Short Stories

"Piece of String" is a short story by Guy de Maupassant. It revolves around an honest peasant named Hauchecorne who finds a lost piece of string but becomes falsely accused of theft. The story explores themes of societal prejudice, the consequences of gossip, and the fragility of reputation.

A flobber-lob is a figment of someones imagination

Della is nervous because she has sold her most prized possession, her long hair, to buy Jim a Christmas gift, not knowing how he will react to her new appearance. She is anxious about his reaction and hopes that he will still love her despite her sacrifice.

It is ironic because Granny herself has been jilted by two men in her life, so the fact that she tells Hapsy to find George and tell him she forgot him highlights the theme of abandonment and the impact it has had on Granny. It shows Granny's own vulnerability and the lasting effects of being jilted.

Both the child and Zaroff exhibit a sense of ruthless determination and cunning in their pursuit of their objectives. They are willing to go to great lengths to achieve their goals and are not easily deterred by obstacles or challenges.

You can search for Jose Garcia Villa's works in libraries, bookstores, online book retailers, and online databases that specialize in Filipino literature. Additionally, you can find his writings in literary journals, anthologies, and websites dedicated to Philippine literature.

This quote is attributed to Alice Walker in her novel "The Color Purple." It reflects the character Sofia's resistance to racial stereotypes and her insistence on maintaining her own identity and pride.

the first discussion involves on the ownership of the territory called Oxy Meadows. This starts when Lomov is about to propose and mentions that he owns that territory. Natalia immediately starts the argument by saying it belongs to her family...

A short story that demonstrates good citizenship values might involve a character who helps their elderly neighbor with groceries, volunteers at a local soup kitchen, and participates in community clean-up efforts. Through these actions, the character shows kindness, empathy, and a willingness to contribute positively to their community.

The prisoner in "The Pit and the Pendulum" wasn't executed immediately because the Inquisition wanted to prolong his suffering and fear by placing him in torturous situations. They wanted him to experience psychological torment before facing physical death.

The climax of "The Jewelry" by Guy De Maupassant occurs when M. Lantin discovers the truth about his late wife's jewels and her secret life of infidelity. This revelation ultimately leads to the tragic downfall of M. Lantin's happiness and his once idyllic marriage.

This is a Philippine Fairy story concerning a dwarf. He is known as the 'Old Man of the Ant Hill or Mound'. This individual could cause harm or injury to anyone who accidentally kicks or destroys a Ant Hill which people believe to be the home of the dwarf. Thus people walking in forests ask permission by saying 'Excuse us, Old Man of the Mound' before passing by a Mound or a Ant Hill

Certain ballparks have distinct sounds. Trains rumble past Safeco Field in Seattle. Seagulls comb AT&T Park after games in San Francisco. Airplanes whoosh over Shea Stadium in Flushing. Horns were always bleating from the catacombs of Olympic Stadium in Montreal.

Here in Toronto, at the park they used to call SkyDome, there's the sound of an old man pounding the pitcher's mound with a tool that flattens dirt. I don't know what it's called, but I know the sound it makes. Over and over and over again: Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!

For several hours before the game and an hour or so after it, the groundskeeper stands out on that mound, holding a long stick with a flat square on the bottom. It's almost like he's churning butter, except a lot louder. The sounds rings through the empty dome, bouncing off the walls and the roof, a cacophony for your ears - Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!

The groundskeepers work so hard here, and there are so many of them, it makes you wonder what they would do if the field were more to take care of than, you know, five patches of dirt and a whole lot of plastic grass. Yesterday I was eating lunch at one of the stadium restaurants, and I looked out and counted nine groundskeepers tending to those five patches of dirt. Nine!

I don't know why the mound, in particular, needs such attention. Roger Clemens mentioned last night that it's a clay mound, and it dries out after three or four innings. Maybe that has something to do with it.

But they sure do take care of it, that much I know. Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!

It's a collection of 50 short stories about Ramon Magsaysay. No downloadable content unfortunately (sigh)

The Beggar

He had seen better days, despite his present misery and infirmities.

