story-to-pack: add the corpora and the catalogue v2/v3
Fourteen corpora split and classified: aesop, bierce, chekhov, holmes, keefe, lawson, lorimer, maupassant, nobody, plaintales, poe, torchy, wallingford and winesburg, each with its splitter and the hand-written groups and pages; catalogue v2 and v3; and the shared splitters gutenberg_chunks.py, se_split.py and se_build.py. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_019rwKTmug58sEsJ72AuWsEi
This commit is contained in:
JesseMarkowitz
co-authored by
Claude Opus 5.5
Claude Opus 5.5
parent
e5617b86ba
commit
3a4758172d
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[
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{
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"chunk": 0,
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"story": 0,
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"summary": "The narrator remembers how an old mate of his father's from the diggings would turn up at the selection, praise the children, slip them coins and tell stories of the old days.",
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"predicament": "An old companion from a parent's hard early years turns up, and the household makes room for a past it never shared."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 1,
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"story": 0,
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"summary": "The two old mates walk among the abandoned shafts, pick over past mistakes and plan a new shaft the father will never sink.",
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"predicament": "Two old companions walk over the ground of a venture that failed them and plan a fresh try neither will ever make."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 2,
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"story": 0,
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"summary": "The father's heart is not in his poor farm but in the old rushes, and the two yarn about lost claims until the children call them to breakfast.",
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"predicament": "A man stuck with a poor living keeps his mind on the lost chances of his youth, egged on by an old companion."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 3,
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"story": 0,
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"summary": "In the evenings the mates yarn about old friends and talk low about the Eureka Stockade, while the father explains away his scars to the children.",
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"predicament": "Two old companions share a dangerous past they will not explain, and turn aside every question the children ask about it."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 4,
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"story": 0,
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"summary": "The mother overhears a hint about a woman and the father brushes it off with the mate's help; the mate tells the story of a diggings bride.",
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"predicament": "A wife overhears a hint of her husband's past with another woman, and his old companion helps him brush it aside."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 5,
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"story": 0,
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"summary": "The mates recall the generous fellowship of the old fields; after the visitor leaves the father broods, and the narrator wonders whether old mates were kinder to each other than sons are to fathers.",
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"predicament": "After an old companion leaves, a man broods on their shared past, and his grown child wonders whether he gives what he owes."
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}
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]
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[
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{
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"chunk": 6,
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"story": 1,
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"summary": "A man leaves a good trade in the city to take up a selection, asks his sweetheart to wait, and starts fencing at a venture because the surveyors never come.",
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"predicament": "A man gives up a steady living in town to start out on land of his own, sure he can do better alone."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 7,
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"story": 1,
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"summary": "With no experience and much bad advice he spends days digging round and trying to burn out the first great tree.",
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"predicament": "A beginner working alone takes on the hardest task first, armed with more advice from others than experience of his own."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 8,
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"story": 1,
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"summary": "The tree falls on the squatter's fence; he breaks ploughshares he cannot pay for, while the squatter's people rob him, burn his hut and have him charged with stock theft.",
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"predicament": "A small holder struggling to clear his ground finds a powerful neighbour set on driving him off by any means at all."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 9,
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"story": 1,
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"summary": "Flood washes away his crop and soil, the next crop rusts, and nursing his cows' eyes he goes half blind himself, nursed through it by a German neighbour.",
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"predicament": "Every effort a struggling beginner makes is undone by weather and sickness, and only one neighbour stands by him through it."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 10,
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"story": 1,
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"summary": "Following local advice he doctors his sick cows and then his horses, and they all die.",
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"predicament": "A man who keeps acting on bad advice watches everything he owns die one after another, and still will not give up."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 11,
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"story": 1,
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"summary": "Ploughing with a borrowed broken-down horse and a hired child, he loses his temper, beats the cheeky boy and is set on by the boy's whole family.",
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"predicament": "A man worn raw by failure loses his temper with a neighbour's child and brings the neighbour's whole family down on himself."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 12,
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"story": 1,
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"summary": "He buys sheep to fatten, but the squatter's men set dogs on them and poison his dog; his nephew is jailed on a false charge and he gets six months for beating the squatter.",
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"predicament": "A small holder hounded by a powerful neighbour tries to hit back the same way, and it is he who ends up locked away."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 13,
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"story": 1,
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"summary": "Out of jail, his wife robs him and runs off, hail ruins his orchard and a ruined neighbour shares wine with him; then the survey shows his land is elsewhere and the squatter seizes everything and sues.",
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"predicament": "A man ruined by one blow after another is comforted by a neighbour ruined alongside him, then loses the rest to a powerful man."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 14,
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"story": 1,
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"summary": "The selector ends in the asylum, and the ruined squatter follows him there, where the two become friends.",
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"predicament": "Two old enemies, both ruined in the end, meet on equal terms at last and find they can get on quite well."
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}
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]
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[
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{
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"chunk": 15,
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"story": 2,
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"summary": "A swagman steps off the train in the city and a cabman offers him a cab, which he takes as a joke at his expense.",
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"predicament": "A worn traveller arriving in the city is offered a service and takes it as a sneer at the way he looks."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 16,
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"story": 2,
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"summary": "When the cabman hints that his swag does not look well in town, the swagman defends it and his dog and threatens to have him summoned.",
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"predicament": "A poor traveller told his belongings do not look respectable in town refuses to be ashamed of them for anyone at all."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 17,
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"story": 2,
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"summary": "Having made his point he gets into the cab anyway, to leave his swag and dog while he buys clothes, and mentions he once drove a cab himself.",
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"predicament": "Having made his point about pride, a traveller quietly accepts the service anyway and admits he once earned his living the same way."
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}
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]
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[
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{
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"chunk": 18,
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"story": 3,
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"summary": "Two broke swagmen reach the hotel of a huge, mean, violent publican and run up drinks they cannot pay for, trying to look as if they have just been paid off.",
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"predicament": "Two broke travellers run up a debt with a hard, dangerous man, trusting that they look as if they can pay."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 19,
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"story": 3,
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"summary": "Bill, who believes the world is sharps and mugs, gets the narrator to cadge ten shillings from a navvy and takes charge of it.",
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"predicament": "A companion who says a man must take or be taken asks his mate to trust him with the little money they have."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 20,
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"story": 3,
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"summary": "Next morning Bill has a black eye and eighteen pence; they quarrel over who must face the landlord and toss for it, and the narrator loses.",
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"predicament": "A mate seems to have lost the pair's last money, and the two argue over which of them must face the one they owe."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 21,
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"story": 3,
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"summary": "The narrator carries the swags out to the veranda, then lingers chatting with the publican and decides to take a big flask of whisky too.",
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"predicament": "Planning to slip away from a debt, a man chats easily with the one he owes and decides he may as well take more."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 22,
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"story": 3,
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"summary": "He wins a bet over the flask, notices the publican limping from a nail in his boot, and offers to fix it, claiming it was his old trade.",
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"predicament": "Keeping a dangerous creditor talking, a man spots a weakness and offers him a friendly favour that will quietly hobble him instead."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 23,
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"story": 3,
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"summary": "He drives a nail up through the boot sole, asks what they owe, hears the threat of a beating, and bolts.",
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"predicament": "Having crippled the pursuit in advance, a man asks what he owes, hears the threat he expected, and runs for it."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 24,
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"story": 3,
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"summary": "The publican gives chase in a slipper and loses it in a waterhole; the two swagmen escape into the bush and stay out of sight.",
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"predicament": "Running from someone he cheated, a man outlasts him on rough ground and vanishes before a proper pursuit can be organised."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 25,
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"story": 3,
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"summary": "In camp Bill boasts that he got them through; the narrator tears into him as a mug, and Bill quietly produces money he had all along.",
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"predicament": "Safe at last, a man berates his boastful mate for the mess, and the mate calmly shows he held money back all along."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 26,
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"story": 3,
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"summary": "Bill produces the rest of the money, explaining he let the narrator take the risk to pay out the publican, whom he had a grudge against; the narrator lies awake.",
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"predicament": "A man learns his mate let him carry all the risk of a trick the mate planned himself, and lies awake wondering about him."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 27,
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"story": 3,
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"summary": "Bill shares out fairly, but the narrator parts from him soon after: he is too sharp to keep up with.",
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"predicament": "A mate who shared fairly still proves too sharp to travel beside, and the other quietly decides to go his own way."
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}
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]
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[
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{
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"chunk": 28,
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"story": 4,
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"summary": "Before going down the shaft, Jack asks his brother Tom not to let the sun go down on their quarrel; Tom refuses his hand, then sits alone feeling mean.",
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"predicament": "A younger brother apologises for a quarrel before a dangerous task, and the elder refuses his hand out of stubborn pride."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 29,
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"story": 4,
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"summary": "Tom decides to go and make up, but the shaft caves in on Jack; Tom rallies the diggers to dig through from old workings.",
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"predicament": "Just as a man decides to make peace with someone he snubbed, disaster traps the other, and he must lead the rescue."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 30,
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"story": 4,
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"summary": "Tom digs like a madman, breaks through in time to save Jack, then collapses with a burst heart, gripping his brother's hand as he dies.",
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"predicament": "A man drives himself past every limit to reach someone he wronged, and saving him costs everything he has left."
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}
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]
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[
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{
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"chunk": 31,
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"story": 5,
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"summary": "At a shearing shed the soft-hearted shearer called The Oracle, who collects afflicted men, takes an interest in a forlorn swagman found wandering with no memory of who he is.",
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"predicament": "A soft-hearted worker takes up a helpless stranger who claims to remember nothing about who he is or where he came from."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 32,
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"story": 5,
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"summary": "The Oracle gets the stranger a job and threatens anyone who mocks him; Mitchell jokes about working the case for money; the stranger muses that he might be a lord.",
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"predicament": "A kindly man vouches for a helpless stranger to the boss and threatens anyone in the crew who dares to mock him."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 33,
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"story": 5,
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"summary": "Mitchell suggests he take a dead man's name, so they call him Smith and come to treat him as a harmless lunatic, while he borrows tobacco and forgets to return it.",
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"predicament": "A crew humours a newcomer with a strange story, lends him a borrowed name, and gradually stops keeping an eye on him."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 34,
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"story": 5,
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"summary": "Smith fails to turn up to work, claiming he has forgotten again; The Oracle vows to see it through, and the boss goes to confront him.",
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"predicament": "A newcomer someone vouched for stops turning up for work, and the boss comes to find out what is going on."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 35,
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"story": 5,
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"summary": "The boss sacks Smith; the men nearly revolt on his behalf until Mitchell suggests The Oracle check his bunk, where he finds he has been robbed.",
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"predicament": "The kind man who stood up for a stranger learns, in front of everyone, that the stranger has robbed him blind."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 36,
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"story": 5,
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"summary": "The Oracle goes silently for his horse, and one by one the others find their own bunks robbed too.",
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"predicament": "Everyone who shared quarters discovers the helpless stranger they sheltered has robbed them all, and the kindest of them is angriest."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 37,
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"story": 5,
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"summary": "The Oracle finds Smith drunk at a shanty, recovers the stolen goods with the shanty-keeper's help, and beats his memory back into him.",
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"predicament": "A man betrayed by someone he protected tracks him down, takes back what was stolen, and settles the matter with his fists."
