prompt:
Chapter: LONELINESS

He was the son of Mrs. Al Robinson who once owned a
farm on a side road leading off Trunion Pike, east of
Winesburg and two miles beyond the town limits. The
farmhouse was painted brown and the blinds to all of
the windows facing the road were kept closed. In the
road before the house a flock of chickens, accompanied
by two guinea hens, lay in the deep dust. Enoch lived
in the house with his mother in those days and when he
was a young boy went to school at the Winesburg High
School. Old citizens remembered him as a quiet, smiling
youth inclined to silence. He walked in the middle of
the road when he came into town and sometimes read a
book. Drivers of teams had to shout and swear to make
him realize where he was so that he would turn out of
the beaten track and let them pass.

When he was twenty-one years old Enoch went to New York
City and was a city man for fifteen years. He studied
French and went to an art school, hoping to develop a
faculty he had for drawing. In his own mind he planned
to go to Paris and to finish his art education among
the masters there, but that never turned out.

Nothing ever turned out for Enoch Robinson. He could
draw well enough and he had many odd delicate thoughts
hidden away in his brain that might have expressed
themselves through the brush of a painter, but he was
always a child and that was a handicap to his worldly
development. He never grew up and of course he couldn't
understand people and he couldn't make people
understand him. The child in him kept bumping against
things, against actualities like money and sex and
opinions. Once he was hit by a street car and thrown
against an iron post. That made him lame. It was one of
the many things that kept things from turning out for
Enoch Robinson.

In New York City, when he first went there to live and
before he became confused and disconcerted by the facts
of life, Enoch went about a good deal with young men.
He got into a group of other young artists, both men
and women, and in the evenings they sometimes came to
visit him in his room. Once he got drunk and was taken
to a police station where a police magistrate
frightened him horribly, and once he tried to have an
affair with a woman of the town met on the sidewalk
before his lodging house. The woman and Enoch walked
together three blocks and then the young man grew
afraid and ran away. The woman had been drinking and
the incident amused her. She leaned against the wall of
a building and laughed so heartily that another man
stopped and laughed with her. The two went away
together, still laughing, and Enoch crept off to his
room trembling and vexed.

The room in which young Robinson lived in New York
faced Washington Square and was long and narrow like a
hallway. It is important to get that fixed in your
mind. The story of Enoch is in fact the story of a room
almost more than it is the story of a man.

And so into the room in the evening came young Enoch's
friends. There was nothing particularly striking about
them except that they were artists of the kind that
talk. Everyone knows of the talking artists. Throughout
all of the known history of the world they have
gathered in rooms and talked. They talk of art and are
passionately, almost feverishly, in earnest about it.
They think it matters much more than it does.

And so these people gathered and smoked cigarettes and
talked and Enoch Robinson, the boy from the farm near
Winesburg, was there. He stayed in a corner and for the
most part said nothing. How his big blue childlike eyes
stared about! On the walls were pictures he had made,
crude things, half finished. His friends talked of
these. Leaning back in their chairs, they talked and
talked with their heads rocking from side to side.
Words were said about line and values and composition,
lots of words, such as are always being said.

Enoch wanted to talk too but he didn't know how. He was
too excited to talk coherently. When he tried he
sputtered and stammered and his voice sounded strange
and squeaky to him. That made him stop talking. He knew
what he wanted to say, but he knew also that he could
never by any possibility say it. When a picture he had
painted was under discussion, he wanted to burst out
with something like this: "You don't get the point," he
wanted to explain; "the picture you see doesn't consist
of the things you see and say words about. There is
something else, something you don't see at all,
something you aren't intended to see. Look at this one
over here, by the door here, where the light from the
window falls on it. The dark spot by the road that you
might not notice at all is, you see, the beginning of
everything. There is a clump of elders there such as
used to grow beside the road before our house back in
Winesburg, Ohio, and in among the elders there is
something hidden. It is a woman, that's what it is. She
has been thrown from a horse and the horse has run away
out of sight. Do you not see how the old man who drives
a cart looks anxiously about? That is Thad Grayback who
has a farm up the road. He is taking corn to Winesburg
to be ground into meal at Comstock's mill. He knows
there is something in the elders, something hidden
away, and yet he doesn't quite know.

"It's a woman you see, that's what it is! It's a woman
and, oh, she is lovely! She is hurt and is suffering
but she makes no sound. Don't you see how it is? She
lies quite still, white and still, and the beauty comes
out from her and spreads over everything. It is in the
sky back there and all around everywhere. I didn't try
to paint the woman, of course. She is too beautiful to
be painted. How dull to talk of composition and such
things! Why do you not look at the sky and then run
away as I used to do when I was a boy back there in
Winesburg, Ohio?"

