prompt:
Chapter: The babe, Tommie, died.  He went away in a white, insignificant coffin,
his small waxen hand clutching a flower that the girl, Maggie, had
stolen from an Italian.

She and Jimmie lived.

The inexperienced fibres of the boy's eyes were hardened at an early
age.  He became a young man of leather.  He lived some red years
without laboring.  During that time his sneer became chronic.  He
studied human nature in the gutter, and found it no worse than he
thought he had reason to believe it.  He never conceived a respect for
the world, because he had begun with no idols that it had smashed.

He clad his soul in armor by means of happening hilariously in at a
mission church where a man composed his sermons of "yous." While they
got warm at the stove, he told his hearers just where he calculated
they stood with the Lord.  Many of the sinners were impatient over the
pictured depths of their degradation.  They were waiting for
soup-tickets.

A reader of words of wind-demons might have been able to see the
portions of a dialogue pass to and fro between the exhorter and his
hearers.

"You are damned," said the preacher.  And the reader of sounds might
have seen the reply go forth from the ragged people: "Where's our soup?"

Jimmie and a companion sat in a rear seat and commented upon the things
that didn't concern them, with all the freedom of English gentlemen.
When they grew thirsty and went out their minds confused the speaker
with Christ.

Momentarily, Jimmie was sullen with thoughts of a hopeless altitude
where grew fruit.  His companion said that if he should ever meet God
he would ask for a million dollars and a bottle of beer.

Jimmie's occupation for a long time was to stand on streetcorners and
watch the world go by, dreaming blood-red dreams at the passing of
pretty women.  He menaced mankind at the intersections of streets.

On the corners he was in life and of life.  The world was going on and
he was there to perceive it.

He maintained a belligerent attitude toward all well-dressed men.  To
him fine raiment was allied to weakness, and all good coats covered
faint hearts.  He and his order were kings, to a certain extent, over
the men of untarnished clothes, because these latter dreaded, perhaps,
to be either killed or laughed at.

Above all things he despised obvious Christians and ciphers with the
chrysanthemums of aristocracy in their button-holes.  He considered
himself above both of these classes.  He was afraid of neither the
devil nor the leader of society.

When he had a dollar in his pocket his satisfaction with existence was
the greatest thing in the world.  So, eventually, he felt obliged to
work.  His father died and his mother's years were divided up into
periods of thirty days.

He became a truck driver.  He was given the charge of a painstaking
pair of horses and a large rattling truck.  He invaded the turmoil and
tumble of the down-town streets and learned to breathe maledictory
defiance at the police who occasionally used to climb up, drag him from
his perch and beat him.

In the lower part of the city he daily involved himself in hideous
tangles.  If he and his team chanced to be in the rear he preserved a
demeanor of serenity, crossing his legs and bursting forth into yells
when foot passengers took dangerous dives beneath the noses of his
champing horses.  He smoked his pipe calmly for he knew that his pay
was marching on.

If in the front and the key-truck of chaos, he entered terrifically
into the quarrel that was raging to and fro among the drivers on their
high seats, and sometimes roared oaths and violently got himself
arrested.

After a time his sneer grew so that it turned its glare upon all
things.  He became so sharp that he believed in nothing.  To him the
police were always actuated by malignant impulses and the rest of the
world was composed, for the most part, of despicable creatures who were
all trying to take advantage of him and with whom, in defense, he was
obliged to quarrel on all possible occasions.  He himself occupied a
down-trodden position that had a private but distinct element of
grandeur in its isolation.

The most complete cases of aggravated idiocy were, to his mind, rampant
upon the front platforms of all the street cars.  At first his tongue
strove with these beings, but he eventually was superior.  He became
immured like an African cow.  In him grew a majestic contempt for those
strings of street cars that followed him like intent bugs.

He fell into the habit, when starting on a long journey, of fixing his
eye on a high and distant object, commanding his horses to begin, and
then going into a sort of a trance of observation.  Multitudes of
drivers might howl in his rear, and passengers might load him with
opprobrium, he would not awaken until some blue policeman turned red
and began to frenziedly tear bridles and beat the soft noses of the
responsible horses.

When he paused to contemplate the attitude of the police toward himself
and his fellows, he believed that they were the only men in the city
who had no rights.  When driving about, he felt that he was held liable
by the police for anything that might occur in the streets, and was the
common prey of all energetic officials.  In revenge, he resolved never
to move out of the way of anything, until formidable circumstances, or
a much larger man than himself forced him to it.

Foot-passengers were mere pestering flies with an insane disregard for
their legs and his convenience.  He could not conceive their maniacal
desires to cross the streets.  Their madness smote him with eternal
amazement.  He was continually storming at them from his throne.  He
sat aloft and denounced their frantic leaps, plunges, dives and
straddles.

When they would thrust at, or parry, the noses of his champing horses,
making them swing their heads and move their feet, disturbing a solid
dreamy repose, he swore at the men as fools, for he himself could
perceive that Providence had caused it clearly to be written, that he
and his team had the unalienable right to stand in the proper path of
the sun chariot, and if they so minded, obstruct its mission or take a
wheel off.

And, perhaps, if the god-driver had an ungovernable desire to step
down, put up his flame-colored fists and manfully dispute the right of
way, he would have probably been immediately opposed by a scowling
mortal with two sets of very hard knuckles.

It is possible, perhaps, that this young man would have derided, in an
axle-wide alley, the approach of a flying ferry boat.  Yet he achieved
a respect for a fire engine.  As one charged toward his truck, he would
drive fearfully upon a sidewalk, threatening untold people with
annihilation.  When an engine would strike a mass of blocked trucks,
splitting it into fragments, as a blow annihilates a cake of ice,
Jimmie's team could usually be observed high and safe, with whole
wheels, on the sidewalk.  The fearful coming of the engine could break
up the most intricate muddle of heavy vehicles at which the police had
been swearing for the half of an hour.

A fire engine was enshrined in his heart as an appalling thing that he
loved with a distant dog-like devotion.  They had been known to
overturn street-cars.  Those leaping horses, striking sparks from the
cobbles in their forward lunge, were creatures to be ineffably admired.
The clang of the gong pierced his breast like a noise of remembered war.

When Jimmie was a little boy, he began to be arrested.  Before he
reached a great age, he had a fair record.

He developed too great a tendency to climb down from his truck and
fight with other drivers.  He had been in quite a number of
miscellaneous fights, and in some general barroom rows that had become
known to the police.  Once he had been arrested for assaulting a
Chinaman.  Two women in different parts of the city, and entirely
unknown to each other, caused him considerable annoyance by breaking
forth, simultaneously, at fateful intervals, into wailings about
marriage and support and infants.

Nevertheless, he had, on a certain star-lit evening, said wonderingly
and quite reverently: "Deh moon looks like hell, don't it?"

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Tommie dies. He is taken away in a "white, insignificant coffin." Maggie steals a flower for him. She and Jimmie live on. Jimmie becomes a "young man of leather." He spends some time unemployed. He watches people and feels nothing for their degradation since he has never seen anything better and has never been taught any higher goals. He spends some time hanging around a mission church to get the free soup. He stands on street corners and watches the world go by. He taunts women and menaces men. He thinks of all well-dressed men as less than manly. He hates all obvious Christians. He hates philanthropists from the wealthy class coming into his neighborhood. He becomes a truck driver. His enemies become the police who beat him and hinder him in his progress through the streets driving his team of horses. He drives in a caravan of trucks. He thinks of pedestrians as stupid nuisances getting in his way. He often jumps down to fight. He is often arrested. He thinks of all police as corrupt and brutal, out to get people like him. He loves above all things the fire truck. When the street is in the most embroiled traffic jam, the fire truck can clear it in no time, overturning cars as it rushes through the streets. He gets into the habit of jumping down from his rig to fight with other drivers. He gets two women pregnant and avoids getting married. Even with all this brutality of his life, he is still able to look at the moon and exclaim over its beauty.


prompt:
Chapter: The girl, Maggie, blossomed in a mud puddle.  She grew to be a most
rare and wonderful production of a tenement district, a pretty girl.

None of the dirt of Rum Alley seemed to be in her veins.  The
philosophers up-stairs, down-stairs and on the same floor, puzzled over
it.

When a child, playing and fighting with gamins in the street, dirt
disguised her.  Attired in tatters and grime, she went unseen.

There came a time, however, when the young men of the vicinity said:
"Dat Johnson goil is a puty good looker."  About this period her
brother remarked to her: "Mag, I'll tell yeh dis!  See?  Yeh've edder
got teh go teh hell or go teh work!"  Whereupon she went to work,
having the feminine aversion of going to hell.

By a chance, she got a position in an establishment where they made
collars and cuffs.  She received a stool and a machine in a room where
sat twenty girls of various shades of yellow discontent.  She perched
on the stool and treadled at her machine all day, turning out collars,
the name of whose brand could be noted for its irrelevancy to anything
in connection with collars.  At night she returned home to her mother.

Jimmie grew large enough to take the vague position of head of the
family.  As incumbent of that office, he stumbled up-stairs late at
night, as his father had done before him.  He reeled about the room,
swearing at his relations, or went to sleep on the floor.

The mother had gradually arisen to that degree of fame that she could
bandy words with her acquaintances among the police-justices.
Court-officials called her by her first name.  When she appeared they
pursued a course which had been theirs for months.  They invariably
grinned and cried out: "Hello, Mary, you here again?"  Her grey head
wagged in many a court.  She always besieged the bench with voluble
excuses, explanations, apologies and prayers.  Her flaming face and
rolling eyes were a sort of familiar sight on the island.  She measured
time by means of sprees, and was eternally swollen and dishevelled.

One day the young man, Pete, who as a lad had smitten the Devil's Row
urchin in the back of the head and put to flight the antagonists of his
friend, Jimmie, strutted upon the scene.  He met Jimmie one day on the
street, promised to take him to a boxing match in Williamsburg, and
called for him in the evening.

Maggie observed Pete.

He sat on a table in the Johnson home and dangled his checked legs with
an enticing nonchalance.  His hair was curled down over his forehead in
an oiled bang.  His rather pugged nose seemed to revolt from contact
with a bristling moustache of short, wire-like hairs.  His blue
double-breasted coat, edged with black braid, buttoned close to a red
puff tie, and his patent-leather shoes looked like murder-fitted
weapons.