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}
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]
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[
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{
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"chunk": 38,
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"story": 6,
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"summary": "The narrator and his mate strike through the scrub to a tiny border town at the end of an unfinished government road, and camp there a day.",
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"predicament": "Two travellers on foot reach a miserable settlement at the end of an unfinished road and stop there for a day."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 39,
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"story": 6,
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"summary": "The town is split by a rabbit-proof fence between two colonies, with the pubs on one side and the post office on the other, and nobody's account of it can be trusted.",
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"predicament": "Travellers stopping in a divided settlement find each half blaming its distant masters, and nobody able to say what is true."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 40,
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"story": 6,
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"summary": "The country round is a barren ash-heap, the river is dry, and the stores charge high prices for sour bread and poor sugar.",
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"predicament": "Travellers with little money must pay stiff prices for poor goods in a barren place with nowhere else to buy."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 41,
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"story": 6,
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"summary": "A storekeeper gives a deadbeat swagman rations to see him over the border, and an old shepherd spits over the fence on both colonies, and on the rest.",
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"predicament": "A penniless traveller is given enough to get him moving on, and an old hand shows what he thinks of every government going."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 42,
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"story": 6,
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"summary": "The old man had been offered droving at a pittance, finding his own horse, feed and supplies; a trooper checks on the travellers, and next morning they move on.",
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"predicament": "An old hand has been offered work on terms that put every cost and every risk on him, and sours on the whole country."
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}
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]
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[
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{
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"chunk": 43,
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"story": 7,
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"summary": "Mitchell tells his mate how a farmer mocked his plain, hardworking daughter as unmarriageable, and how he laughed along and then felt sorry for her.",
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"predicament": "A young man laughs along when a father mocks a plain daughter as unwanted, then sees how badly it hurt her."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 44,
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"story": 7,
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"summary": "Trying to comfort the girl, he offers to marry her and is refused; stung, he sets out to learn whether any girl would have him by asking an even plainer neighbour.",
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"predicament": "Turned down when he offered out of pity, a young man sets out to learn whether anyone would have him at all."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 45,
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"story": 7,
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"summary": "He proposes to the second girl as a joke and she accepts at once, tells his family and the whole district, and he is mocked everywhere.",
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"predicament": "A joking proposal is taken seriously, and the whole neighbourhood hears of the match before the young man can take it back."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 46,
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"story": 7,
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"summary": "He sends a mate to say it was a joke and that he is already married, then flees to another town and moves again when warned she is coming; his mate begins a yarn about a youth pursued by an older woman.",
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"predicament": "A man who made a promise he never meant keeps running from it, and it keeps following him from place to place."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 47,
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"story": 7,
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"summary": "The pursued youth gives in without a struggle, marries the older woman, and is ordered about in front of the whole boardinghouse, though she makes him a good wife.",
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"predicament": "A young man caught by a woman he ran from gives in without a fight, and is ordered about in front of everyone."
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}
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]
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[
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{
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"chunk": 48,
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"story": 8,
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"summary": "On a coach in New Zealand a grey-bearded Australian-born man calls the poorest local country grand and Australia a mongrel desert.",
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"predicament": "A man who left his homeland long ago runs it down to strangers who expected him to speak up for it."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 49,
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"story": 8,
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"summary": "He says he left Australia twice, swearing never to return, and scorns the suggestion that he visit Sydney on his way back to America.",
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"predicament": "An exile passing close to his old home swears he will never go back, and scorns anyone who suggests a visit."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 50,
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"story": 8,
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"summary": "He rails that he starved and worked harder for less at home than anywhere else, and that the country belongs to foreign speculators.",
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"predicament": "A man who was starved and overworked in his own country declares loyalty only to the place that treated him fairly."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 51,
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"story": 8,
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"summary": "He attacks patriotism as a lie that makes men slave and fight for their masters, silencing the bagman, then asks about a grove of trees.",
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"predicament": "A man who was used up by the people who owned his country argues that loyalty to it only serves those masters."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 52,
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"story": 8,
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"summary": "He smells gum leaves burning in a trapper's fire, recognises Australian gums, and shouts a greeting to the trapper, who answers him like an echo from the past.",
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"predicament": "A hardened exile is caught off guard by a familiar smell from home, and an old-fashioned greeting between equals moves him."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 53,
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"story": 8,
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"summary": "After a long silence he snaps at a tourist who sneers at Australia, and decides to visit an old mate in Sydney first.",
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"predicament": "An exile who swore never to go home hears an outsider sneer at it, defends it, and decides to visit an old friend."
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}
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]
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[
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{
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"chunk": 54,
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"story": 9,
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"summary": "On a poor selection the worn-out wife shrieks for her son to bring in the cows, and the boy milks sore-teated cows in a yard of slush, dosed with an ointment recommended by a man who knows nothing.",
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"predicament": "A worn-out household scrapes a living from sick stock and slack habits, following advice from people who know even less."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 55,
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"story": 9,
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"summary": "The boy milks carelessly, dozing against the cow, drowning dirt in the bucket and beating the animals when they kick.",
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"predicament": "A bored youngster left with the daily drudgery cuts every corner he can, knowing nobody will ever check the work properly."
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},
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{
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"chunk": 56,
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"story": 9,
|
||||
"summary": "His mother accuses him of skimping the milking and he denies it; the dairy of rotten bark is propped up and patched with newspaper.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A mother suspects her son of skimping his work, he swears she is wrong, and the place they share keeps falling down."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 57,
|
||||
"story": 9,
|
||||
"summary": "The wife skims dusty cream with her fingers and sets the milk through a strainer full of holes.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A worn-out wife does the daily work with broken tools and dirty makeshifts that nobody has the time or will to mend."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 58,
|
||||
"story": 9,
|
||||
"summary": "The boy is blamed for a missing prop and a lost cow and swears he is always blamed; he hand-feeds the weaned calves and beats them when they butt.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A youngster blamed for every mishap on the place denies everything and takes his temper out on whatever is weaker than him."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 59,
|
||||
"story": 9,
|
||||
"summary": "The selector spends three hours leaning on a fence with a neighbour discussing a cow, then fools about the stick-planted orchard and asks the neighbour to dinner.",
|
||||
"predicament": "While the rest of the household labours, the man at its head idles the morning away with a neighbour, admiring what needs no work."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 60,
|
||||
"story": 9,
|
||||
"summary": "At a scalding dinner on a hot day, with fowls in the house and steers in the wheat, the shiftless selector and his guests talk social reform.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man too shiftless to mend his own fences talks grandly over a meal about how the whole world ought to be put right."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 61,
|
||||
"story": 9,
|
||||
"summary": "The debate about utopian books and a notorious murderer runs on in fragments while the wife shoos fowls, scolds the children and sends a rooster flying.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A gathering of talkers argues about reforming society while a harried wife keeps the home from falling apart around them."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,20 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 62,
|
||||
"story": 10,
|
||||
"summary": "A shearer hurt in a drunken shanty brawl walks ten miles to hospital with his lame dog; the doctors will take him but not the dog, and he gets up to leave.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Badly hurt and needing help, a man is told he may have it only if he turns away the companion who stood by him."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 63,
|
||||
"story": 10,
|
||||
"summary": "He refuses to stay without the dog, telling how it was born on the track and how he killed its blind mother because he could not leave her behind alive.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man refuses help that means abandoning a loyal companion, remembering how he once could not bear to leave one behind."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 64,
|
||||
"story": 10,
|
||||
"summary": "He declares the dog a better mate than any man, which saved him from being robbed and fought beside him, then collapses; they take him in and he asks for the dog.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man tells those in charge that his loyal companion is worth more than he is, and will not desert him now."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,56 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 65,
|
||||
"story": 11,
|
||||
"summary": "The narrator describes the cramped, greasy city dining rooms where he boards as a respectable single man, sharing a room with four others.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A single man living as cheaply as he can in the city shares cramped, grubby rooms with strangers who come and go."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 66,
|
||||
"story": 11,
|
||||
"summary": "He meets Jack Gunther, a slight old-school bushman half deaf from a horse's kick, who has come to the city to get something done for his eyes.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A countryman who has come to the city for help with his failing health strikes up an acquaintance with a stranger there."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 67,
|
||||
"story": 11,
|
||||
"summary": "Gunther is nearly blind, his sight made worse by a quack; a young cousin guides him, and he plans to send the boy home before the city corrupts him.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man going blind leans on a young relative to guide him, yet plans to send the youngster home before the city spoils him."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 68,
|
||||
"story": 11,
|
||||
"summary": "They talk about the bush and Gunther asks after a half-brother he has lost track of, seeing the home country clearly in his mind.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man losing his sight asks after a brother he has lost touch with and pictures the country he may never see again."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 69,
|
||||
"story": 11,
|
||||
"summary": "They talk fencing and timber; Gunther says the doctors can only promise slow improvement, and wishes he had seen one when his eyes first weakened.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man whose health is failing regrets ignoring it when young, and pins his hopes on a slow cure that may not come."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 70,
|
||||
"story": 11,
|
||||
"summary": "Always cheerful, he plans to sort wool by feel if the worst comes, and has the narrator describe his photographs and write to his girl.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man facing disability plans cheerfully how he can still be useful back home, and asks a friend to write to his sweetheart."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 71,
