Fourteen corpora split and classified: aesop, bierce, chekhov, holmes, keefe, lawson, lorimer, maupassant, nobody, plaintales, poe, torchy, wallingford and winesburg, each with its splitter and the hand-written groups and pages; catalogue v2 and v3; and the shared splitters gutenberg_chunks.py, se_split.py and se_build.py. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_019rwKTmug58sEsJ72AuWsEi
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<h1>The Schoolmistress, and Other Stories: reference groups</h1>
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<p class="meta">Anton Chekhov, tr. Constance Garnett, 1918 (Project Gutenberg #1732). 21 stories, 228 scenes cut by the same rule as <code>chunk.py</code>.
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Summaries, predicaments, groups and options written by Claude by reading every scene: no local inference.
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A comparison baseline, not a pack. Option moves give a direction only, never a number.</p>
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<section><h2>G01 · Stuck in a life that has stopped meaning anything</h2>
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<p class="pred">You have done the same thankless duty for years, you no longer believe it matters, and you cannot see any way out.</p>
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<p class="meta">A person worn down by routine wants a reason to keep going from the life they are stuck in. · 9 scenes from 4 stories
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(The Schoolmistress, Champagne, On Official Duty, Small Fry) · stage <b>middle</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Keep at it without complaint. <span class='src'>from scene 7</span><br><code>patience +</code> <code>flags.resigned set</code></li><li>Drink to make the days pass. <span class='src'>from scene 53</span><br><code>money -</code> <code>standing -</code></li><li>Take your complaint to those above you, again. <span class='src'>from scene 3 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>relationships.authority -</code> <code>standing risk</code></li><li>Tell yourself real life is elsewhere, and wait for your chance. <span class='src'>from scene 128 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>flags.dreaming_of_escape set</code></li><li>Give it up and leave for something else. <span class='src'>filled gap</span><br><code>money risk</code> <code>standing risk</code> <code>flags.left set</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>0</b> · <i>The Schoolmistress</i> — A woman who has done the same dull duty for years can no longer imagine any other life for herself.</summary><p class="sum">A village schoolmistress of thirteen years rides back from town with her monthly pay; the spring morning means nothing to her, and she can imagine no future but the same school and the same road.</p></details><details><summary><b>6</b> · <i>The Schoolmistress</i> — A woman worn down by a thankless routine feels herself growing old and coarse, with no affection anywhere in her life.</summary><p class="sum">She reviews her comfortless life: no firewood without begging a coarse overseer, headaches, fear of every official, no affection and no friends.</p></details><details><summary><b>7</b> · <i>The Schoolmistress</i> — A woman who took up a hard duty only to live keeps enduring it long after more spirited people have quit.</summary><p class="sum">She took the post from necessity, never felt a vocation, and endures it like a patient cart-horse while livelier people give up; the cart keeps being turned back by fences and ditches.</p></details><details><summary><b>53</b> · <i>Champagne</i> — A restless young man stuck in a remote post with nothing to do stares after passing strangers and drinks away the days.</summary><p class="sum">The narrator recalls his youth as the official at a remote steppe station, with no woman or company for miles, drinking bad vodka and staring at women's faces in passing train windows.</p></details><details><summary><b>56</b> · <i>Champagne</i> — A man who feels his youth wasted in a dead-end place decides nothing worse can possibly happen to him.</summary><p class="sum">Walking along the line he tells himself nothing worse can happen: orphaned, expelled, friendless and fit for nothing, his youth has been thrown away.</p></details><details><summary><b>121</b> · <i>On Official Duty</i> — Two people stuck at a dreary duty far from where they hoped to be think longingly of the lives others are living.</summary><p class="sum">Stuck for the night, both men brood on how far this is from the city life they once dreamed of; the doctor leaves to spend the evening with a nearby landowner, and the magistrate stays.</p></details><details><summary><b>122</b> · <i>On Official Duty</i> — An old man who must obey every order frets over a pointless errand through a storm because someone might be angry.</summary><p class="sum">The kindly old constable settles the magistrate in the kitchen with tea and hay, fretting about walking miles through the storm to fetch the village elder.</p></details><details><summary><b>123</b> · <i>On Official Duty</i> — An old man has spent thirty years carrying out a duty he knows is mostly pointless, through every hardship, without a day off.</summary><p class="sum">The constable says he has walked his rounds every day for thirty years, even on holy days, carrying forms nobody needs, and has been beaten, robbed and taken to court.</p></details><details><summary><b>163</b> · <i>Small Fry</i> — A man with no education or connections knows he will never rise, and even a night off would change nothing.</summary><p class="sum">He says he will never be promoted, lacking education, manners and a decent name, and that even fleeing the office would only take him back to a greyer lodging.</p></details></section><section><h2>G02 · A grief nobody will hear</h2>
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<p class="pred">You have lost someone, and the people around you will not listen, or tell you that you are mourning wrongly.</p>
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<p class="meta">A bereaved person wants someone to hear their grief from people who will not listen. · 9 scenes from 4 stories
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(Misery, In Exile, On Official Duty, The Requiem) · stage <b>low</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Keep trying to tell whoever is nearest. <span class='src'>from scene 50</span><br><code>patience +</code> <code>relationships.stranger risk</code></li><li>Laugh along and keep it to yourself. <span class='src'>from scene 49</span><br><code>patience +</code> <code>flags.grief_unspoken set</code></li><li>Pour it out to something that cannot answer back. <span class='src'>from scene 52</span><br><code>flags.grief_unspoken set</code></li><li>Mourn your own way, whatever they say. <span class='src'>from scene 169</span><br><code>standing -</code> <code>relationships.family +</code></li><li>Tell them to their face that they are heartless. <span class='src'>from scene 84</span><br><code>standing -</code> <code>relationships.stranger -</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>47</b> · <i>Misery</i> — A grieving man tries to tell a customer that his child has just died, and is cut short before he can go on.</summary><p class="sum">Flustered by the traffic and cursed at from all sides, the driver tries to tell his passenger that his son died this week; the man asks what of, then everyone shouts at him to watch the road.</p></details><details><summary><b>49</b> · <i>Misery</i> — A man in mourning puts up with abuse from strangers because it is company, and they brush off his loss in a phrase.</summary><p class="sum">The young men curse and hit him and he laughs along, their abuse easing his loneliness; when he says his son has died, one replies that we shall all die and tells him to hurry.</p></details><details><summary><b>50</b> · <i>Misery</i> — A man who needs to speak of his grief searches the passing crowd for one person who will stop and listen.</summary><p class="sum">He begins to tell them how his son died but they arrive and leave; alone again, his misery returns worse, and a doorman he speaks to only tells him to move on.</p></details><details><summary><b>51</b> · <i>Misery</i> — A man who has given up on strangers goes home and tries one last time to tell someone he knows.</summary><p class="sum">Giving up, he goes back to the crowded lodging early without enough earned for oats; he tells a young man drinking water that his son is dead.</p></details><details><summary><b>52</b> · <i>Misery</i> — A man with no one who will hear his grief pours it out to the only creature that will stay and listen.</summary><p class="sum">The young man is already asleep; aching to tell the whole story properly, the old man goes out to the stable and tells it all to his horse.</p></details><details><summary><b>84</b> · <i>In Exile</i> — A young man who still feels his grief tells a hardened elder he is dead inside, and is laughed at.</summary><p class="sum">The young exile tells the old man he is a dead stone and the gentleman is truly alive; everyone laughs, the others lie down in the cold hut, and the youth weeps outside.</p></details><details><summary><b>135</b> · <i>On Official Duty</i> — A young man who cannot find words for someone else's grief wonders whether he will end up just as lonely.</summary><p class="sum">The host grieves for the young man and for his own dead wife; the magistrate can only say suicide is undesirable, and lies awake wondering if he too will end up like this.</p></details><details><summary><b>167</b> · <i>The Requiem</i> — A bereaved parent is rebuked in public for the harsh word he used to name his own dead child.</summary><p class="sum">The priest confronts him over his written request for prayers for 'the harlot Mariya', his own dead daughter, and demands how he dared write such a word.</p></details><details><summary><b>169</b> · <i>The Requiem</i> — A father rebuked over how he mourns his child accepts the penance and still insists on marking her death properly.</summary><p class="sum">He explains he only meant to name her calling, accepts a penance of ten bows, then with recovered dignity asks for a requiem for her, which the priest approves.</p></details></section><section><h2>G03 · A glimpse of the life you are missing</h2>
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<p class="pred">In the middle of an ordinary dull day, something brings back or shows you a fuller life than yours.</p>
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<p class="meta">A person in a narrow life wants the life they glimpsed from a passing vision of something better. · 8 scenes from 3 stories
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(The Schoolmistress, On Official Duty, The Beauties) · stage <b>middle</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Let yourself feel it, then go back to your work. <span class='src'>from scene 12</span><br><code>patience +</code></li><li>Keep looking for as long as it lasts. <span class='src'>from scene 213</span><br><code>flags.longing set</code></li><li>Start planning seriously how to get there. <span class='src'>from scene 128</span><br><code>money -</code> <code>flags.dreaming_of_escape set</code></li><li>Speak to the person who stirred it. <span class='src'>filled gap</span><br><code>tact +</code> <code>relationships.stranger risk</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>11</b> · <i>The Schoolmistress</i> — A worn-out woman glimpses a stranger who recalls the life she lost, and is flooded with longing for it.</summary><p class="sum">Soaked and with her supplies ruined, she waits at the railway crossing; a lady on the passing train looks like her mother, and for a moment her whole lost childhood returns.</p></details><details><summary><b>12</b> · <i>The Schoolmistress</i> — A woman caught up in a sudden dream of happiness is called back to her ordinary life, and the feeling vanishes.</summary><p class="sum">Weeping, she imagines happiness and greets the passing neighbour as an equal, as if the years had been a dream, until her driver calls her and it all vanishes.</p></details><details><summary><b>128</b> · <i>On Official Duty</i> — A young man stuck in an obscure post tells himself real life is elsewhere, and dreams of escaping before it is too late.</summary><p class="sum">Lying in the storm-battered hut, he thinks none of this is real life, only 'according to regulation', and dreams of making his name in the capital while he is still young.</p></details><details><summary><b>208</b> · <i>The Beauties</i> — A weary traveller is suddenly struck by a beauty so complete that everything dreary about the day vanishes.</summary><p class="sum">He sees the daughter's face and is struck by the most beautiful girl he has ever seen; even his gruff grandfather gazes at her tenderly.</p></details><details><summary><b>210</b> · <i>The Beauties</i> — A young man moved by something beautiful feels only an unexplained sadness, as if something had been lost for good.</summary><p class="sum">Her beauty fills him not with desire but a vague sadness, as if they had all lost something; outside, a labourer drives horses round a threshing floor, jeering at them.</p></details><details><summary><b>213</b> · <i>The Beauties</i> — A young man leaving a place where he glimpsed something beautiful feels an ache he cannot explain to anyone.</summary><p class="sum">Each time she passes his sadness deepens, for her, himself and the labourer; the hours vanish, and they drive off in silence until the driver remarks on the fine girl.</p></details><details><summary><b>214</b> · <i>The Beauties</i> — A traveller stepping out at a stop is caught unawares by a glimpse of beauty among strangers.</summary><p class="sum">Years later on a train journey, he sees passengers crowding to look at a girl on a station platform, and feels the same overwhelming sense of beauty.</p></details><details><summary><b>217</b> · <i>The Beauties</i> — A worn-out man glimpses youth and happiness in a stranger and knows it is forever out of his reach.</summary><p class="sum">The worn-out guard watches her with tender sadness, as though she stood for all the happiness he will never have; the train pulls away into the melancholy spring dusk.</p></details></section><section><h2>G04 · On the outside of other people's warmth</h2>
