Geboren in ein verworrenes Lied (German Edition)

Doch ach, schon mit der Morgensonne 25 Verengt der Abschied mir das Herz: In deinen Kuessen, welche Wonne! In deinem Auge, welcher Schmerz! Ich ging, du standst und sahst zur Erden, Und sahst mir nach mit nassem Blick: Und lieben, Goetter, welch ein Glueck! Wie glaenzt die Sonne! Wie lacht die Flur! O Glueck, o Lust! O Lieb', o Liebe! So golden schoen, Wie Morgenwolken 15 Auf jenen Hoehn! Wie blinkt dein Auge! Wie liebst du mich! Sei ewig gluecklich, 35 Wie du mich liebst! Aug', mein Aug', was sinkst du nieder? Goldne Traeume, kommt ihr wieder?

Ich breche dich, Roeslein aus der Heiden! Ich steche dich, 10 Dass du ewig denkst an mich, Und ich will's nicht leiden. Roeslein, Roeslein, Roeslein rot, Roeslein auf der Heiden. Roeslein, Roeslein, Roeslein rot, 20 Roeslein auf der Heiden. Suesser Friede, Komm, ach, komm in meine Brust!

Warte nur, balde Ruhest du auch. Lass, o lass mich nicht ermatten! Nein, es sind nicht leere Traeume: Sieh, das Gute liegt so nah. Lerne nur das Glueck ergreifen, Denn das Glueck ist immer da. Ich wollt' es brechen, Da sagt' es fein: Und pflanzt' es wieder Am stillen Ort; Nun zweigt es immer Und blueht so fort. Kennst du es wohl? Dahin Moecht' ich mit dir, o mein Geliebter, ziehn. Kennst du das Haus? Was hat man dir, du armes Kind, getan? Dahin Moecht' ich mit dir, o mein Beschuetzer, ziehn. Kennst du den Berg und seinen Wolkensteg?

Kennst du ihn wohl? Dahin Geht unser Weg! Ihr fuehrt ins Leben uns hinein, 5 Ihr lasst den Armen schuldig werden, Dann ueberlasst ihr ihn der Pein: Denn alle Schuld raecht sich auf Erden. Es ging ihm nichts darueber, 5 Er leert' ihn jeden Schmaus; Die Augen gingen ihm ueber, So oft er trank daraus. Die Augen taeten ihm sinken, Trank nie einen Tropfen mehr.

Und wie er sitzt und wie er lauscht, 5 Teilt sich die Flut empor: Aus dem bewegten Wasser rauscht Ein feuchtes Weib hervor. Sie sang zu ihm, sie sprach zu ihm: Ach, wuesstest du, wie 's Fischlein ist So wohlig auf dem Grund, Du stiegst herunter, wie du bist, 15 Und wuerdest erst gesund. Labt sich die liebe Sonne nicht, Der Mond sich nicht im Meer? Kehrt wellenatmend ihr Gesicht Nicht doppelt schoener her? Lockt dich dein eigen Angesicht Nicht her in ew'gen Tau? Sie sprach zu ihm, sie sang zu ihm; Da war's um ihn geschehn: Den Erlenkoenig mit Kron' und Schweif?

Es scheinen die alten Weiden so grau. Erlkoenig hat mir ein Leids getan! Seele des Menschen, Wie gleichst du dem Wasser! Schicksal des Menschen, Wie gleichst du dem Wind! Was unterscheidet Goetter von Menschen? Uns hebt die Welle, Verschlingt die Welle, 35 Und wir versinken. So seh' ich in allen Die ewige Zier, 10 Und wie mir's gefallen, Gefall' ich auch mir. Ihr gluecklichen Augen, Was je ihr gesehn, Es sei, wie es wolle, 15 Es war doch so schoen! Sei uns der Gastliche gewogen. Der von dem Fremdling wehrt die Schmach! Sind's Raeuber, die ihn feig erschlagen?

Tat's neidisch ein verborgner Feind? Er geht vielleicht mit frechem Schritte Jetzt eben durch der Griechen Mitte. Und waehrend ihn die Rache sucht, 75 Geniesst er seines Frevels Frucht. Wer zaehlt die Voelker, nennt die Namen, Die gastlich hier zusammenkamen? Die zeugete kein sterblich Haus! Es steigt das Riesenmass der Leiber Hoch ueber Menschliches hinaus. Und wo die Haare lieblich flattern, Um Menschenstirnen freundlich wehn, Da sieht man Schlangen hier und Nattern Die giftgeschwollnen Baeuche blaehn.

Besinnungraubend, herzbetoerend Schallt der Erinnyen Gesang. Ihm duerfen wir nicht raechend nahn, Er wandelt frei des Lebens Bahn. Doch wehe, wehe, wer verstohlen Des Mordes schwere Tat vollbracht! Wir heften uns an seine Sohlen, Das furchtbare Geschlecht der Nacht. So jagen wir ihn ohn' Ermatten, Versoehnen kann uns keine Reu', Ihn fort und fort bis zu den Schatten, Und geben ihn auch dort nicht frei.

Und zwischen Trug und Wahrheit schwebet Noch zweifelnd jede Brust und bebet, Und huldiget der furchtbarn Macht, Die richtend im Verborgnen wacht, Die, unerforschlich, unergruendet, Des Schicksals dunkeln Knaeuel flicht, Dem tiefen Herzen sich verkuendet, Doch fliehet vor dem Sonnenlicht. Da hoert man auf den hoechsten Stufen Auf einmal eine Stimme rufen: Was ist's mit dem? Was kann er meinen? Was ist's mit diesem Kranichzug?

Der fromme Dichter wird gerochen, Der Moerder bietet selbst sich dar-- Ergreift ihn, der das Wort gesprochen, Und ihn, an den's gerichtet war! Ist deine Wahrheit wie der Sinne Glueck 10 Nur eine Summe, die man groesser, kleiner Besitzen kann und immer doch besitzt? Ist sie nicht eine einz'ge, ungeteilte? Verwundert Blickt er den Fuehrer an und spricht: Und wer mit ungeweihter, schuld'ger Hand 30 Den heiligen, verbotnen frueher hebt, Der, spricht die Gottheit"--"Nun?

Du selbst, Du haettest also niemals ihn gehoben? Und war auch nie dazu 35 Versucht.

• Class Vamp?
• Calaméo - Winesburg, Ohio (Webster's German Thesaurus Edition) Sherwood Anderson.
• The Adventures of the FinTastic Travelers “The Depths of Time”.
• Winesburg, Ohio (Webster's German Thesaurus Edition) Sherwood Anderson.
• Erinnerung und Identität in frühen Erzählungen Heinrich Manns (German Edition);

Wenn von der Wahrheit Nur diese duenne Scheidewand mich trennte"-- "Und ein Gesetz", faellt ihm sein Fuehrer ein, "Gewichtiger, mein Sohn, als du es meinst, Ist dieser duenne Flor--fuer deine Hand 40 Zwar leicht, doch zentnerschwer fuer dein Gewissen. Zum Tempel 45 Fuehrt unfreiwillig ihn der scheue Tritt. Hier steht er nun, und grauenvoll umfaengt 50 Den Einsamen die lebenlose Stille, Die nur der Tritte hohler Widerhall In den geheimen Grueften unterbricht. Er tritt hinan mit ungewissem Schritt; Schon will die freche Hand das Heilige beruehren, 60 Da zuckt es heiss und kuehl durch sein Gebein Und stoesst ihn weg mit unsichtbarem Arme.

Ungluecklicher, was willst du tun? So ruft In seinem Innern eine treue Stimme. Versuchen den Allheiligen willst du? Doch, setzte nicht derselbe Mund hinzu: Wer diesen Schleier hebt, soll Wahrheit schauen? Ich heb ihn auf. Gellt ihm ein langes Echo spottend nach. Er spricht's und hat den Schleier aufgedeckt. Was er allda gesehen und erfahren, Hat seine Zunge nie bekannt. Jene streift der Wiese Saum, Diese rauschet durch den Baum.

Manche schwingt sich himmelan, 5 Jauchzend auf der lichten Bahn; Eine, voll von Liedeslust, Flattert hier in meiner Brust. Ich bin der Knab' vom Berge! Lasst meines Vaters Haus in Ruh'! Anbetend knie' ich hier. Der Himmel nah und fern, Er ist so klar und feierlich, 10 So ganz, als wollt' er oeffnen sich.

Das ist der Tag des Herrn! Dir auch singt man dort einmal. Wie still des Waldes weiter Raum! Die Voeglein zwitschern nur im Traum, 5 Kein Sang hat sich erschwungen. Ich hab' mich laengst ins Feld gemacht Und habe schon dies Lied erdacht Und hab' es laut gesungen. O frischer Duft, o neuer Klang! Nun, armes Herze, sei nicht bang! Die Welt wird schoener mit jedem Tag, Man weiss nicht, was noch werden mag, Das Bluehen will nicht enden. Es blueht das fernste, tiefste Tal; 10 Nun, armes Herz, vergiss der Qual!

Nun muss sich alles, alles wenden.

Der alte Schmied den Bart sich streicht: Durch meine, nicht durch Feuers Kraft. Er hat ihn erstochen im dunkeln Hain Und den Leib versenket im tiefen Rhein. Hat angeleget die Ruestung blank, 5 Auf des Herren Ross sich geschwungen frank. Und als er sprengen will ueber die Brueck', Da stutzet das Ross und baeumt sich zurueck. Und als er die gueldnen Sporen ihm gab, Da schleudert's ihn wild in den Strom hinab. Wo hat Sie Ihr schoenes Toechterlein? Der erste, der schlug den Schleier zurueck Und schaute sie an mit traurigem Blick: Ich wuerde dich lieben von dieser Zeit.

