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 is in his bar thinking about Maggie. He doesnt think he is responsible for ruining Maggie. He tends to blame Mrs. Johnson and Jimmie for what has happened to Maggie. He also dismisses his moral responsibility toward Maggie on the grounds that in his world, people dont expect to be happy. He dismisses all of these thoughts with "What deh hell?" His main concern is that he might get into trouble with his boss who insists on respectability in his employees. He remembers a conversation with Nellie in which she made fun of Maggie. He told her Maggie wasnt important to him anyway. She had told him she didnt care who he went with. Any time Pete is made fun of for the women he dates, he always dismisses them as passing fancies or less. Suddenly, Pete notices Maggie hanging around the entrance of the saloon. He is astonished that she would show up there and rushes to the side door. When Maggie sees Pete signaling her, she loses her worried look and smiles in gratitude. Pete gestures for her to come to him. When she does, he asks her if she wants to get him fired. She tries to remind him that he once told her to come to the saloon any time she needed anything, but he dismisses her words, saying she will get him fired if she stays. He says the boss had to pay for the breakage caused by the fight Jimmie started, so he has been watching him carefully. Finally, Maggie asks him where shes supposed to go. He tells her to go to hell and slams the door in her face. Maggie stands outside for a moment and then begins to wander aimlessly down the streets. She notices that men look at her with interest when she looks like she has no where to go, so she tries to appear as if she is in a rush. After wandering the streets for a long time, she notices a clergyman. She decides to go over and asks him for help. She has heard about "the Grace of God." When he sees her, however, he steps to the side to avoid her in an effort to save his respectability. "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?"


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: Several months later, on a busy street, people begin to pour out of several theaters and find their way to their conveyances home. " 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 midst of this throng of people, a handful of "wet wanderers" hang around looking dejected." A girl of the painted cohorts of the city" wanders around as well. She smiles at men she passes, but she usually chooses the men who are from the country or are poor-looking. She hurries through the crowd as if shes looking for her home. She moves along the streets until she gets to the saloon district. She passes the door of a concert hall and hears the boisterous sounds from within it. She sees a tall young man in evening dress standing around looking bored. He is surprised that the girl passes him without taking notice of him. She continues to walk on. She passes a pompous man with "philanthropic whiskers" whose broad back seems to sneer at her. She passes a man in business clothes who seems to be rushing to make an appointment. He runs into her on accident and apologizes hastily. The girl passes out of the restaurant-saloon district into the darker streets. A young man notices her looking at him. He wonders if she thought he was a farmer. A worker replies to her saying its a fine evening. She smiles in the face of a hurrying boy who smiles back at her with "cheery unconcern," saying he cant be with her this evening, but will perhaps do so on another. She comes across a drunken man who yells at her that he has no money. She passes into the "gloomy districts near the river" which are the residence of black factories. She only occasionally passes saloons. She comes across a man who tells her he already has a date. She passes on until she meets a ragged man who asks her if she thinks hes a millionaire. Finally, she passes into the "final block" and approaches the river. She sees a huge man in torn and greasy clothes. He laughs at her and then follows her into "the crimson regions." As they walk along, the river "appeared a deathly black hue."


prompt:
Chapter: In a partitioned-off section of a saloon sat a man with a half dozen
women, gleefully laughing, hovering about him.  The man had arrived at
that stage of drunkenness where affection is felt for the universe.

"I'm good f'ler, girls," he said, convincingly.  "I'm damn good f'ler.
An'body treats me right, I allus trea's zem right!  See?"

The women nodded their heads approvingly.  "To be sure," they cried out
in hearty chorus.  "You're the kind of a man we like, Pete.  You're
outa sight!  What yeh goin' to buy this time, dear?"

"An't'ing yehs wants, damn it," said the man in an abandonment of good
will.  His countenance shone with the true spirit of benevolence.  He
was in the proper mode of missionaries.  He would have fraternized with
obscure Hottentots.  And above all, he was overwhelmed in tenderness
for his friends, who were all illustrious.

"An't'ing yehs wants, damn it," repeated he, waving his hands with
beneficent recklessness.  "I'm good f'ler, girls, an' if an'body treats
me right I--here," called he through an open door to a waiter, "bring
girls drinks, damn it.  What 'ill yehs have, girls?  An't'ing yehs
wants, damn it!"

The waiter glanced in with the disgusted look of the man who serves
intoxicants for the man who takes too much of them.  He nodded his head
shortly at the order from each individual, and went.

"Damn it," said the man, "we're havin' heluva time.  I like you girls!
Damn'd if I don't!  Yer right sort!  See?"

He spoke at length and with feeling, concerning the excellencies of his
assembled friends.

"Don' try pull man's leg, but have a heluva time!  Das right!  Das way
teh do!  Now, if I sawght yehs tryin' work me fer drinks, wouldn' buy
damn t'ing!  But yer right sort, damn it!  Yehs know how ter treat a
f'ler, an' I stays by yehs 'til spen' las' cent!  Das right!  I'm good
f'ler an' I knows when an'body treats me right!"

Between the times of the arrival and departure of the waiter, the man
discoursed to the women on the tender regard he felt for all living
things.  He laid stress upon the purity of his motives in all dealings
with men in the world and spoke of the fervor of his friendship for
those who were amiable.  Tears welled slowly from his eyes.  His voice
quavered when he spoke to them.

Once when the waiter was about to depart with an empty tray, the man
drew a coin from his pocket and held it forth.

"Here," said he, quite magnificently, "here's quar'."

The waiter kept his hands on his tray.

"I don' want yer money," he said.

The other put forth the coin with tearful insistence.

"Here, damn it," cried he, "tak't!  Yer damn goo' f'ler an' I wan' yehs
tak't!"

"Come, come, now," said the waiter, with the sullen air of a man who is
forced into giving advice.  "Put yer mon in yer pocket!  Yer loaded an'
yehs on'y makes a damn fool of yerself."

As the latter passed out of the door the man turned pathetically to the
women.

"He don' know I'm damn goo' f'ler," cried he, dismally.

"Never you mind, Pete, dear," said a woman of brilliance and audacity,
laying her hand with great affection upon his arm.  "Never you mind,
old boy!  We'll stay by you, dear!"

"Das ri'," cried the man, his face lighting up at the soothing tones of
the woman's voice.  "Das ri', I'm damn goo' f'ler an' w'en anyone
trea's me ri', I treats zem ri'!  Shee!"

"Sure!" cried the women.  "And we're not goin' back on you, old man."

The man turned appealing eyes to the woman of brilliance and audacity.
He felt that if he could be convicted of a contemptible action he would
die.

"Shay, Nell, damn it, I allus trea's yehs shquare, didn' I?  I allus
been goo' f'ler wi' yehs, ain't I, Nell?"

"Sure you have, Pete," assented the woman.  She delivered an oration to
her companions.  "Yessir, that's a fact.  Pete's a square fellah, he
is.  He never goes back on a friend.  He's the right kind an' we stay
by him, don't we, girls?"

"Sure," they exclaimed.  Looking lovingly at him they raised their
glasses and drank his health.

"Girlsh," said the man, beseechingly, "I allus trea's yehs ri', didn'
I?  I'm goo' f'ler, ain' I, girlsh?"

"Sure," again they chorused.

"Well," said he finally, "le's have nozzer drink, zen."

"That's right," hailed a woman, "that's right.  Yer no bloomin' jay!
Yer spends yer money like a man.  Dat's right."

The man pounded the table with his quivering fists.

"Yessir," he cried, with deep earnestness, as if someone disputed him.
"I'm damn goo' f'ler, an' w'en anyone trea's me ri', I allus
trea's--le's have nozzer drink."

He began to beat the wood with his glass.

"Shay," howled he, growing suddenly impatient.  As the waiter did not
then come, the man swelled with wrath.

"Shay," howled he again.

The waiter appeared at the door.

"Bringsh drinksh," said the man.

The waiter disappeared with the orders.

"Zat f'ler damn fool," cried the man.  "He insul' me!  I'm ge'man!
Can' stan' be insul'!  I'm goin' lickim when comes!"

"No, no," cried the women, crowding about and trying to subdue him.
"He's all right!  He didn't mean anything!  Let it go!  He's a good
fellah!"

"Din' he insul' me?" asked the man earnestly.

"No," said they.  "Of course he didn't!  He's all right!"

"Sure he didn' insul' me?" demanded the man, with deep anxiety in his
voice.

"No, no!  We know him!  He's a good fellah.  He didn't mean anything."

"Well, zen," said the man, resolutely, "I'm go' 'pol'gize!"

When the waiter came, the man struggled to the middle of the floor.

"Girlsh shed you insul' me!  I shay damn lie!  I 'pol'gize!"

"All right," said the waiter.

The man sat down.  He felt a sleepy but strong desire to straighten
things out and have a perfect understanding with everybody.

"Nell, I allus trea's yeh shquare, din' I?  Yeh likes me, don' yehs,
Nell?  I'm goo' f'ler?"

"Sure," said the woman of brilliance and audacity.

"Yeh knows I'm stuck on yehs, don' yehs, Nell?"

"Sure," she repeated, carelessly.

Overwhelmed by a spasm of drunken adoration, he drew two or three bills
from his pocket, and, with the trembling fingers of an offering priest,
laid them on the table before the woman.

