Teacher’s Guide · The Ransom of Red Chief, by O. Henry 42 The Interlopers, by Saki 49 The Lady,...

Teacher’s Guide

Cover StoryTeacher’s Guideby Daniel Schwabauer

Clear Water PressPO Box 62Olathe, KS 66051www.clearwaterpress.com

Printed in the USA

Copyright © 2013 Daniel Schwabauer. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, except in the case of brief quotations printed in articles or reviews, without prior written permission from the publisher.

This book is intended for the education of its readers. Any similarities between characters mentioned herein and persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Any slights of people, places, or organizations are unintentional. All rights reserved.

ISBN 978-0-9828995-4-0

To order additional copies of this textbook or for more information, visit:CoverStoryWriting.com

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http://www.clearwaterpress.com

http://www.clearwaterpress.com

About Cover Story 7

Evaluation & Grading 11

Weekly Lesson Guides 15

Unit 1 (Lessons 1–12) 16






Assigned Readings 41

The Ransom of Red Chief, by O. Henry 42

The Interlopers, by Saki 49

The Lady, or the Tiger, by Frank R. Stockton 53

The Information Conspiracy, by D. Schwabauer 57

The Most Dangerous Game, by Richard Connell 59

The Necklace, by Guy de Maupassant 72

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, by A. Bierce 77

The Sniper, by Liam O’Flaherty 83

Exercise & Grammar Keys 87

Unit Tests & Answers 125

Recording Grades 139

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Contents

About Cover StoryWe designed Cover Story around the idea that middle school students need a

reason to write that goes beyond should. Writing well is work. Sometimes it is liberating and inspiring and transforming work, but it is still work. And few middle school students are mature enough to love the idea of work without first knowing what’s in it for them. They may not say it aloud, but their attitude is a giant question mark. Why should I learn to write?

As teachers and parents we sometimes answer with the comfortable platitudes we were given: You ought to do it because it is good for you. You don't want to be illiterate, do you? Don’t you want to communicate well? Do it because I said so. You have to learn to write if you want to go to college. Or my favorite: Because God gave you a gift, and He expects you to use it!

Not that any of these responses are untrue. They just aren’t motivating. At least they weren’t motivating to me. The only reason I wanted to be a writer when I was young was because I liked the idea of writing. I lived in a world of stories and I wanted to make stories of my own. I never wrote anything (well, anything worth reading) because someone told me that doing so would be good for me.

To put all of this another way, imagine how much easier it would be to get kids to eat their vegetables if every vegetable tasted like chocolate. I can't promise that Cover Story is the writing equivalent of a candy bar, but our intent was to remove some of the obstacles that get in the way of students discovering that writing can be fun. And the main obstacle is this: students are rarely allowed to answer the Why? question for themselves.

Instead of giving students a platitude, we have attempted to turn the question around. Why should you write? Good question! Why should you? What do you love so much that you can pour your heart and energy and time into it and still have something left over to say? What’s worth it—to you?

The point of Cover Story is learning to love writing by nurturing the creative impulse. I believe this is best fostered by helping students to explore their passion.

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Overview

Cover Story leads students through the process of writing the content for their own magazine. By content, we mean written content, not photographs or page design. It is not a course in layout or publishing, though the last few lessons address these briefly.

Students create short stories, poems, non-fiction articles, letters and many other creative pieces over the course of one school year. Along the way they are asked to think deeply about not just their theme and subject matter, but about writing as a creative act. For each type of writing they are led through a process of brainstorming, outlining and analyzing that is meant to carry over and expand into the next section.

Because it is a middle school course and we didn't want the students getting bored, we decided to change gears frequently. We never spend more than three weeks in a row (nine lessons) on any one type of writing, though we do circle back to certain forms more than once.

The idea is that even though the focus may change from poetry to non-fiction to short stories every week or so, the techniques involved carry over. Juxtaposition is used in poetry as well as in short stories. Conflict can be seen not just in fiction and non-fiction, but in a haiku or senryu or ballad. Repetition and progressions of three can be powerful elements of letters and blog posts and limericks.

At the end of the year your student should have created enough written content for a magazine. Although it can be fun to typeset the finished work into a format suitable for color printing, it isn’t necessary for the course. However, we do strongly suggest that you print off your student’s finished works and put them into some sort of physical form he or she can hold in the hand. A three-ring binder is sufficient. Doing this finalizes the act of creation. It puts an exclamation mark on a process that began in the vapor of the imagination and culminated in something tangible.

How to Teach the Course

Cover Story is taught for you on video. The numbered video lessons match the lesson numbers in the Student Book.

The course is designed to be taught three days per week, though it is flexible enough to accommodate a different schedule. Most students will follow the same process:

& Three days per week:& & 1. Watch the video lesson for that day.

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& & 2. Read and complete the corresponding lesson in the Student Book.

& Five days per week:& & 1. Make an entry in The Remarkable Journal.

& Once per month:& & 1. Take the appropriate Unit Tests in the back of this book.

This process is basically self-directed and requires little involvement on a day-to-day basis. The main things a teacher needs to do are:& 1. Make sure the student is following the above regimen.& 2. Answer questions and direct any discussions the student seems to need.& 3. Grade the Student Book, Journal, and completed works (poems, short & & stories, etc) once per unit/month.

Who is Professor Gunther von Steuben?

Von Steuben is purely a fictional character. Moreover, he is an incomplete fictional character, since much of his life and story remain unexplained. Who he ends up being will depend on what the student writes about each day.

The journal was written to serve as a series of writing prompts that are connected to a larger story. I have found that students respond much better to assignments based on stories than they do to random topics. Stories are inherently meaningful, and the search for the meaning of von Steuben’s journal adds a layer of purpose and interest to the daily chore of observing and writing about life.

Thus, the story of the Remarkable Journal was deliberately left open-ended (though I implied a possible ending for those students who need a target ending to make their entries more consistent).

That said, there is no right or wrong ending to the journal, just as there is no right or wrong identity for the professor.

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Evaluation & GradingGrading may be done at your convenience. However, I recommend teachers

grade all the work for each unit at the end of the unit. This amounts to spending one or two hours each month when your student has completed all twelve unit lessons.

The main reason for grading at the end of a unit is that it allows your student(s) to be creative without feeling that they are being evaluated on their ideas. They need the freedom to jot down bad ideas as well as good ones, and that’s hard to do when someone is looking over your shoulder.

Waiting till the end of the unit also allows students to change or expand answers as they progress. For instance, they may not have a clear idea who their main character should be when working on lesson 31. It is still important that they try to answer the questions for that lesson when it is assigned, but their answers may be incomplete. Later, however, they may have a terrific idea for a main character and be able to better answer those questions. This happens frequently and in various places for each student. It is a natural part of the creative process. But if you have already graded their work, they will be more inclined to feel that they are stuck with their previous answers. Waiting till the end of a unit removes this obstacle to creativity.

Of course, it may be necessary with some students to verify that they are working on their student book lessons, magazine content, and journal entries.

How to Grade

Grades are based on a point system. Points are awarded for four things:& Student Book lessons& Journal entries& Completed works (poems, short stories, etc.)& Unit tests

A few of the exercises have answer keys in the back of this book. The answer keys are not meant to provide every possible right answer. They are only there to show you the sort of answer you should be looking for. Creative writing isn’t a matter of right and wrong, but of better and worse.

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The lessons in the Student Book are all graded the same way. Each lesson is worth up to 30 points based on three rubrics. Each rubric is worth 1–10 points. The rubrics are based on whether or not the student’s lesson answers are:

& Complete? Did the student answer every question?& Appropriate? Are the answers relevant, or is the student merely & & & filling in the blanks?& Thoughtful? Is the student giving thought to each question or & & & answering with the first idea that pops into her head? Many of & & & the questions in the Student Book can be answered correctly in & & & different ways. All are meant to stimulate creative thinking. & & & Reward outside-the-box answers with a higher score.

Remember that the lessons in the Student Book are graded independently of any completed works required. For instance, lessons 28–36 are about writing a short story. The student’s answers to these lessons in the Student Book are worth 30 points regardless of the grade your student receives on their written short story.

Write the total score for each lesson under the lesson number in the student’s book.

Journal entries are worth 5 points per day. To receive 5 points, the student’s entry must fit the general parameters of the Journal. That is, if the assignment for that unit is writing dialogue, the student must have written dialogue.

Each entry is based on writing a minimum of 5 sentences (or “bounces” in the dialogue section). Award 1 point per relevant sentence, question, or bounce, up to 5 points per day.

Keep in mind that the journal is meant to help students sharpen their powers of observation and instill in them a thoughtful written voice. Grading of the journal should err on the side of leniency. Do count off for lazy or incomplete entries. Don’t count off for experimental or odd ones. Some days your student(s) may not know what to write, and putting down anything thoughtful can be an accomplishment.

A student’s completed works (such as poems and short stories) should be graded based on the rubrics in the weekly lesson guides that follow. These rubrics change based on the type of creative work required for that segment of the class. The rubrics for longer assignments—such as the two short stories—are different than those used to grade poetry or letter-writing.

Longer and more difficult assignments are worth more points, and are usually based on more rubrics than the shorter assignments.

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Each completed work is graded independently of the lessons in the Student Book associated with it. Grade each finished poem or article or short story on how well it adheres to the rubrics described in each weekly lesson guide, not based on how well the student answered the related questions in their Student Book.

Unit tests are straightforward, multiple-choice quizzes given at the end of each unit. Each test is worth 100 points (10 points per question). An answer key is provided.

Permission is granted to reproduce the test pages from this book for the purpose of administering tests to a student or students using this program. The tests may not be otherwise distributed.

The grammar component is not included in the regular grading scale, but can be added by awarding an additional point for every correct answer in each lesson. This will amount to an additional 403 possible points for the grammar unit.

Alternatively, the grammar lessons could be assigned as extra credit against the regular grading scale.

If grading Cover Story seems complicated now, I think you will be surprised at how simple the grading process really is once you start doing it. The grading sheets at the end of this book will give you an easy-to-grasp overview of the rubric/point system, and are very helpful in keeping a running evaluation of your student’s performance.

! Final Grading Scale! ! ! Final Grading Scale (no grammar / 4,760 points possible)& (with grammar / 5,163 points possible)

& 90% 4,284 points = A& & & 90% 4,646 points = A

& 80% 3,808 points = B& & & 80% 4,130 points = B

& 70% 3,332 points = C& & & 70% 3,614 points = C

& 60% 2,856 points = D& & & 60% 3,097 points = D

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Weekly Lesson GuidesAlthough most of the teaching is done for you on video, you may find the

following summary pages helpful as you prepare for class. In particular, understanding what each series of three lessons is attempting to produce can help you evaluate not just your student’s finished magazine content, but also their comprehension of the core concepts.

The lesson guides provide a general overview of the student assignment(s) for the week (such as writing a short story or series of poems), a summary of the skills each assignment is meant to sharpen, and a short explanation of the rubrics involved in grading a completed work.

Creative Piece(s) Required: This refers to the finished magazine content a student should complete by the end of the week, such as a short story or non-fiction article. It does not refer to lessons in the Student Book.

Goals: Explains what each series of three lessons is attempting to produce in the student. Because some of the content of the video lessons can be challenging for younger writers, it can be helpful to know what you should consider essential.

Grading: Clarifies the rubrics you will use to grade any required magazine content. You will see many of these rubrics appear repeatedly. The rubrics change because the course changes focus frequently, and we expect a different emphasis with each form. Poetry should not be evaluated the same way we evaluate short stories or blog posts, for example.