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<p class="pred">Other people are celebrating together, or a whole household is gathered in warmth, and you are outside it.</p>
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<p class="meta">A person left out wants a share of the warmth from a household or crowd enjoying itself. · 6 scenes from 4 stories
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(On Official Duty, Small Fry, In the Coach-House, The Shoemaker and the Devil) · stage <b>middle</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Accept the welcome and join in. <span class='src'>from scene 134</span><br><code>tact +</code> <code>relationships.host +</code></li><li>Take the extra work for the extra money. <span class='src'>from scene 162</span><br><code>money +</code> <code>relationships.peers -</code></li><li>Watch from outside and keep your thoughts to yourself. <span class='src'>from scene 173</span><br><code>patience +</code></li><li>Grumble aloud at the unfairness of it. <span class='src'>from scene 218</span><br><code>standing -</code> <code>flags.resentment set</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>132</b> · <i>On Official Duty</i> — A man coming in from a bleak night is welcomed into a warm, happy household that is not his own.</summary><p class="sum">They reach a warm, bright manor where children dance to the piano; the fat, widowed host welcomes the magistrate as a former colleague.</p></details><details><summary><b>133</b> · <i>On Official Duty</i> — A guest watches a lively, affectionate family enjoying itself in a warmth he has no share in.</summary><p class="sum">The host's four daughters and a cousin sing, the children skip, and the doctor prances about while everyone laughs.</p></details><details><summary><b>134</b> · <i>On Official Duty</i> — A guest enjoying another family's happiness cannot stop feeling it is not real life, and pities them for it.</summary><p class="sum">He dances and flirts but feels it is all a fragment of life, pities the girls for living in the wilds, and hears the doctor say that nervous people should be forbidden to marry.</p></details><details><summary><b>162</b> · <i>Small Fry</i> — A man who takes others' holiday shifts for a pittance hears everyone celebrating outside while he sits alone.</summary><p class="sum">Hearing the crowds go to church, he complains that he sits here every year; the doorman says he hired himself out for greed, and he answers that it is poverty, dreaming of a festive supper.</p></details><details><summary><b>173</b> · <i>In the Coach-House</i> — A few humble people pass an evening together in a yard, watching the lit windows of a household above them.</summary><p class="sum">In a coach-house at night, a coachman, his small grandson visiting from the village, a doorman and an old pedlar play cards by a lantern, facing the lit windows of a rented lodge.</p></details><details><summary><b>218</b> · <i>The Shoemaker and the Devil</i> — A poor man forced to work through a holiday for a rude customer resents that others celebrate while he labours.</summary><p class="sum">On Christmas Eve a poor shoemaker works late, drinking to stay awake, finishing boots a customer abused him over, and grumbles that others enjoy themselves because they have money.</p></details></section><section><h2>G05 · Talked down to by those above you</h2>
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<p class="pred">Someone above you brushes you off, scolds you, or treats you as beneath their notice, and you need them.</p>
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<p class="meta">A humble person wants to be heard and treated decently from someone above them. · 10 scenes from 7 stories
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(The Schoolmistress, A Nervous Breakdown, The Cattle-Dealers, On Official Duty, Small Fry, The Requiem, The Shoemaker and the Devil) · stage <b>middle</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Bow, flatter them and ask again. <span class='src'>from scene 112 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>tact +</code> <code>standing -</code> <code>relationships.superior +</code></li><li>Take the insult and carry on. <span class='src'>from scene 125</span><br><code>patience +</code> <code>standing -</code></li><li>Go over their head to someone higher. <span class='src'>from scene 102</span><br><code>standing risk</code> <code>relationships.superior -</code></li><li>Argue your case back to them. <span class='src'>from scene 168</span><br><code>standing risk</code> <code>relationships.superior -</code></li><li>Send the polite greetings you do not mean. <span class='src'>from scene 161</span><br><code>tact +</code> <code>relationships.superior +</code> <code>flags.resentment set</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>3</b> · <i>The Schoolmistress</i> — A woman who has complained for years about an abuse at her work finds nobody above her will listen.</summary><p class="sum">Jolting along a ruined road, she broods on the officials who ignore her complaints about a violent, rude caretaker, and on how nobody will hear her.</p></details><details><summary><b>43</b> · <i>A Nervous Breakdown</i> — A man in real anguish is questioned like a specimen by an expert who does not care what upset him.</summary><p class="sum">The doctor asks endless questions about heredity and vices while stroking his knees; the patient grows annoyed at being treated as a case.</p></details><details><summary><b>101</b> · <i>The Cattle-Dealers</i> — A man who paid for a favour finds it quietly undone, and the person in charge is offended that he asks why.</summary><p class="sum">The old man finds his vans uncoupled from the troop train; the strange guards ignore him and a surly official turns indignant at his complaint.</p></details><details><summary><b>102</b> · <i>The Cattle-Dealers</i> — A man brushed off by the person in front of him goes over his head with a complaint to someone higher up.</summary><p class="sum">The official storms out before he can be paid; the dealer wires a complaint to the head of traffic and finds two gentlemen talking in the office.</p></details><details><summary><b>125</b> · <i>On Official Duty</i> — A humble man who serves everyone is mocked and insulted by those above him, and takes kindness only from the poor.</summary><p class="sum">He earns a pittance; the gentry insult him, one calling him 'Administration' for years, while peasants are kinder, and the frightened witnesses paid him kopecks to watch the body.</p></details><details><summary><b>140</b> · <i>On Official Duty</i> — A humble man who waited all night for those in charge is cursed at by their servant and ignored by them.</summary><p class="sum">At dawn, when the storm has passed, they find the constable waiting at the door, bareheaded and soaked, pleading that the villagers are anxious; a footman curses him and they drive off without a word.</p></details><details><summary><b>161</b> · <i>Small Fry</i> — A poor man stuck working through a holiday writes flattering greetings to a superior he secretly despises.</summary><p class="sum">On Easter night a poor clerk, on duty in a dingy office, drafts a flattering holiday letter to a patron he hates, pities even the cockroach on his desk, and hears the bells begin.</p></details><details><summary><b>166</b> · <i>The Requiem</i> — A self-important man waiting for a service he asked for is startled to be summoned sharply by the one in charge.</summary><p class="sum">After mass, a self-important village shopkeeper stands waiting, disdainful of the peasants filing out, until he realises the angry priest is beckoning him.</p></details><details><summary><b>168</b> · <i>The Requiem</i> — A father who tries to justify his harsh judgement of his dead child is scolded for being too clever.</summary><p class="sum">He argues that God forgave harlots; the priest tells him he is slandering his own daughter and should not be over-subtle, and the deacon sneers that she was a famous actress.</p></details><details><summary><b>220</b> · <i>The Shoemaker and the Devil</i> — A poor man on an errand is mocked by his betters and taunted by a rival who has done better than him.</summary><p class="sum">Delivering the boots through the snow, he is jeered at by rich passers-by and taunted by a prosperous rival who married money; he finds the customer pounding in his mortar again.</p></details></section><section><h2>G06 · Nothing moves without a little something</h2>
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<p class="pred">An ordinary thing you are owed will only happen if you slip someone something, and everyone around you already does.</p>
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<p class="meta">A person who needs an ordinary thing done wants it done in time from people who expect a little something. · 9 scenes from 4 stories
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(The Schoolmistress, The Cattle-Dealers, On Official Duty, Small Fry) · stage <b>middle</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Pay what is hinted, without a word. <span class='src'>from scene 88</span><br><code>money -</code> <code>tact +</code> <code>relationships.gatekeeper +</code></li><li>Refuse, and put a complaint in writing. <span class='src'>from scene 105 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>standing risk</code> <code>relationships.gatekeeper -</code> <code>flags.complaint_lodged set</code></li><li>Treat them generously and make a friend of them. <span class='src'>from scene 96 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>money -</code> <code>relationships.gatekeeper +</code></li><li>Keep your hands clean and wait it out. <span class='src'>archetype</span><br><code>patience +</code> <code>money risk</code></li><li>Take a cut of your own while you are at it. <span class='src'>from scene 164</span><br><code>money +</code> <code>standing risk</code> <code>flags.dishonest set</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>9</b> · <i>The Schoolmistress</i> — A woman who handles other people's small sums finds they all quietly believe she is cheating them.</summary><p class="sum">Her driver repeats gossip that officials pocketed money for a school; she denies it, but sees that he, the villagers and the overseer all believe she steals the firewood money too.</p></details><details><summary><b>88</b> · <i>The Cattle-Dealers</i> — A man whose livelihood depends on an ordinary service reads the silent hint and quietly pays a bribe to get it.</summary><p class="sum">He complains that thirty-four hours have been lost and his stock may die; reading the officials' silent hint, he hands the guard a ten-rouble note without a word.</p></details><details><summary><b>90</b> · <i>The Cattle-Dealers</i> — A man learns that paying one hand is not enough, and must pay the next one too before anything moves.</summary><p class="sum">The train keeps jolting without moving; the old man guesses the guard did not share with the driver and sends his son with three roubles, after which they set off.</p></details><details><summary><b>93</b> · <i>The Cattle-Dealers</i> — A man keeps careful accounts of every petty payment it costs him to get through an ordinary day.</summary><p class="sum">The son fetches boiling water by force from a bar-keeper who wants more money, and the father records every bribe from the day before in his notebook.</p></details><details><summary><b>95</b> · <i>The Cattle-Dealers</i> — A man charmed by a courteous gatekeeper pays him handsomely, and suddenly a way is found to help him.</summary><p class="sum">Charmed by the young official's courtesy, the old dealer slips him twelve roubles, and the official finds a way to send the cattle on the faster troop train.</p></details><details><summary><b>97</b> · <i>The Cattle-Dealers</i> — A man threatened with a delay he suspects is invented pays up calmly rather than argue.</summary><p class="sum">The oiler claims two vans are unsafe; the dealer, seeing a demand for money, pays him and his mate without protest, then drinks cheerfully at every stop.</p></details><details><summary><b>104</b> · <i>The Cattle-Dealers</i> — A man complains about being cheated, and is told the cheating is so universal that nobody even notices it.</summary><p class="sum">He boasts of his studying sons and blames the railways; the inspector says graft is so universal nobody is indignant any more, and the official charges him fourteen roubles in fees.</p></details><details><summary><b>124</b> · <i>On Official Duty</i> — A poor man was dragged into someone else's dishonest dealing simply because his poverty made him look untrustworthy.</summary><p class="sum">He was once tried for fraud alongside a clerk who cheated a buyer, merely because a poor man looked untrustworthy; at home he must also wait on the clerk like a servant.</p></details><details><summary><b>164</b> · <i>Small Fry</i> — A man aching for a better life wonders whether a small dishonesty is the only way to get ahead.</summary><p class="sum">He aches for a better life, a family table, a smart coat, a medal; he considers stealing or writing a secret denunciation to get promoted.</p></details></section><section><h2>G07 · Your work goes unrecognised</h2>