His mannerisms stamped him as a man who had a correct sense of his
personal superiority.  There was valor and contempt for circumstances
in the glance of his eye.  He waved his hands like a man of the world,
who dismisses religion and philosophy, and says "Fudge."  He had
certainly seen everything and with each curl of his lip, he declared
that it amounted to nothing.  Maggie thought he must be a very elegant
and graceful bartender.

He was telling tales to Jimmie.

Maggie watched him furtively, with half-closed eyes, lit with a vague
interest.

"Hully gee!  Dey makes me tired," he said.  "Mos' e'ry day some farmer
comes in an' tries teh run deh shop.  See?  But dey gits t'rowed right
out!  I jolt dem right out in deh street before dey knows where dey is!
See?"

"Sure," said Jimmie.

"Dere was a mug come in deh place deh odder day wid an idear he wus
goin' teh own deh place!  Hully gee, he wus goin' teh own deh place!  I
see he had a still on an' I didn' wanna giv 'im no stuff, so I says:
'Git deh hell outa here an' don' make no trouble,' I says like dat!
See?  'Git deh hell outa here an' don' make no trouble'; like dat.
'Git deh hell outa here,' I says.  See?"

Jimmie nodded understandingly.  Over his features played an eager
desire to state the amount of his valor in a similar crisis, but the
narrator proceeded.

"Well, deh blokie he says: 'T'hell wid it!  I ain' lookin' for no
scrap,' he says (See?), 'but' he says, 'I'm 'spectable cit'zen an' I
wanna drink an' purtydamnsoon, too.'  See?  'Deh hell,' I says.  Like
dat!  'Deh hell,' I says.  See?  'Don' make no trouble,' I says.  Like
dat.  'Don' make no trouble.'  See?  Den deh mug he squared off an'
said he was fine as silk wid his dukes (See?) an' he wanned a drink
damnquick.  Dat's what he said.  See?"

"Sure," repeated Jimmie.

Pete continued.  "Say, I jes' jumped deh bar an' deh way I plunked dat
blokie was great.  See?  Dat's right!  In deh jaw!  See?  Hully gee, he
t'rowed a spittoon true deh front windee.  Say, I taut I'd drop dead.
But deh boss, he comes in after an' he says, 'Pete, yehs done jes'
right!  Yeh've gota keep order an' it's all right.'  See?  'It's all
right,' he says.  Dat's what he said."

The two held a technical discussion.

"Dat bloke was a dandy," said Pete, in conclusion, "but he hadn' oughta
made no trouble.  Dat's what I says teh dem: 'Don' come in here an'
make no trouble,' I says, like dat.  'Don' make no trouble.'  See?"

As Jimmie and his friend exchanged tales descriptive of their prowess,
Maggie leaned back in the shadow.  Her eyes dwelt wonderingly and
rather wistfully upon Pete's face.  The broken furniture, grimey walls,
and general disorder and dirt of her home of a sudden appeared before
her and began to take a potential aspect.  Pete's aristocratic person
looked as if it might soil.  She looked keenly at him, occasionally,
wondering if he was feeling contempt.  But Pete seemed to be enveloped
in reminiscence.

"Hully gee," said he, "dose mugs can't phase me.  Dey knows I kin wipe
up deh street wid any t'ree of dem."

When he said, "Ah, what deh hell," his voice was burdened with disdain
for the inevitable and contempt for anything that fate might compel him
to endure.

Maggie perceived that here was the beau ideal of a man.  Her dim
thoughts were often searching for far away lands where, as God says,
the little hills sing together in the morning.  Under the trees of her
dream-gardens there had always walked a lover.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: "The girl, Maggie, blossomed in a mud puddle." No one in the tenement neighborhood notices her as a pretty girl when she is a child because she is so covered with tattered and dirty clothes. When she is a teenager, people are surprised at how pretty she is. The young men begin to comment on her. She gets a job making collars and cuffs. Jimmie becomes head of the family. He stumbles upstairs drunk every night just like his father did before him. Maggies mother becomes famous in the police stations around the neighborhood. They all know her by her first name. She always stands in front of the judge with "voluble excuses, explanations, apologies and prayers." One day, Pete, the young man who got Jimmie out of the fight in his childhood, comes to visit. "Maggie observe Pete." He is dressed in the flamboyant clothing of a bouncer of a bar, the person who keeps order and throws rowdy customers out. He and Jimmie exchange stories of fights theyve had and Maggie sits in the shadows admiring Petes clothing and his carriage. She begins to feel embarrassed about the ugliness of her familys furniture. She sees in Pete a "beau ideal of a man." She has always dreamed of finding a lover like Pete.


prompt:
Chapter: Pete took note of Maggie.

"Say, Mag, I'm stuck on yer shape.  It's outa sight," he said,
parenthetically, with an affable grin.

As he became aware that she was listening closely, he grew still more
eloquent in his descriptions of various happenings in his career.  It
appeared that he was invincible in fights.

"Why," he said, referring to a man with whom he had had a
misunderstanding, "dat mug scrapped like a damn dago.  Dat's right.  He
was dead easy.  See?  He tau't he was a scrapper.  But he foun' out
diff'ent!  Hully gee."

He walked to and fro in the small room, which seemed then to grow even
smaller and unfit to hold his dignity, the attribute of a supreme
warrior.  That swing of the shoulders that had frozen the timid when he
was but a lad had increased with his growth and education at the ratio
of ten to one.  It, combined with the sneer upon his mouth, told
mankind that there was nothing in space which could appall him.  Maggie
marvelled at him and surrounded him with greatness.  She vaguely tried
to calculate the altitude of the pinnacle from which he must have
looked down upon her.

"I met a chump deh odder day way up in deh city," he said.  "I was
goin' teh see a frien' of mine.  When I was a-crossin' deh street deh
chump runned plump inteh me, an' den he turns aroun' an' says, 'Yer
insolen' ruffin,' he says, like dat.  'Oh, gee,' I says, 'oh, gee, go
teh hell and git off deh eart',' I says, like dat.  See?  'Go teh hell
an' git off deh eart',' like dat.  Den deh blokie he got wild.  He says
I was a contempt'ble scoun'el, er somet'ing like dat, an' he says I was
doom' teh everlastin' pe'dition an' all like dat.  'Gee,' I says, 'gee!
Deh hell I am,' I says.  'Deh hell I am,' like dat.  An' den I slugged
'im.  See?"

With Jimmie in his company, Pete departed in a sort of a blaze of glory
from the Johnson home.  Maggie, leaning from the window, watched him as
he walked down the street.

Here was a formidable man who disdained the strength of a world full of
fists.  Here was one who had contempt for brass-clothed power; one
whose knuckles could defiantly ring against the granite of law.  He was
a knight.

The two men went from under the glimmering street-lamp and passed into
shadows.

Turning, Maggie contemplated the dark, dust-stained walls, and the
scant and crude furniture of her home.  A clock, in a splintered and
battered oblong box of varnished wood, she suddenly regarded as an
abomination.  She noted that it ticked raspingly.  The almost vanished
flowers in the carpet-pattern, she conceived to be newly hideous.  Some
faint attempts she had made with blue ribbon, to freshen the appearance
of a dingy curtain, she now saw to be piteous.

She wondered what Pete dined on.

She reflected upon the collar and cuff factory.  It began to appear to
her mind as a dreary place of endless grinding.  Pete's elegant
occupation brought him, no doubt, into contact with people who had
money and manners.  It was probable that he had a large acquaintance of
pretty girls.  He must have great sums of money to spend.

To her the earth was composed of hardships and insults.  She felt
instant admiration for a man who openly defied it.  She thought that if
the grim angel of death should clutch his heart, Pete would shrug his
shoulders and say: "Oh, ev'ryt'ing goes."

She anticipated that he would come again shortly.  She spent some of
her week's pay in the purchase of flowered cretonne for a lambrequin.
She made it with infinite care and hung it to the slightly-careening
mantel, over the stove, in the kitchen.  She studied it with painful
anxiety from different points in the room.  She wanted it to look well
on Sunday night when, perhaps, Jimmie's friend would come.  On Sunday
night, however, Pete did not appear.

Afterward the girl looked at it with a sense of humiliation.  She was
now convinced that Pete was superior to admiration for lambrequins.

A few evenings later Pete entered with fascinating innovations in his
apparel.  As she had seen him twice and he had different suits on each
time, Maggie had a dim impression that his wardrobe was prodigiously
extensive.

"Say, Mag," he said, "put on yer bes' duds Friday night an' I'll take
yehs teh deh show.  See?"

He spent a few moments in flourishing his clothes and then vanished,
without having glanced at the lambrequin.

Over the eternal collars and cuffs in the factory Maggie spent the most
of three days in making imaginary sketches of Pete and his daily
environment.  She imagined some half dozen women in love with him and
thought he must lean dangerously toward an indefinite one, whom she
pictured with great charms of person, but with an altogether
contemptible disposition.

She thought he must live in a blare of pleasure.  He had friends, and
people who were afraid of him.

She saw the golden glitter of the place where Pete was to take her.  An
entertainment of many hues and many melodies where she was afraid she
might appear small and mouse-colored.

Her mother drank whiskey all Friday morning.  With lurid face and
tossing hair she cursed and destroyed furniture all Friday afternoon.
When Maggie came home at half-past six her mother lay asleep amidst the
wreck of chairs and a table.  Fragments of various household utensils
were scattered about the floor.  She had vented some phase of drunken
fury upon the lambrequin.  It lay in a bedraggled heap in the corner.

"Hah," she snorted, sitting up suddenly, "where deh hell yeh been?  Why
deh hell don' yeh come home earlier?  Been loafin' 'round deh streets.
Yer gettin' teh be a reg'lar devil."

