• Industrial revolution created a dicotomy with both socio-economic problems and an affluent and materialistic middle class.
• Expansion in public education created a more literate society, allowing ordinary citizens to participate in the democratic process.
• Emancipation of slavery, waves of immigrants, and women demanding more rights began to alter the male-dominated society.
• Railroad and telegraph technology made the world smaller and improved the flow of goods, people, and information.
• Photography provided realistic views of the world, and inexpensive magazine publications brought literature to ordinary people, making it easier for ordinary people to become published authors.

Characteristics of Realistic Literature By the end of the Civil War in 1865, realism in literature had emerged. As the name implies, writers from this period tried to depict life as it really was with characters and events that could be real. However, keep in mind that although the stories were realistic, they were not true accounts. Realists did not view the world through rose-colored glasses as the romantics had. Instead, realists knew that life did not always have a happy ending, and they portrayed this in their stories. American society was deeply affected by the Civil War and all that went along with it. So, realistic authors reflected those effects in their writings. Realism takes the ordinary and uninteresting and makes it extraordinary and interesting. In realistic writing, even the most boring people and events can become exciting. There are many characteristics that describe realistic writing. Here are a few of the major ones: • familiar, common settings • ordinary, average, believable characters living their ordinary, average, believable lives • character analysis is treated as more important than plot • conflicts between people and society • story told by one of the characters in first person or by an objective narrator; little author comment; characters reveal themselves • characters control their destinies; have free will to make choices; personal responsibility for what happens. As you read the three short stories in this unit, think about how each story illustrates the characteristics of realism. Make notes as you read since the unit writing assignment will involve applying the characteristics to the readings. How to Read a Short Story

You will be tested on your knowledge of the three short stories, and you will be writing a persuasive paper based on the information in these stories, so it is critical that you understand each of the three short stories in this unit.

• Print the Short Story Elements sheet.
• Print the Short Story Elements Worksheet.
• Identify each element and any sub-element.
• Write the answers to each element in the worksheet.
• You will greatly increase your understanding of a short story.
• You will have a concise study aid for which to take your test and write your essay.

Short Story - Elements A GOOD SHORT STORY HAS FOUR MAJOR ELEMENTS:

• Characters
• Setting
• Plot
• Theme

CHARACTERS Characters are people or animals about whom a short story is told. There are two types of characters: main and minor.

• Main characters are characters that are most important to the story.
• Minor characters are relatively unimportant to the story.

SETTING The setting of a story is its time and place.

• Time: A story may occur in the past, present, or future, or anytime of the day or night.
• Place: A story place may be real or imaginary, and it may be well-defined or left to the imagination of the reader

PLOT The plot is the series of events that occur in a story. Most plots have one conflict or problem that characters struggle to resolve. Plots usually follow a five-stage logical pattern to the story’s conclusion:

• Exposition
• Rising action
• Climax
• Falling action
• Resolution.
• Exposition

At the beginning of the story, the exposition provides the reader with necessary information, including background information if crucial to the plot. The exposition introduces the characters, setting, and conflict.

• Rising Action

Conflict is obvious during the rising action. Complications arise and suspense builds as characters struggle with the problem or problems.

• Climax

The turning point of the story is the climax, or the point where the conflict is resolved, and generally results in a change in the characters or a solution to the problem. Usually, the climax occurs in one of three ways: a. The characters reach a decision. b. A discovery occurs to change the situation. c. An event occurs to change the situation.

• Falling Action

The effects of the climax are shown in the falling action stage. The suspense of the story has been resolved and the results of the decision or action that caused the climax are worked out.

• Resolution

The resolution tells how the struggle ends, and all loose ends of the plot are resolved.

THEME The theme of a story is the message the writer conveys through the characters and plot. There are usually two types of themes:

• A generalization about life
• A lesson a character or characters learn

NOTE: The writer rarely states the theme, making you, the reader, determine the theme. Short Story - Elements Worksheet CHARACTERS

• 1.
• 2.
• 3.
• 4.
• 5.

Analyze the main character. What kind of person is the main character?

What details reveal the character's personality?

What do other characters think about the main character? Use descriptive words from the story in your answer.

SETTING

Time Place

How does the setting influence the plot of the story?

What mood or emotion does the setting add? Point out passages to show what you mean.

TONE The tone of the story is the attitude or feeling taken towards the characters and events.

What is the tone of the story?

How does the narrator's point of view contribute to the story's tone? Use descriptive details and specific examples from the story.

PLOT

Exposition: Rising Action: Climax: Falling Action:

Evaluate the most suspenseful moment in the story. What events created the suspense?

Summarize the main events of the story in a short paragraph.

THEME

Mark Twain Mark Twain (1835-1910), born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was an extraordinarily popular writer and lecturer. He is still regarded as one of America's best writers, representing the Realist literary movement that followed the sobering experiences of the Civil War. Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, on the shores of the Mississippi River, spending the early part of his career working as a river boat captain. He began his writing career as a journalist and humorist; later he wrote travel books and novels. His best known works The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Huckleberry Finn (1884) are based on his earlier experiences on the Mississippi River. He derived his pen name, Mark Twain, from the language of the river men. A mark twain is two fathoms (a fathom is a six-foot depth of water), which was an adequate depth by which a river boat could successfully navigate along the Mississippi River. As a journalist and humorist, Twain lived and worked in the gold rush days of California and Nevada. He represents the Realistic Period in American Literature with his short story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." Based on his ability to vividly tell stories, he developed a large audience, though often his humor was crude and irreverent toward American society. Twain was the first writer to effectively capture the regional dialects. "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" In this chapter you will read Mark Twain's "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." Before you begin reading, print the Short Story Elements Worksheet. As you read look for each of the four elements and all sub-elements under the plot section. Also, be sure to determine if the theme is a generalization about life or a lesson a character or characters learn, or both. At first, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" appears to be just a simple, funny story about the foolishness of habitual gambling. However, the story is also a satire of American literature, social conventions, and politics. The story developed from an anecdote Mark Twain heard during his time in the Western United States, and it centers on a narrator from the Eastern U.S. who finds himself in a mining camp listening to a westerner tell a story about a habitual gambler named Jim Smiley. Readers of American short stories in the 19th century were familiar with this type of story, called a “frame story.” Writers of this period often created frame stories with settings in the Western U.S. where supposedly sophisticated easterners encountered less refined western characters. The western characters would tell ridiculous tales and the easterners would provide an account of the story to show the exaggerated differences between the two types of characters. Generally, in these types of stories the reader could identify the writer’s perspective through the narrator. However, Twain expanded on this genre (type of literature) by separating his own point of view from the narrator; in fact, he makes the narrator from the East the ridiculous character. Twain has the narrator talk in the formal language of the East, making him look silly compared to westerners. Next, he shows the ignorance of the narrator because he never understands that the rustic storyteller is playing with him. Twain also used historical and political references in the story by calling the bulldog pup President Andrew Jackson and the frog Daniel Webster. President Jackson had a public image as a champion of the common people and symbolized the belief that anyone with talent and hard work could become successful. Twain gave these same traits to the dog, and he made fun of Jackson because in reality Jackson considered himself superior to the common person. The frog is identified with Daniel Webster, a U.S. congressman, senator, and Secretary of State. Webster had a habit of changing his position on political issues, or flip-flopping like a frog. Twain also makes the frog unable to jump in the contest, satirizing Webster’s failed attempt in the ultimate leap in politics, the presidency of the United States.

