kfast in the morning
and was ready to retire to his study at the back of his house he went around
the table and kissed his wife on the cheek. When thoughts of Kate Swift came
into his head, he smiled and raised his eyes  to  the skies. "Intercede  for
me, Master," he muttered, "keep me in the narrow path intent on Thy work."
     And  now  began the real  struggle  in the soul  of  the  brown-bearded
minister. By chance he discovered  that Kate Swift was in the habit of lying
in her bed in the evenings  and reading a book. A  lamp stood on a table  by
the side of the bed and the light streamed down upon her white shoulders and
bare throat. On the evening  when he made the  discovery the minister sat at
the desk in the  dusty  room from nine until after eleven and when her light
was put out stumbled out  of the church to spend two more  hours walking and
praying in the streets. He did not want to kiss the shoulders and the throat
of Kate Swift and had not allowed his mind to dwell on such thoughts. He did
not know what he wanted. "I am God's child and he must save me from myself,"
he cried, in  the darkness under the trees as he wandered in the streets. By
a tree he stood and looked at the sky that was covered with hurrying clouds.
He began to talk to  God intimately  and  closely. "Please,  Father,  do not
forget me. Give me power to  go  tomorrow and repair the hole in the window.
Lift my eyes  again to the skies. Stay with  me, Thy servant, in his hour of
need."
     Up and down through the silent streets walked the minister and for days
and weeks his soul was troubled. He could not understand the temptation that
had  come to him nor could he fathom the reason for its  coming. In a way he
began to blame God, saying to himself that  he had tried to keep his feet in
the true path and had not run about seeking sin. "Through my days as a young
man and all through  my  life here  I  have gone quietly about  my work," he
declared. "Why  now should I  be tempted? What have I  done that this burden
should be laid on me?"
     Three times  during  the  early  fall and  winter of  that  year Curtis
Hartman crept out of his  house to the room in the bell tower to sit  in the
darkness looking at the figure of Kate Swift lying in her bed and later went
to walk and pray in the  streets. He could not understand himself. For weeks
he  would  go  along  scarcely thinking of  the school  teacher and  telling
himself that he had  conquered the carnal  desire to look  at her body.  And
then  something would happen. As he  sat in the study of his own house, hard
at work on a sermon, he would become  nervous  and begin to walk up and down
the room. "I  will go out into the streets,"  he told himself and even as he
let  himself  in  at the church door he persistently denied  to himself  the
cause  of his being there.  "I will not repair the hole in the window  and I
will  train myself to come here  at night and sit  in  the presence  of this
woman without  raising my eyes. I will  not be defeated  in this  thing. The
Lord has devised this temptation as a test  of my  soul and I  will grope my
way out of darkness into the light of righteousness."
     One night in January  when it was bitter  cold and snow lay deep on the
streets of Winesburg Curtis Hartman paid his last  visit to  the room in the
bell  tower of the  church. It  was past nine  o'clock when he left  his own
house and he set out so hurriedly that he forgot to put on his overshoes. In
Main Street no one was abroad but Hop Higgins the night watchman  and in the
whole town  no one was awake but the  watchman and young George Willard, who
sat in the office of the Winesburg Eagle trying to write a story.  Along the
street to  the church  went  the minister,  plowing  through the  drifts and
thinking that this time he would utterly give way to sin. "I want to look at
the woman and to think of kissing her shoulders and I am going to let myself
think what I choose," he  declared bitterly and tears came into his eyes. He
began to think that he would get out of the ministry and try some other  way
of life. "I shall go to some  city and get into business,"  he declared. "If
my nature is such that I cannot resist sin, I shall give myself over to sin.
At least I shall  not be a hypocrite, preaching the word of God with my mind
thinking of the shoulders and neck of a woman who does not belong to me."
     It was cold in the room of the bell tower of the church on that January
night  and almost as soon as he came  into the room Curtis Hartman knew that
if he  stayed he would be ill. His feet were wet  from tramping in  the snow
and there was no fire. In the room in the house next door Kate Swift had not
yet appeared. With grim determination  the man sat down  to wait. Sitting in
the chair and gripping the edge of the desk on which lay the Bible he stared
into the darkness thinking the blackest thoughts of his life. He thought  of
his wife and for the moment  almost hated her. "She has always  been ashamed
of  passion  and  has cheated me," he  thought. "Man has a  right to  expect
living passion and beauty in a woman. He has no  right to  forget that he is
an animal and  in me there is something that is  Greek. I will throw off the
woman of my bosom and seek other women. I will besiege  this school teacher.