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<p class="pred">You have worked hard and well, and nobody has heard of you, while showier people get all the notice.</p>
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<p class="meta">A hard worker wants credit for their work from an indifferent public. · 9 scenes from 3 stories
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(A Nervous Breakdown, The First-Class Passenger, The Head-Gardener's Story) · stage <b>high</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Keep working and let the work speak for itself. <span class='src'>archetype</span><br><code>patience +</code></li><li>Fish for notice among strangers. <span class='src'>from scene 148</span><br><code>standing -</code></li><li>Go where people who matter might see it. <span class='src'>from scene 146 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>money -</code> <code>standing risk</code></li><li>Laugh about it with someone in the same boat. <span class='src'>from scene 150 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>relationships.peer +</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>38</b> · <i>A Nervous Breakdown</i> — A man's burst of zeal collapses as he remembers how small, timid and unheeded he really is.</summary><p class="sum">The inspiration fades; the scale of the problem crushes him, and he remembers he is timid, unpersuasive and insignificant.</p></details><details><summary><b>142</b> · <i>The First-Class Passenger</i> — A man who has worked hard all his life finds that nobody has ever heard of him or what he did.</summary><p class="sum">He recounts a lifetime of distinguished work, bridges, treatises and discoveries, then tests his fame by asking if his companion knows his name; he does not.</p></details><details><summary><b>143</b> · <i>The First-Class Passenger</i> — A capable man watches lesser people win the recognition he worked for, and cannot work out what they did right.</summary><p class="sum">He complains that worthless, idle people win renown while he did not, and begins a story about taking up, out of boredom, with a talentless singer in a dull town.</p></details><details><summary><b>144</b> · <i>The First-Class Passenger</i> — A man whose finest work goes unnoticed is known in public only as the companion of someone more popular.</summary><p class="sum">At the opening of his magnificent bridge nobody notices him; the crowd whispers only about his mistress, and he is pointed out merely as her lover.</p></details><details><summary><b>145</b> · <i>The First-Class Passenger</i> — A man eager for credit reads the public account of his achievement and finds it given entirely to someone else.</summary><p class="sum">A bystander knows who the singer lives with but not who built the bridge; next day the paper mentions her beauty and not him, and he cries with vexation.</p></details><details><summary><b>147</b> · <i>The First-Class Passenger</i> — A man who wins the honour he hoped for sees it buried in small print while trivial gossip takes the headlines.</summary><p class="sum">His work wins first prize in the capital, but the papers fuss over his mistress's arrival and give his prize one tiny line with his name misspelt.</p></details><details><summary><b>148</b> · <i>The First-Class Passenger</i> — A man starved of recognition fishes for it among strangers, and finds nobody has heard of him.</summary><p class="sum">Years later, called to do an important work in another city and giving public lectures, he is ignored by every paper; he tries to start talk about himself on a crowded tram, and nobody knows.</p></details><details><summary><b>149</b> · <i>The First-Class Passenger</i> — A man who has spent his life on real work rages that the public only celebrates showmen and scoundrels.</summary><p class="sum">The whole tram rushes to see a famous runner; he rants that talented men die unknown while entertainers are household names, and a notorious cardsharp walks past.</p></details><details><summary><b>199</b> · <i>The Head-Gardener's Story</i> — A proud, well-read old man listens to his betters' idle talk, hoping to be asked for his view.</summary><p class="sum">At a plant sale on a spring morning, the narrator and two other buyers chat while a dignified, well-read old gardener, who dislikes contradiction, listens in hoping to hear something new.</p></details></section><section><h2>G08 · A marriage gone numb</h2>
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<p class="pred">Your spouse adores or depends on you, and you have long since stopped seeing them at all.</p>
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<p class="meta">A married person wants something to break the monotony from a devoted spouse. · 4 scenes from 2 stories
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(Champagne, Sorrow) · stage <b>middle</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Take your boredom out on them. <span class='src'>from scene 54</span><br><code>relationships.spouse -</code></li><li>Walk out to be alone with your thoughts. <span class='src'>from scene 55</span><br><code>relationships.spouse -</code></li><li>Humour their worries and stay home. <span class='src'>filled gap</span><br><code>patience +</code> <code>relationships.spouse +</code></li><li>Look at them properly, for once. <span class='src'>from scene 113</span><br><code>relationships.spouse +</code> <code>flags.woke_up set</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>54</b> · <i>Champagne</i> — A bored man who treats a devoted spouse cruelly waits for one small treat to break the monotony of his life.</summary><p class="sum">He and his adoring wife, whom he torments when drunk, wait to see the New Year in with two bottles of real champagne he won in a bet.</p></details><details><summary><b>55</b> · <i>Champagne</i> — A man scoffs at his spouse's fear that a small accident foretells misfortune, then walks off irritated by her.</summary><p class="sum">He drops the first bottle at midnight; his wife, pale, says it is a bad omen, and after scoffing at her he walks out into the moonlit frost.</p></details><details><summary><b>57</b> · <i>Champagne</i> — A man tells himself he no longer loves the spouse who adores him, and takes a vain pleasure in his own misery.</summary><p class="sum">He admits he does not love his wife, whom he married as a boy, and wallows in his misery with a vain, defiant pleasure.</p></details><details><summary><b>113</b> · <i>Sorrow</i> — A man who drifted through years of marriage without feeling is jolted awake when his spouse looks at him as never before.</summary><p class="sum">The chatter hides his shock: after a lifetime of drunken indifference, his wife looked at him sternly as she never had before, and sorrow has woken him.</p></details></section><section><h2>G09 · Too late to make it right</h2>
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<p class="pred">You see at last what you owed someone, or what you let slip with them, and it is already too late.</p>
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<p class="meta">A person who let it slip wants another chance from someone they failed. · 7 scenes from 3 stories
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(A Lady's Story, Sorrow, The Requiem) · stage <b>low</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Say it now, late as it is. <span class='src'>filled gap</span><br><code>tact -</code> <code>relationships.lost +</code></li><li>Sit with it together in silence. <span class='src'>from scene 70</span><br><code>patience +</code> <code>relationships.lost +</code></li><li>Promise to change. <span class='src'>from scene 114</span><br><code>flags.vowed set</code></li><li>Put right the duties you left undone. <span class='src'>from scene 117</span><br><code>money -</code> <code>standing +</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>69</b> · <i>A Lady's Story</i> — A woman who let her chance at happiness drift past sits with the man she might have had, both grown old and flat.</summary><p class="sum">Years slipped by unvalued; her father is dead, she has aged, and he, now a tired, ailing, disillusioned man, sits silently by her fire with nothing to tell her.</p></details><details><summary><b>70</b> · <i>A Lady's Story</i> — Two people who let their chance pass mourn it together in silence, neither able to say what they both feel.</summary><p class="sum">She breaks down weeping that her life is wasted; he understands, says nothing, kisses her hand at the door, and leaves without the words he longs to say.</p></details><details><summary><b>114</b> · <i>Sorrow</i> — A man who mistreated his spouse promises to change, and realises too late that she can no longer hear him.</summary><p class="sum">He begs her to deny to the doctor that he beat her and promises never to again; her face turns waxen, and he feels her cold hand and realises she is dead.</p></details><details><summary><b>115</b> · <i>Sorrow</i> — A man grieving a spouse is tormented that she died just as he finally felt sorry for how he treated her.</summary><p class="sum">He cries, more annoyed than sorry that she died just as he began to pity her; forty years passed in a fog of drink and quarrels, and he turns the sledge back toward home.</p></details><details><summary><b>116</b> · <i>Sorrow</i> — A man who wasted a whole marriage in drink longs for one more chance to live it over properly.</summary><p class="sum">He remembers her young and merry, sees he has been drunk since the wedding, longs to live it over again, and loses hold of the reins as his hands freeze.</p></details><details><summary><b>117</b> · <i>Sorrow</i> — A man who has run out of time begs for a few more years to put right the duties he left undone.</summary><p class="sum">He dozes in the snow and wakes in hospital; the doctor tells him his frozen limbs are gone and he has lived long enough, and he begs for five more years to bury his wife and return the horse.</p></details><details><summary><b>170</b> · <i>The Requiem</i> — A stern parent at a child's memorial remembers how little attention he paid while she was growing up.</summary><p class="sum">At the near-empty requiem, the mournful singing softens him; he remembers his daughter growing up unnoticed among the gentry, listening wide-eyed to his scripture stories.</p></details></section><section><h2>G10 · Drawn to someone of another rank</h2>
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<p class="pred">You are drawn to someone well above or below you, and the gap between you seems too wide to cross.</p>
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<p class="meta">A person drawn across a gap in rank wants the one they are drawn to from someone above or below them. · 8 scenes from 3 stories
