prompt:
Chapter: WE knew that things were hard for our Bohemian neighbors, but the two
girls were light-hearted and never complained. They were always ready to
forget their troubles at home, and to run away with me over the prairie,
scaring rabbits or starting up flocks of quail.

I remember Antonia's excitement when she came into our kitchen one
afternoon and announced: "My papa find friends up north, with Russian
mans. Last night he take me for see, and I can understand very much talk.
Nice mans, Mrs. Burden. One is fat and all the time laugh. Everybody
laugh. The first time I see my papa laugh in this kawn-tree. Oh, very
nice!"

I asked her if she meant the two Russians who lived up by the big
dog-town. I had often been tempted to go to see them when I was riding in
that direction, but one of them was a wild-looking fellow and I was a
little afraid of him. Russia seemed to me more remote than any other
country--farther away than China, almost as far as the North Pole. Of all
the strange, uprooted people among the first settlers, those two men were
the strangest and the most aloof. Their last names were unpronounceable,
so they were called Pavel and Peter. They went about making signs to
people, and until the Shimerdas came they had no friends. Krajiek could
understand them a little, but he had cheated them in a trade, so they
avoided him. Pavel, the tall one, was said to be an anarchist; since he
had no means of imparting his opinions, probably his wild gesticulations
and his generally excited and rebellious manner gave rise to this
supposition. He must once have been a very strong man, but now his great
frame, with big, knotty joints, had a wasted look, and the skin was drawn
tight over his high cheek-bones. His breathing was hoarse, and he always
had a cough.

Peter, his companion, was a very different sort of fellow; short,
bow-legged, and as fat as butter. He always seemed pleased when he met
people on the road, smiled and took off his cap to every one, men as well
as women. At a distance, on his wagon, he looked like an old man; his hair
and beard were of such a pale flaxen color that they seemed white in the
sun. They were as thick and curly as carded wool. His rosy face, with its
snub nose, set in this fleece, was like a melon among its leaves. He was
usually called "Curly Peter," or "Rooshian Peter."

The two Russians made good farmhands, and in summer they worked out
together. I had heard our neighbors laughing when they told how Peter
always had to go home at night to milk his cow. Other bachelor
homesteaders used canned milk, to save trouble. Sometimes Peter came to
church at the sod schoolhouse. It was there I first saw him, sitting on a
low bench by the door, his plush cap in his hands, his bare feet tucked
apologetically under the seat.

After Mr. Shimerda discovered the Russians, he went to see them almost
every evening, and sometimes took Antonia with him. She said they came
from a part of Russia where the language was not very different from
Bohemian, and if I wanted to go to their place, she could talk to them for
me. One afternoon, before the heavy frosts began, we rode up there
together on my pony.

The Russians had a neat log house built on a grassy slope, with a windlass
well beside the door. As we rode up the draw we skirted a big melon patch,
and a garden where squashes and yellow cucumbers lay about on the sod. We
found Peter out behind his kitchen, bending over a washtub. He was working
so hard that he did not hear us coming. His whole body moved up and down
as he rubbed, and he was a funny sight from the rear, with his shaggy head
and bandy legs. When he straightened himself up to greet us, drops of
perspiration were rolling from his thick nose down on to his curly beard.
Peter dried his hands and seemed glad to leave his washing. He took us
down to see his chickens, and his cow that was grazing on the hillside. He
told Antonia that in his country only rich people had cows, but here any
man could have one who would take care of her. The milk was good for
Pavel, who was often sick, and he could make butter by beating sour cream
with a wooden spoon. Peter was very fond of his cow. He patted her flanks
and talked to her in Russian while he pulled up her lariat pin and set it
in a new place.

After he had shown us his garden, Peter trundled a load of watermelons up
the hill in his wheelbarrow. Pavel was not at home. He was off somewhere
helping to dig a well. The house I thought very comfortable for two men
who were "batching." Besides the kitchen, there was a living-room, with a
wide double bed built against the wall, properly made up with blue gingham
sheets and pillows. There was a little storeroom, too, with a window,
where they kept guns and saddles and tools, and old coats and boots. That
day the floor was covered with garden things, drying for winter; corn and
beans and fat yellow cucumbers. There were no screens or window-blinds in
the house, and all the doors and windows stood wide open, letting in flies
and sunshine alike.

Peter put the melons in a row on the oilcloth-covered table and stood over
them, brandishing a butcher knife. Before the blade got fairly into them,
they split of their own ripeness, with a delicious sound. He gave us
knives, but no plates, and the top of the table was soon swimming with
juice and seeds. I had never seen any one eat so many melons as Peter ate.
He assured us that they were good for one--better than medicine; in his
country people lived on them at this time of year. He was very hospitable
and jolly. Once, while he was looking at Antonia, he sighed and told us
that if he had stayed at home in Russia perhaps by this time he would have
had a pretty daughter of his own to cook and keep house for him. He said
he had left his country because of a "great trouble."

When we got up to go, Peter looked about in perplexity for something that
would entertain us. He ran into the storeroom and brought out a gaudily
painted harmonica, sat down on a bench, and spreading his fat legs apart
began to play like a whole band. The tunes were either very lively or very
doleful, and he sang words to some of them.

Before we left, Peter put ripe cucumbers into a sack for Mrs. Shimerda and
gave us a lard-pail full of milk to cook them in. I had never heard of
cooking cucumbers, but Antonia assured me they were very good. We had to
walk the pony all the way home to keep from spilling the milk.

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

completion: Even though the Shimerdas are having trouble getting used to their new home, the two young girls never complain and are always happy. One day Antonia tells Jim that her father had met two Russian men, Peter and Pavel, who speak a dialect similar to the Shimerdas. Pavel is tall, skinny, and wasted-looking; he makes excited gestures, so people think he's an anarchist. Peter is short, fat, pleasant, and very friendly. The two men live together and work together as farmhands. Mr. Shimerda visits the Russians almost every day, sometimes with Antonia, and one day he takes Jim along with them. Peter is out washing laundry, and he shows them his cow, which he is very fond of. Pavel is not home, and their house is very neat and organized. Peter gives them fresh melons, and they eat many of them messily on the table. Looking at Antonia, he sighs because he wishes he hadn't had to leave Russia, where he could have a daughter just like her. Before Jim and the Shimerdas leave, Peter plays the harmonica for them and gives them cucumbers and milk.


prompt:
Chapter: ONE afternoon we were having our reading lesson on the warm, grassy bank
where the badger lived. It was a day of amber sunlight, but there was a
shiver of coming winter in the air. I had seen ice on the little
horse-pond that morning, and as we went through the garden we found the
tall asparagus, with its red berries, lying on the ground, a mass of slimy
green.

Tony was barefooted, and she shivered in her cotton dress and was
comfortable only when we were tucked down on the baked earth, in the full
blaze of the sun. She could talk to me about almost anything by this time.
That afternoon she was telling me how highly esteemed our friend the
badger was in her part of the world, and how men kept a special kind of
dog, with very short legs, to hunt him. Those dogs, she said, went down
into the hole after the badger and killed him there in a terrific struggle
underground; you could hear the barks and yelps outside. Then the dog
dragged himself back, covered with bites and scratches, to be rewarded and
petted by his master. She knew a dog who had a star on his collar for
every badger he had killed.

The rabbits were unusually spry that afternoon. They kept starting up all
about us, and dashing off down the draw as if they were playing a game of
some kind. But the little buzzing things that lived in the grass were all
dead--all but one. While we were lying there against the warm bank, a
little insect of the palest, frailest green hopped painfully out of the
buffalo grass and tried to leap into a bunch of bluestem. He missed it,
fell back, and sat with his head sunk between his long legs, his antennae
quivering, as if he were waiting for something to come and finish him.
Tony made a warm nest for him in her hands; talked to him gayly and
indulgently in Bohemian. Presently he began to sing for us--a thin, rusty
little chirp. She held him close to her ear and laughed, but a moment
afterward I saw there were tears in her eyes. She told me that in her
village at home there was an old beggar woman who went about selling herbs
and roots she had dug up in the forest. If you took her in and gave her a
warm place by the fire, she sang old songs to the children in a cracked
voice, like this. Old Hata, she was called, and the children loved to see
her coming and saved their cakes and sweets for her.

When the bank on the other side of the draw began to throw a narrow shelf
of shadow, we knew we ought to be starting homeward; the chill came on
quickly when the sun got low, and Antonia's dress was thin. What were we
to do with the frail little creature we had lured back to life by false
pretenses? I offered my pockets, but Tony shook her head and carefully put
the green insect in her hair, tying her big handkerchief down loosely over
her curls. I said I would go with her until we could see Squaw Creek, and
then turn and run home. We drifted along lazily, very happy, through the
magical light of the late afternoon.

All those fall afternoons were the same, but I never got used to them. As
far as we could see, the miles of copper-red grass were drenched in
sunlight that was stronger and fiercer than at any other time of the day.
The blond cornfields were red gold, the haystacks turned rosy and threw
long shadows. The whole prairie was like the bush that burned with fire
and was not consumed. That hour always had the exultation of victory, of
triumphant ending, like a hero's death--heroes who died young and
gloriously. It was a sudden transfiguration, a lifting-up of day.

