{ "model": "claude-opus-5 (in-session, by hand)", "note": "Written by Claude (claude-opus-5) directly in a Claude Code session on 2026-09-17, one scene at a time, reading each story's scenes in order, following the same rules as the prompt below. No API call and no post-processing: names were kept out by the writer, not stripped afterwards.", "prompt": "Describe the social situation in a passage of fiction in ONE sentence.\n\nRules:\n- Exactly one sentence, at most 25 words.\n- Never use anyone's name. Refer to each person only by the role the passage gives them: their job, their family tie, or their position.\n- Never name a place, business, street or city.\n- Say what is happening between the people: who wants what from whom, who holds power, what is at stake.\n- Do not describe the writing style, the narrator, or the mood.\n- Output only the sentence.", "summaries": [ { "chunk": 0, "story": 0, "summary": "A writer on assignment casts about for someone who can tell him what the city means, and starts with the woman he courts." }, { "chunk": 1, "story": 0, "summary": "A man presses the woman he courts for an answer she turns aside with jokes; he insists, and she only smiles." }, { "chunk": 2, "story": 0, "summary": "A man questions a bartender about the city's meaning; the bartender is pulled away by a neighbour's errand and talks about his family instead." }, { "chunk": 3, "story": 0, "summary": "A man asks a policeman what the city says; the policeman says he only takes orders, then talks about his new wife." }, { "chunk": 4, "story": 0, "summary": "A man asks a poet for a grand utterance summing up the whole city, laying out at length what the answer should contain." }, { "chunk": 5, "story": 0, "summary": "A poet ignores the question to talk about a girl, and a news-seller wants only his money; the questioner leaves with nothing." }, { "chunk": 6, "story": 0, "summary": "A man returns to the woman he courts and sits silent beside her; she notes he has not spoken, and that is his answer." }, { "chunk": 7, "story": 1, "summary": "A low-paid clerk and his wife live an ordinary flat-bound life, with neither poverty, love nor war to mark it." }, { "chunk": 8, "story": 1, "summary": "A housewife's days are made of bargains, window-sills and small superiorities over a neighbour, in a city where large things happen suddenly." }, { "chunk": 9, "story": 1, "summary": "A clerk tries to make conversation with his wife about his workplace, fails, and goes out for a cigar instead." }, { "chunk": 10, "story": 1, "summary": "A customer finds himself penniless and offers to pay tomorrow; the shopkeeper attacks him and the two fight into the street." }, { "chunk": 11, "story": 1, "summary": "A fleeing man strikes the officer who intervenes, runs, and is picked up by a stranger's car that carries him to a mansion." }, { "chunk": 12, "story": 1, "summary": "A wealthy young woman, mistaking a stranger for a champion, asks him to confront a man who has insulted her." }, { "chunk": 13, "story": 1, "summary": "A man takes a woman's flower and confronts her enemy on her behalf; the young man puts him out the door effortlessly." }, { "chunk": 14, "story": 1, "summary": "The quarrel proves a lovers' game between a couple; the outsider walks home and resumes the dull talk he left." }, { "chunk": 15, "story": 2, "summary": "A young shop assistant behind a counter is beautiful and shrewd, schooled by the other girls in how to handle men who buy." }, { "chunk": 16, "story": 2, "summary": "A rich young man wanders into a store where the counter girls flirt with cheap admirers, and the shop assistant meets his eye." }, { "chunk": 17, "story": 2, "summary": "A rich man realises he stands among ordinary suitors, resolves to win the shop assistant anyway, and leaves his card on the counter." }, { "chunk": 18, "story": 2, "summary": "A rich man asks permission to call; the shop assistant refuses her crowded home and names a street corner instead." }, { "chunk": 19, "story": 2, "summary": "A workmate teases the shop assistant about her rich admirer, while he worries that her easy consent means she is common." }, { "chunk": 20, "story": 2, "summary": "A rich man proposes marriage; the shop assistant disbelieves his station and takes his declarations for the usual flattery." }, { "chunk": 21, "story": 2, "summary": "A suitor paints a life of foreign travel and palaces; the shop assistant recognises the picture and stands up." }, { "chunk": 22, "story": 2, "summary": "The shop assistant ends it and tells a workmate that the rich man only wanted a cheap wedding trip." }, { "chunk": 23, "story": 3, "summary": "A man belongs to a clannish set who live in hotel lobbies and keep their home lives out of sight." }, { "chunk": 24, "story": 3, "summary": "A man treats his wife as a fixture at home, dining out nightly with his set and barely hearing her talk." }, { "chunk": 25, "story": 3, "summary": "A wife asks her husband to take her out after three years indoors; he agrees, and she comes down transformed." }, { "chunk": 26, "story": 3, "summary": "A husband, surprised by his wife's appearance, changes his plan and resolves to show her to his friends rather than hide her." }, { "chunk": 27, "story": 3, "summary": "A man's friends stare as he passes with his wife; at dinner she blooms, and shame reaches him for the years she spent shut in." }, { "chunk": 28, "story": 3, "summary": "An influential friend joins their table and the wife charms him and a crowd of men, while her husband sits without words." }, { "chunk": 29, "story": 3, "summary": "The husband takes his wife's cloak before his friend can, walks her home, and refuses to return to his set." }, { "chunk": 30, "story": 4, "summary": "Three weeks married, a bride idly asks her husband for out-of-season fruit, and he leaves at once to get it." }, { "chunk": 31, "story": 4, "summary": "A husband tries a street vendor and a friend's establishment; both say the fruit is out of season and offer a substitute." }, { "chunk": 32, "story": 4, "summary": "Finding every shop shut, a husband goes to a police captain and offers to lead a raid on a gambling house." }, { "chunk": 33, "story": 4, "summary": "A man guides a dozen officers to a gambling room, the door is broken in, and most of the players escape." }, { "chunk": 34, "story": 4, "summary": "The gambling house's owner attacks the guide; after beating him, the guide hunts the supper room and questions a servant about fruit." }, { "chunk": 35, "story": 4, "summary": "One piece of fruit survives the supper table; the man pockets it and has a druggist check the rib he hurt falling downstairs." }, { "chunk": 36, "story": 4, "summary": "The husband lays the fruit in his wife's hand; she says she would rather have had the other kind after all." }, { "chunk": 37, "story": 5, "summary": "Spring is announced in the city by newspaper items, but the true sign is when one person goes seeking another." }, { "chunk": 38, "story": 5, "summary": "Three idlers on a bench plot how to get the one dollar a married man's wife earned by washing." }, { "chunk": 39, "story": 5, "summary": "The husband boasts he can choke the money out of his wife, then goes home to a woman who despises him." }, { "chunk": 40, "story": 5, "summary": "The husband claims a new position and asks for the money; his wife calls him a liar and refuses." }, { "chunk": 41, "story": 5, "summary": "The husband tries self-pity; his wife mocks it, and he decides to try the tenderness he abandoned years ago." }, { "chunk": 42, "story": 5, "summary": "The husband puts his arm around his wife and calls her old endearments; she breaks down, holds him, and hurries out." }, { "chunk": 43, "story": 5, "summary": "The wife returns having spent the dollar on a tonic for her husband, and sits on his lap; his friends still wait." }, { "chunk": 44, "story": 6, "summary": "A young man contrives to speak to a well-dressed young woman on a park bench; she invites him to sit and talk." }, { "chunk": 45, "story": 6, "summary": "A young woman rebukes a stranger's familiar flirtation, then asks him about the passing crowd and hints she is above them." }, { "chunk": 46, "story": 6, "summary": "A young woman claims a famous name and weariness of wealth; the stranger, curious, catches an inconsistency in her account." }, { "chunk": 47, "story": 6, "summary": "The woman explains away her slip as a fashion, says she could love a lowly worker, and asks the stranger's occupation." }, { "chunk": 48, "story": 6, "summary": "The man says he is a cashier across the street; the woman hurries away, telling him her car waits at the corner." }, { "chunk": 49, "story": 6, "summary": "Told to wait, the man follows the woman instead, and watches her take her place at the cashier's desk she described." }, { "chunk": 50, "story": 6, "summary": "The man drops the woman's book on the grass, steps into the waiting automobile and orders his chauffeur to his club." }, { "chunk": 51, "story": 7, "summary": "A city breeds a tribe of onlookers who gather in a ring around any accident or oddity, however trivial." }, { "chunk": 52, "story": 7, "summary": "Two devoted onlookers meet across the body of an injured man, and one falls in love as the other shoves through the crowd." }, { "chunk": 53, "story": 7, "summary": "The two onlookers remain after the crowd goes, staring frankly at each other's physical defects without speaking." }, { "chunk": 54, "story": 7, "summary": "On a dull day the two fight into a crowd watching a sign-painter, and the man offers to show her a rarer sight." }, { "chunk": 55, "story": 7, "summary": "The pair share an injury, a stakeout and three days on a plank, and pledge themselves as a policeman drives them away." }, { "chunk": 56, "story": 7, "summary": "A wedding is set, the church filled, and outside the crowd of onlookers presses and fights to see the couple arrive." }, { "chunk": 57, "story": 7, "summary": "The couple never arrive; they are dragged from the crowd, trampled, having joined it to watch themselves be married." }, { "chunk": 58, "story": 8, "summary": "A lawyer hands a young heir a thousand dollars and tells him he must render a full account of how he spends it." }, { "chunk": 59, "story": 8, "summary": "The heir tells a club acquaintance that the whole fortune went elsewhere, and mentions a quiet ward left only a ring." }, { "chunk": 60, "story": 8, "summary": "The acquaintance lists worthy uses for the money, then says the heir will only buy a dancer a jewel." }, { "chunk": 61, "story": 8, "summary": "The heir offers a dancer a jewel and she barely attends; he then asks a driver and a street seller what they would do." }, { "chunk": 62, "story": 8, "summary": "Learning the ward received nothing, the heir gives her the thousand dollars, saying a late amendment to the will provided it." }, { "chunk": 63, "story": 8, "summary": "The heir tells the ward he loves her, is refused, and writes an account naming the money as a debt of happiness." }, { "chunk": 64, "story": 8, "summary": "A codicil promises fifty thousand if the money was spent unselfishly; the heir tears up the account that would prove it." }, { "chunk": 65, "story": 9, "summary": "A farmer's son becomes a celebrated city lawyer, remade by the city into an impeccable and narrow gentleman." }, { "chunk": 66, "story": 9, "summary": "The lawyer crowns his rise by marrying a woman of the oldest family, cold and high above every other climber." }, { "chunk": 67, "story": 9, "summary": "The wife finds a letter from her husband's farming mother and announces they will visit, asking whether the farm entertains." }, { "chunk": 68, "story": 9, "summary": "They arrive at the country station, where the husband's brother jeers cheerfully and is silenced by the wife's appearance." }, { "chunk": 69, "story": 9, "summary": "The old countryside takes hold of the husband, and his wife beside him begins to seem remote and unreal." }, { "chunk": 70, "story": 9, "summary": "On the porch the husband throws off his manners, pulls off his father's boots and challenges his brother to wrestle." }, { "chunk": 71, "story": 9, "summary": "The husband wrestles, chases his sister with an insect, dances and clowns, while his wife sits silent and unreadable." }, { "chunk": 72, "story": 9, "summary": "The wife retires; her husband follows, expecting condemnation, and she begins by saying she thought she married a gentleman." }, { "chunk": 73, "story": 9, "summary": "The sentence ends differently: the wife says she finds she married something better, and asks her husband to kiss her." }, { "chunk": 74, "story": 10, "summary": "A young man disinherited for disobeying his uncle spends his last coin and takes a park bench with nothing left." }, { "chunk": 75, "story": 10, "summary": "On the bench a ragged stranger tells the ruined man that tomorrow he inherits millions, and that he is afraid." }, { "chunk": 76, "story": 10, "summary": "The stranger explains he is a cast-off nephew summoned back to be heir, and begs the price of a drink." }, { "chunk": 77, "story": 10, "summary": "The stranger panics, terrified that some accident will kill him in the hours before he can claim the fortune." }, { "chunk": 78, "story": 10, "summary": "The ruined man calms the stranger, uses his standing at a hotel bar to get him food, and eats none himself." }, { "chunk": 79, "story": 10, "summary": "They take neighbouring benches; the stranger promises to get the ruined man a job once his fortune arrives." }, { "chunk": 80, "story": 10, "summary": "At the lawyer's office next morning the stranger is told his uncle has reconsidered and will not take him back." }, { "chunk": 81, "story": 10, "summary": "The stranger walks out steadily cursing his uncle; the lawyer then tells the ruined man his own uncle relents, and he faints." }, { "chunk": 82, "story": 11, "summary": "A writer explains that editors discard manuscripts claiming to be true, and that fiction is held in more esteem than fact." }, { "chunk": 83, "story": 11, "summary": "A storekeeper's son comes to the city to write, carrying two grand historical manuscripts and a small local reputation." }, { "chunk": 84, "story": 11, "summary": "The older writer lodges the newcomer, tests him with an assignment he refuses, and the two live cheaply and happily." }, { "chunk": 85, "story": 11, "summary": "The newcomer's love stories come back rejected; the older writer finds them well made but empty of living substance." }, { "chunk": 86, "story": 11, "summary": "Told he must fall in love before he can write it, the newcomer does, and is wrecked by a careless young woman." }, { "chunk": 87, "story": 11, "summary": "The newcomer writes the story while the feeling is on him; it is sentimental drivel, and all his craft has vanished." }, { "chunk": 88, "story": 11, "summary": "After recovering, the newcomer is worshipped by another woman he only mildly likes, and sits down to write again." }, { "chunk": 89, "story": 11, "summary": "The new story is brilliant; the newcomer says an artist must be a cad, tears it up and goes home to his father's store." }, { "chunk": 90, "story": 12, "summary": "A young woman about to sail receives the suitor who wronged her coldly, and produces a keepsake motto as evidence against him." }, { "chunk": 