r chair by the window
of her room  and  when darkness had come on and a girl from the hotel dining
room  brought her dinner  on a tray, she let it grow  cold. Her thoughts ran
away  to  her girlhood  with its  passionate longing for  adventure and  she
remembered the arms  of men  that had held her when adventure was a possible
thing for her. Particularly she remembered  one who  had for a time been her
lover and who in the moment of his passion had cried out to  her more than a
hundred times, saying the  same words madly over and  over: "You  dear!  You
dear!  You  lovely dear!"  The words, she thought, expressed  something  she
would have liked to have achieved in life.
     In her room in the shabby  old hotel the sick wife of the  hotel keeper
began to weep and, putting her hands to her face, rocked back and forth. The
words of her one  friend, Doctor  Reefy, rang  in  her ears. "Love is like a
wind  stirring the grass beneath trees on a black night," he had said.  "You
must not try to make love definite.  It is the  divine accident of life.  If
you try  to be definite and sure about it  and  to  live beneath the  trees,
where  soft  night  winds blow,  the long  hot  day of disappointment  comes
swiftly and the gritty dust  from passing wagons gathers upon  lips inflamed
and made tender by kisses."
     Elizabeth  Willard could not remember her mother who had  died when she
was but five years old.  Her girlhood  had  been lived in the most haphazard
manner imaginable. Her father was a man who  had wanted to  be let alone and
the affairs of the hotel would not let him alone. He also had lived and died
a  sick man. Every day he arose with a cheerful face, but by ten o'clock  in
the morning all the joy  had gone out of  his heart. When a guest complained
of the fare in the hotel dining room  or one of the  girls who made  up  the
beds got married and  went away, he stamped on the floor and swore. At night
when he went to bed he  thought of  his daughter growing up among the stream
of people  that  drifted  in  and  out  of the  hotel  and was overcome with
sadness.  As  the girl grew older and began to walk out  in the evening with
men  he  wanted to talk to  her, but when  he  tried  was not successful. He
always forgot what he  wanted to say and  spent the time complaining of  his
own affairs.
     In her girlhood  and young womanhood Elizabeth  had tried to  be a real
adventurer  in life.  At eighteen life had so  gripped her  that she  was no
longer a virgin but, although she had a half dozen lovers before she married
Tom  Willard, she  had never  entered upon an adventure  prompted by  desire
alone.  Like all  the  women in  the world, she wanted a real lover.  Always
there was something she sought blindly, passionately,  some hidden wonder in
life. The tall  beautiful girl with the swinging stride who had walked under
the trees with men was  forever  putting out her hand into the  darkness and
trying to get hold of some other hand. In all  the babble of words that fell
from the  lips of  the men with  whom she adventured she was trying  to find
what would be for her the true word,
     Elizabeth  had  married  Tom  Willard, a clerk in  her father's  hotel,
because  he  was  at  hand  and  wanted  to  marry  at  the  time  when  the
determination to marry came to her. For a while, like  most young girls, she
thought marriage  would  change the face of life. If there was in her mind a
doubt  of  the  outcome of  the marriage with Tom she brushed it  aside. Her
father was ill and  near death at the time and she was perplexed  because of
the meaningless outcome  of an affair in which  she had just  been involved.
Other girls of  her age in Winesburg were marrying men she had always known,
grocery clerks or young farmers.  In the evening they walked  in Main Street
with  their husbands and when she  passed they  smiled happily. She began to
think that the fact of marriage  might be full of some  hidden significance.
Young  wives with whom she talked spoke softly and shyly. "It changes things
to have a man of your own," they said.
     On the evening before  her marriage the perplexed girl  had a talk with
her father. Later she wondered if  the hours alone with the sick man had not
led to her decision to marry. The father talked of his life and  advised the
daughter to avoid being led into another such muddle. He abused Tom Willard,
and that led  Elizabeth  to come to the clerk's defense. The sick man became
excited and tried  to get out  of bed. When she would not let him walk about
he began to complain.  "I've never  been let alone," he said. "Although I've
worked hard I've not made the hotel pay.  Even now I owe money  at the bank.
You'll find that out when I'm gone."
     The voice of the sick man became tense with earnestness.  Being  unable
to arise,  he put out his hand and  pulled the girl's  head down beside  his
own. "There's a way out," he whispered. "Don't  marry Tom Willard  or anyone
else here in  Winesburg. There is eight  hundred dollars  in a tin box in my
trunk. Take it and go away."
