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The ideology serves as a powerful mechanism not only for uniting individuals with similar interests but also for exchanging experiences and ideas, embodying the principle that sharing is indeed caring. is a great example of how a community of enthusiasts can change the world. Its are highly impressive and we can claim that most of the Internet works on Linux’s horsepower. open source Linux usage statistics Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships. Linus Torvalds Managing an open-source project carries significant weight, particularly as its popularity grows: it brings forth the spotlight on technical expertise and architectural choices. Popular projects could be a treasure trove of knowledge for anyone who wants to boost their skills. Let's delve deeply into a few notable projects. Why focus on open source? First of all, it embodies top-tier coding standards, integrating best practices championed by industry leaders. My firm belief lies in the notion that genuine programmers are fueled by passion and curiosity. Why not learn something new and integrate it into our daily practice? Secondly, hacking code could take your skills to a whole new level if you are consistent and tenacious. Last but not least, it could help you jump right into the project you like: find new buddies, brand yourself as a skilled developer, and get the job of your dreams. Help the community to solve their problems, and the reward will not keep you waiting. Take your cup of coffee, let’s get straight to work. Linux Kernel The very heart of the Linux system — its kernel. Indeed, this is not merely a singular project, but rather a constellation of diverse projects unified by a central idea: tying up different parts of hardware and providing a sustainable, secure API for the end users. The Linux codebase is huge and contains a lot of vendor-specific code, but it is well-organized and structured. I strongly recommend everyone interested to read . It might be a bit outdated but it will foster a solid understanding of how the kernel internals work. The kernel version I have on the table is 6.3. this Radix tree for memory management At the very beginning of the main.c we can spot definitions of some functions like . It is responsible for initializing the data structure that is used in memory management processes. radix_tree_init In the codebase, the radix_tree_root struct is an alias for a wrapper above the struct. It a lock (pthread mutex); xa_flags — the enum that tells how memory allocations will be performed; and the pointer to xa_head. XArray holds gfp_t struct xarray {
	spinlock_t	xa_lock;
/* private: The rest of the data structure is not to be used directly. */
	gfp_t		xa_flags;
	void __rcu *	xa_head;
}; typedef enum {
	GFP_KERNEL,
	GFP_ATOMIC,
	__GFP_HIGHMEM,
	__GFP_HIGH
} gfp_t; If all of the entries in the array are NULL, xa_head is a NULL pointer. If the only non-NULL entry in the array is at index 0, xa_head is that entry. If any other entry in the array is non-NULL, xa_head points to a xa_node — the internal struct that handles offset, counts, slots, and other fields. struct xa_node {
	unsigned char	shift;		/* Bits remaining in each slot */
	unsigned char	offset;		/* Slot offset in parent */
	unsigned char	count;		/* Total entry count */
	unsigned char	nr_values;	/* Value entry count */
	struct xa_node __rcu *parent;	/* NULL at top of tree */
	struct xarray	*array;		/* The array we belong to */
	union {
		struct list_head private_list;	/* For tree user */
		struct rcu_head	rcu_head;	/* Used when freeing node */
	};
	void __rcu	*slots[XA_CHUNK_SIZE];
	union {
		unsigned long	tags[XA_MAX_MARKS][XA_MARK_LONGS];
		unsigned long	marks[XA_MAX_MARKS][XA_MARK_LONGS];
	};
}; The radix tree data structure contains “nodes” that link with each other based on the int key (index). The node contains several slots, each of which can handle a pointer. The main idea here is to keep a tree wide, not deep — it is effective for fast addressing. When the function is called by a user (it can be a device driver), the following actions occur: radix_tree_insert __radix_create_tree creates a slot in the tree if it is necessary, based on the passed index which is used to check the size of the tree. Or raise an error if there is no available memory; insert_entities pass an item to the slot; some asserts check that offsets are applied correctly to the data structure. Wherever a user of the tree is going to look up a specific page, they need to look up it with an index. The lookup phase is quite efficient because of the broad nature of the structure. It is based on the key that is modified on the user side. Take a look at the for more insight into how it works. article Users of this data structure include GPU and network device drivers, which maintain memory page pointers in a structured format rather than juggling them. It's like having a pocket dimension! This is where Linus's earlier quote comes into play. Consider the essence of the data you handle; aim for efficiency, compactness, and cleanliness in its usage, regardless of the language or project you're involved in. In 2021 Liam Howlett (no, another Liam) and Matthew Wilcox introduced data structure. I encourage you to read more about the intentions, motivation, and realization details and . the maple tree here here Kubernetes Let's direct our steps to the point of the architectural design. One of the most famous orchestrators, invented by Google and spread around the world at rocket pace — Kubernetes. There are a lot of fairly new resources out there covering the internal details, for example here is a that you can start exploring as you delve deeper into the details. repository The whole point of this article is to get some useful insights that answer not just “how” but “why”. Understanding the motivation is crucial, in my opinion, that is how we can “catch a mindset” to re-implement all those cool staff in our daily job. Let’s briefly recall what the Kubernetes is. This is the system that manages containers within the applications and provides orchestration features such as scaling and high availability. Kubernetes’ main components are the API service, the scheduler, etcd — the key-value storage, the controller service, and the agent service — “kubelete” on each node to manage containers. Guys from developed it to utilize the compute resources of their cloud . Their main intention was a “great container management system”. Google as efficiently as possible Architectural highlights The very first thing I’d like to highlight is the distributed nature of execution. To synchronize all of the user’s entities states the orchestrator uses etcd — the key-value storage which information in a tree data structure. It is a common pattern that presents a to manage different states between multiple entities, with one slight difference: the storage is also used to “instruct” all of the components about the final cluster’s state. keeps So the whole system uses the storage as a source of truth to keep maintaining the desired state of a cluster. source of truth One more nice architectural decision is the — container runtime interface. CRI It allows Kubernetes to work not just with Docker but many others (CRI-O, Dockerd) by defining the , just like one from RFC. The kubelet agent utilizes GRPC to connect with a runtime, so in case one would like to implement its own runtime, they should implement the exact interface on their side. The concept aims to loosen the connection between the kubelet agent and a runtime which manages containers. interaction protocol At the end let’s briefly look at the “sidecar” pattern that was presented by third-party services like and has recently been within the core Kubernetes functionality. Istio implemented The whole idea is to embed a service to the main application that helps to handle some specific cases such as proxy or load-balancing. Kubernetes manages this container as a whole different entity of a pod: the container can the entire pod status; restarting and updating separately of the main application; resources with the main app. influence share The main point here is that the main application may know nothing about the sidecar, while the behavior of the entire service can be changed. Bless Open Source, we how new functionality was implemented by the community. can trace PostgreSQL PostgreSQL is not just a database but a whole platform. After the client connects to the server a new is established. The query goes through many while executed: parsing, the rewriting system, planning and executing. backend process stages The PSQL server has a bunch of that allow developers to interact with different internal components. For example, we can our scan provider aimed, for some optimizations at each stage. Or create an . Even though the overall process required for specific knowledge and the documentation could be a bit knotty, interfaces write index add-on the loosely coupled architecture empowers developers to vastly expand functionality. There are many that we can use within the platform and the “bloom index” is one of them. extensions realization Bloom index I faced a problem of growing indexes back in the day. The task was to implement the custom search filter: every column in the database and the combination of it could be a key for a search. Building indexes for each and every column could be a bad decision because of the complexity and size. For example, if we are sure that item==2 is False there is no reason to check all other fields. I remembered the — the probabilistic data structure that could return a false-positive result (because of hash collision) and be quite sure when the data is absent. As I’ve mentioned earlier PSQL has an extension for this data structure. The very first idea that comes to mind is to reduce the dimension of possible variations removing the query values that we are sure are not in the database. Bloom filter Bloom filter in a nutshell — it’s just a bit array. Every item would be hashed with a certain amount of different functions that translates it to some index. That index will set the exact bit in the filter’s array. In the case of 3 different functions, an item would set 3 different bits. At the lookup phase, the query would be also hashed and compared within the bits in the array. If at least one of the bits is not set, we can be sure the item is absent. If all of them were set, it is still possible that the item was not placed — that is because each bit we have found could refer to other items — the collision takes place. Check out this great of how it works within the examples. explanation To start using the bloom index within the PSQL we need to create it properly: CREATE INDEX bloom_idx_bar ON foo.bar USING bloom (id,dept_id,zipcode) WITH (length=80, col1=4, col2=2, col3=4); where “length” — is the length of the array of bits for each row; and the “col” numbers — describe how many bits would be occupied by the column (how many functions would be applied). By increasing these numbers we can reduce false-positive shots. Of index creation in PSQL is a bit complicated, we should understand internal data structures and protocols; let’s try to make the observation short and sweet. The function promotes the data structure’s functions as an IndexAmRoutine pointer — a pointer to the , that represents an API for the index access methods. blhandler struct The function creates the new index: allocate memory pages, scan the table for tuples that will be indexed and in the structure. blbuild BloomState typedef struct BloomState
{
	FmgrInfo	hashFn[INDEX_MAX_KEYS];
	Oid			collations[INDEX_MAX_KEYS];
	BloomOptions opts;			/* copy of options on index's metapage */
	int32		nColumns;