How many an afternoon Antonia and I have trailed along the prairie under
that magnificence! And always two long black shadows flitted before us or
followed after, dark spots on the ruddy grass.

We had been silent a long time, and the edge of the sun sank nearer and
nearer the prairie floor, when we saw a figure moving on the edge of the
upland, a gun over his shoulder. He was walking slowly, dragging his feet
along as if he had no purpose. We broke into a run to overtake him.

"My papa sick all the time," Tony panted as we flew. "He not look good,
Jim."

As we neared Mr. Shimerda she shouted, and he lifted his head and peered
about. Tony ran up to him, caught his hand and pressed it against her
cheek. She was the only one of his family who could rouse the old man from
the torpor in which he seemed to live. He took the bag from his belt and
showed us three rabbits he had shot, looked at Antonia with a wintry
flicker of a smile and began to tell her something. She turned to me.

"My tatinek make me little hat with the skins, little hat for win-ter!"
she exclaimed joyfully. "Meat for eat, skin for hat,"--she told off these
benefits on her fingers.

Her father put his hand on her hair, but she caught his wrist and lifted
it carefully away, talking to him rapidly. I heard the name of old Hata.
He untied the handkerchief, separated her hair with his fingers, and stood
looking down at the green insect. When it began to chirp faintly, he
listened as if it were a beautiful sound.

I picked up the gun he had dropped; a queer piece from the old country,
short and heavy, with a stag's head on the cock. When he saw me examining
it, he turned to me with his far-away look that always made me feel as if
I were down at the bottom of a well. He spoke kindly and gravely, and
Antonia translated:--

"My tatinek say when you are big boy, he give you his gun. Very fine, from
Bohemie. It was belong to a great man, very rich, like what you not got
here; many fields, many forests, many big house. My papa play for his
wedding, and he give my papa fine gun, and my papa give you."

[Illustration: Mr. Shimerda walking on the upland prairie with a gun over
                              his shoulder]

I was glad that this project was one of futurity. There never were such
people as the Shimerdas for wanting to give away everything they had. Even
the mother was always offering me things, though I knew she expected
substantial presents in return. We stood there in friendly silence, while
the feeble minstrel sheltered in Antonia's hair went on with its scratchy
chirp. The old man's smile, as he listened, was so full of sadness, of
pity for things, that I never afterward forgot it. As the sun sank there
came a sudden coolness and the strong smell of earth and drying grass.
Antonia and her father went off hand in hand, and I buttoned up my jacket
and raced my shadow home.

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

completion: One afternoon Jim and "Tony" are sitting outside in the sun for their English lesson. Tony begins talking about badgers and how they are hunted by special dogs in her native country. It is almost winter, so all the insects, except one, are dead. Tony picks the bug up and begins to speak to it in Bohemian, and it starts to chirp back at her. She begins to cry a little bit because the bug reminds her of an old beggar woman she once knew who used to sing songs for children. When they decide to go back, Antonia puts the bug in her hair. As they walk back, Jim marvels at the prairie surrounding them, covered in red grass and cornfields. Every day they walked back through the fields, and the moment seems triumphant, "like a hero's deathheroes who died young and gloriously. They see Mr. Shimerda up ahead and run to overtake him. Antonia confides that her father is sick, and he shows them three rabbits that he killed for food and fur. As Antonia shows her father the bug from her hair, Jim looks at Mr. Shimerda's gun. With Antonia translating, the father tells Jim that he can have the gun when he grows up. The gun is a gift from a very wealthy man whose wedding Mr. Shimerda played at. Jim wonders that the Shimerdas are always wanting to give away their possessions, and he is touched by the old man's look of sadness and pity.


prompt:
Chapter: MUCH as I liked Antonia, I hated a superior tone that she sometimes took
with me. She was four years older than I, to be sure, and had seen more of
the world; but I was a boy and she was a girl, and I resented her
protecting manner. Before the autumn was over she began to treat me more
like an equal and to defer to me in other things than reading lessons.
This change came about from an adventure we had together.

One day when I rode over to the Shimerdas' I found Antonia starting off on
foot for Russian Peter's house, to borrow a spade Ambrosch needed. I
offered to take her on the pony, and she got up behind me. There had been
another black frost the night before, and the air was clear and heady as
wine. Within a week all the blooming roads had been despoiled--hundreds of
miles of yellow sunflowers had been transformed into brown, rattling,
burry stalks.

We found Russian Peter digging his potatoes. We were glad to go in and get
warm by his kitchen stove and to see his squashes and Christmas melons,
heaped in the storeroom for winter. As we rode away with the spade,
Antonia suggested that we stop at the prairie-dog town and dig into one of
the holes. We could find out whether they ran straight down, or were
horizontal, like mole-holes; whether they had underground connections;
whether the owls had nests down there, lined with feathers. We might get
some puppies, or owl eggs, or snake-skins.

The dog-town was spread out over perhaps ten acres. The grass had been
nibbled short and even, so this stretch was not shaggy and red like the
surrounding country, but gray and velvety. The holes were several yards
apart, and were disposed with a good deal of regularity, almost as if the
town had been laid out in streets and avenues. One always felt that an
orderly and very sociable kind of life was going on there. I picketed Dude
down in a draw, and we went wandering about, looking for a hole that would
be easy to dig. The dogs were out, as usual, dozens of them, sitting up on
their hind legs over the doors of their houses. As we approached, they
barked, shook their tails at us, and scurried underground. Before the
mouths of the holes were little patches of sand and gravel, scratched up,
we supposed, from a long way below the surface. Here and there, in the
town, we came on larger gravel patches, several yards away from any hole.
If the dogs had scratched the sand up in excavating, how had they carried
it so far? It was on one of these gravel beds that I met my adventure.

We were examining a big hole with two entrances. The burrow sloped into
the ground at a gentle angle, so that we could see where the two corridors
united, and the floor was dusty from use, like a little highway over which
much travel went. I was walking backward, in a crouching position, when I
heard Antonia scream. She was standing opposite me, pointing behind me and
shouting something in Bohemian. I whirled round, and there, on one of
those dry gravel beds, was the biggest snake I had ever seen. He was
sunning himself, after the cold night, and he must have been asleep when
Antonia screamed. When I turned he was lying in long loose waves, like a
letter "W." He twitched and began to coil slowly. He was not merely a big
snake, I thought--he was a circus monstrosity. His abominable muscularity,
his loathsome, fluid motion, somehow made me sick. He was as thick as my
leg, and looked as if millstones could n't crush the disgusting vitality
out of him. He lifted his hideous little head, and rattled. I did n't run
because I did n't think of it--if my back had been against a stone wall I
could n't have felt more cornered. I saw his coils tighten--now he would
spring, spring his length, I remembered. I ran up and drove at his head
with my spade, struck him fairly across the neck, and in a minute he was
all about my feet in wavy loops. I struck now from hate. Antonia,
barefooted as she was, ran up behind me. Even after I had pounded his ugly
head flat, his body kept on coiling and winding, doubling and falling back
on itself. I walked away and turned my back. I felt seasick. Antonia came
after me, crying, "O Jimmy, he not bite you? You sure? Why you not run
when I say?"

"What did you jabber Bohunk for? You might have told me there was a snake
behind me!" I said petulantly.

"I know I am just awful, Jim, I was so scared." She took my handkerchief
from my pocket and tried to wipe my face with it, but I snatched it away
from her. I suppose I looked as sick as I felt.

"I never know you was so brave, Jim," she went on comfortingly. "You is
just like big mans; you wait for him lift his head and then you go for
him. Ain't you feel scared a bit? Now we take that snake home and show
everybody. Nobody ain't seen in this kawn-tree so big snake like you
kill."

She went on in this strain until I began to think that I had longed for
this opportunity, and had hailed it with joy. Cautiously we went back to
the snake; he was still groping with his tail, turning up his ugly belly
in the light. A faint, fetid smell came from him, and a thread of green
liquid oozed from his crushed head.

"Look, Tony, that's his poison," I said.

I took a long piece of string from my pocket, and she lifted his head with
the spade while I tied a noose around it. We pulled him out straight and
measured him by my riding-quirt; he was about five and a half feet long.
He had twelve rattles, but they were broken off before they began to
taper, so I insisted that he must once have had twenty-four. I explained
to Antonia how this meant that he was twenty-four years old, that he must
have been there when white men first came, left on from buffalo and Indian
times. As I turned him over I began to feel proud of him, to have a kind
of respect for his age and size. He seemed like the ancient, eldest Evil.
Certainly his kind have left horrible unconscious memories in all
warm-blooded life. When we dragged him down into the draw, Dude sprang off
to the end of his tether and shivered all over--would n't let us come near
him.

We decided that Antonia should ride Dude home, and I would walk. As she
rode along slowly, her bare legs swinging against the pony's sides, she
kept shouting back to me about how astonished everybody would be. I
followed with the spade over my shoulder, dragging my snake. Her
exultation was contagious. The great land had never looked to me so big
and free. If the red grass were full of rattlers, I was equal to them all.
Nevertheless, I stole furtive glances behind me now and then to see that
no avenging mate, older and bigger than my quarry, was racing up from the
rear.

