conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first five paragraphs for a story with the title 'The Blacker the Berry'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Blacker the Berry
  Whenever they happened to meet, he would talk to her about her life in particular and Negro life in general. She had to admit that he knew much more about such matters than she or any other Negro she had ever met. And it was because of one of these chance talks that she finally decided to follow Mrs. Blake's advice and take the public school teachers' examination.
  Two years had wrought little change in Emma Lou, although much had happened to her. After that tearful night, when Alva had sworn at her and stalked out of her room, she had somewhat taken stock of herself. She wondered if Alva had been right in his allegations. Was she supersensitive about her color? Did she encourage color prejudice among her own people, simply by being so expectant of it? She tried hard to place the blame on herself, but she couldn't seem to do it. She knew she hadn't been color-conscious during her early childhood days; that is, until she had had it called to her attention by her mother or some of her mother's friends, who had all seemed to take delight in marveling, "What an extraordinarily black child!" or "Such beautiful hair on such a black baby!"
  Her mother had even hidden her away on occasions when she was to have company, and her grandmother had been cruel in always assailing Emma Lou's father, whose only crime seemed to be that he had had a blue black skin. Then there had been her childhood days when she had ventured forth into the streets to play. All of her colored playmates had been mulattoes, and her white playmates had never ceased calling public attention to her crow-like complexion. Consequently, she had grown sensitive and had soon been driven to play by herself, avoiding contact with other children as much as possible. Her mother encouraged her in this, had even suggested that she not attend certain parties because she might not have a good time.
  Then there had been the searing psychological effect of that dreadful graduation night, and the lonely embittering three years at college, all of which had tended to make her color more and more a paramount issue and ill. It was neither fashionable nor good for a girl to be as dark as she, and to be, at the same time, as untalented and undistinguished. Dark girls could get along if they were exceptionally talented or handsome or wealthy, but she had nothing to recommend her, save a beautiful head of hair. Despite the fact that she had managed to lead her classes in school, she had to admit that mentally she was merely mediocre and average. Now, had she been as intelligent as Mamie Olds Bates, head of a Negro school in Florida, and president of a huge national association of colored women's clubs, her darkness would not have mattered. Or had she been as wealthy as Lillian Saunders, who had inherited the millions her mother had made producing hair straightening commodities, things might have been different; but here she was, commonplace and poor, ugly and undistinguished.
  Emma Lou recalled all these things, while trying to fasten the blame for her extreme color-consciousness on herself as Alva had done, but she was unable to make a good case of it. Surely, it had not been her color-consciousness which had excluded her from the only Negro sorority in her college, nor had it been her color-consciousness that had caused her to spend such an isolated three years in Southern California. The people she naturally felt at home with had, somehow or other, managed to keep her at a distance. It was no fun going to social affairs and being neglected throughout the entire evening. There was no need in forcing one's self into a certain milieu only to be frozen out. Hence, she had stayed to herself, had had very few friends, and had become more and more resentful of her blackness of skin.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me five more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: They both had beaux, young men whom they had met at the various church meetings and socials. Gwendolyn insisted that they snub the "high yallers" and continually was going into ecstasies over the browns and blacks they conquested. Emma Lou couldn't get excited over any of them. They all seemed so young and so pallid. Their air of being all-wise amused her, their affected church purity and wholesomeness, largely a verbal matter, tired her. Their world was so small—church, school, home, mother, father, parties, future. She invariably compared them to Alva and made herself laugh by classifying them as a litter of sick puppies. Alva was a bulldog and a healthy one at that. Yet these sick puppies, as she called them, were the next generation of Negro leaders, the next generation of respectable society folk. They had a future; Alva merely lived for no purpose whatsoever except for the pleasure he could squeeze out of each living moment. He didn't construct anything; the litter of pups would, or at least they would be credited with constructing something whether they did or not. She found herself strangely uninterested in anything they might construct. She didn't see that it would make much difference in the world whether they did or did not. Months of sophisticated reading under Campbell Kitchen's tutelage had cultivated the seeds of pessimism experience had sown. Life was all a bad dream recurrent in essentials. Every dog had his day and every dog died. These priggish little respectable persons she now knew and associated with seemed infinitely inferior to her. They were all hypocritical and colorless. They committed what they called sin in the same colorless way they served God, family, and race. None of them had the fire and gusto of Alva, nor his light-heartedness. At last she had met the "right sort of people" and found them to be quite wrong.
