{"id":26,"date":"2021-06-01T11:12:26","date_gmt":"2021-06-01T15:12:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.ryerson.ca\/thegreatgatsby\/chapter\/the-project-gutenberg-ebook-of-the-great-gatsby-6\/"},"modified":"2022-02-15T14:00:33","modified_gmt":"2022-02-15T19:00:33","slug":"9","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thegreatgatsby\/chapter\/9\/","title":{"raw":"Chapter IX","rendered":"Chapter IX"},"content":{"raw":"After two years I remember the rest of that day, and that night and the next day, only as an endless drill of police and photographers and newspaper men in and out of Gatsby\u2019s front door. A rope stretched across the main gate and a policeman by it kept out the curious, but little boys soon discovered that they could enter through my yard, and there were always a few of them clustered open-mouthed about the pool. Someone with a positive manner, perhaps a detective, used the expression \u201cmadman\u201d as he bent over Wilson\u2019s body that afternoon, and the adventitious authority of his voice set the key for the newspaper reports next morning.<\/span>\r\n
\r\n\r\nMost of those reports were a nightmare\u2014grotesque, circumstantial, eager, and untrue. When Michaelis\u2019s testimony at the inquest brought to light Wilson\u2019s suspicions of his wife I thought the whole tale would shortly be served up in racy pasquinade\u2014but Catherine, who might have said anything, didn\u2019t say a word. She showed a surprising amount of character about it too\u2014looked at the coroner with determined eyes under that corrected brow of hers, and swore that her sister had never seen Gatsby, that her sister was completely happy with her husband, that her sister had been into no mischief whatever. She convinced herself of it, and cried into her handkerchief, as if the very suggestion was more than she could endure. So Wilson was reduced to a man \u201cderanged by grief\u201d in order that the case might remain in its simplest form. And it rested there.\r\n\r\nBut all this part of it seemed remote and unessential. I found myself on Gatsby\u2019s side, and alone. From the moment I telephoned news of the catastrophe to West Egg village, every surmise about him, and every practical question, was referred to me. At first I was surprised and confused; then, as he lay in his house and didn\u2019t move or breathe or speak, hour upon hour, it grew upon me that I was responsible, because no one else was interested\u2014interested, I mean, with that intense personal interest to which everyone has some vague right at the end.\r\n\r\nI called up Daisy half an hour after we found him, called her instinctively and without hesitation. But she and Tom had gone away early that afternoon, and taken baggage with them.\r\n\r\n\u201cLeft no address?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cNo.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cSay when they\u2019d be back?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cNo.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cAny idea where they are? How I could reach them?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI don\u2019t know. Can\u2019t say.\u201d\r\n\r\nI wanted to get somebody for him. I wanted to go into the room where he lay and reassure him: \u201cI\u2019ll get somebody for you, Gatsby. Don\u2019t worry. Just trust me and I\u2019ll get somebody for you\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\nMeyer Wolfshiem\u2019s name wasn\u2019t in the phone book. The butler gave me his office address on Broadway, and I called Information, but by the time I had the number it was long after five, and no one answered the phone.\r\n\r\n\u201cWill you ring again?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI\u2019ve rung three times.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cIt\u2019s very important.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cSorry. I\u2019m afraid no one\u2019s there.\u201d\r\n\r\nI went back to the drawing-room and thought for an instant that they were chance visitors, all these official people who suddenly filled it. But, though they drew back the sheet and looked at Gatsby with shocked eyes, his protest continued in my brain:\r\n\r\n\u201cLook here, old sport, you\u2019ve got to get somebody for me. You\u2019ve got to try hard. I can\u2019t go through this alone.\u201d\r\n\r\nSomeone started to ask me questions, but I broke away and going upstairs looked hastily through the unlocked parts of his desk\u2014he\u2019d never told me definitely that his parents were dead. But there was nothing\u2014only the picture of Dan Cody, a token of forgotten violence, staring down from the wall.\r\n\r\nNext morning I sent the butler to New York with a letter to Wolfshiem, which asked for information and urged him to come out on the next train. That request seemed superfluous when I wrote it. I was sure he\u2019d start when he saw the newspapers, just as I was sure there\u2019d be a wire from Daisy before noon\u2014but neither a wire nor Mr. Wolfshiem arrived; no one arrived except more police and photographers and newspaper men. When the butler brought back Wolfshiem\u2019s answer I began to have a feeling of defiance, of scornful solidarity between Gatsby and me against them all.\r\n
\r\n
\r\n\r\nDear Mr. Carraway. This has been one of the most terrible shocks of my life to me I hardly can believe it that it is true at all. Such a mad act as that man did should make us all think. I cannot come down now as I am tied up in some very important business and cannot get mixed up in this thing now. If there is anything I can do a little later let me know in a letter by Edgar. I hardly know where I am when I hear about a thing like this and am completely knocked down and out.\r\n

Yours truly<\/p>\r\n

Meyer Wolfshiem<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div><\/blockquote>\r\n