"Yehs knows, damn it, yehs kin have all got, 'cause I'm stuck on yehs,
Nell, damn't, I--I'm stuck on yehs, Nell--buy drinksh--damn't--we're
havin' heluva time--w'en anyone trea's me ri'--I--damn't, Nell--we're
havin' heluva--time."

Shortly he went to sleep with his swollen face fallen forward on his
chest.

The women drank and laughed, not heeding the slumbering man in the
corner.  Finally he lurched forward and fell groaning to the floor.

The women screamed in disgust and drew back their skirts.

"Come ahn," cried one, starting up angrily, "let's get out of here."

The woman of brilliance and audacity stayed behind, taking up the bills
and stuffing them into a deep, irregularly-shaped pocket.  A guttural
snore from the recumbent man caused her to turn and look down at him.

She laughed.  "What a damn fool," she said, and went.

The smoke from the lamps settled heavily down in the little
compartment, obscuring the way out.  The smell of oil, stifling in its
intensity, pervaded the air.  The wine from an overturned glass dripped
softly down upon the blotches on the man's neck.

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

completion: A man sits in a restaurant with six women around him. He is quite drunk and the women are encouraging him to brag about himself. He repeats over and over that he is a good fellow, encouraging the women to affirm this fact. They do in a bored way and he then repeats the self-praise. He buys drinks for the women and gets into an altercation with the waiter who looks at him with a disgusted look. It begins when he tries to tip the waiter and the waiter refuses it. The waiter tells him hes drunk and he is making a fool of himself. The "woman of brilliance and audacity" tells Pete to ignore the waiter. Pete looks at her as if he would die if he were to be accused of a contemptible action. He asks Nellie if he doesnt always treat her well. She agrees glibly. She asks the other women to join in with her in praise of Petes good qualities. He continues to asks them if he doesnt always treat them right and if he isnt a good fellow. They continue to reply that he does and he is. When he orders more drinks, he feels as if the waiter has insulted him and decides he should defend his honor. The women calm him down and then he thinks he should apologize to the waiter. He pulls money from his wallet and gives it to Nellie. He tells her hes "stuck on her" and falls asleep. The women drink and laugh and he suddenly lurches forward and falls to the floor. The women shriek and pull back their skirts. One of them suggests that they leave. Nellie stays behind picking up the money from the table. She exclaims over Pete, "What a damn fool!" He is left passed out, a glass of wine fallen and dripping the last of its contents onto his neck.


prompt:
Chapter: In a room a woman sat at a table eating like a fat monk in a picture.

A soiled, unshaven man pushed open the door and entered.

"Well," said he, "Mag's dead."

"What?" said the woman, her mouth filled with bread.

"Mag's dead," repeated the man.

"Deh hell she is," said the woman.  She continued her meal.  When she
finished her coffee she began to weep.

"I kin remember when her two feet was no bigger dan yer t'umb, and she
weared worsted boots," moaned she.

"Well, whata dat?" said the man.

"I kin remember when she weared worsted boots," she cried.

The neighbors began to gather in the hall, staring in at the weeping
woman as if watching the contortions of a dying dog.  A dozen women
entered and lamented with her.  Under their busy hands the rooms took
on that appalling appearance of neatness and order with which death is
greeted.

Suddenly the door opened and a woman in a black gown rushed in with
outstretched arms.  "Ah, poor Mary," she cried, and tenderly embraced
the moaning one.

"Ah, what ter'ble affliction is dis," continued she.  Her vocabulary
was derived from mission churches.  "Me poor Mary, how I feel fer yehs!
Ah, what a ter'ble affliction is a disobed'ent chil'."

Her good, motherly face was wet with tears.  She trembled in eagerness
to express her sympathy.  The mourner sat with bowed head, rocking her
body heavily to and fro, and crying out in a high, strained voice that
sounded like a dirge on some forlorn pipe.

"I kin remember when she weared worsted boots an' her two feets was no
bigger dan yer t'umb an' she weared worsted boots, Miss Smith," she
cried, raising her streaming eyes.

"Ah, me poor Mary," sobbed the woman in black.  With low, coddling
cries, she sank on her knees by the mourner's chair, and put her arms
about her.  The other women began to groan in different keys.

"Yer poor misguided chil' is gone now, Mary, an' let us hope it's fer
deh bes'.  Yeh'll fergive her now, Mary, won't yehs, dear, all her
disobed'ence?  All her t'ankless behavior to her mudder an' all her
badness?  She's gone where her ter'ble sins will be judged."

The woman in black raised her face and paused.  The inevitable sunlight
came streaming in at the windows and shed a ghastly cheerfulness upon
the faded hues of the room.  Two or three of the spectators were
sniffling, and one was loudly weeping.  The mourner arose and staggered
into the other room.  In a moment she emerged with a pair of faded baby
shoes held in the hollow of her hand.

"I kin remember when she used to wear dem," cried she.  The women burst
anew into cries as if they had all been stabbed.  The mourner turned to
the soiled and unshaven man.

"Jimmie, boy, go git yer sister!  Go git yer sister an' we'll put deh
boots on her feets!"

"Dey won't fit her now, yeh damn fool," said the man.

"Go git yer sister, Jimmie," shrieked the woman, confronting him
fiercely.

The man swore sullenly.  He went over to a corner and slowly began to
put on his coat.  He took his hat and went out, with a dragging,
reluctant step.

The woman in black came forward and again besought the mourner.

"Yeh'll fergive her, Mary!  Yeh'll fergive yer bad, bad, chil'!  Her
life was a curse an' her days were black an' yeh'll fergive yer bad
girl?  She's gone where her sins will be judged."

"She's gone where her sins will be judged," cried the other women, like
a choir at a funeral.

"Deh Lord gives and deh Lord takes away," said the woman in black,
raising her eyes to the sunbeams.

"Deh Lord gives and deh Lord takes away," responded the others.

"Yeh'll fergive her, Mary!" pleaded the woman in black.  The mourner
essayed to speak but her voice gave way.  She shook her great shoulders
frantically, in an agony of grief.  Hot tears seemed to scald her
quivering face.  Finally her voice came and arose like a scream of pain.

"Oh, yes, I'll fergive her!  I'll fergive her!"

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

completion: A woman sits at a table "eating like a fat monk in a picture. " A dirty man opens the door and says to her "Well, Mags dead." The womans mouth is full. She answers that she doesnt believe him and continues to eat. Then she begins to weep. She remembers when Maggies feet were no bigger than an adults thumb and she wore worsted boots. The neighbors gather in the hallway watching Mrs. Johnson weeping as if they were "watching the contortions of a dying dog. " They straighten up the rooms. Another woman enters the room and exclaims over poor Mrs. Johnson. She tells her it is a "terrible affliction. " She has gotten her words from mission churches. She cries with Mrs. Johnson. Mrs. Johnson repeats over and over that she can remember when Maggie used to wear worsted boots. The woman tells Mrs. Johnson her "misguided child" is now gone and it is time to forgive her. Mrs. Johnson tells Jimmie to go and get Maggie and they will put the boots back on her feet. Jimmie curses and says the infants boots wont fit Maggies feet now. She shrieks at him to go and get his sister. He swears and leaves. The other women in the room say "Shes gone where her sins will be judged. " They repeat platitudes and Mary Johnson wails out " Oh, yes, Ill fergive her! Ill fergive her!"


prompt:
Chapter: A very little boy stood upon a heap of gravel for the honor of Rum
Alley.  He was throwing stones at howling urchins from Devil's Row who
were circling madly about the heap and pelting at him.

His infantile countenance was livid with fury.  His small body was
writhing in the delivery of great, crimson oaths.

"Run, Jimmie, run!  Dey'll get yehs," screamed a retreating Rum Alley
child.

"Naw," responded Jimmie with a valiant roar, "dese micks can't make me
run."

Howls of renewed wrath went up from Devil's Row throats.  Tattered
gamins on the right made a furious assault on the gravel heap.  On
their small, convulsed faces there shone the grins of true assassins.
As they charged, they threw stones and cursed in shrill chorus.

The little champion of Rum Alley stumbled precipitately down the other
side.  His coat had been torn to shreds in a scuffle, and his hat was
gone.  He had bruises on twenty parts of his body, and blood was
dripping from a cut in his head.  His wan features wore a look of a
tiny, insane demon.

On the ground, children from Devil's Row closed in on their antagonist.
He crooked his left arm defensively about his head and fought with
cursing fury.  The little boys ran to and fro, dodging, hurling stones
and swearing in barbaric trebles.

From a window of an apartment house that upreared its form from amid
squat, ignorant stables, there leaned a curious woman.  Some laborers,
unloading a scow at a dock at the river, paused for a moment and
regarded the fight.  The engineer of a passive tugboat hung lazily to a
railing and watched.  Over on the Island, a worm of yellow convicts
came from the shadow of a building and crawled slowly along the river's
bank.

A stone had smashed into Jimmie's mouth.  Blood was bubbling over his
chin and down upon his ragged shirt.  Tears made furrows on his
dirt-stained cheeks.  His thin legs had begun to tremble and turn weak,
causing his small body to reel.  His roaring curses of the first part
of the fight had changed to a blasphemous chatter.

In the yells of the whirling mob of Devil's Row children there were
notes of joy like songs of triumphant savagery.  The little boys seemed
to leer gloatingly at the blood upon the other child's face.

Down the avenue came boastfully sauntering a lad of sixteen years,
although the chronic sneer of an ideal manhood already sat upon his
lips.  His hat was tipped with an air of challenge over his eye.
Between his teeth, a cigar stump was tilted at the angle of defiance.
He walked with a certain swing of the shoulders which appalled the
timid.  He glanced over into the vacant lot in which the little raving
boys from Devil's Row seethed about the shrieking and tearful child
from Rum Alley.