	/*
	 * sizeOfBloomTuple is index-specific, and it depends on reloptions, so
	 * precompute it
	 */
	Size		sizeOfBloomTuple;
} BloomState; When we insert data to the index, we pass it in the form of an array within the array of booleans that marks NULL values to skip it at the indexing phase. The BloomFormTuple function forms the BloomTuple struct from the data — this is the part where the data would be signed. The tuple would be passed to a memory page after that phase. BloomTuple *
BloomFormTuple(BloomState *state, ItemPointer iptr, Datum *values, bool *isnull)
{
	int			i;
	BloomTuple *res = (BloomTuple *) palloc0(state->sizeOfBloomTuple);

	res->heapPtr = *iptr;

	/* Blooming each column */
	for (i = 0; i < state->nColumns; i++)
	{
		/* skip nulls */
		if (isnull[i])
			continue;

		signValue(state, res->sign, values[i], i);
	}

	return res;
} At the scan phase the forms the struct which contains the index’s data and the makes the TIDBitmap struct from it — the internal data structure that holds item pointers — reading BloomState page by page. blbeginscan IndexScanDesc blgetbitmap I hope the explanation isn't too confusing, PSQL internals are quite specific. Bloom filter is a pretty common data structure, PSQL uses the same approach for some purposes. It is also broadly used in many different situations: from cache-hitting cases to implementations. internal kernel packet filter More to know In the article, I’ve just lifted the veil of the shiny open-source world. There are many more great implementations you could meet in the wild: and — if you’d like to catch the magic of the “fair” resource allocation; — to understand the simultaneous editing in Google Docs. CFS CFQ operational transform and CRDT The whole software world is in motion: sidecars and operators to be the new model for software delivery; eBPF is in a to change the service-mesh post. claimed hurry Take a look at the elegance of the great things’ internals.

Algorithms in the Wild: Reusable Insights and Strategies from the Open Source Community

