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JesseMarkowitzandClaude Opus 5 e5617b86ba Replace clustering with a catalogue, and hand-write the references to judge it against 
The pipeline's embed-and-cluster step is dead, and this commit holds both the
evidence for that and the step proposed to replace it.

Predicaments. Scenes are re-described as "what the person is up against", with
no names, jobs or places, then embedded and clustered (redescribe.py,
topic_words.py, topic_share.py). The pilot chose qwen3:14b over 3b by reading
both side by side. Two defects the pilot exposed are fixed: split.py missed
titles in quotes and a contents subtitle after a dash, so three stories had been
merged into their neighbours, and strip_names.py read New York place names as
people. The corrected corpus is probe/v2 (97 stories, 839 scenes);
carry_summaries.py reuses the 829 unchanged v1 summaries. Topic share fell from
20% to 13% at k=60, short of the pre-registered 10%.

Hand references. Three corpora were read scene by scene and written up by hand,
under the same prompt rules the local models get, as a baseline to judge them
against: O. Henry (probe/v2/claude, 839 scenes, 20 situations), Wharton's
Descent of Man (probe/wharton, 262 scenes, 16 groups) and Jacobs's The Lady of
the Barge (probe/jacobs, 157 scenes, 19 groups). Each has its own README and a
readable page. No inference was used for any of them.

Catalogue. probe/catalogue maps every hand group in the three references onto 36
situation entries, with an answer key per corpus and one recurrence rule applied
to all three. classify.py assigns a scene one entry or none, leave-one-corpus-
out; score.py checks it against the key, with a self-test on random labels.

Why clustering is out: hand-written predicaments, embedded and clustered exactly
as the model's were, agree with the hand grouping at ARI 0.05 — no better than
the 14B text's 0.07. Better rewriting cannot rescue it. Embeddings cannot even
shortlist: the hand label is the nearest entry 13% of the time and in the top 8
half the time.

The classification runs are not here. The dev and test runs are pre-registered
in probe/catalogue/README.md with the bar set beforehand, and are blocked on the
inference host, whose GPU has fallen off the PCIe bus three times. The 30-scene
partial output in out/ is not a result.

Review page. The situation review is now a browser page rather than JSON edited
by hand (review_page.py, review_page_logic.cjs with Node tests, format schema
v2). It has never been rendered in a real browser.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_014BygvsUXV9eU6oHkTCkKZ1
2026-09-20 17:19:42 -04:00

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{
"model": "claude-opus-5 (in-session, by hand)",
"note": "Written by Claude (claude-opus-5) directly in a Claude Code session on 2026-09-17, one scene at a time, reading each story's scenes in order, following the same rules as the prompt below. No API call and no post-processing: names were kept out by the writer, not stripped afterwards.",
"prompt": "Describe the social situation in a passage of fiction in ONE sentence.\n\nRules:\n- Exactly one sentence, at most 25 words.\n- Never use anyone's name. Refer to each person only by the role the passage gives them: their job, their family tie, or their position.\n- Never name a place, business, street or city.\n- Say what is happening between the people: who wants what from whom, who holds power, what is at stake.\n- Do not describe the writing style, the narrator, or the mood.\n- Output only the sentence.",
"summaries": [
{
"chunk": 0,
"story": 0,
"summary": "A writer on assignment casts about for someone who can tell him what the city means, and starts with the woman he courts."
},
{
"chunk": 1,
"story": 0,
"summary": "A man presses the woman he courts for an answer she turns aside with jokes; he insists, and she only smiles."
},
{
"chunk": 2,
"story": 0,
"summary": "A man questions a bartender about the city's meaning; the bartender is pulled away by a neighbour's errand and talks about his family instead."
},
{
"chunk": 3,
"story": 0,
"summary": "A man asks a policeman what the city says; the policeman says he only takes orders, then talks about his new wife."
},
{
"chunk": 4,
"story": 0,
"summary": "A man asks a poet for a grand utterance summing up the whole city, laying out at length what the answer should contain."
},
{
"chunk": 5,
"story": 0,
"summary": "A poet ignores the question to talk about a girl, and a news-seller wants only his money; the questioner leaves with nothing."
},
{
"chunk": 6,
"story": 0,
"summary": "A man returns to the woman he courts and sits silent beside her; she notes he has not spoken, and that is his answer."
},
{
"chunk": 7,
"story": 1,
"summary": "A low-paid clerk and his wife live an ordinary flat-bound life, with neither poverty, love nor war to mark it."
},
{
"chunk": 8,
"story": 1,
"summary": "A housewife's days are made of bargains, window-sills and small superiorities over a neighbour, in a city where large things happen suddenly."
},
{
"chunk": 9,
"story": 1,
"summary": "A clerk tries to make conversation with his wife about his workplace, fails, and goes out for a cigar instead."
},
{
"chunk": 10,
"story": 1,
"summary": "A customer finds himself penniless and offers to pay tomorrow; the shopkeeper attacks him and the two fight into the street."
},
{
"chunk": 11,
"story": 1,
"summary": "A fleeing man strikes the officer who intervenes, runs, and is picked up by a stranger's car that carries him to a mansion."
},
{
"chunk": 12,
"story": 1,
"summary": "A wealthy young woman, mistaking a stranger for a champion, asks him to confront a man who has insulted her."
},
{
"chunk": 13,
"story": 1,
"summary": "A man takes a woman's flower and confronts her enemy on her behalf; the young man puts him out the door effortlessly."
},
{
"chunk": 14,
"story": 1,
"summary": "The quarrel proves a lovers' game between a couple; the outsider walks home and resumes the dull talk he left."
},
{
"chunk": 15,
"story": 2,
"summary": "A young shop assistant behind a counter is beautiful and shrewd, schooled by the other girls in how to handle men who buy."
},
{
"chunk": 16,
"story": 2,
"summary": "A rich young man wanders into a store where the counter girls flirt with cheap admirers, and the shop assistant meets his eye."
},
{
"chunk": 17,
"story": 2,
"summary": "A rich man realises he stands among ordinary suitors, resolves to win the shop assistant anyway, and leaves his card on the counter."
},
{
"chunk": 18,
"story": 2,
"summary": "A rich man asks permission to call; the shop assistant refuses her crowded home and names a street corner instead."
},
{
"chunk": 19,
"story": 2,
"summary": "A workmate teases the shop assistant about her rich admirer, while he worries that her easy consent means she is common."
},
{
"chunk": 20,
"story": 2,
"summary": "A rich man proposes marriage; the shop assistant disbelieves his station and takes his declarations for the usual flattery."
},
{
"chunk": 21,
"story": 2,
"summary": "A suitor paints a life of foreign travel and palaces; the shop assistant recognises the picture and stands up."
},
{
"chunk": 22,
"story": 2,
"summary": "The shop assistant ends it and tells a workmate that the rich man only wanted a cheap wedding trip."
},
{
"chunk": 23,
"story": 3,
"summary": "A man belongs to a clannish set who live in hotel lobbies and keep their home lives out of sight."
},
{
"chunk": 24,
"story": 3,
"summary": "A man treats his wife as a fixture at home, dining out nightly with his set and barely hearing her talk."
},
{
"chunk": 25,
"story": 3,
"summary": "A wife asks her husband to take her out after three years indoors; he agrees, and she comes down transformed."
},
{
"chunk": 26,
"story": 3,
"summary": "A husband, surprised by his wife's appearance, changes his plan and resolves to show her to his friends rather than hide her."
},
{
"chunk": 27,
"story": 3,
"summary": "A man's friends stare as he passes with his wife; at dinner she blooms, and shame reaches him for the years she spent shut in."
},
{
"chunk": 28,
"story": 3,
"summary": "An influential friend joins their table and the wife charms him and a crowd of men, while her husband sits without words."
},
{
"chunk": 29,
"story": 3,
"summary": "The husband takes his wife's cloak before his friend can, walks her home, and refuses to return to his set."
},
{
"chunk": 30,
"story": 4,
"summary": "Three weeks married, a bride idly asks her husband for out-of-season fruit, and he leaves at once to get it."
},
{
"chunk": 31,
"story": 4,
"summary": "A husband tries a street vendor and a friend's establishment; both say the fruit is out of season and offer a substitute."
},
{
"chunk": 32,
"story": 4,
"summary": "Finding every shop shut, a husband goes to a police captain and offers to lead a raid on a gambling house."
},
{
"chunk": 33,
"story": 4,
"summary": "A man guides a dozen officers to a gambling room, the door is broken in, and most of the players escape."
},
{
"chunk": 34,
"story": 4,
"summary": "The gambling house's owner attacks the guide; after beating him, the guide hunts the supper room and questions a servant about fruit."
},
{
"chunk": 35,
"story": 4,
"summary": "One piece of fruit survives the supper table; the man pockets it and has a druggist check the rib he hurt falling downstairs."
},
{
"chunk": 36,
"story": 4,
"summary": "The husband lays the fruit in his wife's hand; she says she would rather have had the other kind after all."
},
{
"chunk": 37,
"story": 5,
"summary": "Spring is announced in the city by newspaper items, but the true sign is when one person goes seeking another."
},
{
"chunk": 38,
"story": 5,
"summary": "Three idlers on a bench plot how to get the one dollar a married man's wife earned by washing."
},
{
"chunk": 39,
"story": 5,
"summary": "The husband boasts he can choke the money out of his wife, then goes home to a woman who despises him."
},
{
"chunk": 40,
"story": 5,
"summary": "The husband claims a new position and asks for the money; his wife calls him a liar and refuses."
},
{
"chunk": 41,
"story": 5,
"summary": "The husband tries self-pity; his wife mocks it, and he decides to try the tenderness he abandoned years ago."
},
{
"chunk": 42,
"story": 5,
"summary": "The husband puts his arm around his wife and calls her old endearments; she breaks down, holds him, and hurries out."
},
{
"chunk": 43,
"story": 5,
"summary": "The wife returns having spent the dollar on a tonic for her husband, and sits on his lap; his friends still wait."
},
{
"chunk": 44,
"story": 6,
"summary": "A young man contrives to speak to a well-dressed young woman on a park bench; she invites him to sit and talk."
},
{
"chunk": 45,
"story": 6,
"summary": "A young woman rebukes a stranger's familiar flirtation, then asks him about the passing crowd and hints she is above them."
},
{
"chunk": 46,
"story": 6,
"summary": "A young woman claims a famous name and weariness of wealth; the stranger, curious, catches an inconsistency in her account."
},
{
"chunk": 47,
"story": 6,
"summary": "The woman explains away her slip as a fashion, says she could love a lowly worker, and asks the stranger's occupation."
},
{
"chunk": 48,
"story": 6,
"summary": "The man says he is a cashier across the street; the woman hurries away, telling him her car waits at the corner."
},
{
"chunk": 49,
"story": 6,
"summary": "Told to wait, the man follows the woman instead, and watches her take her place at the cashier's desk she described."
},
{
"chunk": 50,
"story": 6,
"summary": "The man drops the woman's book on the grass, steps into the waiting automobile and orders his chauffeur to his club."
},
{
"chunk": 51,
"story": 7,
"summary": "A city breeds a tribe of onlookers who gather in a ring around any accident or oddity, however trivial."
},
{
"chunk": 52,
"story": 7,
"summary": "Two devoted onlookers meet across the body of an injured man, and one falls in love as the other shoves through the crowd."
},
{
"chunk": 53,
"story": 7,
"summary": "The two onlookers remain after the crowd goes, staring frankly at each other's physical defects without speaking."
},
{
"chunk": 54,
"story": 7,
"summary": "On a dull day the two fight into a crowd watching a sign-painter, and the man offers to show her a rarer sight."
},
{
"chunk": 55,
"story": 7,
"summary": "The pair share an injury, a stakeout and three days on a plank, and pledge themselves as a policeman drives them away."
},
{
"chunk": 56,
"story": 7,
"summary": "A wedding is set, the church filled, and outside the crowd of onlookers presses and fights to see the couple arrive."
},
{
"chunk": 57,
"story": 7,
"summary": "The couple never arrive; they are dragged from the crowd, trampled, having joined it to watch themselves be married."
},
{
"chunk": 58,
"story": 8,
"summary": "A lawyer hands a young heir a thousand dollars and tells him he must render a full account of how he spends it."
},
{
"chunk": 59,
"story": 8,
"summary": "The heir tells a club acquaintance that the whole fortune went elsewhere, and mentions a quiet ward left only a ring."
},
{
"chunk": 60,
"story": 8,
"summary": "The acquaintance lists worthy uses for the money, then says the heir will only buy a dancer a jewel."
},
{
"chunk": 61,
"story": 8,
"summary": "The heir offers a dancer a jewel and she barely attends; he then asks a driver and a street seller what they would do."
},
{
"chunk": 62,
"story": 8,
"summary": "Learning the ward received nothing, the heir gives her the thousand dollars, saying a late amendment to the will provided it."
},
{
"chunk": 63,
"story": 8,
"summary": "The heir tells the ward he loves her, is refused, and writes an account naming the money as a debt of happiness."
},
{
"chunk": 64,
"story": 8,
"summary": "A codicil promises fifty thousand if the money was spent unselfishly; the heir tears up the account that would prove it."
},
{
"chunk": 65,
"story": 9,
"summary": "A farmer's son becomes a celebrated city lawyer, remade by the city into an impeccable and narrow gentleman."
},
{
"chunk": 66,
"story": 9,
"summary": "The lawyer crowns his rise by marrying a woman of the oldest family, cold and high above every other climber."
},
{
"chunk": 67,
"story": 9,
"summary": "The wife finds a letter from her husband's farming mother and announces they will visit, asking whether the farm entertains."
},
{
"chunk": 68,
"story": 9,
"summary": "They arrive at the country station, where the husband's brother jeers cheerfully and is silenced by the wife's appearance."
},
{
"chunk": 69,
"story": 9,
"summary": "The old countryside takes hold of the husband, and his wife beside him begins to seem remote and unreal."
},
{
"chunk": 70,
"story": 9,
"summary": "On the porch the husband throws off his manners, pulls off his father's boots and challenges his brother to wrestle."
},
{
"chunk": 71,
"story": 9,
"summary": "The husband wrestles, chases his sister with an insect, dances and clowns, while his wife sits silent and unreadable."
},
{
"chunk": 72,
"story": 9,
"summary": "The wife retires; her husband follows, expecting condemnation, and she begins by saying she thought she married a gentleman."
},
{
"chunk": 73,
"story": 9,
"summary": "The sentence ends differently: the wife says she finds she married something better, and asks her husband to kiss her."
},
{
"chunk": 74,
"story": 10,
"summary": "A young man disinherited for disobeying his uncle spends his last coin and takes a park bench with nothing left."
},
{
"chunk": 75,
"story": 10,
"summary": "On the bench a ragged stranger tells the ruined man that tomorrow he inherits millions, and that he is afraid."
},
{
"chunk": 76,
"story": 10,
"summary": "The stranger explains he is a cast-off nephew summoned back to be heir, and begs the price of a drink."
},
{
"chunk": 77,
"story": 10,
"summary": "The stranger panics, terrified that some accident will kill him in the hours before he can claim the fortune."
},
{
"chunk": 78,
"story": 10,
"summary": "The ruined man calms the stranger, uses his standing at a hotel bar to get him food, and eats none himself."
},
{
"chunk": 79,
"story": 10,
"summary": "They take neighbouring benches; the stranger promises to get the ruined man a job once his fortune arrives."
},
{
"chunk": 80,
"story": 10,
"summary": "At the lawyer's office next morning the stranger is told his uncle has reconsidered and will not take him back."
},
{
"chunk": 81,
"story": 10,
"summary": "The stranger walks out steadily cursing his uncle; the lawyer then tells the ruined man his own uncle relents, and he faints."
},
{
"chunk": 82,
"story": 11,
"summary": "A writer explains that editors discard manuscripts claiming to be true, and that fiction is held in more esteem than fact."
},
{
"chunk": 83,
"story": 11,
"summary": "A storekeeper's son comes to the city to write, carrying two grand historical manuscripts and a small local reputation."
},
{
"chunk": 84,
"story": 11,
"summary": "The older writer lodges the newcomer, tests him with an assignment he refuses, and the two live cheaply and happily."