91, "story": 12, "summary": "The suitor draws a second motto counselling forgiveness and pleads to be taken back, renouncing the woman who lured him away." }, { "chunk": 92, "story": 12, "summary": "A street seller rests his cart nightly under the window where a celebrated dancer sits while her maids dress her hair." }, { "chunk": 93, "story": 12, "summary": "The dancer asks the street seller whether she is beautiful; he refuses to flatter her and talks about the weather." }, { "chunk": 94, "story": 12, "summary": "The street seller mocks the dancer's fishing for compliments, says his plain evening contents him, and goes in to read." }, { "chunk": 95, "story": 12, "summary": "Piqued, the dancer works daily on the seller until she makes him look into her eyes; next evening he comes dressed up." }, { "chunk": 96, "story": 12, "summary": "Bored the moment he is won, the dancer laughs at the seller's offer of his savings until he leaves; then she screams." }, { "chunk": 97, "story": 13, "summary": "Nature moves in circles and the city in straight lines, and the city remakes whatever comes into it to its angles." }, { "chunk": 98, "story": 13, "summary": "Two mountain families kill each other over forty years until one man of each remains, and one of them disappears." }, { "chunk": 99, "story": 13, "summary": "The last survivor of one family learns his enemy lives in the city, packs a revolver and a knife, and follows him." }, { "chunk": 100, "story": 13, "summary": "Hunting his enemy along the crowded avenues, the mountain man finds a world of straight lines and rushing strangers." }, { "chunk": 101, "story": 13, "summary": "Unseen by thousands of passing faces, the stranger fails even to open a door and is moved along by a policeman." }, { "chunk": 102, "story": 13, "summary": "Jostled and abused by traffic and passers-by, the stranger meets his hereditary enemy at last and shakes his hand gladly." }, { "chunk": 103, "story": 14, "summary": "A poet throws down a magazine and declares romance dead, cataloguing its contents to a cheerful clerk who disagrees by existing." }, { "chunk": 104, "story": 14, "summary": "A plain-dressed clerk sits at the poet's window above an old garden, where an old gentleman refuses to sell his house." }, { "chunk": 105, "story": 14, "summary": "The clerk visits often as a useful foil, and the poet reads him his printed verses about four roses." }, { "chunk": 106, "story": 14, "summary": "The clerk cuts the reading short and leaves; next day the poet sees a beautiful young woman at the opposite window." }, { "chunk": 107, "story": 14, "summary": "Four roses appear in the young woman's window and the poet reads them as her answer to his published verses." }, { "chunk": 108, "story": 14, "summary": "A flower book tells the poet a meeting is expected; the clerk arrives, checks his watch and hurries off to an appointment." }, { "chunk": 109, "story": 14, "summary": "The clerk explains that the roses are his fiancee's signal of the hour, and that the flowerpot means half-past." }, { "chunk": 110, "story": 15, "summary": "Officials proclaim that during the heat the people may sleep in the parks, and whole neighbourhoods move out into one." }, { "chunk": 111, "story": 15, "summary": "Tenants pack bedding and household goods, protesting to the janitor, while an officer orders everyone out to the park." }, { "chunk": 112, "story": 15, "summary": "The narrator praises the mixed and companionable life of the tenement on hot nights, then describes being herded into the dark park." }, { "chunk": 113, "story": 15, "summary": "The officer threatens imprisonment for refusal, and the tenants pass the night in the dark judging strangers by feel." }, { "chunk": 114, "story": 15, "summary": "Two tenants complain that the rent runs on while they lie in the grass, and joke that this is the city's charity." }, { "chunk": 115, "story": 15, "summary": "In the dark the social distinctions of the building collapse into a heap, and by morning five engagements have been announced." }, { "chunk": 116, "story": 15, "summary": "A well-dressed man stops his car to ask why the people lie in the grass, and takes the answer down in a book." }, { "chunk": 117, "story": 16, "summary": "A big idle striker wakes restless and unaccountably disturbed, knocks his brothers aside, and cannot say what ails him." }, { "chunk": 118, "story": 16, "summary": "His mother says the season is in his bones; he denies every sign of spring and goes to his usual idle corner." }, { "chunk": 119, "story": 16, "summary": "He looks for signs of the season, orders a drink and leaves it untasted, and snaps at the bartender who mocks him." }, { "chunk": 120, "story": 16, "summary": "A friendly barber insists the season is coming; the restless man denies it, then fights a standing enemy in the street." }, { "chunk": 121, "story": 16, "summary": "He hunts a sentimental song under a pretext, then knocks at the young woman's door and asks her opinion of the weather." }, { "chunk": 122, "story": 16, "summary": "He names the feeling as her, says he starts work Monday, and she accepts; snow falls and he calls it springtime anyway." }, { "chunk": 123, "story": 17, "summary": "A southern saying summons an imaginary old man who kills fools, invoked in every household with a smile or a tear." }, { "chunk": 124, "story": 17, "summary": "A writer explains how an illustrator wrecks a story with details he never wrote, and how far an artist stands from an author." }, { "chunk": 125, "story": 17, "summary": "The writer befriends a cheerfully melancholy artist who is engaged to a factory worker earning eight dollars a week." }, { "chunk": 126, "story": 17, "summary": "The artist's rich father objects to the match, so the artist gives up the inheritance and lives on credit and sausages." }, { "chunk": 127, "story": 17, "summary": "The young woman proves natural and unpretending at a cheap cafe, and the writer still tells the artist he is a fool." }, { "chunk": 128, "story": 17, "summary": "The artist plans to marry within the week on the price of one picture, while the writer drinks and repeats his verdict." }, { "chunk": 129, "story": 17, "summary": "A grey old man appears and orders the artist to give up the young woman and come home; the artist seems not to hear." }, { "chunk": 130, "story": 17, "summary": "The artist insists nobody spoke to him; the writer, believing he alone can see the visitor, follows the old man out." }, { "chunk": 131, "story": 17, "summary": "The writer accuses the old man of destroying youth and talent for old standards, and calls the artist the wisest man he knows." }, { "chunk": 132, "story": 17, "summary": "The old man asks about the young woman, hears her defended, and asks to have the artist brought out to him." }, { "chunk": 133, "story": 17, "summary": "The old man gives in and asks the artist to bring her home; he is the father, unspoken to for a year." }, { "chunk": 134, "story": 18, "summary": "A quiet hotel offers a few guests the pleasures of a mountain resort, and they hide there fearing discovery by other pleasure-seekers." }, { "chunk": 135, "story": 18, "summary": "A gracious lady arrives and is treated by staff and guests as the perfect ornament of their exclusive retreat." }, { "chunk": 136, "story": 18, "summary": "Rumours make the lady a cosmopolitan; a well-dressed young man arrives, asks about sailings and settles in for a few days." }, { "chunk": 137, "story": 18, "summary": "A dropped handkerchief introduces them, and the two agree that the old resorts are ruined by the crowds who follow them." }, { "chunk": 138, "story": 18, "summary": "Each says they leave on Monday, she for a chateau abroad, and they spend a last evening together on the balcony." }, { "chunk": 139, "story": 18, "summary": "The lady confesses she sells hosiery for eight dollars a week and saved a year to live like a lady once." }, { "chunk": 140, "story": 18, "summary": "He writes her a receipt: he collects instalments on that very dress, saved as she did, and they plan an outing together." }, { "chunk": 141, "story": 19, "summary": "A village-born actress has risen to stardom, and a young character actor seeks the rustic part in her next play." }, { "chunk": 142, "story": 19, "summary": "Told the star rejects every imitation of a country dweller, the actor spends three days gathering the facts of her home village." }, { "chunk": 143, "story": 19, "summary": "At the star's late supper table an awkward country youth enters, and the whole room turns to look at him." }, { "chunk": 144, "story": 19, "summary": "The youth greets the star as a neighbour and retails the village news until she draws him to a private table." }, { "chunk": 145, "story": 19, "summary": "She cannot recall him but asks after her family, and he answers with the changes at her parents' house." }, { "chunk": 146, "story": 19, "summary": "He describes her mother watching the road daily for her return, and gives her a rose from the home doorstep." }, { "chunk": 147, "story": 19, "summary": "She laughs the village off and goes; when the actor calls next day her maid says she has returned there to live." }, { "chunk": 148, "story": 20, "summary": "A detective meets an old friend on the street, takes him aside and asks straight out why he killed the murdered man." }, { "chunk": 149, "story": 20, "summary": "The detective produces the gold pencil he once gave his friend, found at the scene, and warns him he must do his duty." }, { "chunk": 150, "story": 20, "summary": "The killer explains the shooting and the theft, then says the detective owes him a thousand dollars and cannot touch him." }, { "chunk": 151, "story": 20, "summary": "The detective concedes that the debt binds him, and says nothing else could have bought the man out of his hands." }, { "chunk": 152, "story": 20, "summary": "The detective says he will resign, and the killer's boasting of past crimes turns his old gratitude into cold disgust." }, { "chunk": 153, "story": 20, "summary": "Enraged at the mention of newspapers, the killer goes to a telephone to prove to an editor what he thinks of them." }, { "chunk": 154, "story": 20, "summary": "On the telephone he confesses the murder to the editor and proves it with a detail only the killer could know." }, { "chunk": 155, "story": 20, "summary": "He hangs up gloating and spends the night at shows and suppers, while the detective broods and then begins to wonder." }, { "chunk": 156, "story": 20, "summary": "At dawn the newsboys cry the papers; the detective buys one, looks at the front page and begins writing with the pencil." }, { "chunk": 157, "story": 21, "summary": "A village woman comes to the city with an easel to study art; at home she was reckless, here she looks a spinster." }, { "chunk": 158, "story": 21, "summary": "She takes a cheap room and lessons from a fraudulent teacher, one of the hopeless army of the mediocre." }, { "chunk": 159, "story": 21, "summary": "After a day of small defeats she accepts a dinner invitation from the boarding-house's showy man of the world." }, { "chunk": 160, "story": 21, "summary": "He takes her to a fashionable resort of artists, where a young man at a table hails him and invites them to join." }, { "chunk": 161, "story": 21, "summary": "Dazzled by the music and company, she drinks what is poured for her and speaks fondly of the farm she came from." }, { "chunk": 162, "story": 21, "summary": "Home in her room, conscience overwhelms her, and at midnight she writes to her sweetheart renouncing him as one lost forever." }, { "chunk": 163, "story": 21, "summary": "She resolves that no return is possible and models herself on famous fallen women, keeping her room for two days." }, { "chunk": 164, "story": 21, "summary": "Her sweetheart arrives, tells her to wipe off the paint and pack, mentions the trees at home, and she goes." }, { "chunk": 165, "story": 22, "summary": "A quarter of the city shelters exiles of many nations, who pass through its cafes and lodging houses and vanish into service." }, { "chunk": 166, "story": 22, "summary": "In a struggling rooming house the daughter keeps the rooms, and the best lodger is a splendid, prompt-paying foreigner." }, { "chunk": 167, "story": 22, "summary": "The lodger courts the daughter; she likes him but suspects he is one more penniless foreign gentleman with a story." }, { "chunk": 168, "story": 22, "summary": "He invites her to dine and takes her through a dark door into a hidden restaurant's crowded back yard." }, { "chunk": 169, "story": 22, "summary": "He excuses himself, and the whole company applauds and calls his name while she sits dazzled among the fine guests." }, { "chunk": 170, "story": 22, "summary": "He returns in shirtsleeves to season the dishes at every table; her fear of a penniless nobleman rises fourfold first." }, { "chunk": 171, "story": 22, "summary": "He tells her he is the restaurant's famous owner and cook and asks her to marry him; she accepts with relief." }, { "chunk": 172, "story": 23, "summary": "A clubman is bored by his companions' repeated stories and has been refused for the fifth time by the woman he courts." }, { "chunk": 173, "story": 23, "summary": "Strolling out, the clubman is accosted by a man from the loafing corner of thieves, and gladly goes aside to talk." }, { "chunk": 174, "story": 23, "summary": "The stranger announces himself a burglar and confidence man, and asks the clubman what is wrong with the way he dresses." }, { "chunk": 175, "story": 23, "summary": "The clubman itemises every fault of the burglar's expensive outfit, and the burglar demands more of the criticism." }, { "chunk": 176, "story": 23, "summary": "Offered his host's tailor, the burglar boasts of a robbery and lays the clubman's own watch and pocketbook on the table." }, { "chunk": 177, "story": 23, "summary": "Introduced at the club as a burglar and disbelieved, the stranger holds the whole table with an account of the West." }, { "chunk": 178, "story": 23, "summary": "Before leaving, the stranger tells the clubman he is the real thing and promises to return the favour some day." }, { "chunk": 179, "story": 23, "summary": "At lunch the clubman talks only of ranches and says he is going West; the woman who refused him says she will come." }, { "chunk": 180, "story": 24, "summary": "An out-of-work actress darns stockings in a cheap hotel above the theatre district, wanting only to be back on a stage." }, { "chunk": 181, "story": 24, "summary": "The hotel is full of resting players besieging managers for next season, and she wonders aloud where her old friend is." }, { "chunk": 182, "story": 24, "summary": "Her friend's act was throwing a garter to the audience nightly; after two years she quit for a village on the shore." }, { "chunk": 183, "story": 24, "summary": "The friend arrives travel-stained and agitated, drops her bag, and says she has come straight up to talk." }, { "chunk": 184, "story": 24, "summary": "She says she left the stage sick of the life, and above all of the men the work forced her to meet." }, { "chunk": 185, "story": 24, "summary": "She describes the suppers, the leering men and the middling actress who hangs on for the chance that never comes." }, { "chunk": 186, "story": 24, "summary": "She took a