Tom Willard had a passion for village politics and for years had been the leading Democrat in a strongly Republican community.  Some day, he told himself, the fide of things political will turn in my favor and the years of ineffectual service count big in the bestowal of rewards.  He dreamed of going to Congress and even of becoming governor.  Once when a younger member of the party arose at a political conference and began to boast of his faithful service, Tom Willard grew white with fury.  “Shut up, you,” he roared, glaring about.  “What do you know of service?  What are you but a boy?  Look at what I’ve done here!  I was a Democrat here in Winesburg when it was a crime to be a Democrat.  In the old days they fairly hunted us with guns.”

Between Elizabeth and her one son George there was a deep unexpressed bond of sympathy, based on a girlhood dream that had long ago died.  In the son’s presence she was timid and reserved, but sometimes while he hurried about town intent upon his duties as a reporter, she went into his room and closing the door knelt by a little desk, made of a kitchen table, that sat near a window.  In the room by the desk she went through a ceremony that was half a prayer, half a demand, addressed to the skies.  In the boyish figure she yearned to see something half forgotten that had once been a part of herself recreated.  The prayer concerned that.  “Even though I die, I will in some way keep defeat from you,” she cried, and so deep was her determination that her whole body shook.  Her eyes glowed and she clenched her fists.  “If I am dead and see him becoming a meaningless drab figure like myself, I will come back,” she declared.  “I ask God now to give me that privilege.  I demand it.  I will pay for it.  God may beat me with his fists.  I will take any blow that may befall if but this my boy be allowed to express something for us both.”  Pausing uncertainly, the woman stared about the boy’s room.  “And do not let him become smart and successful either,” she added vaguely.

The communion between George Willard and his mother was outwardly a formal thing without meaning.  When she was ill and sat by the window in her room he sometimes went in the evening to make her a visit.  They sat by a window that looked over the roof of a small frame building into Main Street.  By turning their heads they could see through another window, along an alleyway that ran behind the Main Street stores and into the back door of Abner Groff’s bakery.  Sometimes as they sat thus a picture of village life presented itself to them.  At the back door of his shop appeared Abner Groff with a stick or an empty milk bottle in his hand.  For a long time there was a feud between the baker and a grey cat that belonged to Sylvester West, the druggist.  The boy and his mother saw the cat creep into the door of the bakery and presently emerge followed by the baker, who swore and waved his arms about.  The baker’s eyes were small and red and his