This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 DEED license. Authors: (1) Ke Hong, Tsinghua University & Infinigence-AI; (2) Guohao Dai, Shanghai Jiao Tong University & Infinigence-AI; (3) Jiaming Xu, Shanghai Jiao Tong University & Infinigence-AI; (4) Qiuli Mao, Tsinghua University & Infinigence-AI; (5) Xiuhong Li, Peking University; (6) Jun Liu, Shanghai Jiao Tong University & Infinigence-AI; (7) Kangdi Chen, Infinigence-AI; (8) Yuhan Dong, Tsinghua University; (9) Yu Wang, Tsinghua University. Table of Links Abstract & Introduction Backgrounds Asynchronized Softmax with Unified Maximum Value Flat GEMM Optimization with Double Buffering Heuristic Dataflow with Hardware Resource Adaption Evaluation Related Works Conclusion & References 8 Conclusions We propose FlashDecoding++, a fast Large Language Model inference engine in this paper. FlashDecoding++ accelerates mainstream LLMs with multiple hardware backend support. FlashDecoding++ proposes three novel designs: the asynchronized softmax with unified max value, the flat GEMM optimization with double buffering, and the heuristic dataflow with hardware resource adaption, achieving up to × and × speedup on NVIDIA and AMD GPUs compared with Hugging Face implementations. FlashDecoding++ also achieves an average of × speedup compared with state-of-the-art LLM inference engines, FlashDecoding, on various LLMs. 4.86 2.18 1.37 References [1] Hugo Touvron, Louis Martin, Kevin Stone, Peter Albert, Amjad Almahairi, Yasmine Babaei, Nikolay Bashlykov, Soumya Batra, Prajjwal Bhargava, Shruti Bhosale, et al. Llama 2: Open foundation and fine-tuned chat models. arXiv preprint arXiv:2307.09288, 2023. [2] Arun James Thirunavukarasu, Darren Shu Jeng Ting, Kabilan Elangovan, Laura Gutierrez, Ting Fang Tan, and Daniel Shu Wei Ting. Large language models in medicine. Nature medicine, 29(8):1930–1940, 2023. [3] Rohan Anil, Andrew M. Dai, Orhan Firat, Melvin Johnson, Dmitry Lepikhin, Alexandre Passos, Siamak Shakeri, Emanuel Taropa, Paige Bailey, Zhifeng Chen, Eric Chu, Jonathan H. Clark, Laurent El Shafey, Yanping Huang, Kathy Meier-Hellstern, Gaurav Mishra, Erica Moreira, Mark Omernick, Kevin Robinson, Sebastian Ruder, Yi Tay, Kefan Xiao, Yuanzhong Xu, Yujing Zhang, Gustavo Hernandez Abrego, Junwhan Ahn, Jacob Austin, Paul Barham, Jan Botha, James Bradbury, Siddhartha Brahma, Kevin Brooks, Michele Catasta, Yong Cheng, Colin Cherry, Christopher A. Choquette-Choo, Aakanksha Chowdhery, Clément Crepy, Shachi Dave, Mostafa Dehghani, Sunipa Dev, Jacob Devlin, Mark Díaz, Nan Du, Ethan Dyer, Vlad Feinberg, Fangxiaoyu Feng, Vlad Fienber, Markus Freitag, Xavier Garcia, Sebastian Gehrmann, Lucas Gonzalez, Guy Gur-Ari, Steven Hand, Hadi Hashemi, Le Hou, Joshua Howland, Andrea Hu, Jeffrey Hui, Jeremy Hurwitz, Michael Isard, Abe Ittycheriah, Matthew Jagielski, Wenhao Jia, Kathleen Kenealy, Maxim Krikun, Sneha Kudugunta, Chang Lan, Katherine Lee, Benjamin Lee, Eric Li, Music Li, Wei Li, YaGuang Li, Jian Li, Hyeontaek Lim, Hanzhao Lin, Zhongtao Liu, Frederick Liu, Marcello Maggioni, Aroma Mahendru, Joshua Maynez, Vedant Misra, Maysam Moussalem, Zachary Nado, John Nham, Eric Ni, Andrew Nystrom, Alicia Parrish, Marie Pellat, Martin Polacek, Alex Polozov, Reiner Pope, Siyuan Qiao, Emily Reif, Bryan Richter, Parker Riley, Alex Castro Ros, Aurko Roy, Brennan Saeta, Rajkumar Samuel, Renee Shelby, Ambrose Slone, Daniel Smilkov, David R. So, Daniel Sohn, Simon Tokumine, Dasha Valter, Vijay Vasudevan, Kiran Vodrahalli, Xuezhi Wang, Pidong Wang, Zirui Wang, Tao Wang, John Wieting, Yuhuai Wu, Kelvin Xu, Yunhan Xu, Linting Xue, Pengcheng Yin, Jiahui Yu, Qiao Zhang, Steven Zheng, Ce Zheng, Weikang Zhou, Denny Zhou, Slav Petrov, and Yonghui Wu. Palm 2 technical report, 2023. [4] Jan Clusmann, Fiona R Kolbinger, Hannah Sophie Muti, Zunamys I Carrero, Jan-Niklas Eckardt, Narmin Ghaffari Laleh, Chiara Maria Lavinia Löffler, Sophie-Caroline Schwarzkopf, Michaela Unger, Gregory P Veldhuizen, et al. The future landscape of large language models in medicine. Communications Medicine, 3(1):141, 2023. [5] Can Cui, Yunsheng Ma, Xu Cao, Wenqian Ye, and Ziran Wang. Receive, reason, and react: Drive as you say with large language models in autonomous vehicles. arXiv preprint arXiv:2310.08034, 2023. [6] OpenAI. Openai pricing. [Online], 2023. https://openai.com/pricing. [7] Nerdynav. Up-to-date chatgpt statistics and user numbers [oct 2023]. [Online], 2023. https://nerdynav.com/ chatgpt-statistics. [8] AFZAL AHMAD DYLAN PATEL. The inference cost of search disruption - large language model cost analysis. [Online], 2023. https://www.semianalysis.com/p/the-inference-cost-of-search-disruption. [9] Reza Yazdani Aminabadi, Samyam Rajbhandari, Ammar Ahmad Awan, Cheng Li, Du Li, Elton Zheng, Olatunji Ruwase, Shaden Smith, Minjia Zhang, Jeff Rasley, et al. Deepspeed-inference: enabling efficient inference of transformer models at unprecedented scale. In SC22: International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis, pages 1–15. IEEE, 2022. [10] Ying Sheng, Lianmin Zheng, Binhang Yuan, Zhuohan Li, Max Ryabinin, Beidi Chen, Percy Liang, Christopher Re, Ion Stoica, and Ce Zhang. Flexgen: High-throughput generative inference of large language models with a single gpu. 2023. [11] Woosuk Kwon, Zhuohan Li, Siyuan Zhuang, Ying Sheng, Lianmin Zheng, Cody Hao Yu, Joseph Gonzalez, Hao Zhang, and Ion Stoica. Efficient memory management for large language model serving with pagedattention. In Proceedings of the 29th Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, pages 611–626, 2023. [12] Sensetime. Openppl: A high-performance deep learning inference platform. [Online], 2023. https://openppl. ai/home. [13] Tri Dao, Daniel Haziza, Francisco Massa, and Grigory Sizov. Flash-decoding for long-context inference. [Online], 2023. https://crfm.stanford.edu/2023/10/12/flashdecoding.html. [14] Neal Vaidya, Fred Oh, and Nick Comly. Optimizing inference on large language models with nvidia tensorrt-llm, now publicly available. [Online], 2023. https://github.com/NVIDIA/TensorRT-LLM. [15] Sensetime. A light and fast inference service for llm. [Online], 2023. https://github.com/ModelTC/ lightllm. [16] Text generation inference: Fast inference optimize for llms. [Online], 2023. https://github.com/ huggingface/text-generation-inference/. [17] Mlc llm: Machine learning compilation for large language models. [Online], 2023. https://github.com/ mlc-ai/mlc-llm. [18] Tri Dao, Dan Fu, Stefano Ermon, Atri Rudra, and Christopher Ré. Flashattention: Fast and memory-efficient exact attention with io-awareness. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 35:16344–16359, 2022. [19] Tri Dao. Flashattention-2: Faster attention with better parallelism and work partitioning. arXiv preprint arXiv:2307.08691, 2023. [20] Aaron Pham, Chaoyu Yang, Sean Sheng, Shenyang Zhao, Sauyon Lee, Bo Jiang, Fog Dong, Xipeng Guan, and Frost Ming. OpenLLM: Operating LLMs in production, June 2023. [21] Zihang Dai, Zhilin Yang, Yiming Yang, Jaime Carbonell, Quoc V Le, and Ruslan Salakhutdinov. Transformer-xl: Attentive language models beyond a fixed-length context. arXiv preprint arXiv:1901.02860, 2019. [22] Z Dong, T Tang, L Li, and WX Zhao. A survey on long text modeling with transformers. arxiv 2023. arXiv preprint arXiv:2302.14502. [23] Guangxuan Xiao, Yuandong Tian, Beidi Chen, Song Han, and Mike Lewis. Efficient streaming language models with attention sinks. arXiv preprint arXiv:2309.17453, 2023. [24] NVIDIA. cublas: Basic linear algebra on nvidia gpus. [Online], 2017. https://developer.nvidia.com/ cublas. [25] NVIDIA. Cutlass: Cuda templates for linear algebra subroutines. [Online], 2017. https://github.com/ NVIDIA/cutlass. [26] Ashish Vaswani, Noam Shazeer, Niki Parmar, Jakob Uszkoreit, Llion Jones, Aidan N Gomez, Łukasz Kaiser, and Illia Polosukhin. Attention is all you need. Advances in neural information processing systems, 30, 2017. [27] Vinod Nair and Geoffrey E Hinton. Rectified linear units improve restricted boltzmann machines. In Proceedings of the 27th international conference on machine learning (ICML-10), pages 807–814, 2010. [28] Dan Hendrycks and Kevin Gimpel. Gaussian error linear units (gelus). arXiv preprint arXiv:1606.08415, 2016. [29] Prajit Ramachandran, Barret Zoph, and Quoc V Le. Searching for activation functions. arXiv preprint arXiv:1710.05941, 2017. [30] John Bridle. Training stochastic model recognition algorithms as networks can lead to maximum mutual information estimation of parameters. Advances in neural information processing systems, 2, 1989. [31] Stephen Merity, Caiming Xiong, James Bradbury, and Richard Socher. Pointer sentinel mixture models, 2016. [32] NVIDIA. Nvidia tensor core. [Online], 2023. https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/ tensor-cores/. [33] NVIDIA. Fastertransformer: About transformer related optimization, including bert, gpt. [Online], 2017. https://github.com/NVIDIA/FasterTransformer. [34] Siping Wang. Fastgemv: High-speed gemv kernels. [Online], 2023. https://github.com/wangsiping97/ FastGEMV. [35] Thomas Wolf, Lysandre Debut, Victor Sanh, Julien Chaumond, Clement Delangue, Anthony Moi, Pierric Cistac, Tim Rault, Remi Louf, Morgan Funtowicz, Joe Davison, Sam Shleifer, Patrick von Platen, Clara Ma, Yacine Jernite, Julien Plu, Canwen Xu, Teven Le Scao, Sylvain Gugger, Mariama Drame, Quentin Lhoest, and Alexander Rush. Transformers: State-of-the-art natural language processing. In Proceedings of the 2020 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing: System Demonstrations, pages 38–45, Online, October 2020. Association for Computational Linguistics. [36] Susan Zhang, Stephen Roller, Naman Goyal, Mikel Artetxe, Moya Chen, Shuohui Chen, Christopher Dewan, Mona Diab, Xian Li, Xi Victoria Lin, Todor Mihaylov, Myle Ott, Sam Shleifer, Kurt Shuster, Daniel Simig, Punit Singh Koura, Anjali Sridhar, Tianlu Wang, and Luke Zettlemoyer. Opt: Open pre-trained transformer language models, 2022. [37] Zhengxiao Du, Yujie Qian, Xiao Liu, Ming Ding, Jiezhong Qiu, Zhilin Yang, and Jie Tang. Glm: General language model pretraining with autoregressive blank infilling. In Proceedings of the 60th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers), pages 320–335, 2022. [38] NVIDIA. Nvidia tensorrt: An sdk for high-performance deep learning inference. [Online]. https://developer. nvidia.com/tensorrt.

