prompt:
Chapter: THE BOOK OF THE GROTESQUE

The writer, an old man with a white mustache, had some
difficulty in getting into bed. The windows of the
house in which he lived were high and he wanted to look
at the trees when he awoke in the morning. A carpenter
came to fix the bed so that it would be on a level with
the window.

Quite a fuss was made about the matter. The carpenter,
who had been a soldier in the Civil War, came into the
writer's room and sat down to talk of building a
platform for the purpose of raising the bed. The writer
had cigars lying about and the carpenter smoked.

For a time the two men talked of the raising of the bed
and then they talked of other things. The soldier got
on the subject of the war. The writer, in fact, led him
to that subject. The carpenter had once been a prisoner
in Andersonville prison and had lost a brother. The
brother had died of starvation, and whenever the
carpenter got upon that subject he cried. He, like the
old writer, had a white mustache, and when he cried he
puckered up his lips and the mustache bobbed up and
down. The weeping old man with the cigar in his mouth
was ludicrous. The plan the writer had for the raising
of his bed was forgotten and later the carpenter did it
in his own way and the writer, who was past sixty, had
to help himself with a chair when he went to bed at
night.

In his bed the writer rolled over on his side and lay
quite still. For years he had been beset with notions
concerning his heart. He was a hard smoker and his
heart fluttered. The idea had got into his mind that he
would some time die unexpectedly and always when he got
into bed he thought of that. It did not alarm him. The
effect in fact was quite a special thing and not easily
explained. It made him more alive, there in bed, than
at any other time. Perfectly still he lay and his body
was old and not of much use any more, but something
inside him was altogether young. He was like a pregnant
woman, only that the thing inside him was not a baby
but a youth. No, it wasn't a youth, it was a woman,
young, and wearing a coat of mail like a knight. It is
absurd, you see, to try to tell what was inside the old
writer as he lay on his high bed and listened to the
fluttering of his heart. The thing to get at is what
the writer, or the young thing within the writer, was
thinking about.

The old writer, like all of the people in the world,
had got, during his long life, a great many notions in
his head. He had once been quite handsome and a number
of women had been in love with him. And then, of
course, he had known people, many people, known them in
a peculiarly intimate way that was different from the
way in which you and I know people. At least that is
what the writer thought and the thought pleased him.
Why quarrel with an old man concerning his thoughts?

In the bed the writer had a dream that was not a dream.
As he grew somewhat sleepy but was still conscious,
figures began to appear before his eyes. He imagined
the young indescribable thing within himself was
driving a long procession of figures before his eyes.

You see the interest in all this lies in the figures
that went before the eyes of the writer. They were all
grotesques. All of the men and women the writer had
ever known had become grotesques.

The grotesques were not all horrible. Some were
amusing, some almost beautiful, and one, a woman all
drawn out of shape, hurt the old man by her
grotesqueness. When she passed he made a noise like a
small dog whimpering. Had you come into the room you
might have supposed the old man had unpleasant dreams
or perhaps indigestion.

For an hour the procession of grotesques passed before
the eyes of the old man, and then, although it was a
painful thing to do, he crept out of bed and began to
write. Some one of the grotesques had made a deep
impression on his mind and he wanted to describe it.

At his desk the writer worked for an hour. In the end
he wrote a book which he called "The Book of the
Grotesque." It was never published, but I saw it once
and it made an indelible impression on my mind. The
book had one central thought that is very strange and
has always remained with me. By remembering it I have
been able to understand many people and things that I
was never able to understand before. The thought was
involved but a simple statement of it would be
something like this:

That in the beginning when the world was young there
were a great many thoughts but no such thing as a
truth. Man made the truths himself and each truth was a
composite of a great many vague thoughts. All about in
the world were the truths and they were all beautiful.

The old man had listed hundreds of the truths in his
book. I will not try to tell you of all of them. There
was the truth of virginity and the truth of passion,
the truth of wealth and of poverty, of thrift and of
profligacy, of carelessness and abandon. Hundreds and
hundreds were the truths and they were all beautiful.

And then the people came along. Each as he appeared
snatched up one of the truths and some who were quite
strong snatched up a dozen of them.

It was the truths that made the people grotesques. The
old man had quite an elaborate theory concerning the
matter. It was his notion that the moment one of the
people took one of the truths to himself, called it his
truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a
grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood.

You can see for yourself how the old man, who had spent
all of his life writing and was filled with words,
would write hundreds of pages concerning this matter.
The subject would become so big in his mind that he
himself would be in danger of becoming a grotesque. He
didn't, I suppose, for the same reason that he never
published the book. It was the young thing inside him
that saved the old man.

Concerning the old carpenter who fixed the bed for the
writer, I only mentioned him because he, like many of
what are called very common people, became the nearest
thing to what is understandable and lovable of all the
grotesques in the writer's book.

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

completion: The writer is described as an old man with a white mustache who has trouble looking out of his windows, which are too high. For this purpose a carpenter has been sent requested, raise the bed to a level with the window. After some general talk, the carpenter who was a soldier in the Civil War begins reminiscing about it and finally starts to weep. After his departure, the writer lies on his bed, quite still. The writer has a dream, which is like daydreaming since he is still conscious. He sees figures, which are all grotesques. But all these figures are not horrible, some are amusing, some beautiful and one of them is a woman all drawn shapeless. After the procession of grotesques passes his vision, the old man gets up and begins to write. This work he calls ' The book of the grotesque.' The author claims to have read the book, which is never published. The theme behind the book is that, at the beginning of the world, there were many thoughts, but no truth. Man made the truths himself, like the truth of virginity, of passion, of wealth and poverty, of thrift and profligacy and so on. Then the people come along and pick either one of these truths, or sometimes even a dozen of them. According to the old man the writer, the moment a man tries to make the truth his, and live his life by it, he becomes a grotesque and the truth itself becomes a falsehood. The old writer himself is in danger of becoming a grotesque, if not for the fact that he didn't publish the book. And as for the carpenter, he is what is called, a common man, and so the most lovable of the grotesque in the writer's book.


prompt:
Chapter: HANDS

Upon the half decayed veranda of a small frame house
that stood near the edge of a ravine near the town of
Winesburg, Ohio, a fat little old man walked nervously
up and down. Across a long field that had been seeded
for clover but that had produced only a dense crop of
yellow mustard weeds, he could see the public highway
along which went a wagon filled with berry pickers
returning from the fields. The berry pickers, youths
and maidens, laughed and shouted boisterously. A boy
clad in a blue shirt leaped from the wagon and
attempted to drag after him one of the maidens, who
screamed and protested shrilly. The feet of the boy in
the road kicked up a cloud of dust that floated across
the face of the departing sun. Over the long field came
a thin girlish voice. "Oh, you Wing Biddlebaum, comb
your hair, it's falling into your eyes," commanded the
voice to the man, who was bald and whose nervous little
hands fiddled about the bare white forehead as though
arranging a mass of tangled locks.

Wing Biddlebaum, forever frightened and beset by a
ghostly band of doubts, did not think of himself as in
any way a part of the life of the town where he had
lived for twenty years. Among all the people of
Winesburg but one had come close to him. With George
Willard, son of Tom Willard, the proprietor of the New
Willard House, he had formed something like a
friendship. George Willard was the reporter on the
Winesburg Eagle and sometimes in the evenings he walked
out along the highway to Wing Biddlebaum's house. Now
as the old man walked up and down on the veranda, his
hands moving nervously about, he was hoping that George
Willard would come and spend the evening with him.
After the wagon containing the berry pickers had
passed, he went across the field through the tall
mustard weeds and climbing a rail fence peered
anxiously along the road to the town. For a moment he
stood thus, rubbing his hands together and looking up
and down the road, and then, fear overcoming him, ran
back to walk again upon the porch on his own house.