room by the sea, met a young clergyman lodging there, and within a month they were engaged." }, { "chunk": 187, "story": 24, "summary": "She hides her stage past; the landlady tells her he treasures a keepsake of an unhappy love in a locked box." }, { "chunk": 188, "story": 24, "summary": "Questioned, he says his earlier love was ideal: a woman he never met, seen from a distance, far above him." }, { "chunk": 189, "story": 24, "summary": "His answer raises him in her eyes; then, left alone with his forgotten keys, she opens the drawer out of curiosity." }, { "chunk": 190, "story": 24, "summary": "One look inside the box sends her packing; she pays the landlady, declares all men alike, and takes the next train." }, { "chunk": 191, "story": 25, "summary": "Outsiders hold cheap and lurid ideas about stage people, while privately practising gestures in front of their own mirrors." }, { "chunk": 192, "story": 25, "summary": "A performer has toured four years with a mixed act, working to the approval of the musicians below the stage." }, { "chunk": 193, "story": 25, "summary": "Bored by the whole bill, the performer sits up when a young woman does character songs and impersonations." }, { "chunk": 194, "story": 25, "summary": "She exactly fits the part in the sketch he has kept hidden in his trunk, so he calls at her lodgings next day." }, { "chunk": 195, "story": 25, "summary": "He reads her the sketch; she names its weak points and he accepts every change without argument." }, { "chunk": 196, "story": 25, "summary": "She asks his salary, names her lower one, and says she works for money and means to save for a country home." }, { "chunk": 197, "story": 25, "summary": "She insists the partnership be strictly business with no nonsense; he agrees and describes his own dream of a quiet house." }, { "chunk": 198, "story": 25, "summary": "The pair cut, rewrite and rehearse the sketch through every known improvement until it is ready." }, { "chunk": 199, "story": 25, "summary": "The act uses a real revolver and a live cartridge in a melodrama of a ranch, a theft and a jealous woman." }, { "chunk": 200, "story": 25, "summary": "In the story the ranch owner dies, a fortune vanishes, and the woman is convinced her lover is the thief." }, { "chunk": 201, "story": 25, "summary": "At the climax she fires through a rival's photograph; the bullet strikes a hidden spring and the missing fortune appears." }, { "chunk": 202, "story": 25, "summary": "The act triumphs and books at five hundred a week; she asks him inside to hear a proposal that will cut their expenses." }, { "chunk": 203, "story": 25, "summary": "For two years the act tours to full houses, the pair known everywhere as quiet, hard workers who go straight home." }, { "chunk": 204, "story": 25, "summary": "Nervous at a first night, she fires wide and the bullet enters her partner's neck; the audience applauds the supposed comedy." }, { "chunk": 205, "story": 25, "summary": "A fellow performer tells the wounded man that his partner is frantic with love for him; he calls it impossible." }, { "chunk": 206, "story": 25, "summary": "He insists it is too late, and reveals that the two of them have been quietly married for two years." }, { "chunk": 207, "story": 26, "summary": "A quarter of the city gathers exiles from the south, who plot, raise funds and buy arms from a favourite cafe." }, { "chunk": 208, "story": 26, "summary": "A general arrives by liner from the south, short, grand and important, and makes for the quarter where his countrymen gather." }, { "chunk": 209, "story": 26, "summary": "He takes rooms at a hotel whose blond landlady charms him, and reminds himself that his country claims his devotion." }, { "chunk": 210, "story": 26, "summary": "Bewildered by traffic, the general is marked by two street predators, and the smoother of them rescues him and gains his trust." }, { "chunk": 211, "story": 26, "summary": "Over bottles the general loudly confides that he carries drafts for twenty-five thousand to buy rifles for a revolution." }, { "chunk": 212, "story": 26, "summary": "The stranger promises to introduce him to the Secretary of War, and tells him to keep the drafts in his pocket." }, { "chunk": 213, "story": 26, "summary": "The stranger telephones a confidence man and casts him as the Secretary of War for the following afternoon." }, { "chunk": 214, "story": 26, "summary": "On the way out the stranger insults the landlady with a joke she overhears; the false official then plays his part." }, { "chunk": 215, "story": 26, "summary": "Cases are filled with bricks for the sale, and the landlady takes the general aside to ask about his new friend." }, { "chunk": 216, "story": 26, "summary": "The general buys the hotel's furnishings and lease with the money and proposes to the landlady; the swindler chokes with rage." }, { "chunk": 217, "story": 26, "summary": "The general calls it politics, says war is not nice, and asks whether the swindler has tasted the landlady's cooking." }, { "chunk": 218, "story": 27, "summary": "A confidence man follows an old partner's advice and comes to the city, meeting him again on the street." }, { "chunk": 219, "story": 27, "summary": "The partner insists the city's people beg to be robbed, and proposes they work the town together as in old times." }, { "chunk": 220, "story": 27, "summary": "He recounts schemes abandoned for being too easy; the newcomer says the people here do not look easy to him." }, { "chunk": 221, "story": 27, "summary": "The partner mocks the newcomer's caution, who says he wishes he had stayed with the small sure business at home." }, { "chunk": 222, "story": 27, "summary": "They pool their money, and an acquaintance brings a famous financier to their room to meet men from the West." }, { "chunk": 223, "story": 27, "summary": "The financier rages that a painting cannot be found and would pay seventy-five thousand; afterwards they stroll past a pawnshop." }, { "chunk": 224, "story": 27, "summary": "The partner has seen that very picture in the pawnshop, and next morning they go in to bargain for it." }, { "chunk": 225, "story": 27, "summary": "They pay two thousand for the picture; the financier has been abroad a month, and the same print sells everywhere for dollars." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "chunk": 241, "story": 29, "summary": "The host promises good fortune; the coachman, hoping for reinstatement, offers to give up drink if taken 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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "chunk": 258, "story": 31, "summary": "He vanishes without motive, debt, enemy or woman; two friends travelling abroad hear of a remote mountain monastery." }, { "chunk": 259, "story": 31, "summary": "At the monastery they watch the brothers file past and recognise their vanished friend among them." }, { "chunk": 260, "story": 31, "summary": "They confirm it is he, sitting among the shabby brothers, never looking up, eating broth from a coarse bowl." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "chunk": 264, "story": 32, "summary": "He says women do not specialise in his trade because they are already fully occupied extracting money from men." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "chunk": 271, "story": 33, "summary": "Western visitors mope in hotel lobbies; one of them is swept from his companions by the rush hour and backs into a doorway." }, { "chunk": 272, "story": 33, "summary": "Everything about him marks where he came from; he suddenly hauls a passing man out of the crowd and strikes him affectionately." }, { "chunk": 273, "story": 33, "summary": "The friend is now a polished city businessman; the visitor accuses him of becoming tame and orders whiskey against his cocktail." }, { "chunk": 274, "story": 33, "summary": "At lunch the friend orders delicate dishes and defends the city as comfortable, saying he cannot make himself go back." }, { "chunk": 275, "story": 33, "summary": "The visitor denounces him as a renegade softened by small drinks; the friend half agrees and repeats that the city is comfortable." }, { "chunk": 276, "story": 33, "summary": "At an elegant dinner the visitor keeps scorning each refinement while quietly watching the room and its diners." }, { "chunk": 277, "story": 33, "summary": "He admires a woman across the room, muses about selling his ranch, orders two cocktails and says they are on him." }, { "chunk": 278, "story": 34, "summary": "A speculator corners the flour market, adding two cents to every loaf, and retires with two million dollars." }, { "chunk": 279, "story": 34, "summary": "The speculator's easy-tempered son and his intense socialist friend meet again after college, when the son has inherited everything." }, { "chunk": 280, "story": 34, "summary": "The heir says he wants to pay back the people overcharged for bread; his friend tells him it cannot be done." }, { "chunk": 281, "story": 34, "summary": "The heir presses for a way; his friend argues that each penny taken from the poor multiplied a thousandfold in harm." }, { "chunk": 282, "story": 34, "summary": "As an instance, a small baker was ruined by the price rise, went mad, burned a building and died in an asylum." }, { "chunk": 283, "story": 34, "summary": "The last item of the instance is the baker's daughter sewing shirts for four dollars a week; she orders the heir out." }, { "chunk": 284, "story": 34, "summary": "Two months later the watchmaker meets her in furs, haggling over the price of bread: she has married the heir." }, { "chunk": 285, "story": 34, "summary": "A reporter says he could not make a funny column of a violinist's story, and hands the details to his writer friend." }, { "chunk": 286, "story": 34, "summary": "At a wedding twenty years ago the best man climbs the fire escape and begs the bride to run away with him." }, { "chunk": 287, "story": 34, "summary": "She scorns him, and as he kisses her hand in farewell the bridegroom walks in on the two of them." }, { "chunk": 288, "story": 34, "summary": "The bridegroom throws her down and leaves forever; twenty years pass and she keeps the shop and loves him still." }, { "chunk": 289, "story": 34, "summary": "She refuses a suitor because she is still married, lets rooms, and a grey-haired violinist takes the front one." }, { "chunk": 290, "story": 34, "summary": "A second lodger with haunting eyes charms her, and she concludes he is her returned husband, but gives no sign." }, { "chunk": 291, "story": 34, "summary": "The violinist declares his love and admits he knows neither his name nor anything before waking in a hospital." }, { "chunk": 292, "story": 34, "summary": "She tells him she is married; an hour later the other lodger begs her to forgive the wrong of twenty years." }, { "chunk": 293, "story": 34, "summary": "He confesses that he struck her husband down that night; she cries out, breaks away and runs upstairs toward the music." }, { "chunk": 294, "story": 35, "summary": "An overworked lawyer parts from his wife in the usual way, recalling his doctor's warning that his brain may give way." }, { "chunk": 295, "story": 35, "summary": "He wakes on a day coach with no memory of who he is, no papers, and three thousand dollars in his pocket." }, { "chunk": 296, "story": 35, "summary": "Put on the spot by a friendly traveller, he invents a name and a trade on the strength of the man's own talk." }, { "chunk": 297, "story": 35, "summary": "The traveller presses his shelf-bottle reform, and hands him a newspaper item about a supposed case of lost memory." }, { "chunk": 298, "story": 35, "summary": "The item describes a prominent lawyer missing from home, who drew money from his bank and is feared broken by overwork." }, { "chunk": 299, "story": 35, "summary": "He registers under the invented name and feels a wild sense of freedom, as if just born into the world." }, { "chunk": 300, "story": 35, "summary": "Days of theatres, cabarets and crowds teach him that the city's freedom is held inside unwritten rules." }, { "chunk": 301, "story": 35, "summary": "A man greets him by his real name; he denies it coldly, calls the man a confidence trickster and moves hotels." }, { "chunk": 302, "story": 35, "summary": "A handsome woman stops him in a restaurant, sure of him after fifteen years, and he tells her he has forgotten everything." }, { "chunk": 303, "story": 35, "summary": "She asks whether he has ever dared look at white roses since that night, and tells him blissfully that he lies." }, { "chunk": 304, "story": 35, "summary": "He repeats the invented name until she goes; that night a quiet man leads him to his wife and his physician." }, { "chunk": 305, "story": 35, "summary": "The wife throws herself on him and begs him to say her name; he unwinds her arms and the doctor leads her out." }, { "chunk": 306, "story": 35, "summary": "The doctor explains his name, his profession and his illness; he answers coolly and admires his wife's hair." }, { "chunk": 307, "story": 35, "summary": "He engages the doctor in confidence, throws the white roses out of the window, and says the cure may happen now." }, { "chunk": 308, "story": 36, "summary": "The narrator disputes the claim that only certain cities can hold a story, and arrives in a quiet southern capital." }, { "chunk": 309, "story": 36, "summary": "He arrives in the drizzle, is driven to a renovated hotel by an ancient vehicle, and finds the service slow and courteous." }, { "chunk": 310, "story": 36, "summary": "A waiter tells him nothing happens after sundown; he walks the streets and finds quiet houses and little else." }, { "chunk": 311, "story": 36, "summary": "In the lobby he meets a red, pulpy loafer with a blabbing lip whom he recognises at once as a type he detests." }, { "chunk": 312, "story": 36, "summary": "The loafer apologises for spitting near him, and within four minutes has made a friend of him and dragged him to the bar." }, { "chunk": 313, "story": 36, "summary": "The loafer boasts of ancestry and of his wife's income, shows a handful of silver, and the clerk offers to eject him." }, { "chunk": 314, "story": 36, "summary": "He declines to complain, asks what the town offers a stranger, and explains his errand to sign a local contributor." }, { "chunk": 315, "story": 36, "summary": "Next morning he meets an ancient hack driver in a remarkable old military coat, patched with twine where its braid had been." }, { "chunk": 316, "story": 36, "summary": "The coat keeps one yellow horn button and is tied shut with string; the carriage is as old as the coat." }, { "chunk": 317, "story": 36, "summary": "He names the address; the driver first bars his way with suspicion, then presses him eagerly into the carriage." }, { "chunk": 318, "story": 36, "summary": "At the house the driver demands two dollars instead of fifty cents, insisting not that it is right but that he needs it." }, { "chunk": 319, "story": 36, "summary": "He pays with a torn and patched dollar, and is received in a bare, decayed mansion by a frail, white-haired lady." }, { "chunk": 320, "story": 36, "summary": "Charmed by her talk and seeing her poverty, he cannot speak of rates, and sets the business for the next afternoon." }, { "chunk": 321, "story": 36, "summary": "She answers his platitude about dull