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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

completion: During the week following her outing with Pete, Maggie forms a dislike for her old worn clothes and begins to envy the fine adornments and mannerisms of the women she sees in the street. She believes these women to be completely happy. She also considers her workplace from a new perspective and worries that it is only a matter of time before she becomes one of the shriveled petty women who gripe and gossip their way through the dreary workday. She begins to loathe the sight of the fat foreigner who is her boss at the factory. She longs for a confidant but her mother is usually drunk and spends her sober moments taking things to the pawnbrokers. Her brother Jimmie only comes to the apartment when completely inebriated and lacks a better place to pass the night. Maggie and Pete begin to go out regularly. He takes her to a dime museum full of freaks and they spend several Sunday afternoons at the Central Park Menagerie and the Museum of Arts. Normally Pete doesn't take much interest in their surroundings but he is impressed one day at the Menagerie by a small monkey that is threatening to fight a cage full of larger monkeys. At the museum Pete ignores the exhibits and spends his time there trying to stare down the guard. He does, however, take some pleasure in moralizing over the mummies, but more often than not is annoyed by the displays - particularly one of hundreds of jugs in a row that serves no purpose that he can see. Most of all Maggie enjoys going to see melodramatic plays in which the beautiful heroine is inevitably rescued from her cruel guardian by a hero with beautiful sentiments. Maggie is like most of the audience who, whether they were given to vice or not, universally approves of virtuous acts on the stage, boos and hisses the evil characters and identifies wholly with the unfortunate characters going so far as to mourn openly when calamity befalls a lost soul. These plays typically follow the hero's progress from poverty to wealth and triumph. The plays lead Maggie to think that perhaps her own life could be improved in a similar manner.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"T'ree to one on deh red!"

"Ah, stop yer damn scrappin'!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maggie gazed long at her mother.

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

The girl began to tremble.

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

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

"Go teh hell an' good riddance."

She went.

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

completion: This chapter opens with a group of street urchins who witness Mary's expulsion from a bar. She stumbles down the steps, cursing the owner of the establishment and begins her walk home. Along the way the urchins taunt her and she pauses from time to time to hurl maledictions at them. Finally she reaches the tenement house and makes her way upstairs. She notices that several of the doors in the hall are open and curious faces are watching her noisy arrival but when she steps toward one of the doors it closes in her face. Despite her cursing and kicking the owner of the door refuses to open though the other doors in the hallway creak open so the residents can watch her fuming effort. She becomes the subject of catcalls and several people throw things at her. Jimmie arrives home to find his mother thus engaged. " Shet yer face, an' come home, yeh damned old fool," her yells at her. Much to the delight of the other residents Mary lands a powerful blow on her son's backside and the two begin to struggle. Eventually Jimmie is able to throw his mother into their apartment. A great struggle ensues and Maggie flees to the other room. When she returns Jimmie is covered in bloody bruises, her mother is weeping and cursing on the floor and the apartment is a shambles. Pete arrives and seeing the mess exclaims: "Oh, Gawd." Then he whispers in Maggie's ear: "Ah, what deh hell Mag? Come ahn and we'll have a hell of a time. " This arouses Mary who proclaims that Maggie has "gone teh deh devil" and tells her she's a disgrace to the family. Maggie begins to tremble and Pete assures her that it will blow over and she should come with him and have some fun. Jimmie is concerned only with his wounds and pays no heed when Mary tells Maggie "Go teh hell an' good riddance" and Maggie leaves.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Suddenly, however, he began to swear.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Eh?" said his mother.

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

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

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

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

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

The mother raised lamenting eyes to the ceiling.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"May Gawd curse her forever," she cried.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

completion: Jimmie spends the next day wondering whether Pete knows that it is impolite to take Maggie and thereby ruin her. That night, on his way in from work, the old beggar woman who he used to shelter with during his parent's fights delightedly tells him of scene she witnessed the night before. She tells him that Maggie and Pete returned very late and Maggie was crying as if her heart would break. Maggie asked Pete if he loved her and the old woman could tell that Maggie had asked that particular question a lot that evening. Pete's response, "Oh, hell, yes" was absolutely hilarious to the old woman and she repeats it as Jimmie storms up the stairs. Jimmie finds that the apartment has been hastily straightened but there is nobody there and Maggie's jacket and hat are gone. Jimmie looks out the grimy window and thinks. He begins to wonder if some of the women he's been with have brothers but instead his thoughts turn to anger. He considers that Pete was his friend and exclaims aloud: "I'll kill deh jay!" just as his mother enters. Jimmie tells Mary that Maggie has "gone teh deh devil" and the woman is genuinely astounded. She delivers a stream of oaths and begs God to curse her daughter forever. She wonders how such a bad girl could have grown up in their family and enumerates all the good advice she'd given her. She begins to compare Maggie to a girl down the hall that was ruined but Jimmie interjects that Maggie was different but he cannot explain why. Jimmie barrels out of the apartment determined to thrash Pete for all he's worth. On his way out of the building Jimmie passes a group of ladies discussing Maggie and delivering their verdict that she was meant to be damned. In the street Jimmie encounters a friend who sympathizes with his cause but warns him he'll be overwhelmed and arrested if he chooses to fight Pete in a public place. Jimmie, however, is determined.