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(The Schoolmistress, A Lady's Story, The Beauties) · stage <b>high</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Declare yourself and ask for nothing. <span class='src'>from scene 66</span><br><code>standing risk</code> <code>relationships.beloved +</code></li><li>Enjoy their admiration and decide nothing. <span class='src'>from scene 67</span><br><code>standing +</code> <code>relationships.beloved risk</code></li><li>Mock their world instead of trying to enter it. <span class='src'>from scene 68</span><br><code>relationships.beloved -</code> <code>flags.bitter set</code></li><li>Keep your place. <span class='src'>archetype</span><br><code>standing +</code> <code>relationships.beloved -</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>2</b> · <i>The Schoolmistress</i> — A woman of small means is drawn to a charming man above her, and is flustered in his company.</summary><p class="sum">The neighbour is a handsome, idle, hard-drinking bachelor who gave her pupils only top marks; she found him attractive and was embarrassed sitting beside him.</p></details><details><summary><b>5</b> · <i>The Schoolmistress</i> — A lonely woman imagines devoting herself to a man above her, then sees how impossible it is that they could ever be equals.</summary><p class="sum">Smelling drink on him, she pities his slow ruin and imagines saving him as his wife, then feels how absurd it is that they could ever be equals; he drives off.</p></details><details><summary><b>65</b> · <i>A Lady's Story</i> — A young woman of good family is swept up in a poorer companion's high spirits during an exhilarating afternoon together.</summary><p class="sum">A woman recalls riding home with a young official years ago as a thunderstorm broke; his high spirits infected her and they raced the storm laughing.</p></details><details><summary><b>66</b> · <i>A Lady's Story</i> — A man declares his love to a woman far above him, asking nothing because he knows she can never be his.</summary><p class="sum">Sheltering in the stable doorway, he tells her he loves her though he knows she can never be his wife, and asks only that she let him look at her; she is spellbound and happy.</p></details><details><summary><b>67</b> · <i>A Lady's Story</i> — A young woman who has just been declared to is happier about her own advantages than sure of her feelings for him.</summary><p class="sum">They run in laughing; he is boisterous all evening, and that night she feels free, beloved and glad above all of her rank and wealth, unsure whether she loves him.</p></details><details><summary><b>68</b> · <i>A Lady's Story</i> — Two people who care for each other let a difference in rank stand between them, and neither tries to cross it.</summary><p class="sum">Nothing came of it: in town, the gulf of rank between them felt like a thick wall, and he only criticised society with a forced smile instead of trying to break through.</p></details><details><summary><b>212</b> · <i>The Beauties</i> — Two men of different stations watch the same young woman pass, both knowing she will never notice them.</summary><p class="sum">On the hot steps he listens for her footsteps; she runs to the kitchen and out to the threshing floor with bread, and the labourer stops to watch her, then curses his horses in disappointment.</p></details><details><summary><b>216</b> · <i>The Beauties</i> — A man pities someone stuck in a dull, lonely place, hopelessly in love with a beauty who will never notice him.</summary><p class="sum">Her fragile beauty seems as though a gust of wind could scatter it; back aboard, a fellow traveller imagines the lonely station clerk hopelessly in love with her, or married to someone as plain as himself.</p></details></section><section><h2>G11 · Want nothing and nothing can hurt you</h2>
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<p class="pred">After loss or hardship, you are tempted, or urged, to stop wanting anything at all so nothing can hurt you again.</p>
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<p class="meta">A person worn down by loss wants to stop hurting from their own longing. · 6 scenes from 3 stories
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(In Exile, The Bet, The Shoemaker and the Devil) · stage <b>low</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Train yourself to want nothing. <span class='src'>from scene 73</span><br><code>patience +</code> <code>relationships.family -</code> <code>flags.hardened set</code></li><li>Take one day of happiness at any price. <span class='src'>from scene 78</span><br><code>money risk</code> <code>relationships.family +</code></li><li>Give up the prize you were chasing. <span class='src'>from scene 197</span><br><code>money -</code> <code>standing +</code></li><li>Make your peace with your lot. <span class='src'>from scene 227</span><br><code>patience +</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>72</b> · <i>In Exile</i> — A homesick newcomer is told by an old hand that the only way to endure is to stop wanting anything at all.</summary><p class="sum">The old exile tells him he will get used to it: he has worked the same crossing for twenty-two years and wants nothing, and urges the youth to stop wanting his wife and freedom.</p></details><details><summary><b>73</b> · <i>In Exile</i> — A man who has lost everything insists he is free because he has trained himself to want nothing.</summary><p class="sum">The old man boasts that he was once a gentleman's son who wore a frock-coat, and has made himself free by wanting nothing; whoever listens to longing even once is lost.</p></details><details><summary><b>78</b> · <i>In Exile</i> — A young man insists one brief happiness is worth any grief that follows, against an old man who wants nothing.</summary><p class="sum">The old man predicts the father will ruin himself chasing doctors and end in prison; the young exile answers that even three years with a wife were a gift, better than nothing.</p></details><details><summary><b>197</b> · <i>The Bet</i> — A man who has given up years of his life for a prize discovers he no longer wants anything the world offers.</summary><p class="sum">The letter says that through books he has lived every life and learned every wisdom, and now despises it all as a mirage that death will wipe out.</p></details><details><summary><b>226</b> · <i>The Shoemaker and the Devil</i> — A man who got what he envied finds it hollow and joyless, then wakes to find his old life waiting.</summary><p class="sum">Beggars mob him, and his new wife calls him a lout for trying to slap her back; the devil drags him to hell, and he wakes at his bench with the customer shouting that the boots are late.</p></details><details><summary><b>227</b> · <i>The Shoemaker and the Devil</i> — A poor man reconciles himself to his lot, deciding nothing the rich have is worth what it would cost him.</summary><p class="sum">The customer turns out to make fireworks; the shoemaker hands over the boots, goes to church, and no longer envies the rich, since the same grave awaits all.</p></details></section><section><h2>G12 · Racing to save someone who is slipping away</h2>
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<p class="pred">Someone you love is failing, and you are spending everything you have to reach anyone who might save them.</p>
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<p class="meta">A person whose loved one is failing wants help in time from whoever might save them. · 6 scenes from 2 stories
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(In Exile, Sorrow) · stage <b>low</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Drive through anything to reach help. <span class='src'>from scene 110</span><br><code>money -</code> <code>relationships.family +</code></li><li>Spend whatever it takes on one more hope. <span class='src'>from scene 82</span><br><code>money -</code> <code>flags.desperate set</code></li><li>Grovel before whoever can help. <span class='src'>from scene 112</span><br><code>standing -</code> <code>relationships.helper +</code></li><li>Accept that it is beyond help. <span class='src'>archetype</span><br><code>patience +</code> <code>relationships.family -</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>75</b> · <i>In Exile</i> — A man who drags a loved one into his hard lot spends everything trying to make it bearable for her.</summary><p class="sum">The gentleman's wife joined him with their baby, he spent lavishly to keep her happy among the local officials, and she, spoilt and bored, pined in the hardship.</p></details><details><summary><b>77</b> · <i>In Exile</i> — A father who pins all his remaining happiness on his child watches her waste away in a place with nothing for her.</summary><p class="sum">The gentleman spent eight years petitioning to go home, then found new joy in his grown daughter; but the girl, young and with no life there, pined and is now dying of consumption.</p></details><details><summary><b>82</b> · <i>In Exile</i> — A desperate father makes yet another hopeless journey in bad weather for anyone who might save his child.</summary><p class="sum">They row the clumsy barge unhurriedly across; on the far bank the exiled gentleman waits, grim and distracted, hurrying to a new doctor for his sick daughter.</p></details><details><summary><b>110</b> · <i>Sorrow</i> — A man who has neglected his spouse for years rushes her through a storm for help, afraid it is already too late.</summary><p class="sum">A skilled but drunken craftsman drives his sick old wife twenty miles through a blizzard to the hospital, lashing his feeble horse.</p></details><details><summary><b>111</b> · <i>Sorrow</i> — A man desperate for help from someone above him rehearses the scolding he expects to get for asking too late.</summary><p class="sum">He mutters to his wife that the doctor will scold him for coming late but will do his best, rehearsing the telling-off he expects.</p></details><details><summary><b>112</b> · <i>Sorrow</i> — A humble man plans to flatter and grovel before someone powerful, promising favours to win help for a loved one.</summary><p class="sum">He rehearses grovelling and protesting to the doctor, promising to make him fine things for free, and boasts he knows how to handle the gentry.</p></details></section><section><h2>G13 · At odds with a parent over the life you chose</h2>
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<p class="pred">You and a parent cannot accept how the other lives, and neither of you will give way.</p>
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<p class="meta">A grown child wants to live their own way from a parent who disapproves. · 7 scenes from 3 stories
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(The Cattle-Dealers, A Tragic Actor, The Requiem) · stage <b>middle</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Speak up to them. <span class='src'>from scene 98</span><br><code>relationships.parent -</code> <code>flags.defied_parent set</code></li><li>Run off and do it anyway. <span class='src'>from scene 153</span><br><code>standing -</code> <code>relationships.parent -</code> <code>flags.disowned set</code></li><li>Write home asking forgiveness, and help. <span class='src'>from scene 154</span><br><code>money +</code> <code>relationships.parent risk</code></li><li>Go home and try to reach them. <span class='src'>from scene 171</span><br><code>tact +</code> <code>relationships.parent risk</code></li><li>Do as you are told. <span class='src'>archetype</span><br><code>patience +</code> <code>relationships.parent +</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>91</b> · <i>The Cattle-Dealers</i> — A son who disappointed his family's hopes is reminded, in the middle of a hardship, that it is all his own fault.</summary><p class="sum">In the dark, freezing van the father grumbles that his son brought this on himself by refusing to study like his brothers, who are asleep in warm beds.</p></details><details><summary><b>98</b> · <i>The Cattle-Dealers</i> — A grown child who disapproves of a parent's drinking speaks up, and is told to mind his place.</summary><p class="sum">Drink makes him fussy and busy, counting money and lamenting his thirsty cattle; his son rebukes him for drinking and is told not to teach his father.</p></details><details><summary><b>152</b> · <i>A Tragic Actor</i> — A parent puts up with dull, shabby guests because they delight his child, not seeing where it is leading.</summary><p class="sum">The father invites the actors, excluding the actresses; the dinners are dull and the guests shabby and fawning, but his daughter is enchanted and goes to the theatre every night.</p></details><details><summary><b>153</b> · <i>A Tragic Actor</i> — A young woman who ran off with someone who only wanted her family's money is disowned by her family and mistreated.</summary><p class="sum">She elopes with the tragedian, who married her for her father's money; the father disowns her, and the husband beats her and writes begging letters.</p></details><details><summary><b>154</b> · <i>A Tragic Actor</i> — A young woman trapped with a cruel partner begs to be kept and writes home again for forgiveness and money.</summary><p class="sum">She begs on her knees not to be abandoned, is taken on in small parts, freezes onstage whispering that she is miserable, and again writes to her father for money.</p></details><details><summary><b>171</b> · <i>The Requiem</i> — A parent who froze out his grown child over the life she chose remembers the visit when she tried to reach him.</summary><p class="sum">He recalls her last visit: he was scandalised that she was an actress and they barely spoke for two weeks; on a walk by the river she wept over her home, which he could not understand.</p></details><details><summary><b>172</b> · <i>The Requiem</i> — A grieving father cannot shake off his harsh judgement of his child even while praying for her.</summary><p class="sum">He prays for her again, the forbidden word slipping out unnoticed, while incense rises into the sunlight like her soul.</p></details></section><section><h2>G14 · Frightened by something you cannot explain</h2>