At the age of fifteen both his legs had been crushed by a carriage on the Varville highway. From that time forth he begged, dragging himself along the roads and through the farmyards, supported by crutches which forced his shoulders up to his ears. His head looked as if it were squeezed in between two mountains.

A foundling, picked up out of a ditch by the priest of Les Billettes on the eve of All Saints' Day and baptized, for that reason, Nicholas Toussaint, reared by charity, utterly without education, crippled in consequence of having drunk several glasses of brandy given him by the baker (such a funny story!) and a vagabond all his life afterward--the only thing he knew how to do was to hold out his hand for alms.

At one time the Baroness d'Avary allowed him to sleep in a kind of recess spread with straw, close to the poultry yard in the farm adjoining the chateau, and if he was in great need he was sure of getting a glass of cider and a crust of bread in the kitchen. Moreover, the old lady often threw him a few pennies from her window. But she was dead now.

In the villages people gave him scarcely anything--he was too well known. Everybody had grown tired of seeing him, day after day for forty years, dragging his deformed and tattered person from door to door on his wooden crutches. But he could not make up his mind to go elsewhere, because he knew no place on earth but this particular corner of the country, these three or four villages where he had spent the whole of his miserable existence. He had limited his begging operations and would not for worlds have passed his accustomed bounds.

He did not even know whether the world extended for any distance beyond the trees which had always bounded his vision. He did not ask himself the question. And when the peasants, tired of constantly meeting him in their fields or along their lanes, exclaimed: "Why don't you go to other villages instead of always limping about here?" he did not answer, but slunk away, possessed with a vague dread of the unknown--the dread of a poor wretch who fears confusedly a thousand things--new faces, taunts, insults, the suspicious glances of people who do not know him and the policemen walking in couples on the roads. These last he always instinctively avoided, taking refuge in the bushes or behind heaps of stones when he saw them coming.

When he perceived them in the distance, 'With uniforms gleaming in the sun, he was suddenly possessed with unwonted agility--the agility of a wild animal seeking its lair. He threw aside his crutches, fell to the ground like a limp rag, made himself as small as possible and crouched like a bare under cover, his tattered vestments blending in hue with the earth on which he cowered.

He had never had any trouble with the police, but the instinct to avoid them was in his blood. He seemed to have inherited it from the parents he had never known.

He had no refuge, no roof for his head, no shelter of any kind. In summer he slept out of doors and in winter he showed remarkable skill in slipping unperceived into barns and stables. He always decamped before his presence could be discovered. He knew all the holes through which one could creep into farm buildings, and the handling of his crutches having made his arms surprisingly muscular he often hauled himself up through sheer strength of wrist into hay-lofts, where he sometimes remained for four or five days at a time, provided he had collected a sufficient store of food beforehand.

He lived like the beasts of the field. He was in the midst of men, yet knew no one, loved no one, exciting in the breasts of the peasants only a sort of careless contempt and smoldering hostility. They nicknamed him "Bell," because he hung between his two crutches like a church bell between its supports.

For two days he had eaten nothing. No one gave him anything now. Every one's patience was exhausted. Women shouted to him from their doorsteps when they saw him coming:

"Be off with you, you good-for-nothing vagabond! Why, I gave you a piece of bread only three days ago!

And he turned on his crutches to the next house, where he was received in the same fashion.

The women declared to one another as they stood at their doors:

"We can't feed that lazy brute all the year round!"

And yet the "lazy brute" needed food every day.

He had exhausted Saint-Hilaire, Varville and Les Billettes without getting a single copper or so much as a dry crust. His only hope was in Tournolles, but to reach this place he would have to walk five miles along the highroad, and he felt so weary that he could hardly drag himself another yard. His stomach and his pocket were equally empty, but he started on his way.

It was December and a cold wind blew over the fields and whistled through the bare branches of the trees; the clouds careered madly across the black, threatening sky. The cripple dragged himself slowly along, raising one crutch after the other with a painful effort, propping himself on the one distorted leg which remained to him.