When Pete arrived Maggie, in a worn black dress, was waiting for him in
the midst of a floor strewn with wreckage.  The curtain at the window
had been pulled by a heavy hand and hung by one tack, dangling to and
fro in the draft through the cracks at the sash.  The knots of blue
ribbons appeared like violated flowers.  The fire in the stove had gone
out.  The displaced lids and open doors showed heaps of sullen grey
ashes.  The remnants of a meal, ghastly, like dead flesh, lay in a
corner.  Maggie's red mother, stretched on the floor, blasphemed and
gave her daughter a bad name.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Pete notices Maggie is listening to his stories of fights. He calls out to her and tells her he is "stuck on  shape. Its outa sight." Then he embellishes his stories even more for her benefit. Maggie sits and watches him in awe. She thinks he must have to look very far beneath him to notice her. He leaves the Johnson home in a "blaze of glory." Maggie thinks of him as a knight. She looks around the apartment and notices all the ugly details. The clock is broken and ugly and even its tick is an ugly sound. She thinks of the collar and cuff factory now with great distaste. She thinks Pete must have many pretty women surrounding him. " To her the earth was composed of hardships and insults. She felt instant admiration for a man who openly defied it." She thinks Pete might come again for another visit, so she sets about trying to fix up the apartment. She buys some cloth and hangs it on the crooked mantle. That weekend, Pete doesnt come, but a few days later he does. He comes in to ask her out for Friday night. The next few days Maggie spends at work daydreaming about Pete. She thinks he lives in "the blare of pleasure." She thinks of him as a man who has friends and who is feared by people. All day Friday her mother drinks. By the time Maggie gets home from work, her mother is lying on the floor passed out. She has turned the entire apartment up, including the curtain Maggie has made for the mantle. Her mother calls out to her that she must be running the streets. She accuses Maggie of being a whore. When Pete arrives, Maggie is standing in a faded black dress in the midst of rubble with her mother passed out on the floor nearby. As she leaves, her mother calls out bad names to her.


prompt:
Chapter: An orchestra of yellow silk women and bald-headed men on an elevated
stage near the centre of a great green-hued hall, played a popular
waltz.  The place was crowded with people grouped about little tables.
A battalion of waiters slid among the throng, carrying trays of beer
glasses and making change from the inexhaustible vaults of their
trousers pockets.  Little boys, in the costumes of French chefs,
paraded up and down the irregular aisles vending fancy cakes.  There
was a low rumble of conversation and a subdued clinking of glasses.
Clouds of tobacco smoke rolled and wavered high in air about the dull
gilt of the chandeliers.

The vast crowd had an air throughout of having just quitted labor.  Men
with calloused hands and attired in garments that showed the wear of an
endless trudge for a living, smoked their pipes contentedly and spent
five, ten, or perhaps fifteen cents for beer.  There was a mere
sprinkling of kid-gloved men who smoked cigars purchased elsewhere.
The great body of the crowd was composed of people who showed that all
day they strove with their hands.  Quiet Germans, with maybe their
wives and two or three children, sat listening to the music, with the
expressions of happy cows.  An occasional party of sailors from a
war-ship, their faces pictures of sturdy health, spent the earlier
hours of the evening at the small round tables.  Very infrequent tipsy
men, swollen with the value of their opinions, engaged their companions
in earnest and confidential conversation.  In the balcony, and here and
there below, shone the impassive faces of women.  The nationalities of
the Bowery beamed upon the stage from all directions.

Pete aggressively walked up a side aisle and took seats with Maggie at
a table beneath the balcony.

"Two beehs!"

Leaning back he regarded with eyes of superiority the scene before
them.  This attitude affected Maggie strongly.  A man who could regard
such a sight with indifference must be accustomed to very great things.

It was obvious that Pete had been to this place many times before, and
was very familiar with it.  A knowledge of this fact made Maggie feel
little and new.

He was extremely gracious and attentive.  He displayed the
consideration of a cultured gentleman who knew what was due.

"Say, what deh hell?  Bring deh lady a big glass!  What deh hell use is
dat pony?"

"Don't be fresh, now," said the waiter, with some warmth, as he
departed.

"Ah, git off deh eart'," said Pete, after the other's retreating form.

Maggie perceived that Pete brought forth all his elegance and all his
knowledge of high-class customs for her benefit.  Her heart warmed as
she reflected upon his condescension.

The orchestra of yellow silk women and bald-headed men gave vent to a
few bars of anticipatory music and a girl, in a pink dress with short
skirts, galloped upon the stage.  She smiled upon the throng as if in
acknowledgment of a warm welcome, and began to walk to and fro, making
profuse gesticulations and singing, in brazen soprano tones, a song,
the words of which were inaudible.  When she broke into the swift
rattling measures of a chorus some half-tipsy men near the stage joined
in the rollicking refrain and glasses were pounded rhythmically upon
the tables.  People leaned forward to watch her and to try to catch the
words of the song.  When she vanished there were long rollings of
applause.

Obedient to more anticipatory bars, she reappeared amidst the
half-suppressed cheering of the tipsy men.  The orchestra plunged into
dance music and the laces of the dancer fluttered and flew in the glare
of gas jets.  She divulged the fact that she was attired in some half
dozen skirts.  It was patent that any one of them would have proved
adequate for the purpose for which skirts are intended.  An occasional
man bent forward, intent upon the pink stockings.  Maggie wondered at
the splendor of the costume and lost herself in calculations of the
cost of the silks and laces.

The dancer's smile of stereotyped enthusiasm was turned for ten minutes
upon the faces of her audience.  In the finale she fell into some of
those grotesque attitudes which were at the time popular among the
dancers in the theatres up-town, giving to the Bowery public the
phantasies of the aristocratic theatre-going public, at reduced rates.

"Say, Pete," said Maggie, leaning forward, "dis is great."

"Sure," said Pete, with proper complacence.

A ventriloquist followed the dancer.  He held two fantastic dolls on
his knees.  He made them sing mournful ditties and say funny things
about geography and Ireland.

"Do dose little men talk?" asked Maggie.

"Naw," said Pete, "it's some damn fake.  See?"

Two girls, on the bills as sisters, came forth and sang a duet that is
heard occasionally at concerts given under church auspices.  They
supplemented it with a dance which of course can never be seen at
concerts given under church auspices.

After the duettists had retired, a woman of debatable age sang a negro
melody.  The chorus necessitated some grotesque waddlings supposed to
be an imitation of a plantation darkey, under the influence, probably,
of music and the moon.  The audience was just enthusiastic enough over
it to have her return and sing a sorrowful lay, whose lines told of a
mother's love and a sweetheart who waited and a young man who was lost
at sea under the most harrowing circumstances.  From the faces of a
score or so in the crowd, the self-contained look faded.  Many heads
were bent forward with eagerness and sympathy.  As the last distressing
sentiment of the piece was brought forth, it was greeted by that kind
of applause which rings as sincere.

As a final effort, the singer rendered some verses which described a
vision of Britain being annihilated by America, and Ireland bursting
her bonds.  A carefully prepared crisis was reached in the last line of
the last verse, where the singer threw out her arms and cried, "The
star-spangled banner."  Instantly a great cheer swelled from the
throats of the assemblage of the masses.  There was a heavy rumble of
booted feet thumping the floor.  Eyes gleamed with sudden fire, and
calloused hands waved frantically in the air.

After a few moments' rest, the orchestra played crashingly, and a small
fat man burst out upon the stage.  He began to roar a song and stamp
back and forth before the foot-lights, wildly waving a glossy silk hat
and throwing leers, or smiles, broadcast.  He made his face into
fantastic grimaces until he looked like a pictured devil on a Japanese
kite.  The crowd laughed gleefully.  His short, fat legs were never
still a moment.  He shouted and roared and bobbed his shock of red wig
until the audience broke out in excited applause.

Pete did not pay much attention to the progress of events upon the
stage.  He was drinking beer and watching Maggie.

Her cheeks were blushing with excitement and her eyes were glistening.
She drew deep breaths of pleasure.  No thoughts of the atmosphere of
the collar and cuff factory came to her.

When the orchestra crashed finally, they jostled their way to the
sidewalk with the crowd.  Pete took Maggie's arm and pushed a way for
her, offering to fight with a man or two.

They reached Maggie's home at a late hour and stood for a moment in
front of the gruesome doorway.

"Say, Mag," said Pete, "give us a kiss for takin' yeh teh deh show,
will yer?"

Maggie laughed, as if startled, and drew away from him.

"Naw, Pete," she said, "dat wasn't in it."

"Ah, what deh hell?" urged Pete.

The girl retreated nervously.

"Ah, what deh hell?" repeated he.

Maggie darted into the hall, and up the stairs.  She turned and smiled
at him, then disappeared.

Pete walked slowly down the street.  He had something of an astonished
expression upon his features.  He paused under a lamp-post and breathed
a low breath of surprise.

"Gawd," he said, "I wonner if I've been played fer a duffer."

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The orchestra plays a popular waltz to a crowded hall. Waiters bring gallons of beer and boys dressed up in French chef costumes carry fancy desserts. The crowd of customers is composed of men who look like they just got off work. All kinds of people are in the audience, people from all nationalities. Pete walks in aggressively and wins a table for Maggie. He orders two beers and complains when the waiter brings Maggie a small drinking glass instead of a mug like his. Maggie thinks of Pete as full of the knowledge of "high-class customs." The orchestra gears up and a girl in a pink dress "gallops" onto the stage. She dances and performs, giving the Bowery audience all that the upper class audiences of theaters get. Next, a ventriloquist comes out. Maggie wonders if the dolls can actually speak. Pete assures her that they are "damn fakes." Another song and dance act comes onto the stage. Then a singer comes out and sings plantation songs, the orchestra making a show of imitating the way African Americans supposedly dance. The audience loves her so much that she comes back on stage and sings about Irelands eventually freedom from British rule. The crowd roars its praise. Pete doesnt watch the stage; he watches Maggie. Shes radiant with pleasure in the performance. Nothing of her usual life enters her mind as she watches the stage. When they get back to her apartment, he tells her to kiss him for having taken her to the performance. Maggie laughs in embarrassment and tells him that wasnt part of going out with him. He insists and she runs away up the stairs. He shakes his head and wonders if hes been played for a fool.


prompt:
Chapter: As thoughts of Pete came to Maggie's mind, she began to have an intense
dislike for all of her dresses.

"What deh hell ails yeh?  What makes yeh be allus fixin' and fussin'?
Good Gawd," her mother would frequently roar at her.

She began to note, with more interest, the well-dressed women she met
on the avenues.  She envied elegance and soft palms.  She craved those
adornments of person which she saw every day on the street, conceiving
them to be allies of vast importance to women.

Studying faces, she thought many of the women and girls she chanced to
meet, smiled with serenity as though forever cherished and watched over
by those they loved.

The air in the collar and cuff establishment strangled her.  She knew
she was gradually and surely shrivelling in the hot, stuffy room.  The
begrimed windows rattled incessantly from the passing of elevated
trains.  The place was filled with a whirl of noises and odors.

She wondered as she regarded some of the grizzled women in the room,
mere mechanical contrivances sewing seams and grinding out, with heads
bended over their work, tales of imagined or real girlhood happiness,
past drunks, the baby at home, and unpaid wages.  She speculated how
long her youth would endure.  She began to see the bloom upon her
cheeks as valuable.