That is the kind of thing young Enoch Robinson trembled
to say to the guests who came into his room when he was
a young fellow in New York City, but he always ended by
saying nothing. Then he began to doubt his own mind. He
was afraid the things he felt were not getting
expressed in the pictures he painted. In a half
indignant mood he stopped inviting people into his room
and presently got into the habit of locking the door.
He began to think that enough people had visited him,
that he did not need people any more. With quick
imagination he began to invent his own people to whom
he could really talk and to whom he explained the
things he had been unable to explain to living people.
His room began to be inhabited by the spirits of men
and women among whom he went, in his turn saying words.
It was as though everyone Enoch Robinson had ever seen
had left with him some essence of himself, something he
could mould and change to suit his own fancy, something
that understood all about such things as the wounded
woman behind the elders in the pictures.

The mild, blue-eyed young Ohio boy was a complete
egotist, as all children are egotists. He did not want
friends for the quite simple reason that no child wants
friends. He wanted most of all the people of his own
mind, people with whom he could really talk, people he
could harangue and scold by the hour, servants, you
see, to his fancy. Among these people he was always
self-confident and bold. They might talk, to be sure,
and even have opinions of their own, but always he
talked last and best. He was like a writer busy among
the figures of his brain, a kind of tiny blue-eyed king
he was, in a six-dollar room facing Washington Square in
the city of New York.

Then Enoch Robinson got married. He began to get
lonely and to want to touch actual flesh-and-bone
people with his hands. Days passed when his room seemed
empty. Lust visited his body and desire grew in his
mind. At night strange fevers, burning within, kept him
awake. He married a girl who sat in a chair next to his
own in the art school and went to live in an apartment
house in Brooklyn. Two children were born to the woman
he married, and Enoch got a job in a place where
illustrations are made for advertisements.

That began another phase of Enoch's life. He began to
play at a new game. For a while he was very proud of
himself in the role of producing citizen of the world.
He dismissed the essence of things and played with
realities. In the fall he voted at an election and he
had a newspaper thrown on his porch each morning. When
in the evening he came home from work he got off a
streetcar and walked sedately along behind some
business man, striving to look very substantial and
important. As a payer of taxes he thought he should
post himself on how things are run. "I'm getting to be
of some moment, a real part of things, of the state and
the city and all that," he told himself with an amusing
miniature air of dignity. Once, coming home from
Philadelphia, he had a discussion with a man met on a
train. Enoch talked about the advisability of the
government's owning and operating the railroads and the
man gave him a cigar. It was Enoch's notion that such a
move on the part of the government would be a good
thing, and he grew quite excited as he talked. Later he
remembered his own words with pleasure. "I gave him
something to think about, that fellow," he muttered to
himself as he climbed the stairs to his Brooklyn
apartment.

To be sure, Enoch's marriage did not turn out. He
himself brought it to an end. He began to feel choked
and walled in by the life in the apartment, and to feel
toward his wife and even toward his children as he had
felt concerning the friends who once came to visit him.
He began to tell little lies about business engagements
that would give him freedom to walk alone in the street
at night and, the chance offering, he secretly
re-rented the room facing Washington Square. Then Mrs.
Al Robinson died on the farm near Winesburg, and he got
eight thousand dollars from the bank that acted as
trustee of her estate. That took Enoch out of the world
of men altogether. He gave the money to his wife and
told her he could not live in the apartment any more.
She cried and was angry and threatened, but he only
stared at her and went his own way. In reality the wife
did not care much. She thought Enoch slightly insane
and was a little afraid of him. When it was quite sure
that he would never come back, she took the two
children and went to a village in Connecticut where she
had lived as a girl. In the end she married a man who
bought and sold real estate and was contented enough.

And so Enoch Robinson stayed in the New York room among
the people of his fancy, playing with them, talking to
them, happy as a child is happy. They were an odd lot,
Enoch's people. They were made, I suppose, out of real
people he had seen and who had for some obscure reason
made an appeal to him. There was a woman with a sword
in her hand, an old man with a long white beard who
went about followed by a dog, a young girl whose
stockings were always coming down and hanging over her
shoe tops. There must have been two dozen of the shadow
people, invented by the child-mind of Enoch Robinson,
who lived in the room with him.

And Enoch was happy. Into the room he went and locked
the door. With an absurd air of importance he talked
aloud, giving instructions, making comments on life. He
was happy and satisfied to go on making his living in
the advertising place until something happened. Of
course something did happen. That is why he went back
to live in Winesburg and why we know about him. The
thing that happened was a woman. It would be that way.
He was too happy. Something had to come into his world.
Something had to drive him out of the New York room to
live out his life an obscure, jerky little figure,
bobbing up and down on the streets of an Ohio town at
evening when the sun was going down behind the roof of
Wesley Moyer's livery barn.