Journal: Overview of the five required journal entries.

&

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Cover Story

Creative Piece Required: None.

Goals: Students should thoughtfully choose a theme for their magazine. They should also read the first section of the Remarkable Journal (pages 7 to 17) and become comfortable with the course workflow:& 1. Watch the appropriate video lesson.& 2. Read and complete the related lesson in the Student Book.& 3. Make a journal entry of at least 5 sentences every weekday.

Grading: The only rubrics required this week are the default rubrics used in grading lessons in the Student Book. Each of these categories is graded on a scale of 1–10, for a total of 30 possible points per lesson. Are the student’s lesson answers:& Complete? Did the student answer every question?& Appropriate? Are the answers relevant, or is the student merely & & & filling in the blanks?& Thoughtful? Is the student giving thought to each question or & & & answering with the first idea that pops into her head? Many of & & & the questions in the Student Book can be answered correctly in & & & different ways. All are meant to stimulate creative thinking. & & & Reward outside-the-box answers with a higher score.

Journal: Students should read pages 7–17, and write 5 questions per day for 5 days on pages 18–23. Daily journal entries should fit on a single lined page. Each section of lined pages includes an extra page (6 total) for students who want to write more.

The first week of Cover Story is designed to pull students into the flow of the course without requiring any finished creative works. The main task at hand is carefully choosing a magazine theme that is capable of sustaining their interest for a full school year. This means the theme should be neither too specific nor too general.

Some students will want to change their theme after the first week. They should be free to do so until roughly the end of the first unit.

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WEEK 1

1 2 3

Detail, Part 1


Goals: These lessons are meant to help students categorize sentences, nouns and adjectives.

& 1. All sentences are either based on active verbs (movie sentences) or passive & & verbs (concept sentences).

& 2. All nouns fall somewhere between general and specific; good writing & & depends heavily on specific nouns because these produce more & & concrete images in the imagination.

& 3. Adjectives tend to be either vague or precise. Vague adjectives are usually & & not very helpful in creative writing.

Grading: To help students understand the concepts covered in these lessons, consider reviewing their work based on the suggested answers provided in the Exercise Keys for lessons 4, 5, and 6.

While it is possible to grade these three lessons based on the exercise keys, it is simpler (and better for the student in the long run) to use the default rubrics of Complete, Appropriate and Thoughtful. This is because you don’t want your student(s) thinking that their answers to the questions posed in the Student Book will be graded against an unseen answer key.

Journal: Read pages 24–25. Write 5 questions per day for 5 days on pages 26–31.

The goals for this week are extremely important, especially the first one. It is extremely important that students begin to understand the difference between movie sentences and concept sentences. It is not necessary (or possible) that they master ways of exploiting the difference. Mastery will come later. For now, it is enough that students show they can distinguish one from the other.

Consider this week a great success if students understand that movie sentences are generally more powerful than concept sentences, specific nouns are more concrete than general ones, and precise adjectives are often much more useful than vague ones.

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WEEK 2

4 5 6

Detail, Part 2


Goals: Students should take away a basic understanding that an active verb (not a passive verb or an adverb) is the engine of a compelling sentence. They should also begin to connect sensory images to emotion.

Grading: As with the previous week’s lessons, you only need the default rubrics of Complete, Appropriate and Thoughtful. A review of the Exercise Keys for lessons 7, 8 and 9 may be helpful.

Journal: Read pages 32–33. Write 5 questions per day for 5 days on pages 34–39. At this point it may be helpful to look over the completed journal entries to make sure your students are asking thoughtful questions and not simply filling in the blank spaces.

Because most of us don’t use active verbs very often in everyday speech, it is normal for students to balk at the idea of avoiding adverbs and passive verbs. It takes practice and discipline to build a habit of using strong verbs when writing. The result is well worth the effort.

Similarly, creating emotion through the use of sensory images is not a skill most middle school students have ever practiced. They are used to writing the way they speak, and they tend to speak in generalities. They are used to telling, not showing. It is important that they begin to grasp the relationship between concrete images and emotion.

This is why we’ve chosen movie sentences as a way of describing the sort of prose students should aim for most of the time. The idea is to keep reinforcing the need for precise details by reminding students to create a movie in the reader’s mind.

Movies, after all, are fast becoming the language of the next generation, and most middle school students will quickly grasp the connection between emotion and imagery when it is presented in these terms.

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WEEK 3

7 8 9

Description

Creative Piece Required: A review of 300–500 words.

Goals: Learning how to brainstorm ideas. Understanding three-part structure and progressions of three. Basic paragraphing using “rock star” sentences and “groupies.”

Grading: Use the default rubrics (Complete, Appropriate and Thoughtful) to grade the lesson answers in the Student Book. Use the following three rubrics to evaluate the finished review, each of which should be graded on a scale of 1–30, for a total of 90 possible points for this finished creative piece:

& Clarity? Is the main point clear? Has the student made a point and & & reinforced it with evidence? Is the main point consistent throughout & & the piece?

& Strategy? How well did the student apply their chosen strategy for this & & piece?

& Structure? Did the student create a three-part structure that uses a hook, & & evidence and a clincher? Did each of these parts work in proportion to & & the others?

Journal: Read pages 40–41. Write 5 questions per day for 5 days on pages 42–47.

Since this is the first creative piece students are required to write for this course, they may be apprehensive about their words, sentences, subject matter, or main point. They may be intimidated by the grading process.

Tell them you are looking for the things described in the rubrics above rather than focusing on their verb usage or imagery. Verbs and imagery are certainly worth discussing when reviewing a student’s finished piece, but should not, at this point, be directly connected to how you grade what they are writing.

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WEEK 4

10 11 12

STOPIt’s time to give Unit Test One before

your student continues to lesson 13.

Poetry, Part 1

Creative Pieces Required: Three poems (an eight-line poem, an acrostic, and a cinquain).

Goals: Students should understand that the defining structure of poetry is the line break. They should be able to build simple poems around a central image.

Grading: Each poem should be graded on a scale of 1–10 for each rubric below. Each poem is worth up to 30 points (90 points for all three).

& Emotion? Does the poem focus on or produce one key emotion?

& Imagery? Does the poem use precise images?

& Structure? Does the poem follow the structural boundaries that define its & & type (i.e., a cinquain)?

Journal: Read pages 48–49. Write 5 details per day for 5 days on pages 50–55.

Unfortunately, many students bring two misconceptions to poetry writing assignments. The first misconception is that all poems must rhyme in order to be real poetry. Even students who know that rhyming isn’t necessary sometimes feel that a rhyme scheme will somehow make a poem more artistic.

In truth, a rhyme scheme does make writing a poem easier (though not necessarily better). It does this by narrowing the field of possibilities to only certain words. This makes the task of word choice smaller and creates a kind of frame for the poem. In other words, it creates boundaries that inspire the imagination. Thus, students should feel free to use rhymes, but with the understanding that rhymed poems are not necessarily better or more artistic than unrhymed ones.

The second misconception is that poetry is necessarily profound or sad or full of daffodils. That is, beginners sometimes limit their subject matter and emotional pallette to the things and emotions they think they are supposed to write about, rather than the things that actually interest them. Encourage your students to choose from a broad range of emotions and subjects for their poems. Reading from Shel Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends may be helpful in making this point.

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WEEK 5

13 14 15

Poetry, Part 2

Creative Piece Required: Four poems (three haiku and a limerick).

Goals: Students should learn the structure of the haiku and the limerick. At the end of the week they should have a better understanding of how single images represent a moment of change.

Grading: Grade each poem on a scale of 1–10 for each rubric. Each poem is worth up to 30 points (120 points for all three).

& Emotion? Does the poem focus on or produce one key emotion?

& Imagery? Does the poem use precise images?

& Structure? Does the poem follow the structural boundaries that define its & & type (i.e., a cinquain)?


Haiku try to capture snapshots of nature that represent a single moment in time. It may be helpful to reiterate that haiku are more like close-up photographs than landscapes. But even single snapshots can tell a story, and story is the point of these lessons.

It is easy for students to rush past Lesson 16’s concept of change shown through a single image. In particular, students tend to miss the idea of implication. Make sure your student(s) grasp how a picture can demonstrate change by showing an “after” and implying a “before” image (or vice versa). Change is essential to storytelling.

Limericks are a great way to teach appreciation for story. Because they have a rigid structure that tends to sound funny, it is usually easy for students to embrace the limerick assignment. However, successful limericks are often the result of a clear story idea rather than a clever rhyme scheme. Steer your student(s) towards generating a funny idea before they choose their rhyming words.

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WEEK 6

16 17 18

Astounding but True

Creative Piece Required: One Astounding but True non-fiction article based on a live interview will be required by the end of lesson 24.

Goals: Students should demonstrate understanding of the five Ws and how they can be used in an interview. They should understand that good interviews usually arise from interaction rather than merely asking a list of pre-planned questions.

Grading: Use the default rubrics of Complete, Appropriate and Thoughtful to grade your student’s work in the Student Book.


This week is all about planning to tell a story. The assignments are intended to introduce students to the idea that stories are often the result of a gradual process rather than a spontaneous one. This may seem counterintuitive to some, but it will be helpful as they begin to write their own short stories later on.

Concentrate on two things this week. First, help students understand that their interview is key to making their story work. Therefore, they need to pick an interviewee with an interesting story, not just someone who is easy to interview (like a grandparent or coach). Their article will be more fun to write if they are writing something that is inherently fun.

Second, they need to at least begin to understand how every story derives its emotive power from one of the Ws. This is covered in video lesson 21. While it is not necessary that students think in terms of spiraling towards a central question, it is helpful if they can see that a story will change based on which W the writer focuses on.

After they have conducted their interview, you might find it necessary to lead your student(s) towards the W that will give their story the most emotional impact. Is the main thing their story is about a Who, What, When, Where or Why? Sometimes it takes a little discussion to sort out the answer, but doing so is well worth the time spent.

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WEEK 7

19 20 21

Astounding Too

Creative Piece Required: One Astounding but True non-fiction article of at least 500 words.

Goals: Students should learn that storytelling, even with true-life stories, depends greatly on a writer’s choices and perspective. Even though the actual story happened a certain way, it can be told a thousand different ways.

Grading: Grade the finished article based on the four rubrics below. Award up to 30 points for each rubric. The non-fiction article will be worth a total of 120 points.

& Emotion? Does the article create emotion in you as you read it? Is that & & emotion the one the writer intended?

& Imagery? Does the article use precise images to create an unfolding movie in & & your imagination?

& Structure? Does the article follow the general structure of hook, evidence & & and clincher? Does it use one of the three strategies outlined in the & & video lesson?

& Prose? Does the article relate events in a clear, easy-to-follow and & & chronological way? Does the prose rely on sentences that are & & interesting and necessary to the story?


Unlike the other long assignments in this course, the actual prose of your student’s Astounding article will be written in one lesson, rather than spread out over three or more. As a result, their finished article may not be very polished. At this point, that’s okay. The main things to look for in grading the completed article are emphasized in the rubrics above.

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WEEK 8

22 23 24

STOPIt’s time to give Unit Test Two before


Dear Editor

Creative Pieces Required: Three letters.

Goals: Students should come away from these lessons understanding the basic structure of a letter and how letters can be used to tell compelling stories because of their limited human perspective.

Grading: Completed letters should each be awarded up to 30 points based on the three rubrics below (1–10 points each):

& Focus? Does the letter contain all of the basic parts? Does it make a single & & main point?

