Advertisements
Advertisements
प्रश्न
Describe the various sights that one comes across in the meadows.
Advertisements
उत्तर
In the meadows, one comes across various beautiful sights. One is able to see butterflies sipping nectar from the flowers. One encounters a rabbit that suddenly hops in front of you, one is able to see dandelions transform from buds to flowers and seek the pleasure of seeing them flutter. Only in the meadows is it possible to see burrows, mounds, nests all placed nearly in the same area. The feeling of walking through the soft velvet like grass can only be understood by those who have been to the meadows.
APPEARS IN
संबंधित प्रश्न
1. In 1953, Hooper was a favoured young man. A big genuine grin civilized his highly competitive nature. Standing six-foot-one, he'd played on the university football team. He was already a hard-charging Zone Sales Manager for a chemical company. Everything was going for him.
2. Then, when he was driving home one autumn twilight, a car sped out in front of him without warning. Hooper was taken to the hospital with a subdural haemorrhage in the motor section of the brain, completely paralysing his left side.
3. One of Chuck's district managers drove Marcy to the hospital. Her husband couldn't talk; he could only breathe and see, and his vision was double. Marcy phoned a neighbour, asking him to put Duke in a kennel.
4. Hooper remained on the critical list for a month. After the fifth week some men from his company came to the hospital and told Hooper to take a year off. They would create a desk job for him at the headquarters.
5. About six weeks after the accident, the hospital put him in a wheelchair. Every day there was someone working his paralysed arm and leg followed by baths, exercise, a wheeled walker. However, Chuck didn't make much headway.
6. In March, they let him out of the hospital. After the excitement of homecoming wore off, Chuck hit a new low. At the hospital there had been other injured people, but now, each morning when Marcy quietly went to work, it was like a gate slamming down. Duke was still in the kennel, and Chuck was alone with his thoughts.
7. Finally, they decided to bring Duke home. Chuck said he wanted to be standing when Duke came in, so they stood him up. Duke's nails were long from four months' confinement, and when he spied Chuck he stood quivering like 5000 volts; then he let out a bellow, spun his long-nailed wheels, and launched himself across three metres of air. He was a 23-kilo missile of joy. He hit Chuck above the belt, causing him to fight to keep his balance.
8. Those who saw it said the dog knew instantly. He never jumped on Chuck again. From that moment, he took up a post beside his master's bed round the clock.
9. But even Duke's presence didn't reach Chuck. The once-iron muscles slacked on the rangy frame. Secretly, Marcy cried as she watched the big man's grin fade away. Severe face lines set in like cement as Chuck stared at the ceiling for hours, then out of the window, then at Duke.
10. When two fellows stare at each other day in, day out, and one can't move and the other can't talk, boredom sets in. Duke finally couldn't take it. From a motionless coil on the floor he'd spring to his feet, quivering with impatience.
11. "Ya-ruff"
12. "Lie down. Duke!"
13. Duke stalked to the bed, poked his pointed nose under Chuck's elbow and lifted. He nudged and needled and snorted.
14. "Go run around the house, Duke."
15. But Duke wouldn't. He'd lie down with a reproachful eye on Hooper. An hour later he would come over to the bed again and yap and poke. He wouldn't leave but just sit there.
16. One evening Chuck's good hand idly hooked the leash onto Duke's collar to hold him still. It was like lighting a fuse: Duke shimmied himself U-shaped in anticipation. Even Hooper can't explain his next move. He asked Marcy to help him to his feet. Duke pranced, Chuck fought for balance. With his good hand, he placed the leash in his left and folded the paralysed fingers over it, holding them there. Then he leaned forward. With Marcy supporting him by the elbow, he
moved his right leg out in front. Straightening his right leg caused the left foot to drag forward, alongside the right. It could be called a step.
17. Duke felt the sudden slack in the leash and pulled it taut. Chuck swayed forward again, broke the fall with his good right leg, then straightened. Thrice he did that, then collapsed into the wheelchair, exhausted.
18. Next day, the big dog started early; he charged around to Hooper's good side, jabbed his nose under the elbow and snapped his head up. The big man's good arm reached for the leash. With Hooper standing, the dog walked to the end of the leash and tugged steadily. Four so-called steps they took that day.
19. Leaning back against the pull, Hooper learned to keep his balance without Marcy at his elbow. Wednesday, he and Duke took five steps; Thursday, six steps; Friday, failure- two steps followed by exhaustion. But in two weeks they reached the front porch.
20. By mid-April neighbours saw a daily struggle in front of Marcy's house. Out on the sidewalk they saw the dog pull his leash taut then stand and wait. The man would drag himself abreast of the dog, then the dog would surge out to the end of the leash and wait again. The pair set daily goals; Monday, the sixth fence post, Tuesday, the seventh fence post, Wednesday ......
