Kitabı oku: «Eighth Reader», sayfa 8

DOGS AND CATS ³⁶

Most people agree that the dog has intelligence, a heart, and possibly a soul; on the other hand, they declare that the cat is a traitor, a deceiver, an ingrate, a thief. How many persons have I heard say: "Oh, I can't bear a cat! The cat has no love for its master; it cares only for the house. I had one once, for I was living in the country, where there were mice. One day the cook left on the kitchen table a chicken she had just prepared for cooking; in came the cat, and carried it off, and we never saw a morsel of it. Oh, I hate cats; I will never have one."

True, the cat is unpopular. Her reputation is bad, and she makes no effort to improve the general opinion which people have of her. She cares as little about your opinion as does the Sultan of Turkey. And – must I confess – this is the very reason I love her.

In this world, no one can long be indifferent to things, whether trivial or serious – if, indeed, anything is serious. Hence, every person must, sooner or later, declare himself on the subjects of dogs and cats.

Well, then! I love cats.

Ah, how many times people have said to me, "What! do you love cats?"

"Certainly."

"Well, don't you love dogs better?"

"No, I prefer cats every time."

"Oh, that's very queer!"

The truth is, I would rather have neither cat nor dog. But when I am obliged to live with one of these beings, I always choose the cat. I will tell you why.

The cat seems to me to have the manners most necessary to good society. In her early youth she has all the graces, all the gentleness, all the unexpectedness that the most artistic imagination could desire. She is smart; she never loses herself. She is prudent, going everywhere, looking into everything, breaking nothing.

The cat steals fresh mutton just as the dog steals it, but, unlike the dog, she takes no delight in carrion. She is fastidiously clean – and in this respect, she might well be imitated by many of her detractors. She washes her face, and in so doing foretells the weather into the bargain. You may please yourself by putting a ribbon around her neck, but never a collar; she cannot be enslaved.

In short, the cat is a dignified, proud, disdainful animal. She defies advances and tolerates no insults. She abandons the house in which she is not treated according to her merits. She is, in both origin and character, a true aristocrat, while the dog is and always will be, a mere vulgar parvenu.

The only serious argument that can be urged against the cat is that she destroys the birds, not caring whether they are sparrows or nightingales. If the dog does less, it is because of his stupidity and clumsiness, not because he is above such business. He also runs after the birds; but his foolish barking warns them of his coming, and as they fly away he can only watch them with open mouth and drooping tail.

The dog submits himself to the slavery of the collar in order to be taught the art of circumventing rabbits and pigeons – and this not for his own profit, but for the pleasure of his master, the hunter. Foolish, foolish fellow! An animal himself, he delights in persecuting other animals at the command of the man who beats him.

But the cat, when she catches a bird, has a good excuse for her cruelty – she catches it only to eat it herself. Shall she be slandered for such an act? Before condemning her, men may well think of their own shortcomings. They will find among themselves, as well as in the race of cats, many individuals who have claws and often use them for the destruction of those who are gifted with wings.

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Expression: In what does the humor of this selection consist? Read aloud and with expression the passages which appeal to you as the most enjoyable. Do you agree with all the statements made by the author? Read these with which you disagree, and then give reasons for your disagreement.

THE OWL CRITIC ³⁷

 
"Who stuffed that white owl?" No one spoke in the shop;
The barber was busy, and he couldn't stop;
The customers, waiting their turns, were all reading
The Daily, the Herald, the Post, little heeding
The young man who blurted out such a blunt question;
Not one raised a head, or even made a suggestion;
And the barber kept on shaving.
 
 
"Don't you see, Mister Brown,"
Cried the youth, with a frown,
"How wrong the whole thing is,
How preposterous each wing is,
How flattened the head is, how jammed down the neck is —
In short, the whole owl, what an ignorant wreck 'tis?
I make no apology;
I've learned owl-eology,
I've passed days and nights in a hundred collections,
And cannot be blinded to any deflections
Arising from unskillful fingers that fail
To stuff a bird right, from his beak to his tail.
Mister Brown! Mister Brown!
Do take that bird down,
Or you'll soon be the laughingstock all over town!"
And the barber kept on shaving.
 