The sun had set when we reached our garden and went down the draw toward
the house. Otto Fuchs was the first one we met. He was sitting on the edge
of the cattle-pond, having a quiet pipe before supper. Antonia called him
to come quick and look. He did not say anything for a minute, but
scratched his head and turned the snake over with his boot.

"Where did you run onto that beauty, Jim?"

"Up at the dog-town," I answered laconically.

"Kill him yourself? How come you to have a weepon?"

"We'd been up to Russian Peter's, to borrow a spade for Ambrosch."

Otto shook the ashes out of his pipe and squatted down to count the
rattles. "It was just luck you had a tool," he said cautiously. "Gosh! I
would n't want to do any business with that fellow myself, unless I had a
fence-post along. Your grandmother's snake-cane would n't more than tickle
him. He could stand right up and talk to you, he could. Did he fight
hard?"

Antonia broke in: "He fight something awful! He is all over Jimmy's boots.
I scream for him to run, but he just hit and hit that snake like he was
crazy."

Otto winked at me. After Antonia rode on he said: "Got him in the head
first crack, did n't you? That was just as well."

We hung him up to the windmill, and when I went down to the kitchen I
found Antonia standing in the middle of the floor, telling the story with
a great deal of color.

Subsequent experiences with rattlesnakes taught me that my first encounter
was fortunate in circumstance. My big rattler was old, and had led too
easy a life; there was not much fight in him. He had probably lived there
for years, with a fat prairie dog for breakfast whenever he felt like it,
a sheltered home, even an owl-feather bed, perhaps, and he had forgot that
the world does n't owe rattlers a living. A snake of his size, in fighting
trim, would be more than any boy could handle. So in reality it was a mock
adventure; the game was fixed for me by chance, as it probably was for
many a dragon-slayer. I had been adequately armed by Russian Peter; the
snake was old and lazy; and I had Antonia beside me, to appreciate and
admire.

That snake hung on our corral fence for several days; some of the
neighbors came to see it and agreed that it was the biggest rattler ever
killed in those parts. This was enough for Antonia. She liked me better
from that time on, and she never took a supercilious air with me again. I
had killed a big snake--I was now a big fellow.

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

completion: According to Jim, Antonia often treats him a little condescendingly, until one autumn adventure that changes her opinion of him. One day Jim takes Antonia on his pony so that she can borrow a spade from Russian Peter. Afterwards, they go look at the ten-acre large prairie dog town. Suddenly, Antonia screams in Bohemian and points at a huge, coiling snake as big as Jim's leg. Jim rushes up to it and digs into its neck with the spade, while it coils furiously around his feet. After he kills it, Jim feels sick and is irritable. Antonia comforts him and tells him how brave he is. They look at the snake, who is five and a half feet long and twenty-four years old. Jim drags the snake behind him on the way home and feels proud of having killed it. Otto Fuchs tells Jim that he is lucky to have killed the snake so easily, and Antonia tells how brave Jim was. Afterwards, Jim realizes how lucky he was to have had a weapon available and how lazy and old the snake probably was at the time. Nevertheless, Antonia treats him with more respect from then on.


prompt:
Chapter: WHILE the autumn color was growing pale on the grass and cornfields,
things went badly with our friends the Russians. Peter told his troubles
to Mr. Shimerda: he was unable to meet a note which fell due on the first
of November; had to pay an exorbitant bonus on renewing it, and to give a
mortgage on his pigs and horses and even his milk cow. His creditor was
Wick Cutter, the merciless Black Hawk money-lender, a man of evil name
throughout the county, of whom I shall have more to say later. Peter could
give no very clear account of his transactions with Cutter. He only knew
that he had first borrowed two hundred dollars, then another hundred, then
fifty--that each time a bonus was added to the principal, and the debt grew
faster than any crop he planted. Now everything was plastered with
mortgages.

Soon after Peter renewed his note, Pavel strained himself lifting timbers
for a new barn, and fell over among the shavings with such a gush of blood
from the lungs that his fellow-workmen thought he would die on the spot.
They hauled him home and put him into his bed, and there he lay, very ill
indeed. Misfortune seemed to settle like an evil bird on the roof of the
log house, and to flap its wings there, warning human beings away. The
Russians had such bad luck that people were afraid of them and liked to
put them out of mind.

One afternoon Antonia and her father came over to our house to get
buttermilk, and lingered, as they usually did, until the sun was low. Just
as they were leaving, Russian Peter drove up. Pavel was very bad, he said,
and wanted to talk to Mr. Shimerda and his daughter; he had come to fetch
them. When Antonia and her father got into the wagon, I entreated
grandmother to let me go with them: I would gladly go without my supper, I
would sleep in the Shimerdas' barn and run home in the morning. My plan
must have seemed very foolish to her, but she was often large-minded about
humoring the desires of other people. She asked Peter to wait a moment,
and when she came back from the kitchen she brought a bag of sandwiches
and doughnuts for us.

Mr. Shimerda and Peter were on the front seat; Antonia and I sat in the
straw behind and ate our lunch as we bumped along. After the sun sank, a
cold wind sprang up and moaned over the prairie. If this turn in the
weather had come sooner, I should not have got away. We burrowed down in
the straw and curled up close together, watching the angry red die out of
the west and the stars begin to shine in the clear, windy sky. Peter kept
sighing and groaning. Tony whispered to me that he was afraid Pavel would
never get well. We lay still and did not talk. Up there the stars grew
magnificently bright. Though we had come from such different parts of the
world, in both of us there was some dusky superstition that those shining
groups have their influence upon what is and what is not to be. Perhaps
Russian Peter, come from farther away than any of us, had brought from his
land, too, some such belief.

The little house on the hillside was so much the color of the night that
we could not see it as we came up the draw. The ruddy windows guided
us--the light from the kitchen stove, for there was no lamp burning.

We entered softly. The man in the wide bed seemed to be asleep. Tony and I
sat down on the bench by the wall and leaned our arms on the table in
front of us. The firelight flickered on the hewn logs that supported the
thatch overhead. Pavel made a rasping sound when he breathed, and he kept
moaning. We waited. The wind shook the doors and windows impatiently, then
swept on again, singing through the big spaces. Each gust, as it bore
down, rattled the panes, and swelled off like the others. They made me
think of defeated armies, retreating; or of ghosts who were trying
desperately to get in for shelter, and then went moaning on. Presently, in
one of those sobbing intervals between the blasts, the coyotes tuned up
with their whining howl; one, two, three, then all together--to tell us
that winter was coming. This sound brought an answer from the bed,--a long
complaining cry,--as if Pavel were having bad dreams or were waking to some
old misery. Peter listened, but did not stir. He was sitting on the floor
by the kitchen stove. The coyotes broke out again; yap, yap, yap--then the
high whine. Pavel called for something and struggled up on his elbow.

"He is scared of the wolves," Antonia whispered to me. "In his country
there are very many, and they eat men and women." We slid closer together
along the bench.

I could not take my eyes off the man in the bed. His shirt was hanging
open, and his emaciated chest, covered with yellow bristle, rose and fell
horribly. He began to cough. Peter shuffled to his feet, caught up the
tea-kettle and mixed him some hot water and whiskey. The sharp smell of
spirits went through the room.

Pavel snatched the cup and drank, then made Peter give him the bottle and
slipped it under his pillow, grinning disagreeably, as if he had outwitted
some one. His eyes followed Peter about the room with a contemptuous,
unfriendly expression. It seemed to me that he despised him for being so
simple and docile.

Presently Pavel began to talk to Mr. Shimerda, scarcely above a whisper.
He was telling a long story, and as he went on, Antonia took my hand under
the table and held it tight. She leaned forward and strained her ears to
hear him. He grew more and more excited, and kept pointing all around his
bed, as if there were things there and he wanted Mr. Shimerda to see them.

"It's wolves, Jimmy," Antonia whispered. "It's awful, what he says!"

The sick man raged and shook his fist. He seemed to be cursing people who
had wronged him. Mr. Shimerda caught him by the shoulders, but could
hardly hold him in bed. At last he was shut off by a coughing fit which
fairly choked him. He pulled a cloth from under his pillow and held it to
his mouth. Quickly it was covered with bright red spots--I thought I had
never seen any blood so bright. When he lay down and turned his face to
the wall, all the rage had gone out of him. He lay patiently fighting for
breath, like a child with croup. Antonia's father uncovered one of his
long bony legs and rubbed it rhythmically. From our bench we could see
what a hollow case his body was. His spine and shoulder-blades stood out
like the bones under the hide of a dead steer left in the fields. That
sharp backbone must have hurt him when he lay on it.

Gradually, relief came to all of us. Whatever it was, the worst was over.
Mr. Shimerda signed to us that Pavel was asleep. Without a word Peter got
up and lit his lantern. He was going out to get his team to drive us home.
Mr. Shimerda went with him. We sat and watched the long bowed back under
the blue sheet, scarcely daring to breathe.

On the way home, when we were lying in the straw, under the jolting and
rattling Antonia told me as much of the story as she could. What she did
not tell me then, she told later; we talked of nothing else for days
afterward.

When Pavel and Peter were young men, living at home in Russia, they were
asked to be groomsmen for a friend who was to marry the belle of another
village. It was in the dead of winter and the groom's party went over to
the wedding in sledges. Peter and Pavel drove in the groom's sledge, and
six sledges followed with all his relatives and friends.