Ihn hat es weggerissen, Er liegt mir vor den Fuessen, Als waer's ein Stueck von mir. Wie wollt' ich dienen dem Herzog hoch zu Pferd! Er sprang vom Schiffe, da fiel er auf die Hand; "Hei," rief er, "ich fass' und ergreife dich, Engelland! Dann sprengt' er hinein und fuehrte den ersten Stoss, 45 Davon ein englischer Ritter zur Erde schoss; Dann schwang er das Schwert und fuehrte den ersten Schlag, Davon ein englischer Ritter am Boden lag.

Normannen sahen's, die harrten nicht allzulang, Sie brachen herein mit Geschrei und mit Schilderklang. Bis Harald fiel und sein trotziges Heer erlag. Dort sass ein stolzer Koenig, an Land und Siegen reich, 5 Er sass auf seinem Throne so finster und so bleich; Denn was er sinnt, ist Schrecken, und was er blickt, ist Wut, Und was er spricht, ist Geissel, und was er schreibt, ist Blut. Der Alte sprach zum Jungen: Denk unsrer tiefsten Lieder, stimm an den vollsten Ton!

Nimm alle Kraft zusammen, die Lust und auch den Schmerz! Und wie vom Sturm zerstoben ist all der Hoerer Schwarm. Der Juengling hat verroechelt in seines Meisters Arm; Der schlaegt um ihn den Mantel und setzt ihn auf das Ross, Er bind't ihn aufrecht feste, verlaesst mit ihm das Schloss. Euch zeig' ich dieses Toten entstelltes Angesicht, 50 Dass ihr darob verdorret, dass jeder Quell versiegt, Dass ihr in kuenft'gen Tagen versteint, veroedet liegt. Umsonst sei all dein Ringen nach Kraenzen blut'gen Ruhms! Dein Name sei vergessen, in ew'ge Nacht getaucht, 55 Sei wie ein letztes Roecheln in leere Luft verhaucht!

Joseph von Eichendorff Wohl den Meister will ich loben, So lang' noch mein' Stimm' erschallt. Lebe wohl, 5 Lebe wohl, du schoener Wald! Tief die Welt verworren schallt, Oben einsam Rehe grasen, Und wir ziehen fort und blasen, Dass es tausendfach verhallt: Banner, der so kuehle wallt! Lebe wohl, Lebe wohl, du schoener Wald! Was wir still gelobt im Wald, Wollen's draussen ehrlich halten, 20 Ewig bleiben treu die Alten: Deutsch Panier, das rauschend wallt, Lebe wohl!

Schirm dich Gott, du schoener Wald! Denn ueber den mondbeglaenzten Laendern 5 Mit langen weissen Gewaendern Ziehen die schlanken Wolkenfrau'n wie geheime Gedanken, Senden von den Felsenwaenden Hinab die behenden 10 Fruehlingsgesellen, die hellen Waldquellen, Die's unten bestellen An die duft'gen Tiefen, Die gerne noch schliefen. ELFE Bleib bei uns! Die Freude, das schoene leichtglaeubige Kind, 5 Es wiegt sich in Abendwinden: Wo Silber auf Zweigen und Bueschen rinnt, Da wirst du die schoenste finden!

Das Herz mir im Leib entbrennte, 5 Da hab' ich mir heimlich gedacht: Ach, wer da mitreisen koennte In der praechtigen Sommernacht! Zwei junge Gesellen gingen Vorueber am Bergeshang. Die dort gewohnet hat. Hoer ich das Muehlrad gehen: Ich weiss nicht, was ich will-- Ich moecht' am liebsten sterben, Da waer's auf einmal still.

Doch schwer im Schlaf noch ruht die Welt, Von allem nichts verspueret. Nur eine fruehe Lerche steigt, 5 Es hat ihr was getraeumet Vom Lichte, wenn noch alles schweigt, Das kaum die Hoehen saeumet. Und als sie kamen ins deutsche Quartier, Sie liessen die Koepfe hangen. Da hoerten sie beide die traurige Maer': Da weinten zusammen die Grenadier' Wohl ob der klaeglichen Kunde. Wie weh wird mir, Wie brennt meine alte Wunde!

Was schert mich Weib, was schert mich Kind! Ich trage weit bessres Verlangen; Lass sie betteln gehn, wenn sie hungrig sind,-- Mein Kaiser, mein Kaiser gefangen! Dann reitet mein Kaiser wohl ueber mein Grab, Viel Schwerter klirren und blitzen; Dann steig' ich gewaffnet hervor aus dem Grab,-- 35 Den Kaiser, den Kaiser zu schuetzen! In mein gar zu dunkles Leben Strahlte einst ein suesses Bild; Nun das suesse Bild erblichen, Bin ich gaenzlich nachtumhuellt.

Ich weiss nicht, was soll es bedeuten, Dass ich so traurig bin; Ein Maerchen ans alten Zeiten, Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn. Du bist wie eine Blume So hold und schoen und rein: Ich schau' dich an, und Wehmut Schleicht mir ins Herz hinein. Mir ist, als ob ich die Haende 5 Aufs Haupt dir legen sollt', Betend, dass Gott dich erhalte So rein und schoen und hold. Sie blueht und glueht und leuchtet, Und starret stumm in die Hoeh'; 10 Sie duftet und weinet und zittert Vor Liebe und Liebesweh.

Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam Im Norden auf kahler Hoeh'. Ihn schlaefert; mit weisser Decke Umhuellen ihn Eis und Schnee. Mein Liebchen, wir sassen beisammen, Traulich im leichten Kahn. Die Nacht war still, und wir schwammen Auf weiter Wasserbahn. Dort klang es lieb und lieber, Und wogt' es hin und her; 10 Wir aber schwammen vorueber Trostlos auf weitem Meer. Ein Juengling liebt ein Maedchen, Die hat einen aendern erwaehlt; Der andre liebt eine andre, Und hat sich mit dieser vermaehlt.

Es ist eine alte Geschichte, Doch bleibt sie immer neu; 10 Und wem sie just passieret, Dem bricht das Herz entzwei. Es faellt ein Stern herunter Aus seiner funkelnden Hoeh'! Das ist der Stern der Liebe, Den ich dort fallen seh'. Es ist so still und dunkel! Es dunkelt schon, mich schlaefert, Der Tag hat mich mued' gemacht.

Wie still die Stadt! Es ruhte das dumpfe Geraeusch Der schwatzenden, schwuelen Gewerbe, 30 Und durch die reinen, hallenden Strassen Wandelten Menschen, weissgekleidete, Palmzweig-tragende, Und wo sich zwei begegneten, Sah'n sie sich an, verstaendnisinnig, 35 Und schauernd in Liebe und suesser Entsagung Kuessten sie sich auf die Stirne. Und dreimalselig sprachen sie: Leise zieht durch mein Gemuet Liebliches Gelaeute. Klinge, kleines Fruehlingslied, Kling hinaus ins Weite. Kling hinaus, bis an das Haus, 5 Wo die Blumen spriessen.

Wenn du eine Rose schaust, Sag, ich lass' sie gruessen. Kennst du das alte Liedchen? Es klingt so suess, es klingt so trueb'! Sie kommen gross und kraeftig 5 Ohn' Unterlass; Sie werden endlich heftig-- Was hilft uns das? Es ragt ins Meer der Runenstein, Da sitz' ich mit meinen Traeumen. Es pfeift der Wind, die Moewen schrein, Die Wellen, die wandern und schaeumen. Ich habe geliebt manch schoenes Kind 5 Und manchen guten Gesellen-- Wo sind sie hin? Es pfeift der Wind, Es schaeumen und wandern die Wellen. Der Eichenbaum Wuchs dort so hoch, die Veilchen nickten sanft.

Es war ein Traum. Das kuesste mich auf deutsch und sprach auf deutsch 5 Man glaubt es kaum, Wie gut es klang das Wort: Wo wird einst des Wandermueden Letzte Ruhestaette sein? Unter Palmen in dem Sueden? Unter Linden an dem Rhein? Werd' ich wo in einer Wueste 5 Eingescharrt von fremder Hand? Oder ruh' ich an der Kueste Eines Meeres in dem Sand? Mich wird umgeben Gotteshimmel, dort wie hier, 10 Und als Totenlampen schweben Nachts die Sterne ueber mir.

Allzufrueh und fern der Heimat mussten hier sie ihn begraben, 5 Waehrend noch die Jugendlocken seine Schulter blond umgaben. In der wogenleeren Hoehlung wuehlten sie empor die Erde, Senkten tief hinein den Leichnam, mit der Ruestung, auf 10 dem Pferde. Deckten dann mit Erde wieder ihn und seine stolze Habe, Dass die hohen Stromgewaechse wuechsen ans dem Heldengrabe. Abgelenkt zum zweiten Male, ward der Fluss herbeigezogen: Maechtig in ihr altes Bette schaeumten die Busentowogen. Und es sang ein Chor von Maennern: Keines Roemers schnoede Habsucht soll dir je dein Grab versehren!

Im Wasser wogt die Lilie, die blanke, hin und her, Doch irrst du, Freund, sobald du sagst, sie schwanke hin und her: Es wurzelt ja so fest ihr Fuss im tiefen Meeresgrund, Ihr Haupt nur wiegt ein lieblicher Gedanke hin und her! Der Muehlbach rauschte durch felsigen Schacht, Ich lehnte mich ueber die Bruecke, Tief unter mir nahm ich der Wogen in acht, Die wallten so sacht 10 In der Nacht, in der Nacht, Doch wallte nicht eine zuruecke. Ich blickte hinauf in der Nacht, in der Nacht, Ich blickte hinunter aufs neue: Ich moechte, wann ich sterbe, wie die lichten Gestirne schnell und unbewusst erbleichen, Erliegen moecht' ich einst des Todes Streichen, Wie Sagen uns vom Pindaros berichten.

