ad 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 a