prompt:
Chapter: ON the morning of the 22d I wakened with a start. Before I opened my eyes,
I seemed to know that something had happened. I heard excited voices in
the kitchen--grandmother's was so shrill that I knew she must be almost
beside herself. I looked forward to any new crisis with delight. What
could it be, I wondered, as I hurried into my clothes. Perhaps the barn
had burned; perhaps the cattle had frozen to death; perhaps a neighbor was
lost in the storm.

Down in the kitchen grandfather was standing before the stove with his
hands behind him. Jake and Otto had taken off their boots and were rubbing
their woolen socks. Their clothes and boots were steaming, and they both
looked exhausted. On the bench behind the stove lay a man, covered up with
a blanket. Grandmother motioned me to the dining-room. I obeyed
reluctantly. I watched her as she came and went, carrying dishes. Her lips
were tightly compressed and she kept whispering to herself: "Oh, dear
Saviour!" "Lord, Thou knowest!"

Presently grandfather came in and spoke to me: "Jimmy, we will not have
prayers this morning, because we have a great deal to do. Old Mr. Shimerda
is dead, and his family are in great distress. Ambrosch came over here in
the middle of the night, and Jake and Otto went back with him. The boys
have had a hard night, and you must not bother them with questions. That
is Ambrosch, asleep on the bench. Come in to breakfast, boys."

After Jake and Otto had swallowed their first cup of coffee, they began to
talk excitedly, disregarding grandmother's warning glances. I held my
tongue, but I listened with all my ears.

"No, sir," Fuchs said in answer to a question from grandfather, "nobody
heard the gun go off. Ambrosch was out with the ox team, trying to break a
road, and the women folks was shut up tight in their cave. When Ambrosch
come in it was dark and he did n't see nothing, but the oxen acted kind of
queer. One of 'em ripped around and got away from him--bolted clean out of
the stable. His hands is blistered where the rope run through. He got a
lantern and went back and found the old man, just as we seen him."

"Poor soul, poor soul!" grandmother groaned. "I'd like to think he never
done it. He was always considerate and un-wishful to give trouble. How
could he forget himself and bring this on us!"

"I don't think he was out of his head for a minute, Mrs. Burden," Fuchs
declared. "He done everything natural. You know he was always sort of
fixy, and fixy he was to the last. He shaved after dinner, and washed
hisself all over after the girls was done the dishes. Antonia heated the
water for him. Then he put on a clean shirt and clean socks, and after he
was dressed he kissed her and the little one and took his gun and said he
was going out to hunt rabbits. He must have gone right down to the barn
and done it then. He layed down on that bunk-bed, close to the ox stalls,
where he always slept. When we found him, everything was decent
except,"--Fuchs wrinkled his brow and hesitated,--"except what he could n't
nowise foresee. His coat was hung on a peg, and his boots was under the
bed. He'd took off that silk neckcloth he always wore, and folded it
smooth and stuck his pin through it. He turned back his shirt at the neck
and rolled up his sleeves."

"I don't see how he could do it!" grandmother kept saying.

Otto misunderstood her. "Why, mam, it was simple enough; he pulled the
trigger with his big toe. He layed over on his side and put the end of the
barrel in his mouth, then he drew up one foot and felt for the trigger. He
found it all right!"

"Maybe he did," said Jake grimly. "There's something mighty queer about
it."

"Now what do you mean, Jake?" grandmother asked sharply.

"Well, mam, I found Krajiek's axe under the manger, and I picks it up and
carries it over to the corpse, and I take my oath it just fit the gash in
the front of the old man's face. That there Krajiek had been sneakin'
round, pale and quiet, and when he seen me examinin' the axe, he begun
whimperin', 'My God, man, don't do that!' 'I reckon I'm a-goin' to look
into this,' says I. Then he begun to squeal like a rat and run about
wringin' his hands. 'They'll hang me!' says he. 'My God, they'll hang me
sure!'"

Fuchs spoke up impatiently. "Krajiek's gone silly, Jake, and so have you.
The old man would n't have made all them preparations for Krajiek to
murder him, would he? It don't hang together. The gun was right beside him
when Ambrosch found him."

"Krajiek could 'a' put it there, could n't he?" Jake demanded.

Grandmother broke in excitedly: "See here, Jake Marpole, don't you go
trying to add murder to suicide. We're deep enough in trouble. Otto reads
you too many of them detective stories."

"It will be easy to decide all that, Emmaline," said grandfather quietly.
"If he shot himself in the way they think, the gash will be torn from the
inside outward."

"Just so it is, Mr. Burden," Otto affirmed. "I seen bunches of hair and
stuff sticking to the poles and straw along the roof. They was blown up
there by gunshot, no question."

Grandmother told grandfather she meant to go over to the Shimerdas with
him.

"There is nothing you can do," he said doubtfully. "The body can't be
touched until we get the coroner here from Black Hawk, and that will be a
matter of several days, this weather."

"Well, I can take them some victuals, anyway, and say a word of comfort to
them poor little girls. The oldest one was his darling, and was like a
right hand to him. He might have thought of her. He's left her alone in a
hard world." She glanced distrustfully at Ambrosch, who was now eating his
breakfast at the kitchen table.

Fuchs, although he had been up in the cold nearly all night, was going to
make the long ride to Black Hawk to fetch the priest and the coroner. On
the gray gelding, our best horse, he would try to pick his way across the
country with no roads to guide him.

"Don't you worry about me, Mrs. Burden," he said cheerfully, as he put on
a second pair of socks. "I've got a good nose for directions, and I never
did need much sleep. It's the gray I'm worried about. I'll save him what I
can, but it'll strain him, as sure as I'm telling you!"

"This is no time to be over-considerate of animals, Otto; do the best you
can for yourself. Stop at the Widow Steavens's for dinner. She's a good
woman, and she'll do well by you."

After Fuchs rode away, I was left with Ambrosch. I saw a side of him I had
not seen before. He was deeply, even slavishly, devout. He did not say a
word all morning, but sat with his rosary in his hands, praying, now
silently, now aloud. He never looked away from his beads, nor lifted his
hands except to cross himself. Several times the poor boy fell asleep
where he sat, wakened with a start, and began to pray again.

No wagon could be got to the Shimerdas' until a road was broken, and that
would be a day's job. Grandfather came from the barn on one of our big
black horses, and Jake lifted grandmother up behind him. She wore her
black hood and was bundled up in shawls. Grandfather tucked his bushy
white beard inside his overcoat. They looked very Biblical as they set
off, I thought. Jake and Ambrosch followed them, riding the other black
and my pony, carrying bundles of clothes that we had got together for Mrs.
Shimerda. I watched them go past the pond and over the hill by the drifted
cornfield. Then, for the first time, I realized that I was alone in the
house.

I felt a considerable extension of power and authority, and was anxious to
acquit myself creditably. I carried in cobs and wood from the long cellar,
and filled both the stoves. I remembered that in the hurry and excitement
of the morning nobody had thought of the chickens, and the eggs had not
been gathered. Going out through the tunnel, I gave the hens their corn,
emptied the ice from their drinking-pan, and filled it with water. After
the cat had had his milk, I could think of nothing else to do, and I sat
down to get warm. The quiet was delightful, and the ticking clock was the
most pleasant of companions. I got "Robinson Crusoe" and tried to read,
but his life on the island seemed dull compared with ours. Presently, as I
looked with satisfaction about our comfortable sitting-room, it flashed
upon me that if Mr. Shimerda's soul were lingering about in this world at
all, it would be here, in our house, which had been more to his liking
than any other in the neighborhood. I remembered his contented face when
he was with us on Christmas Day. If he could have lived with us, this
terrible thing would never have happened.

I knew it was homesickness that had killed Mr. Shimerda, and I wondered
whether his released spirit would not eventually find its way back to his
own country. I thought of how far it was to Chicago, and then to Virginia,
to Baltimore,--and then the great wintry ocean. No, he would not at once
set out upon that long journey. Surely, his exhausted spirit, so tired of
cold and crowding and the struggle with the ever-falling snow, was resting
now in this quiet house.

I was not frightened, but I made no noise. I did not wish to disturb him.
I went softly down to the kitchen which, tucked away so snugly
underground, always seemed to me the heart and center of the house. There,
on the bench behind the stove, I thought and thought about Mr. Shimerda.
Outside I could hear the wind singing over hundreds of miles of snow. It
was as if I had let the old man in out of the tormenting winter, and were
sitting there with him. I went over all that Antonia had ever told me
about his life before he came to this country; how he used to play the
fiddle at weddings and dances. I thought about the friends he had mourned
to leave, the trombone-player, the great forest full of game,--belonging,
as Antonia said, to the "nobles,"--from which she and her mother used to
steal wood on moonlight nights. There was a white hart that lived in that
forest, and if any one killed it, he would be hanged, she said. Such vivid
pictures came to me that they might have been Mr. Shimerda's memories, not
yet faded out from the air in which they had haunted him.