I will fly in the face of all men and if  I am a creature of carnal  lusts I
will live then for my lusts."
     The distracted man trembled from head to foot, partly from cold, partly
from the struggle in which he was engaged. Hours passed and a fever assailed
his body. His throat began to hurt and his teeth chattered. His  feet on the
study  floor felt like two cakes of ice. Still he would not give up. "I will
see this woman and will think the thoughts I have never  dared to think," he
told himself, gripping the edge of the desk and waiting.
     Curtis  Hartman came  near  dying  from the effects of  that  night  of
waiting in the church, and also he found in  the thing that happened what he
took to  be the way of life for him. On other evenings when he had waited he
had not been able  to see, through the little hole in the glass, any part of
the school  teacher's room except that occupied  by her bed. In the darkness
he had waited  until the woman suddenly appeared sitting in  the  bed in her
white nightrobe. When the light was turned  up she propped  herself up among
the' pillows and read a  book.  Sometimes  she smoked one of the cigarettes.
Only her bare shoulders and throat were visible.
     On the January night, after  he had come near dying with cold and after
his mind had two or three times actually  slipped  away into  an odd land of
fantasy so that he had by an  exercise of will power  to force  himself back
into consciousness, Kate Swift appeared.  In the room  next  door a lamp was
lighted and  the waiting man stared  into  an empty  bed. Then upon the  bed
before his eyes a  naked woman  threw herself. Lying  face downward she wept
and beat with  her fists upon  the pillow. With a final outburst of  weeping
she half  arose, and in the presence of the  man who  had waited to look and
not to think  thoughts the woman of sin began to pray. In the  lamplight her
figure, slim and  strong, looked like the figure of the boy  in the presence
of the Christ on the leaded window.
     Curtis Hartman never remembered  how  he got out of the church. With  a
cry he  arose,  dragging the  heavy desk along  the  floor. The Bible  fell,
making a great clatter in the silence. When the light in the house next door
went out he stumbled down the stairway and into the street. Along the street
he went and  ran in at the door of the Winesburg Eagle.  To George  Willard,
who was tramping up and down in the office undergoing a struggle of his own,
he began  to  talk  half incoherently.  "The ways of  God  are  beyond human
understanding,"  he cried, running in quickly and closing the door. He began
to advance upon the young  man, his eyes glowing and his voice ringing  with
fervor. "I have found  the light," he cried. "After ten  years in this town,
God has manifested himself to me in the body of a woman."  His voice dropped
and he began to whisper. "I did not understand," he said. "What I took to be
a trial of my  soul was  only  a  preparation for  a new  and more beautiful
fervor  of  the spirit. God  has appeared to me in the person of Kate Swift,
the  school teacher,  kneeling naked  on  a  bed.  Do  you know Kate  Swift?
Although she  may  not be aware of it, she is  an instrument of God, bearing
the message of truth."
     Reverend Curtis Hartman turned and  ran out of the office.  At the door
he stopped, and after looking up  and down the deserted street, turned again
to George  Willard. "I  am delivered.  Have no fear."  He held up a bleeding
fist  for  the young  man  to see. "I smashed  the glass of the  window," he
cried. "Now it  will have to be  wholly replaced. The strength of God was in
me and I broke it with my fist."

     THE TEACHER
     SNOW LAY DEEP  in the streets of Winesburg. It had begun to snow  about
ten o'clock in  the morning and a wind sprang up and blew the snow in clouds
along Main Street.  The  frozen  mud  roads that  led into town  were fairly
smooth and in places ice  covered the mud. "There will  be good  sleighing,"
said Will Henderson, standing by the bar in Ed Griffith's saloon. Out of the
saloon he  went and met Sylvester West  the druggist stumbling along  in the
kind of  heavy overshoes called  arctics. "Snow will bring the  people  into
town  on Saturday,"  said  the druggist. The two men stopped  and  discussed
their affairs. Will Henderson, who had on a light overcoat and no overshoes,
kicked the heel of his left foot  with the toe of the  right. "Snow will  be
good for the wheat," observed the druggist sagely.
     Young  George Willard, who had nothing to do,  was  glad because he did
not feel like working that day. The  weekly paper had been printed and taken
to the post office Wednesday evening and the snow began to fall on Thursday.
