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First I heard voices at the door that led into a little hallway and then it opened softly. The girl was ashamed and stood perfectly still staring at the floor. The mother didn’t come into the room. When she had pushed

Only, how under the sun she could have got to town from those seventeen miles. She may even have walked. ‘So it seems I didn’t mean what I said I hoped,’ he said aloud, mounting the outside stairs again, out of the hazy and now windless sunglare, and entered his office. He stopped. Then he said, ‘Good morning, Miss Worsham.

‘A box?’ Again she was looking at him with that expression curious and detached, as though he were a child. ‘He is her grandson, Mr. Stevens. When she took him to raise, she gave him my father’s name – Samuel Worsham. Not just a box, Mr. Stevens.

I understand that can be done by paying so much a month.’ ‘Not just a box,’ Stevens said. He said it in exactly the same tone in which he had said He must come home. ‘Mr. Edmonds will want to help, I know. And I understand that old Luke Beauchamp had some money in the bank. And if you will permit me-’

Five minutes later Stevens was crossing again the empty square in which noon’s hot suspension was that much nearer. He had thought that he was going home to his boarding-house for the noon meal, but he found that he was not. ‘Besides, I didn’t lock my office door,’ he thought.

the girl in through the door she stood in the hallway waiting, hoping we would – well, you see – waiting.” George Willard and the telegraph operator came into the main street of Winesburg. The lights from the store windows lay bright and shining on the sidewalks

So Stevens crossed the lamplit hall (he knew that the entire house was still lighted with oil lamps and there was no running water in it) and preceded the Negro up the clean, paintless stairs beside the faded wall-paper, and followed the old Negro along the hall and into the clean,

his wife and Miss Worsham all three mostly lived, with blurred old eyes and a fridge of white hair about the head and face of a Roman general. ‘She expecting you,’ he said. ‘She say to kindly step up to the chamber.’ ‘Is that where Aunt Mollie is?’ Stevens said. ‘We all dar,’ Worsham said.

Had you been in the earlier years of your life a citizen of the village of Winesburg, Ohio, there would have been for you no mystery in regard to the beast in his cage. “It is like Wash Williams,” you would have said. “As he sits in the corner there, the beast is exactly

like the old Wash sitting on the grass in the station yard on a summer evening after he has closed his office for the night.” Wash Williams, the telegraph operator of Winesburg, was the ugliest thing in town. His girth was immense, his neck thin, his legs feeble. He was dirty. Everything about him was unclean. Even the whites of his eyes looked soiled

And that night after supper he walked through the breathless and star-filled darkness to Miss Worsham’s house on the edge of town and knocked on the paintless front door. Hamp Worsham admitted him – an old man, belly-bloated from the vegetables on which he and

spare bedroom with its unmistakable faint odour of old maidens. They were all there, as Worsham had said – his wife, a tremendous light-coloured woman in a bright turban leaning in the door, Miss Worsham erect again on a hard straight chair, the old Negress sitting in the only rocking-chair beside the hearth on which even tonight a few ashes smouldered faintly.

So Stevens crossed the lamplit hall (he knew that the entire house was still lighted with oil lamps and there was no running water in it) and preceded the Negro up the clean, paintless stairs beside the faded wall-paper, and followed the old Negro along the hall and into the clean, spare bedroom with its unmistakable faint odour of old maidens. They were all there, as Worsham had said – his wife, a tremendous light-coloured woman in a bright turban leaning in the door,

the girl in through the door she stood in the hallway waiting, hoping we would – well, you see – waiting.” George Willard and the telegraph operator came into the main street of Winesburg. The lights from the store windows lay bright and shining on the sidewalks

He descended the stairs almost running. It was not far now; now he could smell and feel it: the breathing and simple dark, and now he could manner himself to pause and wait, turning at the door, watching Miss Worsham as she followed him to the door – the high,

white, erect, old-time head approaching through the old-time lamplight. Now he could hear the third voice, which would be that of Hamp’s wife – a true constant soprano which ran without words beneath the strophe and antistrophe of the brother and sister

First I heard voices at the door that led into a little hallway and then it opened softly. The girl was ashamed and stood perfectly still staring at the floor. The mother didn’t come into the room. When she had pushed

