ETHAN FROME

BY EDITH WHARTON






ETHAN FROME





I Had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally
happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.

If you know Starkfield, Massachusetts, you know the post-office. If
you know the post-office you must have seen Ethan Frome drive up to
it, drop the reins on his hollow-backed bay and drag himself across
the brick pavement to the white colonnade: and you must have asked
who he was.

It was there that, several years ago, I saw him for the first time;
and the sight pulled me up sharp. Even then he was the most striking
figure in Starkfield, though he was but the ruin of a man. It was
not so much his great height that marked him, for the "natives" were
easily singled out by their lank longitude from the stockier foreign
breed: it was the careless powerful look he had, in spite of a