Now and then he sat down beside a ditch for a few moments' rest. Hunger was gnawing his vitals, and in his confused, slow-working mind he had only one idea-to eat-but how this was to be accomplished he did not know. For three hours he continued his painful journey. Then at last the sight of the trees of the village inspired him with new energy.

The first peasant he met, and of whom he asked alms, replied:

"So it's you again, is it, you old scamp? Shall I never be rid of you?"

And "Bell" went on his way. At every door he got nothing but hard words. He made the round of the whole village, but received not a halfpenny for his pains.

Then he visited the neighboring farms, toiling through the muddy land, so exhausted that he could hardly raise his crutches from the ground. He met with the same reception everywhere. It was one of those cold, bleak days, when the heart is frozen and the temper irritable, and hands do not open either to give money or food.

When he had visited all the houses he knew, "Bell" sank down in the corner of a ditch running across Chiquet's farmyard. Letting his crutches slip to the ground, he remained motionless, tortured by hunger, but hardly intelligent enough to realize to the full his unutterable misery.

He awaited he knew not what, possessed with that vague hope which persists in the human heart in spite of everything. He awaited in the corner of the farmyard in the biting December wind, some mysterious aid from Heaven or from men, without the least idea whence it was to arrive. A number of black hens ran hither and thither, seeking their food in the earth which supports all living things. Ever now and then they snapped up in their beaks a grain of corn or a tiny insect; then they continued their slow, sure search for nutriment.

"Bell" watched them at first without thinking of anything. Then a thought occurred rather to his stomach than to his mind--the thought that one of those fowls would be good to eat if it were cooked over a fire of dead wood.

He did not reflect that he was going to commit a theft. He took up a stone which lay within reach, and, being of skillful aim, killed at the first shot the fowl nearest to him. The bird fell on its side, flapping its wings. The others fled wildly hither and thither, and "Bell," picking up his crutches, limped across to where his victim lay.

Just as he reached the little black body with its crimsoned head he received a violent blow in his back which made him let go his hold of his crutches and sent him flying ten paces distant. And Farmer Chiquet, beside himself with rage, cuffed and kicked the marauder with all the fury of a plundered peasant as "Bell" lay defenceless before him.

The farm hands came up also and joined their master in cuffing the lame beggar. Then when they were tired of beating him they carried him off and shut him up in the woodshed, while they went to fetch the police.

"Bell," half dead, bleeding and perishing with hunger, lay on the floor. Evening came--then night--then dawn. And still he had not eaten.

About midday the police arrived. They opened the door of the woodshed with the utmost precaution, fearing resistance on the beggar's part, for Farmer Chiquet asserted that he had been attacked by him and had had great, difficulty in defending himself.

The sergeant cried:

"Come, get up!"

But "Bell" could not move. He did his best to raise himself on his crutches, but without success. The police, thinking his weakness feigned, pulled him up by main force and set him between the crutches.

Fear seized him--his native fear of a uniform, the fear of the game in presence of the sportsman, the fear of a mouse for a cat-and by the exercise of almost superhuman effort he succeeded in remaining upright.

"Forward!" said the sergeant. He walked. All the inmates of the farm watched his departure. The women shook their fists at him the men scoffed at and insulted him. He was taken at last! Good riddance! He went off between his two guards. He mustered sufficient energy--the energy of despair--to drag himself along until the evening, too dazed to know what was happening to him, too frightened to understand.

People whom he met on the road stopped to watch him go by and peasants muttered:

"It's some thief or other."

Toward evening he reached the country town. He had never been so far before. He did not realize in the least what he was there for or what was to become of him. All the terrible and unexpected events of the last two days, all these unfamiliar faces and houses struck dismay into his heart.

He said not a word, having nothing to say because he understood nothing. Besides, he had spoken to no one for so many years past that he had almost lost the use of his tongue, and his thoughts were too indeterminate to be put into words.

He was shut up in the town jail. It did not occur to the police that he might need food, and he was left alone until the following day. But when in the early morning they came to examine him he was found dead on the floor. Such an astonishing thing!