& Content? Does the letter use a friendly, conversational tone? Is it funny or & & interesting? Does it tell or imply a story?

& Character? Does the personality of the writer come through the text? Is the & & writer role-playing well?

Journal: Read pages 83–85. Write a paragraph of at least 5 sentences each day for 5 days on pages 86–91.

Students should feel free to express themselves through their fictional characters. However, they should do so in a way that fits the structure of a short letter. This means they should follow the conventions of letter writing even in lessons 26 and 27.

Help your writer(s) to work at making a single main point in each letter, even when they are writing from the limited perspective of a unique, fictional personality.

Also, encourage them, when writing to a famous person, to pick someone who may be inclined to write back. Although it is okay to write to the President of the United States, getting a personal letter (not a form letter) in return is highly unlikely. Including a SASE for the reply letter is always a good idea.

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WEEK 9

25 26 27

Short Stories, Part 1

Creative Piece Required: Nothing this week. Students will write a short story by the end of lesson 36.

Goals: Stories are about meaningful change. This change is shown through a conflict that centers around a person with a problem. Stories typically make one, and only one, main point.



Reading: Students should also read The Ransom of Red Chief, by O. Henry. This story is printed in the Student Book at the end of lesson 30, and in this book in the Assigned Readings section.

The goal this week is for students to create a worthy framework for an original short story. Many young writers assume that story creation results from spontaneity and inspiration. Good short stories are more often the result of thoughtful planning.

The basic elements of the short story type they will be writing (a character change story) are essential to writing a story that resolves. To put it another way, in order for their story to work—to feel like an actual story rather than a series of events—the basics of character and conflict must be present.

Sometimes students want to rush past the creation of a person and a problem, but doing so will probably lessen the interest they have for their story later.

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WEEK 10

28 29 30



Goals: Students should understand that a fictional character is revealed through what she thinks, says and does. Just as story people must be shown to the audience, so must story problems and story resolutions (major changes).



Reading: Students should read The Interlopers, by Saki. The story is printed in the Student Book and in this Teacher’s Guide in the Assigned Readings section.

Lessons 28 through 36 are designed to further a student’s understanding of showing vs. telling. This week, showing is highlighted.

It is important that your students engage their imaginations and think in terms of movies rather than concepts when answering the questions in lessons 31 and 32. Some young writers find this to be difficult at first. Often the problem isn’t lack of imagination, but lack of discipline in describing what they imagine.

Encourage students to brainstorm answers that can be shown through sensory details. For instance, in responding to the question, “What might your hero do?” your student may try to write something like, “Get mad.” What you are after is something more specific, something that relies on one or more of the senses and creates a movie in the mind, such as: “He slams his fast into the refrigerator and yells at everyone to get out of his house!”

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WEEK 11

31 32 33


Creative Piece Required: A finished short story of at least 800 words.

Goals: Students should convert their general story outline into a short story for their magazine. Their story should demonstrate a rising action, an increase in tension as the story progresses.

Grading: The finished short story is worth a total of 200 points. Award up to 40 points in each of the following 5 categories:

& Emotion? How well does the story create emotion in you as you read? Is this & & the emotion the writer intended?

& Imagery? Does the story use precise images to create an unfolding movie in & & your imagination?

& Structure? Does the story have a clear beginning, middle and end? Does & & something important change as a result of &the story’s events?

& Character? Is the main character revealed through what he thinks, says & & and does? (Deduct points if these things are primarily told to the & & reader rather than shown.)

& Conflict? Does the story problem get bigger as the story progresses? Is the & & problem resolved through the actions of the main character? (Note & & that the hero doesn’t have to overcome the problem in order to resolve & & it.)


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WEEK 12

34 35 36

STOPIt’s time to give Unit Test Three before


Four Layers


Goals: Students should be able to demonstrate a basic understanding of the four layers of meaning and how they are created: & First Layer: words and symbols& Second Layer: sentences (created by combining words and symbols)& Third Layer: context (created by combining sentences)& Fourth Layer: relevance (created by combining the story context with the & & reader’s context)


Journal: Read pages 118–119. Write 5 exchanges of dialogue each day for 5 days on pages 120–125. Each exchange (or “bounce”) should include a statement or question and a response. For example, one exchange would be:

& “Where are you going?”& “Home”Alternatively, you might require ten lines of dialogue.

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WEEK 13

37 38 39

Personal Account

Creative Piece Required: One blog post of 100–200 words

Goals: Students should begin (or continue) to write honestly about personal experiences.

Grading: Use the default rubrics of Complete, Appropriate and Thoughtful to grade your student’s work in the Student Book and the finished blog post. Award up to 10 points for each rubric; the blog post is worth a total of 30 points.

Journal: Read page 126. Write 5 exchanges of dialogue each day for 5 days on pages 127–132.

Telling the truth in one’s work is a subjective goal. How honest must you be? How much honesty is too much? Where should the young writer draw the line?

Lessons 40–42 are not designed to answer these questions. Instead, they are included to introduce students to the idea of transparency. All writers draw from personal experience when telling stories—even writers of science fiction and fantasy. Good writers observe details about the world, about people, about the nature of life. Even when they aren’t doing it consciously, they are rearranging and recycling their own experiences as raw story material. This is part of what makes good fiction believable; it has the flavor of reality built in because it originated in the real world.

But good writing is about more than creating believable events. It is also about telling the truth. It’s about looking honestly at what you believe and why you believe it. It’s about looking past the surface answers and superficial explanations that are sometimes used to cover up ugly (or beautiful) realities.

Telling the truth can be hard. Rather than ask students to bare their souls, these lessons only encourage them to begin writing honestly about subjects they are comfortable with.

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WEEK 14

40 41 42

Make Me Laugh

Creative Piece Required: One humor piece of at least 300 words.

Goals: Students do not have be funny at the end of this week, but they should know what hyperbole is and how it works in humor pieces. They should also recognize the importance of repetition and timing in comedy.

Grading: The finished humor piece will be worth up to 50 points. Award up to 10 points for each of the following rubrics:& Focus? Does the article make one main point? & Tone? Is the language informal and relaxing?& Exaggeration? Does the writer use hyperbole?&& Repetition? Does the piece incorporate any progressions of three or other & & elements of repetition?& Character? Does the writer create a sense of character via a written & & personality?

Journal: Read page 133. Write 5 exchanges of dialogue each day for 5 days on pages 134 to 139.

The idea this week is to introduce students to a few of the techniques of humor writing. Keep in mind that writing “funny stuff” is hard. Don't evaluate your student’s finished article based on whether or not you find it funny. Instead, concentrate on pointing out how he or she implemented the techniques taught in this week’s video lessons.

This doesn't mean “Is it funny?” can’t be part of the discussion. It just shouldn’t be part of the grade. One very valuable exercise, depending on who is involved, is turning your student’s idea into a round-table event. Have them ask for input from friends, peers and family members as they take their article and try to make it even funnier.

This exercise won't work with every student, but it can be an excellent way to demonstrate how humor works.

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WEEK 15

43 44 45

How To

Creative Piece Required: One how-to article of 100–250 words. One “Going Places” article of at least 200 words.

Goals: Understand and practice chronological narration. Students should grasp the importance of relating story events in order.

Grading: Award 60 points for each how-to article written this week (120 points total). The three rubrics below should each be graded on a scale of 1–20:& Ordered? Are the steps described in the article related in chronological & & order?& Clear? Is the narrative clear? Is each point conveyed in a concrete way?& Specific? Does the writer use precise language and detailed images?&

Journal: Read pages 140–143. Write 5 exchanges of dialogue each day for 5 days on pages 144–149.

Ideally, lessons 46–48 will culminate in an act of story creation in the Going Places article. Not every student will find the last how-to article compelling. Still, it is helpful to encourage your student(s) to integrate storytelling principles in their work. Going Places is a lot more fun when it combines steadily increasing problems with a clear story goal and a sense of resolution. That is, it will be more fun to read if it tells a story rather than just gives directions.

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WEEK 16

46 47 48

STOPIt’s time to give Unit Test Four before


Ask Martha

Creative Piece Required: An advice column that consists of at least two letters.

Goals: Should take away from these lessons a basic ability to consider three or more possible answers for any given question. They should also grow in their ability to write from the perspective of at least two viewpoint characters (the reader and the columnist).

Grading: Grade the completed advice column as a single work rather than two separate letters. The finished piece will be worth 80 points based on the four rubrics below (1–20 points each):& Focus? Does each letter contain all of the basic parts and make a single & & main point?& Perspective? Does the column address various possible answers to the & & reader’s question? & Content? Does each letter use a friendly, conversational tone? Is it funny or & & interesting? Does it tell or imply a story?& Character? Is each letter written in a distinctive voice/personality? Is the & & writer role-playing well?

Journal: Read pages 150–151. Write a 5-sentence paragraph describing some characteristic of a real person for 5 days on pages 152–157. The person need not be named.

These three lessons are designed to challenge students in two areas. First, I ask them to think of various perspectives before researching their answers. This is meant to help them do better research by forcing them to consider what sort of research they ought to be doing before they begin. As a result, they should begin to see that sometimes the first answer that comes to mind is not always a complete or true one.

Second, the format of the advice column is a great way to practice the role-playing needed for writing from the perspective of a fictional character.

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WEEK 17

49 50 51



Goals: Students should come away from these lessons with a better understanding of short story structure. They should be able to break any main story problem (source of conflict) into a series of smaller problems that move the story forward. They should also be able to distinguish a fictional personality by breaking it into two or more distinctive characteristics or traits.


Journal: Read pages 158–161. Write a 5-sentence paragraph describing some characteristic of a real person on 5 days on pages 162–167.

Young writers often need to be encouraged (or prodded) into a habit of story outlining. However, I’ve found that the more they outline, the less prodding they eventually need. They usually find that the “what if ” process of story brainstorming can be more fun than the actual writing.

To get to that point, it is sometimes necessary to reiterate the usefulness of trying more than one thing. Remind them that the answers they put down in their book are not the only possible answers, and if they come up with something better later on, they should feel free to forget their earlier ideas.

Creative writing is usually a process of unfolding discoveries. One discovery might lead to another. And one good answer might lead to a different, better answer later on.

Students should not feel tied to anything they’ve brainstormed in their Student Book, but they should understand that the brainstorming they do is essential.

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WEEK 18

52 53 54



Goals: Students should begin to see that conflict is essential to good dialogue and start incorporating it into their own. Students should also understand the basic elements of a good story opening: & 1. Tell us what sort of story we’re about to read.

2. Hook the reader.3. Introduce the main character.4. Show the story problem.



It takes practice to capture the sound of real dialogue in fiction without boring the reader or using too many words. Here are two optional exercises that can be helpful in teaching the student to have an ear for good dialogue.

First, ask two or three people to read aloud a passage of dialogue from a favorite book. Each person should do a different character’s voice. Afterwards, discuss whether or not the words as they were read aloud sounded similar to the way they sounded when the student reads the book silently.

Second, with his or her permission, read some of the student’s dialogue aloud. How different from what he or she imagined does it sound when actually spoken? (Many professional writers read their own dialogue aloud to themselves; the process of verbalizing can reveal awkward or unrealistic sentences.)

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WEEK 19

55 56 57


Creative Piece Required: One short story.

Goals: Metaphors, similes and personification are all ways of creating images in the reader’s mind through comparison. Should understand how these work and begin to recognize the necessity of the unexpected in good storytelling. Ideally, they will use the unexpected (“zap pow”) to make their own story more interesting.

