Main Street
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Chapters
- 1. Introduction 1:12 Free
- 2. Chapter 1: ON a hill by the Mississippi where Chippewas camped... 22:25
- 3. Chapter 2: IT was a frail and blue and lonely Carol who trotted... 15:43
- 4. Chapter 3: UNDER the rolling clouds of the prairie a moving mas... 25:02
- 5. Chapter 4: "THE Clarks have invited some folks to their house t... 53:05
- 6. Chapter 5: "WE'LL steal the whole day, and go hunting 31:12
- 7. Chapter 6: WHEN the first dubious November snow had filtered do... 28:36
- 8. Chapter 7: GOPHER PRAIRIE was digging in for the winter 26:45
- 9. Chapter 8: "DON'T I, in looking for things to do, show that I'm... 12:36
- 10. Chapter 9: SHE had tripped into the meadow to teach the lambs a... 21:39
- 11. Chapter 10: THE house was haunted, long before evening 32:13
- 12. Chapter 11: SHE had often been invited to the weekly meetings of... 46:36
- 13. Chapter 12: ONE week of authentic spring, one rare sweet week of... 18:56
- 14. Chapter 13: SHE tried, more from loyalty than from desire, to ca... 16:43
- 15. Chapter 14: SHE was marching home 34:59
- 16. Chapter 15: THAT December she was in love with her husband 42:21
- 17. Chapter 16: KENNICOTT was heavily pleased by her Christmas prese... 21:39
- 18. Chapter 17: THEY were driving down the lake to the cottages that... 25:32
- 19. Chapter 18: SHE hurried to the first meeting of the play-reading... 27:54
- 20. Chapter 19: IN three years of exile from herself Carol had certa... 21:40
- 21. Chapter 20: THE baby was coming 21:37
- 22. Chapter 21: GRAY steel that seems unmoving because it spins so f... 25:14
- 23. Chapter 22: THE greatest mystery about a human being is not his... 24:44
- 24. Chapter 23: WHEN America entered the Great European War, Vida se... 28:40
- 25. Chapter 24: ALL that midsummer month Carol was sensitive to Kenn... 40:46
- 26. Chapter 25: "CARRIE'S all right 21:27
- 27. Chapter 26: CAROL'S liveliest interest was in her walks with the... 15:51
- 28. Chapter 27: A LETTER from Raymie Wutherspoon, in France, said th... 6:22
- 29. Chapter 28: IT WAS at a supper of the Jolly Seventeen in August... 32:54
- 30. Chapter 29: SHE had walked up the railroad track with Hugh, this... 32:45
- 31. Chapter 30: FERN Mullins rushed into the house on a Saturday mor... 27:52
- 32. Chapter 31: THEIR night came unheralded 18:54
- 33. Chapter 32: CAROL was on the back porch, tightening a bolt on th... 29:22
- 34. Chapter 33: FOR a month which was one suspended moment of doubt... 31:25
- 35. Chapter 34: THEY journeyed for three and a half months 15:51
- 36. Chapter 35: SHE tried to be content, which was a contradiction i... 14:50
- 37. Chapter 36: KENNICOTT was not so inhumanly patient that he could... 14:48
- 38. Chapter 37: SHE found employment in the Bureau of War Risk Insur... 11:59
- 39. Chapter 38: SHE had lived in Washington for a year 26:05
- 40. Chapter 39: SHE wondered all the way home what her sensations wo... 15:31
Read chapter 1
The town is, in our tale, called "Gopher Prairie, Minnesota." But its Main Street is the continuation of Main Streets everywhere. The story would be the same in Ohio or Montana, in Kansas or Kentucky or Illinois, and not very differently would it be told Up York State or in the Carolina hills.
Main Street is the climax of civilization. That this Ford car might stand in front of the Bon Ton Store, Hannibal invaded Rome and Erasmus wrote in Oxford cloisters. What Ole Jenson the grocer says to Ezra Stowbody the banker is the new law for London, Prague, and the unprofitable isles of the sea; whatsoever Ezra does not know and sanction, that thing is heresy, worthless for knowing and wicked to consider.
Our railway station is the final aspiration of architecture. Sam Clark's annual hardware turnover is the envy of the four counties which constitute God's Country. In the sensitive art of the Rosebud Movie Palace there is a Message, and humor strictly moral.
Such is our comfortable tradition and sure faith. Would he not betray himself an alien cynic who should otherwise portray Main Street, or distress the citizens by speculating whether there may not be other faiths?