and then hasty addenda beneath:<\/p>\r\n\r\n

\r\n
\r\n\r\nLet me know about the funeral etc do not know his family at all.\r\n\r\n<\/div><\/blockquote>\r\nWhen the phone rang that afternoon and Long Distance said Chicago was calling I thought this would be Daisy at last. But the connection came through as a man\u2019s voice, very thin and far away.\r\n\r\n\u201cThis is Slagle speaking\u2026\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYes?\u201d The name was unfamiliar.\r\n\r\n\u201cHell of a note, isn\u2019t it? Get my wire?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThere haven\u2019t been any wires.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYoung Parke\u2019s in trouble,\u201d he said rapidly. \u201cThey picked him up when he handed the bonds over the counter. They got a circular from New York giving \u2019em the numbers just five minutes before. What d\u2019you know about that, hey? You never can tell in these hick towns\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cHello!\u201d I interrupted breathlessly. \u201cLook here\u2014this isn\u2019t Mr. Gatsby. Mr. Gatsby\u2019s dead.\u201d\r\n\r\nThere was a long silence on the other end of the wire, followed by an exclamation\u2026 then a quick squawk as the connection was broken.\r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\nI think it was on the third day that a telegram signed Henry C. Gatz arrived from a town in Minnesota. It said only that the sender was leaving immediately and to postpone the funeral until he came.\r\n\r\nIt was Gatsby\u2019s father, a solemn old man, very helpless and dismayed, bundled up in a long cheap ulster against the warm September day. His eyes leaked continuously with excitement, and when I took the bag and umbrella from his hands he began to pull so incessantly at his sparse grey beard that I had difficulty in getting off his coat. He was on the point of collapse, so I took him into the music-room and made him sit down while I sent for something to eat. But he wouldn\u2019t eat, and the glass of milk spilled from his trembling hand.\r\n\r\n\u201cI saw it in the Chicago newspaper,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was all in the Chicago newspaper. I started right away.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI didn\u2019t know how to reach you.\u201d\r\n\r\nHis eyes, seeing nothing, moved ceaselessly about the room.\r\n\r\n\u201cIt was a madman,\u201d he said. \u201cHe must have been mad.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWouldn\u2019t you like some coffee?\u201d I urged him.\r\n\r\n\u201cI don\u2019t want anything. I\u2019m all right now, Mr.\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cCarraway.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWell, I\u2019m all right now. Where have they got Jimmy?\u201d\r\n\r\nI took him into the drawing-room, where his son lay, and left him there. Some little boys had come up on the steps and were looking into the hall; when I told them who had arrived, they went reluctantly away.\r\n\r\nAfter a little while Mr. Gatz opened the door and came out, his mouth ajar, his face flushed slightly, his eyes leaking isolated and unpunctual tears. He had reached an age where death no longer has the quality of ghastly surprise, and when he looked around him now for the first time and saw the height and splendour of the hall and the great rooms opening out from it into other rooms, his grief began to be mixed with an awed pride. I helped him to a bedroom upstairs; while he took off his coat and vest I told him that all arrangements had been deferred until he came.\r\n\r\n\u201cI didn\u2019t know what you\u2019d want, Mr. Gatsby\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cGatz is my name.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201c\u2014Mr. Gatz. I thought you might want to take the body West.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe shook his head.\r\n\r\n\u201cJimmy always liked it better down East. He rose up to his position in the East. Were you a friend of my boy\u2019s, Mr.\u2014?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWe were close friends.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cHe had a big future before him, you know. He was only a young man, but he had a lot of brain power here.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe touched his head impressively, and I nodded.\r\n\r\n\u201cIf he\u2019d of lived, he\u2019d of been a great man. A man like James J. Hill. He\u2019d of helped build up the country.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThat\u2019s true,\u201d I said, uncomfortably.\r\n\r\nHe fumbled at the embroidered coverlet, trying to take it from the bed, and lay down stiffly\u2014was instantly asleep.\r\n\r\nThat night an obviously frightened person called up, and demanded to know who I was before he would give his name.\r\n\r\n\u201cThis is Mr. Carraway,\u201d I said.\r\n\r\n\u201cOh!\u201d He sounded relieved. \u201cThis is Klipspringer.\u201d\r\n\r\nI was relieved too, for that seemed to promise another friend at Gatsby\u2019s grave. I didn\u2019t want it to be in the papers and draw a sightseeing crowd, so I\u2019d been calling up a few people myself. They were hard to find.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe funeral\u2019s tomorrow,\u201d I said. \u201cThree o\u2019clock, here at the house. I wish you\u2019d tell anybody who\u2019d be interested.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cOh, I will,\u201d he broke out hastily. \u201cOf course I\u2019m not likely to see anybody, but if I do.\u201d\r\n\r\nHis tone made me suspicious.\r\n\r\n\u201cOf course you\u2019ll be there yourself.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWell, I\u2019ll certainly try. What I called up about is\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWait a minute,\u201d I interrupted. \u201cHow about saying you\u2019ll come?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWell, the fact is\u2014the truth of the matter is that I\u2019m staying with some people up here in Greenwich, and they rather expect me to be with them tomorrow. In fact, there\u2019s a sort of picnic or something. Of course I\u2019ll do my best to get away.\u201d\r\n\r\nI ejaculated an unrestrained \u201cHuh!\u201d and he must have heard me, for he went on nervously:\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat I called up about was a pair of shoes I left there. I wonder if it\u2019d be too much trouble to have the butler send them on. You see, they\u2019re tennis shoes, and I\u2019m sort of helpless without them. My address is care of B. F.\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\nI didn\u2019t hear the rest of the name, because I hung up the receiver.\r\n\r\nAfter that I felt a certain shame for Gatsby\u2014one gentleman to whom I telephoned implied that he had got what he deserved. However, that was my fault, for he was one of those who used to sneer most bitterly at Gatsby on the courage of Gatsby\u2019s liquor, and I should have known better than to call him.\r\n\r\nThe morning of the funeral I went up to New York to see Meyer Wolfshiem; I couldn\u2019t seem to reach him any other way. The door that I pushed open, on the advice of an elevator boy, was marked \u201cThe Swastika Holding Company,\u201d and at first there didn\u2019t seem to be anyone inside. But when I\u2019d shouted \u201chello\u201d several times in vain, an argument broke out behind a partition, and presently a lovely Jewess appeared at an interior door and scrutinized me with black hostile eyes.\r\n\r\n\u201cNobody\u2019s in,\u201d she said. \u201cMr. Wolfshiem\u2019s gone to Chicago.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe first part of this was obviously untrue, for someone had begun to whistle \u201cThe Rosary,\u201d tunelessly, inside.\r\n\r\n\u201cPlease say that Mr. Carraway wants to see him.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI can\u2019t get him back from Chicago, can I?\u201d\r\n\r\nAt this moment a voice, unmistakably Wolfshiem\u2019s, called \u201cStella!\u201d from the other side of the door.\r\n\r\n\u201cLeave your name on the desk,\u201d she said quickly. \u201cI\u2019ll give it to him when he gets back.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cBut I know he\u2019s there.\u201d\r\n\r\nShe took a step toward me and began to slide her hands indignantly up and down her hips.\r\n\r\n\u201cYou young men think you can force your way in here any time,\u201d she scolded. \u201cWe\u2019re getting sickantired of it. When I say he\u2019s in Chicago, he\u2019s in Chica<\/i>go.\u201d\r\n\r\nI mentioned Gatsby.\r\n\r\n\u201cOh-h!\u201d She looked at me over again. \u201cWill you just\u2014What was your name?\u201d\r\n\r\nShe vanished. In a moment Meyer Wolfshiem stood solemnly in the doorway, holding out both hands. He drew me into his office, remarking in a reverent voice that it was a sad time for all of us, and offered me a cigar.\r\n\r\n\u201cMy memory goes back to when first I met him,\u201d he said. \u201cA young major just out of the army and covered over with medals he got in the war. He was so hard up he had to keep on wearing his uniform because he couldn\u2019t buy some regular clothes. First time I saw him was when he came into Winebrenner\u2019s poolroom at Forty-third Street and asked for a job. He hadn\u2019t eat anything for a couple of days. \u2018Come on have some lunch with me,\u2019 I said. He ate more than four dollars\u2019 worth of food in half an hour.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cDid you start him in business?\u201d I inquired.\r\n\r\n\u201cStart him! I made him.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cOh.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI raised him up out of nothing, right out of the gutter. I saw right away he was a fine-appearing, gentlemanly young man, and when he told me he was at Oggsford I knew I could use him good. I got him to join the American Legion and he used to stand high there. Right off he did some work for a client of mine up to Albany. We were so thick like that in everything\u201d\u2014he held up two bulbous fingers\u2014\u201calways together.\u201d\r\n\r\nI wondered if this partnership had included the World\u2019s Series transaction in 1919.\r\n\r\n\u201cNow he\u2019s dead,\u201d I said after a moment. \u201cYou were his closest friend, so I know you\u2019ll want to come to his funeral this afternoon.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI\u2019d like to come.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWell, come then.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe hair in his nostrils quivered slightly, and as he shook his head his eyes filled with tears.\r\n\r\n\u201cI can\u2019t do it\u2014I can\u2019t get mixed up in it,\u201d he said.\r\n\r\n\u201cThere\u2019s nothing to get mixed up in. It\u2019s all over now.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWhen a man gets killed I never like to get mixed up in it in any way. I keep out. When I was a young man it was different\u2014if a friend of mine died, no matter how, I stuck with them to the end. You may think that\u2019s sentimental, but I mean it\u2014to the bitter end.\u201d\r\n\r\nI saw that for some reason of his own he was determined not to come, so I stood up.\r\n\r\n\u201cAre you a college man?\u201d he inquired suddenly.\r\n\r\nFor a moment I thought he was going to suggest a \u201cgonnegtion,\u201d but he only nodded and shook my hand.\r\n\r\n\u201cLet us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead,\u201d he suggested. \u201cAfter that my own rule is to let everything alone.\u201d\r\n\r\nWhen I left his office the sky had turned dark and I got back to West Egg in a drizzle. After changing my clothes I went next door and found Mr. Gatz walking up and down excitedly in the hall. His pride in his son and in his son\u2019s possessions was continually increasing and now he had something to show me.\r\n\r\n\u201cJimmy sent me this picture.\u201d He took out his wallet with trembling fingers. \u201cLook there.\u201d\r\n\r\nIt was a photograph of the house, cracked in the corners and dirty with many hands. He pointed out every detail to me eagerly. \u201cLook there!\u201d and then sought admiration from my eyes. He had shown it so often that I think it was more real to him now than the house itself.\r\n\r\n\u201cJimmy sent it to me. I think it\u2019s a very pretty picture. It shows up well.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cVery well. Had you seen him lately?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cHe come out to see me two years ago and bought me the house I live in now. Of course we was broke up when he run off from home, but I see now there was a reason for it. He knew he had a big future in front of him. And ever since he made a success he was very generous with me.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe seemed reluctant to put away the picture, held it for another minute, lingeringly, before my eyes. Then he returned the wallet and pulled from his pocket a ragged old copy of a book called Hopalong Cassidy<\/i>.\r\n\r\n\u201cLook here, this is a book he had when he was a boy. It just shows you.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe opened it at the back cover and turned it around for me to see. On the last flyleaf was printed the word schedule<\/b>, and the date September 12, 1906. And underneath:\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Activity<\/th>\r\nTime<\/th>\r\nam\/pm<\/th>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<\/thead>\r\n
Rise from bed<\/td>\r\n6:00<\/td>\r\na.m.<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
Dumbell exercise and wall-scaling<\/td>\r\n6:15\u2060\u2013\u20606:30<\/td>\r\n\u201c<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
Study electricity, etc.<\/td>\r\n7:15\u2060\u2013\u20608:15<\/td>\r\n\u201c<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
Work<\/td>\r\n8:30\u2060\u2013\u20604:30<\/td>\r\np.m.<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
Baseball and sports<\/td>\r\n4:30\u2060\u2013\u20605:00<\/td>\r\n\u201c<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
Practise elocution, poise and how to attain it<\/td>\r\n5:00\u2060\u2013\u20606:00<\/td>\r\n\u201c<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
Study needed inventions<\/td>\r\n7:00\u2060\u2013\u20609:00<\/td>\r\n\u201c<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<\/tbody>\r\n<\/table>\r\n