In the presence of George Willard, Wing Biddlebaum, who
for twenty years had been the town mystery, lost
something of his timidity, and his shadowy personality,
submerged in a sea of doubts, came forth to look at the
world. With the young reporter at his side, he ventured
in the light of day into Main Street or strode up and
down on the rickety front porch of his own house,
talking excitedly. The voice that had been low and
trembling became shrill and loud. The bent figure
straightened. With a kind of wriggle, like a fish
returned to the brook by the fisherman, Biddlebaum the
silent began to talk, striving to put into words the
ideas that had been accumulated by his mind during long
years of silence.

Wing Biddlebaum talked much with his hands. The slender
expressive fingers, forever active, forever striving to
conceal themselves in his pockets or behind his back,
came forth and became the piston rods of his machinery
of expression.

The story of Wing Biddlebaum is a story of hands. Their
restless activity, like unto the beating of the wings
of an imprisoned bird, had given him his name. Some
obscure poet of the town had thought of it. The hands
alarmed their owner. He wanted to keep them hidden away
and looked with amazement at the quiet inexpressive
hands of other men who worked beside him in the fields,
or passed, driving sleepy teams on country roads.

When he talked to George Willard, Wing Biddlebaum
closed his fists and beat with them upon a table or on
the walls of his house. The action made him more
comfortable. If the desire to talk came to him when the
two were walking in the fields, he sought out a stump
or the top board of a fence and with his hands pounding
busily talked with renewed ease.

The story of Wing Biddlebaum's hands is worth a book in
itself. Sympathetically set forth it would tap many
strange, beautiful qualities in obscure men. It is a
job for a poet. In Winesburg the hands had attracted
attention merely because of their activity. With them
Wing Biddlebaum had picked as high as a hundred and
forty quarts of strawberries in a day. They became his
distinguishing feature, the source of his fame. Also
they made more grotesque an already grotesque and
elusive individuality. Winesburg was proud of the hands
of Wing Biddlebaum in the same spirit in which it was
proud of Banker White's new stone house and Wesley
Moyer's bay stallion, Tony Tip, that had won the
two-fifteen trot at the fall races in Cleveland.

As for George Willard, he had many times wanted to ask
about the hands. At times an almost overwhelming
curiosity had taken hold of him. He felt that there
must be a reason for their strange activity and their
inclination to keep hidden away and only a growing
respect for Wing Biddlebaum kept him from blurting out
the questions that were often in his mind.

Once he had been on the point of asking. The two were
walking in the fields on a summer afternoon and had
stopped to sit upon a grassy bank. All afternoon Wing
Biddlebaum had talked as one inspired. By a fence he
had stopped and beating like a giant woodpecker upon
the top board had shouted at George Willard, condemning
his tendency to be too much influenced by the people
about him, "You are destroying yourself," he cried.
"You have the inclination to be alone and to dream and
you are afraid of dreams. You want to be like others in
town here. You hear them talk and you try to imitate
them."

On the grassy bank Wing Biddlebaum had tried again to
drive his point home. His voice became soft and
reminiscent, and with a sigh of contentment he launched
into a long rambling talk, speaking as one lost in a
dream.

Out of the dream Wing Biddlebaum made a picture for
George Willard. In the picture men lived again in a
kind of pastoral golden age. Across a green open
country came clean-limbed young men, some afoot, some
mounted upon horses. In crowds the young men came to
gather about the feet of an old man who sat beneath a
tree in a tiny garden and who talked to them.

Wing Biddlebaum became wholly inspired. For once he
forgot the hands. Slowly they stole forth and lay upon
George Willard's shoulders. Something new and bold came
into the voice that talked. "You must try to forget all
you have learned," said the old man. "You must begin to
dream. From this time on you must shut your ears to the
roaring of the voices."

Pausing in his speech, Wing Biddlebaum looked long and
earnestly at George Willard. His eyes glowed. Again he
raised the hands to caress the boy and then a look of
horror swept over his face.

With a convulsive movement of his body, Wing Biddlebaum
sprang to his feet and thrust his hands deep into his
trousers pockets. Tears came to his eyes. "I must be
getting along home. I can talk no more with you," he
said nervously.

Without looking back, the old man had hurried down the
hillside and across a meadow, leaving George Willard
perplexed and frightened upon the grassy slope. With a
shiver of dread the boy arose and went along the road
toward town. "I'll not ask him about his hands," he
thought, touched by the memory of the terror he had
seen in the man's eyes. "There's something wrong, but I
don't want to know what it is. His hands have something
to do with his fear of me and of everyone."

And George Willard was right. Let us look briefly into
the story of the hands. Perhaps our talking of them
will arouse the poet who will tell the hidden wonder
story of the influence for which the hands were but
fluttering pennants of promise.

In his youth Wing Biddlebaum had been a school teacher
in a town in Pennsylvania. He was not then known as
Wing Biddlebaum, but went by the less euphonic name of
Adolph Myers. As Adolph Myers he was much loved by the
boys of his school.

Adolph Myers was meant by nature to be a teacher of
youth. He was one of those rare, little-understood men
who rule by a power so gentle that it passes as a
lovable weakness. In their feeling for the boys under
their charge such men are not unlike the finer sort of
women in their love of men.

And yet that is but crudely stated. It needs the poet
there. With the boys of his school, Adolph Myers had
walked in the evening or had sat talking until dusk
upon the schoolhouse steps lost in a kind of dream.
Here and there went his hands, caressing the shoulders
of the boys, playing about the tousled heads. As he
talked his voice became soft and musical. There was a
caress in that also. In a way the voice and the hands,
the stroking of the shoulders and the touching of the
hair were a part of the schoolmaster's effort to carry
a dream into the young minds. By the caress that was in
his fingers he expressed himself. He was one of those
men in whom the force that creates life is diffused,
not centralized. Under the caress of his hands doubt
and disbelief went out of the minds of the boys and
they began also to dream.

And then the tragedy. A half-witted boy of the school
became enamored of the young master. In his bed at
night he imagined unspeakable things and in the morning
went forth to tell his dreams as facts. Strange,
hideous accusations fell from his loosehung lips.
Through the Pennsylvania town went a shiver. Hidden,
shadowy doubts that had been in men's minds concerning
Adolph Myers were galvanized into beliefs.

The tragedy did not linger. Trembling lads were jerked
out of bed and questioned. "He put his arms about me,"
said one. "His fingers were always playing in my hair,"
said another.

One afternoon a man of the town, Henry Bradford, who
kept a saloon, came to the schoolhouse door. Calling
Adolph Myers into the school yard he began to beat him
with his fists. As his hard knuckles beat down into the
frightened face of the school-master, his wrath became
more and more terrible. Screaming with dismay, the
children ran here and there like disturbed insects.
"I'll teach you to put your hands on my boy, you
beast," roared the saloon keeper, who, tired of beating
the master, had begun to kick him about the yard.

Adolph Myers was driven from the Pennsylvania town in
the night. With lanterns in their hands a dozen men
came to the door of the house where he lived alone and
commanded that he dress and come forth. It was raining
and one of the men had a rope in his hands. They had
intended to hang the school-master, but something in his
figure, so small, white, and pitiful, touched their
hearts and they let him escape. As he ran away into the
darkness they repented of their weakness and ran after
him, swearing and throwing sticks and great balls of
soft mud at the figure that screamed and ran faster and
faster into the darkness.

