dying woman in their
minds for years. Even Tom Willard who had
always half resented his wife forgot his resent-
ment and the tears ran out of his eyes and lodged
in his mustache. The mustache had begun to
turn grey and Tom colored it with dye. There
was oil in the preparation he used for the pur-
pose and the tears, catching in the mustache and
being brushed away by his hand, formed a fine
mist-like vapor. In his grief Tom Willard's face
looked like the face of a little dog that has been
out a long time in bitter weather.

George came home along Main Street at dark
on the day of his mother's death and, after going

282 WINESBURG, OHIO

to his own room to brush his hair and clothes, went
along the hallway and into the room where the
body lay. There was a candle on the dressing
table by the door and Doctor Reefy sat in a chair
by the bed. The doctor arose and started to go
out. He put out his hand as though to greet the
younger man and then awkwardly drew it back
again. The air of the room was heavy with the
presence of the two self-conscious human beings,
and the man hurried away.

The dead woman's son sat down in a chair and
looked at the floor. He again thought of his own
affairs and definitely decided he would make a
change in his life, that he would leave Winesburg.
"I will go to some city. Perhaps I can get a job
on some newspaper," he thought and then his mind
turned to the girl with whom he was to have spent
this evening and again he was half angry at the
turn of events that had prevented his going to her.

In the dimly lighted room with the dead woman
the young man began to have thoughts. His
mind played with thoughts of life as his mother's
mind had played with the thought of death. He
closed his eyes and imagined that the red young
lips of Helen White touched his own lips. His
body trembled and his hands shook. And then
something happened. The boy sprang to his feet
and stood stiffly. He looked at the figure of the
dead woman under the sheets and shame for his

DEATH 283

thoughts swept over him so that he began to weep.
A new notion came into his mind and he turned
and looked guiltily about as though afraid he
would be observed.

George Willard became possessed of a mad-
ness to lift the sheet from the body of his mother
and look at her face. The thought that had come
into his mind gripped him terribly. He became
convinced that not his mother but some one else
lay in the bed before him. The conviction was so
real that it was almost unbearable. The body
under the sheets was long and in death looked
young and graceful. To the boy, held by some
strange fancy, it was unspeakably lovely. The
feeling that the body before him was alive, that
in another moment a lovely woman would spring
out of the bed and confront him became so over-
powering that he could not bear the suspense.
Again and again he put out his hand. Once he
touched and half lifted the white sheet that cov-
ered her, but his courage failed and he, like Doc-
tor Reefy, turned and went out of the room. In
the hallway outside the door he stopped and trem-
bled so that he had to put a hand against the wall
to support himself. "That's not my mother.
That's not my mother in there," he whispered to
himself and again his body shook with fright and
uncertainty. When Aunt Elizabeth Swift, who
had come to watch over the body, came out of an

284 WINESBURG, OHIO

adjoining room he put his hand into hers and be-
gan* to sob,* shaking his head from side to side,
half blind with grief. "My mother is dead," he
said, and then forgetting the woman he turned
and stared at the door through which he had just
come. "The dear, the dear, oh the lovely dear,"
the boy, urged by some impulse outside himself,
muttered aloud.

• ••••••

As for the eight hundred dollars, the dead
woman had kept hidden so long and that was to
give George Willard his start in the city, it lay
in the tin box behind the plaster by the foot of
his mother's bed. Elizabeth had put it there a
week after her marriage, breaking the plaster
away with a stick. Then she got one of the work-
men her husband was at that time employing about
the hotel to mend the wall. "I jammed the cor-
ner of the bed against it," she had explained to
her husband, unable at the moment to give up her
dream of release, the release that after all came to
her but twice in her life, in the moments when her
lovers Death and Doctor Reefy held her in their
arms.

SOPHISTICATION

IT was early evening of a day in the late fall
and the Winesburg County Fair had brought
crowds of country people into town. The
day had been clear and the night came on warm
and pleasant. On the Trunion Pike, where the
road after it left town stretched away between
berry fields now covered with dry brown leaves,
the dust from passing wagons arose in clouds.
Children, curled into little balls, slept on the straw
scattered on wagon beds. Their hair was full of
dust and their fingers black and sticky. The dust
rolled away over the fields and the departing sun
set it ablaze with colors.