Grading: The finished short story is worth a total of 240 points. Award up to 40 points in each of the following 6 categories:

& Emotion? How well does the story create emotion in you as you read? Is this & & the emotion the writer intended? & Imagery? Does the story use precise images to create an unfolding movie in & & your imagination? & Structure? Does the story have a clear beginning, middle and end? Does & & either the story problem or the hero change as a result of the story?& Unexpected? Does the writer incorporate any unexpected elements into the & & narrative? & Character? Is the main character’s personality revealed as two or more & & traits? Is it shown through what he thinks, says and does? & Conflict? Does the story problem get bigger as the story progresses? Is the & & problem resolved through the actions of the main character?


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WEEK 20

58 59 60

STOPIt’s time to give Unit Test Five before


Poeticalness

Creative Piece Required: Three poems: a senryu, a found poem and a free verse poem.

Goals: Students should understand the basic forms of the three poetry types discussed and recognize the line break as the common structural element of all poetry.

Grading: Each poem should be graded on a scale of 1–10 for each rubric below. Thus, each poem is worth up to 30 points (90 points for all three).

& Emotion? Does the poem focus on or produce one key emotion?& Imagery? Does the poem use precise images? & Structure? Does the poem follow the structural boundaries that define its & & type (i.e., a senryu)?

Journal: Students should read pages 184–186. Each day they should write a 5-sentence mini-story about themselves. The story need not be true. This week’s entries should be made on pages 188–193.

It may be helpful to emphasize the need to imagine precise details while brainstorming. Students sometimes try to jump from idea to poem without taking the time to fully imagine the subject or the emotion they are trying to capture. Fully imagining something usually means picturing it in the mind using all five senses.

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WEEK 21

61 62 63

Ballads

Creative Piece Required: One ballad

Goals: Students should understand the basic format of the ballad:1. They are usually written in four-line stanzas. Sometimes the last line is

repeated for a fifth line.2. They have a distinct rhythm made up of three iambic feet: unstressed

syllables followed by a stressed syllable.3. The 2nd and 4th line of each stanza usually rhyme.4. They sometimes end with a stanza that summarizes the story.5. They are driven by their narrative, not their characters.6. They often focus on death, murder, love, revenge, ghosts or supernatural

phenomena. Sometimes they tell the story of famous bandits or larger-than-life characters.

Grading: The ballad should be graded on a scale of 1–20 for each rubric below, for a total of 80 possible points.

& Structure? Does the poem follow the basic structure of a ballad? (stanzas, & & rhyme scheme, etc.)& Story? Does the poem tell a compelling story? & Emotion? Does the poem focus on one key emotion?& Imagery? Does the poem use precise images to create a series of unfolding & & movies in the mind as you read?

Journal: Read pages 194–195. Write a 5-sentence mini-story on pages 196–201.

Keep in mind that the ballad structure is not entirely rigid. The two things to look for as primary goals for the finished ballad are:

& Does it tell a story using the basic ballad structure?

& Does it have a lyrical quality to it? Can you imagine it being converted into a & song?

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WEEK 22

64 65 66

Hey You!

Creative Pieces Required: Ad copy for three advertisements.

Goals: Students should understand the basic components of every advertisement: & 1. Headline& 2. Benefit& 3. Call to action.

Grading: Because the ad copy for each ad is being written in response to questions printed in the Student Book, you may use the default rubrics of Complete, Appropriate and Thoughtful to grade the finished advertisements.

Journal: Read page 202. Write a 5-sentence mini-story on pages 204–209.

The point of lessons 67–69 is to prepare students to be better gatekeepers of their own minds. Writing ad copy can help students understand how their emotions are manipulated and exploited through marketing.

Understanding the basic techniques of marketing can be a sort of inoculation. Why? Because when a student recognizes what an advertisement is designed to do, she is more likely to respond to that ad analytically rather than emotively. An analytical response almost always renders an ad less effective because ads are typically designed to work on our emotions.

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WEEK 23

67 68 69

Layout & Publishing

Creative Piece Required: Assembly of the student’s magazine content into a physical form such as a binder or printed magazine. Layout and color printing is not required.

Goals: Students should review their finished creative pieces and select only those that fit the theme of their magazine for inclusion in their final printout.


Journal: Read pages 210–211. Write a 5-sentence mini-story on pages 212–219. Extra pages are included in this section to allow students room to wrap up the story of their journal.

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WEEK 24

70 71 72

STOPIt’s time to give Unit Test Six.

Assigned ReadingsCover Story students are asked to read seven short stories and one humor column, each of which is printed in the Student Book. These short works are reprinted here with discussion questions written in conjunction with the video lectures. Please keep in mind that these questions are optional. They are intended for writers who like to process stories verbally, and may also be useful as discussion starters in a classroom setting.

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The Ransom of Red ChiefO. Henry

It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you. We were down South, in Alabama—Bill Driscoll and myself—when this kidnapping idea struck us. It was, as Bill afterward expressed it, “during a moment of temporary mental apparition”; but we didn’t find that out till later.

There was a town down there, as flat as a flannel-cake, and called Summit, of course. It contained inhabitants of as undeleterious and self-satisfied a class of peasantry as ever clustered around a Maypole.

Bill and me had a joint capital of about six hundred dollars, and we needed just two thousand dollars more to pull off a fraudulent town-lot scheme in Western Illinois with. We talked it over on the front steps of the hotel. Philoprogenitiveness, says we, is strong in semi-rural communities; therefore and for other reasons, a kidnapping project ought to do better there than in the radius of newspapers that send reporters out in plain clothes to stir up talk about such things. We knew that Summit couldn’t get after us with anything stronger than constables and maybe some lackadaisical bloodhounds and a diatribe or two in the Weekly Farmers’ Budget. So, it looked good.

We selected for our victim the only child of a prominent citizen named Ebenezer Dorset. The father was respectable and tight, a mortgage fancier and a stern, upright collection-plate passer and forecloser. The kid was a boy of ten, with bas-relief freckles, and hair the colour of the cover of the magazine you buy at the news-stand when you want to catch a train. Bill and me figured that Ebenezer would melt down for a ransom of two thousand dollars to a cent. But wait till I tell you.

About two miles from Summit was a little mountain, covered with a dense cedar brake. On the rear elevation of this mountain was a cave. There we stored provisions. One evening after sundown, we drove in a buggy past old Dorset’s house. The kid was in the street, throwing rocks at a kitten on the opposite fence.

“Hey, little boy!” says Bill, “would you like to have a bag of candy and a nice ride?”The boy catches Bill neatly in the eye with a piece of brick.“That will cost the old man an extra five hundred dollars,” says Bill, climbing over the wheel.That boy put up a fight like a welter-weight cinnamon bear; but, at last, we got him down in

the bottom of the buggy and drove away. We took him up to the cave and I hitched the horse in the cedar brake. After dark I drove the buggy to the little village, three miles away, where we had hired it, and walked back to the mountain.

Bill was pasting court-plaster over the scratches and bruises on his features. There was a fire burning behind the big rock at the entrance of the cave, and the boy was watching a pot of boiling coffee, with two buzzard tail-feathers stuck in his red hair. He points a stick at me when I come up, and says:

“Ha! cursed paleface, do you dare to enter the camp of Red Chief, the terror of the plains?”

“He’s all right now,” says Bill, rolling up his trousers and examining some bruises on his shins. “We're playing Indian. We’re making Buffalo Bill’s show look like magic-lantern views of Palestine in the town hall. I'm Old Hank, the Trapper, Red Chief’s captive, and I’m to be scalped at

42

For Discussion:

Is the boy’s reaction to being kidnapped surprising? What does his reaction make you feel?

daybreak. By Geronimo! that kid can kick hard.”Yes, sir, that boy seemed to be having the time of his life. The fun of camping out in a cave

had made him forget that he was a captive himself. He immediately christened me Snake-eye, the Spy, and announced that, when his braves returned from the warpath, I was to be broiled at the stake at the rising of the sun.

Then we had supper; and he filled his mouth full of bacon and bread and gravy, and began to talk. He made a during-dinner speech something like this:

“I like this fine. I never camped out before; but I had a pet ‘possum once, and I was nine last birthday. I hate to go to school. Rats ate up sixteen of Jimmy Talbot’s aunt’s speckled hen’s eggs. Are there any real Indians in these woods? I want some more gravy. Does the trees moving make the wind blow? We had five puppies. What makes your nose so red, Hank? My father has lots of money. Are the stars hot? I whipped Ed Walker twice, Saturday. I don’t like girls. You dassent catch toads unless with a string. Do oxen make any noise? Why are oranges round? Have you got beds to sleep on in this cave? Amos Murray has got six toes. A parrot can talk, but a monkey or a fish can’t. How many does it take to make twelve?”

Every few minutes he would remember that he was a pesky redskin, and pick up his stick rifle and tiptoe to the mouth of the cave to rubber for the scouts of the hated paleface. Now and then he would let out a war-whoop that made Old Hank the Trapper shiver. That boy had Bill terrorized from the start.

“Red Chief,” says I to the kid, “would you like to go home?”“Aw, what for?” says he. “I don’t have any fun at home. I hate to go to school. I like to camp

out. You won’t take me back home again, Snake-eye, will you?”“Not right away,” says I. “We'll stay here in the cave a while.”“All right!” says he. “That’ll be fine. I never had such fun in all my life.”We went to bed about eleven o’clock. We spread down some wide blankets and quilts and put

Red Chief between us. We weren’t afraid he’d run away. He kept us awake for three hours, jumping up and reaching for his rifle and screeching: “Hist! pard,” in mine and Bill’s ears, as the fancied crackle of a twig or the rustle of a leaf revealed to his young imagination the stealthy approach of the outlaw band. At last, I fell into a troubled sleep, and dreamed that I had been kidnapped and chained to a tree by a ferocious pirate with red hair.

Just at daybreak, I was awakened by a series of awful screams from Bill. They weren’t yells, or howls, or shouts, or whoops, or yawps, such as you’d expect from a manly set of vocal organs—they were simply indecent, terrifying, humiliating screams, such as women emit when they see ghosts or caterpillars. It’s an awful thing to hear a strong, desperate, fat man scream incontinently in a cave at daybreak.

I jumped up to see what the matter was. Red Chief was sitting on Bill’s chest, with one hand twined in Bill’s hair. In the other he had the sharp case-knife we used for slicing bacon; and he was industriously and realistically trying to take Bill’s scalp, according to the sentence that had been pronounced upon him the evening before.

I got the knife away from the kid and made him lie down again. But, from that moment, Bill’s spirit was broken. He laid down on his side of the bed, but he never closed an eye again in sleep as long as that boy was with us. I dozed off for a while, but along toward sun-up I remembered that Red Chief had said I was to be burned at the stake at the rising of the sun. I wasn’t nervous or afraid; but I sat up and lit my pipe and leaned against a rock.

“What you getting up so soon for, Sam?” asked Bill.“Me?” says I. “Oh, I got a kind of a pain in my shoulder. I thought sitting up would rest it.”

43

“You’re a liar!” says Bill. “You’re afraid. You was to be burned at sunrise, and you was afraid he’d do it. And he would, too, if he could find a match. Ain’t it awful, Sam? Do you think anybody will pay out money to get a little imp like that back home?”

“Sure,” said I. “A rowdy kid like that is just the kind that parents dote on. Now, you and the Chief get up and cook breakfast, while I go up on the top of this mountain and reconnoitre.”