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

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

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

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

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

"Gin," said Jimmie.

"Gin," said the companion.

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

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

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

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

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

"Gee! ain't he hot stuff!"

"Git onto his shape!  Great Gawd!"

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

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

"Gin," said Jimmie.

"Gin," said the companion.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The quiet stranger looked at the door calculatingly.

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

"Oh, deh hell," airily cried Jimmie.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The quiet stranger moved modestly toward the door.

Jimmie began to swell with valor.

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

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

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

The two men again began to laugh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The quiet stranger vanished.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

completion: This chapter opens with a description of the bar where Pete works. It has a glass front and the interior is olive colored with bronze tints in order to imitate leather. It had one long side bar behind which numerous glasses are geometrically stacked in front of a large mirror. Lemons, oranges and paper napkins are precisely placed throughout the glasses. Decanters hold various liquors of many hues. A counter opposite the bar contains food that has been picked over by the patrons. Pete is in the act of serving a quiet man at the bar a beer when Jimmie and his companion noisily enter the establishment and demand some gin. Pete serves them the liquor and the two begin to loudly deride Pete. They continue their mocking and insulting behavior when Pete orders them to finish their drinks and leave and not to make any trouble. Pete comes out from behind the bar and swears he'll thrash them if they don't leave. Jimmie dares Pete to make them leave. Pete throws a punch but misses and Jimmie and his friend begin to pound him mercilessly. "The rage of fear shone in all their eyes," relates the narrator, "and their blood-colored fists swirled. " They begin throwing things at each other and glasses and bottles begin to explode throughout the bar. The tower of drinking glasses collapses in shards and the mirror falls to pieces. A crowd gathers outside the bar and soon the police arrive. Seeing the authorities, Jimmie runs out the side door and, his face covered in blood, flees down the street. Running down the alley Jimmie thinks that he should return to rescue his friend from the police but then reconsiders and thinks to himself: "Ah, what deh hell?" .


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

completion: Pete and Maggie sit in a hall listening to an orchestra and drinking beer. On the stage a woman sings a predictably brassy ballad. The woman returns for several encores, wearing less clothing in each successive appearance for the audience of boisterous men. Maggie is pale and she sits submissively next to Pete with the appearance of one beseeching kindness but fearing the worst. In short, she worships him and he makes the most of the situation - ordering the waiters about with an inflated sense of purpose and basking in her attention. At one point he sits back and carefully studies a girl in a wig prancing on the stage in bad imitation of a famous dancer. From time to time Maggie describes her home life and emphasizes the extreme difficulties she was forced to surmount. Holding Maggie's arm as though he owns her, Pete replies: "Dey was damn jays." Maggie considers the violence of her family and looks upon Pete's capable muscles. She thinks of her squalid workplace and regards his fine clothes. She is completely optimistic about her future because she trusts Pete to take care of her. Through the haze of the smoke filled room Maggie can see that many of the men in the hall look at her with wolvish expressions and she fears them but their attentions spur Pete to regard the girl as even more of a prize and she notices this. She knows that the men think she is a prostitute and after some time she begins to tremble under the combined gaze. As she and Pete leave they pass near some prostitutes - known by their heavy makeup and faded beauty - and Maggie fearfully pulls her skirts away from them.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jimmie nodded, admitting the fact.

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

Jimmie nodded again.

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

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

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

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

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

Sobs choked her and interrupted her reproaches.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I know dat," said Jimmie.

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

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

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

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

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

"Damn her," he fervidly said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

completion: After his fight with Pete Jimmie stays away from home for several days. Maggie does not return home. When Jimmie finally does return he finds his mother raving that her daughter has betrayed all of them. She cannot conceive of any reason why Maggie has fallen so low. The neighbors made the most of the woman's misfortune by taunting her with questions about her absent daughter. Jimmie also is dumfounded by the turn of events and cannot fathom what his sister has done. In a long passionate speech filled with rhetorical questions, Mary wonders aloud how her daughter could have gone to the devil with a mother like herself. One day Jimmie returns home in a perturbed state of mind and asks if maybe things wouldn't be better if he fetched his sister home. Mary is visibly offended that Jimmie would ask her to welcome her sinful daughter and declares that even if she were to come home and beg for forgiveness "she kin cry 'er two eyes out on deh stones of deh street before I'll dirty deh place wid her." Mary describes how she will deny comfort to her daughter when Maggie comes crawling home with her miseries. Jimmie, who cannot comprehend that his sister should succumb to passions like other women, agrees that his sister is damned. Mary makes it known to the neighbors that she did everything she could to protect the girl from sin but Maggie was evil to the core and will deserve her unlucky fate. From that time forth, every time Mary is arrested she uses her daughter's downfall as an excuse and to good effect with the magistrates until one notes that her record shows forty two daughters that have fallen from grace. Thus, Mary goes through life loudly shedding tears while Jimmie, in order to stay in good social standing with his peers, denounces his sister though in private moments he would briefly consider and then discard the notion that Maggie was never shown a better way.


