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
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# Notes: Torchy stories 36-54, volume 3 (*Torchy, Private Sec.*, 1917), chunks 481-737, 257 records
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I wrote these by reading every scene myself. No inference was used, and I did no grouping. Below
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are the recurring situations I noticed, as input for the grouping pass. The chunk ids are examples,
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not complete lists.
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Chunks 736 and 737 are the publisher's advertising. Each has a record saying it belongs in no group.
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Chunk 735 is summarised from its story part only; the advertising that follows it is ignored.
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## Recurring situations
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1. **Newly promoted, and meeting the old hierarchy from the other side.** The new boy in his old
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seat calls him Sir (494). The stiff senior clerk who used to order him about now defers to him,
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and Torchy wins him over by refusing the deference (495-496). A senior manager wanted the post
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for his own relative, predicts Torchy will not last, and takes away his only assignment
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(497-498). The old head comes back, knows nothing of the promotion, and orders him about as the
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office boy again (524-526).
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2. **Contradicting a senior authority, and winning.** He backs an overlooked inventor against a
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senior colleague's dismissal. He learns the subject overnight and argues it before the people at
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the top (499-507). This is the story in which he earns the promotion, not just receives it.
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3. **The door to the boss: receiving callers with tact.** He handles an insistent visitor
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smoothly (487-488). He entertains two ill-matched visitors (606-608). He soothes a furious
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figurehead (633-635). A smooth promoter wants him to open doors to rich men (646-649). Panicky
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backers besiege his desk (721-722). He used to guard a door. Now he is the one that callers try
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to use.
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4. **The sweetheart's guardian, who objects to his standing.** She cross-examines him on his lowly
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job (485-486). She arrives to expose him and finds him at a desk (492). She rations his visits
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(565, 568). She uses his advice and then bars him from her event (623-625). She calls him a
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nameless waif (666). She catches him holding her ward's hand (668-669). She is struck dumb when
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his family name is revealed (673). He also rescues her fortune, and she has to thank him
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grudgingly (508-522). **This is the spine of the volume.**
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5. **A rival suitor or rival guest in the room.** The guardian's favoured young man is already
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installed (566-568). He turns out to love someone else, and Torchy warms to him at once
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(571-573).
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6. **Meddling in the boss's own love life.** This is new with the promotion. He finds the boss's
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keepsake (675-677). He plants a reminder in the boss's mail (680). He sends flowers in the
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boss's name (683-686). He explains the boss's case to the woman (691-694). He goes through the
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boss's files to see why the romance failed (694-695). He lectures the boss on courtship
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(696-697 and 698-700, where the advice backfires). He removes a flirt who is monopolising the
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boss (712-720). He is put in charge of the boss's wedding (728-735).
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7. **Private errands for the boss's family.** He decides the son-in-law's telegram for him
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(537-539). He removes the daughter's hired dance partner (557-564). He steers the son-in-law
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away from a courting couple (711). He fetches an uninvited guest (712-714).
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8. **Coaching a timid man to face a bully or a tyrant.** A suitor faces the girl's roaring father
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(546-549). A frail man stands up to a bully's prank (614-617). The boss is urged to pursue the
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woman as he would a deal (696-697). In each case the coached man wins by not flinching.
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9. **A snob humbled by someone of humble origin.** The guardian patronises a shop assistant who
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owns the chain (626-631). A daughter's polish is newly bought, and her plain mother is moved by
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the respect a suitor shows her (569-575). The guardian learns who the nameless suitor is (673).
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The reverse also occurs: an upstart who snubs his family is scared out the back door by his
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sister, who is there as a servant (552-563).
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10. **Using what he knew on the bottom rung.** He bribes a messenger boy into revealing a hidden
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entrance (531-532). He goes to his old newspaper contacts (598-599, 731-732). He knows the
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runners' slang and their stations.
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11. **Championing an overlooked colleague or outsider.** The inventor (499-507). The plain typist
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the office laughs at, who becomes a star (577-590).
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12. **Rescuing a stray dependent and a desperate man.** The runaway child, her jailed father and
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the hidden money (591-605).
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13. **Old loves reunited late.** Two elderly sweethearts elope forty years after a relative stopped
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them (639-645). The boss and the singer (675-735).
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14. **Origins and identity.** A shabby claimant says he is the relative who abandoned Torchy
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(650-653). The real family is revealed through an old man's story and a locket (657-662).
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Torchy stages his own arrival under his real name (672-673). A foundling's lack of a name is
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what the guardian holds against him (666).
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15. **Removing an embarrassing guest quietly.** The hired dancer (560-564). The flirt, scared off by
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a staged half-truth (718-719).
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16. **Rewarded with rank or pay.** He is promoted on the spot (491, 493). He is told he is needed
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(507). The old head doubles his salary (536).
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## Torchy's standing per story
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| Story | Standing | Why |
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| --- | --- | --- |
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| 36 | low to middle | Office boy for four years. He is promoted at the end. |
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| 37 | middle | New in the post and challenged by seniors. He wins his place. |
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| 38 | middle | He is trusted with an urgent errand. |
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| 39 | middle | He is left in charge, then treated as the boy again. His pay is doubled at the end. |
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| 40 | middle | A guest of the boss's family. |
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| 41 | middle | Invited to the family's dance as a real guest. |
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| 42 | middle | A suitor on rationed visits. |
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| 43 | middle | Now senior enough to befriend the office outcast. |
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| 44 | middle | An errand for his sweetheart. |
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| 45 | middle | He hosts the boss's callers. |
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| 46 | middle | Sent in the boss's place. The guardian first bars him, then invites him. |
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| 47 | middle | His nominal superior turns up. |
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| 48 | middle to high | He learns his family. His nominal superior is his great-uncle. |
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| 49 | high | His name ends the guardian's objection. |
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| 50 | high | He sits in on directors' meetings as acting head of the subsidiary. |
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| 51 | high | He advises the boss as a near equal. |
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| 52 | high | He is a guest on the boss's trip. |
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| 53 | high | The old head asks him about the heir. |
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| 54 | high | Best man, and in full charge of the boss's wedding. |
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## What the promotion changes
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- **The rival is no longer his supervisor. It is senior colleagues and old hands who resent the
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jump.** That friction appears only in the first stories (37, 39). After that nobody in the
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office challenges him again, and by 54 the nervous directors come to his desk.
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- **The work largely leaves the office.** Only 36, 37, 39, 43, 50 and 54 have much business in
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them. Most of the volume is the boss's family life and Torchy's courtship.
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- **The direction of favours reverses.** In the earlier volumes the boss helped him with his girl.
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From story 50 on, Torchy manages the boss's romance: he advises, plots, explains, clears the
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field and runs the wedding. He knows the boss's private files and heart better than anyone.
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"Someone junior who meddles in the boss's private life" is the volume's commonest new move.
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- **The title does not settle his standing outside the office.** The guardian's objection moves
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from his job ("still an office boy") to his birth ("a nameless waif"). The promotion answers the
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first objection (492). Only the discovery of his family answers the second (673). Grouping may
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want to keep "judged by rank" and "judged by birth" apart.
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- **He is now addressed with respect.** The new boy and the old clerk call him Sir. The boss's
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family invite him as a guest, not as a messenger. His old low-rank knowledge becomes a tool he
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uses from above (10).
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- **Fewer "called in to be fired" scenes.** The only threat to his job is his own threat to quit
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(490). His fear is now of looking like a dummy in the post (498), not of the sack.
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