|
||||
"story": 11,
|
||||
"summary": "He gives up the hospital, waits anxiously for a letter, is moved onto the stair landing by the landlord, and practises a cheap concertina in case he has to busk.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man running out of money and hope is shoved into the worst corner of his lodging and quietly prepares to beg."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 72,
|
||||
"story": 11,
|
||||
"summary": "The narrator sets out to find someone with influence to help, then remembers his own worn-out clothes and unpaid board and goes no further.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man who wants to help a friend in trouble realises he is too poor and shabby to go where help could be found."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 73,
|
||||
"story": 11,
|
||||
"summary": "Gunther's half-brother turns up, suspicious of everyone, and takes charge of him with rough tenderness, settling the bill and carrying him off; the narrator knows he is all right.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A lost brother turns up just in time, fiercely protective, and takes charge of a helpless relative in a place full of sharps."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 74,
|
||||
"story": 12,
|
||||
"summary": "A newspaper reports a small boy found asleep on a factory's steps at four in the morning for fear of being late; a daughter of the factory's owners gets up a subscription for an alarm clock and is praised for it.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A child worker terrified of losing his place is given a small charity by the family he works for, who make much of it."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 75,
|
||||
"story": 12,
|
||||
"summary": "Sick with croup on the last night of the holidays, Arvie insists on setting the alarm for work: the firm will not wait, and someone might take his place.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A sick youngster insists on going to work anyway, because the people he works for will not wait and someone else wants his place."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 76,
|
||||
"story": 12,
|
||||
"summary": "Reading the clock's motto about early rising, Arvie decides it lies; his mother lies awake over her dead husband, her gaoled and absent sons, her scrubbing and the rent.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A worn-out child working himself to death for a pittance begins to doubt the promise that hard work brings its own reward."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 77,
|
||||
"story": 12,
|
||||
"summary": "His mother sets the alarm back two hours to let him rest; while the owners hold a ball, the alarm rings in the night and Arvie does not wake: he is dead.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A mother who tries to give her overworked child a little rest from the grind finds that it is already too late."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,50 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 78,
|
||||
"story": 13,
|
||||
"summary": "The narrator describes the bare slab hut where thirty shearers and rouseabouts eat and sleep in season, left littered with rubbish when the shed last cut out.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Men between jobs shelter in the bare quarters a work gang left behind in a rush when the last season's work was done."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 79,
|
||||
"story": 13,
|
||||
"summary": "He describes the brush shearing shed and glaring iron wool-shed of a station owned by a company, owned by a bank, owned mostly from England.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Men between jobs look over the rough workplace of a distant owner, himself owned by others further off, who never sets foot there."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 80,
|
||||
"story": 13,
|
||||
"summary": "Half a dozen travellers spell in the hut on New Year's Eve, hoping to shear a few stragglers but mostly tramping for rations to live till next shearing.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Men with no work must keep walking from one handout to the next just to live until the season's work comes round again."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 81,
|
||||
"story": 13,
|
||||
"summary": "One of them, the Exception, is an outcast even among these men, in a boot and a slipper found in rubbish, who has stopped mending his clothes.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Among men already down on their luck, one has sunk so far that he has stopped trying to mend anything at all."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 82,
|
||||
"story": 13,
|
||||
"summary": "A sick young newcomer lies in a bunk while the others rest and read scraps; now and then a man goes to the station for flour when the manager is likely to be out.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Men waiting out the slack time shelter together, time their begging for when the boss is away, and watch over a sick newcomer."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 83,
|
||||
"story": 13,
|
||||
"summary": "A big Irish shearer invites the Exception to eat, but he can barely manage it; the men chaff the one who volunteered to bake bread for them all.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Hungry men between jobs share what food they have with the worst off, and tease the one who offers to feed them all."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 84,
|
||||
"story": 13,
|
||||
"summary": "The sick man goes to the station for medicine and rations; the rest sound each other out about the union, curse the squatter and swap lies about outwitting bosses.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Men between jobs sound each other out about which side each one is on, then swap boasts about getting the better of the bosses."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 85,
|
||||
"story": 13,
|
||||
"summary": "Pat cannot decide whether a pair of trousers found in the scrub are worth carrying, and the men make tea by feel in the dark with no firewood left.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man who owns almost nothing must decide whether a castoff he found is worth carrying, when every ounce on his back counts."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 86,
|
||||
"story": 14,
|
||||
"summary": "A young union labourer, almost a stranger in town, drowns swimming horses; his funeral gathers at a pub, and most of it is too drunk to follow the hearse.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A worker dies among strangers, and the only people who turn out for his burial are those who belonged to his side."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 87,
|
||||
"story": 14,
|
||||
"summary": "A drover is waved away to the bar before he can join; pubs close their front doors as the procession passes, and a drunk shearer pulls himself together to take his hat off.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Strangers along the road show rough respect to a dead man none of them knew, the drunkest of them pulling himself together."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 88,
|
||||
"story": 14,
|
||||
"summary": "A drover walking with the narrator wonders if the dead man's union ticket will count in heaven, and points out that he was the man they joked with on the bank the day before.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Mourners realise the stranger they are burying is the man they brushed off the day before, and wonder what they owed him."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 89,
|
||||
"story": 14,
|
||||
"summary": "At the cemetery the priest's holy water shows up how cheap and shabby the coffin cloth is.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A stranger's burial is done cheaply and quickly, and the small rites only show how little anyone spent on him."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 90,
|
||||
"story": 14,
|
||||
"summary": "A pompous publican holds the priest's hat over his head throughout the service to show off his importance to the church.",
|
||||
"predicament": "At a stranger's burial an important local makes a show of his own piety, and nobody present dares tell him to stop."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 91,
|
||||
"story": 14,
|
||||
"summary": "The gravedigger tries to soften the fall of the clods, but they knock on the coffin all the same.",
|
||||
"predicament": "The one paid to bury a stranger tries to show a little decency, though nothing much can soften the moment for anyone."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 92,
|
||||
"story": 14,
|
||||
"summary": "There is no grieving mate and no letters in his swag, only union papers; his name turns out to be false, and the mourners soon forget it.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A worker who died among strangers leaves nothing behind but his membership papers, and even his name turns out to be false."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,14 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 93,
|
||||
"story": 15,
|
||||
"summary": "Mitchell tells his mate how he came home after eight years without writing to find the family in mourning, having been reported dead, and was smothered with joy.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man who drifted away for years without writing comes home to find his family mourning him, and is smothered with welcome."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 94,
|
||||
"story": 15,
|
||||
"summary": "They made him swear never to leave while his parents lived, but within a week they were grumbling that he could not get work, so he left; he and his mate set off across the plain.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A wanderer swears to stay home for good, but within a week his family are grumbling because he cannot find work there."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 95,
|
||||
"story": 16,
|
||||
"summary": "From the train the narrator sketches the western railway towns: a pub, a store in its shadow, a failed rival shop and a sundowner on the veranda.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A traveller passes one poor settlement after another, where nothing lasts but a place to drink and one dear place to buy."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 96,
|
||||
"story": 16,
|
||||
"summary": "Bushmen with crape on their hats board the train; a ragged sundowner drops his swag and runs at the train, but is only killing a snake.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A traveller sizing up the people along the way sees a ragged wanderer drop everything to kill a danger by the road."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 97,
|
||||
"story": 16,
|
||||
"summary": "The country past Nevertire is parched; shearers watch the train with an independent air, and an unemployed man sent with a labour bureau letter finds his job is a hundred miles off.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man out of work is sent after a place that turns out to be days away on foot, with nothing to eat."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 98,
|
||||
"story": 16,
|
||||
"summary": "A bush liar boasts of lost money, telegrams offering him work anywhere and a boss he thrashed, until a quiet bushman in the corner takes him down.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A loudmouth boasts of the offers pouring in and the bosses he has thrashed, until a quiet man in the corner takes him down."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,20 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 99,
|
||||
"story": 17,
|
||||
"summary": "In a travellers' hut a man tells how hard times sent him upcountry for work, away from a wife he loved, and how he fell in with another woman.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man who left his wife behind to follow work drifts into another life far away, and tells the story for sympathy."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 100,
|
||||
"story": 17,
|
||||
"summary": "His conscience worked on him, he says, so he slaved for a year to save money and went to find his wife, who was struggling alone.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man who deserted his family is driven by conscience to work and save, then go back to try to make amends."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 101,
|
||||
"story": 17,
|
||||
"summary": "He waylaid his children and knocked at sundown; his wife only said, 'Well, so you've come back'; he stayed a year, then deserted her again for good.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man returns to the wife he deserted, is met with weary resignation instead of forgiveness, and in time leaves again for good."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,20 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 102,
|
||||
"story": 18,
|
||||
"summary": "Mitchell plans to go down among the farms, where a farmer once wanted to keep him and the daughters liked his fiddle, and he will never want for tucker.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man with no work dreams aloud of the easy place where he will be welcomed like family and never go hungry again."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 103,
|
||||
"story": 18,
|
||||
"summary": "He imagines shearing the farmer's sheep, growing restless and giving notice, and the farmer demanding to know if he means to marry the girl.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man who dreams of a good position also imagines growing bored and wanting to leave, and being cornered into staying."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 104,
|
||||
"story": 18,
|
||||
"summary": "He will marry her for the farm and two hundred pounds, and tells his mate he can come for tucker if he is hard up, but not while Mitchell is away.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A drifter imagines being bribed into settling down, and promises his old mate a welcome that already comes with conditions."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 105,
|
||||
"story": 19,
|
||||
"summary": "Steelman, a hard case, seeks out old friends who have married and settled, stays to tea, then for the night, then indefinitely, and tells protesting wives he is their husband's guest.",
|
||||
"predicament": "An old companion from wilder days turns up at a settled man's home, invites himself to stay, and cannot be made to leave."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 106,
|
||||
"story": 19,
|
||||
"summary": "The only escape is to move, and he helps with that too; his old schoolmate Brown tries to ease him out by inventing a sister-in-law who needs his room.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A settled man tries to ease out an old friend who has overstayed, blaming his wife's family because he cannot say it straight."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 107,
|
||||
"story": 19,
|
||||
"summary": "Brown flounders and apologises; Steelman cheerfully offers to move into the damp washhouse and borrows a shilling for beer, and Brown gives in.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man trying to tell an old friend to go loses his nerve, and ends up begging him to stay and buying his beer."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 108,
|
||||
"story": 19,
|
||||
"summary": "At last Brown comes home drunk and tries to kick Steelman out, gets a hiding, and is nursed and lectured by him next morning on how to treat a guest.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man who finally tries to throw out an overstaying old friend is beaten, then lectured by him on how to treat a guest."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,20 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 109,
|
||||
"story": 20,
|
||||
"summary": "A swagman walks into a country grocery expecting to surprise old Ben Hake after many years, and learns that Hake sold out and died and that his other friends are gone.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man returns after many years to see old friends and finds, one after another, that they have died or moved away."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 110,
|
||||
"story": 20,
|
||||