Ich will ja nicht im Leben oder Dichten 5 Den grossen Unerreichlichen erreichen, Ich moecht', o Freund, ihm nur im Tode gleichen; Doch hoere nun die schoenste der Geschichten! Als nun der Choere Melodien verklangen, Will wecken ihn, der ihn so sanft geheget, Doch zu den Goettern war er heimgegangen. Keiner blies das Horn so hell, Wie mein Kamerade!

Die Rosse schreiten sanft und weich, Sonst floess' das Blut zu rasch, zu reich. Die Reiter reiten dicht gesellt, Und einer sich am andern haelt. Und traurig trat ich in ihre Stube. Ihr Schrank stand offen, ich fand ihn noch heut', 5 Wie sie, abreisend, ihn eilig gelassen. Wie alles man durcheinander streut Wenn vor der Tuer die Pferde schon passen. Ich las das aufgeschlagne Gebet, Es war: Ich las ihre Schrift, und ich verbiss Nicht laenger meine gerechten Schmerzen, Ich las die Zahlen, und ich zerriss Die Freudenrechnung in meinem Herzen.

Und Erd' und Himmel haben keine Scheide, 5 In eins gefallen sind die nebelgrauen, Zwei Freunden gleich, die sich ihr Leid vertrauen, Und mein und dein vergessen traurig beide. Nun ploetzlich wankt die Distel hin und wieder, Und heftig rauschend bricht der Regen nieder, 10 Wie laute Antwort auf ein stummes Fragen. Der Wandrer hoert den Regen niederbrausen, Er hoert die windgepeitschte Distel sausen, Und eine Wehmut fuehlt er, nicht zu sagen. Das uralt alte Schlummerlied-- Sie achtet's nicht, sie ist es mued'; 10 Ihr klingt des Himmels Blaeue suesser noch, Der fluecht'gen Stunden gleichgeschwung'nes Joch.

Bald siehst du, wenn der Schleier faellt, Den blauen Himmel unverstellt, Herbstkraeftig die gedaempfte Welt 5 In warmem Golde fliessen. Veilchen traeumen schon, 5 Wollen balde kommen. Fruehling, ja du bist's!

Dich hab' ich vernommen! Nicht geheuer muss es sein, Denn er geht schon auf und nieder. Und auf einmal welch Gewuehle 5 Bei der Bruecke, nach dem Feld! Durch Qualm und Schwuele 15 Rennt er schon und ist am Ort! Drueben schallt es fort und fort: Gnade Gott der Seele dein! Feuerreiter, wie so kuehle 45 Reitest du in deinem Grab! Ruhe wohl, Ruhe wohl Drunten in der Muehle! Traene auf Traene dann Stuerzet hernieder: So kommt der Tag heran-- 15 O ging' er wieder! Was tut sie denn den ganzen Tag, Da sie wohl nicht spinnen und naehen mag? Tut fischen und jagen. Fischen und Jagen freute mich sehr.

O dass ich doch ein Koenigssohn waer'! Rohtraut, Schoen-Rohtraut lieb' ich so sehr. Einstmals sie ruhten am Eichenbaum, Da lacht Schoen-Rohtraut: Wenn du das Herz hast, kuesse mich! Mir ist's vergunnt, Und kuesset Schoen-Rohtraut auf den Mund. Und wuerdst du heute Kaiserin, Mich sollt's nicht kraenken! Ihr tausend Blaetter im Walde, wisst! Ein Kunstgebild der echten Art. Was aber schoen ist, selig scheint es in ihm selbst. Ich bin vergnuegt, dass beides Aus deinen Haenden quillt.

Wollest mit Freuden 5 Und wollest mit Leiden Mich nicht ueberschuetten! Doch in der Mitten Liegt holdes Bescheiden. Sie sind erlesen schon-- 5 Denk' es, o Seele! Herz in der Brust wird beengt, 5 Steigendes, neigendes Leben, Riesenhaft fuehle ich's weben, Welches das meine verdraengt. Und sanft und schmeichelnd ruft es aus: Ich denke der letzten Stunde, Da werden's die Nachbarn tun; 10 Sie senken mich still in die Erde, Da werd' ich lange ruhn.

Schliesst nun der Schlaf mein Auge, Wie traeum' ich oftmals das: Es waere eins von beidem, 15 Nur wuesst' ich selber nicht, was. Einmal schwenke sie noch, o Glueck, 5 Einmal, laechelnde Goettin! Wie das zu daempfen, Wie das zu loesen vermag! Der mich bedrueckte, 5 Schlaefst du schon, Schmerz? Was mich beglueckte, Sage, was war's doch, mein Herz? Du tratst aus meinem Traume, 5 Aus deinem trat ich hervor, Wir sterben, wenn sich eines Im andern ganz verlor. Die Luft ist still, als atmete man kaum.

Und dennoch fallen, raschelnd, fern und nah, Die schoensten Fruechte ab von jedem Banm. O stoert sie nicht, die Feier der Natur! Wie so innig, feurig lieb' ich dich! Schoenste Ros', ob jede mir verblich, Duftest noch an meinem oeden Strand! Als ich arm, doch froh, fremdes Land durchstrich, 5 Koenigsglanz mit deinen Bergen mass, Thronenflitter bald ob dir vergass, Wie war da der Bettler stolz auf dich! Als ich fern dir war, o Helvetia! Fasste manchmal mich ein tiefes Leid; 10 Doch wie kehrte schnell es sich in Freud', Wenn ich einen deiner Soehne sah!

Werf' ich von mir einst dies mein Staubgewand, Beten will ich dann zu Gott dem Herrn: Mit ersticktem Jammer tastet sie An der harten Decke her und hin, Ich vergess' das dunkle Antlitz nie, 15 Immer, immer liegt es mir im Sinn. Einmal werdet ihr verdunkelt sein! Fallen einst die mueden Lider zu, 5 Loescht ihr aus, dann hat die Seele Ruh'; Tastend streift sie ab die Wanderschuh', Legt sich auch in ihre finstre Truh'.

Noch zwei Fuenklein sieht sie glimmend stehn Wie zwei Sternlein, innerlich zu sehn, 10 Bis sie schwanken und dann auch vergehn, Wie von eines Falters Fluegelwehn. Wir wollen uns den grauen Tag Vergolden, ja vergolden! Und geht es draussen noch so toll, 5 Unchristlich oder christlich, Ist doch die Welt, die schoene Welt, So gaenzlich unverwuestlich! Und wimmert auch einmal das Herz,-- Stoss an und lass es klingen! Der Nebel steigt, es faellt das Laub; Schenk ein den Wein, den holden!

Wir wollen uns den grauen Tag 15 Vergolden, ja vergolden! Wohl ist es Herbst; doch warte nur, Doch warte nur ein Weilchen! Ich hoere fernher Kirchenglocken Mich lieblich heimatlich verlocken In maerchenstille Heimlichkeit. Sie geht und weckt den Muellerburschen, Der kaum den schweren Augen traut: Herbst ist gekommen, Fruehling ist weit Gab es denn einmal selige Zeit? Brauende Nebel geisten umher; 5 Schwarz ist das Kraut und der Himmel so leer. Waer' ich hier nur nicht gegangen im Mai! Leben und Liebe,--wie flog es vorbei! Nicht war sie klug, nicht schoen; mir aber war 5 Ihr blass Gesichtchen und ihr blondes Haar, Mir war es lieb; aus der Erinnrung Duester Schaut es mich an; wir waren recht Geschwister.

Ihr schmales Bettchen teilte sie mit mir, Und naechtens Wang' an Wange schliefen wir; 10 Das war so schoen! Noch weht ein Kinderfrieden Mich an aus jenen Zeiten, die geschieden. Die Sonne schien; ich lief ins Feld hinaus Und weinte laut; dann kam ich still nach Haus. Wohl zwanzig Jahr und drueber sind vergangen-- An wie viel andrem hat mein Herz gehangen!

Bist du mir nah und hast nach mir verlangt? Willst du, wie einst nach unsern Kinderspielen, Mein Knabenhaupt an deinem Herzen fuehlen? Brushing against one another, passing one another in the streets or the fields, they see bodies and hear voices, but it does not really matter--they are disconnected, psychically lost. Is this due to the particular circumstances of small-town America as Anderson saw it at the turn of the century? Or does he feel that he is sketching an inescapable human condition which makes all of us bear the burden of loneliness?

Alice Hindman in the story "Adventure" turns her face to the wall and tries "to force herself to face the fact that many people must live and die alone, even in Winesburg. Sherwood Anderson 7 impressions have been put in more general terms in Anderson s only successful novel, Poor White: All men lead their lives behind a wall of misunderstanding they have themselves built, and most men die in silence and unnoticed behind the walls.

Word of his activities is carried over the walls. These "walls" of misunderstanding are only seldom due to physical deformities Wing Biddlebaum in "Hands" or oppressive social arrangements Kate Swift in "The Teacher. Nor are these people, the grotesques, simply to be pitied and dismissed; at some point in their lives they have known desire, have dreamt of ambition, have hoped for friendship.