At eight  o'clock, after  the  morning  train had  passed, he  put a pair of
skates in his  pocket and went up to Waterworks Pond but did not go skating.
Past the  pond  and along a path that followed Wine Creek  he went  until he
came to a grove of beech trees. There he built a fire  against the side of a
log and sat down at the end of the log to think. When the snow began to fall
and the wind to blow he hurried about getting fuel for the fire.
     The young reporter was thinking  of Kate Swift, who had  once  been his
school teacher. On the evening before he had gone to her house to get a book
she wanted him to  read  and had been  alone with  her  for an hour. For the
fourth or fifth time the woman had talked to  him with great earnestness and
he  could not make out  what she meant by her talk.  He began to believe she
must be in love with him and the thought was both pleasing and annoying.
     Up from the log he sprang and began to pile sticks on the fire. Looking
about  to be  sure  he was alone  he  talked aloud pretending he was in  the
presence of  the woman,  "Oh,, you're just letting on, you know you are," he
declared. "I am going to find out about you. You wait and see."
     The young man got  up and went back  along the path toward town leaving
the fire blazing in the wood. As  he went  through  the  streets the  skates
clanked in his pocket. In his  own room in the New  Willard House he built a
fire in the stove and lay  down on top  of the bed. He began to have lustful
thoughts and pulling down the shade of the window closed his eyes and turned
his  face  to the wall.  He took a  pillow  into  his arms  and embraced  it
thinking first of the school teacher, who by her words had stirred something
within him, and later of Helen White,  the slim daughter of the town banker,
with whom he had been for a long time half in love.
     By nine o'clock of that evening snow lay deep  in the streets  and  the
weather had become bitter cold. It was  difficult to walk about.  The stores
were dark and the people had crawled away to their houses. The evening train
from Cleveland  was very late but nobody  was interested in its  arrival. By
ten o'clock  all but four of the eighteen hundred citizens  of the town were
in bed.
     Hop Higgins, the night  watchman, was  partially awake. He was lame and
carried a heavy stick. On dark nights he carried a lantern. Between nine and
ten o'clock he went his rounds. Up  and down Main Street he stumbled through
the drifts trying the doors of the stores. Then he went  into  alleyways and
tried the back doors. Finding all tight he hurried around the corner to  the
New  Willard House and  beat on the door. Through the rest  of the  night he
intended to  stay by the  stove. "You go to bed. I'll keep the stove going,"
he said to the boy who slept on a cot in the hotel office.
     Hop Higgins sat down by the stove and took off his shoes. When the  boy
had gone to sleep he began to think of his own affairs. He intended to paint
his house in  the  spring and sat by the stove calculating the cost of paint
and labor. That  led  him  into other  calculations. The night  watchman was
sixty years old and wanted to retire. He had been a soldier in the Civil War
and drew  a  small  pension.  He hoped to  find some new method of making  a
living and aspired to  become a professional breeder of  ferrets. Already he
had four of the strangely shaped savage little creatures,  that  are used by
sportsmen in the pursuit of rabbits, in the cellar of his house. "Now I have
one male and three females," he mused. "If I am lucky by spring I shall have
twelve or fifteen.  In another year I shall  be  able to  begin  advertising
ferrets for sale in the sporting papers."
     The nightwatchman  settled into his chair and his mind became a  blank.
He  did  not sleep.  By years of practice he had trained himself to  sit for
hours through  the long  nights neither  asleep nor awake. In the morning he
was almost as refreshed as though he had slept.
     With Hop Higgins safely  stowed away in the chair behind the stove only
three people were awake in  Winesburg. George Willard was  in  the office of
the Eagle pretending to be at work on  the writing of a story but in reality
continuing the mood of the  morning  by  the fire  in  the wood. In the bell
tower of the Presbyterian Church the Reverend Curtis Hartman  was sitting in
the darkness preparing himself  for a  revelation from God, and  Kate Swift,
the school teacher, was leaving her house for a walk in the storm.
     It was  past ten  o'clock when  Kate  Swift set  out and the  walk  was
unpremeditated. It was  as though the  man and the boy, by thinking  of her,
had driven her forth into the  wintry streets. Aunt Elizabeth Swift had gone
to  the county seat concerning some business in connection with mortgages in
which she had  money invested and would not be back until the next day. By a
huge stove, called  a base burner, in the living room of  the house sat  the
daughter reading  a book. Suddenly  she sprang to her feet  and, snatching a
cloak from a rack by the front door, ran out of the house.