prompt:
Chapter: In a hilarious hall there were twenty-eight tables and twenty-eight
women and a crowd of smoking men.  Valiant noise was made on a stage at
the end of the hall by an orchestra composed of men who looked as if
they had just happened in.  Soiled waiters ran to and fro, swooping
down like hawks on the unwary in the throng; clattering along the
aisles with trays covered with glasses; stumbling over women's skirts
and charging two prices for everything but beer, all with a swiftness
that blurred the view of the cocoanut palms and dusty monstrosities
painted upon the walls of the room.  A bouncer, with an immense load of
business upon his hands, plunged about in the crowd, dragging bashful
strangers to prominent chairs, ordering waiters here and there and
quarreling furiously with men who wanted to sing with the orchestra.

The usual smoke cloud was present, but so dense that heads and arms
seemed entangled in it.  The rumble of conversation was replaced by a
roar.  Plenteous oaths heaved through the air.  The room rang with the
shrill voices of women bubbling o'er with drink-laughter.  The chief
element in the music of the orchestra was speed.  The musicians played
in intent fury.  A woman was singing and smiling upon the stage, but no
one took notice of her.  The rate at which the piano, cornet and
violins were going, seemed to impart wildness to the half-drunken
crowd.  Beer glasses were emptied at a gulp and conversation became a
rapid chatter.  The smoke eddied and swirled like a shadowy river
hurrying toward some unseen falls.  Pete and Maggie entered the hall
and took chairs at a table near the door.  The woman who was seated
there made an attempt to occupy Pete's attention and, failing, went
away.

Three weeks had passed since the girl had left home.  The air of
spaniel-like dependence had been magnified and showed its direct effect
in the peculiar off-handedness and ease of Pete's ways toward her.

She followed Pete's eyes with hers, anticipating with smiles gracious
looks from him.

A woman of brilliance and audacity, accompanied by a mere boy, came
into the place and took seats near them.

At once Pete sprang to his feet, his face beaming with glad surprise.

"By Gawd, there's Nellie," he cried.

He went over to the table and held out an eager hand to the woman.

"Why, hello, Pete, me boy, how are you," said she, giving him her
fingers.

Maggie took instant note of the woman.  She perceived that her black
dress fitted her to perfection.  Her linen collar and cuffs were
spotless.  Tan gloves were stretched over her well-shaped hands.  A hat
of a prevailing fashion perched jauntily upon her dark hair.  She wore
no jewelry and was painted with no apparent paint.  She looked
clear-eyed through the stares of the men.

"Sit down, and call your lady-friend over," she said cordially to Pete.
At his beckoning Maggie came and sat between Pete and the mere boy.

"I thought yeh were gone away fer good," began Pete, at once.  "When
did yeh git back?  How did dat Buff'lo bus'ness turn out?"

The woman shrugged her shoulders.  "Well, he didn't have as many stamps
as he tried to make out, so I shook him, that's all."

"Well, I'm glad teh see yehs back in deh city," said Pete, with awkward
gallantry.

He and the woman entered into a long conversation, exchanging
reminiscences of days together.  Maggie sat still, unable to formulate
an intelligent sentence upon the conversation and painfully aware of it.

She saw Pete's eyes sparkle as he gazed upon the handsome stranger.  He
listened smilingly to all she said.  The woman was familiar with all
his affairs, asked him about mutual friends, and knew the amount of his
salary.

She paid no attention to Maggie, looking toward her once or twice and
apparently seeing the wall beyond.

The mere boy was sulky.  In the beginning he had welcomed with
acclamations the additions.

"Let's all have a drink!  What'll you take, Nell?  And you, Miss
what's-your-name.  Have a drink, Mr. -----, you, I mean."

He had shown a sprightly desire to do the talking for the company and
tell all about his family.  In a loud voice he declaimed on various
topics.  He assumed a patronizing air toward Pete.  As Maggie was
silent, he paid no attention to her.  He made a great show of lavishing
wealth upon the woman of brilliance and audacity.

"Do keep still, Freddie!  You gibber like an ape, dear," said the woman
to him.  She turned away and devoted her attention to Pete.

"We'll have many a good time together again, eh?"

"Sure, Mike," said Pete, enthusiastic at once.

"Say," whispered she, leaning forward, "let's go over to Billie's and
have a heluva time."

"Well, it's dis way!  See?" said Pete.  "I got dis lady frien' here."

"Oh, t'hell with her," argued the woman.

