Winesburg, Ohio

S >> Sherwood Anderson >> Winesburg, Ohio


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

The talk of the town and the respect with which men and
boys instinctively greeted him, as all men greet silent
people, had affected Seth Richmond's outlook on life
and on himself. He, like most boys, was deeper than
boys are given credit for being, but he was not what
the men of the town, and even his mother, thought him
to be. No great underlying purpose lay back of his
habitual silence, and he had no definite plan for his
life. When the boys with whom he associated were noisy
and quarrelsome, he stood quietly at one side. With
calm eyes he watched the gesticulating lively figures
of his companions. He wasn't particularly interested in
what was going on, and sometimes wondered if he would
ever be particularly interested in anything. Now, as he
stood in the half-darkness by the window watching the
baker, he wished that he himself might become
thoroughly stirred by something, even by the fits of
sullen anger for which Baker Groff was noted. "It would
be better for me if I could become excited and wrangle
about politics like windy old Tom Willard," he thought,
as he left the window and went again along the hallway
to the room occupied by his friend, George Willard.

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

The idea that George Willard would some day become a
writer had given him a place of distinction in
Winesburg, and to Seth Richmond he talked continually
of the matter, "It's the easiest of all lives to live,"
he declared, becoming excited and boastful. "Here and
there you go and there is no one to boss you. Though
you are in India or in the South Seas in a boat, you
have but to write and there you are. Wait till I get my
name up and then see what fun I shall have."

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

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

Struck with a new idea, young Willard turned and walked
toward his visitor. "Look here," he said. "You know
Helen White better than I do. I want you to tell her
what I said. You just get to talking to her and say
that I'm in love with her. See what she says to that.
See how she takes it, and then you come and tell me."

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

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

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

Seth went down the stairway and out at the front door
of the hotel muttering with wrath. Crossing a little
dusty street and climbing a low iron railing, he went
to sit upon the grass in the station yard. George
Willard he thought a profound fool, and he wished that
he had said so more vigorously. Although his
acquaintanceship with Helen White, the banker's
daughter, was outwardly but casual, she was often the
subject of his thoughts and he felt that she was
something private and personal to himself. "The busy
fool with his love stories," he muttered, staring back
over his shoulder at George Willard's room, "why does
he never tire of his eternal talking."

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

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

Seth Richmond went slowly along Main Street, past
Wacker's Cigar Store and the Town Hall, and into
Buckeye Street. He was depressed by the thought that he
was not a part of the life in his own town, but the
depression did not cut deeply as he did not think of
himself as at fault. In the heavy shadows of a big tree
before Doctor Welling's house, he stopped and stood
watching half-witted Turk Smollet, who was pushing a
wheelbarrow in the road. The old man with his absurdly
boyish mind had a dozen long boards on the wheelbarrow,
and, as he hurried along the road, balanced the load
with extreme nicety. "Easy there, Turk! Steady now, old
boy!" the old man shouted to himself, and laughed so
that the load of boards rocked dangerously.

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

Seth stumbled forward through the half-darkness,
feeling himself an outcast in his own town. He began to
pity himself, but a sense of the absurdity of his
thoughts made him smile. In the end he decided that he
was simply old beyond his years and not at all a
subject for self-pity. "I'm made to go to work. I may
be able to make a place for myself by steady working,
and I might as well be at it," he decided.

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

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

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

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

The notes had been written in a round, boyish hand and
had reflected a mind inflamed by novel reading. Seth
had not answered them, although he had been moved and
flattered by some of the sentences scrawled in pencil
upon the stationery of the banker's wife. Putting them
into the pocket of his coat, he went through the street
or stood by the fence in the school yard with something
burning at his side. He thought it fine that he should
be thus selected as the favorite of the richest and
most attractive girl in town.

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

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

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

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

And then, looking down, Seth had seen the bees
everywhere all about him in the long grass. He stood in
a mass of weeds that grew waist-high in the field that
ran away from the hillside. The weeds were abloom with
tiny purple blossoms and gave forth an overpowering
fragrance. Upon the weeds the bees were gathered in
armies, singing as they worked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seth arose from the bench and put out his hand. He did
not want to bring the meeting to an end but could not
think of anything more to say. "It's the last time
we'll see each other," he whispered.

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

Seth hesitated and, as he stood waiting, the girl
turned and ran away through the hedge. A desire to run
after her came to him, but he only stood staring,
perplexed and puzzled by her action as he had been
perplexed and puzzled by all of the life of the town
out of which she had come. Walking slowly toward the
house, he stopped in the shadow of a large tree and
looked at his mother sitting by a lighted window busily
sewing. The feeling of loneliness that had visited him
earlier in the evening returned and colored his
thoughts of the adventure through which he had just
passed. "Huh!" he exclaimed, turning and staring in the
direction taken by Helen White. "That's how things'll
turn out. She'll be like the rest. I suppose she'll
begin now to look at me in a funny way." He looked at
the ground and pondered this thought. "She'll be
embarrassed and feel strange when I'm around," he
whispered to himself. "That's how it'll be. That's how
everything'll turn out. When it comes to loving
someone, it won't never be me. It'll be someone
else--some fool--someone who talks a lot--someone like
that George Willard."




TANDY

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

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

The stranger was the son of a rich merchant of
Cleveland and had come to Winesburg on a mission. He
wanted to cure himself of the habit of drink, and
thought that by escaping from his city associates and
living in a rural community he would have a better
chance in the struggle with the appetite that was
destroying him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




THE STRENGTH OF GOD

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

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

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