It had begun to grow dark when my household returned, and grandmother was
so tired that she went at once to bed. Jake and I got supper, and while we
were washing the dishes he told me in loud whispers about the state of
things over at the Shimerdas'. Nobody could touch the body until the
coroner came. If any one did, something terrible would happen, apparently.
The dead man was frozen through, "just as stiff as a dressed turkey you
hang out to freeze," Jake said. The horses and oxen would not go into the
barn until he was frozen so hard that there was no longer any smell of
blood. They were stabled there now, with the dead man, because there was
no other place to keep them. A lighted lantern was kept hanging over Mr.
Shimerda's head. Antonia and Ambrosch and the mother took turns going down
to pray beside him. The crazy boy went with them, because he did not feel
the cold. I believed he felt cold as much as any one else, but he liked to
be thought insensible to it. He was always coveting distinction, poor
Marek!

Ambrosch, Jake said, showed more human feeling than he would have supposed
him capable of; but he was chiefly concerned about getting a priest, and
about his father's soul, which he believed was in a place of torment and
would remain there until his family and the priest had prayed a great deal
for him. "As I understand it," Jake concluded, "it will be a matter of
years to pray his soul out of Purgatory, and right now he's in torment."

"I don't believe it," I said stoutly. "I almost know it is n't true." I
did not, of course, say that I believed he had been in that very kitchen
all afternoon, on his way back to his own country. Nevertheless, after I
went to bed, this idea of punishment and Purgatory came back on me
crushingly. I remembered the account of Dives in torment, and shuddered.
But Mr. Shimerda had not been rich and selfish; he had only been so
unhappy that he could not live any longer.

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

completion: On the 22nd Jim wakes up excited because it sound like there is a crisis going on downstairs. Otto and Jake look exhausted and cold, while Ambrosch is asleep on the bench. Grandfather tells them that Mr. Shimerda is dead and that Otto and Jake had gone over in the middle of the night with Ambrosch. At breakfast, Otto says that nobody heard a gun going off and that Ambrosch discovered his father because the oxen were behaving strangely. Mr. Shimerda had washed and shaved beforehand, had arranged his clothes neatly, and then shot himself in the mouth with a shotgun while lying down. According to Jake, however, Krajiek's axe fits precisely into the gash in Mr. Shimerda's face, and Krajiek was skulking around and acting guilty. The family argues a little about what happened, but there is nothing that they can do until a coroner arrives. Otto goes to Black Hawk to fetch the coroner, and Ambrosch devoutly prays the entire morning. Finally, Grandfather, Grandmother, Jake, and Ambrosch all leave to bring the Shimerdas clothing, while Jim is left alone. Jim is excited to be responsible for all the chores and thinks that the life of Robinson Crusoe is boring in comparison to his. He imagines that Mr. Shimerda's ghost is resting in the house before it goes away to his homeland. He is not afraid and just thinks very quietly about him. When the family returns, Otto tells Jim that Mr. Shimerda is frozen solid outside in the barn and that the Shimerdas take turns praying over his body. Ambrosch wants to find a priest immediately so that his father's soul can get out of Purgatory. Jim knows that Mr. Shimerda's soul will not be stuck in Purgatory and realizes that he was just very unhappy in life.


prompt:
Chapter: OTTO FUCHS got back from Black Hawk at noon the next day. He reported that
the coroner would reach the Shimerdas' sometime that afternoon, but the
missionary priest was at the other end of his parish, a hundred miles
away, and the trains were not running. Fuchs had got a few hours' sleep at
the livery barn in town, but he was afraid the gray gelding had strained
himself. Indeed, he was never the same horse afterward. That long trip
through the deep snow had taken all the endurance out of him.

Fuchs brought home with him a stranger, a young Bohemian who had taken a
homestead near Black Hawk, and who came on his only horse to help his
fellow-countrymen in their trouble. That was the first time I ever saw
Anton Jelinek. He was a strapping young fellow in the early twenties then,
handsome, warm-hearted, and full of life, and he came to us like a miracle
in the midst of that grim business. I remember exactly how he strode into
our kitchen in his felt boots and long wolfskin coat, his eyes and cheeks
bright with the cold. At sight of grandmother, he snatched off his fur
cap, greeting her in a deep, rolling voice which seemed older than he.

"I want to thank you very much, Mrs. Burden, for that you are so kind to
poor strangers from my kawn-tree."

He did not hesitate like a farmer boy, but looked one eagerly in the eye
when he spoke. Everything about him was warm and spontaneous. He said he
would have come to see the Shimerdas before, but he had hired out to husk
corn all the fall, and since winter began he had been going to the school
by the mill, to learn English, along with the little children. He told me
he had a nice "lady-teacher" and that he liked to go to school.

At dinner grandfather talked to Jelinek more than he usually did to
strangers.

"Will they be much disappointed because we cannot get a priest?" he asked.

Jelinek looked serious. "Yes, sir, that is very bad for them. Their father
has done a great sin," he looked straight at grandfather. "Our Lord has
said that."

Grandfather seemed to like his frankness. "We believe that, too, Jelinek.
But we believe that Mr. Shimerda's soul will come to its Creator as well
off without a priest. We believe that Christ is our only intercessor."

The young man shook his head. "I know how you think. My teacher at the
school has explain. But I have seen too much. I believe in prayer for the
dead. I have seen too much."

We asked him what he meant.

He glanced around the table. "You want I shall tell you? When I was a
little boy like this one, I begin to help the priest at the altar. I make
my first communion very young; what the Church teach seem plain to me. By
'n' by war-times come, when the Austrians fight us. We have very many
soldiers in camp near my village, and the cholera break out in that camp,
and the men die like flies. All day long our priest go about there to give
the Sacrament to dying men, and I go with him to carry the vessels with
the Holy Sacrament. Everybody that go near that camp catch the sickness
but me and the priest. But we have no sickness, we have no fear, because
we carry that blood and that body of Christ, and it preserve us." He
paused, looking at grandfather. "That I know, Mr. Burden, for it happened
to myself. All the soldiers know, too. When we walk along the road, the
old priest and me, we meet all the time soldiers marching and officers on
horse. All those officers, when they see what I carry under the cloth,
pull up their horses and kneel down on the ground in the road until we
pass. So I feel very bad for my kawntree-man to die without the Sacrament,
and to die in a bad way for his soul, and I feel sad for his family."

We had listened attentively. It was impossible not to admire his frank,
manly faith.

"I am always glad to meet a young man who thinks seriously about these
things," said grandfather, "and I would never be the one to say you were
not in God's care when you were among the soldiers."

After dinner it was decided that young Jelinek should hook our two strong
black farmhorses to the scraper and break a road through to the
Shimerdas', so that a wagon could go when it was necessary. Fuchs, who was
the only cabinet-maker in the neighborhood, was set to work on a coffin.

Jelinek put on his long wolfskin coat, and when we admired it, he told us
that he had shot and skinned the coyotes, and the young man who "batched"
with him, Jan Bouska, who had been a fur-worker in Vienna, made the coat.
From the windmill I watched Jelinek come out of the barn with the blacks,
and work his way up the hillside toward the cornfield. Sometimes he was
completely hidden by the clouds of snow that rose about him; then he and
the horses would emerge black and shining.

Our heavy carpenter's bench had to be brought from the barn and carried
down into the kitchen. Fuchs selected boards from a pile of planks
grandfather had hauled out from town in the fall to make a new floor for
the oats bin. When at last the lumber and tools were assembled, and the
doors were closed again and the cold drafts shut out, grandfather rode
away to meet the coroner at the Shimerdas', and Fuchs took off his coat
and settled down to work. I sat on his work-table and watched him. He did
not touch his tools at first, but figured for a long while on a piece of
paper, and measured the planks and made marks on them. While he was thus
engaged, he whistled softly to himself, or teasingly pulled at his
half-ear. Grandmother moved about quietly, so as not to disturb him. At
last he folded his ruler and turned a cheerful face to us.

"The hardest part of my job's done," he announced. "It's the head end of
it that comes hard with me, especially when I'm out of practice. The last
time I made one of these, Mrs. Burden," he continued, as he sorted and
tried his chisels, "was for a fellow in the Black Tiger mine, up above
Silverton, Colorado. The mouth of that mine goes right into the face of
the cliff, and they used to put us in a bucket and run us over on a
trolley and shoot us into the shaft. The bucket traveled across a box
canon three hundred feet deep, and about a third full of water. Two Swedes
had fell out of that bucket once, and hit the water, feet down. If you'll
believe it, they went to work the next day. You can't kill a Swede. But in
my time a little Eyetalian tried the high dive, and it turned out
different with him. We was snowed in then, like we are now, and I happened
to be the only man in camp that could make a coffin for him. It's a handy
thing to know, when you knock about like I've done."

"We'd be hard put to it now, if you did n't know, Otto," grandmother said.

"Yes, 'm," Fuchs admitted with modest pride. "So few folks does know how
to make a good tight box that'll turn water. I sometimes wonder if
there'll be anybody about to do it for me. However, I'm not at all
particular that way."

All afternoon, wherever one went in the house, one could hear the panting
wheeze of the saw or the pleasant purring of the plane. They were such
cheerful noises, seeming to promise new things for living people: it was a
pity that those freshly planed pine boards were to be put underground so
soon. The lumber was hard to work because it was full of frost, and the
boards gave off a sweet smell of pine woods, as the heap of yellow
shavings grew higher and higher. I wondered why Fuchs had not stuck to
cabinet-work, he settled down to it with such ease and content. He handled
the tools as if he liked the feel of them; and when he planed, his hands
went back and forth over the boards in an eager, beneficent way as if he
were blessing them. He broke out now and then into German hymns, as if
this occupation brought back old times to him.