General Resolves<\/h2>\r\n
\r\n
\r\n
    \r\n \t
  • \r\n
      \r\n \t
    • \r\n
        \r\n \t
      • \r\n
          \r\n \t
        • No wasting time at Shafters or [a name, indecipherable]<\/li>\r\n \t
        • No more smokeing or chewing.<\/li>\r\n \t
        • Bath every other day<\/li>\r\n \t
        • Read one improving book or magazine per week<\/li>\r\n \t
        • Save $5.00 [crossed out] $3.00 per week<\/li>\r\n \t
        • Be better to parents<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/div><\/blockquote>\r\n

          \u201cI came across this book by accident,\u201d said the old man. \u201cIt just shows you, don\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\r\n\u201cIt just shows you.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cJimmy was bound to get ahead. He always had some resolves like this or something. Do you notice what he\u2019s got about improving his mind? He was always great for that. He told me I et like a hog once, and I beat him for it.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe was reluctant to close the book, reading each item aloud and then looking eagerly at me. I think he rather expected me to copy down the list for my own use.\r\n\r\nA little before three the Lutheran minister arrived from Flushing, and I began to look involuntarily out the windows for other cars. So did Gatsby\u2019s father. And as the time passed and the servants came in and stood waiting in the hall, his eyes began to blink anxiously, and he spoke of the rain in a worried, uncertain way. The minister glanced several times at his watch, so I took him aside and asked him to wait for half an hour. But it wasn\u2019t any use. Nobody came.\r\n\r\n