After the ceremony at the church, the party went to a dinner given by the
parents of the bride. The dinner lasted all afternoon; then it became a
supper and continued far into the night. There was much dancing and
drinking. At midnight the parents of the bride said good-bye to her and
blessed her. The groom took her up in his arms and carried her out to his
sledge and tucked her under the blankets. He sprang in beside her, and
Pavel and Peter (our Pavel and Peter!) took the front seat. Pavel drove.
The party set out with singing and the jingle of sleigh-bells, the groom's
sledge going first. All the drivers were more or less the worse for
merry-making, and the groom was absorbed in his bride.

The wolves were bad that winter, and every one knew it, yet when they
heard the first wolf-cry, the drivers were not much alarmed. They had too
much good food and drink inside them. The first howls were taken up and
echoed and with quickening repetitions. The wolves were coming together.
There was no moon, but the starlight was clear on the snow. A black drove
came up over the hill behind the wedding party. The wolves ran like
streaks of shadow; they looked no bigger than dogs, but there were
hundreds of them.

Something happened to the hindmost sledge: the driver lost control,--he was
probably very drunk,--the horses left the road, the sledge was caught in a
clump of trees, and overturned. The occupants rolled out over the snow,
and the fleetest of the wolves sprang upon them. The shrieks that followed
made everybody sober. The drivers stood up and lashed their horses. The
groom had the best team and his sledge was lightest--all the others carried
from six to a dozen people.

Another driver lost control. The screams of the horses were more terrible
to hear than the cries of the men and women. Nothing seemed to check the
wolves. It was hard to tell what was happening in the rear; the people who
were falling behind shrieked as piteously as those who were already lost.
The little bride hid her face on the groom's shoulder and sobbed. Pavel
sat still and watched his horses. The road was clear and white, and the
groom's three blacks went like the wind. It was only necessary to be calm
and to guide them carefully.

At length, as they breasted a long hill, Peter rose cautiously and looked
back. "There are only three sledges left," he whispered.

"And the wolves?" Pavel asked.

"Enough! Enough for all of us."

Pavel reached the brow of the hill, but only two sledges followed him down
the other side. In that moment on the hilltop, they saw behind them a
whirling black group on the snow. Presently the groom screamed. He saw his
father's sledge overturned, with his mother and sisters. He sprang up as
if he meant to jump, but the girl shrieked and held him back. It was even
then too late. The black ground-shadows were already crowding over the
heap in the road, and one horse ran out across the fields, his harness
hanging to him, wolves at his heels. But the groom's movement had given
Pavel an idea.

They were within a few miles of their village now. The only sledge left
out of six was not very far behind them, and Pavel's middle horse was
failing. Beside a frozen pond something happened to the other sledge;
Peter saw it plainly. Three big wolves got abreast of the horses, and the
horses went crazy. They tried to jump over each other, got tangled up in
the harness, and overturned the sledge.

When the shrieking behind them died away, Pavel realized that he was alone
upon the familiar road. "They still come?" he asked Peter.

"Yes."

"How many?"

"Twenty, thirty--enough."

Now his middle horse was being almost dragged by the other two. Pavel gave
Peter the reins and stepped carefully into the back of the sledge. He
called to the groom that they must lighten--and pointed to the bride. The
young man cursed him and held her tighter. Pavel tried to drag her away.
In the struggle, the groom rose. Pavel knocked him over the side of the
sledge and threw the girl after him. He said he never remembered exactly
how he did it, or what happened afterward. Peter, crouching in the front
seat, saw nothing. The first thing either of them noticed was a new sound
that broke into the clear air, louder than they had ever heard it
before--the bell of the monastery of their own village, ringing for early
prayers.

Pavel and Peter drove into the village alone, and they had been alone ever
since. They were run out of their village. Pavel's own mother would not
look at him. They went away to strange towns, but when people learned
where they came from, they were always asked if they knew the two men who
had fed the bride to the wolves. Wherever they went, the story followed
them. It took them five years to save money enough to come to America.
They worked in Chicago, Des Moines, Fort Wayne, but they were always
unfortunate. When Pavel's health grew so bad, they decided to try farming.

Pavel died a few days after he unburdened his mind to Mr. Shimerda, and
was buried in the Norwegian graveyard. Peter sold off everything, and left
the country--went to be cook in a railway construction camp where gangs of
Russians were employed.

At his sale we bought Peter's wheelbarrow and some of his harness. During
the auction he went about with his head down, and never lifted his eyes.
He seemed not to care about anything. The Black Hawk money-lender who held
mortgages on Peter's live-stock was there, and he bought in the sale notes
at about fifty cents on the dollar. Every one said Peter kissed the cow
before she was led away by her new owner. I did not see him do it, but
this I know: after all his furniture and his cook-stove and pots and pans
had been hauled off by the purchasers, when his house was stripped and
bare, he sat down on the floor with his clasp-knife and ate all the melons
that he had put away for winter. When Mr. Shimerda and Krajiek drove up in
their wagon to take Peter to the train, they found him with a dripping
beard, surrounded by heaps of melon rinds.

The loss of his two friends had a depressing effect upon old Mr. Shimerda.
When he was out hunting, he used to go into the empty log house and sit
there, brooding. This cabin was his hermitage until the winter snows
penned him in his cave. For Antonia and me, the story of the wedding party
was never at an end. We did not tell Pavel's secret to any one, but
guarded it jealously--as if the wolves of the Ukraine had gathered that
night long ago, and the wedding party been sacrificed, to give us a
painful and peculiar pleasure. At night, before I went to sleep, I often
found myself in a sledge drawn by three horses, dashing through a country
that looked something like Nebraska and something like Virginia.

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

completion: In this chapter Jim relates the story of the two Russian men, Peter and Pavel. During the autumn they are having a lot of bad luck. Peter owes money to Wick Cutter, a ruthless money-lender from Black Hawk, and he is forced to mortgage everything. In addition, Pavel injured himself while at work and is now bedridden. One day, Jim goes with Mr. Shimerda and Antonia back to Peter and Pavel's house. Pavel is very sick, and Peter is worried that he will never get better. When they arrive, the wind is blowing loudly, and the coyotes are whining. Delirious and emaciated, Pavel cries out, afraid of the coyotes. He takes medicine, but he seems resentful of Peter, who is described as being simple and docile. Pavel begins to rage and tell a story that Jim cannot understand and that frightens Antonia. Suddenly, he begins to cough up blood but then falls asleep again. On the way home, Antonia tells Jim Pavel's story, and they talk about nothing else for days: Back in Russia, Peter and Pavel were groomsmen for a friend. After the wedding, there was a big party with a lot of merrymaking, and then everyone got into sleds to go home. Peter and Pavel, with Pavel driving, were in the sled with the bride and groom. It was a moonless night, and wolves began to chase the sleds. One sled veered out of control and tipped over, and the wolves immediately pounced on them. More and more sleds tipped over, and Pavel focused on keeping his sled under control. Soon, all the sleds had tipped over, and Pavel's middle horse was having trouble running. Pavel told the groom that he must throw his bride out of the sled in order to make it lighter, and then he knocked both bride and groom out of the sled. Peter saw nothing. Peter and Pavel were the only two people who survived, and they were shunned by everyone in their village. They had to leave Russia and saved enough money to come to America. After telling his story, Pavel dies. Peter sells everything in the household and then eats all the melons that were to be saved for the winter. When Mr. Shimerda and Krajiek come to take him to the train so that he can move away to be a railroad cook, his beard is covered in melon juice. Mr. Shimerda is depressed after his friends leave and frequently goes to sit in their empty log house. Antonia and Jim keep Pavel's secret between them, and Jim often thinks about it before he goes to bed.


prompt:
Chapter: THE first snowfall came early in December. I remember how the world looked
from our sitting-room window as I dressed behind the stove that morning:
the low sky was like a sheet of metal; the blond cornfields had faded out
into ghostliness at last; the little pond was frozen under its stiff
willow bushes. Big white flakes were whirling over everything and
disappearing in the red grass.

Beyond the pond, on the slope that climbed to the cornfield, there was,
faintly marked in the grass, a great circle where the Indians used to
ride. Jake and Otto were sure that when they galloped round that ring the
Indians tortured prisoners, bound to a stake in the center; but
grandfather thought they merely ran races or trained horses there.
Whenever one looked at this slope against the setting sun, the circle
showed like a pattern in the grass; and this morning, when the first light
spray of snow lay over it, it came out with wonderful distinctness, like
strokes of Chinese white on canvas. The old figure stirred me as it had
never done before and seemed a good omen for the winter.

As soon as the snow had packed hard I began to drive about the country in
a clumsy sleigh that Otto Fuchs made for me by fastening a wooden
goods-box on bobs. Fuchs had been apprenticed to a cabinet-maker in the
old country and was very handy with tools. He would have done a better job
if I had n't hurried him. My first trip was to the post-office, and the
next day I went over to take Yulka and Antonia for a sleigh-ride.

It was a bright, cold day. I piled straw and buffalo robes into the box,
and took two hot bricks wrapped in old blankets. When I got to the
Shimerdas' I did not go up to the house, but sat in my sleigh at the
bottom of the draw and called. Antonia and Yulka came running out, wearing
little rabbit-skin hats their father had made for them. They had heard
about my sledge from Ambrosch and knew why I had come. They tumbled in
beside me and we set off toward the north, along a road that happened to
be broken.

