prompt:
Chapter: DRINK

Tom Foster came to Winesburg from Cincinnati when he
was still young and could get many new impressions. His
grandmother had been raised on a farm near the town and
as a young girl had gone to school there when Winesburg
was a village of twelve or fifteen houses clustered
about a general store on the Trunion Pike.

What a life the old woman had led since she went away
from the frontier settlement and what a strong, capable
little old thing she was! She had been in Kansas, in
Canada, and in New York City, traveling about with her
husband, a mechanic, before he died. Later she went to
stay with her daughter, who had also married a mechanic
and lived in Covington, Kentucky, across the river from
Cincinnati.

Then began the hard years for Tom Foster's grandmother.
First her son-in-law was killed by a policeman during a
strike and then Tom's mother became an invalid and died
also. The grandmother had saved a little money, but it
was swept away by the illness of the daughter and by
the cost of the two funerals. She became a half
worn-out old woman worker and lived with the grandson
above a junk shop on a side street in Cincinnati. For
five years she scrubbed the floors in an office
building and then got a place as dish washer in a
restaurant. Her hands were all twisted out of shape.
When she took hold of a mop or a broom handle the hands
looked like the dried stems of an old creeping vine
clinging to a tree.

The old woman came back to Winesburg as soon as she got
the chance. One evening as she was coming home from
work she found a pocket-book containing thirty-seven
dollars, and that opened the way. The trip was a great
adventure for the boy. It was past seven o'clock at
night when the grandmother came home with the
pocket-book held tightly in her old hands and she was
so excited she could scarcely speak. She insisted on
leaving Cincinnati that night, saying that if they
stayed until morning the owner of the money would be
sure to find them out and make trouble. Tom, who was
then sixteen years old, had to go trudging off to the
station with the old woman, bearing all of their
earthly belongings done up in a worn-out blanket and
slung across his back. By his side walked the
grandmother urging him forward. Her toothless old mouth
twitched nervously, and when Tom grew weary and wanted
to put the pack down at a street crossing, she snatched
it up and if he had not prevented would have slung it
across her own back. When they got into the train and
it had run out of the city she was as delighted as a
girl and talked as the boy had never heard her talk
before.

All through the night as the train rattled along, the
grandmother told Tom tales of Winesburg and of how he
would enjoy his life working in the fields and shooting
wild things in the woods there. She could not believe
that the tiny village of fifty years before had grown
into a thriving town in her absence, and in the morning
when the train came to Winesburg did not want to get
off. "It isn't what I thought. It may be hard for you
here," she said, and then the train went on its way and
the two stood confused, not knowing where to turn, in
the presence of Albert Longworth, the Winesburg baggage
master.

But Tom Foster did get along all right. He was one to
get along anywhere. Mrs. White, the banker's wife,
employed his grandmother to work in the kitchen and he
got a place as stable boy in the banker's new brick
barn.

In Winesburg servants were hard to get. The woman who
wanted help in her housework employed a "hired girl"
who insisted on sitting at the table with the family.
Mrs. White was sick of hired girls and snatched at the
chance to get hold of the old city woman. She furnished
a room for the boy Tom upstairs in the barn. "He can
mow the lawn and run errands when the horses do not
need attention," she explained to her husband.

Tom Foster was rather small for his age and had a large
head covered with stiff black hair that stood straight
up. The hair emphasized the bigness of his head. His
voice was the softest thing imaginable, and he was
himself so gentle and quiet that he slipped into the
life of the town without attracting the least bit of
attention.

One could not help wondering where Tom Foster got his
gentleness. In Cincinnati he had lived in a
neighborhood where gangs of tough boys prowled through
the streets, and all through his early formative years
he ran about with tough boys. For a while he was a
messenger for a telegraph company and delivered
messages in a neighborhood sprinkled with houses of
prostitution. The women in the houses knew and loved
Tom Foster and the tough boys in the gangs loved him
also.

He never asserted himself. That was one thing that
helped him escape. In an odd way he stood in the shadow
of the wall of life, was meant to stand in the shadow.
He saw the men and women in the houses of lust, sensed
their casual and horrible love affairs, saw boys
fighting and listened to their tales of thieving and
drunkenness, unmoved and strangely unaffected.

Once Tom did steal. That was while he still lived in
the city. The grandmother was ill at the time and he
himself was out of work. There was nothing to eat in
the house, and so he went into a harness shop on a side
street and stole a dollar and seventy-five cents out of
the cash drawer.

The harness shop was run by an old man with a long
mustache. He saw the boy lurking about and thought
nothing of it. When he went out into the street to talk
to a teamster Tom opened the cash drawer and taking the
money walked away. Later he was caught and his
grandmother settled the matter by offering to come
twice a week for a month and scrub the shop. The boy
was ashamed, but he was rather glad, too. "It is all
right to be ashamed and makes me understand new
things," he said to the grandmother, who didn't know
what the boy was talking about but loved him so much
that it didn't matter whether she understood or not.

For a year Tom Foster lived in the banker's stable and
then lost his place there. He didn't take very good
care of the horses and he was a constant source of
irritation to the banker's wife. She told him to mow
the lawn and he forgot. Then she sent him to the store
or to the post office and he did not come back but
joined a group of men and boys and spent the whole
afternoon with them, standing about, listening and
occasionally, when addressed, saying a few words. As in
the city in the houses of prostitution and with the
rowdy boys running through the streets at night, so in
Winesburg among its citizens he had always the power to
be a part of and yet distinctly apart from the life
about him.

After Tom lost his place at Banker White's he did not
live with his grandmother, although often in the
evening she came to visit him. He rented a room at the
rear of a little frame building belonging to old Rufus
Whiting. The building was on Duane Street, just off
Main Street, and had been used for years as a law
office by the old man, who had become too feeble and
forgetful for the practice of his profession but did
not realize his inefficiency. He liked Tom and let him
have the room for a dollar a month. In the late
afternoon when the lawyer had gone home the boy had the
place to himself and spent hours lying on the floor by
the stove and thinking of things. In the evening the
grandmother came and sat in the lawyer's chair to smoke
a pipe while Tom remained silent, as he always did in
the presence of everyone.

Often the old woman talked with great vigor. Sometimes
she was angry about some happening at the banker's
house and scolded away for hours. Out of her own
earnings she bought a mop and regularly scrubbed the
lawyer's office. Then when the place was spotlessly
clean and smelled clean she lighted her clay pipe and
she and Tom had a smoke together. "When you get ready
to die then I will die also," she said to the boy lying
on the floor beside her chair.

Tom Foster enjoyed life in Winesburg. He did odd jobs,
such as cutting wood for kitchen stoves and mowing the
grass before houses. In late May and early June he
picked strawberries in the fields. He had time to loaf
and he enjoyed loafing. Banker White had given him a
cast-off coat which was too large for him, but his
grandmother cut it down, and he had also an overcoat,
got at the same place, that was lined with fur. The fur
was worn away in spots, but the coat was warm and in
the winter Tom slept in it. He thought his method of
getting along good enough and was happy and satisfied
with the way life in Winesburg had turned out for him.

The most absurd little things made Tom Foster happy.
That, I suppose, was why people loved him. In Hern's
Grocery they would be roasting coffee on Friday
afternoon, preparatory to the Saturday rush of trade,
and the rich odor invaded lower Main Street. Tom Foster
appeared and sat on a box at the rear of the store. For
an hour he did not move but sat perfectly still,
filling his being with the spicy odor that made him
half drunk with happiness. "I like it," he said gently.
"It makes me think of things far away, places and
things like that."

One night Tom Foster got drunk. That came about in a
curious way. He never had been drunk before, and indeed
in all his life had never taken a drink of anything
intoxicating, but he felt he needed to be drunk that
one time and so went and did it.

In Cincinnati, when he lived there, Tom had found out
many things, things about ugliness and crime and lust.
Indeed, he knew more of these things than anyone else
in Winesburg. The matter of sex in particular had
presented itself to him in a quite horrible way and had
made a deep impression on his mind. He thought, after
what he had seen of the women standing before the
squalid houses on cold nights and the look he had seen
in the eyes of the men who stopped to talk to them,
that he would put sex altogether out of his own life.
One of the women of the neighborhood tempted him once
and he went into a room with her. He never forgot the
smell of the room nor the greedy look that came into
the eyes of the woman. It sickened him and in a very
terrible way left a scar on his soul. He had always
before thought of women as quite innocent things, much
like his grandmother, but after that one experience in
the room he dismissed women from his mind. So gentle
was his nature that he could not hate anything and not
being able to understand he decided to forget.

And Tom did forget until he came to Winesburg. After he
had lived there for two years something began to stir
in him. On all sides he saw youth making love and he
was himself a youth. Before he knew what had happened
he was in love also. He fell in love with Helen White,
daughter of the man for whom he had worked, and found
himself thinking of her at night.

