accidentally
automatically
baggage
bravely
conduct
create
curiosity
deaf
estate
extraordinary
fortunately
gloomy
humankind
indeed
intensely
invention
invention
lit up
newsboy
persistently
reward
service
spare
stock
surprisingly
to attend
backpack
bow
.The students ~ to the teacher
catch
to ~ a bus
to ~ a train
duty
~on
fun
greeting
history
texts ~
indoors
literature
~Persian
~folk
lock
~door
math
a ~ problem
national
history~
flag~
neighborhood
~ a quiet
outdoor
~ sports
outdoors
pick up
.Parents ~their kids
pick up
.Students ~ trash in their homeroom
right away
schoolmates
science
.a ~ lab
stairs
subjects
~school
typical
a ~ day at school
The
Last Leaf
by O
Henry
In a
little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and broken
themselves into small strips called "places." These
"places" make strange angles and curves. One Street crosses itself a
time or two. An artist once discovered a valuable possibility in this street.
Suppose a collector with a bill for paints, paper and canvas should, in
traversing this route, suddenly meet himself coming back, without a cent having
been paid on account!
So, to
quaint old Greenwich Village the art people soon came prowling, hunting for
north windows and eighteenth-century gables and Dutch attics and low rents.
Then they imported some pewter mugs and a chafing dish or two from Sixth
Avenue, and became a "colony."
At the
top of a squatty, three-story brick Sue and Johnsy had their studio.
"Johnsy" was familiar for Joanna. One was from Maine; the other from
California. They had met at the table d'hôte of an Eighth Street
"Delmonico's," and found their tastes in art, chicory salad and bishop
sleeves so congenial that the joint studio resulted.
That
was in May. In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors called
Pneumonia, stalked about the colony, touching one here and there with his icy
fingers. Over on the east side this ravager strode boldly, smiting his victims
by scores, but his feet trod slowly through the maze of the narrow and
moss-grown "places."
Mr.
Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman. A mite of a
little woman with blood thinned by California zephyrs was hardly fair game for
the red-fisted, short-breathed old duffer. But Johnsy he smote; and she lay,
scarcely moving, on her painted iron bedstead, looking through the small Dutch
window-panes at the blank side of the next brick house.
One
morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a shaggy, gray
eyebrow.
"She
has one chance in - let us say, ten," he said, as he shook down the
mercury in his clinical thermometer. " And that chance is for her to want
to live. This way people have of lining-u on the side of the undertaker makes
the entire pharmacopoeia look silly. Your little lady has made up her mind that
she's not going to get well. Has she anything on her mind?"
"She
- she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day." said Sue.
"Paint?
- bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking twice - a man for
instance?"
"A
man?" said Sue, with a jew's-harp twang in her voice. "Is a man worth
- but, no, doctor; there is nothing of the kind."
"Well,
it is the weakness, then," said the doctor. "I will do all that
science, so far as it may filter through my efforts, can accomplish. But
whenever my patient begins to count the carriages in her funeral procession I
subtract 50 per cent from the curative power of medicines. If you will get her
to ask one question about the new winter styles in cloak sleeves I will promise
you a one-in-five chance for her, instead of one in ten."
After
the doctor had gone Sue went into the workroom and cried a Japanese napkin to a
pulp. Then she swaggered into Johnsy's room with her drawing board, whistling
ragtime.
Johnsy
lay, scarcely making a ripple under the bedclothes, with her face toward the
window. Sue stopped whistling, thinking she was asleep.
She
arranged her board and began a pen-and-ink drawing to illustrate a magazine
story. Young artists must pave their way to Art by drawing pictures for
magazine stories that young authors write to pave their way to Literature.
As Sue
was sketching a pair of elegant horseshow riding trousers and a monocle of the
figure of the hero, an Idaho cowboy, she heard a low sound, several times
repeated. She went quickly to the bedside.
Johnsy's
eyes were open wide. She was looking out the window and counting - counting
backward.
"Twelve,"
she said, and little later "eleven"; and then "ten," and
"nine"; and then "eight" and "seven", almost
together.
