To write the book Doctor Parcival declared was the
object of his coming to Winesburg to live.
On the morning in August before the coming of
the boy, an incident had happened in the doctor's
office. There had been an accident on Main Street.
A team of horses had been frightened by a train and
had run away. A little girl, the daughter of a farmer,
had been thrown from a buggy and killed.
On Main Street everyone had become excited and
a cry for doctors had gone up. All three of the active
practitioners of the town had come quickly but had
found the child dead. From the crowd someone had
run to the office of Doctor Parcival who had bluntly
refused to go down out of his office to the dead
child. The useless cruelty of his refusal had passed
unnoticed. Indeed, the man who had come up the
stairway to summon him had hurried away without
hearing the refusal.
All of this, Doctor Parcival did not know and
when George Willard came to his office he found
the man shaking with terror. "What I have done
will arouse the people of this town," he declared
excitedly. "Do I not know human nature? Do I not
know what will happen? Word of my refusal will be
whispered about. Presently men will get together in
groups and talk of it. They will come here. We will
quarrel and there will be talk of hanging. Then they
will come again bearing a rope in their hands.
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