"Gee!" he murmured with interest.  "A scrap.  Gee!"

He strode over to the cursing circle, swinging his shoulders in a
manner which denoted that he held victory in his fists.  He approached
at the back of one of the most deeply engaged of the Devil's Row
children.

"Ah, what deh hell," he said, and smote the deeply-engaged one on the
back of the head.  The little boy fell to the ground and gave a hoarse,
tremendous howl.  He scrambled to his feet, and perceiving, evidently,
the size of his assailant, ran quickly off, shouting alarms.  The
entire Devil's Row party followed him.  They came to a stand a short
distance away and yelled taunting oaths at the boy with the chronic
sneer.  The latter, momentarily, paid no attention to them.

"What deh hell, Jimmie?" he asked of the small champion.

Jimmie wiped his blood-wet features with his sleeve.

"Well, it was dis way, Pete, see!  I was goin' teh lick dat Riley kid
and dey all pitched on me."

Some Rum Alley children now came forward.  The party stood for a moment
exchanging vainglorious remarks with Devil's Row.  A few stones were
thrown at long distances, and words of challenge passed between small
warriors.  Then the Rum Alley contingent turned slowly in the direction
of their home street.  They began to give, each to each, distorted
versions of the fight.  Causes of retreat in particular cases were
magnified.  Blows dealt in the fight were enlarged to catapultian
power, and stones thrown were alleged to have hurtled with infinite
accuracy.  Valor grew strong again, and the little boys began to swear
with great spirit.

"Ah, we blokies kin lick deh hull damn Row," said a child, swaggering.

Little Jimmie was striving to stanch the flow of blood from his cut
lips.  Scowling, he turned upon the speaker.

"Ah, where deh hell was yeh when I was doin' all deh fightin?" he
demanded.  "Youse kids makes me tired."

"Ah, go ahn," replied the other argumentatively.

Jimmie replied with heavy contempt.  "Ah, youse can't fight, Blue
Billie!  I kin lick yeh wid one han'."

"Ah, go ahn," replied Billie again.

"Ah," said Jimmie threateningly.

"Ah," said the other in the same tone.

They struck at each other, clinched, and rolled over on the cobble
stones.

"Smash 'im, Jimmie, kick deh damn guts out of 'im," yelled Pete, the
lad with the chronic sneer, in tones of delight.

The small combatants pounded and kicked, scratched and tore.  They
began to weep and their curses struggled in their throats with sobs.
The other little boys clasped their hands and wriggled their legs in
excitement.  They formed a bobbing circle about the pair.

A tiny spectator was suddenly agitated.

"Cheese it, Jimmie, cheese it!  Here comes yer fader," he yelled.

The circle of little boys instantly parted.  They drew away and waited
in ecstatic awe for that which was about to happen.  The two little
boys fighting in the modes of four thousand years ago, did not hear the
warning.

Up the avenue there plodded slowly a man with sullen eyes.  He was
carrying a dinner pail and smoking an apple-wood pipe.

As he neared the spot where the little boys strove, he regarded them
listlessly.  But suddenly he roared an oath and advanced upon the
rolling fighters.

"Here, you Jim, git up, now, while I belt yer life out, you damned
disorderly brat."

He began to kick into the chaotic mass on the ground.  The boy Billie
felt a heavy boot strike his head.  He made a furious effort and
disentangled himself from Jimmie.  He tottered away, damning.

Jimmie arose painfully from the ground and confronting his father,
began to curse him.  His parent kicked him.  "Come home, now," he
cried, "an' stop yer jawin', er I'll lam the everlasting head off yehs."

They departed.  The man paced placidly along with the apple-wood emblem
of serenity between his teeth.  The boy followed a dozen feet in the
rear.  He swore luridly, for he felt that it was degradation for one
who aimed to be some vague soldier, or a man of blood with a sort of
sublime license, to be taken home by a father.

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

completion: The story opens in late nineteenth century New York City's Bowery district where a small boy from Rum Alley stands atop a pile of gravel. He and his friends are under attack by a rival gang of street urchins from Devil's Row and the little boy has chosen to make a stand. He throws rocks and hurls insults at his attackers. One of his retreating friends calls out: "Run, Jimmie, run! Dey'll get yehs," but Jimmie retorts that "dese micks" can't make him run. This causes The Devil's Row gang to pelt Jimmie with rocks. Jimmie stumbles down, his clothes in tatters and his head bleeding from a savage cut. While the boys curse and fight a woman looks on from her squalid apartment, some men unloading a boat on the river pause to watch and on the Island a line of yellow convicts trail along the river's edge. Jimmie receives a cut to his face and his legs begin to buckle. At this moment an older boy of about sixteen years comes swaggering down the street. His hat tipped at an angle, the older boy holds a cigar stump clenched between his teeth, his expression is locked into a permanent sneer. He observes the smaller boys fighting and arrogantly grabs one of the Devil's Row gang and with an exclamation of "Ah, what deh hell," he boxes the child to the ground. The older boy, whose name is Pete, turns to Jimmie and exclaims "What deh hell, Jimmie?" and Jimmie responds to his friend: "I was goin' teh lick dat Riley kid and dey all pitched in on me." The rival gangs quit the field of battle with many curses and begin to brag about their abilities amongst themselves. Jimmie gets into a brief scuffle with one of his gang mates but their fight is interrupted when Jimmie's Father, dinner pail in hand and smoking an apple-wood pipe, arrives on his way home from work. He sees that his son is fighting and he begins to yell and kick the boys. Jimmie curses his father and receives another kick for his trouble. Much chagrined Jimmie follows his father home.


prompt:
Chapter: Eventually they entered into a dark region where, from a careening
building, a dozen gruesome doorways gave up loads of babies to the
street and the gutter.  A wind of early autumn raised yellow dust from
cobbles and swirled it against an hundred windows.  Long streamers of
garments fluttered from fire-escapes.  In all unhandy places there were
buckets, brooms, rags and bottles.  In the street infants played or
fought with other infants or sat stupidly in the way of vehicles.
Formidable women, with uncombed hair and disordered dress, gossiped
while leaning on railings, or screamed in frantic quarrels.  Withered
persons, in curious postures of submission to something, sat smoking
pipes in obscure corners.  A thousand odors of cooking food came forth
to the street.  The building quivered and creaked from the weight of
humanity stamping about in its bowels.

A small ragged girl dragged a red, bawling infant along the crowded
ways.  He was hanging back, baby-like, bracing his wrinkled, bare legs.

The little girl cried out: "Ah, Tommie, come ahn.  Dere's Jimmie and
fader.  Don't be a-pullin' me back."

She jerked the baby's arm impatiently.  He fell on his face, roaring.
With a second jerk she pulled him to his feet, and they went on.  With
the obstinacy of his order, he protested against being dragged in a
chosen direction.  He made heroic endeavors to keep on his legs,
denounce his sister and consume a bit of orange peeling which he chewed
between the times of his infantile orations.

As the sullen-eyed man, followed by the blood-covered boy, drew near,
the little girl burst into reproachful cries.  "Ah, Jimmie, youse bin
fightin' agin."

The urchin swelled disdainfully.

"Ah, what deh hell, Mag.  See?"

The little girl upbraided him,  "Youse allus fightin', Jimmie, an' yeh
knows it puts mudder out when yehs come home half dead, an' it's like
we'll all get a poundin'."

She began to weep.  The babe threw back his head and roared at his
prospects.

"Ah, what deh hell!" cried Jimmie.  "Shut up er I'll smack yer mout'.
See?"

As his sister continued her lamentations, he suddenly swore and struck
her.  The little girl reeled and, recovering herself, burst into tears
and quaveringly cursed him.  As she slowly retreated her brother
advanced dealing her cuffs.  The father heard and turned about.

"Stop that, Jim, d'yeh hear?  Leave yer sister alone on the street.
It's like I can never beat any sense into yer damned wooden head."

The urchin raised his voice in defiance to his parent and continued his
attacks.  The babe bawled tremendously, protesting with great violence.
During his sister's hasty manoeuvres, he was dragged by the arm.

Finally the procession plunged into one of the gruesome doorways.  They
crawled up dark stairways and along cold, gloomy halls.  At last the
father pushed open a door and they entered a lighted room in which a
large woman was rampant.

She stopped in a career from a seething stove to a pan-covered table.
As the father and children filed in she peered at them.

"Eh, what?  Been fightin' agin, by Gawd!"  She threw herself upon
Jimmie.  The urchin tried to dart behind the others and in the scuffle
the babe, Tommie, was knocked down.  He protested with his usual
vehemence, because they had bruised his tender shins against a table
leg.

The mother's massive shoulders heaved with anger.  Grasping the urchin
by the neck and shoulder she shook him until he rattled.  She dragged
him to an unholy sink, and, soaking a rag in water, began to scrub his
lacerated face with it.  Jimmie screamed in pain and tried to twist his
shoulders out of the clasp of the huge arms.

The babe sat on the floor watching the scene, his face in contortions
like that of a woman at a tragedy.  The father, with a newly-ladened
pipe in his mouth, crouched on a backless chair near the stove.
Jimmie's cries annoyed him.  He turned about and bellowed at his wife:

"Let the damned kid alone for a minute, will yeh, Mary?  Yer allus
poundin' 'im.  When I come nights I can't git no rest 'cause yer allus
poundin' a kid.  Let up, d'yeh hear?  Don't be allus poundin' a kid."