In all of them there was once something sweet, "like the twisted little apples that grow in the orchards in Winesburg. Winesburg, Ohio registers the losses inescapable to life, and it does so with a deep fraternal sadness, a sympathy casting a mild glow over the entire book. They want, these Winesburg grotesques, to unpack their hearts, to release emotions buried and festering.

Wash Williams tries to explain his eccentricity but hardly can; Louise Bentley "tried to talk but could say nothing"; Enoch Robinson retreats to a fantasy world, inventing "his own people to whom he German adrift: Kupplung, greifen, ergreifen, angreifen, Kupplungspedal. Fixe Idee, Monomanie, die Monomanie. Winesburg, Ohio 8 could really talk and to whom he explained the things he had been unable to explain to living people. Perhaps the central Winesburg story, tracing the basic movements of the book, is "Paper Pills," in which the old Doctor Reefy sits "in his empty office close by a window that was covered with cobwebs," writes down some thoughts on slips of paper "pyramids of truth," he calls them and then stuffs them into his pockets where they "become round hard balls" soon to be discarded.

Reefy s "truths" may be we never know; Anderson simply persuades us that to this lonely old man they are utterly precious and thereby incommunicable, forming a kind of blurred moral signature. Hesitantly, fearfully, or with a sputtering incoherent rage, they approach him, pleading that he listen to their stories in the hope that perhaps they can find some sort of renewal in his youthful voice. Upon this sensitive and fragile boy they pour out their desires and frustrations.

Parcival hopes that George Willard "will write the book I may never get written," and for Enoch Robinson, the boy represents "the youthful sadness, young man s sadness, the sadness of a growing boy in a village at the year s end which may open the lips of the old man. The burden this places on the boy is more than he can bear. He listens to them attentively, he is sympathetic to their complaints, but finally he is too absorbed in his own dreams. The grotesques turn to him because he seems "different"--younger, more open, not yet hardened-but it is precisely German attentive: Sherwood Anderson 9 this "difference" that keeps him from responding as warmly as they want.

It is hardly the boy s fault; it is simply in the nature of things. For George Willard, the grotesques form a moment in his education; for the grotesques, their encounters with George Willard come to seem like a stamp of hopelessness. In actuality, Anderson developed an artful style in which, following Mark Twain and preceding Ernest Hemingway, he tried to use American speech as the base of a tensed rhythmic prose that has an economy and a shapeliness seldom found in ordinary speech or even oral narration.

What Anderson employs here is a stylized version of the American language, sometimes rising to quite formal rhetorical patterns and sometimes sinking to a self-conscious mannerism. But at its best, Anderson s prose style in Winesburg, Ohio is a supple instrument, yielding that "low fine music" which he admired so much in the stories of Turgenev. One of the worst fates that can befall a writer is that of self-imitation: Something of the sort happened with Anderson s later writings.

Most critics and readers grew impatient with the work he did after, say, or ; they felt he was constantly repeating his gestures of emotional "groping"what he had called in Winesburg, Ohio the "indefinable hunger" that prods and torments people. It became the critical fashion to see Anderson s "gropings" as a sign of delayed adolescence, a failure to develop as a writer. Once he wrote a chilling reply to those who dismissed him in this way: The very man who throws such words as these knows in his heart that he is also facing a wall.

For what characterized it was not so much "groping" as the imitation of "groping," the self-caricature of a writer who feels driven back upon an earlier self that is, alas, no longer available. Qualen, Marter, Plagen, Torturen. Winesburg, Ohio 10 But Winesburg, Ohio remains a vital work, fresh and authentic. Most of its stories are composed in a minor key, a tone of subdued pathos--pathos marking both the nature and limit of Anderson s talent. He spoke of himself as a "minor writer. The single best story in Winesburg, Ohio is, I think, "The Untold Lie," in which the urgency of choice becomes an outer sign of a tragic element in the human condition.

And in Anderson s single greatest story, "The Egg," which appeared a few years after Winesburg, Ohio, he succeeded in bringing together a surface of farce with an undertone of tragedy. Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner both praised him as a writer who brought a new tremor of feeling, a new sense of introspectiveness to the American short story.

As Faulkner put it, Anderson s "was the fumbling for exactitude, the exact word and phrase within the limited scope of a vocabulary controlled and even repressed by what was in him almost a fetish of simplicity. Scharf, eifrig, flink, gewandt, hurtig, gescheit, leidenschaftlich, munter, pfiffig, frisch, gewitzt. The windows of the house in which he lived were high and he wanted to look at the trees when he awoke in the morning. A carpenter came to fix the bed so that it would be on a level with the window. The carpenter, who had been a soldier in the Civil War, came into the writer s room and sat down to talk of building a platform for the purpose of raising the bed.

The writer had cigars lying about and the carpenter smoked.

theranchhands.com: Sarah Kiyanrad: Books

For a time the two men talked of the raising of the bed and then they talked of other things. The soldier got on the subject of the war. The writer, in fact, led him to that subject. The carpenter had once been a prisoner in Andersonville prison and had lost a brother. The brother had died of starvation, and whenever the carpenter got upon that subject he cried.

He, like the old writer, had a white mustache, and when he cried he puckered up his lips and the mustache bobbed up and down. The weeping old man with the cigar in his mouth was ludicrous. The plan the writer had for the raising of his bed was forgotten and later the carpenter did it in his own way and the writer, who was past sixty, had to help himself with a chair when he went to bed at night.

Winesburg, Ohio 14 In his bed the writer rolled over on his side and lay quite still. For years he had been beset with notions concerning his heart. He was a hard smoker and his heart fluttered. The idea had got into his mind that he would some time die unexpectedly and always when he got into bed he thought of that. It did not alarm him. The effect in fact was quite a special thing and not easily explained. It made him more alive, there in bed, than at any other time.

Perfectly still he lay and his body was old and not of much use any more, but something inside him was altogether young. He was like a pregnant woman, only that the thing inside him was not a baby but a youth. No, it wasn t a youth, it was a woman, young, and wearing a coat of mail like a knight. It is absurd, you see, to try to tell what was inside the old writer as he lay on his high bed and listened to the fluttering of his heart. The thing to get at is what the writer, or the young thing within the writer, was thinking about.

He had once been quite handsome and a number of women had been in love with him. And then, of course, he had known people, many people, known them in a peculiarly intimate way that was different from the way in which you and I know people. At least that is what the writer thought and the thought pleased him.

Why quarrel with an old man concerning his thoughts? In the bed the writer had a dream that was not a dream. As he grew somewhat sleepy but was still conscious, figures began to appear before his eyes. He imagined the young indescribable thing within himself was driving a long procession of figures before his eyes. You see the interest in all this lies in the figures that went before the eyes of the writer. They were all grotesques. All of the men and women the writer had ever known had become grotesques.

The grotesques were not all horrible. Some were amusing, some almost beautiful, and one, a woman all drawn out of shape, hurt the old man by her grotesqueness. When she passed he made a noise like a small dog whimpering. Sherwood Anderson 15 Had you come into the room you might have supposed the old man had unpleasant dreams or perhaps indigestion. Some one of the grotesques had made a deep impression on his mind and he wanted to describe it. At his desk the writer worked for an hour. In the end he wrote a book which he called "The Book of the Grotesque. The book had one central thought that is very strange and has always remained with me.

By remembering it I have been able to understand many people and things that I was never able to understand before. The thought was involved but a simple statement of it would be something like this: That in the beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughts but no such thing as a truth. Man made the truths himself and each truth was a composite of a great many vague thoughts.

All about in the world were the truths and they were all beautiful. The old man had listed hundreds of the truths in his book. I will not try to tell you of all of them. There was the truth of virginity and the truth of passion, the truth of wealth and of poverty, of thrift and of profligacy, of carelessness and abandon. Hundreds and hundreds were the truths and they were all beautiful. And then the people came along.

Each as he appeared snatched up one of the truths and some who were quite strong snatched up a dozen of them. It was the truths that made the people grotesques. The old man had quite an elaborate theory concerning the matter. It was his notion that the moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood. Liederlichkeit, die Verschwendung, Lasterhaftigkeit, Verworfenheit, die Lasterhaftigkeit, Verworfenheits. Winesburg, Ohio 16 You can see for yourself how the old man, who had spent all of his life writing and was filled with words, would write hundreds of pages concerning this matter.

The subject would become so big in his mind that he himself would be in danger of becoming a grotesque. He didn t, I suppose, for the same reason that he never published the book. It was the young thing inside him that saved the old man. Across a long field that had been seeded for clover but that had produced only a dense crop of yellow mustard weeds, he could see the public highway along which went a wagon filled with berry pickers returning from the fields. The berry pickers, youths and maidens, laughed and shouted boisterously.

A boy clad in a blue shirt leaped from the wagon and attempted to drag after him one of the maidens, who screamed and protested shrilly. The feet of the boy in the road kicked up a cloud of dust that floated across the face of the departing sun. Over the long field came a thin girlish voice. Wing Biddlebaum, forever frightened and beset by a ghostly band of doubts, did not think of himself as in any way a part of the life of the town where he had lived for twenty years. Among all the people of Winesburg but one had come close to him. George Willard was the reporter on the Winesburg Eagle and sometimes in the evenings he walked out along the highway to Wing Biddlebaum s house.

Now as the old German arranging: Senf, Mostrich, der Senf. Schlucht, Klamm, Felsenschlucht, Abgrund. Winesburg, Ohio 18 man walked up and down on the veranda, his hands moving nervously about, he was hoping that George Willard would come and spend the evening with him. After the wagon containing the berry pickers had passed, he went across the field through the tall mustard weeds and climbing a rail fence peered anxiously along the road to the town. For a moment he stood thus, rubbing his hands together and looking up and down the road, and then, fear overcoming him, ran back to walk again upon the porch on his own house.