},
{
"chunk": 85,
"story": 11,
"summary": "The newcomer's love stories come back rejected; the older writer finds them well made but empty of living substance."
},
{
"chunk": 86,
"story": 11,
"summary": "Told he must fall in love before he can write it, the newcomer does, and is wrecked by a careless young woman."
},
{
"chunk": 87,
"story": 11,
"summary": "The newcomer writes the story while the feeling is on him; it is sentimental drivel, and all his craft has vanished."
},
{
"chunk": 88,
"story": 11,
"summary": "After recovering, the newcomer is worshipped by another woman he only mildly likes, and sits down to write again."
},
{
"chunk": 89,
"story": 11,
"summary": "The new story is brilliant; the newcomer says an artist must be a cad, tears it up and goes home to his father's store."
},
{
"chunk": 90,
"story": 12,
"summary": "A young woman about to sail receives the suitor who wronged her coldly, and produces a keepsake motto as evidence against him."
},
{
"chunk": 91,
"story": 12,
"summary": "The suitor draws a second motto counselling forgiveness and pleads to be taken back, renouncing the woman who lured him away."
},
{
"chunk": 92,
"story": 12,
"summary": "A street seller rests his cart nightly under the window where a celebrated dancer sits while her maids dress her hair."
},
{
"chunk": 93,
"story": 12,
"summary": "The dancer asks the street seller whether she is beautiful; he refuses to flatter her and talks about the weather."
},
{
"chunk": 94,
"story": 12,
"summary": "The street seller mocks the dancer's fishing for compliments, says his plain evening contents him, and goes in to read."
},
{
"chunk": 95,
"story": 12,
"summary": "Piqued, the dancer works daily on the seller until she makes him look into her eyes; next evening he comes dressed up."
},
{
"chunk": 96,
"story": 12,
"summary": "Bored the moment he is won, the dancer laughs at the seller's offer of his savings until he leaves; then she screams."
},
{
"chunk": 97,
"story": 13,
"summary": "Nature moves in circles and the city in straight lines, and the city remakes whatever comes into it to its angles."
},
{
"chunk": 98,
"story": 13,
"summary": "Two mountain families kill each other over forty years until one man of each remains, and one of them disappears."
},
{
"chunk": 99,
"story": 13,
"summary": "The last survivor of one family learns his enemy lives in the city, packs a revolver and a knife, and follows him."
},
{
"chunk": 100,
"story": 13,
"summary": "Hunting his enemy along the crowded avenues, the mountain man finds a world of straight lines and rushing strangers."
},
{
"chunk": 101,
"story": 13,
"summary": "Unseen by thousands of passing faces, the stranger fails even to open a door and is moved along by a policeman."
},
{
"chunk": 102,
"story": 13,
"summary": "Jostled and abused by traffic and passers-by, the stranger meets his hereditary enemy at last and shakes his hand gladly."
},
{
"chunk": 103,
"story": 14,
"summary": "A poet throws down a magazine and declares romance dead, cataloguing its contents to a cheerful clerk who disagrees by existing."
},
{
"chunk": 104,
"story": 14,
"summary": "A plain-dressed clerk sits at the poet's window above an old garden, where an old gentleman refuses to sell his house."
},
{
"chunk": 105,
"story": 14,
"summary": "The clerk visits often as a useful foil, and the poet reads him his printed verses about four roses."
},
{
"chunk": 106,
"story": 14,
"summary": "The clerk cuts the reading short and leaves; next day the poet sees a beautiful young woman at the opposite window."
},
{
"chunk": 107,
"story": 14,
"summary": "Four roses appear in the young woman's window and the poet reads them as her answer to his published verses."
},
{
"chunk": 108,
"story": 14,
"summary": "A flower book tells the poet a meeting is expected; the clerk arrives, checks his watch and hurries off to an appointment."
},
{
"chunk": 109,
"story": 14,
"summary": "The clerk explains that the roses are his fiancee's signal of the hour, and that the flowerpot means half-past."
},
{
"chunk": 110,
"story": 15,
"summary": "Officials proclaim that during the heat the people may sleep in the parks, and whole neighbourhoods move out into one."
},
{
"chunk": 111,
"story": 15,
"summary": "Tenants pack bedding and household goods, protesting to the janitor, while an officer orders everyone out to the park."
},
{
"chunk": 112,
"story": 15,
"summary": "The narrator praises the mixed and companionable life of the tenement on hot nights, then describes being herded into the dark park."
},
{
"chunk": 113,
"story": 15,
"summary": "The officer threatens imprisonment for refusal, and the tenants pass the night in the dark judging strangers by feel."
},
{
"chunk": 114,
"story": 15,
"summary": "Two tenants complain that the rent runs on while they lie in the grass, and joke that this is the city's charity."
},
{
"chunk": 115,
"story": 15,
"summary": "In the dark the social distinctions of the building collapse into a heap, and by morning five engagements have been announced."
},
{
"chunk": 116,
"story": 15,
"summary": "A well-dressed man stops his car to ask why the people lie in the grass, and takes the answer down in a book."
},
{
"chunk": 117,
"story": 16,
"summary": "A big idle striker wakes restless and unaccountably disturbed, knocks his brothers aside, and cannot say what ails him."
},
{
"chunk": 118,
"story": 16,
"summary": "His mother says the season is in his bones; he denies every sign of spring and goes to his usual idle corner."
},
{
"chunk": 119,
"story": 16,
"summary": "He looks for signs of the season, orders a drink and leaves it untasted, and snaps at the bartender who mocks him."
},
{
"chunk": 120,
"story": 16,
"summary": "A friendly barber insists the season is coming; the restless man denies it, then fights a standing enemy in the street."
},
{
"chunk": 121,
"story": 16,
"summary": "He hunts a sentimental song under a pretext, then knocks at the young woman's door and asks her opinion of the weather."
},
{
"chunk": 122,
"story": 16,
"summary": "He names the feeling as her, says he starts work Monday, and she accepts; snow falls and he calls it springtime anyway."
},
{
"chunk": 123,
"story": 17,
"summary": "A southern saying summons an imaginary old man who kills fools, invoked in every household with a smile or a tear."
},
{
"chunk": 124,
"story": 17,
"summary": "A writer explains how an illustrator wrecks a story with details he never wrote, and how far an artist stands from an author."
},
{
"chunk": 125,
"story": 17,
"summary": "The writer befriends a cheerfully melancholy artist who is engaged to a factory worker earning eight dollars a week."
},
{
"chunk": 126,
"story": 17,
"summary": "The artist's rich father objects to the match, so the artist gives up the inheritance and lives on credit and sausages."
},
{
"chunk": 127,
"story": 17,
"summary": "The young woman proves natural and unpretending at a cheap cafe, and the writer still tells the artist he is a fool."
},
{
"chunk": 128,
"story": 17,
"summary": "The artist plans to marry within the week on the price of one picture, while the writer drinks and repeats his verdict."
},
{
"chunk": 129,
"story": 17,
"summary": "A grey old man appears and orders the artist to give up the young woman and come home; the artist seems not to hear."
},
{
"chunk": 130,
"story": 17,
"summary": "The artist insists nobody spoke to him; the writer, believing he alone can see the visitor, follows the old man out."
},
{
"chunk": 131,
"story": 17,
"summary": "The writer accuses the old man of destroying youth and talent for old standards, and calls the artist the wisest man he knows."
},
{
"chunk": 132,
"story": 17,
"summary": "The old man asks about the young woman, hears her defended, and asks to have the artist brought out to him."
},
{
"chunk": 133,
"story": 17,
"summary": "The old man gives in and asks the artist to bring her home; he is the father, unspoken to for a year."
},
{
"chunk": 134,
"story": 18,
"summary": "A quiet hotel offers a few guests the pleasures of a mountain resort, and they hide there fearing discovery by other pleasure-seekers."
},
{
"chunk": 135,
"story": 18,
"summary": "A gracious lady arrives and is treated by staff and guests as the perfect ornament of their exclusive retreat."
},
{
"chunk": 136,
"story": 18,
"summary": "Rumours make the lady a cosmopolitan; a well-dressed young man arrives, asks about sailings and settles in for a few days."
},
{
"chunk": 137,
"story": 18,
"summary": "A dropped handkerchief introduces them, and the two agree that the old resorts are ruined by the crowds who follow them."
},
{
"chunk": 138,
"story": 18,
"summary": "Each says they leave on Monday, she for a chateau abroad, and they spend a last evening together on the balcony."
},
{
"chunk": 139,
"story": 18,
"summary": "The lady confesses she sells hosiery for eight dollars a week and saved a year to live like a lady once."
},
{
"chunk": 140,
"story": 18,
"summary": "He writes her a receipt: he collects instalments on that very dress, saved as she did, and they plan an outing together."
},
{
"chunk": 141,
"story": 19,
"summary": "A village-born actress has risen to stardom, and a young character actor seeks the rustic part in her next play."
},
{
"chunk": 142,
"story": 19,
"summary": "Told the star rejects every imitation of a country dweller, the actor spends three days gathering the facts of her home village."
},
{
"chunk": 143,
"story": 19,
"summary": "At the star's late supper table an awkward country youth enters, and the whole room turns to look at him."
},
{
"chunk": 144,
"story": 19,
"summary": "The youth greets the star as a neighbour and retails the village news until she draws him to a private table."
},
{
"chunk": 145,
"story": 19,
"summary": "She cannot recall him but asks after her family, and he answers with the changes at her parents' house."
},
{
"chunk": 146,
"story": 19,
"summary": "He describes her mother watching the road daily for her return, and gives her a rose from the home doorstep."
},
{
"chunk": 147,
"story": 19,
"summary": "She laughs the village off and goes; when the actor calls next day her maid says she has returned there to live."
},
{
"chunk": 148,
"story": 20,
"summary": "A detective meets an old friend on the street, takes him aside and asks straight out why he killed the murdered man."
},
{
"chunk": 149,
"story": 20,
"summary": "The detective produces the gold pencil he once gave his friend, found at the scene, and warns him he must do his duty."
},
{
"chunk": 150,
"story": 20,
"summary": "The killer explains the shooting and the theft, then says the detective owes him a thousand dollars and cannot touch him."
},
{
"chunk": 151,
"story": 20,
"summary": "The detective concedes that the debt binds him, and says nothing else could have bought the man out of his hands."
},
{
"chunk": 152,
"story": 20,
"summary": "The detective says he will resign, and the killer's boasting of past crimes turns his old gratitude into cold disgust."
},
{
"chunk": 153,
"story": 20,
"summary": "Enraged at the mention of newspapers, the killer goes to a telephone to prove to an editor what he thinks of them."
},
{
"chunk": 154,
"story": 20,
"summary": "On the telephone he confesses the murder to the editor and proves it with a detail only the killer could know."
},
{
"chunk": 155,
"story": 20,
"summary": "He hangs up gloating and spends the night at shows and suppers, while the detective broods and then begins to wonder."
},
{
"chunk": 156,
"story": 20,
"summary": "At dawn the newsboys cry the papers; the detective buys one, looks at the front page and begins writing with the pencil."
},
{
"chunk": 157,
"story": 21,
"summary": "A village woman comes to the city with an easel to study art; at home she was reckless, here she looks a spinster."
},
{
"chunk": 158,
"story": 21,
"summary": "She takes a cheap room and lessons from a fraudulent teacher, one of the hopeless army of the mediocre."
},
{
"chunk": 159,
"story": 21,
"summary": "After a day of small defeats she accepts a dinner invitation from the boarding-house's showy man of the world."
},
{
"chunk": 160,
"story": 21,
"summary": "He takes her to a fashionable resort of artists, where a young man at a table hails him and invites them to join."
},
{
"chunk": 161,
"story": 21,
"summary": "Dazzled by the music and company, she drinks what is poured for her and speaks fondly of the farm she came from."
},
{
"chunk": 162,
"story": 21,
"summary": "Home in her room, conscience overwhelms her, and at midnight she writes to her sweetheart renouncing him as one lost forever."
},
{
"chunk": 163,
"story": 21,
"summary": "She resolves that no return is possible and models herself on famous fallen women, keeping her room for two days."
},
{
"chunk": 164,
"story": 21,
"summary": "Her sweetheart arrives, tells her to wipe off the paint and pack, mentions the trees at home, and she goes."
},
{
"chunk": 165,
"story": 22,
"summary": "A quarter of the city shelters exiles of many nations, who pass through its cafes and lodging houses and vanish into service."
},
{
"chunk": 166,
"story": 22,
"summary": "In a struggling rooming house the daughter keeps the rooms, and the best lodger is a splendid, prompt-paying foreigner."
},
{
"chunk": 167,
"story": 22,
"summary": "The lodger courts the daughter; she likes him but suspects he is one more penniless foreign gentleman with a story."
},
{
"chunk": 168,
"story": 22,
"summary": "He invites her to dine and takes her through a dark door into a hidden restaurant's crowded back yard."
},
{
"chunk": 169,
"story": 22,
"summary": "He excuses himself, and the whole company applauds and calls his name while she sits dazzled among the fine guests."
},
{
"chunk": 170,
"story": 22,
"summary": "He returns in shirtsleeves to season the dishes at every table; her fear of a penniless nobleman rises fourfold first."
},
{
"chunk": 171,
"story": 22,
"summary": "He tells her he is the restaurant's famous owner and cook and asks her to marry him; she accepts with relief."
},
{
"chunk": 172,
"story": 23,
"summary": "A clubman is bored by his companions' repeated stories and has been refused for the fifth time by the woman he courts."
},
{
"chunk": 173,
"story": 23,
"summary": "Strolling out, the clubman is accosted by a man from the loafing corner of thieves, and gladly goes aside to talk."
},
{
"chunk": 174,
"story": 23,
"summary": "The stranger announces himself a burglar and confidence man, and asks the clubman what is wrong with the way he dresses."
},
{
"chunk": 175,
"story": 23,
"summary": "The clubman itemises every fault of the burglar's expensive outfit, and the burglar demands more of the criticism."
},
{
"chunk": 176,
"story": 23,
"summary": "Offered his host's tailor, the burglar boasts of a robbery and lays the clubman's own watch and pocketbook on the table."
},
{
"chunk": 177,
"story": 23,
"summary": "Introduced at the club as a burglar and disbelieved, the stranger holds the whole table with an account of the West."
},
{
"chunk": 178,
"story": 23,
"summary": "Before leaving, the stranger tells the clubman he is the real thing and promises to return the favour some day."
},
{
"chunk": 179,
"story": 23,
"summary": "At lunch the clubman talks only of ranches and says he is going West; the woman who refused him says she will come."
},
{
"chunk": 180,
"story": 24,
"summary": "An out-of-work actress darns stockings in a cheap hotel above the theatre district, wanting only to be back on a stage."
},
{
"chunk": 181,
"story": 24,
"summary": "The hotel is full of resting players besieging managers for next season, and she wonders aloud where her old friend is."
},
{
"chunk": 182,
"story": 24,
"summary": "Her friend's act was throwing a garter to the audience nightly; after two years she quit for a village on the shore."
},
{
"chunk": 183,
"story": 24,
"summary": "The friend arrives travel-stained and agitated, drops her bag, and says she has come straight up to talk."
},
{
"chunk": 184,
"story": 24,
"summary": "She says she left the stage sick of the life, and above all of the men the work forced her to meet."
},
{
"chunk": 185,
"story": 24,
"summary": "She describes the suppers, the leering men and the middling actress who hangs on for the chance that never comes."
},
{
"chunk": 186,
"story": 24,
"summary": "She took a room by the sea, met a young clergyman lodging there, and within a month they were engaged."
},
{
"chunk": 187,
"story": 24,
"summary": "She hides her stage past; the landlady tells her he treasures a keepsake of an unhappy love in a locked box."
},
{
"chunk": 188,
"story": 24,
"summary": "Questioned, he says his earlier love was ideal: a woman he never met, seen from a distance, far above him."
},
{
"chunk": 189,
"story": 24,
"summary": "His answer raises him in her eyes; then, left alone with his forgotten keys, she opens the drawer out of curiosity."
},
{
"chunk": 190,
"story": 24,
"summary": "One look inside the box sends her packing; she pays the landlady, declares all men alike, and takes the next train."
