The shoulders of the stranger shook violently, and when he tried to roll a cigarette the paper fell from his trembling fingers.  He grew angry and scolded.  “They think it’s easy to be a woman, to be loved, but I know better,” he declared.  Again he turned to the child.  “I understand,” he cried.  “Perhaps of all men I alone understand.”

His glance again wandered away to the darkened street.  “I know about her, although she has never crossed my path,” he said softly.  “I know about her struggles and her defeats.  It is because of her defeats that she is to me the lovely one.  Out of her defeats has been born a new quality in woman.  I have a name for it.  I call it Tandy.  I made up the name when I was a true dreamer and before my body became vile.  It is the quality of being strong to be loved.  It is something men need from women and that they do not get.”

The stranger arose and stood before Tom Hard.  His body rocked back and forth and he seemed about to fall, but instead he dropped to his knees on the sidewalk and raised the hands of the little girl to his drunken lips.  He kissed them ecstatically.  “Be Tandy, little one,” he pleaded.  “Dare to be strong and courageous.  That is the road.  Venture anything.  Be brave enough to dare to be loved.  Be something more than man or woman.  Be Tandy.”

The stranger arose and staggered off down the street.  A day or two later he got aboard a train and returned to his home in Cleveland.  On the summer evening, after the talk before the hotel, Tom Hard took the girl child to the house of a relative where she had been invited to spend the night.  As he went along in the darkness under the trees he forgot the babbling voice of the stranger and his mind returned to the making of arguments by which he might destroy men’s faith in God.  He spoke his daughter’s name and she began to weep.

“I don’t want to be called that,” she declared.  “I want to be called Tandy—­Tandy Hard.”  The child wept so bitterly that Tom Hard was touched and tried to comfort her.  He stopped beneath a tree and, taking her into his arms, began to caress her.  “Be good, now,” he said sharply; but she would not be quieted.  With childish abandon she gave herself over to grief, her voice breaking the evening stillness of the street.  “I want to be Tandy.  I want to be Tandy.  I want to be Tandy Hard,” she cried, shaking her head and sobbing as though her young strength were not enough to bear the vision the words of the drunkard had brought to her.

THE STRENGTH OF GOD

The Reverend Curtis Hartman was pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Winesburg, and had been in that position ten years.  He was forty years old, and by his nature very silent and reticent.  To preach, standing in the pulpit before the people, was always a hardship for him and from Wednesday morning until Saturday evening he thought of nothing but the two sermons that must be preached on Sunday.  Early on Sunday morning he went into a little room called a study in the bell tower of the church and prayed.  In his prayers there was one note that always predominated.  “Give me strength and courage for Thy work, O Lord!” he pleaded, kneeling on the bare floor and bowing his head in the presence of the task that lay before him.