towns by saying it is in the still places that things happen." }, { "chunk": 322, "story": 36, "summary": "She lists cruelties she has seen near and far, then answers a knock at the back and returns brighter, offering tea." }, { "chunk": 323, "story": 36, "summary": "She sends a small servant out with that same torn dollar; a man's voice and a scuffle follow, and the tea is withdrawn." }, { "chunk": 324, "story": 36, "summary": "The driver says she will not starve, that she has resources; the visitor wires his magazine a lie to raise her rate." }, { "chunk": 325, "story": 36, "summary": "That evening the loafer slaps down the same torn and patched dollar at the bar, and the visitor recognises it." }, { "chunk": 326, "story": 36, "summary": "She faints after signing the contract; the doctor calls it starvation, and names her as the loafer's wife." }, { "chunk": 327, "story": 36, "summary": "The doctor says the husband takes even what her old servant gives her; the visitor advances her fifty dollars anyway." }, { "chunk": 328, "story": 36, "summary": "The driver's last horn button is gone; two hours later the loafer is found dead in a street after a violent struggle." }, { "chunk": 329, "story": 36, "summary": "The dead hand drops a yellow horn button; the visitor pockets it and, leaving town, throws it into the river." }, { "chunk": 330, "story": 37, "summary": "From a rooftop the people below look like insects, and the watcher's mind expands to the immensity of the universe." }, { "chunk": 331, "story": 37, "summary": "A candy-store clerk earning six dollars a week is courted by the man who keeps the smallest store in the city." }, { "chunk": 332, "story": 37, "summary": "She teases him daily about the size of his store, and lives herself in a room barely wider than her arms." }, { "chunk": 333, "story": 37, "summary": "A second suitor arrives at her boarding house, stuffed with facts and figures which he uses to dominate any table." }, { "chunk": 334, "story": 37, "summary": "The pair stop at the little store for chewing gum before going up to see the view, and she teases him again." }, { "chunk": 335, "story": 37, "summary": "On the roof the philosopher calls the people below crawling insects; she says they are folks and asks to go down." }, { "chunk": 336, "story": 37, "summary": "He presses on about the smallness of human affairs and the distance of the stars; she says she is afraid up here." }, { "chunk": 337, "story": 37, "summary": "A meteor blazes over the roof; she screams, demands to be taken down, and vanishes outside the door below." }, { "chunk": 338, "story": 38, "summary": "A street runs north through grandeur and antique shops into a mediaeval gloom before diving into a tunnel." }, { "chunk": 339, "story": 38, "summary": "A restaurant keeper of half-noble descent works by day and walks the city by night in search of mysteries." }, { "chunk": 340, "story": 38, "summary": "He carries cards good for meals at his own place, and finds a melancholy young man flinging silver into the street." }, { "chunk": 341, "story": 38, "summary": "He takes the young man's arm and leads him to a park bench to learn what drives him to such waste." }, { "chunk": 342, "story": 38, "summary": "He explains that he studies people and seeks to relieve distress in city streets, and invites the young man's confidence." }, { "chunk": 343, "story": 38, "summary": "The young man works in a harness shop; the owner's daughter will go to whichever man answers his riddle first." }, { "chunk": 344, "story": 38, "summary": "The riddle is what kind of hen lays the longest, and the young man asks the would-be benefactor to answer it." }, { "chunk": 345, "story": 38, "summary": "The benefactor cannot solve it and, humiliated, presses one of his meal cards on the young man as they part." }, { "chunk": 346, "story": 38, "summary": "Next morning the rival fails; reading the card in his pocket, the young man answers a dead one and wins the party." }, { "chunk": 347, "story": 39, "summary": "A rich child of five loses the cheap rag-doll she loves, and the whole household cannot find it." }, { "chunk": 348, "story": 39, "summary": "Expensive toys and doctors fail to console her; parents and servants are helpless as the season comes on." }, { "chunk": 349, "story": 39, "summary": "The terrier had buried the doll in a corner of the lawn; meanwhile a decently drunk tramp walks the neighbouring street." }, { "chunk": 350, "story": 39, "summary": "The tramp digs out the doll, takes it into a saloon and earns drinks by addressing it as his lady friend." }, { "chunk": 351, "story": 39, "summary": "Three local toughs read of a hundred-dollar reward for the doll, and one offers the tramp fifty cents for it." }, { "chunk": 352, "story": 39, "summary": "The tramp laughs and refuses, saying money cannot buy her; he is drunk on his first success as a performer." }, { "chunk": 353, "story": 39, "summary": "The toughs show him the advertisement; he agrees to claim the reward, and they follow him armed to the gate." }, { "chunk": 354, "story": 39, "summary": "He rings, the doll is restored, and the child screams hatred at the ragged man who brought her treasure back." }, { "chunk": 355, "story": 39, "summary": "A secretary counts him a hundred dollars and has him shown out, while the three wait beyond the gate." }, { "chunk": 356, "story": 39, "summary": "At the door the holly and the harp music stir old memories, and he insists on paying his compliments to the lady." }, { "chunk": 357, "story": 39, "summary": "The lady receives him, wine is brought, and he begins the old family salutation before his memory fails." }, { "chunk": 358, "story": 39, "summary": "As he is shown out she orders the motor car brought round to take him wherever he wishes to go." }, { "chunk": 359, "story": 40, "summary": "The city swarms with rich men in search of people to relieve, and the poor hide from their attentions." }, { "chunk": 360, "story": 40, "summary": "A retired magnate declares that squaring one old ten thousand dollars would do the trick; he rose from a breaker boy." }, { "chunk": 361, "story": 40, "summary": "Rich beyond counting, he builds a palace and begins to worry about his soul's salvation." }, { "chunk": 362, "story": 40, "summary": "His million to a charity is misreported and his laboratory gift is built as a lavatory, and he is given a degree." }, { "chunk": 363, "story": 40, "summary": "Overhearing professors mock him, he wearies of giving on a large scale and decides to see gratitude himself." }, { "chunk": 364, "story": 40, "summary": "A district boss corners him and says the poor there belong to him, and warns him to keep to his own part of town." }, { "chunk": 365, "story": 40, "summary": "He doubles his donations, buys a young woman a stage part, and still finds no relief; his sister and daughter keep his house." }, { "chunk": 366, "story": 40, "summary": "The daughter, plain, loud and healthy, looks out of a window and gives her heart to the grocer's young man." }, { "chunk": 367, "story": 40, "summary": "She watches the confident young driver three days running and then consults the housemaid who is her friend." }, { "chunk": 368, "story": 40, "summary": "She borrows a cap and apron, passes as a maid, and he stops for her whistling and gives his name." }, { "chunk": 369, "story": 40, "summary": "They whistle duets and he talks of sixteen dollars a week and flats, while she never counts on her father's money." }, { "chunk": 370, "story": 40, "summary": "Raised to eighteen a week, he tells her to untie the apron strings, and they count up what she can do." }, { "chunk": 371, "story": 40, "summary": "The old debt was a hillside bought for a trifle from a miner and sold a month later for ten thousand." }, { "chunk": 372, "story": 40, "summary": "Detectives trace the heir to the grocer's man; the magnate pays him the ten thousand as another man's agent." }, { "chunk": 373, "story": 40, "summary": "Invited to call and meet the daughter, the young man says he is engaged to a parlour maid and must deliver his goods." }, { "chunk": 374, "story": 40, "summary": "She confesses she is the heiress; he says her father will refuse, and she says she will marry him tonight." }, { "chunk": 375, "story": 40, "summary": "The father's car runs the cab down; two years later he refuses every charity and cuts salaries to save money." }, { "chunk": 376, "story": 40, "summary": "He shows the mark his grandson's new tooth made, and raises the price of vinegar three cents instead of two." }, { "chunk": 377, "story": 41, "summary": "A young woman works the cashier's cage at a crowded downtown restaurant, taking money through an arch in a brass screen." }, { "chunk": 378, "story": 41, "summary": "She counts change, deflects proposals and rates every customer at once, and every man who pays adores her." }, { "chunk": 379, "story": 41, "summary": "The young men trade compliments and hints of presents, and one broker proposes to her more often than he eats." }, { "chunk": 380, "story": 41, "summary": "Her talk runs on in one stream of sums, refusals, appointments and rebukes as the queue pays and passes." }, { "chunk": 381, "story": 41, "summary": "An old banker collapses outside, is carried in, and he and his wife take to the beautiful cashier who tended him." }, { "chunk": 382, "story": 41, "summary": "She resigns to be adopted, saying she will miss the cage, and money is poured out to polish her." }, { "chunk": 383, "story": 41, "summary": "At a charity bazaar an earl approaches her booth's brass wicket; she answers him as a cashier would, and faints." }, { "chunk": 384, "story": 42, "summary": "A magazine editor, content with his life, wanders into a small park on a spring afternoon." }, { "chunk": 385, "story": 42, "summary": "Pleased by his sales, his salary and his wife's new devotion to singing, he is caught by the sleeve by a shabby acquaintance." }, { "chunk": 386, "story": 42, "summary": "The shabby man is a fiction writer ruined by a loss, whose stories the editor returns with careful letters of explanation." }, { "chunk": 387, "story": 42, "summary": "On a park bench the writer calls it his office and insists he will force the magazines to admit his work is good." }, { "chunk": 388, "story": 42, "summary": "The editor praises the plot and style, then says he spoils every climax with flat and drab strokes." }, { "chunk": 389, "story": 42, "summary": "They argue whether a mother whose child is taken speaks in grand words or in her ordinary muddled ones." }, { "chunk": 390, "story": 42, "summary": "The editor holds that deep emotion calls out a fitting and elevated expression, learned from the stage and from life." }, { "chunk": 391, "story": 42, "summary": "The writer quotes his own banal lines, and asks whether the editor would buy the story if it were proved true to life." }, { "chunk": 392, "story": 42, "summary": "The writer proposes to prove it from life with his own wife, saying he is down to his last dollar." }, { "chunk": 393, "story": 42, "summary": "The scheme is a false note saying he has run off; the editor calls it cruel and the writer presses him." }, { "chunk": 394, "story": 42, "summary": "They climb to the bare flat, where he finds a note his wife left that morning and reads it aloud." }, { "chunk": 395, "story": 42, "summary": "The wives have gone on the road together; the writer declaims in grand style and the editor blurts out slang." }, { "chunk": 396, "story": 43, "summary": "Two rival gangs observe strict politeness in a saloon while each watches the other in the mirror." }, { "chunk": 397, "story": 43, "summary": "The etiquette breaks, one man is knifed in the dark, and the wounded man refuses to name who did it." }, { "chunk": 398, "story": 43, "summary": "The saloon keeper has told the police, so the knifer must stay hidden until the fixer returns from abroad." }, { "chunk": 399, "story": 43, "summary": "A week of hiding becomes unbearable and he goes to an unfamiliar late resort where nobody knows him." }, { "chunk": 400, "story": 43, "summary": "The resort's distinction is that women may smoke there, which makes its proprietor twenty years ahead of his time." }, { "chunk": 401, "story": 43, "summary": "A girl comes in alone, sits opposite him, lights a cigarette and smiles at him, and both are done for." }, { "chunk": 402, "story": 43, "summary": "Each at once begins to pretend; she explains her cigarette by an aunt, and he tells her to stop it." }, { "chunk": 403, "story": 43, "summary": "She gives a fine name, says she binds books and works overtime, and only came in for a smoke." }, { "chunk": 404, "story": 43, "summary": "He offers to walk her home and invents a rich father and a seat on the exchange to recommend himself." }, { "chunk": 405, "story": 43, "summary": "At one the doors are locked and the drinks become illegal, which sweetens everything in the room." }, { "chunk": 406, "story": 43, "summary": "He asks whether her story was true, believes her, and asks her to be his steady girl." }, { "chunk": 407, "story": 43, "summary": "They arrange a visit on Thursday; then blows fall on the street door and the lights go out." }, { "chunk": 408, "story": 43, "summary": "The guests escape by a ladder; she stops to ask again whether he really likes her, and they are left behind." }, { "chunk": 409, "story": 43, "summary": "A policeman finds the two, takes off his hat, names him as the man who knifed another, and orders him along." }, { "chunk": 410, "story": 43, "summary": "She hurls herself at the officer, claims the man as hers, throws money on the table and names the bribe he takes." }, { "chunk": 411, "story": 43, "summary": "Outside he hands the money back; she says he will not want to see her, and tells him what she had hoped to be." }, { "chunk": 412, "story": 43, "summary": "He confesses his own lies, takes her two blocks to a clergyman's door and rings the bell." }, { "chunk": 413, "story": 44, "summary": "The essay distinguishes fortune, adventure and chance, and names the venturer as one who watches the roadside." }, { "chunk": 414, "story": 44, "summary": "A clubman walks out on a familiar story, craving a turn of events whose ending he cannot already foresee." }, { "chunk": 415, "story": 44, "summary": "He wanders an hour, declines his favourite hotel as no venture, and decides to dine somewhere doubtful instead." }, { "chunk": 416, "story": 44, "summary": "He finds not a penny in thirteen pockets, and a stranger nearby admits he has just done the same." }, { "chunk": 417, "story": 44, "summary": "The stranger proposes they dine expensively and match his two pennies to see who faces the bill." }, { "chunk": 418, "story": 44, "summary": "The stranger explains he seeks adventures whose conclusion he cannot predict, and would bet without seeing his hand." }, { "chunk": 419, "story": 44, "summary": "He says civilisation has posted signboards on every path, and that even ruin now has a known address." }, { "chunk": 420, "story": 44, "summary": "His most promising premise, a veiled lady's note in a bazaar, ended with a journalist wanting newspaper work." }, { "chunk": 421, "story": 44, "summary": "Rapids, cards and strange doorbells all end conventionally; the only certain thing is that nothing is uncertain." }, { "chunk": 422, "story": 44, "summary": "The clubman loses the toss and proposes the other slip away while he holds the check and faces the outcome." }, { "chunk": 423, "story": 44, "summary": "He signs the check, confessing he dines there weekly; the other confesses he owns the hotel." }, { "chunk": 424, "story": 44, "summary": "The clubman says he is engaged, loves the lady, and dreads the certainty of everything that will follow." }, { "chunk": 425, "story": 44, "summary": "The hotel owner calls at an unchanging old house and is met warmly by a young woman he has known for years." }, { "chunk": 426, "story": 44, "summary": "She recalls that he never would play a game with rules, and tells him plainly he could have had her." }, { "chunk": 427, "story": 44, "summary": "He reflects that she and the house offer no surprises; she says she is going to be married soon." }, { "chunk": 428, "story": 44, "summary": "The clubman sails to escape certainty; the other says he has found the real hazard, having married her yesterday." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "chunk": 438, "story": 46, "summary": "A hat cleaner stands at a machine all day for twelve dollars a week, his feet burning and smarting." }, { "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." }, { "chunk": 440, "story": 46, "summary": "The rich man offers to pay for his education, his travels abroad and a business of his own choosing." }, { "chunk": 441, "story": 46, "summary": "The young man takes him for a swindler and tells him to be off before something happens to him." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "chunk": 446, "story": 47, "summary": "He counts each mishap as a prophecy fulfilled and insists the reading is coming true before their eyes." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "chunk": 450, "story": 47, "summary": "The friend explains the palmist's reading and says it strains friendship to stand by a born fool." }, { "chunk": 451, "story": 47, "summary": "The stranger laughs, takes them for drinks, and explains he walks at night collecting oddities for a book." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "chunk": 455, "story": 48, "summary": "She cries, then stands before the glass, lets her hair fall its full length, and her face goes pale." }, { "chunk": 456, "story": 48, "summary": "The household's two treasures are his inherited watch and her hair; she sells the hair for twenty dollars." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "chunk": 459, "story": 48, "summary": "He wakes from his trance, holds her, and tells her to unwrap the package to see what startled him." }, { "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." }, { "chunk": 461, "story": 48, "summary": "Of all who give gifts, the narrator says, these two who sacrificed their greatest treasures were the wisest." }, { "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." }, { "chunk": 463, "story": 49, "summary": "The stranger talks of every country as familiarly as a garden, impartial to cities, continents and zones alike." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "chunk": 467, "story": 49, "summary": "He lists rooms and slippers waiting in a dozen countries, and calls pride in one's birthplace a relic." }, { "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." }, { "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." }, { "chunk": 470, "story": 50, "summary": "A wife waits with cooling supper, and greets her husband with a complaint that he apologises to strangers but never to her." }, { "chunk": 471, "story": 50, "summary": "He answers with an insult, and she hurls the supper at him; the two throw the dishes course by course." }, { "chunk": 472, "story": 50, "summary": "The duel escalates to the wash basin, and a scream downstairs halts them; the policeman outside decides not to interfere." }, { "chunk": 473, "story": 50, "summary": "The landlady's small boy is lost; the boarders exclaim, pair off, and one sets out to scour the city for him." }, { "chunk": 474, "story": 50, "summary": "She cannot say when she last saw him; the news of a straying child moves everyone who hears it." }, { "chunk": 475, "story": 50, "summary": "At the window the couple speak of the son they never had, quarrel gently over his name, and she apologises." }, { "chunk": 476, "story": 50, "summary": "They sit arm in arm watching the search, until word comes that the boy was asleep under a bed all along." }, { "chunk": 477, "story": 50, "summary": "He mocks the name she chose, the crockery flies again, and the policeman times the quarrel by his watch." }, { "chunk": 478, "story": 51, "summary": "A landlady shows each room in descending order of price, scorning anyone who confesses they need something cheaper." }, { "chunk": 479, "story": 51, "summary": "The cheapest room is a coffin-sized space with a skylight; a very small young woman comes hunting a room." }, { "chunk": 480, "story": 51, "summary": "She takes it at two dollars, copies papers at night, and is gay-hearted enough to hear out a lodger's play." }, { "chunk": 481, "story": 51, "summary": "The men gather round her on the stoop while two other women sniff; three of them privately court her." }, { "chunk": 482, "story": 51, "summary": "She points out the steady blue star she can see through her skylight and says she has named it herself." }, { "chunk": 483, "story": 51, "summary": "Work fails; she goes hungry from office to office, refuses a proposal in the hall, and crawls up to her room." }, { "chunk": 484, "story": 51, "summary": "She blows a kiss to the star and says goodbye; next morning the door is forced and an ambulance is called." }, { "chunk": 485, "story": 51, "summary": "The doctor carries her out like his own dead; the paper names him William Jackson, and says she will recover." }, { "chunk": 486, "story": 52, "summary": "Two art students from small towns meet, marry, and set up in a small flat with their studies and each other." }, { "chunk": 487, "story": 52, "summary": "They are happy while the money lasts, each studying under an expensive master toward a clear ambition." }, { "chunk": 488, "story": 52, "summary": "When the money fails she says she has found a pupil in a splendid house at five dollars a lesson." }, { "chunk": 489, "story": 52, "summary": "He protests at her working while he studies; she insists, and from then on both leave the house early." }, { "chunk": 490, "story": 52, "summary": "She brings home fifteen dollars with stories of the household; he lays down eighteen from a sketch sold to a stranger." }, { "chunk": 491, "story": 52, "summary": "She comes home with a bandaged hand and a story about spilled rarebit; he asks quietly what time it happened." }, { "chunk": 492, "story": 52, "summary": "She confesses she has been ironing in a laundry; he confesses he has been firing its engine for two weeks." }, { "chunk": 493, "story": 53, "summary": "At a weekly club dance, a plain young woman always goes escorted by her friend and her friend's fellow." }, { "chunk": 494, "story": 53, "summary": "She tells her friend not to call for her: she has a gentleman friend of her own coming to escort her." }, { "chunk": 495, "story": 53, "summary": "The escort proves tall, dark-curled and graceful, quite unlike the club's muscular young men, and she leads him round proudly." }, { "chunk": 496, "story": 53, "summary": "Her evening is a triumph, but he takes the honours, and waltzes twice with the leader's own partner." }, { "chunk": 497, "story": 53, "summary": "The club's leader, told the visitor is unknown to the district's chief, stops him on the floor and asks where he lives." }, { "chunk": 498, "story": 53, "summary": "Neither will yield; the leader demands proof of the visitor's name and then insults him outright." }, { "chunk": 499, "story": 53, "summary": "The board conducts the visitor to the back room where quarrels are settled, and word reaches her of it." }, { "chunk": 500, "story": 53, "summary": "She bursts in and snatches the long knife from her escort's raised arm before it can be used." }, { "chunk": 501, "story": 53, "summary": "She confesses she dressed him in a false name to have an escort at last; the leader offers to take her next week." }, { "chunk": 502, "story": 54, "summary": "A man in search of answers sets out to learn what exactly is meant by the type called a man about town." }, { "chunk": 503, "story": 54, "summary": "A reporter gives a loose account of the type, and the seeker walks the bright street ignoring everyone else." }, { "chunk": 504, "story": 54, "summary": "He asks a barman, who answers in slang, then stops a collector on the sidewalk with the same question." }, { "chunk": 505, "story": 54, "summary": "A critic defines the type as a man sick with wanting to see and know, who pokes into every new place." }, { "chunk": 506, "story": 54, "summary": "The critic warms to his portrait; the seeker begs to be shown a real specimen rather than a description." }, { "chunk": 507, "story": 54, "summary": "He refuses dinner to keep hunting, is knocked down crossing the street, and the paper calls him a typical specimen." }, { "chunk": 508, "story": 55, "summary": "Winter is coming and the park sleeper decides his plan: three months of board and lodging on the island prison." }, { "chunk": 509, "story": 55, "summary": "He prefers the law to charity, which exacts humiliation, and resolves to dine well and then declare he cannot pay." }, { "chunk": 510, "story": 55, "summary": "At the glittering restaurant door the head waiter sees his shoes and trousers and he is turned out at once." }, { "chunk": 511, "story": 55, "summary": "He breaks a window and waits, but the officer will not believe him; he then eats where the food is cheap." }, { "chunk": 512, "story": 55, "summary": "The waiters pitch him onto the pavement; he next tries insulting a young woman in front of a policeman." }, { "chunk": 513, "story": 55, "summary": "The young woman takes his arm gladly; he shakes her off, then howls and dances and is excused as a student." }, { "chunk": 514, "story": 55, "summary": "He takes another man's umbrella openly, and the owner apologises and gives it up rather than call the officer." }, { "chunk": 515, "story": 55, "summary": "At an old church the organ anthem holds him, and he sees with horror what his days have become." }, { "chunk": 516, "story": 55, "summary": "He resolves to find work and be somebody; a hand falls on his arm, and the magistrate gives him three months." }, { "chunk": 517, "story": 56, "summary": "Three penniless friends eat on credit at a cheap restaurant whose owner lets them pay or not as they can." }, { "chunk": 518, "story": 56, "summary": "The restaurant's waitress is a magnificent figure who seems to belong entirely to the place she serves in." }, { "chunk": 519, "story": 56, "summary": "She mothers and overfeeds them for nothing; one of them says a fate hangs over her that would take her away." }, { "chunk": 520, "story": 56, "summary": "The prediction is a rich timberman who will marry her and remove her from the place where she belongs." }, { "chunk": 521, "story": 56, "summary": "A bearded miner arrives boasting of two millions, and is struck dumb the moment the waitress looms up with his order." }, { "chunk": 522, "story": 56, "summary": "The three rush him out to drink, goad him into paying for everything, and have him carted to a distant hotel." }, { "chunk": 523, "story": 56, "summary": "Three years later the painter's picture of her sells for five thousand, and he admits his motive was not only theory." }, { "chunk": 524, "story": 57, "summary": "A mongrel pup is sold as a rare breed to a large woman and becomes her petted darling in a cheap flat." }, { "chunk": 525, "story": 57, "summary": "The flat holds the usual furniture and a small henpecked husband who wipes dishes and walks the dog each evening." }, { "chunk": 526, "story": 57, "summary": "The wife idles all day and tidies up ten minutes before he returns; dog and husband keep to shabby streets." }, { "chunk": 527, "story": 57, "summary": "The dog urges him to cheer up, and learns from a neighbouring terrier why its owner comes home whistling." }, { "chunk": 528, "story": 57, "summary": "The remedy is drink; on the next walk the dog drags his man toward the doors of a saloon." }, { "chunk": 529, "story": 57, "summary": "After an hour of drinks the man throws away the collar and tells the dog to go; the dog refuses to leave." }, { "chunk": 530, "story": 57, "summary": "The two set out together for the West, and the man gives the dog a plain new name of his own choosing." }, { "chunk": 531, "story": 58, "summary": "The night clerk of an old-fashioned drug store is counsellor and confessor to the whole neighbourhood." }, { "chunk": 532, "story": 58, "summary": "He loves his landlady's daughter but is too timid; his rival, bolder and friendly, drops in to ask for drugs." }, { "chunk": 533, "story": 58, "summary": "The rival says they are to run away and marry that night, if the young woman does not change her mind again." }, { "chunk": 534, "story": 58, "summary": "The rival asks whether there is a powder that will make a girl like you better if it is given to her." }, { "chunk": 535, "story": 58, "summary": "The clerk makes up a sleeping powder, hands it over, and then sends word of the elopement to the girl's father." }, { "chunk": 536, "story": 58, "summary": "Next morning the rival appears married and happy: he would not drug her, so he put the powder in her father's coffee." }, { "chunk": 537, "story": 59, "summary": "A retired soap manufacturer, despised by his aristocratic neighbours, calls his son in and asks what he pays for soap." }, { "chunk": 538, "story": 59, "summary": "The father insists money buys anything; the son answers that it will not buy entry into exclusive society." }, { "chunk": 539, "story": 59, "summary": "Pressed, the son admits a woman is the trouble, and the father tells him to make his chance and ask her." }, { "chunk": 540, "story": 59, "summary": "She sails in two days, and all he will have is eight minutes in a cab between a train and a theatre." }, { "chunk": 541, "story": 59, "summary": "His aunt gives him his mother's ring for luck; he meets the young woman at the station and they drive off." }, { "chunk": 542, "story": 59, "summary": "He stops the cab to recover the dropped ring, and in that minute the traffic locks solid all around them." }, { "chunk": 543, "story": 59, "summary": "Two hours in the blockade wins him her promise, and his aunt declares that love, not money, did it." }, { "chunk": 544, "story": 59, "summary": "Next day a man calls for payment: he hired the wagons, cabs and police who made the blockade to order." }, { "chunk": 545, "story": 60, "summary": "A freelance typist weeps over a menu card; she has no shorthand and lives by odd jobs of copying." }, { "chunk": 546, "story": 60, "summary": "She bargains with a restaurant to typewrite its daily bills of fare in exchange for three meals a day." }, { "chunk": 547, "story": 60, "summary": "In a cold false spring she sits at her window looking past a brick wall to the lane where she was courted." }, { "chunk": 548, "story": 60, "summary": "The farmer crowned