21. When Marcy saw what Duke could do for her husband, she told the doctor, who prescribed a course of physiotherapy with weights, pulleys and whirlpool baths and above all walking every day with Duke, on a limited, gradual scale.
22. By now neighbours on their street were watching the pattern of progress. On June 1, news spread that Hooper and Duke had made it to an intersection quite far away.
23. Soon, Duke began campaigning for two trips a day, and they lengthened the targets, one driveway at a time. Duke no longer waited at each step.
24. On January 4, Hooper made his big move. Without Duke, he walked the 200 metres from the clinic to the local branch office of his company. This had been one of the district offices under his jurisdiction as zone manager. The staff was amazed by the visit. But to Gordon Doule, the Manager, Chuck said, "Gordon, this isn't just a visit. Bring me up to date on what's happened, will you - -so I can get to work?" Doule gaped, "It'll just be an hour a day for a while," Hooper continued. "I'll use that empty desk in the warehouse. And I'll need a dictating machine. 16
25. Back in the company's headquarters, Chuck's move presented problems -- tough ones. When a man fights that hard for a comeback, who wants to tell him he can't handle his old job? On the other hand, what can you do with a salesman who can't move around, and can work only an hour a day? They didn't know that Hooper had already set his next objective: March 1, a full day's work.
26. Chuck hit the target, and after March 1, there was no time for the physiotherapy programme; he turned completely to Duke, who pulled him along the street faster and faster, increasing his stability and endurance. Sometimes, walking after dark, Hooper would trip and fall. Duke would stand still as a post while his master struggled to get up. It was as though the dog knew that his job was to get Chuck back on his feet.
27. Thirteen months from the moment he worked full days. Chuck Hooper was promoted to regional manager covering more than four states.
28. Chuck, Marcy and Duke moved house in March 1956. The people in the new suburb where the Hoopers bought a house didn't know the story of Chuck and Duke. All they knew was that their new neighbour walked like a struggling mechanical giant and that he was always pulled by a rampageous dog that acted as if he owned the man.
29. On the evening of October 12, 1957, the Hoopers had guests. Suddenly over the babble of voices, Chuck heard the screech of brakes outside. Instinctively, he looked for Duke.
30. They carried the big dog into the house. Marcy took one look at Duke's breathing, at his brown eyes with the stubbornness gone. "Phone the vet," she said. "Tell him, I'm bringing Duke." Several people jumped to lift the dog. "No, please," she said. And she picked up the big Duke, carried him gently to the car and drove him to the animal hospital.
31. Duke was drugged and he made it until 11o'clock the next morning, but his injuries were too severe.
32. People who knew the distance Chuck and Duke had come together, one fence post at a time, now watched the big man walk alone day after day. They wondered: how long will he keep it up? How far will he go today? Can he do it alone?
33. A few weeks ago, worded as if in special tribute to Duke, an order came through from the chemical company's headquarters: ".......... therefore, to advance our objectives step by step, Charles Hooper is appointed the Assistant National Sales Manager."
About the Author
William D. Ellis was born in Concord, Massachusetts. He began writing at the age of 12, on being urged by an elementary-school teacher who discerned his talent at an early age. Ellis's study of the history of Ohio provided him material that he eventually used as the foundation for a trilogy of novels: Bounty Lands, Jonathan Blair:Bounty Lands Lawyer, and The Brooks Legend. Each of his novels appeared on best-seller lists, and the trilogy itself eventually earned its author a Pulitzer Prize nomination. The most important recurring theme in his works is the triumph of survival.
1. I first met Private Quelch at the training depot. A man is liable to acquire in his firs week of Army life - together with his uniform, rifle and equipment- a nickname. Anyone who saw Private Quelch, lanky, stooping, frowning through horn-rimmed spectacles, understood why he was known as the Professor. Those who had any doubts on the subject lost them after five minutes' conversation with him.
2. I remember the first lesson we had in musketry. We stood in an attentive circle while a Sergeant, a man as dark and sun-dried as raisins, wearing North-West Frontier ribbons, described the mechanism of a service rifle.
3. "The muzzle velocity or speed at which the bullet leaves the rifle", he told us, "is
well over two thousand feet per second."
4. A voice interrupted. "Two thousand, four hundred and forty feet per second." It
was the Professor.
5. "That's right," the Sergeant said without enthusiasm, and went on lecturing. When he had finished, he asked us questions; and, perhaps in the hope of revenge, he turned with his questions again and again to the Professor. The only result was to enhance the Professor's glory. Technical definitions, the parts of a rifle, its use and care, he had them all by heart.
