A Handful of Dates

The narrator of the story is a little boy who loves and admires his grandfather. His grandfather is like a father to him. He is always with him reading the Koran or talking. One day the boys respect and admiration towards the grandfather changed. The boy’s grandfather owned a field that grows date trees. When he and his grandfather went to see how the harvesting of the dates was progressing. That’s when one of the harvesters named Masood approaches the grandfather and asks him about the money he owed to him. The boy’s grandfather gets angry and yells at Masood for not having the money he owed him. Then the boy realizes how cruel of his grandfather and the real world.

The Interlopers

This story is about two neighbors Georg Zynem and Ulrich von Gradwich from the Carpathians. They are feuding about one piece of land. The neighbors share a forest and Georg Zynem thinks that Ulrich von Gradwich stole land that belonged to his family. With a few men Georg went poaching on Ulrich’s property. Ulrich however knew Georg poached on his land so with the help of few men he went to hunt down Georg. Later in the night Ulrich and Georg met during a thunder storm and they were quarreling with one another. In a flash a bolt of lightning hit a tree causing it to fall on them. The two men were talking about the feud between the two families. That’s when Georg asked Ulrich to become his friend and stop the feud. During the discussion Ulrich and Georg saw what they thought to be men approaching. Ulrich then thought it was Georg’s men approaching and Georg thought it was Ulrich’s men approaching but they soon realized it was a pack of wolves.

Sherlock Holmes and the Speckled Band

A young woman named Helen Stoner visits Sherlock Holmes to tell him that her engaged sister Julia was murdered last night. She was to receive her mother’s large income after the marriage, but her step father would receive less. When Helen went to sleep the night before she heard her sister scream and when Helen rushed into her sisters room Julia was about to die and her last words were “it was a band, the speckled band”. Helen tells Holmes that her step father moved her into a room isolated from the other the night she died. Deep into the night Helen explains she hears eerie sounds like metals banging and whistling sounds. Helen thinks that her sister was murdered by a gypsy that lives outside their house, since the gypsies wear speckled bands around their necks. That night Holmes tells Helen to sleep at her friend’s house so Holmes and his partner Dr. Watson could solve the mystery. After hours spent in the room Holmes discovers a snake in the air vent above his head. It was a Poisonous speckled band snake Helens step father had put in the air vent to kill her and receive her dead mother’s whole income. The sound of metals banging was her step father putting the snake in the air vent and low whistling sound was used to call the snake back after it bit its victim

Sherlock Holmes and the Engineers Thumb

One morning Dr. Watson gets an unexpected visitor from a far away city named Victor Hatherley who is a hydraulic engineer. He tells Watson that his thumb is cut off and he wants to figure out who cut his thumb off. Then Dr. Watson takes Victor Hatherley to Sherlock Holmes a famous detective from Scotland yards. Hatherley tells Holmes that he was confronted by Colonel Lysander who told him to examine a machine. Lysander would give him 50 guineas to examine the strange machine. While Hatherley is inside the house a woman approaches him and tells him to leave the house immediately because it is not safe here. Hatherley finds out that one piece of the machine is not used for its purpose which is to dig up land. When he tries to turn on the machine it almost kills him but he manages to jumps out of a window. When he lands back down he discovers his thumb has been cut off by something. When Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson and Victor Hatherley arrive at the house where the crime took place it is on fire. Holmes figures that the lamp Hatherley used was crushed inside the machine and the machine caught on fire and then the house. Colonel Lysander and the strange woman were trying to make counterfeit money and their operation was dampened by the fire, unfortunately the perpetrators escaped.

A Basket of Apples

The story begins when the narrator is visiting his father in the hospital, who has been diagnosed with lung cancer. However, the narrator’s mother thinks he is in hospital for an annual check up. When the narrator returns home with his siblings he tells his mother that her husband is fine but he is really suffering. One day the narrator sits down with his mother and reminisces to the time when his father was home. The narrator’s mother tells him that she and his father were married by a marriage broker yet she loved him dearly. The narrator’s uncle Yankev doesn’t like the narrator’s father. Yankev often visits them and he yells at the husband because he is not raising the kids correctly or giving his niece a better life. Yankev was the one who brought the narrator’s mother to Canada and he raised her like his own child and now he is ashamed of her for marrying the narrator’s father. After this the narrator and his siblings go back to the hospital to visit their father but when they get there he is pronounced dead. The three return home thinking how they will tell their mother. When their mother wakes up the next morning they tell her that her husband has left the earth but she says that her heart told her he was already gone.

Henye

The story of Henye is about a Jewish immigrant from Rumania. Henye meets Yankev through a matchmaker. Yankev is looking for a mother for his children since his wife had died. Although, he is not pleased with the match he marries her anyways. What Henye didn’t know is that Yankev is making illegal liquor and selling it. This made her very upset and she asks him to stop. He is caught by the authorities on three different occasions and is sent to jail. When Yankev returned home he promised that he would stop making liquor. Yankev fell ill during that winter and is sent to hospital. While in the hospital one of his customers call his home asking his order. Henye becomes furious and with the help of her niece throws the liquor down the drain. When Yankev returns home from hospital he becomes very angry at Henye and tells her to mind her own business. A few moths later Henye dies in her sleep. Yankev remarries only to find that he really misses his kind, loving Henye and realizes he never really appreciated her.