"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" By Mark Twain

In compliance with the request of a friend of mine, who wrote me from the East, I called on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and inquired after my friend's friend, Leonidas W. Smiley, as requested to do, and I hereunto append the result. I have a lurking suspicion that Leonidas W. Smiley is a myth; that my friend never knew such a personage; and that he only conjectured that, if I asked old Wheeler about him, it would remind him of his infamous Jim Smiley, and he would go to work and bore me nearly to death with some infernal reminiscence of him as long and tedious as it should be useless to me. If that was the design, it certainly succeeded.

I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the bar-room stove of the old, dilapidated tavern in the ancient mining camp of Angel's, and I noticed that he was fat and bald-headed, and had an expression of winning gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance. He roused up and gave me good-day. I told him a friend of mine had commissioned me to make some inquiries about a cherished companion of his boyhood named Leonidas W. Smiley -- Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley -- a young minister of the Gospel, who he had heard was at one time a resident of Angel's Camp. I added that, if Mr. Wheeler could tell me any thing about this Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, I would feel under many obligations to him.

Simon Wheeler backed me into a corner and blockaded me there with his chair, and then sat me down and reeled off the monotonous narrative which follows this paragraph. He never smiled, he never frowned, he never changed his voice from the gentle-flowing key to which he tuned the initial sentence, he never betrayed the slightest suspicion of enthusiasm; but all through the interminable narrative there ran a vein of impressive earnestness and sincerity, which showed me plainly that, so far from his imagining that there was any thing ridiculous or funny about his story, he regarded it as a really important matter, and admired its two heroes as men of transcendent genius in finesse. To me, the spectacle of a man drifting serenely along through such a queer yarn without ever smiling, was exquisitely absurd. As I said before, I asked him to tell me what he knew of Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, and he replied as follows. I let him go on in his own way, and never interrupted him once:

There was a feller here once by the name of Jim Smiley, in the winter of '49 -- or may be it was the spring of '50 -- I don't recollect exactly, somehow, though what makes me think it was one or the other is because I remember the big flume wasn't finished when he first came to the camp; but any way, he was the curiosest man about always betting on any thing that turned up you ever see, if he could get any body to bet on the other side; and if he couldn't, he'd change sides. Any way that suited the other man would suit him -- any way just so's he got a bet, he was satisfied. But still he was lucky, uncommon lucky; he most always come out winner. He was always ready and laying for a chance; there couldn't be no solitry thing mentioned but that feller'd offer to bet on it, and take any side you please, as I was just telling you. If there was a horse-race, you'd find him flush, or you'd find him busted at the end of it; if there was a dog-fight, he'd bet on it; if there was a cat-fight, he'd bet on it; if there was a chicken-fight, he'd bet on it; why, if there was two birds setting on a fence, he would bet you which one would fly first; or if there was a camp-meeting, he would be there reg'lar, to bet on Parson Walker, which he judged to be the best exhorter about here, and so he was, too, and a good man. If he even seen a straddle-bug start to go anywheres, he would bet you how long it would take him to get wherever he was going to, and if you took him up, he would foller that straddle-bug to Mexico but what he would find out where he was bound for and how long he was on the road. Lots of the boys here has seen that Smiley, and can tell you about him. Why, it never made no difference to him -- he would bet on any thing -- the dangdest feller. Parson Walker's wife laid very sick once, for a good while, and it seemed as if they warn't going to save her; but one morning he come in, and Smiley asked how she was, and he said she was considerable better -- thank the Lord for his inf'nit mercy -- and coming on so smart that, with the blessing of Prov'dence, she'd get well yet; and Smiley, before he thought, says, "Well, I'll risk two-and-a-half that she don't, any way."

Thish-yer Smiley had a mare -- the boys called her the fifteen-minute nag, but that was only in fun, you know, because, of course, she was faster than that -- and he used to win money on that horse, for all she was so slow and always had the asthma, or the distemper, or the consumption, or something of that kind. They used to give her two or three hundred yards start, and then pass her under way; but always at the fag-end of the race she'd get excited and desperate-like, and come cavorting and straddling up, and scattering her legs around limber, sometimes in the air, and sometimes out to one side amongst the fences, and kicking up m-o-r-e dust, and raising m-o-r-e racket with her coughing and sneezing and blowing her nose -- and always fetch up at the stand just about a neck ahead, as near as you could cipher it down.

And he had a little small bull pup, that to look at him you'd think he wan't worth a cent, but to set around and look ornery, and lay for a chance to steal something. But as soon as money was up on him, he was a different dog; his under-jaw'd begin to stick out like the fo'castle of a steamboat, and his teeth would uncover, and shine savage like the furnaces. And a dog might tackle him, and bully-rag him, and bite him, and throw him over his shoulder two or three times, and Andrew Jackson -- which was the name of the pup -- Andrew Jackson would never let on but what he was satisfied, and hadn't expected nothing else -- and the bets being doubled and doubled on the other side all the time, till the money was all up; and then all of a sudden he would grab that other dog jest by the j'int of his hind leg and freeze to it -- not chew, you understand, but only jest grip and hang on till they throwed up the sponge, if it was a year. Smiley always come out winner on that pup, till he harnessed a dog once that didn't have no hind legs, because they'd been sawed off by a circular saw, and when the thing had gone along far enough, and the money was all up, and he come to make a snatch for his pet holt, he saw in a minute how he'd been imposed on, and how the other dog had him in the door, so to speak, and he 'peared surprised, and then he looked sorter discouraged-like, and didn't try no more to win the fight, and so he got shucked out bad. He give Smiley a look, as much as to say his heart was broke, and it was his fault, for putting up a dog that hadn't no hind legs for him to take holt of, which was his main dependence in a fight, and then he limped off a piece and laid down and died. It was a good pup, was that Andrew Jackson, and would have made a name for hisself if he'd lived, for the stuff was in him, and he had genius -- I know it, because he hadn't had no opportunities to speak of, and it don't stand to reason that a dog could make such a fight as he could under them circumstances, if he hadn't no talent. It always makes me feel sorry when I think of that last fight of his'n, and the way it turned out.

