[
{"chunk":226,"story":28,"summary":"An artist has only four stock pictures for the spring festival, which shows how vague the occasion is in everyone's mind.","predicament":"People keep an occasion whose meaning none of them can say."},
{"chunk":227,"story":28,"summary":"A young carter rises late on the holiday; his blind father sits by the window with a pipe, saying it is fine spring weather.","predicament":"Someone's day of freedom is watched wistfully by a person who cannot leave the room."},
{"chunk":228,"story":28,"summary":"The son snaps that he earns the rent and may go out; his mother says the blind man rambles about a hippopotamus.","predicament":"Someone answers a mild wish with anger, and is told the old one is wandering in mind."},
{"chunk":229,"story":28,"summary":"He asks the janitor and a policeman what the festival is for and whether anyone has spoken of a hippopotamus.","predicament":"Someone goes about asking others to explain a thing nobody around them understands."},
{"chunk":230,"story":28,"summary":"He asks a waiter why the festival exists, gets a joke, and meets the young woman he courts going to church.","predicament":"Someone taking a holiday they do not enjoy looks for a reason in every face they pass."},
{"chunk":231,"story":28,"summary":"At church the preacher's theme is new life arising from the old; afterwards he leaves the young woman piqued on a corner.","predicament":"Someone hears the thing they needed said, without knowing they have heard it."},
{"chunk":232,"story":28,"summary":"Two blocks on, something stirs in him: the old man meant an ancient war, not an animal, and he takes a car home.","predicament":"Someone suddenly understands what a neglected person had been asking them for."},
{"chunk":233,"story":28,"summary":"He takes down the dusty history, roars the question, and reads for an hour while the blind man weeps with joy.","predicament":"Someone resumes a small duty they had dropped, and finds it was everything to another."},
{"chunk":234,"story":29,"summary":"On a cold night a preacher on a box pays for beds, fifteen cents a man, for whoever gathers in the line.","predicament":"People with nowhere to sleep line up nightly for a stranger's charity."},
{"chunk":235,"story":29,"summary":"Among the bedless stands a discharged coachman, sacked for drunkenness a month before and now in the line with the rest.","predicament":"Someone dismissed for their own fault has fallen further than they can climb back."},
{"chunk":236,"story":29,"summary":"A month of whisky has him seeing things; he speaks to the shabby young man beside him about how each came there.","predicament":"Someone at the bottom looks for company and asks a neighbour how they fell."},
{"chunk":237,"story":29,"summary":"The other married against his family, lost work and health, and sent his wife away; then a tire falls from a passing car.","predicament":"Someone cut off by their family for a marriage has nothing left and no way to work."},
{"chunk":238,"story":29,"summary":"The coachman runs the tire down expecting a coin; the owner asks if he knows a certain family and tells him to get in.","predicament":"Someone hoping for a small tip is instead taken up by a stranger for unexplained reasons."},
{"chunk":239,"story":29,"summary":"He is left alone in a gorgeous dark room, where a stuffed owl suddenly raises its wings and shines light from its eyes.","predicament":"Someone brought into a stranger's house is left alone among things they cannot explain."},
{"chunk":240,"story":29,"summary":"He hurls a statuette at the owl; the grand host appears, excuses the toy, and returns to the question of the family.","predicament":"Someone's fright breaks their host's property just as the real business begins."},
{"chunk":241,"story":29,"summary":"The host promises good fortune; the coachman, hoping for reinstatement, offers to give up drink if taken back.","predicament":"Someone is promised good fortune and asks only for their old place back."},
{"chunk":242,"story":29,"summary":"Two women arrive; the elder says she has lost faith in the professor's art and came only because her sister insisted.","predicament":"Someone who has paid for years for hope is close to giving it up."},
{"chunk":243,"story":29,"summary":"The professor reveals the oracle about the fifth wheel, promises proof, and asks the coachman if he would go back home.","predicament":"Someone stakes their credibility on producing the person another is desperate to see."},
{"chunk":244,"story":29,"summary":"Asked his name, he answers plainly; the professor drags him to the door and kicks him down the steps without explanation.","predicament":"Someone is thrown out the moment they turn out not to be who was wanted."},
{"chunk":245,"story":29,"summary":"He walks back to the line; then the maid he courted comes running to him, weeping, saying she came to find him.","predicament":"Someone back at the bottom is found by the person who never stopped looking."},
{"chunk":246,"story":29,"summary":"She says the household will take him back, credits the professor, and he asks her for money for the sick man beside him.","predicament":"Someone newly rescued asks for money for the stranger who is worse off."},
{"chunk":247,"story":29,"summary":"The sick man proves to be the household's lost son, hunted for three years, and he agrees to go home.","predicament":"Someone missing for years is found beside the person who was being searched for."},