Miss Worsham erect again on a hard straight chair, the old Negress sitting in the only rocking-chair beside the hearth on which even tonight a few ashes smouldered faintly. She held a reed-stemmed clay pipe but she was not smoking it, the ash dead and white in the stained bowl; and actually looking at her for the first time, Stevens thought: Good lord, she’s not as big as a ten-year-old child

At four o’clock on the afternoon of the third day Mr. Seeders came in. There were no customers at the tables. At the back end of the restaurant Tildy was refilling the mustard pots and Aileen was quartering pies.

whom she and Tildy had privately christened ‘The Hog’presented her with a turquoise ring. Another one known as ‘Freshy’, who rode on the Traction Company’s repair wagon, was going to give her a poodle as soon as his brother got the hauling contract in the Ninth

For two days Mr. Seeders came not again. During that time Tildy established herself firmly as a woman to be wooed. She bought ribbons, and arranged her hair like Aileen’s, and tightened her waist two inches. She had a thrilling but delightful fear that Mr. Seeders

would rush in suddenly and shoot her with a pistol. He must have loved her desperately; and impulsive lovers are always blindly jealous. Even Aileen had not been shot at with a pistol. And then Tildy rather hoped that he would not shoot at her, for she was always loyal to Aileen; and she did not want to overshadow her friend

If the transients were entranced by the fascinating Aileen, the regulars were her adorers. There was much rivalry among many of the steady customers. Aileen could have had an engagement every evening. At least twice a week someone took her to a theatre or to a dance. One stout gentleman

Mr. Seeders walked back to were they stood. Tildy looked up and saw him, gasped, and pressed the mustard spoon upon her heart. A red hair – bow was in her hair; she wore Venus’s Eighth Avenue Badge, the blue bead necklace with the swinging silver symbolic heart

At the next regular meal when Tildy set food before customers with whom she had acquaintance she said to each of them modestly, as one whose merit needed no bolstering: ‘A gentleman insulted me to-day in the restaurant. He put his arm around my waist and kissed me.’

hay-colored hair the unhandsomest of us dream of a prince or a princess, not vicarious, but coming to us alone. There was a morning when Aileen tripped in to work with a slightly bruised eye; and Tildy’s solicitude was almost enough to heal any optic

The freckles on Tildy’s cheeks merged into a rosy flush. Now both Circe and Psyche peeped from her brightened eyes. Not even Aileen herself had been publicly kissed in the restaurant. Tildy could not keep the delightful secret. When trade was slack she went and stood at Bogle’s desk.

Her eyes were shining; she tried not to let her words sound proud and boastful. ‘A gentleman insulted me to-day’, she said. ‘He hugged me around the waist and kissed me’. That so?’ said Bogle, cracking open his business armour. ‘After this week you get a dollar a week more.’

The blunt nose was loyal to the short Grecian. She was Aileen’s friend; and she was glad to see her rule hearts and wean the attention of men from smoking pot-pie and lemon meringue. But deep below our freckles and

The diners accepted the revelation in various ways – some incredulously, some with congratulations; others turned upon her the stream of badinage that had hitherto been directed at Aileen alone. And Tildy’s heart swelled in the bosom, for she saw at last the towers of Romance rise above the horizon of the grey plain in which she had for so long travelled

When Wash walked through the streets such a one had an instinct to pay him homage, to raise his hat or to bow before him. The superintendent who had supervision over the telegraph operators on the railroad that went through Winesburg felt that way. He

Stevens said. Yes, he thought. It doesn’t matter to her now. Since it had to be and she couldn’t stop it, and now that it’s all over and done and finished, she doesn’t care how he died. She just wanted him home, but she wanted him to come home right. She wanted that casket and those flowers and the hearse and she wanted to ride through town behind it in a car. ‘Come on’ he said. ‘Let’s get back to town. I haven’t seen my desk in two days.’

He went down the hall fast, almost running; he did not even know whether she was following him or not. Soon I will be outside, he thought. Then there will be air, space breath. Then he could hear her behind him – the crisp, light, brisk yet unhurried feet as he had heard them descending the stairs from his office, and beyond them the voices: ‘Sold my Benjamin. Sold him in Egypt.’

‘Sold him in Egypt. Oh yes, Lord.’ He descended the stairs almost running. It was not far now; now he could smell and feel it: the breathing and simple dark, and now he could manner himself to pause and wait, turning at the door, watching Miss Worsham as she followed him to the door – the high, white, erect, old-time head approaching through the old-time lamplight.