Sue
look solicitously out of the window. What was there to count? There was only a
bare, dreary yard to be seen, and the blank side of the brick house twenty feet
away. An old, old ivy vine, gnarled and decayed at the roots, climbed half way
up the brick wall. The cold breath of autumn had stricken its leaves from the
vine until its skeleton branches clung, almost bare, to the crumbling bricks.
"What
is it, dear?" asked Sue.
"Six,"
said Johnsy, in almost a whisper. "They're falling faster now. Three days
ago there were almost a hundred. It made my head ache to count them. But now
it's easy. There goes another one. There are only five left now."
"Five
what, dear? Tell your Sudie."
"Leaves.
On the ivy vine. When the last one falls I must go, too. I've known that for
three days. Didn't the doctor tell you?"
"Oh,
I never heard of such nonsense," complained Sue, with magnificent scorn.
"What have old ivy leaves to do with your getting well? And you used to
love that vine so, you naughty girl. Don't be a goosey. Why, the doctor told me
this morning that your chances for getting well real soon were - let's see
exactly what he said - he said the chances were ten to one! Why, that's almost
as good a chance as we have in New York when we ride on the street cars or walk
past a new building. Try to take some broth now, and let Sudie go back to her
drawing, so she can sell the editor man with it, and buy port wine for her sick
child, and pork chops for her greedy self."
"You
needn't get any more wine," said Johnsy, keeping her eyes fixed out the
window. "There goes another. No, I don't want any broth. That leaves just
four. I want to see the last one fall before it gets dark. Then I'll go,
too."
"Johnsy,
dear," said Sue, bending over her, "will you promise me to keep your
eyes closed, and not look out the window until I am done working? I must hand
those drawings in by to-morrow. I need the light, or I would draw the shade
down."
"Couldn't
you draw in the other room?" asked Johnsy, coldly.
"I'd
rather be here by you," said Sue. "Beside, I don't want you to keep
looking at those silly ivy leaves."
"Tell
me as soon as you have finished," said Johnsy, closing her eyes, and lying
white and still as fallen statue, "because I want to see the last one
fall. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of thinking. I want to turn loose my hold
on everything, and go sailing down, down, just like one of those poor, tired
leaves."
"Try
to sleep," said Sue. "I must call Behrman up to be my model for the
old hermit miner. I'll not be gone a minute. Don't try to move 'til I come
back."
Old
Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath them. He was past
sixty and had a Michael Angelo's Moses beard curling down from the head of a
satyr along with the body of an imp. Behrman was a failure in art. Forty years
he had wielded the brush without getting near enough to touch the hem of his
Mistress's robe. He had been always about to paint a masterpiece, but had never
yet begun it. For several years he had painted nothing except now and then a
daub in the line of commerce or advertising. He earned a little by serving as a
model to those young artists in the colony who could not pay the price of a
professional. He drank gin to excess, and still talked of his coming
masterpiece. For the rest he was a fierce little old man, who scoffed terribly
at softness in any one, and who regarded himself as especial mastiff-in-waiting
to protect the two young artists in the studio above.
Sue
found Behrman smelling strongly of juniper berries in his dimly lighted den
below. In one corner was a blank canvas on an easel that had been waiting there
for twenty-five years to receive the first line of the masterpiece. She told
him of Johnsy's fancy, and how she feared she would, indeed, light and fragile
as a leaf herself, float away, when her slight hold upon the world grew weaker.
Old
Behrman, with his red eyes plainly streaming, shouted his contempt and derision
for such idiotic imaginings.
"Vass!"
he cried. "Is dere people in de world mit der foolishness to die because
leafs dey drop off from a confounded vine? I haf not heard of such a thing. No,
I will not bose as a model for your fool hermit-dunderhead. Vy do you allow dot
silly pusiness to come in der brain of her? Ach, dot poor leetle Miss
Yohnsy."
"She
is very ill and weak," said Sue, "and the fever has left her mind
morbid and full of strange fancies. Very well, Mr. Behrman, if you do not care
to pose for me, you needn't. But I think you are a horrid old - old
flibbertigibbet."
