wanted someone to understand the feeling
that had taken possession of him after his mother's
death.

There is a time in the life of every boy when he for
the first time takes the backward view of life. Perhaps
that is the moment when he crosses the line into
manhood. The boy is walking through the street of his
town. He is thinking of the future and of the figure he
will cut in the world. Ambitions and regrets awake
within him. Suddenly something happens; he stops under
a tree and waits as for a voice calling his name.
Ghosts of old things creep into his consciousness; the
voices outside of himself whisper a message concerning
the limitations of life. From being quite sure of
himself and his future he becomes not at all sure. If
he be an imaginative boy a door is torn open and for the
first time he looks out upon the world, seeing, as
though they marched in procession before him, the
countless figures of men who before his time have come
out of nothingness into the world, lived their lives
and again disappeared into nothingness. The sadness of
sophistication has come to the boy. With a little gasp
he sees himself as merely a leaf blown by the wind
through the streets of his village. He knows that in
spite of all the stout talk of his fellows he must live
and die in uncertainty, a thing blown by the winds, a
thing destined like corn to wilt in the sun. He shivers
and looks eagerly about. The eighteen years he has
lived seem but a moment, a breathing space in the long
march of humanity. Already he hears death calling. With
all his heart he wants to come close to some other
human, touch someone with his hands, be touched by the
hand of another. If he prefers that the other be a
woman, that is because he believes that a woman will be
gentle, that she will understand. He wants, most of
all, understanding.

When the moment of sophistication came to George
Willard his mind turned to Helen White, the Winesburg
banker's daughter. Always he had been conscious of the
girl growing into womanhood as he grew into manhood.
Once on a summer night when he was eighteen, he had
walked with her on a country road and in her presence
had given way to an impulse to boast, to make himself
appear big and significant in her eyes. Now he wanted
to see her for another purpose. He wanted to tell her
of the new impulses that had come to him. He had tried
to make her think of him as a man when he knew nothing
of manhood and now he wanted