Winesburg, Ohio
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CONTENTS
THE TALES AND THE PERSONS
THE BOOK OF THE GROTESQUE
HANDS, concerning Wing Biddlebaum
PAPER PILLS, concerning Doctor Reefy
MOTHER, concerning Elizabeth Willard
THE PHILOSOPHER, concerning Doctor Parcival
NOBODY KNOWS, concerning Louise Trunnion
GODLINESS, a Tale in Four Parts
I, concerning Jesse Bentley
II, also concerning Jesse Bentley
III Surrender, concerning Louise Bentley
IV Terror, concerning David Hardy
A MAN OF IDEAS, concerning Joe Welling
ADVENTURE, concerning Alice Hindman
RESPECTABILITY, concerning Wash Williams
THE THINKER, concerning Seth Richmond
TANDY, concerning Tandy Hard
THE STRENGTH OF GOD, concerning the
Reverend Curtis Hartman
THE TEACHER, concerning Kate Swift
LONELINESS, concerning Enoch Robinson
AN AWAKENING, concerning Belle Carpenter
"QUEER," concerning Elmer Cowley
THE UNTOLD LIE, concerning Ray Pearson
DRINK, concerning Tom Foster
DEATH, concerning Doctor Reefy
and Elizabeth Willard
SOPHISTICATION, concerning Helen White
DEPARTURE, concerning George Willard
To the memory of my mother,
EMMA SMITH ANDERSON,
whose keen observations on the life about
her first awoke in me the hunger to see
beneath the surface of lives,
this book is dedicated.
THE TALES
AND THE PERSONS
THE BOOK OF
THE GROTESQUE
THE WRITER, an old man with a white mustache, had
some difficulty in getting into bed. The windows of
the house in which he lived were high and he
wanted to look at the trees when he awoke in the
morning. A carpenter came to fix the bed so that it
would be on a level with the window.
Quite a fuss was made about the matter. The car-
penter, who had been a soldier in the Civil War,
came into the writer's room and sat down to talk of
building a platform for the purpose of raising the
bed. The writer had cigars lying about and the car-
penter smoked.
For a time the two men talked of the raising of
the bed and then they talked of other things. The
soldier got on the subject of the war. The writer, in
fact, led him to that subject. The carpenter had once
been a prisoner in Andersonville prison and had lost
a brother. The brother had died of starvation, and
whenever the carpenter got upon that subject he
cried. He, like the old writer, had a white mustache,
and when he cried he puckered up his lips and the
mustache bobbed up and down. The weeping old
man with the cigar in his mouth was ludicrous. The
plan the writer had for the raising of his bed was
forgotten and later the carpenter did it in his own
way and the writer, who was past sixty, had to help
himself with a chair when he went to bed at night.
In his bed the writer rolled over on his side and
lay quite still. For years he had been beset with no-
tions concerning his heart. He was a hard smoker
and his heart fluttered. The idea had got into his
mind that he would some time die unexpectedly and
always when he got into bed he thought of that. It
did not alarm him. The effect in fact was quite a
special thing and not easily explained. It made him
more alive, there in bed, than at any other time.
Perfectly still he lay and his body was old and not
of much use any more, but something inside him
was altogether young. He was like a pregnant
woman, only that the thing inside him was not a baby
but a youth. No, it wasn't a youth, it was a woman,
young, and wearing a coat of mail like a knight. It
is absurd, you see, to try to tell what was inside the
old writer as he lay on his high bed and listened to
the fluttering of his heart. The thing to get at is what
the writer, or the young thing within the writer, was
thinking about.
The old writer, like all of the people in the world,
had got, during his long fife, a great many notions
in his head. He had once been quite handsome and
a number of women had been in love with him.
And then, of course, he had known people, many
people, known them in a peculiarly intimate way
that was different from the way in which you and I
know people. At least that is what the writer
thought and the thought pleased him. Why quarrel
with an old man concerning his thoughts?
In the bed the writer had a dream that was not a
dream. As he grew somewhat sleepy but was still
conscious, figures began to appear before his eyes.
He imagined the young indescribable thing within
himself was driving a long procession of figures be-
fore his eyes.
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