Well, thish-yer Smiley had rat-tarriers, and chicken cocks, and tom-cats, and all them kind of things, till you couldn't rest, and you couldn't fetch nothing for him to bet on but he'd match you. He ketched a frog one day, and took him home, and said he cal'klated to edercate him; and so he never done nothing for three months but set in his back yard and learn that frog to jump. And you bet you he did learn him, too. He'd give him a little punch behind, and the next minute you'd see that frog whirling in the air like a doughnut -- see him turn one summerset, or may be a couple, if he got a good start, and come down flat-footed and all right, like a cat. He got him up so in the matter of catching flies, and kept him in practice so constant, that he'd nail a fly every time as far as he could see him. Smiley said all a frog wanted was education, and he could do most any thing -- and I believe him. Why, I've seen him set Dan'l Webster down here on this floor -- Dan'l Webster was the name of the frog -- and sing out, "Flies, Dan'l, flies!" and quicker'n you could wink, he'd spring straight up, and snake a fly off'n the counter there, and flop down on the floor again as solid as a gob of mud, and fall to scratching the side of his head with his hind foot as indifferent as if he hadn't no idea he'd been doin' any more'n any frog might do. You never see a frog so modest and straightfor'ard as he was, for all he was so gifted. And when it come to fair and square jumping on a dead level, he could get over more ground at one straddle than any animal of his breed you ever see. Jumping on a dead level was his strong suit, you understand; and when it come to that, Smiley would ante up money on him as long as he had a red. Smiley was monstrous proud of his frog, and well he might be, for fellers that had traveled and been everywheres, all said he laid over any frog that ever they see.

Well, Smiley kept the beast in a little lattice box, and he used to fetch him down town sometimes and lay for a bet. One day a feller -- a stranger in the camp, he was -- come across him with his box, and says:

"What might it be that you've got in the box?"

And Smiley says, sorter indifferent like, "It might be a parrot, or it might be a canary, may be, but it an't -- it's only just a frog."

And the feller took it, and looked at it careful, and turned it round this way and that, and says, "H'm -- so 'tis. Well, what's he good for?" "Well," Smiley says, easy and careless, "He's good enough for one thing, I should judge -- he can outjump any frog in Calaveras county." The feller took the box again, and took another long, particular look, and give it back to Smiley, and says, very deliberate, "Well, I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog." "May be you don't," Smiley says. "May be you understand frogs, and may be you don't understand 'em; may be you've had experience, and may be you an't only a amature, as it were. Anyways, I've got my opinion, and I'll risk forty dollars that he can outjump any frog in Calaveras county." And the feller studied a minute, and then says, kinder sad like, "Well, I'm only a stranger here, and I an't got no frog; but if I had a frog, I'd bet you." And then Smiley says, "That's all right -- that's all right -- if you'll hold my box a minute, I'll go and get you a frog." And so the feller took the box, and put up his forty dollars along with Smiley's, and set down to wait. So he set there a good while thinking and thinking to hisself, and then he got the frog out and prized his mouth open and took a teaspoon and filled him full of quail shot -- filled him pretty near up to his chin -- and set him on the floor. Smiley he went to the swamp and slopped around in the mud for a long time, and finally he ketched a frog, and fetched him in, and give him to this feller, and says: "Now, if you're ready, set him alongside of Dan'l, with his fore-paws just even with Dan'l, and I'll give the word." Then he says, "One -- two -- three -- jump!" and him and the feller touched up the frogs from behind, and the new frog hopped off, but Dan'l give a heave, and hysted up his shoulders -- so -- like a Frenchman, but it wan't no use -- he couldn't budge; he was planted as solid as an anvil, and he couldn't no more stir than if he was anchored out. Smiley was a good deal surprised, and he was disgusted too, but he didn't have no idea what the matter was, of course. The feller took the money and started away; and when he was going out at the door, he sorter jerked his thumb over his shoulders -- this way -- at Dan'l, and says again, very deliberate, "Well, I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog." Smiley he stood scratching his head and looking down at Dan'l a long time, and at last he says, "I do wonder what in the nation that frog throw'd off for -- I wonder if there an't something the matter with him -- he 'pears to look mighty baggy, somehow." And he ketched Dan'l by the nap of the neck, and lifted him up and says, "Why, blame my cats, if he don't weigh five pound!" and turned him upside down, and he belched out a double handful of shot. And then he see how it was, and he was the maddest man -- he set the frog down and took out after that feller, but he never ketched him. And ---- [Here Simon Wheeler heard his name called from the front yard, and got up to see what was wanted.] And turning to me as he moved away, he said: "Just set where you are, stranger, and rest easy -- I an't going to be gone a second."

But, by your leave, I did not think that a continuation of the history of the enterprising vagabond Jim Smiley would be likely to afford me much information concerning the Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, and so I started away. At the door I met the sociable Wheeler returning, and he buttonholed me and recommenced: "Well, thish-yer Smiley had a yaller one-eyed cow that didn't have no tail, only jest a short stump like a bannanner, and ----" "Oh! hang Smiley and his afflicted cow!" I muttered, good-naturedly, and bidding the old gentleman good-day, I departed.