I went up on the peak of the little mountain and ran my eye over the contiguous vicinity. Over toward Summit I expected to see the sturdy yeomanry of the village armed with scythes and pitchforks beating the countryside for the dastardly kidnappers. But what I saw was a peaceful landscape dotted with one man ploughing with a dun mule. Nobody was dragging the creek; no couriers dashed hither and yon, bringing tidings of no news to the distracted parents. There was a sylvan attitude of somnolent sleepiness pervading that section of the external outward surface of Alabama that lay exposed to my view. “Perhaps,” says I to myself, “it has not yet been discovered that the wolves have borne away the tender lambkin from the fold. Heaven help the wolves!” says I, and I went down the mountain to breakfast.

When I got to the cave I found Bill backed up against the side of it, breathing hard, and the boy threatening to smash him with a rock half as big as a cocoanut.

“He put a red-hot boiled potato down my back,” explained Bill, “and then mashed it with his foot; and I boxed his ears. Have you got a gun about you, Sam?”

I took the rock away from the boy and kind of patched up the argument. “I'll fix you,” says the kid to Bill. “No man ever yet struck the Red Chief but what he got paid for it. You better beware!”

After breakfast the kid takes a piece of leather with strings wrapped around it out of his pocket and goes outside the cave unwinding it.

“What’s he up to now?” says Bill, anxiously. “You don’t think he’ll run away, do you, Sam?”“No fear of it,” says I. “He don’t seem to be much of a home body. But we’ve got to fix up some

plan about the ransom. There don’t seem to be much excitement around Summit on account of his disappearance; but maybe they haven’t realized yet that he’s gone. His folks may think he’s spending the night with Aunt Jane or one of the neighbours. Anyhow, he’ll be missed to-day. To-night we must get a message to his father demanding the two thousand dollars for his return.”

Just then we heard a kind of war-whoop, such as David might have emitted when he knocked out the champion Goliath. It was a sling that Red Chief had pulled out of his pocket, and he was whirling it around his head.

I dodged, and heard a heavy thud and a kind of a sigh from Bill, like a horse gives out when you take his saddle off. A rock the size of an egg had caught Bill just behind his left ear. He loosened himself all over and fell in the fire across the frying pan of hot water for washing the dishes. I dragged him out and poured cold water on his head for half an hour.

By and by, Bill sits up and feels behind his ear and says: “Sam, do you know who my favourite Biblical character is?”

“Take it easy,” says I. “You’ll come to your senses presently.”“King Herod,” says he. “You won’t go away and leave me here alone, will you, Sam?”I went out and caught that boy and shook him until his freckles rattled.“If you don’t behave,” says I, “I'll take you straight home. Now, are you going to be good, or

not?”

44

For Discussion:

At this point in the story, who do you feel sorry for, the boy or the men?

“I was only funning,” says he sullenly. “I didn’t mean to hurt Old Hank. But what did he hit me for? I'll behave, Snake-eye, if you won’t send me home, and if you’ll let me play the Black Scout to-day.”

“I don’t know the game,” says I. “That's for you and Mr. Bill to decide. He’s your playmate for the day. I’m going away for a while, on business. Now, you come in and make friends with him and say you are sorry for hurting him, or home you go, at once.”

I made him and Bill shake hands, and then I took Bill aside and told him I was going to Poplar Cove, a little village three miles from the cave, and find out what I could about how the kidnapping had been regarded in Summit. Also, I thought it best to send a peremptory letter to old man Dorset that day, demanding the ransom and dictating how it should be paid.

“You know, Sam,” says Bill, “I've stood by you without batting an eye in earthquakes, fire and flood—in poker games, dynamite outrages, police raids, train robberies and cyclones. I never lost my nerve yet till we kidnapped that two-legged skyrocket of a kid. He’s got me going. You won’t leave me long with him, will you, Sam?”

“I’ll be back some time this afternoon,” says I. “You must keep the boy amused and quiet till I return. And now we’ll write the letter to old Dorset.”

Bill and I got paper and pencil and worked on the letter while Red Chief, with a blanket wrapped around him, strutted up and down, guarding the mouth of the cave. Bill begged me tearfully to make the ransom fifteen hundred dollars instead of two thousand. “I ain’t attempting,” says he, “to decry the celebrated moral aspect of parental affection, but we’re dealing with humans, and it ain’t human for anybody to give up two thousand dollars for that forty-pound chunk of freckled wildcat. I’m willing to take a chance at fifteen hundred dollars. You can charge the difference up to me.”

So, to relieve Bill, I acceded, and we collaborated a letter that ran this way:

Ebenezer Dorset, Esq.:

We have your boy concealed in a place far from Summit. It is useless for you or the most skilful detectives to attempt to find him. Absolutely, the only terms on which you can have him restored to you are these: We demand fifteen hundred dollars in large bills for his return; the money to be left at midnight to-night at the same spot and in the same box as your reply—as hereinafter described. If you agree to these terms, send your answer in writing by a solitary messenger to-night at half-past eight o’clock. After crossing Owl Creek, on the road to Poplar Cove, there are three large trees about a hundred yards apart, close to the fence of the wheat field on the right-hand side. At the bottom of the fence-post, opposite the third tree, will be found a small pasteboard box.

The messenger will place the answer in this box and return immediately to Summit.

If you attempt any treachery or fail to comply with our demand as stated, you will never see your boy again.

If you pay the money as demanded, he will be returned to you safe and well within three hours. These terms are final, and if you do not accede to them no further communication will be attempted.

TWO DESPERATE MEN.

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I addressed this letter to Dorset, and put it in my pocket. As I was about to start, the kid comes up to me and says:

“Aw, Snake-eye, you said I could play the Black Scout while you was gone.”“Play it, of course,” says I. “Mr. Bill will play with you. What kind of a game is it?”“I’m the Black Scout,” says Red Chief, “and I have to ride to the stockade to warn the settlers

that the Indians are coming. I’m tired of playing Indian myself. I want to be the Black Scout.”“All right,” says I. “It sounds harmless to me. I guess Mr. Bill will help you foil the pesky

savages.”“What am I to do?” asks Bill, looking at the kid suspiciously.“You are the hoss,” says Black Scout. “Get down on your hands and knees. How can I ride to

the stockade without a hoss?”“You’d better keep him interested,” said I, “till we get the scheme going. Loosen up.”Bill gets down on his all fours, and a look comes in his eye like a rabbit’s when you catch it in

a trap.“How far is it to the stockade, kid?” he asks, in a husky manner of voice.“Ninety miles,” says the Black Scout. “And you have to hump yourself to get there on time.

Whoa, now!”The Black Scout jumps on Bill’s back and digs his heels in his side.“For Heaven’s sake,” says Bill, “hurry back, Sam, as soon as you can. I wish we hadn’t made

the ransom more than a thousand. Say, you quit kicking me or I’ll get up and warm you good.”I walked over to Poplar Cove and sat around the postoffice and store, talking with the

chawbacons that came in to trade. One whiskerando says that he hears Summit is all upset on account of Elder Ebenezer Dorset’s boy having been lost or stolen. That was all I wanted to know. I bought some smoking tobacco, referred casually to the price of black-eyed peas, posted my letter surreptitiously and came away. The postmaster said the mail-carrier would come by in an hour to take the mail on to Summit.

When I got back to the cave Bill and the boy were not to be found. I explored the vicinity of the cave, and risked a yodel or two, but there was no response.

So I lighted my pipe and sat down on a mossy bank to await developments.In about half an hour I heard the bushes rustle, and Bill wabbled out into the little glade in

front of the cave. Behind him was the kid, stepping softly like a scout, with a broad grin on his face. Bill stopped, took off his hat and wiped his face with a red handkerchief. The kid stopped about eight feet behind him.

“Sam,” says Bill, “I suppose you’ll think I’m a renegade, but I couldn’t help it. I’m a grown person with masculine proclivities and habits of self-defense, but there is a time when all systems of egotism and predominance fail. The boy is gone. I have sent him home. All is off. There was martyrs in old times,” goes on Bill, “that suffered death rather than give up the particular graft they enjoyed. None of ‘em ever was subjugated to such supernatural tortures as I have been. I tried to be faithful to our articles of depredation; but there came a limit.”

“What’s the trouble, Bill?” I asks him.“I was rode,” says Bill, “the ninety miles to the

stockade, not barring an inch. Then, when the settlers was rescued, I was given oats. Sand ain’t a palatable substitute. And then, for an hour I had to try to explain to him why there was nothin’ in holes, how a road can run both ways and what makes the grass green. I tell you, Sam, a human can only stand so much. I takes him by the neck of his

46

For Discussion:

Why is Bill’s attempt to return the boy necessary to the story?

clothes and drags him down the mountain. On the way he kicks my legs black-and-blue from the knees down; and I’ve got to have two or three bites on my thumb and hand cauterized.

“But he’s gone”—continues Bill—”gone home. I showed him the road to Summit and kicked him about eight feet nearer there at one kick. I’m sorry we lose the ransom; but it was either that or Bill Driscoll to the madhouse.”

Bill is puffing and blowing, but there is a look of ineffable peace and growing content on his rose-pink features.

“Bill,” says I, “there isn’t any heart disease in your family, is there?“No,” says Bill, “nothing chronic except malaria and accidents. Why?”“Then you might turn around,” says I, “and have a took behind you.”Bill turns and sees the boy, and loses his complexion and sits down plump on the round and

begins to pluck aimlessly at grass and little sticks. For an hour I was afraid for his mind. And then I told him that my scheme was to put the whole job through immediately and that we would get the ransom and be off with it by midnight if old Dorset fell in with our proposition. So Bill braced up enough to give the kid a weak sort of a smile and a promise to play the Russian in a Japanese war with him is soon as he felt a little better.

I had a scheme for collecting that ransom without danger of being caught by counterplots that ought to commend itself to professional kidnappers. The tree under which the answer was to be left—and the money later on—was close to the road fence with big, bare fields on all sides. If a gang of constables should be watching for any one to come for the note they could see him a long way off crossing the fields or in the road. But no, sirree! At half-past eight I was up in that tree as well hidden as a tree toad, waiting for the messenger to arrive.

Exactly on time, a half-grown boy rides up the road on a bicycle, locates the pasteboard box at the foot of the fence-post, slips a folded piece of paper into it and pedals away again back toward Summit.

I waited an hour and then concluded the thing was square. I slid down the tree, got the note, slipped along the fence till I struck the woods, and was back at the cave in another half an hour. I opened the note, got near the lantern and read it to Bill. It was written with a pen in a crabbed hand, and the sum and substance of it was this:

Two Desperate Men.

Gentlemen: I received your letter to-day by post, in regard to the ransom you ask for the return of my son. I think you are a little high in your demands, and I hereby make you a counter-proposition, which I am inclined to believe you will accept. You bring Johnny home and pay me two hundred and fifty dollars in cash, and I agree to take him off your hands. You had better come at night, for the neighbours believe he is lost, and I couldn’t be responsible for what they would do to anybody they saw bringing him back. Very respectfully,

EBENEZER DORSET.

“Great pirates of Penzance!” says I; “of all the impudent—”But I glanced at Bill, and hesitated. He had the most appealing look in his eyes I ever saw on

the face of a dumb or a talking brute.

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For Discussion:

Is Dorset’s response at this point believable? Is it funny? Did you expect it?

“Sam,” says he, “what’s two hundred and fifty dollars, after all? We've got the money. One more night of this kid will send me to a bed in Bedlam. Besides being a thorough gentleman, I think Mr. Dorset is a spendthrift for making us such a liberal offer. You ain’t going to let the chance go, are you?”