     Again the sick man's voice became querulous. "You've  got to  promise,"
he declared. "If  you won't  promise  not  to marry, give me  your word that
you'll never tell Tom about the  money. It is mine and if I  give it to  you
I've  the right to make that demand. Hide it  away. It  is to make up to you
for my  failure  as a father. Some time  it may prove  to be a door, a great
open door  to you.  Come  now, I tell you  I'm about  to die, give  me  your
promise."
     In  Doctor  Reefy's  office,  Elizabeth,  a  tired gaunt old  woman  at
forty-one, sat in a chair near the stove and looked at the floor. By a small
desk  near  the window sat the doctor. His hands played  with a lead  pencil
that lay on the desk. Elizabeth talked  of her  life as a married woman. She
became impersonal and forgot her husband, only  using him as a lay figure to
give point to her  tale. "And then I was married and it did not  turn out at
all," she said bitterly. "As soon  as I  had  gone  into  it I  began  to be
afraid. Perhaps I knew too much before and then perhaps I found out too much
during my first night with him. I don't remember.
     "What a fool I was. When father gave me  the money and tried to talk me
out of the thought  of marriage, I  would  not listen. I thought of what the
girls who were married had said of it and I wanted marriage also.  It wasn't
Tom I wanted, it was marriage. When father went to sleep I leaned out of the
window  and  thought of the life I had led. I didn't want to be a bad woman.
The town was full of stories about me. I even began  to be  afraid Tom would
change his mind."
     The woman's voice began to quiver with excitement. To Doctor Reefy, who
without realizing what  was happening had begun to love her,  there  came an
odd illusion.  He thought that as  she talked the woman's body was changing,
that she was becoming younger, straighter, stronger. When he could not shake
off the illusion his mind gave it a professional twist. "It is good for both
her body and her mind, this talking," he muttered.
     The woman began telling of  an incident that had happened one afternoon
a  few months after  her  marriage. Her voice became  steadier. "In the late
afternoon I  went for a drive alone," she said. "I had a buggy and a  little
grey pony I kept in Moyer's Livery. Tom was painting and repapering rooms in
the hotel. He wanted money and I was trying to  make up  my mind to tell him
about the eight hundred dollars father had given to me. I couldn't decide to
do it. I  didn't  like him well enough.  There was always paint on his hands
and face during those days and he smelled of paint. He was trying to fix  up
the old hotel, and make it new and smart."
     The  excited woman sat  up  very straight in her chair and made a quick
girlish movement with her hand as she told  of the drive alone on the spring
afternoon. "It was cloudy and  a storm threatened,"  she said. "Black clouds
made the green of  the trees and the grass stand out so that the colors hurt
my eyes. I went out Trunion  Pike a mile or more and then turned into a side
road. The little horse went quickly along up hill and down. I was impatient.
Thoughts came and I wanted to get away from my thoughts. I began to beat the
horse. The black clouds settled down and it began to rain. I wanted to go at
a terrible speed, to drive on and on forever. I wanted to get  out of  town,
out of my  clothes, out of my marriage, out of my body, out of everything. I
almost killed the  horse, making him run, and when he could not run any more
I got out of the buggy and ran afoot into the darkness until I fell and hurt
my side. I  wanted to run away from  everything but I wanted to  run towards
something too. Don't you see, dear, how it was?"
     Elizabeth  sprang out  of the chair  and began  to  walk  about in  the
office.  She  walked as Doctor Reefy thought he had  never  seen anyone walk
before. To her whole  body there was a swing, a rhythm that intoxicated him.
When she came  and knelt on the floor beside his chair he took  her into his
arms and began to kiss  her  passionately.  "I cried  all the way home," she
said,  as  she tried  to continue the story of her wild ride, but he did not
listen.  "You dear!  You lovely dear! Oh you  lovely dear!" he  muttered and
thought  he held in  his arms not  the tired-out woman  of forty-one  but  a
lovely  and innocent  girl  who  had been able by  some  miracle  to project
herself out of the husk of the body of the tired-out woman.
     Doctor  Reefy did not see the woman he had held in his arms again until
after her death. On the  summer afternoon in the  office  when he was on the
point  of becoming her lover a  half grotesque  little incident brought  his
love-making quickly to an end. As the man  and woman held each other tightly
heavy feet came tramping up  the office stairs. The two sprang to their feet
and stood  listening and  trembling.  The noise on  the stairs was made by a
clerk from the Paris  Dry Goods Company. With a  loud bang he threw an empty
box  on the pile of  rubbish in the  hallway and then went  heavily down the
stairs. Elizabeth followed him almost immediately. The  thing that had  come
to  life in  her as she  talked to  her  one friend  died  suddenly. She was
hysterical, as was also Doctor Reefy, and did not want to continue the talk.