The sky was brilliantly blue, and the sunlight on the glittering white
stretches of prairie was almost blinding. As Antonia said, the whole world
was changed by the snow; we kept looking in vain for familiar landmarks.
The deep arroyo through which Squaw Creek wound was now only a cleft
between snow-drifts--very blue when one looked down into it. The tree-tops
that had been gold all the autumn were dwarfed and twisted, as if they
would never have any life in them again. The few little cedars, which were
so dull and dingy before, now stood out a strong, dusky green. The wind
had the burning taste of fresh snow; my throat and nostrils smarted as if
some one had opened a hartshorn bottle. The cold stung, and at the same
time delighted one. My horse's breath rose like steam, and whenever we
stopped he smoked all over. The cornfields got back a little of their
color under the dazzling light, and stood the palest possible gold in the
sun and snow. All about us the snow was crusted in shallow terraces, with
tracings like ripple-marks at the edges, curly waves that were the actual
impression of the stinging lash in the wind.

The girls had on cotton dresses under their shawls; they kept shivering
beneath the buffalo robes and hugging each other for warmth. But they were
so glad to get away from their ugly cave and their mother's scolding that
they begged me to go on and on, as far as Russian Peter's house. The great
fresh open, after the stupefying warmth indoors, made them behave like
wild things. They laughed and shouted, and said they never wanted to go
home again. Could n't we settle down and live in Russian Peter's house,
Yulka asked, and could n't I go to town and buy things for us to keep
house with?

All the way to Russian Peter's we were extravagantly happy, but when we
turned back,--it must have been about four o'clock,--the east wind grew
stronger and began to howl; the sun lost its heartening power and the sky
became gray and somber. I took off my long woolen comforter and wound it
around Yulka's throat. She got so cold that we made her hide her head
under the buffalo robe. Antonia and I sat erect, but I held the reins
clumsily, and my eyes were blinded by the wind a good deal of the time. It
was growing dark when we got to their house, but I refused to go in with
them and get warm. I knew my hands would ache terribly if I went near a
fire. Yulka forgot to give me back my comforter, and I had to drive home
directly against the wind. The next day I came down with an attack of
quinsy, which kept me in the house for nearly two weeks.

The basement kitchen seemed heavenly safe and warm in those days--like a
tight little boat in a winter sea. The men were out in the fields all day,
husking corn, and when they came in at noon, with long caps pulled down
over their ears and their feet in red-lined overshoes, I used to think
they were like Arctic explorers.

In the afternoons, when grandmother sat upstairs darning, or making
husking-gloves, I read "The Swiss Family Robinson" aloud to her, and I
felt that the Swiss family had no advantages over us in the way of an
adventurous life. I was convinced that man's strongest antagonist is the
cold. I admired the cheerful zest with which grandmother went about
keeping us warm and comfortable and well-fed. She often reminded me, when
she was preparing for the return of the hungry men, that this country was
not like Virginia, and that here a cook had, as she said, "very little to
do with." On Sundays she gave us as much chicken as we could eat, and on
other days we had ham or bacon or sausage meat. She baked either pies or
cake for us every day, unless, for a change, she made my favorite pudding,
striped with currants and boiled in a bag.

Next to getting warm and keeping warm, dinner and supper were the most
interesting things we had to think about. Our lives centered around warmth
and food and the return of the men at nightfall. I used to wonder, when
they came in tired from the fields, their feet numb and their hands
cracked and sore, how they could do all the chores so conscientiously:
feed and water and bed the horses, milk the cows, and look after the pigs.
When supper was over, it took them a long while to get the cold out of
their bones. While grandmother and I washed the dishes and grandfather
read his paper upstairs, Jake and Otto sat on the long bench behind the
stove, "easing" their inside boots, or rubbing mutton tallow into their
cracked hands.

Every Saturday night we popped corn or made taffy, and Otto Fuchs used to
sing, "For I Am a Cowboy and Know I've Done Wrong," or, "Bury Me Not on
the Lone Prairee." He had a good baritone voice and always led the singing
when we went to church services at the sod schoolhouse.

I can still see those two men sitting on the bench; Otto's close-clipped
head and Jake's shaggy hair slicked flat in front by a wet comb. I can see
the sag of their tired shoulders against the whitewashed wall. What good
fellows they were, how much they knew, and how many things they had kept
faith with!

Fuchs had been a cowboy, a stage-driver, a bar-tender, a miner; had
wandered all over that great Western country and done hard work
everywhere, though, as grandmother said, he had nothing to show for it.
Jake was duller than Otto. He could scarcely read, wrote even his name
with difficulty, and he had a violent temper which sometimes made him
behave like a crazy man--tore him all to pieces and actually made him ill.
But he was so soft-hearted that any one could impose upon him. If he, as
he said, "forgot himself" and swore before grandmother, he went about
depressed and shamefaced all day. They were both of them jovial about the
cold in winter and the heat in summer, always ready to work overtime and
to meet emergencies. It was a matter of pride with them not to spare
themselves. Yet they were the sort of men who never get on, somehow, or do
anything but work hard for a dollar or two a day.

On those bitter, starlit nights, as we sat around the old stove that fed
us and warmed us and kept us cheerful, we could hear the coyotes howling
down by the corrals, and their hungry, wintry cry used to remind the boys
of wonderful animal stories; about gray wolves and bears in the Rockies,
wildcats and panthers in the Virginia mountains. Sometimes Fuchs could be
persuaded to talk about the outlaws and desperate characters he had known.
I remember one funny story about himself that made grandmother, who was
working her bread on the bread-board, laugh until she wiped her eyes with
her bare arm, her hands being floury. It was like this:--

When Otto left Austria to come to America, he was asked by one of his
relatives to look after a woman who was crossing on the same boat, to join
her husband in Chicago. The woman started off with two children, but it
was clear that her family might grow larger on the journey. Fuchs said he
"got on fine with the kids," and liked the mother, though she played a
sorry trick on him. In mid-ocean she proceeded to have not one baby, but
three! This event made Fuchs the object of undeserved notoriety, since he
was traveling with her. The steerage stewardess was indignant with him,
the doctor regarded him with suspicion. The first-cabin passengers, who
made up a purse for the woman, took an embarrassing interest in Otto, and
often inquired of him about his charge. When the triplets were taken
ashore at New York, he had, as he said, "to carry some of them." The trip
to Chicago was even worse than the ocean voyage. On the train it was very
difficult to get milk for the babies and to keep their bottles clean. The
mother did her best, but no woman, out of her natural resources, could
feed three babies. The husband, in Chicago, was working in a furniture
factory for modest wages, and when he met his family at the station he was
rather crushed by the size of it. He, too, seemed to consider Fuchs in
some fashion to blame. "I was sure glad," Otto concluded, "that he did n't
take his hard feeling out on that poor woman; but he had a sullen eye for
me, all right! Now, did you ever hear of a young feller's having such hard
luck, Mrs. Burden?"

Grandmother told him she was sure the Lord had remembered these things to
his credit, and had helped him out of many a scrape when he did n't
realize that he was being protected by Providence.

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

completion: In December it snows for the first time. A little way from the house, there is a circle in the grass where the Indians used to ride their horses around, and Jim thinks that the pattern in the snow looks like a good omen. Jim begins to ride around in the snow in a sleigh that Otto Fuchs makes him. One day Jim takes Antonia and Yulka for a ride. Though they do not have adequate winter clothes and are very cold, they are excited to be away from their shabby home and scolding mother, and they go all the way to Russian Peter's house. The two girls want to stay there forever. When they go back, it becomes unbearably cold, and after dropping the Shimerdas off, Jim drives back alone and catches quinsy, which keeps him in the house for two weeks. Jim is cozy indoors and reads "The Swiss Family Robinson" to his grandmother. During the winter, the family's life revolves around eating food and keeping warm. Sometimes they sing and eat popcorn or taffy around the fire. Jim greatly admires Otto and Jake. Otto has done all sorts of work, while Jake is barely literate and often violent, although very soft-hearted. Both are very hard workers. Otto tells a funny story about how he had to accompany a woman on the boat to America and how he got a very bad reputation because she had three babies on the way over.


prompt:
Chapter: FOR several weeks after my sleigh-ride, we heard nothing from the
Shimerdas. My sore throat kept me indoors, and grandmother had a cold
which made the housework heavy for her. When Sunday came she was glad to
have a day of rest. One night at supper Fuchs told us he had seen Mr.
Shimerda out hunting.

"He's made himself a rabbit-skin cap, Jim, and a rabbit-skin collar that
he buttons on outside his coat. They ain't got but one overcoat among 'em
over there, and they take turns wearing it. They seem awful scared of
cold, and stick in that hole in the bank like badgers."

"All but the crazy boy," Jake put in. "He never wears the coat. Krajiek
says he's turrible strong and can stand anything. I guess rabbits must be
getting scarce in this locality. Ambrosch come along by the cornfield
yesterday where I was at work and showed me three prairie dogs he'd shot.
He asked me if they was good to eat. I spit and made a face and took on,
to scare him, but he just looked like he was smarter'n me and put 'em back
in his sack and walked off."