Eudora Welty Eudora Welty was born April 13, 1909 in Jackson, Mississippi. Much of her written work is influenced by her childhood experiences, and her talent for writing was evident from an early age, having published several stories in children's magazines before her teenage years. From 1925 to 1927, she attended Mississippi State College for Women in Columbus, transferring to the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where she graduated. Later, she attended the Columbia University School of Business. In 1931, Eudora experienced tragedy for the first time when her father died. She returned to Jackson to be with her mother and brother, helping them financially with money earned by writing the Jackson and Delta society news for the Memphis Commercial Appeal. From 1935 to 1936, Welty worked as a junior publicity agent for President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal program, the Works Progress Administration (WPA). She traveled throughout Mississippi, promoting the building of roads, airstrips, canning factories, and other efforts to improve the economy of the state. In 1936, Welty published her first important short story, which she followed with many novels and collections of short stories. At this time, she was again beset by tragedy with the illness, and subsequent deaths, of her mother and brother. Welty was now alone in the world, so she consoled herself with her writing. Eudora Welty's represents the Modern Period of American Literature. Her short stories are the richest and most diverse of her works because these stories tell us about the author and the Southern charm, dialect, and local color of her home. After suffering from a bout of pneumonia, Welty died July 23, 2001, in a hospital in Jackson.

"A Worn Path" In this chapter, you will read Eudora Welty's "A Worn Path." Before you begin reading, print the Short Story Elements Worksheet. As you read, look for each of the four elements and all sub-elements under the plot section. Also, be sure to determine if the theme is a generalization about life or a lesson a character or characters learn, or both. Unlike many of her other short stories, Eudora Welty’s "A Worn Path" uses simple organization with a hidden meaning. The story is about an old black woman who makes a journey into Natchez during the Christmas season to get medicine for her sick grandson. Welty gave characters names that have significant meanings to the story. In "A Worn Path," the story’s meaning centers on the myth of the Phoenix. Early on, Welty hints at the Phoenix by naming her character Phoenix Jackson and describing her as carrying a stick that “made a grave and persistent noise in the still air, that seemed meditative like the chirping of a solitary bird.” Welty also describes the woman as having great age and the coloring of a bird. As the story advances, the woman’s similarity with the Phoenix becomes more apparent, culminating with return to her youth, or “rebirth,” when she arrives at the charity ward. A Worn Path BY Eudora Welty