6. The Sergeant asked, "Have you had any training before?"
7. The Professor answered with a phrase that was to become familiar to all of us. "No, Sergeant. It's all a matter of intelligent reading."
8. That was our introduction to him. We soon learned more about him. He saw to that. He meant to get on, he told us. He had the brains. He was sure to get a commission, before long. As a first step, he meant to get a stripe.
9. In pursuit of his ambition he worked hard. We had to give him credit for that. He borrowed training manuals and stayed up late at nights reading them. He badgered the instructors with questions. He drilled with enthusiasm, and on route marches he was not only miraculously tireless but infuriated us all with his horrible heartiness. "What about a song, chaps?" is not greeted politely at the end of thirty miles. His salute at the pay table was a model to behold. When officers were in sight he would swing his skinny arms and march to the canteen like a Guardsman.
10. And day in and day out, he lectured to us in his droning, remorseless voice on every aspect of human knowledge. At first we had a certain respect for him, but soon we lived in terror of his approach. We tried to hit back at him with clumsy sarcasms and practical jokes. The Professor scarcely noticed; he was too busy working for his stripe.
11. Each time one of us made a mistake the Professor would publicly correct him. Whenever one of us shone, the Professor outshone him. When, after a hard morning's work of cleaning out our hut, we listened in silence to the Orderly Officer's praise, the Professor would break out with a ringing, dutifully beaming, "Thank you, sir!" And how superior, how condescending he was. It was always,
"Let me show you, fellow," or, "No, you'll ruin your rifle that way, old man."
12. We used to pride ourselves on aircraft recognition. Once, out for a walk, we heard the drone of a plane flying high overhead. None of us could even see it in the glare of the sun. Without even a glance upward the Professor announced, "That, of course, is a North American Harvard Trainer. It can be unmistakably identified by the harsh engine note, due to the high tip speed of the airscrew."
What could a gang of louts like us do with a man like that? 13. None of us will ever forget the
drowsy summer afternoon which was such a turning-point in the Professor's life.
14. We were sprawling contentedly on the warm grass while Corporal Turnbull was taking a lesson on the hand grenade.
15. Corporal Turnbull was a young man, but he was not a man to be trifled with. He had come back from Dunkirk with all his equipment correct and accounted for and his kitten in his pocket. He was
our hero, and we used to tell each other that he was so tough that you could hammer nails into him without his noticing it.
16. _"The outside of a grenade, as you can see," Corporal Turnbull was saying, "is divided up into a large number of fragments to assist segmentation"
17. "Forty-four"
18. "What's that?" The Corporal looked over his shoulder
19. "Forty-four segments." The Professor beamed at him.
20. The Corporal said nothing, but his brow tightened. He opened his mouth to
resume.
21. "And by the way, Corporal." We were all thunder-struck.
22. The Professor was speaking again. "Shouldn't you have started off with the five characteristics of the grenade? Our instructor at the other camp always used to do that, you know."
23. In the silence that followed a dark flush stained the tan of the Corporal's face. "Here," he said at last, "you give this lecture". As if afraid to say any more, he tossed the grenade to the Professor. Quite unabashed, Private Quelch climbed to his feet and with the attitude of a man coming into his birth-right gave us an unexceptionable lecture on the grenade.
24. The squad listened in a cowed, horrified kind of silence. Corporal Turnbull stood and watched, impassive, except for a searching intentness of gaze. When the lecture was finished he said, "Thank you, Private Quelch. Fall in with the others now." He did not speak again until we had fallen in and were waiting to be dismissed. Then he addressed us. 25. "As some of you may have heard," he began deliberately, "the platoon officer has asked me to nominate one of you for…." He paused and looked lingeringly up and down the ranks as if seeking final confirmation of decision.
26. So this was the great moment! Most of us could not help glancing at Private Quelch, who stood rigidly to attention and stared straight in front of him with an expression of self-conscious innocence.
27. ______"…..for permanent cookhouse duties, I've decided that Private Quelch is just the man for the job."
28. Of course, it was a joke for days afterwards; a joke and joy to all of us.
29. I remember, though.............
30. My friend Trower and I were talking about it a few days later. We were returning from the canteen to our own hut.
31. Through the open door, we could see the three cooks standing against the wall as if at bay; and from within came the monotonous beat of a familiar voice.
32. "Really. I must protest against this abominably unscientific and unhygienic method of peeling potatoes. I need to only draw your attention to the sheer waste of vitamin values.............."
33. We fled.
About the Author
Alexander Baron (1917-1999) has written many novels, including 'There's no Home',
' The Human Kind', 'Queen of the East', 'Seeing Life' and The How Life', along with
film scripts and television plays. He started life as an Asstt. Editor of The Tribune and
later edited the 'New Theater.' He served in the army during the Second World War.
