A friend in need is a friend indeed.
Once upon a time there lived a lion in a forest. One day after a heavy meal. It was sleeping under a tree. After a while, there came a mouse and it started to play on the lion. Suddenly the lion got up with anger and looked for those who disturbed its nice sleep. Then it saw a small mouse standing trembling with fear. The lion jumped on it and started to kill it. The mouse requested the lion to forgive it. The lion felt pity and left it. The mouse ran away.
On another day, the lion was caught in a net by a hunter. The mouse came there and cut the net. Thus it escaped. There after, the mouse and the lion became friends. They lived happily in the forest afterwards.
World Cup
Every four years, millions of people all over the world gather in front of TV screens at all hours of the day and night. As they watch, tension and excitement rises and falls until, all of a sudden, they might leap into the air, screaming and shouting and hugging one another. Or they might, just as suddenly, curse and moan and hold their heads in their hands. At the end of the broadcast they could be singing and dancing with joy, or they could be staring at the floor, silent and heartbroken. What is it that's causing all this joy and sorrow? It is, of course, the FIFA World Cup football tournament, more popularly known as the World Cup or the World Cup Finals.
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History of the World Cup
It all started in 1928, when football's governing body FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) decided to organize a competition among senior men's national football teams for the official title of FIFA World Champions. Before then, the team winning the Olympic Games football gold medal were regarded as world champions. But the members of FIFA felt that the game should have its own international tournament, with its own trophy, and its own officially-named FIFA World Champions.
The first FIFA World Cup tournament was held in 1930. The host country was Uruguay, whose team had won the Olympic gold medal in 1928 and were therefore regarded as the current world champions. Only thirteen countries accepted FIFA's invitation to take part, and only four of those were countries outside North and South America. This was partly due to the high cost of sending teams from Europe and other parts of the world all the way to South America. But the tournament went ahead anyway, and in the final match Uruguay defeated Argentina to become the winners of the first FIFA World Cup. Since then, the tournament has grown enormously, both in size and popularity, and it is now one of the biggest sporting events in the world.
World Cup Qualifying Tournaments
FIFA allows only 32 teams to compete in the World Cup Finals, but with over 200 national teams wanting to compete, qualification tournaments are necessary. Every team, except for the host country's, must earn their place in the Finals, or "qualify", by competing in one of six qualifying tournaments in FIFA's six zones; Africa, Asia, North and Central America and Caribbean, South America, Oceania, and Europe. With so many teams trying to qualify, the process is long and complicated, with over 800 matches held over a two-year period. The first of these matches usually takes place nearly three years before the Finals are held. But once the qualifying tournaments are over, and all 32 places have been filled, the teams that have qualified can begin their preparations for the World Cup Finals.
World Cup Finals
The Finals are in two stages: the "group stage" followed by the "knockout stage". Teams that lose a match in the group stage still have a chance of staying in the competition, but teams that lose a match in the knockout stage are knocked out of the competition, or "eliminated". In the group stage, teams are arranged into eight groups of four teams. Each team plays the other teams in their group one time, and teams earn three points for a win and one point for a draw. The two teams in each group that earn the most points proceed to the knockout stage, while the other two teams in each group are eliminated. In the first round of the knockout stage, called the "round of sixteen", eight matches are played. The eight losing teams are eliminated, while the eight winning teams go on to the next round, called the "quarter-finals". There are four matches in this round, with the four losing teams being eliminated and the four winning teams going into the "semi-finals". The two teams that lose their semi-final match will compete for third place in the third-place match, and the two teams that win will battle against each other for the title of World Champions in the World Cup Final.
The World Cup Final
Between the semi-finals and the World Cup Final, excitement grows with every passing day. When match day finally comes, nearly a hundred thousand noisy and colourful spectators pack into the tournament's main stadium, while nearly a billion more watch the match live on television. When the players and officials finally emerge from the tunnel, the tension and excitement reach "fever pitch". And when the referee blows the starting whistle, the World Cup Final begins. If scores are level after 90 minutes, the match goes into extra time, and if scores are still level after extra time, the result is decided by a penalty shootout. When the match is finally over, the players and fans of one team are leaping and crying with joy, while those of the other slump down in bitter disappointment.
Trophy, Medals and Awards
After the match, the World Cup presentation ceremony begins. The runners-up are awarded World Cup silver medals, and then the champions are awarded World Cup gold medals. The president of FIFA then presents the World Cup trophy to the winning team's captain. Fireworks explode as he and his teammates hold the trophy aloft, and then parade it together on a lap of honour, celebrating wildly as they go. Several other awards are also presented, including the Golden Ball for the tournament's best player, the Golden Boot for the top goal scorer, and the Golden Glove for the best goalkeeper. Bronze medals are also awarded to members of the third-placed team.
World Cup Records
Since the World Cup was first held in 1930, Brazil — the only team to have competed in every tournament — has won five times; Italy and Germany have won four times; Argentina and Uruguay two times; and England, France, and Spain have each won once. Brazil's legendary Pele holds the record for winning the most World Cups, in 1958, 1962 and 1970. The top goal scorer at the World Cup is Germany's Miroslav Klose with 16 goals, followed by Brazil's Ronaldo with 15 goals and Germany's Gerd Müller with 14.
Other FIFA Tournaments
FIFA also organizes several other international football tournaments, including the FIFA Women's World Cup, the FIFA Club World Cup, youth World Cups for players under the ages of 17 and 20, the FIFA Futsal World Cup, and the FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup.
vocabulary
broadcast (n): a program or live event on radio, television or streamed online - Did you watch the live broadcast of the opening ceremony?
trophy (n): a winner's cup, or similar object, presented at the end of a tournament, race, match, etc. - My wife won lots of trophies when she was an athlete in high school.
host country (also host nation) (n): the country in which an international event is held - China was the host country for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games.
qualify (v): to earn the right to compete, either by being highly rated or by winning a qualifying match - Do you think our team has much chance of qualifying for the finals?
(the) finals (n): a tournament's final few rounds, incl. semi-finals, quarter-finals, rounds of 8 and 16, etc. - How many Asian teams got into the finals this time?
(the) final (n): a tournament's final match, the winner of which is the champion - I'm trying to get some tickets for the final, but they're not easy to get.
group stage (n): stage of a tournament in which players or teams compete in groups - Winning two games in the group stage should get us into the knockout stage.
knockout stage (n): stage of a tournament in which competitors are eliminated if they lose - If we hadn't lost that match in the knockout stage, we might've been champions.
round (n): one of several stages into which a tournament or competition is divided - The highlight of her tennis career was getting to the third round at Wimbledon.
runner-up (n): a player or team that comes second in a tournament, race, quiz, etc. - In the Olympic Games, the runners-up are awarded a silver medal.
(be) eliminated (also (be) knocked out) (v): to be defeated and excluded from further competition - The guys were really upset about being eliminated before the semi-finals.
quarter-finals (n): a round of four matches, the winners of which qualify for the semi-finals - We thought we'd won our quarter-final, but Italy got two late goals and beat us.
semi-finals (n): a round of two matches, the winners of which qualify for the final - The semi-finals will be held about a week before the final.
fever pitch (n): a very high level of excitement or frenzy - The crowd's excitement reached fever pitch as Ronaldo scored a goal.
ABOUT GOLF GAME
The dream of many people is to make lots of money, retire from work, and then spend the rest of their days walking around beautifully kept parks with finely-cut lawns, grassy fields and groves of leafy trees. They dream of visiting these parks, or courses, day after day, and of using long metal sticks, called clubs, to hit a little white ball towards, and finally into, a small hole or cup in a manicured lawn they call a green. What they are dreaming of, of course, is playing the game we call golf. It is one of the few sports that nearly everyone can play, regardless of age, body shape, or level of fitness. It is a good form of light exercise, it can help people to relax, and it gives them plenty of time between shots to chat, joke around, or even discuss serious topics like business with their playing partners. As a result, golf has become a very popular game, enjoyed by millions of people in nearly every country of the world.
History
The first recorded game of golf was played at Bruntsfield Links, in Edinburgh, Scotland, in A.D. 1456, and until recently most historians believed the game originated in Scotland in the 11th century. But new evidence suggests a game very similar to golf was played in China during the Song Dynasty (A.D. 960-1279). It was played with 10 clubs similar to modern golf clubs, and Chinese records and drawings show the clubs were used to hit small balls into holes in the ground, just like in modern golf. This game could have been introduced to Scotland in the 11th century by Mongolian traders and travellers.
One of the oldest and most important organizations in the history of golf is the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews (R&A) in Scotland, founded in 1754. The club's course had nine holes, and players would go around twice to complete a full round. As a result, eighteen holes became the standard number of holes in a round of golf. The rules of golf also originated at the R&A, although now they are jointly controlled by the R&A and the United States Golf Association (USGA).
How The Game Works
Golf is played on specially-designed course consisting of a series of numbered holes. Some holes are short, just two or three hundred metres, while others are longer, up to five or six hundred metres. Each hole has a tee-off area, or tee box, from which the first shot is played. Then a long fairway with short grass leads to a small area of very short grass called a green. There's is a small hole in the green called a cup in which a pin stands with a flag flying on it. The object of the game is to hit the ball and get it into the cup with as few shots as possible. But course designers don't want to make this too easy, so they build hazards into the course. On both sides of the fairway, and around the green, areas of long grass called the rough are usually found. Areas thick with trees and bushes are also common, along with hazards such as bunkers, lakes, creeks and gullies.
Most golf courses have eighteen holes, though some only have nine. Players use one of several clubs to hit the ball towards the green, and then into the cup. Players carry up to fourteen clubs in a golf bag, or they have a caddie carry them. These clubs (see picture at right) include woods for long shots (on the left), irons for medium-length shots (top), and a putter for shots hit along the ground on the green (bottom). Players also carry their own score card, and record every stroke they play on each hole. Each shot, whether it's a three-hundred metre drive or a two-centimetre putt, counts as one stroke.
For each hole, a number known as par indicates the number of shots a very good player would normally take to complete the hole. Short holes are usually "par 3", medium-length holes are "par 4", while longer holes are "par 5". If a player completes a hole in one shot less than par, they have made a birdie. Two shots under par is an eagle and three shots under par is an albatross. One shot over par is a bogey, two shots over par is a double bogey and three shots over par is a triple bogey. If we add up the pars of all the holes on an eighteen-hole course, we find the par for the whole course. Most courses are par 72, with four par-3 holes, ten par-4 holes, and 4 par-5 holes. If a player shoots a round of 70 on a par 72 course, we can say they shot a "two-under-par" round. In most formats of the game, the winner is the player who completes a round, or a series of rounds, with the lowest number of strokes.
Tours and Tournaments
As recreational golf became a popular hobby, professional golf became big business. Television broadcasts of major tournaments attract millions of viewers worldwide, and professional golfers play for millions of dollars in prize-money in hundreds of tournaments held all over the world. The biggest prize-money is offered in tournaments which are part of major tours such as the European Tour, the U.S. PGA Tour, and the U.S. LPGA Tour. Players must qualify to play on these tours, but qualifying is very difficult. Those who can't qualify can join other smaller tours such as the high-paying Japanese Tour.
The four most important tournaments in men's golf are called 'the majors', held every year. They are The Masters, the U.S. Open, The Open Championship (also called The British Open) and the PGA Championship. A player who wins all four majors in a single year has achieved a "Grand Slam", while a player who wins each major at least once during his career has achieved a "career Grand Slam". The total number of major tournaments a player wins determines his status in golfing history, and the current leader is Jack Nicklaus with 18 majors, although Tiger Woods is fast approaching this number.
Women's golf doesn't have a set of widely-recognised major tournaments, but the most important of the current events are the Kraft Nabisco Championship, the LPGA Championship, the U.S. Women's Open and the Women's British Open.
Golf Vocabulary List
| word | example sentence | meaning |
|---|---|---|
| albatross | Many people play golf all their lives and never hit an albatross. | score of three strokes under par |
| birdie (n) | After his birdie on the 17th hole, Jack went on to win the match. | score of one stroke under par |
| birdie (v) | Jack birdied the 17th hole, and then went on to win the match. | to shoot one stroke under par |
| bogey (n) | If Annika gets a bogey on the 18th hole, she'll lose the match. | score of one stroke over par |
| bogey (v) | Annika will lose the match if she bogeys the 18th hole. | to shoot one stroke over par |
| break | Professionals read the greens and then allow for the breaks when putting. | the amount a putt curves because of the slope and grain of the green |
| buggy (also cart or golf cart) | If we use the buggy we won't get much exercise from walking. | small vehicle for transporting players and their golf bags |
| bunker | He hit a beautiful shot out of the bunker and it rolled into the hole. | hollow obstruction or hazard, often containing sand |
| caddie | A good caddie always studies a golf course before working on it. | person who carries a player's golf bag and gives advice |
| chip (n) | John spends an hour every day practising chip shots onto the green. | short, low shot to the green |
| chip (v) | His ball was only twenty feet from the green, so he chipped it on with his five iron. | to hit a chip shot |
| course (also golf course) | Some people think golf courses are a waste of important resources like land and water. | large area of land designed for playing golf |
| divot | Players should replace their divots to help keep the course in good condition. | piece of earth and grass that a golf shot cuts from the ground |
| dog leg | On many dog legs you can't see the green when you tee off. | fairway that turns left or right |
| double bogey | I got a double bogey when I took 5 shots on a par-3 hole. | a score of two over par on a hole |
| drive | Tiger hit a beautiful drive nearly 300 yards down the middle of the fairway. | shot played using the number one wood, often the first shot on a long hole |
| driver | One of the hardest clubs to use well is the driver. | number one wood and the longest hitting club |
| eagle | I'm one shot behind, so I'll need an eagle on the last hole to win the match outright. | two strokes under par |
| fade | He hit a long fade and it followed the curve of the fairway to the right. | a right-handed player's shot that moves slightly from left to right |
| fairway | Peter's drives aren't long, but he nearly always gets them on the fairway. | longest part of a hole, from the tee to the green |
| flag stick | A caddie took the flag stick out of the hole before the players putted. | stick with a flag on it that stands in the cup on a green |
| green | On each day of the tournament, the cups are put in different positions on the greens. | area of very short grass at the end of each hole, on which balls are putted into a cup |
| grip | The most common grip is with the right hand positioned just below the left hand. | the positioning of the hands on the shaft of a club |
| hazard | A well-designed course has enough hazards to make it challenging, but not so many that it becomes unfair. | places on a golf course such as lakes, creeks, and bunkers that are difficult or impossible to play from |
| hole | The first nine holes are called the 'front nine' and the second nine are called the 'back nine'. | one of many playing areas on a golf course, including a tee, a fairway and a green |
| hook (n) | I tried to hit a long drive, but I hit a hook and the ball went into a water hazard on the left of the fairway. | a right-handed player's shot that moves from right to left in the air |
| hook (v) | I hooked my drive into the lake to the left of the fairway. | to hit a hook |
| irons | A one iron is for long, low shots, and a nine iron is for shorter, higher shots. | metal golf clubs with blade-shaped clubheads |
| lie | Her shot missed the fairway and went into the rough, but luckily she got a good lie. | the position of the ball when it has come to rest |
| links | Many links courses are built on land which has been reclaimed from the sea. | golf course beside the sea |
| par | Most par-72 courses have four par-three holes, ten par-fours and four par-fives. | number of strokes a good player should take on a hole or a round |
| pitch-and-run | Marian played a pitch-and-run shot over the bunker, and it landed on the green and rolled into the hole. | a shot from near the green in which the ball carries in the air before landing and rolling towards the hole |
| putt (n) | After hitting an excellent approach shot, she was left with an easy three-foot putt. | a shot played along the ground on the green |
| putt (v) | After reading the green and allowing for a slight break, she putted straight into the cup. | to hit a putt |
| putter | Putters come in many shapes and sizes, with shafts of various lengths and heads of various shapes. | club used to putt the ball on the green |
| rough | On some courses the rough is very thick and nearly impossible to play from. | area on a golf course where the grass is longer and thicker than on the fairway |
| round | In major tournaments, four eighteen-hole rounds are played over four days. | the completion of nine or eighteen holes on a golf course |
| shoot | The winner shot a 4-under par 68 on the last round. | to make a score |
| shot | She hit a perfect shot out of the bunker and it went straight into the cup. | a stroke |
| slice (n) | She tried to hit an iron shot onto the green, but she hit a slice and it went right of the green. | a right-handed player's shot that moves sharply from left to right in the air |
| slice (v) | She sliced her shot and it went to the right of the green. | to hit a slice |
| stroke or shot | She had seventy strokes on her first round, which was two shots under par. | strike on a golf ball with a golf club |
| swing | Golfers can improve a lot by having a golf instructor help them to work on their swing. | rhythmic movement which enables a golfer to hit the ball |
| tee (1) | Players can only put the ball on a tee when they're hitting their first shot on a hole. | small peg (wooden or plastic) on which the ball is placed for the first shot of each hole |
| tee (2) or tee box | Many courses have tees for women which are closer to the green than the men's tees. | small area from which golfers play their first shot on each hole |
| tee off | The last group of players will tee off at 2.30 in the afternoon. | play the first shot to start a round of golf |
| tee shot | Tiger took out his driver and hit a perfect tee shot, right down the middle of the fairway. | shot hit from a tee box |
| woods | Woods used to be made of wood, but most are made of metal these days. | clubs with bulbous clubheads that are used to hit the longest shots |
The Chapel
A short story by Josef Essberger
She was walking lazily, for the fierce April sun was directly overhead. Her umbrella blocked its rays but nothing blocked the heat - the sort of raw, wild heat that crushes you with its energy. A few buffalo were tethered under coconuts, browsing the parched verges. Occasionally a car went past, leaving its treads in the melting pitch like the wake of a ship at sea. Otherwise it was quiet, and she saw no-one.
In her long white Sunday dress you might have taken Ginnie Narine for fourteen or fifteen. In fact she was twelve, a happy, uncomplicated child with a nature as open as the red hibiscus that decorated her black, waist-length hair. Generations earlier her family had come to Trinidad from India as overseers on the sugar plantations. Her father had had some success through buying and clearing land around Rio Cristalino and planting it with coffee.
On the dusty verge twenty yards ahead of Ginnie a car pulled up. She had noticed it cruise by once before but she did not recognize it and could not make out the driver through its dark windows, themselves as black as its gleaming paintwork. As she walked past it, the driver's glass started to open.
"Hello, Ginnie," she heard behind her.
She paused and turned. A slight colour rose beneath her dusky skin. Ravi Kirjani was tall and lean, and always well-dressed. His black eyes and large white teeth flashed in the sunlight as he spoke. Everyone in Rio Cristalino knew Ravi. Ginnie often heard her unmarried sisters talk ruefully of him, of how, if only their father were alive and they still had land, one of them might marry him. And then they would squabble over who it might be and laugh at Ginnie because she was too simple for any man to want.
"How do you know my name, Ravi?" she asked with a thrill.
"How do you know mine?"
"Everyone knows your name. You're Mr Kirjani's son."
"Right. And where're you going Ginnie?"
She hesitated and looked down at the ground again.
"To chapel," she said with a faint smile.
"But Ginnie, good Hindus go to the temple." His rich, cultured voice was gently mocking as he added with a laugh: "Or maybe the temple pundits aren't your taste in colour."
She blushed more deeply at the reference to Father Olivier. She did not know how to reply. It was true that she liked the young French priest, with his funny accent and blue eyes, but she had been going to the Catholic chapel for months before he arrived. She loved its cheerful hymns, and its simple creed of one god - so different from those miserable Hindu gods who squabbled with each other like her sisters at home. But, added to that, the vulgarity of Ravi's remark bewildered her because his family were known for their breeding. People always said that Ravi would be a man of honour, like his father.
Ravi looked suddenly grave. His dark skin seemed even darker. It may be that he regretted his words. Possibly he saw the confusion in Ginnie's wide brown eyes. In any case, he did not wait for an answer.
"Can I offer you a lift to chapel - in my twenty-first birthday present?" he asked, putting his sunglasses back on. She noticed how thick their frames were. Real gold, she thought, like the big, fat watch on his wrist.
"It's a Mercedes, from Papa. Do you like it?" he added nonchalantly.
From the shade of her umbrella Ginnie peered up at a small lone cloud that hung motionless above them. The sun was beating down mercilessly and there was an urge in the air and an overpowering sense of growth. With a handkerchief she wiped the sweat from her forehead. Ravi gave a tug at his collar.
"It's air-conditioned, Ginnie. And you won't be late for chapel," he continued, reading her mind.
But chapel must have been the last thing on Ravi's mind when Ginnie, after a moment's hesitation, accepted his offer. For he drove her instead to a quiet sugar field outside town and there, with the Mercedes concealed among the sugar canes, he introduced himself into her. Ginnie was in a daze. Young as she was, she barely understood what was happening to her. The beat of calypso filled her ears and the sugar canes towered over her as the cold draught from the air-conditioner played against her knees. Afterwards, clutching the ragged flower that had been torn from her hair, she lay among the tall, sweet-smelling canes and sobbed until the brief tropical twilight turned to starry night.
But she told no-one, not even Father Olivier.
Two weeks later the little market town of Rio Cristalino was alive with gossip. Ravi Kirjani had been promised the hand of Sunita Moorpalani. Like the Kirjanis, the Moorpalanis were an established Indian family, one of the wealthiest in the Caribbean. But while the Kirjanis were diplomats, the Moorpalanis were a commercial family. They had made their fortune in retailing long before the collapse in oil prices had emptied their customers' pockets; and now Moorpalani stores were scattered throughout Trinidad and some of the other islands. Prudently, they had diversified into banking and insurance, and as a result their influence was felt at the highest level. It was a benevolent influence, of course, never abused, for people always said the Moorpalanis were a respectable family, and well above reproach. They had houses in Port-of-Spain, Tobago and Barbados, as well as in England and India, but their main residence was a magnificent, sprawling, colonial-style mansion just to the north of Rio Cristalino. The arranged marriage would be the social event of the following year.
When Ginnie heard of Ravi's engagement the loathing she had conceived for him grew into a sort of numb hatred. She was soon haunted by a longing to repay that heartless, arrogant brute. She would give anything to humiliate him, to see that leering, conceited grin wiped from his face. But outwardly she was unmoved. On weekdays she went to school and on Sundays she went still to Father Olivier's afternoon service.
"Girl, you sure does have a lot to confess to that whitie," her mother would say to her each time she came home late from chapel.
"He's not a whitie, he's a man of God."
"That's as may be, child, but don't forget he does be a man first."
The months passed and she did not see Ravi again.
And then it rained. All through August the rain hardly stopped. It rattled persistently on the galvanized roofs until you thought you would go mad with the noise. And if it stopped the air was as sticky as treacle and you prayed for it to rain again.
Then one day in October, towards the end of the wet season, when Ginnie's family were celebrating her only brother's eighteenth birthday, something happened that she had been dreading for weeks. She was lying in the hammock on the balcony, playing with her six-year-old nephew Pinni.
Suddenly, Pinni cried out: "Ginnie, why are you so fat?"
Throughout the little frame house all celebration stopped. On the balcony curious eyes were turned upon Ginnie. And you could see what the boy meant.
"Gods have mercy on you, Virginia! Watch the shape of your belly," cried Mrs Narine, exploding with indignation and pulling her daughter indoors, away from the prying neighbours' ears. Her voice was loud and hard and there was a blackness in her eyes like the blackness of the skies before thunder. How could she have been so blind? She cursed herself for it and harsh questions burst from her lips.
"How does you bring such shame upon us, girl? What worthless layabouts does you throw yourself upon? What man'll have you now? No decent man, that does be sure. And why does you blacken your father's name like this, at your age? The man as didn't even live to see you born. Thank the gods he didn't have to know of this. You sure got some explaining to your precious man of God, child."
At last her words were exhausted and she sat down heavily, her weak heart pounding dangerously and her chest heaving from the exertion of her outburst.
Then Ginnie told her mother of the afternoon that Ravi Kirjani had raped her. There was a long silence after that and all you could hear was Mrs Narine wheezing. When at last she spoke, her words were heavy and disjointed.
Ginnie's sisters were awestruck.
"Shall we take her over to the health centre, Ma?" asked Indra. "The midwife comes today."
"Is you crazy, girl? You all does know how that woman does run she mouth like a duck's bottom. You all leave this to me."
That night Mrs Narine took her young daughter to see Doctor Khan, an old friend of her husband whose discretion she could count on.
There was no doubt about it. The child was pregnant.
"And what can us do, Dr Khan?" asked Mrs Narine.
"Marry her off, quick as you can," the lean old doctor replied bluntly.
Mrs Narine scoffed.
"Who would take her now, Doctor? I does beg you. There's nothing? Nothing you can do for us?"
A welcome breeze came through the slats of the surgery windows. Outside you could hear the shrill, persistent sound of cicadas, while mosquitoes crowded at the screens, attracted by the bare bulb over the simple desk. Dr Khan sighed and peered over the frames of his glasses. Then he lowered his voice and spoke wearily, like a man who has said the same thing many times.
"I might arrange something for the baby once it's born. But it must be born, my dear. Your daughter is slimly built. She's young, a child herself. To you she looks barely three months pregnant. Don't fool yourself, if the dates she's given us are correct, in three months she'll be full term. Anything now would be too, too messy."
"And if it's born," asked Mrs Narine falteringly, "if it's born, what does happen then?"
"No, Ma, I want it anyway, I want to keep it," said Ginnie quietly.
"Don't be a fool, child."
"It's my baby. Ma. I want to have it. I want to keep it."
"And who's to look after you, and pay for the baby? Even if that Kirjani does agrees to pay, who does you hope to marry?"
"I'll marry, don't worry."
"You'll marry! You does be a fool. Who will you marry?"
"Kirjani, Ma. I's going to marry Ravi Kirjani."
Doctor Khan gave a chuckle.
"So, your daughter is not such a fool as you think," he said. "I told you to marry her off. And the Kirjani boy's worth a try. What does she have to lose? She's too, too clever!"
So Ravi Kirjani was confronted with the pregnant Ginnie and reminded of that Sunday afternoon in the dry season when the canes were ready for harvesting. To the surprise of the Narines he did not argue at all. He offered at once to marry Ginnie. It may be that for him it was a welcome opportunity to escape a connubial arrangement for which he had little appetite. Though Sunita Moorpalani indisputably had background, nobody ever pretended that she had looks. Or possibly he foresaw awkward police questions that might have been difficult to answer once the fruit of his desire saw the light of day. Mrs Narine was staggered. Even Ginnie was surprised at how little resistance he put up.
"Perhaps," she thought with a wry smile, "he's not really so bad."
Whatever his reasons, you had to admit Ravi acted honourably. And so did the jilted Moorpalani family. If privately they felt their humiliation keenly, publicly they bore it with composure, and people were amazed that they remained on speaking terms with the man who had insulted one of their women and broken her heart.
Sunita's five brothers even invited Ravi to spend a day with them at their seaside villa in Mayaro. And as Ravi had been a friend of the family all his life he saw no reason to refuse.
The Moorpalani brothers chose a Tuesday for the outing - there was little point, they said, in going at the weekend when the working people littered the beach - and one of their Land Rovers for the twenty mile drive from Rio Cristalino. They were in high spirits and joked with Ravi while their servants stowed cold chicken and salad beneath the rear bench seats and packed the iceboxes with beer and puncheon rum. Then they scanned the sky for clouds and congratulated themselves on choosing such a fine day. Suraj, the eldest brother, looked at his watch and his feet shifted uneasily as he said:
"It's time to hit the road."
His brothers gave a laugh and clambered on board. It was an odd, sardonic laugh.
The hardtop Land Rover cruised through Rio Cristalino to the crossroads at the town centre. Already the market traders were pitching their roadside stalls and erecting great canvas umbrellas to shield them from sun or rain. The promise of commerce was in the air and the traders looked about expectantly as they loaded their stalls with fresh mangos or put the finishing touches to displays of giant melons whose fleshy pink innards glistened succulently under cellophane.
The Land Rover turned east towards Mayaro and moments later was passing the cemetery on the edge of town. The road to the coast was busy with traffic in both directions still carrying produce to market, and the frequent bends and potholes made the journey slow. At last, on an uphill straight about six miles from Mayaro, the Land Rover was able to pick up speed. Its ribbed tyres beat on the reflector studs like a drumroll and the early morning sun flashed through the coconut palms. Suddenly a terrible thing happened. The rear door of the Land Rover swung open and Ravi Kirjani tumbled out, falling helplessly beneath the wheels of a heavily laden truck.
At the inquest the coroner acknowledged that the nature and extent of Ravi's injuries made it impossible to determine whether he was killed instantly by the fall or subsequently by the truck. But it was clear at least, he felt, that Ravi had been alive when he fell from the Land Rover. The verdict was death due to misadventure.
Three days later Ravi's remains were cremated according to Hindu rights. As usual, a crush of people from all over Trinidad - distant relatives, old classmates, anyone claiming even the most tenuous connection with the dead man - came to mourn at the riverside pyre outside Mayaro. Some of them were convinced that they could see in Ravi's death the hands of the gods - and they pointed for evidence to the grey sky and the unseasonal rain. But the flames defied the rain and the stench of burning flesh filled the air. A few spoke darkly of murder. Did not the Moorpalanis have a compelling motive? And not by chance did they have the opportunity, and the means. But mostly they agreed that it was a tragic accident. It made little difference that it was a Moorpalani truck that had finished Ravi off. Moorpalani trucks were everywhere.
