[
{"chunk":429,"story":45,"summary":"Everyone arriving in the city must fight it at once, with no rounds and no rest, until one of them wins.","predicament":"Everyone who arrives in a new place must contend with it from the first day."},
{"chunk":430,"story":45,"summary":"The newcomer must become part of the place or its enemy; two friends from the West arrive together to make their fortunes.","predicament":"Two friends arrive somewhere new, each meaning not to be changed by it."},
{"chunk":431,"story":45,"summary":"Four years on, the businessman bustles in to lunch and the artist tells him the city has swallowed and stamped him.","predicament":"Someone tells an old friend that the place has remade them into everyone else."},
{"chunk":432,"story":45,"summary":"The businessman shrugs it off, says the place is good enough for him and that it is giving him his share.","predicament":"Someone accused of being changed answers that the change has paid them well."},
{"chunk":433,"story":45,"summary":"He lists his eight thousand a year, his introductions, his motor rides and his shows, and asks what the objection is.","predicament":"Someone measures their life by what it buys and cannot see what is meant."},
{"chunk":434,"story":45,"summary":"The artist calls the place a leech and a monster, swears it will never take him, and longs for the country he left.","predicament":"Someone declares they will never be changed by what has already changed their friend."},
{"chunk":435,"story":45,"summary":"At midnight the artist looks out at the lights, and answers a telegram offering him what he wanted with a refusal.","predicament":"Someone who swore they were unconquered refuses the chance to leave."},
{"chunk":436,"story":46,"summary":"A very rich old man, tired of everything money buys, decides to go about the city looking for something new.","predicament":"Someone who can buy anything wants something they cannot pay for."},
{"chunk":437,"story":46,"summary":"He dresses plainly and sets out to find someone in trouble to help; across town a young workman leaves his job.","predicament":"Someone sets out to do good to a stranger they have not yet chosen."},
{"chunk":438,"story":46,"summary":"A hat cleaner stands at a machine all day for twelve dollars a week, his feet burning and smarting.","predicament":"Someone works long hours in pain for wages that only just keep them."},
{"chunk":439,"story":46,"summary":"His happiness is cool metal against his burning feet and a sea story; he stops at a second-hand bookstall.","predicament":"Someone has found exactly the small comfort that makes their day bearable."},
{"chunk":440,"story":46,"summary":"The rich man offers to pay for his education, his travels abroad and a business of his own choosing.","predicament":"Someone is offered everything they never asked for by a stranger in the street."},
{"chunk":441,"story":46,"summary":"The young man takes him for a swindler and tells him to be off before something happens to him.","predicament":"Someone offered an impossible gift assumes a trick and refuses it rudely."},
{"chunk":442,"story":46,"summary":"They fight, are jailed, and in his cell the young man puts his feet on the cold bars and finds a sea story.","predicament":"Someone locked up finds by accident the exact comfort they most wanted."},
{"chunk":443,"story":47,"summary":"A man whose sweetheart vanished on her way from Ireland is taken to the seaside, and stops at a palmist's stall.","predicament":"Someone whose promised person has vanished looks for an answer anywhere."},
{"chunk":444,"story":47,"summary":"The palmist foretells trouble from a dark man and a fair woman, a voyage, a loss, and luck from a crooked-nosed man.","predicament":"Someone in trouble is given a list of signs to watch for and believes it."},
{"chunk":445,"story":47,"summary":"Leaving, he is burned by a stranger's cigar, loses his change in the scuffle, and his hat blows overboard.","predicament":"Someone's run of small disasters begins as soon as they are warned of it."},
{"chunk":446,"story":47,"summary":"He counts each mishap as a prophecy fulfilled and insists the reading is coming true before their eyes.","predicament":"Someone fits every ordinary misfortune to the prediction they were given."},
{"chunk":447,"story":47,"summary":"They find a long man with a twice-twisted nose and demand his name, testing it against the letters foretold.","predicament":"Someone stops a stranger in the street because they match a promised description."},
{"chunk":448,"story":47,"summary":"The stranger asks their excuse for being at large, is given it, and tries to walk away from the pair.","predicament":"Someone tries to escape two strangers who believe they owe them a fortune."},