In the story "Gentleman of Rio en Medio," the term "tilled" refers to the act of preparing and cultivating land for planting crops. The narrator describes how her father tilled the soil with care and dedication, emphasizing the hard work and connection to the land that this activity entails.

It is important to avoid generalizations about any group of people, including Filipinos, as alcohol consumption habits can vary greatly among individuals. While some Filipinos may indeed be mild drinkers, it is not accurate to make sweeping statements about an entire population. It is important to respect each person's choices and behaviors when it comes to alcohol consumption.

Rani was the eldest of the four children. Her mother's health was fainting with asthma. Following her mother's illness her father had gone in search of a job to another city, but had never returned.

The responsibility of the family fell on Rani's little shoulders. The twelve year old Rani had to go out and work in two houses before and after school hours, to support herself and her poor family. She would return tired, by 7.30 in the evening, often with an empty stomach. She would happily keep the food she was given in the houses where she worked for her little brothers and sister and she would satisfy herself with the leftovers. Even a portion of that she would keep for her mother and only then would Rani eat. In spite of all her problems, Rani's enthusiasm in studies did not diminish. As there was no electricity in her home, a hut in the slum, Rani studied her lessons under the streetlight. The only earthen lamp they had would often go dry. Her poor mother could do nothing to help her daughter, except weep helplessly and pray for a good day for them.

One evening Rani was at home as one of her Memsahibs had gone out of station. She was delighted to spend an evening with her three siblings - two brothers and a sister.

"Akka, are you not going to work today?" asked her little sister Pinky. It was unusual to see Rani at home.

"No, Pinky,"said Rani happily. "I'll stay at home today and play with you."

Pinky sat for a while thoughtfully and then said in a soft voice. "That means today we don't have anything to eat, I think."

That made Rani very upset. She wondered why God had given her such a miserable life with so many responsibilities. When children of her age enjoyed childhood pleasures and parental love, some unfortunate children like her were destined to toil from dawn to dusk, just to fill their stomachs and those of their families with some leftover food.

With an aching heart she got up from her seat and went out without any destination in mind. When she reached the bus stand an idea struck her. She sang a sad song about her own life describing how her little brothers and sister were waiting at home for her arrival, to fill their stomachs.

A lady who was sitting in her car after her shopping and was about to leave, heard Rani's song and called out to her. Rani walked up to her and stood there hopefully, and narrated her sad story with tearful eyes.

"Do you like to come with me, Rani? I have a daughter of your age. She likes songs. Could you please keep her company and sing for her? I will give you good food and salary" said the lady, who was almost her mother's age, and had some unspoken pain hidden in her smile.

"I would have come, Madam. But I don't want to leave my little brothers and sister alone with my ailing mother, and enjoy myself with your daughter. Secondly, I don't want to miss my school."

"You don't worry about your school. I'll keep a good tutor for you and teach you. Also every evening you can go home to see your little brothers and sister, and come back next morning. Is that alright with you or do you want anything more?"

A ray of hope danced in Rani's eyes.

"I will ask my mother and let you know," said Rani after a moment's thought.

"Okay, Rani. Come, let's go to your home just now. I'll speak to your mother."

Rani was very happy to travel in a car. For the first time in her life she was traveling in a car. She wished her brothers and sister were with her to share her joy.

The car stopped a few yards away from her house as it could not go further on the narrow street. Mrs. Nair walked with Rani to her house.

Rani's brothers and sister, who were playing in the mud, stopped their activities and stared at the stranger approaching with her sister.

"Madam, these two are my brothers - Kitchu and Vitchu and my little sister Pinky" Rani introduced them patting them affectionately.

By then a sickly looking woman with a torn sari and shabby hair came out and stood by the door, looking surprised.

"Ma, I met this Madam at the bus stand. She's a nice lady. She said she will give me a job in her house. Can I go?" asked Rani happily.

Instead of replying to her questions, Rani's mother was observing the stranger from top to toe, then she invited her inside. Mrs. Nair was made to sit on a torn mat. In the mean time Rani went in too and prepared a glass of black coffee. Rani's mother was surprised to see the lady taking the coffee from Rani and drinking it.