Then they watched as the ashes were thrown into the muddy Otoire River, soon to be lost in the warm waters of the Atlantic.
"Anyway," said one old mourner with a shrug, "who are we to ask questions? The police closed their files on the case before the boy was cold." And he shook the last of the rain from his umbrella and slapped impatiently at a mosquito.
You might have thought that the shock of Ravi's death would have induced in Ginnie a premature delivery. But quite the reverse. She attended the inquest and she mourned at the funeral. The expected date came and went. Six more weeks elapsed before Ginnie, by now thirteen, gave birth to a son at the public maternity hospital in San Fernando. When they saw the baby, the nurses glanced anxiously at each other. Then they took him away without letting Ginnie see him.
Eventually they returned with one of the doctors, a big Creole, who assumed his most unruffled bedside manner to reassure Ginnie that the baby was well.
"It's true he's a little pasty, my dear," he said as a nurse placed the baby in Ginnie's arms, "but, you see, that'll be the late delivery. And don't forget, you're very young . . . and you've both had a rough time. Wait a day . . . three days . . . his eyes'll turn, he'll soon have a healthy colour."
Ginnie looked into her son's blue eyes and kissed them, and in doing so a tremendous feeling of tiredness suddenly came over her. They were so very, very blue, so like Father Olivier's. She sighed at the irony of it all, the waste of it all. Was the Creole doctor really so stupid? Surely he knew as well as she did that the pallid looks could never go.
The Metro
A short story by Josef Essberger
The discovery of a body in the Paris Metro early one morning was not particularly unusual. That it was headless sent a frisson through the sixth arrondissement, but the incident went unnoticed outside Paris.
Yet there was clearly something strange about the case. It was hardly as though the body had been decapitated to frustrate identification, for it was fully clothed and none of the owner's personal effects had been removed, save of course for his head. The Paris police soon tied up the contents of the dead man's wallet with forensic evidence from the body. Added to that, Madame Charente, the dead man's wife, could positively identify the body in the most intimate ways. (She had already reported her husband as missing.)
A few men were despatched to poke around in the warm, dark tunnels on either side of Odéon station, where the body had been found. Above ground another search was made, equally fruitlessly, and to Inspector Dutruelle it looked as though the case would linger on unsolved.
Two weeks later, four kilometres away in the west, a headless body was found at Courcelles station, again in the tunnel not far from the platform. As in the earlier case, the cause of death was apparently the severing of the head, which appeared to have been done with some precision. Again, the body was fully clothed and easily identified, and nothing but the head had apparently been removed.
"What can I tell these blessed reporters?" Inspector Dutruelle said as he handed his wife the two sticks of bread he usually bought on the way home. "They want answers for everything. And it's not just the papers now, the politicians are getting worried too. I'm reporting to the Préfet on this one."
"If there were instant answers for everything, mon petit chou, they'd have no need of you," said Madame Dutruelle. "And where would they be without you? Who cleared up that terrible Clichy case last year, and the acid bath at Reuilly Diderot?"
The little inspecteur divisionnaire-chef pulled in his stomach, puffed out his chest and rose to his full height. A smile spread across his round face. In his smart dark suit and gold-rimmed glasses you could have taken him for a provincial bank manager rather than one of Paris's most successful policemen.
"Just think," he said wryly, "they were actually about to close the file on Dr Gomes before I took charge of the investigation."
"They're fools, all of them."
"All the same, my dear, I don't know where to go on this one. There're no leads. There's no apparent motive. And it's a bizarre pattern. Assuming, of course, it is a pattern. We can't be sure of that until there's been another."
Inspector Dutruelle did not have long to wait for his pattern to emerge. A telephone call at half past five the next morning dragged him from his bed.
"It's another one, sir," said the voice at the other end.
"Another what?"
"It's identical. Another headless corpse, just like the others - male, middle-aged, white."
"Where?" asked Inspector Dutruelle fumbling for a cigarette.
"Château Rouge."
"In the Metro?"
"Yes sir, just inside the tunnel. In the anti-suicide well between the tracks."
"Close the line - if you haven't already. I'll be with you soon. And don't move it, d'you hear?"
Inspector Dutruelle replaced the receiver with a sigh as his wife padded into the room.
"I hate these early morning cases," he muttered. He lit his cigarette.
"Have a coffee before you go. Another dead body will keep."
"But we've closed the line. And it's the other side of town, my dear. North Paris."
"All the same."
He sat down heavily and watched his wife sullenly as she made the coffee. Madame Dutruelle was a simple woman of forty-six whose long, thin-lipped face was framed by stern grey hair. Her strong, practical hands were country hands, and she had never got used to city life. She lived for the day when she and her husband would retire to their home village in Les Pyrenées. Inspector Dutruelle sighed to himself again. Poor Agnes. She tried so hard to please him.
How could she know that he longed to be free of her? How could she possibly know of Vololona, the young Malagasy he had met while on the Clichy case? For him it had been love at first sight.
"And for me too, my darling," Vololona had been quick to agree, her large brown eyes welling with tears as they gazed at him through the smoke of the Chatte et Lapin where she worked, "a veritable coup de foudre." She spoke French well, with a Malagasy accent and huskiness that left you with a sense of mystery and promise. Inspector Dutruelle was a happy man; but he was careful to tell no-one except Monsieur Chébaut, his closest friend, about the source of his happiness.
"I've never felt like this before, Pierre. I'm captivated by her," he said one evening when he took Monsieur Chébaut to see Vololona dancing.
It was a rare experience, even for the jaded Monsieur Chébaut. In the frantic coloured spotlights of the Chatte et Lapin Vololona danced solo and in her vitality you sensed the wildness of Madagascar. Her black limbs lashed the air to the music, which was raw and sensual.
"You know, Pierre, in thirty years of marriage I was never unfaithful. Well, you know that already. There was always my work, and the children, and I was happy enough at home. It never occured to me to look at another woman. But something happened when I met Vololona. She showed me how to live. She showed me what real ecstasy is. Look at her, Pierre. Isn't she the most exquisite thing you ever saw? And she adores me. She's crazy about me. But why, I ask you? What can she see in me - three times her age, pot-bellied, bald . . . married?"
Inspector Dutruelle leaned back in his chair and swung around to look at the other customers applauding Vololona from the shadows. He smiled proudly to himself. He knew exactly what was on their minds. Life was strange, he thought, and you could never tell. Some of them were young men, tall and handsome and virile, yet none of them knew Vololona as he knew her.
Monsieur Chébaut finished his whisky.
"I can see," he said, "that a man in your position might have certain attractions for an immigrant without papers working in one of the more dangerous quarters of Paris." Monsieur Chébaut was a lawyer.
"You're a cynic, Pierre."
"And after thirty years in the force you're not?"
"Personally, I believe her when she says she loves me. I just don't know why. Another whisky?"
"Well, one thing's for sure, Régis, it can't go on like that. One way or another things'll come to a head. But I must agree, she's exquisite all right. Like an exquisite Venus flytrap. And at the germane moment, you know, those soft, succulent petals will close around you like a vice."
The normally placid Inspector was piqued by his friend's unreasonable attitude.
"How can you say that?" he snapped. "When you haven't even spoken to her."
"But all women are the same, Régis. Don't you know that? You should be a lawyer, then you'd know it. They can't help it, they're built that way. Believe me, it can't go on without something happening."
Inspector Dutruelle glowered at his old schoolfriend and said nothing. Monsieur Chébaut could see he had touched a raw nerve. He grinned amicably and leaned across to slap his friend playfully on the shoulder.
"Look Régis, all I'm saying is, be careful, you haven't got my experience."
Of course, that was true.
When it came to women few men had Monsieur Chébaut's experience. Or his luck, for that matter. He was one of those people who go through life insulated from difficulties. He crossed roads without looking. He did not hurry for trains. He never reconciled bank accounts. Tall, slim, with boyish good looks and thick, black, wavy hair, he was the antithesis of Inspector Dutruelle.
"Look, you've got two women involved, Régis," Monsieur Chébaut continued, "and women aren't like us. Agnes isn't stupid. She must know something's going on."
"She hasn't said anything," said the Inspector brusquely. He lit another Gauloise.
"Of course she hasn't. She's cleverer than you are. She intends to keep you."
"Mind you," said Inspector Dutruelle grudgingly, "she has had some odd dreams recently - so she says. About me and another woman. But anyway, she just laughs and says she can't believe it."
"But Régis, you must know that what we say and what we think are seldom the same."
"Sometimes I wonder if I ought to tell her something, if only out of decency."
Monsieur Chébaut nearly choked on the fresh whisky he had just put to his lips.
"No," he cried with a passion that surprised the Inspector, "never, you must never tell her. Écoute Régis, even if she did mention it, you must deny everything. Even if she caught the two of you in the act, you must deny it. You can only tell a woman there's another when you've definitively made up your mind to leave her, and even then it may not be safe."
"So much for logic."
"It's no use looking for logic in women, Régis. I told you, they're not like men. In fact, I've come to the conclusion that they're not even the same species as men. Men and women aren't like dog and bitch, they're more like dog and cat. C'est bizarre, non? In any case, I do know you can't keep two women on the go without something happening. I don't know what, but something."
Now the European press had picked the story up and the little Inspector did not know how to deal with the international reporters who hung around like flies outside the old stone walls of the Préfecture de police. Their stories focussed on the bizarre nature of the killings, and the idea that there were three severed heads somewhere in Paris particularly excited them. They wanted constantly to know more. So of course did Inspector Dutruelle.
"I assure you, gentlemen," he told a press conference, "we are at least as anxious as you to recover the missing parts. We are doing everything possible. You can tell your readers that wherever they are, we'll find them."
"Can we have photographs of the victims for our readers?" asked one of the foreign reporters.
"So as we know which heads we're looking for," added a journalist from London.
It was a joke that was not shared by the people of Paris. Suddenly the normally carnival atmosphere of the Metro had evaporated. Buskers no longer worked the coaches between stations. Puppeteers and jugglers no longer entertained passengers with impromptu performances. Even the beggars, who habitually hung around the crowded stations or made impassioned speeches in the carriages, had gone. And the few passengers who remained sat more long-faced than ever, or walked more hastily down the long corridors between platforms.
Inspector Dutruelle despaired of ever clearing the case up. His mind, already excited over Vololona, was now in a turmoil. Vololona had suddenly, and tearfully, announced that she was pregnant. Then, having accepted his financial assistance to terminate the pregnancy - but refusing his offer to take her to the clinic - she told him one day on the telephone: "I thought you were going to ask me to marry you." Inspector Dutruelle was stunned.
"But you know I'm married, ma chérie," he said.
"I thought you'd leave Agnes," she replied. "I wanted to be with you. I wanted to share everything with you . . . my child . . . my life . . . my bed." Inspector Dutruelle could hear her sobbing.
"But darling, we can still see each other."
"No, it's too painful. I love you too much."
Inspector Dutruelle could not concentrate on his work at all. Day and night his thoughts were on Vololona; he longed to be with her. If only Agnes would leave him. And if only Vololona would be satisfied with what he gave her already - the dinners, the presents, the apartment. Why did women have to possess you? It seemed that the more you gave them the more they took, until there was nothing left to give but yourself. Perhaps Pierre was right after all, when you thought about it.
The investigation into the Metro murders was proceeding dismally. Inspector Dutruelle had no suspect, no leads, no motive. His superiors complained about his lack of progress and the press ridiculed him without pity. "It appears," commented France-Soir, "that the only thing Inspector Dutruelle can tell us with certainty is that with each fresh atrocity the Metro station name grows longer." The detectives under him could not understand what had happened to their normally astute Inspector, and they felt leaderless and demoralised. It was left to the security police of the Metro to point out one rather obvious fact: that the three stations where bodies had been found had one thing in common - their lines intersected at Metro Barbes Rochechouart, and it seemed that something might be learned by taking the Metro between them.
Inspector Dutruelle did not like public transport, and he especially did not like the Metro. It was cramped, smelly and claustrophobic at the best of times, and in the summer it was hot. You stood on the very edge of the platform just to feel the breeze as the blue and white trains pulled into the station. It was years since the Inspector had used the Metro.
"I can't take much more of this, Marc," he said to the young Detective Constable who was travelling with him, "it's too hot. We'll get off at the next stop."
"That's Barbes Rochechouart, sir. We can change there."
"No, Marc. We can get out there. Someone else can take a sauna, I've had enough. Anyway, we need to have a look around." Inspector Dutruelle wiped his brow. He sounded irritable. "God knows what it's like normally," he added.
When the train pulled in they took the exit for Boulevard de Rochechouart.
"At least we can get through now," said the Detective Constable as they walked up the passage towards the escalator.
"How d'you mean?" asked Inspector Dutruelle.
"Well, normally this station's packed - beggars, passengers, buskers, hawkers, plus all their tables and stalls. It's like a damn great fair and market rolled into one. You can get anything here, from Eiffel Towers to cabbages and potatoes - not to mention a spot of cannabis or heroin."
"Oh, yes," said Inspector Dutruelle, vaguely. "I remember." He passed a handkerchief across his brow again.
At the turnstyles a man was handing out publicity cards and he thrust one into Inspector Dutruelle's hand. Glancing down at it and squinting in the bright sunlight, the Inspector read aloud: "'Professor Dhiakobli, Grand Médium Voyant can help you succeed rapidly in all areas of life . . .'"
He broke off in mid-sentence with a snort.
"What a lot of mumbo-jumbo! Headless chickens and voodoo magic."
"It may be mumbo-jumbo to you, sir," said the Detective Constable with a laugh, "but round here they take that sort of thing seriously. And not only round here - after all, we use some of these techniques in the police, don't we?"
"Oh really? Such as?"
"Well, graphology for a start - you can hardly call basing a murder case on the size of someone's handwriting scientific, can you sir? Or what about astrology - employing people on the basis of the stars? Or numerology."
"Yes, Marc," said Inspector Dutruelle, pushing the card into his top pocket, "maybe you're right, and maybe when you're older you won't be so sure. Now get on the blower and call the car."
The hot July turned to hotter and more humid August. No more bodies were found in the sweltering tunnels of the Metro, and the media, bored with the lack of developments, left Inspector Dutruelle to his original obscurity. Paris, deserted by its citizens in the yearly exodus to the coast, was tolerable only to the tourists with backpacks who flocked to the cheap hotels and began again to crowd the Metro. Then, in September, the Parisiens came back and life returned to normal.
But Inspector Dutruelle's passion for Vololona did not cool with the season. Vololona had at last agreed to see him, occasionally; but she always managed (with tears in her eyes) to deflect his more amorous advances. For Inspector Dutruelle it was beneath him to observe that he continued to pay the rent on her apartment, but he was growing increasingly frustrated. The notion that she had another lover obsessed him, and in the evenings he took to prowling the broad Boulevard de Clichy between her apartment and the Chatte et Lapin.
Sometimes he would stand for hours watching her door, as locals strolled past with their dogs or sat on the benches under the plane trees. Now, denied the one thing here he wanted, the scene filled him with dismay. Money and music were in the air. Lovers sipped coffee in the open and watched the whores in their doorways. Pigeons fluttered as girls in tight mini-skirts hurried to work.
Tourists with their Deutschmarks arrived by the busload and the touts in dark glasses worked hard to coax them into the expensive sex shows and neon-lit video clubs. Somewhere deep below ran the Metro; but Inspector Dutruelle had no more interest in that. His superiors had given up hope of solving the Metro murders and had moved him on to other things. Sometimes he would stay all night, leaving to the tinkle of broken glass as workmen swept up after the night's revelries. Occasionally he would see Vololona leave her apartment to buy cigarettes, but he never once saw her on the arm of another man, or saw a male visitor take the lift to the seventh floor.
One night, late in October, he returned from the Boulevard de Clichy just after midnight. Madame Dutruelle, having been told that her husband was working on a case, and perhaps believing it, was already asleep. Had she been awake she would surely have been surprised to see him throw his jacket over a chair, for Inspector Dutruelle had always been meticulous with his clothes, the sort of man who irons his shoelaces. But the jacket missed and dropped to the floor. Muttering to himself, the Inspector bent and picked it up, and as he did so something fell from the top pocket. He gazed at it blankly for a moment. Then he realised it was the card he had been given at the metro station, a little the worse for having been once or twice to the cleaners, but still legible. He picked it up and slowly started to read:
PROFESSOR DHIAKOBLI
Grand Médium Voyant can help you succeed rapidly in all areas of life: luck, love, marriage, attraction of clients, examinations, sexual potency. If you desire to make another love you or if your loved one has left with another, this is his domain, you will be loved and your partner will return. Prof. Dhiakobli will come behind you like a dog. He will create between you a perfect rapport on the basis of love. All problems resolved, even desperate cases. Every day from 9am to 9pm. Payment after results.
13b, rue Beldamme, 75018 Paris
staircase B, 6th floor, door on left
Metro: Barbes Rochechouart
Grand Médium Voyant can help you succeed rapidly in all areas of life: luck, love, marriage, attraction of clients, examinations, sexual potency. If you desire to make another love you or if your loved one has left with another, this is his domain, you will be loved and your partner will return. Prof. Dhiakobli will come behind you like a dog. He will create between you a perfect rapport on the basis of love. All problems resolved, even desperate cases. Every day from 9am to 9pm. Payment after results.
13b, rue Beldamme, 75018 Paris
staircase B, 6th floor, door on left
Metro: Barbes Rochechouart
Inspector Dutruelle stood in his socks and braces reading the card over and over again. "All problems resolved . . ." It was preposterous. And yet, it was tempting. What harm could there be in a little hocus pocus when everything else had failed? After all, everyone knew that even the police used clairvoyants when they were really up against it.
Rue Beldamme was a backstreet of tenement buildings in Paris's eighteenth arrondissement, an area popular with immigrants from francophone Africa. It lay close to the busy crossroads straddled by Metro Barbes Rochechouart. Inspector Dutruelle parked in the next street and walked the rest of the way, cursing because he had not brought his umbrella. The door to number 13b was swinging in the wind, its dark paint peeling badly. He stepped through into a narrow courtyard and found his way to the sixth-floor door on which a brass plaque read: "Professor Dhiakobli Spécialiste des travaux occultes Please ring". He stood there, breathing heavily from the stairs, and before he could press the bell the door opened and a man appeared.
"Please enter, my dear sir," said the man with an elegant wave of the hand and exaggerated courtesy. "I am Dhiakobli. And I have the honour to meet . . . ?"
As Inspector Dutruelle had imagined, Professor Dhiakobli was black. He had a short yet commanding figure, and was dressed in a well-tailored grey suit. A large, silk handkerchief fell from his top pocket.
"For the moment," said Inspector Dutruelle, "my name is hardly important. I've only come in response to your advertisement."
"Monsieur has perhaps some small problem with which I can help? A minor indiscretion? Please be seated, sir, and let us talk about the matter."
Inspector Dutruelle handed his coat and gloves to the Professor and sat in the large, well upholstered chair to which he had been directed. Professor Dhiakobli himself settled behind a large mahogany desk, on top of which a chihuahua hardly bigger than a mouse was lounging, its wide, moist eyes gazing disdainfully at the newcomer.
"Ah, I see that Zeus approves of you," said the Professor, stroking the tiny dog with the tips of his manicured fingers, his own unblinking eyes also fixed on Inspector Dutruelle. "Poor Zeus, mon petit papillon, he is devoted to me, but he must remain here whenever I leave France. And you are fortunate, monsieur. It is only now that I return from Côte d'Ivoire. It is my country you know, I return there for a few months each summer. Paris in summer is so disagreeable, don't you agree?"
Professor Dhiakobli glittered with success. The frames of his glasses, the heavy bracelet on his right wrist and the watch on his left, the gem-studded rings on his fingers - all were of gold. From his manner and cultured French accent it was evident that he was an educated man. Around him the large room was like a shrine. Heavy curtains excluded the daylight (the only illumination was a small brass desklamp) and the dark, red walls were festooned with spears, costumes, photographs and other African memorabilia. There was a sweet smell in the air, and in one corner of the room the feathers of a ceremonial African headgear lay draped inappropriately over an enormous American refrigerator. You could not help being struck by the incongruity of this bizarre scene in the roughest quarter of Paris.
"As I say," began Inspector Dutruelle, ignoring the Professor's question, "I saw your card and I wondered just how you work."
"And may one enquire as to monsieur's little difficulty?"
Inspector Dutruelle cleared his throat and tried to adopt as nonchalant an air as he could.
"Well," - he coughed again - "first of all, I wondered what sort of things you can help people with."
The Professor's eyebrows rose.
"Anything," he said slowly, his smile revealing a set of large white teeth that shone brilliantly in the dimness against his black skin. "My dear sir, anything at all."
"And then, I wondered, how do you operate? That's to say, what exactly do you do . . . and how do you charge?"
"Ah monsieur, let us not talk of money. First I must learn just how I can help you. And for that a consultation is in order."
Inspector Dutruelle shifted in his seat.
"And what would a consultation involve? What does it . . . cost?"
Professor Dhiakobli wrung his hands and shrugged amicably.
"Mon cher monsieur, I do understand how distasteful it is to you to discuss so vulgar a matter as money. I too recoil at the mere thought of it. It has been my mission in life to help those who have suffered misfortune. And if some donate a small token of their gratitude, who am I to refuse their offering? They pay according to their means, to assist those who have little to offer. But for a preliminary consultation, monsieur, a nominal sum, as a mark of good faith, is usually in order. For a gentleman of your obvious standing, a trifle, a mere two hundred francs. And let me assure you, monsieur, of my absolute discretion. Nothing you may choose to tell me will go beyond these walls." He paused. Then he threw out his hands and added with a grin: "They have the sanctity of the confessional."
"I'm glad to hear it," said the Inspector.
"But monsieur still has the advantage of me . . ." continued Professor Dhiakobli.
Inspector Dutruelle decided that he had nothing to lose by talking. He adopted the name of Monsieur Mazodier, a Parisien wine merchant, and began to tell the Professor of the dilemma that was tearing at his soul. He told him of the young Malagasy girl he had met while entertaining clients; of their instant and passionate love for one another; of her sudden irrational refusal any longer to give herself to him; and of the wife he now knew he should never have married but whom he had not the heart to leave. Monsieur Mazodier was at his wits' end and now even his business was suffering. He feared that if he did not find a resolution to his problem he might do something that he or others would regret. The Professor listened intently, asking appropriate questions at appropriate moments. Finally Inspector Dutruelle said: "Well, Professor Dhiakobli, I think that's all I can tell you. I don't think I can tell you any more. From what I have told you, do you believe you can help me?"For a long time there was silence. The Professor appeared to be in another world.
He stared at Inspector Dutruelle, but seemed to be looking through him.
"My dear Monsieur Mazodier," he said at last, very slowly, almost mechanically, "the story you have told me is most poignant. Each of us has a hidden corner in his life, a jardin secret. Yet it is rare indeed for men to come to me with problems such as yours. Perhaps it is natural that most of my lovelorn clients should be women. At the mercy of their complex physical structure, is it any wonder that women are such emotional creatures? I help them find their lost ones, their partners of many years, to recreate again the rapport of their youth. You will understand that it is not easy. But this is my work. My domain."
"So you can't help me?" said Inspector Dutruelle, adding despondently: "Perhaps what I really need is a headshrink."
The Professor gave a start. Again, for a long time he did not answer. Then his teeth flashed in the dimness.
"Écoutez monsieur, this is my work, my domain," he repeated. "Certainly I can help you. But you must understand that it will not be easy. It calls for a special ceremony. In the first place, you are married, and I shall be required to work my influence on not one but two women. In the second, we are both men of the world, monsieur, and you will not be offended if I remark upon the extreme disparity in your ages. And finally, it is clear to me that this young girl has chained your heart with her magic. You know, the magic of Madagascar is very strong. No, monsieur, it will not be easy. Enduring love cannot be bought with money alone. Sometimes . . ." He hesitated and looked Inspector Dutruelle straight in the eye, his own eyes suddenly cold and vacant. "Sometimes," he said, "we must make sacrifices."
"What sort of sacrifices?" asked Inspector Dutruelle dully.
"Oh, my dear sir, you must leave that to me. But one cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs." His cold eyes remained fixed on the Inspector and he spoke in a monotone without pausing for breath. "You must not concern yourself with technicalities, monsieur. Your mind must be fixed on the future, on the life you have dreamed of. You must envisage your wife - happy in the arms of another. You must picture the fragile young child you so yearn for . . . secure in your arms . . . sharing your life . . . your days . . . your nights. The perfect solution to all your problems. Is it not worth a considerable sum?"
"It certainly would be worth a lot . . ." Inspector Dutruelle muttered as the Professor's words came to life in his mind.
"Shall we say thirty thousand francs?"
"I'm sorry?" muttered the Inspector.
"Let's say fifteen thousand before and fifteen afterwards," the Professor went on as though his visitor had not spoken. "Do you see, monsieur, how confident I am of success?"
Inspector Dutruelle did not reply. He was confused. He had not expected the Professor to be so blunt, or to propose quite so generous a token. But it did not seem to matter. After all, what was thirty thousand francs to achieve what he craved so desperately? And, in any case, at worst it was only fifteen thousand.
The Professor's eyes were still fixed on Inspector Dutruelle.
"Of course, monsieur, I have faith in your gratitude. I know that you will not forget, in your delight, that what I have done, I can undo. And now, monsieur, you must not allow me to detain you further. We have much work to do. In eight days you will return with photographs and details of Madame Mazodier and the Malagasy. And with some little articles of clothing, something close to their thoughts, say a scarf or a hat. You can arrange this?"
Inspector Dutruelle nodded blankly.
"Excellent, monsieur. I must know them in every detail - if I am to have a spiritual tête-à-tête with each of them. So, in fifteen days, you will return for the ceremony. It will take place beyond those curtains, in the space reserved for the ancestral spirits. Nobody but I and my assistants may enter there, but nevertheless it is imperative that you be present on the day. It must be at dawn, and you must come without fail - the ceremony cannot be deferred. Can you manage six in the morning, shall we say Monday the sixteenth?"
Inspector Dutruelle did not sleep well on the night of the fifteenth of December. At four o'clock in the morning he got out of bed. Though his wife stirred she did not wake. He showered and dressed. His nerves were on edge as he fiddled around in the kitchen, boiling water for his coffee. He drank two cups, strong and black, but he looked helplessly at the croissants he had spread clumsily with jam. He lit a Gauloise and paced the room. Then he pulled the windows open and leaned on the railing, finishing his cigarette. Below him the courtyard was dark and silent, and above him the sky was black. But away in the east, through the open end of the court, a violet hue was creeping over Paris. He glanced at his watch. It was a quarter past five and time to fetch the car. It would seem strange, leaving at that time of the morning without an official car and driver. He wondered what the concierge would make of it all - she was bound to be polishing the brasses by the time he reached the ground floor. He gave a shiver and pushed the windows shut.
Then he put the keys of the Renault in his coat pocket and checked that he had everything. He looked into the bedroom. Gently, he drew the duvet back and looked at his wife as she slept, her arms clasped about her knees. He leaned over and touched his lips to her cheek. Then he closed the bedroom door silently behind him, switched the lights off in the living room and kitchen, and opened the front door. As he did so the telephone rang. It startled him and he cursed aloud. He closed the front door again and hurried to answer the phone so that his wife should not wake.
"Inspector Dutruelle?" said the voice at the other end.
"Yes, what is it?"
"Sorry to disturb you at this time of the morning, Monsieur l'Inspecteur. It's the Préfecture."
"Never mind the time," said Inspector Dutruelle with as much irritation as his whispering voice could convey. "I'm off duty today."
"Well, that's the point, Inspector. The Préfet's ordered us to call you specially. He appreciates you're not on duty, but he wants you anyway."
"It's quite impossible."
"I'm afraid he insists, sir."
"Why?"
"He insists you come on duty immediately, sir. We're sending a car round for you."
"Yes, yes, I understand, but why?"
"It's the Metro again, sir."
"The Metro?"
"Yes, sir. They've found another corpse on the line, decapitated again."
Inspector Dutruelle did not reply. He was cursing to himself. He was cursing the Préfet, the police, this homicidal maniac, his wife. Why today? Why ever today?
"Sir? Hello sir? The car'll be with you in five minutes."
"Yes, all right. I'll be ready in five minutes."
The big black Citroen was soon speeding away from Rue Dauphine and heading north across Pont Neuf. Inspector Dutruelle looked at the winter mists rising from the Seine. His dreams, it seemed, were evaporating just as surely.
"You'd better brief me on this as quick as you can," he said wearily to the Detective Sergeant he had found waiting for him in the car. "Where was the body found?"
"Barbes Rochechouart, sir."
A cold shiver passed through the Inspector.
"I presume it's the same as the others?" he asked.
"Well, in as much as there's nothing to go on, it's the same, sir. Otherwise it couldn't be more different. For a start, we've just heard they've found two of them now. And this time they're women. One white, in her forties, and one black. A young black girl - still in her teens, by the look of things."