Now read the story
- "Ma!" Mrs. Bramble looked up, beaming with a kind of amiable fat-headedness. A domestic creature, wrapped up in Bill, her husband, and Harold, her son. At the present moment only the latter was with her. He sat on the other side of the table, his lips gravely pursed and his eyes a trifle cloudy behind their spectacles. Before him on the red tablecloth lay an open book. His powerful brain was plainly busy.
- "Yes, dearie?"
- "Will you hear me?"
- Mrs. Bramble took the book.
- "Yes, mother will hear you, precious."
- A slight frown, marred the smoothness of Harold Bramble's brow. It jarred upon him, this habit of his mother's, of referring to herself in the third person, as if she were addressing a baby, instead of a young man of ten who had taken the spelling and dictation prize last term on his head.
- He cleared his throat and fixed his eyes upon the cut-glass hangings of the chandelier.
- "Be good, sweet maid," he began, with the toneless rapidity affected by youths of his age when reciting poetry…..
- "You do study so hard, dearie, you'll give yourself a headache. Why don't you take a nice walk by the river for half an hour, and come back nice and fresh?"
- The spectacled child considered the point for a moment gravely. Then nodding, he arranged his books in readiness for his return and went out. The front door closed with a decorous softness.
- It was a constant source of amazement to Mrs. Bramble that she should have brought such a prodigy as Harold into the world. Harold was so different from ordinary children, so devoted to his books, such a model of behaviour, so altogether admirable. The only drawback was, that his very 'perfection' had made necessary a series of evasions and even deliberate falsehoods, on the part of herself and her husband, highly distasteful to both. They were lovers of truth, but they had realized that there are times when truth must be sacrificed. At any cost, the facts concerning Mr. Bramble's profession must be kept from Harold.
- While he was a baby it had not mattered so much. But when he began to move about and take notice, Mrs. Bramble said to Mr. Bramble, "Bill, we must keep it from Harold." A little later, when the child had begun to show signs of being about to become a model of goodness and intelligence, and had already taken two prizes at the Sunday-school, the senior curate of the parish, meeting Mr. Bramble one morning, said nervously-for after all, it was a delicate subject to broach, "Er-Bramble, I think, on the whole, it would be as well to-er-keep it from Harold."
- And only the other day, Mrs. Bramble's brother, Major Percy Stokes, dropping in for a cup of tea, had said, "I hope you are keeping it from Harold. It is the least you can do", and had gone on to make one or two remarks about men of wrath which, considering that his cheek-bones were glistening with Mr. Bramble's buttered toast, were in poor taste. But Percy was like that. Enemies said that he liked the sound of his own voice.
- Certainly he was very persuasive. Mr. Bramble had fallen in with the suggestion without demur. In private life he was the mildest and most obliging of men, and always yielded to everybody. The very naming of Harold had caused a sacrifice on his part.
- When it was certain that he was about to become a father, he had expressed a desire that the child should be named John, if a boy, after Mr John L. Sullivan, or, if a girl, Marie, after Miss Marie Lloyd. But Mrs Bramble saying that Harold was such a sweet name, he had withdrawn his suggestions with the utmost goodhumour.
- Nobody could help liking this excellent man which made it all the greater pity that his walk in life was of such a nature that it simply had to be kept from Harold.
- He was a professional boxer. That was the trouble.
- Before the coming of Harold, he had been proud of being a professional boxer. His ability to paste his fellow-man in the eye while apparently meditating an attack on his stomach, and vice versa, had filled him with that genial glow of self-satisfaction which comes to philanthropists and other benefactors of the species. It had seemed to him a thing on which to congratulate himself that of all London's teeming millions there was not a man, weighing eight stone four, whom he could not overcome in a twenty-round contest. He was delighted to be the possessor of a left hook which had won the approval of the newspapers.
- And then Harold had come into his life, and changed him into a furtive practitioner of shady deeds. Before, he had gone about the world with a match-box full of press-notices, which he would extract with a pin and read to casual acquaintances. Now, he quailed at the sight of his name in print, so thoroughly had he become imbued with the necessity of keeping it from Harold.
- With an ordinary boy it would not have mattered. However, Harold was different. Secretly proud of him as they were, both Bill and his wife were a little afraid of their wonderful child. The fact was, as Bill himself put it, Harold was showing a bit too much class for them. He had formed a corner in brains, as far as the Bramble family was concerned. They had come to regard him as being of a superior order.
- Yet Harold, defying the laws of heredity, had run to intellect as his father had run to muscle. He had learned to read and write with amazing quickness. He sang in the choir.