That was a problem for Tom and he settled it in his own
way. He let himself think of Helen White whenever her
figure came into his mind and only concerned himself
with the manner of his thoughts. He had a fight, a
quiet determined little fight of his own, to keep his
desires in the channel where he thought they belonged,
but on the whole he was victorious.

And then came the spring night when he got drunk. Tom
was wild on that night. He was like an innocent young
buck of the forest that has eaten of some maddening
weed. The thing began, ran its course, and was ended in
one night, and you may be sure that no one in Winesburg
was any the worse for Tom's outbreak.

In the first place, the night was one to make a
sensitive nature drunk. The trees along the residence
streets of the town were all newly clothed in soft
green leaves, in the gardens behind the houses men were
puttering about in vegetable gardens, and in the air
there was a hush, a waiting kind of silence very
stirring to the blood.

Tom left his room on Duane Street just as the young
night began to make itself felt. First he walked
through the streets, going softly and quietly along,
thinking thoughts that he tried to put into words. He
said that Helen White was a flame dancing in the air
and that he was a little tree without leaves standing
out sharply against the sky. Then he said that she was
a wind, a strong terrible wind, coming out of the
darkness of a stormy sea and that he was a boat left on
the shore of the sea by a fisherman.

That idea pleased the boy and he sauntered along
playing with it. He went into Main Street and sat on
the curbing before Wacker's tobacco store. For an hour
he lingered about listening to the talk of men, but it
did not interest him much and he slipped away. Then he
decided to get drunk and went into Willy's saloon and
bought a bottle of whiskey. Putting the bottle into his
pocket, he walked out of town, wanting to be alone to
think more thoughts and to drink the whiskey.

Tom got drunk sitting on a bank of new grass beside the
road about a mile north of town. Before him was a white
road and at his back an apple orchard in full bloom. He
took a drink out of the bottle and then lay down on the
grass. He thought of mornings in Winesburg and of how
the stones in the graveled driveway by Banker White's
house were wet with dew and glistened in the morning
light. He thought of the nights in the barn when it
rained and he lay awake hearing the drumming of the
raindrops and smelling the warm smell of horses and of
hay. Then he thought of a storm that had gone roaring
through Winesburg several days before and, his mind
going back, he relived the night he had spent on the
train with his grandmother when the two were coming
from Cincinnati. Sharply he remembered how strange it
had seemed to sit quietly in the coach and to feel the
power of the engine hurling the train along through the
night.

Tom got drunk in a very short time. He kept taking
drinks from the bottle as the thoughts visited him and
when his head began to reel got up and walked along the
road going away from Winesburg. There was a bridge on
the road that ran out of Winesburg north to Lake Erie
and the drunken boy made his way along the road to the
bridge. There he sat down. He tried to drink again, but
when he had taken the cork out of the bottle he became
ill and put it quickly back. His head was rocking back
and forth and so he sat on the stone approach to the
bridge and sighed. His head seemed to be flying about
like a pinwheel and then projecting itself off into
space and his arms and legs flopped helplessly about.

At eleven o'clock Tom got back into town. George
Willard found him wandering about and took him into the
Eagle printshop. Then he became afraid that the drunken
boy would make a mess on the floor and helped him into
the alleyway.

The reporter was confused by Tom Foster. The drunken
boy talked of Helen White and said he had been with her
on the shore of a sea and had made love to her. George
had seen Helen White walking in the street with her
father during the evening and decided that Tom was out
of his head. A sentiment concerning Helen White that
lurked in his own heart flamed up and he became angry.
"Now you quit that," he said. "I won't let Helen
White's name be dragged into this. I won't let that
happen." He began shaking Tom's shoulder, trying to
make him understand. "You quit it," he said again.

For three hours the two young men, thus strangely
thrown together, stayed in the printshop. When he had a
little recovered George took Tom for a walk. They went
into the country and sat on a log near the edge of a
wood. Something in the still night drew them together
and when the drunken boy's head began to clear they
talked.

"It was good to be drunk," Tom Foster said. "It taught
me something. I won't have to do it again. I will think
more dearly after this. You see how it is."

George Willard did not see, but his anger concerning
Helen White passed and he felt drawn toward the pale,
shaken boy as he had never before been drawn toward
anyone. With motherly solicitude, he insisted that Tom
get to his feet and walk about. Again they went back to
the printshop and sat in silence in the darkness.

The reporter could not get the purpose of Tom Foster's
action straightened out in his mind. When Tom spoke
again of Helen White he again grew angry and began to
scold. "You quit that," he said sharply. "You haven't
been with her. What makes you say you have? What makes
you keep saying such things? Now you quit it, do you
hear?"

Tom was hurt. He couldn't quarrel with George Willard
because he was incapable of quarreling, so he got up to
go away. When George Willard was insistent he put out
his hand, laying it on the older boy's arm, and tried
to explain.

"Well," he said softly, "I don't know how it was. I was
happy. You see how that was. Helen White made me happy
and the night did too. I wanted to suffer, to be hurt
somehow. I thought that was what I should do. I wanted
to suffer, you see, because everyone suffers and does
wrong. I thought of a lot of things to do, but they
wouldn't work. They all hurt someone else."

Tom Foster's voice arose, and for once in his life he
became almost excited. "It was like making love, that's
what I mean," he explained. "Don't you see how it is?
It hurt me to do what I did and made everything
strange. That's why I did it. I'm glad, too. It taught
me something, that's it, that's what I wanted. Don't
you understand? I wanted to learn things, you see.
That's why I did it."

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

completion: Toms grandmother raises Tom Foster. The grandmother has had a tough life, going from place to place eking out a living for herself and for Tom after Tom's parent's death. They get an opportunity to return back to Winesburg when she finds a pocket book containing some money. So both pack their belongings, and return to the grandmother's hometown. Tom is quiet, unassertive boy, who fits into any background, be it among the tough gang boys of Cincinnati, or the quiet folks of Winesburg. The grand mother finds work for herself at Mrs. White's house. Tom at first too works there, but then leaves it and rents a room for himself. Tom does odd jobs to fill his stomach, and otherwise just loafs around listening to people and enjoying life in Winesburg. Small and inconsequential things make him happy, like the smell of roasted coffee, or sleeping near a warm stove. One day, Tom decides to get drunk. He has seen ugliness and crime in Cincinnati and is abhorred by the sight. Sex too seemed vile to him. But here in Winesburg something has stirred in him and he finds himself in love with Helen White, his former employers' daughter. The night Tom gets drunk he gets wild. He begins talking to himself about Helen and his flame of love seems to grow brighter. By late in the night, he is thoroughly drunk when he meets George Willard. George tries to calm him down but he cannot. Though when he hears Tom speak about Helen, he gets infuriated and insists that he shouldn't speak about her. Finally Tom explains, in his drunken state that it is his state of happiness that speaks such thoughts. Getting drunk has been good for his system. He wanted to learn suffering but didn't want to hurt any one else. So he got drunk and this also teaches him something.


prompt:
Chapter: DEATH

The stairway leading up to Doctor Reefy's office, in
the Heffner Block above the Paris Dry Goods store, was
but dimly lighted. At the head of the stairway hung a
lamp with a dirty chimney that was fastened by a
bracket to the wall. The lamp had a tin reflector,
brown with rust and covered with dust. The people who
went up the stairway followed with their feet the feet
of many who had gone before. The soft boards of the
stairs had yielded under the pressure of feet and deep
hollows marked the way.

At the top of the stairway a turn to the right brought
you to the doctor's door. To the left was a dark
hallway filled with rubbish. Old chairs, carpenter's
horses, step ladders and empty boxes lay in the
darkness waiting for shins to be barked. The pile of
rubbish belonged to the Paris Dry Goods Company. When a
counter or a row of shelves in the store became
useless, clerks carried it up the stairway and threw it
on the pile.

Doctor Reefy's office was as large as a barn. A stove
with a round paunch sat in the middle of the room.
Around its base was piled sawdust, held in place by
heavy planks nailed to the floor. By the door stood a
huge table that had once been a part of the furniture
of Herrick's Clothing Store and that had been used for
displaying custom-made clothes. It was covered with
books, bottles, and surgical instruments. Near the edge
of the table lay three or four apples left by John
Spaniard, a tree nurseryman who was Doctor Reefy's
friend, and who had slipped the apples out of his
pocket as he came in at the door.

At middle age Doctor Reefy was tall and awkward. The
grey beard he later wore had not yet appeared, but on
the upper lip grew a brown mustache. He was not a
graceful man, as when he grew older, and was much
occupied with the problem of disposing of his hands and
feet.