     At the age of thirty Kate Swift was not known in Winesburg as a  pretty
woman. Her  complexion was  not good and her face was covered with  blotches
that indicated  ill health. Alone in the night in the winter streets she was
lovely. Her back was straight,  her shoulders square,  and her features were
as the features of a tiny goddess on a pedestal in a garden in the dim light
of a summer evening.
     During the afternoon the school teacher had been to  see Doctor Welling
concerning her health. The doctor had scolded her  and had declared she  was
in danger of losing her hearing.  It was foolish for Kate Swift to be abroad
in the storm, foolish and perhaps dangerous.
     The woman in the  streets did not remember the words of  the doctor and
would not have turned back  had she remembered. She was very  cold but after
walking for five minutes no  longer minded  the cold. First she went  to the
end of her own street and then across a pair of hay scales set in the ground
before a feed barn and into Trunion Pike. Along Trunion Pike she went to Ned
Winters' barn and turning east followed a street  of low  frame  houses that
led over  Gospel Hill and  into Sucker Road that  ran down  a shallow valley
past  Ike Smead's chicken  farm to Waterworks  Pond. As she  went along, the
bold, excited mood that had driven her out of doors passed and then returned
again.
     There  was  something  biting and  forbidding in the character  of Kate
Swift. Everyone felt it. In the schoolroom she was  silent, cold, and stern,
and yet  in  an  odd way  very close to  her pupils.  Once  in  a long while
something  seemed to  have come  over  her  and  she was happy.  All  of the
children in the schoolroom felt the effect of her happiness. For a time they
did not work but sat back in their chairs and looked at her.
     With hands clasped behind her  back the  school teacher  walked  up and
down in the schoolroom  and  talked  very rapidly. It did not seem to matter
what subject came into her mind. Once she talked  to the children of Charles
Lamb and made up strange, intimate little stories concerning the life of the
dead writer. The  stories were told  with the air of one  who had lived in a
house with Charles Lamb and knew all  the  secrets of his private  life. The
children were  somewhat confused, thinking Charles Lamb must  be someone who
had once lived in Winesburg.
     On another  occasion  the  teacher talked to the  children of Benvenuto
Cellini. That time they laughed. What a bragging, blustering, brave, lovable
fellow she  made of  the  old  artist!  Concerning  him  also  she  invented
anecdotes. There was one of a German music  teacher  who  had a  room  above
Cellini's lodgings  in the city of Milan that  made  the boys guffaw. Sugars
McNutts, a fat boy with red cheeks, laughed so hard that he became dizzy and
fell off his seat and  Kate Swift laughed with him. Then suddenly she became
again cold and stern.
     On the winter  night when she walked  through the deserted snow-covered
streets, a crisis had come  into the life of the school teacher. Although no
one  in  Winesburg  would  have  suspected   it,  her  life  had  been  very
adventurous.  It was  still adventurous.  Day by day  as  she worked  in the
schoolroom or  walked in the streets,  grief, hope, and desire fought within
her. Behind a cold exterior the most  extraordinary events transpired in her
mind. The people of the town thought of  her  as a  confirmed  old  maid and
because she  spoke sharply and  went her own  way thought her lacking in all
the human feeling  that did  so  much  to  make and  mar their own lives. In
reality  she was the most eagerly  passionate soul among them, and more than
once, in the five  years since  she had come back from her travels to settle
in Winesburg and  become a school teacher,  had been compelled  to go out of
the house  and walk half  through the night  fighting out some battle raging
within. Once on a night when it rained she had stayed out six hours and when
she came home had a quarrel with Aunt Elizabeth Swift. "I am glad you're not
a man," said the mother sharply. "More than once I've waited for your father
to come home, not knowing what new mess he  had got  into. I've had my share
of uncertainty and you cannot blame me  if  I do  not  want to see the worst
side of him reproduced in you."
     Kate  Swift's  mind  was  ablaze with thoughts  of  George  Willard. In
something he had written as a  school boy she thought she had recognized the
spark of genius and wanted to blow on the spark. One day in the  summer  she
had gone  to the Eagle office and finding the boy  unoccupied had  taken him
out Main  Street to the Fair Ground, where the two sat on  a grassy bank and
talked. The school teacher tried to bring home  to the mind of the boy  some
conception of the difficulties he would have  to face as a writer. "You will
have to know life," she  declared, and her voice  trembled with earnestness.