Pete appeared disturbed.

"All right," said she, nodding her head at him.  "All right for you!
We'll see the next time you ask me to go anywheres with you."

Pete squirmed.

"Say," he said, beseechingly, "come wid me a minit an' I'll tell yer
why."

The woman waved her hand.

"Oh, that's all right, you needn't explain, you know.  You wouldn't
come merely because you wouldn't come, that's all there is of it."

To Pete's visible distress she turned to the mere boy, bringing him
speedily from a terrific rage.  He had been debating whether it would
be the part of a man to pick a quarrel with Pete, or would he be
justified in striking him savagely with his beer glass without warning.
But he recovered himself when the woman turned to renew her smilings.
He beamed upon her with an expression that was somewhat tipsy and
inexpressibly tender.

"Say, shake that Bowery jay," requested he, in a loud whisper.

"Freddie, you are so droll," she replied.

Pete reached forward and touched the woman on the arm.

"Come out a minit while I tells yeh why I can't go wid yer.  Yer doin'
me dirt, Nell!  I never taut ye'd do me dirt, Nell.  Come on, will
yer?"  He spoke in tones of injury.

"Why, I don't see why I should be interested in your explanations,"
said the woman, with a coldness that seemed to reduce Pete to a pulp.

His eyes pleaded with her.  "Come out a minit while I tells yeh."

The woman nodded slightly at Maggie and the mere boy, "'Scuse me."

The mere boy interrupted his loving smile and turned a shrivelling
glare upon Pete.  His boyish countenance flushed and he spoke, in a
whine, to the woman:

"Oh, I say, Nellie, this ain't a square deal, you know.  You aren't
goin' to leave me and go off with that duffer, are you?  I should
think--"

"Why, you dear boy, of course I'm not," cried the woman,
affectionately.  She bended over and whispered in his ear.  He smiled
again and settled in his chair as if resolved to wait patiently.

As the woman walked down between the rows of tables, Pete was at her
shoulder talking earnestly, apparently in explanation.  The woman waved
her hands with studied airs of indifference.  The doors swung behind
them, leaving Maggie and the mere boy seated at the table.

Maggie was dazed.  She could dimly perceive that something stupendous
had happened.  She wondered why Pete saw fit to remonstrate with the
woman, pleading for forgiveness with his eyes.  She thought she noted
an air of submission about her leonine Pete.  She was astounded.

The mere boy occupied himself with cock-tails and a cigar.  He was
tranquilly silent for half an hour.  Then he bestirred himself and
spoke.

"Well," he said, sighing, "I knew this was the way it would be." There
was another stillness.  The mere boy seemed to be musing.

"She was pulling m'leg.  That's the whole amount of it," he said,
suddenly.  "It's a bloomin' shame the way that girl does.  Why, I've
spent over two dollars in drinks to-night.  And she goes off with that
plug-ugly who looks as if he had been hit in the face with a coin-die.
I call it rocky treatment for a fellah like me.  Here, waiter, bring me
a cock-tail and make it damned strong."

Maggie made no reply.  She was watching the doors.  "It's a mean piece
of business," complained the mere boy.  He explained to her how amazing
it was that anybody should treat him in such a manner.  "But I'll get
square with her, you bet.  She won't get far ahead of yours truly, you
know," he added, winking.  "I'll tell her plainly that it was bloomin'
mean business.  And she won't come it over me with any of her
'now-Freddie-dears.'  She thinks my name is Freddie, you know, but of
course it ain't.  I always tell these people some name like that,
because if they got onto your right name they might use it sometime.
Understand?  Oh, they don't fool me much."

Maggie was paying no attention, being intent upon the doors.  The mere
boy relapsed into a period of gloom, during which he exterminated a
number of cock-tails with a determined air, as if replying defiantly to
fate.  He occasionally broke forth into sentences composed of
invectives joined together in a long string.

The girl was still staring at the doors.  After a time the mere boy
began to see cobwebs just in front of his nose.  He spurred himself
into being agreeable and insisted upon her having a charlotte-russe and
a glass of beer.

"They's gone," he remarked, "they's gone."  He looked at her through
the smoke wreaths.  "Shay, lil' girl, we mightish well make bes' of it.
You ain't such bad-lookin' girl, y'know.  Not half bad.  Can't come up
to Nell, though.  No, can't do it!  Well, I should shay not!  Nell
fine-lookin' girl!  F--i--n--ine.  You look damn bad longsider her, but
by y'self ain't so bad.  Have to do anyhow.  Nell gone.  On'y you left.
Not half bad, though."

Maggie stood up.

"I'm going home," she said.

The mere boy started.

"Eh?  What?  Home," he cried, struck with amazement.  "I beg pardon,
did hear say home?"

"I'm going home," she repeated.

"Great Gawd, what hava struck," demanded the mere boy of himself,
stupefied.