And by Jupiter, if I had and if she had known what we know even, I believe she would have said yes. But I didn’t say it. I just said, “Why, you couldn’t read it, Aunty.” And she said, “Miss Belle will show me where to look and I can look at hit. You put hit in de paper. All of hit.”’ ‘Oh,’

had put Wash into the obscure office at Winesburg to avoid discharging him, and he meant to keep him there. When he received the letter of complaint from the banker’s wife, he tore it up and laughed unpleasantly. For some reason he thought of his own wife as he tore up the letter

‘A box?’ Again she was looking at him with that expression curious and detached, as though he were a child. ‘He is her grandson, Mr. Stevens. When she took him to raise, she gave him my father’s name – Samuel Worsham. Not just a box, Mr. Stevens.

name and cooled their heels a while and then went away and returned and sat again, fuming, Stevens passed from store to store and office to office about the square-merchant and clerk, proprietor and employee, doctor, dentist, lawyer, and barber – with his set and rapid speech: ‘It’s to bring a dead nigger home. It’s for Miss Worsham. Never mind about a paper to sign: just give me a dollar. Or half a dollar then. Or a quarter then.’

‘Wait,’ the editor said. ‘Wait.’ ‘And he will come in on Number Four the day after tomorrow and we will meet it, Miss Worsham and his grandmother, the old nigger, in my car and you and me in yours. Miss Worsham and the old woman will take him back home, back where he was born. Or where the old woman raised him. Or where she tried to. And the hearse out there

will be fifteen more, not counting the flowers-’ ‘Flowers?’ the editor cried. ‘Flowers,’ Stevens said. ‘Call the whole thing two hundred and twenty-five. And it will probably be mostly you and me. All right?’ ‘No it aint all right,’ the editor said. ‘But it don’t look like I can help myself. By Jupiter,’ he said ‘even if I could help myself, the novelty will be almost worth it. It will be the first time in my life I ever paid money for copy I had already promised beforehand I won’t print.’

‘Have already promised beforehand you will not print,’ Stevens said. And during the remainder of that hot and now windless afternoon, while officials from the city hall, and justices of the peace and bailiffs come fifteen and twenty miles from the ends of the country, mounted the stairs to the empty office and called his

I understand that can be done by paying so much a month.’ ‘Not just a box,’ Stevens said. He said it in exactly the same tone in which he had said He must come home. ‘Mr. Edmonds will want to help, I know. And I understand that old Luke Beauchamp had some money in the bank. And if you will permit me-’

She held a reed-stemmed clay pipe but she was not smoking it, the ash dead and white in the stained bowl; and actually looking at her for the first time, Stevens thought: Good lord, she’s not as big as a ten-year-old child. Then he sat too, so that the four of them – himself, Miss Worsham, the old Negress and her brother – made a circle about the brick hearth on which the ancient symbol of

Williams was a man of courage. A thing had happened to him that made him hate life, and he hated it whole-heartedly, with the abandon of a poet. First of all, he hated women. “Bitches,” he called them. His feeling toward men was somewhat different

Oh yes, Lord,’ Worsham said. ‘Hush,’ Miss Worsham said. ‘Hush, Hamp.’ ‘I telephoned Mr. Edmonds,’ Stevens said. ‘He will have everything ready when you get there.’ ‘Roth Edmonds sold him,’ the old Negress said. She swayed back and forth in the chair. ‘Sold my Benjamin.’ ‘Hush,’ Miss Worsham said. ‘Hush, Mollie. Hush now.’

‘No,’ Stevens said. ‘No he didn’t, Aunt Mollie. It wasn’t Mr. Edmonds. Mr Edmonds didn’t-’ But she can’t hear me, he thought. She was not even looking at him. She never had looked at him. ‘Sold my Benjamin,’ she said. ‘Sold him in Egypt.’ ‘Sold him in Egypt,’ Worsham said. ‘Roth Edmonds sold my Benjamin.’ ‘Sold him to Pharaoh.’ ‘Sold him to Pharaoh and now he dead.’ ‘I’ll better go,’ Stevens said. He rose quickly. Miss Worsham rose too, but he did not wait for her to precede him.