The woman's operations on the urchin instantly increased in violence.
At last she tossed him to a corner where he limply lay cursing and
weeping.

The wife put her immense hands on her hips and with a chieftain-like
stride approached her husband.

"Ho," she said, with a great grunt of contempt.  "An' what in the devil
are you stickin' your nose for?"

The babe crawled under the table and, turning, peered out cautiously.
The ragged girl retreated and the urchin in the corner drew his legs
carefully beneath him.

The man puffed his pipe calmly and put his great mudded boots on the
back part of the stove.

"Go teh hell," he murmured, tranquilly.

The woman screamed and shook her fists before her husband's eyes.  The
rough yellow of her face and neck flared suddenly crimson.  She began
to howl.

He puffed imperturbably at his pipe for a time, but finally arose and
began to look out at the window into the darkening chaos of back yards.

"You've been drinkin', Mary," he said.  "You'd better let up on the
bot', ol' woman, or you'll git done."

"You're a liar.  I ain't had a drop," she roared in reply.

They had a lurid altercation, in which they damned each other's souls
with frequence.

The babe was staring out from under the table, his small face working
in his excitement.

The ragged girl went stealthily over to the corner where the urchin lay.

"Are yehs hurted much, Jimmie?" she whispered timidly.

"Not a damn bit!  See?" growled the little boy.

"Will I wash deh blood?"

"Naw!"

"Will I--"

"When I catch dat Riley kid I'll break 'is face!  Dat's right!  See?"

He turned his face to the wall as if resolved to grimly bide his time.

In the quarrel between husband and wife, the woman was victor.  The man
grabbed his hat and rushed from the room, apparently determined upon a
vengeful drunk.  She followed to the door and thundered at him as he
made his way down stairs.

She returned and stirred up the room until her children were bobbing
about like bubbles.

"Git outa deh way," she persistently bawled, waving feet with their
dishevelled shoes near the heads of her children.  She shrouded
herself, puffing and snorting, in a cloud of steam at the stove, and
eventually extracted a frying-pan full of potatoes that hissed.

She flourished it.  "Come teh yer suppers, now," she cried with sudden
exasperation.  "Hurry up, now, er I'll help yeh!"

The children scrambled hastily.  With prodigious clatter they arranged
themselves at table.  The babe sat with his feet dangling high from a
precarious infant chair and gorged his small stomach.  Jimmie forced,
with feverish rapidity, the grease-enveloped pieces between his wounded
lips.  Maggie, with side glances of fear of interruption, ate like a
small pursued tigress.

The mother sat blinking at them.  She delivered reproaches, swallowed
potatoes and drank from a yellow-brown bottle.  After a time her mood
changed and she wept as she carried little Tommie into another room and
laid him to sleep with his fists doubled in an old quilt of faded red
and green grandeur.  Then she came and moaned by the stove.  She rocked
to and fro upon a chair, shedding tears and crooning miserably to the
two children about their "poor mother" and "yer fader, damn 'is soul."

The little girl plodded between the table and the chair with a dish-pan
on it.  She tottered on her small legs beneath burdens of dishes.

Jimmie sat nursing his various wounds.  He cast furtive glances at his
mother.  His practised eye perceived her gradually emerge from a
muddled mist of sentiment until her brain burned in drunken heat.  He
sat breathless.

Maggie broke a plate.

The mother started to her feet as if propelled.

"Good Gawd," she howled.  Her eyes glittered on her child with sudden
hatred.  The fervent red of her face turned almost to purple.  The
little boy ran to the halls, shrieking like a monk in an earthquake.

He floundered about in darkness until he found the stairs.  He
stumbled, panic-stricken, to the next floor.  An old woman opened a
door.  A light behind her threw a flare on the urchin's quivering face.

"Eh, Gawd, child, what is it dis time?  Is yer fader beatin' yer
mudder, or yer mudder beatin' yer fader?"

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

completion: Swept along by an early autumn breeze Jimmie and his father arrive at their miserable tenement building. Bedraggled clothes flap from the fire escapes, disordered women gossip and quarrel, withered old persons sit listlessly on the ground and babies are left to fight amongst themselves. The building itself is full of the odors of cooking food and loud noises that betrayed the weight of humanity bound inside it. Jimmie and his father encounter Jimmie's younger sister Maggie dragging their baby brother Tommie down the alley. The bawling baby resists his sister's attempts to force him home. When Maggie sees Jimmie's torn clothes and bleeding face she cries out: "Ah, Jimmie, youse bin fightin' agin. " To which her brother responds: "Ah, what deh hell, Mag. See?" The girl begins to weep with the realization that their mother will be upset and the whole family is likely to suffer as a result. Jimmie smacks his sister in the mouth to stop her crying and the stunned girl retreats cursing. Seeing this Jimmie's father upbraids his son and wonders aloud why the boy never learns anything from the beatings he gives him. Jimmie curses his father as the whole group makes its way up grimy staircases and down gloomy halls. They enter their apartment where their mother, a large woman, is doing battle with a seething stove and a table covered in pans. The woman sees that her son has been fighting and explodes with anger. Knocking the howling baby to the ground she grabs Jimmie and violently shakes him before taking him to a filthy sink and vigorously scrubbing his wounds. Jimmie cries in pain and tries to escape. The father, who sits by the stove smoking his pipe, yells at his wife, whose name is Mary. The father complains that he can't get any rest because Mary is always pounding one of the children. He accuses her of being drunk and the husband and wife fall to arguing violently and the children cower. Maggie crawls over to her brother who refuses to let her clean his wounds. Instead he turns to face the wall. The father storms out of the house to go get drunk and Mary screams after him. She returns to the stove, stirring up the children in the process and eventually produces a pan of fried potatoes that the hungry children desperately consume. Mary drinks from a bottle while they eat. She becomes somber and weeps as she puts Tommie to bed. Maggie struggles do clean the dishes while Jimmie nurses his various wounds and cautiously watches his mother weeping and drinking by the stove. Maggie accidentally breaks a plate and Mary roars to life. Jimmie flees and runs down to the next floor where an old woman opens a door and says: "Eh, Gawd, child, what is it dis time? Is yer fader beatin' yer mudder, or yer mudder beatin' yer fader?" .


prompt:
Chapter: Jimmie and the old woman listened long in the hall.  Above the muffled
roar of conversation, the dismal wailings of babies at night, the
thumping of feet in unseen corridors and rooms, mingled with the sound
of varied hoarse shoutings in the street and the rattling of wheels
over cobbles, they heard the screams of the child and the roars of the
mother die away to a feeble moaning and a subdued bass muttering.

The old woman was a gnarled and leathery personage who could don, at
will, an expression of great virtue.  She possessed a small music-box
capable of one tune, and a collection of "God bless yehs" pitched in
assorted keys of fervency.  Each day she took a position upon the
stones of Fifth Avenue, where she crooked her legs under her and
crouched immovable and hideous, like an idol.  She received daily a
small sum in pennies.  It was contributed, for the most part, by
persons who did not make their homes in that vicinity.

Once, when a lady had dropped her purse on the sidewalk, the gnarled
woman had grabbed it and smuggled it with great dexterity beneath her
cloak.  When she was arrested she had cursed the lady into a partial
swoon, and with her aged limbs, twisted from rheumatism, had almost
kicked the stomach out of a huge policeman whose conduct upon that
occasion she referred to when she said: "The police, damn 'em."

"Eh, Jimmie, it's cursed shame," she said.  "Go, now, like a dear an'
buy me a can, an' if yer mudder raises 'ell all night yehs can sleep
here."

Jimmie took a tendered tin-pail and seven pennies and departed.  He
passed into the side door of a saloon and went to the bar.  Straining
up on his toes he raised the pail and pennies as high as his arms would
let him.  He saw two hands thrust down and take them.  Directly the
same hands let down the filled pail and he left.

In front of the gruesome doorway he met a lurching figure.  It was his
father, swaying about on uncertain legs.

"Give me deh can.  See?" said the man, threateningly.

"Ah, come off!  I got dis can fer dat ol' woman an' it 'ud be dirt teh
swipe it.  See?" cried Jimmie.

The father wrenched the pail from the urchin.  He grasped it in both
hands and lifted it to his mouth.  He glued his lips to the under edge
and tilted his head.  His hairy throat swelled until it seemed to grow
near his chin.  There was a tremendous gulping movement and the beer
was gone.

The man caught his breath and laughed.  He hit his son on the head with
the empty pail.  As it rolled clanging into the street, Jimmie began to
scream and kicked repeatedly at his father's shins.

"Look at deh dirt what yeh done me," he yelled.  "Deh ol' woman 'ill be
raisin' hell."

He retreated to the middle of the street, but the man did not pursue.
He staggered toward the door.

"I'll club hell outa yeh when I ketch yeh," he shouted, and disappeared.

During the evening he had been standing against a bar drinking whiskies
and declaring to all comers, confidentially: "My home reg'lar livin'
hell!  Damndes' place!  Reg'lar hell!  Why do I come an' drin' whisk'
here thish way?  'Cause home reg'lar livin' hell!"

Jimmie waited a long time in the street and then crept warily up
through the building.  He passed with great caution the door of the
gnarled woman, and finally stopped outside his home and listened.