At four o'clock Mr. Bushy, the postmaster, with another neighbor who lived
east of us, stopped in to get warm. They were on their way to the
Shimerdas'. The news of what had happened over there had somehow got
abroad through the snow-blocked country. Grandmother gave the visitors
sugar-cakes and hot coffee. Before these callers were gone, the brother of
the Widow Steavens, who lived on the Black Hawk road, drew up at our door,
and after him came the father of the German family, our nearest neighbors
on the south. They dismounted and joined us in the dining-room. They were
all eager for any details about the suicide, and they were greatly
concerned as to where Mr. Shimerda would be buried. The nearest Catholic
cemetery was at Black Hawk, and it might be weeks before a wagon could get
so far. Besides, Mr. Bushy and grandmother were sure that a man who had
killed himself could not be buried in a Catholic graveyard. There was a
burying-ground over by the Norwegian church, west of Squaw Creek; perhaps
the Norwegians would take Mr. Shimerda in.

After our visitors rode away in single file over the hill, we returned to
the kitchen. Grandmother began to make the icing for a chocolate cake, and
Otto again filled the house with the exciting, expectant song of the
plane. One pleasant thing about this time was that everybody talked more
than usual. I had never heard the postmaster say anything but "Only
papers, to-day," or, "I've got a sackful of mail for ye," until this
afternoon. Grandmother always talked, dear woman; to herself or to the
Lord, if there was no one else to listen; but grandfather was naturally
taciturn, and Jake and Otto were often so tired after supper that I used
to feel as if I were surrounded by a wall of silence. Now every one seemed
eager to talk. That afternoon Fuchs told me story after story; about the
Black Tiger mine, and about violent deaths and casual buryings, and the
queer fancies of dying men. You never really knew a man, he said, until
you saw him die. Most men were game, and went without a grudge.

The postmaster, going home, stopped to say that grandfather would bring
the coroner back with him to spend the night. The officers of the
Norwegian church, he told us, had held a meeting and decided that the
Norwegian graveyard could not extend its hospitality to Mr. Shimerda.

Grandmother was indignant. "If these foreigners are so clannish, Mr.
Bushy, we'll have to have an American graveyard that will be more
liberal-minded. I'll get right after Josiah to start one in the spring. If
anything was to happen to me, I don't want the Norwegians holding
inquisitions over me to see whether I'm good enough to be laid amongst
'em."

Soon grandfather returned, bringing with him Anton Jelinek, and that
important person, the coroner. He was a mild, flurried old man, a Civil
War veteran, with one sleeve hanging empty. He seemed to find this case
very perplexing, and said if it had not been for grandfather he would have
sworn out a warrant against Krajiek. "The way he acted, and the way his
axe fit the wound, was enough to convict any man."

Although it was perfectly clear that Mr. Shimerda had killed himself, Jake
and the coroner thought something ought to be done to Krajiek because he
behaved like a guilty man. He was badly frightened, certainly, and perhaps
he even felt some stirrings of remorse for his indifference to the old
man's misery and loneliness.

At supper the men ate like vikings, and the chocolate cake, which I had
hoped would linger on until to-morrow in a mutilated condition,
disappeared on the second round. They talked excitedly about where they
should bury Mr. Shimerda; I gathered that the neighbors were all disturbed
and shocked about something. It developed that Mrs. Shimerda and Ambrosch
wanted the old man buried on the southwest corner of their own land;
indeed, under the very stake that marked the corner. Grandfather had
explained to Ambrosch that some day, when the country was put under fence
and the roads were confined to section lines, two roads would cross
exactly on that corner. But Ambrosch only said, "It makes no matter."

Grandfather asked Jelinek whether in the old country there was some
superstition to the effect that a suicide must be buried at the
cross-roads.

Jelinek said he did n't know; he seemed to remember hearing there had once
been such a custom in Bohemia. "Mrs. Shimerda is made up her mind," he
added. "I try to persuade her, and say it looks bad for her to all the
neighbors; but she say so it must be. 'There I will bury him, if I dig the
grave myself,' she say. I have to promise her I help Ambrosch make the
grave to-morrow."

Grandfather smoothed his beard and looked judicial. "I don't know whose
wish should decide the matter, if not hers. But if she thinks she will
live to see the people of this country ride over that old man's head, she
is mistaken."

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

completion: After returning from Black Hawk, Otto tells them that a coroner will arrive shortly but that it is impossible for the priest to come. He brings with him a young, strong, and confident Bohemian man named Anton Jelinek, who tells Grandfather that it is very bad that a priest is unavailable. Jelinek tells about how, during a war with the Austrians in his native land, he helped the priest carry the Sacrament around to dying men. Everyone except them got really sick with cholera, and ever since he has appreciated the power of the Sacrament and wishes that Mr. Shimerda could receive it. Jelinek starts to break a road through the snow to the Shimerda's house, while Otto, who is the only cabinet-maker in the neighborhood, begins making a coffin. Otto is a good carpenter, and the sawing and planing noises are pleasant in the house. The postmaster Mr. Bushy and some neighbors drop by to talk about the news, and Jim is excited because he is not used to people being so unusually talkative. Later in the day the postmaster returns to tell Grandmother that the Norwegians refuse to let Mr. Shimerda be buried in their graveyard. Grandmother is upset and vows to start a more "liberal-minded" American graveyard in the spring. The coroner decides that Mr. Shimerda did in fact commit suicide, even though Krajiek is continuing to act like a guilty man. Krajiek probably just feels bad for being so ruthless and unhelpful. During dinner the family talks about how Mrs. Shimerda and Ambrosch want Mr. Shimerda to be buried at the southwest corner of their land, which will someday become a crossroads. Nobody really understands, but they assume that there must be some Bohemian superstition about burying suicides at a crossroads.


prompt:
Chapter: MR. SHIMERDA lay dead in the barn four days, and on the fifth they buried
him. All day Friday Jelinek was off with Ambrosch digging the grave,
chopping out the frozen earth with old axes. On Saturday we breakfasted
before daylight and got into the wagon with the coffin. Jake and Jelinek
went ahead on horseback to cut the body loose from the pool of blood in
which it was frozen fast to the ground.

When grandmother and I went into the Shimerdas' house, we found the
women-folk alone; Ambrosch and Marek were at the barn. Mrs. Shimerda sat
crouching by the stove, Antonia was washing dishes. When she saw me she
ran out of her dark corner and threw her arms around me. "Oh, Jimmy," she
sobbed, "what you tink for my lovely papa!" It seemed to me that I could
feel her heart breaking as she clung to me.

Mrs. Shimerda, sitting on the stump by the stove, kept looking over her
shoulder toward the door while the neighbors were arriving. They came on
horseback, all except the postmaster, who brought his family in a wagon
over the only broken wagon-trail. The Widow Steavens rode up from her farm
eight miles down the Black Hawk road. The cold drove the women into the
cave-house, and it was soon crowded. A fine, sleety snow was beginning to
fall, and every one was afraid of another storm and anxious to have the
burial over with.

Grandfather and Jelinek came to tell Mrs. Shimerda that it was time to
start. After bundling her mother up in clothes the neighbors had brought,
Antonia put on an old cape from our house and the rabbit-skin hat her
father had made for her. Four men carried Mr. Shimerda's box up the hill;
Krajiek slunk along behind them. The coffin was too wide for the door, so
it was put down on the slope outside. I slipped out from the cave and
looked at Mr. Shimerda. He was lying on his side, with his knees drawn up.
His body was draped in a black shawl, and his head was bandaged in white
muslin, like a mummy's; one of his long, shapely hands lay out on the
black cloth; that was all one could see of him.

Mrs. Shimerda came out and placed an open prayer-book against the body,
making the sign of the cross on the bandaged head with her fingers.
Ambrosch knelt down and made the same gesture, and after him Antonia and
Marek. Yulka hung back. Her mother pushed her forward, and kept saying
something to her over and over. Yulka knelt down, shut her eyes, and put
out her hand a little way, but she drew it back and began to cry wildly.
She was afraid to touch the bandage. Mrs. Shimerda caught her by the
shoulders and pushed her toward the coffin, but grandmother interfered.

"No, Mrs. Shimerda," she said firmly, "I won't stand by and see that child
frightened into spasms. She is too little to understand what you want of
her. Let her alone."

At a look from grandfather, Fuchs and Jelinek placed the lid on the box,
and began to nail it down over Mr. Shimerda. I was afraid to look at
Antonia. She put her arms round Yulka and held the little girl close to
her.

The coffin was put into the wagon. We drove slowly away, against the fine,
icy snow which cut our faces like a sand-blast. When we reached the grave,
it looked a very little spot in that snow-covered waste. The men took the
coffin to the edge of the hole and lowered it with ropes. We stood about
watching them, and the powdery snow lay without melting on the caps and
shoulders of the men and the shawls of the women. Jelinek spoke in a
persuasive tone to Mrs. Shimerda, and then turned to grandfather.

"She says, Mr. Burden, she is very glad if you can make some prayer for
him here in English, for the neighbors to understand."