- And now, at the age of ten, a pupil at a local private school where they wore mortar boards and generally comported themselves like young dons, he had already won a prize for spelling and dictation. You simply couldn't take a boy like that aside and tell him that the father whom he believed to be a commercial traveller was affectionately known to a large section of the inhabitants of London, as "Young Porky." There were no two ways about it. You had to keep it from him.
- So, Harold grew in stature and intelligence, without a suspicion of the real identity of the square-jawed man with the irregularly-shaped nose who came and went mysteriously in their semi-detached, red-brick home. He was a self-centred child, and, accepting the commercial traveller fiction, dismissed the subject from his mind and busied himself with things of more moment. And time slipped by.
- Mrs. Bramble, left alone, resumed work on the sock which she was darning. For the first time since Harold had reached years of intelligence she was easy in her mind about the future. A week from tonight would see the end of all her anxieties. On that day Bill would fight his last fight, the twenty-round contest with that American Murphy at the National Sporting Club for which he was now training at the White Hart down the road. He had promised that it would be the last. He was getting on. He was thirty-one, and he said himself that he would have to be chucking the game before it chucked him. His idea was to retire from active work and try for a job as an instructor at one of these big schools or colleges. He had a splendid record for respectability and sobriety and all the other qualities which headmasters demanded in those who taught their young gentlemen to box and several of his friends who had obtained similar posts described the job in question as extremely soft. So that it seemed to Mrs. Bramble, that all might now be considered well. She smiled happily to herself as she darned her sock.
- She was interrupted in her meditations by a knock at the front door. She put down her sock and listened.
- Martha, the general, pattered along the passage, and then there came the sound of voices speaking in an undertone. Footsteps made themselves heard in the passage. The door opened. The head and shoulders of Major Percy Stokes insinuated themselves into the room.
- The Major cocked a mild blue eye at her.
- "Harold anywhere about?"
- "He's gone out for a nice walk. Whatever brings you here, Percy, so late? "
- Percy made no answer. He withdrew his head.
- He then reappeared, this time in his entirety, and remained holding the door open. More footsteps in the passage, and through the doorway in a sideways fashion suggestive of a diffident crab, came a short, sturdy, red-headed man with a broken nose and a propitiatory smile, at the sight of whom Mrs. Bramble, dropping her sock, rose as if propelled by powerful machinery, and exclaimed, "Bill!"
- Mr. Bramble - for it was he - scratched his head, grinned feebly, and looked for assistance to the Major.
- "The scales have fallen from his eyes."
- "What scales?" demanded Mrs. Bramble, a literal-minded woman. "And what are you doing here, Bill, when you ought to be at the White Hart, training?"
- "That's just what I'm telling you," said Percy. "I’ve been wrestling with Bill, and I have been vouchsafed the victory."
- "You!" said Mrs. Bramble, with uncomplimentary astonishment, letting her gaze wander over her brother's weedy form.
- "Jerry Fisher's a hard nut," said Mr. Bramble, apologetically. "He don't like people coming round talking to a man he's training, unless he introduces them or they're newspaper gents."
- "After that I kept away. But I wrote the letters and I sent the tracts. Bill, which of the tracts was it that snatched you from the primrose path?"
- "It wasn't so much the letters, Perce. It was what you wrote about Harold. You see, Jane---"
- "Perhaps you'll kindly allow me to get a word in edgeways, you two," said Mrs.Bramble, her temper for once becoming ruffled. "You can stop talking for half an instant, Percy, if you know how, while Bill tells me what he's doing here when he ought to be at the White Hart with Mr. Fisher, doing his bit of training."
- Mr. Bramble met her eye and blinked awkwardly.
- " Percy's just been telling you, Jane. He wrote---"
- "I haven't made head or tail of a single word that Percy's said, and I don't expect to. All I want is a plain answer to a plain question. What are you doing here, Bill, instead of being at the White Hart? "
- "I've come home, Jane."
- "Glory!" exclaimed the Major.
- "Percy, if you don't keep quiet, I'll forget I'm your sister and let you have one. What
do you mean, Bill, you've come home? Isn't there going to be the fight next week,
after all?" - "The fight's over," said the unsuppressed Major, joyfully, "and Bill's won, with me
seconding him." - "Percy!"
- Mr. Bramble pulled himself together with a visible effort.
- "I'm not going to fight, Jane," he said, in a small voice.
- '' You're not going--!"
- "He's seen the error of his ways," cried Percy, the resilient."That's what he's gone
and done. At the eleventh hour." - "Oh! I have waited for this joyful moment. I have watched for it. I---"
- "You're not going to fight!"
- Mr. Bramble, avoiding his wife's eye, shook his head.
- "And how about the money?"
- "What's money? " said the Major, scornfully.
