rywhere.  In our day  a farmer
standing  by the 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  districts 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 Sunday 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 eagerness, 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 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 contained
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 narrowed 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.
     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 remembered  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. "Jehovah of Hosts," he cried, "send to
me this night out of the womb of Katherine, a son. Let Thy 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."

     II
     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.
     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 deliberately set fire to
the house, and often she hid herself 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.  It 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
afternoons 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 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, orderly 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 was 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  grandfather  on the
Bentley farm, he was altogether 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 overcast 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  weeping
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  darkness. Into his mind came the conviction
that he was walking and  running in some terrible void where no one had ever
been before. The  darkness 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 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 father'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 disappeared. 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 country. 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  suddenly  become another
woman. He could not  believe 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. 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 unimportant matter. He
thought  that  he  would have  been  willing  to  go through  the  frightful
experience 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  boyhood he saw his mother but
seldom and she  became 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 of the boy. The old man was excited  and determined on having his own
way. He talked to John Hardy in the office of the Winesburg Savings 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  presence," 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, leaving 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 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
bed she went into his  room and sat  on the floor until he fell asleep. When
he became drowsy she became 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 the womb of Katherine,  began to think that
at  last his prayers  had been  answered. Although  he was at that time only
fiftyfive 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 disappointed man.
     There were two influences at work in Jesse Bentley and all his life his
mind had been  a battleground  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 walking 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. Instead  he prayed for it. Sometimes he was altogether 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  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  glorifying 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 modem 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
reading  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 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
going 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  excited  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 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
expanded 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 sounds. When  he awoke at dawn
the  barnyard  back of the house  also awoke. In  the  house  people 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
shores,  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
morning  he  made such  a  noise  coming down stairs that  Aunt Callie,  the
housekeeper, declared he was trying to tear the  house down. When he had run
through  the  long  old house, shutting the 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
before 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 tom 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 phaeton drawn by the white horse. The old man
scratched his thin  white  beard  and talked  to  himself  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 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  destroyed  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 possessions, 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 wondered what was
going to happen.  When a rabbit 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 grandfather 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 head 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 inevitable.
"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,  someone  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,  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 everything 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 David. Come down to
me out of the sky and make Thy presence 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 Jesse had carried him to  the
buggy and he  awoke to find the  old man's  hand  stroking his head tenderly
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
dost 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.
     III
     Surrender
     THE STORY  OF Louise Bentley, who became Mrs. John Hardy and lived with
her husband  in a  brick house on  Elm Street  in Winesburg, is a  story  of
misunderstanding.
     Before  such women  as Louise  can be  understood 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 numbers 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 Winesburg with the family of Albert
Hardy,  who had a  store for the sale  of buggies and wagons, and who was  a
member of the town board of education.
     Louise went into town to be a  student in the Winesburg High School and
she  went  to  live at the Hardys'  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 better 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 threatened  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. Always 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 affection 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
household 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 Winesburg 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 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 merchant 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, glaring  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 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 attention 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  altogether 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  coldness  with which she was  always greeted,  she burst into tears.
"Shut up your crying  and go back to your own room and to your  books," Mary
Hardy said sharply.
     x x x
     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 carried 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 making friends with John Hardy.
When he came into  the room  with the wood in  his arms, she pretended 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 people in the world,  a wall had been built up and
that she was  living just on the edge of some warm 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 Wednesday evenings. Sometimes she went with her 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  embraced.  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  Winesburg, 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 evening 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 window 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 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 window 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 darkness  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 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 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 of his  coming  that  for a long time she did not hear the call that
came up  from the orchard. 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 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  darkness.
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
escort. "I hate father and the 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 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  something  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 without 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,
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."

     IV
     Terror
     WHEN DAVID HARDY was a tall boy of fifteen, he, like his mother, had an
adventure 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 trying 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 improve it.
Great ditches had to be dug  and thousands of tile laid. Neighboring farmers
shook their  heads over the  expense.  Some  of  them 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 remaining 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 afternoon  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  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 shooting at
imaginary animals concealed among the brown leaves in the trees. Thoughts of
his coming  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 grandfather
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  seemed  to be  looking  at  nothing.
Something  like an  invisible  curtain appeared to have come between 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 today. 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 farmhouse  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 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."
     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 frightened  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 happen," 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 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 released, 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 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 running and walked rapidly down a road that followed 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 surprised by the boy's disappearance.  By the roadside 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 character 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 physical state  in  which
his  eyes roll and his legs  and arms  jerk. He was like that, only that the
visitation that descended upon  Joe Welling was a mental and not a  physical
thing. He  was  beset by  ideas and  in the throes of one of his  ideas  was
uncontrollable. Words  rolled and tumbled from  his mouth. A peculiar  smile
came upon his lips.  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 who were talking of horse
racing. Wesley Moyer's stallion, Tony Tip, was  to race at the June  meeting
at  Tiffin,  Ohio, and there  was a rumor that  he  would  meet the stiffest
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,  brushing  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's 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  Sinnings'
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. 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 horizon, 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 Standard Oil Company. "Hern's Grocery
will be getting low on coal oil. I'll see them," he muttered, hurrying along
the street, and bowing  politely to 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 newspaper. "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 forefinger 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 and 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. They're burning
up. Decay you see is always going on. It doesn'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
gets everybody working together. You just watch him."