Up along Main Street he went in the evening to Ed Griffith’s saloon, and after drinking unbelievable quantities of beer staggered off to his room in the New Willard House and to his bed for the night. Wash

human coherence and solidity smouldered. ‘He’ll be home the day after tomorrow, Aunt Mollie,’ he said. The old Negress didn’t even look at him; she never had looked at him. ‘He dead,’ she said. ‘Pharaoh got him.’ ‘Oh yes, Lord,’ Worsham said. ‘Pharaoh got him.’ ‘Done sold my Benjamin,’ the old Negress said. ‘Sold him in Egypt.’ She began to sway faintly back and forth in the chair

The young man looked at the hideous, leering face staring about the hotel dining room and was consumed with curiosity. Something he saw lurking in the staring eyes told him that the man who had nothing to say to others

Stevens said. Yes, he thought. It doesn’t matter to her now. Since it had to be and she couldn’t stop it, and now that it’s all over and done and finished, she doesn’t care how he died. She just wanted him home, but she wanted him to come home right. She wanted that casket and those flowers and the hearse and she wanted to ride through town behind it in a car. ‘Come on’ he said. ‘Let’s get back to town. I haven’t seen my desk in two days.’

Then, with Miss Worsham and the old Negress in Stevens’s car with the driver he had hired and himself and the editor in the editor’s, they followed the hearse as it swung into the long hill up from the station, going fast in a whining lower gear until it reached the crest, going pretty fast still but with an unctuous, an almost bishoplike purr until

it slowed into the square, crossing it, circling the Confederate monument and the courthouse while the merchants and clerks and barbers and professional men who had given Stevens the dollars and half-dollars and quarters and the ones who had not, watched quietly from doors and upstairs windows, swinging then into the street which at the edge of town would become the country road leading to the destination seventeen miles away, already picking up speed again and followed still by the two cars

And by Jupiter, if I had and if she had known what we know even, I believe she would have said yes. But I didn’t say it. I just said, “Why, you couldn’t read it, Aunty.” And she said, “Miss Belle will show me where to look and I can look at hit. You put hit in de paper. All of hit.”’ ‘Oh,’

had nevertheless something to say to him. On the pile of railroad ties on the summer evening, he waited expectantly. When the operator remained silent and seemed to have changed his mind about talking, he tried to make conversation

When Mr. Seeders had finished his weakfish he got up, put his arm around Tildy’s waist, kissed her loudly and impudently, walked out upon the street, snapped his fingers in the direction of the laundry, and hied himself to play pennies in the slot machines at

whom she and Tildy had privately christened ‘The Hog’presented her with a turquoise ring. Another one known as ‘Freshy’, who rode on the Traction Company’s repair wagon, was going to give her a poodle as soon as his brother got the hauling contract in the Ninth

Another thing dawned upon Tildy’s recovering wits. In a moment she had advanced from a hopeless, lowly admirer to be an Eve-sister of the potent Aileen. She herself was now a man-charmer, a mark for Cupid, a Sabine who must be coy when the Romans

were at their banquet boards. Man had found her waist achievable and her lips desirable. The sudden and amatory Seeders had, as it were, performed for her a miraculous piece of one-day laundry work. He had taken the sackcloth of her uncomeliness, had washed, dried starched and ironed it, and returned it to her sheer embroidered lawn – the robe of Venus herself

If the transients were entranced by the fascinating Aileen, the regulars were her adorers. There was much rivalry among many of the steady customers. Aileen could have had an engagement every evening. At least twice a week someone took her to a theatre or to a dance. One stout gentleman

the Amusement Arcade. For a few moments Tildy stood petrified. Then she was aware of Aileen shaking at her an arch fore finger, and saying: ‘Why, Til, you naughty girl! Ain’t you getting to be awful, Miss Slyboots! First thing I know you’ll be stealing some of my fellows. I must keep an eye on you, my lady.’

First I heard voices at the door that led into a little hallway and then it opened softly. The girl was ashamed and stood perfectly still staring at the floor. The mother didn’t come into the room. When she had pushed

I don’t know how much, but something. And maybe fifty around the square. But the rest of it is you and me, because she insisted on leaving twenty-five with me, which is just twice what I tried to persuade her it would cost and just exactly four times what she can afford to pay-’

Five minutes later Stevens was crossing again the empty square in which noon’s hot suspension was that much nearer. He had thought that he was going home to his boarding-house for the noon meal, but he found that he was not. ‘Besides, I didn’t lock my office door,’ he thought.

