The Teacher

Snow lay deep in the streets of Winesburg. It had
begun to snow about ten o'clock in the morning and a
wind sprang up and blew the snow in clouds along Main
Street. The frozen mud roads that led into town were
fairly smooth and in places ice covered the mud. "There
will be good sleighing," said Will Henderson, standing
by the bar in Ed Griffith's saloon. Out of the saloon
he went and met Sylvester West the druggist stumbling
along in the kind of heavy overshoes called arctics.
"Snow will bring the people into town on Saturday,"
said the druggist. The two men stopped and discussed
their affairs. Will Henderson, who had on a light
overcoat and no overshoes, kicked the heel of his left
foot with the toe of the right. "Snow will be good for
the wheat," observed the druggist sagely.

Young George Willard, who had nothing to do, was glad
because he did not feel like working that day. The
weekly paper had been printed and taken to the post
office Wednesday evening and the snow began to fall on
Thursday. At eight o'clock, after the morning train had
passed, he put a pair of skates in his pocket and went
up to Waterworks Pond but did not go skating. Past the
pond and along a path that followed Wine Creek he went
until he came to a grove of beech trees. There he built
a fire against the side of a log and sat down at the
end of the log to think. When the snow began to fall
and the wind to blow he hurried about getting fuel for
the fire.

The young reporter was thinking of Kate Swift, who had
once been his school teacher. On the evening before he
had gone to her house to get a book she wanted him to
read and had been alone with her for an hour. For the
fourth or fifth time the woman had talked to him with
great earnestness and he could not make out what she
meant by her talk. He began to believe she must be in
love with him and the thought was both pleasing and
annoying.

Up from the log he sprang and began to pile sticks on
the fire. Looking about to be sure he was alone he
talked aloud pretending he was in the presence of the
woman, "Oh, you're just letting on, you know you are,"
he declared. "I am going to find out about you. You
wait and see."

The young man got up and went back along the path
toward town leaving the fire blazing in the wood. As he
went through the streets the skates clanked in his
pocket. In his own room in the New Willard House he
built a fire in the stove and lay down on top of the
bed. He began to have lustful thoughts and pulling down
the shade of the window closed his eyes and turned his
face to the wall. He took a pillow into his arms and
embraced it thinking first