On summer afternoons, when she had been married many
years and when her son George was a boy of twelve or
fourteen, Elizabeth Willard sometimes went up the worn
steps to Doctor Reefy's office. Already the woman's
naturally tall figure had begun to droop and to drag
itself listlessly about. Ostensibly she went to see the
doctor because of her health, but on the half dozen
occasions when she had been to see him the outcome of
the visits did not primarily concern her health. She
and the doctor talked of that but they talked most of
her life, of their two lives and of the ideas that had
come to them as they lived their lives in Winesburg.

In the big empty office the man and the woman sat
looking at each other and they were a good deal alike.
Their bodies were different, as were also the color of
their eyes, the length of their noses, and the
circumstances of their existence, but something inside
them meant the same thing, wanted the same release,
would have left the same impression on the memory of an
onlooker. Later, and when he grew older and married a
young wife, the doctor often talked to her of the hours
spent with the sick woman and expressed a good many
things he had been unable to express to Elizabeth. He
was almost a poet in his old age and his notion of what
happened took a poetic turn. "I had come to the time in
my life when prayer became necessary and so I invented
gods and prayed to them," he said. "I did not say my
prayers in words nor did I kneel down but sat perfectly
still in my chair. In the late afternoon when it was
hot and quiet on Main Street or in the winter when the
days were gloomy, the gods came into the office and I
thought no one knew about them. Then I found that this
woman Elizabeth knew, that she worshipped also the same
gods. I have a notion that she came to the office
because she thought the gods would be there but she was
happy to find herself not alone just the same. It was
an experience that cannot be explained, although I
suppose it is always happening to men and women in all
sorts of places."

            *       *       *

On the summer afternoons when Elizabeth and the doctor
sat in the office and talked of their two lives they
talked of other lives also. Sometimes the doctor made
philosophic epigrams. Then he chuckled with amusement.
Now and then after a period of silence, a word was said
or a hint given that strangely illuminated the life of
the speaker, a wish became a desire, or a dream, half
dead, flared suddenly into life. For the most part the
words came from the woman and she said them without
looking at the man.

Each time she came to see the doctor the hotel keeper's
wife talked a little more freely and after an hour or
two in his presence went down the stairway into Main
Street feeling renewed and strengthened against the
dullness of her days. With something approaching a
girlhood swing to her body she walked along, but when
she had got back to her chair by the window of her room
and when darkness had come on and a girl from the hotel
dining room brought her dinner on a tray, she let it
grow cold. Her thoughts ran away to her girlhood with
its passionate longing for adventure and she remembered
the arms of men that had held her when adventure was a
possible thing for her. Particularly she remembered one
who had for a time been her lover and who in the moment
of his passion had cried out to her more than a hundred
times, saying the same words madly over and over: "You
dear! You dear! You lovely dear!" The words, she
thought, expressed something she would have liked to
have achieved in life.

In her room in the shabby old hotel the sick wife of
the hotel keeper began to weep and, putting her hands
to her face, rocked back and forth. The words of her
one friend, Doctor Reefy, rang in her ears. "Love is
like a wind stirring the grass beneath trees on a black
night," he had said. "You must not try to make love
definite. It is the divine accident of life. If you try
to be definite and sure about it and to live beneath
the trees, where soft night winds blow, the long hot
day of disappointment comes swiftly and the gritty dust
from passing wagons gathers upon lips inflamed and made
tender by kisses."

Elizabeth Willard could not remember her mother who had
died when she was but five years old. Her girlhood had
been lived in the most haphazard manner imaginable. Her
father was a man who had wanted to be let alone and the
affairs of the hotel would not let him alone. He also
had lived and died a sick man. Every day he arose with
a cheerful face, but by ten o'clock in the morning all
the joy had gone out of his heart. When a guest
complained of the fare in the hotel dining room or one
of the girls who made up the beds got married and went
away, he stamped on the floor and swore. At night when
he went to bed he thought of his daughter growing up
among the stream of people that drifted in and out of
the hotel and was overcome with sadness. As the girl
grew older and began to walk out in the evening with
men he wanted to talk to her, but when he tried was not
successful. He always forgot what he wanted to say and
spent the time complaining of his own affairs.

In her girlhood and young womanhood Elizabeth had tried
to be a real adventurer in life. At eighteen life had
so gripped her that she was no longer a virgin but,
although she had a half dozen lovers before she married
Tom Willard, she had never entered upon an adventure
prompted by desire alone. Like all the women in the
world, she wanted a real lover. Always there was
something she sought blindly, passionately, some hidden
wonder in life. The tall beautiful girl with the
swinging stride who had walked under the trees with men
was forever putting out her hand into the darkness and
trying to get hold of some other hand. In all the
babble of words that fell from the lips of the men with
whom she adventured she was trying to find what would
be for her the true word.

Elizabeth had married Tom Willard, a clerk in her
father's hotel, because he was at hand and wanted to
marry at the time when the determination to marry came
to her. For a while, like most young girls, she thought
marriage would change the face of life. If there was in
her mind a doubt of the outcome of the marriage with
Tom she brushed it aside. Her father was ill and near
death at the time and she was perplexed because of the
meaningless outcome of an affair in which she had just
been involved. Other girls of her age in Winesburg were
marrying men she had always known, grocery clerks or
young farmers. In the evening they walked in Main
Street with their husbands and when she passed they
smiled happily. She began to think that the fact of
marriage might be full of some hidden significance.
Young wives with whom she talked spoke softly and
shyly. "It changes things to have a man of your own,"
they said.

On the evening before her marriage the perplexed girl
had a talk with her father. Later she wondered if the
hours alone with the sick man had not led to her
decision to marry. The father talked of his life and
advised the daughter to avoid being led into another
such muddle. He abused Tom Willard, and that led
Elizabeth to come to the clerk's defense. The sick man
became excited and tried to get out of bed. When she
would not let him walk about he began to complain.
"I've never been let alone," he said. "Although I've
worked hard I've not made the hotel pay. Even now I owe
money at the bank. You'll find that out when I'm gone."

The voice of the sick man became tense with
earnestness. Being unable to arise, he put out his hand
and pulled the girl's head down beside his own.
"There's a way out," he whispered. "Don't marry Tom
Willard or anyone else here in Winesburg. There is
eight hundred dollars in a tin box in my trunk. Take it
and go away."

Again the sick man's voice became querulous. "You've
got to promise," he declared. "If you won't promise not
to marry, give me your word that you'll never tell Tom
about the money. It is mine and if I give it to you
I've the right to make that demand. Hide it away. It is
to make up to you for my failure as a father. Some time
it may prove to be a door, a great open door to you.
Come now, I tell you I'm about to die, give me your
promise."

            *       *       *

In Doctor Reefy's office, Elizabeth, a tired gaunt old
woman at forty-one, sat in a chair near the stove and
looked at the floor. By a small desk near the window
sat the doctor. His hands played with a lead pencil
that lay on the desk. Elizabeth talked of her life as a
married woman. She became impersonal and forgot her
husband, only using him as a lay figure to give point
to her tale. "And then I was married and it did not
turn out at all," she said bitterly. "As soon as I had
gone into it I began to be afraid. Perhaps I knew too
much before and then perhaps I found out too much
during my first night with him. I don't remember.

"What a fool I was. When father gave me the money and
tried to talk me out of the thought of marriage, I
would not listen. I thought of what the girls who were
married had said of it and I wanted marriage also. It
wasn't Tom I wanted, it was marriage. When father went
to sleep I leaned out of the window and thought of the
life I had led. I didn't want to be a bad woman. The
town was full of stories about me. I even began to be
afraid Tom would change his mind."

The woman's voice began to quiver with excitement. To
Doctor Reefy, who without realizing what was happening
had begun to love her, there came an odd illusion. He
thought that as she talked the woman's body was
changing, that she was becoming younger, straighter,
stronger. When he could not shake off the illusion his
mind gave it a professional twist. "It is good for both
her body and her mind, this talking," he muttered.

The woman began telling of an incident that had
happened one afternoon a few months after her marriage.
Her voice became steadier. "In the late afternoon I
went for a drive alone," she said. "I had a buggy and a
little grey pony I kept in Moyer's Livery. Tom was
painting and repapering rooms in the hotel. He wanted
money and I was trying to make up my mind to tell him
about the eight hundred dollars father had given to me.
I couldn't decide to do it. I didn't like him well
enough. There was always paint on his hands and face
during those days and he smelled of paint. He was
trying to fix up the old hotel, and make it new and
smart."

The excited woman sat up very straight in her chair and
made a quick girlish movement with her hand as she told
of the drive alone on the spring afternoon. "It was
cloudy and a storm threatened," she said. "Black clouds
made the green of the trees and the grass stand out so
that the colors hurt my eyes. I went out Trunion Pike a
mile or more and then turned into a side road. The
little horse went quickly along up hill and down. I was
impatient. Thoughts came and I wanted to get away from
my thoughts. I began to beat the horse. The black
clouds settled down and it began to rain. I wanted to
go at a terrible speed, to drive on and on forever. I
wanted to get out of town, out of my clothes, out of my
marriage, out of my body, out of everything. I almost
killed the horse, making him run, and when he could not
run any more I got out of the buggy and ran afoot into
the darkness until I fell and hurt my side. I wanted to
run away from everything but I wanted to run towards
something too. Don't you see, dear, how it was?"