She took hold of George Willard's shoulders and turned him about so that she
could  look into  his  eyes.  A passer-by  might have thought  them about to
embrace. "If  you are to become a writer you'll  have to  stop  fooling with
words," she explained. "It would be better to give up  the notion of writing
until  you are better prepared. Now it's time to be living.  I don't want to
frighten you, but I would like to make you understand the import of what you
think  of attempting. You must not become a mere peddler of words. The thing
to learn is to know what people are thinking about, not what they say."
     On the evening  before  that  stormy  Thursday night  when the Reverend
Curtis Hartman sat in the  bell tower of  the church  waiting to look at her
body, young Willard had gone  to visit the teacher and  to borrow a book. It
was then the thing happened  that confused  and puzzled the boy. He had  the
book under his arm and was preparing to depart. Again Kate Swift talked with
great earnestness. Night  was coming on and the light  in the room grew dim.
As he  turned to go she spoke his name softly and with an impulsive movement
took hold  of  his hand.  Because the  reporter was rapidly  becoming a  man
something of his  man's appeal,  combined  with  the winsomeness of the boy,
stirred  the  heart  of the  lonely  woman. A  passionate desire to have him
understand the import of life, to learn  to interpret it truly and honestly,
swept over her.  Leaning forward, her  lips brushed his  cheek.  At the same
moment he for the  first  time  became aware  of  the marked beauty  of  her
features. They were both embarrassed, and to  relieve her feeling she became
harsh  and domineering.  "What's  the  use? It will be ten years  before you
begin to understand what I mean when I talk to you," she cried passionately.
     On  the  night of the  storm  and while the  minister sat in the church
waiting for  her, Kate  Swift  went to the  office of  the  Winesburg Eagle,
intending to have another talk with the boy. After the long walk in the snow
she was cold, lonely, and tired. As she came through Main Street she saw the
fight from the printshop window shining on the snow and on an impulse opened
the door and went in. For an hour she sat by the stove in the office talking
of life. She talked with passionate earnestness. The impulse that had driven
her out  into the snow poured  itself out into talk. She became  inspired as
she  sometimes  did  in the presence of the  children  in  school.  A  great
eagerness to open  the door of life to the  boy, who had  been her pupil and
who  she thought might possess a  talent for the understanding of  life, had
possession  of  her. So strong  was her  passion that  it  became  something
physical. Again  her hands took  hold of  his  shoulders and she turned  him
about. In the  dim light her eyes blazed. She arose and laughed, not sharply
as was  customary with  her,  but  in a queer,  hesitating  way.  "I must be
going," she said. "In a moment, if I stay, I'll be wanting to kiss you."
     In the newspaper office a confusion arose. Kate Swift turned and walked
to the  door. She was  a teacher but she was also a  woman. As she looked at
George  Willard,  the passionate desire  to be  loved  by  a man, that had a
thousand  times before swept like a storm over her body, took possession  of
her. In the lamplight George Willard looked no longer a boy, but a man ready
to play the part of a man.
     The school teacher  let  George Willard take her into his arms. In  the
warm little office the air became  suddenly heavy and the strength  went out
of  her body. Leaning against a  low counter by the door she waited. When he
came and put a hand on her shoulder she turned and let her body fall heavily
against him. For George Willard the confusion was immediately increased. For
a moment he held the  body of the woman tightly against his body and then it
stiffened. Two sharp little fists began to beat on his face. When the school
teacher had  run away and  left him alone, he walked  up and down the office
swearing furiously.
     It was into this confusion  that the Reverend Curtis Hartman  protruded
himself.  When he came  in  George Willard thought the town  had  gone  mad.
Shaking a bleeding fist in the air, the minister proclaimed the woman George
had only  a moment before held in his arms  an instrument  of God  bearing a
message of truth.
     George blew out the  lamp  by the window  and locking the door  of  the
printshop went home. Through the hotel office, past Hop  Higgins lost in his
dream of the raising of ferrets, he  went and up into his own room. The fire
in the stove had gone out and he undressed in the cold. When he got into bed
the sheets were like blankets of dry snow.
     George  Willard  rolled  about in  the bed on  which  had lain  in  the
afternoon hugging the pillow and thinking thoughts of  Kate Swift. The words
of the minister, who he thought had  gone suddenly insane, rang in his ears.