"You
are just like a woman!" yelled Behrman. "Who said I will not bose? Go
on. I come mit you. For half an hour I haf peen trying to say dot I am ready to
bose. Gott! dis is not any blace in which one so goot as Miss Yohnsy shall lie
sick. Some day I vill baint a masterpiece, and ve shall all go away. Gott! yes."
Johnsy
was sleeping when they went upstairs. Sue pulled the shade down to the
window-sill, and motioned Behrman into the other room. In there they peered out
the window fearfully at the ivy vine. Then they looked at each other for a
moment without speaking. A persistent, cold rain was falling, mingled with
snow. Behrman, in his old blue shirt, took his seat as the hermit miner on an
upturned kettle for a rock.
When
Sue awoke from an hour's sleep the next morning she found Johnsy with dull,
wide-open eyes staring at the drawn green shade.
"Pull
it up; I want to see," she ordered, in a whisper.
Wearily
Sue obeyed.
But,
lo! after the beating rain and fierce gusts of wind that had endured through
the livelong night, there yet stood out against the brick wall one ivy leaf. It
was the last one on the vine. Still dark green near its stem, with its serrated
edges tinted with the yellow of dissolution and decay, it hung bravely from the
branch some twenty feet above the ground.
"It
is the last one," said Johnsy. "I thought it would surely fall during
the night. I heard the wind. It will fall to-day, and I shall die at the same
time."
"Dear,
dear!" said Sue, leaning her worn face down to the pillow, "think of
me, if you won't think of yourself. What would I do?"
But
Johnsy did not answer. The lonesomest thing in all the world is a soul when it
is making ready to go on its mysterious, far journey. The fancy seemed to
possess her more strongly as one by one the ties that bound her to friendship
and to earth were loosed.
The
day wore away, and even through the twilight they could see the lone ivy leaf
clinging to its stem against the wall. And then, with the coming of the night
the north wind was again loosed, while the rain still beat against the windows
and pattered down from the low Dutch eaves.
When
it was light enough Johnsy, the merciless, commanded that the shade be raised.
The
ivy leaf was still there.
Johnsy
lay for a long time looking at it. And then she called to Sue, who was stirring
her chicken broth over the gas stove.
"I've
been a bad girl, Sudie," said Johnsy. "Something has made that last
leaf stay there to show me how wicked I was. It is a sin to want to die. You
may bring a me a little broth now, and some milk with a little port in it, and
- no; bring me a hand-mirror first, and then pack some pillows about me, and I
will sit up and watch you cook."
And
hour later she said:
"Sudie,
some day I hope to paint the Bay of Naples."
The
doctor came in the afternoon, and Sue had an excuse to go into the hallway as
he left.
"Even
chances," said the doctor, taking Sue's thin, shaking hand in his.
"With good nursing you'll win." And now I must see another case I
have downstairs. Behrman, his name is - some kind of an artist, I believe.
Pneumonia, too. He is an old, weak man, and the attack is acute. There is no
hope for him; but he goes to the hospital to-day to be made more
comfortable."
The next
day the doctor said to Sue: "She's out of danger. You won. Nutrition and
care now - that's all."
And
that afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay, contentedly knitting a
very blue and very useless woollen shoulder scarf, and put one arm around her,
pillows and all.
"I
have something to tell you, white mouse," she said. "Mr. Behrman died
of pneumonia to-day in the hospital. He was ill only two days. The janitor
found him the morning of the first day in his room downstairs helpless with
pain. His shoes and clothing were wet through and icy cold. They couldn't
imagine where he had been on such a dreadful night. And then they found a
lantern, still lighted, and a ladder that had been dragged from its place, and
some scattered brushes, and a palette with green and yellow colors mixed on it,
and - look out the window, dear, at the last ivy leaf on the wall. Didn't you
wonder why it never fluttered or moved when the wind blew? Ah, darling, it's
Behrman's masterpiece - he painted it there the night that the last leaf fell."
Difficult People
by
Anton Chekhov
YEVGRAF
IVANOVITCH SHIRYAEV, a small farmer, whose father, a parish priest, now
deceased, had received a gift of three hundred acres of land from Madame
Kuvshinnikov, a general's widow, was standing in a corner before a copper
washing-stand, washing his hands. As usual, his face looked anxious and ill-humoured,
and his beard was uncombed.