Elizabeth sprang out of the chair and began to walk
about in the office. She walked as Doctor Reefy thought
he had never seen anyone walk before. To her whole body
there was a swing, a rhythm that intoxicated him. When
she came and knelt on the floor beside his chair he
took her into his arms and began to kiss her
passionately. "I cried all the way home," she said, as
she tried to continue the story of her wild ride, but
he did not listen. "You dear! You lovely dear! Oh you
lovely dear!" he muttered and thought he held in his
arms not the tired-out woman of forty-one but a lovely
and innocent girl who had been able by some miracle to
project herself out of the husk of the body of the
tired-out woman.

Doctor Reefy did not see the woman he had held in his
arms again until after her death. On the summer
afternoon in the office when he was on the point of
becoming her lover a half grotesque little incident
brought his love-making quickly to an end. As the man
and woman held each other tightly heavy feet came
tramping up the office stairs. The two sprang to their
feet and stood listening and trembling. The noise on
the stairs was made by a clerk from the Paris Dry Goods
Company. With a loud bang he threw an empty box on the
pile of rubbish in the hallway and then went heavily
down the stairs. Elizabeth followed him almost
immediately. The thing that had come to life in her as
she talked to her one friend died suddenly. She was
hysterical, as was also Doctor Reefy, and did not want
to continue the talk. Along the street she went with
the blood still singing in her body, but when she
turned out of Main Street and saw ahead the lights of
the New Willard House, she began to tremble and her
knees shook so that for a moment she thought she would
fall in the street.

The sick woman spent the last few months of her life
hungering for death. Along the road of death she went,
seeking, hungering. She personified the figure of death
and made him now a strong black-haired youth running
over hills, now a stern quiet man marked and scarred by
the business of living. In the darkness of her room she
put out her hand, thrusting it from under the covers of
her bed, and she thought that death like a living thing
put out his hand to her. "Be patient, lover," she
whispered. "Keep yourself young and beautiful and be
patient."

On the evening when disease laid its heavy hand upon
her and defeated her plans for telling her son George
of the eight hundred dollars hidden away, she got out
of bed and crept half across the room pleading with
death for another hour of life. "Wait, dear! The boy!
The boy! The boy!" she pleaded as she tried with all of
her strength to fight off the arms of the lover she had
wanted so earnestly.

            *       *       *

Elizabeth died one day in March in the year when her
son George became eighteen, and the young man had but
little sense of the meaning of her death. Only time
could give him that. For a month he had seen her lying
white and still and speechless in her bed, and then one
afternoon the doctor stopped him in the hallway and
said a few words.

The young man went into his own room and closed the
door. He had a queer empty feeling in the region of his
stomach. For a moment he sat staring at, the floor and
then jumping up went for a walk. Along the station
platform he went, and around through residence streets
past the high-school building, thinking almost entirely
of his own affairs. The notion of death could not get
hold of him and he was in fact a little annoyed that
his mother had died on that day. He had just received a
note from Helen White, the daughter of the town banker,
in answer to one from him. "Tonight I could have gone
to see her and now it will have to be put off," he
thought half angrily.

Elizabeth died on a Friday afternoon at three o'clock.
It had been cold and rainy in the morning but in the
afternoon the sun came out. Before she died she lay
paralyzed for six days unable to speak or move and with
only her mind and her eyes alive. For three of the six
days she struggled, thinking of her boy, trying to say
some few words in regard to his future, and in her eyes
there was an appeal so touching that all who saw it
kept the memory of the dying woman in their minds for
years. Even Tom Willard, who had always half resented
his wife, forgot his resentment and the tears ran out
of his eyes and lodged in his mustache. The mustache
had begun to turn grey and Tom colored it with dye.
There was oil in the preparation he used for the
purpose and the tears, catching in the mustache and
being brushed away by his hand, formed a fine mist-like
vapor. In his grief Tom Willard's face looked like the
face of a little dog that has been out a long time in
bitter weather.

George came home along Main Street at dark on the day
of his mother's death and, after going to his own room
to brush his hair and clothes, went along the hallway
and into the room where the body lay. There was a
candle on the dressing table by the door and Doctor
Reefy sat in a chair by the bed. The doctor arose and
started to go out. He put out his hand as though to
greet the younger man and then awkwardly drew it back
again. The air of the room was heavy with the presence
of the two self-conscious human beings, and the man
hurried away.

The dead woman's son sat down in a chair and looked at
the floor. He again thought of his own affairs and
definitely decided he would make a change in his life,
that he would leave Winesburg. "I will go to some city.
Perhaps I can get a job on some newspaper," he thought,
and then his mind turned to the girl with whom he was
to have spent this evening and again he was half angry
at the turn of events that had prevented his going to
her.

In the dimly lighted room with the dead woman the young
man began to have thoughts. His mind played with
thoughts of life as his mother's mind had played with
the thought of death. He closed his eyes and imagined
that the red young lips of Helen White touched his own
lips. His body trembled and his hands shook. And then
something happened. The boy sprang to his feet and
stood stiffly. He looked at the figure of the dead
woman under the sheets and shame for his thoughts swept
over him so that he began to weep. A new notion came
into his mind and he turned and looked guiltily about
as though afraid he would be observed.

George Willard became possessed of a madness to lift
the sheet from the body of his mother and look at her
face. The thought that had come into his mind gripped
him terribly. He became convinced that not his mother
but someone else lay in the bed before him. The
conviction was so real that it was almost unbearable.
The body under the sheets was long and in death looked
young and graceful. To the boy, held by some strange
fancy, it was unspeakably lovely. The feeling that the
body before him was alive, that in another moment a
lovely woman would spring out of the bed and confront
him, became so overpowering that he could not bear the
suspense. Again and again he put out his hand. Once he
touched and half lifted the white sheet that covered
her, but his courage failed and he, like Doctor Reefy,
turned and went out of the room. In the hallway outside
the door he stopped and trembled so that he had to put
a hand against the wall to support himself. "That's not
my mother. That's not my mother in there," he whispered
to himself and again his body shook with fright and
uncertainty. When Aunt Elizabeth Swift, who had come to
watch over the body, came out of an adjoining room he
put his hand into hers and began to sob, shaking his
head from side to side, half blind with grief. "My
mother is dead," he said, and then forgetting the woman
he turned and stared at the door through which he had
just come. "The dear, the dear, oh the lovely dear,"
the boy, urged by some impulse outside himself,
muttered aloud.

As for the eight hundred dollars the dead woman had
kept hidden so long and that was to give George Willard
his start in the city, it lay in the tin box behind the
plaster by the foot of his mother's bed. Elizabeth had
put it there a week after her marriage, breaking the
plaster away with a stick. Then she got one of the
workmen her husband was at that time employing about
the hotel to mend the wall. "I jammed the corner of the
bed against it," she had explained to her husband,
unable at the moment to give up her dream of release,
the release that after all came to her but twice in her
life, in the moments when her lovers Death and Doctor
Reefy held her in their arms.

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

completion: Doctor Reefy's office is a large, untidy room, above the Paris Dry Goods Store. Often, George's mother, Elizabeth Willard comes to his office ostensibly to discuss about her health, but more to sit with the doctor and talk of life. George is then a boy of twelve or fourteen, and his mother forty-one years. Elizabeth speaks a great deal about her life before her marriage. In her younger days she was quite an adventurer seeking boys out. She wished to find a real lover. She seemed to be forever putting out her hand in the darkness seeking some other hand. When she marries Tom, she marries for the sake of marriage, hoping to find some significance in it for her. But marriage doesnt help her. As Elizabeth sits with Doctor Reefy and describes her earlier life, she seems to change back into the girl she was and the doctor can't help noticing it. In his passion he takes her in his arms and almost makes love to her, if it wasnt for a heavy footstep to be heard outside the door they wouldnt have broken free from each other. Elizabeth then leaves the doctor, but after that she just begins to decline. She awaits death, personified as a young lover holding out his arms to her. In her last days she is not even able to tell George of the eight hundred dollars stowed away. George is at first surprised at her death and is slightly displeased as it jeopardized his meeting with Helen White. But while watching the covered dead body he feels that the sheet covers a young lady who might rise any moment. He runs away from the room half blind with grief and crying, 'My mother is dead.'


prompt:
Chapter: SOPHISTICATION

It was early evening of a day in the late fall and the
Winesburg County Fair had brought crowds of country
people into town. The day had been clear and the night
came on warm and pleasant. On the Trunion Pike, where
the road after it left town stretched away between
berry fields now covered with dry brown leaves, the
dust from passing wagons arose in clouds. Children,
curled into little balls, slept on the straw scattered
on wagon beds. Their hair was full of dust and their
fingers black and sticky. The dust rolled away over the
fields and the departing sun set it ablaze with colors.

