The Thinker

The house in which Seth Richmond of Winesburg lived
with his mother had been at one time the show place of
the town, but when young Seth lived there its glory had
become somewhat dimmed. The huge brick house which
Banker White had built on Buckeye Street had
overshadowed it. The Richmond place was in a little
valley far out at the end of Main Street. Farmers
coming into town by a dusty road from the south passed
by a grove of walnut trees, skirted the Fair Ground
with its high board fence covered with advertisements,
and trotted their horses down through the valley past
the Richmond place into town. As much of the country
north and south of Winesburg was devoted to fruit and
berry raising, Seth saw wagon-loads of berry
pickers--boys, girls, and women--going to the fields in
the morning and returning covered with dust in the
evening. The chattering crowd, with their rude jokes
cried out from wagon to wagon, sometimes irritated him
sharply. He regretted that he also could not laugh
boisterously, shout meaningless jokes and make of
himself a figure in the endless stream of moving,
giggling activity that went up and down the road.

The Richmond house was built of limestone, and,
although it was said in the village to have become run
down, had in reality grown more beautiful with every
passing year. Already time had begun a little to color
the stone, lending a golden richness to its surface and
in the evening or on dark days touching the shaded
places beneath the eaves with wavering patches of
browns and blacks.

The house had been built by Seth's grandfather, a stone
quarryman, and it, together with the stone quarries on
Lake Erie eighteen miles to the north, had been left to
his son, Clarence Richmond, Seth's father. Clarence
Richmond, a quiet passionate man extraordinarily
admired by his neighbors, had been killed in a street
fight with the editor of a newspaper in Toledo, Ohio.
The fight concerned the publication of Clarence
Richmond's name coupled with that of a woman school
teacher, and as the dead man had begun the row by
firing upon the editor, the effort to punish the slayer
was unsuccessful. After the quarryman's death it was
found that much of the money left to him had been
squandered in speculation and in insecure investments
made through the influence of friends.

Left with but a small income, Virginia Richmond had
settled down to a retired life in the village and to
the raising of her son. Although she had been deeply
moved by the death of the husband and father, she did
not at all believe the stories concerning him that ran
about after his death. To her mind, the sensitive,
boyish man whom all had instinctively loved, was