her with flowers and they were to marry at the first sign of spring; then she returned to work." }, { "chunk": 549, "story": 60, "summary": "Typing the spring menu she reaches the flower's name, has had no letter for two weeks, and breaks down." }, { "chunk": 550, "story": 60, "summary": "She forces back the tears, finishes the cards, and at dinner sets that one dish aside untouched." }, { "chunk": 551, "story": 60, "summary": "That evening the bell rings and her farmer comes up the stairs three at a time to find her." }, { "chunk": 552, "story": 60, "summary": "He found her by the bill of fare, where her fingers had typed his name in place of the plant." }, { "chunk": 553, "story": 61, "summary": "A true adventurer goes out aimless to meet whatever fate offers, unlike those with a prize in view." }, { "chunk": 554, "story": 61, "summary": "The city offers clues of adventure at every corner, and almost everyone passes them by out of convention." }, { "chunk": 555, "story": 61, "summary": "A piano salesman who takes up every chance passes a dentist's card-giver outside a building one evening." }, { "chunk": 556, "story": 61, "summary": "His card reads The Green Door in ink; the ones others drop are plain advertisements, and a second card says the same." }, { "chunk": 557, "story": 61, "summary": "On a third pass he is given no card and reads contempt in the man's face for his hesitation." }, { "chunk": 558, "story": 61, "summary": "He climbs the stairs, knocks at the green door, and a white-faced girl opens it and collapses into his arms." }, { "chunk": 559, "story": 61, "summary": "She has not eaten in three days; he runs out and comes back loaded with food from the shops." }, { "chunk": 560, "story": 61, "summary": "Over supper she tells the common story of small wages, fines, illness, lost work and lost hope." }, { "chunk": 561, "story": 61, "summary": "He promises to come back tomorrow, and tells her he knocked by mistake rather than reveal the cards." }, { "chunk": 562, "story": 61, "summary": "Every door in the house is green and the cards advertised a play; he decides Fate arranged it regardless." }, { "chunk": 563, "story": 62, "summary": "From his high seat a cab driver sees every passenger as mere goods in transit, to be despised at the reckoning." }, { "chunk": 564, "story": 62, "summary": "A wedding is celebrated noisily in a tenement, and a cab driver stands by his fine hansom, plainly drunk." }, { "chunk": 565, "story": 62, "summary": "A young woman steps into his cab and says to drive anywhere; he takes her through the park, singing." }, { "chunk": 566, "story": 62, "summary": "He stops at a garden restaurant; she is swept inside, orders one beer with her coins, and watches entranced." }, { "chunk": 567, "story": 62, "summary": "Hours later he demands four dollars before going further; she laughs that she has only a few pennies." }, { "chunk": 568, "story": 62, "summary": "He drags her to the police station to complain, sobers, and introduces her to the sergeant as the bride he married tonight." }, { "chunk": 569, "story": 63, "summary": "The narrator dreams of the day of judgment, where an angel policeman asks if he belongs with a prosperous-looking group." }, { "chunk": 570, "story": 63, "summary": "A shop girl on six dollars a week tells her friend she has accepted a dinner invitation from a known spender." }, { "chunk": 571, "story": 63, "summary": "She spends the fifty cents meant for three meals on an imitation lace collar, and goes up to her furnished room." }, { "chunk": 572, "story": 63, "summary": "Her room holds a few treasures and portraits; her weekly budget for rent and food leaves nothing for clothes." }, { "chunk": 573, "story": 63, "summary": "Her pleasures are counted by summers; the man calling for her is a well-dressed connoisseur of hungry shop girls." }, { "chunk": 574, "story": 63, "summary": "Dressed and happy, she turns for her handkerchief, meets a hero's portrait's stern eyes, and sends word she cannot go." }, { "chunk": 575, "story": 63, "summary": "She cries, changes back into her old gown, and dines on crackers and jam, offering some to the portrait." }, { "chunk": 576, "story": 63, "summary": "She scolds the portrait; the story stops, and the dream's prosperous group proves to be employers who paid girls six dollars a week." }, { "chunk": 577, "story": 64, "summary": "A ragged man on a park bench believes himself a prince in disguise, far richer than the owners of the mansions opposite." }, { "chunk": 578, "story": 64, "summary": "He tells himself he has renounced wealth to study humanity and delights in bestowing gifts on the deserving." }, { "chunk": 579, "story": 64, "summary": "A young man in evening clothes watches the clock tower in distress; the ragged prince approaches and offers his help." }, { "chunk": 580, "story": 64, "summary": "The prince denounces clocks as tyrants; the young man keeps glancing from the clock to a lit house opposite." }, { "chunk": 581, "story": 64, "summary": "At ten to nine the young man nearly leaves, then explains he wronged his fiancee and awaits her decision." }, { "chunk": 582, "story": 64, "summary": "She promised a white scarf in the window at half past eight if she forgave him; the hour has passed and he despairs." }, { "chunk": 583, "story": 64, "summary": "The prince promises a fortune on his wedding day and falls asleep; the young man covers him kindly, then the clock strikes." }, { "chunk": 584, "story": 64, "summary": "The scarf appears: the clock was half an hour fast; next morning police find the sleeping vagrant clutching a fifty-dollar bill." }, { "chunk": 585, "story": 65, "summary": "A sightseeing coach sets out, and on its highest back seat sit a young man from a small town and his bride." }, { "chunk": 586, "story": 65, "summary": "The guide bellows mistaken sights at passengers who gape at whatever he names, the bride among them." }, { "chunk": 587, "story": 65, "summary": "The bride's face shows she thinks her husband right and the world excellent; he is twenty-four and rising." }, { "chunk": 588, "story": 65, "summary": "In front of them sits a girl in a flowered hat beside a sharp-eyed young man who belongs to hard streets." }, { "chunk": 589, "story": 65, "summary": "The two women exchange a look and a whisper; the girl's companion slips over the side just as officers stop the coach." }, { "chunk": 590, "story": 65, "summary": "The officers take the bridegroom for a wanted burglar; he goes down amused, expecting to explain." }, { "chunk": 591, "story": 65, "summary": "His bride tells him to go quietly as the burglar, so he fights the police in fury until her uncle clears him." }, { "chunk": 592, "story": 65, "summary": "She explains that the other pair had married that morning, and she could not refuse another bride her happiness." }, { "chunk": 593, "story": 66, "summary": "A broker arrives with his stenographer and plunges into work; she lingers, then asks whether he ordered a replacement." }, { "chunk": 594, "story": 66, "summary": "The clerk says the broker ordered one; she says she will work until someone comes, and the day's frenzy begins." }, { "chunk": 595, "story": 66, "summary": "An applicant arrives; the broker denies ordering any replacement and says the place is hers as long as she likes." }, { "chunk": 596, "story": 66, "summary": "In a lull the scent of lilac reminds him of her, and he rushes to her desk to propose at once." }, { "chunk": 597, "story": 66, "summary": "He proposes in a hurry, papers in hand; she weeps, then reminds him they were married the evening before." }, { "chunk": 598, "story": 67, "summary": "A patrolman on his beat finds a man in a dark doorway who says he is keeping an appointment made twenty years ago." }, { "chunk": 599, "story": 67, "summary": "He tells of parting from his best friend twenty years ago, each to make a fortune, and shows a diamond watch." }, { "chunk": 600, "story": 67, "summary": "The patrolman moves on; twenty minutes later a tall man hurries across the street and greets him as his old friend." }, { "chunk": 601, "story": 67, "summary": "They walk arm in arm until, under a bright light, he sees the stranger is not his friend at all." }, { "chunk": 602, "story": 67, "summary": "The stranger arrests him and hands him a note: his friend was the patrolman, and could not make the arrest himself." }, { "chunk": 603, "story": 68, "summary": "A draughtsman on eighteen dollars a week saves a dollar weekly to spend one evening in ten dressed and dining as a rich idler." }, { "chunk": 604, "story": 68, "summary": "Parading the bright street in borrowed grandeur, he stops at a corner as a girl slips on ice and falls." }, { "chunk": 605, "story": 68, "summary": "He helps her up; she seems a refined working girl in a plain dress, and he decides to invite her to dine." }, { "chunk": 606, "story": 68, "summary": "He invites her to dinner to rest her ankle; she hesitates over her plain clothes, and he insists they suit her." }, { "chunk": 607, "story": 68, "summary": "She accepts and gives only her first name; at a good restaurant each looks at the other with growing admiration." }, { "chunk": 608, "story": 68, "summary": "Carried away, he boasts of clubs, yachts and idleness; she asks whether he has no work that would interest him more." }, { "chunk": 609, "story": 68, "summary": "They part; he wishes he had told the truth; she hurries to a grand mansion where her sister has been anxious." }, { "chunk": 610, "story": 68, "summary": "She tells her sister she could love a poor man with an ambition, but never an idler between clubs and society." }, { "chunk": 611, "story": 69, "summary": "A young man passing a young woman on a park bench stops further on, and sends a boy with a message to her." }, { "chunk": 612, "story": 69, "summary": "The message says he is leaving the country and asks her, for old times' sake, why she discarded him without explanation." }, { "chunk": 613, "story": 69, "summary": "The boy delivers it in street slang; she answers with cool irony that she knew the gentleman and will hear it." }, { "chunk": 614, "story": 69, "summary": "She says she saw him in the conservatory embracing another woman, and so gave up both her rose and her ideal." }, { "chunk": 615, "story": 69, "summary": "He sends back a letter, saying a little trust would have spared much heartache, and the boy vouches for him." }, { "chunk": 616, "story": 69, "summary": "The letter thanks him, a doctor, for catching the other woman when she fainted; the young woman sends back that she wants him." }, { "chunk": 617, "story": 70, "summary": "In a district of transient lodgers, a young man rings a dozen bells and is shown a room by a sinister housekeeper." }, { "chunk": 618, "story": 70, "summary": "She praises the room and its last tenants, a stage couple; many of her lodgers work in the theatres and move on." }, { "chunk": 619, "story": 70, "summary": "He takes the room and asks, as he has a thousand times, after a young singer; the answer, as always, is no." }, { "chunk": 620, "story": 70, "summary": "Alone in the shabby room, he takes in the pictures and castoffs that pursue the homeless from house to house." }, { "chunk": 621, "story": 70, "summary": "The room's damage speaks of the rage of past tenants against a place that pretended to be a home." }, { "chunk": 622, "story": 70, "summary": "Suddenly the room fills with the scent the lost girl loved, and he cries out that she has been here." }, { "chunk": 623, "story": 70, "summary": "He ransacks drawers and corners for any trace of her and finds only the anonymous leavings of strangers." }, { "chunk": 624, "story": 70, "summary": "The housekeeper lists the room's previous tenants, none like her; he returns and the scent has gone." }, { "chunk": 625, "story": 70, "summary": "He seals the room and turns on the gas; below, the housekeeper admits a young girl killed herself in that bed a week ago." }, { "chunk": 626, "story": 71, "summary": "A cheap chop house is kept by a sour owner at the cash desk, and served by two waitresses, one of them beautiful." }, { "chunk": 627, "story": 71, "summary": "The other waitress is plain and too anxious to please; every customer is enslaved by her beautiful partner." }, { "chunk": 628, "story": 71, "summary": "The beautiful one is courted and given presents by regulars; the plain one has never had a single admirer." }, { "chunk": 629, "story": 71, "summary": "The plain one is loyal and content to be overlooked, and listens enviously to her friend's tale of being followed and struck." }, { "chunk": 630, "story": 71, "summary": "A shy customer, drunk, kisses the plain waitress and leaves; her friend teases her as a rival, and she feels transformed." }, { "chunk": 631, "story": 71, "summary": "She tells the owner and every customer she was insulted; she gets a raise, ribbons and new attention." }, { "chunk": 632, "story": 71, "summary": "The man returns to apologise, saying he was drunk and would never have done it sober; she sobs among the cups." }, { "chunk": 633, "story": 72, "summary": "Two country girls come to the city for work; one irons in a laundry and dresses loudly on good wages." }, { "chunk": 634, "story": 72, "summary": "The other sells in a department store at eight dollars a week, dressed plainly but in the manner of the rich." }, { "chunk": 635, "story": 72, "summary": "The store girl says she means to catch a rich husband; the laundress met her steady young man over her ironing board." }, { "chunk": 636, "story": 72, "summary": "The laundress's steady electrician arrives and proposes the theatre, and the two women trade teasing about manners." }, { "chunk": 637, "story": 72, "summary": "In the store the girl copies the gestures, voice and walk of her richest customers and absorbs their manners." }, { "chunk": 638, "story": 72, "summary": "The store girls pool their stratagems for fending off men, and she learns the art of defence." }, { "chunk": 639, "story": 72, "summary": "Men linger at her counter; she learns to tell the real rich from the imitators by the cars waiting outside." }, { "chunk": 640, "story": 72, "summary": "A genuinely rich young man proposes to her over the counter, and she declines him to her colleague's horror." }, { "chunk": 641, "story": 72, "summary": "She explains that he was caught in a lie and that she wants someone who is more than a moneybag." }, { "chunk": 642, "story": 72, "summary": "She keeps hunting on eight dollars a week, while the laundress spends her wages on ever showier clothes." }, { "chunk": 643, "story": 72, "summary": "The laundress refuses to marry her steady man and keep house, and offers to find her friend better-paid work." }, { "chunk": 644, "story": 72, "summary": "The store girl says she is still looking the rich over; her friend mocks her plain jacket and bets she will catch one first." }, { "chunk": 645, "story": 72, "summary": "Surrounded by luxury, her standard of value slowly shifts from money toward truth, honour and kindness." }, { "chunk": 646, "story": 72, "summary": "The steady man says the laundress has vanished, seen riding with a rich man; the store girl goes to the show with him." }, { "chunk": 647, "story": 72, "summary": "Months later the laundress, dressed in furs and