{"chunk":449,"story":47,"summary":"One of them declares he will sit at the stranger's door till morning, since all their luck depends on him.","predicament":"Someone attaches themselves to a stranger they have decided their fortune rests on."},
{"chunk":450,"story":47,"summary":"The friend explains the palmist's reading and says it strains friendship to stand by a born fool.","predicament":"Someone stays loyal to a friend whose belief they think is nonsense."},
{"chunk":451,"story":47,"summary":"The stranger laughs, takes them for drinks, and explains he walks at night collecting oddities for a book.","predicament":"Someone who collects other people's strangeness is delighted to be taken for a sign."},
{"chunk":452,"story":47,"summary":"The believer grows angry that the promised luck has produced nothing but talk, and drinks with red in his eye.","predicament":"Someone's promised good fortune produces only conversation, and they resent it."},
{"chunk":453,"story":47,"summary":"He invites them down to his basement for cold fowl, and mentions the green girl in his kitchen by name.","predicament":"Someone hears, in passing, the name of the person they had given up for lost."},
{"chunk":454,"story":48,"summary":"A wife has one dollar and eighty-seven cents saved for a Christmas present, in a flat whose rent eats the wages.","predicament":"Someone has saved for months and still cannot afford the gift they intend."},
{"chunk":455,"story":48,"summary":"She cries, then stands before the glass, lets her hair fall its full length, and her face goes pale.","predicament":"Someone out of money considers the one thing of value they still own."},
{"chunk":456,"story":48,"summary":"The household's two treasures are his inherited watch and her hair; she sells the hair for twenty dollars.","predicament":"Someone sells the one thing they were proud of to buy another a gift."},
{"chunk":457,"story":48,"summary":"She buys a plain chain worthy of the watch, curls what is left of her hair, and waits for him.","predicament":"Someone spends everything on a gift and then fears how they will be seen."},
{"chunk":458,"story":48,"summary":"He stops inside the door with an unreadable look; she begs him not to mind and explains what she did.","predicament":"Someone confesses a sacrifice and cannot read the face of the person it was for."},
{"chunk":459,"story":48,"summary":"He wakes from his trance, holds her, and tells her to unwrap the package to see what startled him.","predicament":"Someone reassures another and then hands over the gift that will explain everything."},
{"chunk":460,"story":48,"summary":"The gift is the set of combs she longed for; then he says he sold the watch to buy them.","predicament":"Two people each sold their treasure to buy the other what now cannot be used."},
{"chunk":461,"story":48,"summary":"Of all who give gifts, the narrator says, these two who sacrificed their greatest treasures were the wisest.","predicament":"Two people give away what they cannot spare and are counted wise for it."},
{"chunk":462,"story":49,"summary":"At midnight in a crowded cafe a stranger takes the vacant chair, and the narrator hopes for a true citizen of the world.","predicament":"Someone hoping to find a rare kind of person sits waiting to be joined."},
{"chunk":463,"story":49,"summary":"The stranger talks of every country as familiarly as a garden, impartial to cities, continents and zones alike.","predicament":"Someone claims every place as home and none as theirs in particular."},
{"chunk":464,"story":49,"summary":"Against the poet's claim that men cling to their birthplace, this man seems free of it; then the band plays a southern air.","predicament":"Someone appears to have escaped the loyalty that everyone else is bound by."},
{"chunk":465,"story":49,"summary":"A young man leaps up cheering the tune and joins the table; the narrator starts to ask where he is from.","predicament":"Someone tests a theory by asking a stranger where they come from."},
{"chunk":466,"story":49,"summary":"The traveller bangs the table: a man should not be judged by his post-office address, nor labelled by a section.","predicament":"Someone insists it should not matter where anybody comes from."},
{"chunk":467,"story":49,"summary":"He lists rooms and slippers waiting in a dozen countries, and calls pride in one's birthplace a relic.","predicament":"Someone argues that attachment to a birthplace is a weakness to be outgrown."},
{"chunk":468,"story":49,"summary":"He denies having any spot he thinks of, calls himself a citizen of the sphere, and goes off through the crowd.","predicament":"Someone denies having any attachment at all, and takes their leave."},
{"chunk":469,"story":49,"summary":"A brawl breaks out: the man is fighting someone who slighted the sidewalks of the small town he came from.","predicament":"Someone who denied caring where they came from fights the first person to insult it."}
]