It was December—a bright frozen day in the early morning. Far out in the country there was an old Negro woman with her head tied red rag, coming along a path through the pinewoods. Her name was Phoenix Jackson. She was very old and small and she walked slowly in the dark pine shadows, moving a little from side to side in her steps, with the balanced heaviness and lightness of a pendulum in a grand-father clock. She carried a thin, small cane made from an umbrella, and with this she kept tapping the frozen earth in front of her. This made a grave and persistent noise in the still air, that seemed meditative like the chirping of a solitary little bird. She wore a dark striped dress reaching down to her shoe tops, and an equally long apron of bleached sugar sacks, with a full pocket: all neat and tidy, but every time she took a step she might have fallen over her shoelaces, which dragged from her unlaced shoes. She looked straight ahead. Her eyes were blue with age. Her skin had a pattern all its own of numberless branching wrinkles and as though a whole little tree stood in the middle of her forehead, but a golden color ran underneath, and the two knobs of her cheeks were illumined by a yellow burning under the dark. Under the red rag her hair came down on her neck in the frailest of ringlets, still black, and with an odor like copper. Now and then there was a quivering in the thicket. Old Phoenix said, "Out of my way, all you foxes, owls, beetles, jack rabbits, coons and wild animals!. . . Keep out from under these feet, little bob-whites.... Keep the big wild hogs out of my path. Don't let none of those come running my direction. I got a long way." Under her small black-freckled hand her cane, limber as a buggy whip, would switch at the brush as if to rouse up any hiding things. On she went. The woods were deep and still. The sun made the pine needles almost too bright to look at, up where the wind rocked. The cones dropped as light as feathers. Down in the hollow was the mourning dove—it was not too late for him. The path ran up a hill. "Seem like there is chains about my feet, time I get this far," she said, in the voice of argument old people keep to use with themselves. "Something always take a hold of me on this hill— pleads I should stay." After she got to the top she turned and gave a full, severe look behind her where she had come. "Up through pines," she said at length. "Now down through oaks." Her eyes opened their widest, and she started down gently. But before she got to the bottom of the hill a bush caught her dress. Her fingers were busy and intent, but her skirts were full and long, so that before she could pull them free in one place they were caught in another. It was not possible to allow the dress to tear. "I in the thorny bush," she said. "Thorns, you doing your appointed work. Never want to let folks pass, no sir. Old eyes thought you was a pretty little green bush." Finally, trembling all over, she stood free, and after a moment dared to stoop for her cane. "Sun so high!" she cried, leaning back and looking, while the thick tears went over her eyes. "The time getting all gone here." At the foot of this hill was a place where a log was laid across the creek. "Now comes the trial," said Phoenix. Putting her right foot out, she mounted the log and shut her eyes. Lifting her skirt, leveling her cane fiercely before her, like a festival figure in some parade, she began to march across. Then she opened her eyes and she was safe on the other side. "I wasn't as old as I thought," she said. But she sat down to rest. She spread her skirts on the bank around her and folded her hands over her knees. Up above her was a tree in a pearly cloud of mistletoe. She did not dare to close her eyes, and when a little boy brought her a plate with a slice of marble-cake on it she spoke to him. "That would be acceptable," she said. But when she went to take it there was just her own hand in the air. So she left that tree, and had to go through a barbed-wire fence. There she had to creep and crawl, spreading her knees and stretching her fingers like a baby trying to climb the steps. But she talked loudly to herself: she could not let her dress be torn now, so late in the day, and she could not pay for having her arm or her leg sawed off if she got caught fast where she was. At last she was safe through the fence and risen up out in the clearing. Big dead trees, like black men with one arm, were standing in the purple stalks of the withered cotton field. There sat a buzzard. "Who you watching?" In the furrow she made her way along. "Glad this not the season for bulls," she said, looking sideways, "and the good Lord made his snakes to curl up and sleep in the winter. A pleasure I don't see no two-headed snake coming around that tree, where it come once. It took a while to get by him, back in the summer." She passed through the old cotton and went into a field of dead corn. It whispered and shook and was taller than her head. "Through the maze now," she said, for there was no path. Then there was something tall, black, and skinny there, moving before her. At first she took it for a man. It could have been a man dancing in the field. But she stood still and listened, and it did not make a sound. It was as silent as a ghost. "Ghost," she said sharply, "who be you the ghost of? For I have heard of nary death close by." But there was no answer--only the ragged dancing in the wind. She shut her eyes, reached out her hand, and touched a sleeve. She found a coat and inside that an emptiness, cold as ice. "You scarecrow," she said. Her face lighted. "I ought to be shut up for good," she said with laughter. "My senses is gone. I too old. I the oldest people I ever know. Dance, old scarecrow," she said, "while I dancing with you." She kicked her foot over the furrow, and with mouth drawn down, shook her head once or twice in a little strutting way. Some husks blew down and whirled in streamers about her skirts. Then she went on, parting her way from side to side with the cane, through the whispering field. At last she came to the end, to a wagon track where the silver grass blew between the red ruts. The quail were walking around like pullets, seeming all dainty and unseen. "Walk pretty," she said. "This the easy place. This the easy going." She followed the track, swaying through the quiet bare fields, through the little strings of trees silver in their dead leaves, past cabins silver from weather, with the doors and windows boarded shut, all like old women under a spell sitting there. "I walking in their sleep," she said, nodding her head vigorously. In a ravine she went where a spring was silently flowing through a hollow log. Old Phoenix bent and drank. "Sweet-gum makes the water sweet," she said, and drank more. "Nobody know who made this well, for it was here when I was born." The track crossed a swampy part where the moss hung as white as lace from every limb. "Sleep on, alligators, and blow your bubbles." Then the track went into the road. Deep, deep the road went down between the high green-colored banks. Overhead the live-oaks met, and it was as dark as a cave. A black dog with a lolling tongue came up out of the weeds by the ditch. She was meditating, and not ready, and when he came at her she only hit him a little with her cane. Over she went in the ditch, like a little puff of milkweed. Down there, her senses drifted away. A dream visited her, and she reached her hand up, but nothing reached down and gave her a pull. So she lay there and presently went to talking. "Old woman," she said to herself, "that black dog come up out of the weeds to stall you off, and now there he sitting on his fine tail, smiling at you." A white man finally came along and found her—a hunter, a young man, with his dog on a chain. "Well, Granny!" he laughed. "What are you doing there?" "Lying on my back like a June-bug waiting to be fumed over, mister," she said, reaching up her hand. He lifted her up, gave her a swing in the air, and set her down. "Anything broken, Granny?" "No sir, them old dead weeds is springy enough," said Phoenix, when she had got her breath. "I thank you for your trouble." "Where do you live, Granny?" he asked, while the two dogs were growling at each other. "Away back yonder, sir, behind the ridge. You can't even see it from here." "On your way home?" "No sir, I going to town." "Why, that's too far! That's as far as I walk when I come out myself, and I get something for my trouble." He patted the stuffed