She imagined herself, in an exasperating future, as a scrawny woman
with an eternal grievance.  Too, she thought Pete to be a very
fastidious person concerning the appearance of women.

She felt she would love to see somebody entangle their fingers in the
oily beard of the fat foreigner who owned the establishment.  He was a
detestable creature.  He wore white socks with low shoes.

He sat all day delivering orations, in the depths of a cushioned chair.
His pocketbook deprived them of the power to retort.

"What een hell do you sink I pie fife dolla a week for? Play? No, py
damn!" Maggie was anxious for a friend to whom she could talk about
Pete. She would have liked to discuss his admirable mannerisms with a
reliable mutual friend. At home, she found her mother often drunk and
always raving. It seems that the world had treated this woman very
badly, and she took a deep revenge upon such portions of it as came
within her reach. She broke furniture as if she were at last getting her
rights. She swelled with virtuous indignation as she carried the lighter
articles of household use, one by one under the shadows of the three
gilt balls, where Hebrews chained them with chains of interest.

Jimmie came when he was obliged to by circumstances over which he had no
control. His well-trained legs brought him staggering home and put him
to bed some nights when he would rather have gone elsewhere. Swaggering
Pete loomed like a golden sun to Maggie. He took her to a dime museum
where rows of meek freaks astonished her. She contemplated their
deformities with awe and thought them a sort of chosen tribe.

"What een hell do you sink I pie fife dolla a week for? Play? No, py
damn!" Maggie was anxious for a friend to whom she could talk about
Pete. She would have liked to discuss his admirable mannerisms with a
reliable mutual friend. At home, she found her mother often drunk and
always raving. It seems that the world had treated this woman very
badly, and she took a deep revenge upon such portions of it as came
within her reach. She broke furniture as if she were at last getting her
rights. She swelled with virtuous indignation as she carried the lighter
articles of household use, one by one under the shadows of the three
gilt balls, where Hebrews chained them with chains of interest.

Jimmie came when he was obliged to by circumstances over which he had no
control. His well-trained legs brought him staggering home and put him
to bed some nights when he would rather have gone elsewhere. Swaggering
Pete loomed like a golden sun to Maggie. He took her to a dime museum
where rows of meek freaks astonished her. She contemplated their
deformities with awe and thought them a sort of chosen tribe.

Pete, raking his brains for amusement, discovered the Central Park
Menagerie and the Museum of Arts. Sunday afternoons would sometimes find
them at these places. Pete did not appear to be particularly interested
in what he saw. He stood around looking heavy, while Maggie giggled in
glee.

Once at the Menagerie he went into a trance of admiration before the
spectacle of a very small monkey threatening to thrash a cageful because
one of them had pulled his tail and he had not wheeled about quickly
enough to discover who did it. Ever after Pete knew that monkey by sight
and winked at him, trying to induce hime to fight with other and larger
monkeys. At the Museum, Maggie said, "Dis is outa sight."

"Oh hell," said Pete, "wait 'till next summer an' I'll take yehs to a
picnic."

While the girl wandered in the vaulted rooms, Pete occupied himself in
returning stony stare for stony stare, the appalling scrutiny of the
watch-dogs of the treasures. Occasionally he would remark in loud tones:
"Dat jay has got glass eyes," and sentences of the sort. When he tired
of this amusement he would go to the mummies and moralize over them.

Usually he submitted with silent dignity to all which he had to go
through, but, at times, he was goaded into comment.

"What deh hell," he demanded once.  "Look at all dese little jugs!
Hundred jugs in a row!  Ten rows in a case an' 'bout a t'ousand cases!
What deh blazes use is dem?"

Evenings during the week he took her to see plays in which the
brain-clutching heroine was rescued from the palatial home of her
guardian, who is cruelly after her bonds, by the hero with the
beautiful sentiments.  The latter spent most of his time out at soak in
pale-green snow storms, busy with a nickel-plated revolver, rescuing
aged strangers from villains.

Maggie lost herself in sympathy with the wanderers swooning in snow
storms beneath happy-hued church windows.  And a choir within singing
"Joy to the World."  To Maggie and the rest of the audience this was
transcendental realism.  Joy always within, and they, like the actor,
inevitably without.  Viewing it, they hugged themselves in ecstatic
pity of their imagined or real condition.

The girl thought the arrogance and granite-heartedness of the magnate
of the play was very accurately drawn.  She echoed the maledictions
that the occupants of the gallery showered on this individual when his
lines compelled him to expose his extreme selfishness.

Shady persons in the audience revolted from the pictured villainy of
the drama.  With untiring zeal they hissed vice and applauded virtue.
Unmistakably bad men evinced an apparently sincere admiration for
virtue.

The loud gallery was overwhelmingly with the unfortunate and the
oppressed.  They encouraged the struggling hero with cries, and jeered
the villain, hooting and calling attention to his whiskers.  When
anybody died in the pale-green snow storms, the gallery mourned.  They
sought out the painted misery and hugged it as akin.

In the hero's erratic march from poverty in the first act, to wealth
and triumph in the final one, in which he forgives all the enemies that
he has left, he was assisted by the gallery, which applauded his
generous and noble sentiments and confounded the speeches of his
opponents by making irrelevant but very sharp remarks.  Those actors
who were cursed with villainy parts were confronted at every turn by
the gallery.  If one of them rendered lines containing the most subtile
distinctions between right and wrong, the gallery was immediately aware
if the actor meant wickedness, and denounced him accordingly.

The last act was a triumph for the hero, poor and of the masses, the
representative of the audience, over the villain and the rich man, his
pockets stuffed with bonds, his heart packed with tyrannical purposes,
imperturbable amid suffering.

Maggie always departed with raised spirits from the showing places of
the melodrama.  She rejoiced at the way in which the poor and virtuous
eventually surmounted the wealthy and wicked.  The theatre made her
think.  She wondered if the culture and refinement she had seen
imitated, perhaps grotesquely, by the heroine on the stage, could be
acquired by a girl who lived in a tenement house and worked in a shirt
factory.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Maggie begins to hate all her dresses after she begins to go out with Pete. Her mother screams at her for tending to herself so much. Maggie thinks if only she can dress nicely, she will be cherished and loved. She hates the sweatshop where she works. The women who have been there a long time are grizzled with all the hard work. She begins to worry about losing her beauty in the factory. She hates the boss at her work who sits around all day complaining about the women not working hard enough when he pays them five dollars a week. Maggie wishes she had a friend so she could share stories about Pete. Pete is like a "golden sun to Maggie." He takes her to all forms of popular entertainment. He takes her to a dime museum where they gawk at freaks. He takes her to the Central Park Menagerie and watches her enjoy herself. When he sees a monkey get picked on by other monkeys, he cheers the little monkey on, trying to get it to fight back. He takes her to the Museum of Art and stands around taunting the guards. He cant understand the use of so many jugs. During the evenings, he takes her to plays. Maggie loves the plays most. She and all the other members of the audience cheer on the virtuous heroines and catcall to the vicious villains. The hero always goes from poverty to wealth in these plays. When Maggie leaves the plays, she is always happier. She rejoices over "the way in which the poor and virtuous eventually surmounted the wealthy and wicked." She always wonders after a play if she can imitate the heroines culture and refinement, even if she has been raised in a tenement house and works in a shirt factory.


prompt:
Chapter: A group of urchins were intent upon the side door of a saloon.
Expectancy gleamed from their eyes.  They were twisting their fingers
in excitement.

"Here she comes," yelled one of them suddenly.

The group of urchins burst instantly asunder and its individual
fragments were spread in a wide, respectable half circle about the
point of interest.  The saloon door opened with a crash, and the figure
of a woman appeared upon the threshold.  Her grey hair fell in knotted
masses about her shoulders.  Her face was crimsoned and wet with
perspiration.  Her eyes had a rolling glare.

"Not a damn cent more of me money will yehs ever get, not a damn cent.
I spent me money here fer t'ree years an' now yehs tells me yeh'll sell
me no more stuff!  T'hell wid yeh, Johnnie Murckre!  'Disturbance'?
Disturbance be damned!  T'hell wid yeh, Johnnie--"

The door received a kick of exasperation from within and the woman
lurched heavily out on the sidewalk.

The gamins in the half-circle became violently agitated.  They began to
dance about and hoot and yell and jeer.  Wide dirty grins spread over
each face.

The woman made a furious dash at a particularly outrageous cluster of
little boys.  They laughed delightedly and scampered off a short
distance, calling out over their shoulders to her.  She stood tottering
on the curb-stone and thundered at them.

"Yeh devil's kids," she howled, shaking red fists.  The little boys
whooped in glee.  As she started up the street they fell in behind and
marched uproariously.  Occasionally she wheeled about and made charges
on them.  They ran nimbly out of reach and taunted her.

In the frame of a gruesome doorway she stood for a moment cursing them.
Her hair straggled, giving her crimson features a look of insanity.
Her great fists quivered as she shook them madly in the air.

The urchins made terrific noises until she turned and disappeared.
Then they filed quietly in the way they had come.

The woman floundered about in the lower hall of the tenement house and
finally stumbled up the stairs.  On an upper hall a door was opened and
a collection of heads peered curiously out, watching her.  With a
wrathful snort the woman confronted the door, but it was slammed
hastily in her face and the key was turned.

She stood for a few minutes, delivering a frenzied challenge at the
panels.

"Come out in deh hall, Mary Murphy, damn yeh, if yehs want a row.  Come
ahn, yeh overgrown terrier, come ahn."

She began to kick the door with her great feet.  She shrilly defied the
universe to appear and do battle.  Her cursing trebles brought heads
from all doors save the one she threatened.  Her eyes glared in every
direction.  The air was full of her tossing fists.

"Come ahn, deh hull damn gang of yehs, come ahn," she roared at the
spectators.  An oath or two, cat-calls, jeers and bits of facetious
advice were given in reply.  Missiles clattered about her feet.

"What deh hell's deh matter wid yeh?" said a voice in the gathered
gloom, and Jimmie came forward.  He carried a tin dinner-pail in his
hand and under his arm a brown truckman's apron done in a bundle.
"What deh hell's wrong?" he demanded.

"Come out, all of yehs, come out," his mother was howling.  "Come ahn
an' I'll stamp her damn brains under me feet."