His eyes stared about the room. The resentment, natural to the baffled male,
passed  and he  tried to understand what had happened. He  could not make it
out.  Over and  over  he turned the matter in  his mind. Hours passed and he
began to think it  must be time for another day  to come. At four o'clock he
pulled the covers up about his neck  and  tried  to sleep.  When  he  became
drowsy and closed his eyes, he raised a hand and with it groped about in the
darkness. "I have missed something. I have missed  something Kate  Swift was
trying to tell me," he muttered sleepily. Then he slept and in all Winesburg
he was the last soul on that winter night to go to sleep.

     LONELINESS
     HE WAS THE son of Mrs. Al Robinson who once owned a farm on a side road
leading off Trunion Pike,  east of Winesburg  and two miles beyond the  town
limits. The farmhouse was painted brown and the blinds to all of the windows
facing the road  were kept closed.  In  the road before the house a flock of
chickens, accompanied  by two guinea hens, lay in the deep dust. Enoch lived
in the house with his mother in those  days and when he was a young boy went
to  school  at the  Winesburg High School.  Old citizens remembered him as a
quiet,  smiling youth inclined to silence.  He walked in the  middle of  the
road when he  came into town and sometimes read a book. Drivers of teams had
to shout and  swear to make him realize  where he was so that  he would turn
out of the beaten track and let them pass.
     When  he was twenty-one years old Enoch went to New York City and was a
city  man  for fifteen  years. He studied French and went to  an art school,
hoping to develop  a faculty he had for  drawing. In his own mind he planned
to go to Paris and to finish his art education among  the masters there, but
that never turned out.
     Nothing ever turned  out for Enoch Robinson. He  could draw well enough
and he had  many odd delicate thoughts hidden  away in  his brain that might
have expressed themselves through the brush of a painter, but  he was always
a child and that was a handicap to his worldly development. He never grew up
and of course  he  couldn't  understand  people and he couldn't make  people
understand  him. The  child  in  him  kept  bumping  against things, against
actualities like money and sex and opinions. Once he was hit by a street car
and thrown against an iron post. That made him lame. It was  one of the many
things that kept things from turning out for Enoch Robinson
     In New York City, when he first went there to live and before he became
confused and disconcerted by the facts of life, Enoch went about a good deal
with  young men. He  got into  a group of  other young artists, both men and
women, and in the evenings they sometimes came  to  visit him  in  his room.
Once  he  got  drunk  and was taken  to  a  police station  where  a  police
magistrate frightened him horribly, and once he tried to have an affair with
a woman of the town met on  the sidewalk before his lodging house. The woman
and  Enoch walked together three blocks  and then the young man  grew afraid
and ran away. The woman had been drinking  and the incident  amused her. She
leaned  against the wall of a building and laughed so heartily  that another
man stopped  and  laughed  with  her.  The  two went  away  together,  still
laughing, and Enoch crept off to his room trembling and vexed.
     The room in  which young Robinson  lived  in New York  faced Washington
Square  and was long and  narrow like a hallway. It is important to get that
fixed in your mind. The story of Enoch is in fact the story of a room almost
more than it is the story of a man.
     And  so into  the room in the evening came young Enoch's friends. There
was  nothing particularly striking about them except that they were  artists
of the kind that talk. Everyone knows of the talking artists. Throughout all
of the known  history of the world  they have gathered in  rooms and talked.
They talk  of art and are passionately, almost feverishly, in  earnest about
it. They think it matters much more than it does.
     And so these people gathered and smoked cigarettes and talked and Enoch
Robinson, the boy from the farm near Winesburg, was there. He  stayed  in  a
corner and for  the most  part said nothing. How his big blue childlike eyes
stared about! On  the  walls were pictures he  had made, crude  things, half
finished.  His friends talked of these. Leaning back in  their chairs,  they
talked and talked  with their  heads rocking from side  to  side. Words were
said about line  and values and composition, lots  of  words,  such  as  are
always being said.