          \r\n\r\nAbout five o\u2019clock our procession of three cars reached the cemetery and stopped in a thick drizzle beside the gate\u2014first a motor hearse, horribly black and wet, then Mr. Gatz and the minister and me in the limousine, and a little later four or five servants and the postman from West Egg, in Gatsby\u2019s station wagon, all wet to the skin. As we started through the gate into the cemetery I heard a car stop and then the sound of someone splashing after us over the soggy ground. I looked around. It was the man with owl-eyed glasses whom I had found marvelling over Gatsby\u2019s books in the library one night three months before.\r\n\r\nI\u2019d never seen him since then. I don\u2019t know how he knew about the funeral, or even his name. The rain poured down his thick glasses, and he took them off and wiped them to see the protecting canvas unrolled from Gatsby\u2019s grave.\r\n\r\nI tried to think about Gatsby then for a moment, but he was already too far away, and I could only remember, without resentment, that Daisy hadn\u2019t sent a message or a flower. Dimly I heard someone murmur \u201cBlessed are the dead that the rain falls on,\u201d and then the owl-eyed man said \u201cAmen to that,\u201d in a brave voice.\r\n\r\nWe straggled down quickly through the rain to the cars. Owl-eyes spoke to me by the gate.\r\n\r\n\u201cI couldn\u2019t get to the house,\u201d he remarked.\r\n\r\n\u201cNeither could anybody else.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cGo on!\u201d He started. \u201cWhy, my God! they used to go there by the hundreds.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe took off his glasses and wiped them again, outside and in.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe poor son-of-a-bitch,\u201d he said.\r\n\r\n
          \r\n\r\nOne of my most vivid memories is of coming back West from prep school and later from college at Christmas time. Those who went farther than Chicago would gather in the old dim Union Station at six o\u2019clock of a December evening, with a few Chicago friends, already caught up into their own holiday gaieties, to bid them a hasty goodbye. I remember the fur coats of the girls returning from Miss This-or-That\u2019s and the chatter of frozen breath and the hands waving overhead as we caught sight of old acquaintances, and the matchings of invitations: \u201cAre you going to the Ordways\u2019? the Herseys\u2019? the Schultzes\u2019?\u201d and the long green tickets clasped tight in our gloved hands. And last the murky yellow cars of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul railroad looking cheerful as Christmas itself on the tracks beside the gate.\r\n\r\nWhen we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air. We drew in deep breaths of it as we walked back from dinner through the cold vestibules, unutterably aware of our identity with this country for one strange hour, before we melted indistinguishably into it again.\r\n\r\nThat\u2019s my Middle West\u2014not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns, but the thrilling returning trains of my youth, and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow. I am part of that, a little solemn with the feel of those long winters, a little complacent from growing up in the Carraway house in a city where dwellings are still called through decades by a family\u2019s name. I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all\u2014Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.\r\n\r\nEven when the East excited me most, even when I was most keenly aware of its superiority to the bored, sprawling, swollen towns beyond the Ohio, with their interminable inquisitions which spared only the children and the very old\u2014even then it had always for me a quality of distortion. West Egg, especially, still figures in my more fantastic dreams. I see it as a night scene by El Greco: a hundred houses, at once conventional and grotesque, crouching under a sullen, overhanging sky and a lustreless moon. In the foreground four solemn men in dress suits are walking along the sidewalk with a stretcher on which lies a drunken woman in a white evening dress. Her hand, which dangles over the side, sparkles cold with jewels. Gravely the men turn in at a house\u2014the wrong house. But no one knows the woman\u2019s name, and no one cares.\r\n\r\nAfter Gatsby\u2019s death the East was haunted for me like that, distorted beyond my eyes\u2019 power of correction. So when the blue smoke of brittle leaves was in the air and the wind blew the wet laundry stiff on the line I decided to come back home.\r\n\r\nThere was one thing to be done before I left, an awkward, unpleasant thing that perhaps had better have been let alone. But I wanted to leave things in order and not just trust that obliging and indifferent sea to sweep my refuse away. I saw Jordan Baker and talked over and around what had happened to us together, and what had happened afterward to me, and she lay perfectly still, listening, in a big chair.\r\n\r\nShe was dressed to play golf, and I remember thinking she looked like a good illustration, her chin raised a little jauntily, her hair the colour of an autumn leaf, her face the same brown tint as the fingerless glove on her knee. When I had finished she told me without comment that she was engaged to another man. I doubted that, though there were several she could have married at a nod of her head, but I pretended to be surprised. For just a minute I wondered if I wasn\u2019t making a mistake, then I thought it all over again quickly and got up to say goodbye.\r\n\r\n\u201cNevertheless you did throw me over,\u201d said Jordan suddenly. \u201cYou threw me over on the telephone. I don\u2019t give a damn about you now, but it was a new experience for me, and I felt a little dizzy for a while.\u201d\r\n\r\nWe shook hands.\r\n\r\n\u201cOh, and do you remember\u201d\u2014she added\u2014\u201ca conversation we had once about driving a car?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWhy\u2014not exactly.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad driver, didn\u2019t I? I mean it was careless of me to make such a wrong guess. I thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person. I thought it was your secret pride.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI\u2019m thirty,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019m five years too old to lie to myself and call it honour.\u201d\r\n\r\nShe didn\u2019t answer. Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away.\r\n\r\n
          \r\n\r\nOne afternoon late in October I saw Tom Buchanan. He was walking ahead of me along Fifth Avenue in his alert, aggressive way, his hands out a little from his body as if to fight off interference, his head moving sharply here and there, adapting itself to his restless eyes. Just as I slowed up to avoid overtaking him he stopped and began frowning into the windows of a jewellery store. Suddenly he saw me and walked back, holding out his hand.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter, Nick? Do you object to shaking hands with me?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYes. You know what I think of you.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou\u2019re crazy, Nick,\u201d he said quickly. \u201cCrazy as hell. I don\u2019t know what\u2019s the matter with you.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cTom,\u201d I inquired, \u201cwhat did you say to Wilson that afternoon?\u201d\r\n\r\nHe stared at me without a word, and I knew I had guessed right about those missing hours. I started to turn away, but he took a step after me and grabbed my arm.\r\n\r\n\u201cI told him the truth,\u201d he said. \u201cHe came to the door while we were getting ready to leave, and when I sent down word that we weren\u2019t in he tried to force his way upstairs. He was crazy enough to kill me if I hadn\u2019t told him who owned the car. His hand was on a revolver in his pocket every minute he was in the house\u2014\u201d He broke off defiantly. \u201cWhat if I did tell him? That fellow had it coming to him. He threw dust into your eyes just like he did in Daisy\u2019s, but he was a tough one. He ran over Myrtle like you\u2019d run over a dog and never even stopped his car.\u201d\r\n\r\nThere was nothing I could say, except the one unutterable fact that it wasn\u2019t true.\r\n\r\n\u201cAnd if you think I didn\u2019t have my share of suffering\u2014look here, when I went to give up that flat and saw that damn box of dog biscuits sitting there on the sideboard, I sat down and cried like a baby. By God it was awful\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\nI couldn\u2019t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy\u2014they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made\u2026\r\n\r\nI shook hands with him; it seemed silly not to, for I felt suddenly as though I were talking to a child. Then he went into the jewellery store to buy a pearl necklace\u2014or perhaps only a pair of cuff buttons\u2014rid of my provincial squeamishness forever.\r\n\r\n
          \r\n\r\nGatsby\u2019s house was still empty when I left\u2014the grass on his lawn had grown as long as mine. One of the taxi drivers in the village never took a fare past the entrance gate without stopping for a minute and pointing inside; perhaps it was he who drove Daisy and Gatsby over to East Egg the night of the accident, and perhaps he had made a story about it all his own. I didn\u2019t want to hear it and I avoided him when I got off the train.\r\n\r\nI spent my Saturday nights in New York because those gleaming, dazzling parties of his were with me so vividly that I could still hear the music and the laughter, faint and incessant, from his garden, and the cars going up and down his drive. One night I did hear a material car there, and saw its lights stop at his front steps. But I didn\u2019t investigate. Probably it was some final guest who had been away at the ends of the earth and didn\u2019t know that the party was over.\r\n\r\nOn the last night, with my trunk packed and my car sold to the grocer, I went over and looked at that huge incoherent failure of a house once more. On the white steps an obscene word, scrawled by some boy with a piece of brick, stood out clearly in the moonlight, and I erased it, drawing my shoe raspingly along the stone. Then I wandered down to the beach and sprawled out on the sand.\r\n\r\nMost of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors\u2019 eyes\u2014a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby\u2019s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.\r\n\r\nAnd as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby\u2019s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy\u2019s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.\r\n\r\nGatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that\u2019s no matter\u2014tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further\u2026 And one fine morning\u2014\r\n\r\nSo we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.\r\n\r\n<\/div>","rendered":"

          After two years I remember the rest of that day, and that night and the next day, only as an endless drill of police and photographers and newspaper men in and out of Gatsby\u2019s front door. A rope stretched across the main gate and a policeman by it kept out the curious, but little boys soon discovered that they could enter through my yard, and there were always a few of them clustered open-mouthed about the pool. Someone with a positive manner, perhaps a detective, used the expression \u201cmadman\u201d as he bent over Wilson\u2019s body that afternoon, and the adventitious authority of his voice set the key for the newspaper reports next morning.<\/span><\/p>\n

