Winesburg, Ohio

The brother had died of starvation, and whenever the carpenter got upon that subject he cried

THE TALES AND THE PERSONS

whose keen observations on the life about her first awoke in me the hunger to see beneath the surface of lives

Clyde looked, I suppose, not very different from most other American towns

the truth he embraced became a falsehood.

It was the truths that made the people grotesques.

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.

He had a habit of talking aloud to himself, and early in life a spirit of quiet sadness often took possession of him.

From childhood she had been inclined to fits of temper and when not angry she was often morose and silent