     Enoch wanted to talk too but he didn't know how. He was  too excited to
talk  coherently. When  he tried  he sputtered and stammered  and his  voice
sounded strange and squeaky to him. That made him stop talking. He knew what
he wanted  to say,  but he knew also that he could  never by any possibility
say it. When  a  picture he  had painted  was under discussion, he wanted to
burst out  with something like this: "You don't get the point," he wanted to
explain; "the picture you see doesn't consist of the things you see and  say
words  about.  There is  something  else, something  you don't  see  at all,
something you aren't intended to see.  Look at this  one  over here, by  the
door here, where the light from the window falls on it. The dark spot by the
road that  you might  not  notice  at  all  is, you  see,  the  beginning of
everything. There is a clump of elders there such as used to grow beside the
road before our house back in Winesburg, Ohio, and in among the elders there
is something hidden. It is a  woman, that's what it is. She  has been thrown
from a horse and the horse has run away out of sight. Do you not see how the
old man who drives a cart looks anxiously about? That  is Thad Grayback  who
has  a  farm up the  road. He is  taking corn to Winesburg to be ground into
meal at  Comstock's  mill.  He knows  there  is  something  in  the  elders,
something hidden away, and yet he doesn't quite know.
     "It's a woman you see, that's what it is!  It's a woman and, oh, she is
lovely! She is hurt and  is suffering but she makes no  sound. Don't you see
how it is? She lies quite still,  white and still,  and the beauty comes out
from her and  spreads over everything. It is in  the sky back there  and all
around everywhere. I didn't try to paint the woman, of  course.  She  is too
beautiful  to  be painted. How dull to  talk of composition and such things!
Why do you not look at the sky and then run away  as I used to do when I was
a boy back there in Winesburg, Ohio?"
     That is  the kind  of thing young Enoch Robinson trembled to say to the
guests who came into his room  when he was a young fellow in New  York City,
but  he always ended by saying nothing. Then he began to doubt his own mind.
He was afraid the things he  felt were not getting expressed in the pictures
he painted. In a half indignant  mood he  stopped  inviting people  into his
room and presently got into the habit of locking the door. He began to think
that  enough people had visited  him, that he did not need  people any more.
With quick  imagination he began to invent  his own people to whom  he could
really  talk and to  whom he  explained  the things he had  been  unable  to
explain  to living people. His room began to be inhabited  by the spirits of
men and women among whom he went, in his turn saying words. It was as though
everyone Enoch Robinson  had  ever seen had left with  him some  essence  of
himself,  something  he  could mould  and  change  to  suit  his own  fancy,
something that understood all about such things  as the wounded woman behind
the elders in the pictures.
     The mild,  blue-eyed  young Ohio boy was  a complete  egotist,  as  all
children are egotists. He did  not want friends for  the quite simple reason
that  no  child wants friends. He wanted  most of all the people  of his own
mind, people with  whom he could really talk, people  he could harangue  and
scold  by the hour, servants, you  see, to his  fancy. Among these people he
was always  self-confident and  bold. They might talk, to be  sure, and even
have opinions of their own, but always he  talked last and best. He was like
a writer busy  among the figures of his brain, a kind of tiny blue-eyed king
he was, in  a  sixdollar room facing Washington Square  in  the city  of New
York.
     Then Enoch  Robinson got married. He began to get lonely and to want to
touch  actual flesh-andbone people with his hands. Days passed when his room
seemed empty.  Lust visited his body  and  desire grew in his mind. At night
strange fevers, burning within, kept him awake. He married a girl who sat in
a chair next  to his own in the art school and  went to live in an apartment
house in Brooklyn. Two children were born to the woman he married, and Enoch
got a job in a place where illustrations are made for advertisements.
     That  began another  phase  of Enoch's  life. He began to play at a new
game. For  a while  he was very  proud of himself in the  role of  producing
citizen  of the  world. He dismissed the  essence of things and played  with
realities. In the fall he voted at an election and he had a newspaper thrown
on his porch each morning. When in the evening he came home from work he got
off a streetcar and walked sedately along behind some business man, striving
to  look very substantial and important.  As a payer of taxes he thought  he
should post  himself  on  how  things  are  run. "I'm getting  to be of some
moment, a real part of things, of the state and the  city  and all that," he
told  himself with  an amusing miniature air of  dignity. Once,  coming home
from Philadelphia,  he had a discussion  with  a  man  met on a train. Enoch
talked about the advisability of the government's  owning  and operating the
railroads and the  man  gave him a cigar. It  was Enoch's notion that such a
move on the part  of the government would be a good thing, and he grew quite
excited  as he talked.  Later he remembered his own words with  pleasure. "I
gave him something to  think  about, that fellow," he muttered to himself as
he climbed the stairs to his Brooklyn apartment.