{"chunk":248,"story":29,"summary":"On the car home the coachman half-remembers the house of owls and lights, and says he would punch that man's nose.","predicament":"Someone who was thrown out never learns they were the reason everything came right."},
{"chunk":249,"story":30,"summary":"A genuine country poem is rejected as artificial, so a city writer composes a false one and they send it to the same editor.","predicament":"The real thing is rejected as a fake, so someone submits a fake instead."},
{"chunk":250,"story":30,"summary":"A countryman steps off the ferry with hay in his hair; the crowds glance once, decide he is overdone, and ignore him.","predicament":"Someone genuinely out of place is taken for a bad imitation of themselves."},
{"chunk":251,"story":30,"summary":"A confidence man advises him his rustic get-up is overdone, refuses a card game, and buys him a drink instead.","predicament":"Someone honest is warned by a cheat that their appearance is unconvincing."},
{"chunk":252,"story":30,"summary":"He produces nine hundred and fifty dollars; the cheat admires the roll but still says the clothes will never work.","predicament":"Someone shows real money and is complimented on a good prop."},
{"chunk":253,"story":30,"summary":"A bartender scoffs at his valise of money, and a news-seller refuses to change his note, calling it stage money.","predicament":"Someone cannot get anyone to take their money, because nobody believes it is theirs."},
{"chunk":254,"story":30,"summary":"A gambling tout waves him off as a decoy, and he concludes his clothes are what keep the city from noticing him.","predicament":"Someone is refused everywhere and decides the problem is how they are dressed."},
{"chunk":255,"story":30,"summary":"He outfits himself in the latest fashion, steps out at nine, and by half-past eleven has been robbed of everything.","predicament":"Someone made themselves look worth robbing, and immediately was."},
{"chunk":256,"story":30,"summary":"The editor praises the city writer's poem as the work of one raised close to nature, and pays for it as usual.","predicament":"A judge praises the imitation for the very quality the real thing was denied."},
{"chunk":257,"story":31,"summary":"A man admired as the best-dressed in the city keeps a servant pressing trousers and never wears a pair three hours.","predicament":"Someone's whole standing rests on an appearance that takes constant work to keep."},
{"chunk":258,"story":31,"summary":"He vanishes without motive, debt, enemy or woman; two friends travelling abroad hear of a remote mountain monastery.","predicament":"Someone disappears completely, leaving those who knew them no reason at all."},
{"chunk":259,"story":31,"summary":"At the monastery they watch the brothers file past and recognise their vanished friend among them.","predicament":"Someone is found living a life nobody who knew them would have predicted."},
{"chunk":260,"story":31,"summary":"They confirm it is he, sitting among the shabby brothers, never looking up, eating broth from a coarse bowl.","predicament":"Someone who lived for elegance is seen content among the plainest of things."},
{"chunk":261,"story":31,"summary":"He comes serene and happy in a rough robe, greets them easily, and asks whether that waistcoat is the new fashion.","predicament":"Someone found in a new life shows no embarrassment and asks after the old one's fashions."},
{"chunk":262,"story":31,"summary":"They beg him to come back; he says he has reached his goal, having found at last a garment that never bags.","predicament":"Someone explains a life-changing choice by a reason nobody else can take seriously."},
{"chunk":263,"story":32,"summary":"A travelling swindler takes his holidays in the city, practising a tune in a hall bedroom beside a pistol and a roll of notes.","predicament":"Someone whose trade is deception rests where nobody knows them."},
{"chunk":264,"story":32,"summary":"He says women do not specialise in his trade because they are already fully occupied extracting money from men.","predicament":"Someone explains that one group must bargain constantly for what the other simply holds."},
{"chunk":265,"story":32,"summary":"He calls a wife's kiss for a jewel the same trade, then tells of a striking country woman and a rich man he met.","predicament":"Someone argues that every exchange of affection for money is the same transaction."},
{"chunk":266,"story":32,"summary":"The rich man's one ambition is to be noticed; he has tried gifts, accidents and paying reporters, and got nothing.","predicament":"Someone with money enough to live on cannot buy the one thing they want: notice."},
{"chunk":267,"story":32,"summary":"The swindler offers to put him in every paper for a week, and names ten thousand dollars as the price.","predicament":"Someone offers to sell another the attention they have failed to buy honestly."},
{"chunk":268,"story":32,"summary":"The plan: a month of showy courtship and terrible love letters, then a desertion and a huge breach of promise suit.","predicament":"Three people contract to stage a betrayal for the publicity the trial will bring."},
{"chunk":269,"story":32,"summary":"She coaches him into writing worse love letters, and in a crowded restaurant a process-server hands him the papers publicly.","predicament":"Someone stages their own humiliation in public and is proud of how it looks."},
{"chunk":270,"story":32,"summary":"Two hours later the pair return married, leaving behind a railway ticket and two pairs of the rich man's old trousers.","predicament":"Two people hired to stage a courtship carry it through for real and pay nothing."}
]