 
"I've studied owls,
And other night fowls,
And I tell you
What I know to be true:
An owl cannot roost
With his limbs so unloosed;
No owl in this world
Ever had his claws curled,
Ever had his legs slanted,
Ever had his bill canted,
Ever had his neck screwed
Into that attitude.
He can't do it, because
'Tis against all bird laws.
Anatomy teaches,
Ornithology preaches,
An owl has a toe
That can't turn out so!
I've made the white owl my study for years,
And to see such a job almost moves me to tears!
Mister Brown, I'm amazed
You should be so gone crazed
As to put up a bird
In that posture absurd!
To look at that owl really brings on a dizziness;
The man who stuffed him don't half know his business!"
And the barber kept on shaving.
 
 
"Examine those eyes.
I'm filled with surprise
Taxidermists should pass
Off on you such poor glass;
So unnatural they seem
They'd make Audubon scream,
And John Burroughs laugh
To encounter such chaff.
Do take that bird down:
Have him stuffed again, Brown!"
And the barber kept on shaving.
 
 
"With some sawdust and bark
I could stuff in the dark
An owl better than that.
I could make an old hat
Look more like an owl than that horrid fowl
Stuck up there so stiff like a side of coarse leather.
In fact, about him there's not one natural feather."
Just then, with a wink and a sly normal lurch,
The owl, very gravely, got down from his perch,
Walked round, and regarded his fault-finding critic
(Who thought he was stuffed) with a glance analytic,
And then fairly hooted, as if he should say,
"Your learning's at fault this time, anyway;
Don't waste it again on a live bird, I pray.
I'm an owl; you're another. Sir Critic, good day!"
And the barber kept on shaving.
 

MRS. CAUDLE'S UMBRELLA LECTURE ³⁸

Bah! That's the third umbrella gone since Christmas. What were you to do? Why, let him go home in the rain, to be sure. I'm very certain there was nothing about him that could spoil. Take cold? Indeed! He doesn't look like one of the sort to take cold. Besides, he'd better have taken cold than taken our umbrella. Do you hear the rain, Mr. Caudle? I say, DO YOU HEAR THE RAIN?

Pooh! don't think me a fool, Mr. Caudle. Don't insult me. He return the umbrella? Anybody would think you were born yesterday. As if anybody ever did return an umbrella!

I should like to know how the children are to go to school to-morrow. They shan't go through such weather, I'm determined. No! they shall stay at home and never learn anything – the blessed creatures – sooner than go and get wet. And when they grow up, I wonder whom they'll have to thank for knowing nothing – who, indeed, but their father?

But I know why you lent the umbrella. Oh, yes! I know very well. I was going out to tea at dear mother's to-morrow – you knew that – and you did it on purpose. Don't tell me; you hate to have me to go there, and take every mean advantage to hinder me. But don't you think it, Mr. Caudle. No, sir; if it comes down in bucketfuls I'll go all the more.

No! and I won't have a cab! Where do you think the money's to come from? You've got nice, high notions at that club of yours. A cab, indeed! Cost me sixteen pence at least – sixteen pence? – two-and-eight-pence, for there's back again! Cabs, indeed! I should like to know who is to pay for them! I can't pay for them, and I'm sure you can't if you go on as you do; throwing away your property and beggaring your children, buying umbrellas.

Do you hear the rain, Mr. Caudle? I say, DO YOU HEAR IT? But I don't care – I'll go to mother's to-morrow, I will; and what's more, I'll walk every step of the way; and you know that will give me my death. Don't call me a foolish woman; it's you that's the foolish man. You know I can't wear clogs; and with no umbrella, the wet's sure to give me a cold – it always does. But what do you care for that? Nothing at all. I may be laid up for what you care, as I dare say I shall – and a pretty doctor's bill there'll be. I hope there will! It will teach you to lend your umbrella again. I shouldn't wonder if I caught my death; and that's what you lent your umbrella for. Of course!

Nice clothes I shall get, too, traipsing through weather like this. My gown and bonnet will be spoiled quite. Needn't I wear them, then? Indeed, Mr. Caudle, I shall wear them. No, sir; I'm not going out a dowdy to please you or anybody else. Gracious knows, it isn't often I step over the threshold; indeed, I might as well be a slave at once – better, I should say. But when I go out, Mr. Caudle, I choose to go as a lady.

Ugh! I look forward with dread for to-morrow. How I'm to go to mother's I'm sure I can't tell. But, if I die, I'll go. No, sir; I won't borrow an umbrella.

No; and you shan't buy one. Mr. Caudle, if you bring home another umbrella, I'll throw it into the street. Ha! it was only last week I had a new nozzle put to that umbrella. I'm sure if I'd known as much as I do now, it might have gone without one, for all of me.