Grandmother looked anxiously at grandfather. He took off his hat, and the
other men did likewise. I thought his prayer remarkable. I still remember
it. He began, "Oh, great and just God, no man among us knows what the
sleeper knows, nor is it for us to judge what lies between him and Thee."
He prayed that if any man there had been remiss toward the stranger come
to a far country, God would forgive him and soften his heart. He recalled
the promises to the widow and the fatherless, and asked God to smooth the
way before this widow and her children, and to "incline the hearts of men
to deal justly with her." In closing, he said we were leaving Mr. Shimerda
at "Thy judgment seat, which is also Thy mercy seat."

All the time he was praying, grandmother watched him through the black
fingers of her glove, and when he said "Amen," I thought she looked
satisfied with him. She turned to Otto and whispered, "Can't you start a
hymn, Fuchs? It would seem less heathenish."

Fuchs glanced about to see if there was general approval of her
suggestion, then began, "Jesus, Lover of my Soul," and all the men and
women took it up after him. Whenever I have heard the hymn since, it has
made me remember that white waste and the little group of people; and the
bluish air, full of fine, eddying snow, like long veils flying:--

  "While the nearer waters roll,
  While the tempest still is high."

Years afterward, when the open-grazing days were over, and the red grass
had been ploughed under and under until it had almost disappeared from the
prairie; when all the fields were under fence, and the roads no longer ran
about like wild things, but followed the surveyed section-lines, Mr.
Shimerda's grave was still there, with a sagging wire fence around it, and
an unpainted wooden cross. As grandfather had predicted, Mrs. Shimerda
never saw the roads going over his head. The road from the north curved a
little to the east just there, and the road from the west swung out a
little to the south; so that the grave, with its tall red grass that was
never mowed, was like a little island; and at twilight, under a new moon
or the clear evening star, the dusty roads used to look like soft gray
rivers flowing past it. I never came upon the place without emotion, and
in all that country it was the spot most dear to me. I loved the dim
superstition, the propitiatory intent, that had put the grave there; and
still more I loved the spirit that could not carry out the sentence--the
error from the surveyed lines, the clemency of the soft earth roads along
which the home-coming wagons rattled after sunset. Never a tired driver
passed the wooden cross, I am sure, without wishing well to the sleeper.

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

completion: On the fifth day Mr. Shimerda is buried, but Jake and Jelinek have to chop him away from the pool of frozen blood surrounding him. When Antonia sees Jim for the first time since her father's death, she clings to him so tightly that he seems to feel her heart break. Once the neighbors arrive, it's time to start the funeral. Outside all the children except Yulka, who is too young to understand, cross themselves over their father's body. The coffin is closed and placed on a wagon, then taken to the grave. Mrs. Shimerda asks Grandfather to make a prayer, and Jim says that it was so remarkable that he still remembers it now. At Grandmother's suggestion , Otto begins to sing "Jesus, Lover of my Soul," which Jim still associates with the funeral and the "white waste" of snow there. Jim relates that years later, the grave is still there, surrounded by a fence and marked by a cross. However, the roads do not pass over the grave but instead swerve around it. Jim thinks of the grave as an island and is glad that wagons have to pass by it and realize that it's there.


prompt:
Chapter: WHEN spring came, after that hard winter, one could not get enough of the
nimble air. Every morning I wakened with a fresh consciousness that winter
was over. There were none of the signs of spring for which I used to watch
in Virginia, no budding woods or blooming gardens. There was only--spring
itself; the throb of it, the light restlessness, the vital essence of it
everywhere; in the sky, in the swift clouds, in the pale sunshine, and in
the warm, high wind--rising suddenly, sinking suddenly, impulsive and
playful like a big puppy that pawed you and then lay down to be petted. If
I had been tossed down blindfold on that red prairie, I should have known
that it was spring.

Everywhere now there was the smell of burning grass. Our neighbors burned
off their pasture before the new grass made a start, so that the fresh
growth would not be mixed with the dead stand of last year. Those light,
swift fires, running about the country, seemed a part of the same kindling
that was in the air.

The Shimerdas were in their new log house by then. The neighbors had
helped them to build it in March. It stood directly in front of their old
cave, which they used as a cellar. The family were now fairly equipped to
begin their struggle with the soil. They had four comfortable rooms to
live in, a new windmill,--bought on credit,--a chicken-house and poultry.
Mrs. Shimerda had paid grandfather ten dollars for a milk cow, and was to
give him fifteen more as soon as they harvested their first crop.

When I rode up to the Shimerdas' one bright windy afternoon in April,
Yulka ran out to meet me. It was to her, now, that I gave reading lessons;
Antonia was busy with other things. I tied my pony and went into the
kitchen where Mrs. Shimerda was baking bread, chewing poppy seeds as she
worked. By this time she could speak enough English to ask me a great many
questions about what our men were doing in the fields. She seemed to think
that my elders withheld helpful information, and that from me she might
get valuable secrets. On this occasion she asked me very craftily when
grandfather expected to begin planting corn. I told her, adding that he
thought we should have a dry spring and that the corn would not be held
back by too much rain, as it had been last year.

She gave me a shrewd glance. "He not Jesus," she blustered; "he not know
about the wet and the dry."

I did not answer her; what was the use? As I sat waiting for the hour when
Ambrosch and Antonia would return from the fields, I watched Mrs. Shimerda
at her work. She took from the oven a coffee-cake which she wanted to keep
warm for supper, and wrapped it in a quilt stuffed with feathers. I have
seen her put even a roast goose in this quilt to keep it hot. When the
neighbors were there building the new house they saw her do this, and the
story got abroad that the Shimerdas kept their food in their feather beds.

When the sun was dropping low, Antonia came up the big south draw with her
team. How much older she had grown in eight months! She had come to us a
child, and now she was a tall, strong young girl, although her fifteenth
birthday had just slipped by. I ran out and met her as she brought her
horses up to the windmill to water them. She wore the boots her father had
so thoughtfully taken off before he shot himself, and his old fur cap. Her
outgrown cotton dress switched about her calves, over the boot-tops. She
kept her sleeves rolled up all day, and her arms and throat were burned as
brown as a sailor's. Her neck came up strongly out of her shoulders, like
the bole of a tree out of the turf. One sees that draft-horse neck among
the peasant women in all old countries.

She greeted me gayly, and began at once to tell me how much ploughing she
had done that day. Ambrosch, she said, was on the north quarter, breaking
sod with the oxen.

"Jim, you ask Jake how much he ploughed to-day. I don't want that Jake get
more done in one day than me. I want we have very much corn this fall."

While the horses drew in the water, and nosed each other, and then drank
again, Antonia sat down on the windmill step and rested her head on her
hand. "You see the big prairie fire from your place last night? I hope
your grandpa ain't lose no stacks?"

"No, we did n't. I came to ask you something, Tony. Grandmother wants to
know if you can't go to the term of school that begins next week over at
the sod schoolhouse. She says there's a good teacher, and you'd learn a
lot."

Antonia stood up, lifting and dropping her shoulders as if they were
stiff. "I ain't got time to learn. I can work like mans now. My mother
can't say no more how Ambrosch do all and nobody to help him. I can work
as much as him. School is all right for little boys. I help make this land
one good farm."

She clucked to her team and started for the barn. I walked beside her,
feeling vexed. Was she going to grow up boastful like her mother, I
wondered? Before we reached the stable, I felt something tense in her
silence, and glancing up I saw that she was crying. She turned her face
from me and looked off at the red streak of dying light, over the dark
prairie.

I climbed up into the loft and threw down the hay for her, while she
unharnessed her team. We walked slowly back toward the house. Ambrosch had
come in from the north quarter, and was watering his oxen at the tank.

Antonia took my hand. "Sometime you will tell me all those nice things you
learn at the school, won't you, Jimmy?" she asked with a sudden rush of
feeling in her voice. "My father, he went much to school. He know a great
deal; how to make the fine cloth like what you not got here. He play horn
and violin, and he read so many books that the priests in Bohemie come to
talk to him. You won't forget my father, Jim?"

"No," I said, "I will never forget him."

Mrs. Shimerda asked me to stay for supper. After Ambrosch and Antonia had
washed the field dust from their hands and faces at the wash-basin by the
kitchen door, we sat down at the oilcloth-covered table. Mrs. Shimerda
ladled meal mush out of an iron pot and poured milk on it. After the mush
we had fresh bread and sorghum molasses, and coffee with the cake that had
been kept warm in the feathers. Antonia and Ambrosch were talking in
Bohemian; disputing about which of them had done more ploughing that day.
Mrs. Shimerda egged them on, chuckling while she gobbled her food.

              [Illustration: Antonia ploughing in the field]

Presently Ambrosch said sullenly in English: "You take them ox to-morrow
and try the sod plough. Then you not be so smart."

His sister laughed. "Don't be mad. I know it's awful hard work for break
sod. I milk the cow for you to-morrow, if you want."

Mrs. Shimerda turned quickly to me. "That cow not give so much milk like
what your grandpa say. If he make talk about fifteen dollars, I send him
back the cow."

"He does n't talk about the fifteen dollars," I exclaimed indignantly. "He
does n't find fault with people."

"He say I break his saw when we build, and I never," grumbled Ambrosch.

I knew he had broken the saw, and then hid it and lied about it. I began
to wish I had not stayed for supper. Everything was disagreeable to me.
Antonia ate so noisily now, like a man, and she yawned often at the table
and kept stretching her arms over her head, as if they ached. Grandmother
had said, "Heavy field work'll spoil that girl. She'll lose all her nice
ways and get rough ones." She had lost them already.