But Inspector Dutruelle was not listening. He was staring blankly through the glass to his right, and as they turned at Place du Châtelet the empty streets were no more than a cold, grey blur to him. The car swung onto the broad Boulevard de Sébastopol and accelerated northwards to cover the three kilometres to Metro Barbes Rochechouart. It was the route he should have been taking in his own car.
Outside the station, now closed to passengers, people were standing around under the street lights with their collars up. Inspector Dutruelle got out of the car. He hesitated. He glanced towards Rue Beldamme (just a stone's throw away across the bleak Boulevard de Rochechouart) where the Professor would be waiting for him. He shrugged and went down the station steps.
Underground, on the number four line, there was an air of gloom. Both bodies lay where they had been spotted by the first train drivers through that morning. Inspector Dutruelle looked impassively at the first one. It was the body of a middle-aged woman, quite unexceptional, coarse and wiry, like his wife.
"She's forty-seven, Monsieur l'Inspecteur," said somebody beside him. "French. Name of Madame Catherine Dubur. Not like the other one."
"The other one?" said the Inspector blankly.
"I told you in the car, sir," said the Detective Sergeant at his ear, "there's two of them."
"You'd better show me."
They strolled in their overcoats to the other end of the platform and went down the little steps that led to the track. A uniformed policeman pulled back the blanket that covered the second body, which lay on its back. Inspector Dutruelle stared dispassionately at the stiff, black limbs that stuck out awkwardly across the railway lines. Suddenly he shuddered in alarm. Even in the dim lights of the train that was pulled up beyond you could see the resemblance to Vololona.
"Identity?" he asked. He tried to control his voice.
"We don't know, sir - this is all we found," said a policeman, handing him a tattered greetings card. Inside, in large, green handwriting, were the words: "Happy Nineteenth Birthday, from Everyone in Antananarivo."
"D'you think she's Malagasy, sir?" asked the policeman. The Inspector shrugged his shoulders, then held out an open hand.
"Your torch, please," he said.
He played its beam over the body, up and down the long, slender legs, across the clothes. At least he did not recognise the clothes. Yet the body's size, its build, its colour, everything pointed to Vololona. He bent down and flashed the light onto the fingers of the left hand and laughed weakly to himself as he saw the tawdry rings that glinted back at him. He stood up in relief. That was certainly not Vololona. Yet it was uncanny how this body reminded him of her - and the other of Agnes, for that matter. Even the ages were the same.
He smoked as he stood staring at the headless corpse. He could not understand. Was the magic of Madagascar really so strong that now he saw Vololona everywhere? And what of Agnes? How would Professor Dhiakobli explain that? How could he explain it, when you came to think of it? When you came to think of it, he had explained very little. He had been happy enough to take the money, and free enough with his words - all those grandiose notions of mission and sacrifice and spiritual tête-à-têtes . . .
Inspector Dutruelle gasped.
"The devil," he muttered to himself. Suddenly he understood everything.
"The what, sir?" said somebody beside him.
"Never mind," he answered quietly, putting his hand to his breast pocket. His heart had started to pound with a sense of danger and his head suddenly ached with questions. He took out his cigarette case and lit another Gauloise. Through its curling blue smoke, back-lit by the lights of the train, the black limbs were splayed out in a grotesque dance, while beside him men's voices were thrumming in his ear. Why was there no time to think, to extricate himself from this nightmare? He cursed himself. How could he have been so stupid? He cursed his wife and Vololona. And Professor Dhiakobli. What madness had driven him to this? Then he cursed himself again, and turned abruptly to one of the men babbling at his side.
"What time is it?"
"Six-fifteen, sir."
For a moment, he hesitated. Then he called for the Detective Sergeant who was with the photographer at the other body.
"Écoute Guy, when he's got his pictures they can move the bodies and fix things up," he said. "Now get me the Préfet."
The Préfet was beside himself with rage at this further disturbance to his sleep, and he exploded with indignation when Inspector Dutruelle offered his resignation.
"Are you insane, man? You're in the middle of an investigation!"
"The investigation is over, Monsieur le Préfet."
"So, you have the killer at last!"
"In fifteen minutes, monsieur, in fifteen minutes."
"Then why in the name of God are you asking to be relieved from duty?"
"Monsieur le Préfet, my position is impossible. On this occasion it was I that paid the killer," he answered calmly as he took another cigarette from his silver cigarette case.
SINHALA LITERATURE IN TAMIL TRANSLATION
Introduction
Tamil and Sinhala have been co-existing and interacting in different social situations and contexts in Sri Lanka for many centuries. Sinhala scholars like Peter Silva (1961) and D.E. Hettiarachchi (1969) recognized the influence of Tamil on the structure and lexicon of Sinhala from the historical periods. Sugathapala de Silva (1969) and C.E. Godakumbura (1950) admit that Sidat Saitgarawa, the earliest grammar of the Sinhala language written in the 13th century A.D., is influenced by the Tamil grammar Vi:raco:liyam. Sinhala, in turn, influenced Sri Lanka Tamil to a certain extent, mainly in the area of its lexicon.
In spite of the present political conflict between the Tamils and Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, both the languages are mutually used by these communities for their day-to-day communication, at least in certain bilingual areas in this country.
Although Sinhala and Tamil have a long literary history of their own, Tamil literature has greatly influenced Sinhala literature during the middle ages. Peter Silva (1963), Charles de Silva (1964), Hissalle Dhammaratana Thera (1963) and recently Sunil Ariyaratna (1995) have pointed out the impact of Tamil on Sinhala literature. Tamil literature, however, did not in return get anything from Sinhala literature until very recently, maybe because of the political and literary dominance of the Tamil language in the region during the ancient and medieval periods.
The situation changed during the post-Independence period in Sri Lanka. Despite the ethnic tension and violence which occurred from time to time in the recent past, the Tamil-speaking communities in Sri Lanka have shown their interest in learning Sinhala, in reading Sinhala literature, and also in translating the same into Tamil. They learned Sinhala mainly because it was made the (only) official language in the late 19505 and had become socially dominant, so that they were compelled to learn it for their official existence. Whatever their reasons for learning Sinhala, this opened the windows to the culture of the majority community.
Tamil and Muslim writers who learned Sinhala have translated a number of contemporary Sinhala creative pieces into Tamil.' Most of these translations were undertaken with a purpose; that i.s, to promote an inter-communal dialogue through literature in order to create an understanding between communities, and to create communal harmony in this country. It was a one-way effort until very recently,
Some of the translators of creative writings from Sinhala into Tamil are AJAzoomath, S.M.J. Faisdeen, Junaida Shariff, T. Kanakaratnarn, M. Kanagarajah, Madulugiriye Wijeratna, Neelkarai Nambi, Nilarrn Casim, M.A. Nuhman, A. Piyadasa, Raja Srikandan, P. Ratnasabapathy Iyar, Sarojinidevi Arunasalam, M.H.M. Shams, Sinnaiya Kanagamoorthy ,Sinnaia Sivanesan, SivaSubramaniyarn, Sundaram Saumiyan, Tambyaya Davadas and M.M. Uwais.
M.A. l'I1JHUMAN 161
however, because only a few contemporary Tamil pieces had been translated into Sinhala till the late 1970s.2 This means that, unlike in the medieval period. Tamil bad lost its social and political importance in tills country. However, from the late 19708, because of the intensification of the ethnic conflict after the 1983 communal riot, the emergence of Tamil militancy, and the escalation of the civil war some progressive Sinhala writers, journalists, and intellectuals took positive steps to have a dialogue with the minority communities through literature and started to translate contemporary Tamil writings, mainly Sri Lankan Tamil poetry, into Sinhala. Some Muslim and Tamil writers willingly collaborated with them in their meaningful efforts. Some of tbe progressive Sinhala tabloids like Mawatha, Viwara~a, Ravaya, and Yukthiya made conscious efforts to promote the translation of Tamil literature into Sinhala during the last decade!
This paper surveys the Sinhala literary works translated into Tamil during the post-Independent period, assesses the quality of the translations, and highlights some of the problems of translating Sinhala creative writing into Tamil.
Some Tamil classics have been translated into Sinhala between the years 1950 and 1970. Sri Charles de Silva (1964) and Misiharni Gorakagoda (l961a, 1961b) have translated Tirukkura] of Thiruvalluvar. Misihami Gorakagoda (1968) has also translated Na.latya:r an anthology of didactic poems ill Tamil. Cilappatika.ram, the first Tamil epic, has been translated by Amarakoon Dassanayake (1956) and Rev. Hissalle Dhammaratana (1959). Rev. Hissalle Dhammaratana (1950)has also translated the classical Tamil Buddhist epic Manimekalai, I could gather information of only one modern Tamil creative work that has been translated into Sinhala during this period. It is Narisura.va, (Kallo: Ka:viyamo:), a novel by M. Varatharajan (1966) translated by M.C.M. Sayir and P.D. Wijedasa.
I gathered information about the following five Tamil short story collections published since 1970 in Sinhala translation which include 64 Tamil short stories.
(1) Kulahi.nayo 17 short stories by C. Rajagopalachari (1973). Translated by D.D. Nanayakkara.
(2) Alut Satanpa.tha 12 short stories by S. Kaneshalingam. Translated by Ranjith Perera.
(3) Demala Ketikata 12 short stories of different authors. Translated by T. Kanakaratnam 1979).
(4) Kalimuttuge: puravasi Bha:vaya 11 'short stories of different authors. Translated by Ibnu Azoomat and Pushpa Rarnlane Ratnayake (1991).
(5) Demalaketikata 12 short stories by S. Thillai Nadaraja (!994). The translator's name is not given.
SNHALA LITERA TlJRE IN TAMIL 162
Translation of Sinhala Short Stories
Nearly a hundred Sinhala short stories have been translated into Tamil during this period. Three Sinhala short story collections have been published. Ce.tu Pantanam, translated by Kanakaratnam (1979), consists of twelve short stories of different authors. Cinkalac Cuukataikai, published in India in 1982, includes ten short stories of different authors. These translations were done by eight different persons, and they had already been published in Mallikai, a Tamil literary monthly. Valai, translated by Madulugiriya Wijerathne (1994), consists of five short stories of different authors including one of his O\\-TI. The other stories have been published invarious magazines and newspapers during the past thirty years.
Haircut
I got another barber that comes over from Carterville and helps me out Saturdays, but the rest of the time I can get along all right alone. You can see for yourself that this ain't no New York: City and besides that, the most of the boys works all day and don't have no leisure to drop in here and get themselves prettied up.
You're a newcomer, ain't you? I thought I hadn't seen you round before. I hope you like it good enough to stay. As I say, we ain't no New York City or Chicago, but we have pretty good times. Not as good, though, since Jim Kendall got killed. When he was alive, him and Hod Meyers used to keep this town in an uproar. I bet they was more laughin' done here than any town its size in America.
Jim was comical, and Hod was pretty near a match for him. Since Jim's gone, Hod tries to hold his end up just the same as ever, but it's tough goin' when you ain't got nobody to kind of work with.
They used to be plenty fun in here Saturdays. This place is jampacked Saturdays, from four o'clock on. Jim and Hod would show up right after their supper round six o'clock. Jim would set himself down in that big chair, nearest the blue spittoon. Whoever had been settin' in that chair, why they'd get up when Jim come in and at" it to him.
You'd of thought it was a reserved seat like they have sometimes in a theaytre. Hod would generally always stand or walk up and down or some Saturdays, of course, he'd be settin' in this chair part of the time, gettin' a haircut.
Well, Jim would set there a w'ile without opening his mouth only to spit, and then finally he'd say to me, "Whitey,"--my right name, that is, my right first name, is Dick, but everybody round here calls me Whitey--Jim would say, "Whitey, your nose looks like a rosebud tonight. You must of been drinkin' some of your aw de cologne."
So I'd say, "No, Jim, but you look like you'd been drinkin' something of that kind or somethin' worse."
Jim would have to laugh at that, but then he'd speak up and say, "No, I ain't had nothin' to drink, but that ain't sayin' I wouldn't like somethin'. I wouldn't even mind if it was wood alcohol."
Then Hod Meyers would say, "Neither would your wife." That would set everybody to laughin' because Jim and his wife wasn't on very good terms. She'd of divorced him only they wasn't no chance to get alimony and she didn't have no way to take care of herself and the kids. She couldn't never understand Jim. He was kind of rough, but a good fella at heart.
Him and Hod had all kinds of sport with Milt Sheppard. I don't suppose you've seen Milt. Well, he's got an Adam's apple that looks more like a mush-melon. So I'd be shavin' Milt and when I'd start to shave down here on his neck, Hod would holler, "Hey, Whitey, wait a minute! Before you cut into it, let's make up a pool and see who can guess closest to the number of seeds."
And Jim would say, "If Milt hadn't of been so hoggish, he'd of ordered a half a cantaloupe instead of a whole one and it might not of stuck in his throat."
All the boys would roar at this and Milt himself would force a smile, though the joke was on him. Jim certainly was a card!
There's his shavin' mug, setting on the shelf, right next to Charley Vail's. "Charles M. Vail." That's the druggist. He comes in regular for his shave, three times a week. And Jim's is the cup next to Charley's. "dames H. Kendall." Jim won't need no shavin' mug no more, but I'll leave it there just the same for old time's sake. Jim certainly was a character!
Years ago, Jim used to travel for a canned goods concern over in Carterville. They sold canned goods. Jim had the whole northern half of the State and was on the road five days out of every week. He'd drop in here Saturdays and tell his experiences for that week. It was rich.
I guess he paid more attention to playin' jokes than makin' sales. Finally the concern let him out and he come right home here and told everybody he'd been fired instead of sayin' he'd resigned like most fellas would of.
It was a Saturday and the shop was full and Jim got up out of that chair and says, "Gentlemen, I got an important announcement to make. I been fired from my job."
Well, they asked him if he was in earnest and he said he was and nobody could think of nothin' to say till Jim finally broke the ice himself. He says, "I been sellin' canned goods and now I'm canned goods myself.
You see, the concern he'd been workin' for was a factory that made canned goods. Over in Carterville. And now Jim said he was canned himself. He was certainly a card!
Jim had a great trick that he used to play w'ile he was travelin'. For instance, he'd be ridin' on a train and they'd come to some little town like, well, like, well, like, we'll say, like Benton. Jim would look out the train window and read the signs of the stores.
For instance, they'd be a sign, "Henry Smith, Dry Goods." Well, Jim would write down the name and the name of the town and when he got to wherever he was goin' he'd mail back a postal card to Henry Smith at Benton and not sign no name to it, but he'd write on the card, well somethin' like "Ask your wife about that book agent that spent the afternoon last week," or "Ask your Missus who kept her from gettin' lonesome the last time you was in Carterville." And he'd sign the card, "A Friend."
Of course, he never knew what really come of none of these jokes, but he could picture what probably happened and that was enough.
Jim didn't work very steady after he lost his position with the Carterville people. What he did earn, coin' odd jobs round town why he spent pretty near all of it on gin, and his family might of starved if the stores hadn't of carried them along. Jim's wife tried her hand at dressmakin', but they ain't nobody goin' to get rich makin' dresses in this town.
As I say, she'd of divorced Jim, only she seen that she couldn't support herself and the kids and she was always hopin' that some day Jim would cut out his habits and give her more than two or three dollars a week.
They was a time when she would go to whoever he was workin' for and ask them to give her his wages, but after she done this once or twice, he beat her to it by borrowin' most of his pay in advance. He told it all round town, how he had outfoxed his Missus. He certainly was a caution!
But he wasn't satisfied with just outwittin' her. He was sore the way she had acted, tryin' to grab off his pay. And he made up his mind he'd get even. Well, he waited till Evans's Circus was advertised to come to town. Then he told his wife and two kiddies that he was goin' to take them to the circus. The day of the circus, he told them he would get the tickets and meet them outside the entrance to the tent.
Well, he didn't have no intentions of bein' there or buyin' tickets or nothin'. He got full of gin and laid round Wright's poolroom all day. His wife and the kids waited and waited and of course he didn't show up. His wife didn't have a dime with her, or nowhere else, I guess. So she finally had to tell the kids it was all off and they cried like they wasn't never goin' to stop.
Well, it seems, w'ile they was cryin', Doc Stair come along and he asked what was the matter, but Mrs. Kendall was stubborn and wouldn't tell him, but the kids told him and he insisted on takin' them and their mother in the show. Jim found this out afterwards and it was one reason why he had it in for Doc Stair.
Doc Stair come here about a year and a half ago. He's a mighty handsome young fella and his clothes always look like he has them made to order. He goes to Detroit two or three times a year and w'ile he's there must have a tailor take his measure and then make him a suit to order. They cost pretty near twice as much, but they fit a whole lot better than if you just bought them in a store.
For a w'ile everybody was wonderin' why a young doctor like Doc Stair should come to a town like this where we already got old Doc Gamble and Doc Foote that's both been here for years and all the practice in town was always divided between the two of them.
Then they was a story got round that Doc Stair's gal had thronged him over, a gal up in the Northern Peninsula somewhere, and the reason he come here was to hide himself away and forget it. He said himself that he thought they wasn't nothin' like general practice in a place like ours to fit a man to be a good all round doctor. And that's why he'd came.
Anyways, it wasn't long before he was makin' enough to live on, though they tell me that he never dunned nobody for what they owed him, and the folks here certainly has got the owin' habit, even in my business. If I had all that was comin' to me for just shaves alone, I could go to Carterville and put up at the Mercer for a week and see a different picture every night. For instance, they's old George Purdy--but I guess I shouldn't ought to be gossipin'.
Well, last year, our coroner died, died of the flu. Ken Beatty, that was his name. He was the coroner. So they had to choose another man to be coroner in his place and they picked Doc Stair. He laughed at first and said he didn't want it, but they made him take it. It ain't no job that anybody would fight for and what a man makes out of it in a year would just about buy seeds for their garden. Doc's the kind, though, that can't say no to nothin' if you keep at him long enough.
But I was goin' to tell you about a poor boy we got here in town-Paul Dickson. He fell out of a tree when he was about ten years old. Lit on his head and it done somethin' to him and he ain't never been right. No harm in him, but just silly. Jim Kendall used to call him cuckoo; that's a name Jim had for anybody that was off their head, only he called people's head their bean. That was another of his gags, callin' head bean and callin' crazy people cuckoo. Only poor Paul ain't crazy, but just silly.
You can imagine that Jim used to have all kinds of fun with Paul. He'd send him to the White Front Garage for a left-handed monkey wrench. Of course they ain't no such thing as a left-handed monkey wrench.
And once we had a kind of a fair here and they was a baseball game between the fats and the leans and before the game started Jim called Paul over and sent him way down to Schrader's hardware store to get a key for the pitcher's box.
They wasn't nothin' in the way of gags that Jim couldn't think up, when he put his mind to it.
Poor Paul was always kind of suspicious of people, maybe on account of how Jim had kept foolin' him. Paul wouldn't have much to do with anybody only his own mother and Doc Stair and a girl here in town named Julie Gregg. That is, she ain't a girl no more, but pretty near thirty or over.
When Doc first come to town, Paul seemed to feel like here was a real friend and he hung round Doc's office most of the w'ile; the only time he wasn't there was when he'd go home to eat or sleep or when he seen Julie Gregg coin' her shoppin'.
When he looked out Doc's window and seen her, he'd run downstairs and join her and tag along with her to the different stores. The poor boy was crazy about Julie and she always treated him mighty nice and made him feel like he was welcome, though of course it wasn't nothin' but pity on her side.
Doc done all he could to improve Paul's mind and he told me once that he really thought the boy was getting better, that they was times when he was as bright and sensible as anybody else.
But I was goin' to tell you about Julie Gregg. Old man Gregg was in the lumber business, but got to drinkin' and lost the most of his money and when he died, he didn't leave nothin' but the house and just enough insurance for the girl to skimp along on.
Her mother was a kind of a half invalid and didn't hardly ever leave the house. Julie wanted to sell the place and move somewhere else after the old man died, but the mother said she was born here and would die here. It was tough on Julie as the young people round this town--well, she's too good for them.
She'd been away to school and Chicago and New York and different places and they ain't no subject she can't talk on, where you take the rest of the young folks here and you mention anything to them outside of Gloria Swanson or Tommy Meighan and they think you're delirious. Did you see Gloria in Wages of Virtue? You missed somethin'!
Well, Doc Stair hadn't been here more than a week when he came in one day to get shaved and I recognized who he was, as he had been pointed out to me, so I told him about my old lady. She's been ailin' for a couple years and either Doc Gamble or Doc Foote, neither one, seemed to be helpin' her. So he said he would come out and see her, but if she was able to get out herself, it would be better to bring her to his office where he could make a completer examination.
So I took her to his office and w'ile I was waitin' for her in the reception room, in come Julie Gregg. When somebody comes in Doc Stair's office, they's a bell that rings in his inside office so he can tell they's somebody to see him.
So he left my old lady inside and come out to the front office and that's the first time him and Julie met and I guess it was what they call love at first sight. But it wasn't fifty-fifty. This young fella was the slickest lookin' fella she'd ever seen in this town and she went wild over him. To him she was just a young lady that wanted to see the doctor.
She'd came on about the same business I had. Her mother had been doctorin' for years with Doc Gamble and Doc Foote and with" out no results. So she'd heard they was a new doc in town and decided to give him a try. He promised to call and see her mother that same day.
I said a minute ago that it was love at first sight on her part. I'm not only judgin' by how she acted afterwards but how she looked at him that first day in his office. I ain't no mind reader, but it was wrote all over her face that she was gone.
Now Jim Kendall, besides bein' a jokesmith and a pretty good drinker, well Jim was quite a lady-killer. I guess he run pretty wild durin' the time he was on the road for them Carterville people, and besides that, he'd had a couple little affairs of the heart right here in town. As I say, his wife would have divorced him, only she couldn't.
But Jim was like the majority of men, and women, too, I guess. He wanted what he couldn't get. He wanted Julie Gregg and worked his head off tryin' to land her. Only he'd of said bean instead of head.
Well, Jim's habits and his jokes didn't appeal to Julie and of course he was a married man, so he didn't have no more chance than, well, than a rabbit. That's an expression of Jim's himself. When somebody didn't have no chance to get elected or somethin', Jim would always say they didn't have no more chance than a rabbit.
He didn't make no bones about how he felt. Right in here, more than once, in front of the whole crowd, he said he was stuck on Julie and anybody that could get her for him was welcome to his house and his wife and kids included. But she wouldn't have nothin' to do with him; wouldn't even speak to him on the street. He finally seen he wasn't gettin' nowheres with his usual line so he decided to try the rough stuff. He went right up to her house one evenin' and when she opened the door he forced his way in and grabbed her. But she broke loose and before he could stop her, she run in the next room and locked the door and phoned to Joe Barnes. Joe's the marshal. Jim could hear who she was phonin' to and he beat it before Joe got there.
Joe was an old friend of Julie's pa. Joe went to Jim the next day and told him what would happen if he ever done it again.
I don't know how the news of this little affair leaked out. Chances is that Joe Barnes told his wife and she told somebody else's wife and they told their husband. Anyways, it did leak out and Hod Meyers had the nerve to kid Jim about it, right here in this shop. Jim didn't deny nothin' and kind of laughed it off and said for us all to wait; that lots of people had tried to make a monkey out of him, but he always got even.
Meanw'ile everybody in town was wise to Julie's bein' wild mad over the Doc. I don't suppose she had any idea how her face changed when him and her was together; of course she couldn't of, or she'd of kept away from him. And she didn't know that we was all noticin' how many times she made excuses to go up to his office or pass it on the other side of the street and look up in his window to see if he was there. I felt sorry for her and so did most other people.
Hod Meyers kept rubbin' it into Jim about how the Doc had cut him out. Jim didn't pay no attention to the kiddie' and you could see he was plannin' one of his jokes.
One trick Jim had was the knack of changin' his voice. He could make you think he was a girl talkie' and he could mimic any man's voice. To show you how good he was along this line, I'll tell you the joke he played on me once.
You know, in most towns of any size, when a man is dead and needs a shave, why the barber that shaves him soaks him five dollars for the job; that is, he don't soak him, but whoever ordered the shave. I just charge three dollars because personally I don't mind much shavin' a dead person. They lay a whole lot stiller than live customers. The only thing is that you don't feel like talkie' to them and you get kind of lonesome.
Well, about the coldest day we ever had here, two years ago last winter, the phone rung at the house w'ile I was home to dinner and I answered the phone and it was a woman's voice and she said she was Mrs. John Scott and her husband was dead and would I come out and shave him.
Old John had always been a good customer of mine. But they live seven miles out in the country, on the Streeter road. Still I didn't see how I could say no.
So I said I would be there, but would have to come in a jitney and it might cost three or four dollars besides the price of the shave. So she, or the voice, it said that was all right, so I got Frank Abbott to drive me out to the place and when I got there, who should open the door but old John himself! He wasn't no more dead than, well, than a rabbit.
It didn't take no private detective to figure out who had played me this little joke. Nobody could of thought it up but Jim Kendall. He certainly was a card!
I tell you this incident just to show you how he could disguise his voice and make you believe it was somebody else talkie'. I'd of swore it was Mrs. Scott had called me. Anyways, some woman.
Well, Jim waited till he had Doc Stair's voice down pat; then he went after revenge.
He called Julie up on a night when he knew Doc was over in Carterville. She never questioned but what it was Doc's voice. Jim said he must see her that night; he couldn't wait no longer to tell her somethin'. She was all excited and told him to come to the house. But he said he was expectin' an important long distance call and wouldn't she please forget her manners for once and come to his office. He said they couldn't nothin' hurt her and nobody would see her and he just must talk to her a little w'ile. Well, poor Julie fell for it.
Doc always keeps a night light in his office, so it looked to Julie like they was somebody there.
Meanw'ile Jim Kendall had went to Wright's poolroom, where they was a whole gang amusin' themselves. The most of them had drank plenty of gin, and they was a rough bunch even when sober. They was always strong for Jim's jokes and when he told them to come with him and see some fun they give up their card games and pool games and followed along.
Doc's office is on the second floor. Right outside his door they's a flight of stairs leadin' to the floor above. Jim and his gang hid in the dark behind these stairs.
Well, tulle come up to Doc's door and rung the bell and they was nothin' coin'. She rung it again and she rung it seven or eight times. Then she tried the door and found it locked. Then Jim made some kind of a noise and she heard it and waited a minute, and then she says, "Is that you, Ralph?" Ralph is Doc's first name.
They was no answer and it must of came to her all of a sudden that she'd been bunked. She pretty near fell downstairs and the whole gang after her. They chased her all the way home, hollerin', "Is that you, Ralph?" and "Oh, Ralphie, dear, is that you?" Jim says he couldn't holler it himself, as he was laughin' too hard.
Poor Julie! She didn't show up here on Main Street for a long, long time afterward.
And of course Jim and his gang told everybody in town, everybody but Doc Stair. They was scared to tell him, and he might of never knowed only for Paul Dickson. The poor cuckoo, as Jim called him, he was here in the shop one night when Jim was still gloatin' yet over what he'd done to Julie. And Paul took in as much of it as he could understand and he run to Doc with the story.
It's a cinch Doc went up in the air and swore he'd make Jim suffer. But it was a kind of a delicate thing, because if it got out that he had beat Jim up, Julie was bound to hear of it and then she'd know that Doc knew and of course knowin' that he knew would make it worse for her than ever. He was goin' to do somethin', but it took a lot of figurin'.
Well, it was a couple days later when Jim was here in the shop again, and so was the cuckoo. Jim was goin' duck-shootin' the next day and had come in lookin' for Hod Meyers to go with him. I happened to know that Hod had went over to Carterville and wouldn't be home till the end of the week. So Jim said he hated to go alone and he guessed he would call it off. Then poor Paul spoke up and said if Jim would take him he would go along. Jim thought a w'ile and then he said, well, he guessed a half-wit was better than nothin'.
I suppose he was plottin' to get Paul out in the boat and play some joke on him, like pushin' him in the water. Anyways, he said Paul could go. He asked him had he ever shot a duck and Paul said no, he'd never even had a gun in his hands. So Jim said he could set in the boat and watch him and if he behaved himself, he might lend him his gun for a couple of shots. They made a date to meet in the mornin' and that's the last I seen of Jim alive.
Next mornin', I hadn't been open more than ten minutes when Doc Stair come in. He looked kind of nervous. He asked me had I seen Paul Dickson. I said no, but I knew where he was, out duckshootin' with Jim Kendall. So Doc says that's what he had heard, and he couldn't understand it because Paul had told him he wouldn't never have no more to do with Jim as long as he lived.
He said Paul had told him about the joke Jim had played on Julie. He said Paul had asked him what he thought of the joke and the Doc told him that anybody that would do a thing like that ought not to be let live. I said it had been a kind of a raw thing, but Jim just couldn't resist no kind of a joke, no matter how raw. I said I thought he was all right at heart, but just bubblin' over with mischief. Doc turned and walked out.
At noon he got a phone call from old John Scott. The lake where Jim and Paul had went shootin' is on John's place. Paul had came runnin' up to the house a few minutes before and said they'd been an accident. Jim had shot a few ducks and then give the gun to Paul and told him to try his luck. Paul hadn't never handled a gun and he was nervous. He was shakin' so hard that he couldn't control the gun. He let fire and Jim sunk back in the boat, dead.