“Tell you the truth, Bill,” says I, “this little he ewe lamb has somewhat got on my nerves too. We’ll take him home, pay the ransom and make our get-away.”

We took him home that night. We got him to go by telling him that his father had bought a silver-mounted rifle and a pair of moccasins for him, and we were going to hunt bears the next day.

It was just twelve o’clock when we knocked at Ebenezer’s front door. Just at the moment when I should have been abstracting the fifteen hundred dollars from the box under the tree, according to the original proposition, Bill was counting out two hundred and fifty dollars into Dorset’s hand.

When the kid found out we were going to leave him at home he started up a howl like a calliope and fastened himself as tight as a leech to Bill’s leg. His father peeled him away gradually, like a porous plaster.

“How long can you hold him?” asks Bill.“I'm not as strong as I used to be,” says old Dorset, “but I think I can promise you ten

minutes.”“Enough,” says Bill. “In ten minutes I shall cross the Central, Southern and Middle Western

States, and be legging it trippingly for the Canadian border.”And, as dark as it was, and as fat as Bill was, and as good a runner as I am, he was a good mile

and a half out of Summit before I could catch up with him.

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For Discussion:

Who changes in this story, and how is that change shown?

The InterlopersSaki

In a forest of mixed growth somewhere on the eastern spurs of the Karpathians, a man stood one winter night watching and listening, as though he waited for some beast of the woods to come within the range of his vision, and, later, of his rifle. But the game for whose presence he kept so keen an outlook was none that figured in the sportsman’s calendar as lawful and proper for the chase; Ulrich von Gradwitz patrolled the dark forest in quest of a human enemy.

The forest lands of Gradwitz were of wide extent and well stocked with game; the narrow strip of precipitous woodland that lay on its outskirt was not remarkable for the game it harboured or the shooting it afforded, but it was the most jealously guarded of all its owner’s territorial possessions. A famous law suit, in the days of his grandfather, had wrested it from the illegal possession of a neighbouring family of petty landowners; the dispossessed party had never acquiesced in the judgment of the Courts, and a long series of poaching affrays and similar scandals had embittered the relationships between the families for three generations. The neighbour feud had grown into a personal one since Ulrich had come to be head of his family; if there was a man in the world whom he detested and wished ill to it was Georg Znaeym, the inheritor of the quarrel and the tireless game-snatcher and raider of the disputed border-forest. The feud might, perhaps, have died down or been compromised if the personal ill-will of the two men had not stood in the way; as boys they had thirsted for one another’s blood, as men each prayed that misfortune might fall on the other, and this wind-scourged winter night Ulrich had banded together his foresters to watch the dark forest, not in quest of four-footed quarry, but to keep a look-out for the prowling thieves whom he suspected of being afoot from across the land boundary. The roebuck, which usually kept in the sheltered hollows during a storm-wind, were running like driven things to-night, and there was movement and unrest among the creatures that were wont to sleep through the dark hours. Assuredly there was a disturbing element in the forest, and Ulrich could guess the quarter from whence it came.

He strayed away by himself from the watchers whom he had placed in ambush on the crest of the hill, and wandered far down the steep slopes amid the wild tangle of undergrowth, peering through the tree trunks and listening through the whistling and skirling of the wind and the restless beating of the branches for sight and sound of the marauders. If only on this wild night, in this dark, lone spot, he might come across Georg Znaeym, man to man, with none to witness—that was the wish that was uppermost in his thoughts. And as he stepped round the trunk of a huge beech he came face to face with the man he sought.

The two enemies stood glaring at one another for a long silent moment. Each had a rifle in his hand, each had hate in his heart and murder uppermost in his mind. The chance had come to give full play to the passions of a lifetime. But a man who has been brought up under the code of a restraining civilisation cannot easily nerve himself to shoot down his neighbour in cold blood and without word spoken, except for an offence against his hearth and honour. And before the moment of hesitation had given way to action a deed of Nature’s own violence overwhelmed them both. A fierce shriek of the storm had been answered by a splitting crash over their heads, and ere they could leap aside a mass of falling beech tree had thundered down on them. Ulrich von

49

For Discussion:

Which of these two men do you consider the main character? (Or is it both?)

Gradwitz found himself stretched on the ground, one arm numb beneath him and the other held almost as helplessly in a tight tangle of forked branches, while both legs were pinned beneath the fallen mass. His heavy shooting-boots had saved his feet from being crushed to pieces, but if his fractures were not as serious as they might have been, at least it was evident that he could not move from his present position till some one came to release him. The descending twig had slashed the skin of his face, and he had to wink away some drops of blood from his eyelashes before he could take in a general view of the disaster. At his side, so near that under ordinary circumstances he could almost have touched him, lay Georg Znaeym, alive and struggling, but obviously as helplessly pinioned down as himself. All round them lay a thick-strewn wreckage of splintered branches and broken twigs.

Relief at being alive and exasperation at his captive plight brought a strange medley of pious thank-offerings and sharp curses to Ulrich’s lips. Georg, who was nearly blinded with the blood which trickled across his eyes, stopped his struggling for a moment to listen, and then gave a short, snarling laugh.

“So you’re not killed, as you ought to be, but you’re caught, anyway,” he cried; “caught fast. Ho, what a jest, Ulrich von Gradwitz snared in his stolen forest. There’s real justice for you!”

And he laughed again, mockingly and savagely.“I’m caught in my own forest-land,” retorted Ulrich. “When my men come to release us you

will wish, perhaps, that you were in a better plight than caught poaching on a neighbour’s land, shame on you.”

Georg was silent for a moment; then he answered quietly:“Are you sure that your men will find much to release? I have men, too, in the forest to-night,

close behind me, and they will be here first and do the releasing. When they drag me out from under these damned branches it won’t need much clumsiness on their part to roll this mass of trunk right over on the top of you. Your men will find you dead under a fallen beech tree. For form’s sake I shall send my condolences to your family.”

“It is a useful hint,” said Ulrich fiercely. “My men had orders to follow in ten minutes time, seven of which must have gone by already, and when they get me out—I will remember the hint. Only as you will have met your death poaching on my lands I don’t think I can decently send any message of condolence to your family.”

“Good,” snarled Georg, “good. We fight this quarrel out to the death, you and I and our foresters, with no cursed interlopers to come between us. Death and damnation to you, Ulrich von Gradwitz.”

“The same to you, Georg Znaeym, forest-thief, game-snatcher.”

Both men spoke with the bitterness of possible defeat before them, for each knew that it might be long before his men would seek him out or find him; it was a bare matter of chance which party would arrive first on the scene.

Both had now given up the useless struggle to free themselves from the mass of wood that held them down; Ulrich limited his endeavours to an effort to bring his one partially free arm near enough to his outer coat-pocket to draw out his wine-flask. Even when he had accomplished that operation it was long before he could manage the unscrewing of the stopper or get any of the liquid down his throat. But what a Heaven-sent draught it seemed! It was an open winter, and little snow had fallen as yet, hence the captives suffered less from the cold than might have been

50

For Discussion:

What do you think about their feud at this point in the story? Does it seem admirable or rather foolish?

the case at that season of the year; nevertheless, the wine was warming and reviving to the wounded man, and he looked across with something like a throb of pity to where his enemy lay, just keeping the groans of pain and weariness from crossing his lips.

“Could you reach this flask if I threw it over to you?” asked Ulrich suddenly; “there is good wine in it, and one may as well be as comfortable as one can. Let us drink, even if to-night one of us dies.”

“No, I can scarcely see anything; there is so much blood caked round my eyes,” said Georg, “and in any case I don’t drink wine with an enemy.”

Ulrich was silent for a few minutes, and lay listening to the weary screeching of the wind. An idea was slowly forming and growing in his brain, an idea that gained strength every time that he looked across at the man who was fighting so grimly against pain and exhaustion. In the pain and languor that Ulrich himself was feeling the old fierce hatred seemed to be dying down.

“Neighbour,” he said presently, “do as you please if your men come first. It was a fair compact. But as for me, I’ve changed my mind. If my men are the first to come you shall be the first to be helped, as though you were my guest. We have quarrelled like devils all our lives over this stupid strip of forest, where the trees can’t even stand upright in a breath of wind. Lying here to-night thinking I’ve come to think we’ve been rather fools; there are better things in life than getting the better of a boundary dispute. Neighbour, if you will help me to bury the old quarrel I—I will ask you to be my friend.”

Georg Znaeym was silent for so long that Ulrich thought, perhaps, he had fainted with the pain of his injuries. Then he spoke slowly and in jerks.

“How the whole region would stare and gabble if we rode into the market-square together. No one living can remember seeing a Znaeym and a von Gradwitz talking to one another in friendship. And what peace there would be among the forester folk if we ended our feud to-night. And if we choose to make peace among our people there is none other to interfere, no interlopers from outside . . . You would come and keep the Sylvester night beneath my roof, and I would come and feast on some high day at your castle . . . I would never fire a shot on your land, save when you invited me as a guest; and you should come and shoot with me down in the marshes where the wildfowl are. In all the countryside there are none that could hinder if we willed to make peace. I never thought to have wanted to do other than hate you all my life, but I think I have changed my mind about things too, this last half-hour. And you offered me your wine-flask . . . Ulrich von Gradwitz, I will be your friend.”

For a space both men were silent, turning over in their minds the wonderful changes that this dramatic reconciliation would bring about. In the cold, gloomy forest, with the wind tearing in fitful gusts through the naked branches and whistling round the tree-trunks, they lay and waited for the help that would now bring release and succour to both parties. And each prayed a private prayer that his men might be the first to arrive, so that he might be the first to show honourable attention to the enemy that had become a friend.

Presently, as the wind dropped for a moment, Ulrich broke silence.“Let’s shout for help,” he said; “in this lull our voices may carry a little way.”“They won’t carry far through the trees and undergrowth,” said Georg, “but we can try.

Together, then.”The two raised their voices in a prolonged hunting call.

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For Discussion:

What has changed at this point in the story? How do you feel about that change?

“Together again,” said Ulrich a few minutes later, after listening in vain for an answering halloo.

“I heard nothing but the pestilential wind,” said Georg hoarsely.There was silence again for some minutes, and then Ulrich gave a joyful cry.“I can see figures coming through the wood. They are following in the way I came down the

hillside.”Both men raised their voices in as loud a shout as they could muster.“They hear us! They’ve stopped. Now they see us. They’re running down the hill towards us,”

cried Ulrich.“How many of them are there?” asked Georg.“I can’t see distinctly,” said Ulrich; “nine or ten,”“Then they are yours,” said Georg; “I had only seven out with me.”“They are making all the speed they can, brave lads,” said Ulrich gladly.“Are they your men?” asked Georg. “Are they your men?” he repeated impatiently as Ulrich

did not answer.“No,” said Ulrich with a laugh, the idiotic chattering laugh of a man unstrung with hideous

fear.“Who are they?” asked Georg quickly, straining his eyes to see what the other would gladly

not have seen.“Wolves.”

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For Discussion:

Why do you think Saki ended the story this way?

The Lady, or the TigerFrank R. Stockton

In the very olden time there lived a semi-barbaric king, whose ideas, though somewhat polished and sharpened by the progressiveness of distant Latin neighbors, were still large, florid, and untrammeled, as became the half of him which was barbaric. He was a man of exuberant fancy, and, withal, of an authority so irresistible that, at his will, he turned his varied fancies into facts. He was greatly given to self-communing, and, when he and himself agreed upon anything, the thing was done. When every member of his domestic and political systems moved smoothly in its appointed course, his nature was bland and genial; but, whenever there was a little hitch, and some of his orbs got out of their orbits, he was blander and more genial still, for nothing pleased him so much as to make the crooked straight and crush down uneven places.