He could hear his mother moving heavily about among the furniture of
the room.  She was chanting in a mournful voice, occasionally
interjecting bursts of volcanic wrath at the father, who, Jimmie
judged, had sunk down on the floor or in a corner.

"Why deh blazes don' chere try teh keep Jim from fightin'?  I'll break
her jaw," she suddenly bellowed.

The man mumbled with drunken indifference.  "Ah, wha' deh hell.  W'a's
odds?  Wha' makes kick?"

"Because he tears 'is clothes, yeh damn fool," cried the woman in
supreme wrath.

The husband seemed to become aroused.  "Go teh hell," he thundered
fiercely in reply.  There was a crash against the door and something
broke into clattering fragments.  Jimmie partially suppressed a howl
and darted down the stairway.  Below he paused and listened.  He heard
howls and curses, groans and shrieks, confusingly in chorus as if a
battle were raging.  With all was the crash of splintering furniture.
The eyes of the urchin glared in fear that one of them would discover
him.

Curious faces appeared in doorways, and whispered comments passed to
and fro.  "Ol' Johnson's raisin' hell agin."

Jimmie stood until the noises ceased and the other inhabitants of the
tenement had all yawned and shut their doors.  Then he crawled upstairs
with the caution of an invader of a panther den.  Sounds of labored
breathing came through the broken door-panels.  He pushed the door open
and entered, quaking.

A glow from the fire threw red hues over the bare floor, the cracked
and soiled plastering, and the overturned and broken furniture.

In the middle of the floor lay his mother asleep.  In one corner of the
room his father's limp body hung across the seat of a chair.

The urchin stole forward.  He began to shiver in dread of awakening his
parents.  His mother's great chest was heaving painfully.  Jimmie
paused and looked down at her.  Her face was inflamed and swollen from
drinking.  Her yellow brows shaded eyelids that had brown blue.  Her
tangled hair tossed in waves over her forehead.  Her mouth was set in
the same lines of vindictive hatred that it had, perhaps, borne during
the fight.  Her bare, red arms were thrown out above her head in
positions of exhaustion, something, mayhap, like those of a sated
villain.

The urchin bended over his mother.  He was fearful lest she should open
her eyes, and the dread within him was so strong, that he could not
forbear to stare, but hung as if fascinated over the woman's grim face.

Suddenly her eyes opened.  The urchin found himself looking straight
into that expression, which, it would seem, had the power to change his
blood to salt.  He howled piercingly and fell backward.

The woman floundered for a moment, tossed her arms about her head as if
in combat, and again began to snore.

Jimmie crawled back in the shadows and waited.  A noise in the next
room had followed his cry at the discovery that his mother was awake.
He grovelled in the gloom, the eyes from out his drawn face riveted
upon the intervening door.

He heard it creak, and then the sound of a small voice came to him.
"Jimmie!  Jimmie!  Are yehs dere?" it whispered.  The urchin started.
The thin, white face of his sister looked at him from the door-way of
the other room.  She crept to him across the floor.

The father had not moved, but lay in the same death-like sleep.  The
mother writhed in uneasy slumber, her chest wheezing as if she were in
the agonies of strangulation.  Out at the window a florid moon was
peering over dark roofs, and in the distance the waters of a river
glimmered pallidly.

The small frame of the ragged girl was quivering.  Her features were
haggard from weeping, and her eyes gleamed from fear.  She grasped the
urchin's arm in her little trembling hands and they huddled in a
corner.  The eyes of both were drawn, by some force, to stare at the
woman's face, for they thought she need only to awake and all fiends
would come from below.

They crouched until the ghost-mists of dawn appeared at the window,
drawing close to the panes, and looking in at the prostrate, heaving
body of the mother.

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

completion: Jimmie and the old woman listen until the noise from the fight fades. The old woman is a beggar who has practiced her trade on Fifth Avenue for many years. She earns a few pennies every day. Once she retrieved a dropped purse but even this seeming good luck had turned foul when the police caught her with the supposedly stolen goods. As such, she has nothing good to say about the police. She gives Jimmie seven pennies and a bucket to fetch beer. She tells Jimmie that if his mother continues on her rampage he can stay with her that night. Jimmie goes to a nearby saloon, gets the bucket filled with beer and is on his way back to the old woman's apartment when he encounters his drunken father. Despite Jimmie's protests the father grabs the bucket and drinks it off in one long draught. Jimmie curses his father but the man laughs, throws the empty bucket at him and promises to beat him soon. The father staggers toward home and Jimmie cautiously returns to the tenement building. He creeps past the old woman's dooer and then listens at his family's door. He hears his parents arguing and his father yells "Go teh hell". Something crashes loudly against the door and Jimmie runs downstairs where he cowers and listens to the sounds of struggle coming from the apartment. He sees other residents of the building poke their heads out of their doors and more than one of them remarks "Ol' Johnson's raising hell agin." Jimmie waits until long after the noise has died down and then he creeps back to the apartment. In the red glare of the stove he sees the broken furniture strewn about the apartment. His mother is asleep in the middle of the floor and his father's sleeping body hangs limply across a chair. He cautiously approaches his mother, terrified she will awake, and observes her face swollen from drinking, her painful breathing and her harsh expression. Fascinated, he looks directly into her face and to his horror Mary's eyes open. Jimmie falls back howling with fear but the woman flounders and then renews her snoring. Jimmie hears his sister meekly calling to him from the other room and he sees that she shivers with fear. Maggie's eyes are red with weeping. As the two children crouch together on the floor and stare wordlessly at their sleeping mother until dawn, afraid that she will awake.


prompt:
Chapter: The babe, Tommie, died.  He went away in a white, insignificant coffin,
his small waxen hand clutching a flower that the girl, Maggie, had
stolen from an Italian.

She and Jimmie lived.

The inexperienced fibres of the boy's eyes were hardened at an early
age.  He became a young man of leather.  He lived some red years
without laboring.  During that time his sneer became chronic.  He
studied human nature in the gutter, and found it no worse than he
thought he had reason to believe it.  He never conceived a respect for
the world, because he had begun with no idols that it had smashed.

He clad his soul in armor by means of happening hilariously in at a
mission church where a man composed his sermons of "yous." While they
got warm at the stove, he told his hearers just where he calculated
they stood with the Lord.  Many of the sinners were impatient over the
pictured depths of their degradation.  They were waiting for
soup-tickets.

A reader of words of wind-demons might have been able to see the
portions of a dialogue pass to and fro between the exhorter and his
hearers.

"You are damned," said the preacher.  And the reader of sounds might
have seen the reply go forth from the ragged people: "Where's our soup?"

Jimmie and a companion sat in a rear seat and commented upon the things
that didn't concern them, with all the freedom of English gentlemen.
When they grew thirsty and went out their minds confused the speaker
with Christ.

Momentarily, Jimmie was sullen with thoughts of a hopeless altitude
where grew fruit.  His companion said that if he should ever meet God
he would ask for a million dollars and a bottle of beer.

Jimmie's occupation for a long time was to stand on streetcorners and
watch the world go by, dreaming blood-red dreams at the passing of
pretty women.  He menaced mankind at the intersections of streets.

On the corners he was in life and of life.  The world was going on and
he was there to perceive it.

He maintained a belligerent attitude toward all well-dressed men.  To
him fine raiment was allied to weakness, and all good coats covered
faint hearts.  He and his order were kings, to a certain extent, over
the men of untarnished clothes, because these latter dreaded, perhaps,
to be either killed or laughed at.

Above all things he despised obvious Christians and ciphers with the
chrysanthemums of aristocracy in their button-holes.  He considered
himself above both of these classes.  He was afraid of neither the
devil nor the leader of society.

When he had a dollar in his pocket his satisfaction with existence was
the greatest thing in the world.  So, eventually, he felt obliged to
work.  His father died and his mother's years were divided up into
periods of thirty days.

He became a truck driver.  He was given the charge of a painstaking
pair of horses and a large rattling truck.  He invaded the turmoil and
tumble of the down-town streets and learned to breathe maledictory
defiance at the police who occasionally used to climb up, drag him from
his perch and beat him.

In the lower part of the city he daily involved himself in hideous
tangles.  If he and his team chanced to be in the rear he preserved a
demeanor of serenity, crossing his legs and bursting forth into yells
when foot passengers took dangerous dives beneath the noses of his
champing horses.  He smoked his pipe calmly for he knew that his pay
was marching on.

If in the front and the key-truck of chaos, he entered terrifically
into the quarrel that was raging to and fro among the drivers on their
high seats, and sometimes roared oaths and violently got himself
arrested.

After a time his sneer grew so that it turned its glare upon all
things.  He became so sharp that he believed in nothing.  To him the
police were always actuated by malignant impulses and the rest of the
world was composed, for the most part, of despicable creatures who were
all trying to take advantage of him and with whom, in defense, he was
obliged to quarrel on all possible occasions.  He himself occupied a
down-trodden position that had a private but distinct element of
grandeur in its isolation.

The most complete cases of aggravated idiocy were, to his mind, rampant
upon the front platforms of all the street cars.  At first his tongue
strove with these beings, but he eventually was superior.  He became
immured like an African cow.  In him grew a majestic contempt for those
strings of street cars that followed him like intent bugs.

He fell into the habit, when starting on a long journey, of fixing his
eye on a high and distant object, commanding his horses to begin, and
then going into a sort of a trance of observation.  Multitudes of
drivers might howl in his rear, and passengers might load him with
opprobrium, he would not awaken until some blue policeman turned red
and began to frenziedly tear bridles and beat the soft noses of the
responsible horses.