The children, too, dear things, they'll be sopping wet; for they shan't stay at home; they shan't lose their learning; it's all their father will leave them, I'm sure. But they shall go to school. Don't tell me I said they shouldn't; you are so aggravating, Caudle, you'd spoil the temper of an angel; they shall go to school; mark that! And if they get their deaths of cold, it's not my fault. I didn't lend the umbrella.

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Note: Which of the various specimens of humor here presented do you enjoy most? Give reasons.

THE DARK DAY IN CONNECTICUT ³⁹

 
'Twas on a Mayday of the far old year,
Seventeen hundred eighty, that there fell
Over the bloom and sweet life of the spring,
Over the fresh earth and the heaven of noon,
A horror of great darkness, like the night
In day of which the Norland sagas tell, —
The Twilight of the Gods…
Birds ceased to sing, and all the barnyard fowls
Roosted; the cattle at the pasture bars
Lowed, and looked homeward; bats on leathern wings
Flitted abroad; the sounds of labor died;
Men prayed, and women wept; all ears grew sharp
To hear the doom blast of the trumpet shatter
The black sky, that the dreadful face of Christ
Might look from the rent clouds, not as he looked
A loving guest at Bethany, but stern
As Justice and inexorable Law.
Meanwhile in the old statehouse, dim as ghosts,
Sat the lawgivers of Connecticut,
Trembling beneath their legislative robes.
"It is the Lord's Great Day! Let us adjourn,"
Some said; and then as if with one accord
All eyes were turned to Abraham Davenport.
He rose, slow cleaving with his steady voice
The intolerable hush. "This well may be
The Day of Judgment which the world awaits;
But be it so or not, I only know
My present duty, and my Lord's command
To occupy till he come. So at the post
Where he hath set me in his providence,
I choose, for one, to meet him face to face, —
No faithless servant frightened from my task,
But ready when the Lord of the harvest calls;
And therefore, with all reverence, I would say,
Let God do his work, we will see to ours. —
Bring in the candles!" And they brought them in.
Then, by the flaring lights the Speaker read,
Albeit with husky voice and shaking hands,
An act to amend an act to regulate
The shad and alewive fisheries. Whereupon
Wisely and well spake Abraham Davenport,
Straight to the question, with no figures of speech
Save the ten Arab signs, yet not without
The shrewd, dry humor natural to the man —
His awestruck colleagues listening all the while,
Between the pauses of his argument,
To hear the thunder of the wrath of God
Break from the hollow trumpet of the cloud.
And there he stands in memory to this day,
Erect, self-poised, a rugged face, half seen
Against the background of unnatural dark,
A witness to the ages as they pass,
That simple duty hath no place for fear.
 

TWO INTERESTING LETTERS

I. Columbus to the Lord Treasurer of Spain

Barcelona, 1493.

To Lord Raphael Sanchez: —

Knowing that it will afford you pleasure to learn that I have brought my undertaking to a successful termination, I have decided upon writing you this letter to acquaint you with all the events which have occurred in my voyage, and the discoveries which have resulted from it.

Thirty-three days after my departure from Cadiz I reached the Indian sea, where I discovered many islands, thickly peopled, of which I took possession without resistance in the name of our most illustrious monarchs, by public proclamation and with unfurled banners. To the first of these islands, which is called by the Indians Guanahani, I gave the name of the blessed Saviour, relying upon whose protection I had reached this as well as the other islands.

As soon as we arrived at that, which as I have said was named Juana, I proceeded along its coast a short distance westward, and found it to be so large and apparently without termination, that I could not suppose it to be an island, but the continental province of Cathay.

In the meantime I had learned from some Indians whom I had seized, that the country was certainly an island; and therefore I sailed toward the east, coasting to the distance of three hundred and twenty-two miles, which brought us to the extremity of it; from this point I saw lying eastwards another island, fifty-four miles distant from Juana, to which I gave the name Española.

All these islands are very beautiful, and distinguished by a diversity of scenery; they are filled with a great variety of trees of immense height, and which I believe to retain their foliage in all seasons; for when I saw them they were as verdant and luxurious as they usually are in Spain in the month of May, – some of them were blossoming, some bearing fruit, and all flourishing in the greatest perfection, according to their respective stages of growth, and the nature and quality of each; yet the islands are not so thickly wooded as to be impassable. The nightingale and various birds were singing in countless numbers, and that in November, the month in which I arrived there.