In the main street of Winesburg crowds filled
the stores and the sidewalks. Night came on,
horses whinnied, the clerks in the stores ran madly
about, children became lost and cried lustily, an
American town worked terribly at the task of
amusing itself.

Pushing his way through the crowds in Main
Street, young George Willard concealed himself
in the stairway leading to Doctor Reefy's office
and looked at the people. With feverish eyes he

285

286 WINESBURG, OHIO

watched the faces drifting past under the store
lights. Thoughts kept coming into his head and
he did not want to think. He stamped impa-
tiently on the wooden steps and looked sharply
about. "Well, is she going to stay with him all
day? Have I done all this waiting for nothing?"
he muttered.

George Willard, the Ohio village boy, was fast
grbwing into manhood and new thoughts had been
coming into his mind. All that day, amid the
jam of people at the Fair, he had gone about feel-
ing lonely. He was about to leave Winesburg
to go away to some city where he hoped to get
work on a city newspaper and he felt grown up.
The mood that had taken possession of him was
a thing known to men and unknown to boys. He
felt old and a little tired. Memories awoke in
him. To his mind his new sense of maturity
set him apart, made of him a half-tragic figure.
He wanted someone to understand the feeling
that had taken possession of him after his mother's
death.

There is a time in the life of every boy when he
for the first time takes the backward view of life.
Perhaps that is the moment when he crosses the
line into manhood. The boy is walking through
the street of his town. He is thinking of the
future and of the figure he will cut in the world.
Ambitions and regrets awake within him. Sud-

SOPHISTICATION 287

denly something happens; he stops under a tree
and waits as for a voice calling his name. Ghosts
of old things creep into his consciousness; the
voices outside of himself whisper a message con-
cerning the limitations of life. From being quite
sure of himself and his future he becomes not at
all sure. If he be an imaginative boy a door is
torn open and for the first time he looks out upon
the world, seeing, as though they marched in pro-
cession before him, the countless figures of men
who before his time have come out of nothingness
into the world, lived their lives and again disap-
peared into nothingness. The sadness of sophis-
tication has come to the boy. With a little gasp
he sees "himself as merely a leaf blown by the wind
through the streets of his village. He knows that
in spite of all the stout talk of his fellows he must
live and die in uncertainty, a thing blown by the
winds, a thing destined like corn to wilt in the sun.
He shivers and looks eagerly about. The eighteen
years he has lived seem but a moment, a breath-
ing space in the long march of humanity. Already
he hears death calling. With all his heart he
wants to come close to some other human, touch
someone with his hands, be touched by the hand
of another. If he prefers that the other be a
woman, that is because he believes that a woman
will be gentle, that she will understand. He
wants, most of all, understanding.

288 WINESBURG, OHIO

When the moment of sophistication came to
George Willard his mind turned to Helen White,
the Winesburg banker's daughter. Always he
had been conscious of the girl growing into woman-
hood as he grew into manhood. Once on a sum-
mer night when he was eighteen, he had walked
with her on a country road and in her presence
had given way to an impulse to boast, to make
himself appear big and significant in her eyes.
Now he wanted to. see her for another purpose.
He wanted to tell her of the new impulses that
had come to him. He had tried to make her think
of him as a man when he knew nothing of man-
hood and now he wanted to be with her and to
try to make her feel the change he believed had
] taken place in his nature.

As for Helen White, she also had come to a
period of change. What George felt, she in her
young woman's way felt also. She was no longer
a girl and hungered to reach into the grace and
beauty of womanhood. She had come home from
Cleveland, where she was attending college, to
spend a day at the Fair. She also had begun to
have memories. During the day she sat in the
grandstand with a young man, one of the instruc-
tors from the college, who was a guest of her
mother's. The young man was of a pedantic turn
of mind and she felt at once he would not do for
her purpose. At the Fair she was glad to be seen

SOPHISTICATION 289

in his company as he was well dressed and a stran-
ger. She knew that the fact of his presence would
create an impression. During the day she was
happy, but when night came on she began to grow
restless. She wanted to drive the instructor away,
to get out of his presence. While they sat
together in the grand-stand and while the eyes of
former schoolmates were upon them, she paid so
much attention to her escort that he grew inter-
ested. "A scholar needs money. I should marry
a woman with money," he mused.