About the thing that happened. Enoch told George
Willard about it one night. He wanted to talk to
someone, and he chose the young newspaper reporter
because the two happened to be thrown together at a
time when the younger man was in a mood to understand.

Youthful sadness, young man's sadness, the sadness of a
growing boy in a village at the year's end, opened the
lips of the old man. The sadness was in the heart of
George Willard and was without meaning, but it appealed
to Enoch Robinson.

It rained on the evening when the two met and talked, a
drizzly wet October rain. The fruition of the year had
come and the night should have been fine with a moon in
the sky and the crisp sharp promise of frost in the
air, but it wasn't that way. It rained and little
puddles of water shone under the street lamps on Main
Street. In the woods in the darkness beyond the Fair
Ground water dripped from the black trees. Beneath the
trees wet leaves were pasted against tree roots that
protruded from the ground. In gardens back of houses in
Winesburg dry shriveled potato vines lay sprawling on
the ground. Men who had finished the evening meal and
who had planned to go uptown to talk the evening away
with other men at the back of some store changed their
minds. George Willard tramped about in the rain and was
glad that it rained. He felt that way. He was like
Enoch Robinson on the evenings when the old man came
down out of his room and wandered alone in the streets.
He was like that only that George Willard had become a
tall young man and did not think it manly to weep and
carry on. For a month his mother had been very ill and
that had something to do with his sadness, but not
much. He thought about himself and to the young that
always brings sadness.

Enoch Robinson and George Willard met beneath a wooden
awning that extended out over the sidewalk before
Voight's wagon shop on Maumee Street just off the main
street of Winesburg. They went together from there
through the rain-washed streets to the older man's room
on the third floor of the Heffner Block. The young
reporter went willingly enough. Enoch Robinson asked
him to go after the two had talked for ten minutes. The
boy was a little afraid but had never been more curious
in his life. A hundred times he had heard the old man
spoken of as a little off his head and he thought
himself rather brave and manly to go at all. From the
very beginning, in the street in the rain, the old man
talked in a queer way, trying to tell the story of the
room in Washington Square and of his life in the room.
"You'll understand if you try hard enough," he said
conclusively. "I have looked at you when you went past
me on the street and I think you can understand. It
isn't hard. All you have to do is to believe what I
say, just listen and believe, that's all there is to
it."

It was past eleven o'clock that evening when old Enoch,
talking to George Willard in the room in the Heffner
Block, came to the vital thing, the story of the woman
and of what drove him out of the city to live out his
life alone and defeated in Winesburg. He sat on a cot
by the window with his head in his hand and George
Willard was in a chair by a table. A kerosene lamp sat
on the table and the room, although almost bare of
furniture, was scrupulously clean. As the man talked
George Willard began to feel that he would like to get
out of the chair and sit on the cot also. He wanted to
put his arms about the little old man. In the half
darkness the man talked and the boy listened, filled
with sadness.

"She got to coming in there after there hadn't been
anyone in the room for years," said Enoch Robinson.
"She saw me in the hallway of the house and we got
acquainted. I don't know just what she did in her own
room. I never went there. I think she was a musician
and played a violin. Every now and then she came and
knocked at the door and I opened it. In she came and
sat down beside me, just sat and looked about and said
nothing. Anyway, she said nothing that mattered."

The old man arose from the cot and moved about the
room. The overcoat he wore was wet from the rain and
drops of water kept falling with a soft thump on the
floor. When he again sat upon the cot George Willard
got out of the chair and sat beside him.

"I had a feeling about her. She sat there in the room
with me and she was too big for the room. I felt that
she was driving everything else away. We just talked of
little things, but I couldn't sit still. I wanted to
touch her with my fingers and to kiss her. Her hands
were so strong and her face was so good and she looked
at me all the time."

The trembling voice of the old man became silent and
his body shook as from a chill. "I was afraid," he
whispered. "I was terribly afraid. I didn't want to let
her come in when she knocked at the door but I couldn't
sit still. 'No, no,' I said to myself, but I got up and
opened the door just the same. She was so grown up, you
see. She was a woman. I thought she would be bigger
than I was there in that room."

Enoch Robinson stared at George Willard, his childlike
blue eyes shining in the lamplight. Again he shivered.
"I wanted her and all the time I didn't want her," he
explained. "Then I began to tell her about my people,
about everything that meant anything to me. I tried to
keep quiet, to keep myself to myself, but I couldn't. I
felt just as I did about opening the door. Sometimes I
ached to have her go away and never come back any
more."

