THE PHILOSOPHER

a drooping mouth covered by a yellow

mustache. He always wore a dirty white
waistcoat out of the pockets of which protruded
a number of the kind of black cigars known as
stogies. His teeth were black and irregular and
there was something strange about his eyes. The
lid of the left eye twitched; it fell down and snap-
ped up; it was exactly as though the lid of the
eye were a window shade and someone stood in-
side the doctor’s head playing with the cord.

Doctor Parcival ‘had a liking for the boy,
George WViIlard. It began when George had
been working for a year on the Winesburg Eagle
and the acquaintanceship was entirely a matter of
the doctor’s own making.

In the late afternoon Will Henderson, owner
and editor of the Eagle, went over to Torn
Willy’s saloon. Along an alleyway he went
and slipping in at the back door of the saloon
began drinking a drink made of a combination of
sloe gin and soda water. Will Henderson was

a sensualist and had reached the age of forty-five.
38

DOCTOR PARCIVAL was a large man with