When he paused to contemplate the attitude of the police toward himself
and his fellows, he believed that they were the only men in the city
who had no rights.  When driving about, he felt that he was held liable
by the police for anything that might occur in the streets, and was the
common prey of all energetic officials.  In revenge, he resolved never
to move out of the way of anything, until formidable circumstances, or
a much larger man than himself forced him to it.

Foot-passengers were mere pestering flies with an insane disregard for
their legs and his convenience.  He could not conceive their maniacal
desires to cross the streets.  Their madness smote him with eternal
amazement.  He was continually storming at them from his throne.  He
sat aloft and denounced their frantic leaps, plunges, dives and
straddles.

When they would thrust at, or parry, the noses of his champing horses,
making them swing their heads and move their feet, disturbing a solid
dreamy repose, he swore at the men as fools, for he himself could
perceive that Providence had caused it clearly to be written, that he
and his team had the unalienable right to stand in the proper path of
the sun chariot, and if they so minded, obstruct its mission or take a
wheel off.

And, perhaps, if the god-driver had an ungovernable desire to step
down, put up his flame-colored fists and manfully dispute the right of
way, he would have probably been immediately opposed by a scowling
mortal with two sets of very hard knuckles.

It is possible, perhaps, that this young man would have derided, in an
axle-wide alley, the approach of a flying ferry boat.  Yet he achieved
a respect for a fire engine.  As one charged toward his truck, he would
drive fearfully upon a sidewalk, threatening untold people with
annihilation.  When an engine would strike a mass of blocked trucks,
splitting it into fragments, as a blow annihilates a cake of ice,
Jimmie's team could usually be observed high and safe, with whole
wheels, on the sidewalk.  The fearful coming of the engine could break
up the most intricate muddle of heavy vehicles at which the police had
been swearing for the half of an hour.

A fire engine was enshrined in his heart as an appalling thing that he
loved with a distant dog-like devotion.  They had been known to
overturn street-cars.  Those leaping horses, striking sparks from the
cobbles in their forward lunge, were creatures to be ineffably admired.
The clang of the gong pierced his breast like a noise of remembered war.

When Jimmie was a little boy, he began to be arrested.  Before he
reached a great age, he had a fair record.

He developed too great a tendency to climb down from his truck and
fight with other drivers.  He had been in quite a number of
miscellaneous fights, and in some general barroom rows that had become
known to the police.  Once he had been arrested for assaulting a
Chinaman.  Two women in different parts of the city, and entirely
unknown to each other, caused him considerable annoyance by breaking
forth, simultaneously, at fateful intervals, into wailings about
marriage and support and infants.

Nevertheless, he had, on a certain star-lit evening, said wonderingly
and quite reverently: "Deh moon looks like hell, don't it?"

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

completion: Time passes. The baby Tommie dies and goes to his grave clutching a flower that his sister steals for his tiny casket. Jimmie becomes a hardened young man who wears a permanent sneer. " He never conceived a respect for the world," we are told, "because he had begun with no idols that it had smashed." One day he and a companion happen in at a church where the minister is preaching to an indifferent lot of men waiting for soup tickets. The minister tells his congregation that they are all damned to hell and Jimmie's companion later remarks that if he ever met God he would ask for a million dollars and a bottle of beer. Jimmie's primary occupation as a young man is to stand on street corners and watch the world go by, dreaming "blood-red dreams" of the pretty women and despising any finely dressed man. He comes to believe that all fine things are signs of weakness and that obvious Christians and aristocrats are the most despicable creatures on the face of the earth. He fears nothing. His father dies. Soon afterward he takes a job as a truck driver in the city and is given charge of two horses and a large truck. He enters freely into the violent and chaotic world of the city's truck drivers and develops the opinion that the police exist simply to persecute him. He quarrels often with the authorities and receives numerous beatings and arrests for his trouble. He learns to despise the streetcars and develops the singular habit of fixing his stare on some distant object before beginning a long journey. He resolves never to move out of anyone or anything's way and swears at pedestrians who fails to heed his approach. He fights often and willingly with other drivers who refuse to yield the way. Her fears and respects only fire engines with their physical power to smash through anything in their path. As much as he fears the fire engines, however, he respects them as well. The sound of the gong from an approaching fire engine thrills him to the core of his being. Two women in different parts of the city claim, without knowing the other, that Jimmie is the father of their baby and that he must marry them. Jimmie, however, ignores these claims upon his freedom and has little regard for the women. He seems to have no dreams of anything beyond the world of the Bowery but on one occasion he is heard to remark with something approaching wonder: "Deh moon looks like hell, don't it?" .


prompt:
Chapter: The girl, Maggie, blossomed in a mud puddle.  She grew to be a most
rare and wonderful production of a tenement district, a pretty girl.

None of the dirt of Rum Alley seemed to be in her veins.  The
philosophers up-stairs, down-stairs and on the same floor, puzzled over
it.

When a child, playing and fighting with gamins in the street, dirt
disguised her.  Attired in tatters and grime, she went unseen.

There came a time, however, when the young men of the vicinity said:
"Dat Johnson goil is a puty good looker."  About this period her
brother remarked to her: "Mag, I'll tell yeh dis!  See?  Yeh've edder
got teh go teh hell or go teh work!"  Whereupon she went to work,
having the feminine aversion of going to hell.

By a chance, she got a position in an establishment where they made
collars and cuffs.  She received a stool and a machine in a room where
sat twenty girls of various shades of yellow discontent.  She perched
on the stool and treadled at her machine all day, turning out collars,
the name of whose brand could be noted for its irrelevancy to anything
in connection with collars.  At night she returned home to her mother.

Jimmie grew large enough to take the vague position of head of the
family.  As incumbent of that office, he stumbled up-stairs late at
night, as his father had done before him.  He reeled about the room,
swearing at his relations, or went to sleep on the floor.

The mother had gradually arisen to that degree of fame that she could
bandy words with her acquaintances among the police-justices.
Court-officials called her by her first name.  When she appeared they
pursued a course which had been theirs for months.  They invariably
grinned and cried out: "Hello, Mary, you here again?"  Her grey head
wagged in many a court.  She always besieged the bench with voluble
excuses, explanations, apologies and prayers.  Her flaming face and
rolling eyes were a sort of familiar sight on the island.  She measured
time by means of sprees, and was eternally swollen and dishevelled.

One day the young man, Pete, who as a lad had smitten the Devil's Row
urchin in the back of the head and put to flight the antagonists of his
friend, Jimmie, strutted upon the scene.  He met Jimmie one day on the
street, promised to take him to a boxing match in Williamsburg, and
called for him in the evening.

Maggie observed Pete.

He sat on a table in the Johnson home and dangled his checked legs with
an enticing nonchalance.  His hair was curled down over his forehead in
an oiled bang.  His rather pugged nose seemed to revolt from contact
with a bristling moustache of short, wire-like hairs.  His blue
double-breasted coat, edged with black braid, buttoned close to a red
puff tie, and his patent-leather shoes looked like murder-fitted
weapons.

His mannerisms stamped him as a man who had a correct sense of his
personal superiority.  There was valor and contempt for circumstances
in the glance of his eye.  He waved his hands like a man of the world,
who dismisses religion and philosophy, and says "Fudge."  He had
certainly seen everything and with each curl of his lip, he declared
that it amounted to nothing.  Maggie thought he must be a very elegant
and graceful bartender.

He was telling tales to Jimmie.

Maggie watched him furtively, with half-closed eyes, lit with a vague
interest.

"Hully gee!  Dey makes me tired," he said.  "Mos' e'ry day some farmer
comes in an' tries teh run deh shop.  See?  But dey gits t'rowed right
out!  I jolt dem right out in deh street before dey knows where dey is!
See?"

"Sure," said Jimmie.

"Dere was a mug come in deh place deh odder day wid an idear he wus
goin' teh own deh place!  Hully gee, he wus goin' teh own deh place!  I
see he had a still on an' I didn' wanna giv 'im no stuff, so I says:
'Git deh hell outa here an' don' make no trouble,' I says like dat!
See?  'Git deh hell outa here an' don' make no trouble'; like dat.
'Git deh hell outa here,' I says.  See?"

Jimmie nodded understandingly.  Over his features played an eager
desire to state the amount of his valor in a similar crisis, but the
narrator proceeded.

"Well, deh blokie he says: 'T'hell wid it!  I ain' lookin' for no
scrap,' he says (See?), 'but' he says, 'I'm 'spectable cit'zen an' I
wanna drink an' purtydamnsoon, too.'  See?  'Deh hell,' I says.  Like
dat!  'Deh hell,' I says.  See?  'Don' make no trouble,' I says.  Like
dat.  'Don' make no trouble.'  See?  Den deh mug he squared off an'
said he was fine as silk wid his dukes (See?) an' he wanned a drink
damnquick.  Dat's what he said.  See?"

"Sure," repeated Jimmie.

Pete continued.  "Say, I jes' jumped deh bar an' deh way I plunked dat
blokie was great.  See?  Dat's right!  In deh jaw!  See?  Hully gee, he
t'rowed a spittoon true deh front windee.  Say, I taut I'd drop dead.
But deh boss, he comes in after an' he says, 'Pete, yehs done jes'
right!  Yeh've gota keep order an' it's all right.'  See?  'It's all
right,' he says.  Dat's what he said."

The two held a technical discussion.