Among the borrowed notions by which his barbarism had become semified was that of the public arena, in which, by exhibitions of manly and beastly valor, the minds of his subjects were refined and cultured.

But even here the exuberant and barbaric fancy asserted itself. The arena of the king was built, not to give the people an opportunity of hearing the rhapsodies of dying gladiators, nor to enable them to view the inevitable conclusion of a conflict between religious opinions and hungry jaws, but for purposes far better adapted to widen and develop the mental energies of the people. This vast amphitheater, with its encircling galleries, its mysterious vaults, and its unseen passages, was an agent of poetic justice, in which crime was punished, or virtue rewarded, by the decrees of an impartial and incorruptible chance.

When a subject was accused of a crime of sufficient importance to interest the king, public notice was given that on an appointed day the fate of the accused person would be decided in the king's arena, a structure which well deserved its name, for, although its form and plan were borrowed from afar, its purpose emanated solely from the brain of this man, who, every barleycorn a king, knew no tradition to which he owed more allegiance than pleased his fancy, and who ingrafted on every adopted form of human thought and action the rich growth of his barbaric idealism.

When all the people had assembled in the galleries, and the king, surrounded by his court, sat high up on his throne of royal state on one side of the arena, he gave a signal, a door beneath him opened, and the accused subject stepped out into the amphitheater. Directly opposite him, on the other side of the inclosed space, were two doors, exactly alike and side by side. It was the duty and the privilege of the person on trial to walk directly to these doors and open one of them. He could open either door he pleased; he was subject to no guidance or influence but that of the aforementioned impartial and incorruptible chance. If he opened the one, there came out of it a hungry tiger, the fiercest and most cruel that could be procured, which immediately sprang upon him and tore him to pieces as a punishment for his guilt. The moment that the case of the criminal was thus decided, doleful iron bells were clanged, great wails went up from the hired mourners posted on the outer rim of the arena, and the vast audience, with bowed heads and

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For Discussion:

Why do you think Stockton used the language of fairy tales to tell this story?

For Discussion:

Do you detect any irony in Stockton’s narration?

downcast hearts, wended slowly their homeward way, mourning greatly that one so young and fair, or so old and respected, should have merited so dire a fate.

But, if the accused person opened the other door, there came forth from it a lady, the most suitable to his years and station that his majesty could select among his fair subjects, and to this lady he was immediately married, as a reward of his innocence. It mattered not that he might already possess a wife and family, or that his affections might be engaged upon an object of his own selection; the king allowed no such subordinate arrangements to interfere with his great scheme of retribution and reward. The exercises, as in the other instance, took place immediately, and in the arena. Another door opened beneath the king, and a priest, followed by a band of choristers, and dancing maidens blowing joyous airs on golden horns and treading an epithalamic measure, advanced to where the pair stood, side by side, and the wedding was promptly and cheerily solemnized. Then the gay brass bells rang forth their merry peals, the people shouted glad hurrahs, and the innocent man, preceded by children strewing flowers on his path, led his bride to his home.

This was the king’s semi-barbaric method of administering justice. Its perfect fairness is obvious. The criminal could not know out of which door would come the lady; he opened either he pleased, without having the slightest idea whether, in the next instant, he was to be devoured or married. On some occasions the tiger came out of one door, and on some out of the other. The decisions of this tribunal were not only fair, they were positively determinate: the accused person was instantly punished if he found himself guilty, and, if innocent, he was rewarded on the spot, whether he liked it or not. There was no escape from the judgments of the king’s arena.

The institution was a very popular one. When the people gathered together on one of the great trial days, they never knew whether they were to witness a bloody slaughter or a hilarious wedding. This element of uncertainty lent an interest to the occasion which it could not otherwise have attained. Thus, the masses were entertained and pleased, and the thinking part of the community could bring no charge of unfairness against this plan, for did not the accused person have the whole matter in his own hands?

This semi-barbaric king had a daughter as blooming as his most florid fancies, and with a soul as fervent and imperious as his own. As is usual in such cases, she was the apple of his eye, and was loved by him above all humanity. Among his courtiers was a young man of that fineness of blood and lowness of station common to the conventional heroes of romance who love royal maidens. This royal maiden was well satisfied with her lover, for he was handsome and brave to a degree unsurpassed in all this kingdom, and she loved him with an ardor that had enough of barbarism in it to make it exceedingly warm and strong. This love affair moved on happily for many months, until one day the king happened to discover its existence. He did not hesitate nor waver in regard to his duty in the premises. The youth was immediately cast into prison, and a day was appointed for his trial in the king’s arena. This, of course, was an especially important occasion, and his majesty, as well as all the people, was greatly interested in the workings and development of this trial. Never before had such a case occurred; never before had a subject dared to love the daughter of the king. In after years such things became commonplace enough, but then they were in no slight degree novel and startling.

The tiger-cages of the kingdom were searched for the most savage and relentless beasts, from which the fiercest monster might be selected for the arena; and the ranks of maiden youth and beauty throughout the land were carefully surveyed by competent judges in order that the young man might have a fitting bride in case fate did not determine for him a different destiny. Of course, everybody knew that the deed with which the accused was charged had been done. He had loved the princess, and neither he, she, nor any one else, thought of denying the fact; but the king

54

would not think of allowing any fact of this kind to interfere with the workings of the tribunal, in which he took such great delight and satisfaction. No matter how the affair turned out, the youth would be disposed of, and the king would take an aesthetic pleasure in watching the course of events, which would determine whether or not the young man had done wrong in allowing himself to love the princess.

The appointed day arrived. From far and near the people gathered, and thronged the great galleries of the arena, and crowds, unable to gain admittance, massed themselves against its outside walls. The king and his court were in their places, opposite the twin doors, those fateful portals, so terrible in their similarity.

All was ready. The signal was given. A door beneath the royal party opened, and the lover of the princess walked into the arena. Tall, beautiful, fair, his appearance was greeted with a low hum of admiration and anxiety. Half the audience had not known so grand a youth had lived among them. No wonder the princess loved him! What a terrible thing for him to be there!

As the youth advanced into the arena he turned, as the custom was, to bow to the king, but he did not think at all of that royal personage. His eyes were fixed upon the princess, who sat to the right of her father. Had it not been for the moiety of barbarism in her nature it is probable that lady would not have been there, but her intense and fervid soul would not allow her to be absent on an occasion in which she was so terribly interested. From the moment that the decree had gone forth that her lover should decide his fate in the king's arena, she had thought of nothing, night or day, but this great event and the various subjects connected with it. Possessed of more power, influence, and force of character than any one who had ever before been interested in such a case, she had done what no other person had done,—she had possessed herself of the secret of the doors. She knew in which of the two rooms, that lay behind those doors, stood the cage of the tiger, with its open front, and in which waited the lady. Through these thick doors, heavily curtained with skins on the inside, it was impossible that any noise or suggestion should come from within to the person who should approach to raise the latch of one of them. But gold, and the power of a woman's will, had brought the secret to the princess.

And not only did she know in which room stood the lady ready to emerge, all blushing and radiant, should her door be opened, but she knew who the lady was. It was one of the fairest and loveliest of the damsels of the court who had been selected as the reward of the accused youth, should he be proved innocent of the crime of aspiring to one so far above him; and the princess hated her. Often had she seen, or imagined that she had seen, this fair creature throwing glances of admiration upon the person of her lover, and sometimes she thought these glances were perceived, and even returned. Now and then she had seen them talking together; it was but for a moment or two, but much can be said in a brief space; it may have been on most unimportant topics, but how could she know that? The girl was lovely, but she had dared to raise her eyes to the loved one of the princess; and, with all the intensity of the savage blood transmitted to her through long lines of wholly barbaric ancestors, she hated the woman who blushed and trembled behind that silent door.

When her lover turned and looked at her, and his eye met hers as she sat there, paler and whiter than any one in the vast ocean of anxious faces about her, he saw, by that power of quick perception which is given to those whose souls are one, that she knew behind which door crouched the tiger, and behind which stood the lady. He had expected her to know it. He

55

For Discussion:

Why do you think the young man is referred to only as “the youth” rather than by name?

Note to the teacher: On the surface, this short story has colonial, even racist undertones. Your student may or may not pick up on them. But careful reading reveals the subtle ways in which the author criticizes this system.

understood her nature, and his soul was assured that she would never rest until she had made plain to herself this thing, hidden to all other lookers-on, even to the king. The only hope for the youth in which there was any element of certainty was based upon the success of the princess in discovering this mystery; and the moment he looked upon her, he saw she had succeeded, as in his soul he knew she would succeed.

Then it was that his quick and anxious glance asked the question: "Which?" It was as plain to her as if he shouted it from where he stood. There was not an instant to be lost. The question was asked in a flash; it must be answered in another.

Her right arm lay on the cushioned parapet before her. She raised her hand, and made a slight, quick movement toward the right. No one but her lover saw her. Every eye but his was fixed on the man in the arena.

He turned, and with a firm and rapid step he walked across the empty space. Every heart stopped beating, every breath was held, every eye was fixed immovably upon that man. Without the slightest hesitation, he went to the door on the right, and opened it.

Now, the point of the story is this: Did the tiger come out of that door, or did the lady?The more we reflect upon this question, the harder it is to answer. It involves a study of the

human heart which leads us through devious mazes of passion, out of which it is difficult to find our way. Think of it, fair reader, not as if the decision of the question depended upon yourself, but upon that hot-blooded, semi-barbaric princess, her soul at a white heat beneath the combined fires of despair and jealousy. She had lost him, but who should have him?

How often, in her waking hours and in her dreams, had she started in wild horror, and covered her face with her hands as she thought of her lover opening the door on the other side of which waited the cruel fangs of the tiger!

But how much oftener had she seen him at the other door! How in her grievous reveries had she gnashed her teeth, and torn her hair, when she saw his start of rapturous delight as he opened the door of the lady! How her soul had burned in agony when she had seen him rush to meet that woman, with her flushing cheek and sparkling eye of triumph; when she had seen him lead her forth, his whole frame kindled with the joy of recovered life; when she had heard the glad shouts from the multitude, and the wild ringing of the happy bells; when she had seen the priest, with his joyous followers, advance to the couple, and make them man and wife before her very eyes; and when she had seen them walk away together upon their path of flowers, followed by the tremendous shouts of the hilarious multitude, in which her one despairing shriek was lost and drowned!

Would it not be better for him to die at once, and go to wait for her in the blessed regions of semi-barbaric futurity?

And yet, that awful tiger, those shrieks, that blood!Her decision had been indicated in an instant, but it had

been made after days and nights of anguished deliberation. She had known she would be asked, she had decided what she would answer, and, without the slightest hesitation, she had moved her hand to the right.

The question of her decision is one not to be lightly considered, and it is not for me to presume to set myself up as the one person able to answer it. And so I leave it with all of you: Which came out of the opened door,—the lady, or the tiger?

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For Discussion:

Is the ending of this story frustrating? Why or why not?

The Information ConspiracyDaniel Schwabauer

It turns out I was wrong about the reality of a sinister national conspiracy designed to enslave us all under the ruthless power of a few mindless automatons. However, I was wrong only about the source of it. The real threat to our freedom will not come from the trilateral commission, the illuminati, or the shampoo conglomerates. No, our freedoms are now being eroded by the tyranny of the corporate mailing list.

