Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town LifeAnderson, Sherwood
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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
Jesse and his grandson were driving in a distant part of the valley
some miles from home. A forest came down to the road and through the
forest Wine Creek wriggled its way over stones toward a distant river.
All the afternoon Jesse had been in a meditative mood and now he began
to talk. His mind went back to the night when he had been frightened by
thoughts of a giant that might come to rob and plunder him of his
possessions, and again as on that night when he had run through the
fields crying for a son, he became excited to the edge of insanity.
Stopping the horse he got out of the buggy and asked David to get out
also. The two climbed over a fence and walked along the bank of the
stream. The boy paid no attention to the muttering of his grandfather,
but ran along beside him and wondered what was going to happen. When a
rabbit jumped up and ran away through the woods, he clapped his hands
and danced with delight. He looked at the tall trees and was sorry that
he was not a little animal to climb high in the air without being
frightened. Stooping, he picked up a small stone and threw it over the
head of his grandfather into a clump of bushes. “Wake up, little
animal. Go and climb to the top of the trees,” he shouted in a shrill
voice.
Jesse Bentley went along under the trees with his head bowed and with
his mind in a ferment. His earnestness affected the boy, who presently
became silent and a little alarmed. Into the old man’s mind had come
the notion that now he could bring from God a word or a sign out of the
sky, that the presence of the boy and man on their knees in some lonely
spot in the forest would make the miracle he had been waiting for
almost inevitable. “It was in just such a place as this that other
David tended the sheep when his father came and told him to go down
unto Saul,” he muttered.
Taking the boy rather roughly by the shoulder, he climbed over a fallen
log and when he had come to an open place among the trees he dropped
upon his knees and began to pray in a loud voice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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