FlashDecoding++: Faster Large Language Model Inference on GPUs: Conclusion & References

A Conversation with Picatrix Picori — The Manga-Style AI Illustrator

পিকাট্রিক্স পিকোরির সাথে একটি কথোপকথন — দ্য মাঙ্গা-স্টাইল এআই ইলাস্ট্রেটর

Ein Gespräch mit Picatrix Picori – dem KI-Illustrator im Manga-Stil

Una conversación con Picatrix Picori: el ilustrador de IA estilo manga

Une conversation avec Picatrix Picori — L'illustrateur IA de style manga

पिकाट्रिक्स पिकोरी के साथ बातचीत - मंगा-स्टाइल एआई इलस्ट्रेटर

マンガ風のAIイラストレーター、Picatrix Picori氏との対談

Picatrix Picori와의 대화 — 만화 스타일의 AI 일러스트레이터

Uma conversa com Picatrix Picori – o ilustrador de IA estilo mangá

Разговор с Пикатриксом Пикори — иллюстратором искусственного интеллекта в стиле манга

Manga Stili Yapay Zeka İllüstratörü Picatrix Picori ile Söyleşi

Cuộc trò chuyện với Picatrix Picori - Họa sĩ minh họa AI theo phong cách Manga

对话 Picatrix Picori — 漫画风格的 AI 插画师

Gemini - A Family of Highly Capable Multimodal Models: Discussion and Conclusion, References

90 Stories To Learn About Startup Strategy

Mr. Cheesacre's Fate

Now—soft awhile—have I arrived so near the end?