  However, she quelled her growing dissatisfaction and immersed herself in her work. Campbell Kitchen had told her again and again that economic independence was the solution to almost any problem. When she found herself a well-paying position she need not worry more. Everything else would follow and she would find herself among the pursued instead of among the pursuers. This was the gospel she now adhered to and placed faith in. She studied hard, finished her courses at Teachers College, took and passed the school board examination, and mechanically followed Gwendolyn about, pretending to share her enthusiasms and hatreds. All would soon come to the desired end. Her doctrine of pessimism was weakened by the optimism the future seemed to promise. She had even become somewhat interested in one of the young men she had met at St. Mark's Gwendolyn discouraged this interest. "Why, Emma Lou, he's one of them yaller niggers; you don't want to get mixed up with him."
  Though meaning well, she did not know that it was precisely because he was one of those "yaller niggers" that Emma Lou liked him.
  Emma Lou and her new "yaller nigger," Benson Brown, were returning from church on a Tuesday evening where they had attended a young people's bible class. It was a beautiful early fall night, warm and moonlit, and they had left the church early, intent upon slipping away from Gwendolyn, and taking a walk before they parted for the night. Emma Lou had no reason for liking Benson save that she was flattered that a man as light as he should find himself attracted to her. It always gave her a thrill to stroll into church or down Seventh Avenue with him. And she loved to show him off in the reception room of the Y.W.C.A. True, he was almost as colorless and uninteresting to her as the rest of the crowd with whom she now associated, but he had a fair skin and he didn't seem to mind her darkness. Then, it did her good to show Gwendolyn that she, Emma Lou, could get a yellow-skinned man. She always felt that the reason Gwendolyn insisted upon her going with a dark-skinned man was because she secretly considered it unlikely for her to get a light one.
  Benson was a negative personality. His father was an ex-preacher turned Pullman porter because, since prohibition times, he could make more money on the Pullman cars than he could in the pulpit. His mother was an active church worker and club woman, "one of the pillars of the community," the current pastor at their church had called her. Benson himself was in college, studying business methods and administration. It had taken him six years to finish high school, and it promised to take him much longer to finish college. He had a placid, ineffectual dirty yellow face, topped by red mariney hair, and studded with gray eyes. He was as ugly as he was stupid, and he had been as glad to have Emma Lou interested in him as she had been glad to attract him. She actually seemed to take him seriously, while every one else more or less laughed at him. Already he was planning to quit school, go to work, and marry her; and Emma Lou, while not anticipating any such sudden consummation, remained blind to everything save his color and the attention he paid to her.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Reverse the sentences.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Already he was planning to quit school, go to work, and marry her; and Emma Lou, while not anticipating any such sudden consummation, remained blind to everything save his color and the attention he paid to her.. She actually seemed to take him seriously, while every one else more or less laughed at him. He was as ugly as he was stupid, and he had been as glad to have Emma Lou interested in him as she had been glad to attract him. He had a placid, ineffectual dirty yellow face, topped by red mariney hair, and studded with gray eyes. It had taken him six years to finish high school, and it promised to take him much longer to finish college. Benson himself was in college, studying business methods and administration. His mother was an active church worker and club woman, "one of the pillars of the community," the current pastor at their church had called her. His father was an ex-preacher turned Pullman porter because, since prohibition times, he could make more money on the Pullman cars than he could in the pulpit.
  Benson was a negative personality. She always felt that the reason Gwendolyn insisted upon her going with a dark-skinned man was because she secretly considered it unlikely for her to get a light one. Then, it did her good to show Gwendolyn that she, Emma Lou, could get a yellow-skinned man. True, he was almost as colorless and uninteresting to her as the rest of the crowd with whom she now associated, but he had a fair skin and he didn't seem to mind her darkness.A.C.W. And she loved to show him off in the reception room of the Y. It always gave her a thrill to stroll into church or down Seventh Avenue with him. Emma Lou had no reason for liking Benson save that she was flattered that a man as light as he should find himself attracted to her. It was a beautiful early fall night, warm and moonlit, and they had left the church early, intent upon slipping away from Gwendolyn, and taking a walk before they parted for the night.
  Emma Lou and her new "yaller nigger," Benson Brown, were returning from church on a Tuesday evening where they had attended a young people's bible class."
