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Question
What does the writer say about the friendship between man and dog?
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Solution
Dog is man’s most dependable servant. He has been serving his master most faithfully for ages. He never felt the need to change his master again.
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RELATED QUESTIONS
Thinking about the Text
Answer these question.
They can’t hang me twice.”
(i) Who says this?
(ii) Why does the speaker say it?
Answer the following question in one or two sentences.
How did Abdul Kalam earn his first wages?
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.
Here's a glimpse of a naughty child whose life is full of fun and frolic .
One of the reasons why Tom's mind had drifted away from ita secret troubles was that it bad found a new and weighty matter to interest itself about. Becky Thatcher had stopped coming to school. Tom bad struggled with his pride a few days and tried to "whistle her down the wind," but failed. He began to find himself hanging around her father's house all night and feeling very miserable. She was ill. What if she should die! There was distraction in the thought. Tom Sawyer no longer took an interest in war, nor even in piracy. The charm of life was gone; there was nothing but dreariness left. He put his hoop away, and his bat; there was no joy in them any more. His aunt was concerned. She began to try all manners of remedies on him. She was one of those people who are Infatuated with patent medicines and all new-fangled methods of producing health or mending it. She was an inveterate experimenter in these things. When something fresh in this line came out, she was in a fever, right away, to try it; not on herself, for she was never ailing, but on anybody else that came handy.
2. She tried every remedy she could. Yet, not with standing all this, the boy grew more and more melancholy and pale and dejected. She added hot baths, sitz baths, shower baths, and plunges. The boy remained as dismal as a hearse. She began to assist the boy with a slim oatmeal diet and blister-plaster&. She calculated his capacity as she would judge and filled him up every day with quack cure-alls.
3. Tom had become indifferent to persecution by this time. This phase filled the old lady's heart with consternation. This indifference must be broken up at any cost. Now she heard of Pain-killer for the first time. She ordered a lot at once. She tasted it and was filled with gratitude. It was simply fire in a liquid form. She dropped the water treatment and everything else, and pinned her faith on Pain-killer. She gave Tom a teaspoonful and watched with the deepest anxiety for the result. Her troubles were instantly at rest, her soul at peace again; for the 'indifference' was broken up. The boy could not have shown a wilder, heartier interest, if she had built a fire under him.
4. Tom felt that it was time to wake up; this sort of life might be romantic enough, in his blighted condition, but it was getting to have too little sentiment and too much distracting variety about it. So he thought over various plans for relief and finally hit upon that of professing to be fond of Pain-killer. He asked for it so often that he became a nuisance and his aunt ended up by telling him to help himself and quit bothering her. If it had been Sid, she would have had no misgivings to alloy her delight; but since it was Tom, she watched the bottle clandestinely. She found that the medicine did really diminish, but it did not occur to her that the boy was mending the health of a crack in the sitting-room floor with it.
5. One day Tom was in the act of dosing the crack when his aunt's yellow cat came along, purring, eyeing the teaspoon avariciously and begging for a taste. Tom said: "Peter, now you've asked for it, and I'll give it to you, because there ain't anything mean about me; but if you find you don't like it, you mustn't blame anybody but your own self."
6. Tom pried his mouth open and poured down the Pain-killer. Peter sprang a couple of yards in the air, and then delivered a war-whoop and set off round and round the room, banging against furniture, upsetting flower-pots, and making general havoc. Next he rose on his hind feet and pranced around, in a frenzy of enjoyment, with his head over his shoulder and his voice proclaiming his unappeasable happiness. Then he went tearing around the house again spreading chaos and destruction in his path. Aunt Polly entered in time to see him throw a few double summersaults, deliver a final mighty hurrah, and sail through the open window, carrying the rest of the flower-pots with him. The old lady stood petrified with astonishment, peering over her glasses; Tom lay on the floor hysterical with laughter.
"Tom, what on earth ails that cat?"
"I don't know, aunt," gasped the boy.
7. The old lady was bending down, Tom watching, with interest emphasized by anxiety. Too late he divined her 'drift'. The handle of the telltale teaspoon was visible under the sofa. Aunt Polly took it, held it up. Tom winced, and dropped his eyes. Aunt Polly raised him by the usual handle - his ear - and cracked his head soundly with her thimble.
"Now, sir, what did you want to treat that poor dumb beast so, for?"
"I done it out of pity for him - because he hadn't any aunt."
"Hadn't any aunt! -you numskull. What has that got to do with it?"
"Heaps. Because if he'd had one, she'd a burnt him out herself! She'd a roasted his bowels out of him 'thout any more feeling than if he was a human!"
Tom looked up in her face with just a perceptible twinkle peeping through his gravity.