The old man sprang to his feet and his voice shook with
excitement. "One night something happened. I became mad
to make her understand me and to know what a big thing
I was in that room. I wanted her to see how important I
was. I told her over and over. When she tried to go
away, I ran and locked the door. I followed her about.
I talked and talked and then all of a sudden things
went to smash. A look came into her eyes and I knew she
did understand. Maybe she had understood all the time.
I was furious. I couldn't stand it. I wanted her to
understand but, don't you see, I couldn't let her
understand. I felt that then she would know everything,
that I would be submerged, drowned out, you see. That's
how it is. I don't know why."

The old man dropped into a chair by the lamp and the
boy listened, filled with awe. "Go away, boy," said the
man. "Don't stay here with me any more. I thought it
might be a good thing to tell you but it isn't. I don't
want to talk any more. Go away."

George Willard shook his head and a note of command
came into his voice. "Don't stop now. Tell me the rest
of it," he commanded sharply. "What happened? Tell me
the rest of the story."

Enoch Robinson sprang to his feet and ran to the window
that looked down into the deserted main street of
Winesburg. George Willard followed. By the window the
two stood, the tall awkward boy-man and the little
wrinkled man-boy. The childish, eager voice carried
forward the tale. "I swore at her," he explained. "I
said vile words. I ordered her to go away and not to
come back. Oh, I said terrible things. At first she
pretended not to understand but I kept at it. I
screamed and stamped on the floor. I made the house
ring with my curses. I didn't want ever to see her
again and I knew, after some of the things I said, that
I never would see her again."

The old man's voice broke and he shook his head.
"Things went to smash," he said quietly and sadly. "Out
she went through the door and all the life there had
been in the room followed her out. She took all of my
people away. They all went out through the door after
her. That's the way it was."

George Willard turned and went out of Enoch Robinson's
room. In the darkness by the window, as he went through
the door, he could hear the thin old voice whimpering
and complaining. "I'm alone, all alone here," said the
voice. "It was warm and friendly in my room but now I'm
all alone."

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

completion: Enoch Robinson is a childish man who seems crazy. He grew up on a farm near Winesburg, and he used to want to be an artist. When he was twenty-one he went to live in New York City, where he remained for fifteen years. There, he made friends who were artists, and they came to visit him in his little rented room. They talked of the composition of his pictures, but he felt they did not understand the art. Then, he stopped letting them come visit and instead invented people to keep him company in his room, people he could better control. Eventually, he married an art student, but that, too did not work out because of his egotism. He wanted people who exactly suited his needs, rather than real people, so he left his wife and two children, returned to his room, and continued imagining people. Finally, a young woman started visiting him again, and he tried to make her understand about his people, but she realized he was crazy and ran away. He ran after her and tried to explain, but he ended up swearing at her, instead. When she left, she took all the life and imagined people out of his room. He returned to Winesburg to live out his life alone and defeated.


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 owns the Winesburg hotel, which she inherited from her parents. Her husband, Tom, runs the shabby, unnprofitable hotel and behaves as though he is a very important man. He has a dream that one day he will become a Congressman or even governor. Elizabeth, on the other hand, has faded away and does not like to be seen by people. She feels defeated by life. However, she believes she has a special relationship with her son George, who sometimes comes to sit in her room with her when she is sick. But, they are just awkward with each other. One time, she hears her husband admonishing her son to be bold, and she wants desperately to communicate with George that he should not be too slick but should instead harbor dreams. Unfortunately, she is unable to communicate this to George.


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: Doctor Reefy, an old man with a white beard, once had a wife, but she died young. Now he lives alone and has become eccentric; he has worn one suit of clothes for ten years, which is now frayed at the sleeves and has holes at the knees and elbows. He has only one friend in the town, another old man. Doctor Reefy met his wife when she was a patient. A lover had made her pregnant, but she lost the child. She and the doctor fell in love even though she was younger than he, and he showed her how sweet gnarled apples can be. He shared with her the thoughts that he wrote down on little pieces of paper. Now that she is gone, he has no one to share the thoughts with. They sit in his pockets till they become little balls of paper, then he throws them away.


prompt:
Chapter: "QUEER"

From his seat on a box in the rough board shed that
stuck like a burr on the rear of Cowley & Son's store
in Winesburg, Elmer Cowley, the junior member of the
firm, could see through a dirty window into the
printshop of the Winesburg Eagle. Elmer was putting new
shoelaces in his shoes. They did not go in readily and
he had to take the shoes off. With the shoes in his
hand he sat looking at a large hole in the heel of one
of his stockings. Then looking quickly up he saw George
Willard, the only newspaper reporter in Winesburg,
standing at the back door of the Eagle printshop and
staring absentmindedly about. "Well, well, what next!"
exclaimed the young man with the shoes in his hand,
jumping to his feet and creeping away from the window.