"Dat bloke was a dandy," said Pete, in conclusion, "but he hadn' oughta
made no trouble.  Dat's what I says teh dem: 'Don' come in here an'
make no trouble,' I says, like dat.  'Don' make no trouble.'  See?"

As Jimmie and his friend exchanged tales descriptive of their prowess,
Maggie leaned back in the shadow.  Her eyes dwelt wonderingly and
rather wistfully upon Pete's face.  The broken furniture, grimey walls,
and general disorder and dirt of her home of a sudden appeared before
her and began to take a potential aspect.  Pete's aristocratic person
looked as if it might soil.  She looked keenly at him, occasionally,
wondering if he was feeling contempt.  But Pete seemed to be enveloped
in reminiscence.

"Hully gee," said he, "dose mugs can't phase me.  Dey knows I kin wipe
up deh street wid any t'ree of dem."

When he said, "Ah, what deh hell," his voice was burdened with disdain
for the inevitable and contempt for anything that fate might compel him
to endure.

Maggie perceived that here was the beau ideal of a man.  Her dim
thoughts were often searching for far away lands where, as God says,
the little hills sing together in the morning.  Under the trees of her
dream-gardens there had always walked a lover.

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

completion: Against all odds, Maggie grows to be a pretty girl a condition that does not escape the attention of the males of her neighborhood. One day her brother advises her that she "edder got teh go teh hell or go teh work!" so she obtains a position in a shop making collars and cuffs. At the workshop she sits upon a stool and toils over a sewing machine in a drab room with 20 other girls and at night she returns home to her inebriated mother. Mary becomes well known in the courts and many policemen come to know her by her first name. Her face is constantly swollen and red from drink. Jimmie takes his place as head of the family by doing as his father had done before him - returning home drunk, fighting with his family and passing out on the floor. One day Jimmie happens to meet his older friend Pete who promises to take Jimmie to a boxing match in Brooklyn. When Pete arrives at the apartment that evening Maggie watches her brother's friend carefully. Pete, who works as a bartender, is dressed smartly and carried himself with an air of one whose seen much of life and dismissed it. Pete tells Jimmie about various troublemakers he's thrown out of the bar and as Maggie listens to the story she contemplates anew her drab surroundings and wonders if Pete feels contempt for them.


prompt:
Chapter: Pete took note of Maggie.

"Say, Mag, I'm stuck on yer shape.  It's outa sight," he said,
parenthetically, with an affable grin.

As he became aware that she was listening closely, he grew still more
eloquent in his descriptions of various happenings in his career.  It
appeared that he was invincible in fights.

"Why," he said, referring to a man with whom he had had a
misunderstanding, "dat mug scrapped like a damn dago.  Dat's right.  He
was dead easy.  See?  He tau't he was a scrapper.  But he foun' out
diff'ent!  Hully gee."

He walked to and fro in the small room, which seemed then to grow even
smaller and unfit to hold his dignity, the attribute of a supreme
warrior.  That swing of the shoulders that had frozen the timid when he
was but a lad had increased with his growth and education at the ratio
of ten to one.  It, combined with the sneer upon his mouth, told
mankind that there was nothing in space which could appall him.  Maggie
marvelled at him and surrounded him with greatness.  She vaguely tried
to calculate the altitude of the pinnacle from which he must have
looked down upon her.

"I met a chump deh odder day way up in deh city," he said.  "I was
goin' teh see a frien' of mine.  When I was a-crossin' deh street deh
chump runned plump inteh me, an' den he turns aroun' an' says, 'Yer
insolen' ruffin,' he says, like dat.  'Oh, gee,' I says, 'oh, gee, go
teh hell and git off deh eart',' I says, like dat.  See?  'Go teh hell
an' git off deh eart',' like dat.  Den deh blokie he got wild.  He says
I was a contempt'ble scoun'el, er somet'ing like dat, an' he says I was
doom' teh everlastin' pe'dition an' all like dat.  'Gee,' I says, 'gee!
Deh hell I am,' I says.  'Deh hell I am,' like dat.  An' den I slugged
'im.  See?"

With Jimmie in his company, Pete departed in a sort of a blaze of glory
from the Johnson home.  Maggie, leaning from the window, watched him as
he walked down the street.

Here was a formidable man who disdained the strength of a world full of
fists.  Here was one who had contempt for brass-clothed power; one
whose knuckles could defiantly ring against the granite of law.  He was
a knight.

The two men went from under the glimmering street-lamp and passed into
shadows.

Turning, Maggie contemplated the dark, dust-stained walls, and the
scant and crude furniture of her home.  A clock, in a splintered and
battered oblong box of varnished wood, she suddenly regarded as an
abomination.  She noted that it ticked raspingly.  The almost vanished
flowers in the carpet-pattern, she conceived to be newly hideous.  Some
faint attempts she had made with blue ribbon, to freshen the appearance
of a dingy curtain, she now saw to be piteous.

She wondered what Pete dined on.

She reflected upon the collar and cuff factory.  It began to appear to
her mind as a dreary place of endless grinding.  Pete's elegant
occupation brought him, no doubt, into contact with people who had
money and manners.  It was probable that he had a large acquaintance of
pretty girls.  He must have great sums of money to spend.

To her the earth was composed of hardships and insults.  She felt
instant admiration for a man who openly defied it.  She thought that if
the grim angel of death should clutch his heart, Pete would shrug his
shoulders and say: "Oh, ev'ryt'ing goes."

She anticipated that he would come again shortly.  She spent some of
her week's pay in the purchase of flowered cretonne for a lambrequin.
She made it with infinite care and hung it to the slightly-careening
mantel, over the stove, in the kitchen.  She studied it with painful
anxiety from different points in the room.  She wanted it to look well
on Sunday night when, perhaps, Jimmie's friend would come.  On Sunday
night, however, Pete did not appear.

Afterward the girl looked at it with a sense of humiliation.  She was
now convinced that Pete was superior to admiration for lambrequins.

A few evenings later Pete entered with fascinating innovations in his
apparel.  As she had seen him twice and he had different suits on each
time, Maggie had a dim impression that his wardrobe was prodigiously
extensive.

"Say, Mag," he said, "put on yer bes' duds Friday night an' I'll take
yehs teh deh show.  See?"

He spent a few moments in flourishing his clothes and then vanished,
without having glanced at the lambrequin.

Over the eternal collars and cuffs in the factory Maggie spent the most
of three days in making imaginary sketches of Pete and his daily
environment.  She imagined some half dozen women in love with him and
thought he must lean dangerously toward an indefinite one, whom she
pictured with great charms of person, but with an altogether
contemptible disposition.

She thought he must live in a blare of pleasure.  He had friends, and
people who were afraid of him.

She saw the golden glitter of the place where Pete was to take her.  An
entertainment of many hues and many melodies where she was afraid she
might appear small and mouse-colored.

Her mother drank whiskey all Friday morning.  With lurid face and
tossing hair she cursed and destroyed furniture all Friday afternoon.
When Maggie came home at half-past six her mother lay asleep amidst the
wreck of chairs and a table.  Fragments of various household utensils
were scattered about the floor.  She had vented some phase of drunken
fury upon the lambrequin.  It lay in a bedraggled heap in the corner.

"Hah," she snorted, sitting up suddenly, "where deh hell yeh been?  Why
deh hell don' yeh come home earlier?  Been loafin' 'round deh streets.
Yer gettin' teh be a reg'lar devil."

When Pete arrived Maggie, in a worn black dress, was waiting for him in
the midst of a floor strewn with wreckage.  The curtain at the window
had been pulled by a heavy hand and hung by one tack, dangling to and
fro in the draft through the cracks at the sash.  The knots of blue
ribbons appeared like violated flowers.  The fire in the stove had gone
out.  The displaced lids and open doors showed heaps of sullen grey
ashes.  The remnants of a meal, ghastly, like dead flesh, lay in a
corner.  Maggie's red mother, stretched on the floor, blasphemed and
gave her daughter a bad name.

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

completion: Pete continues to tell Jimmie about his triumphant fights. Pete notices that Maggie is paying close attention and his descriptions become more boastful. He says to Maggie: "Say, Mag, I'm stuck on your shape. It's outa sight." As he walks back and forth in the small apartment Maggie begins to think that he is truly a great person and very much out of place in her family's apartment. Pete details an experience in which a nicely dressed man bumped into him on the street and called him an "insolen' ruffin" to which Pete responded "Go teh hell an' git off deh eart'. " This upset the fellow who insisted on giving Pete a lecture so Pete struck him to the ground and went about his business. After Pete and Jimmie leave to go to the boxing match Maggie comes to the conclusion that Pete is a gentleman who knows the ways of the better classes. She knows only a world full of hardship and struggle and Pete, she believes, is a man who can stand against it. She imagines that Pete's job at the bar must bring him into contact with interesting people and lots of pretty girls who admire him because he has money to spend. She believes that Pete will return for another visit so she spends some of her precious earnings on a flowered lambrequin. She hangs it on the mantle above the stove and deludes herself that it adds an element of refinement to the apartment. The following Sunday Pete fails to appear and Maggie is ashamed at her feeble attempt to beautify the apartment. A few days later, however, Pete does appear - in a new suit. "Say, Mag," he prompts, "put on her bes' duds Friday night an' I'll take yehs teh deh show. See?" He departs immediately. Maggie spends the next three days at the collar factory dreaming of Pete's life and the various women who must vie for his attention. She imagines that there must be one woman among the many who Pete favors. Maggie imagines Pete's favorite girl to be charming but with a contemptible disposition. She also imagines the place he intends to take her. She is very afraid that she will seem small and ugly, "mouse-like" in comparison to what she is sure will be glamorous surroundings. When Maggie arrives home from work Friday evening she finds that her mother has been on a whiskey binge and has broken all the furniture and torn down the lambrequin before collapsing on the floor. Mary wakes up long enough to curse at Maggie. Later that evening Pete arrives to find Maggie dressed in a worn black dress and waiting for him in the cold room among the rubble of the apartment. Mary, still lying on the floor swears at her daughter. Maggie and Pete depart.


prompt:
Chapter: An orchestra of yellow silk women and bald-headed men on an elevated
stage near the centre of a great green-hued hall, played a popular
waltz.  The place was crowded with people grouped about little tables.
A battalion of waiters slid among the throng, carrying trays of beer
glasses and making change from the inexhaustible vaults of their
trousers pockets.  Little boys, in the costumes of French chefs,
paraded up and down the irregular aisles vending fancy cakes.  There
was a low rumble of conversation and a subdued clinking of glasses.
Clouds of tobacco smoke rolled and wavered high in air about the dull
gilt of the chandeliers.