bag he carried, and there hung down a little closed claw. It was one of the bob-whites, with its beak hooked bitterly to show it was dead. "Now you go on home, Granny!" "I bound to go to town, mister," said Phoenix. "The time come around." He gave another laugh, filling the whole landscape. "I know you old colored people! Wouldn't miss going to town to see Santa Claus!" But something held old Phoenix very still. The deep lines in her face went into a fierce and different radiation. Without warning, she had seen with her own eyes a flashing nickel fall out of the man's pocket onto the ground. "How old are you, Granny?" he was saying. "There is no telling, mister," she said, "no telling." Then she gave a little cry and clapped her hands and said, "Git on away from here, dog! Look! Look at that dog!" She laughed as if in admiration. "He ain't scared of nobody. He a big black dog." She whispered, "Sic him!" "Watch me get rid of that cur," said the man. "Sic him, Pete! Sic him!" Phoenix heard the dogs fighting, and heard the man running and throwing sticks. She even heard a gunshot. But she was slowly bending forward by that time, further and further forward, the lids stretched down over her eyes, as if she were doing this in her sleep. Her chin was lowered almost to her knees. The yellow palm of her hand came out from the fold of her apron. Her fingers slid down and along the ground under the piece of money with the grace and care they would have in lifting an egg from under a setting hen. Then she slowly straightened up, she stood erect, and the nickel was in her apron pocket. A bird flew by. Her lips moved. "God watching me the whole time. I come to stealing." The man came back, and his own dog panted about them. "Well, I scared him off that time," he said, and then he laughed and lifted his gun and pointed it at Phoenix. She stood straight and faced him. "Doesn't the gun scare you?" he said, still pointing it. "No, sir, I seen plenty go off closer by, in my day, and for less than what I done," she said, holding utterly still. He smiled, and shouldered the gun. "Well, Granny," he said, "you must be a hundred years old, and scared of nothing. I'd give you a dime if I had any money with me. But you take my advice and stay home, and nothing will happen to you." "I bound to go on my way, mister," said Phoenix. She inclined her head in the red rag. Then they went in different directions, but she could hear the gun shooting again and again over the hill. She walked on. The shadows hung from the oak trees to the road like curtains. Then she smelled wood-smoke, and smelled the river, and she saw a steeple and the cabins on their steep steps. Dozens of little black children whirled around her. There ahead was Natchez shining. Bells were ringing. She walked on. In the paved city it was Christmas time. There were red and green electric lights strung and crisscrossed everywhere, and all turned on in the daytime. Old Phoenix would have been lost if she had not distrusted her eyesight and depended on her feet to know where to take her. She paused quietly on the sidewalk where people were passing by. A lady came along in the crowd, carrying an armful of red-, green- and silver-wrapped presents; she gave off perfume like the red roses in hot summer, and Phoenix stopped her. "Please, missy, will you lace up my shoe?" She held up her foot. "What do you want, Grandma?" "See my shoe," said Phoenix. "Do all right for out in the country, but wouldn't look right to go in a big building." "Stand still then, Grandma," said the lady. She put her packages down on the sidewalk beside her and laced and tied both shoes tightly. "Can't lace 'em with a cane," said Phoenix. "Thank you, missy. I doesn't mind asking a nice lady to tie up my shoe, when I gets out on the street." Moving slowly and from side to side, she went into the big building, and into a tower of steps, where she walked up and around and around until her feet knew to stop. She entered a door, and there she saw nailed up on the wall the document that had been stamped with the gold seal and framed in the gold frame, which matched the dream that was hung up in her head. "Here I be," she said. There was a fixed and ceremonial stiffness over her body. "A charity case, I suppose," said an attendant who sat at the desk before her. But Phoenix only looked above her head. There was sweat on her face, the wrinkles in her skin shone like a bright net. "Speak up, Grandma," the woman said. "What's your name? We must have your history, you know. Have you been here before? What seems to be the trouble with you?" Old Phoenix only gave a twitch to her face as if a fly were bothering her. "Are you deaf?" cried the attendant. But then the nurse came in. "Oh, that's just old Aunt Phoenix," she said. "She doesn't come for herself—she has a little grandson. She makes these trips just as regular as clockwork. She lives away back off the Old Natchez Trace." She bent down. "Well, Aunt Phoenix, why don't you just take a seat? We won't keep you standing after your long trip." She pointed. The old woman sat down, bolt upright in the chair. "Now, how is the boy?" asked the nurse. Old Phoenix did not speak. "I said, how is the boy?" But Phoenix only waited and stared straight ahead, her face very solemn and withdrawn into rigidity. "Is his throat any better?" asked the nurse. "Aunt Phoenix, don't you hear me? Is your grandson's throat any better since the last time you came for the medicine?" With her hands on her knees, the old woman waited, silent, erect and motionless, just as if she were in armor. "You mustn't take up our time this way, Aunt Phoenix," the nurse said. "Tell us quickly about your grandson, and get it over. He isn't dead, is he?' At last there came a flicker and then a flame of comprehension across her face, and she spoke. "My grandson. It was my memory had left me. There I sat and forgot why I made my long trip." "Forgot?" The nurse frowned. "After you came so far?" Then Phoenix was like an old woman begging a dignified forgiveness for waking up frightened in the night. "I never did go to school, I was too old at the Surrender," she said in a soft voice. "I'm an old woman without an education. It was my memory fail me. My little grandson, he is just the same, and I forgot it in the coming." "Throat never heals, does it?" said the nurse, speaking in a loud, sure voice to old Phoenix. By now she had a card with something written on it, a little list. "Yes. Swallowed lye. When was it?—January—two, three years ago—" Phoenix spoke unasked now. "No, missy, he not dead, he just the same. Every little while his throat begin to close up again, and he not able to swallow. He not get his breath. He not able to help himself. So the time come around, and I go on another trip for the soothing medicine." "All right. The doctor said as long as you came to get it, you could have it," said the nurse. "But it's an obstinate case." "My little grandson, he sit up there in the house all wrapped up, waiting by himself," Phoenix went on. "We is the only two left in the world. He suffer and it don't seem to put him back at all. He got a sweet look. He going to last. He wear a little patch quilt and peep out holding his mouth open like a little bird. I remembers so plain now. I not going to forget him again, no, the whole enduring time. I could tell him from all the others in creation." "All right." The nurse was trying to hush her now. She brought her a bottle of medicine. "Charity," she said, making a check mark in a book. Old Phoenix held the bottle close to her eyes, and then carefully put it into her pocket. "I thank you," she said. "It's Christmas time, Grandma," said the attendant. "Could I give you a few pennies out of my purse?" "Five pennies is a nickel," said Phoenix stiffly. "Here's a nickel," said the attendant. Phoenix rose carefully and held out her hand. She received the nickel and then fished the other nickel out of her pocket and laid it beside the new one. She stared at her palm closely, with her head on one side. Then she gave a tap with her cane on the floor. "This is what come to me to do," she said. "I going to the store and buy my child a little windmill they sells, made out of paper. He going to find it hard to believe there such a thing in the world. I'll march myself back where he waiting, holding it straight up in this hand." She lifted her free hand, gave a little nod, turned around, and walked out of the doctor's office. Then her slow step began on the stairs, going down.