},
{
"chunk": 191,
"story": 25,
"summary": "Outsiders hold cheap and lurid ideas about stage people, while privately practising gestures in front of their own mirrors."
},
{
"chunk": 192,
"story": 25,
"summary": "A performer has toured four years with a mixed act, working to the approval of the musicians below the stage."
},
{
"chunk": 193,
"story": 25,
"summary": "Bored by the whole bill, the performer sits up when a young woman does character songs and impersonations."
},
{
"chunk": 194,
"story": 25,
"summary": "She exactly fits the part in the sketch he has kept hidden in his trunk, so he calls at her lodgings next day."
},
{
"chunk": 195,
"story": 25,
"summary": "He reads her the sketch; she names its weak points and he accepts every change without argument."
},
{
"chunk": 196,
"story": 25,
"summary": "She asks his salary, names her lower one, and says she works for money and means to save for a country home."
},
{
"chunk": 197,
"story": 25,
"summary": "She insists the partnership be strictly business with no nonsense; he agrees and describes his own dream of a quiet house."
},
{
"chunk": 198,
"story": 25,
"summary": "The pair cut, rewrite and rehearse the sketch through every known improvement until it is ready."
},
{
"chunk": 199,
"story": 25,
"summary": "The act uses a real revolver and a live cartridge in a melodrama of a ranch, a theft and a jealous woman."
},
{
"chunk": 200,
"story": 25,
"summary": "In the story the ranch owner dies, a fortune vanishes, and the woman is convinced her lover is the thief."
},
{
"chunk": 201,
"story": 25,
"summary": "At the climax she fires through a rival's photograph; the bullet strikes a hidden spring and the missing fortune appears."
},
{
"chunk": 202,
"story": 25,
"summary": "The act triumphs and books at five hundred a week; she asks him inside to hear a proposal that will cut their expenses."
},
{
"chunk": 203,
"story": 25,
"summary": "For two years the act tours to full houses, the pair known everywhere as quiet, hard workers who go straight home."
},
{
"chunk": 204,
"story": 25,
"summary": "Nervous at a first night, she fires wide and the bullet enters her partner's neck; the audience applauds the supposed comedy."
},
{
"chunk": 205,
"story": 25,
"summary": "A fellow performer tells the wounded man that his partner is frantic with love for him; he calls it impossible."
},
{
"chunk": 206,
"story": 25,
"summary": "He insists it is too late, and reveals that the two of them have been quietly married for two years."
},
{
"chunk": 207,
"story": 26,
"summary": "A quarter of the city gathers exiles from the south, who plot, raise funds and buy arms from a favourite cafe."
},
{
"chunk": 208,
"story": 26,
"summary": "A general arrives by liner from the south, short, grand and important, and makes for the quarter where his countrymen gather."
},
{
"chunk": 209,
"story": 26,
"summary": "He takes rooms at a hotel whose blond landlady charms him, and reminds himself that his country claims his devotion."
},
{
"chunk": 210,
"story": 26,
"summary": "Bewildered by traffic, the general is marked by two street predators, and the smoother of them rescues him and gains his trust."
},
{
"chunk": 211,
"story": 26,
"summary": "Over bottles the general loudly confides that he carries drafts for twenty-five thousand to buy rifles for a revolution."
},
{
"chunk": 212,
"story": 26,
"summary": "The stranger promises to introduce him to the Secretary of War, and tells him to keep the drafts in his pocket."
},
{
"chunk": 213,
"story": 26,
"summary": "The stranger telephones a confidence man and casts him as the Secretary of War for the following afternoon."
},
{
"chunk": 214,
"story": 26,
"summary": "On the way out the stranger insults the landlady with a joke she overhears; the false official then plays his part."
},
{
"chunk": 215,
"story": 26,
"summary": "Cases are filled with bricks for the sale, and the landlady takes the general aside to ask about his new friend."
},
{
"chunk": 216,
"story": 26,
"summary": "The general buys the hotel's furnishings and lease with the money and proposes to the landlady; the swindler chokes with rage."
},
{
"chunk": 217,
"story": 26,
"summary": "The general calls it politics, says war is not nice, and asks whether the swindler has tasted the landlady's cooking."
},
{
"chunk": 218,
"story": 27,
"summary": "A confidence man follows an old partner's advice and comes to the city, meeting him again on the street."
},
{
"chunk": 219,
"story": 27,
"summary": "The partner insists the city's people beg to be robbed, and proposes they work the town together as in old times."
},
{
"chunk": 220,
"story": 27,
"summary": "He recounts schemes abandoned for being too easy; the newcomer says the people here do not look easy to him."
},
{
"chunk": 221,
"story": 27,
"summary": "The partner mocks the newcomer's caution, who says he wishes he had stayed with the small sure business at home."
},
{
"chunk": 222,
"story": 27,
"summary": "They pool their money, and an acquaintance brings a famous financier to their room to meet men from the West."
},
{
"chunk": 223,
"story": 27,
"summary": "The financier rages that a painting cannot be found and would pay seventy-five thousand; afterwards they stroll past a pawnshop."
},
{
"chunk": 224,
"story": 27,
"summary": "The partner has seen that very picture in the pawnshop, and next morning they go in to bargain for it."
},
{
"chunk": 225,
"story": 27,
"summary": "They pay two thousand for the picture; the financier has been abroad a month, and the same print sells everywhere for dollars."
},
{
"chunk": 226,
"story": 28,
"summary": "An artist has only four stock pictures for the spring festival, which shows how vague the occasion is in everyone's mind."
},
{
"chunk": 227,
"story": 28,
"summary": "A young carter rises late on the holiday; his blind father sits by the window with a pipe, saying it is fine spring weather."
},
{
"chunk": 228,
"story": 28,
"summary": "The son snaps that he earns the rent and may go out; his mother says the blind man rambles about a hippopotamus."
},
{
"chunk": 229,
"story": 28,
"summary": "He asks the janitor and a policeman what the festival is for and whether anyone has spoken of a hippopotamus."
},
{
"chunk": 230,
"story": 28,
"summary": "He asks a waiter why the festival exists, gets a joke, and meets the young woman he courts going to church."
},
{
"chunk": 231,
"story": 28,
"summary": "At church the preacher's theme is new life arising from the old; afterwards he leaves the young woman piqued on a corner."
},
{
"chunk": 232,
"story": 28,
"summary": "Two blocks on, something stirs in him: the old man meant an ancient war, not an animal, and he takes a car home."
},
{
"chunk": 233,
"story": 28,
"summary": "He takes down the dusty history, roars the question, and reads for an hour while the blind man weeps with joy."
},
{
"chunk": 234,
"story": 29,
"summary": "On a cold night a preacher on a box pays for beds, fifteen cents a man, for whoever gathers in the line."
},
{
"chunk": 235,
"story": 29,
"summary": "Among the bedless stands a discharged coachman, sacked for drunkenness a month before and now in the line with the rest."
},
{
"chunk": 236,
"story": 29,
"summary": "A month of whisky has him seeing things; he speaks to the shabby young man beside him about how each came there."
},
{
"chunk": 237,
"story": 29,
"summary": "The other married against his family, lost work and health, and sent his wife away; then a tire falls from a passing car."
},
{
"chunk": 238,
"story": 29,
"summary": "The coachman runs the tire down expecting a coin; the owner asks if he knows a certain family and tells him to get in."
},
{
"chunk": 239,
"story": 29,
"summary": "He is left alone in a gorgeous dark room, where a stuffed owl suddenly raises its wings and shines light from its eyes."
},
{
"chunk": 240,
"story": 29,
"summary": "He hurls a statuette at the owl; the grand host appears, excuses the toy, and returns to the question of the family."
},
{
"chunk": 241,
"story": 29,
"summary": "The host promises good fortune; the coachman, hoping for reinstatement, offers to give up drink if taken back."
},
{
"chunk": 242,
"story": 29,
"summary": "Two women arrive; the elder says she has lost faith in the professor's art and came only because her sister insisted."
},
{
"chunk": 243,
"story": 29,
"summary": "The professor reveals the oracle about the fifth wheel, promises proof, and asks the coachman if he would go back home."
},
{
"chunk": 244,
"story": 29,
"summary": "Asked his name, he answers plainly; the professor drags him to the door and kicks him down the steps without explanation."
},
{
"chunk": 245,
"story": 29,
"summary": "He walks back to the line; then the maid he courted comes running to him, weeping, saying she came to find him."
},
{
"chunk": 246,
"story": 29,
"summary": "She says the household will take him back, credits the professor, and he asks her for money for the sick man beside him."
},
{
"chunk": 247,
"story": 29,
"summary": "The sick man proves to be the household's lost son, hunted for three years, and he agrees to go home."
},
{
"chunk": 248,
"story": 29,
"summary": "On the car home the coachman half-remembers the house of owls and lights, and says he would punch that man's nose."
},
{
"chunk": 249,
"story": 30,
"summary": "A genuine country poem is rejected as artificial, so a city writer composes a false one and they send it to the same editor."
},
{
"chunk": 250,
"story": 30,
"summary": "A countryman steps off the ferry with hay in his hair; the crowds glance once, decide he is overdone, and ignore him."
},
{
"chunk": 251,
"story": 30,
"summary": "A confidence man advises him his rustic get-up is overdone, refuses a card game, and buys him a drink instead."
},
{
"chunk": 252,
"story": 30,
"summary": "He produces nine hundred and fifty dollars; the cheat admires the roll but still says the clothes will never work."
},
{
"chunk": 253,
"story": 30,
"summary": "A bartender scoffs at his valise of money, and a news-seller refuses to change his note, calling it stage money."
},
{
"chunk": 254,
"story": 30,
"summary": "A gambling tout waves him off as a decoy, and he concludes his clothes are what keep the city from noticing him."
},
{
"chunk": 255,
"story": 30,
"summary": "He outfits himself in the latest fashion, steps out at nine, and by half-past eleven has been robbed of everything."
},
{
"chunk": 256,
"story": 30,
"summary": "The editor praises the city writer's poem as the work of one raised close to nature, and pays for it as usual."
},
{
"chunk": 257,
"story": 31,
"summary": "A man admired as the best-dressed in the city keeps a servant pressing trousers and never wears a pair three hours."
},
{
"chunk": 258,
"story": 31,
"summary": "He vanishes without motive, debt, enemy or woman; two friends travelling abroad hear of a remote mountain monastery."
},
{
"chunk": 259,
"story": 31,
"summary": "At the monastery they watch the brothers file past and recognise their vanished friend among them."
},
{
"chunk": 260,
"story": 31,
"summary": "They confirm it is he, sitting among the shabby brothers, never looking up, eating broth from a coarse bowl."
},
{
"chunk": 261,
"story": 31,
"summary": "He comes serene and happy in a rough robe, greets them easily, and asks whether that waistcoat is the new fashion."
},
{
"chunk": 262,
"story": 31,
"summary": "They beg him to come back; he says he has reached his goal, having found at last a garment that never bags."
},
{
"chunk": 263,
"story": 32,
"summary": "A travelling swindler takes his holidays in the city, practising a tune in a hall bedroom beside a pistol and a roll of notes."
},
{
"chunk": 264,
"story": 32,
"summary": "He says women do not specialise in his trade because they are already fully occupied extracting money from men."
},
{
"chunk": 265,
"story": 32,
"summary": "He calls a wife's kiss for a jewel the same trade, then tells of a striking country woman and a rich man he met."
},
{
"chunk": 266,
"story": 32,
"summary": "The rich man's one ambition is to be noticed; he has tried gifts, accidents and paying reporters, and got nothing."
},
{
"chunk": 267,
"story": 32,
"summary": "The swindler offers to put him in every paper for a week, and names ten thousand dollars as the price."
},
{
"chunk": 268,
"story": 32,
"summary": "The plan: a month of showy courtship and terrible love letters, then a desertion and a huge breach of promise suit."
},
{
"chunk": 269,
"story": 32,
"summary": "She coaches him into writing worse love letters, and in a crowded restaurant a process-server hands him the papers publicly."
},
{
"chunk": 270,
"story": 32,
"summary": "Two hours later the pair return married, leaving behind a railway ticket and two pairs of the rich man's old trousers."
},
{
"chunk": 271,
"story": 33,
"summary": "Western visitors mope in hotel lobbies; one of them is swept from his companions by the rush hour and backs into a doorway."
},
{
"chunk": 272,
"story": 33,
"summary": "Everything about him marks where he came from; he suddenly hauls a passing man out of the crowd and strikes him affectionately."
},
{
"chunk": 273,
"story": 33,
"summary": "The friend is now a polished city businessman; the visitor accuses him of becoming tame and orders whiskey against his cocktail."
},
{
"chunk": 274,
"story": 33,
"summary": "At lunch the friend orders delicate dishes and defends the city as comfortable, saying he cannot make himself go back."
},
{
"chunk": 275,
"story": 33,
"summary": "The visitor denounces him as a renegade softened by small drinks; the friend half agrees and repeats that the city is comfortable."
},
{
"chunk": 276,
"story": 33,
"summary": "At an elegant dinner the visitor keeps scorning each refinement while quietly watching the room and its diners."
},
{
"chunk": 277,
"story": 33,
"summary": "He admires a woman across the room, muses about selling his ranch, orders two cocktails and says they are on him."
},
{
"chunk": 278,
"story": 34,
"summary": "A speculator corners the flour market, adding two cents to every loaf, and retires with two million dollars."
},
{
"chunk": 279,
"story": 34,
"summary": "The speculator's easy-tempered son and his intense socialist friend meet again after college, when the son has inherited everything."
},
{
"chunk": 280,
"story": 34,
"summary": "The heir says he wants to pay back the people overcharged for bread; his friend tells him it cannot be done."
},
{
"chunk": 281,
"story": 34,
"summary": "The heir presses for a way; his friend argues that each penny taken from the poor multiplied a thousandfold in harm."
},
{
"chunk": 282,
"story": 34,
"summary": "As an instance, a small baker was ruined by the price rise, went mad, burned a building and died in an asylum."
},
{
"chunk": 283,
"story": 34,
"summary": "The last item of the instance is the baker's daughter sewing shirts for four dollars a week; she orders the heir out."
},
{
"chunk": 284,
"story": 34,
"summary": "Two months later the watchmaker meets her in furs, haggling over the price of bread: she has married the heir."
},
{
"chunk": 285,
"story": 34,
"summary": "A reporter says he could not make a funny column of a violinist's story, and hands the details to his writer friend."
},
{
"chunk": 286,
"story": 34,
"summary": "At a wedding twenty years ago the best man climbs the fire escape and begs the bride to run away with him."
},
{
"chunk": 287,
"story": 34,
"summary": "She scorns him, and as he kisses her hand in farewell the bridegroom walks in on the two of them."
},
{
"chunk": 288,
"story": 34,
"summary": "The bridegroom throws her down and leaves forever; twenty years pass and she keeps the shop and loves him still."
},
{
"chunk": 289,
"story": 34,
"summary": "She refuses a suitor because she is still married, lets rooms, and a grey-haired violinist takes the front one."
},
{
"chunk": 290,
"story": 34,
"summary": "A second lodger with haunting eyes charms her, and she concludes he is her returned husband, but gives no sign."
},
{
"chunk": 291,
"story": 34,
"summary": "The violinist declares his love and admits he knows neither his name nor anything before waking in a hospital."
},
{
"chunk": 292,
"story": 34,
"summary": "She tells him she is married; an hour later the other lodger begs her to forgive the wrong of twenty years."
},
{
"chunk": 293,
"story": 34,
"summary": "He confesses that he struck her husband down that night; she cries out, breaks away and runs upstairs toward the music."
},
{
"chunk": 294,
"story": 35,
"summary": "An overworked lawyer parts from his wife in the usual way, recalling his doctor's warning that his brain may give way."
},
{
"chunk": 295,
"story": 35,
"summary": "He wakes on a day coach with no memory of who he is, no papers, and three thousand dollars in his pocket."
},
{
"chunk": 296,
"story": 35,
"summary": "Put on the spot by a friendly traveller, he invents a name and a trade on the strength of the man's own talk."
},
{
"chunk": 297,
"story": 35,
"summary": "The traveller presses his shelf-bottle reform, and hands him a newspaper item about a supposed case of lost memory."
