In New York City, when he first went there to live and before he became confused and disconcerted by the facts of life, Enoch went about a good deal with young men. It was one of the many things that kept things from turning out for Enoch Robinson Once he was hit by a street car and thrown against an iron post. The child in him kept bumping against things, against actualities like money and sex and opinions. He never grew up and of course he couldn't understand people and he couldn't make people understand him.

He could draw well enough and he had many odd delicate thoughts hidden away in his brain that might have expressed themselves through the brush of a painter, but he was always a child and that was a handicap to his worldly development. Nothing ever turned out for Enoch Robinson. In his own mind he planned to go to Paris and to finish his art education among the masters there, but that never turned out. He studied French and went to an art school, hoping to develop a faculty he had for drawing. When he was twenty-one years old Enoch went to New York City and was a city man for fifteen years. Drivers of teams had to shout and swear to make him realize where he was so that he would turn out of the beaten track and let them pass. He walked in the middle of the road when he came into town and sometimes read a book. Old citizens remembered him as a quiet, smiling youth inclined to silence. Enoch lived in the house with his mother in those days and when he was a young boy went to school at the Winesburg High School. In the road before the house a flock of chickens, accompanied by two guinea hens, lay in the deep dust. The farmhouse was painted brown and the blinds to all of the windows facing the road were kept closed. Al Robinson who once owned a farm on a side road leading off Trunion Pike, east of Winesburg and two miles beyond the town limits.

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