For twenty years Adolph Myers had lived alone in
Winesburg. He was but forty but looked sixty-five. The
name of Biddlebaum he got from a box of goods seen at a
freight station as he hurried through an eastern Ohio
town. He had an aunt in Winesburg, a black-toothed old
woman who raised chickens, and with her he lived until
she died. He had been ill for a year after the
experience in Pennsylvania, and after his recovery
worked as a day laborer in the fields, going timidly
about and striving to conceal his hands. Although he
did not understand what had happened he felt that the
hands must be to blame. Again and again the fathers of
the boys had talked of the hands. "Keep your hands to
yourself," the saloon keeper had roared, dancing, with
fury in the schoolhouse yard.

Upon the veranda of his house by the ravine, Wing
Biddlebaum continued to walk up and down until the sun
had disappeared and the road beyond the field was lost
in the grey shadows. Going into his house he cut slices
of bread and spread honey upon them. When the rumble of
the evening train that took away the express cars
loaded with the day's harvest of berries had passed and
restored the silence of the summer night, he went again
to walk upon the veranda. In the darkness he could not
see the hands and they became quiet. Although he still
hungered for the presence of the boy, who was the
medium through which he expressed his love of man, the
hunger became again a part of his loneliness and his
waiting. Lighting a lamp, Wing Biddlebaum washed the
few dishes soiled by his simple meal and, setting up a
folding cot by the screen door that led to the porch,
prepared to undress for the night. A few stray white
bread crumbs lay on the cleanly washed floor by the
table; putting the lamp upon a low stool he began to
pick up the crumbs, carrying them to his mouth one by
one with unbelievable rapidity. In the dense blotch of
light beneath the table, the kneeling figure looked
like a priest engaged in some service of his church.
The nervous expressive fingers, flashing in and out of
the light, might well have been mistaken for the
fingers of the devotee going swiftly through decade
after decade of his rosary.

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

completion: Wing Biddlebaum, a fat, little, old man is walking up and down the veranda of his small house, which stood near a ravine, near the town of Winesburg, Ohio. Wing Biddlebaum, while he has lived in this town for twenty years, still does not consider himself a part of it. He is close to only one boy, George Willard, the son of Tom Willard. George is a reporter on the 'Winesburg Eagle' and often spends his time with Biddlebaum. Only with George, would Biddlebaum open up and talk for hours on any subject. Biddlebaum's hands are very expressive and restless; he always seems to speak through his hands. His hands restless activities, like the beatings of the wings of an imprisoned bird, have earned him his name. In Winesburg, his hands have attracted attention merely because of their activity, and have become a distinguishing feature for his fame. George is fascinated by Wings's hands and feels that there must a reason to this fascination. One day, both are involved in a deep discussion and Wing is chastising George for letting himself be influenced by people. Wing, who is totally involved now, forgets his hands, and slips them on George's shoulders. He goes on speaking about forgetting all that he has learned, and he begins to dream. And as Wing speaks, his eyes glow and his hands caress George's face. Immediately he realizes what he is doing and with a look of horror, leaves abruptly. George is perplexed but decides to leave the subject of Wing's hands. But the real story behind his hands is that as a young man, Biddlebaum was a schoolteacher in Pennsylvania, and was known as Adolph Myers. He was a very gentle soul, who ruled by a gentle power. With his boys, he used to be lost as if in a dream. While speaking to them, he would unconsciously caress their tousled heads and stroke their shoulders. Under his hands, all the doubts and disbelief of the youngsters disappeared. The tragedy struck when a half-witted boy misunderstood his intentions and blurted out his feelings about the caresses. This instigated all the others who began disbelieving his pure intentions. Adolph was driven out of the school and ridiculed. Thus for twenty years, Adolph lived alone in Winesburg, with his stained past only his secret. He only understood that his poor hands were to blame and so always kept them hidden, away from the prying eyes of the people.


prompt:
Chapter: PAPER PILLS

He was an old man with a white beard and huge nose and
hands. Long before the time during which we will know
him, he was a doctor and drove a jaded white horse from
house to house through the streets of Winesburg. Later
he married a girl who had money. She had been left a
large fertile farm when her father died. The girl was
quiet, tall, and dark, and to many people she seemed
very beautiful. Everyone in Winesburg wondered why she
married the doctor. Within a year after the marriage
she died.

The knuckles of the doctor's hands were extraordinarily
large. When the hands were closed they looked like
clusters of unpainted wooden balls as large as walnuts
fastened together by steel rods. He smoked a cob pipe
and after his wife's death sat all day in his empty
office close by a window that was covered with cobwebs.
He never opened the window. Once on a hot day in August
he tried but found it stuck fast and after that he
forgot all about it.

Winesburg had forgotten the old man, but in Doctor
Reefy there were the seeds of something very fine.
Alone in his musty office in the Heffner Block above
the Paris Dry Goods Company's store, he worked
ceaselessly, building up something that he himself
destroyed. Little pyramids of truth he erected and
after erecting knocked them down again that he might
have the truths to erect other pyramids.

Doctor Reefy was a tall man who had worn one suit of
clothes for ten years. It was frayed at the sleeves and
little holes had appeared at the knees and elbows. In
the office he wore also a linen duster with huge
pockets into which he continually stuffed scraps of
paper. After some weeks the scraps of paper became
little hard round balls, and when the pockets were
filled he dumped them out upon the floor. For ten years
he had but one friend, another old man named John
Spaniard who owned a tree nursery. Sometimes, in a
playful mood, old Doctor Reefy took from his pockets a
handful of the paper balls and threw them at the
nursery man. "That is to confound you, you blathering
old sentimentalist," he cried, shaking with laughter.

The story of Doctor Reefy and his courtship of the tall
dark girl who became his wife and left her money to him
is a very curious story. It is delicious, like the
twisted little apples that grow in the orchards of
Winesburg. In the fall one walks in the orchards and
the ground is hard with frost underfoot. The apples
have been taken from the trees by the pickers. They
have been put in barrels and shipped to the cities
where they will be eaten in apartments that are filled
with books, magazines, furniture, and people. On the
trees are only a few gnarled apples that the pickers
have rejected. They look like the knuckles of Doctor
Reefy's hands. One nibbles at them and they are
delicious. Into a little round place at the side of the
apple has been gathered all of its sweetness. One runs
from tree to tree over the frosted ground picking the
gnarled, twisted apples and filling his pockets with
them. Only the few know the sweetness of the twisted
apples.

The girl and Doctor Reefy began their courtship on a
summer afternoon. He was forty-five then and already he
had begun the practice of filling his pockets with the
scraps of paper that became hard balls and were thrown
away. The habit had been formed as he sat in his buggy
behind the jaded white horse and went slowly along
country roads. On the papers were written thoughts,
ends of thoughts, beginnings of thoughts.

One by one the mind of Doctor Reefy had made the
thoughts. Out of many of them he formed a truth that
arose gigantic in his mind. The truth clouded the
world. It became terrible and then faded away and the
little thoughts began again.

The tall dark girl came to see Doctor Reefy because she
was in the family way and had become frightened. She
was in that condition because of a series of
circumstances also curious.

The death of her father and mother and the rich acres
of land that had come down to her had set a train of
suitors on her heels. For two years she saw suitors
almost every evening. Except two they were all alike.
They talked to her of passion and there was a strained
eager quality in their voices and in their eyes when
they looked at her. The two who were different were
much unlike each other. One of them, a slender young
man with white hands, the son of a jeweler in
Winesburg, talked continually of virginity. When he was
with her he was never off the subject. The other, a
black-haired boy with large ears, said nothing at all
but always managed to get her into the darkness, where
he began to kiss her.