After supper I rode home through the sad, soft spring twilight. Since
winter I had seen very little of Antonia. She was out in the fields from
sun-up until sun-down. If I rode over to see her where she was ploughing,
she stopped at the end of a row to chat for a moment, then gripped her
plough-handles, clucked to her team, and waded on down the furrow, making
me feel that she was now grown up and had no time for me. On Sundays she
helped her mother make garden or sewed all day. Grandfather was pleased
with Antonia. When we complained of her, he only smiled and said, "She
will help some fellow get ahead in the world."

Nowadays Tony could talk of nothing but the prices of things, or how much
she could lift and endure. She was too proud of her strength. I knew, too,
that Ambrosch put upon her some chores a girl ought not to do, and that
the farmhands around the country joked in a nasty way about it. Whenever I
saw her come up the furrow, shouting to her beasts, sunburned, sweaty, her
dress open at the neck, and her throat and chest dust-plastered, I used to
think of the tone in which poor Mr. Shimerda, who could say so little, yet
managed to say so much when he exclaimed, "My An-tonia!"

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

completion: Finally spring comes, and Jim says that the coming of spring in Nebraska is much different than anything he had experienced in Virginia. Spring is everywhere, and you can just tell that it's there. People are burning their pastures before the new grass starts to grow, and the smell pervades the prairie. Neighbors are helping the Shimerdas a lot and extending them credit, so now they have a new log house, a windmill, and farm animals. One day Jim visits the Shimerdas to give Yulka her English lesson since Antonia is now busy working in the fields. Mrs. Shimerda is very suspicious of everyone and thinks that people are trying to cheat her. When Antonia returns from plowing the fields, Jim is amazed at what a strong, young girl of fifteen she has become. She is proud of how much work she can do and says she doesn't want to go to school because she is happy to be working with Ambrosch like a man. Jim worries that Antonia is becoming boastful like her mother, but then he notices that she is secretly crying. As he helps her with some chores, she makes him promise to tell her the things he learns in school and not to forget her father, who also went to school. Jim stays for dinner but is not having a good time. Antonia and Ambrosch quarrel about who can do more work, Mrs. Shimerda and Ambrosch wrongly accuse Grandfather of trying to cheat them, and it is apparent that Antonia has lost her gentle, ladylike ways. Jim is sad because Antonia is always working and has no time for him anymore. He knows that Ambrosch is overworking her and that people are gossiping about it, and he imagines how sad her father would be if he were alive.


prompt:
Chapter: AFTER I began to go to the country school, I saw less of the Bohemians. We
were sixteen pupils at the sod schoolhouse, and we all came on horseback
and brought our dinner. My schoolmates were none of them very interesting,
but I somehow felt that by making comrades of them I was getting even with
Antonia for her indifference. Since the father's death, Ambrosch was more
than ever the head of the house and he seemed to direct the feelings as
well as the fortunes of his women-folk. Antonia often quoted his opinions
to me, and she let me see that she admired him, while she thought of me
only as a little boy. Before the spring was over, there was a distinct
coldness between us and the Shimerdas. It came about in this way.

One Sunday I rode over there with Jake to get a horse-collar which
Ambrosch had borrowed from him and had not returned. It was a beautiful
blue morning. The buffalo-peas were blooming in pink and purple masses
along the roadside, and the larks, perched on last year's dried sunflower
stalks, were singing straight at the sun, their heads thrown back and
their yellow breasts a-quiver. The wind blew about us in warm, sweet
gusts. We rode slowly, with a pleasant sense of Sunday indolence.

We found the Shimerdas working just as if it were a week-day. Marek was
cleaning out the stable, and Antonia and her mother were making garden,
off across the pond in the draw-head. Ambrosch was up on the windmill
tower, oiling the wheel. He came down, not very cordially. When Jake asked
for the collar, he grunted and scratched his head. The collar belonged to
grandfather, of course, and Jake, feeling responsible for it, flared up.

"Now, don't you say you have n't got it, Ambrosch, because I know you
have, and if you ain't a-going to look for it, I will."

Ambrosch shrugged his shoulders and sauntered down the hill toward the
stable. I could see that it was one of his mean days. Presently he
returned, carrying a collar that had been badly used--trampled in the dirt
and gnawed by rats until the hair was sticking out of it.

"This what you want?" he asked surlily.

Jake jumped off his horse. I saw a wave of red come up under the rough
stubble on his face. "That ain't the piece of harness I loaned you,
Ambrosch; or if it is, you've used it shameful. I ain't a-going to carry
such a looking thing back to Mr. Burden."

Ambrosch dropped the collar on the ground. "All right," he said coolly,
took up his oil-can, and began to climb the mill. Jake caught him by the
belt of his trousers and yanked him back. Ambrosch's feet had scarcely
touched the ground when he lunged out with a vicious kick at Jake's
stomach. Fortunately Jake was in such a position that he could dodge it.
This was not the sort of thing country boys did when they played at
fisticuffs, and Jake was furious. He landed Ambrosch a blow on the head--it
sounded like the crack of an axe on a cow-pumpkin. Ambrosch dropped over,
stunned.

We heard squeals, and looking up saw Antonia and her mother coming on the
run. They did not take the path around the pond, but plunged through the
muddy water, without even lifting their skirts. They came on, screaming
and clawing the air. By this time Ambrosch had come to his senses and was
sputtering with nose-bleed. Jake sprang into his saddle. "Let's get out of
this, Jim," he called.

Mrs. Shimerda threw her hands over her head and clutched as if she were
going to pull down lightning. "Law, law!" she shrieked after us. "Law for
knock my Ambrosch down!"

"I never like you no more, Jake and Jim Burden," Antonia panted. "No
friends any more!"

Jake stopped and turned his horse for a second. "Well, you're a damned
ungrateful lot, the whole pack of you," he shouted back. "I guess the
Burdens can get along without you. You've been a sight of trouble to them,
anyhow!"

We rode away, feeling so outraged that the fine morning was spoiled for
us. I had n't a word to say, and poor Jake was white as paper and
trembling all over. It made him sick to get so angry. "They ain't the
same, Jimmy," he kept saying in a hurt tone. "These foreigners ain't the
same. You can't trust 'em to be fair. It's dirty to kick a feller. You
heard how the women turned on you--and after all we went through on account
of 'em last winter! They ain't to be trusted. I don't want to see you get
too thick with any of 'em."

"I'll never be friends with them again, Jake," I declared hotly. "I
believe they are all like Krajiek and Ambrosch underneath."

Grandfather heard our story with a twinkle in his eye. He advised Jake to
ride to town to-morrow, go to a justice of the peace, tell him he had
knocked young Shimerda down, and pay his fine. Then if Mrs. Shimerda was
inclined to make trouble--her son was still under age--she would be
forestalled. Jake said he might as well take the wagon and haul to market
the pig he had been fattening. On Monday, about an hour after Jake had
started, we saw Mrs. Shimerda and her Ambrosch proudly driving by, looking
neither to the right nor left. As they rattled out of sight down the Black
Hawk road, grandfather chuckled, saying he had rather expected she would
follow the matter up.

Jake paid his fine with a ten-dollar bill grandfather had given him for
that purpose. But when the Shimerdas found that Jake sold his pig in town
that day, Ambrosch worked it out in his shrewd head that Jake had to sell
his pig to pay his fine. This theory afforded the Shimerdas great
satisfaction, apparently. For weeks afterward, whenever Jake and I met
Antonia on her way to the post-office, or going along the road with her
work-team, she would clap her hands and call to us in a spiteful, crowing
voice:--

"Jake-y, Jake-y, sell the pig and pay the slap!"

Otto pretended not to be surprised at Antonia's behavior. He only lifted
his brows and said, "You can't tell me anything new about a Czech; I'm an
Austrian."

Grandfather was never a party to what Jake called our feud with the
Shimerdas. Ambrosch and Antonia always greeted him respectfully, and he
asked them about their affairs and gave them advice as usual. He thought
the future looked hopeful for them. Ambrosch was a far-seeing fellow; he
soon realized that his oxen were too heavy for any work except breaking
sod, and he succeeded in selling them to a newly arrived German. With the
money he bought another team of horses, which grandfather selected for
him. Marek was strong, and Ambrosch worked him hard; but he could never
teach him to cultivate corn, I remember. The one idea that had ever got
through poor Marek's thick head was that all exertion was meritorious. He
always bore down on the handles of the cultivator and drove the blades so
deep into the earth that the horses were soon exhausted.

In June Ambrosch went to work at Mr. Bushy's for a week, and took Marek
with him at full wages. Mrs. Shimerda then drove the second cultivator;
she and Antonia worked in the fields all day and did the chores at night.
While the two women were running the place alone, one of the new horses
got colic and gave them a terrible fright.

Antonia had gone down to the barn one night to see that all was well
before she went to bed, and she noticed that one of the roans was swollen
about the middle and stood with its head hanging. She mounted another
horse, without waiting to saddle him, and hammered on our door just as we
were going to bed. Grandfather answered her knock. He did not send one of
his men, but rode back with her himself, taking a syringe and an old piece
of carpet he kept for hot applications when our horses were sick. He found
Mrs. Shimerda sitting by the horse with her lantern, groaning and wringing
her hands. It took but a few moments to release the gases pent up in the
poor beast, and the two women heard the rush of wind and saw the roan
visibly diminish in girth.