"Shet yer face, an' come home, yeh damned old fool," roared Jimmie at
her.  She strided up to him and twirled her fingers in his face.  Her
eyes were darting flames of unreasoning rage and her frame trembled
with eagerness for a fight.

"T'hell wid yehs!  An' who deh hell are yehs?  I ain't givin' a snap of
me fingers fer yehs," she bawled at him.  She turned her huge back in
tremendous disdain and climbed the stairs to the next floor.

Jimmie followed, cursing blackly.  At the top of the flight he seized
his mother's arm and started to drag her toward the door of their room.

"Come home, damn yeh," he gritted between his teeth.

"Take yer hands off me!  Take yer hands off me," shrieked his mother.

She raised her arm and whirled her great fist at her son's face.
Jimmie dodged his head and the blow struck him in the back of the neck.
"Damn yeh," gritted he again.  He threw out his left hand and writhed
his fingers about her middle arm.  The mother and the son began to sway
and struggle like gladiators.

"Whoop!" said the Rum Alley tenement house.  The hall filled with
interested spectators.

"Hi, ol' lady, dat was a dandy!"

"T'ree to one on deh red!"

"Ah, stop yer damn scrappin'!"

The door of the Johnson home opened and Maggie looked out.  Jimmie made
a supreme cursing effort and hurled his mother into the room.  He
quickly followed and closed the door.  The Rum Alley tenement swore
disappointedly and retired.

The mother slowly gathered herself up from the floor.  Her eyes
glittered menacingly upon her children.

"Here, now," said Jimmie, "we've had enough of dis.  Sit down, an' don'
make no trouble."

He grasped her arm, and twisting it, forced her into a creaking chair.

"Keep yer hands off me," roared his mother again.

"Damn yer ol' hide," yelled Jimmie, madly.  Maggie shrieked and ran
into the other room.  To her there came the sound of a storm of crashes
and curses.  There was a great final thump and Jimmie's voice cried:
"Dere, damn yeh, stay still."  Maggie opened the door now, and went
warily out.  "Oh, Jimmie."

He was leaning against the wall and swearing.  Blood stood upon bruises
on his knotty fore-arms where they had scraped against the floor or the
walls in the scuffle.  The mother lay screeching on the floor, the
tears running down her furrowed face.

Maggie, standing in the middle of the room, gazed about her.  The usual
upheaval of the tables and chairs had taken place.  Crockery was strewn
broadcast in fragments.  The stove had been disturbed on its legs, and
now leaned idiotically to one side.  A pail had been upset and water
spread in all directions.

The door opened and Pete appeared.  He shrugged his shoulders.  "Oh,
Gawd," he observed.

He walked over to Maggie and whispered in her ear.  "Ah, what deh hell,
Mag?  Come ahn and we'll have a hell of a time."

The mother in the corner upreared her head and shook her tangled locks.

"Teh hell wid him and you," she said, glowering at her daughter in the
gloom.  Her eyes seemed to burn balefully.  "Yeh've gone teh deh devil,
Mag Johnson, yehs knows yehs have gone teh deh devil.  Yer a disgrace
teh yer people, damn yeh.  An' now, git out an' go ahn wid dat
doe-faced jude of yours.  Go teh hell wid him, damn yeh, an' a good
riddance.  Go teh hell an' see how yeh likes it."

Maggie gazed long at her mother.

"Go teh hell now, an' see how yeh likes it.  Git out.  I won't have
sech as yehs in me house!  Get out, d'yeh hear!  Damn yeh, git out!"

The girl began to tremble.

At this instant Pete came forward.  "Oh, what deh hell, Mag, see,"
whispered he softly in her ear.  "Dis all blows over.  See?  Deh ol'
woman 'ill be all right in deh mornin'.  Come ahn out wid me!  We'll
have a hell of a time."

The woman on the floor cursed.  Jimmie was intent upon his bruised
fore-arms.  The girl cast a glance about the room filled with a chaotic
mass of debris, and at the red, writhing body of her mother.

"Go teh hell an' good riddance."

She went.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: A group of children wait outside the side door of a bar. One of them calls out a warning to the others and at that moment Mary Johnson comes reeling out of the bar. She is screaming at the bar keeper that she has been frequenting the bar for three years and finds it astonishing that they are now trying to ban her. The children begin to jeer at her and she tries to grab them. They easily get away and follow her all the way home making fun of her. When she gets into her building, one of the apartment doors is open and everyone from that apartment is looking out at her grinning in amusement. She lunges for the door, but they shut it and lock it before she can get to them. She stands outside kicking the door and cursing them until Jimmie comes home. He tries to make her go home, but she fights him. Everyone comes outside their apartments to watch the fight. Finally, he shoves her into their own apartment and continues to fight her until she falls on the floor cursing. Maggie has run to hide in the other room. Just at that moment, Pete comes over. He tells Maggie to come with him and they will have "a hell of a time." Mrs. Johnson looks at him and tells Maggie to go to hell. She says Maggie has gone to the devil and that she is a disgrace to herself and to her people. Maggie stares at her mother frozen. Her mother continues to tell her to get out of the house and never come back. Maggie trembles in fear. Pete asks her again to come with him. He tells Maggie her mother will forget all about it by morning. Maggie gets up and leaves with him. Her mother yells "good riddance" behind her.


prompt:
Chapter: Jimmie had an idea it wasn't common courtesy for a friend to come to
one's home and ruin one's sister.  But he was not sure how much Pete
knew about the rules of politeness.

The following night he returned home from work at rather a late hour in
the evening.  In passing through the halls he came upon the gnarled and
leathery old woman who possessed the music box.  She was grinning in
the dim light that drifted through dust-stained panes.  She beckoned to
him with a smudged forefinger.

"Ah, Jimmie, what do yehs t'ink I got onto las' night.  It was deh
funnies' t'ing I ever saw," she cried, coming close to him and leering.
She was trembling with eagerness to tell her tale.  "I was by me door
las' night when yer sister and her jude feller came in late, oh, very
late.  An' she, the dear, she was a-cryin' as if her heart would break,
she was.  It was deh funnies' t'ing I ever saw.  An' right out here by
me door she asked him did he love her, did he.  An' she was a-cryin' as
if her heart would break, poor t'ing.  An' him, I could see by deh way
what he said it dat she had been askin' orften, he says: 'Oh, hell,
yes,' he says, says he, 'Oh, hell, yes.'"

Storm-clouds swept over Jimmie's face, but he turned from the leathery
old woman and plodded on up-stairs.

"Oh, hell, yes," called she after him.  She laughed a laugh that was
like a prophetic croak.  "'Oh, hell, yes,' he says, says he, 'Oh, hell,
yes.'"

There was no one in at home.  The rooms showed that attempts had been
made at tidying them.  Parts of the wreckage of the day before had been
repaired by an unskilful hand.  A chair or two and the table, stood
uncertainly upon legs.  The floor had been newly swept.  Too, the blue
ribbons had been restored to the curtains, and the lambrequin, with its
immense sheaves of yellow wheat and red roses of equal size, had been
returned, in a worn and sorry state, to its position at the mantel.
Maggie's jacket and hat were gone from the nail behind the door.

Jimmie walked to the window and began to look through the blurred
glass.  It occurred to him to vaguely wonder, for an instant, if some
of the women of his acquaintance had brothers.

Suddenly, however, he began to swear.

"But he was me frien'!  I brought 'im here!  Dat's deh hell of it!"

He fumed about the room, his anger gradually rising to the furious
pitch.

"I'll kill deh jay!  Dat's what I'll do!  I'll kill deh jay!"

He clutched his hat and sprang toward the door.  But it opened and his
mother's great form blocked the passage.

"What deh hell's deh matter wid yeh?" exclaimed she, coming into the
rooms.

Jimmie gave vent to a sardonic curse and then laughed heavily.

"Well, Maggie's gone teh deh devil!  Dat's what!  See?"

"Eh?" said his mother.

"Maggie's gone teh deh devil!  Are yehs deaf?" roared Jimmie,
impatiently.

"Deh hell she has," murmured the mother, astounded.

Jimmie grunted, and then began to stare out at the window.  His mother
sat down in a chair, but a moment later sprang erect and delivered a
maddened whirl of oaths.  Her son turned to look at her as she reeled
and swayed in the middle of the room, her fierce face convulsed with
passion, her blotched arms raised high in imprecation.

"May Gawd curse her forever," she shrieked.  "May she eat nothin' but
stones and deh dirt in deh street.  May she sleep in deh gutter an'
never see deh sun shine agin.  Deh damn--"

"Here, now," said her son.  "Take a drop on yourself."

The mother raised lamenting eyes to the ceiling.

"She's deh devil's own chil', Jimmie," she whispered.  "Ah, who would
t'ink such a bad girl could grow up in our fambly, Jimmie, me son.
Many deh hour I've spent in talk wid dat girl an' tol' her if she ever
went on deh streets I'd see her damned.  An' after all her bringin' up
an' what I tol' her and talked wid her, she goes teh deh bad, like a
duck teh water."

The tears rolled down her furrowed face.  Her hands trembled.

"An' den when dat Sadie MacMallister next door to us was sent teh deh
devil by dat feller what worked in deh soap-factory, didn't I tell our
Mag dat if she--"

"Ah, dat's annuder story," interrupted the brother.  "Of course, dat
Sadie was nice an' all dat--but--see--it ain't dessame as if--well,
Maggie was diff'ent--see--she was diff'ent."

He was trying to formulate a theory that he had always unconsciously
held, that all sisters, excepting his own, could advisedly be ruined.

He suddenly broke out again.  "I'll go t'ump hell outa deh mug what did
her deh harm.  I'll kill 'im!  He t'inks he kin scrap, but when he gits
me a-chasin' 'im he'll fin' out where he's wrong, deh damned duffer.
I'll wipe up deh street wid 'im."

In a fury he plunged out of the doorway.  As he vanished the mother
raised her head and lifted both hands, entreating.

"May Gawd curse her forever," she cried.

In the darkness of the hallway Jimmie discerned a knot of women talking
volubly.  When he strode by they paid no attention to him.

"She allus was a bold thing," he heard one of them cry in an eager
voice.  "Dere wasn't a feller come teh deh house but she'd try teh mash
'im.  My Annie says deh shameless t'ing tried teh ketch her feller, her
own feller, what we useter know his fader."