          \n

          Most of those reports were a nightmare\u2014grotesque, circumstantial, eager, and untrue. When Michaelis\u2019s testimony at the inquest brought to light Wilson\u2019s suspicions of his wife I thought the whole tale would shortly be served up in racy pasquinade\u2014but Catherine, who might have said anything, didn\u2019t say a word. She showed a surprising amount of character about it too\u2014looked at the coroner with determined eyes under that corrected brow of hers, and swore that her sister had never seen Gatsby, that her sister was completely happy with her husband, that her sister had been into no mischief whatever. She convinced herself of it, and cried into her handkerchief, as if the very suggestion was more than she could endure. So Wilson was reduced to a man \u201cderanged by grief\u201d in order that the case might remain in its simplest form. And it rested there.<\/p>\n

          But all this part of it seemed remote and unessential. I found myself on Gatsby\u2019s side, and alone. From the moment I telephoned news of the catastrophe to West Egg village, every surmise about him, and every practical question, was referred to me. At first I was surprised and confused; then, as he lay in his house and didn\u2019t move or breathe or speak, hour upon hour, it grew upon me that I was responsible, because no one else was interested\u2014interested, I mean, with that intense personal interest to which everyone has some vague right at the end.<\/p>\n

          I called up Daisy half an hour after we found him, called her instinctively and without hesitation. But she and Tom had gone away early that afternoon, and taken baggage with them.<\/p>\n

          \u201cLeft no address?\u201d<\/p>\n

          \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n

          \u201cSay when they\u2019d be back?\u201d<\/p>\n

          \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n

          \u201cAny idea where they are? How I could reach them?\u201d<\/p>\n

          \u201cI don\u2019t know. Can\u2019t say.\u201d<\/p>\n

          I wanted to get somebody for him. I wanted to go into the room where he lay and reassure him: \u201cI\u2019ll get somebody for you, Gatsby. Don\u2019t worry. Just trust me and I\u2019ll get somebody for you\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

          Meyer Wolfshiem\u2019s name wasn\u2019t in the phone book. The butler gave me his office address on Broadway, and I called Information, but by the time I had the number it was long after five, and no one answered the phone.<\/p>\n

          \u201cWill you ring again?\u201d<\/p>\n

          \u201cI\u2019ve rung three times.\u201d<\/p>\n

          \u201cIt\u2019s very important.\u201d<\/p>\n

          \u201cSorry. I\u2019m afraid no one\u2019s there.\u201d<\/p>\n

          I went back to the drawing-room and thought for an instant that they were chance visitors, all these official people who suddenly filled it. But, though they drew back the sheet and looked at Gatsby with shocked eyes, his protest continued in my brain:<\/p>\n

          \u201cLook here, old sport, you\u2019ve got to get somebody for me. You\u2019ve got to try hard. I can\u2019t go through this alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

          Someone started to ask me questions, but I broke away and going upstairs looked hastily through the unlocked parts of his desk\u2014he\u2019d never told me definitely that his parents were dead. But there was nothing\u2014only the picture of Dan Cody, a token of forgotten violence, staring down from the wall.<\/p>\n

          Next morning I sent the butler to New York with a letter to Wolfshiem, which asked for information and urged him to come out on the next train. That request seemed superfluous when I wrote it. I was sure he\u2019d start when he saw the newspapers, just as I was sure there\u2019d be a wire from Daisy before noon\u2014but neither a wire nor Mr. Wolfshiem arrived; no one arrived except more police and photographers and newspaper men. When the butler brought back Wolfshiem\u2019s answer I began to have a feeling of defiance, of scornful solidarity between Gatsby and me against them all.<\/p>\n

          \n
          \n

          Dear Mr. Carraway. This has been one of the most terrible shocks of my life to me I hardly can believe it that it is true at all. Such a mad act as that man did should make us all think. I cannot come down now as I am tied up in some very important business and cannot get mixed up in this thing now. If there is anything I can do a little later let me know in a letter by Edgar. I hardly know where I am when I hear about a thing like this and am completely knocked down and out.<\/p>\n

          Yours truly<\/p>\n

          Meyer Wolfshiem<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

          and then hasty addenda beneath:<\/p>\n

          \n
          \n

          Let me know about the funeral etc do not know his family at all.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

          When the phone rang that afternoon and Long Distance said Chicago was calling I thought this would be Daisy at last. But the connection came through as a man\u2019s voice, very thin and far away.<\/p>\n

          \u201cThis is Slagle speaking\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

          \u201cYes?\u201d The name was unfamiliar.<\/p>\n

          \u201cHell of a note, isn\u2019t it? Get my wire?\u201d<\/p>\n

          \u201cThere haven\u2019t been any wires.\u201d<\/p>\n

          \u201cYoung Parke\u2019s in trouble,\u201d he said rapidly. \u201cThey picked him up when he handed the bonds over the counter. They got a circular from New York giving \u2019em the numbers just five minutes before. What d\u2019you know about that, hey? You never can tell in these hick towns\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

          \u201cHello!\u201d I interrupted breathlessly. \u201cLook here\u2014this isn\u2019t Mr. Gatsby. Mr. Gatsby\u2019s dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

          There was a long silence on the other end of the wire, followed by an exclamation\u2026 then a quick squawk as the connection was broken.<\/p>\n

          \n

          I think it was on the third day that a telegram signed Henry C. Gatz arrived from a town in Minnesota. It said only that the sender was leaving immediately and to postpone the funeral until he came.<\/p>\n

          It was Gatsby\u2019s father, a solemn old man, very helpless and dismayed, bundled up in a long cheap ulster against the warm September day. His eyes leaked continuously with excitement, and when I took the bag and umbrella from his hands he began to pull so incessantly at his sparse grey beard that I had difficulty in getting off his coat. He was on the point of collapse, so I took him into the music-room and made him sit down while I sent for something to eat. But he wouldn\u2019t eat, and the glass of milk spilled from his trembling hand.<\/p>\n

          \u201cI saw it in the Chicago newspaper,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was all in the Chicago newspaper. I started right away.\u201d<\/p>\n

          \u201cI didn\u2019t know how to reach you.\u201d<\/p>\n

          His eyes, seeing nothing, moved ceaselessly about the room.<\/p>\n

          \u201cIt was a madman,\u201d he said. \u201cHe must have been mad.\u201d<\/p>\n

          \u201cWouldn\u2019t you like some coffee?\u201d I urged him.<\/p>\n

          \u201cI don\u2019t want anything. I\u2019m all right now, Mr.\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

          \u201cCarraway.\u201d<\/p>\n

          \u201cWell, I\u2019m all right now. Where have they got Jimmy?\u201d<\/p>\n

          I took him into the drawing-room, where his son lay, and left him there. Some little boys had come up on the steps and were looking into the hall; when I told them who had arrived, they went reluctantly away.<\/p>\n

          After a little while Mr. Gatz opened the door and came out, his mouth ajar, his face flushed slightly, his eyes leaking isolated and unpunctual tears. He had reached an age where death no longer has the quality of ghastly surprise, and when he looked around him now for the first time and saw the height and splendour of the hall and the great rooms opening out from it into other rooms, his grief began to be mixed with an awed pride. I helped him to a bedroom upstairs; while he took off his coat and vest I told him that all arrangements had been deferred until he came.<\/p>\n