The vast crowd had an air throughout of having just quitted labor.  Men
with calloused hands and attired in garments that showed the wear of an
endless trudge for a living, smoked their pipes contentedly and spent
five, ten, or perhaps fifteen cents for beer.  There was a mere
sprinkling of kid-gloved men who smoked cigars purchased elsewhere.
The great body of the crowd was composed of people who showed that all
day they strove with their hands.  Quiet Germans, with maybe their
wives and two or three children, sat listening to the music, with the
expressions of happy cows.  An occasional party of sailors from a
war-ship, their faces pictures of sturdy health, spent the earlier
hours of the evening at the small round tables.  Very infrequent tipsy
men, swollen with the value of their opinions, engaged their companions
in earnest and confidential conversation.  In the balcony, and here and
there below, shone the impassive faces of women.  The nationalities of
the Bowery beamed upon the stage from all directions.

Pete aggressively walked up a side aisle and took seats with Maggie at
a table beneath the balcony.

"Two beehs!"

Leaning back he regarded with eyes of superiority the scene before
them.  This attitude affected Maggie strongly.  A man who could regard
such a sight with indifference must be accustomed to very great things.

It was obvious that Pete had been to this place many times before, and
was very familiar with it.  A knowledge of this fact made Maggie feel
little and new.

He was extremely gracious and attentive.  He displayed the
consideration of a cultured gentleman who knew what was due.

"Say, what deh hell?  Bring deh lady a big glass!  What deh hell use is
dat pony?"

"Don't be fresh, now," said the waiter, with some warmth, as he
departed.

"Ah, git off deh eart'," said Pete, after the other's retreating form.

Maggie perceived that Pete brought forth all his elegance and all his
knowledge of high-class customs for her benefit.  Her heart warmed as
she reflected upon his condescension.

The orchestra of yellow silk women and bald-headed men gave vent to a
few bars of anticipatory music and a girl, in a pink dress with short
skirts, galloped upon the stage.  She smiled upon the throng as if in
acknowledgment of a warm welcome, and began to walk to and fro, making
profuse gesticulations and singing, in brazen soprano tones, a song,
the words of which were inaudible.  When she broke into the swift
rattling measures of a chorus some half-tipsy men near the stage joined
in the rollicking refrain and glasses were pounded rhythmically upon
the tables.  People leaned forward to watch her and to try to catch the
words of the song.  When she vanished there were long rollings of
applause.

Obedient to more anticipatory bars, she reappeared amidst the
half-suppressed cheering of the tipsy men.  The orchestra plunged into
dance music and the laces of the dancer fluttered and flew in the glare
of gas jets.  She divulged the fact that she was attired in some half
dozen skirts.  It was patent that any one of them would have proved
adequate for the purpose for which skirts are intended.  An occasional
man bent forward, intent upon the pink stockings.  Maggie wondered at
the splendor of the costume and lost herself in calculations of the
cost of the silks and laces.

The dancer's smile of stereotyped enthusiasm was turned for ten minutes
upon the faces of her audience.  In the finale she fell into some of
those grotesque attitudes which were at the time popular among the
dancers in the theatres up-town, giving to the Bowery public the
phantasies of the aristocratic theatre-going public, at reduced rates.

"Say, Pete," said Maggie, leaning forward, "dis is great."

"Sure," said Pete, with proper complacence.

A ventriloquist followed the dancer.  He held two fantastic dolls on
his knees.  He made them sing mournful ditties and say funny things
about geography and Ireland.

"Do dose little men talk?" asked Maggie.

"Naw," said Pete, "it's some damn fake.  See?"

Two girls, on the bills as sisters, came forth and sang a duet that is
heard occasionally at concerts given under church auspices.  They
supplemented it with a dance which of course can never be seen at
concerts given under church auspices.

After the duettists had retired, a woman of debatable age sang a negro
melody.  The chorus necessitated some grotesque waddlings supposed to
be an imitation of a plantation darkey, under the influence, probably,
of music and the moon.  The audience was just enthusiastic enough over
it to have her return and sing a sorrowful lay, whose lines told of a
mother's love and a sweetheart who waited and a young man who was lost
at sea under the most harrowing circumstances.  From the faces of a
score or so in the crowd, the self-contained look faded.  Many heads
were bent forward with eagerness and sympathy.  As the last distressing
sentiment of the piece was brought forth, it was greeted by that kind
of applause which rings as sincere.

As a final effort, the singer rendered some verses which described a
vision of Britain being annihilated by America, and Ireland bursting
her bonds.  A carefully prepared crisis was reached in the last line of
the last verse, where the singer threw out her arms and cried, "The
star-spangled banner."  Instantly a great cheer swelled from the
throats of the assemblage of the masses.  There was a heavy rumble of
booted feet thumping the floor.  Eyes gleamed with sudden fire, and
calloused hands waved frantically in the air.

After a few moments' rest, the orchestra played crashingly, and a small
fat man burst out upon the stage.  He began to roar a song and stamp
back and forth before the foot-lights, wildly waving a glossy silk hat
and throwing leers, or smiles, broadcast.  He made his face into
fantastic grimaces until he looked like a pictured devil on a Japanese
kite.  The crowd laughed gleefully.  His short, fat legs were never
still a moment.  He shouted and roared and bobbed his shock of red wig
until the audience broke out in excited applause.

Pete did not pay much attention to the progress of events upon the
stage.  He was drinking beer and watching Maggie.

Her cheeks were blushing with excitement and her eyes were glistening.
She drew deep breaths of pleasure.  No thoughts of the atmosphere of
the collar and cuff factory came to her.

When the orchestra crashed finally, they jostled their way to the
sidewalk with the crowd.  Pete took Maggie's arm and pushed a way for
her, offering to fight with a man or two.

They reached Maggie's home at a late hour and stood for a moment in
front of the gruesome doorway.

"Say, Mag," said Pete, "give us a kiss for takin' yeh teh deh show,
will yer?"

Maggie laughed, as if startled, and drew away from him.

"Naw, Pete," she said, "dat wasn't in it."

"Ah, what deh hell?" urged Pete.

The girl retreated nervously.

"Ah, what deh hell?" repeated he.

Maggie darted into the hall, and up the stairs.  She turned and smiled
at him, then disappeared.

Pete walked slowly down the street.  He had something of an astonished
expression upon his features.  He paused under a lamp-post and breathed
a low breath of surprise.

"Gawd," he said, "I wonner if I've been played fer a duffer."

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

completion: Pete takes Maggie to a large music hall. An orchestra sits upon a stage near the center of the room. The hall is crowded with working class patrons, some with their families, and numerous waiters who carry trays of beer and make change. Small boys vend cakes to the throng and smoke from the men's pipes lingers high in the air. Pete seizes a table and orders two beers. When the beverages arrive he upbraids the waiter for their size and orders larger beers. Maggie is impressed by Pete's knowledge of the manners of what she considers a very fine establishment. The orchestra strikes some introductory notes and a girl in a short pink dress runs onto the stage. The girl sings a brazen song and the men in the front row accompany her on the chorus. She runs offstage to loud applause. When she returns she flounces her many skirts to reveal her pink stockings. Maggie is awed by the extravagance of the costume. Before leaving the stage the dancer attempts some of the moves popular among the higher-class theaters. The next performer is a ventriloquist who makes two dolls sing songs and tell funny jokes. Maggie is captivated and asks Pete if the little men are truly talking. Pete responds: "Naw, its' some damn fake. See?" Next on the bill are two girls claiming to be sisters who sing a popular duet. Then a woman sings Negro melodies and a mournful air that brings heartfelt applause from the whole audience. For her final song the woman sings a patriotic piece that receives wild cheers and boot thumping. After that a short fat man does a comical song and dance. Pete drinks his beer and watches Maggie. She is obviously pleased. He sees that Maggie breathes heavily and that her eyes glisten. After the show Pete takes her arm and, offering to fight several men along the way, shoves a way for them out of the theater. It is very late at night when they reach the tenement building. Pete asks Maggie for a kiss as payment for having taken her to the show." Naw, Pete," she responds laughing, "dat wasn't in it." Maggie retreats up the stairs but looks back and smiles at him before disappearing. Pete wonders if he's been "played fer a duffer." .