Our escort had been directed to prepare our abode for the night at the inn

The spirit of emigration crept in among the few survivors

Phineas Redux by Anthony Trollope, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . PHINEAS IN PRISON. here PHINEAS IN PRISON. Phineas Finn himself, during the fortnight in which he was carried backwards and forwards between his prison and the Bow Street Police-office, was able to maintain some outward show of manly dignity,—as though he felt that the terrible accusation and great material inconvenience to which he was subjected were only, and could only be, temporary in their nature, and that the truth would soon prevail. During this period he had friends constantly with him,—either Mr. Low, or Lord Chiltern, or Barrington Erle, or his landlord, Mr. Bunce, who, in these days, was very true to him. And he was very frequently visited by the attorney, Mr. Wickerby, who had been expressly recommended to him for this occasion. If anybody could be counted upon to see him through his difficulty it was Wickerby. But the company of Mr. Wickerby was not pleasant to him, because, as far as he could judge, Mr. Wickerby did not believe in his innocence. Mr. Wickerby was willing to do his best for him; was, so to speak, moving heaven and earth on his behalf; was fully conscious that this case was a great affair, and in no respect similar to those which were constantly placed in his hands; but there never fell from him a sympathetic expression of assurance of his client's absolute freedom from all taint of guilt in the matter. From day to day, and ten times a day, Phineas would express his indignant surprise that any one should think it possible that he had done this deed, but to all these expressions Mr. Wickerby would make no answer whatever. At last Phineas asked him the direct question. "I never suspect anybody of anything," said Mr. Wickerby. "Do you believe in my innocence?" demanded Phineas. "Everybody is entitled to be believed innocent till he has been proved to be guilty," said Mr. Wickerby. Then Phineas appealed to his friend Mr. Low, asking whether he might not be allowed to employ some lawyer whose feelings would be more in unison with his own. But Mr. Low adjured him to make no change. Mr. Wickerby understood the work and was a most zealous man. His client was entitled to his services, but to nothing more than his services. And so Mr. Wickerby carried on the work, fully believing that Phineas Finn had in truth murdered Mr. Bonteen. But the prisoner was not without sympathy and confidence. Mr. Low, Lord Chiltern, and Lady Chiltern, who, on one occasion, came to visit him with her husband, entertained no doubts prejudicial to his honour. They told him perhaps almost more than was quite true of the feelings of the world in his favour. He heard of the friendship and faith of the Duchess of Omnium, of Madame Goesler, and of Lady Laura Kennedy,—hearing also that Lady Laura was now a widow. And then at length his two sisters came over to him from Ireland, and wept and sobbed, and fell into hysterics in his presence. They were sure that he was innocent, as was every one, they said, throughout the length and breadth of Ireland. And Mrs. Bunce, who came to see Phineas in his prison, swore that she would tear the judge from his bench if he did not at once pronounce a verdict in favour of her darling without waiting for any nonsense of a jury. And Bunce, her husband, having convinced himself that his lodger had not committed the murder, was zealous in another way, taking delight in the case, and proving that no jury could find a verdict of guilty. During that week Phineas, buoyed up by the sympathy of his friends, and in some measure supported by the excitement of the occasion, carried himself well, and bore bravely the terrible misfortune to which he had been subjected by untoward circumstances. But when the magistrate fully committed him, giving the first public decision on the matter from the bench, declaring to the world at large that on the evidence as given, prima facie, he, Phineas Finn, must be regarded as the murderer of Mr. Bonteen, our hero's courage almost gave way. If such was now the judicial opinion of the magistrate, how could he expect a different verdict from a jury in two months' time, when he would be tried before a final court? As far as he could understand, nothing more could be learned on the matter. All the facts were known that could be known,—as far as he, or rather his friends on his behalf, were able to search for facts. It seemed to him that there was no tittle whatever of evidence against him. He had walked straight home from his club with the life-preserver in his pocket, and had never turned to the right or to the left. Till he found himself committed, he would not believe that any serious and prolonged impediment could be thrown in the way of his liberty. He would not believe that a man altogether innocent could be in danger of the gallows on a false accusation. It had seemed to him that the police had kept their hold on him with a rabid ferocity, straining every point with the view of showing that it was possible that he should have been the murderer. Every policeman who had been near him, carrying him backward and forward from his prison, or giving evidence as to the circumstances of the locality and of his walk home on that fatal night, had seemed to him to be an enemy. But he had looked for impartiality from the magistrate,—and now the magistrate had failed him. He had seen in court the faces of men well known to him,—men known in the world,—with whom he had been on pleasant terms in Parliament, who had sat upon the bench while he was standing as a culprit between two constables; and they who had been his familiar friends had appeared at once to have been removed from him by some unmeasurable distance. But all that he had, as it were, discounted, believing that a few hours,—at the very longest a few days,—would remove the distance; but now he was sent back to his prison, there to await his trial for the murder. And it seemed to him that his committal startled no one but himself. Could it be that even his dearest friends thought it possible that he had been guilty? When that day came, and he was taken back to Newgate on his last journey there from Bow Street, Lord Chiltern had returned for a while to Harrington Hall, having promised that he would be back in London as soon as his business would permit; but Mr. Low came to him almost immediately to his prison room. "This is a pleasant state of things," said Phineas, with a forced laugh. But as he laughed he also sobbed, with a low, irrepressible, convulsive movement in his throat. "A man! Oh, yes, I can be a man. A murderer you mean. I shall have to be—hung, I suppose." "May God, in His mercy, forbid." "No;—not in His mercy; in His justice. There can be no need for mercy here,—not even from Heaven. When they take my life may He forgive my sins through the merits of my Saviour. But for this there can be no mercy. Why do you not speak? Do you mean to say that I am guilty?" "I am sure that you are innocent." "And yet, look here. What more can be done to prove it than has been done? That blundering fool will swear my life away." Then he threw himself on his bed, and gave way to his sobs. That evening he was alone,—as, indeed, most of his evenings had been spent, and the minutes were minutes of agony to him. The external circumstances of his position were as comfortable as circumstances would allow. He had a room to himself looking out through heavy iron bars into one of the courts of the prison. The chamber was carpeted, and was furnished with bed and chairs and two tables. Books were allowed him as he pleased, and pen and ink. It was May, and no fire was necessary. At certain periods of the day he could walk alone in the court below,—the restriction on such liberty being that at other certain hours the place was wanted for other prisoners. As far as he knew no friend who called was denied to him, though he was by no means certain that his privilege in that respect would not be curtailed now that he had been committed for trial. His food had been plentiful and well cooked, and even luxuries, such as fish and wine and fruit, had been supplied to him. That the fruit had come from the hot-houses of the Duchess of Omnium, and the wine from Mr. Low's cellar, and the fish and lamb and spring vegetables, the cream and coffee and fresh butter from the unrestricted orders of another friend, that Lord Chiltern had sent him champagne and cigars, and that Lady Chiltern had given directions about the books and stationery, he did not know. But as far as he could be consoled by such comforts, there had been the consolation. If lamb and salad could make him happy he might have enjoyed his sojourn in Newgate. Now, this evening, he was past all enjoyment. It was impossible that he should read. How could a man fix his attention on any book, with a charge of murder against himself affirmed by the deliberate decision of a judge? And he knew himself to be as innocent as the magistrate himself. Every now and then he would rise from his bed, and almost rush across the room as though he would dash his head against the wall. Murder! They really believed that he had deliberately murdered the man;—he, Phineas Finn, who had served his country with repute, who had sat in Parliament, who had prided himself on living with the best of his fellow-creatures, who had been the friend of Mr. Monk and of Lord Cantrip, the trusted intimate of such women as Lady Laura and Lady Chiltern, who had never put his hand to a mean action, or allowed his tongue to speak a mean word! He laughed in his wrath, and then almost howled in his agony. He thought of the young loving wife who had lived with him little more than for one fleeting year, and wondered whether she was looking down upon him from Heaven, and how her spirit would bear this accusation against the man upon whose bosom she had slept, and in whose arms she had gone to her long rest. "They can't believe it," he said aloud. "It is impossible. Why should I have murdered him?" And then he remembered an example in Latin from some rule of grammar, and repeated it to himself over and over again.—"No one at an instant,—of a sudden,—becomes most base." It seemed to him that there was such a want of knowledge of human nature in the supposition that it was possible that he should have committed such a crime. And yet—there he was, committed to take his trial for the murder of Mr. Bonteen. The days were long, and it was daylight till nearly nine. Indeed the twilight lingered, even through those iron bars, till after nine. He had once asked for candles, but had been told that they could not be allowed him without an attendant in the room,—and he had dispensed with them. He had been treated doubtless with great respect, but nevertheless he had been treated as a prisoner. They hardly denied him anything that he asked, but when he asked for that which they did not choose to grant they would annex conditions which induced him to withdraw his request. He understood their ways now, and did not rebel against them. On a sudden he heard the key in the door, and the man who attended him entered the room with a candle in his hand. A lady had come to call, and the governor had given permission for her entrance. He would return for the light,—and for the lady, in half an hour. He had said all this before Phineas could see who the lady was. And when he did see the form of her who followed the gaoler, and who stood with hesitating steps behind him in the doorway, he knew her by her sombre solemn raiment, and not by her countenance. She was dressed from head to foot in the deepest weeds of widowhood, and a heavy veil fell from her bonnet over her face. "Lady Laura, is it you?" said Phineas, putting out his hand. Of course it was Lady Laura. While the Duchess of Omnium and Madame Goesler were talking about such a visit, allowing themselves to be deterred by the wisdom of Mr. Low, she had made her way through bolts and bars, and was now with him in his prison. "Oh, Phineas!" She slowly raised her veil, and stood gazing at him. "Of all my troubles this,—to see you here,—is the heaviest." "And of all my consolations to see you here is the greatest." He should not have so spoken. Could he have thought of things as they were, and have restrained himself, he should not have uttered words to her which were pleasant but not true. There came a gleam of sunshine across her face as she listened to him, and then she threw herself into his arms, and wept upon his shoulder. "I did not expect that you would have found me," he said. She took the chair opposite to that on which he usually sat, and then began her tale. Her cousin, Barrington Erle, had brought her there, and was below, waiting for her in the Governor's house. He had procured an order for her admission that evening, direct from Sir Harry Coldfoot, the Home Secretary,—which, however, as she admitted, had been given under the idea that she and Erle were to see him together. "But I would not let him come with me," she said. "I could not have spoken to you, had he been here;—could I?" "It would not have been the same, Lady Laura." He had thought much of his mode of addressing her on occasions before this, at Dresden and at Portman Square, and had determined that he would always give her her title. Once or twice he had lacked the courage to be so hard to her. Now as she heard the name the gleam of sunshine passed from her altogether. "We hardly expected that we should ever meet in such a place as this?" he said. "I cannot understand it. They cannot really think you killed him." He smiled, and shook his head. Then she spoke of her own condition. "You have heard what has happened? You know that I am—a widow?" "Yes;—I had heard." And then he smiled again. "You will have understood why I could not come to you,—as I should have done but for this little accident." "He died on the day that they arrested you. Was it not strange that such a double blow should fall together? Oswald, no doubt, told you all." "He told me of your husband's death." "But not of his will? Perhaps he has not seen you since he heard it." Lord Chiltern had heard of the will before his last visit to Phineas in Newgate, but had not chosen then to speak of his sister's wealth. "I have heard nothing of Mr. Kennedy's will." "It was made immediately after our marriage,—and he never changed it, though he had so much cause of anger against me." "He has not injured you, then,—as regards money." "Injured me! No, indeed. I am a rich woman,—very rich. All Loughlinter is my own,—for life. But of what use can it be to me?" He in his present state could tell her of no uses for such a property. "I suppose, Phineas, it cannot be that you are really in danger?" "In the greatest danger, I fancy." "Do you mean that they will say—you are guilty?" "The magistrates have said so already." "But surely that is nothing. If I thought so, I should die. If I believed it, they should never take me out of the prison while you are here. Barrington says that it cannot be. Oswald and Violet are sure that such a thing can never happen. It was that Jew who did it." "I cannot say who did it. I did not." "You! Oh, Phineas! The world must be mad when any can believe it!" "But they do believe it?" This, he said, meaning to ask a question as to that outside world. "We do not. Barrington says—" "What does Barrington say?" "That there are some who do;—just a few, who were Mr. Bonteen's special friends." "The police believe it. That is what I cannot understand;—men who ought to be keen-eyed and quick-witted. That magistrate believes it. I saw men in the Court who used to know me well, and I could see that they believed it. Mr. Monk was here yesterday." "Does he believe it?" "I asked him, and he told me—no. But I did not quite trust him as he told me. There are two or three who believe me innocent." "Who are they?" "Low, and Chiltern, and his wife;—and that man Bunce, and his wife. If I escape from this,—if they do not hang me,—I will remember them. And there are two other women who know me well enough not to think me a murderer." "Who are they, Phineas?" "Madame Goesler, and the Duchess of Omnium." "Have they been here?" she asked, with jealous eagerness. "Oh, no. But I hear that it is so,—and I know it. One learns to feel even from hearsay what is in the minds of people." "And what do I believe, Phineas? Can you read my thoughts?" "I know them of old, without reading them now." Then he put forth his hand and took hers. "Had I murdered him in real truth, you would not have believed it." "Because I love you, Phineas." Then the key was again heard in the door, and Barrington Erle appeared with the gaolers. The time was up, he said, and he had come to redeem his promise. He spoke cordially to his old friend, and grasped the prisoner's hand cordially,—but not the less did he believe that there was blood on it, and Phineas knew that such was his belief. It appeared on his arrival that Lady Laura had not at all accomplished the chief object of her visit. She had brought with her various cheques, all drawn by Barrington Erle on his banker,—amounting altogether to many hundreds of pounds,—which it was intended that Phineas should use from time to time for the necessities of his trial. Barrington Erle explained that the money was in fact to be a loan from Lady Laura's father, and was simply passed through his banker's account. But Phineas knew that the loan must come from Lady Laura, and he positively refused to touch it. His friend, Mr. Low, was managing all that for him, and he would not embarrass the matter by a fresh account. He was very obstinate, and at last the cheques were taken away in Barrington Erle's pocket. "Good-night, old fellow," said Erle, affectionately. "I'll see you again before long. May God send you through it all." "Good-night, Barrington. It was kind of you to come to me." Then Lady Laura, watching to see whether her cousin would leave her alone for a moment with the object of her idolatry, paused before she gave him her hand. "Good-night, Lady Laura," he said. "Good-night!" Barrington Erle was now just outside the door. "I shall not forget your coming here to me." "How should we, either of us, forget it?" "Come, Laura," said Barrington Erle, "we had better make an end of it." "But if I should never see him again!" "Of course you will see him again." "When! and where! Oh, God,—if they should murder him!" Then she threw herself into his arms, and covered him with kisses, though her cousin had returned into the room and stood over her as she embraced him. "Laura," said he, "you are doing him an injury. How should he support himself if you behave like this! Come away." "Oh, my God, if they should kill him!" she exclaimed. But she allowed her cousin to take her in his arms, and Phineas Finn was left alone without having spoken another word to either of them. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Anthony Trollope (2006). Phineas Redux. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/18640/pg18640-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

PHINEAS IN PRISON.