Doc Stair, bein' the coroner, jumped in Frank Abbott's flivver and rushed out to Scott's farm. Paul and old John was down on the shore of the lake. Paul had rowed the boat to shore, but they'd left the body in it, waiting for Doc to come.
Doc examined the body and said they might as well fetch it back to town. They was no use leavin' it there or callin' a jury, as it was a plain case of accidental shootin'.
Personally I wouldn't never leave a person shoot a gun in the same boat I was in unless I was sure they knew somethin' about guns. Jim was a sucker to leave a new beginner have his gun, let alone a half-wit. It probably served Jim right, what he got. But still we miss him round here. He certainly was a card! Comb it wet or dry?
uproar (noun): an upset state
jam-packed (adjective): very full
spittoon (noun): a pot for spitting into
on good terms (adjective): friendly with
alimony (noun): money owed to a divorced spouse
Adam’s apple (noun): the lump at the front of the throat
hoggish (adjective): very selfish
break the ice (verb): to make people feel comfortable in a new setting
outfox (verb): to deceive through cleverness
outwit (verb): to deceive through cleverness
sore (adjective): to feel bad or upset
dun (verb): to repeatedly demand payment
coroner (noun): a person who investigates the cause of death
monkey wrench (noun): a handheld tool with an adjustable jaw
tag along (verb): to join people without a formal invitation
ail (verb): to feel unwell
slick (adjective): cool; fashionable
lady-killer (noun): a man who women adore
make no bones about something (verb): to say something clearly and directly despite it being unpleasant
laugh something off (verb): to not take something too seriously
a card (noun): a person with a unique personality
tulle (noun): a fine material used for veils
jitney (noun): a small bus
bunked (adjective): drunk
gloat (verb): to take delight in
a cinch (noun): a sure, easy thing
flivver (noun): a car in poor condition
jam-packed (adjective): very full
spittoon (noun): a pot for spitting into
on good terms (adjective): friendly with
alimony (noun): money owed to a divorced spouse
Adam’s apple (noun): the lump at the front of the throat
hoggish (adjective): very selfish
break the ice (verb): to make people feel comfortable in a new setting
outfox (verb): to deceive through cleverness
outwit (verb): to deceive through cleverness
sore (adjective): to feel bad or upset
dun (verb): to repeatedly demand payment
coroner (noun): a person who investigates the cause of death
monkey wrench (noun): a handheld tool with an adjustable jaw
tag along (verb): to join people without a formal invitation
ail (verb): to feel unwell
slick (adjective): cool; fashionable
lady-killer (noun): a man who women adore
make no bones about something (verb): to say something clearly and directly despite it being unpleasant
laugh something off (verb): to not take something too seriously
a card (noun): a person with a unique personality
tulle (noun): a fine material used for veils
jitney (noun): a small bus
bunked (adjective): drunk
gloat (verb): to take delight in
a cinch (noun): a sure, easy thing
flivver (noun): a car in poor condition
Environment Verbs
Do you consider yourself an earth activist? Talking about environmental issues is difficult to do in a foreign language. Learning the following verbs will help you express your thoughts and concerns in English.
| Word | Meaning | Example sentence |
|---|---|---|
| ban | disallow an action or thing in a specified area | The school banned water bottles because they are bad for the environment. |
| carpool | when people take turns driving instead of taking two or more cars to the same location | I carpool to work with two of my neighbours who also work downtown. |
| clear-cut or chop down | to remove trees from a forest | It is important to plant new trees in nearby areas after clear-cutting. |
| compost | put certain types of waste (vegetable peels, newspapers, dry leaves) into a large container that will break down into reusable soil | Since we started composting we've reduced our garbage by half. |
| commute | travel from home to work (either by public transit or driving) | Imagine how much pollution you cause in a lifetime by commuting two hours a day? |
| consume | take into our bodies or homes | Americans consume more than their share of the earth's resources. |
| donate | give money or items to an organization or individual in need | When you donate money to this fund, the animals' habit is protected. |
| emit | to give off or out | Cars emit harmful pollutants into the atmosphere. |
| fertilize | treat plants and green spaces (lawns and fields) with special chemicals that helps them to grow | If you are going to fertilize your lawn, make sure to use an organic fertilizer. |
| minimize | make as little as possible | We can minimize pollution by walking instead of driving to work and school. |
| pollute | put dangerous substances into the ground and the air | Fumes from factories pollute our lakes and oceans. |
| preserve | keep in its natural state | We need stronger laws in order to preserve our forests. |
| protect | keep from harm | It is important to protect your skin from the harmful UV rays of the sun. |
| protest | voice concern about; fight against an issue or decision | The environmentalists will protest if the road builders don't make a bicycle lane. |
| recycle | to take materials from garbage and form it into something new that can be used | Please recycle your junk mail instead of throwing it in the garbage. |
| reduce | use less | You can reduce your household waste by buying products with less packaging. |
| reuse | use again | We reuse the inner bags from the cereal boxes inside our small garbage can. |
| throw away | put in the garbage | Don't throw away your grass clippings; leave them on your lawn. |
| use up | use until there is no more | We are using up the earth's natural resources faster than ever. |
| waste | throw away something that is still useful | Don't waste toilet paper; use one or two sheets instead of three or four. |
IF
IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
IF you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
IF you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
IF you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!
vocabularies
keep your head (verb): to stay calm; to remain cool
make allowance for (verb): to take into account
impostor (noun): person who pretends to be someone else; charlatan; fraud; phony
knave (noun): con man; cheat; trickster
stoop (verb): to bend down; to bow; to incline; to crouch
build 'em up (informal contraction): build them up
worn-out (adjective): used; completely exhausted; useless
pitch-and-toss (noun): game in which players throw coins
sinew (noun): tough, fibrous tissue joining muscle to bone
hold on (verb): to continue; to persist
foe (noun): enemy
count with you (verb): to matter to you; to be important to you
The Winepress
A short story by Josef Essberger
"You don't have to be French to enjoy a decent red wine," Charles Jousselin de Gruse used to tell his foreign guests whenever he entertained them in Paris. "But you do have to be French to recognize one," he would add with a laugh.
After a lifetime in the French diplomatic corps, the Count de Gruse lived with his wife in an elegant townhouse on Quai Voltaire.
He was a likeable man, cultivated of course, with a well-deserved reputation as a generous host and an amusing raconteur.
This evening's guests were all European and all equally convinced that immigration was at the root of Europe's problems. Charles de Gruse said nothing.
He had always concealed his contempt for such ideas. And, in any case, he had never much cared for these particular guests.
The first of the red Bordeaux was being served with the veal, and one of the guests turned to de Gruse.
"Come on, Charles, it's simple arithmetic. Nothing to do with race or colour. You must've had bags of experience of this sort of thing. What d'you say?"
"Yes, General. Bags!"
Without another word, de Gruse picked up his glass and introduced his bulbous, winey nose.
After a moment he looked up with watery eyes.
"A truly full-bodied Bordeaux," he said warmly, "a wine among wines."
The four guests held their glasses to the light and studied their blood-red contents. They all agreed that it was the best wine they had ever tasted.
One by one the little white lights along the Seine were coming on, and from the first-floor windows you could see the brightly lit bateaux-mouches passing through the arches of the Pont du Carrousel. The party moved on to a dish of game served with a more vigorous claret.
"Can you imagine," asked de Gruse, as the claret was poured, "that there are people who actually serve wines they know nothing about?"
"Really?" said one of the guests, a German politician.
"Personally, before I uncork a bottle I like to know what's in it."
"But how? How can anyone be sure?"
"I like to hunt around the vineyards. Take this place I used to visit in Bordeaux. I got to know the winegrower there personally. That's the way to know what you're drinking."
"A matter of pedigree, Charles," said the other politician.
"This fellow," continued de Gruse as though the Dutchman had not spoken, "always gave you the story behind his wines.
One of them was the most extraordinary story I ever heard. We were tasting, in his winery, and we came to a cask that made him frown. He asked if I agreed with him that red Bordeaux was the best wine in the world. Of course, I agreed. Then he made the strangest statement.
"'The wine in this cask,' he said, and there were tears in his eyes, 'is the best vintage in the world. But it started its life far from the country where it was grown.'"
De Gruse paused to check that his guests were being served.
"Well?" said the Dutchman.
De Gruse and his wife exchanged glances.
"Do tell them, mon chéri," she said.
De Gruse leaned forwards, took another sip of wine, and dabbed his lips with the corner of his napkin. This is the story he told them.
At the age of twenty-one, Pierre - that was the name he gave the winegrower - had been sent by his father to spend some time with his uncle in Madagascar.
Within two weeks he had fallen for a local girl called Faniry, or "Desire" in Malagasy. You could not blame him. At seventeen she was ravishing. In the Malagasy sunlight her skin was golden.
Her black, waist-length hair, which hung straight beside her cheeks, framed large, fathomless eyes. It was a genuine coup de foudre, for both of them. Within five months they were married. Faniry had no family, but Pierre's parents came out from France for the wedding, even though they did not strictly approve of it, and for three years the young couple lived very happily on the island of Madagascar. Then, one day, a telegram came from France.
Pierre's parents and his only brother had been killed in a car crash. Pierre took the next flight home to attend the funeral and manage the vineyard left by his father.
Faniry followed two weeks later. Pierre was grief-stricken, but with Faniry he settled down to running the vineyard. His family, and the lazy, idyllic days under a tropical sun, were gone forever. But he was very happily married, and he was very well-off. Perhaps, he reasoned, life in Bordeaux would not be so bad.
But he was wrong. It soon became obvious that Faniry was jealous. In Madagascar she had no match. In France she was jealous of everyone. Of the maids. Of the secretary. Even of the peasant girls who picked the grapes and giggled at her funny accent. She convinced herself that Pierre made love to each of them in turn.
She started with insinuations, simple, artless ones that Pierre hardly even recognized. Then she tried blunt accusation in the privacy of their bedroom. When he denied that, she resorted to violent, humiliating denouncements in the kitchens, the winery, the plantations. The angel that Pierre had married in Madagascar had become a termagant, blinded by jealousy.
Nothing he did or said could help. Often, she would refuse to speak for a week or more, and when at last she spoke it would only be to scream yet more abuse or swear again her intention to leave him. By the third vine-harvest it was obvious to everyone that they loathed each other.
One Friday evening, Pierre was down in the winery, working on a new electric winepress. He was alone. The grape-pickers had left. Suddenly the door opened and Faniry entered, excessively made up.
She walked straight up to Pierre, flung her arms around his neck, and pressed herself against him. Even above the fumes from the pressed grapes he could smell that she had been drinking.
"Darling," she sighed, "what shall we do?"
He badly wanted her, but all the past insults and humiliating scenes welled up inside him. He pushed her away.
"But, darling, I'm going to have a baby."
"Don't be absurd. Go to bed! You're drunk. And take that paint off. It makes you look like a tart."
Faniry's face blackened, and she threw herself at him with new accusations. He had never cared for her. He cared only about sex. He was obsessed with it. And with white women. But the women in France, the white women, they were the tarts, and he was welcome to them.
She snatched a knife from the wall and lunged at him with it. She was in tears, but it took all his strength to keep the knife from his throat.
Eventually he pushed her off, and she stumbled towards the winepress. Pierre stood, breathing heavily, as the screw of the press caught at her hair and dragged her in. She screamed, struggling to free herself. The screw bit slowly into her shoulder and she screamed again. Then she fainted, though whether from the pain or the fumes he was not sure. He looked away until a sickening sound told him it was over. Then he raised his arm and switched the current off.
The guests shuddered visibly and de Gruse paused in his story.
"Well, I won't go into the details at table," he said. "Pierre fed the rest of the body into the press and tidied up. Then he went up to the house, had a bath, ate a meal, and went to bed. The next day, he told everyone Faniry had finally left him and gone back to Madagascar. No-one was surprised."
He paused again. His guests sat motionless, their eyes turned towards him.
"Of course," he continued, "Sixty-five was a bad year for red Bordeaux. Except for Pierre's. That was the extraordinary thing. It won award after award, and nobody could understand why."
The general's wife cleared her throat.
"But, surely," she said, "you didn't taste it?"
"No, I didn't taste it, though Pierre did assure me his wife had lent the wine an incomparable aroma."
"And you didn't, er, buy any?" asked the general.
"How could I refuse? It isn't every day that one finds such a pedigree."
There was a long silence. The Dutchman shifted awkwardly in his seat, his glass poised midway between the table and his open lips.
The other guests looked around uneasily at each other. They did not understand.
"But look here, Gruse," said the general at last, "you don't mean to tell me we're drinking this damned woman now, d'you?"
De Gruse gazed impassively at the Englishman.
"Heaven forbid, General," he said slowly. "Everyone knows that the best vintage should always come first."
The Black Cat
A short story by Edgar Allan Poe
For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not - and very surely do I not dream.
But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburthen my soul. My immediate purpose is to place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household events.
In their consequences, these events have terrified - have tortured - have destroyed me. Yet I will not attempt to expound them. To me, they have presented little but Horror - to many they will seem less terrible than barroques. Hereafter, perhaps, some intellect may be found which will reduce my phantasm to the common-place - some intellect more calm, more logical, and far less excitable than my own, which will perceive, in the circumstances I detail with awe, nothing more than an ordinary succession of very natural causes and effects.
From my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition. My tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to make me the jest of my companions. I was especially fond of animals, and was indulged by my parents with a great variety of pets. With these I spent most of my time, and never was so happy as when feeding and caressing them. This peculiarity of character grew with my growth, and in my manhood, I derived from it one of my principal sources of pleasure.
To those who have cherished an affection for a faithful and sagacious dog, I need hardly be at the trouble of explaining the nature or the intensity of the gratification thus derivable. There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.
I married early, and was happy to find in my wife a disposition not uncongenial with my own. Observing my partiality for domestic pets, she lost no opportunity of procuring those of the most agreeable kind. We had birds, gold-fish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat.
This latter was a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree.
In speaking of his intelligence, my wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured with superstition, made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion, which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise. Not that she was ever serious upon this point - and I mention the matter at all for no better reason than that it happens, just now, to be remembered.
Pluto - this was the cat's name - was my favorite pet and playmate. I alone fed him, and he attended me wherever I went about the house. It was even with difficulty that I could prevent him from following me through the streets.
Our friendship lasted, in this manner, for several years, during which my general temperament and character - through the instrumentality of the Fiend Intemperance - had (I blush to confess it) experienced a radical alteration for the worse. I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others. I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife.
At length, I even offered her personal violence. My pets, of course, were made to feel the change in my disposition. I not only neglected, but ill-used them. For Pluto, however, I still retained sufficient regard to restrain me from maltreating him, as I made no scruple of maltreating the rabbits, the monkey, or even the dog, when by accident, or through affection, they came in my way. But my disease grew upon me - for what disease is like Alcohol! - and at length even Pluto, who was now becoming old, and consequently somewhat peevish - even Pluto began to experience the effects of my ill temper.
One night, returning home, much intoxicated, from one of my haunts about town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence. I seized him; when, in his fright at my violence, he inflicted a slight wound upon my hand with his teeth. The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame.
I took from my waistcoat-pocket a pen-knife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket! I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity.
When reason returned with the morning - when I had slept off the fumes of the night's debauch - I experienced a sentiment half of horror, half of remorse, for the crime of which I had been guilty; but it was, at best, a feeble and equivocal feeling, and the soul remained untouched.
I again plunged into excess, and soon drowned in wine all memory of the deed.
In the meantime the cat slowly recovered. The socket of the lost eye presented, it is true, a frightful appearance, but he no longer appeared to suffer any pain. He went about the house as usual, but, as might be expected, fled in extreme terror at my approach. I had so much of my old heart left, as to be at first grieved by this evident dislike on the part of a creature which had once so loved me. But this feeling soon gave place to irritation. And then came, as if to my final and irrevocable overthrow, the spirit of PERVERSENESS. Of this spirit philosophy takes no account.
Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart - one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man.
Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such? This spirit of perverseness, I say, came to my final overthrow. It was this unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself - to offer violence to its own nature - to do wrong for the wrong's sake only - that urged me to continue and finally to consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the unoffending brute.
One morning, in cool blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree; - hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart; - hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no reason of offence; - hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin - a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it - if such a thing wore possible - even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God.
On the night of the day on which this cruel deed was done, I was aroused from sleep by the cry of fire. The curtains of my bed were in flames. The whole house was blazing. It was with great difficulty that my wife, a servant, and myself, made our escape from the conflagration. The destruction was complete. My entire worldly wealth was swallowed up, and I resigned myself thenceforward to despair.
I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity. But I am detailing a chain of facts - and wish not to leave even a possible link imperfect. On the day succeeding the fire, I visited the ruins. The walls, with one exception, had fallen in. This exception was found in a compartment wall, not very thick, which stood about the middle of the house, and against which had rested the head of my bed. The plastering had here, in great measure, resisted the action of the fire - a fact which I attributed to its having been recently spread.
About this wall a dense crowd were collected, and many persons seemed to be examining a particular portion of it with very minute and eager attention. The words "strange!" "singular!" and other similar expressions, excited my curiosity. I approached and saw, as if graven in bas relief upon the white surface, the figure of a gigantic cat. The impression was given with an accuracy truly marvellous. There was a rope about the animal's neck.
When I first beheld this apparition - for I could scarcely regard it as less - my wonder and my terror were extreme. But at length reflection came to my aid. The cat, I remembered, had been hung in a garden adjacent to the house. Upon the alarm of fire, this garden had been immediately filled by the crowd - by some one of whom the animal must have been cut from the tree and thrown, through an open window, into my chamber. This had probably been done with the view of arousing me from sleep. The falling of other walls had compressed the victim of my cruelty into the substance of the freshly-spread plaster; the lime of which, with the flames, and the ammonia from the carcass, had then accomplished the portraiture as I saw it.
Although I thus readily accounted to my reason, if not altogether to my conscience, for the startling fact just detailed, it did not the less fail to make a deep impression upon my fancy. For months I could not rid myself of the phantasm of the cat; and, during this period, there came back into my spirit a half-sentiment that seemed, but was not, remorse. I went so far as to regret the loss of the animal, and to look about me, among the vile haunts which I now habitually frequented, for another pet of the same species, and of somewhat similar appearance, with which to supply its place.
One night as I sat, half stupified, in a den of more than infamy, my attention was suddenly drawn to some black object, reposing upon the head of one of the immense hogsheads of Gin, or of Rum, which constituted the chief furniture of the apartment. I had been looking steadily at the top of this hogshead for some minutes, and what now caused me surprise was the fact that I had not sooner perceived the object thereupon.
I approached it, and touched it with my hand. It was a black cat - a very large one - fully as large as Pluto, and closely resembling him in every respect but one. Pluto had not a white hair upon any portion of his body; but this cat had a large, although indefinite splotch of white, covering nearly the whole region of the breast. Upon my touching him, he immediately arose, purred loudly, rubbed against my hand, and appeared delighted with my notice. This, then, was the very creature of which I was in search. I at once offered to purchase it of the landlord; but this person made no claim to it - knew nothing of it - had never seen it before.
I continued my caresses, and, when I prepared to go home, the animal evinced a disposition to accompany me. I permitted it to do so; occasionally stooping and patting it as I proceeded. When it reached the house it domesticated itself at once, and became immediately a great favorite with my wife.
For my own part, I soon found a dislike to it arising within me. This was just the reverse of what I had anticipated; but - I know not how or why it was - its evident fondness for myself rather disgusted and annoyed. By slow degrees, these feelings of disgust and annoyance rose into the bitterness of hatred. I avoided the creature; a certain sense of shame, and the remembrance of my former deed of cruelty, preventing me from physically abusing it. I did not, for some weeks, strike, or otherwise violently ill use it; but gradually - very gradually - I came to look upon it with unutterable loathing, and to flee silently from its odious presence, as from the breath of a pestilence.
What added, no doubt, to my hatred of the beast, was the discovery, on the morning after I brought it home, that, like Pluto, it also had been deprived of one of its eyes. This circumstance, however, only endeared it to my wife, who, as I have already said, possessed, in a high degree, that humanity of feeling which had once been my distinguishing trait, and the source of many of my simplest and purest pleasures.
With my aversion to this cat, however, its partiality for myself seemed to increase. It followed my footsteps with a pertinacity which it would be difficult to make the reader comprehend. Whenever I sat, it would crouch beneath my chair, or spring upon my knees, covering me with its loathsome caresses. If I arose to walk it would get between my feet and thus nearly throw me down, or, fastening its long and sharp claws in my dress, clamber, in this manner, to my breast. At such times, although I longed to destroy it with a blow, I was yet withheld from so doing, partly by a memory of my former crime, but chiefly - let me confess it at once - by absolute dread of the beast.
This dread was not exactly a dread of physical evil - and yet I should be at a loss how otherwise to define it. I am almost ashamed to own - yes, even in this felon's cell, I am almost ashamed to own - that the terror and horror with which the animal inspired me, had been heightened by one of the merest chimaeras it would be possible to conceive.
My wife had called my attention, more than once, to the character of the mark of white hair, of which I have spoken, and which constituted the sole visible difference between the strange beast and the one I had destroyed.
The reader will remember that this mark, although large, had been originally very indefinite; but, by slow degrees - degrees nearly imperceptible, and which for a long time my Reason struggled to reject as fanciful - it had, at length, assumed a rigorous distinctness of outline. It was now the representation of an object that I shudder to name - and for this, above all, I loathed, and dreaded, and would have rid myself of the monster had I dared - it was now, I say, the image of a hideous - of a ghastly thing - of the GALLOWS! - oh, mournful and terrible engine of Horror and of Crime - of Agony and of Death!
And now was I indeed wretched beyond the wretchedness of mere Humanity. And a brute beast - whose fellow I had contemptuously destroyed - a brute beast to work out for me - for me a man, fashioned in the image of the High God - so much of insufferable wo! Alas! neither by day nor by night knew I the blessing of Rest any more! During the former the creature left me no moment alone; and, in the latter, I started, hourly, from dreams of unutterable fear, to find the hot breath of the thing upon my face, and its vast weight - an incarnate Night-Mare that I had no power to shake off - incumbent eternally upon my heart!
Beneath the pressure of torments such as these, the feeble remnant of the good within me succumbed. Evil thoughts became my sole intimates - the darkest and most evil of thoughts.
The moodiness of my usual temper increased to hatred of all things and of all mankind; while, from the sudden, frequent, and ungovernable outbursts of a fury to which I now blindly abandoned myself, my uncomplaining wife, alas! was the most usual and the most patient of sufferers.
One day she accompanied me, upon some household errand, into the cellar of the old building which our poverty compelled us to inhabit. The cat followed me down the steep stairs, and, nearly throwing me headlong, exasperated me to madness. Uplifting an axe, and forgetting, in my wrath, the childish dread which had hitherto stayed my hand, I aimed a blow at the animal which, of course, would have proved instantly fatal had it descended as I wished. But this blow was arrested by the hand of my wife. Goaded, by the interference, into a rage more than demoniacal, I withdrew my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain. She fell dead upon the spot, without a groan.
This hideous murder accomplished, I set myself forthwith, and with entire deliberation, to the task of concealing the body. I knew that I could not remove it from the house, either by day or by night, without the risk of being observed by the neighbors. Many projects entered my mind. At one period I thought of cutting the corpse into minute fragments, and destroying them by fire. At another, I resolved to dig a grave for it in the floor of the cellar. Again, I deliberated about casting it in the well in the yard - about packing it in a box, as if merchandize, with the usual arrangements, and so getting a porter to take it from the house. Finally I hit upon what I considered a far better expedient than either of these. I determined to wall it up in the cellar - as the monks of the middle ages are recorded to have walled up their victims.
For a purpose such as this the cellar was well adapted. Its walls were loosely constructed, and had lately been plastered throughout with a rough plaster, which the dampness of the atmosphere had prevented from hardening. Moreover, in one of the walls was a projection, caused by a false chimney, or fireplace, that had been filled up, and made to resemble the red of the cellar. I made no doubt that I could readily displace the bricks at this point, insert the corpse, and wall the whole up as before, so that no eye could detect any thing suspicious. And in this calculation I was not deceived.
By means of a crow-bar I easily dislodged the bricks, and, having carefully deposited the body against the inner wall, I propped it in that position, while, with little trouble, I re-laid the whole structure as it originally stood. Having procured mortar, sand, and hair, with every possible precaution, I prepared a plaster which could not be distinguished from the old, and with this I very carefully went over the new brickwork. When I had finished, I felt satisfied that all was right. The wall did not present the slightest appearance of having been disturbed. The rubbish on the floor was picked up with the minutest care. I looked around triumphantly, and said to myself - "Here at least, then, my labor has not been in vain."
My next step was to look for the beast which had been the cause of so much wretchedness; for I had, at length, firmly resolved to put it to death. Had I been able to meet with it, at the moment, there could have been no doubt of its fate; but it appeared that the crafty animal had been alarmed at the violence of my previous anger, and forebore to present itself in my present mood. It is impossible to describe, or to imagine, the deep, the blissful sense of relief which the absence of the detested creature occasioned in my bosom. It did not make its appearance during the night - and thus for one night at least, since its introduction into the house, I soundly and tranquilly slept; aye, slept even with the burden of murder upon my soul!
The second and the third day passed, and still my tormentor came not. Once again I breathed as a freeman. The monster, in terror, had fled the premises forever! I should behold it no more! My happiness was supreme! The guilt of my dark deed disturbed me but little. Some few inquiries had been made, but these had been readily answered. Even a search had been instituted - but of course nothing was to be discovered. I looked upon my future felicity as secured.
Upon the fourth day of the assassination, a party of the police came, very unexpectedly, into the house, and proceeded again to make rigorous investigation of the premises. Secure, however, in the inscrutability of my place of concealment, I felt no embarrassment whatever. The officers bade me accompany them in their search. They left no nook or corner unexplored. At length, for the third or fourth time, they descended into the cellar. I quivered not in a muscle. My heart beat calmly as that of one who slumbers in innocence. I walked the cellar from end to end. I folded my arms upon my bosom, and roamed easily to and fro. The police were thoroughly satisfied and prepared to depart. The glee at my heart was too strong to be restrained. I burned to say if but one word, by way of triumph, and to render doubly sure their assurance of my guiltlessness.
"Gentlemen," I said at last, as the party ascended the steps, "I delight to have allayed your suspicions. I wish you all health, and a little more courtesy. By the bye, gentlemen, this - this is a very well constructed house." [In the rabid desire to say something easily, I scarcely knew what I uttered at all.] - "I may say an excellently well constructed house. These walls are you going, gentlemen? - these walls are solidly put together;" and here, through the mere phrenzy of bravado, I rapped heavily, with a cane which I held in my hand, upon that very portion of the brick-work behind which stood the corpse of the wife of my bosom.
But may God shield and deliver me from the fangs of the Arch-Fiend! No sooner had the reverberation of my blows sunk into silence, than I was answered by a voice from within the tomb! - by a cry, at first muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child, and then quickly swelling into one long, loud, and continuous scream, utterly anomalous and inhuman - a howl - a wailing shriek, half of horror and half of triumph, such as might have arisen only out of hell, conjointly from the throats of the dammed in their agony and of the demons that exult in the damnation.