"What
weather!" he said. "It's not weather, but a curse laid upon us. It's
raining again!"
He
grumbled on, while his family sat waiting at table for him to have finished
washing his hands before beginning dinner. Fedosya Semyonovna, his wife, his
son Pyotr, a student, his eldest daughter Varvara, and three small boys, had
been sitting waiting a long time. The boys -- Kolka, Vanka, and Arhipka --
grubby, snub-nosed little fellows with chubby faces and tousled hair that
wanted cutting, moved their chairs impatiently, while their elders sat without
stirring, and apparently did not care whether they ate their dinner or waited.
. . .
As
though trying their patience, Shiryaev deliberately dried his hands,
deliberately said his prayer, and sat down to the table without hurrying
himself. Cabbage-soup was served immediately. The sound of carpenters' axes
(Shiryaev was having a new barn built) and the laughter of Fomka, their
labourer, teasing the turkey, floated in from the courtyard.
Big,
sparse drops of rain pattered on the window.
Pyotr,
a round-shouldered student in spectacles, kept exchanging glances with his
mother as he ate his dinner. Several times he laid down his spoon and cleared
his throat, meaning to begin to speak, but after an intent look at his father
he fell to eating again. At last, when the porridge had been served, he cleared
his throat resolutely and said:
"I
ought to go tonight by the evening train. I out to have gone before; I have
missed a fortnight as it is. The lectures begin on the first of
September."
"Well,
go," Shiryaev assented; "why are you lingering on here? Pack up and
go, and good luck to you."
A
minute passed in silence.
"He
must have money for the journey, Yevgraf Ivanovitch," the mother observed
in a low voice.
"Money?
To be sure, you can't go without money. Take it at once, since you need it. You
could have had it long ago!"
The
student heaved a faint sigh and looked with relief at his mother. Deliberately
Shiryaev took a pocket-book out of his coat-pocket and put on his spectacles.
"How
much do you want?" he asked.
"The
fare to Moscow is eleven roubles forty-two kopecks. . . ."
"Ah,
money, money!" sighed the father. (He always sighed when he saw money,
even when he was receiving it.) "Here are twelve roubles for you. You will
have change out of that which will be of use to you on the journey."
"Thank
you."
After
waiting a little, the student said:
"I
did not get lessons quite at first last year. I don't know how it will be this
year; most likely it will take me a little time to find work. I ought to ask
you for fifteen roubles for my lodging and dinner."
Shiryaev
thought a little and heaved a sigh.
"You
will have to make ten do," he said. "Here, take it."
The
student thanked him. He ought to have asked him for something more, for
clothes, for lecture fees, for books, but after an intent look at his father he
decided not to pester him further.
The
mother, lacking in diplomacy and prudence, like all mothers, could not restrain
herself, and said:
"You
ought to give him another six roubles, Yevgraf Ivanovitch, for a pair of boots.
Why, just see, how can he go to Moscow in such wrecks?"
"Let
him take my old ones; they are still quite good."
"He
must have trousers, anyway; he is a disgrace to look at."
And
immediately after that a storm-signal showed itself, at the sight of which all
the family trembled.
Shiryaev's
short, fat neck turned suddenly red as a beetroot. The colour mounted slowly to
his ears, from his ears to his temples, and by degrees suffused his whole face.
Yevgraf Ivanovitch shifted in his chair and unbuttoned his shirt-collar to save
himself from choking. He was evidently struggling with the feeling that was
mastering him. A deathlike silence followed. The children held their breath.
Fedosya Semyonovna, as though she did not grasp what was happening to her
husband, went on:
"He
is not a little boy now, you know; he is ashamed to go about without
clothes."
Shiryaev
suddenly jumped up, and with all his might flung down his fat pocket-book in
the middle of the table, so that a hunk of bread flew off a plate. A revolting
expression of anger, resentment, avarice -- all mixed together -- flamed on his
face.
"Take
everything!" he shouted in an unnatural voice; "plunder me! Take it
all! Strangle me!"
He
jumped up from the table, clutched at his head, and ran staggering about the
room.
