Excercise II, Hemingway

Here are a few paragraphs out of a short story by Ernest Hemingway. Of course, I've butchered them by taking out all of the punctuation. Try any or all of them.

"The Big Two-Hearted River," Part II. Complete Short Stories. New York: Scribners, 1962.

175 words

while the water was heating in the pot he took an empty bottle and went down over the edge of the high ground to the meadow the meadow was wet with dew and nick wanted to catch grasshoppers for bait before the sun dried the grass he found plenty of good grasshoppers they were at the base of the grass stems sometimes they clung to a grass stem they were cold and wet with the dew and could not jump until the sun warmed them nick picked them up taking only the medium sized brown ones and put them into the bottle he turned over a log and just under the shelter of the edge were several hundred hoppers it was a grasshopper lodging house nick put about fifty of the medium browns into the bottle while he was picking up the hoppers the others warmed in the sun and commenced to hop away they flew when they hopped at first they made one flight and stayed stiff when they landed as though they were dead

(222)

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p 209. 309 words. This is his 3 paragraphs.
Big-Hearted River: Part I.


the train went on up the track out of sight around one of the hills of burnt timber nick sat down on the bundler of canvas and bedding the baggage man had pitched out of the door of th baggage car there was no town nothing but the rails and the burned over country the thirteen saloons that had lined the one street of seney had not left a trace the foundations of the mansion house hotel stuck up above the ground the stone was chipped and split by the fire it was all that was left of the town of seney even the surface had been burned off the ground

Nick looked at the burned over stretch of hillside where he had expected to find the scattered houses of the town and then walked down the railroad to the bridge over the river the river was there it swirled against the log spiles of the bridges nick looked down into the clear brown water colored form the pebbly bottom and watched the trout keeping themselves steady in the current with wavering fins as he watched them they changed their positions by quick angles only to hold steady in the fast water again. Nick watched them a long time

he watched them holding themselves with their noses into the current many trout in deep fast moving water slightly distorted as he watched far down through the glassy convex surface of the pool, its surface pushing and swelling smooth against the resistance of the log driven piles of the bridge at the bottom of the pool were the big trout nick did not see them at first then he saw them at the bottom of the pool big trout looking to hold themselves on the gravel bottom in a varying mist of gravel and sand raised in spurts by the current