Word: dirk
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Follows matter enough for a dozen penny dreadfuls, threepenny thrillers: a fight with sledgehammer and dirk in the lurid shadows of a gypsy fire-Claire's body gleaming white but for the dark cords that bind her ankles and wrists; a struggle in the dank blackness of a railway tunnel which a gang of Claire's suitors blockade at one end, while others sneak in opposite: "Kill the man, but save the wench! . . ."A relic of civilized scruple holds Martin from killing a hairy giant furnaceman, because he has sprawled over the tracks and technically is down...
...story goes: Selina Peake, sprite of poverty, married Pervus De Jong, Illinois potato man. No amount of grubbing could deaden Selina. After years of it, she could still stick radishes behind her ear and dance for Dirk, her boy, only "so big." Dirk grew up and trailed off into a dull love-jam involving a nice girl and a naughtyish one. Also, Selina, old and bent, peddled her potatoes on Prairie Avenue, Chicago...
There was a time in the rude past when the cheering stranger extended his right hand to show that it concealed no treacherous dirk. The skeptic seized it to make sure. Like the doffing of helmets, this medieval precautionary measure has persisted to an age when it is usually unnecessary; the deliberate murderer nowadays shoots with his left hand quite as skilfully as with his right. And with the advance of medical science has come the knowledge that this apparently harmless custom is a dangerous spreader of disease germs. President Coolidge is doubtless acting for the health of the nation...
...Dirk grows, becomes an architect, with promise of being successful. It seems to Selina that the sacrifice that she has made of her whole life is justified. But Dirk is in love with Julie's daughter, already married. Since the daughter cannot marry him she wishes at least to make him successful, leads him into the world of finance. He thinks that he is successful, but his mother's heart is suffering...
...Selina's heart is mended by the return of Roelf Pool, onetime Dutch boy she used to teach in High Prairie, now a famed artist, who recognizes in her the one who started him on his career. And Dirk discovers that he is really in love with Dallas O'Mara, girl artist, and- realizing that they two don't live in the same world-is led to question (bitterly) his ostensibly shining success...