A flush crept into Elmer Cowley's face and his hands
began to tremble. In Cowley & Son's store a Jewish
traveling salesman stood by the counter talking to his
father. He imagined the reporter could hear what was
being said and the thought made him furious. With one
of the shoes still held in his hand he stood in a
corner of the shed and stamped with a stockinged foot
upon the board floor.

Cowley & Son's store did not face the main street of
Winesburg. The front was on Maumee Street and beyond it
was Voight's wagon shop and a shed for the sheltering
of farmers' horses. Beside the store an alleyway ran
behind the main street stores and all day drays and
delivery wagons, intent on bringing in and taking out
goods, passed up and down. The store itself was
indescribable. Will Henderson once said of it that it
sold everything and nothing. In the window facing
Maumee Street stood a chunk of coal as large as an
apple barrel, to indicate that orders for coal were
taken, and beside the black mass of the coal stood
three combs of honey grown brown and dirty in their
wooden frames.

The honey had stood in the store window for six months.
It was for sale as were also the coat hangers, patent
suspender buttons, cans of roof paint, bottles of
rheumatism cure, and a substitute for coffee that
companioned the honey in its patient willingness to
serve the public.

Ebenezer Cowley, the man who stood in the store
listening to the eager patter of words that fell from
the lips of the traveling man, was tall and lean and
looked unwashed. On his scrawny neck was a large wen
partially covered by a grey beard. He wore a long
Prince Albert coat. The coat had been purchased to
serve as a wedding garment. Before he became a merchant
Ebenezer was a farmer and after his marriage he wore
the Prince Albert coat to church on Sundays and on
Saturday afternoons when he came into town to trade.
When he sold the farm to become a merchant he wore the
coat constantly. It had become brown with age and was
covered with grease spots, but in it Ebenezer always
felt dressed up and ready for the day in town.

As a merchant Ebenezer was not happily placed in life
and he had not been happily placed as a farmer. Still
he existed. His family, consisting of a daughter named
Mabel and the son, lived with him in rooms above the
store and it did not cost them much to live. His
troubles were not financial. His unhappiness as a
merchant lay in the fact that when a traveling man with
wares to be sold came in at the front door he was
afraid. Behind the counter he stood shaking his head.
He was afraid, first that he would stubbornly refuse to
buy and thus lose the opportunity to sell again; second
that he would not be stubborn enough and would in a
moment of weakness buy what could not be sold.

In the store on the morning when Elmer Cowley saw
George Willard standing and apparently listening at the
back door of the Eagle printshop, a situation had
arisen that always stirred the son's wrath. The
traveling man talked and Ebenezer listened, his whole
figure expressing uncertainty. "You see how quickly it
is done," said the traveling man, who had for sale a
small flat metal substitute for collar buttons. With
one hand he quickly unfastened a collar from his shirt
and then fastened it on again. He assumed a flattering
wheedling tone. "I tell you what, men have come to the
end of all this fooling with collar buttons and you are
the man to make money out of the change that is coming.
I am offering you the exclusive agency for this town.
Take twenty dozen of these fasteners and I'll not visit
any other store. I'll leave the field to you."

The traveling man leaned over the counter and tapped
with his finger on Ebenezer's breast. "It's an
opportunity and I want you to take it," he urged. "A
friend of mine told me about you. 'See that man
Cowley,' he said. 'He's a live one.'"

The traveling man paused and waited. Taking a book
from his pocket he began writing out the order. Still
holding the shoe in his hand Elmer Cowley went through
the store, past the two absorbed men, to a glass
showcase near the front door. He took a cheap revolver
from the case and began to wave it about. "You get out
of here!" he shrieked. "We don't want any collar
fasteners here." An idea came to him. "Mind, I'm not
making any threat," he added. "I don't say I'll shoot.
Maybe I just took this gun out of the case to look at
it. But you better get out. Yes sir, I'll say that. You
better grab up your things and get out."

The young storekeeper's voice rose to a scream and
going behind the counter he began to advance upon the
two men. "We're through being fools here!" he cried.
"We ain't going to buy any more stuff until we begin to
sell. We ain't going to keep on being queer and have
folks staring and listening. You get out of here!"

The traveling man left. Raking the samples of collar
fasteners off the counter into a black leather bag, he
ran. He was a small man and very bow-legged and he ran
awkwardly. The black bag caught against the door and he
stumbled and fell. "Crazy, that's what he is--crazy!"
he sputtered as he arose from the sidewalk and hurried
away.

