An adulterous affair between Dmitri Dmitritch Gurov, an unhappily married Moscow banker, and Anna Sergeyevna Von Diderits, a young married woman, an affair which begins while both are vacationing alone in the Crimean sea resort of Yalta.
An anonymous assassin is sent to infiltrate the St. Petersburg household of Orlov, the son of a ministerial judge deemed a "serious enemy", by an unnamed radical cause. While masquerading as a servant, the narrator spies on the household and observes the extravagant and frivolous habits of the wealthy family, and is repelled by Orlov's aloof treatment of his lover Zinaida. He eventually becomes disillusioned with his mission and the purposelessness of life itself, comparing his own deceitfulness with the womanizing Orlov's self-awareness, and abandons his mission.
Odile is a lovely twenty-three-year-old art-school dropout, a minor vandal, and a hopeless dreamer, and you get to meet her in this story.
The story opens with a panoramic view of the Salinas Valley in winter. The focus narrows and finally settles on Elisa Allen, cutting down the spent stalks of chrysanthemums, in the garden on her husband’s ranch. Elisa is thirty-five, lean and strong, and she approaches her gardening with great energy.[1] Her husband, Henry, comes from across the yard, where he had been arranging the sale of the thirty steers. Then he offers to take Elisa to town so they can celebrate the sale. He praises her skill with flowers, and she congratulates him on doing well in the negotiations for the steer. They seem to be a well-matched couple, though their way of talking together is formal and serious. While talking about their plan to go out, Henry jokingly asks Elisa if she would like to see a fight. With disinterest, Elisa refuses and says she wouldn't like it. They agree on dinner and a movie instead. Elisa decides to finish her transplanting before they get ready to leave for town
Langston Hughes was an important and prolific writer during the Harlem Renaissance of the early 20th century. He wrote about African-American life and experience. Thank You Ma'am is about what happens when a teenage boy and an older working woman collide on a Harlem street. The story begins with an encounter between Roger, a teenage boy, and Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones, an older woman walking home from work late one night. He attempts to steal her purse, but because it is so heavy, and Mrs. Jones is quite stout, he merely ends up breaking the strap instead. She kicks him and grabs him by the shirt, asking if he feels ashamed of himself. Please continue the reading....
A little boy craving for sweets in The Wild Fruit.
Homecomings can be full of joy and happiness with a tinge of nostalgia, but for some, it can be an occasion of regret about things unsaid and undone.
Crane knew what many in later years forgot: that for the Civil War generation, a regimental designation was not merely a military convenience. In truth, the regiment was the primary object of identification for the men who fought the war. For the most part, a unit meant neighbors, friends, and in many cases (as in the story that gave Crane his title) blood relatives. To speak the name of a unit was often to summon up a host of associations within a particular state and community.