"I know you was meaning for the best, aunty, and so was I with Peter. It done him good, too. I never see him get around so-"
So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Then fill the shelves with lots of books,
Ignoring all the dirty looks,
The Screams and yells,the bites and kicks,
And children hitting you with sticks-
Fear not, because we promise you
That, in about a week ot two
Of having nothing else to do,
They'll now begin to feel the need
Of having something to read.
And once they start - oh boy, oh boy!
You watch the slowly growing joy
That fills their hearts. They'll grow so keen
They'll wonder what they'd ever seen
In that ridiculous machine,
That nauseating, foul, unclean,
Repulsive television screen!
And later, each and every kid
Will love you more for what you did.
Read the lines given above and answer the question given below.
Explain with reference to context.
“You haven’t brought home that sick brat!” Anger and astonishment were in the tones of Mrs. Joe Thompson; her face was in a flame.
“I think women’s hearts are sometimes very hard,” said Joe. Usually Joe Thompson got out of his wife’s way, or kept rigidly silent and non-combative when she fired up on any subject; it was with some surprise, therefore, that she now encountered a firmly-set countenance and a resolute pair of eyes.
“Women’s hearts are not half so hard as men’s!”
Joe saw, by a quick intuition, that his resolute bearing h«d impressed his wife and he answered quickly, and with real indignation, “Be that as it may, every woman at the funeral turned her eyes steadily from the sick child’s face, and when the cart went off with her dead mother, hurried away, and left her alone in that old hut, with the sun not an hour in the sky.”
“Where were John and Kate?” asked Mrs. Thompson.
“Farmer Jones tossed John into his wagon, and drove off. Katie went home with Mrs. Ellis; but nobody wanted the poor sick one. ‘Send her to the poorhouse,’ was the cry.”
“Why didn’t you let her go, then. What did you bring her here for?”
“She can’t walk to the poorhouse,” said Joe; “somebody’s arms must carry her, and mine are strong enough for that task.”
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
How did Joe counter his wife on her remark about Maggie?
After washing from his hands and face the dust and soil of work, Joe left the kitchen, and went to the little bedroom. A pair of large bright eyes looked up at him from the snowy bed; looked at him tenderly, gratefully, pleadingly. How his heart swelled in his bosom! With what a quicker motion came the heart-beats! Joe sat down, and now, for the first time, examining the thin free carefully under the lamp light, saw that it was an attractive face, and full of a childish sweetness which suffering had not been able to obliterate.
“Your name is Maggie?” he said, as he sat down and took her soft little hand in his.
“Yes, sir.” Her voice struck a chord that quivered in a low strain of music.
“Have you been sick long?”
“Yes, sir.” What a sweet patience was in her tone!
“Has the doctor been to see you?”
“He used to come”
“But not lately?”
“No, sir.”
Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow.
What did Joe notice about Maggie in the light of the lamp?
“Do the scientists really know? Will it happen today, will it ?”
“Look, look; see for yourself !”The children pressed to each other like so many roses, so many weeds, intermixed, peering out for a look at the hidden sun. It rained. It had been raining for seven years; thousands upon thousands of days compounded and filled from one end to the other with rain, with the drum and gush of water, with the sweet crystal fall of showers and the concussion of storms so heavy they were tidal waves come over the islands. A thousand forests had been crushed under the rain and grown up a thousand times to be crushed again. And this was the way life was forever on the planet Venus, and this was the schoolroom of the children of the rocket men and women who had come to a raining world to set up civilization and live out their lives.
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
What is supposed to happen on this particular day?
Name some other creatures that live in anthills.
Answer the following question.
“Come here, little one, and I’ll whisper the answer to you.”The crocodile said this because
Find out the meaning of the following words by looking them up in the dictionary. Then use them in sentences of your own.
challenge
What preparations did the kind old couple make for the New Year?
Why did the author went to the shoe shop for the last time?
How did the two baby birds get separated?
Answer the following question:
Why did the waterfall give Taro saké and others water?
Replace the italicised portion of the sentence below with a suitable phrase from the box. Make necessary changes, wherever required.
The patient needs to be properly taken care of.
Answer the following question:
Why was Rasheed upset?
Write ‘True’ or ‘False’ against each of the following sentences.
Gopal was too poor to afford decent clothes.________
Read the following extract from Ray Bradbury's short story, 'All Summer in a Day' and answer the questions that follow:
|
"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. |
- Who is Margot?
How does the author describe her? [3] - Who are 'They'?
Where do they live?
Mention any one reality of the planet on which they live. [3] - What two words would you use to describe what the children were experiencing in the above extract?
Why does the mention of Margot's name affect them in this way? [3] - What event had the children awaited eagerly that day?
What made this event special?
Why did this event mean so much to Margot in particular? [3] - What is the central theme of Bradbury's story, 'All Summer in a Day'?
What important lesson have the children learnt from this experience?
Why do you suppose the story is said to end on a note of hope? [4]
In Stephen Leacock’s ‘With the Photographer’, while waiting for the photographer, the narrator spent time ______.