Along the street she went with the blood still singing in her body, but when
she turned out  of Main Street and saw ahead  the lights of the  New Willard
House,  she began  to tremble  and  her knees shook so that for a moment she
thought she would fall in the street.
     The  sick woman spent  the last few  months of  her  life hungering for
death. Along the road of death she went, seeking, hungering. She personified
the figure of death and made him now a strong blackhaired youth running over
hills, now a stem quiet man marked and scarred by the business of living. In
the darkness  of her room she put out her hand, thrusting it  from under the
covers of her bed, and she  thought  that death like a living thing  put out
his hand to her.  "Be patient, lover," she  whispered. "Keep  yourself young
and beautiful and be patient."
     On the evening when disease  laid its heavy hand upon her  and defeated
her plans  for telling her son George of  the eight  hundred  dollars hidden
away, she got out of bed and crept half across the room pleading  with death
for  another hour  of  life. "Wait, dear! The boy!  The boy!  The  boy!" she
pleaded as she tried with all of her strength to  fight off the  arms of the
lover she had wanted so earnestly.
     Elizabeth died one day in March in the year when  her son George became
eighteen, and  the young man had but  little  sense of  the meaning  of  her
death. Only  time could  give him that. For a month he  had seen  her  lying
white and still and speechless in her bed, and then one afternoon the doctor
stopped him in the hallway and said a few words.
     The young man went  into his  own  room and closed  the door. He  had a
queer  empty feeling  in  the  region of  his stomach.  For a moment he  sat
staring at, the floor and then jumping up went for a walk. Along the station
platform he  went, and around through residence streets past  the highschool
building, thinking  almost entirely of his own affairs. The notion of  death
could  not  get hold of  him and  he was in fact  a little  annoyed that his
mother had died on that day.  He had  just received a note from Helen White,
the daughter of the town banker, in answer to one from him. "Tonight I could
have gone  to see her and now it  will have to be  put off," he thought half
angrily.
     Elizabeth died on a Friday afternoon at three o'clock. It had been cold
and  rainy in the morning but in  the afternoon the sun came out. Before she
died she lay paralyzed for six days  unable to speak or  move  and with only
her mind and her  eyes  alive.  For  three  of  the  six days she struggled,
thinking of her boy, trying to say some few  words in regard  to his future,
and in her eyes there was an appeal so touching that all who saw it kept the
memory of the dying woman  in their minds for  years.  Even Tom Willard, who
had always half  resented  his wife, forgot his resentment and the tears ran
out of his  eyes and lodged in his mustache. The mustache had  begun to turn
grey and Tom colored it with dye. There  was oil  in the preparation he used
for the purpose  and the tears, catching in the mustache and  being  brushed
away by his hand, formed  a fine mistlike vapor. In his  grief Tom Willard's
face looked  like the face of a little dog that has been out  a long time in
bitter weather.
     George came home  along Main Street at dark on the day  of his mother's
death and, after going to his  own room  to brush his hair and clothes, went
along the hallway and into the room where  the body lay. There was  a candle
on the dressing table  by the door and Doctor Reefy sat  in  a  chair by the
bed. The doctor  arose and started  to go out. He put out his hand as though
to greet the younger man and then  awkwardly drew it back again. The  air of
the  room was heavy with the presence of the two selfconscious human beings,
and the man hurried away.
     The dead woman's son sat down  in  a chair  and looked at the floor. He
again thought of his own  affairs  and definitely  decided he would  make  a
change in his fife, that he would  leave Winesburg. "I will go to some city.
Perhaps I can get a job on  some newspaper," he  thought, and then his  mind
turned to the girl with whom he was to have spent this evening and  again he
was half angry at the turn of events that had prevented his going to her.
     In  the dimly  lighted  room with the dead woman the young man began to
have  thoughts. His mind  played with thoughts of life as  his mother's mind
had played with the thought of death. He  closed  his eyes and imagined that
the red young  lips of  Helen  White touched his own lips. His body trembled
and his hands shook. And then something happened. The boy sprang to his feet
and stood  stiffly.  He  looked at the  figure of the dead  woman  under the
sheets and shame for his thoughts swept over him so that he began to weep. A
new notion came  into his mind and  he  turned and  looked guiltily about as
though afraid he would be observed.