With the young reporter at his side, he ventured in the light of day into Main Street or strode up and down on the rickety front porch of his own house, talking excitedly. The voice that had been low and trembling became shrill and loud. The bent figure straightened. With a kind of wriggle, like a fish returned to the brook by the fisherman, Biddlebaum the silent began to talk, striving to put into words the ideas that had been accumulated by his mind during long years of silence. Wing Biddlebaum talked much with his hands. The slender expressive fingers, forever active, forever striving to conceal themselves in his pockets or behind his back, came forth and became the piston rods of his machinery of expression.

The story of Wing Biddlebaum is a story of hands. Their restless activity, like unto the beating of the wings of an imprisoned bird, had given him his name. Some obscure poet of the town had thought of it. The hands alarmed their owner. He wanted to keep them hidden away and looked with amazement at the quiet inexpressive hands of other men who worked beside him in the fields, or passed, driving sleepy teams on country roads.

When he talked to George Willard, Wing Biddlebaum closed his fists and beat with them upon a table or on the walls of his house. The action made him more comfortable. If the desire to talk came to him when the two were walking German alarmed: Sherwood Anderson 19 in the fields, he sought out a stump or the top board of a fence and with his hands pounding busily talked with renewed ease. Sympathetically set forth it would tap many strange, beautiful qualities in obscure men. It is a job for a poet. In Winesburg the hands had attracted attention merely because of their activity.

With them Wing Biddlebaum had picked as high as a hundred and forty quarts of strawberries in a day. They became his distinguishing feature, the source of his fame. Also they made more grotesque an already grotesque and elusive individuality. Winesburg was proud of the hands of Wing Biddlebaum in the same spirit in which it was proud of Banker White s new stone house and Wesley Moyer s bay stallion, Tony Tip, that had won the two-fifteen trot at the fall races in Cleveland.

As for George Willard, he had many times wanted to ask about the hands. At times an almost overwhelming curiosity had taken hold of him. He felt that there must be a reason for their strange activity and their inclination to keep hidden away and only a growing respect for Wing Biddlebaum kept him from blurting out the questions that were often in his mind. Once he had been on the point of asking. The two were walking in the fields on a summer afternoon and had stopped to sit upon a grassy bank.

All afternoon Wing Biddlebaum had talked as one inspired. By a fence he had stopped and beating like a giant woodpecker upon the top board had shouted at George Willard, condemning his tendency to be too much influenced by the people about him, "You are destroying yourself," he cried. You want to be like others in town here. You hear them talk and you try to imitate them. His voice became soft and reminiscent, and with a sigh of contentment he launched into a long rambling talk, speaking as one lost in a dream.

Out of the dream Wing Biddlebaum made a picture for George Willard. In the picture men lived again in a kind of pastoral golden age. Across a green open country came clean-limbed young men, some afoot, some mounted upon German afoot: Trab, trotten, traben, Trott.

Winesburg, Ohio 20 horses. In crowds the young men came to gather about the feet of an old man who sat beneath a tree in a tiny garden and who talked to them. For once he forgot the hands. Slowly they stole forth and lay upon George Willard s shoulders. Something new and bold came into the voice that talked. From this time on you must shut your ears to the roaring of the voices. Again he raised the hands to caress the boy and then a look of horror swept over his face. With a convulsive movement of his body, Wing Biddlebaum sprang to his feet and thrust his hands deep into his trousers pockets.

Tears came to his eyes. I can talk no more with you," he said nervously. Without looking back, the old man had hurried down the hillside and across a meadow, leaving George Willard perplexed and frightened upon the grassy slope. With a shiver of dread the boy arose and went along the road toward town. His hands have something to do with his fear of me and of everyone.

Let us look briefly into the story of the hands. Perhaps our talking of them will arouse the poet who will tell the hidden wonder story of the influence for which the hands were but fluttering pennants of promise. In his youth Wing Biddlebaum had been a school teacher in a town in Pennsylvania.

He was not then known as Wing Biddlebaum, but went by the less euphonic name of Adolph Myers. As Adolph Myers he was much loved by the boys of his school. Adolph Myers was meant by nature to be a teacher of youth. He was one of those rare, little understood men who rule by a power so gentle that it passes as a German arouse: Abhang, Hang, Steilung, Halde. Sherwood Anderson 21 lovable weakness. In their feeling for the boys under their charge such men are not unlike the finer sort of women in their love of men.

It needs the poet there. With the boys of his school, Adolph Myers had walked in the evening or had sat talking until dusk upon the schoolhouse steps lost in a kind of dream. Here and there went his hands, caressing the shoulders of the boys, playing about the tousled heads. As he talked his voice became soft and musical.

There was a caress in that also. In a way the voice and the hands, the stroking of the shoulders and the touching of the hair were a part of the schoolmaster s effort to carry a dream into the young minds. By the caress that was in his fingers he expressed himself. He was one of those men in whom the force that creates life is diffused, not centralized. Under the caress of his hands doubt and disbelief went out of the minds of the boys and they began also to dream. And then the tragedy. A half-witted boy of the school became enamored of the young master. In his bed at night he imagined unspeakable things and in the morning went forth to tell his dreams as facts.

Strange, hideous accusations fell from his loose hung lips. Through the Pennsylvania town went a shiver. Hidden, shadowy doubts that had been in men s minds concerning Adolph Myers were galvanized into beliefs. The tragedy did not linger. Trembling lads were jerked out of bed and questioned. One afternoon a man of the town, Henry Bradford, who kept a saloon, came to the schoolhouse door. Calling Adolph Myers into the school yard he began to beat him with his fists. As his hard knuckles beat down into the frightened face of the schoolmaster, his wrath became more and more terrible.

Screaming with dismay, the children ran here and there like disturbed insects. Adolph Myers was driven from the Pennsylvania town in the night. With lanterns in their hands a dozen men came to the door of the house where he German caressing: Zorn, Wut, Erbitterung, Grimm, Gram. Winesburg, Ohio 22 lived alone and commanded that he dress and come forth. It was raining and one of the men had a rope in his hands.

They had intended to hang the schoolmaster, but something in his figure, so small, white, and pitiful, touched their hearts and they let him escape. As he ran away into the darkness they repented of their weakness and ran after him, swearing and throwing sticks and great balls of soft mud at the figure that screamed and ran faster and faster into the darkness. He was but forty but looked sixty-five. The name of Biddlebaum he got from a box of goods seen at a freight station as he hurried through an eastern Ohio town.

He had an aunt in Winesburg, a black-toothed old woman who raised chickens, and with her he lived until she died. He had been ill for a year after the experience in Pennsylvania, and after his recovery worked as a day laborer in the fields, going timidly about and striving to conceal his hands. Although he did not understand what had happened he felt that the hands must be to blame.

Again and again the fathers of the boys had talked of the hands. Upon the veranda of his house by the ravine, Wing Biddlebaum continued to walk up and down until the sun had disappeared and the road beyond the field was lost in the grey shadows. Going into his house he cut slices of bread and spread honey upon them. When the rumble of the evening train that took away the express cars loaded with the day s harvest of berries had passed and restored the silence of the summer night, he went again to walk upon the veranda. In the darkness he could not see the hands and they became quiet.

Although he still hungered for the presence of the boy, who was the medium through which he expressed his love of man, the hunger became again a part of his loneliness and his waiting. Lighting a lamp, Wing Biddlebaum washed the few dishes soiled by his simple meal and, setting up a folding cot by the screen door that led to the porch, prepared to undress for the night. A few stray white bread crumbs lay on the cleanly washed floor by the table; putting the lamp upon a low stool he German berries: In the dense blotch of light beneath the table, the kneeling figure looked like a priest engaged in some service of his church.

The nervous expressive fingers, flashing in and out of the light, might well have been mistaken for the fingers of the devotee going swiftly through decade after decade of his rosary. Kniend, Hinkniend, Kniebeugung, Kniefall. Long before the time during which we will know him, he was a doctor and drove a jaded white horse from house to house through the streets of Winesburg.

Later he married a girl who had money. She had been left a large fertile farm when her father died. The girl was quiet, tall, and dark, and to many people she seemed very beautiful. Everyone in Winesburg wondered why she married the doctor. Within a year after the marriage she died. The knuckles of the doctor s hands were extraordinarily large. When the hands were closed they looked like clusters of unpainted wooden balls as large as walnuts fastened together by steel rods.

He smoked a cob pipe and after his wife s death sat all day in his empty office close by a window that was covered with cobwebs. He never opened the window. Once on a hot day in August he tried but found it stuck fast and after that he forgot all about it. Winesburg had forgotten the old man, but in Doctor Reefy there were the seeds of something very fine.

Alone in his musty office in the Heffner Block above the Paris Dry Goods Company s store, he worked ceaselessly, building up something that he himself destroyed. Little pyramids of truth he erected and after erecting knocked them down again that he might have the truths to erect other pyramids. Sherwood Anderson 25 Doctor Reefy was a tall man who had worn one suit of clothes for ten years.

It was frayed at the sleeves and little holes had appeared at the knees and elbows. In the office he wore also a linen duster with huge pockets into which he continually stuffed scraps of paper. After some weeks the scraps of paper became little hard round balls, and when the pockets were filled he dumped them out upon the floor. For ten years he had but one friend, another old man named John Spaniard who owned a tree nursery. Sometimes, in a playful mood, old Doctor Reefy took from his pockets a handful of the paper balls and threw them at the nursery man. It is delicious, like the twisted little apples that grow in the orchards of Winesburg.