"summary": "He asks after more names, all dead or gone, then after Mary Wild, and learns she is the grocer's wife; he refuses to see her and shoulders his swag.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A returning wanderer learns the sweetheart he left behind married the man in front of him, and leaves before she can see him."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 111,
|
||||
"story": 20,
|
||||
"summary": "He notes the fence he helped build twenty years ago, says the people have changed, and drifts out along the track at dusk.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A wanderer finds nothing left for him in the place he came back to, and quietly takes to the road again alone."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 112,
|
||||
"story": 21,
|
||||
"summary": "The narrator praises the custom of mates remailing newspapers to each other; Bill reads his paper through, and others in the camp ask to have it after him.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man who looks forward to one small pleasure must share it round the others before he can pass it to an absent friend."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 113,
|
||||
"story": 21,
|
||||
"summary": "The paper passes round with grumbling and accusation, and when Bill gets it back he hides it away to send to his old mate Jim.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man lends out something he treasures, has to fight to get it back, and keeps it safe for a friend far away."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 114,
|
||||
"story": 21,
|
||||
"summary": "Bill clumsily folds, ties and addresses the paper, finding his old mate's formal name strange to write.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man goes to awkward trouble over a small gift for an old mate, finding even his friend's formal name strange to him."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 115,
|
||||
"story": 21,
|
||||
"summary": "Far away, Jim strolls to the post office on mail night hoping for a paper from Bill; old mates like these seldom write.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man far away goes looking for word from an old mate, though the two of them hardly ever write to each other."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 116,
|
||||
"story": 21,
|
||||
"summary": "Bill marks articles that support his side of an old argument and sends them on; Jim answers in kind, or they send a good joke or notice of an old mate's death.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Two old mates far apart keep an old argument going by post, each sending the other proof he was right all along."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 117,
|
||||
"story": 21,
|
||||
"summary": "Both men once courted the same girl, who married another; Bill sends Jim the notice of her twins' birth with a chuckle, and each sits brooding over the old pain.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Two old friends who lost the same sweetheart to another man reopen the old hurt, half as a joke and half in earnest."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 118,
|
||||
"story": 21,
|
||||
"summary": "The narrator says he would sooner see his own work marked with crosses in a mate's remailed paper than praised by critics.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Someone whose work is judged by others decides a friend's rough mark of approval means more to him than any official praise."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,20 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 119,
|
||||
"story": 22,
|
||||
"summary": "Mitchell vows that if he gets a job again he will stick to it and save, and that if the boss gives him the sack he simply will not take it.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man who has lost every place he ever had resolves that next time he is let go, he simply will not leave."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 120,
|
||||
"story": 22,
|
||||
"summary": "He rehearses telling the boss that taking the sack has been the cause of all his troubles and that he is comfortable and will not go.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A worker told there is no more work for him argues calmly that he is comfortable where he is and will not accept it."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 121,
|
||||
"story": 22,
|
||||
"summary": "Unpaid, he will potter about for his meals until the boss decides he may as well give him regular work, and then he will draw his wages again.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man let go for lack of work stays on for his meals, betting the boss will give him work rather than feed him."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,20 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 122,
|
||||
"story": 23,
|
||||
"summary": "In camp Mitchell recalls a pub he had to leave without paying, the rope he carried to lower his things, and the revolver he kept while waiting for a mate to send a pound.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man down to his last possessions waits for an old mate to send money, with nothing else between him and despair."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 123,
|
||||
"story": 23,
|
||||
"summary": "A stranger in the other bed woke as he raised the window and asked to borrow the rope, so the two teamed up to lower their swags.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Two strangers each planning to slip away from what they owe discover each other and agree to join forces on the spot."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 124,
|
||||
"story": 23,
|
||||
"summary": "The shadow catching the swags was the landlord, who asked why they had not simply told him they were broke, then fed them and sent them off with supplies.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Caught sneaking away from a debt, a man is asked why he did not simply admit he was broke, and is helped instead."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,80 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 125,
|
||||
"story": 24,
|
||||
"summary": "Golden Gully is an abandoned goldfield, its mullock heaps and shafts slowly being reclaimed by scrub under three lone pines.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A place that once promised fortunes lies abandoned and scarred, and the wilderness is slowly closing back over it."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 126,
|
||||
"story": 24,
|
||||
"summary": "Only the stragglers remain, men too poor, old or disheartened to follow the rushes, fossicking in old claims; a boy sits writing on a slate beside a newly rigged windlass.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Those too poor, old or disheartened to follow the next opportunity stay behind to scratch a living from what others abandoned."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 127,
|
||||
"story": 24,
|
||||
"summary": "Little Isley Mason, called His Father's Mate, labours over his copybook; he has always been a favourite of the diggers.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A motherless child raised among hard, lonely men becomes everyone's favourite as he works at his lessons beside his father."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 128,
|
||||
"story": 24,
|
||||
"summary": "Isley winds up the wash-dirt for his father below, insisting he can take bigger loads, and is told to send down the slate for sums.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A small boy proud to do a man's share of the work insists on hauling more than he should to help his father."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 129,
|
||||
"story": 24,
|
||||
"summary": "Tom Mason, a silent hard worker of sixty, stayed on after his wife died; digging by candlelight he is lost in painful memories.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A silent, hardened worker who stayed on after every loss keeps at his work while old griefs rise up in his mind."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 130,
|
||||
"story": 24,
|
||||
"summary": "He remembers sailing out to the goldfields with his brother, full of hope, and the brother's arrest at Ballarat for a killing done in drink and jealousy.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man remembers the hopeful start he shared with a brother, and the night drink and jealousy ended it for good."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 131,
|
||||
"story": 24,
|
||||
"summary": "He remembers troopers taking his seventeen-year-old son for armed robbery while he went on digging, unable to look up.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A father watches the law take away his son, and keeps working mechanically because he cannot bear to look up."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 132,
|
||||
"story": 24,
|
||||
"summary": "His wife died of shame after the trial and hard times; he fears the same fate for Isley and prays for the boy to die before it can come; Long Tom Hopkins is introduced.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man who has lost a brother and a son to disgrace dreads the same end for his last child more than death itself."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 133,
|
||||
"story": 24,
|
||||
"summary": "Long Tom, a good-natured one-eyed digger, stops to chat with Isley and tells him education is a failure.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A kindly old hand who has taken to a hard man's child sits down to talk with the boy about his lessons."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 134,
|
||||
"story": 24,
|
||||
"summary": "Isley proudly winds alone; Tom asks about Isley's lost brother and his father's brother, and takes a newspaper from the father's coat.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A family friend quietly questions a child about the relatives nobody speaks of, keeping his own tie to them hidden."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 135,
|
||||
"story": 24,
|
||||
"summary": "Leaning over the shaft to hear his father, Isley falls when the windlass slips; hauled up, he says goodbye to Tom and his father and dies.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A child eager to help at dangerous work falls to his death, and the hard men around him can do nothing to save him."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 136,
|
||||
"story": 24,
|
||||
"summary": "Tom says 'He never knowed' and Mason answers 'What does it matter?'; the neighbours make a shroud and a woman gives up her prized table for the coffin.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A poor community gives up the few things it prizes to bury a child decently for a grieving, stony father."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 137,
|
||||
"story": 24,
|
||||
"summary": "The women cover the coffin with a riding-skirt and the little funeral leaves in a dray; months later Tom brings a tall young man to Mason's hut, who calls him father.",
|
||||
"predicament": "An old companion brings a disgraced son home to the bitter father who disowned him, and leaves the two face to face."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,14 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 138,
|
||||
"story": 25,
|
||||
"summary": "On the first day back at school the master calls the roll and reads the name of a girl who has died; her sister sobs and the school dunce brightly answers 'Dead, sir'.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Someone in charge of children calls out the name of one who has died, and a slow child answers it far too cheerfully."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 139,
|
||||
"story": 25,
|
||||
"summary": "The master asks for quiet out of respect; the dunce asks what D stands for and is elbowed by a classmate.",
|
||||
"predicament": "When a respectful silence is asked for, a slow child blunders a second time, and a classmate punishes him for it."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 140,
|
||||
"story": 26,
|
||||
"summary": "The cook's sulky, unlovable poodle follows the shearers to the shed each morning; the cook, Curry-and-Rice, is a fat old ship's cook stranded among rouseabouts far from the sea.",
|
||||
"predicament": "An old man out of place among a rough crowd of workers keeps an unlovable pet that trails after them all day."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 141,
|
||||
"story": 26,
|
||||
"summary": "The men chaff the cook, who answers with pathetic speeches about his age, hard work and small wages; at smoko Geordie shears the dog to roars of laughter, and the cook rages at teatime.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A rough crowd plays a cruel joke on an old man's pet for fun, and he confronts all of them over the evening meal."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 142,
|
||||
"story": 26,
|
||||
"summary": "Every man denies knowing anything, and Geordie, who did it, loudly condemns the others for a mean, dirty trick.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Accused over a prank the whole crowd enjoyed, everyone denies it, and the ringleader himself loudly condemns the rest to keep clear."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 143,
|
||||
"story": 26,
|
||||
"summary": "The cook laments his long hours and asks why they could not play the trick on another man's dog; Geordie, trying to look ashamed, catches sight of the dog and explodes with laughter.",
|
||||
"predicament": "An overworked old man complains that the crew he slaves for have no respect for him, and the culprit cannot keep a straight face."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 144,
|
||||
"story": 26,
|
||||
"summary": "The cook sulks for three days, and the men grow sorry and then irritated, until he admits he only minded that the trimmed dog would make him look flash in town.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A crew that went too far with a joke grows sorry, then resentful, until they learn what really stung the one they mocked."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 145,
|
||||
"story": 27,
|
||||
"summary": "On a cold wet night some two hundred unemployed men sleep on the pavements of Sydney under shop verandas, sharing newspapers and rooting in rubbish bins.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Men with no work and nowhere to sleep huddle together on a cold pavement, scavenging for scraps before the day begins."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 146,
|
||||
"story": 27,
|
||||
"summary": "The police look at them as rubbish; the narrator contrasts dossing out in the city with camping in the bush, where a poor man can light a fire, wash and be left alone.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man down and out in the city is treated as rubbish by the law, and longs for the freedom of being poor elsewhere."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 147,
|
||||
"story": 27,
|
||||
"summary": "In the city the outcast cannot light a fire or wash, must cadge breakfast and walk in circles all day, and among well-dressed men he feels despised and criminal.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man out of work among well-dressed crowds feels degraded and suspected, as if being poor were itself a crime."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 148,
|
||||
"story": 27,
|
||||
"summary": "The narrator recalls a night on the streets feeling like a felon; a small businessman left food scraps outside each night for a shadow, who turned out to be an old mate.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man of small means leaves food out each night for a stranger, and finds it is an old mate fallen on hard times."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 149,
|
||||
"story": 27,
|
||||
"summary": "On the quay after midnight an old man carefully folds his best trousers into a pillow, puts on his rags and sleeps.",
|
||||
"predicament": "An old man with almost nothing left guards his one good possession for a better day, sleeping on it in the cold."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,56 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 150,
|
||||
"story": 28,
|
||||
"summary": "The narrator crosses the strait in an old rusty coastal steamer; without competition, fares are high and food is foul, and the passengers pilfer the fruit cargo to survive.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Travellers forced to pay high prices to the only company going are served bad food, and quietly help themselves to the cargo instead."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 151,