Of my own thoughts it is folly to speak. Swooning, I staggered to the opposite wall. For one instant the party upon the stairs remained motionless, through extremity of terror and of awe. In the next, a dozen stout arms were toiling at the wall. It fell bodily. The corpse, already greatly decayed and clotted with gore, stood erect before the eyes of the spectators. Upon its head, with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman. I had walled the monster up within the tomb!
homely (adjective): plain
solicit (verb): to try to get; to request
unburthen (verb): to offer freedom or relief from something
succinctly (adverb): without too much detail
expound (verb): to explain
barroques (noun - French): fanciful adventure novels
desolate (adjective): deserted; very alone
phantasm (noun): illusion
docility (noun): strong ability to learn or take direction
conspicuous (adjective): very noticeable
indulged (adjective): treated with something that brings pleasure
sagacious (adjective): having good judgement
derivable (adjective): able to receive from a source
paltry (adjective): very small; almost non-existent
gossamer (adjective): delicate
fidelity (noun): faithfulness
Fiend Intemperance (noun): alcoholism
intemperance (noun): inability to refrain from drinking
blush (verb): to turn red in the face due to embarrassment
scruple (noun): doubt
peevish (adjective): irritable; cranky
malevolence (noun): hatred
atrocity (noun): a terrible occurrence
debauch (noun): the act of becoming drunk
equivocal (adjective): uncertain
irrevocable (adjective): unable to be changed
perverseness (noun): stubbornness
unfathomable (adjective): unthinkable
vex (verb): to annoy
conflagration (noun): a major fire
graven (adjective): carved
bas relief (noun): a type of sculpture
apparition (noun): ghost
adjacent (adjective): next to something
carcass (noun): dead body of an animal
stupefied (adjective): shocked
evince (verb): to reveal
domesticate (verb): to become part of the home
odious (adjective): very unpleasant
pestilence (noun): an infectious disease that causes death
aversion (noun): dislike
partiality (adjective): fondness for someone or something specific
loathsome (adjective): causing disgust
gallows (noun): execution by hanging
contemptuously (adverb): with a feeling of hatred
incumbent (adjective): resting on
succumb (verb): to surrender to
goad (verb): provoke or annoy someone into some action
tranquilly (adverb): peacefully
felicity (noun): happiness
inscrutability (noun): mysteriousness
allay (verb): to diminish
anomalous (adjective): abnormal; non-standard; not expected
solicit (verb): to try to get; to request
unburthen (verb): to offer freedom or relief from something
succinctly (adverb): without too much detail
expound (verb): to explain
barroques (noun - French): fanciful adventure novels
desolate (adjective): deserted; very alone
phantasm (noun): illusion
docility (noun): strong ability to learn or take direction
conspicuous (adjective): very noticeable
indulged (adjective): treated with something that brings pleasure
sagacious (adjective): having good judgement
derivable (adjective): able to receive from a source
paltry (adjective): very small; almost non-existent
gossamer (adjective): delicate
fidelity (noun): faithfulness
Fiend Intemperance (noun): alcoholism
intemperance (noun): inability to refrain from drinking
blush (verb): to turn red in the face due to embarrassment
scruple (noun): doubt
peevish (adjective): irritable; cranky
malevolence (noun): hatred
atrocity (noun): a terrible occurrence
debauch (noun): the act of becoming drunk
equivocal (adjective): uncertain
irrevocable (adjective): unable to be changed
perverseness (noun): stubbornness
unfathomable (adjective): unthinkable
vex (verb): to annoy
conflagration (noun): a major fire
graven (adjective): carved
bas relief (noun): a type of sculpture
apparition (noun): ghost
adjacent (adjective): next to something
carcass (noun): dead body of an animal
stupefied (adjective): shocked
evince (verb): to reveal
domesticate (verb): to become part of the home
odious (adjective): very unpleasant
pestilence (noun): an infectious disease that causes death
aversion (noun): dislike
partiality (adjective): fondness for someone or something specific
loathsome (adjective): causing disgust
gallows (noun): execution by hanging
contemptuously (adverb): with a feeling of hatred
incumbent (adjective): resting on
succumb (verb): to surrender to
goad (verb): provoke or annoy someone into some action
tranquilly (adverb): peacefully
felicity (noun): happiness
inscrutability (noun): mysteriousness
allay (verb): to diminish
anomalous (adjective): abnormal; non-standard; not expected
Araby
A short story by James Joyce
North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers' School set the boys free. An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbours in a square ground. The other houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces.
The former tenant of our house, a priest, had died in the back drawing-room. Air, musty from having been long enclosed, hung in all the rooms, and the waste room behind the kitchen was littered with old useless papers. Among these I found a few paper-covered books, the pages of which were curled and damp:
The Abbot, by Walter Scott, The Devout Communicant, and The Memoirs of Vidocq. I liked the last best because its leaves were yellow. The wild garden behind the house contained a central apple-tree and a few straggling bushes, under one of which I found the late tenant's rusty bicycle-pump. He had been a very charitable priest; in his will he had left all his money to institutions and the furniture of his house to his sister.
When the short days of winter came, dusk fell before we had well eaten our dinners. When we met in the street the houses had grown sombre. The space of sky above us was the colour of ever-changing violet and towards it the lamps of the street lifted their feeble lanterns. The cold air stung us and we played till our bodies glowed.
Our shouts echoed in the silent street. The career of our play brought us through the dark muddy lanes behind the houses, where we ran the gauntlet of the rough tribes from the cottages, to the back doors of the dark dripping gardens where odours arose from the ashpits, to the dark odorous stables where a coachman smoothed and combed the horse or shook music from the buckled harness.
When we returned to the street, light from the kitchen windows had filled the areas. If my uncle was seen turning the corner, we hid in the shadow until we had seen him safely housed. Or if Mangan's sister came out on the doorstep to call her brother in to his tea, we watched her from our shadow peer up and down the street.
We waited to see whether she would remain or go in and, if she remained, we left our shadow and walked up to Mangan's steps resignedly. She was waiting for us, her figure defined by the light from the half-opened door. Her brother always teased her before he obeyed, and I stood by the railings looking at her. Her dress swung as she moved her body, and the soft rope of her hair tossed from side to side.
Every morning I lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her door. The blind was pulled down to within an inch of the sash so that I could not be seen. When she came out on the doorstep my heart leaped. I ran to the hall, seized my books and followed her. I kept her brown figure always in my eye and, when we came near the point at which our ways diverged, I quickened my pace and passed her. This happened morning after morning. I had never spoken to her, except for a few casual words, and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.
Her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance. On Saturday evenings when my aunt went marketing I had to go to carry some of the parcels. We walked through the flaring streets, jostled by drunken men and bargaining women, amid the curses of labourers, the shrill litanies of shop-boys who stood on guard by the barrels of pigs' cheeks, the nasal chanting of street-singers, who sang a come-all-you about O'Donovan Rossa, or a ballad about the troubles in our native land. These noises converged in a single sensation of life for me:
I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes. Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand. My eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom. I thought little of the future. I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration. But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.
One evening I went into the back drawing-room in which the priest had died. It was a dark rainy evening and there was no sound in the house. Through one of the broken panes I heard the rain impinge upon the earth, the fine incessant needles of water playing in the sodden beds. Some distant lamp or lighted window gleamed below me. I was thankful that I could see so little. All my senses seemed to desire to veil themselves and, feeling that I was about to slip from them, I pressed the palms of my hands together until they trembled, murmuring: "O love! O love!" many times.
At last she spoke to me. When she addressed the first words to me I was so confused that I did not know what to answer. She asked me was I going to Araby. I forgot whether I answered yes or no. It would be a splendid bazaar; she said she would love to go.
"And why can't you?" I asked.
While she spoke she turned a silver bracelet round and round her wrist. She could not go, she said, because there would be a retreat that week in her convent. Her brother and two other boys were fighting for their caps, and I was alone at the railings. She held one of the spikes, bowing her head towards me. The light from the lamp opposite our door caught the white curve of her neck, lit up her hair that rested there and, falling, lit up the hand upon the railing. It fell over one side of her dress and caught the white border of a petticoat, just visible as she stood at ease.
"It's well for you," she said.
"If I go," I said, "I will bring you something."
What innumerable follies laid waste my waking and sleeping thoughts after that evening! I wished to annihilate the tedious intervening days. I chafed against the work of school. At night in my bedroom and by day in the classroom her image came between me and the page I strove to read.
The syllables of the word Araby were called to me through the silence in which my soul luxuriated and cast an Eastern enchantment over me. I asked for leave to go to the bazaar on Saturday night. My aunt was surprised, and hoped it was not some Freemason affair. I answered few questions in class. I watched my master's face pass from amiability to sternness; he hoped I was not beginning to idle. I could not call my wandering thoughts together. I had hardly any patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stood between me and my desire, seemed to me child's play, ugly monotonous child's play.
On Saturday morning I reminded my uncle that I wished to go to the bazaar in the evening. He was fussing at the hallstand, looking for the hat-brush, and answered me curtly:
"Yes, boy, I know."
As he was in the hall I could not go into the front parlour and lie at the window. I felt the house in bad humour and walked slowly towards the school. The air was pitilessly raw and already my heart misgave me.
When I came home to dinner my uncle had not yet been home. Still it was early. I sat staring at the clock for some time and, when its ticking began to irritate me, I left the room. I mounted the staircase and gained the upper part of the house. The high, cold, empty, gloomy rooms liberated me and I went from room to room singing. From the front window I saw my companions playing below in the street. Their cries reached me weakened and indistinct and, leaning my forehead against the cool glass, I looked over at the dark house where she lived. I may have stood there for an hour, seeing nothing but the brown-clad figure cast by my imagination, touched discreetly by the lamplight at the curved neck, at the hand upon the railings and at the border below the dress.
When I came downstairs again I found Mrs Mercer sitting at the fire. She was an old, garrulous woman, a pawnbroker's widow, who collected used stamps for some pious purpose. I had to endure the gossip of the tea-table. The meal was prolonged beyond an hour and still my uncle did not come. Mrs Mercer stood up to go: she was sorry she couldn't wait any longer, but it was after eight o'clock and she did not like to be out late, as the night air was bad for her. When she had gone I began to walk up and down the room, clenching my fists. My aunt said:
"I'm afraid you may put off your bazaar for this night of Our Lord."
At nine o'clock I heard my uncle's latchkey in the hall door. I heard him talking to himself and heard the hallstand rocking when it had received the weight of his overcoat. I could interpret these signs. When he was midway through his dinner I asked him to give me the money to go to the bazaar. He had forgotten.
"The people are in bed and after their first sleep now," he said.
I did not smile. My aunt said to him energetically:
"Can't you give him the money and let him go? You've kept him late enough as it is."
My uncle said he was very sorry he had forgotten. He said he believed in the old saying: "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." He asked me where I was going and, when I told him a second time, he asked me did I know The Arab's Farewell to his Steed. When I left the kitchen he was about to recite the opening lines of the piece to my aunt.
I held a florin tightly in my hand as I strode down Buckingham Street towards the station. The sight of the streets thronged with buyers and glaring with gas recalled to me the purpose of my journey. I took my seat in a third-class carriage of a deserted train. After an intolerable delay the train moved out of the station slowly. It crept onward among ruinous houses and over the twinkling river.
At Westland Row Station a crowd of people pressed to the carriage doors; but the porters moved them back, saying that it was a special train for the bazaar. I remained alone in the bare carriage. In a few minutes the train drew up beside an improvised wooden platform. I passed out on to the road and saw by the lighted dial of a clock that it was ten minutes to ten. In front of me was a large building which displayed the magical name.
I could not find any sixpenny entrance and, fearing that the bazaar would be closed, I passed in quickly through a turnstile, handing a shilling to a weary-looking man. I found myself in a big hall girded at half its height by a gallery. Nearly all the stalls were closed and the greater part of the hall was in darkness. I recognized a silence like that which pervades a church after a service. I walked into the centre of the bazaar timidly. A few people were gathered about the stalls which were still open. Before a curtain, over which the words Café Chantant were written in coloured lamps, two men were counting money on a salver. I listened to the fall of the coins.
Remembering with difficulty why I had come, I went over to one of the stalls and examined porcelain vases and flowered tea-sets. At the door of the stall a young lady was talking and laughing with two young gentlemen. I remarked their English accents and listened vaguely to their conversation.
"O, I never said such a thing!"
"O, but you did!"
"O, but I didn't!"
"Didn't she say that?"
"Yes. I heard her."
"O, there's a... fib!"
Observing me, the young lady came over and asked me did I wish to buy anything. The tone of her voice was not encouraging; she seemed to have spoken to me out of a sense of duty. I looked humbly at the great jars that stood like eastern guards at either side of the dark entrance to the stall and murmured:
"No, thank you."
The young lady changed the position of one of the vases and went back to the two young men. They began to talk of the same subject. Once or twice the young lady glanced at me over her shoulder.
I lingered before her stall, though I knew my stay was useless, to make my interest in her wares seem the more real. Then I turned away slowly and walked down the middle of the bazaar. I allowed the two pennies to fall against the sixpence in my pocket. I heard a voice call from one end of the gallery that the light was out. The upper part of the hall was now completely dark.
Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.
imperturbable (adjective): difficult to upset; relaxed
musty (adjective): damp and dusty
charitable (adjective): helpful to people or groups in need
odorous (adjective): having a strong smell (usually unpleasant)
diverge (verb): to go a different way
converge (verb): to come together
impinge (verb): to invade an area
incessant (adjective): continual
sodden (adjective): soaked with water
petticoat (noun): woman's undergarment; worn under a skirt or dress
annihilate (verb): to destroy completely
amiability (noun): friendliness
monotonous (noun): the same, over and over
pitilessly (adverb): in a cruel way; with no sympathy
discreetly (adverb): without being observed
garrulous (adjective): talkative
pious (adjective): very religious
florin (noun): an old coin
thronged (adjective): crowded
salver (noun): tray
linger (verb): to stay for a little longer
deride (verb): to mock; make fun of
musty (adjective): damp and dusty
charitable (adjective): helpful to people or groups in need
odorous (adjective): having a strong smell (usually unpleasant)
diverge (verb): to go a different way
converge (verb): to come together
impinge (verb): to invade an area
incessant (adjective): continual
sodden (adjective): soaked with water
petticoat (noun): woman's undergarment; worn under a skirt or dress
annihilate (verb): to destroy completely
amiability (noun): friendliness
monotonous (noun): the same, over and over
pitilessly (adverb): in a cruel way; with no sympathy
discreetly (adverb): without being observed
garrulous (adjective): talkative
pious (adjective): very religious
florin (noun): an old coin
thronged (adjective): crowded
salver (noun): tray
linger (verb): to stay for a little longer
deride (verb): to mock; make fun of
A Haunted House
A short story by Virginia Woolf
Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure--a ghostly couple.
"Here we left it," she said. And he added, "Oh, but here tool" "It's upstairs," she murmured. "And in the garden," he whispered. "Quietly," they said, "or we shall wake them."
But it wasn't that you woke us. Oh, no. "They're looking for it; they're drawing the curtain," one might say, and so read on a page or two. "Now they've found it,' one would be certain, stopping the pencil on the margin. And then, tired of reading, one might rise and see for oneself, the house all empty, the doors standing open, only the wood pigeons bubbling with content and the hum of the threshing machine sounding from the farm. "What did I come in here for? What did I want to find?" My hands were empty. "Perhaps its upstairs then?" The apples were in the loft. And so down again, the garden still as ever, only the book had slipped into the grass.
But they had found it in the drawing room. Not that one could ever see them. The windowpanes reflected apples, reflected roses; all the leaves were green in the glass. If they moved in the drawing room, the apple only turned its yellow side. Yet, the moment after, if the door was opened, spread about the floor, hung upon the walls, pendant from the ceiling--what? My hands were empty. The shadow of a thrush crossed the carpet; from the deepest wells of silence the wood pigeon drew its bubble of sound. "Safe, safe, safe" the pulse of the house beat softly. "The treasure buried; the room . . ." the pulse stopped short. Oh, was that the buried treasure?
A moment later the light had faded. Out in the garden then? But the trees spun darkness for a wandering beam of sun. So fine, so rare, coolly sunk beneath the surface the beam I sought always burned behind the glass. Death was the glass; death was between us, coming to the woman first, hundreds of years ago, leaving the house, sealing all the windows; the rooms were darkened. He left it, left her, went North, went East, saw the stars turned in the Southern sky; sought the house, found it dropped beneath the Downs. "Safe, safe, safe," the pulse of the house beat gladly. 'The Treasure yours."
The wind roars up the avenue. Trees stoop and bend this way and that. Moonbeams splash and spill wildly in the rain. But the beam of the lamp falls straight from the window. The candle burns stiff and still. Wandering through the house, opening the windows, whispering not to wake us, the ghostly couple seek their joy.
"Here we slept," she says. And he adds, "Kisses without number." "Waking in the morning--" "Silver between the trees--" "Upstairs--" 'In the garden--" "When summer came--" 'In winter snowtime--" "The doors go shutting far in the distance, gently knocking like the pulse of a heart.
Nearer they come, cease at the doorway. The wind falls, the rain slides silver down the glass. Our eyes darken, we hear no steps beside us; we see no lady spread her ghostly cloak. His hands shield the lantern. "Look," he breathes. "Sound asleep. Love upon their lips."
Stooping, holding their silver lamp above us, long they look and deeply. Long they pause. The wind drives straightly; the flame stoops slightly. Wild beams of moonlight cross both floor and wall, and, meeting, stain the faces bent; the faces pondering; the faces that search the sleepers and seek their hidden joy.
"Safe, safe, safe," the heart of the house beats proudly. "Long years--" he sighs. "Again you found me." "Here," she murmurs, "sleeping; in the garden reading; laughing, rolling apples in the loft. Here we left our treasure--" Stooping, their light lifts the lids upon my eyes. "Safe! safe! safe!" the pulse of the house beats wildly. Waking, I cry "Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart."
draw (verb): to open
margin (noun): the edge of a line of text
threshing machine (noun): a farming machine used for separating grain from husks
pulse (noun): a steady beat that signifies life
cease (verb): to stop
cloak (noun): a large garment that covers the body
ponder (verb): to think about something
murmur (verb): to say softly
stoop (verb): to bend or become lower
margin (noun): the edge of a line of text
threshing machine (noun): a farming machine used for separating grain from husks
pulse (noun): a steady beat that signifies life
cease (verb): to stop
cloak (noun): a large garment that covers the body
ponder (verb): to think about something
murmur (verb): to say softly
stoop (verb): to bend or become lower
The Monkey's Paw
A short story by W. W. Jacobs
Without, the night was cold and wet, but in the small parlor of Lakesnam Villa the blinds were drawn and the fire burned brightly. Father and son were at chess, the former, who possessed ideas about the game involving radical changes, putting his king into such sharp and unnecessary perils that it even provoked comment from the whitehaired old lady knitting placidly by the fire.
"Hark at the wind," said Mr. White, who, having seen a fatal mistake after it was too late, was amiably desirous of preventing his son from seeing it.
"I'm listening," said the latter, grimly surveying the board as he stretched out his hand. "Check."
"I should hardly think that he'd come tonight," said his father, with his hand poised over the board.
"Mate," replied the son.
"That's the worst of living so far out," bawled Mr. White, with sudden and unlooked-for violence; "of all the beastly, slushy, out-of-the-way places to live in, this is the worst. Pathway's a bog, and the road's a torrent. I don't know what people are thinking about. I suppose because only two houses on the road are let, they think it doesn't matter."
"Never mind, dear," said his wife soothingly; "perhaps you'll win the next one."
Mr. White looked up sharply, just in time to intercept a knowing glance between mother and son. The words died away on his lips, and he hid a guilty grin in his thin grey beard.
"There he is," said Herbert White, as the gate banged to loudly and heavy footsteps came toward the door.
The old man rose with hospitable haste, and opening the door, was heard condoling with the new arrival. The new arrival also condoled with himself, so that Mrs. White said, "Tut, tut!" and coughed gently as her husband entered the room, followed by a tall, burly man, beady of eye and rubicund of visage.
"Sergeant Major Morris," he said, introducing him.
The sergeant major shook hands, and taking the proffered seat by the fire, watched contentedly while his host got out whisky and tumblers and stood a small copper kettle on the fire.
At the third glass his eyes got brighter, and he began to talk, the little family circle regarding with eager interest this visitor from distant parts, as he squared his broad shoulders in the chair and spoke of strange scenes and doughty deeds, of wars and plagues and strange peoples.
"Twenty-one years of it," said Mr. White, nodding at his wife and son. "When he went away he was a slip of a youth in the warehouse. Now look at him."
"He don't look to have taken much harm," said Mrs. White politely. "I'd like to go to India myself," said the old man, "just to look round a bit, you know."
"Better where you are," said the sergeant major, shaking his head. He put down the empty glass, and sighing softly, shook it again.
"I should like to see those old temples and fakirs and jugglers," said the old man. "What was that you started telling me the other day about a monkey's paw or something, Morris?"
"Nothing," said the soldier hastily. "Leastways, nothing worth hearing."
"Monkey's paw?" said Mrs. White curiously.
"Well, it's just a bit of what you might call magic, perhaps," said the sergeant major offhandedly.
His three listeners leaned forward eagerly. The visitor absentmindedly put his empty glass to his lips and then set it down again. His host filled it for him.
"To look at," said the sergeant major, fumbling in his pocket, "it's just an ordinary little paw, dried to a mummy."
He took something out of his pocket and proffered it. Mrs. White drew back with a grimace, but her son, taking it, examined it curiously.
"And what is there special about it?" inquired Mr. White, as he took it from his son, and having examined it, placed it upon the table.
"It had a spell put on it by an old fakir," said the sergeant major, "a very holy man. He wanted to show that fate ruled people's lives, and that those who interfered with it did so to their sorrow. He put a spell on it so that three separate men could each have three wishes from it."
His manner was so impressive that his hearers were conscious that their light laughter jarred somewhat.
"Well, why don't you have three, sir?" said Herbert White cleverly.
The soldier regarded him in the way that middle age is wont to regard presumptuous youth. "I have," he said quietly, and his blotchy face whitened.
"And did you really have the three wishes granted?" asked Mrs. White.
"I did," said the sergeant major, and his glass tapped against his strong teeth.
"And has anybody else wished?" inquired the old lady.
"The first man had his three wishes, yes," was the reply. "I don't know what the first two were, but the third was for death. That's how I got the paw."
His tones were so grave that a hush fell upon the group.
"If you've had your three wishes, it's no good to you now, then, Morris," said the old man at last. "What do you keep it for?"
The soldier shook his head. "Fancy, I suppose," he said slowly. "I did have some idea of selling it, but I don't think I will. It has caused enough mischief already. Besides, people won't buy.
They think it's a fairy tale, some of them, and those who do think anything of it want to try it first and pay me afterward."
"If you could have another three wishes," said the old man, eyeing him keenly, "would you have them?"
"I don't know," said the other. "I don't know."
He took the paw, and dangling it between his front finger and thumb, suddenly threw it upon the fire. White, with a slight cry, stooped down and snatched it off.
"Better let it burn," said the soldier solemnly.
"If you don't want it, Morris," said the old man, "give it to me."
"I won't," said his friend doggedly. "I threw it on the fire. If you keep it, don't blame me for what happens. Pitch it on the fire again, like a sensible man."
The other shook his head and examined his new possession closely. "How do you do it?" he inquired.
"Hold it up in your right hand and wish aloud," said the sergeant major, "but I warn you of the consequences."
"Sounds like the Arabian Nights," said Mrs. White, as she rose and began to set the supper. "Don't you think you might wish for four pairs of hands for me?"
Her husband drew the talisman from his pocket and then all three burst into laughter as the sergeant major, with a look of alarm on his face, caught him by the arm.
"If you must wish," he said gruffly, "wish for something sensible."
Mr. White dropped it back into his pocket, and placing chairs, motioned his friend to the table. In the business of supper the talisman was partly forgotten, and afterward the three sat listening in an enthralled fashion to a second installment of the soldier's adventures in India.
"If the tale about the monkey's paw is not more truthful than those he has been telling us," said Herbert, as the door closed behind their guest, just in time for him to catch the last train, "we shan't make much out of it."
"Did you give him anything for it, Father?" inquired Mrs. White, regarding her husband closely.
"A trifle," said he, coloring slightly. "He didn't want it, but I made him take it. And he pressed me again to throw it away."
"Likely," said Herbert, with pretended horror. "Why, we're going to be rich, and famous, and happy. Wish to be an emperor, Father, to begin with; then you can't be henpecked."
He darted around the table, pursued by the maligned Mrs. White armed with an antimacassar.
Mr. White took the paw from his pocket and eyed it dubiously. "I don't know what to wish for, and that's a fact," he said slowly. "It seems to me I've got all I want."
"If you only cleared the house, you'd be quite happy, wouldn't you?" said Herbert, with his hand on his shoulder. "Well, wish for two hundred pounds, then; that'll just do it."
His father, smiling shamefacedly at his own credulity, held up the talisman, as his son, with a solemn face somewhat marred by a wink at his mother, sat down at the piano and struck a few impressive chords.
"I wish for two hundred pounds," said the old man distinctly.
A fine crash from the piano greeted the words, interrupted by a shuddering cry from the old man. His wife and son ran toward him.
"It moved," he cried, with a glance of disgust at the object as it lay on the floor. "As I wished, it twisted in my hand like a snake."
"Well, I don't see the money," said his son, as he picked it up and placed it on the table, "and I bet I never shall."
"It must have been your fancy, Father," said his wife, regarding him anxiously.
He shook his head. "Never mind, though; there's no harm done, but it gave me a shock all the same."
They sat down by the fire again while the two men finished their pipes. Outside, the wind was higher than ever, and the old man started nervously at the sound of a door banging upstairs. A silence unusual and depressing settled upon all three, which lasted until the old couple rose to retire for the night.
"I expect you'll find the cash tied up in a big bag in the middle of your bed," said Herbert, as he bade them good night, "and something horrible squatting up on top of the wardrobe watching you as you pocket your ill-gotten gains."
In the brightness of the wintry sun next morning as it streamed over the breakfast table, Herbert laughed at his fears. There was an air of prosaic wholesomeness about the room which it had lacked on the previous night, and the dirty, shriveled little paw was pitched on the sideboard with a carelessness which betokened no great belief in its virtues.
"I suppose all old soldiers are the same," said Mrs. White. "The idea of our listening to such nonsense! How could wishes be granted in these days? And if they could, how could two hundred pounds hurt you, Father?"
"Might drop on his head from the sky," said the frivolous Herbert.
"Morris said the things happened so naturally," said his father, "that you might, if you so wished, attribute it to coincidence."
"Well, don't break into the money before I come back," said Herbert, as he rose from the table. "I'm afraid it'll turn you into a mean, avaricious man, and we shall have to disown you."
His mother laughed, and following him to the door, watched him down the road, and returning to the breakfast table, was very happy at the expense of her husband's credulity. All of which did not prevent her from scurrying to the door at the postman's knock, nor prevent her from referring somewhat shortly to retired sergeant majors of bibulous habits, when she found that the post brought a tailor's bill.
"Herbert will have some more of his funny remarks, I expect, when he comes home," she said, as they sat at dinner.
"I daresay," said Mr. White, pouring himself out some beer; "but for all that, the thing moved in my hand; that I'll swear to."
"You thought it did," said the old lady soothingly.
"I say it did," replied the other. "There was no thought about it; I had just-- What's the matter?"
His wife made no reply. She was watching the mysterious movements of a man outside, who, peering in an undecided fashion at the house, appeared to be trying to make up his mind to enter.
In mental connection with the two hundred pounds, she noticed that the stranger was well dressed and wore a silk hat of glossy newness. Three times he paused at the gate, and then walked on again. The fourth time he stood with his hand upon it, and then with sudden resolution flung it open and walked up the path. Mrs. White at the same moment placed her hands behind her, and hurriedly unfastening the strings of her apron, put that useful article of apparel beneath the cushion of her chair.
She brought the stranger, who seemed ill at ease, into the room. He gazed furtively at Mrs. White, and listened in a preoccupied fashion as the old lady apologized for the appearance of the room, and her husband's coat, a garment which he usually reserved for the garden. She then waited as patiently as her sex would permit for him to broach his business, but he was at first strangely silent.
"I--was asked to call," he said at last, and stooped and picked a piece of cotton from his trousers. "I come from Maw and Meggins."
The old lady started. "Is anything the matter?" she asked breathlessly. "Has anything happened to Herbert? What is it? What is it?"
Her husband interposed. "There, there, Mother," he said hastily. "Sit down, and don't jump to conclusions. You've not brought bad news, I'm sure, sir," and he eyed the other wistfully.
"I'm sorry--" began the visitor.
"Is he hurt?" demanded the mother.
The visitor bowed in assent. "Badly hurt," he said quietly, "but he is not in any pain."
"Oh, thank God!" said the old woman, clasping her hands. "Thank God for that! Thank--"
She broke off suddenly as the sinister meaning of the assurance dawned upon her and she saw the awful confirmation of her fears in the other's averted face. She caught her breath, and turning to her slower-witted husband, laid her trembling old hand upon his. There was a long silence.
"He was caught in the machinery," said the visitor at length, in a low voice.
"Caught in the machinery," repeated Mr. White, in a dazed fashion, "yes."
He sat staring blankly out at the window, and taking his wife's hand between his own, pressed it as he had been wont to do in their old courting days nearly forty years before.
"He was the only one left to us," he said, turning gently to the visitor. "It is hard."
The other coughed, and rising, walked slowly to the window. "The firm wished me to convey their sincere sympathy with you in your great loss," he said, without looking around. "I beg that you will understand I am only their servant and merely obeying orders."
There was no reply; the old woman's face was white, her eyes staring, and her breath inaudible; on the husband's face was a look such as his friend the sergeant might have carried into his first action.
"I was to say that Maw and Meggins disclaim all responsibility," continued the other. "They admit no liability at all, but in consideration of your son's services they wish to present you with a certain sum as compensation."
Mr. White dropped his wife's hand, and rising to his feet, gazed with a look of horror at his visitor. His dry lips shaped the words, "How much?"
"Two hundred pounds," was the answer.
Unconscious of his wife's shriek, the old man smiled faintly, put out his hands like a sightless man, and dropped, a senseless heap, to the floor.
In the huge new cemetery, some two miles distant, the old people buried their dead, and came back to a house steeped in shadow and silence. It was all over so quickly that at first they could hardly realize it, and remained in a state of expectation, as though of something else to happen--something else which was to lighten this load, too heavy for old hearts to bear. But the days passed, and expectation gave place to resignation--the hopeless resignation of the old, sometimes miscalled apathy. Sometimes they hardly exchanged a word, for now they had nothing to talk about, and their days were long to weariness.
It was about a week after that that the old man, waking suddenly in the night, stretched out his hand and found himself alone. The room was in darkness, and the sound of subdued weeping came from the window. He raised himself in bed and listened.
"Come back," he said tenderly. "You will be cold."
"It is colder for my son," said the old woman, and wept afresh.
The sound of her sobs died away on his ears. The bed was -warm, and his eyes heavy with sleep. He dozed fitfully, and then slept until a sudden cry from his wife awoke him with a start.
"The monkey's paw!" she cried wildly. "The monkey's paw!"
He started up in alarm. "Where? Where is it? What's the matter?" She came stumbling across the room toward him. "I want it," she said quietly. "You've not destroyed it?"