In the fall one walks in the orchards and the ground is hard with frost underfoot. The apples have been taken from the trees by the pickers. They have been put in barrels and shipped to the cities where they will be eaten in apartments that are filled with books, magazines, furniture, and people. On the trees are only a few gnarled apples that the pickers have rejected. They look like the knuckles of Doctor Reefy s hands. One nibbles at them and they are delicious.

Into a little round place at the side of the apple has been gathered all of its sweetness. One runs from tree to tree over the frosted ground picking the gnarled, twisted apples and filling his pockets with them. Only the few know the sweetness of the twisted apples. The girl and Doctor Reefy began their courtship on a summer afternoon. He was forty-five then and already he had begun the practice of filling his pockets with the scraps of paper that became hard balls and were thrown away.

The habit had been formed as he sat in his buggy behind the jaded white horse and went slowly along country roads. On the papers were written thoughts, ends of thoughts, beginnings of thoughts. One by one the mind of Doctor Reefy had made the thoughts. Out of many of them he formed a truth that arose gigantic in his mind.

The truth clouded the German apartments: Winesburg, Ohio 26 world. It became terrible and then faded away and the little thoughts began again. She was in that condition because of a series of circumstances also curious. The death of her father and mother and the rich acres of land that had come down to her had set a train of suitors on her heels. For two years she saw suitors almost every evening.

Except two they were all alike. They talked to her of passion and there was a strained eager quality in their voices and in their eyes when they looked at her. The two who were different were much unlike each other. One of them, a slender young man with white hands, the son of a jeweler in Winesburg, talked continually of virginity. When he was with her he was never off the subject. The other, a black-haired boy with large ears, said nothing at all but always managed to get her into the darkness, where he began to kiss her.

For a time the tall dark girl thought she would marry the jeweler s son. For hours she sat in silence listening as he talked to her and then she began to be afraid of something. Beneath his talk of virginity she began to think there was a lust greater than in all the others. At times it seemed to her that as he talked he was holding her body in his hands. She imagined him turning it slowly about in the white hands and staring at it. At night she dreamed that he had bitten into her body and that his jaws were dripping.

She had the dream three times, then she became in the family way to the one who said nothing at all but who in the moment of his passion actually did bite her shoulder so that for days the marks of his teeth showed. After the tall dark girl came to know Doctor Reefy it seemed to her that she never wanted to leave him again.

She went into his office one morning and without her saying anything he seemed to know what had happened to her. In the office of the doctor there was a woman, the wife of the man who kept the bookstore in Winesburg. Like all old-fashioned country practitioners, Doctor Reefy pulled teeth, and the woman who waited held a handkerchief to her teeth German alike: Sherwood Anderson 27 and groaned.

Her husband was with her and when the tooth was taken out they both screamed and blood ran down on the woman s white dress. The tall dark girl did not pay any attention. When the woman and the man had gone the doctor smiled. The condition that had brought her to him passed in an illness, but she was like one who has discovered the sweetness of the twisted apples, she could not get her mind fixed again upon the round perfect fruit that is eaten in the city apartments. In the fall after the beginning of her acquaintanceship with him she married Doctor Reefy and in the following spring she died.

During the winter he read to her all of the odds and ends of thoughts he had scribbled on the bits of paper. After he had read them he laughed and stuffed them away in his pockets to become round hard balls. Kleid, anziehen, ankleiden, kleiden, bekleiden, verbinden, Kleidung, sichanziehen, das Kleid, Robe, anlegen. Although she was but forty-five, some obscure disease had taken the fire out of her figure. Listlessly she went about the disorderly old hotel looking at the faded wall-paper and the ragged carpets and, when she was able to be about, doing the work of a chambermaid among beds soiled by the slumbers of fat traveling men.

Her husband, Tom Willard, a slender, graceful man with square shoulders, a quick military step, and a black mustache trained to turn sharply up at the ends, tried to put the wife out of his mind. The presence of the tall ghostly figure, moving slowly through the halls, he took as a reproach to himself.

When he thought of her he grew angry and swore. The hotel was unprofitable and forever on the edge of failure and he wished himself out of it. He thought of the old house and the woman who lived there with him as things defeated and done for. The hotel in which he had begun life so hopefully was now a mere ghost of what a hotel should be. As he went spruce and business-like through the streets of Winesburg, he sometimes stopped and turned quickly about as though fearing that the spirit of the hotel and of the woman would follow him even into the streets. Tom Willard had a passion for village politics and for years had been the leading Democrat in a strongly Republican community.

Some day, he told German aimlessly: Fichte, Tanne, gepflegt, Edeltanne, schleimig. He dreamed of going to Congress and even of becoming governor. Once when a younger member of the party arose at a political conference and began to boast of his faithful service, Tom Willard grew white with fury. What are you but a boy? Look at what I ve done here! I was a Democrat here in Winesburg when it was a crime to be a Democrat.

In the old days they fairly hunted us with guns. In the son s presence she was timid and reserved, but sometimes while he hurried about town intent upon his duties as a reporter, she went into his room and closing the door knelt by a little desk, made of a kitchen table, that sat near a window. In the room by the desk she went through a ceremony that was half a prayer, half a demand, addressed to the skies.

In the boyish figure she yearned to see something half forgotten that had once been a part of herself recreated. The prayer concerned that. Her eyes glowed and she clenched her fists. I will pay for it. God may beat me with his fists. I will take any blow that may befall if but this my boy be allowed to express something for us both. The communion between George Willard and his mother was outwardly a formal thing without meaning.

When she was ill and sat by the window in her room he sometimes went in the evening to make her a visit. They sat by a window that looked over the roof of a small frame building into Main Street. By turning their heads they could see through another window, along an alleyway that ran behind the Main Street stores and into the back door of Abner Groff s German alleyway: Winesburg, Ohio 30 bakery. At the back door of his shop appeared Abner Groff with a stick or an empty milk bottle in his hand.

For a long time there was a feud between the baker and a grey cat that belonged to Sylvester West, the druggist. The boy and his mother saw the cat creep into the door of the bakery and presently emerge followed by the baker, who swore and waved his arms about. The baker s eyes were small and red and his black hair and beard were filled with flour dust. Sometimes he was so angry that, although the cat had disappeared, he hurled sticks, bits of broken glass, and even some of the tools of his trade about. Once he broke a window at the back of Sinning s Hardware Store.

In the alley the grey cat crouched behind barrels filled with torn paper and broken bottles above which flew a black swarm of flies. Once when she was alone, and after watching a prolonged and ineffectual outburst on the part of the baker, Elizabeth Willard put her head down on her long white hands and wept. After that she did not look along the alleyway any more, but tried to forget the contest between the bearded man and the cat.

It seemed like a rehearsal of her own life, terrible in its vividness. Into the lunch room he stalked and deposited twenty cents upon the counter. It makes no difference to me. I am a man of distinction, you see. Why should I concern myself with what I eat. Sometimes the boy thought they must all be inventions, a pack of lies. And then again he was convinced that they contained the very essence of truth. I don t remember and anyway it makes no difference. Perhaps I am trying to conceal my identity and don t want to be very definite.

• ☀️ Free Download Audiobooks To Cd Geboren In Ein Verworrenes Lied German Edition Pdf.
• A Commentary On The Old and New Testaments: Volume Two Ezra-Psalms.
• .
• La Folie dAlbert (TERRES FRANCE) (French Edition).
• Ce que je crois (French Edition);
• Electronics Free Ebooks Download Geboren In Ein Verworrenes Lied German Edition Pdf.
• LAmante de Victor Hugo (French Edition)?

Have you ever thought it strange that I have money for my needs although I do nothing? I may have stolen a great sum of money or been involved in a murder before I came here. There is food for thought in that, eh? If you were a really smart newspaper reporter you would look me up. In Chicago there was a Doctor Cronin who was murdered. Have you heard of that?

Some men murdered him and put him in a trunk. In the early morning they hauled the trunk across the city. It sat on the back of an express wagon and they were on the seat as unconcerned as anything. Along they went through quiet streets where everyone was asleep. The sun was just coming up over the lake. Funny, eh--just to think of them smoking pipes and chattering as they drove along as unconcerned as I am now.

Perhaps I was one of those men. That would be a strange turn of things, now wouldn t it, eh? My mother was poor. She took in German apron: Sherwood Anderson 39 washing. Her dream was to make me a Presbyterian minister and I was studying with that end in view. He was in an asylum over at Dayton, Ohio. There you see I have let it slip out! All of this took place in Ohio, right here in Ohio. There is a clew if you ever get the notion of looking me up.

That s the object of all this. That s what I m getting at. My brother was a railroad painter and had a job on the Big Four. You know that road runs through Ohio here. With other men he lived in a box car and away they went from town to town painting the railroad propertyswitches, crossing gates, bridges, and stations.

How I hated that color! My brother was always covered with it. On pay days he used to get drunk and come home wearing his paint-covered clothes and bringing his money with him. He did not give it to mother but laid it in a pile on our kitchen table. I can see the picture. My mother, who was small and had red, sad-looking eyes, would come into the house from a little shed at the back. That s where she spent her time over the washtub scrubbing people s dirty clothes. In she would come and stand by the table, rubbing her eyes with her apron that was covered with soap-suds.

Don t you dare touch that money, my brother roared, and then he himself took five or ten dollars and went tramping off to the saloons. When he had spent what he had taken he came back for more. He never gave my mother any money at all but stayed about until he had spent it all, a little at a time. Then he went back to his job with the painting crew on the railroad. After he had gone things began to arrive at our house, groceries and such things. Sometimes there would be a dress for mother or a pair of shoes for me.