},
{
"chunk": 298,
"story": 35,
"summary": "The item describes a prominent lawyer missing from home, who drew money from his bank and is feared broken by overwork."
},
{
"chunk": 299,
"story": 35,
"summary": "He registers under the invented name and feels a wild sense of freedom, as if just born into the world."
},
{
"chunk": 300,
"story": 35,
"summary": "Days of theatres, cabarets and crowds teach him that the city's freedom is held inside unwritten rules."
},
{
"chunk": 301,
"story": 35,
"summary": "A man greets him by his real name; he denies it coldly, calls the man a confidence trickster and moves hotels."
},
{
"chunk": 302,
"story": 35,
"summary": "A handsome woman stops him in a restaurant, sure of him after fifteen years, and he tells her he has forgotten everything."
},
{
"chunk": 303,
"story": 35,
"summary": "She asks whether he has ever dared look at white roses since that night, and tells him blissfully that he lies."
},
{
"chunk": 304,
"story": 35,
"summary": "He repeats the invented name until she goes; that night a quiet man leads him to his wife and his physician."
},
{
"chunk": 305,
"story": 35,
"summary": "The wife throws herself on him and begs him to say her name; he unwinds her arms and the doctor leads her out."
},
{
"chunk": 306,
"story": 35,
"summary": "The doctor explains his name, his profession and his illness; he answers coolly and admires his wife's hair."
},
{
"chunk": 307,
"story": 35,
"summary": "He engages the doctor in confidence, throws the white roses out of the window, and says the cure may happen now."
},
{
"chunk": 308,
"story": 36,
"summary": "The narrator disputes the claim that only certain cities can hold a story, and arrives in a quiet southern capital."
},
{
"chunk": 309,
"story": 36,
"summary": "He arrives in the drizzle, is driven to a renovated hotel by an ancient vehicle, and finds the service slow and courteous."
},
{
"chunk": 310,
"story": 36,
"summary": "A waiter tells him nothing happens after sundown; he walks the streets and finds quiet houses and little else."
},
{
"chunk": 311,
"story": 36,
"summary": "In the lobby he meets a red, pulpy loafer with a blabbing lip whom he recognises at once as a type he detests."
},
{
"chunk": 312,
"story": 36,
"summary": "The loafer apologises for spitting near him, and within four minutes has made a friend of him and dragged him to the bar."
},
{
"chunk": 313,
"story": 36,
"summary": "The loafer boasts of ancestry and of his wife's income, shows a handful of silver, and the clerk offers to eject him."
},
{
"chunk": 314,
"story": 36,
"summary": "He declines to complain, asks what the town offers a stranger, and explains his errand to sign a local contributor."
},
{
"chunk": 315,
"story": 36,
"summary": "Next morning he meets an ancient hack driver in a remarkable old military coat, patched with twine where its braid had been."
},
{
"chunk": 316,
"story": 36,
"summary": "The coat keeps one yellow horn button and is tied shut with string; the carriage is as old as the coat."
},
{
"chunk": 317,
"story": 36,
"summary": "He names the address; the driver first bars his way with suspicion, then presses him eagerly into the carriage."
},
{
"chunk": 318,
"story": 36,
"summary": "At the house the driver demands two dollars instead of fifty cents, insisting not that it is right but that he needs it."
},
{
"chunk": 319,
"story": 36,
"summary": "He pays with a torn and patched dollar, and is received in a bare, decayed mansion by a frail, white-haired lady."
},
{
"chunk": 320,
"story": 36,
"summary": "Charmed by her talk and seeing her poverty, he cannot speak of rates, and sets the business for the next afternoon."
},
{
"chunk": 321,
"story": 36,
"summary": "She answers his platitude about dull towns by saying it is in the still places that things happen."
},
{
"chunk": 322,
"story": 36,
"summary": "She lists cruelties she has seen near and far, then answers a knock at the back and returns brighter, offering tea."
},
{
"chunk": 323,
"story": 36,
"summary": "She sends a small servant out with that same torn dollar; a man's voice and a scuffle follow, and the tea is withdrawn."
},
{
"chunk": 324,
"story": 36,
"summary": "The driver says she will not starve, that she has resources; the visitor wires his magazine a lie to raise her rate."
},
{
"chunk": 325,
"story": 36,
"summary": "That evening the loafer slaps down the same torn and patched dollar at the bar, and the visitor recognises it."
},
{
"chunk": 326,
"story": 36,
"summary": "She faints after signing the contract; the doctor calls it starvation, and names her as the loafer's wife."
},
{
"chunk": 327,
"story": 36,
"summary": "The doctor says the husband takes even what her old servant gives her; the visitor advances her fifty dollars anyway."
},
{
"chunk": 328,
"story": 36,
"summary": "The driver's last horn button is gone; two hours later the loafer is found dead in a street after a violent struggle."
},
{
"chunk": 329,
"story": 36,
"summary": "The dead hand drops a yellow horn button; the visitor pockets it and, leaving town, throws it into the river."
},
{
"chunk": 330,
"story": 37,
"summary": "From a rooftop the people below look like insects, and the watcher's mind expands to the immensity of the universe."
},
{
"chunk": 331,
"story": 37,
"summary": "A candy-store clerk earning six dollars a week is courted by the man who keeps the smallest store in the city."
},
{
"chunk": 332,
"story": 37,
"summary": "She teases him daily about the size of his store, and lives herself in a room barely wider than her arms."
},
{
"chunk": 333,
"story": 37,
"summary": "A second suitor arrives at her boarding house, stuffed with facts and figures which he uses to dominate any table."
},
{
"chunk": 334,
"story": 37,
"summary": "The pair stop at the little store for chewing gum before going up to see the view, and she teases him again."
},
{
"chunk": 335,
"story": 37,
"summary": "On the roof the philosopher calls the people below crawling insects; she says they are folks and asks to go down."
},
{
"chunk": 336,
"story": 37,
"summary": "He presses on about the smallness of human affairs and the distance of the stars; she says she is afraid up here."
},
{
"chunk": 337,
"story": 37,
"summary": "A meteor blazes over the roof; she screams, demands to be taken down, and vanishes outside the door below."
},
{
"chunk": 338,
"story": 38,
"summary": "A street runs north through grandeur and antique shops into a mediaeval gloom before diving into a tunnel."
},
{
"chunk": 339,
"story": 38,
"summary": "A restaurant keeper of half-noble descent works by day and walks the city by night in search of mysteries."
},
{
"chunk": 340,
"story": 38,
"summary": "He carries cards good for meals at his own place, and finds a melancholy young man flinging silver into the street."
},
{
"chunk": 341,
"story": 38,
"summary": "He takes the young man's arm and leads him to a park bench to learn what drives him to such waste."
},
{
"chunk": 342,
"story": 38,
"summary": "He explains that he studies people and seeks to relieve distress in city streets, and invites the young man's confidence."
},
{
"chunk": 343,
"story": 38,
"summary": "The young man works in a harness shop; the owner's daughter will go to whichever man answers his riddle first."
},
{
"chunk": 344,
"story": 38,
"summary": "The riddle is what kind of hen lays the longest, and the young man asks the would-be benefactor to answer it."
},
{
"chunk": 345,
"story": 38,
"summary": "The benefactor cannot solve it and, humiliated, presses one of his meal cards on the young man as they part."
},
{
"chunk": 346,
"story": 38,
"summary": "Next morning the rival fails; reading the card in his pocket, the young man answers a dead one and wins the party."
},
{
"chunk": 347,
"story": 39,
"summary": "A rich child of five loses the cheap rag-doll she loves, and the whole household cannot find it."
},
{
"chunk": 348,
"story": 39,
"summary": "Expensive toys and doctors fail to console her; parents and servants are helpless as the season comes on."
},
{
"chunk": 349,
"story": 39,
"summary": "The terrier had buried the doll in a corner of the lawn; meanwhile a decently drunk tramp walks the neighbouring street."
},
{
"chunk": 350,
"story": 39,
"summary": "The tramp digs out the doll, takes it into a saloon and earns drinks by addressing it as his lady friend."
},
{
"chunk": 351,
"story": 39,
"summary": "Three local toughs read of a hundred-dollar reward for the doll, and one offers the tramp fifty cents for it."
},
{
"chunk": 352,
"story": 39,
"summary": "The tramp laughs and refuses, saying money cannot buy her; he is drunk on his first success as a performer."
},
{
"chunk": 353,
"story": 39,
"summary": "The toughs show him the advertisement; he agrees to claim the reward, and they follow him armed to the gate."
},
{
"chunk": 354,
"story": 39,
"summary": "He rings, the doll is restored, and the child screams hatred at the ragged man who brought her treasure back."
},
{
"chunk": 355,
"story": 39,
"summary": "A secretary counts him a hundred dollars and has him shown out, while the three wait beyond the gate."
},
{
"chunk": 356,
"story": 39,
"summary": "At the door the holly and the harp music stir old memories, and he insists on paying his compliments to the lady."
},
{
"chunk": 357,
"story": 39,
"summary": "The lady receives him, wine is brought, and he begins the old family salutation before his memory fails."
},
{
"chunk": 358,
"story": 39,
"summary": "As he is shown out she orders the motor car brought round to take him wherever he wishes to go."
},
{
"chunk": 359,
"story": 40,
"summary": "The city swarms with rich men in search of people to relieve, and the poor hide from their attentions."
},
{
"chunk": 360,
"story": 40,
"summary": "A retired magnate declares that squaring one old ten thousand dollars would do the trick; he rose from a breaker boy."
},
{
"chunk": 361,
"story": 40,
"summary": "Rich beyond counting, he builds a palace and begins to worry about his soul's salvation."
},
{
"chunk": 362,
"story": 40,
"summary": "His million to a charity is misreported and his laboratory gift is built as a lavatory, and he is given a degree."
},
{
"chunk": 363,
"story": 40,
"summary": "Overhearing professors mock him, he wearies of giving on a large scale and decides to see gratitude himself."
},
{
"chunk": 364,
"story": 40,
"summary": "A district boss corners him and says the poor there belong to him, and warns him to keep to his own part of town."
},
{
"chunk": 365,
"story": 40,
"summary": "He doubles his donations, buys a young woman a stage part, and still finds no relief; his sister and daughter keep his house."
},
{
"chunk": 366,
"story": 40,
"summary": "The daughter, plain, loud and healthy, looks out of a window and gives her heart to the grocer's young man."
},
{
"chunk": 367,
"story": 40,
"summary": "She watches the confident young driver three days running and then consults the housemaid who is her friend."
},
{
"chunk": 368,
"story": 40,
"summary": "She borrows a cap and apron, passes as a maid, and he stops for her whistling and gives his name."
},
{
"chunk": 369,
"story": 40,
"summary": "They whistle duets and he talks of sixteen dollars a week and flats, while she never counts on her father's money."
},
{
"chunk": 370,
"story": 40,
"summary": "Raised to eighteen a week, he tells her to untie the apron strings, and they count up what she can do."
},
{
"chunk": 371,
"story": 40,
"summary": "The old debt was a hillside bought for a trifle from a miner and sold a month later for ten thousand."
},
{
"chunk": 372,
"story": 40,
"summary": "Detectives trace the heir to the grocer's man; the magnate pays him the ten thousand as another man's agent."
},
{
"chunk": 373,
"story": 40,
"summary": "Invited to call and meet the daughter, the young man says he is engaged to a parlour maid and must deliver his goods."
},
{
"chunk": 374,
"story": 40,
"summary": "She confesses she is the heiress; he says her father will refuse, and she says she will marry him tonight."
},
{
"chunk": 375,
"story": 40,
"summary": "The father's car runs the cab down; two years later he refuses every charity and cuts salaries to save money."
},
{
"chunk": 376,
"story": 40,
"summary": "He shows the mark his grandson's new tooth made, and raises the price of vinegar three cents instead of two."
},
{
"chunk": 377,
"story": 41,
"summary": "A young woman works the cashier's cage at a crowded downtown restaurant, taking money through an arch in a brass screen."
},
{
"chunk": 378,
"story": 41,
"summary": "She counts change, deflects proposals and rates every customer at once, and every man who pays adores her."
},
{
"chunk": 379,
"story": 41,
"summary": "The young men trade compliments and hints of presents, and one broker proposes to her more often than he eats."
},
{
"chunk": 380,
"story": 41,
"summary": "Her talk runs on in one stream of sums, refusals, appointments and rebukes as the queue pays and passes."
},
{
"chunk": 381,
"story": 41,
"summary": "An old banker collapses outside, is carried in, and he and his wife take to the beautiful cashier who tended him."
},
{
"chunk": 382,
"story": 41,
"summary": "She resigns to be adopted, saying she will miss the cage, and money is poured out to polish her."
},
{
"chunk": 383,
"story": 41,
"summary": "At a charity bazaar an earl approaches her booth's brass wicket; she answers him as a cashier would, and faints."
},
{
"chunk": 384,
"story": 42,
"summary": "A magazine editor, content with his life, wanders into a small park on a spring afternoon."
},
{
"chunk": 385,
"story": 42,
"summary": "Pleased by his sales, his salary and his wife's new devotion to singing, he is caught by the sleeve by a shabby acquaintance."
},
{
"chunk": 386,
"story": 42,
"summary": "The shabby man is a fiction writer ruined by a loss, whose stories the editor returns with careful letters of explanation."
},
{
"chunk": 387,
"story": 42,
"summary": "On a park bench the writer calls it his office and insists he will force the magazines to admit his work is good."
},
{
"chunk": 388,
"story": 42,
"summary": "The editor praises the plot and style, then says he spoils every climax with flat and drab strokes."
},
{
"chunk": 389,
"story": 42,
"summary": "They argue whether a mother whose child is taken speaks in grand words or in her ordinary muddled ones."
},
{
"chunk": 390,
"story": 42,
"summary": "The editor holds that deep emotion calls out a fitting and elevated expression, learned from the stage and from life."
},
{
"chunk": 391,
"story": 42,
"summary": "The writer quotes his own banal lines, and asks whether the editor would buy the story if it were proved true to life."
},
{
"chunk": 392,
"story": 42,
"summary": "The writer proposes to prove it from life with his own wife, saying he is down to his last dollar."
},
{
"chunk": 393,
"story": 42,
"summary": "The scheme is a false note saying he has run off; the editor calls it cruel and the writer presses him."
},
{
"chunk": 394,
"story": 42,
"summary": "They climb to the bare flat, where he finds a note his wife left that morning and reads it aloud."
},
{
"chunk": 395,
"story": 42,
"summary": "The wives have gone on the road together; the writer declaims in grand style and the editor blurts out slang."
},
{
"chunk": 396,
"story": 43,
"summary": "Two rival gangs observe strict politeness in a saloon while each watches the other in the mirror."
},
{
"chunk": 397,
"story": 43,
"summary": "The etiquette breaks, one man is knifed in the dark, and the wounded man refuses to name who did it."
},
{
"chunk": 398,
"story": 43,
"summary": "The saloon keeper has told the police, so the knifer must stay hidden until the fixer returns from abroad."
},
{
"chunk": 399,
"story": 43,
"summary": "A week of hiding becomes unbearable and he goes to an unfamiliar late resort where nobody knows him."
},
{
"chunk": 400,
"story": 43,
"summary": "The resort's distinction is that women may smoke there, which makes its proprietor twenty years ahead of his time."
},
{
"chunk": 401,
"story": 43,
"summary": "A girl comes in alone, sits opposite him, lights a cigarette and smiles at him, and both are done for."
},
{
"chunk": 402,
"story": 43,
"summary": "Each at once begins to pretend; she explains her cigarette by an aunt, and he tells her to stop it."
},
{
"chunk": 403,
"story": 43,
"summary": "She gives a fine name, says she binds books and works overtime, and only came in for a smoke."
},
{
"chunk": 404,
"story": 43,
"summary": "He offers to walk her home and invents a rich father and a seat on the exchange to recommend himself."
},
{
"chunk": 405,
"story": 43,
"summary": "At one the doors are locked and the drinks become illegal, which sweetens everything in the room."
},
{
"chunk": 406,
"story": 43,
"summary": "He asks whether her story was true, believes her, and asks her to be his steady girl."