Flannery O’Connor Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964) was an American writer who combined the comic with the tragic and brutal. O'Connor's short stories are representative of the Post-Modern Period of American Literature and are considered her finest work. Since her book A Good Man is Hard to Find, and Other Stories was published in 1955, O’Connor has been regarded as a master of the short story form. She died at age 39, and her body of work was small, consisting of thirty-one stories, two novels, and a handful of speeches and letters. O'Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia, the only child of a Catholic family in the region known as the “Christ-haunted”' Bible belt of the Southern States, where the spiritual heritage of the region had a deep impact on her writing. At age 12, O'Connor moved with her family to her mother’s birthplace, Milledgeville, where she attended Peabody High School. Later she attended Georgia State College for Women and edited the college magazine, graduating in 1945. O’Connor continued her studies at the University of Iowa, where, at age 21, she published her first short story, "The Geranium." In 1947, she received a Master of Fine Arts degree in Literature, and a year later she moved to New York where she published four chapters of Wise Blood in Mademoiselle, Sewanee Review, and Partisan Review, with the completed novel appearing in 1952. Wise Blood is about a young religious enthusiast who attempts to establish a church without Christ. In 1950, O'Connor suffered her first attack from disseminated lupus, a debilitating blood disease that killed her father. She returned to Milledgeville to live with her mother, and despite her illness, O'Connor continued to write. After an abdominal operation reactivated her lupus, O'Connor died on August 3, 1964.

"A Good Man is Hard to Find" In this chapter, you will read Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find." Before you begin reading, print the Short Story Elements Worksheet. As you read look for each of the four elements and all sub-elements under the plot section. Also, be sure to determine if the theme is a generalization about life or a lesson a character or characters learn, or both. Flannery O’Connor’s "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is an excellent introduction to her short stories because it contains all the elements of her literary achievements. The story starts out as a satire of a family vacation and ends up as a tale of cold-blooded murder. As a Southerner, O’Connor used a rich tradition of humor, Southern detail, and characters that show their uncertainty toward the South, as shown in the Grandmother in the story. The Grandmother represents a Southern stereotype that is afraid of the unfamiliar and obsessed with social class. O’Connor was a Southern Catholic who instilled into her stories her belief that a person may not gain points in heaven by performing good deeds; instead, he or she may use free will to accept or reject the grace of God. Also, O’Connor would often show grace as an act of violence, as in the confrontation between the superficial Grandmother and the Misfit. As the struggle between the Misfit and the Grandmother proceeds, it goes beyond efforts to save herself and her family to a discussion about faith. The Grandmother believes, without proof, in the saving grace of Jesus. The Misfit, on the other hand, does not believe anything he has not seen for himself. As the argument continues, the Grandmother touches the Misfit in an act of grace; however, the Misfit rejects her kindness and kills her.