My mother loved my brother much more than she did me, although he never said a kind word to either of us and always raved up and German asylum: Schrubben, Scheuernd, Scheuern, Bohnern. Winesburg, Ohio 40 down threatening us if we dared so much as touch the money that sometimes lay on the table three days. I studied to be a minister and prayed. I was a regular ass about saying prayers. You should have heard me.

When my father died I prayed all night, just as I did sometimes when my brother was in town drinking and going about buying the things for us. In the evening after supper I knelt by the table where the money lay and prayed for hours. When no one was looking I stole a dollar or two and put it in my pocket. That makes me laugh now but then it was terrible.

It was on my mind all the time. I got six dollars a week from my job on the paper and always took it straight home to mother. The few dollars I stole from my brother s pile I spent on myself, you know, for trifles, candy and cigarettes and such things. I borrowed some money from the man for whom I worked and went on the train at night.

In the asylum they treated me as though I were a king. That made them afraid. There had been some negligence, some carelessness, you see, when father was ill. They thought perhaps I would write it up in the paper and make a fuss. I never intended to do anything of the kind. I wonder what put that notion into my head. Wouldn t my brother, the painter, have laughed, though.

There I stood over the dead body and spread out my hands. The superintendent of the asylum and some of his helpers came in and stood about looking sheepish. It was very amusing. I spread out my hands and said, Let peace brood over this carcass. That s what I said. He was awkward and, as the office was small, continually knocked against things. I have something else in mind. You are a reporter just as I was once and you have attracted my German ass: Sherwood Anderson 41 attention. I want to warn you and keep on warning you.

That s why I seek you out. It seemed to the boy that the man had but one object in view, to make everyone seem despicable. There was a fellow, eh? He despised everyone, you see. You have no idea with what contempt he looked upon mother and me. And was he not our superior? You know he was. You have not seen him and yet I have made you feel that. I have given you a sense of it.

Once when he was drunk he lay down on the tracks and the car in which he lived with the other painters ran over him. For a month George Willard had been going each morning to spend an hour in the doctor s office. The visits came about through a desire on the part of the doctor to read to the boy from the pages of a book he was in the process of writing. To write the book Doctor Parcival declared was the object of his coming to Winesburg to live. On the morning in August before the coming of the boy, an incident had happened in the doctor s office.

There had been an accident on Main Street. A team of horses had been frightened by a train and had run away. A little girl, the daughter of a farmer, had been thrown from a buggy and killed. On Main Street everyone had become excited and a cry for doctors had gone up.

All three of the active practitioners of the town had come quickly but had found the child dead. From the crowd someone had run to the office of Doctor Parcival who had bluntly refused to go down out of his office to the dead child. The useless cruelty of his refusal had passed unnoticed.

Indeed, the man who had come up the stairway to summon him had hurried away without hearing the refusal. All of this, Doctor Parcival did not know and when George Willard came to his office he found the man shaking with terror. Abenteuer, Erlebniss, Schicksale, Schicksal. Schrecken, Schreck, Grauen, Entzetzen, Entsetzen. Winesburg, Ohio 42 Do I not know what will happen? Word of my refusal will be whispered about. Presently men will get together in groups and talk of it. They will come here.

We will quarrel and there will be talk of hanging. Then they will come again bearing a rope in their hands. It may be put off until tonight but I will be hanged. Everyone will get excited. I will be hanged to a lamp-post on Main Street. When he returned the fright that had been in his eyes was beginning to be replaced by doubt.

Coming on tiptoe across the room he tapped George Willard on the shoulder. The idea is very simple, so simple that if you are not careful you will forget it. It is this--that everyone in the world is Christ and they are all crucified. That s what I want to say. Don t you forget that. Whatever happens, don t you dare let yourself forget. Weigerung, Ablehnung, Verweigerung, Absage. Schulter, Achsel, schultern, tragen, die Schulter, Bankett, Seitenstreifen.

The night was warm and cloudy and although it was not yet eight o clock, the alleyway back of the Eagle office was pitch dark. A team of horses tied to a post somewhere in the darkness stamped on the hard-baked ground. A cat sprang from under George Willard s feet and ran away into the night. The young man was nervous. All day he had gone about his work like one dazed by a blow. In the alleyway he trembled as though with fright. In the darkness George Willard walked along the alleyway, going carefully and cautiously.

The back doors of the Winesburg stores were open and he could see men sitting about under the store lamps. In Myerbaum s Notion Store Mrs. Willy the saloon keeper s wife stood by the counter with a basket on her arm. Sid Green the clerk was waiting on her. He leaned over the counter and talked earnestly. George Willard crouched and then jumped through the path of light that came out at the door.

He began to run forward in the darkness. Behind Ed Griffith s saloon old Jerry Bird the town drunkard lay asleep on the ground. The runner stumbled over the sprawling legs. Winesburg, Ohio 44 George Willard had set forth upon an adventure. All day he had been trying to make up his mind to go through with the adventure and now he was acting. In the office of the Winesburg Eagle he had been sitting since six o clock trying to think. He had just jumped to his feet, hurried past Will Henderson who was reading proof in the print-shop and started to run along the alleyway.

Through street after street went George Willard, avoiding the people who passed. He crossed and re-crossed the road. When he passed a street lamp he pulled his hat down over his face. He did not dare think. In his mind there was a fear but it was a new kind of fear. He was afraid the adventure on which he had set out would be spoiled, that he would lose courage and turn back. George Willard found Louise Trunnion in the kitchen of her father s house. She was washing dishes by the light of a kerosene lamp. There she stood behind the screen door in the little shed-like kitchen at the back of the house.

George Willard stopped by a picket fence and tried to control the shaking of his body. Only a narrow potato patch separated him from the adventure. Five minutes passed before he felt sure enough of himself to call to her. The cry stuck in his throat. His voice became a hoarse whisper.

Louise Trunnion came out across the potato patch holding the dish cloth in her hand. In silence the two stood in the darkness with the fence between them. I ll come along. You wait by Williams barn. It had come that morning to the office of the Winesburg Eagle. The letter was brief. He thought it annoying that in the darkness by the fence she had pretended there was nothing between them. Well, gracious sakes, she has a nerve," he muttered as he went German annoying: Lampe, die Lampe, Laterne.

Flicken, ausbessern, Fleck, Korrektur. Kartoffel, Erdapfel, die Kartoffel, Kleikartoffel. Sherwood Anderson 45 along the street and passed a row of vacant lots where corn grew. The corn was shoulder high and had been planted right down to the sidewalk. There was no hat on her head. The boy could see her standing with the doorknob in her hand talking to someone within, no doubt to old Jake Trunnion, her father.

Old Jake was half deaf and she shouted. The door closed and everything was dark and silent in the little side street. George Willard trembled more violently than ever. In the shadows by Williams barn George and Louise stood, not daring to talk. She was not particularly comely and there was a black smudge on the side of her nose. George thought she must have rubbed her nose with her finger after she had been handling some of the kitchen pots. The young man began to laugh nervously. He wanted to touch her with his hand. Just to touch the folds of the soiled gingham dress would, he decided, be an exquisite pleasure.

She began to quibble. Don t tell me, I guess I know," she said drawing closer to him. A flood of words burst from George Willard. He remembered the look that had lurked in the girl s eyes when they had met on the streets and thought of the note she had written. The whispered tales concerning her that had gone about town gave him confidence. He became wholly the male, bold and aggressive. In his heart there was no sympathy for her.

There won t be anyone know anything. How can they know? They began to walk along a narrow brick sidewalk between the cracks of which tall weeds grew. Some of the bricks were missing and the sidewalk was rough and irregular. He took hold of her hand that was also rough and thought it delightfully small. Ziegelstein, Backstein, Ziegel, Baustein, Stein. Winesburg, Ohio 46 They crossed a bridge that ran over a tiny stream and passed another vacant lot in which corn grew.

In the path at the side of the road they were compelled to walk one behind the other. Will Overton s berry field lay beside the road and there was a pile of boards. Three times he walked up and down the length of Main Street. Sylvester West s Drug Store was still open and he went in and bought a cigar.

When Shorty Crandall the clerk came out at the door with him he was pleased. For five minutes the two stood in the shelter of the store awning and talked. George Willard felt satisfied. He had wanted more than anything else to talk to some man. Around a corner toward the New Willard House he went whistling softly. On the sidewalk at the side of Winney s Dry Goods Store where there was a high board fence covered with circus pictures, he stopped whistling and stood perfectly still in the darkness, attentive, listening as though for a voice calling his name.

Then again he laughed nervously. Nobody knows," he muttered doggedly and went on his way. Three of the old people were women and sisters to Jesse. They were a colorless, soft voiced lot. Then there was a silent old man with thin white hair who was Jesse s uncle. It was in reality not one house but a cluster of houses joined together in a rather haphazard manner. Inside, the place was full of surprises. One went up steps from the living room into the dining room and there were always steps to be ascended or descended in passing from one room to another. At meal times the place was like a beehive.

At one moment all was quiet, then doors began to open, feet clattered on stairs, a murmur of soft voices arose and people appeared from a dozen obscure corners. Besides the old people, already mentioned, many others lived in the Bentley house. There were four hired men, a woman named Aunt Callie Beebe, who was in charge of the housekeeping, a dull-witted girl named Eliza Stoughton, who made beds and helped with the milking, a boy who worked in the stables, and Jesse Bentley himself, the owner and overlord of it all.