},
{
"chunk": 407,
"story": 43,
"summary": "They arrange a visit on Thursday; then blows fall on the street door and the lights go out."
},
{
"chunk": 408,
"story": 43,
"summary": "The guests escape by a ladder; she stops to ask again whether he really likes her, and they are left behind."
},
{
"chunk": 409,
"story": 43,
"summary": "A policeman finds the two, takes off his hat, names him as the man who knifed another, and orders him along."
},
{
"chunk": 410,
"story": 43,
"summary": "She hurls herself at the officer, claims the man as hers, throws money on the table and names the bribe he takes."
},
{
"chunk": 411,
"story": 43,
"summary": "Outside he hands the money back; she says he will not want to see her, and tells him what she had hoped to be."
},
{
"chunk": 412,
"story": 43,
"summary": "He confesses his own lies, takes her two blocks to a clergyman's door and rings the bell."
},
{
"chunk": 413,
"story": 44,
"summary": "The essay distinguishes fortune, adventure and chance, and names the venturer as one who watches the roadside."
},
{
"chunk": 414,
"story": 44,
"summary": "A clubman walks out on a familiar story, craving a turn of events whose ending he cannot already foresee."
},
{
"chunk": 415,
"story": 44,
"summary": "He wanders an hour, declines his favourite hotel as no venture, and decides to dine somewhere doubtful instead."
},
{
"chunk": 416,
"story": 44,
"summary": "He finds not a penny in thirteen pockets, and a stranger nearby admits he has just done the same."
},
{
"chunk": 417,
"story": 44,
"summary": "The stranger proposes they dine expensively and match his two pennies to see who faces the bill."
},
{
"chunk": 418,
"story": 44,
"summary": "The stranger explains he seeks adventures whose conclusion he cannot predict, and would bet without seeing his hand."
},
{
"chunk": 419,
"story": 44,
"summary": "He says civilisation has posted signboards on every path, and that even ruin now has a known address."
},
{
"chunk": 420,
"story": 44,
"summary": "His most promising premise, a veiled lady's note in a bazaar, ended with a journalist wanting newspaper work."
},
{
"chunk": 421,
"story": 44,
"summary": "Rapids, cards and strange doorbells all end conventionally; the only certain thing is that nothing is uncertain."
},
{
"chunk": 422,
"story": 44,
"summary": "The clubman loses the toss and proposes the other slip away while he holds the check and faces the outcome."
},
{
"chunk": 423,
"story": 44,
"summary": "He signs the check, confessing he dines there weekly; the other confesses he owns the hotel."
},
{
"chunk": 424,
"story": 44,
"summary": "The clubman says he is engaged, loves the lady, and dreads the certainty of everything that will follow."
},
{
"chunk": 425,
"story": 44,
"summary": "The hotel owner calls at an unchanging old house and is met warmly by a young woman he has known for years."
},
{
"chunk": 426,
"story": 44,
"summary": "She recalls that he never would play a game with rules, and tells him plainly he could have had her."
},
{
"chunk": 427,
"story": 44,
"summary": "He reflects that she and the house offer no surprises; she says she is going to be married soon."
},
{
"chunk": 428,
"story": 44,
"summary": "The clubman sails to escape certainty; the other says he has found the real hazard, having married her yesterday."
},
{
"chunk": 429,
"story": 45,
"summary": "Everyone arriving in the city must fight it at once, with no rounds and no rest, until one of them wins."
},
{
"chunk": 430,
"story": 45,
"summary": "The newcomer must become part of the place or its enemy; two friends from the West arrive together to make their fortunes."
},
{
"chunk": 431,
"story": 45,
"summary": "Four years on, the businessman bustles in to lunch and the artist tells him the city has swallowed and stamped him."
},
{
"chunk": 432,
"story": 45,
"summary": "The businessman shrugs it off, says the place is good enough for him and that it is giving him his share."
},
{
"chunk": 433,
"story": 45,
"summary": "He lists his eight thousand a year, his introductions, his motor rides and his shows, and asks what the objection is."
},
{
"chunk": 434,
"story": 45,
"summary": "The artist calls the place a leech and a monster, swears it will never take him, and longs for the country he left."
},
{
"chunk": 435,
"story": 45,
"summary": "At midnight the artist looks out at the lights, and answers a telegram offering him what he wanted with a refusal."
},
{
"chunk": 436,
"story": 46,
"summary": "A very rich old man, tired of everything money buys, decides to go about the city looking for something new."
},
{
"chunk": 437,
"story": 46,
"summary": "He dresses plainly and sets out to find someone in trouble to help; across town a young workman leaves his job."
},
{
"chunk": 438,
"story": 46,
"summary": "A hat cleaner stands at a machine all day for twelve dollars a week, his feet burning and smarting."
},
{
"chunk": 439,
"story": 46,
"summary": "His happiness is cool metal against his burning feet and a sea story; he stops at a second-hand bookstall."
},
{
"chunk": 440,
"story": 46,
"summary": "The rich man offers to pay for his education, his travels abroad and a business of his own choosing."
},
{
"chunk": 441,
"story": 46,
"summary": "The young man takes him for a swindler and tells him to be off before something happens to him."
},
{
"chunk": 442,
"story": 46,
"summary": "They fight, are jailed, and in his cell the young man puts his feet on the cold bars and finds a sea story."
},
{
"chunk": 443,
"story": 47,
"summary": "A man whose sweetheart vanished on her way from Ireland is taken to the seaside, and stops at a palmist's stall."
},
{
"chunk": 444,
"story": 47,
"summary": "The palmist foretells trouble from a dark man and a fair woman, a voyage, a loss, and luck from a crooked-nosed man."
},
{
"chunk": 445,
"story": 47,
"summary": "Leaving, he is burned by a stranger's cigar, loses his change in the scuffle, and his hat blows overboard."
},
{
"chunk": 446,
"story": 47,
"summary": "He counts each mishap as a prophecy fulfilled and insists the reading is coming true before their eyes."
},
{
"chunk": 447,
"story": 47,
"summary": "They find a long man with a twice-twisted nose and demand his name, testing it against the letters foretold."
},
{
"chunk": 448,
"story": 47,
"summary": "The stranger asks their excuse for being at large, is given it, and tries to walk away from the pair."
},
{
"chunk": 449,
"story": 47,
"summary": "One of them declares he will sit at the stranger's door till morning, since all their luck depends on him."
},
{
"chunk": 450,
"story": 47,
"summary": "The friend explains the palmist's reading and says it strains friendship to stand by a born fool."
},
{
"chunk": 451,
"story": 47,
"summary": "The stranger laughs, takes them for drinks, and explains he walks at night collecting oddities for a book."
},
{
"chunk": 452,
"story": 47,
"summary": "The believer grows angry that the promised luck has produced nothing but talk, and drinks with red in his eye."
},
{
"chunk": 453,
"story": 47,
"summary": "He invites them down to his basement for cold fowl, and mentions the green girl in his kitchen by name."
},
{
"chunk": 454,
"story": 48,
"summary": "A wife has one dollar and eighty-seven cents saved for a Christmas present, in a flat whose rent eats the wages."
},
{
"chunk": 455,
"story": 48,
"summary": "She cries, then stands before the glass, lets her hair fall its full length, and her face goes pale."
},
{
"chunk": 456,
"story": 48,
"summary": "The household's two treasures are his inherited watch and her hair; she sells the hair for twenty dollars."
},
{
"chunk": 457,
"story": 48,
"summary": "She buys a plain chain worthy of the watch, curls what is left of her hair, and waits for him."
},
{
"chunk": 458,
"story": 48,
"summary": "He stops inside the door with an unreadable look; she begs him not to mind and explains what she did."
},
{
"chunk": 459,
"story": 48,
"summary": "He wakes from his trance, holds her, and tells her to unwrap the package to see what startled him."
},
{
"chunk": 460,
"story": 48,
"summary": "The gift is the set of combs she longed for; then he says he sold the watch to buy them."
},
{
"chunk": 461,
"story": 48,
"summary": "Of all who give gifts, the narrator says, these two who sacrificed their greatest treasures were the wisest."
},
{
"chunk": 462,
"story": 49,
"summary": "At midnight in a crowded cafe a stranger takes the vacant chair, and the narrator hopes for a true citizen of the world."
},
{
"chunk": 463,
"story": 49,
"summary": "The stranger talks of every country as familiarly as a garden, impartial to cities, continents and zones alike."
},
{
"chunk": 464,
"story": 49,
"summary": "Against the poet's claim that men cling to their birthplace, this man seems free of it; then the band plays a southern air."
},
{
"chunk": 465,
"story": 49,
"summary": "A young man leaps up cheering the tune and joins the table; the narrator starts to ask where he is from."
},
{
"chunk": 466,
"story": 49,
"summary": "The traveller bangs the table: a man should not be judged by his post-office address, nor labelled by a section."
},
{
"chunk": 467,
"story": 49,
"summary": "He lists rooms and slippers waiting in a dozen countries, and calls pride in one's birthplace a relic."
},
{
"chunk": 468,
"story": 49,
"summary": "He denies having any spot he thinks of, calls himself a citizen of the sphere, and goes off through the crowd."
},
{
"chunk": 469,
"story": 49,
"summary": "A brawl breaks out: the man is fighting someone who slighted the sidewalks of the small town he came from."
},
{
"chunk": 470,
"story": 50,
"summary": "A wife waits with cooling supper, and greets her husband with a complaint that he apologises to strangers but never to her."
},
{
"chunk": 471,
"story": 50,
"summary": "He answers with an insult, and she hurls the supper at him; the two throw the dishes course by course."
},
{
"chunk": 472,
"story": 50,
"summary": "The duel escalates to the wash basin, and a scream downstairs halts them; the policeman outside decides not to interfere."
},
{
"chunk": 473,
"story": 50,
"summary": "The landlady's small boy is lost; the boarders exclaim, pair off, and one sets out to scour the city for him."
},
{
"chunk": 474,
"story": 50,
"summary": "She cannot say when she last saw him; the news of a straying child moves everyone who hears it."
},
{
"chunk": 475,
"story": 50,
"summary": "At the window the couple speak of the son they never had, quarrel gently over his name, and she apologises."
},
{
"chunk": 476,
"story": 50,
"summary": "They sit arm in arm watching the search, until word comes that the boy was asleep under a bed all along."
},
{
"chunk": 477,
"story": 50,
"summary": "He mocks the name she chose, the crockery flies again, and the policeman times the quarrel by his watch."
},
{
"chunk": 478,
"story": 51,
"summary": "A landlady shows each room in descending order of price, scorning anyone who confesses they need something cheaper."
},
{
"chunk": 479,
"story": 51,
"summary": "The cheapest room is a coffin-sized space with a skylight; a very small young woman comes hunting a room."
},
{
"chunk": 480,
"story": 51,
"summary": "She takes it at two dollars, copies papers at night, and is gay-hearted enough to hear out a lodger's play."
},
{
"chunk": 481,
"story": 51,
"summary": "The men gather round her on the stoop while two other women sniff; three of them privately court her."
},
{
"chunk": 482,
"story": 51,
"summary": "She points out the steady blue star she can see through her skylight and says she has named it herself."
},
{
"chunk": 483,
"story": 51,
"summary": "Work fails; she goes hungry from office to office, refuses a proposal in the hall, and crawls up to her room."
},
{
"chunk": 484,
"story": 51,
"summary": "She blows a kiss to the star and says goodbye; next morning the door is forced and an ambulance is called."
},
{
"chunk": 485,
"story": 51,
"summary": "The doctor carries her out like his own dead; the paper names him William Jackson, and says she will recover."
},
{
"chunk": 486,
"story": 52,
"summary": "Two art students from small towns meet, marry, and set up in a small flat with their studies and each other."
},
{
"chunk": 487,
"story": 52,
"summary": "They are happy while the money lasts, each studying under an expensive master toward a clear ambition."
},
{
"chunk": 488,
"story": 52,
"summary": "When the money fails she says she has found a pupil in a splendid house at five dollars a lesson."
},
{
"chunk": 489,
"story": 52,
"summary": "He protests at her working while he studies; she insists, and from then on both leave the house early."
},
{
"chunk": 490,
"story": 52,
"summary": "She brings home fifteen dollars with stories of the household; he lays down eighteen from a sketch sold to a stranger."
},
{
"chunk": 491,
"story": 52,
"summary": "She comes home with a bandaged hand and a story about spilled rarebit; he asks quietly what time it happened."
},
{
"chunk": 492,
"story": 52,
"summary": "She confesses she has been ironing in a laundry; he confesses he has been firing its engine for two weeks."
},
{
"chunk": 493,
"story": 53,
"summary": "At a weekly club dance, a plain young woman always goes escorted by her friend and her friend's fellow."
},
{
"chunk": 494,
"story": 53,
"summary": "She tells her friend not to call for her: she has a gentleman friend of her own coming to escort her."
},
{
"chunk": 495,
"story": 53,
"summary": "The escort proves tall, dark-curled and graceful, quite unlike the club's muscular young men, and she leads him round proudly."
},
{
"chunk": 496,
"story": 53,
"summary": "Her evening is a triumph, but he takes the honours, and waltzes twice with the leader's own partner."
},
{
"chunk": 497,
"story": 53,
"summary": "The club's leader, told the visitor is unknown to the district's chief, stops him on the floor and asks where he lives."
},
{
"chunk": 498,
"story": 53,
"summary": "Neither will yield; the leader demands proof of the visitor's name and then insults him outright."
},
{
"chunk": 499,
"story": 53,
"summary": "The board conducts the visitor to the back room where quarrels are settled, and word reaches her of it."
},
{
"chunk": 500,
"story": 53,
"summary": "She bursts in and snatches the long knife from her escort's raised arm before it can be used."
},
{
"chunk": 501,
"story": 53,
"summary": "She confesses she dressed him in a false name to have an escort at last; the leader offers to take her next week."
},
{
"chunk": 502,
"story": 54,
"summary": "A man in search of answers sets out to learn what exactly is meant by the type called a man about town."
},
{
"chunk": 503,
"story": 54,
"summary": "A reporter gives a loose account of the type, and the seeker walks the bright street ignoring everyone else."
},
{
"chunk": 504,
"story": 54,
"summary": "He asks a barman, who answers in slang, then stops a collector on the sidewalk with the same question."
},
{
"chunk": 505,
"story": 54,
"summary": "A critic defines the type as a man sick with wanting to see and know, who pokes into every new place."
},
{
"chunk": 506,
"story": 54,
"summary": "The critic warms to his portrait; the seeker begs to be shown a real specimen rather than a description."
},
{
"chunk": 507,
"story": 54,
"summary": "He refuses dinner to keep hunting, is knocked down crossing the street, and the paper calls him a typical specimen."
},
{
"chunk": 508,
"story": 55,
"summary": "Winter is coming and the park sleeper decides his plan: three months of board and lodging on the island prison."
},
{
"chunk": 509,
"story": 55,
"summary": "He prefers the law to charity, which exacts humiliation, and resolves to dine well and then declare he cannot pay."
},
{
"chunk": 510,
"story": 55,
"summary": "At the glittering restaurant door the head waiter sees his shoes and trousers and he is turned out at once."
},
{
"chunk": 511,
"story": 55,
"summary": "He breaks a window and waits, but the officer will not believe him; he then eats where the food is cheap."
},
{
"chunk": 512,
"story": 55,
"summary": "The waiters pitch him onto the pavement; he next tries insulting a young woman in front of a policeman."
},
{
"chunk": 513,
"story": 55,
"summary": "The young woman takes his arm gladly; he shakes her off, then howls and dances and is excused as a student."
},
{
"chunk": 514,
"story": 55,
"summary": "He takes another man's umbrella openly, and the owner apologises and gives it up rather than call the officer."
},
{
"chunk": 515,
"story": 55,
"summary": "At an old church the organ anthem holds him, and he sees with horror what his days have become."
},
{
"chunk": 516,
"story": 55,
"summary": "He resolves to find work and be somebody; a hand falls on his arm, and the magistrate gives him three months."
},
{
"chunk": 517,
"story": 56,
"summary": "Three penniless friends eat on credit at a cheap restaurant whose owner lets them pay or not as they can."
},
{
"chunk": 518,
"story": 56,
"summary": "The restaurant's waitress is a magnificent figure who seems to belong entirely to the place she serves in."
