growing boy in a village at the year's end, opened the
lips of the old man. The sadness was in the heart of
George Willard and was without meaning, but it appealed
to Enoch Robinson.

It rained on the evening when the two met and talked, a
drizzly wet October rain. The fruition of the year had
come and the night should have been fine with a moon in
the sky and the crisp sharp promise of frost in the
air, but it wasn't that way. It rained and little
puddles of water shone under the street lamps on Main
Street. In the woods in the darkness beyond the Fair
Ground water dripped from the black trees. Beneath the
trees wet leaves were pasted against tree roots that
protruded from the ground. In gardens back of houses in
Winesburg dry shriveled potato vines lay sprawling on
the ground. Men who had finished the evening meal and
who had planned to go uptown to talk the evening away
with other men at the back of some store changed their
minds. George Willard tramped about in the rain and was
glad that it rained. He felt that way. He was like
Enoch Robinson on the evenings when the old man came
down out of his room and wandered alone in the streets.
He was like that only that George Willard had become a
tall young man and did not think it manly to weep and
carry on. For a month his mother had been very ill and
that had something to do with his sadness, but not
much. He thought about himself and to the young that
always brings sadness.

Enoch Robinson and George Willard met beneath a wooden
awning that extended out over the sidewalk before
Voight's wagon shop on Maumee Street just off the main
street of Winesburg. They went together from there
through the rain-washed streets to the older man's room
on the third floor of the Heffner Block. The young
reporter went willingly enough. Enoch Robinson asked
him to go after the two had talked for ten minutes. The
boy was a little afraid but had never been more curious
in his life. A hundred times he had heard the old man
spoken of as a little off his head and he thought
himself rather brave and manly to go at all. From the
very beginning, in the street in the rain, the old man
talked in a queer way, trying to tell the story of the
room in Washington Square and of his life in the room.
"You'll understand if you try hard enough," he said
conclusively. "I have looked at you when you went past
me on the street and I think you can understand. It
isn't hard. All you have to do is to b