In a semi-comatose state he conducted her on board an up-town car,
ostentatiously paid her fare, leered kindly at her through the rear
window and fell off the steps.

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

completion: Three weeks after Maggie leaves home to be with Pete they sit in yet another dance hall. At every table sat a woman of questionable character, the musicians were haphazard and their chief strength was speed. There is a woman onstage singing but the overly riotous crowd ignores her and drowns her song out with their violent conversation. When Pete and Maggie take a table by the door the woman already seated there vies for Pete's attention but failing departs. Maggie is even more obviously dependent upon Pete than before. A woman whom the narrator characterizes as being "a woman of brilliance and audacity" attended by a "mere boy" takes seats near them. Pete recognizes her immediately and calls out to her: "By Gawd, there's Nellie." Maggie notices that the woman looks men directly in the eye and that she is dressed in the height of fashion with clothes that flatter her figure to great effect. She wears no jewelry nor did she wear makeup - both traits associated with prostitutes. The woman Nellie recognizes Pete and bids that he and his "lady friend" join she and her companion. Maggie is seated between Pete and the "mere boy". At first the "mere boy" welcomes the newcomers but his manner soon cools when he perceives that Nellie is showing Pete the bulk of her attention. Maggie notices immediately that the woman is familiar with Pete and even knows the amount of his salary. Pete questions Nell about an affair in Buffalo and she mockingly derides the man she left there because he had not the means she expected so she left. Maggie sees that Pete's eyes sparkle when he talks to Nell. She tries to think of something to add to the lively conversation but can think of nothing to say. Occasionally Nell looks her way but seems to look right through her and pays her no regard. The "mere boy" persists for awhile in patronizing Pete and making great displays of wealth but his noisome manner interrupts the talk and Nell commands: "Do keep still Freddie! You gibber like an ape, dear. " After some talk Nell suggests that she and Pete leave to have "one hell of a time" together but Pete resists and insists that he cannot because he has his lady friend with him." Oh, t'hell with her" the woman responds but Pete continues to resist. Nell affects to be hurt by Pete's refusal and warns him that she will not be so willing next time the opportunity presents itself. Pete begs her to step aside for a moment so he can explain why he must remain with Maggie but Nell feigns indifference. She returns her attentions to the "mere boy" who was at the moment wondering whether he should pick a fight with Pete. When Nell gives him her attentions, however, Freddie perks up and asks her to "shake that Bowery jay." ' Pete becomes desperate to explain but Nell fails to see why she should listen to his reasons. After some more talk Nell agrees to go out with Pete. Freddie is immediately offended but Nell whispers soothing words in his ear and he agrees to wait patiently. As Maggie dumbly watches Pete and Nell exit together while Pete continues to offer excuses and the woman continues to wave them off. Once they have departed Maggie feels that something momentous has happened but she cannot say just what it is. She is surprised not only by his sudden departure but also by his submission to the woman. After they've left Freddie waits for a half an hour in silence and then explains to Maggie that he knew Nell would run off all along which is why he never gives his real name to "those people." He laments the money he spent on Nell and drinks more cocktails to drown his disappointment. Maggie hears little of what he says and keeps her attention focused on the door, waiting for Pete to return. After some time and some more drinks Freddie works himself into a positive attitude and proposes that he and Maggie make the best of it. Though he loudly proclaims Maggie to be inferior to Nell he insists that she will do fine for the evening and that she is "not half bad." Maggie announces that she is going home and the somewhat mystified Freddie helps her into a car and pays her fare before falling off the steps as her coach departs.


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

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

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

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

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

Jimmie made an impatient gesture and quickened his pace.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jimmie snarled.  "Oh, go teh hell."

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

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

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

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

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

She screamed in scoffing laughter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Naw!  Young Mag's come home!"

"Deh hell yeh say?"

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

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

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

The jeering cries ended in another burst of shrill laughter.

The girl seemed to awaken.  "Jimmie--"

He drew hastily back from her.

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

Maggie turned and went.

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

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

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

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

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

completion: A downtrodden woman walks slowly down a busy street full of rushing people and busy horse cars. It is obvious from her behavior that she is searching for someone. At every saloon she waits outside the door and looks closely at the men going in and out. The men don't notice her and go about their business in ignorance of her scrutiny. All the while the woman's expression is that of a sardonic grin - shadowy and hard. She encounters Jimmie and calling him by name accosts him in the street. She moans that she has been looking for him all day but Jimmie quickens his pace and attempts to leave her behind. The woman does not relent, however. Jimmie barks at her: "Ah, don't bodder me! Good Gawd! " Not deterred the woman begs Jimmie's attention and he savagely turns on her. Jimmie call her by name, Hattie, and puts her off with several rude slanders. Hattie beseeches him and touches his arm but he yells: "Oh, go to hell" before entering a saloon . A few moments later he sneaks out the back door and is amused to see Hattie still waiting in front. At home Jimmie finds that Maggie has returned and Mary is brutally mocking and deriding her. Maggie is obviously shaken but this does not deter Mary whose thunderous denunciations of her daughter bring the other tenement residents to observe. The residents watch as though they are viewing a play and they comment to each other and offer opinions freely. One woman's baby begins to crawl toward Maggie but the frightened mother grabs her wayward child away from the ruined girl with a loud cry of alarm. The mother presents her daughter as though she were an exhibit on display." Dere she stands," she cries pointing an accusatory figure at Maggie. Seeing her brother Maggie pitifully says his name but he steps back from her. " Well, now, yer a hell of a t'ing ain't yeh?" he says with a sanctimonious air. Hearing this, Maggie leaves the room and as she does so a woman snatches a baby out of her path lest she dirty it with her touch. As Maggie leaves other residents peer curiously out from their doorway. Only the old woman on the next floor speaks to her however and invites her to stay the night with her. All the while Maggie's mother's laughter rings in the young girl's ears.