},
{
"chunk": 519,
"story": 56,
"summary": "She mothers and overfeeds them for nothing; one of them says a fate hangs over her that would take her away."
},
{
"chunk": 520,
"story": 56,
"summary": "The prediction is a rich timberman who will marry her and remove her from the place where she belongs."
},
{
"chunk": 521,
"story": 56,
"summary": "A bearded miner arrives boasting of two millions, and is struck dumb the moment the waitress looms up with his order."
},
{
"chunk": 522,
"story": 56,
"summary": "The three rush him out to drink, goad him into paying for everything, and have him carted to a distant hotel."
},
{
"chunk": 523,
"story": 56,
"summary": "Three years later the painter's picture of her sells for five thousand, and he admits his motive was not only theory."
},
{
"chunk": 524,
"story": 57,
"summary": "A mongrel pup is sold as a rare breed to a large woman and becomes her petted darling in a cheap flat."
},
{
"chunk": 525,
"story": 57,
"summary": "The flat holds the usual furniture and a small henpecked husband who wipes dishes and walks the dog each evening."
},
{
"chunk": 526,
"story": 57,
"summary": "The wife idles all day and tidies up ten minutes before he returns; dog and husband keep to shabby streets."
},
{
"chunk": 527,
"story": 57,
"summary": "The dog urges him to cheer up, and learns from a neighbouring terrier why its owner comes home whistling."
},
{
"chunk": 528,
"story": 57,
"summary": "The remedy is drink; on the next walk the dog drags his man toward the doors of a saloon."
},
{
"chunk": 529,
"story": 57,
"summary": "After an hour of drinks the man throws away the collar and tells the dog to go; the dog refuses to leave."
},
{
"chunk": 530,
"story": 57,
"summary": "The two set out together for the West, and the man gives the dog a plain new name of his own choosing."
},
{
"chunk": 531,
"story": 58,
"summary": "The night clerk of an old-fashioned drug store is counsellor and confessor to the whole neighbourhood."
},
{
"chunk": 532,
"story": 58,
"summary": "He loves his landlady's daughter but is too timid; his rival, bolder and friendly, drops in to ask for drugs."
},
{
"chunk": 533,
"story": 58,
"summary": "The rival says they are to run away and marry that night, if the young woman does not change her mind again."
},
{
"chunk": 534,
"story": 58,
"summary": "The rival asks whether there is a powder that will make a girl like you better if it is given to her."
},
{
"chunk": 535,
"story": 58,
"summary": "The clerk makes up a sleeping powder, hands it over, and then sends word of the elopement to the girl's father."
},
{
"chunk": 536,
"story": 58,
"summary": "Next morning the rival appears married and happy: he would not drug her, so he put the powder in her father's coffee."
},
{
"chunk": 537,
"story": 59,
"summary": "A retired soap manufacturer, despised by his aristocratic neighbours, calls his son in and asks what he pays for soap."
},
{
"chunk": 538,
"story": 59,
"summary": "The father insists money buys anything; the son answers that it will not buy entry into exclusive society."
},
{
"chunk": 539,
"story": 59,
"summary": "Pressed, the son admits a woman is the trouble, and the father tells him to make his chance and ask her."
},
{
"chunk": 540,
"story": 59,
"summary": "She sails in two days, and all he will have is eight minutes in a cab between a train and a theatre."
},
{
"chunk": 541,
"story": 59,
"summary": "His aunt gives him his mother's ring for luck; he meets the young woman at the station and they drive off."
},
{
"chunk": 542,
"story": 59,
"summary": "He stops the cab to recover the dropped ring, and in that minute the traffic locks solid all around them."
},
{
"chunk": 543,
"story": 59,
"summary": "Two hours in the blockade wins him her promise, and his aunt declares that love, not money, did it."
},
{
"chunk": 544,
"story": 59,
"summary": "Next day a man calls for payment: he hired the wagons, cabs and police who made the blockade to order."
},
{
"chunk": 545,
"story": 60,
"summary": "A freelance typist weeps over a menu card; she has no shorthand and lives by odd jobs of copying."
},
{
"chunk": 546,
"story": 60,
"summary": "She bargains with a restaurant to typewrite its daily bills of fare in exchange for three meals a day."
},
{
"chunk": 547,
"story": 60,
"summary": "In a cold false spring she sits at her window looking past a brick wall to the lane where she was courted."
},
{
"chunk": 548,
"story": 60,
"summary": "The farmer crowned her with flowers and they were to marry at the first sign of spring; then she returned to work."
},
{
"chunk": 549,
"story": 60,
"summary": "Typing the spring menu she reaches the flower's name, has had no letter for two weeks, and breaks down."
},
{
"chunk": 550,
"story": 60,
"summary": "She forces back the tears, finishes the cards, and at dinner sets that one dish aside untouched."
},
{
"chunk": 551,
"story": 60,
"summary": "That evening the bell rings and her farmer comes up the stairs three at a time to find her."
},
{
"chunk": 552,
"story": 60,
"summary": "He found her by the bill of fare, where her fingers had typed his name in place of the plant."
},
{
"chunk": 553,
"story": 61,
"summary": "A true adventurer goes out aimless to meet whatever fate offers, unlike those with a prize in view."
},
{
"chunk": 554,
"story": 61,
"summary": "The city offers clues of adventure at every corner, and almost everyone passes them by out of convention."
},
{
"chunk": 555,
"story": 61,
"summary": "A piano salesman who takes up every chance passes a dentist's card-giver outside a building one evening."
},
{
"chunk": 556,
"story": 61,
"summary": "His card reads The Green Door in ink; the ones others drop are plain advertisements, and a second card says the same."
},
{
"chunk": 557,
"story": 61,
"summary": "On a third pass he is given no card and reads contempt in the man's face for his hesitation."
},
{
"chunk": 558,
"story": 61,
"summary": "He climbs the stairs, knocks at the green door, and a white-faced girl opens it and collapses into his arms."
},
{
"chunk": 559,
"story": 61,
"summary": "She has not eaten in three days; he runs out and comes back loaded with food from the shops."
},
{
"chunk": 560,
"story": 61,
"summary": "Over supper she tells the common story of small wages, fines, illness, lost work and lost hope."
},
{
"chunk": 561,
"story": 61,
"summary": "He promises to come back tomorrow, and tells her he knocked by mistake rather than reveal the cards."
},
{
"chunk": 562,
"story": 61,
"summary": "Every door in the house is green and the cards advertised a play; he decides Fate arranged it regardless."
},
{
"chunk": 563,
"story": 62,
"summary": "From his high seat a cab driver sees every passenger as mere goods in transit, to be despised at the reckoning."
},
{
"chunk": 564,
"story": 62,
"summary": "A wedding is celebrated noisily in a tenement, and a cab driver stands by his fine hansom, plainly drunk."
},
{
"chunk": 565,
"story": 62,
"summary": "A young woman steps into his cab and says to drive anywhere; he takes her through the park, singing."
},
{
"chunk": 566,
"story": 62,
"summary": "He stops at a garden restaurant; she is swept inside, orders one beer with her coins, and watches entranced."
},
{
"chunk": 567,
"story": 62,
"summary": "Hours later he demands four dollars before going further; she laughs that she has only a few pennies."
},
{
"chunk": 568,
"story": 62,
"summary": "He drags her to the police station to complain, sobers, and introduces her to the sergeant as the bride he married tonight."
},
{
"chunk": 569,
"story": 63,
"summary": "The narrator dreams of the day of judgment, where an angel policeman asks if he belongs with a prosperous-looking group."
},
{
"chunk": 570,
"story": 63,
"summary": "A shop girl on six dollars a week tells her friend she has accepted a dinner invitation from a known spender."
},
{
"chunk": 571,
"story": 63,
"summary": "She spends the fifty cents meant for three meals on an imitation lace collar, and goes up to her furnished room."
},
{
"chunk": 572,
"story": 63,
"summary": "Her room holds a few treasures and portraits; her weekly budget for rent and food leaves nothing for clothes."
},
{
"chunk": 573,
"story": 63,
"summary": "Her pleasures are counted by summers; the man calling for her is a well-dressed connoisseur of hungry shop girls."
},
{
"chunk": 574,
"story": 63,
"summary": "Dressed and happy, she turns for her handkerchief, meets a hero's portrait's stern eyes, and sends word she cannot go."
},
{
"chunk": 575,
"story": 63,
"summary": "She cries, changes back into her old gown, and dines on crackers and jam, offering some to the portrait."
},
{
"chunk": 576,
"story": 63,
"summary": "She scolds the portrait; the story stops, and the dream's prosperous group proves to be employers who paid girls six dollars a week."
},
{
"chunk": 577,
"story": 64,
"summary": "A ragged man on a park bench believes himself a prince in disguise, far richer than the owners of the mansions opposite."
},
{
"chunk": 578,
"story": 64,
"summary": "He tells himself he has renounced wealth to study humanity and delights in bestowing gifts on the deserving."
},
{
"chunk": 579,
"story": 64,
"summary": "A young man in evening clothes watches the clock tower in distress; the ragged prince approaches and offers his help."
},
{
"chunk": 580,
"story": 64,
"summary": "The prince denounces clocks as tyrants; the young man keeps glancing from the clock to a lit house opposite."
},
{
"chunk": 581,
"story": 64,
"summary": "At ten to nine the young man nearly leaves, then explains he wronged his fiancee and awaits her decision."
},
{
"chunk": 582,
"story": 64,
"summary": "She promised a white scarf in the window at half past eight if she forgave him; the hour has passed and he despairs."
},
{
"chunk": 583,
"story": 64,
"summary": "The prince promises a fortune on his wedding day and falls asleep; the young man covers him kindly, then the clock strikes."
},
{
"chunk": 584,
"story": 64,
"summary": "The scarf appears: the clock was half an hour fast; next morning police find the sleeping vagrant clutching a fifty-dollar bill."
},
{
"chunk": 585,
"story": 65,
"summary": "A sightseeing coach sets out, and on its highest back seat sit a young man from a small town and his bride."
},
{
"chunk": 586,
"story": 65,
"summary": "The guide bellows mistaken sights at passengers who gape at whatever he names, the bride among them."
},
{
"chunk": 587,
"story": 65,
"summary": "The bride's face shows she thinks her husband right and the world excellent; he is twenty-four and rising."
},
{
"chunk": 588,
"story": 65,
"summary": "In front of them sits a girl in a flowered hat beside a sharp-eyed young man who belongs to hard streets."
},
{
"chunk": 589,
"story": 65,
"summary": "The two women exchange a look and a whisper; the girl's companion slips over the side just as officers stop the coach."
},
{
"chunk": 590,
"story": 65,
"summary": "The officers take the bridegroom for a wanted burglar; he goes down amused, expecting to explain."
},
{
"chunk": 591,
"story": 65,
"summary": "His bride tells him to go quietly as the burglar, so he fights the police in fury until her uncle clears him."
},
{
"chunk": 592,
"story": 65,
"summary": "She explains that the other pair had married that morning, and she could not refuse another bride her happiness."
},
{
"chunk": 593,
"story": 66,
"summary": "A broker arrives with his stenographer and plunges into work; she lingers, then asks whether he ordered a replacement."
},
{
"chunk": 594,
"story": 66,
"summary": "The clerk says the broker ordered one; she says she will work until someone comes, and the day's frenzy begins."
},
{
"chunk": 595,
"story": 66,
"summary": "An applicant arrives; the broker denies ordering any replacement and says the place is hers as long as she likes."
},
{
"chunk": 596,
"story": 66,
"summary": "In a lull the scent of lilac reminds him of her, and he rushes to her desk to propose at once."
},
{
"chunk": 597,
"story": 66,
"summary": "He proposes in a hurry, papers in hand; she weeps, then reminds him they were married the evening before."
},
{
"chunk": 598,
"story": 67,
"summary": "A patrolman on his beat finds a man in a dark doorway who says he is keeping an appointment made twenty years ago."
},
{
"chunk": 599,
"story": 67,
"summary": "He tells of parting from his best friend twenty years ago, each to make a fortune, and shows a diamond watch."
},
{
"chunk": 600,
"story": 67,
"summary": "The patrolman moves on; twenty minutes later a tall man hurries across the street and greets him as his old friend."
},
{
"chunk": 601,
"story": 67,
"summary": "They walk arm in arm until, under a bright light, he sees the stranger is not his friend at all."
},
{
"chunk": 602,
"story": 67,
"summary": "The stranger arrests him and hands him a note: his friend was the patrolman, and could not make the arrest himself."
},
{
"chunk": 603,
"story": 68,
"summary": "A draughtsman on eighteen dollars a week saves a dollar weekly to spend one evening in ten dressed and dining as a rich idler."
},
{
"chunk": 604,
"story": 68,
"summary": "Parading the bright street in borrowed grandeur, he stops at a corner as a girl slips on ice and falls."
},
{
"chunk": 605,
"story": 68,
"summary": "He helps her up; she seems a refined working girl in a plain dress, and he decides to invite her to dine."
},
{
"chunk": 606,
"story": 68,
"summary": "He invites her to dinner to rest her ankle; she hesitates over her plain clothes, and he insists they suit her."
},
{
"chunk": 607,
"story": 68,
"summary": "She accepts and gives only her first name; at a good restaurant each looks at the other with growing admiration."
},
{
"chunk": 608,
"story": 68,
"summary": "Carried away, he boasts of clubs, yachts and idleness; she asks whether he has no work that would interest him more."
},
{
"chunk": 609,
"story": 68,
"summary": "They part; he wishes he had told the truth; she hurries to a grand mansion where her sister has been anxious."
},
{
"chunk": 610,
"story": 68,
"summary": "She tells her sister she could love a poor man with an ambition, but never an idler between clubs and society."
},
{
"chunk": 611,
"story": 69,
"summary": "A young man passing a young woman on a park bench stops further on, and sends a boy with a message to her."
},
{
"chunk": 612,
"story": 69,
"summary": "The message says he is leaving the country and asks her, for old times' sake, why she discarded him without explanation."
},
{
"chunk": 613,
"story": 69,
"summary": "The boy delivers it in street slang; she answers with cool irony that she knew the gentleman and will hear it."
},
{
"chunk": 614,
"story": 69,
"summary": "She says she saw him in the conservatory embracing another woman, and so gave up both her rose and her ideal."
},
{
"chunk": 615,
"story": 69,
"summary": "He sends back a letter, saying a little trust would have spared much heartache, and the boy vouches for him."
},
{
"chunk": 616,
"story": 69,
"summary": "The letter thanks him, a doctor, for catching the other woman when she fainted; the young woman sends back that she wants him."
},
{
"chunk": 617,
"story": 70,
"summary": "In a district of transient lodgers, a young man rings a dozen bells and is shown a room by a sinister housekeeper."
},
{
"chunk": 618,
"story": 70,
"summary": "She praises the room and its last tenants, a stage couple; many of her lodgers work in the theatres and move on."
},
{
"chunk": 619,
"story": 70,
"summary": "He takes the room and asks, as he has a thousand times, after a young singer; the answer, as always, is no."
},
{
"chunk": 620,
"story": 70,
"summary": "Alone in the shabby room, he takes in the pictures and castoffs that pursue the homeless from house to house."
},
{
"chunk": 621,
"story": 70,
"summary": "The room's damage speaks of the rage of past tenants against a place that pretended to be a home."
},
{
"chunk": 622,
"story": 70,
"summary": "Suddenly the room fills with the scent the lost girl loved, and he cries out that she has been here."
},
{
"chunk": 623,
"story": 70,
"summary": "He ransacks drawers and corners for any trace of her and finds only the anonymous leavings of strangers."
},
{
"chunk": 624,
"story": 70,
"summary": "The housekeeper lists the room's previous tenants, none like her; he returns and the scent has gone."
},
{
"chunk": 625,
"story": 70,
"summary": "He seals the room and turns on the gas; below, the housekeeper admits a young girl killed herself in that bed a week ago."
},
{
"chunk": 626,
"story": 71,
"summary": "A cheap chop house is kept by a sour owner at the cash desk, and served by two waitresses, one of them beautiful."
},
{
"chunk": 627,
"story": 71,
"summary": "The other waitress is plain and too anxious to please; every customer is enslaved by her beautiful partner."