"It's in the parlor, on the bracket," he replied, marveling. "Why?"
She cried and laughed together, and bending over, kissed his cheek.
"I only just thought of it," she said hysterically. "Why didn't I think of it before? Why didn't you think of it?"
"Think of what?" he questioned.
"The other two wishes," she replied rapidly. "We've only had one."
"Was not that enough?" he demanded fiercely.
"No," she cried triumphantly; "we'll have one more. Go down and get it quickly, and wish our boy alive again."
The man sat up in bed and flung the bedclothes from his quaking limbs. "Good God, you are mad!" he cried, aghast.
"Get it," she panted; "get it quickly, and wish-- Oh, my boy, my boy!"
Her husband struck a match and lit the candle. "Get back to bed," he said unsteadily. "You don't know what you are saying."
"We had the first wish granted," said the old woman feverishly; "why not the second?"
"A coincidence," stammered the old man.
"Go and get it and wish," cried the old woman, and dragged him toward the door.
He went down in the darkness, and felt his way to the parlor, and then to the mantelpiece. The talisman was in its place, and a horrible fear that the unspoken wish might bring his mutilated son before him ere he could escape from the room seized upon him, and he caught his breath as he found that he had lost the direction of the door. His brow cold with sweat, he felt his way around the table, and groped along the wall until he found himself in the small passage with the unwholesome thing in his hand.
Even his wife's face seemed changed as he entered the room. It was white and expectant, and to his fears seemed to have an unnatural look upon it. He was afraid of her.
"Wish!" she cried, in a strong voice.
"It is foolish and wicked," he faltered.
"Wish!" repeated his wife.
He raised his hand. "I wish my son alive again."
The talisman fell to the floor, and he regarded it shudderingly. Then he sank trembling into a chair as the old woman, with burning eyes, walked to the window and raised the blind.
He sat until he was chilled with the cold, glancing occasionally at the figure of the old woman peering through the window. The candle end, which had burned below the rim of the china candlestick, was throwing pulsating shadows on the ceiling and walls, until, with a flicker larger than the rest, it expired. The old man, with an unspeakable sense of relief at the failure of the talisman, crept back to his bed, and a minute or two afterward the old woman came silently and apathetically beside him.
Neither spoke, but both lay silently listening to the ticking of the clock. A stair creaked, and a squeaky mouse scurried noisily through the wall. The darkness was oppressive, and after lying for some time screwing up his courage, the husband took the box of matches, and striking one, went downstairs for a candle.
At the foot of the stairs the match went out, and he paused to strike another, and at the same moment a knock, so quiet and stealthy as to be scarcely audible, sounded on the front door.
The matches fell from his hand. He stood motionless, his breath suspended until the knock was repeated. Then he turned and fled swiftly back to his room, and closed the door behind him. A third knock sounded through the house.
"What's that?" cried the old woman, starting up.
"A rat," said the old man, in shaking tones, "a rat. It passed me on the stairs."
His wife sat up in bed listening. A loud knock resounded through the house.
"It's Herbert!" she screamed. "It's Herbert!"
She ran to the door, but her husband was before her, and catching her by the arm, held her tightly.
"What are you going to do?" he whispered hoarsely.
"It's my boy; it's Herbert!" she cried, struggling mechanically. "I forgot it was two miles away. What are you holding me for? Let go. I must open the door."
"For God's sake don't let it in," cried the old man, trembling.
"You're afraid of your own son," she cried, struggling. "Let me go. I'm coming, Herbert; I'm coming."
There was another knock, and another. The old woman with a sudden wrench broke free and ran from the room. Her husband followed to the landing, and called after her appealingly as she hurried downstairs. He heard the chain rattle back and the bottom bolt drawn slowly and stiffly from the socket. Then the old woman's voice, strained and panting.
"The bolt," she cried loudly. "Come down. I can't reach it."
But her husband was on his hands and knees groping wildly on the floor in search of the paw. If he could only find it before the thing outside got in. A perfect fusillade of knocks reverberated through the house, and he heard the scraping of a chair as his wife put it down in the passage against the door. He heard the creaking of the bolt as it came slowly back, and at the same moment, he found the monkey's paw, and frantically breathed his third and last wish.
The knocking ceased suddenly, although the echoes of it were still in the house. He heard the chair drawn back and the door opened. A cold wind rushed up the staircase, and a long, loud wail of disappointment and misery from his wife gave him courage to run down to her side, and then to the gate beyond. The streetlamp flickering opposite shone on a quiet and deserted road.
peril (noun): danger
placidly (adverb): peacefully
amiably (adverb): in a friendly way
torrent (noun): a fast-moving stream
condole (verb): to grieve; to show sympathy
tumbler (noun): a type of glass with no stem
doughty (adjective): determined
fakir (noun): a Hindu magician
jar (verb): to unsettle or shock
presumptuous (adjective): goes beyond what is appropriate; bold
doggedly (adverb): in a determined way
talisman (noun): a lucky object
enthralled (adjective): very interested
henpecked (adjective): constantly criticized and bossed about by one's wife
antimacassar (noun): a drop cloth placed over a chair
dubiously (adverb): with uncertainty or doubt
credulity (noun): the willingness to believe something is true without evidence
prosaic (adjective): straightforward
betoken (verb): to indicate
avaricious (adjective): greedy
bibulous (adjective): enjoys alcohol
furtively (adverb): in a sly way
mutilated (adjective): completely destroyed
apathetically (adverb): without emotion
reverberate (verb): to echo
Candidate for a
placidly (adverb): peacefully
amiably (adverb): in a friendly way
torrent (noun): a fast-moving stream
condole (verb): to grieve; to show sympathy
tumbler (noun): a type of glass with no stem
doughty (adjective): determined
fakir (noun): a Hindu magician
jar (verb): to unsettle or shock
presumptuous (adjective): goes beyond what is appropriate; bold
doggedly (adverb): in a determined way
talisman (noun): a lucky object
enthralled (adjective): very interested
henpecked (adjective): constantly criticized and bossed about by one's wife
antimacassar (noun): a drop cloth placed over a chair
dubiously (adverb): with uncertainty or doubt
credulity (noun): the willingness to believe something is true without evidence
prosaic (adjective): straightforward
betoken (verb): to indicate
avaricious (adjective): greedy
bibulous (adjective): enjoys alcohol
furtively (adverb): in a sly way
mutilated (adjective): completely destroyed
apathetically (adverb): without emotion
reverberate (verb): to echo
Spellchecker Dangers
This fun poem by Jerrold Zar shows the dangers of relying too much on a spellchecker. By the author's count, 127 of the 224 words of the poem are incorrect, although all individual words are spelled correctly (they just have the wrong meaning). To see the correct version, click on "Correct spelling".
Candidate for a
Pullet Surprise
I have a spelling checker,
It came with my PC.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot sea.
Eye ran this poem threw it,
Your sure reel glad two no.
Its vary polished in it's weigh.
My checker tolled me sew.
A checker is a bless sing,
It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
It helps me right awl stiles two reed,
And aides me when eye rime.
Each frays come posed up on my screen
Eye trussed too bee a joule.
The checker pours or every word
Too cheque sum spelling rule.
Bee fore a veiling checker's
Hour spelling mite decline,
And if we're lacks oar have a laps,
We wood bee maid too wine.
Butt now bee cause my spelling
Is checked with such grate flare,
Their are know fault's with in my cite,
Of nun eye am a wear.
Now spelling does knot phase me,
It does knot bring a tier.
My pay purrs awl due glad den
With wrapped word's fare as hear.
Too rite with care is quite a feet
Of witch won should bee proud,
And wee mussed dew the best wee can,
Sew flaw's are knot aloud.
Sow ewe can sea why aye dew prays
Such soft wear four pea seas,
And why eye brake in two averse
Buy righting want too pleas.
It came with my PC.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot sea.
Eye ran this poem threw it,
Your sure reel glad two no.
Its vary polished in it's weigh.
My checker tolled me sew.
A checker is a bless sing,
It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
It helps me right awl stiles two reed,
And aides me when eye rime.
Each frays come posed up on my screen
Eye trussed too bee a joule.
The checker pours or every word
Too cheque sum spelling rule.
Bee fore a veiling checker's
Hour spelling mite decline,
And if we're lacks oar have a laps,
We wood bee maid too wine.
Butt now bee cause my spelling
Is checked with such grate flare,
Their are know fault's with in my cite,
Of nun eye am a wear.
Now spelling does knot phase me,
It does knot bring a tier.
My pay purrs awl due glad den
With wrapped word's fare as hear.
Too rite with care is quite a feet
Of witch won should bee proud,
And wee mussed dew the best wee can,
Sew flaw's are knot aloud.
Sow ewe can sea why aye dew prays
Such soft wear four pea seas,
And why eye brake in two averse
Buy righting want too pleas.
The Fall of the House of Usher
A short story by Edgar Allan Poe
During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was--but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit.
I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me--upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain--upon the bleak walls--upon the vacant eye-like windows--upon a few rank sedges--and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees--with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium--the bitter lapse into everyday life-the hideous dropping off of the reveller upon opium--the bitter lapse into everyday life--the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart--an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it--I paused to think--what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble;
nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down--but with a shudder even more thrilling than before--upon the remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.
Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a sojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of my boon companions in boyhood; but many years had elapsed since our last meeting. A letter, however, had lately reached me in a distant part of the country--a letter from him--which, in its wildly importunate nature, had admitted of no other than a personal reply. The MS. gave evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute bodily illness--of a mental disorder which oppressed him--and of an earnest desire to see me, as his best, and indeed his only personal friend, with a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my society, some alleviation of his malady. It was the manner in which all this, and much more, was said--it the apparent heart that went with his request--which allowed me no room for hesitation; and I accordingly obeyed forthwith what I still considered a very singular summons.
Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet really knew little of my friend. His reserve had been always excessive and habitual. I was aware, however, that his very ancient family had been noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of temperament, displaying itself, through long ages, in many works of exalted art, and manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent yet unobtrusive charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhaps even more than to the orthodox and easily recognisable beauties, of musical science. I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact, that the stem of the Usher race, all time-honoured as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain. It was this deficiency, I considered, while running over in thought the perfect keeping of the character of the premises with the accredited character of the people, and while speculating upon the possible influence which the one, in the long lapse of centuries, might have exercised upon the other--it was this deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the consequent undeviating transmission, from sire to son, of the patrimony with the name, which had, at length, so identified the two as to merge the original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal appellation of the "House of Usher" --an appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and the family mansion.
I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment--that of looking down within the tarn--had been to deepen the first singular impression. There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid increase of my superstition--for why should I not so term it?--served mainly to accelerate the increase itself. Such, I have long known, is the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis. And it might have been for this reason only, that, when I again uplifted my eyes to the house itself, from its image in the pool, there grew in my mind a strange fancy --a fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that I but mention it to show the vivid force of the sensations which oppressed me. I had so worked upon my imagination as really to believe that about the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity-an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn--a pestilent and mystic vapour, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued.
Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity.
The discoloration of ages had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual stones. In this there was much that reminded me of the specious totality of old wood-work which has rotted for long years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance from the breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinising observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn.
Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house. A servant in waiting took my horse, and I entered the Gothic archway of the hall. A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence, through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the studio of his master. Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken. While the objects around me--while the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed from my infancy--while I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all this--I still wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images were stirring up. On one of the staircases, I met the physician of the family. His countenance, I thought, wore a mingled expression of low cunning and perplexity. He accosted me with trepidation and passed on. The valet now threw open a door and ushered me into the presence of his master.
The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellised panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all.
Upon my entrance, Usher arose from a sofa on which he had been lying at full length, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth which had much in it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality--of the constrained effort of the ennuye man of the world. A glance, however, at his countenance, convinced me of his perfect sincerity. We sat down; and for some moments, while he spoke not, I gazed upon him with a feeling half of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher! It was with difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the identity of the wan being before me with the companion of my early boyhood. Yet the character of his face had been at all times remarkable.
A cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a finely moulded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity; these features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten. And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of the eve, above all things startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face, I could not, even with effort, connect its Arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity.
In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherence --an inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise from a series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy--an excessive nervous agitation. For something of this nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by his letter, than by reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical conformation and temperament. His action was alternately vivacious and sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that species of energetic concision--that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation--that leaden, self-balanced and perfectly modulated guttural utterance, which may be observed in the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of opium, during the periods of his most intense excitement.
It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest desire to see me, and of the solace he expected me to afford him. He entered, at some length, into what he conceived to be the nature of his malady. It was, he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and one for which he despaired to find a remedy--a mere nervous affection, he immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon pass off. It displayed itself in a host of unnatural sensations. Some of these, as he detailed them, interested and bewildered me; although, perhaps, the terms, and the general manner of the narration had their weight. He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odours of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with horror.
To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave. "I shall perish," said he, "I must perish in this deplorable folly. Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of the future, not in themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate upon this intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect--in terror. In this unnerved-in this pitiable condition--I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR."
I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never ventured forth--in regard to an influence whose supposititious force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be re-stated--an influence which some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family mansion, had, by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his spirit-an effect which the physique of the gray walls and turrets, and of the dim tarn into which they all looked down, had, at length, brought about upon the morale of his existence.
He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more natural and far more palpable origin--to the severe and long-continued illness --indeed to the evidently approaching dissolution-of a tenderly beloved sister--his sole companion for long years--his last and only relative on earth. "Her decease," he said, with a bitterness which I can never forget, "would leave him (him the hopeless and the frail) the last of the ancient race of the Ushers." While he spoke, the lady Madeline (for so was she called) passed slowly through a remote portion of the apartment, and, without having noticed my presence, disappeared. I regarded her with an utter astonishment not unmingled with dread--and yet I found it impossible to account for such feelings. A sensation of stupor oppressed me, as my eyes followed her retreating steps. When a door, at length, closed upon her, my glance sought instinctively and eagerly the countenance of the brother--but he had buried his face in his hands, and I could only perceive that a far more than ordinary wanness had overspread the emaciated fingers through which trickled many passionate tears.
The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of her physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person, and frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical character, were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto she had steadily borne up against the pressure of her malady, and had not betaken herself finally to bed; but, on the closing in of the evening of my arrival at the house, she succumbed (as her brother told me at night with inexpressible agitation) to the prostrating power of the destroyer; and I learned that the glimpse I had obtained of her person would thus probably be the last I should obtain --that the lady, at least while living, would be seen by me no more.
For several days ensuing, her name was unmentioned by either Usher or myself: and during this period I was busied in earnest endeavours to alleviate the melancholy of my friend. We painted and read together; or I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations of his speaking guitar. And thus, as a closer and still intimacy admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit, the more bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth upon all objects of the moral and physical universe, in one unceasing radiation of gloom.
I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours I thus spent alone with the master of the House of Usher. Yet I should fail in any attempt to convey an idea of the exact character of the studies, or of the occupations, in which he involved me, or led me the way. An excited and highly distempered ideality threw a sulphureous lustre over all. His long improvised dirges will ring forever in my ears. Among other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular perversion and amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of Von Weber. From the paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded, and which grew, touch by touch, into vaguenesses at which I shuddered the more thrillingly, because I shuddered knowing not why;--from these paintings (vivid as their images now are before me) I would in vain endeavour to educe more than a small portion which should lie within the compass of merely written words.
By the utter simplicity, by the nakedness of his designs, he arrested and overawed attention. If ever mortal painted an idea, that mortal was Roderick Usher. For me at least--in the circumstances then surrounding me--there arose out of the pure abstractions which the hypochondriac contrived to throw upon his canvas, an intensity of intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt I ever yet in the contemplation of the certainly glowing yet too concrete reveries of Fuseli.
One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend, partaking not so rigidly of the spirit of abstraction, may be shadowed forth, although feebly, in words. A small picture presented the interior of an immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls, smooth, white, and without interruption or device. Certain accessory points of the design served well to convey the idea that this excavation lay at an exceeding depth below the surface of the earth. No outlet was observed in any portion of its vast extent, and no torch, or other artificial source of light was discernible; yet a flood of intense rays rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a ghastly and inappropriate splendour.
I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve which rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with the exception of certain effects of stringed instruments. It was, perhaps, the narrow limits to which he thus confined himself upon the guitar, which gave birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character of his performances. But the fervid facility of his impromptus could not be so accounted for. They must have been, and were, in the notes, as well as in the words of his wild fantasias (for he not unfrequently accompanied himself with rhymed verbal improvisations), the result of that intense mental collectedness and concentration to which I have previously alluded as observable only in particular moments of the highest artificial excitement. The words of one of these rhapsodies I have easily remembered. I was, perhaps, the more forcibly impressed with it, as he gave it, because, in the under or mystic current of its meaning, I fancied that I perceived, and for the first time, a full consciousness on the part of Usher, of the tottering of his lofty reason upon her throne. The verses, which were entitled "The Haunted Palace," ran very nearly, if not accurately, thus:
I.
In the greenest of our valleys,
By good angels tenanted,
Once fair and stately palace--
Radiant palace--reared its head.
In the monarch Thought's dominion--
It stood there!
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair.
By good angels tenanted,
Once fair and stately palace--
Radiant palace--reared its head.
In the monarch Thought's dominion--
It stood there!
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair.
II.
Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow;
(This--all this--was in the olden
Time long ago);
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A winged odour went away.
On its roof did float and flow;
(This--all this--was in the olden
Time long ago);
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A winged odour went away.
III.
Wanderers in that happy valley
Through two luminous windows saw
Spirits moving musically
To a lute's well-tuned law,
Round about a throne, where sitting
(Porphyrogene!)
In state his glory well befitting,
The ruler of the realm was seen.
Through two luminous windows saw
Spirits moving musically
To a lute's well-tuned law,
Round about a throne, where sitting
(Porphyrogene!)
In state his glory well befitting,
The ruler of the realm was seen.
IV.
And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.
V.
But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch's high estate;
(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)
And, round about his home, the glory That blushed and bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.
Assailed the monarch's high estate;
(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)
And, round about his home, the glory That blushed and bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.
VI.
And travellers now within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows, see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;
While, like a rapid ghastly river,
Through the pale door,
A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh--but smile no more.
Through the red-litten windows, see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;
While, like a rapid ghastly river,
Through the pale door,
A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh--but smile no more.
I well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad led us into a train of thought wherein there became manifest an opinion of Usher's which I mention not so much on account of its novelty, (for other men have thought thus,) as on account of the pertinacity with which he maintained it. This opinion, in its general form, was that of the sentience of all vegetable things. But, in his disordered fancy, the idea had assumed a more daring character, and trespassed, under certain conditions, upon the kingdom of inorganization.
I lack words to express the full extent, or the earnest abandon of his persuasion. The belief, however, was connected (as I have previously hinted) with the gray stones of the home of his forefathers. The conditions of the sentience had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the method of collocation of these stones--in the order of their arrangement, as well as in that of the many fungi which overspread them, and of the decayed trees which stood around--above all, in the long undisturbed endurance of this arrangement, and in its reduplication in the still waters of the tarn. Its evidence--the evidence of the sentience--was to be seen, he said, (and I here started as he spoke,) in the gradual yet certain condensation of an atmosphere of their own about the waters and the walls. The result was discoverable, he added, in that silent, yet importunate and terrible influence which for centuries had moulded the destinies of his family, and which made him what I now saw him--what he was. Such opinions need no comment, and I will make none.
Our books--the books which, for years, had formed no small portion of the mental existence of the invalid--were, as might be supposed, in strict keeping with this character of phantasm. We pored together over such works as the Ververt et Chartreuse of Gresset; the Belphegor of Machiavelli; the Heaven and Hell of Swedenborg; the Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm by Holberg; the Chiromancy of Robert Flud, of Jean D'Indagine, and of De la Chambre; the Journey into the Blue Distance of Tieck; and the City of the Sun of Campanella. One favourite volume was a small octavo edition of the Directorium Inquisitorum, by the Dominican Eymeric de Gironne; and there were passages in Pomponius Mela, about the old African Satyrs and AEgipans, over which Usher would sit dreaming for hours. His chief delight, however, was found in the perusal of an exceedingly rare and curious book in quarto Gothic--the manual of a forgotten church--the Vigilae Mortuorum secundum Chorum Ecclesiae Maguntinae.
I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its probable influence upon the hypochondriac, when, one evening, having informed me abruptly that the lady Madeline was no more, he stated his intention of preserving her corpse for a fortnight, (previously to its final interment,) in one of the numerous vaults within the main walls of the building. The worldly reason, however, assigned for this singular proceeding, was one which I did not feel at liberty to dispute. The brother had been led to his resolution (so he told me) by consideration of the unusual character of the malady of the deceased, of certain obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her medical men, and of the remote and exposed situation of the burial-ground of the family. I will not deny that when I called to mind the sinister countenance of the person whom I met upon the stair case, on the day of my arrival at the house, I had no desire to oppose what I regarded as at best but a harmless, and by no means an unnatural, precaution.
At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in the arrangements for the temporary entombment. The body having been encoffined, we two alone bore it to its rest. The vault in which we placed it (and which had been so long unopened that our torches, half smothered in its oppressive atmosphere, gave us little opportunity for investigation) was small, damp, and entirely without means of admission for light; lying, at great depth, immediately beneath that portion of the building in which was my own sleeping apartment. It had been used, apparently, in remote feudal times, for the worst purposes of a donjon-keep, and, in later days, as a place of deposit for powder, or some other highly combustible substance, as a portion of its floor, and the whole interior of a long archway through which we reached it, were carefully sheathed with copper. The door, of massive iron, had been, also, similarly protected. Its immense weight caused an unusually sharp grating sound, as it moved upon its hinges.
Having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels within this region of horror, we partially turned aside the yet unscrewed lid of the coffin, and looked upon the face of the tenant. A striking similitude between the brother and sister now first arrested my attention; and Usher, divining, perhaps, my thoughts, murmured out some few words from which I learned that the deceased and himself had been twins, and that sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had always existed between them. Our glances, however, rested not long upon the dead--for we could not regard her unawed. The disease which had thus entombed the lady in the maturity of youth, had left, as usual in all maladies of a strictly cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint blush upon the bosom and the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip which is so terrible in death. We replaced and screwed down the lid, and, having secured the door of iron, made our way, with toll, into the scarcely less gloomy apartments of the upper portion of the house.
And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable change came over the features of the mental disorder of my friend. His ordinary manner had vanished. His ordinary occupations were neglected or forgotten. He roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal, and objectless step. The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if possible, a more ghastly hue--but the luminousness of his eye had utterly gone out. The once occasional huskiness of his tone was heard no more; and a tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually characterized his utterance. There were times, indeed, when I thought his unceasingly agitated mind was labouring with some oppressive secret, to divulge which he struggled for the necessary courage. At times, again, I was obliged to resolve all into the mere inexplicable vagaries of madness, for I beheld him gazing upon vacancy for long hours, in an attitude of the profoundest attention, as if listening to some imaginary sound. It was no wonder that his condition terrified-that it infected me. I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet certain degrees, the wild influences of his own fantastic yet impressive superstitions.
It was, especially, upon retiring to bed late in the night of the seventh or eighth day after the placing of the lady Madeline within the donjon, that I experienced the full power of such feelings. Sleep came not near my couch--while the hours waned and waned away. I struggled to reason off the nervousness which had dominion over me. I endeavoured to believe that much, if not all of what I felt, was due to the bewildering influence of the gloomy furniture of the room--of the dark and tattered draperies, which, tortured into motion by the breath of a rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were fruitless. An irrepressible tremour gradually pervaded my frame; and, at length, there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself upon the pillows, and, peering earnestly within the intense darkness of the chamber, hearkened--I know not why, except that an instinctive spirit prompted me--to certain low and indefinite sounds which came, through the pauses of the storm, at long intervals, I knew not whence. Overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror, unaccountable yet unendurable, I threw on my clothes with haste (for I felt that I should sleep no more during the night), and endeavoured to arouse myself from the pitiable condition into which I had fallen, by pacing rapidly to and fro through the apartment.
I had taken but few turns in this manner, when a light step on an adjoining staircase arrested my attention. I presently recognised it as that of Usher. In an instant afterward he rapped, with a gentle touch, at my door, and entered, bearing a lamp. His countenance was, as usual, cadaverously wan--but, moreover, there was a species of mad hilarity in his eyes--an evidently restrained hysteria in his whole demeanour. His air appalled me--but anything was preferable to the solitude which I had so long endured, and I even welcomed his presence as a relief.
"And you have not seen it?" he said abruptly, after having stared about him for some moments in silence--"you have not then seen it?--but, stay! you shall." Thus speaking, and having carefully shaded his lamp, he hurried to one of the casements, and threw it freely open to the storm.
The impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us from our feet. It was, indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and one wildly singular in its terror and its beauty. A whirlwind had apparently collected its force in our vicinity; for there were frequent and violent alterations in the direction of the wind; and the exceeding density of the clouds (which hung so low as to press upon the turrets of the house) did not prevent our perceiving the life-like velocity with which they flew careering from all points against each other, without passing away into the distance. I say that even their exceeding density did not prevent our perceiving this--yet we had no glimpse of the moon or stars--nor was there any flashing forth of the lightning. But the under surfaces of the huge masses of agitated vapour, as well as all terrestrial objects immediately around us, were glowing in the unnatural light of a faintly luminous and distinctly visible gaseous exhalation which hung about and enshrouded the mansion.
"You must not--you shall not behold this!" said I, shudderingly, to Usher, as I led him, with a gentle violence, from the window to a seat. "These appearances, which bewilder you, are merely electrical phenomena not uncommon--or it may be that they have their ghastly origin in the rank miasma of the tarn. Let us close this casement;--the air is chilling and dangerous to your frame. Here is one of your favourite romances. I will read, and you shall listen;--and so we will pass away this terrible night together."
The antique volume which I had taken up was the "Mad Trist" of Sir Launcelot Canning; but I had called it a favourite of Usher's more in sad jest than in earnest; for, in truth, there is little in its uncouth and unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest for the lofty and spiritual ideality of my friend. It was, however, the only book immediately at hand; and I indulged a vague hope that the excitement which now agitated the hypochondriac, might find relief (for the history of mental disorder is full of similar anomalies) even in the extremeness of the folly which I should read. Could I have judged, indeed, by the wild over-strained air of vivacity with which he hearkened, or apparently hearkened, to the words of the tale, I might well have congratulated myself upon the success of my design.
I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story where Ethelred, the hero of the Trist, having sought in vain for peaceable admission into the dwelling of the hermit, proceeds to make good an entrance by force. Here, it will be remembered, the words of the narrative run thus:
"And Ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty heart, and who was now mighty withal, on account of the powerfulness of the wine which he had drunken, waited no longer to hold parley with the hermit, who, in sooth, was of an obstinate and maliceful turn, but, feeling the rain upon his shoulders, and fearing the rising of the tempest, uplifted his mace outright, and, with blows, made quickly room in the plankings of the door for his gauntleted hand; and now pulling there-with sturdily, he so cracked, and ripped, and tore all asunder, that the noise of the dry and hollow-sounding wood alarumed and reverberated throughout the forest."
At the termination of this sentence I started, and for a moment, paused; for it appeared to me (although I at once concluded that my excited fancy had deceived me)--it appeared to me that, from some very remote portion of the mansion, there came, indistinctly, to my ears, what might have been, in its exact similarity of character, the echo (but a stifled and dull one certainly) of the very cracking and ripping sound which Sir Launcelot had so particularly described. It was, beyond doubt, the coincidence alone which had arrested my attention; for, amid the rattling of the sashes of the casements, and the ordinary commingled noises of the still increasing storm, the sound, in itself, had nothing, surely, which should have interested or disturbed me. I continued the story:
"But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door, was sore enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit; but, in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious demeanour, and of a fiery tongue, which sate in guard before a palace of gold, with a floor of silver; and upon the wall there hung a shield of shining brass with this legend enwritten--
Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath bin;
Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win...
And Ethelred uplifted his mace, and struck upon the head of the dragon, which fell before him, and gave up his pesty breath, with a shriek so horrid and harsh, and withal so piercing, that Ethelred had fain to close his ears with his hands against the dreadful noise of it, the like whereof was never before heard."
Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild amazement --for there could be no doubt whatever that, in this instance, I did actually hear (although from what direction it proceeded I found it impossible to say) a low and apparently distant, but harsh, protracted, and most unusual screaming or grating sound--the exact counterpart of what my fancy had already conjured up for the dragon's unnatural shriek as described by the romancer.
Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of the second and most extraordinary coincidence, by a thousand conflicting sensations, in which wonder and extreme terror were predominant, I still retained sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting, by any observation, the sensitive nervousness of my companion. I was by no means certain that he had noticed the sounds in question; although, assuredly, a strange alteration had, during the last few minutes, taken place in his demeanour. From a position fronting my own, he had gradually brought round his chair, so as to sit with his face to the door of the chamber; and thus I could but partially perceive his features, although I saw that his lips trembled as if he were murmuring inaudibly. His head had dropped upon his breast--yet I knew that he was not asleep, from the wide and rigid opening of the eye as I caught a glance of it in profile. The motion of his body, too, was at variance with this idea--for he rocked from side to side with a gentle yet constant and uniform sway. Having rapidly taken notice of all this, I resumed the narrative of Sir Launcelot, which thus proceeded:
"And now, the champion, having escaped from the terrible fury of the dragon, bethinking himself of the brazen shield, and of the breaking up of the enchantment which was upon it, removed the carcass from out of the way before him, and approached valorously over the silver pavement of the castle to where the shield was upon the wall; which in sooth tarried not for his full coming, but fell down at his feet upon the silver floor, with a mighty great and terrible ringing sound."