Only, how under the sun she could have got to town from those seventeen miles. She may even have walked. ‘So it seems I didn’t mean what I said I hoped,’ he said aloud, mounting the outside stairs again, out of the hazy and now windless sunglare, and entered his office. He stopped. Then he said, ‘Good morning, Miss Worsham.’

‘We’re bringing him home,’ he said. ‘Miss Worsham and you and me and some others. It will cost-’ ‘Wait’, the editor said. ‘What others?’ ‘I don’t know yet. It will cost about two hundred. I’m not counting the telephones; I’ll take care of them myself. I’ll get something out of Carothers Edmonds the first time I catch him;

the girl in through the door she stood in the hallway waiting, hoping we would – well, you see – waiting.” George Willard and the telegraph operator came into the main street of Winesburg. The lights from the store windows lay bright and shining on the sidewalks

“In the garden back to our house we planted vegetables,” he said, “You know, pears and corn and such things. We went to Columbus in early March and as soon as the days became long I went to work in the garden. With a spade I turned up the black ground while she ran about laughing and pretending to be afraid

I understand that can be done by paying so much a month.’ ‘Not just a box,’ Stevens said. He said it in exactly the same tone in which he had said He must come home. ‘Mr. Edmonds will want to help, I know. And I understand that old Luke Beauchamp had some money in the bank. And if you will permit me-’

On his marriage day, because of his ability, he was promoted to a position as dispatcher at an increased salary and sent to an office at Columbus, Ohio. There he settled down with his young wife and began buying a house on the installment plan.

The young telegraph operator was madly in love. With a kind of religious fervor he had managed to go through the pitfalls of his youth and to remain virginal until after his marriage. He made George Willard a picture of his life in the house of Columbus, Ohio, with the young wife

‘A box?’ Again she was looking at him with that expression curious and detached, as though he were a child. ‘He is her grandson, Mr. Stevens. When she took him to raise, she gave him my father’s name – Samuel Worsham. Not just a box, Mr. Stevens.

of the worms I uncovered. Late in April came the planting. In the little paths among the seed beds she stood holding a paper bag in her hand. The bag was filled with seeds. A few at a time she handed me the seeds that I might thrust them into the warm, soft ground.”

The blunt nose was loyal to the short Grecian. She was Aileen’s friend; and she was glad to see her rule hearts and wean the attention of men from smoking pot-pie and lemon meringue. But deep below our freckles and

and learned in persiflage. Her other name? There was no more necessity for the other name at Bogle’s than there was for finger-bowls. The name of the other waitress was Tildy. Why do you suggest Matilda? Please listen this name – Tildy – Tildy. Tildy was dumpy, plain-faced, and too anxious to please to please

He rose and took his old fine worn panama and descended the outside stairs and crossed the empty square in the hot suspension of noon’s beginning, to the office of the county newspaper. The editor was in – an older man but with hair less white than Stevens’s, in a black string tie and an old-fashioned

boiled shirt and tremendously fat. ‘An old nigger woman named Mollie Beauchamp,’ Stevens said. ‘She and her husband live on the Edmond’s place. It’s her grandson. You remember him – Butch Beauchamp, about five or six years ago, who spent a year in town, mostly in jail, until they finally caught him breaking into Rouncewell’s store one night

So take your change and go – to the devil if you like. There you have Bogle’s sentiments. The needs of Bogle’s customers were supplied by two waitresses and a Voice. One of the waitresses was named Aileen She was tall, beautiful, lively, gracious

hay-colored hair the unhandsomest of us dream of a prince or a princess, not vicarious, but coming to us alone. There was a morning when Aileen tripped in to work with a slightly bruised eye; and Tildy’s solicitude was almost enough to heal any optic

If you have lived in cities and have walked in the park on a summer afternoon, you have perhaps seen, blinking in a corner of his iron cage, a huge, grotesque kind of monkey, a creature with ugly, sagging, hairless skin below his eyes and a bright purple underbody. This monkey is a true

spare bedroom with its unmistakable faint odour of old maidens. They were all there, as Worsham had said – his wife, a tremendous light-coloured woman in a bright turban leaning in the door, Miss Worsham erect again on a hard straight chair, the old Negress sitting in the only rocking-chair beside the hearth on which even tonight a few ashes smouldered faintly