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<p class="pred">Something you cannot account for has frightened you, alone or far from help, and you must decide what to do.</p>
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<p class="meta">A frightened person wants to understand it, or get away from something unexplained. · 11 scenes from 4 stories
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(A Nervous Breakdown, On Official Duty, In the Coach-House, Panic Fears) · stage <b>high</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Get away as fast as you can. <span class='src'>from scene 184</span><br><code>standing -</code></li><li>Find someone and ask what it was. <span class='src'>from scene 186</span><br><code>relationships.stranger +</code></li><li>Tell yourself it is nothing and carry on. <span class='src'>archetype</span><br><code>patience +</code> <code>flags.faced_fear set</code></li><li>Stay close to someone who is not afraid. <span class='src'>from scene 180</span><br><code>relationships.companion +</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>33</b> · <i>A Nervous Breakdown</i> — A sensitive man alone at night feels a familiar collapse coming on, and cannot stop imagining others' misery as his own.</summary><p class="sum">Walking home alone he is seized by terror, knows a breakdown is coming, and lies imagining himself the brother or father of such a woman.</p></details><details><summary><b>129</b> · <i>On Official Duty</i> — A tired man in charge snaps at a humble helper who only wants to be sure he is not doing wrong.</summary><p class="sum">Remembering meeting the dead man once, he feels a moment of fright; the constable disturbs him to ask again about fetching the elder, and is sent away irritably.</p></details><details><summary><b>178</b> · <i>In the Coach-House</i> — A child who has glimpsed a stranger's family in mourning is too frightened to sleep in a strange place.</summary><p class="sum">The coachman and his grandson look in at the window where the dead man's parents are laying out the body; back in the coach-house the terrified boy runs weeping to his grandfather.</p></details><details><summary><b>180</b> · <i>In the Coach-House</i> — A frightened child is steadied by the ordinary company of adults carrying on as usual.</summary><p class="sum">The men start another card game; comforted by their voices, the boy sleeps, and by morning the coach-house no longer seems terrible.</p></details><details><summary><b>182</b> · <i>Panic Fears</i> — A man on a familiar road notices something that should not be there and has no explanation for it.</summary><p class="sum">Descending into a valley above a sleeping village, he sees a flickering light in the top of a belfry turret where he knows there is nothing that could burn.</p></details><details><summary><b>183</b> · <i>Panic Fears</i> — A man who cannot explain something strange is overtaken by dread, and his fear spreads to the child beside him.</summary><p class="sum">Unable to explain the light, he is gradually overcome by lonely horror; the boy yawns at first, then says he is frightened too.</p></details><details><summary><b>184</b> · <i>Panic Fears</i> — A man shaken by something he cannot explain delays going home, and never does learn what it was.</summary><p class="sum">He whips the horse on, lingers an hour at the station reading papers, never learns the cause; the second fright begins as he walks home happy from a tryst along a railway at night.</p></details><details><summary><b>185</b> · <i>Panic Fears</i> — A man walking home content is startled by something inexplicable rushing past him in the night.</summary><p class="sum">Feeling young and happy, he hears a roar behind him and a lone goods truck with no engine flies past in the dark; he cannot account for it.</p></details><details><summary><b>186</b> · <i>Panic Fears</i> — A man who has run in panic is told the plain explanation, and is ashamed of how frightened he was.</summary><p class="sum">Suddenly alone and afraid, he runs until he meets a signalman who explains a truck broke loose from a train; the third fright comes as he walks home exhausted from a spring shoot.</p></details><details><summary><b>187</b> · <i>Panic Fears</i> — A tired man alone in the woods is unnerved by a harmless stranger he cannot account for.</summary><p class="sum">A strange black spaniel he cannot place follows him deep in the forest and stares at him; exhausted, he thinks of the devil-dog in Faust and grows uneasy.</p></details><details><summary><b>188</b> · <i>Panic Fears</i> — A man flees in terror from something harmless, and learns at home it was only a friend's lost pet.</summary><p class="sum">The friendly dog frolics around him as he shouts at it, and in panic he runs home, where a visiting friend complains he lost his valuable dog in the forest.</p></details></section><section><h2>G15 · Far from home and your own people</h2>
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<p class="pred">You are stuck far from home and the people you love, in a hard place that does not want you.</p>
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<p class="meta">A person far from home wants to be with their own people from a hard, strange place. · 6 scenes from 3 stories
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(The Schoolmistress, In Exile, In the Coach-House) · stage <b>low</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Beg to be taken home. <span class='src'>from scene 179</span><br><code>relationships.guardian -</code> <code>relationships.family +</code></li><li>Ask your people to come to you. <span class='src'>from scene 80</span><br><code>money -</code> <code>relationships.family +</code></li><li>Keep writing home for help. <span class='src'>from scene 74</span><br><code>money risk</code> <code>relationships.family +</code></li><li>Settle in and make the best of it. <span class='src'>filled gap</span><br><code>patience +</code> <code>money +</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>1</b> · <i>The Schoolmistress</i> — A woman cut off from the family she came from has almost forgotten she ever had another life.</summary><p class="sum">She has nearly forgotten her childhood family, and her brother has stopped writing; on the road a wealthy neighbour who once examined her pupils overtakes her cart and greets her.</p></details><details><summary><b>71</b> · <i>In Exile</i> — A young man sent far from home against his will sits in a bleak place longing for the family he left behind.</summary><p class="sum">By a campfire on a bleak river-bank, a drunk old exile hides his bottle from his mates while a sick young newcomer mourns the home and wife he was sent away from.</p></details><details><summary><b>74</b> · <i>In Exile</i> — A man starting over in hard exile cannot stop hoping for help from the life he lost.</summary><p class="sum">He tells of a gentleman exiled for forgery who meant to live by his own labour but kept riding for money from home, while the old man warned him that wanting leads to ruin.</p></details><details><summary><b>80</b> · <i>In Exile</i> — A poor man longing for a loved one to join him realises he could not even feed her if she came.</summary><p class="sum">Alone by the fire, he longs for his wife to come even for a day, then realises he could not feed her; his mates cheat him of his share of tips, and soon he will be begging.</p></details><details><summary><b>81</b> · <i>In Exile</i> — A homesick man dreams for a moment that his hardship was only a nightmare, then wakes to it again.</summary><p class="sum">Towards dawn he dreams he is home and the exile was a nightmare, then wakes to shouts and gunshots from the far bank calling the ferrymen out into the cold.</p></details><details><summary><b>179</b> · <i>In the Coach-House</i> — A frightened child far from home begs to be taken back to his mother, and his guardian has no comfort to give.</summary><p class="sum">The boy begs to be taken home to his mother; his grandfather threatens then comforts him, admitting he is frightened too, and the doorman reports the mother's grief.</p></details></section><section><h2>G16 · A stranger's death lands on you</h2>
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<p class="pred">Someone you barely knew has died near you, and the aftermath has become your chore or your fright.</p>
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<p class="meta">A person drawn into the aftermath wants to be done with it from a stranger's tragedy. · 5 scenes from 2 stories
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(On Official Duty, In the Coach-House) · stage <b>middle</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Do what duty asks, and no more. <span class='src'>from scene 174</span><br><code>patience +</code></li><li>Complain about the inconvenience. <span class='src'>from scene 119</span><br><code>standing -</code> <code>relationships.bereaved -</code></li><li>Get away somewhere comfortable until it is over. <span class='src'>from scene 130 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>relationships.neighbours -</code></li><li>Stay with the frightened people who cannot leave. <span class='src'>filled gap</span><br><code>standing +</code> <code>relationships.neighbours +</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>118</b> · <i>On Official Duty</i> — Two men sent on a tiresome errand arrive late and cold, and find nobody ready for them.</summary><p class="sum">A young examining magistrate and a doctor, delayed by a blizzard, arrive at night at a village hut to hold an inquest on an insurance agent who shot himself there; the old constable says the witnesses have gone to tea.</p></details><details><summary><b>119</b> · <i>On Official Duty</i> — A man put out by someone else's tragedy complains that the dead person was selfish to inconvenience him.</summary><p class="sum">In the room with the covered body, the doctor complains that the dead man was tactless and egotistical to shoot himself where he would cause everyone the most trouble.</p></details><details><summary><b>120</b> · <i>On Official Duty</i> — Two comfortable outsiders talk idly about a death that has left the ordinary people around them frightened and sleepless.</summary><p class="sum">The magistrate yawns that people now kill themselves from weariness rather than theft; the constable says the whole village is frightened and cannot sleep.</p></details><details><summary><b>174</b> · <i>In the Coach-House</i> — A humble man caught up in a stranger's tragedy worries about being questioned over what little he saw.</summary><p class="sum">The doorman reports that a lodger shot himself in the head that morning and the doctors have given up; the man's parents have arrived wailing, and the doorman must go to the police.</p></details><details><summary><b>175</b> · <i>In the Coach-House</i> — Onlookers gossip idly about a neighbour's sudden death, and quarrel over whether he deserves anyone's prayers at all.</summary><p class="sum">They gossip that he loved another man's wife; the boy remembers the man stroking his head yesterday; the lodger dies, and the pedlar says such a soul cannot be prayed for.</p></details></section><section><h2>G17 · Covering up a disgrace</h2>
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<p class="pred">Something shameful has come to light, or is about to, and you could still hide it from those who would judge you.</p>
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<p class="meta">A person with a disgrace to hide wants to keep their good name from those who would judge them. · 9 scenes from 3 stories