jewels, learns her friend is marrying the man she left, and sobs against a fence." }, { "chunk": 648, "story": 73, "summary": "A wealthy man receives his wife's photograph and a letter hinting ill of her, tears it up, and asks about the homeless men outside." }, { "chunk": 649, "story": 73, "summary": "He orders his servant to fetch one of the homeless men at random to dine with him, to lift his mood." }, { "chunk": 650, "story": 73, "summary": "The guest arrives washed but wrecked, defiant and unembarrassed, and announces his own name before his host's." }, { "chunk": 651, "story": 73, "summary": "The guest mocks the city's would-be benefactors, who all pay for a meal by extracting the recipient's life story." }, { "chunk": 652, "story": 73, "summary": "The host asks for no story; the guest offers the truth instead: he was once a fashionable portrait painter." }, { "chunk": 653, "story": 73, "summary": "His portraits revealed each sitter's hidden character, and one after another his patrons were exposed and turned on him." }, { "chunk": 654, "story": 73, "summary": "Unable to work anywhere, he took to drink; the host has him draw a sketch from the photograph of his wife." }, { "chunk": 655, "story": 73, "summary": "The painter leaves with money; the host cannot bring himself to look, and sends for a young artist to judge the sketch." }, { "chunk": 656, "story": 73, "summary": "The young artist calls the drawing a master's and the face an angel's; the host cries that she is his wife." }, { "chunk": 657, "story": 74, "summary": "A man stopping at his usual bar after work overhears a friend saying he was very drunk there last night." }, { "chunk": 658, "story": 74, "summary": "Shaken, he orders seltzer and leaves; the story recalls his summer courtship of his wife and their shared love of a poem." }, { "chunk": 659, "story": 74, "summary": "They married, came to the city, and as his salary rose they took up the showy, drinking life of the cafes." }, { "chunk": 660, "story": 74, "summary": "Their home life becomes cocktails and late parties, and he comes home merry each evening to wild greetings." }, { "chunk": 661, "story": 74, "summary": "He comes home sober, kisses her quietly, and when she asks what is wrong, he answers that nothing is." }, { "chunk": 662, "story": 74, "summary": "He declines the whisky at dinner and says he has stopped; she answers coldly, and the evening dies in silence." }, { "chunk": 663, "story": 74, "summary": "She sets out the bottle defiantly; he recites their old verse to her, then goes and pours himself a drink." }, { "chunk": 664, "story": 74, "summary": "She sweeps the bottle and glasses to the floor, embraces him, and asks for the verse about remoulding things nearer the heart's desire." }, { "chunk": 665, "story": 75, "summary": "A man two years married walks home from the train knowing exactly how the whole evening will go." }, { "chunk": 666, "story": 75, "summary": "He knows the dinner, the noises of the flats, and that at a quarter past eight he will leave to play pool." }, { "chunk": 667, "story": 75, "summary": "Tonight she is gone, her things scattered in haste, with a note that her mother is ill and she has taken the train." }, { "chunk": 668, "story": 75, "summary": "Alone for the first time in two years of marriage, he tidies her things with a feeling close to terror." }, { "chunk": 669, "story": 75, "summary": "He eats cold mutton alone; the whole night is free for pleasure, and he discovers he does not want it." }, { "chunk": 670, "story": 75, "summary": "He calls himself a brute for neglecting her, resolves to take her out and give up his cronies, and she walks in." }, { "chunk": 671, "story": 75, "summary": "Her mother was hardly ill and she came straight back; at a quarter past eight he reaches for his hat as always." }, { "chunk": 672, "story": 76, "summary": "On the national holiday a vagrant takes the same bench he has taken at the same hour for nine years." }, { "chunk": 673, "story": 76, "summary": "This year he arrives already gorged, having just eaten an enormous unexpected dinner, and can barely breathe." }, { "chunk": 674, "story": 76, "summary": "Two old ladies' custom of feeding the first hungry passer-by caught him; now he sees his yearly benefactor approaching." }, { "chunk": 675, "story": 76, "summary": "For nine years an old gentleman has fed this same man a holiday dinner, hoping to found an American tradition." }, { "chunk": 676, "story": 76, "summary": "He makes his usual speech of invitation, a little sadly, wishing he had a son to carry on the custom after him." }, { "chunk": 677, "story": 76, "summary": "The old man lives alone in rented rooms; seeing his joy, the gorged vagrant accepts in the usual words out of duty." }, { "chunk": 678, "story": 76, "summary": "At the restaurant he eats a second vast dinner rather than dim the old man's happiness, then collapses around the corner." }, { "chunk": 679, "story": 76, "summary": "Both men land in the hospital, where a doctor mentions the old gentleman is starving: he had not eaten for three days." }, { "chunk": 680, "story": 77, "summary": "A well-dressed man without a cent walks through a park pitying the idle poor, sure he will be rich again by morning." }, { "chunk": 681, "story": 77, "summary": "He gets five dollars from a clergyman with a forged letter, then placates a creditor in the street with drinks." }, { "chunk": 682, "story": 77, "summary": "He loses most of it at roulette, then cheats a small child of the change from his mother's medicine money." }, { "chunk": 683, "story": 77, "summary": "He saves the child from two street cars, sends him off swindled and happy, and dines laughing at how easily everyone is taken in." }, { "chunk": 684, "story": 77, "summary": "Old friends try to sweep him off to a dinner party; he declines with a grand lie, delighted at how front works." }, { "chunk": 685, "story": 77, "summary": "An old countryman asks for his son's address; the swindler first refuses, then claims to live next door to the son." }, { "chunk": 686, "story": 77, "summary": "An hour later, with a hundred and forty dollars, he tosses a beggar a dollar and tells him work is for fools." }, { "chunk": 687, "story": 77, "summary": "Crossing to his hotel he sees a pure-faced girl he sat beside at school, and hides his burning face against a lamp-post." }, { "chunk": 688, "story": 78, "summary": "The senior partner of a great western dry-goods store sends his junior east to buy the season's stock this year." }, { "chunk": 689, "story": 78, "summary": "The wholesaler greets the buyer, predicts his order from the rainfall, and tells his son to show him the town." }, { "chunk": 690, "story": 78, "summary": "Unimpressed by the city's lights, the buyer is struck motionless when the firm's best model comes to show the gowns." }, { "chunk": 691, "story": 78, "summary": "She models gown after gown with a tired contempt, and the wholesaler offers her as company for dinner." }, { "chunk": 692, "story": 78, "summary": "She agrees coolly; at dinner he takes away her cocktail and asks her first name, which she gives freezingly." }, { "chunk": 693, "story": 78, "summary": "He tells her she will go home with him and offers a diamond; she flicks it back, sure he is like all buyers." }, { "chunk": 694, "story": 78, "summary": "She explains she must dine with buyers or lose her place; he says she will drink no more wine, and she weeps." }, { "chunk": 695, "story": 78, "summary": "She slaps him; a wedding ring falls from his pocket, and that night she wakes her roommate to ask where his town is." }, { "chunk": 696, "story": 79, "summary": "A rich man's war comrade turns up penniless at his club and asks for help finding a job." }, { "chunk": 697, "story": 79, "summary": "The rich man gets him the post he asks for, a mounted policeman in the park, and soon after glimpses a beautiful woman." }, { "chunk": 698, "story": 79, "summary": "He falls in love with a young woman in a passing motor car; later, at a reunion, the policeman gets too drunk to ride." }, { "chunk": 699, "story": 79, "summary": "To save his friend's badge, the rich man puts on the uniform and rides the patrol in his place." }, { "chunk": 700, "story": 79, "summary": "In the park he meets the woman he loves in a carriage; the horses bolt and he rides them down." }, { "chunk": 701, "story": 79, "summary": "Thanked and asked his name, he realises giving it would disgrace his friend, and answers that it is only his duty." }, { "chunk": 702, "story": 79, "summary": "His friend reveals he is an earl's son whose family has found him, and that the woman, his sister, wants to meet the rescuer." }, { "chunk": 703, "story": 80, "summary": "A rich heir, annoyed at being kept in town to sign papers, grumbles at the family lawyer." }, { "chunk": 704, "story": 80, "summary": "The lawyer tries to raise a matter of right concerning his properties; he brushes it off and finds his club empty." }, { "chunk": 705, "story": 80, "summary": "On a whim he takes a crowded boat to the amusement beach and falls into talk with a frank, pretty girl." }, { "chunk": 706, "story": 80, "summary": "She teases him, lets him join her, and tells him she trims hats and lives in a furnished room with a friend." }, { "chunk": 707, "story": 80, "summary": "The crowd's vulgarity repels him until he looks at her happy face and suddenly sees the place as she does." }, { "chunk": 708, "story": 80, "summary": "He throws himself into the amusements with her, and on the boat home he forgets his cares and repeats her name." }, { "chunk": 709, "story": 80, "summary": "A steamer rams their boat; the life preservers prove rotten, and she laughs and holds his hand calmly." }, { "chunk": 710, "story": 80, "summary": "He declares his love; she says that is what they all say, and explains she meets men on boats and in the street." }, { "chunk": 711, "story": 80, "summary": "She explains that where she lives there is no parlour and no room to receive anyone, so a girl must meet men outside." }, { "chunk": 712, "story": 80, "summary": "Next day he learns the houses without parlours are his own; he tells the lawyer to change them, crying it is too late." }, { "chunk": 713, "story": 81, "summary": "A wandering tramp studies each city as a poet would, finding its soul and then moving restlessly to another." }, { "chunk": 714, "story": 81, "summary": "He has personal fancies for each city he has known: one hearty, one aloof, one chilling, each with its own figure." }, { "chunk": 715, "story": 81, "summary": "He arrives in the greatest city meaning to read it like the others, and by afternoon is defeated and frightened." }, { "chunk": 716, "story": 81, "summary": "No one looks at him or speaks to him; he longs for even the kicks and stares of the rougher cities." }, { "chunk": 717, "story": 81, "summary": "The people seem cold, conceited idols; he singles out three types: a rich old man, a cold beauty, and a jowled tough." }, { "chunk": 718, "story": 81, "summary": "Refused alms, he is struck by a car, and opens his eyes to find those same three strangers tending him with care." }, { "chunk": 719, "story": 81, "summary": "A kindly crowd gathers and he says he feels fine; three days later he fights a patient for running down his city." }, { "chunk": 720, "story": 82, "summary": "The vainest and cleverest member of a street gang of well-dressed robbers withdraws from it because the girl he loves asks him to." }, { "chunk": 721, "story": 82, "summary": "He promises to work honestly and marry within a year, though he looks mournfully at his fine clothes." }, { "chunk": 722, "story": 82, "summary": "He returns to plumbing as an assistant for eight months, his clothes wearing thin, then brings her a mysterious parcel." }, { "chunk": 723, "story": 82, "summary": "The parcel holds costly-looking sables; she is overjoyed, then looks at him steadily, doubting how he paid." }, { "chunk": 724, "story": 82, "summary": "She parades them through the neighbourhood as a queen; a fair-minded detective hears of the fabulous furs and follows." }, { "chunk": 725, "story": 82, "summary": "The detective says a lady's sables vanished from a house the man worked at yesterday, and offers to check his story." }, { "chunk": 726, "story": 82, "summary": "He admits theft rather than say where he bought them; a policeman who sold furs prices them at twenty-one dollars." }, { "chunk": 727, "story": 82, "summary": "She cries that she wants only him, not furs; the real sables were found at home, and the officers let them go." }, { "chunk": 728, "story": 83, "summary": "A tailor's apprentice with his week's twelve dollars goes to the cafe where the district's political leader is celebrating victory." }, { "chunk": 729, "story": 83, "summary": "Emboldened, he shakes the great man's hand and spends his whole week's wages buying wine for him and his lieutenants." }, { "chunk": 730, "story": 83, "summary": "His family shrieks and strikes at him over the lost wages, but he is ecstatic; the leader himself cannot enter the best houses." }, { "chunk": 731, "story": 83, "summary": "At a fashionable restaurant the political leader dines gloomily, ignored; across the room sits a millionaire of the oldest society." }, { "chunk": 732, "story": 83, "summary": "The leader walks over and offers help with the aristocrat's reforms; the handshake raises him in every eye, and he orders wine for all." }, { "chunk": 733, "story": 83, "summary": "The aristocrat drives his fiancee through the slums, pointing out where he will build kitchens and replace the old death-traps." }, { "chunk": 734, "story": 83, "summary": "On impulse he grasps the hand of a squalid young man coming out of a tenement, and feels almost happy: it is the apprentice." }, { "chunk": 735, "story": 84, "summary": "Two shop girls plan new dresses for the store's holiday dinner, one purple, one red, each hoping to charm the head clerk." }, { "chunk": 736, "story": 84, "summary": "She has saved eighteen dollars over eight months and needs four more to collect the dress the day before the holiday." }, { "chunk": 737, "story": 84, "summary": "The head clerk is a gentleman and a health crank, and every girl in the store dreams of becoming his wife." }, { "chunk": 738, "story": 84, "summary": "The night before, her rival is locked out over four dollars of rent; she gives her the four dollars meant for the dress." }, { "chunk": 739, "story": 84, "summary": "Her rival goes to the dinner in red; she stays home by the window, then tells the tailor she cannot pay." }, { "chunk": 740, "story": 84, "summary": "The tailor, who has watched her pass for two years, gives her the dress to pay later; she walks out happy into the rain." }, { "chunk": 741, "story": 84, "summary": "The head clerk meets her walking bareheaded in the rain, praises her dress and her good sense, and asks to walk with her." }, { "chunk": 742, "story": 85, "summary": "A fire company's cart driver follows a foreign war obsessively on a pinned map, cheering one side and cursing the other." }, { "chunk": 743, "story": 85, "summary": "The firemen live by an unwritten code; meanwhile a grinning, bewildered immigrant is put ashore and wanders into the city." }, { "chunk": 744, "story": 85, "summary": "The immigrant