A MAN OF IDEAS

He lived with his mother, a grey, silent woman with a peculiar ashy complexion.  The house in which they lived stood in a little grove of trees beyond where the main street of Winesburg crossed Wine Creek.  His name was Joe Welling, and his father had been a man of some dignity in the community, a lawyer, and a member of the state legislature at Columbus.  Joe himself was small of body and in his character unlike anyone else in town.  He was like a tiny little volcano that lies silent for days and then suddenly spouts fire.  No, he wasn’t like that—­he was like a man who is subject to fits, one who walks among his fellow men inspiring fear because a fit may come upon him suddenly and blow him away into a strange uncanny physical state in which his eyes roll and his legs and arms jerk.  He was like that, only that the visitation that descended upon Joe Welling was a mental and not a physical thing.  He was beset by ideas and in the throes of one of his ideas was uncontrollable.  Words rolled and tumbled from his mouth.  A peculiar smile came upon his lips.  The edges of his teeth that were tipped with gold glistened in the light.  Pouncing upon a bystander he began to talk.  For the bystander there was no escape.  The excited man breathed into his face, peered into his eyes, pounded upon his chest with a shaking forefinger, demanded, compelled attention.

In those days the Standard Oil Company did not deliver oil to the consumer in big wagons and motor trucks as it does now, but delivered instead to retail grocers, hardware stores, and the like.  Joe was the Standard Oil agent in Winesburg and in several towns up and down the railroad that went through Winesburg.  He collected bills, booked orders, and did other things.  His father, the legislator, had secured the job for him.

In and out of the stores of Winesburg went Joe Welling—­silent, excessively polite, intent upon his business.  Men watched him with eyes in which lurked amusement tempered by alarm.  They were waiting for him to break forth, preparing to flee.  Although the seizures that came upon him were harmless enough, they could not be laughed away.  They were overwhelming.  Astride an idea, Joe was overmastering.  His personality became gigantic.  It overrode the man to whom he talked, swept him away, swept all away, all who stood within sound of his voice.

In Sylvester West’s Drug Store stood four men who were talking of horse racing.  Wesley Moyer’s stallion, Tony Tip, was to race at the June meeting at Tiffin, Ohio, and there was a rumor that he would meet the stiffest competition of his career.  It was said that Pop Geers, the great racing driver, would himself be there.  A doubt of the success of Tony Tip hung heavy in the air of Winesburg.

Into the drug store came Joe Welling, brushing the screen door violently aside.  With a strange absorbed light in his eyes he pounced upon Ed Thomas, he who knew Pop Geers and whose opinion of Tony Tip’s chances was worth considering.