For a time the tall dark girl thought she would marry
the jeweler's son. For hours she sat in silence
listening as he talked to her and then she began to be
afraid of something. Beneath his talk of virginity she
began to think there was a lust greater than in all the
others. At times it seemed to her that as he talked he
was holding her body in his hands. She imagined him
turning it slowly about in the white hands and staring
at it. At night she dreamed that he had bitten into her
body and that his jaws were dripping. She had the dream
three times, then she became in the family way to the
one who said nothing at all but who in the moment of
his passion actually did bite her shoulder so that for
days the marks of his teeth showed.

After the tall dark girl came to know Doctor Reefy it
seemed to her that she never wanted to leave him again.
She went into his office one morning and without her
saying anything he seemed to know what had happened to
her.

In the office of the doctor there was a woman, the wife
of the man who kept the bookstore in Winesburg. Like
all old-fashioned country practitioners, Doctor Reefy
pulled teeth, and the woman who waited held a
handkerchief to her teeth and groaned. Her husband was
with her and when the tooth was taken out they both
screamed and blood ran down on the woman's white dress.
The tall dark girl did not pay any attention. When the
woman and the man had gone the doctor smiled. "I will
take you driving into the country with me," he said.

For several weeks the tall dark girl and the doctor
were together almost every day. The condition that had
brought her to him passed in an illness, but she was
like one who has discovered the sweetness of the
twisted apples, she could not get her mind fixed again
upon the round perfect fruit that is eaten in the city
apartments. In the fall after the beginning of her
acquaintanceship with him she married Doctor Reefy and
in the following spring she died. During the winter he
read to her all of the odds and ends of thoughts he had
scribbled on the bits of paper. After he had read them
he laughed and stuffed them away in his pockets to
become round hard balls.

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

completion: The old man, with the white beard, was a doctor, married to a girl with money. Within a year of their marriage, she had died and left him all her money. This old man's knuckles were unnaturally large and looked like unpainted wooden balls. Doctor Reefy had a strange habit of writing his thoughts on paper and then crumpling the paper into balls. These papers contained his written thoughts. Out of many of these thoughts he would form a truth when this truth grew and clouded the world he would throw it away and begin new with little thoughts. Doctor Reefy's courtship with the wealthy girl was quite curious. After her parent's death she began to view suitors for marriage and had sorted down to two suitors. These suitors were totally unlike each other. One, a son of a jeweler who only spoke of virginity, while the other said nothing at all but always managed to corner her for a kiss in the darkness. For a time she thought that she would marry the one who spoke on virginity. But after a while she began detecting a greater lust in him beneath the clothing of his talks. In the meanwhile she got pregnant by the second one. She went to Doctor Reefy for help, and from then onwards, never left him. She lost her unborn baby in an illness, and later on in the fall, she married Doctor Reefy. The doctor used to read to her all this thoughts which were written on those bits of paper which he rolled. She died in the following spring.


prompt:
Chapter: MOTHER

Elizabeth Willard, the mother of George Willard, was
tall and gaunt and her face was marked with smallpox
scars. Although she was but forty-five, some obscure
disease had taken the fire out of her figure.
Listlessly she went about the disorderly old hotel
looking at the faded wall-paper and the ragged carpets
and, when she was able to be about, doing the work of a
chambermaid among beds soiled by the slumbers of fat
traveling men. Her husband, Tom Willard, a slender,
graceful man with square shoulders, a quick military
step, and a black mustache trained to turn sharply up
at the ends, tried to put the wife out of his mind. The
presence of the tall ghostly figure, moving slowly
through the halls, he took as a reproach to himself.
When he thought of her he grew angry and swore. The
hotel was unprofitable and forever on the edge of
failure and he wished himself out of it. He thought of
the old house and the woman who lived there with him as
things defeated and done for. The hotel in which he had
begun life so hopefully was now a mere ghost of what a
hotel should be. As he went spruce and business-like
through the streets of Winesburg, he sometimes stopped
and turned quickly about as though fearing that the
spirit of the hotel and of the woman would follow him
even into the streets. "Damn such a life, damn it!" he
sputtered aimlessly.

Tom Willard had a passion for village politics and for
years had been the leading Democrat in a strongly
Republican community. Some day, he told himself, the
tide of things political will turn in my favor and the
years of ineffectual service count big in the bestowal
of rewards. He dreamed of going to Congress and even of
becoming governor. Once when a younger member of the
party arose at a political conference and began to
boast of his faithful service, Tom Willard grew white
with fury. "Shut up, you," he roared, glaring about.
"What do you know of service? What are you but a boy?
Look at what I've done here! I was a Democrat here in
Winesburg when it was a crime to be a Democrat. In the
old days they fairly hunted us with guns."

Between Elizabeth and her one son George there was a
deep unexpressed bond of sympathy, based on a girlhood
dream that had long ago died. In the son's presence she
was timid and reserved, but sometimes while he hurried
about town intent upon his duties as a reporter, she
went into his room and closing the door knelt by a
little desk, made of a kitchen table, that sat near a
window. In the room by the desk she went through a
ceremony that was half a prayer, half a demand,
addressed to the skies. In the boyish figure she
yearned to see something half forgotten that had once
been a part of herself recreated. The prayer concerned
that. "Even though I die, I will in some way keep
defeat from you," she cried, and so deep was her
determination that her whole body shook. Her eyes
glowed and she clenched her fists. "If I am dead and
see him becoming a meaningless drab figure like myself,
I will come back," she declared. "I ask God now to give
me that privilege. I demand it. I will pay for it. God
may beat me with his fists. I will take any blow that
may befall if but this my boy be allowed to express
something for us both." Pausing uncertainly, the woman
stared about the boy's room. "And do not let him become
smart and successful either," she added vaguely.

The communion between George Willard and his mother was
outwardly a formal thing without meaning. When she was
ill and sat by the window in her room he sometimes went
in the evening to make her a visit. They sat by a
window that looked over the roof of a small frame
building into Main Street. By turning their heads they
could see through another window, along an alleyway
that ran behind the Main Street stores and into the
back door of Abner Groff's bakery. Sometimes as they
sat thus a picture of village life presented itself to
them. At the back door of his shop appeared Abner Groff
with a stick or an empty milk bottle in his hand. For a
long time there was a feud between the baker and a grey
cat that belonged to Sylvester West, the druggist. The
boy and his mother saw the cat creep into the door of
the bakery and presently emerge followed by the baker,
who swore and waved his arms about. The baker's eyes
were small and red and his black hair and beard were
filled with flour dust. Sometimes he was so angry that,
although the cat had disappeared, he hurled sticks,
bits of broken glass, and even some of the tools of his
trade about. Once he broke a window at the back of
Sinning's Hardware Store. In the alley the grey cat
crouched behind barrels filled with torn paper and
broken bottles above which flew a black swarm of flies.
Once when she was alone, and after watching a prolonged
and ineffectual outburst on the part of the baker,
Elizabeth Willard put her head down on her long white
hands and wept. After that she did not look along the
alleyway any more, but tried to forget the contest
between the bearded man and the cat. It seemed like a
rehearsal of her own life, terrible in its vividness.