In the store Elmer Cowley and his father stared at each
other. Now that the immediate object of his wrath had
fled, the younger man was embarrassed. "Well, I meant
it. I think we've been queer long enough," he declared,
going to the showcase and replacing the revolver.
Sitting on a barrel he pulled on and fastened the shoe
he had been holding in his hand. He was waiting for
some word of understanding from his father but when
Ebenezer spoke his words only served to reawaken the
wrath in the son and the young man ran out of the store
without replying. Scratching his grey beard with his
long dirty fingers, the merchant looked at his son with
the same wavering uncertain stare with which he had
confronted the traveling man. "I'll be starched," he
said softly. "Well, well, I'll be washed and ironed and
starched!"

Elmer Cowley went out of Winesburg and along a country
road that paralleled the railroad track. He did not
know where he was going or what he was going to do. In
the shelter of a deep cut where the road, after turning
sharply to the right, dipped under the tracks he
stopped and the passion that had been the cause of his
outburst in the store began to again find expression.
"I will not be queer--one to be looked at and listened
to," he declared aloud. "I'll be like other people.
I'll show that George Willard. He'll find out. I'll
show him!"

The distraught young man stood in the middle of the
road and glared back at the town. He did not know the
reporter George Willard and had no special feeling
concerning the tall boy who ran about town gathering
the town news. The reporter had merely come, by his
presence in the office and in the printshop of the
Winesburg Eagle, to stand for something in the young
merchant's mind. He thought the boy who passed and
repassed Cowley & Son's store and who stopped to talk
to people in the street must be thinking of him and
perhaps laughing at him. George Willard, he felt,
belonged to the town, typified the town, represented in
his person the spirit of the town. Elmer Cowley could
not have believed that George Willard had also his days
of unhappiness, that vague hungers and secret unnamable
desires visited also his mind. Did he not represent
public opinion and had not the public opinion of
Winesburg condemned the Cowleys to queerness? Did he
not walk whistling and laughing through Main Street?
Might not one by striking his person strike also the
greater enemy--the thing that smiled and went its own
way--the judgment of Winesburg?

Elmer Cowley was extraordinarily tall and his arms were
long and powerful. His hair, his eyebrows, and the
downy beard that had begun to grow upon his chin, were
pale almost to whiteness. His teeth protruded from
between his lips and his eyes were blue with the
colorless blueness of the marbles called "aggies" that
the boys of Winesburg carried in their pockets. Elmer
had lived in Winesburg for a year and had made no
friends. He was, he felt, one condemned to go through
life without friends and he hated the thought.

Sullenly the tall young man tramped along the road with
his hands stuffed into his trouser pockets. The day was
cold with a raw wind, but presently the sun began to
shine and the road became soft and muddy. The tops of
the ridges of frozen mud that formed the road began to
melt and the mud clung to Elmer's shoes. His feet
became cold. When he had gone several miles he turned
off the road, crossed a field and entered a wood. In
the wood he gathered sticks to build a fire, by which
he sat trying to warm himself, miserable in body and in
mind.

For two hours he sat on the log by the fire and then,
arising and creeping cautiously through a mass of
underbrush, he went to a fence and looked across fields
to a small farmhouse surrounded by low sheds. A smile
came to his lips and he began making motions with his
long arms to a man who was husking corn in one of the
fields.

In his hour of misery the young merchant had returned
to the farm where he had lived through boyhood and
where there was another human being to whom he felt he
could explain himself. The man on the farm was a
half-witted old fellow named Mook. He had once been
employed by Ebenezer Cowley and had stayed on the farm
when it was sold. The old man lived in one of the
unpainted sheds back of the farmhouse and puttered
about all day in the fields.

Mook the half-wit lived happily. With childlike faith
he believed in the intelligence of the animals that
lived in the sheds with him, and when he was lonely
held long conversations with the cows, the pigs, and
even with the chickens that ran about the barnyard. He
it was who had put the expression regarding being
"laundered" into the mouth of his former employer. When
excited or surprised by anything he smiled vaguely and
muttered: "I'll be washed and ironed. Well, well, I'll
be washed and ironed and starched."

When the half-witted old man left his husking of corn
and came into the wood to meet Elmer Cowley, he was
neither surprised nor especially interested in the
sudden appearance of the young man. His feet also were
cold and he sat on the log by the fire, grateful for
the warmth and apparently indifferent to what Elmer had
to say.