Helen White was thinking of George Willard
even as he wandered gloomily through the crowds
thinking of her. She remembered the summer
evening when they had walked together and
wanted to walk with him again. She thought that
the months she had spent in the city, the going
to theatres and the seeing of great crowds wan-
dering in lighted thoroughfares, had changed her
profoundly. She wanted him to feel and be con-
scious of the change in her nature.

The summer evening together that had left its
mark on the memory of both the young man and
woman had, when looked at quite sensibly, been
rather stupidly spent. They had walked out of
town along a country road. Then they had
stopped by a fence near a field of young corn and
George had taken off his coat and let it hang on
his arm. "Well, I've stayed here in Winesburg

290 WINESBURG, OHIO

— yes — I've not yet gone away but I'm growing
up," he had said. "I've been reading books and
I've been thinking. I'm going to try to amount to
something in life.

"Well," he explained, "that isn't the point.
Perhaps I'd better quit talking."

The confused boy put his hand on the girl's arm.
His voice trembled. The two started to walk
back along the road toward town. In his desper-
ation George boasted, "I'm going to be a big man,
the biggest that ever lived here in Winesburg,"
he declared. "I want you to do something, I
don't know what. Perhaps it is none of my busi-
ness. I want you to try to be different from other
women. You see the point. It's none of my
business I tell you. I want you to be a beautiful
woman. You see what I want."

The boy's voice failed and in silence the two
came back into town and went along the street to
Helen White's house. At the gate he tried to
say something impressive. Speeches he had
thought out came into his head, but they seemed
utterly pointless. "I thought — I used to think —
I had it in my mind you would marry Seth Rich-
mond. Now I know you won't," was all he
could find to say as she went through the gate and
toward the door of her house.

On the warm fall evening as he stood in the
stairway and looked at the crowd drifting through

SOPHISTICATION 291

Main Street, George thought of the talk beside
the field of young corn and was ashamed of the
figure he had made of himself. In the street the
people surged up and down like cattle confined in
a pen. Buggies and wagons almost filled the nar-
row thoroughfare. A band played and small
boys raced along the sidewalk, diving between
the legs of men. Young men with shining red
faces walked awkwardly about with girls on their
arms. In a room above one of the stores, where
a dance was to be held, the fiddlers tuned their
instruments. The broken sounds floated down
through an open window and out across the mur-
mer of voices and the loud blare of the horns of
the band. The medley of sounds got on young
Willard's nerves. Everywhere, on all sides, the
sense of crowding, moving life closed in about
him. He wanted to run away by himself and
think. "If she wants to stay with that fellow she
may. Why should I care? What difference
does it make to me?" he growled and went along
Main Street and through Hern's grocery into a
side street.

George felt so utterly lonely and dejected that
he wanted to weep but pride made him walk rap-
idly along, swinging his arms. He came to West-
ley Mover's livery barn and stopped in the shad-
ows to listen to a group of men who talked of a
race Westley's stallion, Tony Tip, had won at the

292 WINESBURG, OHIO

Fair during the afternoon. A crowd had gath-
ered in front of the barn and before the crowd
walked Westley, prancing up and down and boast-
ing. He held a whip in his hand and kept tap-
ping the ground. Little puffs of dust arose in the
lamplight. "Hell, quit your talking," Westley
exclaimed. "I wasn't afraid, I knew I had 'em
beat all the time. I wasn't afraid."

Ordinarily George Willard would have been
intensely interested in the boasting of Moyer, the
horseman. Now it made him angry. He turned
and hurried away along the street. "Old wind-
bag," he sputtered. "Why does he want to be
bragging? Why don't he shut up?"