},
{
"chunk": 628,
"story": 71,
"summary": "The beautiful one is courted and given presents by regulars; the plain one has never had a single admirer."
},
{
"chunk": 629,
"story": 71,
"summary": "The plain one is loyal and content to be overlooked, and listens enviously to her friend's tale of being followed and struck."
},
{
"chunk": 630,
"story": 71,
"summary": "A shy customer, drunk, kisses the plain waitress and leaves; her friend teases her as a rival, and she feels transformed."
},
{
"chunk": 631,
"story": 71,
"summary": "She tells the owner and every customer she was insulted; she gets a raise, ribbons and new attention."
},
{
"chunk": 632,
"story": 71,
"summary": "The man returns to apologise, saying he was drunk and would never have done it sober; she sobs among the cups."
},
{
"chunk": 633,
"story": 72,
"summary": "Two country girls come to the city for work; one irons in a laundry and dresses loudly on good wages."
},
{
"chunk": 634,
"story": 72,
"summary": "The other sells in a department store at eight dollars a week, dressed plainly but in the manner of the rich."
},
{
"chunk": 635,
"story": 72,
"summary": "The store girl says she means to catch a rich husband; the laundress met her steady young man over her ironing board."
},
{
"chunk": 636,
"story": 72,
"summary": "The laundress's steady electrician arrives and proposes the theatre, and the two women trade teasing about manners."
},
{
"chunk": 637,
"story": 72,
"summary": "In the store the girl copies the gestures, voice and walk of her richest customers and absorbs their manners."
},
{
"chunk": 638,
"story": 72,
"summary": "The store girls pool their stratagems for fending off men, and she learns the art of defence."
},
{
"chunk": 639,
"story": 72,
"summary": "Men linger at her counter; she learns to tell the real rich from the imitators by the cars waiting outside."
},
{
"chunk": 640,
"story": 72,
"summary": "A genuinely rich young man proposes to her over the counter, and she declines him to her colleague's horror."
},
{
"chunk": 641,
"story": 72,
"summary": "She explains that he was caught in a lie and that she wants someone who is more than a moneybag."
},
{
"chunk": 642,
"story": 72,
"summary": "She keeps hunting on eight dollars a week, while the laundress spends her wages on ever showier clothes."
},
{
"chunk": 643,
"story": 72,
"summary": "The laundress refuses to marry her steady man and keep house, and offers to find her friend better-paid work."
},
{
"chunk": 644,
"story": 72,
"summary": "The store girl says she is still looking the rich over; her friend mocks her plain jacket and bets she will catch one first."
},
{
"chunk": 645,
"story": 72,
"summary": "Surrounded by luxury, her standard of value slowly shifts from money toward truth, honour and kindness."
},
{
"chunk": 646,
"story": 72,
"summary": "The steady man says the laundress has vanished, seen riding with a rich man; the store girl goes to the show with him."
},
{
"chunk": 647,
"story": 72,
"summary": "Months later the laundress, dressed in furs and jewels, learns her friend is marrying the man she left, and sobs against a fence."
},
{
"chunk": 648,
"story": 73,
"summary": "A wealthy man receives his wife's photograph and a letter hinting ill of her, tears it up, and asks about the homeless men outside."
},
{
"chunk": 649,
"story": 73,
"summary": "He orders his servant to fetch one of the homeless men at random to dine with him, to lift his mood."
},
{
"chunk": 650,
"story": 73,
"summary": "The guest arrives washed but wrecked, defiant and unembarrassed, and announces his own name before his host's."
},
{
"chunk": 651,
"story": 73,
"summary": "The guest mocks the city's would-be benefactors, who all pay for a meal by extracting the recipient's life story."
},
{
"chunk": 652,
"story": 73,
"summary": "The host asks for no story; the guest offers the truth instead: he was once a fashionable portrait painter."
},
{
"chunk": 653,
"story": 73,
"summary": "His portraits revealed each sitter's hidden character, and one after another his patrons were exposed and turned on him."
},
{
"chunk": 654,
"story": 73,
"summary": "Unable to work anywhere, he took to drink; the host has him draw a sketch from the photograph of his wife."
},
{
"chunk": 655,
"story": 73,
"summary": "The painter leaves with money; the host cannot bring himself to look, and sends for a young artist to judge the sketch."
},
{
"chunk": 656,
"story": 73,
"summary": "The young artist calls the drawing a master's and the face an angel's; the host cries that she is his wife."
},
{
"chunk": 657,
"story": 74,
"summary": "A man stopping at his usual bar after work overhears a friend saying he was very drunk there last night."
},
{
"chunk": 658,
"story": 74,
"summary": "Shaken, he orders seltzer and leaves; the story recalls his summer courtship of his wife and their shared love of a poem."
},
{
"chunk": 659,
"story": 74,
"summary": "They married, came to the city, and as his salary rose they took up the showy, drinking life of the cafes."
},
{
"chunk": 660,
"story": 74,
"summary": "Their home life becomes cocktails and late parties, and he comes home merry each evening to wild greetings."
},
{
"chunk": 661,
"story": 74,
"summary": "He comes home sober, kisses her quietly, and when she asks what is wrong, he answers that nothing is."
},
{
"chunk": 662,
"story": 74,
"summary": "He declines the whisky at dinner and says he has stopped; she answers coldly, and the evening dies in silence."
},
{
"chunk": 663,
"story": 74,
"summary": "She sets out the bottle defiantly; he recites their old verse to her, then goes and pours himself a drink."
},
{
"chunk": 664,
"story": 74,
"summary": "She sweeps the bottle and glasses to the floor, embraces him, and asks for the verse about remoulding things nearer the heart's desire."
},
{
"chunk": 665,
"story": 75,
"summary": "A man two years married walks home from the train knowing exactly how the whole evening will go."
},
{
"chunk": 666,
"story": 75,
"summary": "He knows the dinner, the noises of the flats, and that at a quarter past eight he will leave to play pool."
},
{
"chunk": 667,
"story": 75,
"summary": "Tonight she is gone, her things scattered in haste, with a note that her mother is ill and she has taken the train."
},
{
"chunk": 668,
"story": 75,
"summary": "Alone for the first time in two years of marriage, he tidies her things with a feeling close to terror."
},
{
"chunk": 669,
"story": 75,
"summary": "He eats cold mutton alone; the whole night is free for pleasure, and he discovers he does not want it."
},
{
"chunk": 670,
"story": 75,
"summary": "He calls himself a brute for neglecting her, resolves to take her out and give up his cronies, and she walks in."
},
{
"chunk": 671,
"story": 75,
"summary": "Her mother was hardly ill and she came straight back; at a quarter past eight he reaches for his hat as always."
},
{
"chunk": 672,
"story": 76,
"summary": "On the national holiday a vagrant takes the same bench he has taken at the same hour for nine years."
},
{
"chunk": 673,
"story": 76,
"summary": "This year he arrives already gorged, having just eaten an enormous unexpected dinner, and can barely breathe."
},
{
"chunk": 674,
"story": 76,
"summary": "Two old ladies' custom of feeding the first hungry passer-by caught him; now he sees his yearly benefactor approaching."
},
{
"chunk": 675,
"story": 76,
"summary": "For nine years an old gentleman has fed this same man a holiday dinner, hoping to found an American tradition."
},
{
"chunk": 676,
"story": 76,
"summary": "He makes his usual speech of invitation, a little sadly, wishing he had a son to carry on the custom after him."
},
{
"chunk": 677,
"story": 76,
"summary": "The old man lives alone in rented rooms; seeing his joy, the gorged vagrant accepts in the usual words out of duty."
},
{
"chunk": 678,
"story": 76,
"summary": "At the restaurant he eats a second vast dinner rather than dim the old man's happiness, then collapses around the corner."
},
{
"chunk": 679,
"story": 76,
"summary": "Both men land in the hospital, where a doctor mentions the old gentleman is starving: he had not eaten for three days."
},
{
"chunk": 680,
"story": 77,
"summary": "A well-dressed man without a cent walks through a park pitying the idle poor, sure he will be rich again by morning."
},
{
"chunk": 681,
"story": 77,
"summary": "He gets five dollars from a clergyman with a forged letter, then placates a creditor in the street with drinks."
},
{
"chunk": 682,
"story": 77,
"summary": "He loses most of it at roulette, then cheats a small child of the change from his mother's medicine money."
},
{
"chunk": 683,
"story": 77,
"summary": "He saves the child from two street cars, sends him off swindled and happy, and dines laughing at how easily everyone is taken in."
},
{
"chunk": 684,
"story": 77,
"summary": "Old friends try to sweep him off to a dinner party; he declines with a grand lie, delighted at how front works."
},
{
"chunk": 685,
"story": 77,
"summary": "An old countryman asks for his son's address; the swindler first refuses, then claims to live next door to the son."
},
{
"chunk": 686,
"story": 77,
"summary": "An hour later, with a hundred and forty dollars, he tosses a beggar a dollar and tells him work is for fools."
},
{
"chunk": 687,
"story": 77,
"summary": "Crossing to his hotel he sees a pure-faced girl he sat beside at school, and hides his burning face against a lamp-post."
},
{
"chunk": 688,
"story": 78,
"summary": "The senior partner of a great western dry-goods store sends his junior east to buy the season's stock this year."
},
{
"chunk": 689,
"story": 78,
"summary": "The wholesaler greets the buyer, predicts his order from the rainfall, and tells his son to show him the town."
},
{
"chunk": 690,
"story": 78,
"summary": "Unimpressed by the city's lights, the buyer is struck motionless when the firm's best model comes to show the gowns."
},
{
"chunk": 691,
"story": 78,
"summary": "She models gown after gown with a tired contempt, and the wholesaler offers her as company for dinner."
},
{
"chunk": 692,
"story": 78,
"summary": "She agrees coolly; at dinner he takes away her cocktail and asks her first name, which she gives freezingly."
},
{
"chunk": 693,
"story": 78,
"summary": "He tells her she will go home with him and offers a diamond; she flicks it back, sure he is like all buyers."
},
{
"chunk": 694,
"story": 78,
"summary": "She explains she must dine with buyers or lose her place; he says she will drink no more wine, and she weeps."
},
{
"chunk": 695,
"story": 78,
"summary": "She slaps him; a wedding ring falls from his pocket, and that night she wakes her roommate to ask where his town is."
},
{
"chunk": 696,
"story": 79,
"summary": "A rich man's war comrade turns up penniless at his club and asks for help finding a job."
},
{
"chunk": 697,
"story": 79,
"summary": "The rich man gets him the post he asks for, a mounted policeman in the park, and soon after glimpses a beautiful woman."
},
{
"chunk": 698,
"story": 79,
"summary": "He falls in love with a young woman in a passing motor car; later, at a reunion, the policeman gets too drunk to ride."
},
{
"chunk": 699,
"story": 79,
"summary": "To save his friend's badge, the rich man puts on the uniform and rides the patrol in his place."
},
{
"chunk": 700,
"story": 79,
"summary": "In the park he meets the woman he loves in a carriage; the horses bolt and he rides them down."
},
{
"chunk": 701,
"story": 79,
"summary": "Thanked and asked his name, he realises giving it would disgrace his friend, and answers that it is only his duty."
},
{
"chunk": 702,
"story": 79,
"summary": "His friend reveals he is an earl's son whose family has found him, and that the woman, his sister, wants to meet the rescuer."
},
{
"chunk": 703,
"story": 80,
"summary": "A rich heir, annoyed at being kept in town to sign papers, grumbles at the family lawyer."
},
{
"chunk": 704,
"story": 80,
"summary": "The lawyer tries to raise a matter of right concerning his properties; he brushes it off and finds his club empty."
},
{
"chunk": 705,
"story": 80,
"summary": "On a whim he takes a crowded boat to the amusement beach and falls into talk with a frank, pretty girl."
},
{
"chunk": 706,
"story": 80,
"summary": "She teases him, lets him join her, and tells him she trims hats and lives in a furnished room with a friend."
},
{
"chunk": 707,
"story": 80,
"summary": "The crowd's vulgarity repels him until he looks at her happy face and suddenly sees the place as she does."
},
{
"chunk": 708,
"story": 80,
"summary": "He throws himself into the amusements with her, and on the boat home he forgets his cares and repeats her name."
},
{
"chunk": 709,
"story": 80,
"summary": "A steamer rams their boat; the life preservers prove rotten, and she laughs and holds his hand calmly."
},
{
"chunk": 710,
"story": 80,
"summary": "He declares his love; she says that is what they all say, and explains she meets men on boats and in the street."
},
{
"chunk": 711,
"story": 80,
"summary": "She explains that where she lives there is no parlour and no room to receive anyone, so a girl must meet men outside."
},
{
"chunk": 712,
"story": 80,
"summary": "Next day he learns the houses without parlours are his own; he tells the lawyer to change them, crying it is too late."
},
{
"chunk": 713,
"story": 81,
"summary": "A wandering tramp studies each city as a poet would, finding its soul and then moving restlessly to another."
},
{
"chunk": 714,
"story": 81,
"summary": "He has personal fancies for each city he has known: one hearty, one aloof, one chilling, each with its own figure."
},
{
"chunk": 715,
"story": 81,
"summary": "He arrives in the greatest city meaning to read it like the others, and by afternoon is defeated and frightened."
},
{
"chunk": 716,
"story": 81,
"summary": "No one looks at him or speaks to him; he longs for even the kicks and stares of the rougher cities."
},
{
"chunk": 717,
"story": 81,
"summary": "The people seem cold, conceited idols; he singles out three types: a rich old man, a cold beauty, and a jowled tough."
},
{
"chunk": 718,
"story": 81,
"summary": "Refused alms, he is struck by a car, and opens his eyes to find those same three strangers tending him with care."
},
{
"chunk": 719,
"story": 81,
"summary": "A kindly crowd gathers and he says he feels fine; three days later he fights a patient for running down his city."
},
{
"chunk": 720,
"story": 82,
"summary": "The vainest and cleverest member of a street gang of well-dressed robbers withdraws from it because the girl he loves asks him to."
},
{
"chunk": 721,
"story": 82,
"summary": "He promises to work honestly and marry within a year, though he looks mournfully at his fine clothes."
},
{
"chunk": 722,
"story": 82,
"summary": "He returns to plumbing as an assistant for eight months, his clothes wearing thin, then brings her a mysterious parcel."
},
{
"chunk": 723,
"story": 82,
"summary": "The parcel holds costly-looking sables; she is overjoyed, then looks at him steadily, doubting how he paid."
},
{
"chunk": 724,
"story": 82,
"summary": "She parades them through the neighbourhood as a queen; a fair-minded detective hears of the fabulous furs and follows."
},
{
"chunk": 725,
"story": 82,
"summary": "The detective says a lady's sables vanished from a house the man worked at yesterday, and offers to check his story."
},
{
"chunk": 726,
"story": 82,
"summary": "He admits theft rather than say where he bought them; a policeman who sold furs prices them at twenty-one dollars."
},
{
"chunk": 727,
"story": 82,
"summary": "She cries that she wants only him, not furs; the real sables were found at home, and the officers let them go."
},
{
"chunk": 728,
"story": 83,
"summary": "A tailor's apprentice with his week's twelve dollars goes to the cafe where the district's political leader is celebrating victory."
},
{
"chunk": 729,
"story": 83,
"summary": "Emboldened, he shakes the great man's hand and spends his whole week's wages buying wine for him and his lieutenants."
},
{
"chunk": 730,
"story": 83,
"summary": "His family shrieks and strikes at him over the lost wages, but he is ecstatic; the leader himself cannot enter the best houses."
},
{
"chunk": 731,
"story": 83,
"summary": "At a fashionable restaurant the political leader dines gloomily, ignored; across the room sits a millionaire of the oldest society."
},
{
"chunk": 732,
"story": 83,
"summary": "The leader walks over and offers help with the aristocrat's reforms; the handshake raises him in every eye, and he orders wine for all."
},
{
"chunk": 733,
"story": 83,
"summary": "The aristocrat drives his fiancee through the slums, pointing out where he will build kitchens and replace the old death-traps."
},
{
"chunk": 734,
"story": 83,
"summary": "On impulse he grasps the hand of a squalid young man coming out of a tenement, and feels almost happy: it is the apprentice."
