Classic Poem

When at forty he went to America, the family was glad to be rid of him, envious and quarrelsome. All but him had married and were well-to-do.
The smallpox when a child had left him ugly. Because it had also left him sickly, he had been humored in not going to school, and so could not read or cypher.
To strengthen him he had been apprenticed to a blacksmith.
When he walked he kept hitching up his shoulders and throwing out his hands.
He spoke indistinctly and so foolishly that when understood, his hearers could not help smiling. Sure that they did not understand, he would repeat what he had said until tears were in his eyes.

In New York he stayed with a pushcart pedlar. The pedlar had a daughter who had worked her way through high school and was in college.
The blacksmith's arm became infected and he could not work.
He stayed at home waiting for his arm to heal, silently watching as she moved about the house or did her lessons. She tried not to mind his eyes always on her.
At last she insisted that he move away. So he had to take lodgings elsewhere.

After supper he would stand in front of the house in which she lived, hoping that she would come out on an errand.
The boys playing in the street, discovered him, and searched the gutters for peach pits and apple cores
to throw over their shoulders at him as they passed, intent upon the sky.
He would chase them in his jerky way.