Grandmother looked up in alarm and spoke to grandfather. "Josiah, you
don't suppose Krajiek would let them poor creatures eat prairie dogs, do
you?"

"You had better go over and see our neighbors to-morrow, Emmaline," he
replied gravely.

Fuchs put in a cheerful word and said prairie dogs were clean beasts and
ought to be good for food, but their family connections were against them.
I asked what he meant, and he grinned and said they belonged to the rat
family.

When I went downstairs in the morning, I found grandmother and Jake
packing a hamper basket in the kitchen.

"Now, Jake," grandmother was saying, "if you can find that old rooster
that got his comb froze, just give his neck a twist, and we'll take him
along. There's no good reason why Mrs. Shimerda could n't have got hens
from her neighbors last fall and had a henhouse going by now. I reckon she
was confused and did n't know where to begin. I've come strange to a new
country myself, but I never forgot hens are a good thing to have, no
matter what you don't have."

"Just as you say, mam," said Jake, "but I hate to think of Krajiek getting
a leg of that old rooster." He tramped out through the long cellar and
dropped the heavy door behind him.

After breakfast grandmother and Jake and I bundled ourselves up and
climbed into the cold front wagon-seat. As we approached the Shimerdas' we
heard the frosty whine of the pump and saw Antonia, her head tied up and
her cotton dress blown about her, throwing all her weight on the
pump-handle as it went up and down. She heard our wagon, looked back over
her shoulder, and catching up her pail of water, started at a run for the
hole in the bank.

Jake helped grandmother to the ground, saying he would bring the
provisions after he had blanketed his horses. We went slowly up the icy
path toward the door sunk in the drawside. Blue puffs of smoke came from
the stovepipe that stuck out through the grass and snow, but the wind
whisked them roughly away.

Mrs. Shimerda opened the door before we knocked and seized grandmother's
hand. She did not say "How do!" as usual, but at once began to cry,
talking very fast in her own language, pointing to her feet which were
tied up in rags, and looking about accusingly at every one.

The old man was sitting on a stump behind the stove, crouching over as if
he were trying to hide from us. Yulka was on the floor at his feet, her
kitten in her lap. She peeped out at me and smiled, but, glancing up at
her mother, hid again. Antonia was washing pans and dishes in a dark
corner. The crazy boy lay under the only window, stretched on a gunnysack
stuffed with straw. As soon as we entered he threw a grainsack over the
crack at the bottom of the door. The air in the cave was stifling, and it
was very dark, too. A lighted lantern, hung over the stove, threw out a
feeble yellow glimmer.

Mrs. Shimerda snatched off the covers of two barrels behind the door, and
made us look into them. In one there were some potatoes that had been
frozen and were rotting, in the other was a little pile of flour.
Grandmother murmured something in embarrassment, but the Bohemian woman
laughed scornfully, a kind of whinny-laugh, and catching up an empty
coffee-pot from the shelf, shook it at us with a look positively
vindictive.

Grandmother went on talking in her polite Virginia way, not admitting
their stark need or her own remissness, until Jake arrived with the
hamper, as if in direct answer to Mrs. Shimerda's reproaches. Then the
poor woman broke down. She dropped on the floor beside her crazy son, hid
her face on her knees, and sat crying bitterly. Grandmother paid no heed
to her, but called Antonia to come and help empty the basket. Tony left
her corner reluctantly. I had never seen her crushed like this before.

"You not mind my poor mamenka, Mrs. Burden. She is so sad," she whispered,
as she wiped her wet hands on her skirt and took the things grandmother
handed her.

The crazy boy, seeing the food, began to make soft, gurgling noises and
stroked his stomach. Jake came in again, this time with a sack of
potatoes. Grandmother looked about in perplexity.

"Have n't you got any sort of cave or cellar outside, Antonia? This is no
place to keep vegetables. How did your potatoes get frozen?"

"We get from Mr. Bushy, at the post-office,--what he throw out. We got no
potatoes, Mrs. Burden," Tony admitted mournfully.

When Jake went out, Marek crawled along the floor and stuffed up the
door-crack again. Then, quietly as a shadow, Mr. Shimerda came out from
behind the stove. He stood brushing his hand over his smooth gray hair, as
if he were trying to clear away a fog about his head. He was clean and
neat as usual, with his green neckcloth and his coral pin. He took
grandmother's arm and led her behind the stove, to the back of the room.
In the rear wall was another little cave; a round hole, not much bigger
than an oil barrel, scooped out in the black earth. When I got up on one
of the stools and peered into it, I saw some quilts and a pile of straw.
The old man held the lantern. "Yulka," he said in a low, despairing voice,
"Yulka; my Antonia!"

Grandmother drew back. "You mean they sleep in there,--your girls?" He
bowed his head.

Tony slipped under his arm. "It is very cold on the floor, and this is
warm like the badger hole. I like for sleep there," she insisted eagerly.
"My mamenka have nice bed, with pillows from our own geese in Bohemie.
See, Jim?" She pointed to the narrow bunk which Krajiek had built against
the wall for himself before the Shimerdas came.

Grandmother sighed. "Sure enough, where _would_ you sleep, dear! I don't
doubt you're warm there. You'll have a better house after while, Antonia,
and then you'll forget these hard times."

Mr. Shimerda made grandmother sit down on the only chair and pointed his
wife to a stool beside her. Standing before them with his hand on
Antonia's shoulder, he talked in a low tone, and his daughter translated.
He wanted us to know that they were not beggars in the old country; he
made good wages, and his family were respected there. He left Bohemia with
more than a thousand dollars in savings, after their passage money was
paid. He had in some way lost on exchange in New York, and the railway
fare to Nebraska was more than they had expected. By the time they paid
Krajiek for the land, and bought his horses and oxen and some old farm
machinery, they had very little money left. He wished grandmother to know,
however, that he still had some money. If they could get through until
spring came, they would buy a cow and chickens and plant a garden, and
would then do very well. Ambrosch and Antonia were both old enough to work
in the fields, and they were willing to work. But the snow and the bitter
weather had disheartened them all.

Antonia explained that her father meant to build a new house for them in
the spring; he and Ambrosch had already split the logs for it, but the
logs were all buried in the snow, along the creek where they had been
felled.

While grandmother encouraged and gave them advice, I sat down on the floor
with Yulka and let her show me her kitten. Marek slid cautiously toward us
and began to exhibit his webbed fingers. I knew he wanted to make his
queer noises for me--to bark like a dog or whinny like a horse,--but he did
not dare in the presence of his elders. Marek was always trying to be
agreeable, poor fellow, as if he had it on his mind that he must make up
for his deficiencies.

Mrs. Shimerda grew more calm and reasonable before our visit was over,
and, while Antonia translated, put in a word now and then on her own
account. The woman had a quick ear, and caught up phrases whenever she
heard English spoken. As we rose to go, she opened her wooden chest and
brought out a bag made of bed-ticking, about as long as a flour sack and
half as wide, stuffed full of something. At sight of it, the crazy boy
began to smack his lips. When Mrs. Shimerda opened the bag and stirred the
contents with her hand, it gave out a salty, earthy smell, very pungent,
even among the other odors of that cave. She measured a teacup full, tied
it up in a bit of sacking, and presented it ceremoniously to grandmother.

"For cook," she announced. "Little now; be very much when cook," spreading
out her hands as if to indicate that the pint would swell to a gallon.
"Very good. You no have in this country. All things for eat better in my
country."

"Maybe so, Mrs. Shimerda," grandmother said drily. "I can't say but I
prefer our bread to yours, myself."

  [Illustration: Mrs. Shimerda gathering mushrooms in a Bohemian forest]

Antonia undertook to explain. "This very good, Mrs. Burden,"--she clasped
her hands as if she could not express how good,--"it make very much when
you cook, like what my mama say. Cook with rabbit, cook with chicken, in
the gravy,--oh, so good!"

All the way home grandmother and Jake talked about how easily good
Christian people could forget they were their brothers' keepers.

"I will say, Jake, some of our brothers and sisters are hard to keep.
Where's a body to begin, with these people? They're wanting in everything,
and most of all in horse-sense. Nobody can give 'em that, I guess. Jimmy,
here, is about as able to take over a homestead as they are. Do you reckon
that boy Ambrosch has any real push in him?"

"He's a worker, all right, mam, and he's got some ketch-on about him; but
he's a mean one. Folks can be mean enough to get on in this world; and
then, ag'in, they can be too mean."

That night, while grandmother was getting supper, we opened the package
Mrs. Shimerda had given her. It was full of little brown chips that looked
like the shavings of some root. They were as light as feathers, and the
most noticeable thing about them was their penetrating, earthy odor. We
could not determine whether they were animal or vegetable.

"They might be dried meat from some queer beast, Jim. They ain't dried
fish, and they never grew on stalk or vine. I'm afraid of 'em. Anyhow, I
should n't want to eat anything that had been shut up for months with old
clothes and goose pillows."