  Though meaning well, she did not know that it was precisely because he was one of those "yaller niggers" that Emma Lou liked him. "Why, Emma Lou, he's one of them yaller niggers; you don't want to get mixed up with him. Mark's Gwendolyn discouraged this interest. She had even become somewhat interested in one of the young men she had met at St. Her doctrine of pessimism was weakened by the optimism the future seemed to promise. All would soon come to the desired end. She studied hard, finished her courses at Teachers College, took and passed the school board examination, and mechanically followed Gwendolyn about, pretending to share her enthusiasms and hatreds. This was the gospel she now adhered to and placed faith in. Everything else would follow and she would find herself among the pursued instead of among the pursuers. When she found herself a well-paying position she need not worry more. Campbell Kitchen had told her again and again that economic independence was the solution to almost any problem.
  However, she quelled her growing dissatisfaction and immersed herself in her work. At last she had met the "right sort of people" and found them to be quite wrong. None of them had the fire and gusto of Alva, nor his light-heartedness. They committed what they called sin in the same colorless way they served God, family, and race. They were all hypocritical and colorless. These priggish little respectable persons she now knew and associated with seemed infinitely inferior to her. Every dog had his day and every dog died. Life was all a bad dream recurrent in essentials. Months of sophisticated reading under Campbell Kitchen's tutelage had cultivated the seeds of pessimism experience had sown. She didn't see that it would make much difference in the world whether they did or did not. She found herself strangely uninterested in anything they might construct. He didn't construct anything; the litter of pups would, or at least they would be credited with constructing something whether they did or not. They had a future; Alva merely lived for no purpose whatsoever except for the pleasure he could squeeze out of each living moment. Yet these sick puppies, as she called them, were the next generation of Negro leaders, the next generation of respectable society folk. Alva was a bulldog and a healthy one at that. She invariably compared them to Alva and made herself laugh by classifying them as a litter of sick puppies. Their world was so small—church, school, home, mother, father, parties, future. Their air of being all-wise amused her, their affected church purity and wholesomeness, largely a verbal matter, tired her. They all seemed so young and so pallid. Emma Lou couldn't get excited over any of them. Gwendolyn insisted that they snub the "high yallers" and continually was going into ecstasies over the browns and blacks they conquested.They both had beaux, young men whom they had met at the various church meetings and socials
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last four paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Alva handed the flask back to Bobbie, who got up from the bed and said something about leaving. The others in the room also got up and began staggering around looking for their hats. Emma Lou thought for a moment that she was going to win without any further struggle, but she had not reckoned with Alva, who, meanwhile, had sufficiently emerged from his stupor to realize that his friends were about to go.
  The others in the room had now found their hats and started toward the door, eager to escape. Emma Lou crossed the room to where Alva was sitting and said, "You might make less noise, the baby's asleep."
  The four boys had by this time opened the door and staggered out into the hallway. Bobbie edged nervously away from Alva, who leered up at Emma Lou and snarled, "If you don't like it—"
  For the moment Emma Lou did not know what to do. Her first impulse was to strike him, but she was restrained because underneath the loathsome beast that he now was, she saw the Alva who had first attracted her to him, the Alva she had always loved. She suddenly felt an immense compassion for him and had difficulty in stifling an unwelcome urge to take him into her arms. Tears came into her eyes, and for a moment it seemed as if all her rationalization would go for naught. Then once more she saw Alva, not as he had been, but as he was now, a drunken, drooling libertine, struggling to keep the embarrassed Bobbie in a vile embrace. Something snapped within her. The tears in her eyes receded, her features grew set, and she felt herself hardening inside. Then, without saying a word, she resolutely turned away, went into the alcove, pulled her suitcases down from the shelf in the clothes-closet, and to the blasphemous accompaniment of Alva berating Bobbie for wishing to leave, finished packing her clothes, not stopping even when Alva Junior's cries deafened her, and caused the people in the next room to stir uneasily.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first four paragraphs for this story.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Blacker the Berry
  Whenever they happened to meet, he would talk to her about her life in particular and Negro life in general. She had to admit that he knew much more about such matters than she or any other Negro she had ever met. And it was because of one of these chance talks that she finally decided to follow Mrs. Blake's advice and take the public school teachers' examination.