     George Willard became possessed of a madness to lift the sheet from the
body of his mother and look at her face. The thought  that had come into his
mind gripped him terribly. He  became  convinced  that not  his  mother  but
someone else lay in  the  bed before him. The conviction was so real that it
was  almost unbearable.  The body  under  the  sheets was long and in  death
looked  young and graceful. To the boy,  held by  some strange fancy, it was
unspeakably lovely.  The feeling that the body before him was alive, that in
another moment a lovely woman would spring  out of the bed and confront him,
became so overpowering that he could not bear the  suspense. Again and again
he put out his  hand. Once he touched  and half lifted  the white sheet that
covered  her, but his  courage failed and he, like Doctor Reefy, turned  and
went  out  of the room.  In  the hallway  outside  the door he  stopped  and
trembled  so that he had to put  a hand against the wall to support himself.
"That's not  my  mother.  That's  not my mother in there," he  whispered  to
himself  and  again his body  shook  with  fright and uncertainty. When Aunt
Elizabeth  Swift,  who had  come to  watch  over  the body,  came out  of an
adjoining room he put his hand into  hers and began to sob, shaking his head
from side to side, half blind with grief. "My mother is dead," he said,  and
then forgetting the woman he turned and stared at the door  through which he
had just come. "The dear, the dear, oh the lovely dear,"  the  boy, urged by
some impulse outside himself, muttered aloud.
     As for the eight hundred dollars the dead woman had kept hidden so long
and that was to give George Willard his start in the city, it lay in the tin
box behind the plaster by the foot of his mother's bed. Elizabeth had put it
there a week  after her marriage, breaking the plaster  away with  a  stick.
Then she got one of the workmen her husband was at that time employing about
the hotel to mend the wall. "I jammed the corner of the bed against it," she
had  explained to  her husband, unable at the moment to give up her dream of
release, the release  that after  all came to her but twice in her life,  in
the moments when her lovers Death and Doctor Reefy held her in their arms.

     SOPHISTICATION
     IT WAS  EARLY  evening of a  day  in, the  late fall and the  Winesburg
County Fair had brought crowds of country people into town. The day had been
clear and the  night came on warm and pleasant. On  the Trunion  Pike, where
the road after it left town stretched  away between berry fields now covered
with  dry  brown  leaves,  the  dust from passing wagons  arose  in  clouds.
Children,  curled into little  balls, slept on the straw  scattered on wagon
beds. Their hair was full of dust and  their fingers  black  and sticky. The
dust  rolled away over the fields and the departing  sun set it ablaze  with
colors.
     In  the main  street  of  Winesburg  crowds filled  the  stores and the
sidewalks. Night  came  on, horses  whinnied,  the clerks in  the stores ran
madly about, children became lost and cried lustily, an American town worked
terribly at the task of amusing itself.
     Pushing his way through the crowds in Main Street, young George Willard
concealed himself in  the  stairway  leading to  Doctor  Reefy's office  and
looked at the people. With feverish eyes he  watched the faces drifting past
under the store lights. Thoughts kept  coming into his  head and  he did not
want to think. He stamped impatiently on the wooden steps and looked sharply
about. "Well,  is she going to stay with him  all day? Have  I done all this
waiting for nothing?" he muttered.
     George Willard, the Ohio village boy, was fast growing into manhood and
new  thoughts had been coming into his mind. All that day, amid  the  jam of
people  at the Fair, he had gone about feeling lonely. He was about to leave
Winesburg  to go away to some  city where he hoped to  get  work on  a  city
newspaper  and he felt grown  up. The mood that had  taken possession of him
was a  thing  known  to men and unknown  to boys. He  felt old  and a little
tired. Memories awoke in him. To his mind  his new sense of maturity set him
apart, made of him a halftragic figure. He wanted someone to  understand the
feeling that had taken possession of him after his mother's death.
     There is a time in the  life of every boy  when he  for  the first time
takes the backward view of  life. Perhaps that is the moment when he crosses
the line into manhood. The boy is walking through the street of his town. He
is  thinking of  the  future and  of the figure  he will cut  in the  world.