prompt:
Chapter: Pete did not consider that he had ruined Maggie.  If he had thought
that her soul could never smile again, he would have believed the
mother and brother, who were pyrotechnic over the affair, to be
responsible for it.

Besides, in his world, souls did not insist upon being able to smile.
"What deh hell?"

He felt a trifle entangled.  It distressed him.  Revelations and scenes
might bring upon him the wrath of the owner of the saloon, who insisted
upon respectability of an advanced type.

"What deh hell do dey wanna raise such a smoke about it fer?" demanded
he of himself, disgusted with the attitude of the family.  He saw no
necessity for anyone's losing their equilibrium merely because their
sister or their daughter had stayed away from home.

Searching about in his mind for possible reasons for their conduct, he
came upon the conclusion that Maggie's motives were correct, but that
the two others wished to snare him.  He felt pursued.

The woman of brilliance and audacity whom he had met in the hilarious
hall showed a disposition to ridicule him.

"A little pale thing with no spirit," she said.  "Did you note the
expression of her eyes?  There was something in them about pumpkin pie
and virtue.  That is a peculiar way the left corner of her mouth has of
twitching, isn't it?  Dear, dear, my cloud-compelling Pete, what are
you coming to?"

Pete asserted at once that he never was very much interested in the
girl.  The woman interrupted him, laughing.

"Oh, it's not of the slightest consequence to me, my dear young man.
You needn't draw maps for my benefit.  Why should I be concerned about
it?"

But Pete continued with his explanations.  If he was laughed at for his
tastes in women, he felt obliged to say that they were only temporary
or indifferent ones.

The morning after Maggie had departed from home, Pete stood behind the
bar.  He was immaculate in white jacket and apron and his hair was
plastered over his brow with infinite correctness.  No customers were
in the place.  Pete was twisting his napkined fist slowly in a beer
glass, softly whistling to himself and occasionally holding the object
of his attention between his eyes and a few weak beams of sunlight that
had found their way over the thick screens and into the shaded room.

With lingering thoughts of the woman of brilliance and audacity, the
bartender raised his head and stared through the varying cracks between
the swaying bamboo doors.  Suddenly the whistling pucker faded from his
lips.  He saw Maggie walking slowly past.  He gave a great start,
fearing for the previously-mentioned eminent respectability of the
place.

He threw a swift, nervous glance about him, all at once feeling guilty.
No one was in the room.

He went hastily over to the side door.  Opening it and looking out, he
perceived Maggie standing, as if undecided, on the corner.  She was
searching the place with her eyes.

As she turned her face toward him Pete beckoned to her hurriedly,
intent upon returning with speed to a position behind the bar and to
the atmosphere of respectability upon which the proprietor insisted.

Maggie came to him, the anxious look disappearing from her face and a
smile wreathing her lips.

"Oh, Pete--," she began brightly.

The bartender made a violent gesture of impatience.

"Oh, my Gawd," cried he, vehemently.  "What deh hell do yeh wanna hang
aroun' here fer?  Do yeh wanna git me inteh trouble?" he demanded with
an air of injury.

Astonishment swept over the girl's features.  "Why, Pete! yehs tol'
me--"

Pete glanced profound irritation.  His countenance reddened with the
anger of a man whose respectability is being threatened.

"Say, yehs makes me tired.  See?  What deh hell deh yeh wanna tag
aroun' atter me fer?  Yeh'll git me inteh trouble wid deh ol' man an'
dey'll be hell teh pay!  If he sees a woman roun' here he'll go crazy
an' I'll lose me job!  See?  Yer brudder come in here an' raised hell
an' deh ol' man hada put up fer it!  An' now I'm done!  See?  I'm done."

The girl's eyes stared into his face.  "Pete, don't yeh remem--"

"Oh, hell," interrupted Pete, anticipating.

The girl seemed to have a struggle with herself.  She was apparently
bewildered and could not find speech.  Finally she asked in a low
voice: "But where kin I go?"