},
{
"chunk": 735,
"story": 84,
"summary": "Two shop girls plan new dresses for the store's holiday dinner, one purple, one red, each hoping to charm the head clerk."
},
{
"chunk": 736,
"story": 84,
"summary": "She has saved eighteen dollars over eight months and needs four more to collect the dress the day before the holiday."
},
{
"chunk": 737,
"story": 84,
"summary": "The head clerk is a gentleman and a health crank, and every girl in the store dreams of becoming his wife."
},
{
"chunk": 738,
"story": 84,
"summary": "The night before, her rival is locked out over four dollars of rent; she gives her the four dollars meant for the dress."
},
{
"chunk": 739,
"story": 84,
"summary": "Her rival goes to the dinner in red; she stays home by the window, then tells the tailor she cannot pay."
},
{
"chunk": 740,
"story": 84,
"summary": "The tailor, who has watched her pass for two years, gives her the dress to pay later; she walks out happy into the rain."
},
{
"chunk": 741,
"story": 84,
"summary": "The head clerk meets her walking bareheaded in the rain, praises her dress and her good sense, and asks to walk with her."
},
{
"chunk": 742,
"story": 85,
"summary": "A fire company's cart driver follows a foreign war obsessively on a pinned map, cheering one side and cursing the other."
},
{
"chunk": 743,
"story": 85,
"summary": "The firemen live by an unwritten code; meanwhile a grinning, bewildered immigrant is put ashore and wanders into the city."
},
{
"chunk": 744,
"story": 85,
"summary": "The immigrant steps in front of the racing hose cart; the driver swerves into a pillar, breaking his shoulder and the horse's leg."
},
{
"chunk": 745,
"story": 85,
"summary": "The beloved horse is shot; the firemen drag the immigrant back to the station and abuse him as worthless foreign rubbish."
},
{
"chunk": 746,
"story": 85,
"summary": "A shopkeeper who claims many languages cannot place him and calls him a fool; the firemen kick him into the street."
},
{
"chunk": 747,
"story": 85,
"summary": "The stranger keeps returning to apologise and is kicked out daily, until the driver's small son befriends him."
},
{
"chunk": 748,
"story": 85,
"summary": "The boy sets a motor car running away; the stranger leaps on the remaining horse bareback and snatches him from it."
},
{
"chunk": 749,
"story": 85,
"summary": "The driver grips his hand; told the stranger is a Cossack, a kind of Russian, he promptly changes sides in the war."
},
{
"chunk": 750,
"story": 86,
"summary": "A sober, capable bartender loves his employer's daughter but cannot say a word to her."
},
{
"chunk": 751,
"story": 86,
"summary": "Speechless before her, he talks only of rain; two men in the back room spend their days mixing and discarding drinks."
},
{
"chunk": 752,
"story": 86,
"summary": "The men explain that to dodge a heavy duty abroad they dumped all their bottles into two barrels, one vile, one sublime."
},
{
"chunk": 753,
"story": 86,
"summary": "The second barrel gave courage, ambition and nerve; they sold it by the glass until a whole country nearly declared war."
},
{
"chunk": 754,
"story": 86,
"summary": "For ten months they have mixed every liquor they own trying to find it again, pouring each failure away."
},
{
"chunk": 755,
"story": 86,
"summary": "The bartender repeats the daughter's remark about water; they realise the missing element and are soon arrested for fighting and singing."
},
{
"chunk": 756,
"story": 86,
"summary": "He drinks the last two spoonfuls of the golden blend, lifts the daughter off her feet, and announces they are to be married."
},
{
"chunk": 757,
"story": 87,
"summary": "A young wife proudly shows her friend the bruises her husband gives her, saying a man who does not beat you does not care."
},
{
"chunk": 758,
"story": 87,
"summary": "The friend asks whether it hurts and why he does it; she laughs that it earns her theatre tickets and silk."
},
{
"chunk": 759,
"story": 87,
"summary": "She says he beats her when drunk; the friend confesses her own husband never strikes her and never takes her anywhere either."
},
{
"chunk": 760,
"story": 87,
"summary": "The husband bursts in with bundles, theatre tickets and the promised silk waist, and the envious friend goes upstairs."
},
{
"chunk": 761,
"story": 87,
"summary": "The friend cries without reason; her husband comes home, grunts at supper, and reads in his stocking feet."
},
{
"chunk": 762,
"story": 87,
"summary": "On the holiday her friend is merry in new silk; seized by jealousy, she resolves to provoke her own husband into striking her."
},
{
"chunk": 763,
"story": 87,
"summary": "She rails at him and strikes him twice in the face, closing her eyes and waiting for the blow she longs for."
},
{
"chunk": 764,
"story": 87,
"summary": "Her friend runs up to see; she sobs that he never touched her, and has instead begun washing the clothes."
},
{
"chunk": 765,
"story": 88,
"summary": "A tired father reading by the window refuses to play with his young daughter and sends her out to play in the street."
},
{
"chunk": 766,
"story": 88,
"summary": "Years on, a gang leader bets he will take another girl to the dance, and his friend warns him not to cross his fiancee."
},
{
"chunk": 767,
"story": 88,
"summary": "He wants to teach his fiancee a lesson for her jealousy and drinking; his friend recalls he gave her her first drink."
},
{
"chunk": 768,
"story": 88,
"summary": "She drinks whisky in a cafe and tells the waiter that if he takes the other girl to the dance she will kill him."
},
{
"chunk": 769,
"story": 88,
"summary": "She recalls sitting on doorsteps as a child with nothing at home, then sits and teaches a small girl a string game."
},
{
"chunk": 770,
"story": 88,
"summary": "At the dance she steps out and stabs him, then runs, pursued down the street by a howling crowd."
},
{
"chunk": 771,
"story": 88,
"summary": "She throws herself into the river; the narrator dreams of a heavenly court where she is brought up for judgment."
},
{
"chunk": 772,
"story": 88,
"summary": "The court discharges her and sends the officer after the guilty party: the father who sat reading while his children played in the street."
},
{
"chunk": 773,
"story": 89,
"summary": "A police captain dismissed in a reform scandal has fallen to begging, and befriends another man as low as himself."
},
{
"chunk": 774,
"story": 89,
"summary": "His companion was thrown out of a rich uncle's house; the two sit on a park bench, one cursing, one silent."
},
{
"chunk": 775,
"story": 89,
"summary": "Starving after a failed attempt at a free lunch, the former captain goes off to try one more scheme for food."
},
{
"chunk": 776,
"story": 89,
"summary": "Left alone, the young man goes to the police to ask whether there is a reward for his friend; the sergeant throws him out."
},
{
"chunk": 777,
"story": 89,
"summary": "The captain returns splattered, having proposed to a fruit seller for her business; he would do anything, he says, except betray a friend."
},
{
"chunk": 778,
"story": 89,
"summary": "A political agent offers the captain five hundred dollars to testify against his old superior; he refuses and drives the man off."
},
{
"chunk": 779,
"story": 89,
"summary": "The young man calls him a fool; then an agent tells the young man his uncle will restore him if he marries an heiress."
},
{
"chunk": 780,
"story": 89,
"summary": "The young man refuses the heiress and her fortune, and the two join the midnight bread line together."
},
{
"chunk": 781,
"story": 90,
"summary": "The city swelters through a summer so hot that everyone talks of heat, baths and cool diets."
},
{
"chunk": 782,
"story": 90,
"summary": "A harassed man insists loudly that the city is the finest summer resort, and refuses a friend's invitation to go fishing."
},
{
"chunk": 783,
"story": 90,
"summary": "Alone at his desk he wonders about his friend's trout, and drifts into memory of a mountain summer long ago."
},
{
"chunk": 784,
"story": 90,
"summary": "At a mountain hotel, two young men, one rich and one not, compete for the same beautiful young woman."
},
{
"chunk": 785,
"story": 90,
"summary": "At a mock tournament she climbs a rock; he races his rich rival up the face and reaches her first to crown her."
},
{
"chunk": 786,
"story": 90,
"summary": "His clerk wakes him at his desk; he insists again that the city beats the country, and turns to the letters."
},
{
"chunk": 787,
"story": 90,
"summary": "A letter from his wife reveals he stays in the hot city working so she and the sick children can stay in the mountains."
},
{
"chunk": 788,
"story": 91,
"summary": "Two young women share a cheap studio in an artists' quarter; in November pneumonia strikes one of them down."
},
{
"chunk": 789,
"story": 91,
"summary": "The doctor says she has one chance in ten, and only if she wants to live; she has made up her mind to die."
},
{
"chunk": 790,
"story": 91,
"summary": "The sick girl lies counting the leaves falling from an old vine on the wall outside, and says she will die with the last."
},
{
"chunk": 791,
"story": 91,
"summary": "Her friend scolds her for the fancy and asks her to close her eyes; she says she is tired and wants to let go."
},
{
"chunk": 792,
"story": 91,
"summary": "The friend goes down to an old drunken painter who has always promised a masterpiece, to ask him to pose."
},
{
"chunk": 793,
"story": 91,
"summary": "The old man scorns the fancy but agrees to pose; the two look fearfully at the vine as cold rain and snow begin."
},
{
"chunk": 794,
"story": 91,
"summary": "Next morning one leaf still clings to the wall; it survives another stormy night, and the girl watches it."
},
{
"chunk": 795,
"story": 91,
"summary": "She says it was wicked to want to die and asks for broth; the doctor mentions the old painter downstairs has pneumonia too."
},
{
"chunk": 796,
"story": 91,
"summary": "Her friend tells her the old painter has died of pneumonia: he painted that last leaf on the wall the night the real one fell."
},
{
"chunk": 797,
"story": 92,
"summary": "A rising young man ignores a plain new boarder, until he sees her one evening dressed in deep mourning, beautiful and sad."
},
{
"chunk": 798,
"story": 92,
"summary": "He speaks to her on the steps; she hints that death has claimed not a relative but someone closer, and he sympathises."
},
{
"chunk": 799,
"story": 92,
"summary": "In the park she tells him her fiance was a real count with a castle, and that her father kept them apart."
},
{
"chunk": 800,
"story": 92,
"summary": "The count, she says, was killed abroad and her heart lies in his grave; he resolves to be her friend and more."
},
{
"chunk": 801,
"story": 92,
"summary": "She shows him the count's photograph in her locket and a larger one framed; he studies it with inscrutable eyes."
},
{
"chunk": 802,
"story": 92,
"summary": "Engaged a month later, he turns gloomy and explains that a great political boss has promised to come to the wedding."
},
{
"chunk": 803,
"story": 92,
"summary": "He says the patron must not come, for reasons he will not give, and asks whether she loves him as she loved the count."
},
{
"chunk": 804,
"story": 92,
"summary": "She confesses she invented the count to wear becoming black; he forgives her, since the photograph was the political boss himself."
},
{
"chunk": 805,
"story": 93,
"summary": "A weary magazine sub-editor seeks relief in the artists' world of the city, and calls for a woman who belongs to it."
},
{
"chunk": 806,
"story": 93,
"summary": "Her flat is strewn with the wreckage of last night's party; she appears radiant and they go to a famous bohemian restaurant."
},
{
"chunk": 807,
"story": 93,
"summary": "The restaurant's owner rose from a cheap eating-house by staging eccentricities that fashionable diners took for authentic bohemia."
},
{
"chunk": 808,
"story": 93,
"summary": "At the round table sit painters, poets and a mourning widow; the woman is one of the acknowledged princesses of their circle."
},
{
"chunk": 809,
"story": 93,
"summary": "Dinner proceeds by courses of humour, wit, repartee and brag, each guest ready with their prepared performance."
},
{
"chunk": 810,
"story": 93,
"summary": "The strain of seeming at ease shows between her brows; freedom there is a tyrant that forbids anyone to object."
},
{
"chunk": 811,
"story": 93,
"summary": "After the party she takes a midnight train to her parents' bare country cottage, and greets her stern father at sunrise."
},
{
"chunk": 812,
"story": 93,
"summary": "She peels potatoes, lies about her work, and sits two hours on a hard chair hearing theology read aloud, blissfully happy."
},
{
"chunk": 813,
"story": 93,
"summary": "The sermon damns her and she rejoices; that evening at dinner she tells her friends she has been away in bohemia."
},
{
"chunk": 814,
"story": 93,
"summary": "When a painter tries to kiss her she slaps him hard, breaking the one law of their circle, and the party breaks up."
},
{
"chunk": 815,
"story": 93,
"summary": "A village girl in the city, hearing the story, says that had the woman stayed home a week the painter would have got his kiss."
},
{
"chunk": 816,
"story": 94,
"summary": "A miner back from the far north with a fortune sees a young woman in the homeward crowd and resolves at once to follow her."
},
{
"chunk": 817,
"story": 94,
"summary": "She catches her ferry, exhausted after a late dance and a trying day, and he gains the deck beside her."
},
{
"chunk": 818,
"story": 94,
"summary": "He speaks; she takes him for a masher, then, seeing his sincerity, lets him sit and teases him about his name."
},
{
"chunk": 819,
"story": 94,
"summary": "He earnestly describes the gold dust he has brought south; she mistakes his meaning, grows bored, and falls asleep on his shoulder."
},
{
"chunk": 820,
"story": 94,
"summary": "He asks whether she would rather a husband had money or love; she cries 'Cash!' in her sleep, and wakes to find him gone."
},
{
"chunk": 821,
"story": 95,
"summary": "A ten-dollar note tells its own history, noting that the cultured seldom hold it long enough to learn its manners."
},
{
"chunk": 822,
"story": 95,
"summary": "In a butcher's purse it meets a limp five-dollar note that spent the day in a shop girl's stocking in the heat."
},
{
"chunk": 823,
"story": 95,
"summary": "It circulates fast through bars, a peddler's roll, a policeman's pocket and a gambling back room, and delights in it."
},
{
"chunk": 824,
"story": 95,
"summary": "A gambling-house owner rolls it into a wad for a night on the town, and a gold note says he will spend lavishly."
},
{
"chunk": 825,
"story": 95,
"summary": "The gambler offered a church fifty thousand and was refused as tainted, and now half the town follows him to drink it."
},
{
"chunk": 826,
"story": 95,
"summary": "At a cafe he asks whether the refused money will buy drink; at one o'clock a ragged woman comes in and stares at it."
},
{
"chunk": 827,
"story": 95,
"summary": "He bows and hands her the note; once a Treasury clerk who counted such notes, she thanks him and runs to a bakery."
},
{
"chunk": 828,
"story": 95,
"summary": "A dollar from her change reports she fed a sick, half-starved child and prayed; the ten says there is no such thing as tainted money."
},
{
"chunk": 829,
"story": 96,
"summary": "A young woman's father, an old cutter, dies after an accident, leaving her a dollar and his employer's letter offering help."
},
{
"chunk": 830,
"story": 96,
"summary": "Evicted, she rides downtown with her dollar and the letter to seek the firm, which has moved to an address she lacks."
},
{
"chunk": 831,
"story": 96,
"summary": "A kindly western rancher looking for a wife approaches her honestly; a policeman seizes him as a masher and drags him away."
},
{
"chunk": 832,
"story": 96,
"summary": "Preferring to support herself, she is offered a companion's post by a kind lady, until an association agent forbids her to accept."
},
{
"chunk": 833,
"story": 96,
"summary": "She takes a cashier's place in a candy store, and a temperance crusader warns her that the sweets contain brandy."
},
{
"chunk": 834,
"story": 96,
"summary": "She gives up the job at the crusader's urging, who drives off in her carriage; next she tries sewing theatrical costumes."
},
{
"chunk": 835,
"story": 96,
"summary": "A clergyman forbids her to sew costumes for the stage and promises only that the Lord will provide."
},
{
"chunk": 836,
"story": 96,
"summary": "Striking girls warn her off a factory job; at last she finds her father's employer, who welcomes her warmly and offers a place."
},
{
"chunk": 837,
"story": 96,
"summary": "He has her try on furs and a fine hat as a model, then telephones to reserve his usual private table for a new companion."
},
{
"chunk": 838,
"story": 96,
"summary": "The narrator blames the reformers and associations, compassionate in heart but reverent of money, for losing such girls every day."
}
]
}
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