          \u201cI didn\u2019t know what you\u2019d want, Mr. Gatsby\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

          \u201cGatz is my name.\u201d<\/p>\n

          \u201c\u2014Mr. Gatz. I thought you might want to take the body West.\u201d<\/p>\n

          He shook his head.<\/p>\n

          \u201cJimmy always liked it better down East. He rose up to his position in the East. Were you a friend of my boy\u2019s, Mr.\u2014?\u201d<\/p>\n

          \u201cWe were close friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

          \u201cHe had a big future before him, you know. He was only a young man, but he had a lot of brain power here.\u201d<\/p>\n

          He touched his head impressively, and I nodded.<\/p>\n

          \u201cIf he\u2019d of lived, he\u2019d of been a great man. A man like James J. Hill. He\u2019d of helped build up the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

          \u201cThat\u2019s true,\u201d I said, uncomfortably.<\/p>\n

          He fumbled at the embroidered coverlet, trying to take it from the bed, and lay down stiffly\u2014was instantly asleep.<\/p>\n

          That night an obviously frightened person called up, and demanded to know who I was before he would give his name.<\/p>\n

          \u201cThis is Mr. Carraway,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

          \u201cOh!\u201d He sounded relieved. \u201cThis is Klipspringer.\u201d<\/p>\n

          I was relieved too, for that seemed to promise another friend at Gatsby\u2019s grave. I didn\u2019t want it to be in the papers and draw a sightseeing crowd, so I\u2019d been calling up a few people myself. They were hard to find.<\/p>\n

          \u201cThe funeral\u2019s tomorrow,\u201d I said. \u201cThree o\u2019clock, here at the house. I wish you\u2019d tell anybody who\u2019d be interested.\u201d<\/p>\n

          \u201cOh, I will,\u201d he broke out hastily. \u201cOf course I\u2019m not likely to see anybody, but if I do.\u201d<\/p>\n

          His tone made me suspicious.<\/p>\n

          \u201cOf course you\u2019ll be there yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

          \u201cWell, I\u2019ll certainly try. What I called up about is\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

          \u201cWait a minute,\u201d I interrupted. \u201cHow about saying you\u2019ll come?\u201d<\/p>\n

          \u201cWell, the fact is\u2014the truth of the matter is that I\u2019m staying with some people up here in Greenwich, and they rather expect me to be with them tomorrow. In fact, there\u2019s a sort of picnic or something. Of course I\u2019ll do my best to get away.\u201d<\/p>\n

          I ejaculated an unrestrained \u201cHuh!\u201d and he must have heard me, for he went on nervously:<\/p>\n

          \u201cWhat I called up about was a pair of shoes I left there. I wonder if it\u2019d be too much trouble to have the butler send them on. You see, they\u2019re tennis shoes, and I\u2019m sort of helpless without them. My address is care of B. F.\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

          I didn\u2019t hear the rest of the name, because I hung up the receiver.<\/p>\n

          After that I felt a certain shame for Gatsby\u2014one gentleman to whom I telephoned implied that he had got what he deserved. However, that was my fault, for he was one of those who used to sneer most bitterly at Gatsby on the courage of Gatsby\u2019s liquor, and I should have known better than to call him.<\/p>\n

          The morning of the funeral I went up to New York to see Meyer Wolfshiem; I couldn\u2019t seem to reach him any other way. The door that I pushed open, on the advice of an elevator boy, was marked \u201cThe Swastika Holding Company,\u201d and at first there didn\u2019t seem to be anyone inside. But when I\u2019d shouted \u201chello\u201d several times in vain, an argument broke out behind a partition, and presently a lovely Jewess appeared at an interior door and scrutinized me with black hostile eyes.<\/p>\n

          \u201cNobody\u2019s in,\u201d she said. \u201cMr. Wolfshiem\u2019s gone to Chicago.\u201d<\/p>\n

          The first part of this was obviously untrue, for someone had begun to whistle \u201cThe Rosary,\u201d tunelessly, inside.<\/p>\n

          \u201cPlease say that Mr. Carraway wants to see him.\u201d<\/p>\n

          \u201cI can\u2019t get him back from Chicago, can I?\u201d<\/p>\n

          At this moment a voice, unmistakably Wolfshiem\u2019s, called \u201cStella!\u201d from the other side of the door.<\/p>\n

          \u201cLeave your name on the desk,\u201d she said quickly. \u201cI\u2019ll give it to him when he gets back.\u201d<\/p>\n

          \u201cBut I know he\u2019s there.\u201d<\/p>\n

          She took a step toward me and began to slide her hands indignantly up and down her hips.<\/p>\n

          \u201cYou young men think you can force your way in here any time,\u201d she scolded. \u201cWe\u2019re getting sickantired of it. When I say he\u2019s in Chicago, he\u2019s in Chica<\/i>go.\u201d<\/p>\n

          I mentioned Gatsby.<\/p>\n

          \u201cOh-h!\u201d She looked at me over again. \u201cWill you just\u2014What was your name?\u201d<\/p>\n

          She vanished. In a moment Meyer Wolfshiem stood solemnly in the doorway, holding out both hands. He drew me into his office, remarking in a reverent voice that it was a sad time for all of us, and offered me a cigar.<\/p>\n

          \u201cMy memory goes back to when first I met him,\u201d he said. \u201cA young major just out of the army and covered over with medals he got in the war. He was so hard up he had to keep on wearing his uniform because he couldn\u2019t buy some regular clothes. First time I saw him was when he came into Winebrenner\u2019s poolroom at Forty-third Street and asked for a job. He hadn\u2019t eat anything for a couple of days. \u2018Come on have some lunch with me,\u2019 I said. He ate more than four dollars\u2019 worth of food in half an hour.\u201d<\/p>\n

          \u201cDid you start him in business?\u201d I inquired.<\/p>\n

          \u201cStart him! I made him.\u201d<\/p>\n

          \u201cOh.\u201d<\/p>\n

          \u201cI raised him up out of nothing, right out of the gutter. I saw right away he was a fine-appearing, gentlemanly young man, and when he told me he was at Oggsford I knew I could use him good. I got him to join the American Legion and he used to stand high there. Right off he did some work for a client of mine up to Albany. We were so thick like that in everything\u201d\u2014he held up two bulbous fingers\u2014\u201calways together.\u201d<\/p>\n

          I wondered if this partnership had included the World\u2019s Series transaction in 1919.<\/p>\n

          \u201cNow he\u2019s dead,\u201d I said after a moment. \u201cYou were his closest friend, so I know you\u2019ll want to come to his funeral this afternoon.\u201d<\/p>\n

          \u201cI\u2019d like to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

          \u201cWell, come then.\u201d<\/p>\n

          The hair in his nostrils quivered slightly, and as he shook his head his eyes filled with tears.<\/p>\n

          \u201cI can\u2019t do it\u2014I can\u2019t get mixed up in it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

          \u201cThere\u2019s nothing to get mixed up in. It\u2019s all over now.\u201d<\/p>\n