steps in front of the racing hose cart; the driver swerves into a pillar, breaking his shoulder and the horse's leg." }, { "chunk": 745, "story": 85, "summary": "The beloved horse is shot; the firemen drag the immigrant back to the station and abuse him as worthless foreign rubbish." }, { "chunk": 746, "story": 85, "summary": "A shopkeeper who claims many languages cannot place him and calls him a fool; the firemen kick him into the street." }, { "chunk": 747, "story": 85, "summary": "The stranger keeps returning to apologise and is kicked out daily, until the driver's small son befriends him." }, { "chunk": 748, "story": 85, "summary": "The boy sets a motor car running away; the stranger leaps on the remaining horse bareback and snatches him from it." }, { "chunk": 749, "story": 85, "summary": "The driver grips his hand; told the stranger is a Cossack, a kind of Russian, he promptly changes sides in the war." }, { "chunk": 750, "story": 86, "summary": "A sober, capable bartender loves his employer's daughter but cannot say a word to her." }, { "chunk": 751, "story": 86, "summary": "Speechless before her, he talks only of rain; two men in the back room spend their days mixing and discarding drinks." }, { "chunk": 752, "story": 86, "summary": "The men explain that to dodge a heavy duty abroad they dumped all their bottles into two barrels, one vile, one sublime." }, { "chunk": 753, "story": 86, "summary": "The second barrel gave courage, ambition and nerve; they sold it by the glass until a whole country nearly declared war." }, { "chunk": 754, "story": 86, "summary": "For ten months they have mixed every liquor they own trying to find it again, pouring each failure away." }, { "chunk": 755, "story": 86, "summary": "The bartender repeats the daughter's remark about water; they realise the missing element and are soon arrested for fighting and singing." }, { "chunk": 756, "story": 86, "summary": "He drinks the last two spoonfuls of the golden blend, lifts the daughter off her feet, and announces they are to be married." }, { "chunk": 757, "story": 87, "summary": "A young wife proudly shows her friend the bruises her husband gives her, saying a man who does not beat you does not care." }, { "chunk": 758, "story": 87, "summary": "The friend asks whether it hurts and why he does it; she laughs that it earns her theatre tickets and silk." }, { "chunk": 759, "story": 87, "summary": "She says he beats her when drunk; the friend confesses her own husband never strikes her and never takes her anywhere either." }, { "chunk": 760, "story": 87, "summary": "The husband bursts in with bundles, theatre tickets and the promised silk waist, and the envious friend goes upstairs." }, { "chunk": 761, "story": 87, "summary": "The friend cries without reason; her husband comes home, grunts at supper, and reads in his stocking feet." }, { "chunk": 762, "story": 87, "summary": "On the holiday her friend is merry in new silk; seized by jealousy, she resolves to provoke her own husband into striking her." }, { "chunk": 763, "story": 87, "summary": "She rails at him and strikes him twice in the face, closing her eyes and waiting for the blow she longs for." }, { "chunk": 764, "story": 87, "summary": "Her friend runs up to see; she sobs that he never touched her, and has instead begun washing the clothes." }, { "chunk": 765, "story": 88, "summary": "A tired father reading by the window refuses to play with his young daughter and sends her out to play in the street." }, { "chunk": 766, "story": 88, "summary": "Years on, a gang leader bets he will take another girl to the dance, and his friend warns him not to cross his fiancee." }, { "chunk": 767, "story": 88, "summary": "He wants to teach his fiancee a lesson for her jealousy and drinking; his friend recalls he gave her her first drink." }, { "chunk": 768, "story": 88, "summary": "She drinks whisky in a cafe and tells the waiter that if he takes the other girl to the dance she will kill him." }, { "chunk": 769, "story": 88, "summary": "She recalls sitting on doorsteps as a child with nothing at home, then sits and teaches a small girl a string game." }, { "chunk": 770, "story": 88, "summary": "At the dance she steps out and stabs him, then runs, pursued down the street by a howling crowd." }, { "chunk": 771, "story": 88, "summary": "She throws herself into the river; the narrator dreams of a heavenly court where she is brought up for judgment." }, { "chunk": 772, "story": 88, "summary": "The court discharges her and sends the officer after the guilty party: the father who sat reading while his children played in the street." }, { "chunk": 773, "story": 89, "summary": "A police captain dismissed in a reform scandal has fallen to begging, and befriends another man as low as himself." }, { "chunk": 774, "story": 89, "summary": "His companion was thrown out of a rich uncle's house; the two sit on a park bench, one cursing, one silent." }, { "chunk": 775, "story": 89, "summary": "Starving after a failed attempt at a free lunch, the former captain goes off to try one more scheme for food." }, { "chunk": 776, "story": 89, "summary": "Left alone, the young man goes to the police to ask whether there is a reward for his friend; the sergeant throws him out." }, { "chunk": 777, "story": 89, "summary": "The captain returns splattered, having proposed to a fruit seller for her business; he would do anything, he says, except betray a friend." }, { "chunk": 778, "story": 89, "summary": "A political agent offers the captain five hundred dollars to testify against his old superior; he refuses and drives the man off." }, { "chunk": 779, "story": 89, "summary": "The young man calls him a fool; then an agent tells the young man his uncle will restore him if he marries an heiress." }, { "chunk": 780, "story": 89, "summary": "The young man refuses the heiress and her fortune, and the two join the midnight bread line together." }, { "chunk": 781, "story": 90, "summary": "The city swelters through a summer so hot that everyone talks of heat, baths and cool diets." }, { "chunk": 782, "story": 90, "summary": "A harassed man insists loudly that the city is the finest summer resort, and refuses a friend's invitation to go fishing." }, { "chunk": 783, "story": 90, "summary": "Alone at his desk he wonders about his friend's trout, and drifts into memory of a mountain summer long ago." }, { "chunk": 784, "story": 90, "summary": "At a mountain hotel, two young men, one rich and one not, compete for the same beautiful young woman." }, { "chunk": 785, "story": 90, "summary": "At a mock tournament she climbs a rock; he races his rich rival up the face and reaches her first to crown her." }, { "chunk": 786, "story": 90, "summary": "His clerk wakes him at his desk; he insists again that the city beats the country, and turns to the letters." }, { "chunk": 787, "story": 90, "summary": "A letter from his wife reveals he stays in the hot city working so she and the sick children can stay in the mountains." }, { "chunk": 788, "story": 91, "summary": "Two young women share a cheap studio in an artists' quarter; in November pneumonia strikes one of them down." }, { "chunk": 789, "story": 91, "summary": "The doctor says she has one chance in ten, and only if she wants to live; she has made up her mind to die." }, { "chunk": 790, "story": 91, "summary": "The sick girl lies counting the leaves falling from an old vine on the wall outside, and says she will die with the last." }, { "chunk": 791, "story": 91, "summary": "Her friend scolds her for the fancy and asks her to close her eyes; she says she is tired and wants to let go." }, { "chunk": 792, "story": 91, "summary": "The friend goes down to an old drunken painter who has always promised a masterpiece, to ask him to pose." }, { "chunk": 793, "story": 91, "summary": "The old man scorns the fancy but agrees to pose; the two look fearfully at the vine as cold rain and snow begin." }, { "chunk": 794, "story": 91, "summary": "Next morning one leaf still clings to the wall; it survives another stormy night, and the girl watches it." }, { "chunk": 795, "story": 91, "summary": "She says it was wicked to want to die and asks for broth; the doctor mentions the old painter downstairs has pneumonia too." }, { "chunk": 796, "story": 91, "summary": "Her friend tells her the old painter has died of pneumonia: he painted that last leaf on the wall the night the real one fell." }, { "chunk": 797, "story": 92, "summary": "A rising young man ignores a plain new boarder, until he sees her one evening dressed in deep mourning, beautiful and sad." }, { "chunk": 798, "story": 92, "summary": "He speaks to her on the steps; she hints that death has claimed not a relative but someone closer, and he sympathises." }, { "chunk": 799, "story": 92, "summary": "In the park she tells him her fiance was a real count with a castle, and that her father kept them apart." }, { "chunk": 800, "story": 92, "summary": "The count, she says, was killed abroad and her heart lies in his grave; he resolves to be her friend and more." }, { "chunk": 801, "story": 92, "summary": "She shows him the count's photograph in her locket and a larger one framed; he studies it with inscrutable eyes." }, { "chunk": 802, "story": 92, "summary": "Engaged a month later, he turns gloomy and explains that a great political boss has promised to come to the wedding." }, { "chunk": 803, "story": 92, "summary": "He says the patron must not come, for reasons he will not give, and asks whether she loves him as she loved the count." }, { "chunk": 804, "story": 92, "summary": "She confesses she invented the count to wear becoming black; he forgives her, since the photograph was the political boss himself." }, { "chunk": 805, "story": 93, "summary": "A weary magazine sub-editor seeks relief in the artists' world of the city, and calls for a woman who belongs to it." }, { "chunk": 806, "story": 93, "summary": "Her flat is strewn with the wreckage of last night's party; she appears radiant and they go to a famous bohemian restaurant." }, { "chunk": 807, "story": 93, "summary": "The restaurant's owner rose from a cheap eating-house by staging eccentricities that fashionable diners took for authentic bohemia." }, { "chunk": 808, "story": 93, "summary": "At the round table sit painters, poets and a mourning widow; the woman is one of the acknowledged princesses of their circle." }, { "chunk": 809, "story": 93, "summary": "Dinner proceeds by courses of humour, wit, repartee and brag, each guest ready with their prepared performance." }, { "chunk": 810, "story": 93, "summary": "The strain of seeming at ease shows between her brows; freedom there is a tyrant that forbids anyone to object." }, { "chunk": 811, "story": 93, "summary": "After the party she takes a midnight train to her parents' bare country cottage, and greets her stern father at sunrise." }, { "chunk": 812, "story": 93, "summary": "She peels potatoes, lies about her work, and sits two hours on a hard chair hearing theology read aloud, blissfully happy." }, { "chunk": 813, "story": 93, "summary": "The sermon damns her and she rejoices; that evening at dinner she tells her friends she has been away in bohemia." }, { "chunk": 814, "story": 93, "summary": "When a painter tries to kiss her she slaps him hard, breaking the one law of their circle, and the party breaks up." }, { "chunk": 815, "story": 93, "summary": "A village girl in the city, hearing the story, says that had the woman stayed home a week the painter would have got his kiss." }, { "chunk": 816, "story": 94, "summary": "A miner back from the far north with a fortune sees a young woman in the homeward crowd and resolves at once to follow her." }, { "chunk": 817, "story": 94, "summary": "She catches her ferry, exhausted after a late dance and a trying day, and he gains the deck beside her." }, { "chunk": 818, "story": 94, "summary": "He speaks; she takes him for a masher, then, seeing his sincerity, lets him sit and teases him about his name." }, { "chunk": 819, "story": 94, "summary": "He earnestly describes the gold dust he has brought south; she mistakes his meaning, grows bored, and falls asleep on his shoulder." }, { "chunk": 820, "story": 94, "summary": "He asks whether she would rather a husband had money or love; she cries 'Cash!' in her sleep, and wakes to find him gone." }, { "chunk": 821, "story": 95, "summary": "A ten-dollar note tells its own history, noting that the cultured seldom hold it long enough to learn its manners." }, { "chunk": 822, "story": 95, "summary": "In a butcher's purse it meets a limp five-dollar note that spent the day in a shop girl's stocking in the heat." }, { "chunk": 823, "story": 95, "summary": "It circulates fast through bars, a peddler's roll, a policeman's pocket and a gambling back room, and delights in it." }, { "chunk": 824, "story": 95, "summary": "A gambling-house owner rolls it into a wad for a night on the town, and a gold note says he will spend lavishly." }, { "chunk": 825, "story": 95, "summary": "The gambler offered a church fifty thousand and was refused as tainted, and now half the town follows him to drink it." }, { "chunk": 826, "story": 95, "summary": "At a cafe he asks whether the refused money will buy drink; at one o'clock a ragged woman comes in and stares at it." }, { "chunk": 827, "story": 95, "summary": "He bows and hands her the note; once a Treasury clerk who counted such notes, she thanks him and runs to a bakery." }, { "chunk": 828, "story": 95, "summary": "A dollar from her change reports she fed a sick, half-starved child and prayed; the ten says there is no such thing as tainted money." }, { "chunk": 829, "story": 96, "summary": "A young woman's father, an old cutter, dies after an accident, leaving her a dollar and his employer's letter offering help." }, { "chunk": 830, "story": 96, "summary": "Evicted, she rides downtown with her dollar and the letter to seek the firm, which has moved to an address she lacks." }, { "chunk": 831, "story": 96, "summary": "A kindly western rancher looking for a wife approaches her honestly; a policeman seizes him as a masher and drags him away." }, { "chunk": 832, "story": 96, "summary": "Preferring to support herself, she is offered a companion's post by a kind lady, until an association agent forbids her to accept." }, { "chunk": 833, "story": 96, "summary": "She takes a cashier's place in a candy store, and a temperance crusader warns her that the sweets contain brandy." }, { "chunk": 834, "story": 96, "summary": "She gives up the job at the crusader's urging, who drives off in her carriage; next she tries sewing theatrical costumes." }, { "chunk": 835, "story": 96, "summary": "A clergyman forbids her to sew costumes for the stage and promises only that the Lord will provide." }, { "chunk": 836, "story": 96, "summary": "Striking girls warn her off a factory job; at last she finds her father's employer, who welcomes her warmly and offers a place." }, { "chunk": 837, "story": 96, "summary": "He has her try on furs and a fine hat as a model, then telephones to reserve his usual private table for a new companion." }, { "chunk": 838, "story": 96, "summary": "The narrator blames the reformers and associations, compassionate in heart but reverent of money, for losing such girls every day." } ] }