In the main street of Winesburg crowds filled the
stores and the sidewalks. Night came on, horses
whinnied, the clerks in the stores ran madly about,
children became lost and cried lustily, an American
town worked terribly at the task of amusing itself.

Pushing his way through the crowds in Main Street,
young George Willard concealed himself in the stairway
leading to Doctor Reefy's office and looked at the
people. With feverish eyes he watched the faces
drifting past under the store lights. Thoughts kept
coming into his head and he did not want to think. He
stamped impatiently on the wooden steps and looked
sharply about. "Well, is she going to stay with him all
day? Have I done all this waiting for nothing?" he
muttered.

George Willard, the Ohio village boy, was fast growing
into manhood and new thoughts had been coming into his
mind. All that day, amid the jam of people at the Fair,
he had gone about feeling lonely. He was about to leave
Winesburg to go away to some city where he hoped to get
work on a city newspaper and he felt grown up. The mood
that had taken possession of him was a thing known to
men and unknown to boys. He felt old and a little
tired. Memories awoke in him. To his mind his new sense
of maturity set him apart, made of him a half-tragic
figure. He wanted someone to understand the feeling
that had taken possession of him after his mother's
death.

There is a time in the life of every boy when he for
the first time takes the backward view of life. Perhaps
that is the moment when he crosses the line into
manhood. The boy is walking through the street of his
town. He is thinking of the future and of the figure he
will cut in the world. Ambitions and regrets awake
within him. Suddenly something happens; he stops under
a tree and waits as for a voice calling his name.
Ghosts of old things creep into his consciousness; the
voices outside of himself whisper a message concerning
the limitations of life. From being quite sure of
himself and his future he becomes not at all sure. If
he be an imaginative boy a door is torn open and for the
first time he looks out upon the world, seeing, as
though they marched in procession before him, the
countless figures of men who before his time have come
out of nothingness into the world, lived their lives
and again disappeared into nothingness. The sadness of
sophistication has come to the boy. With a little gasp
he sees himself as merely a leaf blown by the wind
through the streets of his village. He knows that in
spite of all the stout talk of his fellows he must live
and die in uncertainty, a thing blown by the winds, a
thing destined like corn to wilt in the sun. He shivers
and looks eagerly about. The eighteen years he has
lived seem but a moment, a breathing space in the long
march of humanity. Already he hears death calling. With
all his heart he wants to come close to some other
human, touch someone with his hands, be touched by the
hand of another. If he prefers that the other be a
woman, that is because he believes that a woman will be
gentle, that she will understand. He wants, most of
all, understanding.

When the moment of sophistication came to George
Willard his mind turned to Helen White, the Winesburg
banker's daughter. Always he had been conscious of the
girl growing into womanhood as he grew into manhood.
Once on a summer night when he was eighteen, he had
walked with her on a country road and in her presence
had given way to an impulse to boast, to make himself
appear big and significant in her eyes. Now he wanted
to see her for another purpose. He wanted to tell her
of the new impulses that had come to him. He had tried
to make her think of him as a man when he knew nothing
of manhood and now he wanted to be with her and to try
to make her feel the change he believed had taken place
in his nature.

As for Helen White, she also had come to a period of
change. What George felt, she in her young woman's way
felt also. She was no longer a girl and hungered to
reach into the grace and beauty of womanhood. She had
come home from Cleveland, where she was attending
college, to spend a day at the Fair. She also had begun
to have memories. During the day she sat in the
grand-stand with a young man, one of the instructors
from the college, who was a guest of her mother's. The
young man was of a pedantic turn of mind and she felt
at once he would not do for her purpose. At the Fair
she was glad to be seen in his company as he was well
dressed and a stranger. She knew that the fact of his
presence would create an impression. During the day she
was happy, but when night came on she began to grow
restless. She wanted to drive the instructor away, to
get out of his presence. While they sat together in the
grand-stand and while the eyes of former schoolmates
were upon them, she paid so much attention to her
escort that he grew interested. "A scholar needs money.
I should marry a woman with money," he mused.

Helen White was thinking of George Willard even as he
wandered gloomily through the crowds thinking of her.
She remembered the summer evening when they had walked
together and wanted to walk with him again. She thought
that the months she had spent in the city, the going to
theaters and the seeing of great crowds wandering in
lighted thoroughfares, had changed her profoundly. She
wanted him to feel and be conscious of the change in
her nature.

The summer evening together that had left its mark on
the memory of both the young man and woman had, when
looked at quite sensibly, been rather stupidly spent.
They had walked out of town along a country road. Then
they had stopped by a fence near a field of young corn
and George had taken off his coat and let it hang on
his arm. "Well, I've stayed here in
Winesburg--yes--I've not yet gone away but I'm growing
up," he had said. "I've been reading books and I've
been thinking. I'm going to try to amount to something
in life.

"Well," he explained, "that isn't the point. Perhaps
I'd better quit talking."

The confused boy put his hand on the girl's arm. His
voice trembled. The two started to walk back along the
road toward town. In his desperation George boasted,
"I'm going to be a big man, the biggest that ever lived
here in Winesburg," he declared. "I want you to do
something, I don't know what. Perhaps it is none of my
business. I want you to try to be different from other
women. You see the point. It's none of my business I
tell you. I want you to be a beautiful woman. You see
what I want."

The boy's voice failed and in silence the two came back
into town and went along the street to Helen White's
house. At the gate he tried to say something
impressive. Speeches he had thought out came into his
head, but they seemed utterly pointless. "I thought--I
used to think--I had it in my mind you would marry Seth
Richmond. Now I know you won't," was all he could find
to say as she went through the gate and toward the door
of her house.

On the warm fall evening as he stood in the stairway
and looked at the crowd drifting through Main Street,
George thought of the talk beside the field of young
corn and was ashamed of the figure he had made of
himself. In the street the people surged up and down
like cattle confined in a pen. Buggies and wagons
almost filled the narrow thoroughfare. A band played
and small boys raced along the sidewalk, diving between
the legs of men. Young men with shining red faces
walked awkwardly about with girls on their arms. In a
room above one of the stores, where a dance was to be
held, the fiddlers tuned their instruments. The broken
sounds floated down through an open window and out
across the murmur of voices and the loud blare of the
horns of the band. The medley of sounds got on young
Willard's nerves. Everywhere, on all sides, the sense
of crowding, moving life closed in about him. He wanted
to run away by himself and think. "If she wants to stay
with that fellow she may. Why should I care? What
difference does it make to me?" he growled and went
along Main Street and through Hern's Grocery into a
side street.

George felt so utterly lonely and dejected that he
wanted to weep but pride made him walk rapidly along,
swinging his arms. He came to Wesley Moyer's livery
barn and stopped in the shadows to listen to a group of
men who talked of a race Wesley's stallion, Tony Tip,
had won at the Fair during the afternoon. A crowd had
gathered in front of the barn and before the crowd
walked Wesley, prancing up and down boasting. He held a
whip in his hand and kept tapping the ground. Little
puffs of dust arose in the lamplight. "Hell, quit your
talking," Wesley exclaimed. "I wasn't afraid, I knew I
had 'em beat all the time. I wasn't afraid."

Ordinarily George Willard would have been intensely
interested in the boasting of Moyer, the horseman. Now
it made him angry. He turned and hurried away along the
street. "Old windbag," he sputtered. "Why does he want
to be bragging? Why don't he shut up?"

George went into a vacant lot and, as he hurried along,
fell over a pile of rubbish. A nail protruding from an
empty barrel tore his trousers. He sat down on the
ground and swore. With a pin he mended the torn place
and then arose and went on. "I'll go to Helen White's
house, that's what I'll do. I'll walk right in. I'll
say that I want to see her. I'll walk right in and sit
down, that's what I'll do," he declared, climbing over
a fence and beginning to run.

            *       *       *

On the veranda of Banker White's house Helen was
restless and distraught. The instructor sat between the
mother and daughter. His talk wearied the girl.
Although he had also been raised in an Ohio town, the
instructor began to put on the airs of the city. He
wanted to appear cosmopolitan. "I like the chance you
have given me to study the background out of which most
of our girls come," he declared. "It was good of you,
Mrs. White, to have me down for the day." He turned to
Helen and laughed. "Your life is still bound up with
the life of this town?" he asked. "There are people
here in whom you are interested?" To the girl his voice
sounded pompous and heavy.