          \u201cWhen a man gets killed I never like to get mixed up in it in any way. I keep out. When I was a young man it was different\u2014if a friend of mine died, no matter how, I stuck with them to the end. You may think that\u2019s sentimental, but I mean it\u2014to the bitter end.\u201d<\/p>\n

          I saw that for some reason of his own he was determined not to come, so I stood up.<\/p>\n

          \u201cAre you a college man?\u201d he inquired suddenly.<\/p>\n

          For a moment I thought he was going to suggest a \u201cgonnegtion,\u201d but he only nodded and shook my hand.<\/p>\n

          \u201cLet us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead,\u201d he suggested. \u201cAfter that my own rule is to let everything alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

          When I left his office the sky had turned dark and I got back to West Egg in a drizzle. After changing my clothes I went next door and found Mr. Gatz walking up and down excitedly in the hall. His pride in his son and in his son\u2019s possessions was continually increasing and now he had something to show me.<\/p>\n

          \u201cJimmy sent me this picture.\u201d He took out his wallet with trembling fingers. \u201cLook there.\u201d<\/p>\n

          It was a photograph of the house, cracked in the corners and dirty with many hands. He pointed out every detail to me eagerly. \u201cLook there!\u201d and then sought admiration from my eyes. He had shown it so often that I think it was more real to him now than the house itself.<\/p>\n

          \u201cJimmy sent it to me. I think it\u2019s a very pretty picture. It shows up well.\u201d<\/p>\n

          \u201cVery well. Had you seen him lately?\u201d<\/p>\n

          \u201cHe come out to see me two years ago and bought me the house I live in now. Of course we was broke up when he run off from home, but I see now there was a reason for it. He knew he had a big future in front of him. And ever since he made a success he was very generous with me.\u201d<\/p>\n

          He seemed reluctant to put away the picture, held it for another minute, lingeringly, before my eyes. Then he returned the wallet and pulled from his pocket a ragged old copy of a book called Hopalong Cassidy<\/i>.<\/p>\n

          \u201cLook here, this is a book he had when he was a boy. It just shows you.\u201d<\/p>\n

          He opened it at the back cover and turned it around for me to see. On the last flyleaf was printed the word schedule<\/b>, and the date September 12, 1906. And underneath:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
          Activity<\/th>\nTime<\/th>\nam\/pm<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
          Rise from bed<\/td>\n6:00<\/td>\na.m.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
          Dumbell exercise and wall-scaling<\/td>\n6:15\u2060\u2013\u20606:30<\/td>\n\u201c<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
          Study electricity, etc.<\/td>\n7:15\u2060\u2013\u20608:15<\/td>\n\u201c<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
          Work<\/td>\n8:30\u2060\u2013\u20604:30<\/td>\np.m.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
          Baseball and sports<\/td>\n4:30\u2060\u2013\u20605:00<\/td>\n\u201c<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
          Practise elocution, poise and how to attain it<\/td>\n5:00\u2060\u2013\u20606:00<\/td>\n\u201c<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
          Study needed inventions<\/td>\n7:00\u2060\u2013\u20609:00<\/td>\n\u201c<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

          General Resolves<\/h2>\n
          \n
          \n
            \n
          • \n
              \n
            • \n
                \n
              • \n
                  \n
                • No wasting time at Shafters or [a name, indecipherable]<\/li>\n
                • No more smokeing or chewing.<\/li>\n
                • Bath every other day<\/li>\n
                • Read one improving book or magazine per week<\/li>\n
                • Save $5.00 [crossed out] $3.00 per week<\/li>\n
                • Be better to parents<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

                  \u201cI came across this book by accident,\u201d said the old man. \u201cIt just shows you, don\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n

                  \u201cIt just shows you.\u201d<\/p>\n

                  \u201cJimmy was bound to get ahead. He always had some resolves like this or something. Do you notice what he\u2019s got about improving his mind? He was always great for that. He told me I et like a hog once, and I beat him for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

                  He was reluctant to close the book, reading each item aloud and then looking eagerly at me. I think he rather expected me to copy down the list for my own use.<\/p>\n

                  A little before three the Lutheran minister arrived from Flushing, and I began to look involuntarily out the windows for other cars. So did Gatsby\u2019s father. And as the time passed and the servants came in and stood waiting in the hall, his eyes began to blink anxiously, and he spoke of the rain in a worried, uncertain way. The minister glanced several times at his watch, so I took him aside and asked him to wait for half an hour. But it wasn\u2019t any use. Nobody came.<\/p>\n

                  \n

                  About five o\u2019clock our procession of three cars reached the cemetery and stopped in a thick drizzle beside the gate\u2014first a motor hearse, horribly black and wet, then Mr. Gatz and the minister and me in the limousine, and a little later four or five servants and the postman from West Egg, in Gatsby\u2019s station wagon, all wet to the skin. As we started through the gate into the cemetery I heard a car stop and then the sound of someone splashing after us over the soggy ground. I looked around. It was the man with owl-eyed glasses whom I had found marvelling over Gatsby\u2019s books in the library one night three months before.<\/p>\n

                  I\u2019d never seen him since then. I don\u2019t know how he knew about the funeral, or even his name. The rain poured down his thick glasses, and he took them off and wiped them to see the protecting canvas unrolled from Gatsby\u2019s grave.<\/p>\n

                  I tried to think about Gatsby then for a moment, but he was already too far away, and I could only remember, without resentment, that Daisy hadn\u2019t sent a message or a flower. Dimly I heard someone murmur \u201cBlessed are the dead that the rain falls on,\u201d and then the owl-eyed man said \u201cAmen to that,\u201d in a brave voice.<\/p>\n

                  We straggled down quickly through the rain to the cars. Owl-eyes spoke to me by the gate.<\/p>\n

                  \u201cI couldn\u2019t get to the house,\u201d he remarked.<\/p>\n

                  \u201cNeither could anybody else.\u201d<\/p>\n

                  \u201cGo on!\u201d He started. \u201cWhy, my God! they used to go there by the hundreds.\u201d<\/p>\n

                  He took off his glasses and wiped them again, outside and in.<\/p>\n

                  \u201cThe poor son-of-a-bitch,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

                  \n

                  One of my most vivid memories is of coming back West from prep school and later from college at Christmas time. Those who went farther than Chicago would gather in the old dim Union Station at six o\u2019clock of a December evening, with a few Chicago friends, already caught up into their own holiday gaieties, to bid them a hasty goodbye. I remember the fur coats of the girls returning from Miss This-or-That\u2019s and the chatter of frozen breath and the hands waving overhead as we caught sight of old acquaintances, and the matchings of invitations: \u201cAre you going to the Ordways\u2019? the Herseys\u2019? the Schultzes\u2019?\u201d and the long green tickets clasped tight in our gloved hands. And last the murky yellow cars of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul railroad looking cheerful as Christmas itself on the tracks beside the gate.<\/p>\n

                  When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air. We drew in deep breaths of it as we walked back from dinner through the cold vestibules, unutterably aware of our identity with this country for one strange hour, before we melted indistinguishably into it again.<\/p>\n