After a long interval, I am again impelled by the restless spirit within me to continue my narration

I have lingered thus long on the extreme bank

The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . JOHN CRUMB FALLS INTO TROUBLE here JOHN CRUMB FALLS INTO TROUBLE. It was on a Friday evening, an inauspicious Friday, that poor Ruby Ruggles had insisted on leaving the security of her Aunt Pipkin's house with her aristocratic and vicious lover, in spite of the positive assurance made to her by Mrs. Pipkin that if she went forth in such company she should not be allowed to return. "Of course you must let her in," Mrs. Hurtle had said soon after the girl's departure. Whereupon Mrs. Pipkin had cried. She knew her own softness too well to suppose it to be possible that she could keep the girl out in the streets all night; but yet it was hard upon her, very hard, that she should be so troubled. "We usen't to have our ways like that when I was young," she said, sobbing. What was to be the end of it? Was she to be forced by circumstances to keep the girl always there, let the girl's conduct be what it might? Nevertheless she acknowledged that Ruby must be let in when she came back. Then, about nine o'clock, John Crumb came; and the latter part of the evening was more melancholy even than the first. It was impossible to conceal the truth from John Crumb. Mrs. Hurtle saw the poor man and told the story in Mrs. Pipkin's presence. "She's headstrong, Mr. Crumb," said Mrs. Hurtle. "She is that, ma'am. And it was along wi' the baro-nite she went?" "It was so, Mr. Crumb." "Baro-nite! Well;—perhaps I shall catch him some of these days;—went to dinner wi' him, did she? Didn't she have no dinner here?" Then Mrs. Pipkin spoke up with a keen sense of offence. Ruby Ruggles had had as wholesome a dinner as any young woman in London,—a bullock's heart and potatoes,—just as much as ever she had pleased to eat of it. Mrs. Pipkin could tell Mr. Crumb that there was "no starvation nor yet no stint in her house." John Crumb immediately produced a very thick and admirably useful blue cloth cloak, which he had brought up with him to London from Bungay, as a present to the woman who had been good to his Ruby. He assured her that he did not doubt that her victuals were good and plentiful, and went on to say that he had made bold to bring her a trifle out of respect. It was some little time before Mrs. Pipkin would allow herself to be appeased;—but at last she permitted the garment to be placed on her shoulders. But it was done after a melancholy fashion. There was no smiling consciousness of the bestowal of joy on the countenance of the donor as he gave it, no exuberance of thanks from the recipient as she received it. Mrs. Hurtle, standing by, declared it to be perfect;—but the occasion was one which admitted of no delight. "It's very good of you, Mr. Crumb, to think of an old woman like me,—particularly when you've such a deal of trouble with a young 'un." "It's like the smut in the wheat, Mrs. Pipkin, or the d'sease in the 'tatoes;—it has to be put up with, I suppose. Is she very partial, ma'am, to that young baro-nite?" This question was asked of Mrs. Hurtle. "Just a fancy for the time, Mr. Crumb," said the lady. "They never thinks as how their fancies may well-nigh half kill a man!" Then he was silent for awhile, sitting back in his chair, not moving a limb, with his eyes fastened on Mrs. Pipkin's ceiling. Mrs. Hurtle had some work in her hand, and sat watching him. The man was to her an extraordinary being,—so constant, so slow, so unexpressive, so unlike her own countrymen,—willing to endure so much, and at the same time so warm in his affections! "Sir Felix Carbury!" he said. "I'll Sir Felix him some of these days. If it was only dinner, wouldn't she be back afore this, ma'am?" "I suppose they've gone to some place of amusement," said Mrs. Hurtle. "Like enough," said John Crumb in a low voice. "She's that mad after dancing as never was," said Mrs. Pipkin. "And where is it as 'em dances?" asked Crumb, getting up from his chair, and stretching himself. It was evident to both the ladies that he was beginning to think that he would follow Ruby to the music hall. Neither of them answered him, however, and then he sat down again. "Does 'em dance all night at them places, Mrs. Pipkin?" "They do pretty nearly all that they oughtn't to do," said Mrs. Pipkin. John Crumb raised one of his fists, brought it down heavily on the palm of his other hand, and then again sat silent for awhile. "I never knowed as she was fond o' dancing," he said. "I'd a had dancing for her down at Bungay,—just as ready as anything. D'ye think, ma'am, it's the dancing she's after, or the baro-nite?" This was another appeal to Mrs. Hurtle. "I suppose they go together," said the lady. Then there was another long pause, at the end of which poor John Crumb burst out with some violence. "Domn him! Domn him! What 'ad I ever dun to him? Nothing! Did I ever interfere wi' him? Never! But I wull. I wull. I wouldn't wonder but I'll swing for this at Bury!" "Oh, Mr. Crumb, don't talk like that," said Mrs. Pipkin. "Mr. Crumb is a little disturbed, but he'll get over it presently," said Mrs. Hurtle. "She's a nasty slut to go and treat a young man as she's treating you," said Mrs. Pipkin. "No, ma'am;—she ain't nasty," said the lover. "But she's crou'll—horrid crou'll. It's no more use my going down about meal and pollard, nor business, and she up here with that baro-nite,—no, no more nor nothin'! When I handles it I don't know whether its middlings nor nothin' else. If I was to twist his neck, ma'am, would you take it on yourself to say as I was wrong?" "I'd sooner hear that you had taken the girl away from him," said Mrs. Hurtle. "I could pretty well eat him,—that's what I could. Half past eleven; is it? She must come some time, mustn't she?" Mrs. Pipkin, who did not want to burn candles all night long, declared that she could give no assurance on that head. If Ruby did come, she should, on that night, be admitted. But Mrs. Pipkin thought that it would be better to get up and let her in than to sit up for her. Poor Mr. Crumb did not at once take the hint, and remained there for another half-hour, saying little, but waiting with the hope that Ruby might come. But when the clock struck twelve he was told that he must go. Then he slowly collected his limbs and dragged them out of the house. "That young man is a good fellow," said Mrs. Hurtle as soon as the door was closed. "A deal too good for Ruby Ruggles," said Mrs. Pipkin. "And he can maintain a wife. Mr. Carbury says as he's as well to do as any tradesman down in them parts." Mrs. Hurtle disliked the name of Mr. Carbury, and took this last statement as no evidence in John Crumb's favour. "I don't know that I think better of the man for having Mr. Carbury's friendship," she said. "Mr. Carbury ain't any way like his cousin, Mrs. Hurtle." "I don't think much of any of the Carburys, Mrs. Pipkin. It seems to me that everybody here is either too humble or too overbearing. Nobody seems content to stand firm on his own footing and interfere with nobody else." This was all Greek to poor Mrs. Pipkin. "I suppose we may as well go to bed now. When that girl comes and knocks, of course we must let her in. If I hear her, I'll go down and open the door for her." Mrs. Pipkin made very many apologies to her lodger for the condition of her household. She would remain up herself to answer the door at the first sound, so that Mrs. Hurtle should not be disturbed. She would do her best to prevent any further annoyance. She trusted Mrs. Hurtle would see that she was endeavouring to do her duty by the naughty wicked girl. And then she came round to the point of her discourse. She hoped that Mrs. Hurtle would not be induced to quit the rooms by these disagreeable occurrences. "I don't mind saying it now, Mrs. Hurtle, but your being here is ever so much to me. I ain't nothing to depend on,—only lodgers, and them as is any good is so hard to get!" The poor woman hardly understood Mrs. Hurtle, who, as a lodger, was certainly peculiar. She cared nothing for disturbances, and rather liked than otherwise the task of endeavouring to assist in the salvation of Ruby. Mrs. Hurtle begged that Mrs. Pipkin would go to bed. She would not be in the least annoyed by the knocking. Another half-hour had thus been passed by the two ladies in the parlour after Crumb's departure. Then Mrs. Hurtle took her candle and had ascended the stairs half way to her own sitting-room, when a loud double knock was heard. She immediately joined Mrs. Pipkin in the passage. The door was opened, and there stood Ruby Ruggles, John Crumb, and two policemen! Ruby rushed in, and casting herself on to one of the stairs began to throw her hands about, and to howl piteously. "Laws a mercy; what is it?" asked Mrs. Pipkin. "He's been and murdered him!" screamed Ruby. "He has! He's been and murdered him!" "This young woman is living here;—is she?" asked one of the policemen. "She is living here," said Mrs. Hurtle. But now we must go back to the adventures of John Crumb after he had left the house. He had taken a bedroom at a small inn close to the Eastern Counties Railway Station which he was accustomed to frequent when business brought him up to London, and thither