"If I lose that horse, Mr. Burden," Antonia exclaimed, "I never stay here
till Ambrosch come home! I go drown myself in the pond before morning."

When Ambrosch came back from Mr. Bushy's, we learned that he had given
Marek's wages to the priest at Black Hawk, for masses for their father's
soul. Grandmother thought Antonia needed shoes more than Mr. Shimerda
needed prayers, but grandfather said tolerantly, "If he can spare six
dollars, pinched as he is, it shows he believes what he professes."

It was grandfather who brought about a reconciliation with the Shimerdas.
One morning he told us that the small grain was coming on so well, he
thought he would begin to cut his wheat on the first of July. He would
need more men, and if it were agreeable to every one he would engage
Ambrosch for the reaping and thrashing, as the Shimerdas had no small
grain of their own.

"I think, Emmaline," he concluded, "I will ask Antonia to come over and
help you in the kitchen. She will be glad to earn something, and it will
be a good time to end misunderstandings. I may as well ride over this
morning and make arrangements. Do you want to go with me, Jim?" His tone
told me that he had already decided for me.

After breakfast we set off together. When Mrs. Shimerda saw us coming, she
ran from her door down into the draw behind the stable, as if she did not
want to meet us. Grandfather smiled to himself while he tied his horse,
and we followed her.

Behind the barn we came upon a funny sight. The cow had evidently been
grazing somewhere in the draw. Mrs. Shimerda had run to the animal, pulled
up the lariat pin, and, when we came upon her, she was trying to hide the
cow in an old cave in the bank. As the hole was narrow and dark, the cow
held back, and the old woman was slapping and pushing at her hind
quarters, trying to spank her into the draw-side.

Grandfather ignored her singular occupation and greeted her politely.
"Good-morning, Mrs. Shimerda. Can you tell me where I will find Ambrosch?
Which field?"

"He with the sod corn." She pointed toward the north, still standing in
front of the cow as if she hoped to conceal it.

"His sod corn will be good for fodder this winter," said grandfather
encouragingly. "And where is Antonia?"

"She go with." Mrs. Shimerda kept wiggling her bare feet about nervously
in the dust.

"Very well. I will ride up there. I want them to come over and help me cut
my oats and wheat next month. I will pay them wages. Good-morning. By the
way, Mrs. Shimerda," he said as he turned up the path, "I think we may as
well call it square about the cow."

She started and clutched the rope tighter. Seeing that she did not
understand, grandfather turned back. "You need not pay me anything more;
no more money. The cow is yours."

"Pay no more, keep cow?" she asked in a bewildered tone, her narrow eyes
snapping at us in the sunlight.

"Exactly. Pay no more, keep cow." He nodded.

Mrs. Shimerda dropped the rope, ran after us, and crouching down beside
grandfather, she took his hand and kissed it. I doubt if he had ever been
so much embarrassed before. I was a little startled, too. Somehow, that
seemed to bring the Old World very close.

We rode away laughing, and grandfather said: "I expect she thought we had
come to take the cow away for certain, Jim. I wonder if she would n't have
scratched a little if we'd laid hold of that lariat rope!"

Our neighbors seemed glad to make peace with us. The next Sunday Mrs.
Shimerda came over and brought Jake a pair of socks she had knitted. She
presented them with an air of great magnanimity, saying, "Now you not come
any more for knock my Ambrosch down?"

Jake laughed sheepishly. "I don't want to have no trouble with Ambrosch.
If he'll let me alone, I'll let him alone."

"If he slap you, we ain't got no pig for pay the fine," she said
insinuatingly.

Jake was not at all disconcerted. "Have the last word, mam," he said
cheerfully. "It's a lady's privilege."

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

completion: Jim starts school and tries to get back at Antonia by becoming friends with his classmates, even though he thinks they're boring. He is resentful that Antonia seems to worship Ambrosch, while she treats him with mild disdain. He recounts how the Burdens and Shimerdas were further estranged that spring. Jim and Jake went to the Shimerdas to retrieve a horse-collar that Ambrosch had borrowed but not returned. Ambrosch is surly and gives Jake a collar in very poor condition. The two men get into a scuffle, with Ambrosch fighting unfairly and Jake knocking him down. Antonia screams hatred at them, and Mrs. Shimerda threatens with the law. While leaving, Jim and Jake express their distrust of foreigners and say they're just not the same as other people. Grandfather simply laughs at the story and tells Jake to go to town and pay his fine. Jake happens to sell a pig at the same time, and the Shimerdas mock him because they think he needed to sell it in order to have enough money to pay the fine. Despite the feud, the Shimerdas are always respectful to Grandfather, who gives them a lot of helpful advice and helps them when they have a problem with their horse. Ambrosch and Marek have started working for wages, and Grandfather decides to pay Ambrosch and Antonia to help out on the farm. When he goes to the Shimerdas to ask, he graciously gives Mrs. Shimerda the cow that she has purchased on credit, and she falls to her knees and kisses his hand. Afterwards, the feud between the two families is forgotten, although Mrs. Shimerda wants to have the last word.


prompt:
Chapter: JULY came on with that breathless, brilliant heat which makes the plains
of Kansas and Nebraska the best corn country in the world. It seemed as if
we could hear the corn growing in the night; under the stars one caught a
faint crackling in the dewy, heavy-odored cornfields where the feathered
stalks stood so juicy and green. If all the great plain from the Missouri
to the Rocky Mountains had been under glass, and the heat regulated by a
thermometer, it could not have been better for the yellow tassels that
were ripening and fertilizing each other day by day. The cornfields were
far apart in those times, with miles of wild grazing land between. It took
a clear, meditative eye like my grandfather's to foresee that they would
enlarge and multiply until they would be, not the Shimerdas' cornfields,
or Mr. Bushy's, but the world's cornfields; that their yield would be one
of the great economic facts, like the wheat crop of Russia, which underlie
all the activities of men, in peace or war.

The burning sun of those few weeks, with occasional rains at night,
secured the corn. After the milky ears were once formed, we had little to
fear from dry weather. The men were working so hard in the wheatfields
that they did not notice the heat,--though I was kept busy carrying water
for them,--and grandmother and Antonia had so much to do in the kitchen
that they could not have told whether one day was hotter than another.
Each morning, while the dew was still on the grass, Antonia went with me
up to the garden to get early vegetables for dinner. Grandmother made her
wear a sunbonnet, but as soon as we reached the garden she threw it on the
grass and let her hair fly in the breeze. I remember how, as we bent over
the pea-vines, beads of perspiration used to gather on her upper lip like
a little mustache.

"Oh, better I like to work out of doors than in a house!" she used to sing
joyfully. "I not care that your grandmother say it makes me like a man. I
like to be like a man." She would toss her head and ask me to feel the
muscles swell in her brown arm.

We were glad to have her in the house. She was so gay and responsive that
one did not mind her heavy, running step, or her clattery way with pans.
Grandmother was in high spirits during the weeks that Antonia worked for
us.

All the nights were close and hot during that harvest season. The
harvesters slept in the hayloft because it was cooler there than in the
house. I used to lie in my bed by the open window, watching the heat
lightning play softly along the horizon, or looking up at the gaunt frame
of the windmill against the blue night sky. One night there was a
beautiful electric storm, though not enough rain fell to damage the cut
grain. The men went down to the barn immediately after supper, and when
the dishes were washed Antonia and I climbed up on the slanting roof of
the chicken-house to watch the clouds. The thunder was loud and metallic,
like the rattle of sheet iron, and the lightning broke in great zigzags
across the heavens, making everything stand out and come close to us for a
moment. Half the sky was checkered with black thunderheads, but all the
west was luminous and clear: in the lightning-flashes it looked like deep
blue water, with the sheen of moonlight on it; and the mottled part of the
sky was like marble pavement, like the quay of some splendid sea-coast
city, doomed to destruction. Great warm splashes of rain fell on our
upturned faces. One black cloud, no bigger than a little boat, drifted out
into the clear space unattended, and kept moving westward. All about us we
could hear the felty beat of the raindrops on the soft dust of the
farmyard. Grandmother came to the door and said it was late, and we would
get wet out there.

"In a minute we come," Antonia called back to her. "I like your
grandmother, and all things here," she sighed. "I wish my papa live to see
this summer. I wish no winter ever come again."

"It will be summer a long while yet," I reassured her. "Why are n't you
always nice like this, Tony?"

"How nice?"

"Why, just like this; like yourself. Why do you all the time try to be
like Ambrosch?"

She put her arms under her head and lay back, looking up at the sky. "If I
live here, like you, that is different. Things will be easy for you. But
they will be hard for us."

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

completion: In July the heat comes, and the corn grows fabulously. Jim notes that his grandfather has already predicted that in the future the American Midwest will produce enough corn for the rest of the world. During this time Antonia is mostly working in the kitchen with Grandmother, but she also goes outside to work with Jim in the vegetable garden. She prefers to work outside like a man and is proud of her arm muscles. One day there is a big thunderstorm, and Antonia and Jim go outside to watch it. It is pleasant, and Jim asks her why she can't always be herself and why sometimes she tries to be like Ambrosch. She answers that if she lived with Jim in the Burden household, life would be easy and she would be different. However, she predicts that life will be hard for her and her family.


prompt:
Chapter: I HAD been living with my grandfather for nearly three years when he
decided to move to Black Hawk. He and grandmother were getting old for the
heavy work of a farm, and as I was now thirteen they thought I ought to be
going to school. Accordingly our homestead was rented to "that good woman,
the Widow Steavens," and her bachelor brother, and we bought Preacher
White's house, at the north end of Black Hawk. This was the first town
house one passed driving in from the farm, a landmark which told country
people their long ride was over.