|
||||
"story": 28,
|
||||
"summary": "Fares are cheaper now, but the public will patronise the cheapest until the rival is starved out and prices rise again; the crews have grown used to the danger.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Customers chasing the cheapest price help starve out the competition, and then pay dearly once only one seller remains."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 152,
|
||||
"story": 28,
|
||||
"summary": "Rushing for the wharf with little money, he pulls out his ticket to read the boat's name and loses his half-sovereign.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A traveller with almost nothing loses a good part of his money in the rush to catch his passage."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 153,
|
||||
"story": 28,
|
||||
"summary": "He describes searching his pockets again and again for a lost coin and retracing every hurried farewell beer.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man who has lost money he cannot spare searches himself again and again, retracing every drink he had on the way."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 154,
|
||||
"story": 28,
|
||||
"summary": "The lost coin haunts him for months; since part of it was owed to his last landlord, he feels the loss as a judgment and hopes it is enough.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man who lost money he partly owed to someone else feels the loss as a judgment on him for not paying."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 155,
|
||||
"story": 28,
|
||||
"summary": "He once found a lost coin in a pipe bowl months later; he leaves port hoping some poor devil found his, though he would rather have found it himself.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man who lost money he could not spare hopes some poorer soul found it, though he would much rather have found it himself."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 156,
|
||||
"story": 28,
|
||||
"summary": "A sailor calls the old boat safe, then says he could poke a stick through her anywhere; below, sick families lie in the stinking cabin while a young Maori plays a concertina.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A traveller is assured his worn-out transport is safe by a man who then admits it is rotten all the way through."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 157,
|
||||
"story": 28,
|
||||
"summary": "Knocked back down the hatch by a wave, he drinks with the Maori, spending his last half-crown, and decides he will fall on his feet.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A worried traveller shares drinks with a friendly stranger, spends what little he has left, and decides not to care."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 158,
|
||||
"story": 28,
|
||||
"summary": "Landing at Picton, he gloomily wires a friend in the North Island 'Wire quid; stumped', takes a room at a pub and writes the sketch as the candle dies.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Arriving broke among strangers, a traveller sends word to a friend far away asking for money to tide him over."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,80 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 159,
|
||||
"story": 29,
|
||||
"summary": "A drover's wife is left alone with four children in a slab hut nineteen miles from anyone; a snake goes into the woodheap and under the house, and her eldest boy and the dog rush after it.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A wife left alone with small children far from any help finds that a deadly danger has got into their home."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 160,
|
||||
"story": 29,
|
||||
"summary": "She will not take the children into the house, so she puts them to bed on the kitchen table and sits up all night beside them with a club, the dog and her sewing.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Left alone to protect her children, a woman gives up her own sleep to keep watch through the night against a hidden danger."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 161,
|
||||
"story": 29,
|
||||
"summary": "Her eldest son swears and vows to stay awake and kill the snake; a thunderstorm comes on, and the dog's gaze tells her the snake is behind the partition.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Keeping watch alone through a stormy night, a mother calms frightened children while her eager eldest wants to face the danger himself."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 162,
|
||||
"story": 29,
|
||||
"summary": "Her nerves are shaken: a nephew recently died of snakebite, and she has not heard from her husband for six months since drought ruined him and sent him back to droving; her girlish hopes are long dead.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A wife left on her own for months, with no word from a husband gone to find work, has let every girlhood hope die."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 163,
|
||||
"story": 29,
|
||||
"summary": "Her husband is careless but good to her when he has money; she bore her last children alone, helped once by an Aboriginal woman, and rode nineteen miles carrying a dead child.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A wife left alone when she most needed help has faced childbirth and a child's death with only strangers to turn to."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 164,
|
||||
"story": 29,
|
||||
"summary": "Near two in the morning, with the old scarred dog watching the wall, she lays down her sewing and thinks about her life, since there is little else to think about.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Sitting up alone at night, a woman whose life holds little else keeps company with her own hard memories."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 165,
|
||||
"story": 29,
|
||||
"summary": "She remembers fighting a bushfire alone in her husband's trousers with her small son beside her, saved only by four bushmen who arrived in time.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A wife left alone to defend the place fights a disaster far beyond her strength, and is rescued only just in time."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 166,
|
||||
"story": 29,
|
||||
"summary": "She remembers losing the dam to a flood, losing her best cows to disease, shooting a mad bullock and selling its hide, and telling suspicious strangers that her husband and sons are nearby.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A wife alone keeps losing battles against flood and sickness, and pretends her menfolk are close by whenever a stranger calls."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 167,
|
||||
"story": 29,
|
||||
"summary": "Last week she drove off a menacing swagman with a batten and the dog; every Sunday she dresses the children and walks the empty track with the pram, having grown used to the loneliness.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A woman alone faces down a threatening stranger who expected no man about, and keeps up appearances though nobody will see."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 168,
|
||||
"story": 29,
|
||||
"summary": "She is glad but undemonstrative when her husband returns; going for wood before dawn, she finds the woodheap she praised and paid an Aboriginal man for was built hollow, and cries.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A woman who praised and paid someone for honest work finds, at the worst possible moment, that she was cheated."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 169,
|
||||
"story": 29,
|
||||
"summary": "Wiping her eyes, she pokes her fingers through the holes in her handkerchief and laughs, as she once laughed when the cat seemed to cry with her.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A worn-out woman at the end of her tether finds something absurd enough to laugh at instead of weeping."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 170,
|
||||
"story": 29,
|
||||
"summary": "Near daylight the snake shows itself at a crack; the dog drags it out and the woman clubs it to death, holding her eldest back in bed.",
|
||||
"predicament": "After a long night's watch alone, the danger at last shows itself, and a woman and her loyal dog must kill it together."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 171,
|
||||
"story": 29,
|
||||
"summary": "She burns the snake; her son sees her tears, hugs her and vows he will never go droving, and they sit together as day breaks.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Seeing his mother's tears after the long night, a boy vows never to take up the life that leaves a family alone."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 172,
|
||||
"story": 30,
|
||||
"summary": "Steelman, a humorous spieler, takes the weedy, cringing Smith in hand to teach him and beats him when he fails; as Smith sets off to beg at an old Scottish couple's store, Steelman stops him in despair.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A hard, sharp companion takes a weaker one under his wing to teach him the game, and punishes every failure."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 173,
|
||||
"story": 30,
|
||||
"summary": "Steelman calls Smith a born mug, which hurts him most, and wearily offers to stage the business for him.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A domineering companion scorns his pupil as a born fool, then offers to set up the whole scheme for him himself."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 174,
|
||||
"story": 30,
|
||||
"summary": "He dresses Smith in rags and greasepaint as a dying consumptive, and scripts a tale of a faithful mate who gave up his first job in nine months to carry him.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A domineering companion disguises his pupil as a dying man and scripts a tale of loyalty to work on kind strangers."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 175,
|
||||
"story": 30,
|
||||
"summary": "He drills Smith in a Scottish birth, a wronged old mother, the right church and the right symptoms, and threatens him if he comes back empty-handed.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A schemer drills his pupil in every detail that will soften one particular household, and threatens him if he fails."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 176,
|
||||
"story": 30,
|
||||
"summary": "Smith returns laden with food, clothes, medicine and money; later Steelman prospers managing a pub, and Smith turns up broke expecting help.",
|
||||
"predicament": "The pupil's trick succeeds, and later, when his old mentor has done well, he turns up broke expecting to be looked after."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 177,
|
||||
"story": 30,
|
||||
"summary": "Steelman lectures Smith for failing his training and gives him a pound in disgust; later, down again, they team up, and Smith asks to borrow Steelman's overcoat for the night.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man who prospered lectures a broke old companion for failing him, helps him grudgingly, and soon finds himself leaned on again."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 178,
|
||||
"story": 31,
|
||||
"summary": "Brook, fifteen years in the city, lets the cattle through the sliprails of his dead father's old selection, now let to a tenant, and feels contempt for the unhappy boy he was there.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man who escaped a hard early life comes back for a visit and feels more contempt than pity for the youth he was."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 179,
|
||||
"story": 31,
|
||||
"summary": "He studies Lizzie, the tenant's plain, grave niece, who watches without smiling as he struggles with the jammed rails and bangs his knee.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A visitor from the city, on holiday in the place he left, finds himself studying a plain and serious young woman there."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 180,
|
||||
"story": 31,
|
||||
"summary": "Sitting on a log at dusk he tells her he leaves tomorrow, puts his arm round her and asks if she could love him.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A worldly visitor about to leave presses an inexperienced young woman to say that she could love him."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 181,
|
||||
"story": 31,
|
||||
"summary": "He kisses her, draws her behind a bush, and presses her until she promises to walk with him by moonlight, though she fears her aunt and parents would not like it.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A worldly man leaving soon presses an inexperienced young woman into a secret meeting she fears is wrong."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 182,
|
||||
"story": 31,
|
||||
"summary": "Next morning he helps her milk, though the work brings back the past he despises, and they kiss over the strainer in the dairy.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man who despises the hard life he left joins in its chores for a few days, for a young woman's attention."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 183,
|
||||
"story": 31,
|
||||
"summary": "After a week of moonlight walks he leaves by coach; she waves hopelessly and buries her face in her hands; he goes straight to a bar in the city, and they say she broke her heart.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A visitor who trifled with a young woman for a week goes back to his own life and leaves her heartbroken."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 184,
|
||||
"story": 32,
|
||||
"summary": "An unemployed man drags himself back to his boarding house at one on Saturday, asks hopelessly for letters, and says he has eaten when he has not.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man out of work comes back to his lodgings after a fruitless week, hoping for news, and pretends he has eaten."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 185,
|
||||
"story": 32,
|
||||
"summary": "A slovenly daughter is scrubbing his room, so he lies on the parlour sofa under the landlady's disapproval; he is two weeks behind, and her politeness has cooled.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A lodger who has fallen behind finds the politeness of the one he owes turning cold, however well he paid before."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 186,
|
||||
"story": 32,
|
||||
"summary": "A sly child comes to tidy the parlour, so he takes his hat and goes out again, wishing he were upcountry or dead.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man behind on what he owes is made unwelcome in the only home he has, and has nowhere else to rest."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 187,
|
||||
"story": 32,
|
||||
"summary": "The landlady corners him in the passage for hours about her respectability, her boarders and her children, saying she could never be hard on a young man out of work.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man who owes money must stand and listen for hours to the one he owes, because she has him cornered and knows it."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 188,
|
||||
"story": 32,
|
||||
"summary": "He was steered there by a furniture dealer who praised the landlady and took a commission; after paying in advance he found extras charged and food of the worst kind.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A newcomer who paid in advance on a stranger's recommendation finds the promises were lies and the recommender was paid."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 189,
|
||||
"story": 32,
|
||||
"summary": "A timid boarder tells the landlady he must leave because the place is too far from work, inventing excuses rather than the truth, while she gushes and asks him to send her new boarders.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man who wants to leave a bad arrangement is too timid to say why, and invents polite excuses instead."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,14 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 190,
|
||||
"story": 33,
|
||||