No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than--as if a shield of brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a floor of silver became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic, and clangorous, yet apparently muffled reverberation. Completely unnerved, I leaped to my feet; but the measured rocking movement of Usher was undisturbed. I rushed to the chair in which he sat. His eyes were bent fixedly before him, and throughout his whole countenance there reigned a stony rigidity. But, as I placed my hand upon his shoulder, there came a strong shudder over his whole person; a sickly smile quivered about his lips; and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur, as if unconscious of my presence. Bending closely over him, I at length drank in the hideous import of his words.
"Now hear it?--yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long--long --long--many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it--yet I dared not--oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!--I dared not--I dared not speak! We have put her living in the tomb! Said I not that my senses were acute? I now tell you that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them--many, many days ago--yet I dared not--I dared not speak! And now--to-night--Ethelred--ha! ha!--the breaking of the hermit's door, and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangour of the shield!--say, rather, the rending of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison, and her struggles within the coppered archway of the vault! Oh whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her footstep on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart? Madman!" here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his soul--"Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door!"
As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found the potency of a spell--the huge antique panels to which the speaker pointed, threw slowly back, upon the instant, ponderous and ebony jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust--but then without those doors there DID stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold, then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated.
From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the old causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued; for the vast house and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that of the full, setting, and blood-red moon which now shone vividly through that once barely-discernible fissure of which I have before spoken as extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened--there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind--the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight--my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder--there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters--and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the "House of Usher."
oppressively (adverb): harshly; excessively
dreary (adjective): depressing
melancholy (adjective): depressing
pervade (verb): to spread
sentiment (noun): feeling
rank (adjective): excessive in growth
sedge (noun): a grasslike bush
reveller (noun): merrymaker
goad (verb): to convince
aught (pronoun): anything
sublime (noun): excellence
insoluble (adjective): impossible to solve
grapple (verb): to struggle
annihilate (verb): to ruin completely
precipitous (adjective): very high or steep
brink (noun): the edge
lurid (adjective): intense
tarn (noun): mountain lake
lustre (noun): glow or shine
sojourn (noun): short-term visit
proprietor (noun): business owner
boon companion (noun): close friend
importunate (adjective): overly persistent; annoying
alleviation (noun): relief
malady (noun): disease
summons (noun): call of duty
munificent (adjective): generous
unobstrusive (adjective): not overly noticeable
intricacy (noun): detail
orthodox (adjective): traditionally accepted
trifling (adjective): unimportant
collateral (noun): something that can be used as a guarantee
undeviating (adjective): steady
patrimony (noun): related to one’s father
appellation (noun): name
paradoxical (adjective): contradictory
vicinity (noun): surrounding area
affinity (noun): likeness
reek (verb): to emit a strong smell
pestilent (adjective): deadly
discernible (adjective): visible
leaden-hued (adjective): dull grey in colour (like lead)
antiquity (noun): a time long ago
minute (adjective): very small
dilapidation (noun): the state of being in ruins
masonry (noun): stonework
fissure (noun): a long crack
countenance (noun): facial expression
cunning (adjective): able to deceive
perplexity (noun): the state of being confused or puzzled
accost (verb): to approach aggressively
trepidation (noun): fear
valet (noun): a person whose job is to drive someone’s car
trellised (adjective): covered with a vine
in vain (adjective): without success
recess (noun): a hollow
fretted (adjective): worn away
profuse (adjective): abundant
irredeemable (adjective): impossible to fix
vivacious (adjective): lively
wan (adjective ): pale
cadaverous (adjective): related to death
tenuity (noun): lack of substance
pallor (noun): paleness
gossamer (adjective): sheer
incoherence (noun): confusion
reminiscence (noun): the remembering of the past
tremulous (adjective): fearful
abeyance (noun): a state of being temporarily set aside
concision (noun): the state of being brief
guttural (adjective): of the throat
acuteness (noun): severeness
insipid (adjective): dull
anomalous (adjective): abnormal
deplorable (adjective): bad
abhorrence (noun): a feeling of being disgusted
palpable (adjective): able to touch or feel
emaciated (adjective): very thin
baffle (verb): to confuse
prostrating (adjective): causing extreme weakness
sulphureous (adjective): sulphur-like, pale greenish-yellow in colour
hypochondriac (noun): a person who is always worried about health issues
Fuseli (noun): an English painter
excavation (noun): a big hole
fervid (adjective): passionate
impromptu (adjective): not planned
rhapsody (noun): a passionate literary work
seraph (noun): a type of angel
rampart (noun): mounds of earth used as a fort for defence
pallid (adjective): pale
lute (noun): a stringed instrument
Porphyrogene (noun): an emperor
discordant (adjective): conflicting
pertinacity (noun): the state of being determined
sentience (noun): the state of being aware
perusal (noun): definition
obtrusive (adjective): too noticeable
sinister (adjective): evil
donjon-keep (noun): the main tower of a castle
sheath (verb): to encase
similitude (noun): similarity
cataleptical (adjective): in a state of psychosis in which one can’t move
pitiable (adjective): causing people to feel pity
enshroud (verb): to cover
miasma (noun): a poisonous atmosphere
uncouth (adjective): not graceful; clumsy
prolixity (noun): the use of too many words
hearken (verb): to listen
hermit (noun): a person who lives a solitary life
hold parley (verb): to discuss
mace (noun): a heavy club
commingle (verb): to blend
prodigious (adjective): very large
tarry (verb): to delay
aghast (adjective): shocked
orb (noun): a sphere
tumultuous (adjective): noisy
dank (adjective): damp
dreary (adjective): depressing
melancholy (adjective): depressing
pervade (verb): to spread
sentiment (noun): feeling
rank (adjective): excessive in growth
sedge (noun): a grasslike bush
reveller (noun): merrymaker
goad (verb): to convince
aught (pronoun): anything
sublime (noun): excellence
insoluble (adjective): impossible to solve
grapple (verb): to struggle
annihilate (verb): to ruin completely
precipitous (adjective): very high or steep
brink (noun): the edge
lurid (adjective): intense
tarn (noun): mountain lake
lustre (noun): glow or shine
sojourn (noun): short-term visit
proprietor (noun): business owner
boon companion (noun): close friend
importunate (adjective): overly persistent; annoying
alleviation (noun): relief
malady (noun): disease
summons (noun): call of duty
munificent (adjective): generous
unobstrusive (adjective): not overly noticeable
intricacy (noun): detail
orthodox (adjective): traditionally accepted
trifling (adjective): unimportant
collateral (noun): something that can be used as a guarantee
undeviating (adjective): steady
patrimony (noun): related to one’s father
appellation (noun): name
paradoxical (adjective): contradictory
vicinity (noun): surrounding area
affinity (noun): likeness
reek (verb): to emit a strong smell
pestilent (adjective): deadly
discernible (adjective): visible
leaden-hued (adjective): dull grey in colour (like lead)
antiquity (noun): a time long ago
minute (adjective): very small
dilapidation (noun): the state of being in ruins
masonry (noun): stonework
fissure (noun): a long crack
countenance (noun): facial expression
cunning (adjective): able to deceive
perplexity (noun): the state of being confused or puzzled
accost (verb): to approach aggressively
trepidation (noun): fear
valet (noun): a person whose job is to drive someone’s car
trellised (adjective): covered with a vine
in vain (adjective): without success
recess (noun): a hollow
fretted (adjective): worn away
profuse (adjective): abundant
irredeemable (adjective): impossible to fix
vivacious (adjective): lively
wan (adjective ): pale
cadaverous (adjective): related to death
tenuity (noun): lack of substance
pallor (noun): paleness
gossamer (adjective): sheer
incoherence (noun): confusion
reminiscence (noun): the remembering of the past
tremulous (adjective): fearful
abeyance (noun): a state of being temporarily set aside
concision (noun): the state of being brief
guttural (adjective): of the throat
acuteness (noun): severeness
insipid (adjective): dull
anomalous (adjective): abnormal
deplorable (adjective): bad
abhorrence (noun): a feeling of being disgusted
palpable (adjective): able to touch or feel
emaciated (adjective): very thin
baffle (verb): to confuse
prostrating (adjective): causing extreme weakness
sulphureous (adjective): sulphur-like, pale greenish-yellow in colour
hypochondriac (noun): a person who is always worried about health issues
Fuseli (noun): an English painter
excavation (noun): a big hole
fervid (adjective): passionate
impromptu (adjective): not planned
rhapsody (noun): a passionate literary work
seraph (noun): a type of angel
rampart (noun): mounds of earth used as a fort for defence
pallid (adjective): pale
lute (noun): a stringed instrument
Porphyrogene (noun): an emperor
discordant (adjective): conflicting
pertinacity (noun): the state of being determined
sentience (noun): the state of being aware
perusal (noun): definition
obtrusive (adjective): too noticeable
sinister (adjective): evil
donjon-keep (noun): the main tower of a castle
sheath (verb): to encase
similitude (noun): similarity
cataleptical (adjective): in a state of psychosis in which one can’t move
pitiable (adjective): causing people to feel pity
enshroud (verb): to cover
miasma (noun): a poisonous atmosphere
uncouth (adjective): not graceful; clumsy
prolixity (noun): the use of too many words
hearken (verb): to listen
hermit (noun): a person who lives a solitary life
hold parley (verb): to discuss
mace (noun): a heavy club
commingle (verb): to blend
prodigious (adjective): very large
tarry (verb): to delay
aghast (adjective): shocked
orb (noun): a sphere
tumultuous (adjective): noisy
dank (adjective): damp
A Dark Brown Dog
A short story by Stephen Crane
A child was standing on a street-corner. He leaned with one shoulder against a high board-fence and swayed the other to and fro, the while kicking carelessly at the gravel.
Sunshine beat upon the cobbles, and a lazy summer wind raised yellow dust which trailed in clouds down the avenue. Clattering trucks moved with indistinctness through it. The child stood dreamily gazing.
After a time, a little dark-brown dog came trotting with an intent air down the sidewalk. A short rope was dragging from his neck. Occasionally he trod upon the end of it and stumbled.
He stopped opposite the child, and the two regarded each other. The dog hesitated for a moment, but presently he made some little advances with his tail. The child put out his hand and called him. In an apologetic manner the dog came close, and the two had an interchange of friendly pattings and waggles. The dog became more enthusiastic with each moment of the interview, until with his gleeful caperings he threatened to overturn the child. Whereupon the child lifted his hand and struck the dog a blow upon the head.
This thing seemed to overpower and astonish the little dark-brown dog, and wounded him to the heart. He sank down in despair at the child's feet. When the blow was repeated, together with an admonition in childish sentences, he turned over upon his back, and held his paws in a peculiar manner. At the same time with his ears and his eyes he offered a small prayer to the child.
He looked so comical on his back, and holding his paws peculiarly, that the child was greatly amused and gave him little taps repeatedly, to keep him so. But the little dark-brown dog took this chastisement in the most serious way, and no doubt considered that he had committed some grave crime, for he wriggled contritely and showed his repentance in every way that was in his power. He pleaded with the child and petitioned him, and offered more prayers.
At last the child grew weary of this amusement and turned toward home. The dog was praying at the time. He lay on his back and turned his eyes upon the retreating form.
Presently he struggled to his feet and started after the child. The latter wandered in a perfunctory way toward his home, stopping at times to investigate various matters. During one of these pauses he discovered the little dark-brown dog who was following him with the air of a footpad.
The child beat his pursuer with a small stick he had found. The dog lay down and prayed until the child had finished, and resumed his journey. Then he scrambled erect and took up the pursuit again.
On the way to his home the child turned many times and beat the dog, proclaiming with childish gestures that he held him in contempt as an unimportant dog, with no value save for a moment. For being this quality of animal the dog apologized and eloquently expressed regret, but he continued stealthily to follow the child. His manner grew so very guilty that he slunk like an assassin.
When the child reached his door-step, the dog was industriously ambling a few yards in the rear. He became so agitated with shame when he again confronted the child that he forgot the dragging rope. He tripped upon it and fell forward.
The child sat down on the step and the two had another interview. During it the dog greatly exerted himself to please the child. He performed a few gambols with such abandon that the child suddenly saw him to be a valuable thing. He made a swift, avaricious charge and seized the rope.
He dragged his captive into a hall and up many long stairways in a dark tenement. The dog made willing efforts, but he could not hobble very skilfully up the stairs because he was very small and soft, and at last the pace of the engrossed child grew so energetic that the dog became panic-stricken. In his mind he was being dragged toward a grim unknown. His eyes grew wild with the terror of it. He began to wiggle his head frantically and to brace his legs.
The child redoubled his exertions. They had a battle on the stairs. The child was victorious because he was completely absorbed in his purpose, and because the dog was very small. He dragged his acquirement to the door of his home, and finally with triumph across the threshold.
No one was in. The child sat down on the floor and made overtures to the dog. These the dog instantly accepted. He beamed with affection upon his new friend. In a short time they were firm and abiding comrades.
When the child's family appeared, they made a great row. The dog was examined and commented upon and called names. Scorn was leveled at him from all eyes, so that he became much embarrassed and drooped like a scorched plant. But the child went sturdily to the center of the floor, and, at the top of his voice, championed the dog. It happened that he was roaring protestations, with his arms clasped about the dog's neck, when the father of the family came in from work.
The parent demanded to know what the blazes they were making the kid howl for. It was explained in many words that the infernal kid wanted to introduce a disreputable dog into the family.
A family council was held. On this depended the dog's fate, but he in no way heeded, being busily engaged in chewing the end of the child's dress.
The affair was quickly ended. The father of the family, it appears, was in a particularly savage temper that evening, and when he perceived that it would amaze and anger everybody if such a dog were allowed to remain, he decided that it should be so. The child, crying softly, took his friend off to a retired part of the room to hobnob with him, while the father quelled a fierce rebellion of his wife. So it came to pass that the dog was a member of the household.
He and the child were associated together at all times save when the child slept. The child became a guardian and a friend. If the large folk kicked the dog and threw things at him, the child made loud and violent objections. Once when the child had run, protesting loudly, with tears raining down his face and his arms outstretched, to protect his friend, he had been struck in the head with a very large saucepan from the hand of his father, enraged at some seeming lack of courtesy in the dog. Ever after, the family were careful how they threw things at the dog. Moreover, the latter grew very skilful in avoiding missiles and feet. In a small room containing a stove, a table, a bureau and some chairs, he would display strategic ability of a high order, dodging, feinting and scuttling about among the furniture. He could force three or four people armed with brooms, sticks and handfuls of coal, to use all their ingenuity to get in a blow. And even when they did, it was seldom that they could do him a serious injury or leave any imprint.
But when the child was present, these scenes did not occur. It came to be recognized that if the dog was molested, the child would burst into sobs, and as the child, when started, was very riotous and practically unquenchable, the dog had therein a safeguard.
However, the child could not always be near. At night, when he was asleep, his dark-brown friend would raise from some black corner a wild, wailful cry, a song of infinite lowliness and despair, that would go shuddering and sobbing among the buildings of the block and cause people to swear. At these times the singer would often be chased all over the kitchen and hit with a great variety of articles.
Sometimes, too, the child himself used to beat the dog, although it is not known that he ever had what could be truly called a just cause. The dog always accepted these thrashings with an air of admitted guilt. He was too much of a dog to try to look to be a martyr or to plot revenge. He received the blows with deep humility, and furthermore he forgave his friend the moment the child had finished, and was ready to caress the child's hand with his little red tongue.
When misfortune came upon the child, and his troubles overwhelmed him, he would often crawl under the table and lay his small distressed head on the dog's back. The dog was ever sympathetic. It is not to be supposed that at such times he took occasion to refer to the unjust beatings his friend, when provoked, had administered to him.
He did not achieve any notable degree of intimacy with the other members of the family. He had no confidence in them, and the fear that he would express at their casual approach often exasperated them exceedingly. They used to gain a certain satisfaction in underfeeding him, but finally his friend the child grew to watch the matter with some care, and when he forgot it, the dog was often successful in secret for himself.
So the dog prospered. He developed a large bark, which came wondrously from such a small rug of a dog. He ceased to howl persistently at night. Sometimes, indeed, in his sleep, he would utter little yells, as from pain, but that occurred, no doubt, when in his dreams he encountered huge flaming dogs who threatened him direfully.
His devotion to the child grew until it was a sublime thing. He wagged at his approach; he sank down in despair at his departure. He could detect the sound of the child's step among all the noises of the neighborhood. It was like a calling voice to him.
The scene of their companionship was a kingdom governed by this terrible potentate, the child; but neither criticism nor rebellion ever lived for an instant in the heart of the one subject. Down in the mystic, hidden fields of his little dog-soul bloomed flowers of love and fidelity and perfect faith.
The child was in the habit of going on many expeditions to observe strange things in the vicinity. On these occasions his friend usually jogged aimfully along behind. Perhaps, though, he went ahead. This necessitated his turning around every quarter-minute to make sure the child was coming. He was filled with a large idea of the importance of these journeys. He would carry himself with such an air! He was proud to be the retainer of so great a monarch.
One day, however, the father of the family got quite exceptionally drunk. He came home and held carnival with the cooking utensils, the furniture and his wife. He was in the midst of this recreation when the child, followed by the dark-brown dog, entered the room. They were returning from their voyages.
The child's practised eye instantly noted his father's state. He dived under the table, where experience had taught him was a rather safe place. The dog, lacking skill in such matters, was, of course, unaware of the true condition of affairs. He looked with interested eyes at his friend's sudden dive. He interpreted it to mean: Joyous gambol. He started to patter across the floor to join him. He was the picture of a little dark-brown dog en route to a friend.
The head of the family saw him at this moment. He gave a huge howl of joy, and knocked the dog down with a heavy coffee-pot. The dog, yelling in supreme astonishment and fear, writhed to his feet and ran for cover. The man kicked out with a ponderous foot. It caused the dog to swerve as if caught in a tide. A second blow of the coffee-pot laid him upon the floor.
Here the child, uttering loud cries, came valiantly forth like a knight. The father of the family paid no attention to these calls of the child, but advanced with glee upon the dog. Upon being knocked down twice in swift succession, the latter apparently gave up all hope of escape. He rolled over on his back and held his paws in a peculiar manner. At the same time with his eyes and his ears he offered up a small prayer.
But the father was in a mood for having fun, and it occurred to him that it would be a fine thing to throw the dog out of the window. So he reached down and grabbing the animal by a leg, lifted him, squirming, up. He swung him two or three times hilariously about his head, and then flung him with great accuracy through the window.
The soaring dog created a surprise in the block. A woman watering plants in an opposite window gave an involuntary shout and dropped a flower-pot. A man in another window leaned perilously out to watch the flight of the dog. A woman, who had been hanging out clothes in a yard, began to caper wildly. Her mouth was filled with clothes-pins, but her arms gave vent to a sort of exclamation. In appearance she was like a gagged prisoner. Children ran whooping.
The dark-brown body crashed in a heap on the roof of a shed five stories below. From thence it rolled to the pavement of an alleyway.
The child in the room far above burst into a long, dirgelike cry, and toddled hastily out of the room. It took him a long time to reach the alley, because his size compelled him to go downstairs backward, one step at a time, and holding with both hands to the step above.
When they came for him later, they found him seated by the body of his dark-brown friend.
cobbles (noun): the streets (British slang)
indistinctness (noun): the state of being unrecognizable
air (noun): appearance
capering (noun): playful movement
blow (noun): a forceful hit or punch
astonish (verb): to greatly surprise
admonition (noun): warning
chastisement (noun): punishment
contritely (adverb): with guilt
latter (noun): the one mentioned last
perfunctory (adjective): quick and careless
eloquently (adverb): in fine form
slink (verb): to move in a hunched manner (due to shame or guilt)
amble (verb): to move slowly
eloquently (adverb): in fine form
gambol (noun): a playful jump
avaricious (adjective): hopeful of achieving gain
tenement (noun): apartment building
scorched (adjective): overheated; burned
hobnob (verb): to hang out with socially
quell (verb): to end forcefully
ingenuity (noun): cleverness
unquenchable (adjective): unable to end
exasperate (verb): to cause irritation or anger
sublime (adjective): a much better version
potentate (noun): a powerful figure
valiantly (adverb): with great honour
perilously (adverb): unsafely
dirge like (adjective): full of sadness
indistinctness (noun): the state of being unrecognizable
air (noun): appearance
capering (noun): playful movement
blow (noun): a forceful hit or punch
astonish (verb): to greatly surprise
admonition (noun): warning
chastisement (noun): punishment
contritely (adverb): with guilt
latter (noun): the one mentioned last
perfunctory (adjective): quick and careless
eloquently (adverb): in fine form
slink (verb): to move in a hunched manner (due to shame or guilt)
amble (verb): to move slowly
eloquently (adverb): in fine form
gambol (noun): a playful jump
avaricious (adjective): hopeful of achieving gain
tenement (noun): apartment building
scorched (adjective): overheated; burned
hobnob (verb): to hang out with socially
quell (verb): to end forcefully
ingenuity (noun): cleverness
unquenchable (adjective): unable to end
exasperate (verb): to cause irritation or anger
sublime (adjective): a much better version
potentate (noun): a powerful figure
valiantly (adverb): with great honour
perilously (adverb): unsafely
dirge like (adjective): full of sadness
A Dark Brown Dog
A short story by Stephen Crane
A child was standing on a street-corner. He leaned with one shoulder against a high board-fence and swayed the other to and fro, the while kicking carelessly at the gravel.
Sunshine beat upon the cobbles, and a lazy summer wind raised yellow dust which trailed in clouds down the avenue. Clattering trucks moved with indistinctness through it. The child stood dreamily gazing.
After a time, a little dark-brown dog came trotting with an intent air down the sidewalk. A short rope was dragging from his neck. Occasionally he trod upon the end of it and stumbled.
He stopped opposite the child, and the two regarded each other. The dog hesitated for a moment, but presently he made some little advances with his tail. The child put out his hand and called him. In an apologetic manner the dog came close, and the two had an interchange of friendly pattings and waggles. The dog became more enthusiastic with each moment of the interview, until with his gleeful caperings he threatened to overturn the child. Whereupon the child lifted his hand and struck the dog a blow upon the head.
This thing seemed to overpower and astonish the little dark-brown dog, and wounded him to the heart. He sank down in despair at the child's feet. When the blow was repeated, together with an admonition in childish sentences, he turned over upon his back, and held his paws in a peculiar manner. At the same time with his ears and his eyes he offered a small prayer to the child.
He looked so comical on his back, and holding his paws peculiarly, that the child was greatly amused and gave him little taps repeatedly, to keep him so. But the little dark-brown dog took this chastisement in the most serious way, and no doubt considered that he had committed some grave crime, for he wriggled contritely and showed his repentance in every way that was in his power. He pleaded with the child and petitioned him, and offered more prayers.
At last the child grew weary of this amusement and turned toward home. The dog was praying at the time. He lay on his back and turned his eyes upon the retreating form.
Presently he struggled to his feet and started after the child. The latter wandered in a perfunctory way toward his home, stopping at times to investigate various matters. During one of these pauses he discovered the little dark-brown dog who was following him with the air of a footpad.
The child beat his pursuer with a small stick he had found. The dog lay down and prayed until the child had finished, and resumed his journey. Then he scrambled erect and took up the pursuit again.
On the way to his home the child turned many times and beat the dog, proclaiming with childish gestures that he held him in contempt as an unimportant dog, with no value save for a moment. For being this quality of animal the dog apologized and eloquently expressed regret, but he continued stealthily to follow the child. His manner grew so very guilty that he slunk like an assassin.
When the child reached his door-step, the dog was industriously ambling a few yards in the rear. He became so agitated with shame when he again confronted the child that he forgot the dragging rope. He tripped upon it and fell forward.
The child sat down on the step and the two had another interview. During it the dog greatly exerted himself to please the child. He performed a few gambols with such abandon that the child suddenly saw him to be a valuable thing. He made a swift, avaricious charge and seized the rope.
He dragged his captive into a hall and up many long stairways in a dark tenement. The dog made willing efforts, but he could not hobble very skilfully up the stairs because he was very small and soft, and at last the pace of the engrossed child grew so energetic that the dog became panic-stricken. In his mind he was being dragged toward a grim unknown. His eyes grew wild with the terror of it. He began to wiggle his head frantically and to brace his legs.
The child redoubled his exertions. They had a battle on the stairs. The child was victorious because he was completely absorbed in his purpose, and because the dog was very small. He dragged his acquirement to the door of his home, and finally with triumph across the threshold.
No one was in. The child sat down on the floor and made overtures to the dog. These the dog instantly accepted. He beamed with affection upon his new friend. In a short time they were firm and abiding comrades.
When the child's family appeared, they made a great row. The dog was examined and commented upon and called names. Scorn was leveled at him from all eyes, so that he became much embarrassed and drooped like a scorched plant. But the child went sturdily to the center of the floor, and, at the top of his voice, championed the dog. It happened that he was roaring protestations, with his arms clasped about the dog's neck, when the father of the family came in from work.
The parent demanded to know what the blazes they were making the kid howl for. It was explained in many words that the infernal kid wanted to introduce a disreputable dog into the family.
A family council was held. On this depended the dog's fate, but he in no way heeded, being busily engaged in chewing the end of the child's dress.
The affair was quickly ended. The father of the family, it appears, was in a particularly savage temper that evening, and when he perceived that it would amaze and anger everybody if such a dog were allowed to remain, he decided that it should be so. The child, crying softly, took his friend off to a retired part of the room to hobnob with him, while the father quelled a fierce rebellion of his wife. So it came to pass that the dog was a member of the household.
He and the child were associated together at all times save when the child slept. The child became a guardian and a friend. If the large folk kicked the dog and threw things at him, the child made loud and violent objections. Once when the child had run, protesting loudly, with tears raining down his face and his arms outstretched, to protect his friend, he had been struck in the head with a very large saucepan from the hand of his father, enraged at some seeming lack of courtesy in the dog. Ever after, the family were careful how they threw things at the dog. Moreover, the latter grew very skilful in avoiding missiles and feet. In a small room containing a stove, a table, a bureau and some chairs, he would display strategic ability of a high order, dodging, feinting and scuttling about among the furniture. He could force three or four people armed with brooms, sticks and handfuls of coal, to use all their ingenuity to get in a blow. And even when they did, it was seldom that they could do him a serious injury or leave any imprint.
But when the child was present, these scenes did not occur. It came to be recognized that if the dog was molested, the child would burst into sobs, and as the child, when started, was very riotous and practically unquenchable, the dog had therein a safeguard.
However, the child could not always be near. At night, when he was asleep, his dark-brown friend would raise from some black corner a wild, wailful cry, a song of infinite lowliness and despair, that would go shuddering and sobbing among the buildings of the block and cause people to swear. At these times the singer would often be chased all over the kitchen and hit with a great variety of articles.
Sometimes, too, the child himself used to beat the dog, although it is not known that he ever had what could be truly called a just cause. The dog always accepted these thrashings with an air of admitted guilt. He was too much of a dog to try to look to be a martyr or to plot revenge. He received the blows with deep humility, and furthermore he forgave his friend the moment the child had finished, and was ready to caress the child's hand with his little red tongue.
When misfortune came upon the child, and his troubles overwhelmed him, he would often crawl under the table and lay his small distressed head on the dog's back. The dog was ever sympathetic. It is not to be supposed that at such times he took occasion to refer to the unjust beatings his friend, when provoked, had administered to him.
He did not achieve any notable degree of intimacy with the other members of the family. He had no confidence in them, and the fear that he would express at their casual approach often exasperated them exceedingly. They used to gain a certain satisfaction in underfeeding him, but finally his friend the child grew to watch the matter with some care, and when he forgot it, the dog was often successful in secret for himself.
So the dog prospered. He developed a large bark, which came wondrously from such a small rug of a dog. He ceased to howl persistently at night. Sometimes, indeed, in his sleep, he would utter little yells, as from pain, but that occurred, no doubt, when in his dreams he encountered huge flaming dogs who threatened him direfully.
His devotion to the child grew until it was a sublime thing. He wagged at his approach; he sank down in despair at his departure. He could detect the sound of the child's step among all the noises of the neighborhood. It was like a calling voice to him.
The scene of their companionship was a kingdom governed by this terrible potentate, the child; but neither criticism nor rebellion ever lived for an instant in the heart of the one subject. Down in the mystic, hidden fields of his little dog-soul bloomed flowers of love and fidelity and perfect faith.
The child was in the habit of going on many expeditions to observe strange things in the vicinity. On these occasions his friend usually jogged aimfully along behind. Perhaps, though, he went ahead. This necessitated his turning around every quarter-minute to make sure the child was coming. He was filled with a large idea of the importance of these journeys. He would carry himself with such an air! He was proud to be the retainer of so great a monarch.