We were to move to Black Hawk in March, and as soon as grandfather had
fixed the date he let Jake and Otto know of his intention. Otto said he
would not be likely to find another place that suited him so well; that he
was tired of farming and thought he would go back to what he called the
"wild West." Jake Marpole, lured by Otto's stories of adventure, decided
to go with him. We did our best to dissuade Jake. He was so handicapped by
illiteracy and by his trusting disposition that he would be an easy prey
to sharpers. Grandmother begged him to stay among kindly, Christian
people, where he was known; but there was no reasoning with him. He wanted
to be a prospector. He thought a silver mine was waiting for him in
Colorado.

Jake and Otto served us to the last. They moved us into town, put down the
carpets in our new house, made shelves and cupboards for grandmother's
kitchen, and seemed loath to leave us. But at last they went, without
warning. Those two fellows had been faithful to us through sun and storm,
had given us things that cannot be bought in any market in the world. With
me they had been like older brothers; had restrained their speech and
manners out of care for me, and given me so much good comradeship. Now
they got on the west-bound train one morning, in their Sunday clothes,
with their oilcloth valises--and I never saw them again. Months afterward
we got a card from Otto, saying that Jake had been down with mountain
fever, but now they were both working in the Yankee Girl mine, and were
doing well. I wrote to them at that address, but my letter was returned to
me, "unclaimed." After that we never heard from them.

Black Hawk, the new world in which we had come to live, was a clean,
well-planted little prairie town, with white fences and good green yards
about the dwellings, wide, dusty streets, and shapely little trees growing
along the wooden sidewalks. In the center of the town there were two rows
of new brick "store" buildings, a brick schoolhouse, the courthouse, and
four white churches. Our own house looked down over the town, and from our
upstairs windows we could see the winding line of the river bluffs, two
miles south of us. That river was to be my compensation for the lost
freedom of the farming country.

We came to Black Hawk in March, and by the end of April we felt like town
people. Grandfather was a deacon in the new Baptist Church, grandmother
was busy with church suppers and missionary societies, and I was quite
another boy, or thought I was. Suddenly put down among boys of my own age,
I found I had a great deal to learn. Before the spring term of school was
over I could fight, play "keeps," tease the little girls, and use
forbidden words as well as any boy in my class. I was restrained from
utter savagery only by the fact that Mrs. Harling, our nearest neighbor,
kept an eye on me, and if my behavior went beyond certain bounds I was not
permitted to come into her yard or to play with her jolly children.

We saw more of our country neighbors now than when we lived on the farm.
Our house was a convenient stopping-place for them. We had a big barn
where the farmers could put up their teams, and their women-folk more
often accompanied them, now that they could stay with us for dinner, and
rest and set their bonnets right before they went shopping. The more our
house was like a country hotel, the better I liked it. I was glad, when I
came home from school at noon, to see a farm wagon standing in the back
yard, and I was always ready to run downtown to get beefsteak or baker's
bread for unexpected company. All through that first spring and summer I
kept hoping that Ambrosch would bring Antonia and Yulka to see our new
house. I wanted to show them our red plush furniture, and the
trumpet-blowing cherubs the German paper-hanger had put on our parlor
ceiling.

When Ambrosch came to town, however, he came alone, and though he put his
horses in our barn, he would never stay for dinner, or tell us anything
about his mother and sisters. If we ran out and questioned him as he was
slipping through the yard, he would merely work his shoulders about in his
coat and say, "They all right, I guess."

Mrs. Steavens, who now lived on our farm, grew as fond of Antonia as we
had been, and always brought us news of her. All through the wheat season,
she told us, Ambrosch hired his sister out like a man, and she went from
farm to farm, binding sheaves or working with the thrashers. The farmers
liked her and were kind to her; said they would rather have her for a hand
than Ambrosch. When fall came she was to husk corn for the neighbors until
Christmas, as she had done the year before; but grandmother saved her from
this by getting her a place to work with our neighbors, the Harlings.

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

completion: After Jim lives in the country for three years, his grandfather, who feels like he is getting too old and that Jim needs to go to school, decided to move to Black Hawk. The Burdens sell their farm to the Widow Steavens and buy a house at the very edge of town. Otto decides to go West, and Jake follows him, even though the Burdens think he is too kind and trusting to live on the frontier. Jake and Otto help the Burdens move to the town, and Jim only hears of them once after that, when they are working in a mine. Black Hawk is a nice, clean little town with a river that reminds Jim of the country. Soon the Burden family feels like town people, and Jim learns boyish ways at school. Country neighbors coming to town would generally stay with them at their home, although Ambrosch only came alone, wouldn't stay long, and wouldn't tell them much about his family. Mrs. Steavens, however, tells them news of Antonia, whom her brother hires out like a man and whom everyone liked. Grandmother gets Antonia a place to work with the Harlings, who live next door to them in Black Hawk, so she doesn't have to be hired out again for the fall.


prompt:
Chapter: GRANDMOTHER often said that if she had to live in town, she thanked God
she lived next the Harlings. They had been farming people, like ourselves,
and their place was like a little farm, with a big barn and a garden, and
an orchard and grazing lots,--even a windmill. The Harlings were
Norwegians, and Mrs. Harling had lived in Christiania until she was ten
years old. Her husband was born in Minnesota. He was a grain merchant and
cattle buyer, and was generally considered the most enterprising business
man in our county. He controlled a line of grain elevators in the little
towns along the railroad to the west of us, and was away from home a great
deal. In his absence his wife was the head of the household.

Mrs. Harling was short and square and sturdy-looking, like her house.
Every inch of her was charged with an energy that made itself felt the
moment she entered a room. Her face was rosy and solid, with bright,
twinkling eyes and a stubborn little chin. She was quick to anger, quick
to laughter, and jolly from the depths of her soul. How well I remember
her laugh; it had in it the same sudden recognition that flashed into her
eyes, was a burst of humor, short and intelligent. Her rapid footsteps
shook her own floors, and she routed lassitude and indifference wherever
she came. She could not be negative or perfunctory about anything. Her
enthusiasm, and her violent likes and dislikes, asserted themselves in all
the every-day occupations of life. Wash-day was interesting, never dreary,
at the Harlings'. Preserving-time was a prolonged festival, and
house-cleaning was like a revolution. When Mrs. Harling made garden that
spring, we could feel the stir of her undertaking through the willow hedge
that separated our place from hers.

Three of the Harling children were near me in age. Charley, the only
son,--they had lost an older boy,--was sixteen; Julia, who was known as the
musical one, was fourteen when I was; and Sally, the tomboy with short
hair, was a year younger. She was nearly as strong as I, and uncannily
clever at all boys' sports. Sally was a wild thing, with sunburned yellow
hair, bobbed about her ears, and a brown skin, for she never wore a hat.
She raced all over town on one roller skate, often cheated at "keeps," but
was such a quick shot one could n't catch her at it.

The grown-up daughter, Frances, was a very important person in our world.
She was her father's chief clerk, and virtually managed his Black Hawk
office during his frequent absences. Because of her unusual business
ability, he was stern and exacting with her. He paid her a good salary,
but she had few holidays and never got away from her responsibilities.
Even on Sundays she went to the office to open the mail and read the
markets. With Charley, who was not interested in business, but was already
preparing for Annapolis, Mr. Harling was very indulgent; bought him guns
and tools and electric batteries, and never asked what he did with them.

Frances was dark, like her father, and quite as tall. In winter she wore a
sealskin coat and cap, and she and Mr. Harling used to walk home together
in the evening, talking about grain-cars and cattle, like two men.
Sometimes she came over to see grandfather after supper, and her visits
flattered him. More than once they put their wits together to rescue some
unfortunate farmer from the clutches of Wick Cutter, the Black Hawk
money-lender. Grandfather said Frances Harling was as good a judge of
credits as any banker in the county. The two or three men who had tried to
take advantage of her in a deal acquired celebrity by their defeat. She
knew every farmer for miles about; how much land he had under cultivation,
how many cattle he was feeding, what his liabilities were. Her interest in
these people was more than a business interest. She carried them all in
her mind as if they were characters in a book or a play.

When Frances drove out into the country on business, she would go miles
out of her way to call on some of the old people, or to see the women who
seldom got to town. She was quick at understanding the grandmothers who
spoke no English, and the most reticent and distrustful of them would tell
her their story without realizing they were doing so. She went to country
funerals and weddings in all weathers. A farmer's daughter who was to be
married could count on a wedding present from Frances Harling.

In August the Harlings' Danish cook had to leave them. Grandmother
entreated them to try Antonia. She cornered Ambrosch the next time he came
to town, and pointed out to him that any connection with Christian Harling
would strengthen his credit and be of advantage to him. One Sunday Mrs.
Harling took the long ride out to the Shimerdas' with Frances. She said
she wanted to see "what the girl came from" and to have a clear
understanding with her mother. I was in our yard when they came driving
home, just before sunset. They laughed and waved to me as they passed, and
I could see they were in great good humor. After supper, when grandfather
set off to church, grandmother and I took my short cut through the willow
hedge and went over to hear about the visit to the Shimerdas.