he proposed to himself to return. At one time there had come upon him an idea that he would endeavour to seek Ruby and his enemy among the dancing saloons of the metropolis; and he had asked a question with that view. But no answer had been given which seemed to aid him in his project, and his purpose had been abandoned as being too complex and requiring more intelligence than he gave himself credit for possessing. So he had turned down a street with which he was so far acquainted as to know that it would take him to the Islington Angel,—where various roads meet, and whence he would know his way eastwards. He had just passed the Angel, and the end of Goswell Road, and was standing with his mouth open, looking about, trying to make certain of himself that he would not go wrong, thinking that he would ask a policeman whom he saw, and hesitating because he feared that the man would want to know his business. Then, of a sudden, he heard a woman scream, and knew that it was Ruby's voice. The sound was very near him, but in the glimmer of the gaslight he could not quite see whence it came. He stood still, putting his hand up to scratch his head under his hat,—trying to think what, in such an emergency, it would be well that he should do. Then he heard the voice distinctly, "I won't;—I won't," and after that a scream. Then there were further words. "It's no good—I won't." At last he was able to make up his mind. He rushed after the sound, and turning down a passage to the right which led back into Goswell Road, saw Ruby struggling in a man's arms. She had left the dancing establishment with her lover; and when they had come to the turn of the passage, there had arisen a question as to her further destiny for the night. Ruby, though she well remembered Mrs. Pipkin's threats, was minded to try her chance at her aunt's door. Sir Felix was of opinion that he could make a preferable arrangement for her; and as Ruby was not at once amenable to his arguments he had thought that a little gentle force might avail him. He had therefore dragged Ruby into the passage. The unfortunate one! That so ill a chance should have come upon him in the midst of his diversion! He had swallowed several tumblers of brandy and water, and was therefore brave with reference to that interference of the police, the fear of which might otherwise have induced him to relinquish his hold of Ruby's arm when she first raised her voice. But what amount of brandy and water would have enabled him to persevere, could he have dreamed that John Crumb was near him? On a sudden he found a hand on his coat, and he was swung violently away, and brought with his back against the railings so forcibly as to have the breath almost knocked out of his body. But he could hear Ruby's exclamation, "If it isn't John Crumb!" Then there came upon him a sense of coming destruction, as though the world for him were all over; and, collapsing throughout his limbs, he slunk down upon the ground. "Get up, you wiper," said John Crumb. But the baronet thought it better to cling to the ground. "You sholl get up," said John, taking him by the collar of his coat and lifting him. "Now, Ruby, he's a-going to have it," said John. Whereupon Ruby screamed at the top of her voice, with a shriek very much louder than that which had at first attracted John Crumb's notice. "Don't hit a man when he's down," said the baronet, pleading as though for his life. "I wunt," said John;—"but I'll hit a fellow when 'un's up." Sir Felix was little more than a child in the man's arms. John Crumb raised him, and catching him round the neck with his left arm,—getting his head into chancery as we used to say when we fought at school,—struck the poor wretch some half-dozen times violently in the face, not knowing or caring exactly where he hit him, but at every blow obliterating a feature. And he would have continued had not Ruby flown at him and rescued Sir Felix from his arms. "He's about got enough of it," said John Crumb as he gave over his work. Then Sir Felix fell again to the ground, moaning fearfully. "I know'd he'd have to have it," said John Crumb. Ruby's screams of course brought the police, one arriving from each end of the passage on the scene of action at the same time. And now the cruellest thing of all was that Ruby in the complaints which she made to the policemen said not a word against Sir Felix, but was as bitter as she knew how to be in her denunciations of John Crumb. It was in vain that John endeavoured to make the man understand that the young woman had been crying out for protection when he had interfered. Ruby was very quick of speech and John Crumb was very slow. Ruby swore that nothing so horrible, so cruel, so bloodthirsty had ever been done before. Sir Felix himself when appealed to could say nothing. He could only moan and make futile efforts to wipe away the stream of blood from his face when the men stood him up leaning against the railings. And John, though he endeavoured to make the policemen comprehend the extent of the wickedness of the young baronet, would not say a word against Ruby. He was not even in the least angered by her denunciations of himself. As he himself said sometimes afterwards, he had "dropped into the baro-nite" just in time, and, having been successful in this, felt no wrath against Ruby for having made such an operation necessary. There was soon a third policeman on the spot, and a dozen other persons,—cab-drivers, haunters of the street by night, and houseless wanderers, casuals who at this season of the year preferred the pavements to the poor-house wards. They all took part against John Crumb. Why had the big man interfered between the young woman and her young man? Two or three of them wiped Sir Felix's face, and dabbed his eyes, and proposed this and the other remedy. Some thought that he had better be taken straight to an hospital. One lady remarked that he was "so mashed and mauled" that she was sure he would never "come to" again. A precocious youth remarked that he was "all one as a dead 'un." A cabman observed that he had "'ad it awful 'eavy." To all these criticisms on his condition Sir Felix himself made no direct reply, but he intimated his desire to be carried away somewhere, though he did not much care whither. At last the policemen among them decided upon a course of action. They had learned by the united testimony of Ruby and Crumb that Sir Felix was Sir Felix. He was to be carried in a cab by one constable to Bartholomew Hospital, who would then take his address so that he might be produced and bound over to prosecute. Ruby should be even conducted to the address she gave,—not half a mile from the spot on which they now stood,—and be left there or not according to the account which might be given of her. John Crumb must be undoubtedly locked up in the station-house. He was the offender;—for aught that any of them yet knew, the murderer. No one said a good word for him. He hardly said a good word for himself, and certainly made no objection to the treatment that had been proposed for him. But, no doubt, he was buoyed up inwardly by the conviction that he had thoroughly thrashed his enemy. Thus it came to pass that the two policemen with John Crumb and Ruby came together to Mrs. Pipkin's door. Ruby was still loud with complaints against the ruffian who had beaten her lover,—who, perhaps, had killed her loved one. She threatened the gallows, and handcuffs, and perpetual imprisonment, and an action for damages amidst her lamentations. But from Mrs. Hurtle the policemen did manage to learn something of the truth. Oh yes;—the girl lived there and was—respectable. This man whom they had arrested was respectable also, and was the girl's proper lover. The other man who had been beaten was undoubtedly the owner of a title; but he was not respectable, and was only the girl's improper lover. And John Crumb's name was given. "I'm John Crumb of Bungay," said he, "and I ain't afeared of nothin' nor nobody. And I ain't a been a drinking; no, I ain't. Mauled 'un! In course I've mauled 'un. And I meaned it. That ere young woman is engaged to be my wife." "No, I ain't," shouted Ruby. "But she is," persisted John Crumb. "Well then, I never will," rejoined Ruby. John Crumb turned upon her a look of love, and put his hand on his heart. Whereupon the senior policeman said that he saw at a glance how it all was, but that Mr. Crumb had better come along with him,—just for the present. To this arrangement the unfortunate hero from Bungay made not the slightest objection. "Miss Ruggles," said Mrs. Hurtle, "if that young man doesn't conquer you at last you can't have a heart in your bosom." "Indeed and I have then, and I don't mean to give it him if it's ever so. He's been and killed Sir Felix." Mrs. Hurtle in a whisper to Mrs. Pipkin expressed a wicked wish that it might be so. After that the three women all went to bed. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Anthony Trollope (2004). The Way We Live Now. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5231/pg5231-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

JOHN CRUMB FALLS INTO TROUBLE

The stars still shone brightly when I awoke

I found that an order had already gone forth for the army to proceed immediately towards Constantino

THE INVISIBLE GIRL.