In the evening when the son sat in the room with his
mother, the silence made them both feel awkward.
Darkness came on and the evening train came in at the
station. In the street below feet tramped up and down
upon a board sidewalk. In the station yard, after the
evening train had gone, there was a heavy silence.
Perhaps Skinner Leason, the express agent, moved a
truck the length of the station platform. Over on Main
Street sounded a man's voice, laughing. The door of the
express office banged. George Willard arose and
crossing the room fumbled for the doorknob. Sometimes
he knocked against a chair, making it scrape along the
floor. By the window sat the sick woman, perfectly
still, listless. Her long hands, white and bloodless,
could be seen drooping over the ends of the arms of the
chair. "I think you had better be out among the boys.
You are too much indoors," she said, striving to
relieve the embarrassment of the departure. "I thought
I would take a walk," replied George Willard, who felt
awkward and confused.

One evening in July, when the transient guests who made
the New Willard House their temporary home had become
scarce, and the hallways, lighted only by kerosene
lamps turned low, were plunged in gloom, Elizabeth
Willard had an adventure. She had been ill in bed for
several days and her son had not come to visit her. She
was alarmed. The feeble blaze of life that remained in
her body was blown into a flame by her anxiety and she
crept out of bed, dressed and hurried along the hallway
toward her son's room, shaking with exaggerated fears.
As she went along she steadied herself with her hand,
slipped along the papered walls of the hall and
breathed with difficulty. The air whistled through her
teeth. As she hurried forward she thought how foolish
she was. "He is concerned with boyish affairs," she
told herself. "Perhaps he has now begun to walk about
in the evening with girls."

Elizabeth Willard had a dread of being seen by guests
in the hotel that had once belonged to her father and
the ownership of which still stood recorded in her name
in the county courthouse. The hotel was continually
losing patronage because of its shabbiness and she
thought of herself as also shabby. Her own room was in
an obscure corner and when she felt able to work she
voluntarily worked among the beds, preferring the labor
that could be done when the guests were abroad seeking
trade among the merchants of Winesburg.

By the door of her son's room the mother knelt upon the
floor and listened for some sound from within. When she
heard the boy moving about and talking in low tones a
smile came to her lips. George Willard had a habit of
talking aloud to himself and to hear him doing so had
always given his mother a peculiar pleasure. The habit
in him, she felt, strengthened the secret bond that
existed between them. A thousand times she had
whispered to herself of the matter. "He is groping
about, trying to find himself," she thought. "He is not
a dull clod, all words and smartness. Within him there
is a secret something that is striving to grow. It is
the thing I let be killed in myself."

In the darkness in the hallway by the door the sick
woman arose and started again toward her own room. She
was afraid that the door would open and the boy come
upon her. When she had reached a safe distance and was
about to turn a corner into a second hallway she
stopped and bracing herself with her hands waited,
thinking to shake off a trembling fit of weakness that
had come upon her. The presence of the boy in the room
had made her happy. In her bed, during the long hours
alone, the little fears that had visited her had become
giants. Now they were all gone. "When I get back to my
room I shall sleep," she murmured gratefully.

But Elizabeth Willard was not to return to her bed and
to sleep. As she stood trembling in the darkness the
door of her son's room opened and the boy's father, Tom
Willard, stepped out. In the light that steamed out at
the door he stood with the knob in his hand and talked.
What he said infuriated the woman.

Tom Willard was ambitious for his son. He had always
thought of himself as a successful man, although
nothing he had ever done had turned out successfully.
However, when he was out of sight of the New Willard
House and had no fear of coming upon his wife, he
swaggered and began to dramatize himself as one of the
chief men of the town. He wanted his son to succeed. He
it was who had secured for the boy the position on the
Winesburg Eagle. Now, with a ring of earnestness in his
voice, he was advising concerning some course of
conduct. "I tell you what, George, you've got to wake
up," he said sharply. "Will Henderson has spoken to me
three times concerning the matter. He says you go along
for hours not hearing when you are spoken to and acting
like a gawky girl. What ails you?" Tom Willard laughed
good-naturedly. "Well, I guess you'll get over it," he
said. "I told Will that. You're not a fool and you're
not a woman. You're Tom Willard's son and you'll wake
up. I'm not afraid. What you say clears things up. If
being a newspaper man had put the notion of becoming a
writer into your mind that's all right. Only I guess
you'll have to wake up to do that too, eh?"

Tom Willard went briskly along the hallway and down a
flight of stairs to the office. The woman in the
darkness could hear him laughing and talking with a
guest who was striving to wear away a dull evening by
dozing in a chair by the office door. She returned to
the door of her son's room. The weakness had passed
from her body as by a miracle and she stepped boldly
along. A thousand ideas raced through her head. When
she heard the scraping of a chair and the sound of a
pen scratching upon paper, she again turned and went
back along the hallway to her own room.

A definite determination had come into the mind of the
defeated wife of the Winesburg hotel keeper. The
determination was the result of long years of quiet and
rather ineffectual thinking. "Now," she told herself,
"I will act. There is something threatening my boy and
I will ward it off." The fact that the conversation
between Tom Willard and his son had been rather quiet
and natural, as though an understanding existed between
them, maddened her. Although for years she had hated
her husband, her hatred had always before been a quite
impersonal thing. He had been merely a part of
something else that she hated. Now, and by the few
words at the door, he had become the thing personified.
In the darkness of her own room she clenched her fists
and glared about. Going to a cloth bag that hung on a
nail by the wall she took out a long pair of sewing
scissors and held them in her hand like a dagger. "I
will stab him," she said aloud. "He has chosen to be
the voice of evil and I will kill him. When I have
killed him something will snap within myself and I will
die also. It will be a release for all of us."

In her girlhood and before her marriage with Tom
Willard, Elizabeth had borne a somewhat shaky
reputation in Winesburg. For years she had been what is
called "stage-struck" and had paraded through the
streets with traveling men guests at her father's
hotel, wearing loud clothes and urging them to tell her
of life in the cities out of which they had come. Once
she startled the town by putting on men's clothes and
riding a bicycle down Main Street.

In her own mind the tall dark girl had been in those
days much confused. A great restlessness was in her and
it expressed itself in two ways. First there was an
uneasy desire for change, for some big definite
movement to her life. It was this feeling that had
turned her mind to the stage. She dreamed of joining
some company and wandering over the world, seeing
always new faces and giving something out of herself to
all people. Sometimes at night she was quite beside
herself with the thought, but when she tried to talk of
the matter to the members of the theatrical companies
that came to Winesburg and stopped at her father's
hotel, she got nowhere. They did not seem to know what
she meant, or if she did get something of her passion
expressed, they only laughed. "It's not like that,"
they said. "It's as dull and uninteresting as this
here. Nothing comes of it."

With the traveling men when she walked about with them,
and later with Tom Willard, it was quite different.
Always they seemed to understand and sympathize with
her. On the side streets of the village, in the
darkness under the trees, they took hold of her hand
and she thought that something unexpressed in herself
came forth and became a part of an unexpressed
something in them.

And then there was the second expression of her
restlessness. When that came she felt for a time
released and happy. She did not blame the men who
walked with her and later she did not blame Tom
Willard. It was always the same, beginning with kisses
and ending, after strange wild emotions, with peace and
then sobbing repentance. When she sobbed she put her
hand upon the face of the man and had always the same
thought. Even though he were large and bearded she
thought he had become suddenly a little boy. She
wondered why he did not sob also.

In her room, tucked away in a corner of the old Willard
House, Elizabeth Willard lighted a lamp and put it on a
dressing table that stood by the door. A thought had
come into her mind and she went to a closet and brought
out a small square box and set it on the table. The box
contained material for make-up and had been left with
other things by a theatrical company that had once been
stranded in Winesburg. Elizabeth Willard had decided
that she would be beautiful. Her hair was still black
and there was a great mass of it braided and coiled
about her head. The scene that was to take place in the
office below began to grow in her mind. No ghostly
worn-out figure should confront Tom Willard, but
something quite unexpected and startling. Tall and with
dusky cheeks and hair that fell in a mass from her
shoulders, a figure should come striding down the
stairway before the startled loungers in the hotel
office. The figure would be silent--it would be swift
and terrible. As a tigress whose cub had been
threatened would she appear, coming out of the shadows,
stealing noiselessly along and holding the long wicked
scissors in her hand.