Elmer talked earnestly and with great freedom, walking
up and down and waving his arms about. "You don't
understand what's the matter with me so of course you
don't care," he declared. "With me it's different. Look
how it has always been with me. Father is queer and
mother was queer, too. Even the clothes mother used to
wear were not like other people's clothes, and look at
that coat in which father goes about there in town,
thinking he's dressed up, too. Why don't he get a new
one? It wouldn't cost much. I'll tell you why. Father
doesn't know and when mother was alive she didn't know
either. Mabel is different. She knows but she won't say
anything. I will, though. I'm not going to be stared at
any longer. Why look here, Mook, father doesn't know
that his store there in town is just a queer jumble,
that he'll never sell the stuff he buys. He knows
nothing about it. Sometimes he's a little worried that
trade doesn't come and then he goes and buys something
else. In the evenings he sits by the fire upstairs and
says trade will come after a while. He isn't worried.
He's queer. He doesn't know enough to be worried."

The excited young man became more excited. "He don't
know but I know," he shouted, stopping to gaze down
into the dumb, unresponsive face of the half-wit. "I
know too well. I can't stand it. When we lived out here
it was different. I worked and at night I went to bed
and slept. I wasn't always seeing people and thinking
as I am now. In the evening, there in town, I go to the
post office or to the depot to see the train come in,
and no one says anything to me. Everyone stands around
and laughs and they talk but they say nothing to me.
Then I feel so queer that I can't talk either. I go
away. I don't say anything. I can't."

The fury of the young man became uncontrollable. "I
won't stand it," he yelled, looking up at the bare
branches of the trees. "I'm not made to stand it."

Maddened by the dull face of the man on the log by the
fire, Elmer turned and glared at him as he had glared
back along the road at the town of Winesburg. "Go on
back to work," he screamed. "What good does it do me to
talk to you?" A thought came to him and his voice
dropped. "I'm a coward too, eh?" he muttered. "Do you
know why I came clear out here afoot? I had to tell
someone and you were the only one I could tell. I
hunted out another queer one, you see. I ran away,
that's what I did. I couldn't stand up to someone like
that George Willard. I had to come to you. I ought to
tell him and I will."

Again his voice arose to a shout and his arms flew
about. "I will tell him. I won't be queer. I don't care
what they think. I won't stand it."

Elmer Cowley ran out of the woods leaving the half-wit
sitting on the log before the fire. Presently the old
man arose and climbing over the fence went back to his
work in the corn. "I'll be washed and ironed and
starched," he declared. "Well, well, I'll be washed and
ironed." Mook was interested. He went along a lane to a
field where two cows stood nibbling at a straw stack.
"Elmer was here," he said to the cows. "Elmer is crazy.
You better get behind the stack where he don't see you.
He'll hurt someone yet, Elmer will."

At eight o'clock that evening Elmer Cowley put his head
in at the front door of the office of the Winesburg
Eagle where George Willard sat writing. His cap was
pulled down over his eyes and a sullen determined look
was on his face. "You come on outside with me," he
said, stepping in and closing the door. He kept his
hand on the knob as though prepared to resist anyone
else coming in. "You just come along outside. I want to
see you."

George Willard and Elmer Cowley walked through the main
street of Winesburg. The night was cold and George
Willard had on a new overcoat and looked very spruce
and dressed up. He thrust his hands into the overcoat
pockets and looked inquiringly at his companion. He had
long been wanting to make friends with the young
merchant and find out what was in his mind. Now he
thought he saw a chance and was delighted. "I wonder
what he's up to? Perhaps he thinks he has a piece of
news for the paper. It can't be a fire because I
haven't heard the fire bell and there isn't anyone
running," he thought.

In the main street of Winesburg, on the cold November
evening, but few citizens appeared and these hurried
along bent on getting to the stove at the back of some
store. The windows of the stores were frosted and the
wind rattled the tin sign that hung over the entrance
to the stairway leading to Doctor Welling's office.
Before Hern's Grocery a basket of apples and a rack
filled with new brooms stood on the sidewalk. Elmer
Cowley stopped and stood facing George Willard. He
tried to talk and his arms began to pump up and down.
His face worked spasmodically. He seemed about to
shout. "Oh, you go on back," he cried. "Don't stay out
here with me. I ain't got anything to tell you. I don't
want to see you at all."

For three hours the distracted young merchant wandered
through the resident streets of Winesburg blind with
anger, brought on by his failure to declare his
determination not to be queer. Bitterly the sense of
defeat settled upon him and he wanted to weep. After
the hours of futile sputtering at nothingness that had
occupied the afternoon and his failure in the presence
of the young reporter, he thought he could see no hope
of a future for himself.

And then a new idea dawned for him. In the darkness
that surrounded him he began to see a light. Going to
the now darkened store, where Cowley & Son had for over
a year waited vainly for trade to come, he crept
stealthily in and felt about in a barrel that stood by
the stove at the rear. In the barrel beneath shavings
lay a tin box containing Cowley & Son's cash. Every
evening Ebenezer Cowley put the box in the barrel when
he closed the store and went upstairs to bed. "They
wouldn't never think of a careless place like that," he
told himself, thinking of robbers.