We found Mrs. Harling with Charley and Sally on the front porch, resting
after her hard drive. Julia was in the hammock--she was fond of repose--and
Frances was at the piano, playing without a light and talking to her
mother through the open window.

Mrs. Harling laughed when she saw us coming. "I expect you left your
dishes on the table to-night, Mrs. Burden," she called. Frances shut the
piano and came out to join us.

They had liked Antonia from their first glimpse of her; felt they knew
exactly what kind of girl she was. As for Mrs. Shimerda, they found her
very amusing. Mrs. Harling chuckled whenever she spoke of her. "I expect I
am more at home with that sort of bird than you are, Mrs. Burden. They're
a pair, Ambrosch and that old woman!"

They had had a long argument with Ambrosch about Antonia's allowance for
clothes and pocket-money. It was his plan that every cent of his sister's
wages should be paid over to him each month, and he would provide her with
such clothing as he thought necessary. When Mrs. Harling told him firmly
that she would keep fifty dollars a year for Antonia's own use, he
declared they wanted to take his sister to town and dress her up and make
a fool of her. Mrs. Harling gave us a lively account of Ambrosch's
behavior throughout the interview; how he kept jumping up and putting on
his cap as if he were through with the whole business, and how his mother
tweaked his coat-tail and prompted him in Bohemian. Mrs. Harling finally
agreed to pay three dollars a week for Antonia's services--good wages in
those days--and to keep her in shoes. There had been hot dispute about the
shoes, Mrs. Shimerda finally saying persuasively that she would send Mrs.
Harling three fat geese every year to "make even." Ambrosch was to bring
his sister to town next Saturday.

"She'll be awkward and rough at first, like enough," grandmother said
anxiously, "but unless she's been spoiled by the hard life she's led, she
has it in her to be a real helpful girl."

Mrs. Harling laughed her quick, decided laugh. "Oh, I'm not worrying, Mrs.
Burden! I can bring something out of that girl. She's barely seventeen,
not too old to learn new ways. She's good-looking, too!" she added warmly.

Frances turned to grandmother. "Oh, yes, Mrs. Burden, you did n't tell us
that! She was working in the garden when we got there, barefoot and
ragged. But she has such fine brown legs and arms, and splendid color in
her cheeks--like those big dark red plums."

We were pleased at this praise. Grandmother spoke feelingly. "When she
first came to this country, Frances, and had that genteel old man to watch
over her, she was as pretty a girl as ever I saw. But, dear me, what a
life she's led, out in the fields with those rough thrashers! Things would
have been very different with poor Antonia if her father had lived."

The Harlings begged us to tell them about Mr. Shimerda's death and the big
snowstorm. By the time we saw grandfather coming home from church we had
told them pretty much all we knew of the Shimerdas.

"The girl will be happy here, and she'll forget those things," said Mrs.
Harling confidently, as we rose to take our leave.

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

completion: Jim begins this chapter by describing their Norwegian neighbors, the Harlings. Mr. Harling is very successful and frequently away on business, and his wife generally runs the household. She is short, sturdy, and jolly. There are three Harling children around Jim's age: Charley, Julia, and Sally the tomboy. The oldest daughter Frances helps her father with his business and is trusted around the countryside because of her understanding of financial matters. When the Harlings' cook leaves, Grandmother persuades Mrs. Harling to hire Antonia. Mrs. Harling goes to visit the Shimerdas to get an impression of Antonia and her family. Afterwards, Jim and the grandmother go hear what Mrs. Harling has to say. Mrs. Harling likes Antonia and tells about how grumpy and demanding Ambrosch was. Ambrosch wanted all of Antonia's wages to go directly to him, but Mrs. Harling mandates that a certain amount will be set aside for Antonia's own use. Mrs. Harling comments on how pretty Antonia is, and Jim and Grandmother are pleased at the praise. Grandmother then tells a brief history of the Shimerda family.


prompt:
Chapter: ON Saturday Ambrosch drove up to the back gate, and Antonia jumped down
from the wagon and ran into our kitchen just as she used to do. She was
wearing shoes and stockings, and was breathless and excited. She gave me a
playful shake by the shoulders. "You ain't forget about me, Jim?"

Grandmother kissed her. "God bless you, child! Now you've come, you must
try to do right and be a credit to us."

Antonia looked eagerly about the house and admired everything. "Maybe I be
the kind of girl you like better, now I come to town," she suggested
hopefully.

How good it was to have Antonia near us again; to see her every day and
almost every night! Her greatest fault, Mrs. Harling found, was that she
so often stopped her work and fell to playing with the children. She would
race about the orchard with us, or take sides in our hay-fights in the
barn, or be the old bear that came down from the mountain and carried off
Nina. Tony learned English so quickly that by the time school began she
could speak as well as any of us.

I was jealous of Tony's admiration for Charley Harling. Because he was
always first in his classes at school, and could mend the water-pipes or
the door-bell and take the clock to pieces, she seemed to think him a sort
of prince. Nothing that Charley wanted was too much trouble for her. She
loved to put up lunches for him when he went hunting, to mend his
ball-gloves and sew buttons on his shooting-coat, baked the kind of
nut-cake he liked, and fed his setter dog when he was away on trips with
his father. Antonia had made herself cloth working-slippers out of Mr.
Harling's old coats, and in these she went padding about after Charley,
fairly panting with eagerness to please him.

Next to Charley, I think she loved Nina best. Nina was only six, and she
was rather more complex than the other children. She was fanciful, had all
sorts of unspoken preferences, and was easily offended. At the slightest
disappointment or displeasure her velvety brown eyes filled with tears,
and she would lift her chin and walk silently away. If we ran after her
and tried to appease her, it did no good. She walked on unmollified. I
used to think that no eyes in the world could grow so large or hold so
many tears as Nina's. Mrs. Harling and Antonia invariably took her part.
We were never given a chance to explain. The charge was simply: "You have
made Nina cry. Now, Jimmy can go home, and Sally must get her arithmetic."
I liked Nina, too; she was so quaint and unexpected, and her eyes were
lovely; but I often wanted to shake her.

We had jolly evenings at the Harlings when the father was away. If he was
at home, the children had to go to bed early, or they came over to my
house to play. Mr. Harling not only demanded a quiet house, he demanded
all his wife's attention. He used to take her away to their room in the
west ell, and talk over his business with her all evening. Though we did
not realize it then, Mrs. Harling was our audience when we played, and we
always looked to her for suggestions. Nothing flattered one like her quick
laugh.

Mr. Harling had a desk in his bedroom, and his own easy-chair by the
window, in which no one else ever sat. On the nights when he was at home,
I could see his shadow on the blind, and it seemed to me an arrogant
shadow. Mrs. Harling paid no heed to any one else if he was there. Before
he went to bed she always got him a lunch of smoked salmon or anchovies
and beer. He kept an alcohol lamp in his room, and a French coffee-pot,
and his wife made coffee for him at any hour of the night he happened to
want it.

Most Black Hawk fathers had no personal habits outside their domestic
ones; they paid the bills, pushed the baby carriage after office hours,
moved the sprinkler about over the lawn, and took the family driving on
Sunday. Mr. Harling, therefore, seemed to me autocratic and imperial in
his ways. He walked, talked, put on his gloves, shook hands, like a man
who felt that he had power. He was not tall, but he carried his head so
haughtily that he looked a commanding figure, and there was something
daring and challenging in his eyes. I used to imagine that the "nobles" of
whom Antonia was always talking probably looked very much like Christian
Harling, wore caped overcoats like his, and just such a glittering diamond
upon the little finger.

Except when the father was at home, the Harling house was never quiet.
Mrs. Harling and Nina and Antonia made as much noise as a houseful of
children, and there was usually somebody at the piano. Julia was the only
one who was held down to regular hours of practicing, but they all played.
When Frances came home at noon, she played until dinner was ready. When
Sally got back from school, she sat down in her hat and coat and drummed
the plantation melodies that negro minstrel troupes brought to town. Even
Nina played the Swedish Wedding March.

Mrs. Harling had studied the piano under a good teacher, and somehow she
managed to practice every day. I soon learned that if I were sent over on
an errand and found Mrs. Harling at the piano, I must sit down and wait
quietly until she turned to me. I can see her at this moment; her short,
square person planted firmly on the stool, her little fat hands moving
quickly and neatly over the keys, her eyes fixed on the music with
intelligent concentration.

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

completion: Antonia soon comes to work for the Harlings, and Jim and Grandmother are very happy to see her. Antonia likes working in town and learning English, and she plays with the children a lot. Jim is jealous because Antonia has a crush on Charley Harling and is always trying to do nice things for him. The Harling household is always very pleasant, except when Mr. Harling is at home. He likes to have everything quiet, and he makes Mrs. Harling devote all her attention to him. Later Jim realizes how important Mrs. Harling's presence in their lives was. Jim thinks that Mr. Harling is an arrogant man and walks around feeling powerful all the time. Whenever Mr. Harling is not around, the house is loud with a lot of music. Mrs. Harling is very serious about playing the piano.