"Strip
me to the last thread!" he shouted in a shrill voice. "Squeeze out the
last drop! Rob me! Wring my neck!"
The
student flushed and dropped his eyes. He could not go on eating. Fedosya
Semyonovna, who had not after twenty-five years grown used to her husband's
difficult character, shrank into herself and muttered something in
self-defence. An expression of amazement and dull terror came into her wasted
and birdlike face, which at all times looked dull and scared. The little boys
and the elder daughter Varvara, a girl in her teens, with a pale ugly face,
laid down their spoons and sat mute.
Shiryaev,
growing more and more ferocious, uttering words each more terrible than the one
before, dashed up to the table and began shaking the notes out of his
pocket-book.
"Take
them!" he muttered, shaking all over. "You've eaten and drunk your
fill, so here's money for you too! I need nothing! Order yourself new boots and
uniforms!"
The
student turned pale and got up.
"Listen,
papa," he began, gasping for breath. "I . . . I beg you to end this,
for . . ."
"Hold
your tongue!" the father shouted at him, and so loudly that the spectacles
fell off his nose; "hold your tongue!"
"I
used . . . I used to be able to put up with such scenes, but . . . but now I
have got out of the way of it. Do you understand? I have got out of the way of
it!"
"Hold
your tongue!" cried the father, and he stamped with his feet. "You
must listen to what I say! I shall say what I like, and you hold your tongue.
At your age I was earning my living, while you . . . Do you know what you cost
me, you scoundrel? I'll turn you out! Wastrel!"
"Yevgraf
Ivanovitch," muttered Fedosya Semyonovna, moving her fingers nervously;
"you know he. . . you know Petya . . . !"
"Hold
your tongue!" Shiryaev shouted out to her, and tears actually came into
his eyes from anger. "It is you who have spoilt them -- you! It's all your
fault! He has no respect for us, does not say his prayers, and earns nothing! I
am only one against the ten of you! I'll turn you out of the house!"
The
daughter Varvara gazed fixedly at her mother with her mouth open, moved her
vacant-looking eyes to the window, turned pale, and, uttering a loud shriek,
fell back in her chair. The father, with a curse and a wave of the hand, ran
out into the yard.
This
was how domestic scenes usually ended at the Shiryaevs'. But on this occasion,
unfortunately, Pyotr the student was carried away by overmastering anger. He
was just as hasty and ill-tempered as his father and his grandfather the
priest, who used to beat his parishioners about the head with a stick. Pale and
clenching his fists, he went up to his mother and shouted in the very highest
tenor note his voice could reach:
"These
reproaches are loathsome! sickening to me! I want nothing from you! Nothing! I
would rather die of hunger than eat another mouthful at your expense! Take your
nasty money back! take it!"
The
mother huddled against the wall and waved her hands, as though it were not her
son, but some phantom before her. "What have I done?" she wailed.
"What?"
Like
his father, the boy waved his hands and ran into the yard. Shiryaev's house
stood alone on a ravine which ran like a furrow for four miles along the
steppe. Its sides were overgrown with oak saplings and alders, and a stream ran
at the bottom. On one side the house looked towards the ravine, on the other
towards the open country, there were no fences nor hurdles. Instead there were
farm-buildings of all sorts close to one another, shutting in a small space in
front of the house which was regarded as the yard, and in which hens, ducks, and
pigs ran about.
Going
out of the house, the student walked along the muddy road towards the open
country. The air was full of a penetrating autumn dampness. The road was muddy,
puddles gleamed here and there, and in the yellow fields autumn itself seemed
looking out from the grass, dismal, decaying, dark. On the right-hand side of
the road was a vegetable-garden cleared of its crops and gloomy-looking, with
here and there sunflowers standing up in it with hanging heads already black.
Pyotr
thought it would not be a bad thing to walk to Moscow on foot; to walk just as
he was, with holes in his boots, without a cap, and without a farthing of
money. When he had gone eighty miles his father, frightened and aghast, would
overtake him, would begin begging him to turn back or take the money, but he
would not even look at him, but would go on and on. . . . Bare forests would be
followed by desolate fields, fields by forests again; soon the earth would be
white with the first snow, and the streams would be coated with ice. . . .