- "You ought to know," snapped Mrs. Bramble, turning on him. "You've borrowed
enough of it from me in your time." - The Major waved a hand in wounded silence. He considered the remark in poor
taste. - "How about the money?" repeated Mrs. Bramble. "Goodness knows I've never liked your profession, Bill, but there is this to be said for it, that it's earned you good money and made it possible for us to give Harold as good an education as any Duke ever had, I'm sure. And you know, you yourself said that the five hundred pounds you were going to get if you beat this Murphy, and even if you lost it would be a hundred and twenty, was going to be a blessing, because it would let us finish him off proper and give him a better start in life than you or me ever had, and now
you let this Percy come over you with his foolish talk, and now I don't know what will happen." - There was an uncomfortable silence. Even Percy seemed to be at a loss for words. Mrs. Bramble sat down and began to sob. Mr. Bramble shuffled his feet.
- "Talking of Harold," said Mr. Bramble at last, " That's , really what I'm driving at. It was him only whom I was thinking of when I hopped it from the White Hart. It would be written up in all the papers, instead of only in the sporting ones. As likely as not there would be a piece about it in the Mail, with a photograph of me. And you know Harold reads his Mail regularly. And then, don't you see, the fat would be in the fire. "That's what Percy pointed out to me, and I seen what he meant, so I hopped it."
- "At the eleventh hour," added the Major, rubbing in the point.
- "You see, Jane---" Mr. Bramble was beginning, when there was a knock at the door, and a little, ferret-faced man in a woollen sweater and cycling knickerbockers entered, removing as he did so a somewhat battered bowler hat.
- "Beg pardon, Mrs. Bramble," he said, " coming in like this. Found the front door ajar, so came in, to ask if you'd happened to have seen-"
- He broke off and stood staring wildly at the little group.
- "I thought so!" he said, and shot through the air towards Percy.
- "Jerry !" said Bill.
- "Mr. Fisher!" said Mrs. Bramble,
- "Be reasonable," said the Major, diving underneath the table and coming up the other side like a performing seal.
- "Let me get at him," begged the intruder, struggling to free himself from Bill's restraining arms.
- Mrs. Bramble rapped on the table.
- "Kindly remember there's a lady present, Mr. Fisher."
- The little man's face became a battlefield on which rage, misery, and a respect for the decencies of social life struggled for mastery.
- "It's hard," he said at length, in a choked voice. "I just wanted to break his neck for him, but I suppose it's not to be. I know it's him that's at the bottom of it. And here I find them together, so I know it's him. Well, if you say so, Mrs. B., I suppose I mustn't put a hand on him. But it's hard. Bill, you come back along with me to the White Hart. I'm surprised at you. Ashamed of you, I am. All the time you and me have known each other, I've never known you do such a thing. You are such a pleasure to train as a rule. It all comes of getting with bad companions."
- Mr. Bramble looked at his brother-in-law miserably.
- "You tell him," he said.
- "You tell him, Jane," said the Major.
- "I won't," said Mrs. Bramble.
- "Tell him what? " asked the puzzled trainer.
- "Well?"
- "It's only that I'm not going to fight on Monday."
- "What!"
- "Bill has seen a sudden bright light," said Percy, edging a few inches to the left, so that the table was exactly between the trainer and himself. "At the eleventh hour, he has turned from his wicked ways. You ought to be singing with joy, Mr. Fisher, if you really loved Bill. This ought to be the happiest evening you've ever known. You ought to be singing like a little child."
- A strange, guttural noise escaped the trainer. It may have been a song, but it did not sound like it.
- "It's true, Jerry," said Bill, unhappily. "I have been thinking it over, and I'm not going to fight on Monday."
- "Glory!" said the Major, tactlessly.
- Jerry Fisher's face was a study in violent emotions. His eyes seemed to protrude from their sockets like a snail's. He clutched the tablecloth.
- "I'm sorry, Jerry," said Bill. " I know it's hard on you. But I've got to think of Harold. This fight with Jimmy Murphy being what you might call a kind of national affair, in a way of speaking, will be reported in The Mail as like as not, with a photograph of me, and Harold reads The Mail regular. We've been keeping it from him all these years that I'm in the profession, and we can't let him know now. He would die of shame, Jerry."
- Tears appeared in Jerry Fisher's eyes.
- "Bill," he cried, " you're off your head. Think of the purse!"
- "Ah!" said Mrs. Bramble.
- "Think of all the swells that'll be coming to see you. Think of what the papers'll say. Think of me."
- "I know, Jerry, it's chronic. But Harold---"
- "Think of all the trouble you've taken for the last few weeks getting yourself into condition."
- "I know. But Har---"
- "You can't not fight on Monday."