"I could a' tol' yehs dis two years ago," said a woman, in a key of
triumph.  "Yessir, it was over two years ago dat I says teh my ol' man,
I says, 'Dat Johnson girl ain't straight,' I says.  'Oh, hell,' he
says.  'Oh, hell.'  'Dat's all right,' I says, 'but I know what I
knows,' I says, 'an' it 'ill come out later.  You wait an' see,' I
says, 'you see.'"

"Anybody what had eyes could see dat dere was somethin' wrong wid dat
girl.  I didn't like her actions."

On the street Jimmie met a friend.  "What deh hell?" asked the latter.

Jimmie explained.  "An' I'll t'ump 'im till he can't stand."

"Oh, what deh hell," said the friend.  "What's deh use!  Yeh'll git
pulled in!  Everybody 'ill be onto it!  An' ten plunks!  Gee!"

Jimmie was determined.  "He t'inks he kin scrap, but he'll fin' out
diff'ent."

"Gee," remonstrated the friend.  "What deh hell?"

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Jimmie realizes that Pete has betrayed his trust. He brought Pete into his home and Pete has now ruined his sister. He gets home from work late the next evening and the old beggar woman catches him in the hallway. She tells him the night before she overheard Maggie talking to Pete. It was very late when they arrived home and Maggie was asking Pete if he loved her. Pete had reluctantly said "Oh, hell, yes." The old woman laughs at this exchange. Jimmie leaves her and goes to his apartment. He finds it has been cleaned up and the blue ribbons replaced on the curtains. When his mother gets home, he tells her Maggie has gone to "hell." She begins to cry and curse Maggie. She cant imagine why Maggie has done this since she was raised so well. She tells Jimmie that she often warned Maggie away from this kind of life. When the girl next door got pregnant, she had warned Maggie. Jimmie says the girl next door was a different story. Jimmy has always thought that the sexual ruin of other girls was different from that of his sister. He leaves the apartment. On the way out, he hears the neighbors gossiping about Maggie. They all say they always knew this would happen to Maggie. On the street, Jimmie runs into a friend. He tells his friend that hes going to get Pete for this. The friend discourages him from doing anything, saying "What deh hell?"


prompt:
Chapter: On a corner a glass-fronted building shed a yellow glare upon the
pavements.  The open mouth of a saloon called seductively to passengers
to enter and annihilate sorrow or create rage.

The interior of the place was papered in olive and bronze tints of
imitation leather.  A shining bar of counterfeit massiveness extended
down the side of the room.  Behind it a great mahogany-appearing
sideboard reached the ceiling.  Upon its shelves rested pyramids of
shimmering glasses that were never disturbed.  Mirrors set in the face
of the sideboard multiplied them.  Lemons, oranges and paper napkins,
arranged with mathematical precision, sat among the glasses.  Many-hued
decanters of liquor perched at regular intervals on the lower shelves.
A nickel-plated cash register occupied a position in the exact centre
of the general effect.  The elementary senses of it all seemed to be
opulence and geometrical accuracy.

Across from the bar a smaller counter held a collection of plates upon
which swarmed frayed fragments of crackers, slices of boiled ham,
dishevelled bits of cheese, and pickles swimming in vinegar.  An odor
of grasping, begrimed hands and munching mouths pervaded.

Pete, in a white jacket, was behind the bar bending expectantly toward
a quiet stranger.  "A beeh," said the man.  Pete drew a foam-topped
glassful and set it dripping upon the bar.

At this moment the light bamboo doors at the entrance swung open and
crashed against the siding.  Jimmie and a companion entered.  They
swaggered unsteadily but belligerently toward the bar and looked at
Pete with bleared and blinking eyes.

"Gin," said Jimmie.

"Gin," said the companion.

Pete slid a bottle and two glasses along the bar.  He bended his head
sideways as he assiduously polished away with a napkin at the gleaming
wood.  He had a look of watchfulness upon his features.

Jimmie and his companion kept their eyes upon the bartender and
conversed loudly in tones of contempt.

"He's a dindy masher, ain't he, by Gawd?" laughed Jimmie.

"Oh, hell, yes," said the companion, sneering widely.  "He's great, he
is.  Git onto deh mug on deh blokie.  Dat's enough to make a feller
turn hand-springs in 'is sleep."

The quiet stranger moved himself and his glass a trifle further away
and maintained an attitude of oblivion.

"Gee! ain't he hot stuff!"

"Git onto his shape!  Great Gawd!"

"Hey," cried Jimmie, in tones of command.  Pete came along slowly, with
a sullen dropping of the under lip.

"Well," he growled, "what's eatin' yehs?"

"Gin," said Jimmie.

"Gin," said the companion.

As Pete confronted them with the bottle and the glasses, they laughed
in his face.  Jimmie's companion, evidently overcome with merriment,
pointed a grimy forefinger in Pete's direction.

"Say, Jimmie," demanded he, "what deh hell is dat behind deh bar?"

"Damned if I knows," replied Jimmie.  They laughed loudly.  Pete put
down a bottle with a bang and turned a formidable face toward them.  He
disclosed his teeth and his shoulders heaved restlessly.

"You fellers can't guy me," he said.  "Drink yer stuff an' git out an'
don' make no trouble."

Instantly the laughter faded from the faces of the two men and
expressions of offended dignity immediately came.

"Who deh hell has said anyt'ing teh you," cried they in the same breath.

The quiet stranger looked at the door calculatingly.

"Ah, come off," said Pete to the two men.  "Don't pick me up for no
jay.  Drink yer rum an' git out an' don' make no trouble."

"Oh, deh hell," airily cried Jimmie.

"Oh, deh hell," airily repeated his companion.

"We goes when we git ready!  See!" continued Jimmie.

"Well," said Pete in a threatening voice, "don' make no trouble."

Jimmie suddenly leaned forward with his head on one side.  He snarled
like a wild animal.

"Well, what if we does?  See?" said he.

Dark blood flushed into Pete's face, and he shot a lurid glance at
Jimmie.

"Well, den we'll see whose deh bes' man, you or me," he said.

The quiet stranger moved modestly toward the door.

Jimmie began to swell with valor.

"Don' pick me up fer no tenderfoot.  When yeh tackles me yeh tackles
one of deh bes' men in deh city.  See?  I'm a scrapper, I am.  Ain't
dat right, Billie?"

"Sure, Mike," responded his companion in tones of conviction.

"Oh, hell," said Pete, easily.  "Go fall on yerself."

The two men again began to laugh.

"What deh hell is dat talkin'?" cried the companion.

"Damned if I knows," replied Jimmie with exaggerated contempt.

Pete made a furious gesture.  "Git outa here now, an' don' make no
trouble.  See?  Youse fellers er lookin' fer a scrap an' it's damn
likely yeh'll fin' one if yeh keeps on shootin' off yer mout's.  I know
yehs!  See?  I kin lick better men dan yehs ever saw in yer lifes.
Dat's right!  See?  Don' pick me up fer no stuff er yeh might be jolted
out in deh street before yeh knows where yeh is.  When I comes from
behind dis bar, I t'rows yehs bote inteh deh street.  See?"

"Oh, hell," cried the two men in chorus.

The glare of a panther came into Pete's eyes.  "Dat's what I said!
Unnerstan'?"

He came through a passage at the end of the bar and swelled down upon
the two men.  They stepped promptly forward and crowded close to him.

They bristled like three roosters.  They moved their heads pugnaciously
and kept their shoulders braced.  The nervous muscles about each mouth
twitched with a forced smile of mockery.

"Well, what deh hell yer goin' teh do?" gritted Jimmie.

Pete stepped warily back, waving his hands before him to keep the men
from coming too near.

"Well, what deh hell yer goin' teh do?" repeated Jimmie's ally.  They
kept close to him, taunting and leering.  They strove to make him
attempt the initial blow.

"Keep back, now!  Don' crowd me," ominously said Pete.

Again they chorused in contempt.  "Oh, hell!"

In a small, tossing group, the three men edged for positions like
frigates contemplating battle.

"Well, why deh hell don' yeh try teh t'row us out?" cried Jimmie and
his ally with copious sneers.

The bravery of bull-dogs sat upon the faces of the men.  Their clenched
fists moved like eager weapons.

The allied two jostled the bartender's elbows, glaring at him with
feverish eyes and forcing him toward the wall.

Suddenly Pete swore redly.  The flash of action gleamed from his eyes.
He threw back his arm and aimed a tremendous, lightning-like blow at
Jimmie's face.  His foot swung a step forward and the weight of his
body was behind his fist.  Jimmie ducked his head, Bowery-like, with
the quickness of a cat.  The fierce, answering blows of him and his
ally crushed on Pete's bowed head.

The quiet stranger vanished.

The arms of the combatants whirled in the air like flails.  The faces
of the men, at first flushed to flame-colored anger, now began to fade
to the pallor of warriors in the blood and heat of a battle.  Their
lips curled back and stretched tightly over the gums in ghoul-like
grins.  Through their white, gripped teeth struggled hoarse whisperings
of oaths.  Their eyes glittered with murderous fire.

Each head was huddled between its owner's shoulders, and arms were
swinging with marvelous rapidity.  Feet scraped to and fro with a loud
scratching sound upon the sanded floor.  Blows left crimson blotches
upon pale skin.  The curses of the first quarter minute of the fight
died away.  The breaths of the fighters came wheezingly from their lips
and the three chests were straining and heaving.  Pete at intervals
gave vent to low, labored hisses, that sounded like a desire to kill.
Jimmie's ally gibbered at times like a wounded maniac.  Jimmie was
silent, fighting with the face of a sacrificial priest.  The rage of
fear shone in all their eyes and their blood-colored fists swirled.

At a tottering moment a blow from Pete's hand struck the ally and he
crashed to the floor.  He wriggled instantly to his feet and grasping
the quiet stranger's beer glass from the bar, hurled it at Pete's head.

High on the wall it burst like a bomb, shivering fragments flying in
all directions.  Then missiles came to every man's hand.  The place had
heretofore appeared free of things to throw, but suddenly glass and
bottles went singing through the air.  They were thrown point blank at
bobbing heads.  The pyramid of shimmering glasses, that had never been
disturbed, changed to cascades as heavy bottles were flung into them.
Mirrors splintered to nothing.

The three frothing creatures on the floor buried themselves in a frenzy
for blood.  There followed in the wake of missiles and fists some
unknown prayers, perhaps for death.

The quiet stranger had sprawled very pyrotechnically out on the
sidewalk.  A laugh ran up and down the avenue for the half of a block.