Somewhere near Kursk or near Serpuhovo, exhausted and dying of hunger, he would
sink down and die. His corpse would be found, and there would be a paragraph in
all the papers saying that a student called Shiryaev had died of hunger. . . .
A
white dog with a muddy tail who was wandering about the vegetable-garden
looking for something gazed at him and sauntered after him.
He
walked along the road and thought of death, of the grief of his family, of the
moral sufferings of his father, and then pictured all sorts of adventures on
the road, each more marvellous than the one before -- picturesque places,
terrible nights, chance encounters. He imagined a string of pilgrims, a hut in
the forest with one little window shining in the darkness; he stands before the
window, begs for a night's lodging. . . . They let him in, and suddenly he sees
that they are robbers. Or, better still, he is taken into a big manor-house,
where, learning who he is, they give him food and drink, play to him on the piano,
listen to his complaints, and the daughter of the house, a beauty, falls in
love with him.
Absorbed
in his bitterness and such thoughts, young Shiryaev walked on and on. Far, far
ahead he saw the inn, a dark patch against the grey background of cloud. Beyond
the inn, on the very horizon, he could see a little hillock; this was the
railway-station. That hillock reminded him of the connection existing between
the place where he was now standing and Moscow, where street-lamps were burning
and carriages were rattling in the streets, where lectures were being given.
And he almost wept with depression and impatience. The solemn landscape, with
its order and beauty, the deathlike stillness all around, revolted him and
moved him to despair and hatred!
"Look
out!" He heard behind him a loud voice.
An old
lady of his acquaintance, a landowner of the neighbourhood, drove past him in a
light, elegant landau. He bowed to her, and smiled all over his face. And at
once he caught himself in that smile, which was so out of keeping with his
gloomy mood. Where did it come from if his whole heart was full of vexation and
misery? And he thought nature itself had given man this capacity for lying,
that even in difficult moments of spiritual strain he might be able to hide the
secrets of his nest as the fox and the wild duck do. Every family has its joys
and its horrors, but however great they may be, it's hard for an outsider's eye
to see them; they are a secret. The father of the old lady who had just driven
by, for instance, had for some offence lain for half his lifetime under the ban
of the wrath of Tsar Nicolas I.; her husband had been a gambler; of her four
sons, not one had turned out well. One could imagine how many terrible scenes
there must have been in her life, how many tears must have been shed. And yet
the old lady seemed happy and satisfied, and she had answered his smile by
smiling too. The student thought of his comrades, who did not like talking
about their families; he thought of his mother, who almost always lied when she
had to speak of her husband and children. . . .
Pyotr
walked about the roads far from home till dusk, abandoning himself to dreary
thoughts. When it began to drizzle with rain he turned homewards. As he walked
back he made up his mind at all costs to talk to his father, to explain to him,
once and for all, that it was dreadful and oppressive to live with him.
He
found perfect stillness in the house. His sister Varvara was lying behind a
screen with a headache, moaning faintly. His mother, with a look of amazement
and guilt upon her face, was sitting beside her on a box, mending Arhipka's
trousers. Yevgraf Ivanovitch was pacing from one window to another, scowling at
the weather. From his walk, from the way he cleared his throat, and even from
the back of his head, it was evident he felt himself to blame.
"I
suppose you have changed your mind about going today?" he asked.
The
student felt sorry for him, but immediately suppressing that feeling, he said:
"Listen
. . . I must speak to you seriously. . . yes, seriously. I have always
respected you, and . . . and have never brought myself to speak to you in such
a tone, but your behaviour . . . your last action . . ."
The
father looked out of the window and did not speak. The student, as though
considering his words, rubbed his forehead and went on in great excitement:
"Not
a dinner or tea passes without your making an uproar. Your bread sticks in our
throat. . . nothing is more bitter, more humiliating, than bread that sticks in
one's throat. . . . Though you are my father, no one, neither God nor nature,
has given you the right to insult and humiliate us so horribly, to vent your
ill-humour on the weak. You have worn my mother out and made a slave of her, my
sister is hopelessly crushed, while I . . ."