Business English: A Practice Book by Rose Buhlig is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . INTERESTING WORDS here INTERESTING WORDS Business English is the expression of our commercial life in English. It is not synonymous with letter writing. To be sure, business letters are important, but they form only a part of one of the two large divisions into which the subject naturally falls. First, there is , important because so many of our business transactions are conducted personally. Thousands of salesmen daily move from place to place over the entire country, earning their salaries by talking convincingly of the goods that they have to sell. A still greater number of clerks, salesmen, managers, and officials orally transact business in our shops, stores, offices, and banks. Complaints are adjusted; difficulties are disentangled; and affairs of magnitude are consummated in personal interviews, the matter under discussion often being thought too important to be entrusted to correspondence. In every business oral English is essential. oral expression Second, there is . This takes account of the writing of advertisements, circulars, booklets, and prospectuses, as well as of letters. And in the preparation of these oral English is fundamental. It precedes and practically includes the written expression. For example, we say colloquially that a good advertisement "talks." We mean that the writer has so fully realized the buyer's point of view that the words of the advertisement seem to speak directly to the reader, arousing his interest or perhaps answering his objection. Oral English is fundamental, too, in the writing of letters, for most letters are dictated and not written. The correspondent dictates them to his stenographer or to a recording machine in the same tone, probably, that he would use if the customer were sitting before him. written expression But in taking this point of view, we should not minimize the importance of written business English. In a way, it is more difficult to write well than it is to talk well. In talking we are not troubled with the problems of correct spelling, proper punctuation, and good paragraphing. We may even repeat somewhat, if only we are persuasive. But in writing we are confronted with the necessity of putting the best thoughts into the clearest, most concise language, at the same time obeying all the rules of spelling, punctuation, and grammar. The business man must be sure of these details in order to know that his letters and advertising matter are correct. The stenographer, especially, must be thoroughly familiar with them, so that she may correctly transcribe what has been dictated. Business English is much the same as any other English. It consists in expression by means of words, sentences, and paragraphs. Moreover, they are much the same kind of words, sentences, and paragraphs that appear in any book that is written in what is commonly called the literary style. In a business letter the words are largely those of every day use, and but few are technical. It is the manner in which the words are put together, the idea back of the sentence, that makes the only difference. We shall begin the study of business English with a study of words, for in all expression, whether oral or written, a knowledge of words, of their meaning and suggestive power, is fundamental. On the choice of words depends not only the correctness but also the effectiveness of expression—the courtesy of a letter, the appeal of an advertisement, the persuasiveness of a salesman's talk. A mastery of words cannot be gained at once. Every time one speaks, he must consider what words will best convey his idea. In this chapter only the barest beginning of such study can be made. The exercises show the value of the subject. The study of words is interesting because words themselves are interesting. Sometimes the interest consists in the story of the derivation. As an example, consider the word . Many words in this book are written in italic to draw attention to them. Literally the word means "relating to Italy or its people." It is now applied to a kind of type in which the letters slope toward the right. The type was called italic because it was dedicated to the states of Italy by the inventor, Manutius, about the year 1500. An unabridged dictionary will tell all about the word. italic The word tells a curious story. It is derived from a Latin word, , meaning "salt money." It was the name of the money that was given to the Roman soldiers for salt, which was a part of their pay. Finally, instead of signifying only the salt money, it came to mean the total pay. salary salarium Practically all of this information a good dictionary gives. In other words, a dictionary is a story book containing not one, but hundreds of thousands of stories. Whenever possible it tells what language a word came from, how it got its different meanings, and how those meanings have changed in the course of time. For it is natural that words should change just as styles change, names of ancient things being lost and names for new things being made. As the objects themselves have gone out of use, their names have also gone. When a word has gone entirely out of use, it is marked in the dictionary. On the other hand, new inventions must be named. Thus new words are constantly being added to the language and the dictionary because they are needed. obsolete There is a large class of words that we shall not have time to consider. They are called . Every profession, business, or trade has its distinctive words. The technical words that a printer would use are entirely different from those which a dentist, a bookkeeper, or a lawyer would use. You will learn the technical terms of your business most thoroughly after you enter it and see the use for such terms. technical None of the words, therefore, that you will be asked to search out in the dictionary are, strictly speaking, technical. It is evident that it will do you no good to search out the words in the dictionary, unless you learn them—unless you use them correctly in speaking and writing. There is pleasure in thus employing new material, as everybody knows. Use your eyes and ears. When you hear a new word, or read one, focus the mind upon it for a moment until you can retain a mental picture of its spelling and of its pronunciation. Then as soon as possible look it up in the dictionary to fix its spelling, pronunciation, and definition. Do this regularly, and you will have reason to be proud of your vocabulary. An excellent way to increase the number of words that you know is to read the right kind of books. The careful study of the words used in the speeches and addresses of noted men is good practice. The conditions that called forth the speech were probably important, and the speech itself interesting, or it would not be preserved. When a man has an interesting or important message to give, he usually gives it in clear, exact, simple language. Therefore the vocabulary that he uses is worth copying. As for stories, there is a kind that furnishes a wealth of material that modern authors are constantly using or referring to, and this is found in stories of the Bible, stories of Greek and Northern gods and goddesses, stories of the , the , the , stories of chivalry—all old stories. Every one should know them well, because they are the basis of many allusions in which a single word oftentimes suggests a whole story. The meaning of the word , for instance, is missed if you do not know the story of Hercules and know that he was famous for his strength. Iliad Odyssey Æneid herculean Exercise 1 is an interesting word. Originally it was the name of a Greek god, who carried the world on his shoulders. Then it is supposed that in the sixteenth century the famous geographer Mercator prefixed his collection of maps with the picture of Atlas supporting the world. Thus a collection of maps in a volume came to be called an . Consult an unabridged dictionary for the origin of each of the following: Atlas atlas rival fortune cereal boycott dollar finance china derrick bankrupt milliner java mercury cash pullman cashmere colossal mint grocer macadam turbine Exercise 2 The days of the week and the months of the year are interesting in their derivation. Monday, for example, represents the day sacred to the Moon as a deity. Explain the origin of each of the following: Sunday Saturday May October Tuesday January June November Wednesday February July December Thursday March August Friday April September Exercise 3 Look up the derivation of the following: cancel bead ambition hospital pecuniary paper influence pavilion cheat book virtue mackintosh speculation bayonet peevish chapel phaëton tawdry disaster omnibus Exercise 4 Explain the origin of each of the following: curfew tulip turquoise good-bye pompadour aster amethyst dismal hyacinth dunce tantalize titanic dandelion humor umbrella volcano dahlia villain sandwich tangle begonia echo lunatic babble Exercise 5 Name the image that each of the following suggests to you: howl sputter rasping munch skim prance clatter trickle squeal click wheeze shuffle moan thud trudge bulge squeak patter chuckle gobble squawk spatter toddling swish Exercise 6 Bring to class a list of words which, because they are the names of modern inventions, have come into the language in modern time. Exercise 7 How many words can you name which might be called the technical terms of school life, words which always carry with them a suggestion of the school room? Bring in a list of twenty such words. Exercise 8 How many words can you name which are used only in the business world? Bring in a list of twenty such words. Exercise 9 How many words can you name which apply particularly to money and the payment or non-payment of money? Bring in a list of twenty or more such words. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Rose Buhlig (2011). Business English: A Practice Book. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/38046/pg38046-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

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