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(A Transgression, In the Coach-House, The Bet) · stage <b>middle</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Get rid of the evidence quietly. <span class='src'>from scene 156</span><br><code>tact +</code> <code>flags.secret_kept set</code></li><li>Pay to have it smoothed over. <span class='src'>from scene 176</span><br><code>money -</code> <code>standing +</code> <code>flags.secret_kept set</code></li><li>Confess to those closest to you. <span class='src'>from scene 159</span><br><code>standing -</code> <code>relationships.spouse risk</code></li><li>Call it a joke and take it back. <span class='src'>from scene 160</span><br><code>relationships.spouse -</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>155</b> · <i>A Transgression</i> — A respectable married man, threatened with exposure over an old affair, finds the proof of it left on his doorstep.</summary><p class="sum">A respectable married official, threatened by a former maid he seduced who swore to leave their baby at his door, finds a bundled infant on his doorstep one night.</p></details><details><summary><b>156</b> · <i>A Transgression</i> — A man desperate to hide a past wrong from his spouse tries to get rid of the evidence before anyone notices.</summary><p class="sum">Terrified of his wife, his colleagues and scandal, he hurries off with the baby to leave it at a rich merchant's house before anyone sees.</p></details><details><summary><b>157</b> · <i>A Transgression</i> — A man hurrying to cover up his wrong begins to see the innocent person who will pay for it.</summary><p class="sum">Carrying the child through dark lanes, he realises how cruel it is to pass an innocent baby from door to door and imagines its bleak future among strangers.</p></details><details><summary><b>158</b> · <i>A Transgression</i> — A man torn between confessing to his spouse and keeping his reputation chooses the easy way, and is ashamed.</summary><p class="sum">He looks at the baby, sees his own nose, imagines confessing and adopting it, then fears his colleagues' mockery and leaves it on the step, begging its forgiveness.</p></details><details><summary><b>159</b> · <i>A Transgression</i> — A man who finally confesses a hidden wrong to his spouse learns the evidence he feared was never his at all.</summary><p class="sum">He turns back, carries the baby home and confesses to his wife on his knees, then learns from the doorman that the baby was a washerwoman's, not his.</p></details><details><summary><b>160</b> · <i>A Transgression</i> — A man who confessed for nothing tries to take it back, and his spouse now knows the truth anyway.</summary><p class="sum">The doorman apologises for having women visitors; the man curses him and tells his furious, tearful wife it was all a joke.</p></details><details><summary><b>176</b> · <i>In the Coach-House</i> — A grieving parent pays to have a disgraceful death covered up so the family can mourn with honour.</summary><p class="sum">The pedlar tells how a rich lady bribed officials to give her son a proper church burial after he shot himself, until watchmen said they heard him howling under the church.</p></details><details><summary><b>177</b> · <i>In the Coach-House</i> — A parent who hid a disgraceful death is haunted by it until she secretly undoes what she paid for.</summary><p class="sum">She secretly paid to have her son dug up and reburied outside the cemetery, then fed birds for his soul until a black dog appeared and drove her half-mad.</p></details><details><summary><b>198</b> · <i>The Bet</i> — A man spared ruin by another's renunciation is ashamed of himself, yet still quietly secures his own advantage.</summary><p class="sum">He renounces the millions by leaving five hours early; the banker kisses him and weeps in self-contempt, then next morning locks the renunciation away in his safe to avoid talk.</p></details></section>
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<section><h2>Unassigned (99)</h2><p class="meta">Scenes that fit no situation recurring in two or more stories.</p><details><summary><b>4</b> · <i>The Schoolmistress</i> — A struggling woman watches a comfortable man shrug off the hardships she lives with, and wonders why he stays.</summary><p class="sum">She cannot understand why a rich man would choose to live in this mud; he laughs at the road, says he is bored at home, and thinks his small gifts make him useful.</p></details><details><summary><b>8</b> · <i>The Schoolmistress</i> — A woman who feels unvalued among rough company is briefly treated with a little respect, and is glad of it.</summary><p class="sum">At a noisy tavern a drunk swears in front of her, is rebuked, apologises, and the others call her a good young lady; she drinks her tea content.</p></details><details><summary><b>10</b> · <i>The Schoolmistress</i> — A woman at the mercy of a stubborn companion is dragged through a needless hardship to save a little time.</summary><p class="sum">Her driver insists on fording the swollen river rather than taking the bridge the rich neighbour uses, and the horse wades in up to its belly.</p></details><details><summary><b>13</b> · <i>A Nervous Breakdown</i> — A scrupulous young man lets his friends talk him into an outing he knows only from books and privately disapproves of.</summary><p class="sum">Two friends persuade a scrupulous law student to come with them to a street of brothels; he knows fallen women only from books and pious stories, and goes reluctantly.</p></details><details><summary><b>14</b> · <i>A Nervous Breakdown</i> — A cautious young man is teased by livelier companions for brooding when he is meant to be enjoying himself.</summary><p class="sum">Walking out in the first snow, the three stop for vodka; he peers at a bit of cork in his glass and his friend tells him to stop philosophising and live like a human being for one evening.</p></details><details><summary><b>15</b> · <i>A Nervous Breakdown</i> — A man who weighs every step envies his carefree friends and decides, just once, to stop holding himself back.</summary><p class="sum">Warmed by drink, he envies his friends' easy, balanced cheerfulness and resolves to let himself go for one evening, whatever it costs him.</p></details><details><summary><b>16</b> · <i>A Nervous Breakdown</i> — A young man about to try something forbidden pictures it as dark and thrilling, and cannot wait to see it.</summary><p class="sum">Humming a song with his friends, he enjoys the snowy night and imagines a dark, secret, dreadful encounter with a guilty, frightened woman.</p></details><details><summary><b>17</b> · <i>A Nervous Breakdown</i> — A newcomer finds that a place he imagined as shameful and secret is treated as utterly ordinary by everyone around him.</summary><p class="sum">The street turns out brightly lit and noisy, with everyone indifferent to it; his friends clown their way into the first house.</p></details><details><summary><b>18</b> · <i>A Nervous Breakdown</i> — A self-conscious man trails his confident friends into a strange place, wishing he could play the fool as easily.</summary><p class="sum">His friends bow and joke their way into the parlour; he hangs back smiling awkwardly as young women arrive one by one.</p></details><details><summary><b>19</b> · <i>A Nervous Breakdown</i> — A man too polite to refuse is taken advantage of, then scolded by his friend for being so easily fleeced.</summary><p class="sum">He finds everything tawdry and ordinary, politely buys a girl a drink he will not share, and is scolded by a friend for being fleeced.</p></details><details><summary><b>20</b> · <i>A Nervous Breakdown</i> — A man dragged along by a drunken friend distracts himself by wondering what brought the people around him so low.</summary><p class="sum">In house after house he fixates on the doormen, wondering what lives brought them there; one friend gets drunk and demands they go on to 'the best one'.</p></details><details><summary><b>21</b> · <i>A Nervous Breakdown</i> — A bored and disgusted guest sits apart from the fun, silently judging everyone in the room while his friends enjoy themselves.</summary><p class="sum">His friends dance; he decides the ugliness is a deliberate style, sneers inwardly at how clumsily the women sell themselves, and tells one he is dull because it is dull.</p></details><details><summary><b>22</b> · <i>A Nervous Breakdown</i> — A well-meaning man longs to ask a stranger about her real life, but cannot find a way that is not insulting.</summary><p class="sum">He wants to ask a woman about her life and family but cannot find words; she jokes, says something coarse aloud, and keeps asking him to buy wine.</p></details><details><summary><b>23</b> · <i>A Nervous Breakdown</i> — A man who expected to feel pity feels only disgust, and cannot understand how decent-looking people can stand to be there.</summary><p class="sum">Repelled, he moves away and stares at the musicians, unable to understand how respectable-looking men can sit there unashamed; the place seems another world.</p></details><details><summary><b>24</b> · <i>A Nervous Breakdown</i> — A man who wants to go home is guilted by an affectionate friend into staying for one more round.</summary><p class="sum">Disgusted, he leaves and announces he is going home, but his tearful, affectionate friend hugs him and drags him into one more house.</p></details><details><summary><b>25</b> · <i>A Nervous Breakdown</i> — A man who thought himself kind is ashamed to find he feels nothing but contempt for people he meant to pity.</summary><p class="sum">Ignored in a grander house, he is ashamed to be there and tormented that he feels only hatred for the women, and resolves to try to understand them.</p></details><details><summary><b>26</b> · <i>A Nervous Breakdown</i> — A man who wants to rescue someone draws her out, and learns she sees no better place to go.</summary><p class="sum">Finding only boredom on every face, he sits beside a tired, thoughtful-looking woman and tries to draw her out; she says she is bored but has nowhere else to go.</p></details><details><summary><b>27</b> · <i>A Nervous Breakdown</i> — A man who rushes to comfort someone being mistreated recoils when she turns out not to be the victim he pictured.</summary><p class="sum">He tells her begging would be freer; she only asks for porter. Then a man slaps a girl, he rushes to the weeping girl in pity, and recoils when he sees she is drunk.</p></details><details><summary><b>28</b> · <i>A Nervous Breakdown</i> — A shaken man flees an ugly scene and waits outside, torn between going home and having it out with his companions.</summary><p class="sum">Frightened, he flees the house and waits in the falling snow, exhausted and wanting to go home but wanting still more to vent his feelings on his friends.</p></details><details><summary><b>29</b> · <i>A Nervous Breakdown</i> — A man who has seen something he cannot unsee realises his own friends are part of the wrong he is horrified by.</summary><p class="sum">He concludes the women are not falling but already ruined and that everyone shares the blame; a drunk passer-by claps him on the shoulder as one of the crowd, and he hears his friend fighting inside.</p></details><details><summary><b>30</b> · <i>A Nervous Breakdown</i> — A man walks home behind friends who have already shrugged off the evening, unable to shake it off himself.</summary><p class="sum">One friend is thrown downstairs after defending a woman from being hit; they calm him and walk home singing, while the student walks behind, judging them.</p></details><details><summary><b>31</b> · <i>A Nervous Breakdown</i> — A man decides the friends he admired are hypocrites whose fine talk covers the harm they cheerfully do.</summary><p class="sum">He decides his friends are as bad as slave-owners and murderers who keep a religious fast, their art and science a hypocrite's pretence.</p></details><details><summary><b>32</b> · <i>A Nervous Breakdown</i> — A man who denounces his friends for their conduct is called a self-righteous fool and left standing alone.</summary><p class="sum">He accuses his friends of murdering the women; one calls him a fool whose look of hatred is worse than the whole street, and both leave him.</p></details><details><summary><b>34</b> · <i>A Nervous Breakdown</i> — A man who cannot bear an injustice tries to solve it single-handed overnight by sheer effort of thought.</summary><p class="sum">Treating it as his own problem, he sits up methodically recalling every method his acquaintances have tried to save such women.</p></details><details><summary><b>35</b> · <i>A Nervous Breakdown</i> — A man looking for a way to help someone concludes that the only remedy that works would cost him his whole life.</summary><p class="sum">He sorts past rescue attempts into three kinds, finds the first two always failed, and concludes only marriage has ever worked.</p></details><details><summary><b>36</b> · <i>A Nervous Breakdown</i> — A man who realises he cannot make the sacrifice his principles demand looks for a grander, less personal cause instead.</summary><p class="sum">He admits he could never marry one, sees the problem is endless, decides the buyers must be saved, and dreams of preaching on the street corner.