Ambitions and regrets awake within him. Suddenly something happens; he stops
under a tree and waits as for a voice calling his name. Ghosts of old things
creep  into his consciousness;  the  voices  outside  of  himself  whisper a
message concerning the limitations of life. From being quite sure of himself
and his future  he becomes not at all  sure. If he be an imaginative  boy  a
door is tom open and for the first time he looks out upon the world, seeing,
as though  they  marched in procession before him,  the countless figures of
men who before his time have come  out of nothingness  into the world, lived
their  lives  and  again  disappeared  into  nothingness.  The   sadness  of
sophistication has  come  to the boy. With a  little gasp he sees himself as
merely a leaf blown by the wind through the streets of his village. He knows
that in  spite of all the stout talk of his fellows he must live and die  in
uncertainty, a thing blown by the winds, a thing destined like corn to  wilt
in  the sun. He shivers and  looks eagerly about. The eighteen years  he has
lived seem but a moment,  a breathing  space in the  long march of humanity.
Already he hears death calling. With all his heart he wants to come close to
some other human,  touch someone with  his hands, be touched by the  hand of
another. If  he  prefers  that  the other  be  a  woman,  that is because he
believes that a woman will be gentle, that she  will understand.  He  wants,
most of all, understanding.
     When the  moment of  sophistication  came to  George Willard  his  mind
turned to Helen White,  the Winesburg banker's daughter. Always  he had been
conscious of the girl growing  into womanhood as he  grew into manhood. Once
on a summer  night when he was eighteen, he had walked with her on a country
road and in her presence had given  way  to an  impulse to  boast,  to  make
himself appear big and significant in her eyes. Now he wanted to see her for
another purpose. He wanted to tell her of the  new impulses that had come to
him. He had tried to make her think of him as a man  when he knew nothing of
manhood and  now he wanted to be with her and  to try  to make  her feel the
change he believed had taken place in his nature.
     As  for Helen  White,  she also  had come to  a  period of change. What
George felt, she in  her young woman's  way  felt also.  She was no longer a
girl and hungered to reach into the grace  and beauty  of womanhood. She had
come home from Cleveland, where she was attending college, to spend a day at
the Fair. She also had begun to have memories. During the day she sat in the
grand-stand with a young man,  one  of the instructors from the college, who
was a guest  of her mother's. The young man  was of a pedantic  turn of mind
and she felt at  once he would not  do for her purpose. At  the Fair she was
glad to be  seen in his company as he was well dressed and a  stranger.  She
knew that the fact of  his presence would  create  an impression. During the
day  she was happy,  but when night came on she began to  grow restless. She
wanted to drive the instructor  away, to get out of his presence. While they
sat  together in  the grand-stand and while  the  eyes of former schoolmates
were upon  them, she paid  so  much attention  to her  escort  that  he grew
interested. "A scholar needs  money. I should marry a woman with  money," he
mused.
     Helen White was thinking of George Willard even as he wandered gloomily
through the crowds thinking of  her. She remembered  the summer evening when
they had walked together and wanted to walk with him again. She thought that
the months she  had spent  in the city, the going to theaters and the seeing
of  great  crowds  wandering  in  lighted  thoroughfares,  had  changed  her
profoundly. She wanted him  to feel and be conscious of  the  change  in her
nature.
     The  summer evening  together that had  left its mark on the  memory of
both the young man and woman had, when looked at quite sensibly, been rather
stupidly spent.  They had walked out of town along a country road. Then they
had stopped by a fence near a field of young corn and  George had taken  off
his  coat  and  let  it  hang  on  his  arm.  "Well,  I've  stayed  here  in
Winesburg--yes--I've not yet  gone  away but I'm  growing up," he had  said.
"I've been reading books and  I've been thinking. I'm going to try to amount
to something in life.
     "Well," he explained,  "that isn't  the point. Perhaps I'd better  quit
talking."
     The confused boy put  his hand on the  girl's arm.  His voice trembled.
The two started to walk back  along the road toward town. In his desperation
George boasted, "I'm going to be a big man, the biggest that ever lived here
in Winesburg," he declared. "I want you to do something,  I don't know what.
Perhaps it  is none  of my business. I want you to try to  be different from
other women. You see the  point. It's none of my business I tell you. I want
you to be a beautiful woman. You see what I want."
     The boy's voice failed and in silence the two  came back into  town and
went along the street  to Helen  White's house. At the  gate he tried to say
something impressive.  Speeches he  had thought out came into his head,  but
they  seemed utterly pointless. "I thought--I  used to think--I had it in my
mind you would marry Seth Richmond. Now  I know you won't," was all he could
find to say as she went through the gate and toward the door of her house.
