Read "Main Street" by Sinclair Lewis online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
"He has absolutely no sense of humor. Less than Will. But hasn't he -- What is a ‘sense of humor'? Isn't the thing he lacks the back-slapping jocosity that passes for humor here? Anyway -- Poor lamb, coaxing me to stay and play with him! Poor lonely lamb! If he could be free from Nat Hickses, from people who say ‘dandy' and ‘bum,' would he develop?
"I wonder if Whitman didn't use Brooklyn back-street slang, as a boy?