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Sister Carrie

✒ Author
📖 Pages732
⏰ Reading time 26 hours 45 minutes
💡 Originally published1900
🌏 Original language English
📌 Type Novels
📌 Genres Love, Historical, Prose, Psychological, Realism, Social
📌 Sections Love history , Historical novel , Love story , Psychological novel , Realistic novel , Social novel

Table of contents

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Chapter 1. THE MAGNET ATTRACTING—A WAIF AMID FORCES1
Chapter 2. WHAT POVERTY THREATENED—OF GRANITE AND BRASS16
Chapter 3. WEE QUESTION OF FORTUNE—FOUR-FIFTY A WEEK25
Chapter 4. THE SPENDINGS OF FANCY—FACTS ANSWER WITH SNEERS40
Chapter 5. A GLITTERING NIGHT FLOWER—THE USE OF A NAME60
Chapter 6. THE MACHINE AND THE MAIDEN—A KNIGHT OF TO-DAY71
Chapter 7. THE LURE OF THE MATERIAL—BEAUTY SPEAKS FOR ITSELF91
Chapter 8. INTIMATIONS BY WINTER—AN AMBASSADOR SUMMONED109
Chapter 9. CONVENTION'S OWN TINDER-BOX—THE EYE THAT IS GREEN121
Chapter 10. THE COUNSEL OF WINTER—FORTUNE'S AMBASSADOR CALLS132
Chapter 11. THE PERSUASION OF FASHION—FEELING GUARDS O'ER ITS OWN146
Chapter 12. OF THE LAMPS OF THE MANSIONS—THE AMBASSADOR PLEA162
Chapter 13. HIS CREDENTIALS ACCEPTED—A BABEL OF TONGUES174
Chapter 14. WITH EYES AND NOT SEEING—ONE INFLUENCE WANES189
Chapter 15. THE IRK OF THE OLD TIES—THE MAGIC OF YOUTH201
Chapter 16. A WITLESS ALADDIN—THE GATE TO THE WORLD219
Chapter 17. A GLIMPSE THROUGH THE GATEWAY—HOPE LIGHTENS THE EYE232
Chapter 18. JUST OVER THE BORDER—A HAIL AND FAREWELL246
Chapter 19. AN HOUR IN ELFLAND—A CLAMOUR HALF HEARD254
Chapter 20. THE LURE OF THE SPIRIT—THE FLESH IN PURSUIT275
Chapter 21. THE LURE OF THE SPIRIT—THE FLESH IN PURSUIT288
Chapter 22. THE BLAZE OF THE TINDER—FLESH WARS WITH THE FLESH295
Chapter 23. A SPIRIT IN TRAVAIL—ONE RUNG PUT BEHIND314
Chapter 24. ASHES OF TINDER—A FACE AT THE WINDOW332
Chapter 25. ASHES OF TINDER—THE LOOSING OF STAYS340
Chapter 26. THE AMBASSADOR FALLEN—A SEARCH FOR THE GATE348
Chapter 27. WHEN WATERS ENGULF US WE REACH FOR A STAR367
Chapter 28. A PILGRIM, AN OUTLAW—THE SPIRIT DETAINED384
Chapter 29. THE SOLACE OF TRAVEL—THE BOATS OF THE SEA402
Chapter 30. THE KINGDOM OF GREATNESS—THE PILGRIM A DREAM423
Chapter 31. A PET OF GOOD FORTUNE—BROADWAY FLAUNTS ITS JOYS434
Chapter 32. THE FEAST OF BELSHAZZAR—A SEER TO TRANSLATE448
Chapter 33. WITHOUT THE WALLED CITY—THE SLOPE OF THE YEARS470
Chapter 34. THE GRIND OF THE MILLSTONES—A SAMPLE OF CHAFF483
Chapter 35. THE PASSING OF EFFORT—THE VISAGE OF CARE497
Chapter 36. A GRIM RETROGRESSION—THE PHANTOM OF CHANCE514
Chapter 37. THE SPIRIT AWAKENS—NEW SEARCH FOR THE GATE532
Chapter 38. IN ELF LAND DISPORTING—THE GRIM WORLD WITHOUT545
Chapter 39. OF LIGHTS AND OF SHADOWS—THE PARTING OF WORLDS561
Chapter 40. A PUBLIC DISSENSION—A FINAL APPEAL579
Chapter 41. THE STRIKE592
Chapter 42. A TOUCH OF SPRING—THE EMPTY SHELL619
Chapter 43. THE WORLD TURNS FLATTERER—AN EYE IN THE DARK635
Chapter 44. AND THIS IS NOT ELF LAND—WHAT GOLD WILL NOT BUY649
Chapter 45. CURIOUS SHIFTS OF THE POOR665
Chapter 46. STIRRING TROUBLED WATERS690
Chapter 47. THE WAY OF THE BEATEN—A HARP IN THE WIND708

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Chapter 1. THE MAGNET ATTRACTING—A WAIF AMID FORCES

When Caroline Meeber boarded the afternoon train for Chicago, her total outfit consisted of a small trunk, a cheap imitation alligator-skin satchel, a small lunch in a paper box, and a yellow leather snap purse, containing her ticket, a scrap of paper with her sister's address in Van Buren Street, and four dollars in money. It was in August, 1889. She was eighteen years of age, bright, timid, and full of the illusions of ignorance and youth. Whatever touch of regret at parting characterised her thoughts, it was certainly not for advantages now being given up. A gush of tears at her mother's farewell kiss, a touch in her throat when the cars clacked by the flour mill where her father worked by the day, a pathetic sigh as the familiar green environs of the village passed in review, and the threads which bound her so lightly to girlhood and home were irretrievably broken.
To be sure there was always the next station, where one might descend and return. There was the great city, bound more closely by these very trains which came up daily. Columbia City was not so very far away, even once she was in Chicago. What, pray, is a few hours — a few hundred miles? She looked at the little slip bearing her sister's address and wondered. She gazed at the green landscape, now passing in swift review, until her swifter thoughts replaced its impression with vague conjectures of what Chicago might be.
When a girl leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse. Of an intermediate balance, under the circumstances, there is no possibility. The city has its cunning wiles, no less than the infinitely smaller and more human tempter. There are large forces which allure with all the soulfulness of expression possible in the most cultured human. The gleam of a thousand lights is often as effective as the persuasive light in a wooing and fascinating eye. Half the undoing of the unsophisticated and natural mind is accomplished by forces wholly superhuman. A blare of sound, a roar of life, a vast array of human hives, appeal to the astonished senses in equivocal terms. Without a counsellor at hand to whisper cautious interpretations, what falsehoods may not these things breathe into the unguarded ear! Unrecognised for what they are, their beauty, like music, too often relaxes, then weakens, then perverts the simpler human perceptions.
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Download the free e-book by Theodore Dreiser, «Sister Carrie» , in English. You can also print the text of the book. For this, the PDF and DOC formats are suitable.

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