- "But Harold, Jerry. He'd die of the disgrace of it. He ain't like you and me, Jerry. He's a little gentleman. I got to think of Harold"
- "What about me, pa?" said a youthful voice at the door; and Bill's honest blood froze at the sound. His jaw fell, and he goggled dumbly.
- There, his spectacles gleaming in the gaslight, his cheeks glowing with the exertion of the nice walk, his eyebrows slightly elevated with surprise, stood Harold himself.
- "Halloa, pa! Halloa, Uncle Percy! Somebody's left the front door open. What were you saying about thinking about me, pa? Ma, will you hear me, my piece of poetry again? I think I've forgotten it."
- The four adults surveyed the innocent child in silence.
- On the faces of three of them consternation was written. In the eyes of the fourth, Mr. Fisher, there glittered that nasty, steely expression of the man, who sees his way to getting a bit of his own back, Mr. Fisher's was not an un-mixedly chivalrous nature. He considered that he had been badly treated, and what he wanted most at the moment was revenge. He had been fond and proud of Bill Bramble, but those emotions belonged to the dead past. Just at present, he felt that he disliked Bill rather more than anyone else in the world, with the possible exception of Major Percy Stokes.
- "So you're Harold, are you, Tommy? " he said, in a metallic voice." Then just you listen here a minute."
- "Jerry," cried Bill, advancing, "you keep your mouth shut, or I'll dot you one."
- Mr. Fisher retreated and, grasping a chair, swung it above his head.
- "You better! " he said, curtly.
- ''Mr. Fisher, do be a gentleman," entreated Mrs. Bramble.
- "My dear sir." There was a crooning winningness in Percy's voice. "My dear sir, do nothing hasty. Think before you speak. Don't go and be so silly as to act like a mutton-head. I'd be ashamed to be so spiteful. Respect a father's feelings."
- "Tommy," said Mr. Fisher, ignoring them all, "you think your pa's a commercial. He ain't. He's a fighting-man, doing his eight-stone-four ringside, and known to all the heads as ' Young Porky.' "
- Bill sank into a chair. He could see Harold's round eyes staring at him.
- "I'd never have thought it of you, Jerry," he said, miserably. "If anyone had come to me and told me that you could have acted so raw I'd have dotted him one."
- "And if anyone had come to me and told me that I should live to see the day when you broke training a week before a fight at the National, I'd given him one for himself."
- "Harold, my lad," said Percy, "you mustn't think none the worse of your pa for having been a man of wrath. He hadn't seen the bright light then. It's all over now. He's given it up for ever, and there's no call for you to feel ashamed."
- Bill seized on the point.
- "That's right, Harold," he said, reviving, "I've given it up. I was going to fight an American named Murphy at the National next Monday, but I ain't going to now, not if they come to me on their bended knees. Not even if the King of England came to me on his bended knees."
- Harold drew a deep breath.
- "Oh!" he cried, shrilly. "Oh, aren't you? Then what about my two bob? What about my two bob, I've betted Dicky Saunders that Jimmy Murphy won't last ten rounds?"
- He looked round the room wrathfully.
- "It's thick," he said in the crisp, gentlemanly, voice of which his parents were so proud. "It's jolly thick. That's what it is. A chap takes the trouble to study form and saves up his pocket-money to have a bet on a good thing, and then he goes and gets let down like this. It may be funny to you, but I call it rotten. And another thing I call rotten is you having kept it from me all this time that you were 'Young Porky,' pa. That's what I call so jolly rotten! There's a fellow at our school who goes about swanking in the most rotten way because he once got Phil Scott's autograph. Fellows look up to him most awfully, and all the time they might have been doing it to me. That's what makes me so jolly sick. How long do you suppose they'd go on calling me, 'Goggles' if they knew that you were my father? They'd chuck it tomorrow, and look up to me like anything, I do call it rotten. And chucking it up like this is the limit. What do you want to do it for? It's the silliest idea, I've ever heard. Why, if you beat Jimmy Murphy they'll have to give you the next chance with Sid
Sampson for the Lonsdale belt. Jimmy beat Ted Richards, and Ted beat the Ginger Nut, and the Ginger Nut only lost on a foul to Sid Sampson, and you beat Ted Richards, so they couldn't help letting you have the next go at Sid." - Mr. Fisher beamed approval.
- "If I've told your pa that once, I've told him twenty times," he said. "You certainly know a thing or two, Tommy."
- "Well, I've made a study of it since I was a kid, so I jolly well ought to. All the fellows at our place are frightfully keen on it. One chap's got a snapshot of Jimmy Wilde. At least, he says it's Jimmy Wilde, but I believe it's just some ordinary fellow. Anyhow, it's jolly blurred, so it might be anyone. Pa, can't you give me a picture of yourself boxing? I could swank like anything. And you don't know how sick a chap gets of having chaps call him, 'Goggles.' "
- "Bill," said Mr. Fisher, "you and me had better be getting back to the White Hart."