"Even though she looks highly sophisticated she is a simple person," thought Rani's mother.

Mrs. Nair explained her plans to Rani's mother and promised to send her home every day in the evening.

She gave an advance of Rs.1000/- to her mother. She initially refused it, but later accepted with reluctance.

Mrs. Nair went back to her car and brought two packets of bread and some apples which she had brought for her home and distributed this among Rani's family members. She enjoyed watching them eat the apples. By then Rani's neighbors had assembled there and began to whisper.

"There must be something fishy. Otherwise why should a big Madam come to your hut?" said an old lady softly.

"This lady must be taking Rani to the Gulf countries for sale," said another woman in the crowd.

Rani's mother was not perturbed by these comments. She had developed a strong faith in the Good Samaritan, whose dignified face showed no trace of any cheating habits. Instead, she could find only love and compassion there.

The next day Mrs. Nair's car came at 7.30 in the morning to pick up Rani. Collecting a small bag, Rani prayed before Lord Murugan's faded photo that hung on the wall. She took her mother's blessing and giving affectionate kisses to her siblings, she left her home and got into the car, and sat next to Mrs. Nair. When they reached Mrs. Nair's house Rani's eyes searched for her daughter playing somewhere. She was stunned to see such a beautiful house with huge Alsation dogs guarding it, and servants ready to serve people everywhere around. For quite sometime she found it difficult to take her eyes away from the enchanting beauty of the garden.

Rani had her own doubts as to whether the rich and pampered daughter of this lady would accept her as her companion. She felt as though she was in a wonderland which she had seen only in dreams. With all these mixed feelings Rani was hesitant to put her dirty feet on the shining floor, when Mrs. Nair beckoned her to follow her.

Mrs. Nair led her to a well-furnished room where her daughter Neena, was lying on a bed. She was a beautiful looking girl, well dressed, holding a Barbie doll against her chest.

"This is my only daughter Neena. She has been paralyzed and in bed for the last three years, following an accident. Rani, I want you to keep her company and sing for her. Everyday by 10' O' clock her teacher will come to coach her. I will ask her to teach you too," said Mrs.Nair with a pale smile.

Rani felt very sorry for Neena.

"God has given her a lot of wealth for a luxurious life, but has forgotten to give her health. In my case God has given me normal health and some talent. Two extreme ends of life!" thought Rani.

After a hot water bath, Rani was given a clean dress to wear, and some food. When she appeared in front of Neena, the latter could not believe her eyes. Was this the same shabby ragged girl whom she had seen a few minutes back? Neena gave her a welcoming warm smile and asked Rani to sit beside her. Mrs. Nair requested her to sing a song, the same song which had attracted her. Rani obliged, but this time she had no tears in her eyes, instead the tears were in Neena's eyes.

"How lucky you are Rani! At this young age you are capable of looking after a family. See my fate. Even to get up from the bed I need someone's help." Neena sighed heavily.

Only then did Rani realize that she was fortunate to have a healthy body and was far better than the bedridden rich girl. She prayed to God silently for all His blessings.

Yes, in "The Interlopers," Saki intentionally creates a tension-filled mood from the beginning that suggests a conflict or some form of confrontation is imminent. The rivalry and feud between the two main characters, coupled with the setting and the ominous atmosphere, build suspense and hint at a dramatic or tragic resolution.

From this passage, we can infer that the character being referred to in the passage has been absent for four days on a mission to hunt down the enemy troops. The mention of his four-day beard growth suggests that he has not had the opportunity to shave during this time, emphasizing the intensity and focus of his pursuit.

In Shirley Jackson's story "The Lottery," the normal law of probability is suspended as the townspeople continue to blindly follow the tradition of the lottery despite its horrifying consequences. The idea of random chance and fairness is discarded in favor of a brutal and senseless ritual.

Some of the key symbols in "The Boarding House" by James Joyce include the boarding house itself, which represents a microcosm of societal expectations and norms; the pawn shop, symbolizing manipulation and exploitation; and Mr. Doran's library book, which symbolizes his desire for escape and freedom from his predicament.