Helen arose and went into the house. At the door
leading to a garden at the back she stopped and stood
listening. Her mother began to talk. "There is no one
here fit to associate with a girl of Helen's breeding,"
she said.

Helen ran down a flight of stairs at the back of the
house and into the garden. In the darkness she stopped
and stood trembling. It seemed to her that the world
was full of meaningless people saying words. Afire with
eagerness she ran through a garden gate and, turning a
corner by the banker's barn, went into a little side
street. "George! Where are you, George?" she cried,
filled with nervous excitement. She stopped running,
and leaned against a tree to laugh hysterically. Along
the dark little street came George Willard, still
saying words. "I'm going to walk right into her house.
I'll go right in and sit down," he declared as he came
up to her. He stopped and stared stupidly. "Come on,"
he said and took hold of her hand. With hanging heads
they walked away along the street under the trees. Dry
leaves rustled under foot. Now that he had found her
George wondered what he had better do and say.

            *       *       *

At the upper end of the Fair Ground, in Winesburg,
there is a half decayed old grand-stand. It has never
been painted and the boards are all warped out of
shape. The Fair Ground stands on top of a low hill
rising out of the valley of Wine Creek and from the
grand-stand one can see at night, over a cornfield, the
lights of the town reflected against the sky.

George and Helen climbed the hill to the Fair Ground,
coming by the path past Waterworks Pond. The feeling of
loneliness and isolation that had come to the young man
in the crowded streets of his town was both broken and
intensified by the presence of Helen. What he felt was
reflected in her.

In youth there are always two forces fighting in
people. The warm unthinking little animal struggles
against the thing that reflects and remembers, and the
older, the more sophisticated thing had possession of
George Willard. Sensing his mood, Helen walked beside
him filled with respect. When they got to the
grand-stand they climbed up under the roof and sat down
on one of the long bench-like seats.

There is something memorable in the experience to be
had by going into a fair ground that stands at the edge
of a Middle Western town on a night after the annual
fair has been held. The sensation is one never to be
forgotten. On all sides are ghosts, not of the dead,
but of living people. Here, during the day just passed,
have come the people pouring in from the town and the
country around. Farmers with their wives and children
and all the people from the hundreds of little frame
houses have gathered within these board walls. Young
girls have laughed and men with beards have talked of
the affairs of their lives. The place has been filled
to overflowing with life. It has itched and squirmed
with life and now it is night and the life has all gone
away. The silence is almost terrifying. One conceals
oneself standing silently beside the trunk of a tree
and what there is of a reflective tendency in his
nature is intensified. One shudders at the thought of
the meaninglessness of life while at the same instant,
and if the people of the town are his people, one loves
life so intensely that tears come into the eyes.

In the darkness under the roof of the grand-stand,
George Willard sat beside Helen White and felt very
keenly his own insignificance in the scheme of
existence. Now that he had come out of town where the
presence of the people stirring about, busy with a
multitude of affairs, had been so irritating, the
irritation was all gone. The presence of Helen renewed
and refreshed him. It was as though her woman's hand
was assisting him to make some minute readjustment of
the machinery of his life. He began to think of the
people in the town where he had always lived with
something like reverence. He had reverence for Helen.
He wanted to love and to be loved by her, but he did
not want at the moment to be confused by her womanhood.
In the darkness he took hold of her hand and when she
crept close put a hand on her shoulder. A wind began to
blow and he shivered. With all his strength he tried to
hold and to understand the mood that had come upon him.
In that high place in the darkness the two oddly
sensitive human atoms held each other tightly and
waited. In the mind of each was the same thought. "I
have come to this lonely place and here is this other,"
was the substance of the thing felt.

In Winesburg the crowded day had run itself out into
the long night of the late fall. Farm horses jogged
away along lonely country roads pulling their portion
of weary people. Clerks began to bring samples of goods
in off the sidewalks and lock the doors of stores. In
the Opera House a crowd had gathered to see a show and
further down Main Street the fiddlers, their
instruments tuned, sweated and worked to keep the feet
of youth flying over a dance floor.

In the darkness in the grand-stand Helen White and
George Willard remained silent. Now and then the spell
that held them was broken and they turned and tried in
the dim light to see into each other's eyes. They
kissed but that impulse did not last. At the upper end
of the Fair Ground a half dozen men worked over horses
that had raced during the afternoon. The men had built
a fire and were heating kettles of water. Only their
legs could be seen as they passed back and forth in the
light. When the wind blew the little flames of the fire
danced crazily about.

George and Helen arose and walked away into the
darkness. They went along a path past a field of corn
that had not yet been cut. The wind whispered among the
dry corn blades. For a moment during the walk back into
town the spell that held them was broken. When they had
come to the crest of Waterworks Hill they stopped by a
tree and George again put his hands on the girl's
shoulders. She embraced him eagerly and then again they
drew quickly back from that impulse. They stopped
kissing and stood a little apart. Mutual respect grew
big in them. They were both embarrassed and to relieve
their embarrassment dropped into the animalism of
youth. They laughed and began to pull and haul at each
other. In some way chastened and purified by the mood
they had been in, they became, not man and woman, not
boy and girl, but excited little animals.

It was so they went down the hill. In the darkness
they played like two splendid young things in a young
world. Once, running swiftly forward, Helen tripped
George and he fell. He squirmed and shouted. Shaking
with laughter, he roiled down the hill. Helen ran after
him. For just a moment she stopped in the darkness.
There was no way of knowing what woman's thoughts went
through her mind but, when the bottom of the hill was
reached and she came up to the boy, she took his arm
and walked beside him in dignified silence. For some
reason they could not have explained they had both got
from their silent evening together the thing needed.
Man or boy, woman or girl, they had for a moment taken
hold of the thing that makes the mature life of men and
women in the modern world possible.

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

completion: It is the time of the country fair, at Winesburg. The day is filled with noise and excitement and people, and the night is still and warm. George is looking at the store lights and waiting for Helen White. George has fast grown into manhood. After his mother's death a sense of maturity has filled him and to his mind it makes him a half-tragic figure. George has seen Helen grow from girlhood into womanhood, as he grew into manhood himself. He now remembers how he had boasted to Helen White earlier about the things he would do when he grew up, and he feels embarrassed of his words. While at the fair, Helen is with her instructor. A pedantic man he both repels and attracts her. At the fair, she is glad of his well-dressed company but at home she gets tired of his act of superiority. She wishes to be with George, and at the same time, George too decides to go to her house. They meet and he takes her to the top of the hill overlooking the Fair ground. The night is still and both feel a sense of insignificance in the scheme of existence. They kiss and hold hands but the impulse does not last. Finally as they return home they throw away their cloak of maturity and don their childhood cloak. They play around pushing and laughing and teasing. At the end of the evening, they are both satisfied as if they had got the thing they had needed.


prompt:
Chapter: DEPARTURE

Young George Willard got out of bed at four in the
morning. It was April and the young tree leaves were
just coming out of their buds. The trees along the
residence streets in Winesburg are maple and the seeds
are winged. When the wind blows they whirl crazily
about, filling the air and making a carpet underfoot.

George came downstairs into the hotel office carrying a
brown leather bag. His trunk was packed for departure.
Since two o'clock he had been awake thinking of the
journey he was about to take and wondering what he
would find at the end of his journey. The boy who slept
in the hotel office lay on a cot by the door. His mouth
was open and he snored lustily. George crept past the
cot and went out into the silent deserted main street.
The east was pink with the dawn and long streaks of
light climbed into the sky where a few stars still
shone.

Beyond the last house on Trunion Pike in Winesburg
there is a great stretch of open fields. The fields are
owned by farmers who live in town and drive homeward at
evening along Trunion Pike in light creaking wagons. In
the fields are planted berries and small fruits. In the
late afternoon in the hot summers when the road and the
fields are covered with dust, a smoky haze lies over
the great flat basin of land. To look across it is like
looking out across the sea. In the spring when the land
is green the effect is somewhat different. The land
becomes a wide green billiard table on which tiny human
insects toil up and down.

All through his boyhood and young manhood George
Willard had been in the habit of walking on Trunion
Pike. He had been in the midst of the great open place
on winter nights when it was covered with snow and only
the moon looked down at him; he had been there in the
fall when bleak winds blew and on summer evenings when
the air vibrated with the song of insects. On the April
morning he wanted to go there again, to walk again in
the silence. He did walk to where the road dipped down
by a little stream two miles from town and then turned
and walked silently back again. When he got to Main
Street clerks were sweeping the sidewalks before the
stores. "Hey, you George. How does it feel to be going
away?" they asked.

The westbound train leaves Winesburg at seven
forty-five in the morning. Tom Little is conductor. His
train runs from Cleveland to where it connects with a
great trunk line railroad with terminals in Chicago and
New York. Tom has what in railroad circles is called an
"easy run." Every evening he returns to his family. In
the fall and spring he spends his Sundays fishing in
Lake Erie. He has a round red face and small blue eyes.
He knows the people in the towns along his railroad
better than a city man knows the people who live in his
apartment building.