George went into a vacant lot and as he hur-
ried along, fell over a pile of rubbish. A nail pro-
truding from an empty barrel tore his trousers.
He sat down on the ground and swore. With a
pin he mended the torn place and then arose and
went on. "I'll go to Helen White's house, that's
what I'll do. I'll walk right in. I'll say that I
want to see her. I'll walk right in and sit down,
that's what I'll do," he declared, climbing over a
fence and beginning to run.

On the veranda of Banker White's house Helen

was restless and distraught. The instructor sat
between the mother and daughter. His talk
wearied the girl. Although he had also been

SOPHISTICATION 293

raised in an Ohio town, the instructor began to
put on the airs of the city. He wanted to appear
cosmopolitan. "I like the chance you have given
me to study the background out of which most of
our girls come," he declared. "It was good of
you, Mrs. White, to have me down for the day."
He turned to Helen and laughed. "Your life is
still bound up with the life of this town?" he
asked. "There are people here in whom you are
interested?" To the girl his voice sounded pom-
pous and heavy.

Helen arose and went into the house. At the
door leading to a garden at the back she stopped
and stood listening. Her mother began to talk.
"There is no one here fit to associate with a girl
of Helen's breeding," she said.

Helen ran down a flight of stairs at the back of
the house and into the garden. In the darkness
she stopped and stood trembling. It seemed to
her that the world was full of meaningless people
saying words. Afire with eagerness she ran
through a garden gate and turning a corner by
the banker's barn, went into a little side street.
"George! Where are you, George?" she cried,
filled with nervous excitement. She stopped run-
ning, and leaned against a tree to laugh hysteri-
cally. Along the dark little street came George
Willard, still saying words. "I'm going to walk
right into her house. I'll go right in and sit

294 WINESBURG, OHIO

down," he declared as he came up to her. He
stopped and stared stupidly. "Come on," he said
and took hold of her hand. With hanging heads
they walked away along the street under the trees.
Dry leaves rustled under foot. Now that he had
found her George wondered what he had better
do and say.

At the upper end of the fair ground, in Wines-
burg, there is a half decayed old grand-stand. It
has never been painted and the boards are all
warped out of shape. The fair ground stands on
top of a low hill rising out of the valley of Wine
Creek and from the grand-stand one can see at
night, over a cornfield, the lights of the town re-
flected against the sky.

George and Helen climbed the hill to the fair
ground, coming by the path past Waterworks
Pond. The feeling of loneliness and isolation
that had come to the young man in the crowded
streets of his town was both broken and intensi-
fied by the presence of Helen. What he felt was
reflected in her.

In youth there are always two forces fighting in
people. The warm unthinking little animal strug-
gles against the thing that reflects and remembers,
and the older, the more sophisticated thing had
possession of George Willard. Sensing his mood,
Helen walked beside him filled with respect.

SOPHISTICATION 295

When they got to the grand-stand they climbed up
under the roof and sat down on one of the long
bench-like seats.

There is something memorable in the experience
to be had by going into a fair ground that stands
at the edge of a Middle Western town on a night
after the annual fair has been held. The sensa-
tion is one never to be forgotten. On all sides are
ghosts, not of the dead, but of living people.
Here, during the day just passed, have come the
people pouring in from the town and the country
around. Farmers with their wives and children
and all the people from the hundreds of little
frame houses have gathered within these board
walls. Young girls have laughed and men with
beards have talked of the affairs of their lives.
The place has been filled to overflowing with life.
It has itched and squirmed with life and now it is
night and the life has all gone away. The silence
is almost terrifying. One conceals oneself stand-
ing silently beside the trunk of a tree and what
there is of a reflective tendency in his nature is in-
tensified. One shudders at the thought of the
meaninglessness of life while at the same instant,
and if the people of the town are his people, one
loves life so intensely that tears come into the
eyes.