"It's
not your business to teach me," said his father.
"Yes,
it is my business! You can quarrel with me as much as you like, but leave my
mother in peace! I will not allow you to torment my mother!" the student
went on, with flashing eyes. "You are spoilt because no one has yet dared
to oppose you. They tremble and are mute towards you, but now that is over!
Coarse, ill-bred man! You are coarse . . . do you understand? You are coarse,
ill-humoured, unfeeling. And the peasants can't endure you!"
The
student had by now lost his thread, and was not so much speaking as firing off
detached words. Yevgraf Ivanovitch listened in silence, as though stunned; but
suddenly his neck turned crimson, the colour crept up his face, and he made a
movement.
"Hold
your tongue!" he shouted.
"That's
right!" the son persisted; "you don't like to hear the truth!
Excellent! Very good! begin shouting! Excellent!"
"Hold
your tongue, I tell you!" roared Yevgraf Ivanovitch.
Fedosya
Semyonovna appeared in the doorway, very pale, with an astonished face; she
tried to say something, but she could not, and could only move her fingers.
"It's
all your fault!" Shiryaev shouted at her. "You have brought him up
like this!"
"I
don't want to go on living in this house!" shouted the student, crying,
and looking angrily at his mother. "I don't want to live with you!"
Varvara
uttered a shriek behind the screen and broke into loud sobs. With a wave of his
hand, Shiryaev ran out of the house.
The
student went to his own room and quietly lay down. He lay till midnight without
moving or opening his eyes. He felt neither anger nor shame, but a vague ache
in his soul. He neither blamed his father nor pitied his mother, nor was he
tormented by stings of conscience; he realized that every one in the house was
feeling the same ache, and God only knew which was most to blame, which was
suffering most. . . .
At
midnight he woke the labourer, and told him to have the horse ready at five
o'clock in the morning for him to drive to the station; he undressed and got
into bed, but could not get to sleep. He heard how his father, still awake,
paced slowly from window to window, sighing, till early morning. No one was
asleep; they spoke rarely, and only in whispers. Twice his mother came to him
behind the screen. Always with the same look of vacant wonder, she slowly made
the cross over him, shaking nervously.
At
five o'clock in the morning he said good-bye to them all affectionately, and
even shed tears. As he passed his father's room, he glanced in at the door.
Yevgraf Ivanovitch, who had not taken off his clothes or gone to bed, was
standing by the window, drumming on the panes.
"Good-bye;
I am going," said his son.
"Good-bye
. . . the money is on the round table . . ." his father answered, without
turning round.
A
cold, hateful rain was falling as the labourer drove him to the station. The
sunflowers were drooping their heads still lower, and the grass seemed darker
than ever.
LINGUISTICS
The Study of Language (3rd Edition) by George Yule
Linguistics and Language: A Survey of Basic Concepts & Implications by
Julia S. Falk
An Introduction to Language(7th Edition) by V. Fromkin, R. Rodman & N.
Hymas
Linguistics: An Introduction to Language and Communication( 5th Edition) by A.
Akmajian, R.A. Demers, A.K. Framer, & R.M. Harnish
An Introduction to Language & Linguistics by R. W. Fasold & J.
Connor-Linton
Essential Introductory Linguistics by G. Hudson
LANGUAGE TEACHING & METHODOLOGY
Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching by Diane Larsen-Freeman
Developing Second Language Skills: Theory & Practice by K. Chastain
Teaching Second Language Skills by Wilga Rivers
Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching by J.C. Richards & T. S. Rogers
Principles of Language Learning & Teaching by H. Douglas Brown
Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy by H.
Douglas Brown
Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language by D. Celce-Murcia (Apple
Book)
Fundamental Concepts of Language Teaching by H.H. Stern
LANGUAGE TESTING
Testing: From Theory to Practice by H. Farhady, A. Jafarpour, & B. Birjandi
(SAMT)
Testing English as a Second Language by Harris
Language Testing: A Critical Survey and Practical Guide by David Baker
Writing English Language Tests by J. B. Heaton
Fundamental Considerations in Language Testing by L. F. Bachman
Language Testing: A Critical Survey & Practical Guide by D. Baker