The question exasperated Pete beyond the powers of endurance.  It was a
direct attempt to give him some responsibility in a matter that did not
concern him.  In his indignation he volunteered information.

"Oh, go teh hell," cried he.  He slammed the door furiously and
returned, with an air of relief, to his respectability.

Maggie went away.

She wandered aimlessly for several blocks.  She stopped once and asked
aloud a question of herself: "Who?"

A man who was passing near her shoulder, humorously took the
questioning word as intended for him.

"Eh?  What?  Who?  Nobody!  I didn't say anything," he laughingly said,
and continued his way.

Soon the girl discovered that if she walked with such apparent
aimlessness, some men looked at her with calculating eyes.  She
quickened her step, frightened.  As a protection, she adopted a
demeanor of intentness as if going somewhere.

After a time she left rattling avenues and passed between rows of
houses with sternness and stolidity stamped upon their features.  She
hung her head for she felt their eyes grimly upon her.

Suddenly she came upon a stout gentleman in a silk hat and a chaste
black coat, whose decorous row of buttons reached from his chin to his
knees.  The girl had heard of the Grace of God and she decided to
approach this man.

His beaming, chubby face was a picture of benevolence and
kind-heartedness.  His eyes shone good-will.

But as the girl timidly accosted him, he gave a convulsive movement and
saved his respectability by a vigorous side-step.  He did not risk it
to save a soul.  For how was he to know that there was a soul before
him that needed saving?

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

completion: Pete succeeds in rationalizing his position vis a vis Maggie's compromised virtue. He transfers the blame to Maggie's family and comes to believe that it is they who have created Maggie's supposed downfall by making such a great fuss over her absence from home. He is alarmed when he considers that their excitement over the matter might cause his own reputation to be sullied and his job might be in jeopardy as result. He reaches the conclusion that Maggie has done no wrong but that her brother and mother, not himself, have done wrong by her. The "woman of brilliance and audacity" named Nell ridicules his relationship with Maggie and belittles her appearance. Pete forcibly insists to Nell that his attraction to Maggie was a passing thing and meant nothing. He tells Nell that his tastes in women are superior to the likes of Maggie. The day after Maggie tried to return to her family, Pete is at work tending to an empty bar room. As he contentedly wipes the clean glasses even more luminous he is horrified to see Maggie pass outside the bar. He quickly makes his way to the door. Maggie sees him in the entryway and smiling comes over to him. Before she can complete a sentence, however, Pete rejects her in the rudest terms. The smile fades from the girl's lips and bewildered she asks Pete where she should go." Oh, go teh hell," he offers before slamming the door. Heartbroken, confused and scared Maggie wanders the streets. After some time she notices that some men are looking at her in a strange way and she hurries her steps as if with purpose. Maggie is without purpose, however and in desperation she turns to a gentleman she sees whose dress marks him as a minister. She approaches the gentlemen hoping for pity and the Grace of God but he shies away from her to protect his respectability." He did not risk it to save a soul," notes the author, "for how was he to know that there was a soul before him that needed saving." .


prompt:
Chapter: Upon a wet evening, several months after the last chapter, two
interminable rows of cars, pulled by slipping horses, jangled along a
prominent side-street.  A dozen cabs, with coat-enshrouded drivers,
clattered to and fro.  Electric lights, whirring softly, shed a blurred
radiance.  A flower dealer, his feet tapping impatiently, his nose and
his wares glistening with rain-drops, stood behind an array of roses
and chrysanthemums.  Two or three theatres emptied a crowd upon the
storm-swept pavements.  Men pulled their hats over their eyebrows and
raised their collars to their ears.  Women shrugged impatient shoulders
in their warm cloaks and stopped to arrange their skirts for a walk
through the storm.  People having been comparatively silent for two
hours burst into a roar of conversation, their hearts still kindling
from the glowings of the stage.

The pavements became tossing seas of umbrellas.  Men stepped forth to
hail cabs or cars, raising their fingers in varied forms of polite
request or imperative demand.  An endless procession wended toward
elevated stations.  An atmosphere of pleasure and prosperity seemed to
hang over the throng, born, perhaps, of good clothes and of having just
emerged from a place of forgetfulness.

In the mingled light and gloom of an adjacent park, a handful of wet
wanderers, in attitudes of chronic dejection, was scattered among the
benches.

A girl of the painted cohorts of the city went along the street.  She
threw changing glances at men who passed her, giving smiling
invitations to men of rural or untaught pattern and usually seeming
sedately unconscious of the men with a metropolitan seal upon their
faces.

Crossing glittering avenues, she went into the throng emerging from the
places of forgetfulness.  She hurried forward through the crowd as if
intent upon reaching a distant home, bending forward in her handsome
cloak, daintily lifting her skirts and picking for her well-shod feet
the dryer spots upon the pavements.

The restless doors of saloons, clashing to and fro, disclosed animated
rows of men before bars and hurrying barkeepers.