Sherwood Anderson 49 By the time the American Civil War had been over for twenty years, that part of Northern Ohio where the Bentley farms lay had begun to emerge from pioneer life. Jesse then owned machinery for harvesting grain. He had built modern barns and most of his land was drained with carefully laid tile drain, but in order to understand the man we will have to go back to an earlier day. They came from New York State and took up land when the country was new and land could be had at a low price. For a long time they, in common with all the other Middle Western people, were very poor.

The land they had settled upon was heavily wooded and covered with fallen logs and underbrush. After the long hard labor of clearing these away and cutting the timber, there were still the stumps to be reckoned with. Plows run through the fields caught on hidden roots, stones lay all about, on the low places water gathered, and the young corn turned yellow, sickened and died.

When Jesse Bentley s father and brothers had come into their ownership of the place, much of the harder part of the work of clearing had been done, but they clung to old traditions and worked like driven animals. They lived as practically all of the farming people of the time lived. In the spring and through most of the winter the highways leading into the town of Winesburg were a sea of mud. The four young men of the family worked hard all day in the fields, they ate heavily of coarse, greasy food, and at night slept like tired beasts on beds of straw. Into their lives came little that was not coarse and brutal and outwardly they were themselves coarse and brutal.

On Saturday afternoons they hitched a team of horses to a three-seated wagon and went off to town. In town they stood about the stoves in the stores talking to other farmers or to the store keepers. They were dressed in overalls and in the winter wore heavy coats that were flecked with mud. Their hands as they stretched them out to the heat of the stoves were cracked and red. It was difficult for them to talk and so they for the most part kept silent. When they had bought meat, flour, sugar, and salt, they went into one of the Winesburg saloons and drank beer.

Under the influence of drink the naturally strong lusts of their natures, kept suppressed by German afternoons: Fliese, Kachel, Dachziegel, Kacheln, kleine Fliese. Winesburg, Ohio 50 the heroic labor of breaking up new ground, were released. A kind of crude and animal-like poetic fervor took possession of them.

On the road home they stood up on the wagon seats and shouted at the stars. Sometimes they fought long and bitterly and at other times they broke forth into songs. Once Enoch Bentley, the older one of the boys, struck his father, old Tom Bentley, with the butt of a teamster s whip, and the old man seemed likely to die. For days Enoch lay hid in the straw in the loft of the stable ready to flee if the result of his momentary passion turned out to be murder.

He was kept alive with food brought by his mother, who also kept him informed of the injured man s condition. When all turned out well he emerged from his hiding place and went back to the work of clearing land as though nothing had happened. Enoch, Edward, Harry, and Will Bentley all enlisted and before the long war ended they were all killed. For a time after they went away to the South, old Tom tried to run the place, but he was not successful.

When the last of the four had been killed he sent word to Jesse that he would have to come home. Then the mother, who had not been well for a year, died suddenly, and the father became altogether discouraged. He talked of selling the farm and moving into town. All day he went about shaking his head and muttering. The work in the fields was neglected and weeds grew high in the corn. Old Tim hired men but he did not use them intelligently. When they had gone away to the fields in the morning he wandered into the woods and sat down on a log.

Sometimes he forgot to come home at night and one of the daughters had to go in search of him. When Jesse Bentley came home to the farm and began to take charge of things he was a slight, sensitive-looking man of twenty-two. At eighteen he had left home to go to school to become a scholar and eventually to become a minister of the Presbyterian Church.

All through his boyhood he had been what in our country was called an "odd sheep" and had not got on with his brothers. Of all the family only his mother had understood him and she was now dead. Sherwood Anderson 51 When he came home to take charge of the farm, that had at that time grown to more than six hundred acres, everyone on the farms about and in the nearby town of Winesburg smiled at the idea of his trying to handle the work that had been done by his four strong brothers.

By the standards of his day Jesse did not look like a man at all. He was small and very slender and womanish of body and, true to the traditions of young ministers, wore a long black coat and a narrow black string tie. The neighbors were amused when they saw him, after the years away, and they were even more amused when they saw the woman he had married in the city.

As a matter of fact, Jesse s wife did soon go under. That was perhaps Jesse s fault. A farm in Northern Ohio in the hard years after the Civil War was no place for a delicate woman, and Katherine Bentley was delicate. Jesse was hard with her as he was with everybody about him in those days. She tried to do such work as all the neighbor women about her did and he let her go on without interference.

She helped to do the milking and did part of the housework; she made the beds for the men and prepared their food. For a year she worked every day from sunrise until late at night and then after giving birth to a child she died. As for Jesse Bentley--although he was a delicately built man there was something within him that could not easily be killed.

He had brown curly hair and grey eyes that were at times hard and direct, at times wavering and uncertain. Not only was he slender but he was also short of stature. His mouth was like the mouth of a sensitive and very determined child. Jesse Bentley was a fanatic. He was a man born out of his time and place and for this he suffered and made others suffer. Never did he succeed in getting what he wanted out of fife and he did not know what he wanted.

Within a very short time after he came home to the Bentley farm he made everyone there a little afraid of him, and his wife, who should have been close to him as his mother had been, was afraid also. At the end of two weeks after his coming, old Tom Bentley made over to him the entire ownership of the place and retired into the background. In spite of his youth and inexperience, Jesse had the trick of mastering the souls of his people.

He was so in earnest in everything he did and said that no one understood him. He made everyone on the farm work as they had never worked before and yet there was no joy in the work. If things went well they went well for Jesse and never for the people who were his dependents. Like a thousand other strong men who have come into the world here in America in these later times, Jesse was but half strong. He could master others but he could not master himself. The running of the farm as it had never been run before was easy for him. When he came home from Cleveland where he had been in school, he shut himself off from all of his people and began to make plans.

He thought about the farm night and day and that made him successful. Other men on the farms about him worked too hard and were too fired to think, but to think of the farm and to be everlastingly making plans for its success was a relief to Jesse. It partially satisfied something in his passionate nature.

Geboren in ein verworrenes Lied

Immediately after he came home he had a wing built on to the old house and in a large room facing the west he had windows that looked into the barnyard and other windows that looked off across the fields. By the window he sat down to think. Hour after hour and day after day he sat and looked over the land and thought out his new place in life. The passionate burning thing in his nature flamed up and his eyes became hard. He wanted to make the farm produce as no farm in his state had ever produced before and then he wanted something else.

It was the indefinable hunger within that made his eyes waver and that kept him always more and more silent before people. He would have given much to achieve peace and in him was a fear that peace was the thing he could not achieve. All over his body Jesse Bentley was alive. In his small frame was gathered the force of a long line of strong men. He had always been extraordinarily alive when he was a small boy on the farm and later when he was a young man in school.

In the school he had studied and thought of God and the Bible with his whole mind and heart. As time passed and he grew to know people better, he began to think of himself as an extraordinary man, one set apart from his fellows. He wanted terribly to make his life a thing of great importance, and as German barnyard: Sherwood Anderson 53 he looked about at his fellow men and saw how like clods they lived it seemed to him that he could not bear to become also such a clod.

Although in his absorption in himself and in his own destiny he was blind to the fact that his young wife was doing a strong woman s work even after she had become large with child and that she was killing herself in his service, he did not intend to be unkind to her. When his father, who was old and twisted with toil, made over to him the ownership of the farm and seemed content to creep away to a corner and wait for death, he shrugged his shoulders and dismissed the old man from his mind.

In the stables he could hear the tramping of his horses and the restless movement of his cattle. Away in the fields he could see other cattle wandering over green hills. The voices of men, his men who worked for him, came in to him through the window.

Typee (Webster's German Thesaurus Edition)

From the milkhouse there was the steady thump, thump of a churn being manipulated by the half-witted girl, Eliza Stoughton. Jesse s mind went back to the men of Old Testament days who had also owned lands and herds. He remembered how God had come down out of the skies and talked to these men and he wanted God to notice and to talk to him also. A kind of feverish boyish eagerness to in some way achieve in his own life the flavor of significance that had hung over these men took possession of him.

Being a prayerful man he spoke of the matter aloud to God and the sound of his own words strengthened and fed his eagerness. O God, create in me another Jesse, like that one of old, to rule over men and to be the father of sons who shall be rulers! In fancy he saw himself living in old times and among old peoples. The land that lay stretched out before him became of vast significance, a place peopled by his fancy with a new race of men sprung from himself.

It seemed to him that in his day as in those other and older days, kingdoms might be created German absorption: Kriechen, kriecht, krieche, kriechst, schleichen, schleiche, schleicht, schleichst. Winesburg, Ohio 54 and new impulses given to the lives of men by the power of God speaking through a chosen servant. He longed to be such a servant.

In the last fifty years a vast change has taken place in the lives of our people. A revolution has in fact taken place. The coming of industrialism, attended by all the roar and rattle of affairs, the shrill cries of millions of new voices that have come among us from overseas, the going and coming of trains, the growth of cities, the building of the interurban car lines that weave in and out of towns and past farmhouses, and now in these later days the coming of the automobiles has worked a tremendous change in the lives and in the habits of thought of our people of Mid-America.

Books, badly imagined and written though they may be in the hurry of our times, are in every household, magazines circulate by the millions of copies, newspapers are everywhere. In our day a farmer standing by the stove in the store in his village has his mind filled to overflowing with the words of other men. The newspapers and the magazines have pumped him full. Much of the old brutal ignorance that had in it also a kind of beautiful childlike innocence is gone forever. The farmer by the stove is brother to the men of the cities, and if you listen you will find him talking as glibly and as senselessly as the best city man of us all.

In Jesse Bentley s time and in the country districts of the whole Middle West in the years after the Civil War it was not so. Men labored too hard and were too tired to read. In them was no desire for words printed upon paper.