                  That\u2019s my Middle West\u2014not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns, but the thrilling returning trains of my youth, and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow. I am part of that, a little solemn with the feel of those long winters, a little complacent from growing up in the Carraway house in a city where dwellings are still called through decades by a family\u2019s name. I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all\u2014Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.<\/p>\n

                  Even when the East excited me most, even when I was most keenly aware of its superiority to the bored, sprawling, swollen towns beyond the Ohio, with their interminable inquisitions which spared only the children and the very old\u2014even then it had always for me a quality of distortion. West Egg, especially, still figures in my more fantastic dreams. I see it as a night scene by El Greco: a hundred houses, at once conventional and grotesque, crouching under a sullen, overhanging sky and a lustreless moon. In the foreground four solemn men in dress suits are walking along the sidewalk with a stretcher on which lies a drunken woman in a white evening dress. Her hand, which dangles over the side, sparkles cold with jewels. Gravely the men turn in at a house\u2014the wrong house. But no one knows the woman\u2019s name, and no one cares.<\/p>\n

                  After Gatsby\u2019s death the East was haunted for me like that, distorted beyond my eyes\u2019 power of correction. So when the blue smoke of brittle leaves was in the air and the wind blew the wet laundry stiff on the line I decided to come back home.<\/p>\n

                  There was one thing to be done before I left, an awkward, unpleasant thing that perhaps had better have been let alone. But I wanted to leave things in order and not just trust that obliging and indifferent sea to sweep my refuse away. I saw Jordan Baker and talked over and around what had happened to us together, and what had happened afterward to me, and she lay perfectly still, listening, in a big chair.<\/p>\n

                  She was dressed to play golf, and I remember thinking she looked like a good illustration, her chin raised a little jauntily, her hair the colour of an autumn leaf, her face the same brown tint as the fingerless glove on her knee. When I had finished she told me without comment that she was engaged to another man. I doubted that, though there were several she could have married at a nod of her head, but I pretended to be surprised. For just a minute I wondered if I wasn\u2019t making a mistake, then I thought it all over again quickly and got up to say goodbye.<\/p>\n

                  \u201cNevertheless you did throw me over,\u201d said Jordan suddenly. \u201cYou threw me over on the telephone. I don\u2019t give a damn about you now, but it was a new experience for me, and I felt a little dizzy for a while.\u201d<\/p>\n

                  We shook hands.<\/p>\n

                  \u201cOh, and do you remember\u201d\u2014she added\u2014\u201ca conversation we had once about driving a car?\u201d<\/p>\n

                  \u201cWhy\u2014not exactly.\u201d<\/p>\n

                  \u201cYou said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad driver, didn\u2019t I? I mean it was careless of me to make such a wrong guess. I thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person. I thought it was your secret pride.\u201d<\/p>\n

                  \u201cI\u2019m thirty,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019m five years too old to lie to myself and call it honour.\u201d<\/p>\n

                  She didn\u2019t answer. Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away.<\/p>\n

                  \n

                  One afternoon late in October I saw Tom Buchanan. He was walking ahead of me along Fifth Avenue in his alert, aggressive way, his hands out a little from his body as if to fight off interference, his head moving sharply here and there, adapting itself to his restless eyes. Just as I slowed up to avoid overtaking him he stopped and began frowning into the windows of a jewellery store. Suddenly he saw me and walked back, holding out his hand.<\/p>\n

                  \u201cWhat\u2019s the matter, Nick? Do you object to shaking hands with me?\u201d<\/p>\n

                  \u201cYes. You know what I think of you.\u201d<\/p>\n

                  \u201cYou\u2019re crazy, Nick,\u201d he said quickly. \u201cCrazy as hell. I don\u2019t know what\u2019s the matter with you.\u201d<\/p>\n

                  \u201cTom,\u201d I inquired, \u201cwhat did you say to Wilson that afternoon?\u201d<\/p>\n

                  He stared at me without a word, and I knew I had guessed right about those missing hours. I started to turn away, but he took a step after me and grabbed my arm.<\/p>\n

                  \u201cI told him the truth,\u201d he said. \u201cHe came to the door while we were getting ready to leave, and when I sent down word that we weren\u2019t in he tried to force his way upstairs. He was crazy enough to kill me if I hadn\u2019t told him who owned the car. His hand was on a revolver in his pocket every minute he was in the house\u2014\u201d He broke off defiantly. \u201cWhat if I did tell him? That fellow had it coming to him. He threw dust into your eyes just like he did in Daisy\u2019s, but he was a tough one. He ran over Myrtle like you\u2019d run over a dog and never even stopped his car.\u201d<\/p>\n

                  There was nothing I could say, except the one unutterable fact that it wasn\u2019t true.<\/p>\n

                  \u201cAnd if you think I didn\u2019t have my share of suffering\u2014look here, when I went to give up that flat and saw that damn box of dog biscuits sitting there on the sideboard, I sat down and cried like a baby. By God it was awful\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

                  I couldn\u2019t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy\u2014they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made\u2026<\/p>\n

                  I shook hands with him; it seemed silly not to, for I felt suddenly as though I were talking to a child. Then he went into the jewellery store to buy a pearl necklace\u2014or perhaps only a pair of cuff buttons\u2014rid of my provincial squeamishness forever.<\/p>\n

                  \n

                  Gatsby\u2019s house was still empty when I left\u2014the grass on his lawn had grown as long as mine. One of the taxi drivers in the village never took a fare past the entrance gate without stopping for a minute and pointing inside; perhaps it was he who drove Daisy and Gatsby over to East Egg the night of the accident, and perhaps he had made a story about it all his own. I didn\u2019t want to hear it and I avoided him when I got off the train.<\/p>\n

                  I spent my Saturday nights in New York because those gleaming, dazzling parties of his were with me so vividly that I could still hear the music and the laughter, faint and incessant, from his garden, and the cars going up and down his drive. One night I did hear a material car there, and saw its lights stop at his front steps. But I didn\u2019t investigate. Probably it was some final guest who had been away at the ends of the earth and didn\u2019t know that the party was over.<\/p>\n

                  On the last night, with my trunk packed and my car sold to the grocer, I went over and looked at that huge incoherent failure of a house once more. On the white steps an obscene word, scrawled by some boy with a piece of brick, stood out clearly in the moonlight, and I erased it, drawing my shoe raspingly along the stone. Then I wandered down to the beach and sprawled out on the sand.<\/p>\n

                  Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors\u2019 eyes\u2014a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby\u2019s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.<\/p>\n

                  And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby\u2019s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy\u2019s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.<\/p>\n

                  Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that\u2019s no matter\u2014tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further\u2026 And one fine morning\u2014<\/p>\n

                  So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"menu_order":10,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[48],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-26","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry","chapter-type-numberless"],"part":3,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thegreatgatsby\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/26","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thegreatgatsby\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thegreatgatsby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thegreatgatsby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thegreatgatsby\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/26\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thegreatgatsby\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/26\/revisions\/98"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thegreatgatsby\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/3"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thegreatgatsby\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/26\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thegreatgatsby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thegreatgatsby\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=26"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thegreatgatsby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=26"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thegreatgatsby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}