George came down the little incline from the New
Willard House at seven o'clock. Tom Willard carried his
bag. The son had become taller than the father.

On the station platform everyone shook the young man's
hand. More than a dozen people waited about. Then they
talked of their own affairs. Even Will Henderson, who
was lazy and often slept until nine, had got out of
bed. George was embarrassed. Gertrude Wilmot, a tall
thin woman of fifty who worked in the Winesburg post
office, came along the station platform. She had never
before paid any attention to George. Now she stopped
and put out her hand. In two words she voiced what
everyone felt. "Good luck," she said sharply and then
turning went on her way.

When the train came into the station George felt
relieved. He scampered hurriedly aboard. Helen White
came running along Main Street hoping to have a parting
word with him, but he had found a seat and did not see
her. When the train started Tom Little punched his
ticket, grinned and, although he knew George well and
knew on what adventure he was just setting out, made no
comment. Tom had seen a thousand George Willards go out
of their towns to the city. It was a commonplace enough
incident with him. In the smoking car there was a man
who had just invited Tom to go on a fishing trip to
Sandusky Bay. He wanted to accept the invitation and
talk over details.

George glanced up and down the car to be sure no one
was looking, then took out his pocket-book and counted
his money. His mind was occupied with a desire not to
appear green. Almost the last words his father had said
to him concerned the matter of his behavior when he got
to the city. "Be a sharp one," Tom Willard had said.
"Keep your eyes on your money. Be awake. That's the
ticket. Don't let anyone think you're a greenhorn."

After George counted his money he looked out of the
window and was surprised to see that the train was
still in Winesburg.

The young man, going out of his town to meet the
adventure of life, began to think but he did not think
of anything very big or dramatic. Things like his
mother's death, his departure from Winesburg, the
uncertainty of his future life in the city, the serious
and larger aspects of his life did not come into his
mind.

He thought of little things--Turk Smollet wheeling
boards through the main street of his town in the
morning, a tall woman, beautifully gowned, who had once
stayed overnight at his father's hotel, Butch Wheeler
the lamp lighter of Winesburg hurrying through the
streets on a summer evening and holding a torch in his
hand, Helen White standing by a window in the Winesburg
post office and putting a stamp on an envelope.

The young man's mind was carried away by his growing
passion for dreams. One looking at him would not have
thought him particularly sharp. With the recollection
of little things occupying his mind he closed his eyes
and leaned back in the car seat. He stayed that way for
a long time and when he aroused himself and again
looked out of the car window the town of Winesburg had
disappeared and his life there had become but a
background on which to paint the dreams of his manhood.

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

completion: George Willard wakes up from his sleep, early in the morning. His bag is already packed and he is all set. George has decided to leave Winesburg, his hometown, and go out into the world to seek adventures and his own fortune. When he reaches the railway platform he finds many of his folks out there, come to bid him farewell. George is embarrassed at this display of affection. When the train arrives, he scampers in and doesn't even notice Helen White who had come to have a parting word with him. Already, George has left his town in his mind and is ready for any adventure awaiting him. His father Tom Willard's last words of caution are to be careful with his money. George closes his eyes as the train speeds away. He thinks of his dream and the adventures waiting for him and when he opens his eyes, the town of Winesburg has already disappeared.


prompt:
Chapter: A MAN OF IDEAS

He lived with his mother, a grey, silent woman with a
peculiar ashy complexion. The house in which they lived
stood in a little grove of trees beyond where the main
street of Winesburg crossed Wine Creek. His name was
Joe Welling, and his father had been a man of some
dignity in the community, a lawyer, and a member of the
state legislature at Columbus. Joe himself was small of
body and in his character unlike anyone else in town.
He was like a tiny little volcano that lies silent for
days and then suddenly spouts fire. No, he wasn't like
that--he was like a man who is subject to fits, one
who walks among his fellow men inspiring fear because a
fit may come upon him suddenly and blow him away into a
strange uncanny physical state in which his eyes roll
and his legs and arms jerk. He was like that, only that
the visitation that descended upon Joe Welling was a
mental and not a physical thing. He was beset by ideas
and in the throes of one of his ideas was
uncontrollable. Words rolled and tumbled from his
mouth. A peculiar smile came upon his lips. The edges
of his teeth that were tipped with gold glistened in
the light. Pouncing upon a bystander he began to talk.
For the bystander there was no escape. The excited man
breathed into his face, peered into his eyes, pounded
upon his chest with a shaking forefinger, demanded,
compelled attention.

In those days the Standard Oil Company did not deliver
oil to the consumer in big wagons and motor trucks as
it does now, but delivered instead to retail grocers,
hardware stores, and the like. Joe was the Standard Oil
agent in Winesburg and in several towns up and down the
railroad that went through Winesburg. He collected
bills, booked orders, and did other things. His father,
the legislator, had secured the job for him.

In and out of the stores of Winesburg went Joe
Welling--silent, excessively polite, intent upon his
business. Men watched him with eyes in which lurked
amusement tempered by alarm. They were waiting for him
to break forth, preparing to flee. Although the
seizures that came upon him were harmless enough, they
could not be laughed away. They were overwhelming.
Astride an idea, Joe was overmastering. His personality
became gigantic. It overrode the man to whom he talked,
swept him away, swept all away, all who stood within
sound of his voice.

In Sylvester West's Drug Store stood four men who were
talking of horse racing. Wesley Moyer's stallion, Tony
Tip, was to race at the June meeting at Tiffin, Ohio,
and there was a rumor that he would meet the stiffest
competition of his career. It was said that Pop Geers,
the great racing driver, would himself be there. A
doubt of the success of Tony Tip hung heavy in the air
of Winesburg.

Into the drug store came Joe Welling, brushing the
screen door violently aside. With a strange absorbed
light in his eyes he pounced upon Ed Thomas, he who
knew Pop Geers and whose opinion of Tony Tip's chances
was worth considering.

"The water is up in Wine Creek," cried Joe Welling with
the air of Pheidippides bringing news of the victory of
the Greeks in the struggle at Marathon. His finger beat
a tattoo upon Ed Thomas's broad chest. "By Trunion
bridge it is within eleven and a half inches of the
flooring," he went on, the words coming quickly and
with a little whistling noise from between his teeth.
An expression of helpless annoyance crept over the
faces of the four.

"I have my facts correct. Depend upon that. I went to
Sinnings' Hardware Store and got a rule. Then I went
back and measured. I could hardly believe my own eyes.
It hasn't rained you see for ten days. At first I
didn't know what to think. Thoughts rushed through my
head. I thought of subterranean passages and springs.
Down under the ground went my mind, delving about. I
sat on the floor of the bridge and rubbed my head.
There wasn't a cloud in the sky, not one. Come out into
the street and you'll see. There wasn't a cloud. There
isn't a cloud now. Yes, there was a cloud. I don't want
to keep back any facts. There was a cloud in the west
down near the horizon, a cloud no bigger than a man's
hand.

"Not that I think that has anything to do with it.
There it is, you see. You understand how puzzled I was.

"Then an idea came to me. I laughed. You'll laugh,
too. Of course it rained over in Medina County. That's
interesting, eh? If we had no trains, no mails, no
telegraph, we would know that it rained over in Medina
County. That's where Wine Creek comes from. Everyone
knows that. Little old Wine Creek brought us the news.
That's interesting. I laughed. I thought I'd tell
you--it's interesting, eh?"

Joe Welling turned and went out at the door. Taking a
book from his pocket, he stopped and ran a finger down
one of the pages. Again he was absorbed in his duties
as agent of the Standard Oil Company. "Hern's Grocery
will be getting low on coal oil. I'll see them," he
muttered, hurrying along the street, and bowing
politely to the right and left at the people walking
past.

When George Willard went to work for the Winesburg
Eagle he was besieged by Joe Welling. Joe envied the
boy. It seemed to him that he was meant by Nature to be
a reporter on a newspaper. "It is what I should be
doing, there is no doubt of that," he declared,
stopping George Willard on the sidewalk before
Daugherty's Feed Store. His eyes began to glisten and
his forefinger to tremble. "Of course I make more money
with the Standard Oil Company and I'm only telling
you," he added. "I've got nothing against you but I
should have your place. I could do the work at odd
moments. Here and there I would run finding out things
you'll never see."