Elmer took twenty dollars, two ten-dollar bills, from
the little roll containing perhaps four hundred
dollars, the cash left from the sale of the farm. Then
replacing the box beneath the shavings he went quietly
out at the front door and walked again in the streets.

The idea that he thought might put an end to all of his
unhappiness was very simple. "I will get out of here,
run away from home," he told himself. He knew that a
local freight train passed through Winesburg at
midnight and went on to Cleveland, where it arrived at
dawn. He would steal a ride on the local and when he
got to Cleveland would lose himself in the crowds
there. He would get work in some shop and become
friends with the other workmen and would be
indistinguishable. Then he could talk and laugh. He
would no longer be queer and would make friends. Life
would begin to have warmth and meaning for him as it
had for others.

The tall awkward young man, striding through the
streets, laughed at himself because he had been angry
and had been half afraid of George Willard. He decided
he would have his talk with the young reporter before
he left town, that he would tell him about things,
perhaps challenge him, challenge all of Winesburg
through him.

Aglow with new confidence Elmer went to the office of
the New Willard House and pounded on the door. A
sleep-eyed boy slept on a cot in the office. He
received no salary but was fed at the hotel table and
bore with pride the title of "night clerk." Before the
boy Elmer was bold, insistent. "You 'wake him up," he
commanded. "You tell him to come down by the depot. I
got to see him and I'm going away on the local. Tell
him to dress and come on down. I ain't got much time."

The midnight local had finished its work in Winesburg
and the trainsmen were coupling cars, swinging lanterns
and preparing to resume their flight east. George
Willard, rubbing his eyes and again wearing the new
overcoat, ran down to the station platform afire with
curiosity. "Well, here I am. What do you want? You've
got something to tell me, eh?" he said.

Elmer tried to explain. He wet his lips with his
tongue and looked at the train that had begun to groan
and get under way. "Well, you see," he began, and then
lost control of his tongue. "I'll be washed and ironed.
I'll be washed and ironed and starched," he muttered
half incoherently.

Elmer Cowley danced with fury beside the groaning train
in the darkness on the station platform. Lights leaped
into the air and bobbed up and down before his eyes.
Taking the two ten-dollar bills from his pocket he
thrust them into George Willard's hand. "Take them," he
cried. "I don't want them. Give them to father. I stole
them." With a snarl of rage he turned and his long arms
began to flay the air. Like one struggling for release
from hands that held him he struck out, hitting George
Willard blow after blow on the breast, the neck, the
mouth. The young reporter rolled over on the platform
half unconscious, stunned by the terrific force of the
blows. Springing aboard the passing train and running
over the tops of cars, Elmer sprang down to a flat car
and lying on his face looked back, trying to see the
fallen man in the darkness. Pride surged up in him. "I
showed him," he cried. "I guess I showed him. I ain't
so queer. I guess I showed him I ain't so queer."

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

completion: Elmer Cowley is the son of Ebenezer Cowley, a farmer who sold his farm a year ago and became a storekeeper. Ebenezer is not much of a merchant, as he just buys up a jumble of things that cannot really be sold. One time, Elmer threatens a merchant who tries to sell them an item they will never be able to sell again. He is bitter that his family is so odd and he thinks that everyone in the town laughs at them because of it. He takes a walk and tries to talk to a simple-minded man who remained on the Cowley farm, but he is unable to communicate his frustration. When he sees George Willard happen to look at him, Elmer flies into a rage, thinking the reporter is considering how odd the Cowleys are. Yet, when he confronts George, he cannot find words to tell him how he feels and just sputters with anger. He steals $20 from his father to take the local train to the city, where he plans to join the anonymous rush of people. He wakes up George and tells him to come down to the station, intending to tell the young man that he is not strange. Again, words fail him, and he gives George the $20 to return to his father and then beats up George before jumping on the train.


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: George Willard is thinking of Helen White on the day of the county fair, and she is thinking of George, even though she is stuck with a college instructor of hers who has come to town for the day. In the evening, her mother insinuates that this instructor would be a good match for Helen and keeps the two talking on the porch. Helen leaves the house and runs into George on his way to visit her. They go off together to the fairgrounds and spend some time together. They embrace a little and talk a little. Then, they play around like two small animals. After they goof around, they feel satisfied and ready to be adults.


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: An old writer has a bed that his carpenter raised up so the writer can see out the window. Unfortunately, it is now difficult for him to get in and out of the bed. From this bed, he dreams "a dream that was not a dream"  in which all the people has had ever known pass before his eyes. These figures are grotesques. From this parade of figures, he creates the stories in this book.