In the darkness under the roof of the grand-
stand, George Willard sat beside Helen White

296 WINESBURG, OHIO

and felt very keenly his own insignificance in the
scheme of existence. Now that he had come out
of town where the presence of the people stirring
about, busy with a multitude of affairs, had been
so irritating the irritation was all gone. The
presence of Helen renewed and refreshed him.
It was as though her woman's hand was assisting
him to make some minute readjustment of the ma-
chinery of his life. He began to think of the peo-
ple in the town where he had always lived with
something like reverence. He had reverence for
Helen. He wanted to love and to be loved by
her, but he did not want at the moment to be con-
fused by her womarihood. In the darkness he took
hold of her hand and when she crept close put a
hand on her shoulder. A wind began to blow and
he shivered. With all his strength he tried to
hold and to understand the mood that had come
upon him. In that high place in the darkness the
two oddly sensitive human atoms held each other
tightly and waited. In the mind of each was the
same thought. "I have come to this lonely place
and here is this other," was the substance of the
thing felt.

In Winesburg the crowded day had run it-
self out into the long night of the late fall. Farm
horses jogged away along lonely country roads
pulling their portion of weary people. Clerks
began to bring samples of goods in off the side-

SOPHISTICATION 297

walks and lock the doors of stores. In the Opera
House a crowd had gathered to see a show and
further down Main Street the fiddlers, their in-
struments tuned, sweated and worked to keep the
feet of youth flying over a dance floor.

In the darkness in the grand-stand Helen White
and George Willard remained silent. Now and
then the spell that held them was broken and they
turned and tried in the dim light to see into each
others eyes. They kissed but that impulse did not
last. At the upper end of the fair ground a half
dozen men worked over horses that had raced dur-
ing the afternoon. The men had built a fire and
were heating kettles of water. Only their legs
could be seen as they passed back and forth in the
light. When the wind blew the little flames of the
fire danced crazily about.

George and Helen arose and walked away into
the darkness. They went along a path past a
field of corn that had not yet been cut. The wind
whispered among the dry corn blades. For a mo-
ment during the walk back into town the spell
that held them was broken. When they had come
to the crest of Waterworks Hill they stopped by
a tree and George again put his hands on the girl's
shoulders. She embraced him eagerly and then
again they drew quickly back from that impulse.
They stopped kissing and stood a little apart.
Mutual respect grew big in them. They were

298 WINESBURG, OHIO

both embarrassed and to relieve their embarrass-
ment dropped into the animalism of youth. They
laughed and began to pull and haul at each other.
In some way chastened and purified by the mood
they had been in they became, not man and woman,
not boy and girl, but excited little animals.

It was so they went down the hill. In the dark-
ness they played like two splendid young things
in a young world. Once, running swiftly forward,
Helen tripped George and he fell. He squirmed
and shouted. Shaking with laughter, he rolled
down the hill. Helen ran after him. For just a
moment she stopped in the darkness. There is
no way of knowing what woman's thoughts went
through her mind but, when the bottom of the hill
was reached and she came up to the boy, she took
his arm and walked beside him in dignified silence.
For some reason they could not have explained
they had both got from their silent evening to-
gether the thing needed. Man or boy, woman or
girl, they had for a moment taken hold of the
thing that makes the mature life of men and
women in the modern world possible.

DEPARTURE

YOUNG George Willard got out of bed
at four in the morning. It was April and
the young tree leaves were just coming out
of their buds. The trees along the residence
streets in Winesburg are maple and the seeds are
winged. When the wind blows they whirl crazily
about, filling the air and making a carpet under-
foot.

George came down stairs into the hotel office
carrying a brown leather bag. His trunk was
packed for departure. Since two o'clock he had
been awake thinking of the journey he was about
to take and wondering what he would find at the
end of his journey. The boy who slept in the
hotel office lay on a cot by the door. His mouth
was open and he snored lustily. George crept
past the cot and went out into the silent deserted
main street. The east was pink with the dawn
and long streaks of light climbed into the sky
where a few stars still shone.

Beyond the last house on Trunion Pike in
Winesburg there is a great stretch of open fields.
The fields are owned by farmers who live in town

299

300 WINESBURG, OHIO

and drive homeward at evening along Trunion
Pike in light creaking wagons. In the fields are
planted berries and small fruits. In the late aft-
ernoon in the hot summers when the road and the
fields are covered with dust, a smoky haze lies over
the great flat basin of land. To look across it is
like looking out across the sea. In the spring
when the land is green the effect is somewhat dif-
ferent. The land becomes a wide green billiard
table on which tiny human insects toil up and
down.