     On the warm fall evening as he stood in the stairway  and looked at the
crowd drifting  through Main Street, George  thought  of the talk beside the
field of young corn and was ashamed of the figure he had made of himself. In
the  street the  people surged up  and down like  cattle confined  in a pen.
Buggies and  wagons almost filled the narrow thoroughfare. A band played and
small boys raced along the sidewalk, diving between the legs  of men.  Young
men with shining red  faces walked awkwardly about with girls on their arms.
In  a room  above  one  of the stores,  where  a dance was  to be held,  the
fiddlers tuned their instruments.  The broken sounds floated down through an
open window and  out across the murmur of voices and the loud  blare of  the
horns  of the band. The medley  of  sounds got  on young  Willard's  nerves.
Everywhere, on all sides, the sense of crowding, moving life closed in about
him. He wanted to run away by himself  and think. "If she wants to stay with
that fellow she may. Why should I care? What difference does it make to me?"
he growled and went along Main Street and through Hern's Grocery into a side
street.
     George felt so utterly lonely and dejected that he wanted to  weep  but
pride made  him walk rapidly along,  swinging  his arms. He came  to  Wesley
Moyer's livery barn and stopped in the shadows to listen to a  group  of men
who talked of a race Wesley's stallion, Tony Tip, had won at the Fair during
the  afternoon. A crowd had gathered  in front  of  the barn and before  the
crowd walked Wesley, prancing up  and down boasting. He  held a  whip in his
hand  and kept  tapping  the  ground.  Little puffs  of dust  arose  in  the
lamplight. "Hell, quit your talking," Wesley  exclaimed. "I wasn't afraid, I
knew I had 'em beat all the time. I wasn't afraid."
     Ordinarily George Willard would have been  intensely  interested in the
boasting  of Moyer, the  horseman. Now it  made  him  angry.  He  turned and
hurried away along  the street. "Old windbag," he  sputtered.  "Why  does he
want to be bragging? Why don't he shut up?"
     George went  into a  vacant lot and, as he hurried along,  fell over  a
pile of rubbish. A nail protruding  from an empty barrel tore his  trousers.
He sat down on the ground and swore. With a pin he mended the torn place and
then arose  and went on. "I'll  go to Helen White's house, that's what  I'll
do. I'll walk right in. I'll  say that I want to see her. I'll walk right in
and sit down, that's what I'll do," he declared,  climbing over  a fence and
beginning to run.
     On  the  veranda  of  Banker  White's  house  Helen  was  restless  and
distraught. The instructor  sat between  the  mother and daughter. His  talk
wearied  the girl.  Although he had  also been  raised in an Ohio town,  the
instructor began to  put  on the airs  of  the  city.  He  wanted  to appear
cosmopolitan.  "I like the chance you  have given me to study the background
out of which most of our girls come," he declared. "It was good of you, Mrs.
White, to have me down  for the day." He turned to  Helen and laughed. "Your
life is  still  bound  up with the life of this town?" he asked.  "There are
people  here in whom  you  are  interested?" To  the  girl his voice sounded
pompous and heavy.
     Helen arose and went into the house. At the door leading to a garden at
the  back she stopped and stood listening. Her mother  began to talk. "There
is no one here fit to associate with a girl of Helen's breeding," she said.
     Helen ran down a flight of stairs at the back of the house and into the
garden.  In the darkness she stopped  and stood trembling. It seemed  to her
that  the world  was full  of meaningless people saying  words.  Afire  with
eagerness  she  ran  through  a  garden gate  and, turning  a corner  by the
banker's  barn,  went  into  a  little side street. "George! Where  are you,
George?" she cried, filled with nervous excitement. She stopped running, and
leaned against a  tree to laugh hysterically.  Along the dark  little street
came George Willard, still  saying words. "I'm going to walk  right into her
house. I'll go right in and sit down, " he declared as he came up to her. He
stopped and stared stupidly. "Come on," he  said and took hold of  her hand.
With  hanging  heads they walked away along  the street under the trees. Dry
leaves rustled under foot. Now that he had found her George wondered what he
had better do and say.
     At  the upper  end of the Fair  Ground,  in Winesburg,  there is a half
decayed  old grand-stand. It  has never  been painted and the boards are all
warped out of shape. The Fair Ground stands on top of  a low hill rising out
of  the  valley of Wine Creek and from the grand-stand one can see at night,
over a cornfield, the lights of the town reflected against the sky.