"summary": "The narrator meets an old schoolmate, now a lank, red-bearded man on his father's farm, who answers everything with 'My oath!' and says the old schoolmaster 'finished' his education.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man back from years in the city meets an old schoolfellow who stayed behind, and they find nothing left to say."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 191,
|
||||
"story": 33,
|
||||
"summary": "The schoolmate says he is thinking of training as a teacher, grows uneasy at talk of the old school and escapes; the narrator wonders which of them has changed.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Two old schoolfellows let the talk die, and the one who went away wonders which of them has really changed."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 192,
|
||||
"story": 34,
|
||||
"summary": "Mitchell tells his mate about a girl visiting his sister whom he loved but thought too good for a rough, ugly man like him, so he kept away and took two or three years' work near the border.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A rough man sure the woman he loves could never want him keeps his distance, and takes work far away to escape it."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 193,
|
||||
"story": 34,
|
||||
"summary": "On the platform as he left she cried and held up her arms to him; his mate asks if he will go back and marry her some day.",
|
||||
"predicament": "At the last moment before leaving, a man learns that the woman he kept away from loved him all along."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 194,
|
||||
"story": 34,
|
||||
"summary": "'Some day,' says Mitchell bitterly: he swore never to go home without a cheque, the cheque days are over, and the track slowly turns a man's heart into a bullock's.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man who swore never to go home without money to show has been on the road so long he has stopped hoping."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 195,
|
||||
"story": 34,
|
||||
"summary": "He admits he is out of sorts, and they roll out their swags for the long dry stretch tomorrow.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man who opened his heart for a moment closes it again and settles down before the long, hard day ahead."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 196,
|
||||
"story": 35,
|
||||
"summary": "A rough boy, Bill, turns up at Jones's Alley to warn Arvie that another lad will take his job if he does not come to work tomorrow, and learns from the mother that Arvie is dead.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A rough youngster comes to warn a workmate that someone will take his place, and learns that the workmate has died."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 197,
|
||||
"story": 35,
|
||||
"summary": "Bill asks to see him, takes his hat off, sizes up the pauper coffin, and lays his hand on the dead boy's forehead before covering the weakness with a question.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A rough youngster who is ashamed of softness views the body of a workmate and lets a moment of tenderness show."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 198,
|
||||
"story": 35,
|
||||
"summary": "Bill and the mother find their stories alike: fathers who died suddenly at work, mothers who scrub offices and wash; she wishes she were dead, and he tells her to cheer up.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A grieving mother and a rough boy find they share one hard story: fathers dead at work, mothers scrubbing to live."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 199,
|
||||
"story": 35,
|
||||
"summary": "Bill tells her Arvie was kept at the same work, dared not ask for a rise for fear of the sack, and was bullied by the other boys; she never knew, for he never complained.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A mother learns from a workmate that her child was bullied and held down at work, and never said a word about it."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 200,
|
||||
"story": 35,
|
||||
"summary": "Bill says kids get sharp in the alley, offers to mend her step and sends his own mother to help lay Arvie out, though he cannot come to the funeral because he must work.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A rough youngster who cannot take time off work for a funeral offers what practical help he can give instead."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 201,
|
||||
"story": 36,
|
||||
"summary": "From a train in heavy rain beyond Bourke the narrator sees dismal flooded plains, a swagman's camp and a platform of patient, damp townsfolk.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A traveller passing through a drowned, dismal country sees the camps of men with nowhere else to be."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 202,
|
||||
"story": 36,
|
||||
"summary": "He sees a swagman trudging hopelessly through the mud with a dingo at his heels, a hawker's sorry turnout and a teamster's camp.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A traveller glimpses a lone man trudging through the mud with no hope in his face, going nowhere in particular."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 203,
|
||||
"story": 36,
|
||||
"summary": "At shanties on a mud flat, forlorn horses wait outside a pub, and three drovers bring a small flock in across the flat, bound for the shanty once the sheep are yarded.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Men at the end of a long, wet day's work bring the stock in and head straight for the only warm place: drink."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 204,
|
||||
"story": 36,
|
||||
"summary": "The narrator is travelling on a drover's pass in charge of cattle trucks, obtained after two humiliating weeks besieging local influence to escape the bush; the note of introduction says 'send this beggar on'.",
|
||||
"predicament": "To get out of a place with no work, a man must beg a favour from someone with influence and swallow every humiliation."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 205,
|
||||
"story": 36,
|
||||
"summary": "He spends a freezing night in an ancient van while bushmen open the windows at every stop, and the weather clears for the cities.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man who begged his way out of a hard country endures a cold, wretched night on the road back."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,20 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 206,
|
||||
"story": 37,
|
||||
"summary": "Three shearers on a lonely plain see what looks like a man beating a woman, hurry to stop it, and find old Rats, a crazed swagman, fighting his own swag.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Travellers hurry to stop what looks like a brutal attack on the road, and find a lonely old man fighting his own belongings."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 207,
|
||||
"story": 37,
|
||||
"summary": "Rats says the swag knocked him down first, so the shearers stage a mock boxing match, seconding the swag and betting, and award him the fight.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Travellers who meet a harmless old man gone strange from loneliness choose to humour his delusion rather than mock him."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 208,
|
||||
"story": 37,
|
||||
"summary": "Rats borrows meat for bait and fishes imaginary cod in the grass; before they move on, Sunlight gives him half a crown and tucker and tells him to reach the water before dark.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Before moving on, a traveller quietly gives what money and food he can spare to a lonely old man who has lost his wits."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,14 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 209,
|
||||
"story": 38,
|
||||
"summary": "At a mean station Mitchell asks the manager for any work, is refused, and asks for rations instead; told to kill a sheep and take a forequarter, he takes a hindquarter.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Asking a mean boss for work and getting none, a man settles for a handout and quietly helps himself to the better share."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 210,
|
||||
"story": 38,
|
||||
"summary": "He keeps the lonely cook talking while the cook fills his bags generously and hands over cooked beef and cake; the cook and overseer decide he is a bit gone, but he is only a city man who has been around.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man begging supplies keeps a lonely worker talking so pleasantly that he hands over far more than he meant to."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,68 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 211,
|
||||
"story": 39,
|
||||
"summary": "On a scorching Christmas Day an old hut-keeping shepherd plans to yard the sheep early without the super knowing, cooks his dinner and thinks of digging up an Aboriginal grave.",
|
||||
"predicament": "An old man alone at a remote post decides to knock off early for the holiday, sure that the boss will never know."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 212,
|
||||
"story": 39,
|
||||
"summary": "He shares his Christmas dinner with his dog Five Bob, yards the sheep, and walks three miles to dig up the grave for its bones.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A solitary old man makes a holiday out of almost nothing, with only his dog for company, and goes hunting for curiosities."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 213,
|
||||
"story": 39,
|
||||
"summary": "Coming home through a gully he finds the sun-dried body of a man lying face down under a sapling.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man alone far from anyone stumbles on the body of someone who died out there with no help at all."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 214,
|
||||
"story": 39,
|
||||
"summary": "From the boots and the rum bottle he recognises Brummy, an old mate who could earn more than any man but drank it all, and scolds the corpse before pocketing the rum.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man finds that an old mate who could never stay off the drink has finally drunk himself to death, alone."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 215,
|
||||
"story": 39,
|
||||
"summary": "He sandwiches the body between sheets of bark, tears strips from his only shirt to tie it, and carries Brummy home on his shoulder with the bag of bones.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man with almost nothing gives up part of what little he owns to carry home the body of an old mate decently."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 216,
|
||||
"story": 39,
|
||||
"summary": "On the way he keeps stopping for pulls at the rum, while black goannas keep appearing and his dog will not touch them.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Carrying home a dead mate, a man steadies himself with the dead man's own drink while something keeps following them."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 217,
|
||||
"story": 39,
|
||||
"summary": "At the hut the corpse falls against him and later seems to stare from empty sockets; he threatens it not to play jokes on him.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Alone at night with the body of an old mate, a man is badly frightened and scolds the dead man to steady himself."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 218,
|
||||
"story": 39,
|
||||
"summary": "He wakes after dark to a rustling on the roof, searches with his shotgun, and finally sits up outside to watch till dawn.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man alone at night hears something he cannot explain, and sits up armed and watching until he knows what it is."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 219,
|
||||
"story": 39,
|
||||
"summary": "He shoots a goanna that had been feeding on the body; unable to leave the sheep to report the death, he decides to bury Brummy himself.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Unable to leave his charge to fetch anyone, a man alone takes on the burial of an old mate by himself."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 220,
|
||||
"story": 39,
|
||||
"summary": "He lowers the body into the grave and, leaning on his spade, remembers the past and says tomorrow has come for Brummy and is coming for him.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Burying an old mate who drank himself to death, a lonely man remembers their past and feels his own end coming."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 221,
|
||||
"story": 39,
|
||||
"summary": "Feeling something ought to be said, he takes off his hat and recites a garbled 'ashes to ashes' in hope of the resurrection, then walks back to the hut.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A rough, lonely man wants to say something proper over an old mate's grave and does his best with half-remembered words."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 222,
|
||||
"story": 40,
|
||||
"summary": "The narrator and Mitchell reach water two hours after dark following a twenty-five-mile dry stretch on their third day out, too stiff to sit down.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Two mates reach water after a brutal day on foot, so worn out that even stopping to rest will hurt."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 223,
|
||||
"story": 40,
|
||||
"summary": "Lying on their swags with tea and pipes, they curse society for not being rich, and Mitchell recalls starting to smoke at fifteen by minding an admired older youth's pipe.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Resting after a hard day, a man recalls copying an older youth he admired in a habit his family forbade."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 224,
|
||||
"story": 40,
|
||||
"summary": "His mother caught him sick, took the pipe and returned it to its owner; she burned his next pipe and hid his tobacco, which his father seemed to have smoked.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A youngster caught at a forbidden habit blames the one who lent him the means, and keeps at it in secret anyway."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 225,
|
||||
"story": 40,
|
||||
"summary": "He hid the bowl and stem of a cherry pipe separately, but she sniffed out the bowl; he switched to cigars, then a pipe again until she gave in; she has been dead seventeen years.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A youngster keeps dodging a parent over a forbidden habit until she gives up, and years later remembers her with regret."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 226,
|
||||
"story": 40,
|
||||
"summary": "His father, kept on an allowance by his mother, livened up on learning of it and asked him for a fill; they had many quiet smokes together, and he has been dead twelve years.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A son finds that his father, kept on a tight allowance, is glad to share his forbidden habit behind the mother's back."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,98 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 227,
|
||||
"story": 41,
|
||||
"summary": "The New Zealand steamer waits inside Sydney Heads to take on English immigrants, one of whom, a radical, complains that bankers rob widows unpunished while a poor man is transported for a shilling.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Travellers leaving to look for work meet a newcomer who complains that the rich rob freely while the poor are punished hard."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 228,
|
||||
"story": 41,
|
||||
"summary": "After being told transportation is long over, the newcomer is unconvinced; passenger after passenger points to a different part of the cliff as the place of a famous wreck.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Everyone on a crowded passage repeats the same old local story, each man sure that he alone knows the right spot."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 229,
|
||||
"story": 41,
|
||||
"summary": "The narrator travels steerage with shearers, tradesmen, labourers and clerks driven from Australia by hard times; a bagman whose girl thought he was travelling saloon gives her flower to the stewardess.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Men driven abroad by hard times crowd the cheapest berths, and one has hidden from his sweetheart that he could not afford better."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 230,
