Winesburg, Ohio: Drink

What a life the old woman had led since she went away from the frontier settlement and what a strong, capable little old thing she was!

She could not believe that the tiny village of fifty years before had grown into a thriving town in her absence, and in the morning when the train came to Winesburg did not want to get off.

In Cincinnati he had lived in a neighborhood where gangs of tough boys prowled through the streets, and all through his early formative years he ran about with tough boys.

He never asserted himself.

He saw the men and women in the houses of lust, sensed their casual and horrible love affairs, saw boys fighting and listened to their tales of thieving and drunkenness, unmoved and strangely unaffected.

He saw the men and women in the houses of lust, sensed their casual and horrible love affairs, saw boys fighting and listened to their tales of thieving and drunkenness, unmoved and strangely unaffected.

Often the old woman talked with great vigor.

He thought, after what he had seen of the women standing before the squalid houses on cold nights and the look he had seen in the eyes of the men who stopped to talk to them...

That idea pleased the boy and he sauntered along playing with it.

With motherly solicitude, he insisted that Tom get to his feet and walk about.