     George and  Helen  climbed  the  hill to the Fair Ground, coming by the
path past Waterworks Pond. The  feeling of loneliness and isolation that had
come to the young man in the crowded streets of his town was both broken and
intensified by the presence of Helen. What he felt was reflected in her.
     In  youth  there  are  always two forces  fighting  in people. The warm
unthinking  little animal  struggles  against the thing  that  reflects  and
remembers, and the  older,  the  more sophisticated  thing had possession of
George  Willard.  Sensing  his  mood,  Helen walked beside  him  filled with
respect. When they got to the grand-stand they climbed up under the roof and
sat down on one of the long bench-like seats.
     There is something memorable in the  experience to be had by going into
a fair ground that stands at  the edge of  a Middle  Western town on a night
after  the  annual  fair has been  held.  The sensation is one  never to  be
forgotten. On all  sides are ghosts, not of the dead, but  of living people.
Here, during  the day just passed,  have come the people pouring in from the
town and the country around. Farmers with their wives and  children  and all
the  people from  the hundreds of little  frame houses have  gathered within
these board walls. Young girls have laughed and  men with beards have talked
of the affairs of their lives. The place has been filled to overflowing with
life. It has itched and squirmed  with life and now it is night and the life
has all gone away.  The silence is almost  terrifying. One conceals  oneself
standing  silently  beside  the trunk  of  a  tree  and  what there is  of a
reflective tendency  in  his nature is  intensified.  One  shudders  at  the
thought of the meaninglessness of life while at the same instant, and if the
people of  the town are  his people, one  loves life so intensely that tears
come into the eyes.
     In  the darkness under the  roof of the grand-stand, George Willard sat
beside Helen White and felt very keenly his own insignificance in the scheme
of  existence. Now that he had come out  of town where  the  presence of the
people stirring  about,  busy  with  a multitude  of affairs,  had  been  so
irritating,  the irritation was all gone. The presence of Helen renewed  and
refreshed him. It was as though her woman's hand was assisting  him  to make
some minute readjustment of the  machinery of his life. He began to think of
the people  in  the town where  he had  always  lived  with  something  like
reverence. He had reverence for  Helen. He wanted to love and to be loved by
her, but he did not want at the moment to  be  confused by her womanhood. In
the darkness he took hold of her hand and when she crept close put a hand on
her shoulder. A wind began to blow and he shivered. With all his strength he
tried to hold and  to understand the mood that  had come  upon him. In  that
high place in the  darkness  the two oddly sensitive human atoms  held  each
other tightly and waited. In the mind of each was the same thought.  "I have
come to this lonely place  and here is this other," was the substance of the
thing felt.
     In Winesburg the crowded day had run itself out into the long night  of
the late fall. Farm  horses jogged  away along lonely country  roads pulling
their portion of weary people. Clerks began to bring samples of goods in off
the  sidewalks and  lock the doors of stores. In the Opera House a crowd had
gathered  to see  a  show and further  down Main Street the  fiddlers, their
instruments tuned, sweated and worked to keep the  feet of youth flying over
a dance floor.
     In the  darkness in the  grand-stand  Helen  White and  George  Willard
remained silent. Now and  then  the spell that held them was broken and they
turned and tried in the dim light to see into each other's eyes. They kissed
but that impulse did not last. At the upper  end of  the Fair Ground  a half
dozen men worked over  horses  that had raced  during the afternoon. The men
had built a fire and were heating kettles of water. Only their legs could be
seen  as they passed  back  and forth in the  light. When the wind blew  the
little flames of the fire danced crazily about.
     George and  Helen arose and walked away  into  the darkness. They  went
along a  path past  a  field  of corn that had  not  yet been cut. The  wind
whispered among the dry corn blades. For a  moment during the walk back into
town the spell that held them was broken. When they had come to the crest of
Waterworks Hill they stopped by a tree and George again put his hands on the
girl's shoulders. She embraced him eagerly and  then again they drew quickly
back from  that  impulse.  They  stopped  kissing and  stood a little apart.
Mutual  respect grew big in them. They were both embarrassed  and to relieve
their embarrassment  dropped into the animalism of  youth. They  laughed and
began to pull and  haul at each other. In some way chastened and purified by
the mood they had been in, they became, not man and woman, not boy and girl,
but excited little animals.