</p></details><details><summary><b>37</b> · <i>A Nervous Breakdown</i> — A man who feels others' suffering as his own is swept up in a burst of fervour to set the world right.</summary><p class="sum">He imagines rebuking passers-by, and in an ecstasy of feeling for others' pain writes letters and makes vows through the night.</p></details><details><summary><b>39</b> · <i>A Nervous Breakdown</i> — A man sunk in a despair that makes everything he cared about seem loathsome clings to the knowledge it will pass.</summary><p class="sum">By daylight he lies motionless in a nameless anguish that makes everything, good or evil, equally loathsome; only the thought that he could kill himself, or that it will pass in three days, soothes him.</p></details><details><summary><b>40</b> · <i>A Nervous Breakdown</i> — A man in private anguish hides from a friend at his door, then flees into the night rather than face it alone.</summary><p class="sum">He paces, sees his haggard face, hides when a friend knocks, weeps, and at dusk runs out into the street dreading the night.</p></details><details><summary><b>41</b> · <i>A Nervous Breakdown</i> — A man in unbearable distress looks for any other pain to drown it out, and finds nothing works.</summary><p class="sum">He wanders the city, drinks vodka, bares his chest to the wet snow and nearly throws himself off a bridge to trade one pain for another, then goes home and paces till morning.</p></details><details><summary><b>42</b> · <i>A Nervous Breakdown</i> — A man who has reached the end of his strength begs his friends to take him anywhere that can help.</summary><p class="sum">His friends find him in torment, begging to be saved; they take him to a polite, cold specialist who begins questioning him.</p></details><details><summary><b>44</b> · <i>A Nervous Breakdown</i> — A man is treated as ill for feeling what everyone around him calmly agrees is a real wrong.</summary><p class="sum">Hearing them discuss the street coolly, he protests that he is praised for trivial work but called mad for caring about the women, then weeps in pity for everyone.</p></details><details><summary><b>45</b> · <i>A Nervous Breakdown</i> — A man whose outburst has been soothed away feels ashamed and goes back to his ordinary routine as if nothing happened.</summary><p class="sum">The doctor sedates and examines him; calmer and ashamed, he leaves with prescriptions he has had before and drags himself back to his studies.</p></details><details><summary><b>46</b> · <i>Misery</i> — An old man carrying a fresh grief sits out in the cold at his work, waiting for anyone at all to need him.</summary><p class="sum">An old sledge-driver sits motionless in the falling snow, bent double, having had no fare all day, until an officer hails him.</p></details><details><summary><b>48</b> · <i>Misery</i> — A bereaved man takes whatever work comes, however insulting, just to have people near him.</summary><p class="sum">The officer shuts his eyes and won't listen; later three rowdy young men haggle him down, squabble over the seats and mock his cap.</p></details><details><summary><b>58</b> · <i>Champagne</i> — A man is asked by his spouse to welcome a runaway relative he has never met, and not to be hard on her.</summary><p class="sum">Back at the door, his wife joyfully tells him an aunt by marriage has arrived by train, fleeing a tyrannical husband, and begs him to be kind to her.</p></details><details><summary><b>59</b> · <i>Champagne</i> — A bored married man is dazzled by a lively, reckless visitor under his own roof and begins flirting with her at once.</summary><p class="sum">The 'aunt' is young, beautiful, perfumed and plainly dissolute; the dreary room brightens, and he flirts with her at once.</p></details><details><summary><b>60</b> · <i>Champagne</i> — A man who thought nothing worse could happen throws away his marriage and everything else for a sudden passion.</summary><p class="sum">They drink the second bottle; he falls headlong into a passion that sweeps away his wife, the visitor and himself, and has left him ruined on a dark street.</p></details><details><summary><b>61</b> · <i>After the Theatre</i> — A young girl with two admirers plays at being unloved and unhappy because it seems more romantic than being loved.</summary><p class="sum">Back from the opera, a sixteen-year-old girl who loves no one yet writes a romantic letter to one of her two admirers, pretending not to believe his love and pitying herself to tears.</p></details><details><summary><b>62</b> · <i>After the Theatre</i> — A girl dramatising her own feelings drifts from imagined sorrow into fond memories of a shy admirer's devotion.</summary><p class="sum">She imagines renouncing the world, then dwells fondly on her shy suitor's hidden passion for music and on how he declared his love in a draughty hallway.</p></details><details><summary><b>63</b> · <i>After the Theatre</i> — A girl choosing between two admirers is swept by a joy she cannot explain and laughs at nothing.</summary><p class="sum">She mentions her other admirer in the letter, wonders whether he deserves it more, and is overcome by causeless laughter at a funny story he told about a poodle.</p></details><details><summary><b>64</b> · <i>After the Theatre</i> — A girl on the edge of grown-up life is so full of happy expectation that she hardly knows what to do with herself.</summary><p class="sum">She tears up the letter, decides to love the other admirer, and imagines a summer of both men courting her, full of joy she does not know what to do with.</p></details><details><summary><b>76</b> · <i>In Exile</i> — A man whose spouse has run off with another chases them in vain, and returns to be laughed at.</summary><p class="sum">Three years later the wife fled across the river with a young official; the husband chased them for five days and then beat his head on the ferry boards, while the old man laughed at him.</p></details><details><summary><b>79</b> · <i>In Exile</i> — A young man punished for what his relatives did protests his innocence, and is told only that he will get used to it.</summary><p class="sum">The young exile weeps that he is innocent, punished in place of a rich uncle by an unfair verdict; the old man only repeats that he will get used to it and goes to sleep.</p></details><details><summary><b>83</b> · <i>In Exile</i> — A man in distress is mocked by someone who takes satisfaction in having predicted his misfortune.</summary><p class="sum">The old man taunts the silent gentleman with his own words that people can live even here and tells him his search is useless; he pays and drives off without a word.</p></details><details><summary><b>85</b> · <i>The Cattle-Dealers</i> — A man whose goods are spoiling sits stalled for hours, waiting on people who feel no hurry at all.</summary><p class="sum">A goods train carrying cattle has stood for hours at a small station at night; an old dealer and his big, dreamy son sit in the crowded van among eight unfed bullocks.</p></details><details><summary><b>86</b> · <i>The Cattle-Dealers</i> — A man pressed for time goes looking for whoever is holding him up, and finds them idle.</summary><p class="sum">The old man goes to stir up the crew, finds the driver asleep at the engine, and walks into the steaming station where two officials are arguing over a fur cap.</p></details><details><summary><b>87</b> · <i>The Cattle-Dealers</i> — A man who needs something done is met with a shrug and a vague reason why it cannot happen soon.</summary><p class="sum">He joins their squabble over whether the cap is real beaver, then remembers his errand; the guard says there is no hurry, as they are too late to avoid delays anyway.</p></details><details><summary><b>89</b> · <i>The Cattle-Dealers</i> — A man who has paid to be treated fairly finds himself still being treated roughly by those he paid.</summary><p class="sum">His son strums an accordion contentedly; the train starts with such a violent jolt that the cattle fall on each other and the old man curses the driver.</p></details><details><summary><b>92</b> · <i>The Cattle-Dealers</i> — A tired, irritable parent takes a bad night out on a grown child who works beside him without complaint.</summary><p class="sum">At dawn the old man wakes cold and cross, scolds his son for a tangled rope, then the two say their morning prayers side by side.</p></details><details><summary><b>94</b> · <i>The Cattle-Dealers</i> — A man who has already paid for help learns that the arrangement fell through anyway, and must start again.</summary><p class="sum">At the big station the guard sighs that their slot is gone; a fresh, eager young official asks cheerfully what is to be done now.</p></details><details><summary><b>96</b> · <i>The Cattle-Dealers</i> — A man who has learned how things work treats the right people well and teaches his child to do the same.</summary><p class="sum">He treats the guard to drinks to secure a smooth journey, telling his son that one gets nothing without bestirring oneself; a filthy oiler appears at the door.</p></details><details><summary><b>99</b> · <i>The Cattle-Dealers</i> — A young man dragged along on a parent's business drifts through it without caring about anything he sees.</summary><p class="sum">The son wanders about the station and engine staring at things, neither bored nor eager, indifferent to where he is.</p></details><details><summary><b>100</b> · <i>The Cattle-Dealers</i> — A young man passing through a strange place assumes it is dull without bothering to look.</summary><p class="sum">At a big station at evening the son fetches water, imagines the unseen town is dull, and the train is shunted back and forth.</p></details><details><summary><b>103</b> · <i>The Cattle-Dealers</i> — A plain man flattered to be talking with educated people joins in to air his own grievance with dignity.</summary><p class="sum">An inspector tells a tale of one railway stealing another's trucks; the dealer, flattered to talk with educated men, joins in with his own grievance about overcharging.</p></details><details><summary><b>105</b> · <i>The Cattle-Dealers</i> — A man who has been pushed around at last gets a small win, and wants every slight he suffered written down.</summary><p class="sum">His complaint wins precedence, and pleased with himself he has a policeman write a long, vindictive protocol of his whole journey, including the official who disliked his face.</p></details><details><summary><b>106</b> · <i>The Cattle-Dealers</i> — A worn-out man takes his frustration out on the helpless creatures in his care, who have suffered most of all.</summary><p class="sum">Next morning he rages at his thirsty, exhausted cattle, who will not drink the icy water given them; after two more days they reach the city and stagger off the train.</p></details><details><summary><b>107</b> · <i>The Cattle-Dealers</i> — A young man stuck in a strange city while a parent does business finds nothing in it that interests him.</summary><p class="sum">In a filthy lodging the father hunts buyers while the son idles, uninterested in the city; the cattle are sold and driven off by bored drovers who beat them.</p></details><details><summary><b>108</b> · <i>The Cattle-Dealers</i> — A man who has lost money on a venture cares less about the loss than about having someone to tell it to.</summary><p class="sum">Before leaving, the dealer insists on treating the indifferent hotel-keeper, recounting how late arrival and bribes cost him heavily, yet plainly not minding as long as someone listens.</p></details><details><summary><b>109</b> · <i>The Cattle-Dealers</i> — A man leaves after a costly journey pleased with himself, beside a child who feels nothing either way.</summary><p class="sum">Seen off by the staff, he tips everyone, blesses them and crosses himself; his son sits beside him, neither glad to go home nor sorry to leave.</p></details><details><summary><b>126</b> · <i>On Official Duty</i> — A proud young man who inherited nothing but debts is forced into humble work he feels is far beneath him.</summary><p class="sum">He tells how the dead man's father burnt his sister's will to seize land meant for the peasants, died disgraced, and left his son ruined, reduced to a lowly job he felt was beneath him.</p></details><details><summary><b>127</b> · <i>On Official Duty</i> — A young man who will one day leave a dreary place tires of hearing how an old man there will never escape.</summary><p class="sum">The constable's own drunkard sons ruined him; the magistrate, bored, reflects that he will go back to the city while the old man walks forever, and lies down restless at half past seven.</p></details><details><summary><b>130</b> · <i>On Official Duty</i> — A man offered an easy escape from a grim duty takes it, leaving frightened people behind to wait.</summary><p class="sum">The doctor returns with a landowner's horses to fetch him for supper and a proper bed; they drive through a village where no one has gone to sleep for fear of the dead man.