in the tin box behind the
plaster by the foot of his mother's bed. Elizabeth had
put it there a week after her marriage, breaking the
plaster away with a stick. Then she got one of the
workmen her husband was at that time employing about
the hotel to mend the wall. "I jammed the corner of the
bed against it," she had explained to her husband,
unable at the moment to give up her dream of release,
the release that after all came to her but twice in her
life, in the moments when her lovers Death and Doctor
Reefy held her in their arms.

SOPHISTICATION

It was early evening of a day in, the late fall and the
Winesburg County Fair had brought crowds of country
people into town. The day had been clear and the night
came on warm and pleasant. On the Trunion Pike, where
the road after it left town stretched away between
berry fields now covered with dry brown leaves, the
dust from passing wagons arose in clouds. Children,
curled into little balls, slept on the straw scattered
on wagon beds. Their hair was full of dust and their
fingers black and sticky. The dust rolled away over the
fields and the departing sun set it ablaze with colors.

In the main street of Winesburg crowds filled the
stores and the sidewalks. Night came on, horses
whinnied, the clerks in the stores ran madly about,
children became lost and cried lustily, an American
town worked terribly at the task of amusing itself.

Pushing his way through the crowds in Main Street,
young George Willard concealed himself in the stairway
leading to Doctor Reefy's office and looked at the
people. With feverish eyes he watched the faces
drifting past under the store lights. Thoughts kept
coming into his head and he did not want to think. He
stamped impatiently on the wooden steps and looked
sharply about. "Well, is she going to stay with him all
day? Have I done all this waiting for nothing?" he
muttered.

George Willard, the Ohio village boy, was fast growing
into manhood and new thoughts had been coming into his
mind. All that day, amid the jam of people at the Fair,
he had gone about feeling lonely. He was about to leave
Winesburg to go away to some city where he hoped to get
work on a city newspaper and he felt grown up. The mood
that had taken possession of him was a thing known to
men and unknown to boys. He felt old and a little
tired. Memories awoke in him. To his mind his new sense
of maturity set him apart, made of him a half-tragic
figure. He