The inhabitants are very simple and honest, and exceedingly liberal with all they have; none of them refusing anything he may possess when he is asked for it, but on the contrary inviting us to ask them. They exhibit great love toward all others in preference to themselves: they also give objects of great value for trifles, and content themselves with very little or nothing in return.

I, however, forbade that these trifles and articles of no value (such as pieces of dishes, plates, and glass, keys, and leather straps) should be given to them, although, if they could obtain them, they imagined themselves to be possessed of the most beautiful trinkets in the world.

It even happened that a sailor received for a leather strap as much gold as was worth three golden nobles, and for things of more trifling value offered by our men, the Indian would give whatever the seller required.

On my arrival I had taken some Indians by force from the first island that I came to, in order that they might learn our language. These men are still traveling with me, and although they have been with us now a long time, they continue to entertain the idea that I have descended from heaven; and on our arrival at any new place they published this, crying out immediately with a loud voice to the other Indians, "Come, come and look upon beings of a celestial race": upon which both men and women, children and adults, young men and old, when they got rid of the fear they at first entertained, would come out in throngs, crowding the roads to see us, some bringing food, others drink, with astonishing affection and kindness.

Although all I have related may appear to be wonderful and unheard of, yet the results of my voyage would have been more astonishing if I had had at my disposal such ships as I required. But these great and marvelous results are not to be attributed to any merit of mine, but to the holy Christian faith, and to the piety and religion of our Sovereigns; for that which the unaided intellect of man could not compass, the spirit of God has granted to human exertions, for God is wont to hear the prayers of his servants who love his precepts even to the performance of apparent impossibilities.

Thus it has happened to me in the present instance, who have accomplished a task to which the powers of mortal men had never hitherto attained; for if there have been those who have anywhere written or spoken of these islands, they have done so with doubts and conjectures, and no one has ever asserted that he has seen them, on which account their writings have been looked upon as little else than fables.

Therefore let the king and queen, our princes and their most happy kingdoms, and all the other provinces of Christendom, render thanks to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who has granted us so great a victory and such prosperity.

Christopher Columbus.

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Expression: In connection with this letter, read again the story of the discovery as narrated by Washington Irving, page 43. In what respect do the two accounts differ?

II. Governor Winslow to a Friend in England

Dear Friend, —

Although I received no letter from you by this ship, yet forasmuch as I know you expect the performance of my promise, which was to write to you truly and faithfully of all things, I have therefore, at this time, sent unto you accordingly, referring you for further satisfaction to our more large relations.

You shall understand that in this little time that a few of us have been here, we have built seven dwelling houses and four for the use of the plantation, and have made preparation for divers others.

We set the last spring some twenty acres of Indian corn, and sowed some six acres of barley and pease; and according to the manner of the Indians, we manured our ground with herrings, or rather shads, which we have in great abundance, and take with great ease at our doors.

Our corn did prove well; and God be praised, we had a good increase of Indian corn, and our barley indifferent good, but our pease not worth the gathering, for we feared they were too late sown. They came up very well, and blossomed; but the sun parched them in the blossom.

Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might, after a special manner, rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. They four, in one day, killed as much fowl as with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming among us, and among the rest their greatest king, Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted; and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation, and bestowed upon our governor, and upon the captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God we are so far from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plenty…

We have often found the Indians very faithful in their covenant of peace with us, very loving, and ready to pleasure us. We often go to them, and they come to us… Yea, it hath pleased God so to possess the Indians with a fear of us and love to us, that not only the greatest king amongst them, called Massasoit, but also all the princes and peoples round about us, have either made suit to us, or been glad of any occasion to make peace with us; so that seven of them at once have sent their messengers to us to that end… They are a people without any religion or knowledge of any God, yet very trusty, quick of apprehension, ripe-witted, just…

Now, because I expect you coming unto us, with other of our friends, I thought good to advertise you of a few things needful. Be careful to have a very good bread room to put your biscuits in. Let not your meat be dry-salted; none can better do it than the sailors. Let your meal be so hard trod in your cask that you shall need an adz or hatchet to work it out with. Trust not too much on us for corn at this time, for we shall have little enough till harvest.

Build your cabins as open as you can, and bring good store of clothes and bedding with you. Bring every man a musket or fowling piece. Let your piece be long in the barrel, and fear not the weight of it, for most of our shooting is from stands.

I forbear further to write for the present, hoping to see you by the next return. So I take my leave, commending you to the Lord for a safe conduct unto us, resting in him,

Your loving friend,

Edward Winslow.

Plymouth in New England, this 11th of December, 1621.