One day, however, the father of the family got quite exceptionally drunk. He came home and held carnival with the cooking utensils, the furniture and his wife. He was in the midst of this recreation when the child, followed by the dark-brown dog, entered the room. They were returning from their voyages.
The child's practised eye instantly noted his father's state. He dived under the table, where experience had taught him was a rather safe place. The dog, lacking skill in such matters, was, of course, unaware of the true condition of affairs. He looked with interested eyes at his friend's sudden dive. He interpreted it to mean: Joyous gambol. He started to patter across the floor to join him. He was the picture of a little dark-brown dog en route to a friend.
The head of the family saw him at this moment. He gave a huge howl of joy, and knocked the dog down with a heavy coffee-pot. The dog, yelling in supreme astonishment and fear, writhed to his feet and ran for cover. The man kicked out with a ponderous foot. It caused the dog to swerve as if caught in a tide. A second blow of the coffee-pot laid him upon the floor.
Here the child, uttering loud cries, came valiantly forth like a knight. The father of the family paid no attention to these calls of the child, but advanced with glee upon the dog. Upon being knocked down twice in swift succession, the latter apparently gave up all hope of escape. He rolled over on his back and held his paws in a peculiar manner. At the same time with his eyes and his ears he offered up a small prayer.
But the father was in a mood for having fun, and it occurred to him that it would be a fine thing to throw the dog out of the window. So he reached down and grabbing the animal by a leg, lifted him, squirming, up. He swung him two or three times hilariously about his head, and then flung him with great accuracy through the window.
The soaring dog created a surprise in the block. A woman watering plants in an opposite window gave an involuntary shout and dropped a flower-pot. A man in another window leaned perilously out to watch the flight of the dog. A woman, who had been hanging out clothes in a yard, began to caper wildly. Her mouth was filled with clothes-pins, but her arms gave vent to a sort of exclamation. In appearance she was like a gagged prisoner. Children ran whooping.
The dark-brown body crashed in a heap on the roof of a shed five stories below. From thence it rolled to the pavement of an alleyway.
The child in the room far above burst into a long, dirgelike cry, and toddled hastily out of the room. It took him a long time to reach the alley, because his size compelled him to go downstairs backward, one step at a time, and holding with both hands to the step above.
When they came for him later, they found him seated by the body of his dark-brown friend.
cobbles (noun): the streets (British slang)
indistinctness (noun): the state of being unrecognizable
air (noun): appearance
capering (noun): playful movement
blow (noun): a forceful hit or punch
astonish (verb): to greatly surprise
admonition (noun): warning
chastisement (noun): punishment
contritely (adverb): with guilt
latter (noun): the one mentioned last
perfunctory (adjective): quick and careless
eloquently (adverb): in fine form
slink (verb): to move in a hunched manner (due to shame or guilt)
amble (verb): to move slowly
eloquently (adverb): in fine form
gambol (noun): a playful jump
avaricious (adjective): hopeful of achieving gain
tenement (noun): apartment building
scorched (adjective): overheated; burned
hobnob (verb): to hang out with socially
quell (verb): to end forcefully
ingenuity (noun): cleverness
unquenchable (adjective): unable to end
exasperate (verb): to cause irritation or anger
sublime (adjective): a much better version
potentate (noun): a powerful figure
valiantly (adverb): with great honour
perilously (adverb): unsafely
dirge like (adjective): full of sadness
indistinctness (noun): the state of being unrecognizable
air (noun): appearance
capering (noun): playful movement
blow (noun): a forceful hit or punch
astonish (verb): to greatly surprise
admonition (noun): warning
chastisement (noun): punishment
contritely (adverb): with guilt
latter (noun): the one mentioned last
perfunctory (adjective): quick and careless
eloquently (adverb): in fine form
slink (verb): to move in a hunched manner (due to shame or guilt)
amble (verb): to move slowly
eloquently (adverb): in fine form
gambol (noun): a playful jump
avaricious (adjective): hopeful of achieving gain
tenement (noun): apartment building
scorched (adjective): overheated; burned
hobnob (verb): to hang out with socially
quell (verb): to end forcefully
ingenuity (noun): cleverness
unquenchable (adjective): unable to end
exasperate (verb): to cause irritation or anger
sublime (adjective): a much better version
potentate (noun): a powerful figure
valiantly (adverb): with great honour
perilously (adverb): unsafely
dirge like (adjective): full of sadness
A Dark Brown Dog
A short story by Stephen Crane
A child was standing on a street-corner. He leaned with one shoulder against a high board-fence and swayed the other to and fro, the while kicking carelessly at the gravel.
Sunshine beat upon the cobbles, and a lazy summer wind raised yellow dust which trailed in clouds down the avenue. Clattering trucks moved with indistinctness through it. The child stood dreamily gazing.
After a time, a little dark-brown dog came trotting with an intent air down the sidewalk. A short rope was dragging from his neck. Occasionally he trod upon the end of it and stumbled.
He stopped opposite the child, and the two regarded each other. The dog hesitated for a moment, but presently he made some little advances with his tail. The child put out his hand and called him. In an apologetic manner the dog came close, and the two had an interchange of friendly pattings and waggles. The dog became more enthusiastic with each moment of the interview, until with his gleeful caperings he threatened to overturn the child. Whereupon the child lifted his hand and struck the dog a blow upon the head.
This thing seemed to overpower and astonish the little dark-brown dog, and wounded him to the heart. He sank down in despair at the child's feet. When the blow was repeated, together with an admonition in childish sentences, he turned over upon his back, and held his paws in a peculiar manner. At the same time with his ears and his eyes he offered a small prayer to the child.
He looked so comical on his back, and holding his paws peculiarly, that the child was greatly amused and gave him little taps repeatedly, to keep him so. But the little dark-brown dog took this chastisement in the most serious way, and no doubt considered that he had committed some grave crime, for he wriggled contritely and showed his repentance in every way that was in his power. He pleaded with the child and petitioned him, and offered more prayers.
At last the child grew weary of this amusement and turned toward home. The dog was praying at the time. He lay on his back and turned his eyes upon the retreating form.
Presently he struggled to his feet and started after the child. The latter wandered in a perfunctory way toward his home, stopping at times to investigate various matters. During one of these pauses he discovered the little dark-brown dog who was following him with the air of a footpad.
The child beat his pursuer with a small stick he had found. The dog lay down and prayed until the child had finished, and resumed his journey. Then he scrambled erect and took up the pursuit again.
On the way to his home the child turned many times and beat the dog, proclaiming with childish gestures that he held him in contempt as an unimportant dog, with no value save for a moment. For being this quality of animal the dog apologized and eloquently expressed regret, but he continued stealthily to follow the child. His manner grew so very guilty that he slunk like an assassin.
When the child reached his door-step, the dog was industriously ambling a few yards in the rear. He became so agitated with shame when he again confronted the child that he forgot the dragging rope. He tripped upon it and fell forward.
The child sat down on the step and the two had another interview. During it the dog greatly exerted himself to please the child. He performed a few gambols with such abandon that the child suddenly saw him to be a valuable thing. He made a swift, avaricious charge and seized the rope.
He dragged his captive into a hall and up many long stairways in a dark tenement. The dog made willing efforts, but he could not hobble very skilfully up the stairs because he was very small and soft, and at last the pace of the engrossed child grew so energetic that the dog became panic-stricken. In his mind he was being dragged toward a grim unknown. His eyes grew wild with the terror of it. He began to wiggle his head frantically and to brace his legs.
The child redoubled his exertions. They had a battle on the stairs. The child was victorious because he was completely absorbed in his purpose, and because the dog was very small. He dragged his acquirement to the door of his home, and finally with triumph across the threshold.
No one was in. The child sat down on the floor and made overtures to the dog. These the dog instantly accepted. He beamed with affection upon his new friend. In a short time they were firm and abiding comrades.
When the child's family appeared, they made a great row. The dog was examined and commented upon and called names. Scorn was leveled at him from all eyes, so that he became much embarrassed and drooped like a scorched plant. But the child went sturdily to the center of the floor, and, at the top of his voice, championed the dog. It happened that he was roaring protestations, with his arms clasped about the dog's neck, when the father of the family came in from work.
The parent demanded to know what the blazes they were making the kid howl for. It was explained in many words that the infernal kid wanted to introduce a disreputable dog into the family.
A family council was held. On this depended the dog's fate, but he in no way heeded, being busily engaged in chewing the end of the child's dress.
The affair was quickly ended. The father of the family, it appears, was in a particularly savage temper that evening, and when he perceived that it would amaze and anger everybody if such a dog were allowed to remain, he decided that it should be so. The child, crying softly, took his friend off to a retired part of the room to hobnob with him, while the father quelled a fierce rebellion of his wife. So it came to pass that the dog was a member of the household.
He and the child were associated together at all times save when the child slept. The child became a guardian and a friend. If the large folk kicked the dog and threw things at him, the child made loud and violent objections. Once when the child had run, protesting loudly, with tears raining down his face and his arms outstretched, to protect his friend, he had been struck in the head with a very large saucepan from the hand of his father, enraged at some seeming lack of courtesy in the dog. Ever after, the family were careful how they threw things at the dog. Moreover, the latter grew very skilful in avoiding missiles and feet. In a small room containing a stove, a table, a bureau and some chairs, he would display strategic ability of a high order, dodging, feinting and scuttling about among the furniture. He could force three or four people armed with brooms, sticks and handfuls of coal, to use all their ingenuity to get in a blow. And even when they did, it was seldom that they could do him a serious injury or leave any imprint.
But when the child was present, these scenes did not occur. It came to be recognized that if the dog was molested, the child would burst into sobs, and as the child, when started, was very riotous and practically unquenchable, the dog had therein a safeguard.
However, the child could not always be near. At night, when he was asleep, his dark-brown friend would raise from some black corner a wild, wailful cry, a song of infinite lowliness and despair, that would go shuddering and sobbing among the buildings of the block and cause people to swear. At these times the singer would often be chased all over the kitchen and hit with a great variety of articles.
Sometimes, too, the child himself used to beat the dog, although it is not known that he ever had what could be truly called a just cause. The dog always accepted these thrashings with an air of admitted guilt. He was too much of a dog to try to look to be a martyr or to plot revenge. He received the blows with deep humility, and furthermore he forgave his friend the moment the child had finished, and was ready to caress the child's hand with his little red tongue.
When misfortune came upon the child, and his troubles overwhelmed him, he would often crawl under the table and lay his small distressed head on the dog's back. The dog was ever sympathetic. It is not to be supposed that at such times he took occasion to refer to the unjust beatings his friend, when provoked, had administered to him.
He did not achieve any notable degree of intimacy with the other members of the family. He had no confidence in them, and the fear that he would express at their casual approach often exasperated them exceedingly. They used to gain a certain satisfaction in underfeeding him, but finally his friend the child grew to watch the matter with some care, and when he forgot it, the dog was often successful in secret for himself.
So the dog prospered. He developed a large bark, which came wondrously from such a small rug of a dog. He ceased to howl persistently at night. Sometimes, indeed, in his sleep, he would utter little yells, as from pain, but that occurred, no doubt, when in his dreams he encountered huge flaming dogs who threatened him direfully.
His devotion to the child grew until it was a sublime thing. He wagged at his approach; he sank down in despair at his departure. He could detect the sound of the child's step among all the noises of the neighborhood. It was like a calling voice to him.
The scene of their companionship was a kingdom governed by this terrible potentate, the child; but neither criticism nor rebellion ever lived for an instant in the heart of the one subject. Down in the mystic, hidden fields of his little dog-soul bloomed flowers of love and fidelity and perfect faith.
The child was in the habit of going on many expeditions to observe strange things in the vicinity. On these occasions his friend usually jogged aimfully along behind. Perhaps, though, he went ahead. This necessitated his turning around every quarter-minute to make sure the child was coming. He was filled with a large idea of the importance of these journeys. He would carry himself with such an air! He was proud to be the retainer of so great a monarch.
One day, however, the father of the family got quite exceptionally drunk. He came home and held carnival with the cooking utensils, the furniture and his wife. He was in the midst of this recreation when the child, followed by the dark-brown dog, entered the room. They were returning from their voyages.
The child's practised eye instantly noted his father's state. He dived under the table, where experience had taught him was a rather safe place. The dog, lacking skill in such matters, was, of course, unaware of the true condition of affairs. He looked with interested eyes at his friend's sudden dive. He interpreted it to mean: Joyous gambol. He started to patter across the floor to join him. He was the picture of a little dark-brown dog en route to a friend.
The head of the family saw him at this moment. He gave a huge howl of joy, and knocked the dog down with a heavy coffee-pot. The dog, yelling in supreme astonishment and fear, writhed to his feet and ran for cover. The man kicked out with a ponderous foot. It caused the dog to swerve as if caught in a tide. A second blow of the coffee-pot laid him upon the floor.
Here the child, uttering loud cries, came valiantly forth like a knight. The father of the family paid no attention to these calls of the child, but advanced with glee upon the dog. Upon being knocked down twice in swift succession, the latter apparently gave up all hope of escape. He rolled over on his back and held his paws in a peculiar manner. At the same time with his eyes and his ears he offered up a small prayer.
But the father was in a mood for having fun, and it occurred to him that it would be a fine thing to throw the dog out of the window. So he reached down and grabbing the animal by a leg, lifted him, squirming, up. He swung him two or three times hilariously about his head, and then flung him with great accuracy through the window.
The soaring dog created a surprise in the block. A woman watering plants in an opposite window gave an involuntary shout and dropped a flower-pot. A man in another window leaned perilously out to watch the flight of the dog. A woman, who had been hanging out clothes in a yard, began to caper wildly. Her mouth was filled with clothes-pins, but her arms gave vent to a sort of exclamation. In appearance she was like a gagged prisoner. Children ran whooping.
The dark-brown body crashed in a heap on the roof of a shed five stories below. From thence it rolled to the pavement of an alleyway.
The child in the room far above burst into a long, dirgelike cry, and toddled hastily out of the room. It took him a long time to reach the alley, because his size compelled him to go downstairs backward, one step at a time, and holding with both hands to the step above.
When they came for him later, they found him seated by the body of his dark-brown friend.
cobbles (noun): the streets (British slang)
indistinctness (noun): the state of being unrecognizable
air (noun): appearance
capering (noun): playful movement
blow (noun): a forceful hit or punch
astonish (verb): to greatly surprise
admonition (noun): warning
chastisement (noun): punishment
contritely (adverb): with guilt
latter (noun): the one mentioned last
perfunctory (adjective): quick and careless
eloquently (adverb): in fine form
slink (verb): to move in a hunched manner (due to shame or guilt)
amble (verb): to move slowly
eloquently (adverb): in fine form
gambol (noun): a playful jump
avaricious (adjective): hopeful of achieving gain
tenement (noun): apartment building
scorched (adjective): overheated; burned
hobnob (verb): to hang out with socially
quell (verb): to end forcefully
ingenuity (noun): cleverness
unquenchable (adjective): unable to end
exasperate (verb): to cause irritation or anger
sublime (adjective): a much better version
potentate (noun): a powerful figure
valiantly (adverb): with great honour
perilously (adverb): unsafely
dirge like (adjective): full of sadness
indistinctness (noun): the state of being unrecognizable
air (noun): appearance
capering (noun): playful movement
blow (noun): a forceful hit or punch
astonish (verb): to greatly surprise
admonition (noun): warning
chastisement (noun): punishment
contritely (adverb): with guilt
latter (noun): the one mentioned last
perfunctory (adjective): quick and careless
eloquently (adverb): in fine form
slink (verb): to move in a hunched manner (due to shame or guilt)
amble (verb): to move slowly
eloquently (adverb): in fine form
gambol (noun): a playful jump
avaricious (adjective): hopeful of achieving gain
tenement (noun): apartment building
scorched (adjective): overheated; burned
hobnob (verb): to hang out with socially
quell (verb): to end forcefully
ingenuity (noun): cleverness
unquenchable (adjective): unable to end
exasperate (verb): to cause irritation or anger
sublime (adjective): a much better version
potentate (noun): a powerful figure
valiantly (adverb): with great honour
perilously (adverb): unsafely
dirge like (adjective): full of sadness
A short story by Stephen Crane
A child was standing on a street-corner. He leaned with one shoulder against a high board-fence and swayed the other to and fro, the while kicking carelessly at the gravel.
Sunshine beat upon the cobbles, and a lazy summer wind raised yellow dust which trailed in clouds down the avenue. Clattering trucks moved with indistinctness through it. The child stood dreamily gazing.
After a time, a little dark-brown dog came trotting with an intent air down the sidewalk. A short rope was dragging from his neck. Occasionally he trod upon the end of it and stumbled.
He stopped opposite the child, and the two regarded each other. The dog hesitated for a moment, but presently he made some little advances with his tail. The child put out his hand and called him. In an apologetic manner the dog came close, and the two had an interchange of friendly pattings and waggles. The dog became more enthusiastic with each moment of the interview, until with his gleeful caperings he threatened to overturn the child. Whereupon the child lifted his hand and struck the dog a blow upon the head.
This thing seemed to overpower and astonish the little dark-brown dog, and wounded him to the heart. He sank down in despair at the child's feet. When the blow was repeated, together with an admonition in childish sentences, he turned over upon his back, and held his paws in a peculiar manner. At the same time with his ears and his eyes he offered a small prayer to the child.
He looked so comical on his back, and holding his paws peculiarly, that the child was greatly amused and gave him little taps repeatedly, to keep him so. But the little dark-brown dog took this chastisement in the most serious way, and no doubt considered that he had committed some grave crime, for he wriggled contritely and showed his repentance in every way that was in his power. He pleaded with the child and petitioned him, and offered more prayers.
At last the child grew weary of this amusement and turned toward home. The dog was praying at the time. He lay on his back and turned his eyes upon the retreating form.
Presently he struggled to his feet and started after the child. The latter wandered in a perfunctory way toward his home, stopping at times to investigate various matters. During one of these pauses he discovered the little dark-brown dog who was following him with the air of a footpad.
The child beat his pursuer with a small stick he had found. The dog lay down and prayed until the child had finished, and resumed his journey. Then he scrambled erect and took up the pursuit again.
On the way to his home the child turned many times and beat the dog, proclaiming with childish gestures that he held him in contempt as an unimportant dog, with no value save for a moment. For being this quality of animal the dog apologized and eloquently expressed regret, but he continued stealthily to follow the child. His manner grew so very guilty that he slunk like an assassin.
When the child reached his door-step, the dog was industriously ambling a few yards in the rear. He became so agitated with shame when he again confronted the child that he forgot the dragging rope. He tripped upon it and fell forward.
The child sat down on the step and the two had another interview. During it the dog greatly exerted himself to please the child. He performed a few gambols with such abandon that the child suddenly saw him to be a valuable thing. He made a swift, avaricious charge and seized the rope.
He dragged his captive into a hall and up many long stairways in a dark tenement. The dog made willing efforts, but he could not hobble very skilfully up the stairs because he was very small and soft, and at last the pace of the engrossed child grew so energetic that the dog became panic-stricken. In his mind he was being dragged toward a grim unknown. His eyes grew wild with the terror of it. He began to wiggle his head frantically and to brace his legs.
The child redoubled his exertions. They had a battle on the stairs. The child was victorious because he was completely absorbed in his purpose, and because the dog was very small. He dragged his acquirement to the door of his home, and finally with triumph across the threshold.
No one was in. The child sat down on the floor and made overtures to the dog. These the dog instantly accepted. He beamed with affection upon his new friend. In a short time they were firm and abiding comrades.
When the child's family appeared, they made a great row. The dog was examined and commented upon and called names. Scorn was leveled at him from all eyes, so that he became much embarrassed and drooped like a scorched plant. But the child went sturdily to the center of the floor, and, at the top of his voice, championed the dog. It happened that he was roaring protestations, with his arms clasped about the dog's neck, when the father of the family came in from work.
The parent demanded to know what the blazes they were making the kid howl for. It was explained in many words that the infernal kid wanted to introduce a disreputable dog into the family.
A family council was held. On this depended the dog's fate, but he in no way heeded, being busily engaged in chewing the end of the child's dress.
The affair was quickly ended. The father of the family, it appears, was in a particularly savage temper that evening, and when he perceived that it would amaze and anger everybody if such a dog were allowed to remain, he decided that it should be so. The child, crying softly, took his friend off to a retired part of the room to hobnob with him, while the father quelled a fierce rebellion of his wife. So it came to pass that the dog was a member of the household.
He and the child were associated together at all times save when the child slept. The child became a guardian and a friend. If the large folk kicked the dog and threw things at him, the child made loud and violent objections. Once when the child had run, protesting loudly, with tears raining down his face and his arms outstretched, to protect his friend, he had been struck in the head with a very large saucepan from the hand of his father, enraged at some seeming lack of courtesy in the dog. Ever after, the family were careful how they threw things at the dog. Moreover, the latter grew very skilful in avoiding missiles and feet. In a small room containing a stove, a table, a bureau and some chairs, he would display strategic ability of a high order, dodging, feinting and scuttling about among the furniture. He could force three or four people armed with brooms, sticks and handfuls of coal, to use all their ingenuity to get in a blow. And even when they did, it was seldom that they could do him a serious injury or leave any imprint.
But when the child was present, these scenes did not occur. It came to be recognized that if the dog was molested, the child would burst into sobs, and as the child, when started, was very riotous and practically unquenchable, the dog had therein a safeguard.
However, the child could not always be near. At night, when he was asleep, his dark-brown friend would raise from some black corner a wild, wailful cry, a song of infinite lowliness and despair, that would go shuddering and sobbing among the buildings of the block and cause people to swear. At these times the singer would often be chased all over the kitchen and hit with a great variety of articles.
Sometimes, too, the child himself used to beat the dog, although it is not known that he ever had what could be truly called a just cause. The dog always accepted these thrashings with an air of admitted guilt. He was too much of a dog to try to look to be a martyr or to plot revenge. He received the blows with deep humility, and furthermore he forgave his friend the moment the child had finished, and was ready to caress the child's hand with his little red tongue.
When misfortune came upon the child, and his troubles overwhelmed him, he would often crawl under the table and lay his small distressed head on the dog's back. The dog was ever sympathetic. It is not to be supposed that at such times he took occasion to refer to the unjust beatings his friend, when provoked, had administered to him.
He did not achieve any notable degree of intimacy with the other members of the family. He had no confidence in them, and the fear that he would express at their casual approach often exasperated them exceedingly. They used to gain a certain satisfaction in underfeeding him, but finally his friend the child grew to watch the matter with some care, and when he forgot it, the dog was often successful in secret for himself.
So the dog prospered. He developed a large bark, which came wondrously from such a small rug of a dog. He ceased to howl persistently at night. Sometimes, indeed, in his sleep, he would utter little yells, as from pain, but that occurred, no doubt, when in his dreams he encountered huge flaming dogs who threatened him direfully.
His devotion to the child grew until it was a sublime thing. He wagged at his approach; he sank down in despair at his departure. He could detect the sound of the child's step among all the noises of the neighborhood. It was like a calling voice to him.
The scene of their companionship was a kingdom governed by this terrible potentate, the child; but neither criticism nor rebellion ever lived for an instant in the heart of the one subject. Down in the mystic, hidden fields of his little dog-soul bloomed flowers of love and fidelity and perfect faith.
The child was in the habit of going on many expeditions to observe strange things in the vicinity. On these occasions his friend usually jogged aimfully along behind. Perhaps, though, he went ahead. This necessitated his turning around every quarter-minute to make sure the child was coming. He was filled with a large idea of the importance of these journeys. He would carry himself with such an air! He was proud to be the retainer of so great a monarch.
One day, however, the father of the family got quite exceptionally drunk. He came home and held carnival with the cooking utensils, the furniture and his wife. He was in the midst of this recreation when the child, followed by the dark-brown dog, entered the room. They were returning from their voyages.
The child's practised eye instantly noted his father's state. He dived under the table, where experience had taught him was a rather safe place. The dog, lacking skill in such matters, was, of course, unaware of the true condition of affairs. He looked with interested eyes at his friend's sudden dive. He interpreted it to mean: Joyous gambol. He started to patter across the floor to join him. He was the picture of a little dark-brown dog en route to a friend.
The head of the family saw him at this moment. He gave a huge howl of joy, and knocked the dog down with a heavy coffee-pot. The dog, yelling in supreme astonishment and fear, writhed to his feet and ran for cover. The man kicked out with a ponderous foot. It caused the dog to swerve as if caught in a tide. A second blow of the coffee-pot laid him upon the floor.
Here the child, uttering loud cries, came valiantly forth like a knight. The father of the family paid no attention to these calls of the child, but advanced with glee upon the dog. Upon being knocked down twice in swift succession, the latter apparently gave up all hope of escape. He rolled over on his back and held his paws in a peculiar manner. At the same time with his eyes and his ears he offered up a small prayer.
But the father was in a mood for having fun, and it occurred to him that it would be a fine thing to throw the dog out of the window. So he reached down and grabbing the animal by a leg, lifted him, squirming, up. He swung him two or three times hilariously about his head, and then flung him with great accuracy through the window.
The soaring dog created a surprise in the block. A woman watering plants in an opposite window gave an involuntary shout and dropped a flower-pot. A man in another window leaned perilously out to watch the flight of the dog. A woman, who had been hanging out clothes in a yard, began to caper wildly. Her mouth was filled with clothes-pins, but her arms gave vent to a sort of exclamation. In appearance she was like a gagged prisoner. Children ran whooping.
The dark-brown body crashed in a heap on the roof of a shed five stories below. From thence it rolled to the pavement of an alleyway.
The child in the room far above burst into a long, dirgelike cry, and toddled hastily out of the room. It took him a long time to reach the alley, because his size compelled him to go downstairs backward, one step at a time, and holding with both hands to the step above.
When they came for him later, they found him seated by the body of his dark-brown friend.
cobbles (noun): the streets (British slang)
indistinctness (noun): the state of being unrecognizable
air (noun): appearance
capering (noun): playful movement
blow (noun): a forceful hit or punch
astonish (verb): to greatly surprise
admonition (noun): warning
chastisement (noun): punishment
contritely (adverb): with guilt
latter (noun): the one mentioned last
perfunctory (adjective): quick and careless
eloquently (adverb): in fine form
slink (verb): to move in a hunched manner (due to shame or guilt)
amble (verb): to move slowly
eloquently (adverb): in fine form
gambol (noun): a playful jump
avaricious (adjective): hopeful of achieving gain
tenement (noun): apartment building
scorched (adjective): overheated; burned
hobnob (verb): to hang out with socially
quell (verb): to end forcefully
ingenuity (noun): cleverness
unquenchable (adjective): unable to end
exasperate (verb): to cause irritation or anger
sublime (adjective): a much better version
potentate (noun): a powerful figure
valiantly (adverb): with great honour
perilously (adverb): unsafely
dirge like (adjective): full of sadness
1. what brother’s is name
your
2. is what address your
3. favourite is your food
what
4. is your what name
5. date the what today is
6. much how that shirt is
7. are how you
8. your what is surname
9. your postcode what is
10. your when birthday is
indistinctness (noun): the state of being unrecognizable
air (noun): appearance
capering (noun): playful movement
blow (noun): a forceful hit or punch
astonish (verb): to greatly surprise
admonition (noun): warning
chastisement (noun): punishment
contritely (adverb): with guilt
latter (noun): the one mentioned last
perfunctory (adjective): quick and careless
eloquently (adverb): in fine form
slink (verb): to move in a hunched manner (due to shame or guilt)
amble (verb): to move slowly
eloquently (adverb): in fine form
gambol (noun): a playful jump
avaricious (adjective): hopeful of achieving gain
tenement (noun): apartment building
scorched (adjective): overheated; burned
hobnob (verb): to hang out with socially
quell (verb): to end forcefully
ingenuity (noun): cleverness
unquenchable (adjective): unable to end
exasperate (verb): to cause irritation or anger
sublime (adjective): a much better version
potentate (noun): a powerful figure
valiantly (adverb): with great honour
perilously (adverb): unsafely
dirge like (adjective): full of sadness
Rearrange
the words in each sentence to make a question using verb ‘to be’
in the present simple tense.
Don’t forget to put a capital letter at the start of each sentence and a question mark at the end:
1. what brother’s is name
your2. is what address your3. favourite is your food
what4. is your what name5. date the what today is6. much how that shirt is7. are how you8. your what is surname9. your postcode what is10. your when birthday is
Add full stops to this text:
Hello,
I’m Jenny, Tim’s wife We have been married for almost eleven
years I met
Tim when we were both
at university I studied
Physics while Tim studied Business
Management We graduated
from Cardiff University in 1989,
and went to live in Birmingham We got married
in 1993 at Lincoln Cathedral I
took a one-year post-graduate teaching
course, then got a job teaching Science at Lincoln High School
We moved to
Nottingham in 1996 where Lisa
was born I remember that she was a very fat baby, but a happy one! My mum helped us
with looking after the baby in the first year, before she
had to go into the nursing home in Manchester She wanted
to move to a home in
Manchester because that is
where my two older sisters and
their families live We go
to visit often - when I
can get Tim to drive
us up there! I don’t drive I took some lessons when I was a student in Cardiff but I found driving on the roads quite frightening and gave up! Perhaps one day I will try
again
About
two years after we had Lisa, James was born He
was born at St.Patrick’s hospital in Nottingham It seems like it was only
last week I can’t believe he’s already at school
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