Michael Malone - Weebly

charge accounts for model airplanes and eight-track
tapes and other amusements, chargeable to the parents
of young gentlemen at Alexander Hamilton Academy.
They assumed he had friends, he must do something
besides buy and sell, but as to what he did, and with
whom he did it, they hadn't a clue. They didn't like him.
Occasionally Lime gave way to the suspicion that
they didn't like him. It made him hate them all. He spent
some evenings at the Old Towne Inn (which thought it
was better than he was), and some evenings at Fred's
Fries (which was beneath him), and in both these
barrooms he tried to strike up conversations with
people who seemed to have it easier than he did at
getting along. It was naturally difficult for Barnum to
acknowledge that he had no talent for friendship, but he
acknowledged that something was wrong, though he
couldn't figure out what it could be: neither shyness nor
physical impediment nor peculiarity of style or dress
hampered him. It must be the people of Dingley Falls,
then, who conspired against his happiness. All of Limus
Barnum's life (a life that had taken him from Detroit to
Cincinnati to Pittsburgh to Worcester to Dingley Falls)