All through his boyhood and young manhood
George Willard had been in the habit of walking
on Trunion Pike. He had been in the midst of
the great open place on winter nights when it
was covered with snow and only the moon looked
down at him; he had been there in the fall when
bleak winds blew and on summer evenings when
the air vibrated with the song of insects. On the
April morning he wanted to go there again, to
walk again in the silence. He did walk to where
the road dipped down by a little stream two miles
from town and then turned and walked silently
back again. When he got to Main Street clerks
were sweeping the sidewalks before the stores.
"Hey, you George. How does it feel to be going
away?" they asked.

The west bound train leaves Winesburg at seven
forty-five in the morning. Tom Little is conduc-

DEPARTURE 301

tor. His train runs from Cleveland to where
it connects with a great trunk line railroad with
terminals in Chicago and New York. Tom has
what in railroad circles is called an "easy run."
Every evening he returned to his family. In the
fall and spring he spends his Sundays fishing in
Lake Erie. He has a round red face and small
blue eyes. He knows the people in the towns
along his railroad better than a city man knows
the people who live in his apartment building.

George came down the little incline from the
New Willard House at seven o'clock. Tom Wil-
lard carried his bag. The son had become taller
than the father.

On the station platform everyone shook the
young man's hand. More than a dozen people
waited about. Then they talked of their own af-
fairs. Even Will Henderson, who was lazy and
often slept until nine, had got out of bed. George
was embarrassed. Gertrude Wilmot, a tall thin
woman of fifty who worked in the Winesburg post
office, came along the station platform. She had
never before paid any attention to George. Now
she stopped and put out her hand. In two words
she voiced what everyone felt. "Good luck/' she
said sharply and then turning went on her way.

When the train came into the station George
felt relieved. He scampered hurriedly aboard.
Helen White came running along Main Street

302 WINESBURG, OHIO

hoping to have a parting word with him, but he
had found a seat and did not see her. When the
train started Tom Little punched his ticket,
grinned and, although he knew George well and
knew on what adventure he was just setting out,
made no comment. Tom had seen a thousand
George Willards go out of their towns to the city.
It was a commonplace enough incident with him.
In the smoking car there was a man who had just
invited Tom to go on a fishing trip to Sandusky
Bay. He wanted to accept the invitation and talk
over details.

George glanced up and down the car to be sure
no one was looking then took out his pocketbook
and counted his money. His mind was occupied
with a desire not to appear green. Almost the
last words his father had said to him concerned
the matter of his behavior when he got to the city.
"Be a sharp-one," Tom Willard had said. "Keep
your eyes on your money. Be awake. That's
the ticket. Don't let any one think you're a green-
horn."

After George counted his money he looked out
of the window and was surprised to see that the
train was still in Winesburg.

The young man, going out of his town to meet
the adventure of life, began to think but he did
not think of anything very big or dramatic.
Things like his mother's death, his departure from

DEPARTURE 303

Winesburg, the uncertainty^ of his future life in
the city, the serious and larger aspects of his life
did not come into his mind.

He thought of little things — Turk Smallet
wheeling boards through the main street "of his
town in the morning, a tall woman, beautifully
gowned, who had once stayed over night at his
father's hotel, Butch Wheeler the lamp lighter of
Winesburg hurrying through the streets on a sum-
mer evening and holding a torch in his hand,
Helen White standing by a window in the Wines-
burg post office and putting a stamp on an en-
velope.

The young man's mind was carried away by
his growing passion for dreams. One looking at
him would not have thought him particularly
sharp. With the recollection of little things oc-
cupying his mind he closed his eyes and leaned
back in the car seat. He stayed that way for a
long time and when he aroused himself and again
looked out of the car window the town of Wines-
burg had disappeared and his life there had be-
come but a background on which to paint the
dreams of his manhood.

THE END

GO

LLl

CC

- 1980
PRATT

MAR 2 1987