Becoming more excited Joe Welling crowded the young
reporter against the front of the feed store. He
appeared to be lost in thought, rolling his eyes about
and running a thin nervous hand through his hair. A
smile spread over his face and his gold teeth
glittered. "You get out your note book," he commanded.
"You carry a little pad of paper in your pocket, don't
you? I knew you did. Well, you set this down. I thought
of it the other day. Let's take decay. Now what is
decay? It's fire. It burns up wood and other things.
You never thought of that? Of course not. This sidewalk
here and this feed store, the trees down the street
there--they're all on fire. They're burning up. Decay
you see is always going on. It doesn't stop. Water and
paint can't stop it. If a thing is iron, then what? It
rusts, you see. That's fire, too. The world is on fire.
Start your pieces in the paper that way. Just say in
big letters 'The World Is On Fire.' That will make 'em
look up. They'll say you're a smart one. I don't care.
I don't envy you. I just snatched that idea out of the
air. I would make a newspaper hum. You got to admit
that."'

Turning quickly, Joe Welling walked rapidly away. When
he had taken several steps he stopped and looked back.
"I'm going to stick to you," he said. "I'm going to
make you a regular hummer. I should start a newspaper
myself, that's what I should do. I'd be a marvel.
Everybody knows that."

When George Willard had been for a year on the
Winesburg Eagle, four things happened to Joe Welling.
His mother died, he came to live at the New Willard
House, he became involved in a love affair, and he
organized the Winesburg Baseball Club.

Joe organized the baseball club because he wanted to be
a coach and in that position he began to win the
respect of his townsmen. "He is a wonder," they
declared after Joe's team had whipped the team from
Medina County. "He gets everybody working together. You
just watch him."

Upon the baseball field Joe Welling stood by first
base, his whole body quivering with excitement. In
spite of themselves all the players watched him
closely. The opposing pitcher became confused.

"Now! Now! Now! Now!" shouted the excited man. "Watch
me! Watch me! Watch my fingers! Watch my hands! Watch
my feet! Watch my eyes! Let's work together here! Watch
me! In me you see all the movements of the game! Work
with me! Work with me! Watch me! Watch me! Watch me!"

With runners of the Winesburg team on bases, Joe
Welling became as one inspired. Before they knew what
had come over them, the base runners were watching the
man, edging off the bases, advancing, retreating, held
as by an invisible cord. The players of the opposing
team also watched Joe. They were fascinated. For a
moment they watched and then, as though to break a
spell that hung over them, they began hurling the ball
wildly about, and amid a series of fierce animal-like
cries from the coach, the runners of the Winesburg team
scampered home.

Joe Welling's love affair set the town of Winesburg on
edge. When it began everyone whispered and shook his
head. When people tried to laugh, the laughter was
forced and unnatural. Joe fell in love with Sarah King,
a lean, sad-looking woman who lived with her father and
brother in a brick house that stood opposite the gate
leading to the Winesburg Cemetery.

The two Kings, Edward the father, and Tom the son, were
not popular in Winesburg. They were called proud and
dangerous. They had come to Winesburg from some place
in the South and ran a cider mill on the Trunion Pike.
Tom King was reported to have killed a man before he
came to Winesburg. He was twenty-seven years old and
rode about town on a grey pony. Also he had a long
yellow mustache that dropped down over his teeth, and
always carried a heavy, wicked-looking walking stick in
his hand. Once he killed a dog with the stick. The dog
belonged to Win Pawsey, the shoe merchant, and stood on
the sidewalk wagging its tail. Tom King killed it with
one blow. He was arrested and paid a fine of ten
dollars.

Old Edward King was small of stature and when he passed
people in the street laughed a queer unmirthful laugh.
When he laughed he scratched his left elbow with his
right hand. The sleeve of his coat was almost worn
through from the habit. As he walked along the street,
looking nervously about and laughing, he seemed more
dangerous than his silent, fierce-looking son.

When Sarah King began walking out in the evening with
Joe Welling, people shook their heads in alarm. She was
tall and pale and had dark rings under her eyes. The
couple looked ridiculous together. Under the trees they
walked and Joe talked. His passionate eager
protestations of love, heard coming out of the darkness
by the cemetery wall, or from the deep shadows of the
trees on the hill that ran up to the Fair Grounds from
Waterworks Pond, were repeated in the stores. Men stood
by the bar in the New Willard House laughing and
talking of Joe's courtship. After the laughter came the
silence. The Winesburg baseball team, under his
management, was winning game after game, and the town
had begun to respect him. Sensing a tragedy, they
waited, laughing nervously.

Late on a Saturday afternoon the meeting between Joe
Welling and the two Kings, the anticipation of which
had set the town on edge, took place in Joe Welling's
room in the New Willard House. George Willard was a
witness to the meeting. It came about in this way:

When the young reporter went to his room after the
evening meal he saw Tom King and his father sitting in
the half darkness in Joe's room. The son had the heavy
walking stick in his hand and sat near the door. Old
Edward King walked nervously about, scratching his left
elbow with his right hand. The hallways were empty and
silent.

George Willard went to his own room and sat down at his
desk. He tried to write but his hand trembled so that
he could not hold the pen. He also walked nervously up
and down. Like the rest of the town of Winesburg he was
perplexed and knew not what to do.

It was seven-thirty and fast growing dark when Joe
Welling came along the station platform toward the New
Willard House. In his arms he held a bundle of weeds
and grasses. In spite of the terror that made his body
shake, George Willard was amused at the sight of the
small spry figure holding the grasses and half running
along the platform.

Shaking with fright and anxiety, the young reporter
lurked in the hallway outside the door of the room in
which Joe Welling talked to the two Kings. There had
been an oath, the nervous giggle of old Edward King,
and then silence. Now the voice of Joe Welling, sharp
and clear, broke forth. George Willard began to laugh.
He understood. As he had swept all men before him, so
now Joe Welling was carrying the two men in the room
off their feet with a tidal wave of words. The listener
in the hall walked up and down, lost in amazement.

Inside the room Joe Welling had paid no attention to
the grumbled threat of Tom King. Absorbed in an idea he
closed the door and, lighting a lamp, spread the
handful of weeds and grasses upon the floor. "I've got
something here," he announced solemnly. "I was going to
tell George Willard about it, let him make a piece out
of it for the paper. I'm glad you're here. I wish Sarah
were here also. I've been going to come to your house
and tell you of some of my ideas. They're interesting.
Sarah wouldn't let me. She said we'd quarrel. That's
foolish."

Running up and down before the two perplexed men, Joe
Welling began to explain. "Don't you make a mistake
now," he cried. "This is something big." His voice was
shrill with excitement. "You just follow me, you'll be
interested. I know you will. Suppose this--suppose all
of the wheat, the corn, the oats, the peas, the
potatoes, were all by some miracle swept away. Now here
we are, you see, in this county. There is a high fence
built all around us. We'll suppose that. No one can get
over the fence and all the fruits of the earth are
destroyed, nothing left but these wild things, these
grasses. Would we be done for? I ask you that. Would we
be done for?" Again Tom King growled and for a moment
there was silence in the room. Then again Joe plunged
into the exposition of his idea. "Things would go hard
for a time. I admit that. I've got to admit that. No
getting around it. We'd be hard put to it. More than
one fat stomach would cave in. But they couldn't down
us. I should say not."

Tom King laughed good naturedly and the shivery,
nervous laugh of Edward King rang through the house.
Joe Welling hurried on. "We'd begin, you see, to breed
up new vegetables and fruits. Soon we'd regain all we
had lost. Mind, I don't say the new things would be the
same as the old. They wouldn't. Maybe they'd be better,
maybe not so good. That's interesting, eh? You can
think about that. It starts your mind working, now
don't it?"

In the room there was silence and then again old Edward
King laughed nervously. "Say, I wish Sarah was here,"
cried Joe Welling. "Let's go up to your house. I want
to tell her of this."

There was a scraping of chairs in the room. It was
then that George Willard retreated to his own room.
Leaning out at the window he saw Joe Welling going
along the street with the two Kings. Tom King was
forced to take extraordinary long strides to keep pace
with the little man. As he strode along, he leaned
over, listening--absorbed, fascinated. Joe Welling
again talked excitedly. "Take milkweed now," he cried.
"A lot might be done with milkweed, eh? It's almost
unbelievable. I want you to think about it. I want you
two to think about it. There would be a new vegetable
kingdom you see. It's interesting, eh? It's an idea.
Wait till you see Sarah, she'll get the idea. She'll be
interested. Sarah is always interested in ideas. You
can't be too smart for Sarah, now can you? Of course
you can't. You know that."

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

completion: Joe Welling, an agent for the Standard Oil company, lives in Winesburg with his mother. He has a tendency to get big ideas about things in his head and then he tells people about them enthusiastically. He falls in love with Sarah King, a young woman with a dangerous brother and father. However, when they come to threaten him, Joe starts telling them about how all the fruits and vegetables in the world could be re-engineered using grasses if all the usual foods people eat were wiped out. They get swept along by the torrent of his words, like everyone else always is, and forget all about threatening him.