  Two years had wrought little change in Emma Lou, although much had happened to her. After that tearful night, when Alva had sworn at her and stalked out of her room, she had somewhat taken stock of herself. She wondered if Alva had been right in his allegations. Was she supersensitive about her color? Did she encourage color prejudice among her own people, simply by being so expectant of it? She tried hard to place the blame on herself, but she couldn't seem to do it. She knew she hadn't been color-conscious during her early childhood days; that is, until she had had it called to her attention by her mother or some of her mother's friends, who had all seemed to take delight in marveling, "What an extraordinarily black child!" or "Such beautiful hair on such a black baby!"
  Her mother had even hidden her away on occasions when she was to have company, and her grandmother had been cruel in always assailing Emma Lou's father, whose only crime seemed to be that he had had a blue black skin. Then there had been her childhood days when she had ventured forth into the streets to play. All of her colored playmates had been mulattoes, and her white playmates had never ceased calling public attention to her crow-like complexion. Consequently, she had grown sensitive and had soon been driven to play by herself, avoiding contact with other children as much as possible. Her mother encouraged her in this, had even suggested that she not attend certain parties because she might not have a good time.
  Then there had been the searing psychological effect of that dreadful graduation night, and the lonely and embittering three years at college, all of which had tended to make her color more and more a paramount issue and ill. It was neither fashionable nor good for a girl to be as dark as she, and to be, at the same time, as untalented and undistinguished. Dark girls could get along if they were exceptionally talented or handsome or wealthy, but she had nothing to recommend her, save a beautiful head of hair. Despite the fact that she had managed to lead her classes in school, she had to admit that mentally she was merely mediocre and average. Now, had she been as intelligent as Mamie Olds Bates, head of a Negro school in Florida, and president of a huge national association of colored women's clubs, her darkness would not have mattered. Or had she been as wealthy as Lillian Saunders, who had inherited the millions her mother had made producing hair straightening commodities, things might have been different; but here she was, commonplace and poor, ugly and undistinguished.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me five more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: They both had beaux, young men whom they had met at the various church meetings and socials. Gwendolyn insisted that they snub the "high yallers" and continually was going into ecstasies over the browns and blacks they conquested. Emma Lou couldn't get excited over any of them. They all seemed so young and pallid. Their air of being all-wise amused her, their affected church purity and wholesomeness, largely a verbal matter, tired her. Their world was so small—church, school, home, mother, father, parties, future. She invariably compared them to Alva and made herself laugh by classifying them as a litter of sick puppies. Alva was a bulldog and a healthy one at that. Yet these sick puppies, as she called them, were the next generation of Negro leaders, the next generation of respectable society folk. They had a future; Alva merely lived for no purpose whatsoever except for the pleasure he could squeeze out of each living moment. He didn't construct anything; the litter of pups would, or at least they would be credited with constructing something whether they did or not. She found herself strangely uninterested in anything they might construct. She didn't see that it would make much difference in the world whether they did or did not. Months of sophisticated reading under Campbell Kitchen's tutelage had cultivated the seeds of pessimism experience had sown. Life was all a bad dream recurrent in essentials. Every dog had his day and every dog died. These priggish little respectable persons she now knew and associated with seemed infinitely inferior to her. They were all hypocritical and colorless. The committed what they called sin in the same colorless way they served God, family, and race. None of them had the fire or gusto of Alva, nor his light-heartedness. At last she had met the "right sort of people" and found them to be quite wrong.
  However, she quelled her growing dissatisfaction and immersed herself in her work. Campbell Kitchen had told her again and again that economic independence was the solution to almost any problem. When she found herself a well-paying position she need not worry more. Everything else would follow and she would find herself among the pursued instead of among the pursuers. This was the gospel she now adhered to and placed faith in. She studied hard, finished her courses at Teachers College, took and passed the school board examination, and mechanically followed Gwendolyn about, pretending to share her enthusiasms and hatreds. All would soon come to the desired end. Her doctrine of pessimism was weakened by the optimism the future seemed to promise. She had even become somewhat interested in one of the young men she had met at St. Mark's. Gwendolyn discouraged this interest. "Why, Emma Lou, he's one of them yaller niggers; you don't want to get mixed up with him."
  Though meaning well, she did not know that it was precisely because he was one of those "yaller niggers" that Emma Lou liked him.