With a little broken sob in her throat, Elizabeth
Willard blew out the light that stood upon the table
and stood weak and trembling in the darkness. The
strength that had been as a miracle in her body left
and she half reeled across the floor, clutching at the
back of the chair in which she had spent so many long
days staring out over the tin roofs into the main
street of Winesburg. In the hallway there was the sound
of footsteps and George Willard came in at the door.
Sitting in a chair beside his mother he began to talk.
"I'm going to get out of here," he said. "I don't know
where I shall go or what I shall do but I am going
away."

The woman in the chair waited and trembled. An impulse
came to her. "I suppose you had better wake up," she
said. "You think that? You will go to the city and make
money, eh? It will be better for you, you think, to be
a business man, to be brisk and smart and alive?" She
waited and trembled.

The son shook his head. "I suppose I can't make you
understand, but oh, I wish I could," he said earnestly.
"I can't even talk to father about it. I don't try.
There isn't any use. I don't know what I shall do. I
just want to go away and look at people and think."

Silence fell upon the room where the boy and woman sat
together. Again, as on the other evenings, they were
embarrassed. After a time the boy tried again to talk.
"I suppose it won't be for a year or two but I've been
thinking about it," he said, rising and going toward
the door. "Something father said makes it sure that I
shall have to go away." He fumbled with the doorknob.
In the room the silence became unbearable to the woman.
She wanted to cry out with joy because of the words
that had come from the lips of her son, but the
expression of joy had become impossible to her. "I
think you had better go out among the boys. You are too
much indoors," she said. "I thought I would go for a
little walk," replied the son stepping awkwardly out of
the room and closing the door.

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

completion: Elizabeth Willard is George Willard's mother and wife of Tom Willard. She manages their disorderly hotel with disinterest and slovenliness. Her husband, who is a brisk militant-looking man, tries as best as possible to put his wife and the hotel out of his mind. His passion is village politics and he dreams of becoming the governor. Elizabeth shares an unexpressed bond of sympathy with her son. Though their communion, outwardly, is just a formal thing, deep within; she is fiercely possessive of him. One evening while Elizabeth is ill in bed, though her son does not come to visit her alarmed and anxious as she expects him to, she goes over to his room to check on him and overhears him talking to her husband. Her husband, in his wish to see his son succeed in life, secures a position, for him on the 'Winesburg Eagle' the local newspaper. The realization that her husband and her son have a congenial relationship maddens her and pushes her to a decision of killing her husband. She then plans out her act. Her stage background goads her to dress herself up for her final act. She imagines herself all beautiful and stately stealing noiselessly with a pair of scissors in her hand. Just then George comes up to her room and begins talking to her from his words she realizes that there is no great bonding between father and son. The joy in her heart is inexpressible. But very mundanely, she merely tells him to go out and take a walk to freshen himself.


prompt:
Chapter: THE PHILOSOPHER

Doctor Parcival was a large man with a drooping mouth
covered by a yellow mustache. He always wore a dirty
white waistcoat out of the pockets of which protruded a
number of the kind of black cigars known as stogies.
His teeth were black and irregular and there was
something strange about his eyes. The lid of the left
eye twitched; it fell down and snapped up; it was
exactly as though the lid of the eye were a window
shade and someone stood inside the doctor's head
playing with the cord.

Doctor Parcival had a liking for the boy, George
Willard. It began when George had been working for a
year on the Winesburg Eagle and the acquaintanceship
was entirely a matter of the doctor's own making.

In the late afternoon Will Henderson, owner and editor
of the Eagle, went over to Tom Willy's saloon. Along an
alleyway he went and slipping in at the back door of
the saloon began drinking a drink made of a combination
of sloe gin and soda water. Will Henderson was a
sensualist and had reached the age of forty-five. He
imagined the gin renewed the youth in him. Like most
sensualists he enjoyed talking of women, and for an
hour he lingered about gossiping with Tom Willy. The
saloon keeper was a short, broad-shouldered man with
peculiarly marked hands. That flaming kind of birthmark
that sometimes paints with red the faces of men and
women had touched with red Tom Willy's fingers and the
backs of his hands. As he stood by the bar talking to
Will Henderson he rubbed the hands together. As he grew
more and more excited the red of his fingers deepened.
It was as though the hands had been dipped in blood
that had dried and faded.

As Will Henderson stood at the bar looking at the red
hands and talking of women, his assistant, George
Willard, sat in the office of the Winesburg Eagle and
listened to the talk of Doctor Parcival.

Doctor Parcival appeared immediately after Will
Henderson had disappeared. One might have supposed that
the doctor had been watching from his office window and
had seen the editor going along the alleyway. Coming in
at the front door and finding himself a chair, he
lighted one of the stogies and crossing his legs began
to talk. He seemed intent upon convincing the boy of
the advisability of adopting a line of conduct that he
was himself unable to define.

"If you have your eyes open you will see that although
I call myself a doctor I have mighty few patients," he
began. "There is a reason for that. It is not an
accident and it is not because I do not know as much of
medicine as anyone here. I do not want patients. The
reason, you see, does not appear on the surface. It
lies in fact in my character, which has, if you think
about it, many strange turns. Why I want to talk to you
of the matter I don't know. I might keep still and get
more credit in your eyes. I have a desire to make you
admire me, that's a fact. I don't know why. That's why
I talk. It's very amusing, eh?"

Sometimes the doctor launched into long tales
concerning himself. To the boy the tales were very real
and full of meaning. He began to admire the fat
unclean-looking man and, in the afternoon when Will
Henderson had gone, looked forward with keen interest
to the doctor's coming.

Doctor Parcival had been in Winesburg about five years.
He came from Chicago and when he arrived was drunk and
got into a fight with Albert Longworth, the baggageman.
The fight concerned a trunk and ended by the doctor's
being escorted to the village lockup. When he was
released he rented a room above a shoe-repairing shop
at the lower end of Main Street and put out the sign
that announced himself as a doctor. Although he had but
few patients and these of the poorer sort who were
unable to pay, he seemed to have plenty of money for
his needs. He slept in the office that was unspeakably
dirty and dined at Biff Carter's lunch room in a small
frame building opposite the railroad station. In the
summer the lunch room was filled with flies and Biff
Carter's white apron was more dirty than his floor.
Doctor Parcival did not mind. Into the lunch room he
stalked and deposited twenty cents upon the counter.
"Feed me what you wish for that," he said laughing.
"Use up food that you wouldn't otherwise sell. It makes
no difference to me. I am a man of distinction, you
see. Why should I concern myself with what I eat."

The tales that Doctor Parcival told George Willard
began nowhere and ended nowhere. Sometimes the boy
thought they must all be inventions, a pack of lies.
And then again he was convinced that they contained the
very essence of truth.