She threw the package into the stove, but I bit off a corner of one of the
chips I held in my hand, and chewed it tentatively. I never forgot the
strange taste; though it was many years before I knew that those little
brown shavings, which the Shimerdas had brought so far and treasured so
jealously, were dried mushrooms. They had been gathered, probably, in some
deep Bohemian forest {~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~}

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

completion: For several weeks Jim doesn't hear anything from the Shimerdas because he's inside sick. One day Otto says that he saw Mr. Shimerda hunting, wearing the one winter coat that the whole family shares. Apparently the family is so poor that they eat prairie dogs, so the next day Grandmother decides to bring over food and chickens. When they arrive, Mrs. Shimerda speaks accusingly to them in Bohemian and shows them how little food they have. The dugout house is dingy and sad. When Jake brings in the food, Mrs. Shimerda begins to weep. Grandmother is appalled to discover that the girls sleep in a small cave in the dirt wall, and Mr. Shimerda, with Antonia translating, explains that in the old country they were a very respectable family. They still have some money left, and once it is spring, they will be ready to build a nice farm. They are just having trouble their first winter. Grandmother gives them some advice. Before they leave, Mrs. Shimerda measures out a pint of some pungent, earthy substance to give to the Burdens. On the way back, Grandmother comments on how lacking in sense and resources the Shimerdas seem. When she looks at what Mrs. Shimerda gave her, she doesn't know what it is and throws it out. Jim tastes a bit of it, and only much later in life realizes that the food was dried mushrooms that the Shimerdas carried over from their homeland.


prompt:
Chapter: DURING the week before Christmas, Jake was the most important person of
our household, for he was to go to town and do all our Christmas shopping.
But on the 21st of December, the snow began to fall. The flakes came down
so thickly that from the sitting-room windows I could not see beyond the
windmill--its frame looked dim and gray, unsubstantial like a shadow. The
snow did not stop falling all day, or during the night that followed. The
cold was not severe, but the storm was quiet and resistless. The men could
not go farther than the barns and corral. They sat about the house most of
the day as if it were Sunday; greasing their boots, mending their
suspenders, plaiting whiplashes.

On the morning of the 22d, grandfather announced at breakfast that it
would be impossible to go to Black Hawk for Christmas purchases. Jake was
sure he could get through on horseback, and bring home our things in
saddle-bags; but grandfather told him the roads would be obliterated, and
a newcomer in the country would be lost ten times over. Anyway, he would
never allow one of his horses to be put to such a strain.

We decided to have a country Christmas, without any help from town. I had
wanted to get some picture-books for Yulka and Antonia; even Yulka was
able to read a little now. Grandmother took me into the ice-cold
storeroom, where she had some bolts of gingham and sheeting. She cut
squares of cotton cloth and we sewed them together into a book. We bound
it between pasteboards, which I covered with brilliant calico,
representing scenes from a circus. For two days I sat at the dining-room
table, pasting this book full of pictures for Yulka. We had files of those
good old family magazines which used to publish colored lithographs of
popular paintings, and I was allowed to use some of these. I took
"Napoleon Announcing the Divorce to Josephine" for my frontispiece. On the
white pages I grouped Sunday-School cards and advertising cards which I
had brought from my "old country." Fuchs got out the old candle-moulds and
made tallow candles. Grandmother hunted up her fancy cake-cutters and
baked gingerbread men and roosters, which we decorated with burnt sugar
and red cinnamon drops.

On the day before Christmas, Jake packed the things we were sending to the
Shimerdas in his saddle-bags and set off on grandfather's gray gelding.
When he mounted his horse at the door, I saw that he had a hatchet slung
to his belt, and he gave grandmother a meaning look which told me he was
planning a surprise for me. That afternoon I watched long and eagerly from
the sitting-room window. At last I saw a dark spot moving on the west
hill, beside the half-buried cornfield, where the sky was taking on a
coppery flush from the sun that did not quite break through. I put on my
cap and ran out to meet Jake. When I got to the pond I could see that he
was bringing in a little cedar tree across his pommel. He used to help my
father cut Christmas trees for me in Virginia, and he had not forgotten
how much I liked them.

By the time we had placed the cold, fresh-smelling little tree in a corner
of the sitting-room, it was already Christmas Eve. After supper we all
gathered there, and even grandfather, reading his paper by the table,
looked up with friendly interest now and then. The cedar was about five
feet high and very shapely. We hung it with the gingerbread animals,
strings of popcorn, and bits of candle which Fuchs had fitted into
pasteboard sockets. Its real splendors, however, came from the most
unlikely place in the world--from Otto's cowboy trunk. I had never seen
anything in that trunk but old boots and spurs and pistols, and a
fascinating mixture of yellow leather thongs, cartridges, and shoemaker's
wax. From under the lining he now produced a collection of brilliantly
colored paper figures, several inches high and stiff enough to stand
alone. They had been sent to him year after year, by his old mother in
Austria. There was a bleeding heart, in tufts of paper lace; there were
the three kings, gorgeously appareled, and the ox and the ass and the
shepherds; there was the Baby in the manger, and a group of angels,
singing; there were camels and leopards, held by the black slaves of the
three kings. Our tree became the talking tree of the fairy tale; legends
and stories nestled like birds in its branches. Grandmother said it
reminded her of the Tree of Knowledge. We put sheets of cotton wool under
it for a snow-field, and Jake's pocket-mirror for a frozen lake.

I can see them now, exactly as they looked, working about the table in the
lamplight: Jake with his heavy features, so rudely moulded that his face
seemed, somehow, unfinished; Otto with his half-ear and the savage scar
that made his upper lip curl so ferociously under his twisted mustache. As
I remember them, what unprotected faces they were; their very roughness
and violence made them defenseless. These boys had no practiced manner
behind which they could retreat and hold people at a distance. They had
only their hard fists to batter at the world with. Otto was already one of
those drifting, case-hardened laborers who never marry or have children of
their own. Yet he was so fond of children!

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

completion: Jake is supposed to go to Black Hawk to make the family's Christmas purchases, but it snows so much that it is decided that he shouldn't go. The family has a country Christmas instead and makes everyone's gifts. With Grandmother's help, Jim makes picture books for Yulka and Antonia. On the day before Christmas, Jake brings the Shimerdas their Christmas gifts and returns with a Christmas tree. The family decorates it with gingerbread, popcorn, and candles. In addition, from a trunk containing all his cowboy possessions, Otto takes Christmas paper figures sent to him yearly from his mother in Austria. Speaking in the present, Jim relates that he can still see Otto and Jake exactly as they looked then. Though they looked fierce on the outside, he knew that they were actually very vulnerable. They only knew how to fight, and though Otto loved children, he was destined to become a hardened, childless laborer.


prompt:
Chapter: ON Christmas morning, when I got down to the kitchen, the men were just
coming in from their morning chores--the horses and pigs always had their
breakfast before we did. Jake and Otto shouted "Merry Christmas"! to me,
and winked at each other when they saw the waffle-irons on the stove.
Grandfather came down, wearing a white shirt and his Sunday coat. Morning
prayers were longer than usual. He read the chapters from St. Matthew
about the birth of Christ, and as we listened it all seemed like something
that had happened lately, and near at hand. In his prayer he thanked the
Lord for the first Christmas, and for all that it had meant to the world
ever since. He gave thanks for our food and comfort, and prayed for the
poor and destitute in great cities, where the struggle for life was harder
than it was here with us. Grandfather's prayers were often very
interesting. He had the gift of simple and moving expression. Because he
talked so little, his words had a peculiar force; they were not worn dull
from constant use. His prayers reflected what he was thinking about at the
time, and it was chiefly through them that we got to know his feelings and
his views about things.

After we sat down to our waffles and sausage, Jake told us how pleased the
Shimerdas had been with their presents; even Ambrosch was friendly and
went to the creek with him to cut the Christmas tree. It was a soft gray
day outside, with heavy clouds working across the sky, and occasional
squalls of snow. There were always odd jobs to be done about the barn on
holidays, and the men were busy until afternoon. Then Jake and I played
dominoes, while Otto wrote a long letter home to his mother. He always
wrote to her on Christmas Day, he said, no matter where he was, and no
matter how long it had been since his last letter. All afternoon he sat in
the dining-room. He would write for a while, then sit idle, his clenched
fist lying on the table, his eyes following the pattern of the oilcloth.
He spoke and wrote his own language so seldom that it came to him
awkwardly. His effort to remember entirely absorbed him.

At about four o'clock a visitor appeared: Mr. Shimerda, wearing his
rabbit-skin cap and collar, and new mittens his wife had knitted. He had
come to thank us for the presents, and for all grandmother's kindness to
his family. Jake and Otto joined us from the basement and we sat about the
stove, enjoying the deepening gray of the winter afternoon and the
atmosphere of comfort and security in my grandfather's house. This feeling
seemed completely to take possession of Mr. Shimerda. I suppose, in the
crowded clutter of their cave, the old man had come to believe that peace
and order had vanished from the earth, or existed only in the old world he
had left so far behind. He sat still and passive, his head resting against
the back of the wooden rocking-chair, his hands relaxed upon the arms. His
face had a look of weariness and pleasure, like that of sick people when
they feel relief from pain. Grandmother insisted on his drinking a glass
of Virginia apple-brandy after his long walk in the cold, and when a faint
flush came up in his cheeks, his features might have been cut out of a
shell, they were so transparent. He said almost nothing, and smiled
rarely; but as he rested there we all had a sense of his utter content.