     To be sure, Enoch's marriage did not turn out. He himself brought it to
an end. He began to feel choked and walled in by the  life in the apartment,
and to  feel toward his  wife  and even  toward his children  as he had felt
concerning the friends who once came to  visit him. He began to tell  little
lies about business engagements that would give him freedom to walk alone in
the street at night and, the chance offering, he secretly re-rented the room
facing Washington  Square.  Then  Mrs. Al Robinson  died on  the  farm  near
Winesburg, and he got  eight  thousand  dollars from  the bank that acted as
trustee of her estate. That  took Enoch out of the world of  men altogether.
He  gave the  money to  his  wife and  told  her he could not  live  in  the
apartment any  more. She  cried  and was  angry and threatened,  but he only
stared at her and went his own way. In reality the wife  did not  care much.
She  thought Enoch  slightly insane and was  a little afraid of him. When it
was quite sure that he  would never come back, she took the two children and
went to a village in Connecticut where she  had lived as a girl. In  the end
she married a man who bought and sold real estate and was contented enough.
     And so Enoch Robinson stayed in the New York room among  the  people of
his  fancy, playing with them, talking to them,  happy as a child is  happy.
They were an odd lot, Enoch's people. They were made, I suppose, out of real
people he  had seen and  who had for some obscure  reason made an appeal  to
him. There was  a woman with  a sword  in her hand, an old man with  a  long
white beard who went about followed  by a dog, a young girl  whose stockings
were always coming down and hanging over her shoe tops. There must have been
two  dozen of  the  shadow  people,  invented by  the  child-mind  of  Enoch
Robinson, who lived in the room with him.
     And Enoch was happy. Into the room he went and locked the door. With an
absurd  air  of  importance  he talked  aloud,  giving  instructions, making
comments on life.  He was happy  and satisfied to go on making his living in
the advertising  place  until  something happened.  Of course something  did
happen. That is why he went back to live in  Winesburg and why we know about
him. The  thing that happened was a woman. It would be that way. He  was too
happy. Something had  to come into his world. Something had to drive him out
of the  New York room to live out his life an obscure, jerky little  figure,
bobbing up and down on the streets  of an Ohio town  at evening when the sun
was going down behind the roof of Wesley Moyer's livery barn.
     About the thing that happened. Enoch told George Willard about  it  one
night.  He  wanted  to  talk  to  someone, and he  chose the young newspaper
reporter because the two  happened to  be thrown together at a time when the
younger man was in a mood to understand.
     Youthful sadness, young man's  sadness, the sadness of a growing boy in
a village at the year's end, opened the lips of the old man. The sadness was
in the  heart of George Willard and was without meaning,  but it appealed to
Enoch Robinson.
     It  rained on the evening  when the  two met and  talked, a drizzly wet
October rain. The  fruition of the  year had come and the night  should have
been fine with a moon in the sky and the crisp sharp promise of frost in the
air,  but  it wasn't that way. It  rained and little puddles of  water shone
under the street lamps on Main  Street. In the woods in the darkness  beyond
the Fair Ground water  dripped from the black  trees. Beneath the  trees wet
leaves were  pasted  against  tree roots that protruded from  the ground. In
gardens back of houses in Winesburg dry shriveled potato vines lay sprawling
on the ground. Men who had finished the  evening meal and who had planned to
go uptown to talk the evening away with other men at the back  of some store
changed their minds. George Willard tramped about in  the rain and was  glad
that it rained. He felt that way. He was like Enoch Robinson on the evenings
when  the old man came  down  out of  his room  and  wandered alone  in  the
streets.  He was like that only that George Willard had  become a tall young
man and did  not think it manly to weep and carry on. For a month his mother
had  been very ill  and  that had something to do with his sadness,  but not
much. He thought about himself and to the young that always brings sadness.
     Enoch  Robinson and George Willard  met  beneath a  wooden  awning that
extended out over the  sidewalk before Voight's wagon shop  on Maumee Street
just off the main street of Winesburg. They went together from there through
the  rain-washed streets to the older man's room on the  third floor of  the
Heffner  Block. The  young reporter  went  willingly enough.  Enoch Robinson
asked  him to  go after  the two had talked for ten minutes. The  boy was  a
little  afraid but  had never been more curious in his life. A hundred times
he had heard the old man spoken of as a little  off his  head and he thought
himself rather brave and manly to go at all. From the very beginning, in the
street in the rain, the old man  talked  in a queer way, trying  to tell the
story of the room in Washington Square  and of his life in the room. "You'll
understand  if you try hard enough," he said conclus