- Bill rose and followed him without a word.
- Harold broke the silence which followed their departure. The animated expression which had been on his face as he discussed the relative merits of Sid Sampson and the Ginger Nut had given place to the abstracted gravity of the student.
- "Ma!"
- Mrs. Bramble started convulsively.
- "Yes, dearie?"
- "Will you hear me? "
- Mrs. Bramble took the book.
- ''Yes, mother will hear you, precious," she said, mechanically.
- Harold fixed his eyes upon the cut-glass hangings of the chandelier.
- "Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever-clever. Do noble things.. "
About the Author
Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE (15 October 1881 - 14 February 1975) was a comic writer who enjoyed enormous popular success during his career as an acknowledged master of English prose. Wodehouse has been admired both by his contemporaries such as Hilaire Belloc, Evelyn Waugh and Rudyard Kipling and by modern writers such as Douglas Adams, Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith and Terry Pratchett.
Best known today for his Jeeves and Blandings Castle novels and short stories, Wodehouse was also a playwright and lyricist who was part author and writer of 15 plays and of 250 lyrics for some 30 musical comedies. He worked with Cole Porter on the musical 'Anything Goes' (1934) and frequently collaborated with Jerome Kern and Guy Bolton. He wrote the lyrics for the hit song "Bill" in Kern's Show Boat (1927), wrote the lyrics for the Gershwin - Romberg’s musical Rosalie (1928) and collaborated with Rudolf Friml on a musical version of The Three Musketeers (1928).
Some are Purple and gold flecked grey
For she who has journeyed through life midway,
Whose hands have cherished , whose love has blest,
And cradled fair sons on her faithful breast,
And serves her household in fruitful pride,
And worship the gods at her husband's side.
Read the lines given above and answer the question that follow:
What is the ryme scheme of the poem?
Oh yes, we know it keeps them still,
They don't climb out the window sill,
They never fight or kick or punch,
They leave you free to cook the lunch
And wash the dishes in the sink....
But did you ever stop to think,
To wonder just exactly what
This does to your beloved tot?
IT ROTS THE SENSE IN THE HEAD!
IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!
IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!
IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND
HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND
A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND!
HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!
HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!
HE CANNOT THINK - HE ONLY SEES!
Read the lines given above and answer the question given below.
Explain with reference to context.
They stood in the doorway of the underground for a moment until it was raining hard. Then they closed the door and heard the gigantic sound of the rain falling in tons and avalanches, everywhere and forever.
“Will it be seven more years?” “Yes. Seven.” Then one of them gave a little cry. “Margot!” “What?” “She’s still in the closet where we locked her.” “Margot.”
They stood as if someone had driven them, like so many stakes, into the floor. They looked at each other and then looked away. They glanced out at the world that was raining now and raining and raining steadily. They could not meet each other’s glances. Their faces were solemn and pale. They looked at their hands and feet, their faces down. “Margot.” One of the girls said, “Well.. .?” No one moved. “Go on,” whispered the girl. They walked slowly down the hall in the sound of the cold rain. They turned through the doorway to the room in the sound of the storm and thunder, lightning on their faces, blue and terrible. They walked over to the closet door slowly and stood by it. Behind the closed door was only silence. They unlocked the door, even more slowly, and let Margot out.
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
Why were the children avoiding looking at each other?
Explain-'Tell me not in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream!' What should not be considered the goal of life?
Answer the following question.
Which uncle of Golu had red eyes?
“Now Abbu Khan understood Chandni’s problem...” What was Chandni's problem?
Match items in List A with their meanings in List B.
Use any three of the above words in sentences of your own. You may change the form of the word
A B
wounded got up from sleep
awoke give back
forgive small patches of ground for plants
faithful severely injured
pity pardon
beds loyal
return feel sorry for
Find in the poem lines that match the following. Read both one after the other.
He is noisy on purpose
Now write the story in your own words. Give it a title.
Why the king changed his clothes and left behind his bodyguards and horse before meeting the hermit?
Why did the python help Golu?
How did Taro manage to meet the demand of his father?
Multiple Choice Question:
What is the kite compared to?
Answer the following question.
What was the purpose of these special days?
What is the mystery about the child’s school teacher? How does it plan to discover the truth?
Why did the author order so many pairs of boots? Did he really need them?
The Medicine Bag traces the narrator’s attitude to his Sioux Grandfather, from mild embarrassment to appreciation. Summarise the reasons for this embarrassment and the change. Write your answer in 100-150 words incorporating the following details.
- Reasons for embarrassment
- Specific reasons for the change in attitude