|
||||
"story": 41,
|
||||
"summary": "A well-known Sydney man spends his last shilling treating friends and waves from the saloon deck for the sake of proud female relatives, then comes forward to steerage, bitterly proud.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man leaving home broke spends his last money keeping up appearances for proud relatives who come to see him off."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 231,
|
||||
"story": 41,
|
||||
"summary": "The drunk shearers befriend a saloon dandy who makes a fool of himself; passengers buy sour beer from a reticent, failed-looking steward.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Rough travellers drink with a well-off stranger slumming it among them, and he makes a thorough fool of himself."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 232,
|
||||
"story": 41,
|
||||
"summary": "Men of better days undress furtively, ashamed of their poor underwear, while the drunk shearers and their friends keep up a noisy concert late into the night.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Men who have come down in the world hide their poverty from their neighbours in the cramped quarters of the cheapest berths."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 233,
|
||||
"story": 41,
|
||||
"summary": "The drinkers argue drunkenly about women voting and about working men in parliament, while another tries to finish a yarn in which he is the hero.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Men thrown together by hard times argue about who will really stand up for working people, while one keeps boasting."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 234,
|
||||
"story": 41,
|
||||
"summary": "A quarrel over 'horny heads' is smoothed over with a flask; a shearer boasts of flooring the boss-over-the-board and two blacklegs until a voice begs him to give it a rest.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man boasts to strangers of defying a boss and beating the men brought in against him, until someone tells him to stop."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 235,
|
||||
"story": 41,
|
||||
"summary": "The narrator describes the dim steerage: drunk shearers asleep with knuckles on the deck, two young Swiss emigrants with a dictionary, and a consumptive newcomer staring at nothing.",
|
||||
"predicament": "In the dim, cheap berths, drunken workers sleep it off beside young foreigners learning the language and a sick man staring at nothing."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 236,
|
||||
"story": 41,
|
||||
"summary": "The consumptive newcomer is sick in the night; next morning the men idle about the deck, smoking, playing quoits and eyeing a huge log lashed by the hatch.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Men who sold up to seek work abroad kill the idle hours of the passage, with nothing to do but watch and wait."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 237,
|
||||
"story": 41,
|
||||
"summary": "A bloated first-class Englishman comes forward to gawk at the steerage as if it were a zoo until the comedian silently points him aft; the men grumble about the food.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A well-off stranger comes to gawk at poor travellers like a sideshow, and one of them silently shows him the door."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 238,
|
||||
"story": 41,
|
||||
"summary": "A shearer tops the complaints with a tall tale of meat so bad out west that it had to be chained up and shepherded by dogs; the Sydney man starts a dog yarn.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Men grumbling about poor food are topped by a veteran's tall tale of how much worse it was where he worked."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 239,
|
||||
"story": 41,
|
||||
"summary": "The Sydney man's yarn falls flat, and a commercial traveller tells of a bag that knew its own way into pubs, until the steward turns off the light.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Strangers pass a dull night swapping ever taller tales, each trying to outdo the last, until the light goes out on them."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 240,
|
||||
"story": 41,
|
||||
"summary": "Oranges vanish from the deck cargo; a shearer blames the saloon passengers, the comedian drops the narrator an orange, and no man dares complain about the peel lest he seem an informer.",
|
||||
"predicament": "When some of the group steal from the cargo, everyone shares the spoils and keeps quiet rather than be taken for an informer."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 241,
|
||||
"story": 41,
|
||||
"summary": "Two jokers eat a stolen pineapple by an open porthole; next day the men argue it is no sin to rob a company that underfeeds them, feel mean when told a poor grower may bear the loss, and feel better when blamed on a middleman.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Men who helped themselves to someone else's goods argue it was no wrong, until one asks whether a poor man bears the loss."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 242,
|
||||
"story": 41,
|
||||
"summary": "The women appear near the end, young wives with babies whose husbands go ahead to earn enough to send for them; nearing land the men face again the question of how to make a living.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Men who left their wives behind to go ahead and find work sight the new shore, and the fear of finding none returns."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 243,
|
||||
"story": 42,
|
||||
"summary": "Malachi, a tall, shabby, simple station hand who has barely left the bush, is the butt of all the boys' jokes and never protests beyond 'Now, none of your pranktical jokes!'",
|
||||
"predicament": "A simple, shabby workmate becomes the whole crew's butt, and never protests beyond a mild word or two."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 244,
|
||||
"story": 42,
|
||||
"summary": "The boys graduate to forged letters from women threatening breach of promise, in the long words he hates; a visiting bricklayer who dabbles in phrenology and seances offers a bigger joke.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A crew's jokes on a slow, trusting workmate grow crueller, playing on everything he fears or dislikes."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 245,
|
||||
"story": 42,
|
||||
"summary": "They get Malachi's bumps read at a seance, then persuade him the bricklayer kills people for their skulls and admires his.",
|
||||
"predicament": "The crew persuades a trusting workmate that a visiting stranger means him harm, and watches his fear grow."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 246,
|
||||
"story": 42,
|
||||
"summary": "On his last night the bricklayer walks into Malachi's hut with a pumpkin in a bag, claims it is another man's skull, and says he has come for Malachi's.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A trusting man alone at night is confronted by the very stranger he has been told wants to kill him."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 247,
|
||||
"story": 42,
|
||||
"summary": "Malachi offers his skeleton after death, then bursts out through the bark wall and runs for the station, while the hidden jokers laugh themselves sick.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A frightened man bursts out of the trap the crew set for him, and the jokers laugh at him until they ache."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 248,
|
||||
"story": 42,
|
||||
"summary": "When a cow charges the squatter's daughter and her city fiance runs for the fence, Malachi stops it barehanded and is gored; dying, he wonders how his mother will manage.",
|
||||
"predicament": "The crew's despised butt dies saving someone a smarter man abandoned, and they learn that others depended on him."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 249,
|
||||
"story": 42,
|
||||
"summary": "He tells them he and his mother were saving to provide for his blind younger brother; the narrator regrets the jokes, and the men take up a collection for the brother.",
|
||||
"predicament": "The men who mocked a dead workmate learn he was quietly supporting his family, and try too late to make amends."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,20 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 250,
|
||||
"story": 43,
|
||||
"summary": "Mitchell explains that nothing maddens a dog like another dog sniffing at him through his fence; the inside dog starts it and would kill even his own brother if he got out.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Someone penned in rages at another who is free to come and go, even when the other means no harm at all."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 251,
|
||||
"story": 43,
|
||||
"summary": "Sometimes the outside dog grins, but sometimes he is short-tempered, like peaceful men who never start a row but keep it going because the other started it.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Two people who each claim the other started the quarrel keep it going, each blaming the other for losing his temper."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 252,
|
||||
"story": 43,
|
||||
"summary": "Then they go at it like a war, though if the same two dogs met outside they might become the best of mates.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Two who would be friends anywhere else are made bitter enemies by the barrier standing between them."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,92 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 253,
|
||||
"story": 44,
|
||||
"summary": "Mrs Aspinall cleans offices, washes and nurses from dawn to dark to keep her sickly children, dreading the return of a husband supposed dead and buying off a loafing elder son.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A worn-out mother works every waking hour to keep her family, while the men who should help her only take from her."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 254,
|
||||
"story": 44,
|
||||
"summary": "In her spare time she sews new cuffs on gentlemen's shirts for a landlady who charges double; being called 'Misses' and respectable is the one thing she has left, and her house is falling down.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A woman doing piecework for someone who takes half the pay clings to her respectability as the one thing she has left."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 255,
|
||||
"story": 44,
|
||||
"summary": "Only after plaster falls and injures a child does the landlord agree to repairs; the agent had always said it was not his business, and the landlord has evicted fifteen-year tenants for six weeks' arrears.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A tenant whose home is falling down gets nothing from the people she pays but excuses, each saying it is not his business."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 256,
|
||||
"story": 44,
|
||||
"summary": "The contractor's men botch the work and bill her; contractor, landlord and agent each refer her to another, and she is sued while her grocer and wood-man press her for the first time in years.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A woman billed for repairs she never ordered is passed from one person to the next until the whole debt lands on her."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 257,
|
||||
"story": 44,
|
||||
"summary": "The landlord refuses her; she gets sympathy but no help, and scorns the practical help of the brothel-keeper opposite; nobody considers that the landlord himself has been ruined in the crash.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A woman in trouble finds plenty of sympathy but no help, and refuses the one real offer from someone she thinks beneath her."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 258,
|
||||
"story": 44,
|
||||
"summary": "Her greengrocer gives her credit; in the local court the magistrate greets the landlord, finds against her in a moment, and she is steered out into the crowd with no one to listen.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A poor woman sued by someone on good terms with the one judging loses in a moment and is hustled out unheard."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 259,
|
||||
"story": 44,
|
||||
"summary": "Billy Anderson, who worked with her dead son Arvie, recognises her outside the court and offers to walk her home.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A woman at her lowest meets a young man who once worked beside her dead son, and he offers to walk her home."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 260,
|
||||
"story": 44,
|
||||
"summary": "She cannot afford the tram; she tells her troubles over and over while Bill repeats that it is red-hot, and admits her second husband ran off and is supposed dead.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A worn-out woman pours out her troubles to a sympathetic youngster, who listens patiently and asks what nobody else will."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 261,
|
||||
"story": 44,
|
||||
"summary": "Bill says his mother remarried for his sake and left him a stepfamily to support; he quit the factory because his stepfather waited for his pay, and now sells papers.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A youngster who quit underpaid work to escape a sponging stepfather can only fall back on work that pays nothing."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 262,
|
||||
"story": 44,
|
||||
"summary": "He lost his carting jobs when the banks failed and his boss went bankrupt, and the paper trade is overcrowded; he asks her why she does not go to the sister-in-law who keeps inviting her.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A friend asks a woman drowning in debt why she will not accept the refuge a relative keeps offering her."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 263,
|
||||
"story": 44,
|
||||
"summary": "She says the landlord would not let her take her furniture if she left; Bill offers to move her that night with a mate's cart and his push, for nothing, saying the landlord can do nothing.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A youngster offers to move a woman out by night before the one she owes can seize her goods, asking nothing back."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 264,
|
||||
"story": 44,
|
||||
"summary": "She hesitates over losing her few things, especially the ironing table, then agrees; at eight Bill arrives with his push, lounging by the window while one keeps watch.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A frightened woman decides to trust a young friend's plan to slip away with her few belongings before they are taken."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 265,
|
||||
"story": 44,
|
||||
"summary": "Chinny arrives with a bony horse and a spliced bottle-cart; the boys eagerly load the furniture, the ironing table upside down with the rest between its legs.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A band of rough youngsters turns out at night to help a woman in trouble, eager to lend a hand for nothing."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 266,
|
||||
"story": 44,
|
||||
"summary": "A policeman stands under the lamp opposite, apparently seeing nothing, an old Irishman who once resisted evictions himself; they go ahead, Bill carrying two of the children.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Helping a woman slip away from her debts, the helpers are watched by someone in authority who chooses to look the other way."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 267,
|
||||
"story": 44,
|
||||
"summary": "Chinny drags the horse and cart out of the gutter with the mangy dog behind; the push vanishes, and the policeman is already two blocks off, walking very straight the other way.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A night flight gets away quietly while the one person who could stop it walks steadily off in the other direction."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 268,
|
||||
"story": 45,
|
||||
"summary": "An old swagman tells the narrator that most old bushmen have been reported dead at some time, and that he himself was better thought of by his friends when they believed him dead.",
|