"Dey've trowed a bloke inteh deh street."

People heard the sound of breaking glass and shuffling feet within the
saloon and came running.  A small group, bending down to look under the
bamboo doors, watching the fall of glass, and three pairs of violent
legs, changed in a moment to a crowd.

A policeman came charging down the sidewalk and bounced through the
doors into the saloon.  The crowd bended and surged in absorbing
anxiety to see.

Jimmie caught first sight of the on-coming interruption.  On his feet
he had the same regard for a policeman that, when on his truck, he had
for a fire engine.  He howled and ran for the side door.

The officer made a terrific advance, club in hand.  One comprehensive
sweep of the long night stick threw the ally to the floor and forced
Pete to a corner.  With his disengaged hand he made a furious effort at
Jimmie's coat-tails.  Then he regained his balance and paused.

"Well, well, you are a pair of pictures.  What in hell yeh been up to?"

Jimmie, with his face drenched in blood, escaped up a side street,
pursued a short distance by some of the more law-loving, or excited
individuals of the crowd.

Later, from a corner safely dark, he saw the policeman, the ally and
the bartender emerge from the saloon.  Pete locked the doors and then
followed up the avenue in the rear of the crowd-encompassed policeman
and his charge.

On first thoughts Jimmie, with his heart throbbing at battle heat,
started to go desperately to the rescue of his friend, but he halted.

"Ah, what deh hell?" he demanded of himself.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: A bar stands on a corner. Inside, it is full of fake furnishings. Mirrors line the walls and glasses are neatly stacked along the sideboard. "An odor of grasping, begrimed hands and munching mouths pervaded. " Pete is the bartender. He serves a customer a drink and then wipes the bar. Suddenly, Jimmie and a companion come in the door and start making fun of Pete. They order drinks and continue to mock Pete. Pete tries to get them to stop, but they continue. Finally, he comes around the bar and gets into a fighting stance. The men circle each other for what seems like a long time and finally Pete throws a punch that Jimmie ducks. They fight viciously for a long time and then suddenly someone picks up a bottle and throws it. They all start throwing glass at each other. Outside in the street, people gather when they hear the breaking glass. Police officers arrive and enter the bar. Jimmie runs for the side door and escapes just as the police officer has subdued his companion and thrown Pete against the wall. Out at the entrance of the alley, Jimmie sees the police officer leading Pete and his companion away. He thinks for a moment about running to the rescue of his companion, but then decides "Ah, what deh hell?"


prompt:
Chapter: In a hall of irregular shape sat Pete and Maggie drinking beer.  A
submissive orchestra dictated to by a spectacled man with frowsy hair
and a dress suit, industriously followed the bobs of his head and the
waves of his baton.  A ballad singer, in a dress of flaming scarlet,
sang in the inevitable voice of brass.  When she vanished, men seated
at the tables near the front applauded loudly, pounding the polished
wood with their beer glasses.  She returned attired in less gown, and
sang again.  She received another enthusiastic encore.  She reappeared
in still less gown and danced.  The deafening rumble of glasses and
clapping of hands that followed her exit indicated an overwhelming
desire to have her come on for the fourth time, but the curiosity of
the audience was not gratified.

Maggie was pale.  From her eyes had been plucked all look of
self-reliance.  She leaned with a dependent air toward her companion.
She was timid, as if fearing his anger or displeasure.  She seemed to
beseech tenderness of him.

Pete's air of distinguished valor had grown upon him until it
threatened stupendous dimensions.  He was infinitely gracious to the
girl.  It was apparent to her that his condescension was a marvel.

He could appear to strut even while sitting still and he showed that he
was a lion of lordly characteristics by the air with which he spat.

With Maggie gazing at him wonderingly, he took pride in commanding the
waiters who were, however, indifferent or deaf.

"Hi, you, git a russle on yehs!  What deh hell yehs lookin' at?  Two
more beehs, d'yeh hear?"

He leaned back and critically regarded the person of a girl with a
straw-colored wig who upon the stage was flinging her heels in somewhat
awkward imitation of a well-known danseuse.

At times Maggie told Pete long confidential tales of her former home
life, dwelling upon the escapades of the other members of the family
and the difficulties she had to combat in order to obtain a degree of
comfort.  He responded in tones of philanthropy.  He pressed her arm
with an air of reassuring proprietorship.

"Dey was damn jays," he said, denouncing the mother and brother.

The sound of the music which, by the efforts of the frowsy-headed
leader, drifted to her ears through the smoke-filled atmosphere, made
the girl dream.  She thought of her former Rum Alley environment and
turned to regard Pete's strong protecting fists.  She thought of the
collar and cuff manufactory and the eternal moan of the proprietor:
"What een hell do you sink I pie fife dolla a week for?  Play?  No, py
damn."  She contemplated Pete's man-subduing eyes and noted that wealth
and prosperity was indicated by his clothes.  She imagined a future,
rose-tinted, because of its distance from all that she previously had
experienced.

As to the present she perceived only vague reasons to be miserable.
Her life was Pete's and she considered him worthy of the charge.  She
would be disturbed by no particular apprehensions, so long as Pete
adored her as he now said he did.  She did not feel like a bad woman.
To her knowledge she had never seen any better.

At times men at other tables regarded the girl furtively.  Pete, aware
of it, nodded at her and grinned.  He felt proud.

"Mag, yer a bloomin' good-looker," he remarked, studying her face
through the haze.  The men made Maggie fear, but she blushed at Pete's
words as it became apparent to her that she was the apple of his eye.

Grey-headed men, wonderfully pathetic in their dissipation, stared at
her through clouds.  Smooth-cheeked boys, some of them with faces of
stone and mouths of sin, not nearly so pathetic as the grey heads,
tried to find the girl's eyes in the smoke wreaths.  Maggie considered
she was not what they thought her.  She confined her glances to Pete
and the stage.

The orchestra played negro melodies and a versatile drummer pounded,
whacked, clattered and scratched on a dozen machines to make noise.

Those glances of the men, shot at Maggie from under half-closed lids,
made her tremble.  She thought them all to be worse men than Pete.

"Come, let's go," she said.

As they went out Maggie perceived two women seated at a table with some
men.  They were painted and their cheeks had lost their roundness.  As
she passed them the girl, with a shrinking movement, drew back her
skirts.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Maggie and Pete are sitting in a hall drinking beer. A singer is on stage singing a ballad. She leaves the stage and returns with less clothing on. She repeats this maneuver several times. Each time she leaves, the men in the audience call out more loudly for her return. Maggie is pale. She leans on Pete as if he is the only person in the world who can protect her. She seems to worry at every step if she is pleasing him well enough. " Petes air of distinguished valor had grown upon him until it threatened stupendous dimensions. " He leans back and yells at the waiters to prove his manliness. Maggie sometimes tells Pete long tales about her former life at home. She tells him about her familys violence and her attempts to make her life orderly and loving. Pete reassures her with "Dey was damn jays." Maggie thinks of her old home and clings to Pete as the alternative to it. She thinks of her old job where the manager sat around screaming at the women to work harder. She imagines a wonderful future with Pete. She thinks of her life as belonging to Pete. She doesnt think of herself as a bad woman. No other women of her experience were any better. As she sits in the hall, she notices the men in the audience staring at her, old and young alike. Their stares make her nervous. They make Pete proud. He tells her shes a good looking woman. She smiles nervously at him. She doesnt think she is the kind of woman these men think she is. She looks only at Pete and the stage. She thinks of all the men who stare at her as much worse men than Pete. Finally, she asks him if they can go. On their way out, Maggie sees two prostitutes sitting at a table with some men. The prostitutes make a show of moving their skirts aside when Maggie passes them.


prompt:
Chapter: Jimmie did not return home for a number of days after the fight with
Pete in the saloon.  When he did, he approached with extreme caution.

He found his mother raving.  Maggie had not returned home.  The parent
continually wondered how her daughter could come to such a pass.  She
had never considered Maggie as a pearl dropped unstained into Rum Alley
from Heaven, but she could not conceive how it was possible for her
daughter to fall so low as to bring disgrace upon her family.  She was
terrific in denunciation of the girl's wickedness.

The fact that the neighbors talked of it, maddened her.  When women
came in, and in the course of their conversation casually asked,
"Where's Maggie dese days?" the mother shook her fuzzy head at them and
appalled them with curses.  Cunning hints inviting confidence she
rebuffed with violence.

"An' wid all deh bringin' up she had, how could she?" moaningly she
asked of her son.  "Wid all deh talkin' wid her I did an' deh t'ings I
tol' her to remember?  When a girl is bringed up deh way I bringed up
Maggie, how kin she go teh deh devil?"

Jimmie was transfixed by these questions.  He could not conceive how
under the circumstances his mother's daughter and his sister could have
been so wicked.

His mother took a drink from a squdgy bottle that sat on the table.
She continued her lament.

"She had a bad heart, dat girl did, Jimmie.  She was wicked teh deh
heart an' we never knowed it."

Jimmie nodded, admitting the fact.

"We lived in deh same house wid her an' I brought her up an' we never
knowed how bad she was."

Jimmie nodded again.

"Wid a home like dis an' a mudder like me, she went teh deh bad," cried
the mother, raising her eyes.

One day, Jimmie came home, sat down in a chair and began to wriggle
about with a new and strange nervousness.  At last he spoke
shamefacedly.

"Well, look-a-here, dis t'ing queers us!  See?  We're queered!  An'
maybe it 'ud be better if I--well, I t'ink I kin look 'er up an'--maybe
it 'ud be better if I fetched her home an'--"

The mother started from her chair and broke forth into a storm of
passionate anger.

"What!  Let 'er come an' sleep under deh same roof wid her mudder agin!
Oh, yes, I will, won't I?  Sure?  Shame on yehs, Jimmie Johnson, for
sayin' such a t'ing teh yer own mudder--teh yer own mudder!  Little did
I t'ink when yehs was a babby playin' about me feet dat ye'd grow up
teh say sech a t'ing teh yer mudder--yer own mudder.  I never taut--"

Sobs choked her and interrupted her reproaches.

"Dere ain't nottin' teh raise sech hell about," said Jimmie.  "I on'y
says it 'ud be better if we keep dis t'ing dark, see?  It queers us!
See?"

His mother laughed a laugh that seemed to ring through the city and be
echoed and re-echoed by countless other laughs.  "Oh, yes, I will,
won't I!  Sure!"