</p></details><details><summary><b>131</b> · <i>On Official Duty</i> — A man riding off to comfort passes the humble person he left behind, still standing out in the cold.</summary><p class="sum">Leaving the village they pass the constable standing in the snow, apparently smiling; the coachman loses the road in the blizzard and circles to find it.</p></details><details><summary><b>136</b> · <i>On Official Duty</i> — A comfortable man is haunted by the thought that others carry the hardship that makes his own ease possible.</summary><p class="sum">He dreams of the dead man and the constable walking together through the storm, singing that they bear all life's burden while others sit in warmth.</p></details><details><summary><b>137</b> · <i>On Official Duty</i> — A man who dismissed people he met as unimportant realises his life and theirs are bound together after all.</summary><p class="sum">Waking, he realises the suicide, the constable and his host are all bound together, and that nothing in life is accidental for one who sees himself as part of the whole.</p></details><details><summary><b>138</b> · <i>On Official Duty</i> — A man realises that simply wanting an easy life for himself means accepting that others will suffer for it.</summary><p class="sum">He feels the suicide and the old man's suffering on his own conscience, since wanting a bright, easy life means accepting that others will carry the worst of it; next morning the storm keeps them in.</p></details><details><summary><b>139</b> · <i>On Official Duty</i> — A man kept in comfort by circumstances knows the people depending on him are waiting and does nothing about it.</summary><p class="sum">Their host refuses to let them go out in the storm; the doctor lectures on the climate, and they spend the day eating, playing cards and dancing while the body and witnesses wait.</p></details><details><summary><b>141</b> · <i>The First-Class Passenger</i> — A comfortable older man, idle after dinner, draws a stranger into talk about something that plainly still rankles him.</summary><p class="sum">A well-fed, slightly drunk first-class traveller asks his companion to chat, and raises the question of what fame really is and how anyone gets it.</p></details><details><summary><b>146</b> · <i>The First-Class Passenger</i> — A man overlooked at home tells himself that people who matter elsewhere will surely recognise him.</summary><p class="sum">He consoles himself that the provinces are stupid and real recognition waits in the capital, where a competition entry of his is about to be judged.</p></details><details><summary><b>150</b> · <i>The First-Class Passenger</i> — A man complaining that nobody knows his name is caught not knowing the name of the person in front of him.</summary><p class="sum">Someone recognises the cardsharp at once; then his companion shyly asks if he knows his name, a professor and academician of thirty-five years, and he doesn't; they both laugh.</p></details><details><summary><b>151</b> · <i>A Tragic Actor</i> — A sheltered young woman seeing a glamorous world for the first time is swept away and wants to be part of it.</summary><p class="sum">At a touring company's benefit night, a sheltered official's daughter, at the theatre for the first time, is overwhelmed by the bombastic leading man and begs her father to invite the actors to dinner.</p></details><details><summary><b>165</b> · <i>Small Fry</i> — A man too timid to cheat his way up takes out his frustration on something smaller and more helpless than himself.</summary><p class="sum">He knows he is too timid to invent slanders, remembers he has begged his hated patron for a two-rouble raise for ten years, and kills the cockroach, feeling better.</p></details><details><summary><b>181</b> · <i>Panic Fears</i> — A man with nothing to do sets off alone on an ordinary errand at dusk, unaware anything will unsettle him.</summary><p class="sum">A landowner recalls the first of three times he was truly terrified: idly driving to the station one sultry July evening with a small boy asleep behind him.</p></details><details><summary><b>189</b> · <i>The Bet</i> — A man looking back on an old argument remembers the careless boast that set his present trouble in motion.</summary><p class="sum">An old banker paces at night recalling a party fifteen years ago where guests argued about the death penalty and a young lawyer said life in prison was better than death.</p></details><details><summary><b>190</b> · <i>The Bet</i> — A rich man realises a reckless wager he made in a fit of pride has cost both parties years for nothing.</summary><p class="sum">He had impulsively bet two millions that the young man could not stand solitary confinement; the lawyer offered fifteen years; now the banker sees the bet was his caprice and the other's greed.</p></details><details><summary><b>191</b> · <i>The Bet</i> — A young man agrees to give up years of freedom and company for a fortune, on terms that allow no slip.</summary><p class="sum">The terms: fifteen years alone in a garden lodge, no visitors, voices or news, only books, music and wine through a small window, and any breach forfeits the money.</p></details><details><summary><b>192</b> · <i>The Bet</i> — A man in long isolation swings between despair and fierce effort, looking for anything that makes the time bearable.</summary><p class="sum">The prisoner suffers loneliness, refuses wine, reads novels, then classics, sinks into idle despair in the fifth year, then studies languages and history with fervour.</p></details><details><summary><b>193</b> · <i>The Bet</i> — A man who once staked a fortune lightly now faces having to pay it when it will ruin him.</summary><p class="sum">He writes in six languages asking for a shot to confirm his success, later reads only the Gospel, then everything at random; the banker realises paying tomorrow will ruin him.</p></details><details><summary><b>194</b> · <i>The Bet</i> — A man facing ruin over a promise he made decides the only way out is to do something terrible.</summary><p class="sum">Wild speculation has reduced the banker to middling rank; dreading envy and pity, he decides the prisoner must die and creeps out in the rain to the lodge.</p></details><details><summary><b>195</b> · <i>The Bet</i> — A man about to commit a crime plans for suspicion to fall on an innocent servant.</summary><p class="sum">Planning to let the absent watchman take the blame, he breaks the seals and enters; the prisoner, seated at the table, does not stir.</p></details><details><summary><b>196</b> · <i>The Bet</i> — A desperate man stands over someone helpless whom he could harm, and hesitates long enough to read what they wrote.</summary><p class="sum">He finds a skeletal, prematurely aged man asleep beside a letter, and considers smothering him before reading what he has written.</p></details><details><summary><b>200</b> · <i>The Head-Gardener's Story</i> — A man of lower rank contradicts his betters' confident opinion with a stubborn conviction of his own.</summary><p class="sum">A landowner complains that acquittals of obvious criminals corrupt the public; the gardener says he rejoices at every acquittal, because faith in a person is higher than evidence.</p></details><details><summary><b>201</b> · <i>The Head-Gardener's Story</i> — A stranger who keeps entirely to himself in a small town is respected from a distance for his usefulness.</summary><p class="sum">Gratified to be asked, he tells a legend from his grandmother about a solitary, silent, learned doctor who settled in a small town and was revered for his skill.</p></details><details><summary><b>202</b> · <i>The Head-Gardener's Story</i> — A man who gives himself selflessly to people not his own comes to be trusted and loved by everyone.</summary><p class="sum">The doctor loved the townsfolk like children, treated them for nothing despite his own illness, and was so beloved that he never locked his door.</p></details><details><summary><b>203</b> · <i>The Head-Gardener's Story</i> — A community refuses to believe that anyone among them could have wronged the person they all revered.</summary><p class="sum">Even robbers honoured him, yet one morning he was found murdered with an amazed look on his face; the judges ruled it an accident because nobody could have killed him.</p></details><details><summary><b>204</b> · <i>The Head-Gardener's Story</i> — People faced with plain proof of a terrible wrong still cannot bring themselves to believe it of anyone.</summary><p class="sum">A notorious vagrant was caught with the doctor's belongings and a bloodstained shirt; the townsfolk still doubted, and the judges agonised over overwhelming evidence.</p></details><details><summary><b>205</b> · <i>The Head-Gardener's Story</i> — Someone who must condemn another chooses faith in human decency over the plain evidence in front of him.</summary><p class="sum">The chief judge could not pronounce sentence and the court freed the man; the gardener says God forgave the town for its faith in humanity, then walks off before anyone can object.</p></details><details><summary><b>206</b> · <i>The Beauties</i> — A bored youngster dragged on a long, hot journey with an elder has nothing to do but endure it.</summary><p class="sum">The narrator recalls a stifling August journey as a schoolboy with his grandfather, stopping to rest the horses at a rich villager's house whose owner is a comic, haughty figure.</p></details><details><summary><b>207</b> · <i>The Beauties</i> — A youngster stuck waiting on the adults' dull business feels the idle hours stretch out into forever.</summary><p class="sum">In the fly-filled room he faces hours of waiting while the men talk of manure and oats, hating everything; then the host calls his daughter to pour tea.</p></details><details><summary><b>209</b> · <i>The Beauties</i> — A young man hurt to be ignored by someone lovely forgets himself entirely in simply looking at her.</summary><p class="sum">He dwells on her flawless features, feels hurt that she ignores him because he is dusty and young, then forgets himself entirely in the consciousness of her beauty.</p></details><details><summary><b>211</b> · <i>The Beauties</i> — A bystander idly watches others' hard, repetitive labour on a hot afternoon, with nothing to do himself.</summary><p class="sum">Horses circle unwillingly, raising clouds of golden chaff, while women rake and carts move among the stacks.</p></details><details><summary><b>215</b> · <i>The Beauties</i> — A man watching a stranger realises her charm lies in her liveliness, not in any feature he could name.</summary><p class="sum">Her features are ordinary, yet her restless movements, laughter and freshness make her lovelier than any perfect face.</p></details><details><summary><b>219</b> · <i>The Shoemaker and the Devil</i> — A poor man who envies those above him dreams of trading places and lording it over someone else.</summary><p class="sum">He hates the strange customer, whose room once filled with sulphurous pink smoke, and dreams of the rich being ruined while he lords it over some other poor shoemaker.</p></details><details><summary><b>221</b> · <i>The Shoemaker and the Devil</i> — A poor man meets someone with the power to grant any wish, and flatters him instead of running.</summary><p class="sum">Fitting the boots, he discovers the customer has a hoof; instead of fleeing he flatters the devil, who asks what he wants.</p></details><details><summary><b>222</b> · <i>The Shoemaker and the Devil</i> — A man who has envied the rich all his life is offered wealth in exchange for his soul, and bargains over the terms.</summary><p class="sum">He pours out his lifelong envy of the rich and complaints about his good but coarse wife, and asks to be made rich; the devil wants his soul, and he insists on payment after delivery.</p></details><details><summary><b>223</b> · <i>The Shoemaker and the Devil</i> — A poor man suddenly made rich gorges on luxury, and finds even that becomes oppressive.</summary><p class="sum">He is transformed into a gentleman served an enormous dinner, eats until he is uncomfortably stuffed, and orders his old rival sent for.</p></details><details><summary><b>224</b> · <i>The Shoemaker and the Devil</i> — A man newly raised above others treats them as he was once treated, and finds wealth only makes him anxious.</summary><p class="sum">He abuses his rival as he was once abused, feels uneasy at the memory, counts his money but only wants more, and lies awake fearing thieves beside a new, grand wife.</p></details><details><summary><b>225</b> · <i>The Shoemaker and the Devil</i> — A man who has risen above his station finds all his old pleasures are now forbidden as improper for his rank.</summary><p class="sum">At church he sees rich and poor are equal before God and in the grave; when he sings or plays in the street, policemen and cabmen tell him it is not proper for a gentleman.</p></details></section>
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