Had you been in the earlier years of your life a citizen of the village of Winesburg, Ohio, there would have been for you no mystery in regard to the beast in his cage. “It is like Wash Williams,” you would have said. “As he sits in the corner there, the beast is exactly

like the old Wash sitting on the grass in the station yard on a summer evening after he has closed his office for the night.” Wash Williams, the telegraph operator of Winesburg, was the ugliest thing in town. His girth was immense, his neck thin, his legs feeble. He was dirty. Everything about him was unclean. Even the whites of his eyes looked soiled

So Stevens crossed the lamplit hall (he knew that the entire house was still lighted with oil lamps and there was no running water in it) and preceded the Negro up the clean, paintless stairs beside the faded wall-paper, and followed the old Negro along the hall and into the clean,

monster. In the completeness of his ugliness he achieved a kind of perverted beauty. Children stopping before the cage are fascinated, men turn away with an air of disgust, and women linger for a moment, trying perhaps to remember which one of their male acquaintances the thing in some faint was resembles

On his marriage day, because of his ability, he was promoted to a position as dispatcher at an increased salary and sent to an office at Columbus, Ohio. There he settled down with his young wife and began buying a house on the installment plan.

of the worms I uncovered. Late in April came the planting. In the little paths among the seed beds she stood holding a paper bag in her hand. The bag was filled with seeds. A few at a time she handed me the seeds that I might thrust them into the warm, soft ground.”

‘A box?’ Again she was looking at him with that expression curious and detached, as though he were a child. ‘He is her grandson, Mr. Stevens. When she took him to raise, she gave him my father’s name – Samuel Worsham. Not just a box, Mr. Stevens.

I understand that can be done by paying so much a month.’ ‘Not just a box,’ Stevens said. He said it in exactly the same tone in which he had said He must come home. ‘Mr. Edmonds will want to help, I know. And I understand that old Luke Beauchamp had some money in the bank. And if you will permit me-’

“In the garden back to our house we planted vegetables,” he said, “You know, pears and corn and such things. We went to Columbus in early March and as soon as the days became long I went to work in the garden. With a spade I turned up the black ground while she ran about laughing and pretending to be afraid

The young telegraph operator was madly in love. With a kind of religious fervor he had managed to go through the pitfalls of his youth and to remain virginal until after his marriage. He made George Willard a picture of his life in the house of Columbus, Ohio, with the young wife

‘I telephoned,’ Stevens said. ‘I talked to the Warden at Joliet, and to the District Attorney in Chicago. He had a fair trial, a good lawyer – of that sort. He had money. He was in a business called numbers, that people like him make money in.’ She watched him, erect and motionless. ‘He is a murderer, Miss Worsham.

I don’t know how much, but something. And maybe fifty around the square. But the rest of it is you and me, because she insisted on leaving twenty-five with me, which is just twice what I tried to persuade her it would cost and just exactly four times what she can afford to pay-’

He had known her too all his life. She lived alone in the decaying house her father had left her, where she gave lessons in china-painting and, with the help of Hamp Worsham, descendant of one of her father’s slaves, and his wife, raised chickens and vegetables for market.

‘I came about Mollie,’ she said. ‘Mollie Beauchamp. She said that you-‘ He told her while she watched him, erect on the hard chair where the old Negress had sat, the rusty umbrella leaning against her knee. On her lap, beneath her folded hands, lay an old-fashioned beaded reticule almost as big as a suitcase. ‘He is to be executed tonight.’

‘We’re bringing him home,’ he said. ‘Miss Worsham and you and me and some others. It will cost-’ ‘Wait’, the editor said. ‘What others?’ ‘I don’t know yet. It will cost about two hundred. I’m not counting the telephones; I’ll take care of them myself. I’ll get something out of Carothers Edmonds the first time I catch him;

He shot that policeman in the back. A bad son of a bad father. He admitted, confessed it afterward.’ ‘I know,’ she said. Then he realised that she was not looking at him, not seeing him at least. ‘It’s terrible.’ ‘So is murder terrible,’ Stevens said. ‘It’s better this way.’ Then she was looking at him again