"Well, yeh must take me fer a damn fool," said Jimmie, indignant at his
mother for mocking him.  "I didn't say we'd make 'er inteh a little tin
angel, ner nottin', but deh way it is now she can queer us!  Don' che
see?"

"Aye, she'll git tired of deh life atter a while an' den she'll wanna
be a-comin' home, won' she, deh beast!  I'll let 'er in den, won' I?"

"Well, I didn' mean none of dis prod'gal bus'ness anyway," explained
Jimmie.

"It wasn't no prod'gal dauter, yeh damn fool," said the mother.  "It
was prod'gal son, anyhow."

"I know dat," said Jimmie.

For a time they sat in silence.  The mother's eyes gloated on a scene
her imagination could call before her.  Her lips were set in a
vindictive smile.

"Aye, she'll cry, won' she, an' carry on, an' tell how Pete, or some
odder feller, beats 'er an' she'll say she's sorry an' all dat an' she
ain't happy, she ain't, an' she wants to come home agin, she does."

With grim humor, the mother imitated the possible wailing notes of the
daughter's voice.

"Den I'll take 'er in, won't I, deh beast.  She kin cry 'er two eyes
out on deh stones of deh street before I'll dirty deh place wid her.
She abused an' ill-treated her own mudder--her own mudder what loved
her an' she'll never git anodder chance dis side of hell."

Jimmie thought he had a great idea of women's frailty, but he could not
understand why any of his kin should be victims.

"Damn her," he fervidly said.

Again he wondered vaguely if some of the women of his acquaintance had
brothers.  Nevertheless, his mind did not for an instant confuse
himself with those brothers nor his sister with theirs.  After the
mother had, with great difficulty, suppressed the neighbors, she went
among them and proclaimed her grief.  "May Gawd forgive dat girl," was
her continual cry.  To attentive ears she recited the whole length and
breadth of her woes.

"I bringed 'er up deh way a dauter oughta be bringed up an' dis is how
she served me!  She went teh deh devil deh first chance she got!  May
Gawd forgive her."

When arrested for drunkenness she used the story of her daughter's
downfall with telling effect upon the police justices.  Finally one of
them said to her, peering down over his spectacles: "Mary, the records
of this and other courts show that you are the mother of forty-two
daughters who have been ruined.  The case is unparalleled in the annals
of this court, and this court thinks--"

The mother went through life shedding large tears of sorrow.  Her red
face was a picture of agony.

Of course Jimmie publicly damned his sister that he might appear on a
higher social plane.  But, arguing with himself, stumbling about in
ways that he knew not, he, once, almost came to a conclusion that his
sister would have been more firmly good had she better known why.
However, he felt that he could not hold such a view.  He threw it
hastily aside.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: After the fight, Jimmie stays away from home for a few days. When he returns, he finds his mother raving about Maggie. She hasnt come home for days. Mrs. Johnson bewails her fate. She cant believe after her careful rearing of Maggie that Maggie could have turned out so badly. Jimmie cant believe Maggie could have turned out so wicked. Finally, Mrs. Johnson concludes that Maggie had a bad heart and was wicked from the beginning without revealing it until now. Jimmie thinks it would be best to go and get Maggie and bring her home. He wants to avoid all the embarrassing gossip. Mrs. Johnson is shocked and horrified that Jimmie would bring such a vicious girl under his dear mothers roof. Jimmie tries to convince his mother that it would be best to keep Maggie with them in an effort to quiet the scandal. Mrs. Johnson reminds him that the prodigal story was about a son, not a daughter. She refuses to let Maggie back in. Mrs. Johnson spends the rest of the evening fantasizing about Maggie coming home, begging to be let in, and being rebuffed by a scornful and morally righteous mother. From this point on, Mrs. Johnson uses the story of her daughters moral downfall in all her court cases. One of the judges finally tells her that the records of all the courts combined show that she is the mother of forty-two daughters who have been ruined. Jimmie publicly damns his sister in order to get some moral distance from her and save his own reputation. Only occasionally does Jimmie question the justice of his condemnation of his sister. When he does, he quickly throws these thoughts aside.


prompt:
Chapter: A forlorn woman went along a lighted avenue.  The street was filled
with people desperately bound on missions.  An endless crowd darted at
the elevated station stairs and the horse cars were thronged with
owners of bundles.

The pace of the forlorn woman was slow.  She was apparently searching
for some one.  She loitered near the doors of saloons and watched men
emerge from them.  She scanned furtively the faces in the rushing
stream of pedestrians.  Hurrying men, bent on catching some boat or
train, jostled her elbows, failing to notice her, their thoughts fixed
on distant dinners.

The forlorn woman had a peculiar face.  Her smile was no smile.  But
when in repose her features had a shadowy look that was like a sardonic
grin, as if some one had sketched with cruel forefinger indelible lines
about her mouth.

Jimmie came strolling up the avenue.  The woman encountered him with an
aggrieved air.

"Oh, Jimmie, I've been lookin' all over fer yehs--," she began.

Jimmie made an impatient gesture and quickened his pace.

"Ah, don't bodder me!  Good Gawd!" he said, with the savageness of a
man whose life is pestered.

The woman followed him along the sidewalk in somewhat the manner of a
suppliant.

"But, Jimmie," she said, "yehs told me ye'd--"

Jimmie turned upon her fiercely as if resolved to make a last stand for
comfort and peace.

"Say, fer Gawd's sake, Hattie, don' foller me from one end of deh city
teh deh odder.  Let up, will yehs!  Give me a minute's res', can't
yehs?  Yehs makes me tired, allus taggin' me.  See?  Ain' yehs got no
sense.  Do yehs want people teh get onto me?  Go chase yerself, fer
Gawd's sake."

The woman stepped closer and laid her fingers on his arm.  "But,
look-a-here--"

Jimmie snarled.  "Oh, go teh hell."

He darted into the front door of a convenient saloon and a moment later
came out into the shadows that surrounded the side door.  On the
brilliantly lighted avenue he perceived the forlorn woman dodging about
like a scout.  Jimmie laughed with an air of relief and went away.

When he arrived home he found his mother clamoring.  Maggie had
returned.  She stood shivering beneath the torrent of her mother's
wrath.

"Well, I'm damned," said Jimmie in greeting.

His mother, tottering about the room, pointed a quivering forefinger.

"Lookut her, Jimmie, lookut her.  Dere's yer sister, boy.  Dere's yer
sister.  Lookut her!  Lookut her!"

She screamed in scoffing laughter.

The girl stood in the middle of the room.  She edged about as if unable
to find a place on the floor to put her feet.

"Ha, ha, ha," bellowed the mother.  "Dere she stands!  Ain' she purty?
Lookut her!  Ain' she sweet, deh beast?  Lookut her!  Ha, ha, lookut
her!"

She lurched forward and put her red and seamed hands upon her
daughter's face.  She bent down and peered keenly up into the eyes of
the girl.

"Oh, she's jes' dessame as she ever was, ain' she?  She's her mudder's
purty darlin' yit, ain' she?  Lookut her, Jimmie!  Come here, fer
Gawd's sake, and lookut her."

The loud, tremendous sneering of the mother brought the denizens of the
Rum Alley tenement to their doors.  Women came in the hallways.
Children scurried to and fro.

"What's up?  Dat Johnson party on anudder tear?"

"Naw!  Young Mag's come home!"

"Deh hell yeh say?"

Through the open door curious eyes stared in at Maggie.  Children
ventured into the room and ogled her, as if they formed the front row
at a theatre.  Women, without, bended toward each other and whispered,
nodding their heads with airs of profound philosophy.  A baby, overcome
with curiosity concerning this object at which all were looking, sidled
forward and touched her dress, cautiously, as if investigating a
red-hot stove.  Its mother's voice rang out like a warning trumpet.
She rushed forward and grabbed her child, casting a terrible look of
indignation at the girl.

Maggie's mother paced to and fro, addressing the doorful of eyes,
expounding like a glib showman at a museum.  Her voice rang through the
building.

"Dere she stands," she cried, wheeling suddenly and pointing with
dramatic finger.  "Dere she stands!  Lookut her!  Ain' she a dindy?
An' she was so good as to come home teh her mudder, she was!  Ain' she
a beaut'?  Ain' she a dindy?  Fer Gawd's sake!"

The jeering cries ended in another burst of shrill laughter.

The girl seemed to awaken.  "Jimmie--"

He drew hastily back from her.

"Well, now, yer a hell of a t'ing, ain' yeh?" he said, his lips curling
in scorn.  Radiant virtue sat upon his brow and his repelling hands
expressed horror of contamination.

Maggie turned and went.

The crowd at the door fell back precipitately.  A baby falling down in
front of the door, wrenched a scream like a wounded animal from its
mother.  Another woman sprang forward and picked it up, with a
chivalrous air, as if rescuing a human being from an oncoming express
train.

As the girl passed down through the hall, she went before open doors
framing more eyes strangely microscopic, and sending broad beams of
inquisitive light into the darkness of her path.  On the second floor
she met the gnarled old woman who possessed the music box.

"So," she cried, "'ere yehs are back again, are yehs?  An' dey've
kicked yehs out?  Well, come in an' stay wid me teh-night.  I ain' got
no moral standin'."

From above came an unceasing babble of tongues, over all of which rang
the mother's derisive laughter.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: A forlorn woman walks along a crowded street looking for someone. When she sees Jimmie, she calls out to him. He is instantly exasperated to see her and pushes her away. She keeps pursuing him with entreaties. He tells her to "go to hell." Then he slips into a bar and loses her. He watches her through the window laughing at her futile attempts to catch sight of him in the crowd. Jimmie arrives home and finds Maggie standing in the middle of the room being screamed at by her mother. Maggie shifts around the floor as if she has no place to stand. Mrs. Johnson screams so loudly, calling Maggie a "beast" for coming back home, that the neighbors begin to crowd around the open door to watch. Mrs. Johnson sneers at Maggie, calling her a pretty girl just like she always was. Maggie appeals to Jimmie who flinches away from her as if she has some kind of disease. Finally, Maggie turns and leaves the room. A child has gotten free of its mother and blocks the doorway. When it sees Maggie approaching, it screams in terror. The mother grabs it up away from contact with Maggie. As Maggie gets out into the hallway, she encounters the old beggar woman. The woman exclaims over Maggies return and her rejection. She offers her place for the night, saying "I aint got no moral standin." Maggie can still hear all the voices of the neighbors on the floor above and can hear her mothers derisive laughter above it all.