"I was a reporter like you here," Doctor Parcival
began. "It was in a town in Iowa--or was it in
Illinois? I don't remember and anyway it makes no
difference. Perhaps I am trying to conceal my identity
and don't want to be very definite. Have you ever
thought it strange that I have money for my needs
although I do nothing? I may have stolen a great sum of
money or been involved in a murder before I came here.
There is food for thought in that, eh? If you were a
really smart newspaper reporter you would look me up.
In Chicago there was a Doctor Cronin who was murdered.
Have you heard of that? Some men murdered him and put
him in a trunk. In the early morning they hauled the
trunk across the city. It sat on the back of an express
wagon and they were on the seat as unconcerned as
anything. Along they went through quiet streets where
everyone was asleep. The sun was just coming up over
the lake. Funny, eh--just to think of them smoking
pipes and chattering as they drove along as unconcerned
as I am now. Perhaps I was one of those men. That would
be a strange turn of things, now wouldn't it, eh?"
Again Doctor Parcival began his tale: "Well, anyway
there I was, a reporter on a paper just as you are
here, running about and getting little items to print.
My mother was poor. She took in washing. Her dream was
to make me a Presbyterian minister and I was studying
with that end in view.

"My father had been insane for a number of years. He
was in an asylum over at Dayton, Ohio. There you see I
have let it slip out! All of this took place in Ohio,
right here in Ohio. There is a clew if you ever get the
notion of looking me up.

"I was going to tell you of my brother. That's the
object of all this. That's what I'm getting at. My
brother was a railroad painter and had a job on the Big
Four. You know that road runs through Ohio here. With
other men he lived in a box car and away they went from
town to town painting the railroad property-switches,
crossing gates, bridges, and stations.

"The Big Four paints its stations a nasty orange color.
How I hated that color! My brother was always covered
with it. On pay days he used to get drunk and come home
wearing his paint-covered clothes and bringing his
money with him. He did not give it to mother but laid
it in a pile on our kitchen table.

"About the house he went in the clothes covered with
the nasty orange colored paint. I can see the picture.
My mother, who was small and had red, sad-looking eyes,
would come into the house from a little shed at the
back. That's where she spent her time over the washtub
scrubbing people's dirty clothes. In she would come and
stand by the table, rubbing her eyes with her apron
that was covered with soap-suds.

"'Don't touch it! Don't you dare touch that money,' my
brother roared, and then he himself took five or ten
dollars and went tramping off to the saloons. When he
had spent what he had taken he came back for more. He
never gave my mother any money at all but stayed about
until he had spent it all, a little at a time. Then he
went back to his job with the painting crew on the
railroad. After he had gone things began to arrive at
our house, groceries and such things. Sometimes there
would be a dress for mother or a pair of shoes for me.

"Strange, eh? My mother loved my brother much more than
she did me, although he never said a kind word to
either of us and always raved up and down threatening
us if we dared so much as touch the money that
sometimes lay on the table three days.

"We got along pretty well. I studied to be a minister
and prayed. I was a regular ass about saying prayers.
You should have heard me. When my father died I prayed
all night, just as I did sometimes when my brother was
in town drinking and going about buying the things for
us. In the evening after supper I knelt by the table
where the money lay and prayed for hours. When no one
was looking I stole a dollar or two and put it in my
pocket. That makes me laugh now but then it was
terrible. It was on my mind all the time. I got six
dollars a week from my job on the paper and always took
it straight home to mother. The few dollars I stole
from my brother's pile I spent on myself, you know, for
trifles, candy and cigarettes and such things.

"When my father died at the asylum over at Dayton, I
went over there. I borrowed some money from the man for
whom I worked and went on the train at night. It was
raining. In the asylum they treated me as though I were
a king.

"The men who had jobs in the asylum had found out I was
a newspaper reporter. That made them afraid. There had
been some negligence, some carelessness, you see, when
father was ill. They thought perhaps I would write it
up in the paper and make a fuss. I never intended to do
anything of the kind.

"Anyway, in I went to the room where my father lay dead
and blessed the dead body. I wonder what put that
notion into my head. Wouldn't my brother, the painter,
have laughed, though. There I stood over the dead body
and spread out my hands. The superintendent of the
asylum and some of his helpers came in and stood about
looking sheepish. It was very amusing. I spread out my
hands and said, 'Let peace brood over this carcass.'
That's what I said."

Jumping to his feet and breaking off the tale, Doctor
Parcival began to walk up and down in the office of the
Winesburg Eagle where George Willard sat listening. He
was awkward and, as the office was small, continually
knocked against things. "What a fool I am to be
talking," he said. "That is not my object in coming
here and forcing my acquaintanceship upon you. I have
something else in mind. You are a reporter just as I
was once and you have attracted my attention. You may
end by becoming just such another fool. I want to warn
you and keep on warning you. That's why I seek you
out."

Doctor Parcival began talking of George Willard's
attitude toward men. It seemed to the boy that the man
had but one object in view, to make everyone seem
despicable. "I want to fill you with hatred and
contempt so that you will be a superior being," he
declared. "Look at my brother. There was a fellow, eh?
He despised everyone, you see. You have no idea with
what contempt he looked upon mother and me. And was he
not our superior? You know he was. You have not seen
him and yet I have made you feel that. I have given you
a sense of it. He is dead. Once when he was drunk he
lay down on the tracks and the car in which he lived
with the other painters ran over him."

            *       *       *

One day in August Doctor Parcival had an adventure in
Winesburg. For a month George Willard had been going
each morning to spend an hour in the doctor's office.
The visits came about through a desire on the part of
the doctor to read to the boy from the pages of a book
he was in the process of writing. To write the book
Doctor Parcival declared was the object of his coming
to Winesburg to live.

On the morning in August before the coming of the boy,
an incident had happened in the doctor's office. There
had been an accident on Main Street. A team of horses
had been frightened by a train and had run away. A
little girl, the daughter of a farmer, had been thrown
from a buggy and killed.

On Main Street everyone had become excited and a cry
for doctors had gone up. All three of the active
practitioners of the town had come quickly but had
found the child dead. From the crowd someone had run to
the office of Doctor Parcival who had bluntly refused
to go down out of his office to the dead child. The
useless cruelty of his refusal had passed unnoticed.
Indeed, the man who had come up the stairway to summon
him had hurried away without hearing the refusal.

All of this, Doctor Parcival did not know and when
George Willard came to his office he found the man
shaking with terror. "What I have done will arouse the
people of this town," he declared excitedly. "Do I not
know human nature? Do I not know what will happen? Word
of my refusal will be whispered about. Presently men
will get together in groups and talk of it. They will
come here. We will quarrel and there will be talk of
hanging. Then they will come again bearing a rope in
their hands."

Doctor Parcival shook with fright. "I have a
presentiment," he declared emphatically. "It may be
that what I am talking about will not occur this
morning. It may be put off until tonight but I will be
hanged. Everyone will get excited. I will be hanged to
a lamp-post on Main Street."

Going to the door of his dirty office, Doctor Parcival
looked timidly down the stairway leading to the street.
When he returned the fright that had been in his eyes
was beginning to be replaced by doubt. Coming on tiptoe
across the room he tapped George Willard on the
shoulder. "If not now, sometime," he whispered, shaking
his head. "In the end I will be crucified, uselessly
crucified."

Doctor Parcival began to plead with George Willard.
"You must pay attention to me," he urged. "If something
happens perhaps you will be able to write the book that
I may never get written. The idea is very simple, so
simple that if you are not careful you will forget it.
It is this--that everyone in the world is Christ and
they are all crucified. That's what I want to say.
Don't you forget that. Whatever happens, don't you dare
let yourself forget."