     It was so they went down the hill. In the darkness they played like two
splendid young things in a young world. Once, running swiftly forward, Helen
tripped  George and he fell. He squirmed and shouted. Shaking with laughter,
he roiled down the hill. Helen ran after him. For just a moment  she stopped
in  the darkness. There  was no way of knowing  what  woman's thoughts  went
through  her mind but, when the bottom of the hill was reached and  she came
up to the boy,  she took his arm and walked beside him in dignified silence.
For some  reason they could  not have explained they had both got from their
silent  evening together the thing needed. Man  or boy, woman or girl,  they
had for a moment taken hold of  the thing that  makes the mature life of men
and women in the modern world possible.

     DEPARTURE
     YOUNG  GEORGE  WILLARD  got out of  bed at four in  the morning. It was
April and  the young  tree  leaves  were just coming  out of their buds. The
trees along the residence streets in Winesburg are maple  and the  seeds are
winged.  When the wind blows they whirl crazily  about, filling the air  and
making a carpet underfoot.
     George came downstairs into  the  hotel office carrying a brown leather
bag. His trunk was packed for departure. Since two o'clock he had been awake
thinking  of the journey he was  about to take and  wondering what  he would
find at the end of his journey. The boy who slept in the hotel office lay on
a cot by the door. His mouth  was open and  he snored lustily.  George crept
past the cot and went out into the silent deserted main street. The east was
pink with  the dawn and long streaks of light climbed  into the  sky where a
few stars still shone.
     Beyond the  last house on  Trunion Pike in Winesburg there  is  a great
stretch of open fields. The fields are owned by farmers who live in town and
drive homeward at evening  along Trunion Pike in  light creaking  wagons. In
the  fields are planted berries and small  fruits. In the late afternoon  in
the hot  summers when the road and the fields are covered with dust, a smoky
haze lies over the great flat basin  of land.  To  look  across  it  is like
looking  out across the sea. In the spring when the land is green the effect
is somewhat different. The land becomes a wide green billiard table on which
tiny human insects toil up and down.
     All through  his  boyhood and young manhood  George Willard had been in
the habit of walking on  Trunion Pike. He had been in the midst of the great
open place on winter nights when it was covered with  snow and only the moon
looked down at him; he had been there in the fall  when bleak winds blew and
on summer evenings  when the air  vibrated with the song of  insects. On the
April morning he  wanted to go there again, to walk again in the silence. He
did walk to where the road  dipped down by  a  little stream  two miles from
town and then turned and  walked silently  back again. When  he got  to Main
Street  clerks were sweeping  the  sidewalks  before  the stores. "Hey,  you
George. How does it feel to be going away?" they asked.
     The  westbound train  leaves  Winesburg  at  seven  forty-five  in  the
morning. Tom Little is conductor.  His train runs from Cleveland to where it
connects  with a great trunk line railroad with terminals in Chicago and New
York.  Tom  has  what in railroad  circles  is called  an  "easy run." Every
evening  he  returns to his family.  In  the fall  and spring  he spends his
Sundays fishing in  Lake Erie. He has a round red  face and small blue eyes.
He knows the  people in the towns along his railroad better than a city  man
knows the people who live in his apartment building.
     George came down the little incline from the New Willard House at seven
o'clock. Tom Willard carried his  bag. The  son  had  become taller than the
father.
     On  the station platform everyone shook the young man's hand. More than
a dozen people  waited about. Then they talked  of  their own affairs.  Even
Will Henderson, who was lazy and often slept until nine, had got out of bed.
George was  embarrassed.  Gertrude Wilmot,  a tall  thin  woman of fifty who
worked in the  Winesburg post office,  came  along the station platform. She
had never before paid any attention to George. Now she  stopped and  put out
her hand. In two words she voiced what  everyone felt. "Good luck," she said
sharply and then turning went on her way.
     When the train came into the station George felt relieved. He scampered
hurriedly aboard. Helen White came running along Main Street  hoping to have
a parting word with him, but he had found a seat and  did  not see her. When
the train started Tom Little punched  his ticket, grinned  and, although  he
knew George well and knew on what adventure he was just setting out, made no
comment.  Tom  had seen a thousand George Willards go  out of their towns to
the city. It was a commonplace enough incident with him.  In the smoking car
there was a man who had just invited Tom to go on a fishing trip to Sandusky
Bay. He wanted to accept the invitation and talk over details.
     George glanced up and down the car to be sure no one was looking,  then
took out his pocketbook and counted  his money. His mind was occupied with a
desire not to appear green. Almost the last words his father had said to him
conce