  Emma Lou and her new "yaller nigger," Benson Brown, were returning from church on a Tuesday evening where they had attended a young people's bible class. It was a beautiful early fall night, warm and moonlit, and they had left the church early, intent upon slipping away from Gwendolyn, and taking a walk before they parted for the night. Emma Lou had no reason for liking Benson save that she was flattered that a man as light as he should find himself attracted to her. It always gave her a thrill to stroll into church or down Seventh Avenue with him. And she loved to show him off in the reception room of the Y.W.C.A. True, he was almost as colorless and uninteresting to her as the rest of the crowd with whom she now associated, but he had a fair skin and he didn't seem to mind her darkness. Then, it did her good to show Gwendolyn that she, Emma Lou, could get a yellow-skinned man. She always felt that the reason Gwendolyn insisted upon her going with a dark-skinned man was because she secretly considered it unlikely for her to get a light one.
  Benson was a negative personality. His father was an ex-preacher turned Pullman porter because, since prohibition times, he could make more money on the Pullman cars than he could in the pulpit. His mother was an active church worker and club woman, "one of the pillars of the community," the current pastor at their church had called her. Benson himself was in college, studying business methods and administration. It had taken him six years to finish high school, and it promised to take him much longer to finish college. He had a placid, ineffectual dirty yellow face, topped by red mariney hair, and studded with gray eyes. He was as ugly as he was stupid, and he had been as glad to have Emma Lou interested in him as she had been glad to attract him. She actually seemed to take him seriously, while every one else more or less laughed at him. Already he was planning to quit school, go to work, and marry her; and Emma Lou, while not anticipating any such sudden consummation, remained blind to everything save his color and the attention he paid to her.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last five paragraphs.. Start with the sentence 'She was in front of the house now and looking up saw that all the lights in her room were lit'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: She was in front of the house now and looking up saw that all the lights in her room were lit. And as she climbed the stairs she could hear a drunken chorus of raucous masculine laughter. Alva had come home meanwhile, drunk of course and accompanied by the usual drunken crowd. Emma Lou started to turn back, to flee into the street—anywhere to escape being precipitated into another sordid situation, but remembering this was to be her last night there, and that the new day would find her beginning a new life, she subdued her flight impulse and without knocking threw open the door and walked into the room. She saw the usual and expected sight: Alva, face a death mask, sitting on the bed embracing an effeminate boy whom she knew as Bobbie, and who drew hurriedly away from Alva as he saw her. There were four other boys in the room, all in varied states of drunkenness—all laughing boisterously at some obscene witticism. Emma Lou suppressed a shudder and calmly said "Hello Alva"—The room grew silent. They all seemed shocked and surprised by her sudden appearance. Alva did not answer her greeting but instead turned to Bobbie and asked him for another drink. Bobbie fumbled nervously at his hip pocket and finally produced a flask which he handed to Alva. Emma Lou stood at the door and watched Alva drink the liquor Bobbie had given him. Every one else in the room watched her. For the moment she did not know what to say or what to do. Obviously she couldn't continue standing there by the door nor could she leave and let them feel she had been completely put to rout.
  Alva handed the flask back to Bobbie, who got up from the bed and said something about leaving. The others in the room also got up and began staggering around looking for their hats. Emma Lou thought for a moment that she was going to win without any further struggle, but she had not reckoned with Alva, who, meanwhile, had sufficiently emerged from his stupor to realize that his friends were about to go.
  The others in the room had now found their hats and started toward the door, eager to escape. Emma Lou crossed the room to where Alva was sitting and said, "You might make less noise, the baby's asleep."
  The four boys had by this time opened the door and staggered out into the hallway. Bobbie edged nervously away from Alva, who leered up at Emma Lou and snarled, "If you don't like it—"
  For the moment Emma Lou did not know what to do. Her first impulse was to strike him, but she was restrained because underneath the loathsome beast that he now was, she saw the Alva who had first attracted her to him, the Alva she had always loved. She suddenly felt an immense compassion for him and had difficulty in stifling an unwelcome urge to take him into her arms. Tears came into her eyes, and for a moment it seemed as if all her rationalization would go for naught. Then once more she saw Alva, not as he had been, but as he was now, a drunken, drooling libertine, struggling to keep the embarrassed Bobbie in a vile embrace. Something snapped within her. The tears in her eyes receded, her features grew set, and she felt herself hardening inside. Then, without saying a word, she resolutely turned away, went into the alcove, pulled her suitcases down from the shelf in the clothes-closet, and to the blasphemous accompaniment of Alva berating Bobbie for wishing to leave, finished packing her clothes, not stopping even when Alva Junior's cries deafened her, and caused the people in the next room to stir uneasily.