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

completion: George Willard is an assistant to Will Henderson, owner and editor of the 'Eagle'. In the afternoons Will Henderson goes over to Tom Willy's saloon for a drink. Immediately after the departure of Will Henderson, Doctor Parcival appears at George's office to talk to him. The Doctor usually launches into long tales mostly concerning himself. He claims that he too was once a reporter, like George. His brother was a railroad painter and would come home covered in a nasty orange color. On paydays, he would get drunk, lay all his money on the table, and shout at anybody who tried to touch the money. After he was gone, groceries and other things would begin arriving in the house. This was his way of showing that he cared for his family and didn't mind spending money on his family. Doctor Parcival spoke about George's attitude towards men and would goad him to feel hatred and contempt for others, in order to become a superior being and to substantiate his lectures he always gave the example of his own brother. One day, an accident took place outside the doctor's office a little girl had been thrown from a buggy and killed. Three practitioners had reached the spot but had found the child dead. Doctor Parcival too had been briefly summoned but had refused to come and help. And belatedly he felt anxious for his act and began to believe that he is going to be executed for his conduct. His fright was so great that he called George over and entreated him to complete the book he had been working on. The idea, which should be emphasized, is that everyone in the world is Christ and they are all crucified, is what the doctor tried to convey.


prompt:
Chapter: NOBODY KNOWS

Looking cautiously about, George Willard arose from his
desk in the office of the Winesburg Eagle and went
hurriedly out at the back door. The night was warm and
cloudy and although it was not yet eight o'clock, the
alleyway back of the Eagle office was pitch dark. A
team of horses tied to a post somewhere in the darkness
stamped on the hard-baked ground. A cat sprang from
under George Willard's feet and ran away into the
night. The young man was nervous. All day he had gone
about his work like one dazed by a blow. In the
alleyway he trembled as though with fright.

In the darkness George Willard walked along the
alleyway, going carefully and cautiously. The back
doors of the Winesburg stores were open and he could
see men sitting about under the store lamps. In
Myerbaum's Notion Store Mrs. Willy the saloon keeper's
wife stood by the counter with a basket on her arm. Sid
Green the clerk was waiting on her. He leaned over the
counter and talked earnestly.

George Willard crouched and then jumped through the
path of light that came out at the door. He began to
run forward in the darkness. Behind Ed Griffith's
saloon old Jerry Bird the town drunkard lay asleep on
the ground. The runner stumbled over the sprawling
legs. He laughed brokenly.

George Willard had set forth upon an adventure. All day
he had been trying to make up his mind to go through
with the adventure and now he was acting. In the office
of the Winesburg Eagle he had been sitting since six
o'clock trying to think.

There had been no decision. He had just jumped to his
feet, hurried past Will Henderson who was reading proof
in the printshop and started to run along the alleyway.

Through street after street went George Willard,
avoiding the people who passed. He crossed and
recrossed the road. When he passed a street lamp he
pulled his hat down over his face. He did not dare
think. In his mind there was a fear but it was a new
kind of fear. He was afraid the adventure on which he
had set out would be spoiled, that he would lose
courage and turn back.

George Willard found Louise Trunnion in the kitchen of
her father's house. She was washing dishes by the light
of a kerosene lamp. There she stood behind the screen
door in the little shedlike kitchen at the back of the
house. George Willard stopped by a picket fence and
tried to control the shaking of his body. Only a narrow
potato patch separated him from the adventure. Five
minutes passed before he felt sure enough of himself to
call to her. "Louise! Oh, Louise!" he called. The cry
stuck in his throat. His voice became a hoarse whisper.

Louise Trunnion came out across the potato patch
holding the dish cloth in her hand. "How do you know I
want to go out with you," she said sulkily. "What makes
you so sure?"

George Willard did not answer. In silence the two
stood in the darkness with the fence between them. "You
go on along," she said. "Pa's in there. I'll come
along. You wait by Williams' barn."

The young newspaper reporter had received a letter from
Louise Trunnion. It had come that morning to the office
of the Winesburg Eagle. The letter was brief. "I'm
yours if you want me," it said. He thought it annoying
that in the darkness by the fence she had pretended
there was nothing between them. "She has a nerve! Well,
gracious sakes, she has a nerve," he muttered as he
went along the street and passed a row of vacant lots
where corn grew. The corn was shoulder high and had
been planted right down to the sidewalk.

When Louise Trunnion came out of the front door of her
house she still wore the gingham dress in which she had
been washing dishes. There was no hat on her head. The
boy could see her standing with the doorknob in her
hand talking to someone within, no doubt to old Jake
Trunnion, her father. Old Jake was half deaf and she
shouted. The door closed and everything was dark and
silent in the little side street. George Willard
trembled more violently than ever.

In the shadows by Williams' barn George and Louise
stood, not daring to talk. She was not particularly
comely and there was a black smudge on the side of her
nose. George thought she must have rubbed her nose with
her finger after she had been handling some of the
kitchen pots.

The young man began to laugh nervously. "It's warm,"
he said. He wanted to touch her with his hand. "I'm not
very bold," he thought. Just to touch the folds of the
soiled gingham dress would, he decided, be an exquisite
pleasure. She began to quibble. "You think you're
better than I am. Don't tell me, I guess I know," she
said drawing closer to him.

A flood of words burst from George Willard. He
remembered the look that had lurked in the girl's eyes
when they had met on the streets and thought of the
note she had written. Doubt left him. The whispered
tales concerning her that had gone about town gave him
confidence. He became wholly the male, bold and
aggressive. In his heart there was no sympathy for her.
"Ah, come on, it'll be all right. There won't be anyone
know anything. How can they know?" he urged.

They began to walk along a narrow brick sidewalk
between the cracks of which tall weeds grew. Some of
the bricks were missing and the sidewalk was rough and
irregular. He took hold of her hand that was also rough
and thought it delightfully small. "I can't go far,"
she said and her voice was quiet, unperturbed.

They crossed a bridge that ran over a tiny stream and
passed another vacant lot in which corn grew. The
street ended. In the path at the side of the road they
were compelled to walk one behind the other. Will
Overton's berry field lay beside the road and there was
a pile of boards. "Will is going to build a shed to
store berry crates here," said George and they sat down
upon the boards.

            *       *       *

When George Willard got back into Main Street it was
past ten o'clock and had begun to rain. Three times he
walked up and down the length of Main Street. Sylvester
West's Drug Store was still open and he went in and
bought a cigar. When Shorty Crandall the clerk came out
at the door with him he was pleased. For five minutes
the two stood in the shelter of the store awning and
talked. George Willard felt satisfied. He had wanted
more than anything else to talk to some man. Around a
corner toward the New Willard House he went whistling
softly.

On the sidewalk at the side of Winney's Dry Goods Store
where there was a high board fence covered with circus
pictures, he stopped whistling and stood perfectly
still in the darkness, attentive, listening as though
for a voice calling his name. Then again he laughed
nervously. "She hasn't got anything on me. Nobody
knows," he muttered doggedly and went on his way.

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

completion: George Willard hurriedly leaves his desk at the 'Eagle' office and makes his way through the night. All day at the office, he had been in a daze thought and eventually at six' o clock he finally decides to set forth upon his adventure. George passes street after street, avoiding known faces until he reaches his father's house he finds Louise Trunnion the servant girl, in the kitchen. On seeing him, she suddenly retorts that he shouldn't have been so certain that she would have accompanied her out, George is flummoxed, since it was Louise who has earlier sent him a letter with the terse message, "I'm yours if you want me." Annoyed at her impertinence, George walks out, but Louise follows him. They reach a secluded barn and stand still, facing each other. George is excited by her touch. The whispered tale concerning her that had gone about town gives him confidence. Urging her that no one will come to know, they walk ahead, till they reach a field and they lie down besides each other. When George returns back to Main Street, it is after ten-o clock He feels satisfied and begins to whistle softly. As he goes ahead, he however mutters uneasily to himself, "She hasn't got anything on me. Nobody knows."