||||
"predicament": "An old wanderer admits that his friends thought better of him while they believed him dead than they ever did alive."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 269,
|
||||
"story": 45,
|
||||
"summary": "Billy Nowlett, a bullock-driver, was reported dead by a publican who sent the widow five pounds; she managed better without him, an old digger began courting her, and then Billy turned up.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man reported dead turns up to find his wife managing better without him and a neighbour sitting by her fire."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 270,
|
||||
"story": 45,
|
||||
"summary": "Billy had been confused with another driver; young Joe Swallow was buried and his ghost seen, until Joe turned up and people decided the ghost had been someone else's all along.",
|
||||
"predicament": "People who made up their minds about who died adjust their story rather than admit they were ever wrong."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 271,
|
||||
"story": 45,
|
||||
"summary": "A bushranger shot in a hold-up was identified by a tattoo as Brummy Usen, a sawmill hand; when the real Brummy turned up, the obstinate neighbours would not believe he was alive.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man wrongly declared dead comes back, and nobody will believe he is who he says he is."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 272,
|
||||
"story": 45,
|
||||
"summary": "Only the publican's wife believed him; he could not collect the wages owed him or convince the police, so he went away to start again; the old swagman then shows the same tattoo on his own arm.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man everyone insists is dead cannot even claim the wages he is owed, so he gives up his name and starts again."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 273,
|
||||
"story": 46,
|
||||
"summary": "Bogg, the town drunk regularly fined in the police court, once wandered into the newspaper office and corrected the editor's proofs, Latin and all.",
|
||||
"predicament": "The town drunk, fined and locked up as a matter of routine, shows a learning nobody expects by correcting his betters' work."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 274,
|
||||
"story": 46,
|
||||
"summary": "A young doctor hears Bogg muttering in a bar and recognises a passage of Homer and a Dublin University song: he must once have been a classical scholar.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A newcomer recognises in the town drunk the ruins of an educated man, and wonders sadly what brought him so low."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 275,
|
||||
"story": 46,
|
||||
"summary": "Sober, Bogg fossicks and splits palings, keeps his credit good and feeds any sundowner; larrikins come to play a ghost joke on him, but their leader sees him grieving over a letter, a portrait and a lock of hair.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Youths planning a cruel joke on a lonely drunk glimpse him grieving over old keepsakes, and their leader calls it off."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 276,
|
||||
"story": 46,
|
||||
"summary": "The leader makes the gang leave Bogg alone; days later the paper reports him drowned in the river, apparently by his own hand, his sorrows unknown.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A bully shields a lonely man from his own gang, but the lonely man's private grief ends his life anyway."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 277,
|
||||
"story": 47,
|
||||
"summary": "Two dusty shearers sit down to dinner at a pub where a pretty servant girl is laughing and joking with some young gentlemen, but she will not say a word to the shearers, whatever Dave tries.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Two rough workers are snubbed by someone who was all smiles for their betters, and set out to make her notice them."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 278,
|
||||
"story": 47,
|
||||
"summary": "Dave tries flattery and gossip without a word from her, then bets his mate five pounds he will make her speak.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Snubbed by the one serving them, two rough men try every trick to get a word out of her, and bet on it."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 279,
|
||||
"story": 47,
|
||||
"summary": "They keep passing their cups for more tea, grumbling at its weakness, until they are brimming over; she refills them without a word or a sign of temper.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Two men determined to break a snub keep making demands until the joke is on them, and she still says nothing."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 280,
|
||||
"story": 47,
|
||||
"summary": "After a dozen cups each and nearly an hour, they give up and leave their cups half full, and sit outside to let the tea settle before taking the track.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Two men who tried to force a response from someone who snubbed them give up at last, beaten by her silence."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,74 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 281,
|
||||
"story": 48,
|
||||
"summary": "Steelman and Smith reach a cooperative gang working on a new railway line in New Zealand; a gloomy navvy tells them the boss is only the party's elected spokesman.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Two tricksters looking for free board approach a gang of hard-working men and ask who is in charge."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 282,
|
||||
"story": 48,
|
||||
"summary": "Steelman, dressed as a scientific gentleman with Smith as his servant, chats with the young spokesman, who says they worked the swamps up to their waists in midwinter for eighteenpence a yard.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A trickster posing as a gentleman of learning chats up the leader of a hard-worked gang, sizing him up as an easy mark."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 283,
|
||||
"story": 48,
|
||||
"summary": "Asked if he is a commercial traveller, Steelman introduces himself as Stoneleigh the geologist, with Smith as his man, and watches the boss grow uncertain.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A trickster introduces himself with an impressive false title and a hired helper in tow, and waits for the other to be impressed."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 284,
|
||||
"story": 48,
|
||||
"summary": "He claims to be vice-president of a geological society and lectures on the strata of the cutting as if reading a book.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A trickster wins over a plain working man with a flood of learned-sounding nonsense about his own place of work."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 285,
|
||||
"story": 48,
|
||||
"summary": "He declares the country geologically ancient, sends Smith up a slippery bank for a specimen, and talks of upheavals and restoring the mineral kingdom.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A pretender keeps up a show of expertise and orders his companion about to make the act more convincing."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 286,
|
||||
"story": 48,
|
||||
"summary": "He says the rock is rotting, which makes their work easier, hints at gold, tin and silver in the gullies, and asks where he might find lodgings.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Having dazzled his listener, a trickster drops a hint of hidden riches and angles for a free place to stay."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 287,
|
||||
"story": 48,
|
||||
"summary": "The boss invites them to camp with the party and use an empty hut; after tea Steelman lectures the more thoughtful men.",
|
||||
"predicament": "The leader of a working crew, taken in by a learned stranger, offers him shelter and hospitality for as long as he likes."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 288,
|
||||
"story": 48,
|
||||
"summary": "Smith entertains the other men, and in drink calls geology bosh and his employer Old Rocks, while praising his easy, well-paid billet.",
|
||||
"predicament": "The trickster's sidekick, loosened by drink, grumbles about his supposed master to the workers, which only adds to the act."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 289,
|
||||
"story": 48,
|
||||
"summary": "In the hut Steelman reads a cheap adventure novel, then hurriedly resumes his spectacles when a serious navvy brings coffee and cake and asks if they are comfortable.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Hard-working men who have little themselves go out of their way to make a pair of pretending strangers comfortable."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 290,
|
||||
"story": 48,
|
||||
"summary": "The pair wink and chuckle in the dark; they stay on for days, poking at rocks in sight of the works each morning, then loafing in the bush till dinner and lecturing on stones at night.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Two tricksters settle in as guests of a working crew, making a show of work each morning and loafing out of sight all day."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 291,
|
||||
"story": 48,
|
||||
"summary": "A grinning young navvy tells Steelman the boss is a university man and the country's best mineralogist, ruined by drink; Steelman decides to stay one more day and take them down.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A trickster learns that his host may know far more than he ever pretended to, and wonders whether the joke is on him."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 292,
|
||||
"story": 48,
|
||||
"summary": "Another man says the boss can barely write his name and that the grinning navvy is the college man; Steelman decides there is too much humour in the camp and they leave next day.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Unsure which of his hosts has seen through him, a trickster decides it is time to move on before he is exposed."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 293,
|
||||
"story": 49,
|
||||
"summary": "Drinkers in a shanty run down Macquarie, an absent shearer, as a loafer and a liar; an old ruined drunk called Awful Example rises to say Macquarie was his mate.",
|
||||
"predicament": "When a crowd runs down an absent man, a broken old drunk who was once his mate stands up to defend him."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 294,
|
||||
"story": 49,
|
||||
"summary": "The old man denies each charge and says Macquarie never talked about any man behind his back, and the room falls into an uneasy silence.",
|
||||
"predicament": "An old man shames a crowd of gossips by saying that the absent man never spoke ill of anyone behind his back."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 295,
|
||||
"story": 49,
|
||||
"summary": "Barcoo says Macquarie was a bully who smashed smaller men; the old man says Macquarie is dead, and the drinkers shuffle and find reasons to go outside; a gaunt stranger rides up to the back.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Told that the man they slandered is dead, a crowd of gossips shift uncomfortably and find excuses to be somewhere else."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 296,
|
||||
"story": 49,
|
||||
"summary": "Sally Thompson argues there is too much sentiment about the dead and justice is owed to the living; Barcoo calls Macquarie a spieler, and the old man says he has one more point.",
|
||||
"predicament": "The gossips rally round a reason for speaking ill of the dead, and the old man stubbornly insists on having his say."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 297,
|
||||
"story": 49,
|
||||
"summary": "The old man shouts that Macquarie's mate is alive and squares up to fight Barcoo; the stranger pins him from behind and says 'It's Macquarie, old mate', and Barcoo rides off.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A broken old man squares up to fight for an absent mate's name, and the mate himself walks in to stand beside him."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 298,
|
||||
"story": 50,
|
||||
"summary": "Baldy Thompson, an old squatter who has been everything from swagman to politician and is now at the banks' mercy, grumbles to travellers that he cannot afford to take on more men.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A boss who once did every kind of work himself turns travellers away, pleading hard times, though he can never quite refuse them."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 299,
|
||||
"story": 50,
|
||||
"summary": "He sends them for rations and argues politics all night; travellers flatter his views to get a full nosebag; shearers once woke him with a false fire alarm, and he sacked them all, but they worked as usual next day.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Travellers learn that the way to a boss's charity is to flatter his opinions, and he half knows it and pays anyway."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 300,
|
||||
"story": 50,
|
||||
"summary": "Taken for a fellow rouseabout by a jackaroo, Baldy calls Thompson the meanest squatter alive and then gives the lad tucker from the store; the narrator once got rations by repeating Baldy's own ideas to him.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A boss mistaken for one of his own workers runs himself down as the meanest boss alive, then feeds the stranger anyway."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 301,
|
||||
"story": 50,
|
||||
"summary": "Next morning the narrator agreed with him some more and got a sovereign, but learned later that the best way to win Baldy was to disagree with him on every point.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A man who flattered a generous boss to get help learns that honest disagreement would have won him more respect."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
|
||||
[
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 302,
|
||||
"story": 51,
|
||||
"summary": "Ten mates gather on the wharf to see off their first mate, a carpenter who can get no regular work or fair wages in Sydney, leaving his wife with her people and four pounds ten.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A skilled worker who can find no steady work at home must leave his wife behind and go abroad to try again."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 303,
|
||||
"story": 51,
|
||||
"summary": "He is the first of the old mountain push of building tradesmen to go; they have shared good times and lean ones and famous fortnightly sprees on country jobs.",
|
||||
"predicament": "A band of workmates who shared good times and lean ones gather to see off the first of them forced to leave."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 304,
|
||||
"story": 51,
|
||||
"summary": "Bound by work, poverty and drink, they slip tobacco, books and flasks into his bunk and pockets, and pool what money they have for more.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Mates with very little money pool what they have to send one of their own off with small tokens of friendship."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 305,
|
||||
"story": 51,
|
||||
"summary": "They fuss over his bunk, drag him ashore for drink after drink, and grip his hand over the rail as the steamer casts off, singing and cheering till a sergeant of police watches them.",
|
||||
"predicament": "Workmates seeing one of their own off stretch the parting with one more drink after another until the very last moment."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 306,
|
||||
"story": 51,
|
||||
"summary": "The policeman joins in the singing; the first mate has since prospered in New Zealand; another left secretly to escape debt, dishonour and a drunken wife, and others followed.",
|
||||
"predicament": "One by one the old crew leave, one to prosper far away, another fleeing debt and shame, and the rest see each one off."
|
||||
},
|
||||
{
|
||||
"chunk": 307,
|
||||
"story": 51,
|
||||
"summary": "Jack, the narrator's closest mate, left today, and the narrator thinks it is time he raised his own fare and followed the others.",
|
||||
"predicament": "As the last of his old mates leaves, a man left behind decides it is time he followed them too."
|
||||
}
|
||||
]
|
||||
Reference in New Issue
Block a user