     Upon the baseball field Joe Welling stood by first base, his whole body
quivering  with  excitement. In  spite of themselves all the players watched
him closely. The opposing pitcher became confused.
     "Now! Now! Now! Now!" shouted the  excited  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!"
     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, advancing, 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 Winesburg on  edge. When  it
began everyone whispered and shook his head. When people tried to laugh, the
laughter was forced and unnatural. Joe fell in love with Sarah King, a lean,
sad-looking woman who  lived with  her father and brother  in a  brick house
that stood opposite the gate leading 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.
     When Sarah  King began  walking out in the  evening  with Joe  Welling,
people shook their heads in alarm. She was tall and pale and had dark  rings
under her eyes. The couple looked  ridiculous 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 Willard House
laughing  and talking of  Joe's  courtship.  After  the  laughter  came  the
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  between Joe  Welling and the
two Kings, the anticipation 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 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 toward 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 Willard  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  reporter 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  giggle  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  attention  to the  grumbled
threat of Tom King. Absorbed 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 something 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 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 shivery,  nervous  laugh of
Edward King rang through the house. Joe Welling hurried on. "We'd begin, 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 extraordinary  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 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 always 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  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
became 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 tom 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 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 Wesley Moyer'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 wonder and
beauty of the thing that  had happened.  "Now  we will have to stick to each
other, whatever 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 Chicago he boarded
at a house  where there  were  several 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 carpets,  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 waiting 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 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 attention 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 evenings  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 became attached
to inanimate objects,  and because  it was her own,  could  not bare 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 impossible dreams of saving money enough so that the interest would
support both herself and her future husband.
     "Ned always liked to travel  about," she  thought. "I'll 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
customers  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 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 afternoons. 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 the other young people on  Sunday, but  one day after he had been
gone for two or three  years and  when her loneliness 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  ineffectuality  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 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 twentyfive two things happened to
disturb the dull uneventfulness of her days. Her mother married Bush Milton,
the carriage painter of Winesburg, and  she herself became a member  of  the
Winesburg Methodist Church.  Alice joined the  church because she had become
frightened by the loneliness 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 resolutely
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 evening  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 loyalty to Ned Currie.
     Without realizing what was happening, Alice was trying feebly at first,
but with growing determination, 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 drug  clerk, and when, in the evening, he came  to walk with
her she sent him away. Her mind became 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,  whispering  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 town and her mother to the house of
a neighbor. Alice went upstairs  to her room and undressed in  the darkness.
For a 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 creative 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 stumbled 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 listening. 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. 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 doorway.  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
brokenheartedly. "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, began
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 creature with ugly, sagging, hairless skin
below his eyes and a bright purple underbody. This monkey 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 girth was immense, his neck thin, his legs feeble. He was
dirty. Everything about him was  unclean. 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 sensitive  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 Winesburg, 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  nothing to do with  them," he said, looking with  bleary
eyes at the men who  walked  along  the station platform past  the telegraph
office. Up along Main Street he went in the evening to Ed Griffith's saloon,
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 wholeheartedly, 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.
     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  Winesburg  was  dirty  and  smelled
abominably,  but  nothing  came  of  her  complaint.  Here and  there a  man
respected  the  operator.  Instinctively  the man  felt  in  him  a  glowing
resentment of something 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 who knew the story of the
thing that had made ugly the person and the  character of Wash  Williams. He
once told the story to George Willard and the telling of the tale came about
in this way:
     George Willard went one 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 embraced. The night and their own  thoughts had
aroused something in them. As they were returning to Main Street they passed
the little lawn beside the railroad station and saw Wash Williams 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  consumed with curiosity.  Something he  saw lurking in the staring eyes
told him  that the  man who had  nothing to say to  others  had nevertheless
something 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 commanded. "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 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 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 Wash 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.  Already 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 the blue eyes whom he had met when he was a young  operator
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  position 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. 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  managed to
acquire three other lovers  who came regularly 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 wrote me a letter and asked me
to come to their house at Dayton. When I got there it was evening 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 respectable 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 coaxing 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 perfectly 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  hallway waiting, hoping we  would--well,
you see-- waiting."
     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 became 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 Winesburg 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  somewhat dimmed.  The  huge brick house which  Banker
White  had built on Buckeye Street  had overshadowed it.  The Richmond place
was  in a little  valley  far out at the end of Main Street. Farmers  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 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  become run down,  had in  reality grown more beautiful
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