Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town LifeAnderson, Sherwood
General
Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town Life
Anderson, Sherwood
City and town life -- Fiction; Ohio -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Pastoral fiction
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 life 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. Everyone 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. 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account