A concert hall gave to the street faint sounds of swift, machine-like
music, as if a group of phantom musicians were hastening.

A tall young man, smoking a cigarette with a sublime air, strolled near
the girl.  He had on evening dress, a moustache, a chrysanthemum, and a
look of ennui, all of which he kept carefully under his eye.  Seeing
the girl walk on as if such a young man as he was not in existence, he
looked back transfixed with interest.  He stared glassily for a moment,
but gave a slight convulsive start when he discerned that she was
neither new, Parisian, nor theatrical.  He wheeled about hastily and
turned his stare into the air, like a sailor with a search-light.

A stout gentleman, with pompous and philanthropic whiskers, went
stolidly by, the broad of his back sneering at the girl.

A belated man in business clothes, and in haste to catch a car, bounced
against her shoulder.  "Hi, there, Mary, I beg your pardon!  Brace up,
old girl."  He grasped her arm to steady her, and then was away running
down the middle of the street.

The girl walked on out of the realm of restaurants and saloons.  She
passed more glittering avenues and went into darker blocks than those
where the crowd travelled.

A young man in light overcoat and derby hat received a glance shot
keenly from the eyes of the girl.  He stopped and looked at her,
thrusting his hands in his pockets and making a mocking smile curl his
lips.  "Come, now, old lady," he said, "you don't mean to tel me that
you sized me up for a farmer?"

A labouring man marched along; with bundles under his arms. To her
remarks, he replied, "It's a fine evenin', ain't it?"

She smiled squarely into the face of a boy who was hurrying by with his
hands buried in his overcoat pockets, his blonde locks bobbing on his
youthful temples, and a cheery smile of unconcern upon his lips. He
turned his head and smiled back at her, waving his hands.

"Not this eve--some other eve!"

A drunken man, reeling in her pathway, began to roar at her. "I ain' ga
no money!" he shouted, in a dismal voice. He lurched on up the street,
wailing to himself: "I ain' ga no money. Ba' luck. Ain' ga no more
money."

The girl went into gloomy districts near the river, where the tall
black factories shut in the street and only occasional broad beams of
light fell across the pavements from saloons. In front of one of these
places, whence came the sound of a violin vigorously scraped, the
patter of feet on boards and the ring of loud laughter, there stood a
man with blotched features.

Further on in the darkness she met a ragged being with shifting,
bloodshot eyes and grimy hands.

She went into the blackness of the final block. The shutters of the
tall buildings were closed like grim lips. The structures seemed to
have eyes that looked over them, beyond them, at other things. Afar off
the lights of the avenues glittered as if from an impossible distance.
Street-car bells jingled with a sound of merriment.

At the feet of the tall buildings appeared the deathly black hue of the
river. Some hidden factory sent up a yellow glare, that lit for a
moment the waters lapping oilily against timbers. The varied sounds of
life, made joyous by distance and seeming unapproachableness, came
faintly and died away to a silence.

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

completion: On a rainy night several months later the respectable theaters are letting out from the evening show. Numerous carriages and cabs sit waiting in the street for the flood of humanity exiting the well-lit theaters. Flower vendors and other merchants make their wares known in the hustle and bustle of men and women walking through the downpour. Everywhere people are talking and socializing and basking in the memory of the theater. The streets are full of upturned umbrellas and the happy confidence of well-to-do people making their way home from the theaters - "the places of forgetfulness" in the narrator's words. In an adjacent park a dejected group of homeless souls sit upon the benches. A girl with painted cheeks passes among the throng. She gives meaningful glances to those men whom she deems of unsophisticated tastes and rural tendencies while she studiously avoids contact with men of more cosmopolitan demeanor. The girl walks purposefully through the crowd and takes care to lift the skirts of her fine cloak away from the puddles. A debonair young man with a cigarette looks back interestedly at the girl as she passes but then noticing that she is somewhat worn out and certainly not exotic, he quickly looks away. A large man with a bushy beard passes her and makes a great point of ignoring her. A businessman rushing across the street mistakes the girl for her mother and calls her Mary. From the theaters to the saloons and onto the darker avenues the girl continues walking. A young man refutes her gaze and reminds her that he is not a farmer. An even younger man, a farm boy from the looks of him, passes and the girl gives him a long pointed look but he says: "Not this eve-some other eve!" An inebriated man sees the girl and begins to loudly bemoan his lack of funds. The girl proceeds to the factory district near the river where many of the streets are shrouded in inky darkness. From a saloon she hears the sound of a violin and the noise of riotous laughter. One pockmarked man refuses the girl, claiming he's already got another, and a second man claims to be short of money. Finally the girl enter the last block before the river. The sounds of the city are far off and the light is lost in the darkness. Near the river the girl sees a fat man in ragged clothes. His hair is gray and his eyes peer out from his fat face and encompass the girl. His laughter is maniacal. He follows the girl to the river where the sounds of life cease.