A Good Man Is Hard To Find The grandmother didn't want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennes- see and she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey's mind. Bailey was the son she lived with, her only boy. He was sitting on the edge of his chair at the table, bent over the orange sports section of the Journal. "Now look here, Bailey," she said, "see here, read this," and she stood with one hand on her thin hip and the other rattling the newspaper at his bald head. "Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn't answer to my conscience if I did." Bailey didn't look up from his reading so she wheeled around then and faced the children's mother, a young woman in slacks, whose face was as broad and innocent as a cabbage and was tied around with a green head-kerchief that had two points on the top like rabbit's ears. She was sitting on the sofa, feeding the baby his apricots out of a jar. "The children have been to Florida before," the old lady said. "You all ought to take them somewhere else for a change so they would see different parts of the world and be broad. They never have been to east Tennessee." The children's mother didn't seem to hear her but the eight-year-old boy, John Wesley, a stocky child with glasses, said, "If you don't want to go to Florida, why dontcha stay at home?" He and the little girl, June Star, were reading the funny papers on the floor. "She wouldn't stay at home to be queen for a day," June Star said without raising her yellow head. "Yes and what would you do if this fellow, The Misfit, caught you?" the grandmother asked. "I'd smack his face," John Wesley said. "She wouldn't stay at home for a million bucks," June Star said. "Afraid she'd miss something. She has to go everywhere we go." "All right, Miss," the grandmother said. "Just re- member that the next time you want me to curl your hair." June Star said her hair was naturally curly. The next morning the grandmother was the first one in the car, ready to go. She had her big black valise that looked like the head of a hippopotamus in one corner, and underneath it she was hiding a basket with Pitty Sing, the cat, in it. She didn't intend for the cat to be left alone in the house for three days because he would miss her too much and she was afraid he might brush against one of her gas burners and accidentally asphyxiate himself. Her son, Bailey, didn't like to arrive at a motel with a cat. She sat in the middle of the back seat with John Wesley and June Star on either side of her. Bailey and the children's mother and the baby sat in front and they left Atlanta at eight forty-five with the mileage on the car at 55890. The grandmother wrote this down because she thought it would be interesting to say how many miles they had been when they got back. It took them twenty minutes to reach the outskirts of the city. The old lady settled herself comfortably, removing her white cotton gloves and putting them up with her purse on the shelf in front of the back window. The children's mother still had on slacks and still had her head tied up in a green kerchief, but the grandmother had on a navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the brim and a navy blue dress with a small white dot in the print. Her collars and cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline she had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady. She said she thought it was going to be a good day for driving, neither too hot nor too cold, and she cautioned Bailey that the speed limit was fifty-five miles an hour and that the patrolmen hid themselves behind billboards and small clumps of trees and sped out after you before you had a chance to slow down. She pointed out interesting details of the scenery: Stone Mountain; the blue granite that in some places came up to both sides of the highway; the brilliant red clay banks slightly streaked with purple; and the various crops that made rows of green lace-work on the ground. The trees were full of silver-white sunlight and the meanest of them sparkled. The children were reading comic magazines and their mother and gone back to sleep. "Let's go through Georgia fast so we won't have to look at it much," John Wesley said. "If I were a little boy," said the grandmother, "I wouldn't talk about my native state that way. Tennessee has the mountains and Georgia has the hills." "Tennessee is just a hillbilly dumping ground," John Wesley said, "and Georgia is a lousy state too." "You said it," June Star said. "In my time," said the grandmother, folding her thin veined fingers, "children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else. People did right then. Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!" she said and pointed to a Negro child standing in the door of a shack. "Wouldn't that make a picture, now?" she asked and they all turned and looked at the little Negro out of the back window. He waved "He didn't have any britches on," June Star said. "He probably didn't have any," the grandmother explained. "Little riggers in the country don't have things like we do. If I could paint, I'd paint that picture," she said. The children exchanged comic books. The grandmother offered to hold the baby and the children's mother passed him over the front seat to her. She set him on her knee and bounced him and told him about the things they were passing. She rolled her eyes and screwed up her mouth and stuck her leathery thin face into his smooth bland one. Occasionally he gave her a faraway smile. They passed a large cotton field with five or fix graves fenced in the middle of it, like a small island. "Look at the graveyard!" the grandmother said, pointing it out. "That was the old family burying ground. That belonged to the plantation." "Where's the plantation?" John Wesley asked. "Gone With the Wind" said the grandmother. "Ha. Ha." When the children finished all the comic books they had brought, they opened the lunch and ate it. The grandmother ate a peanut butter sandwich and an olive and would not let the children throw the box and the paper napkins out the window. When there was nothing else to do they played a game by choosing a cloud and making the other two guess what shape it suggested. John Wesley took one the shape of a cow and June Star guessed a cow and John Wesley said, no, an automobile, and June Star said he didn't play fair, and they began to slap each other over the grandmother. The grandmother said she would tell them a story if they would keep quiet. When she told a story, she rolled her eyes and waved her head and was very dramatic. She said once when she was a maiden lady she had been courted by a Mr. Edgar Atkins Teagarden from Jasper, Georgia. She said he was a very good-looking man and a gentleman and that he brought her a watermelon every Saturday afternoon with his initials cut in it, E. A. T. Well, one Saturday, she said, Mr. Teagarden brought the watermelon and there was nobody at home and he left it on the front porch and returned in his buggy to Jasper, but she never got the watermelon, she said, because a nigger boy ate it when he saw the initials, E. A. T. ! This story tickled John Wesley's funny bone and he giggled and giggled but June Star didn't think it was any good. She said she wouldn't marry a man that just brought her a watermelon on Saturday. The grandmother said she would have done well to marry Mr. Teagarden because he was a gentle man and had bought Coca-Cola stock when it first came out and that he had died only a few years ago, a very wealthy man. They stopped at The Tower for barbecued sand- wiches. The Tower was a part stucco and part wood filling station and dance hall set in a clearing outside of Timothy. A fat man named Red Sammy Butts ran it and there were signs stuck here and there on the building and for miles up and down the highway saying, TRY RED SAMMY'S FAMOUS BARBECUE. NONE LIKE FAMOUS RED SAMMY'S! RED SAM! THE FAT BOY WITH THE HAPPY LAUGH. A VETERAN! RED SAMMY'S YOUR MAN! Red Sammy was lying on the bare ground outside The Tower with his head under a truck while a gray monkey about a foot high, chained to a small chinaberry tree, chattered nearby. The monkey sprang back into the tree and got on the highest limb as soon as he saw the children jump out of the car and run toward him. Inside, The Tower was a long dark room with a counter at one end and tables at the other and dancing space in the middle. They all sat down at a board table next to the nickelodeon and Red Sam's wife, a tall burnt-brown woman with hair and eyes lighter than her skin, came and took their order. The children's mother put a dime in the machine and played "The Tennessee Waltz," and the grandmother said that tune always made her want to dance. She asked Bailey if he would like to dance but he only glared at her. He didn't have a naturally sunny disposition like she did and trips made him nervous. The grandmother's brown eyes were very bright. She swayed her head from side to side and pretended she was dancing in her chair. June Star said play something she could tap to so the children's mother put in another dime and played a fast number and June Star stepped out onto the dance floor and did her tap routine. "Ain't she cute?" Red Sam's wife said, leaning over the counter. "Would you like to come be my little girl?" "No I certainly wouldn't," June Star said. "I wouldn't live in a broken-down place like this for a million bucks!" and she ran back to the table. "Ain't she cute?" the woman repeated, stretching her mouth politely. "Arn't you ashamed?" hissed the grandmother. Red Sam came in and told his wife to quit lounging on the counter and hurry up with these people's order. His khaki trousers reached just to his hip bones and his stomach hung over them like a sack of meal swaying under his shirt. He came over and sat down at a table nearby and let out a combination sigh and yodel. "You can't win," he said. "You can't win," and he wiped his sweating red face off with a gray handkerchief. "These days you don't know who to trust," he said. "Ain't that the truth?" "People are certainly not nice like they used to be," said the grandmother. "Two fellers come in here last week," Red Sammy said, "driving a Chrysler. It was a old beat-up car but it was a good one and these boys looked all right to me. Said they worked at the mill and you know I let them fellers charge the gas they bought? Now why did I do that?" "Because you're a good man!" the grandmother said at once. "Yes'm, I suppose so," Red Sam said as if he were struck with this answer. His wife brought the orders, carrying the five plates all at once without a tray, two in each hand and one balanced on her arm. "It isn't a soul in this green world of God's that you can trust," she said. "And I don't count nobody out of that, not nobody," she repeated, looking at Red Sammy. "Did you read about that criminal, The Misfit, that's escaped?" asked the grandmother. "I wouldn't be a bit surprised if he didn't attack this place right here," said the woman. "If he hears about it being here, I wouldn't be none surprised to see him. If he hears it's two cent in the cash register, I wouldn't be a tall surprised if he . . ." "That'll do," Red Sam said. "Go bring these people their Co'-Colas," and the woman went off to get the rest of the order. "A good man is hard to find," Red Sammy said. "Everything is getting terrible. I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more." He and the grandmother discussed better times. The old lady said that in her opinion Europe was entirely to blame for the way things were now. She said the way Europe acted you would think we were made of money and Red Sam said it was no use talking about it, she was exactly right. The children ran outside into the white sunlight and looked at the monkey in the lacy chinaberry tree. He was busy catching fleas on himself and biting each one carefully between his teeth as if it were a delicacy. They drove off again into the hot afternoon. The grandmother took cat naps and woke up every few minutes with her own snoring. Outside of Toombsboro she woke up and recalled an old plantation that she had visited in this neighborhood once when she was a young lady. She said the house had six white columns across the front and that there was an avenue of oaks leading up to it and two little wooden trellis arbors on either side in front where you sat down with your suitor after a stroll in the garden. She recalled exactly which road to turn off to get to it. She knew that Bailey would not be willing to lose any time looking at an old house, but the more she talked about it, the more she wanted to see it once again and find out if the little twin arbors were still standing. "There was a secret:-panel in this house," she said craftily, not telling the truth but wishing that she were, "and the story went that all the family silver was hidden in it when Sherman came through but it was never found . . ." "Hey!" John Wesley said. "Let's go see it! We'll find it! We'll poke all the woodwork and find it! Who lives there? Where do you turn off at? Hey Pop, can't we turn off there?" "We never have seen a house with a secret panel!" June Star shrieked. "Let's go to the house with the secret panel! Hey Pop, can't we go see the house with the secret panel!" "It's not far from here, I know," the grandmother said. "It wouldn't take over twenty minutes." Bailey was looking straight ahead. His jaw was as rigid as a horseshoe. "No," he said. The children began to yell and scream that they wanted to see the house with the secret panel. John Wesley kicked the back of the front seat and June Star hung over her mother's shoulder and whined desperately into her ear that they never had any fun even on their vacation, that they could never do what THEY wanted to do. The baby began to scream and John Wesley kicked the back of the seat so hard that his father could feel the blows in his kidney. "All right!" he shouted and drew the car to a stop at the side of the road. "Will you all shut up? Will you all just shut up for one second? If you don't shut up, we won't go anywhere." "It would be very educational for them," the grandmother murmured. "All right," Bailey said, "but get this: this is the only time we're going to stop for anything like this. This is the one and only time." "The dirt road that you have to turn down is about a mile back," the grandmother directed. "I marked it when we passed." "A dirt road," Bailey groaned. After they had turned around and were headed toward the dirt road, the grandmother recalled other points about the house, the beautiful glass over the front doorway and the candle-lamp in the hall. John Wesley said that the secret panel was probably in the fireplace. "You can't go inside this house," Bailey said. "You don't know who lives there." "While you all talk to the people in front, I'll run around behind and get in a window," John Wesley suggested. "We'll all stay in the car," his mother said. They turned onto the dirt road and the car raced roughly along in a swirl of pink dust. The grandmother recalled the times when there were no paved roads and thirty miles was a day's journey. The dirt road was hilly and there were sudden washes in it and sharp curves on dangerous embankments. All at once they would be on a hill, looking down over the blue tops of trees for miles around, then the next minute, they would be in a red depression with the dust-coated trees looking down on them. "This place had better turn up in a minute," Bailey said, "or I'm going to turn around." The road looked as if no one had traveled on it in months. "It's not much farther," the grandmother said and just as she said it, a horrible thought came to her. The thought was so embarrassing that she turned red in the face and her eyes dilated and her feet jumped up, upsetting her valise in the corner. The instant the valise moved, the newspaper top she had over the basket under it rose with a snarl and Pitty Sing, the cat, sprang onto Bailey's shoulder. The children were thrown to the floor and their mother, clutching the baby, was thrown out the door onto the ground; the old lady was thrown into the front seat. The car turned over once and landed right-side-up in a gulch off the side of the ro