           [Illustration: Jake bringing home a Christmas tree]

As it grew dark, I asked whether I might light the Christmas tree before
the lamp was brought. When the candle ends sent up their conical yellow
flames, all the colored figures from Austria stood out clear and full of
meaning against the green boughs. Mr. Shimerda rose, crossed himself, and
quietly knelt down before the tree, his head sunk forward. His long body
formed a letter "S." I saw grandmother look apprehensively at grandfather.
He was rather narrow in religious matters, and sometimes spoke out and
hurt people's feelings. There had been nothing strange about the tree
before, but now, with some one kneeling before it,--images, candles, {~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~}
Grandfather merely put his finger-tips to his brow and bowed his venerable
head, thus Protestantizing the atmosphere.

We persuaded our guest to stay for supper with us. He needed little
urging. As we sat down to the table, it occurred to me that he liked to
look at us, and that our faces were open books to him. When his
deep-seeing eyes rested on me, I felt as if he were looking far ahead into
the future for me, down the road I would have to travel.

At nine o'clock Mr. Shimerda lighted one of our lanterns and put on his
overcoat and fur collar. He stood in the little entry hall, the lantern
and his fur cap under his arm, shaking hands with us. When he took
grandmother's hand, he bent over it as he always did, and said slowly,
"Good wo-man!" He made the sign of the cross over me, put on his cap and
went off in the dark. As we turned back to the sitting-room, grandfather
looked at me searchingly. "The prayers of all good people are good," he
said quietly.

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

completion: On Christmas morning, Jim wakes up, and the whole family listens to Grandfather solemnly and simply make morning prayers. Grandfather's prayers always reflect his present thoughts, and Jim asserts that it is through them that one got to know his thoughts and feelings. That day they all do miscellaneous chores and play games, and Otto laboriously writes his annual Christmas letter to his mother. In late afternoon Mr. Shimerda comes over to thank them for all the gifts they gave his family. After escaping from the dreary dugout, he welcomes the Burden's home as an oasis of peace and order. He rests there and is completely content. When Jim lights the Christmas tree, Mr. Shimerda kneels in prayer in front of it. As Protestants, Grandfather and Grandmother are a little uncomfortable but say nothing. Mr. Shimerda stays over for dinner and watches everyone's face intently. While leaving, he thanks Grandmother and makes the sign of the cross over Jim. After he leaves, Grandfather says, "The prayers of all good people are good.


prompt:
Chapter: THE week following Christmas brought in a thaw, and by New Year's Day all
the world about us was a broth of gray slush, and the guttered slope
between the windmill and the barn was running black water. The soft black
earth stood out in patches along the roadsides. I resumed all my chores,
carried in the cobs and wood and water, and spent the afternoons at the
barn, watching Jake shell corn with a hand-sheller.

One morning, during this interval of fine weather, Antonia and her mother
rode over on one of their shaggy old horses to pay us a visit. It was the
first time Mrs. Shimerda had been to our house, and she ran about
examining our carpets and curtains and furniture, all the while commenting
upon them to her daughter in an envious, complaining tone. In the kitchen
she caught up an iron pot that stood on the back of the stove and said:
"You got many, Shimerdas no got." I thought it weak-minded of grandmother
to give the pot to her.

After dinner, when she was helping to wash the dishes, she said, tossing
her head: "You got many things for cook. If I got all things like you, I
make much better."

She was a conceited, boastful old thing, and even misfortune could not
humble her. I was so annoyed that I felt coldly even toward Antonia and
listened unsympathetically when she told me her father was not well.

"My papa sad for the old country. He not look good. He never make music
any more. At home he play violin all the time; for weddings and for dance.
Here never. When I beg him for play, he shake his head no. Some days he
take his violin out of his box and make with his fingers on the strings,
like this, but never he make the music. He don't like this kawn-tree."

"People who don't like this country ought to stay at home," I said
severely. "We don't make them come here."

"He not want to come, nev-er!" she burst out. "My mamenka make him come.
All the time she say: 'America big country; much money, much land for my
boys, much husband for my girls.' My papa, he cry for leave his old
friends what make music with him. He love very much the man what play the
long horn like this"--she indicated a slide trombone. "They go to school
together and are friends from boys. But my mama, she want Ambrosch for be
rich, with many cattle."

"Your mama," I said angrily, "wants other people's things."

"Your grandfather is rich," she retorted fiercely. "Why he not help my
papa? Ambrosch be rich, too, after while, and he pay back. He is very
smart boy. For Ambrosch my mama come here."

Ambrosch was considered the important person in the family. Mrs. Shimerda
and Antonia always deferred to him, though he was often surly with them
and contemptuous toward his father. Ambrosch and his mother had everything
their own way. Though Antonia loved her father more than she did any one
else, she stood in awe of her elder brother.

After I watched Antonia and her mother go over the hill on their miserable
horse, carrying our iron pot with them, I turned to grandmother, who had
taken up her darning, and said I hoped that snooping old woman would n't
come to see us any more.

Grandmother chuckled and drove her bright needle across a hole in Otto's
sock. "She's not old, Jim, though I expect she seems old to you. No, I
would n't mourn if she never came again. But, you see, a body never knows
what traits poverty might bring out in 'em. It makes a woman grasping to
see her children want for things. Now read me a chapter in 'The Prince of
the House of David.' Let's forget the Bohemians."

We had three weeks of this mild, open weather. The cattle in the corral
ate corn almost as fast as the men could shell it for them, and we hoped
they would be ready for an early market. One morning the two big bulls,
Gladstone and Brigham Young, thought spring had come, and they began to
tease and butt at each other across the barbed wire that separated them.
Soon they got angry. They bellowed and pawed up the soft earth with their
hoofs, rolling their eyes and tossing their heads. Each withdrew to a far
corner of his own corral, and then they made for each other at a gallop.
Thud, thud, we could hear the impact of their great heads, and their
bellowing shook the pans on the kitchen shelves. Had they not been
dehorned, they would have torn each other to pieces. Pretty soon the fat
steers took it up and began butting and horning each other. Clearly, the
affair had to be stopped. We all stood by and watched admiringly while
Fuchs rode into the corral with a pitchfork and prodded the bulls again
and again, finally driving them apart.

The big storm of the winter began on my eleventh birthday, the 20th of
January. When I went down to breakfast that morning, Jake and Otto came in
white as snow-men, beating their hands and stamping their feet. They began
to laugh boisterously when they saw me, calling:--

"You've got a birthday present this time, Jim, and no mistake. They was a
full-grown blizzard ordered for you."

All day the storm went on. The snow did not fall this time, it simply
spilled out of heaven, like thousands of feather-beds being emptied. That
afternoon the kitchen was a carpenter-shop; the men brought in their tools
and made two great wooden shovels with long handles. Neither grandmother
nor I could go out in the storm, so Jake fed the chickens and brought in a
pitiful contribution of eggs.

Next day our men had to shovel until noon to reach the barn--and the snow
was still falling! There had not been such a storm in the ten years my
grandfather had lived in Nebraska. He said at dinner that we would not try
to reach the cattle--they were fat enough to go without their corn for a
day or two; but to-morrow we must feed them and thaw out their water-tap
so that they could drink. We could not so much as see the corrals, but we
knew the steers were over there, huddled together under the north bank.
Our ferocious bulls, subdued enough by this time, were probably warming
each other's backs. "This'll take the bile out of 'em!" Fuchs remarked
gleefully.

At noon that day the hens had not been heard from. After dinner Jake and
Otto, their damp clothes now dried on them, stretched their stiff arms and
plunged again into the drifts. They made a tunnel under the snow to the
henhouse, with walls so solid that grandmother and I could walk back and
forth in it. We found the chickens asleep; perhaps they thought night had
come to stay. One old rooster was stirring about, pecking at the solid
lump of ice in their water-tin. When we flashed the lantern in their eyes,
the hens set up a great cackling and flew about clumsily, scattering
down-feathers. The mottled, pin-headed guinea-hens, always resentful of
captivity, ran screeching out into the tunnel and tried to poke their
ugly, painted faces through the snow walls. By five o'clock the chores
were done--just when it was time to begin them all over again! That was a
strange, unnatural sort of day.

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

completion: During the week after Christmas, the snow starts to thaw for awhile, and Antonia and her mother come over to visit. Mrs. Shimerda had never been to the house before, and the entire time she looks at everything enviously and complains that the Burdens have so much more than she does. She asks Grandmother for a pot, which she gives to her. Jim is annoyed by Mrs. Shimerda, who lacks humility despite her misfortune. Antonia explains to Jim that her father is sick and depressed at having left the old country. He misses playing the fiddle with his friends, and he had not wanted to come over originally. Mrs. Shimerda wanted to come to America because she thought that Ambrosch would be able to become rich here. Ambrosch is considered the most important person in the Shimerda family, and even Antonia is in awe of him. For three weeks it seems like it is almost spring. The bulls get into a fight across the fence between them and have to be separated. On January 20, Jim's eleventh birthday, however, a huge blizzard starts. It was the biggest storm in ten years, and Otto and Jack have to dig tunnels through the snow to get to the barn and the henhouse. All the water is frozen, and as soon as they finish the chores, they have to start over with them again. Jim calls that day very strange and unnatural.