The truth of this dawned on me unexpectedly when a clerk at a local grocery store asked me very pleasantly (perhaps TOO pleasantly) if I wanted to sign up for the store Super Saver Member Card. After all, she gushed, the card was absolutely FREE. All she needed was my name, address, phone number, social security number, mother’s maiden name, two photo I.D.s, and a small blood sample. Please sign here.

Obviously, I said No. I’m no idiot. Somewhere in the fine print would be language requiring a long-term relationship between myself and said grocer. “Besides,” I added, “next thing I know you’ll want to plant little computer chips in my forehead.”

She said this was ridiculous, because wouldn’t everyone in line look silly bending over the checkout scanner?

But I was not persuaded. The application form looked suspiciously like something generated by a team of insurance executives. “Anyway,” I asked, “Why should I want the card? I have enough cards.”

She pointed to page 3, paragraph 5.A.(ii) and read: “The Super-Saver Member Card provides access to all of the exciting and valuable special privileges available at participating locations for a limited time only to carded members of the Super-Saver Special feature program, but only for persons to whom this special offer applies.” She smiled happily. “Plus, it’s FREE.”

“Does that mean I’ll get a discount on my food?” I asked.“Not necessarily.”I folded my arms. “Basically, the idea is to get me to sign up for a card so that you can keep

track of what I buy, right? Somehow you’ll use this information in pricing. You’ll sell my name on some database and a bunch of corporate sales types in a smoke-filled room will know that I drink decaffeinated Pepsi. Information is power, and in this case I’m giving the big food companies the power to determine how much of my paycheck I keep when I leave your store. Am I right?”

“Ummmm,” she said slowly.“Really,” I continued, “What good will it do me? It’s just a piece of molded green plastic.

WILL IT MAKE ME HAPPY?”She flicked her gaze over to her partner in a silent plea for help, but the other employee had

suddenly become engrossed in straightening a neatly-stacked pyramid of canned corn. “From the way this conversation is going,” she admitted, “probably not.”

It was then that I noticed the large yellow sign taped to the stack of corn: “Buy one get one FREE! … (with card).”

“Hey,” I pointed to the sign. “I thought you said the card didn’t give a discount.”“It doesn’t. It’s just that you pay more without it.”“But that means you’re penalizing people who don’t get the card.”She nodded. “But if we don’t penalize you, you won’t have any reason to give us your name

and phone number.”

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“AHA!” I shouted. “The card really IS the important thing! It’s an EVIL PLOT and we both KNOW it! The CARD is INFORMATION and INFORMATION is the CARD!!!”

For now, that’s as far as I’ll go with this particular story, because by the time she went for the mace on her key-chain and began screaming for security she was no longer communicating on an adult level. You see what oppression does to people. But I think I made my point intelligently enough: knowledge really is power.

As to linking all of this with a malevolent conspiracy, well … what else can you link it to? The only sane explanation is that the technological revolution has installed a new dictator on the throne of our lives. That dictator is the corporate mailing list, and it is currently fashioning the endless paper chains by which we will be shackled to a lifetime of coupons, catalogues, and free space-saving appliances with membership application.

Go shopping and see for yourself. I dare you. Just try to get your poodle groomed or your car lubed without someone prying your zip code out of you.

I, for one, have decided to take a stand. I now carry a little black book with me. Whenever a clerk asks me for my name or phone number, I pull out my book, making sure that they can see the skull and cross-bones on the cover. “Okay,” I tell them, “But first you’ll have to give me yours. You see, I’m compiling a list of all the people who know about me for my ‘Enemies of Freedom’ database. Let’s start with your blood-type.”

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For Discussion:

Does this short column make a single main point? What do you think the point is?

The Most Dangerous GameRichard Connell

“Off there to the right—somewhere—is a large island,” said Whitney. “It’s rather a mystery—”“What island is it?” Rainsford asked.“The old charts call it ‘Ship-Trap Island,’” Whitney replied. “A suggestive name, isn’t it?

Sailors have a curious dread of the place. I don’t know why. Some superstition—”“Can’t see it,” remarked Rainsford, trying to peer through the dank tropical night that was

palpable as it pressed its thick warm blackness in upon the yacht.“You’ve good eyes,” said Whitney, with a laugh, “and I’ve seen you pick off a moose moving in

the brown fall bush at four hundred yards, but even you can’t see four miles or so through a moonless Caribbean night.”

“Nor four yards,” admitted Rainsford. “Ugh! It’s like moist black velvet.”“It will be light enough in Rio,” promised Whitney. “We should make it in a few days. I hope

the jaguar guns have come from Purdey's. We should have some good hunting up the Amazon. Great sport, hunting.”

“The best sport in the world,” agreed Rainsford.“For the hunter,” amended Whitney. “Not for the jaguar.”“Don’t talk rot, Whitney,” said Rainsford. “You’re a big-game hunter, not a philosopher. Who

cares how a jaguar feels?”“Perhaps the jaguar does,” observed Whitney.“Bah! They’ve no understanding.”“Even so, I rather think they understand one thing—fear. The fear of pain and the fear of

death.”“Nonsense,” laughed Rainsford. “This hot weather is making you soft, Whitney. Be a realist.

The world is made up of two classes—the hunters and the huntees. Luckily, you and I are hunters. Do you think we’ve passed that island yet?”

“I can’t tell in the dark. I hope so.”“Why?” asked Rainsford.“The place has a reputation—a bad one.”“Cannibals?” suggested Rainsford.“Hardly. Even cannibals wouldn’t live in such a God-forsaken place. But it’s gotten into sailor

lore, somehow. Didn’t you notice that the crew’s nerves seemed a bit jumpy today?”“They were a bit strange, now you mention it. Even Captain Nielsen—”“Yes, even that tough-minded old Swede, who’d go up to the devil himself and ask him for a

light. Those fishy blue eyes held a look I never saw there before. All I could get out of him was ‘This place has an evil name among seafaring men, sir.’ Then he said to me, very gravely, ‘Don’t you feel anything?’—as if the air about us was actually poisonous. Now, you mustn’t laugh when I tell you this—I did feel something like a sudden chill.

“There was no breeze. The sea was as flat as a plate-glass window. We were drawing near the island then. What I felt was a—a mental chill; a sort of sudden dread.”

“Pure imagination,” said Rainsford. “One superstitious sailor can taint the whole ship’s company with his fear.”

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For Discussion:

At this point in the story, what sort of man does Rainsford seem to be? What do we know about him?

“Maybe. But sometimes I think sailors have an extra sense that tells them when they are in danger. Sometimes I think evil is a tangible thing—with wave lengths, just as sound and light have. An evil place can, so to speak, broadcast vibrations of evil. Anyhow, I’m glad we’re getting out of this zone. Well, I think I’ll turn in now, Rainsford.”

“I’m not sleepy,” said Rainsford. “I’m going to smoke another pipe up on the afterdeck.”“Good night, then, Rainsford. See you at breakfast.”“Right. Good night, Whitney.”There was no sound in the night as Rainsford sat there but the muffled throb of the engine

that drove the yacht swiftly through the darkness, and the swish and ripple of the wash of the propeller.

Rainsford, reclining in a steamer chair, indolently puffed on his favorite brier. The sensuous drowsiness of the night was on him. “It’s so dark,” he thought, “that I could sleep without closing my eyes; the night would be my eyelids—”

An abrupt sound startled him. Off to the right he heard it, and his ears, expert in such matters, could not be mistaken. Again he heard the sound, and again. Somewhere, off in the blackness, someone had fired a gun three times.

Rainsford sprang up and moved quickly to the rail, mystified. He strained his eyes in the direction from which the reports had come, but it was like trying to see through a blanket. He leaped upon the rail and balanced himself there, to get greater elevation; his pipe, striking a rope, was knocked from his mouth. He lunged for it; a short, hoarse cry came from his lips as he realized he had reached too far and had lost his balance. The cry was pinched off short as the blood-warm waters of the Caribbean Sea closed over his head.

He struggled up to the surface and tried to cry out, but the wash from the speeding yacht slapped him in the face and the salt water in his open mouth made him gag and strangle. Desperately he struck out with strong strokes after the receding lights of the yacht, but he stopped before he had swum fifty feet. A certain coolheadedness had come to him; it was not the first time he had been in a tight place. There was a chance that his cries could be heard by someone aboard the yacht, but that chance was slender and grew more slender as the yacht raced on. He wrestled himself out of his clothes and shouted with all his power. The lights of the yacht became faint and ever-vanishing fireflies; then they were blotted out entirely by the night.

Rainsford remembered the shots. They had come from the right, and doggedly he swam in that direction, swimming with slow, deliberate strokes, conserving his strength. For a seemingly endless time he fought the sea. He began to count his strokes; he could do possibly a hundred more and then—

Rainsford heard a sound. It came out of the darkness, a high screaming sound, the sound of an animal in an extremity of anguish and terror.

He did not recognize the animal that made the sound; he did not try to; with fresh vitality he swam toward the sound. He heard it again; then it was cut short by another noise, crisp, staccato.

“Pistol shot,” muttered Rainsford, swimming on.Ten minutes of determined effort brought another sound to his ears—the most welcome he

had ever heard—the muttering and growling of the sea breaking on a rocky shore. He was almost on the rocks before he saw them; on a night less calm he would have been shattered against them. With his remaining strength he dragged himself from the swirling waters. Jagged crags appeared to jut up into the opaqueness; he forced himself upward, hand over hand. Gasping, his hands raw, he reached a flat place at the top. Dense jungle came down to the very edge of the cliffs. What perils that tangle of trees and underbrush might hold for him did not concern Rainsford just then.

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All he knew was that he was safe from his enemy, the sea, and that utter weariness was on him. He flung himself down at the jungle edge and tumbled headlong into the deepest sleep of his life.

When he opened his eyes he knew from the position of the sun that it was late in the afternoon. Sleep had given him new vigor; a sharp hunger was picking at him. He looked about him, almost cheerfully.

“Where there are pistol shots, there are men. Where there are men, there is food,” he thought. But what kind of men, he wondered, in so forbidding a place? An unbroken front of snarled and ragged jungle fringed the shore.

He saw no sign of a trail through the closely knit web of weeds and trees; it was easier to go along the shore, and Rainsford floundered along by the water. Not far from where he landed, he stopped.

Some wounded thing—by the evidence, a large animal—had thrashed about in the underbrush; the jungle weeds were crushed down and the moss was lacerated; one patch of weeds was stained crimson. A small, glittering object not far away caught Rainsford’s eye and he picked it up. It was an empty cartridge.

“A twenty-two,” he remarked. “That’s odd. It must have been a fairly large animal too. The hunter had his nerve with him to tackle it with a light gun. It’s clear that the brute put up a fight. I suppose the first three shots I heard was when the hunter flushed his quarry and wounded it. The last shot was when he trailed it here and finished it.”

He examined the ground closely and found what he had hoped to find—the print of hunting boots. They pointed along the cliff in the direction he had been going. Eagerly he hurried along, now slipping on a rotten log or a loose stone, but making headway; night was beginning to settle down on the island.

Bleak darkness was blacking out the sea and jungle when Rainsford sighted the lights. He came upon them as he turned a crook in the coast line; and his first thought was that be had come upon a village, for there were many lights. But as he forged along he saw to his great astonishment that all the lights were in one enormous building—a lofty structure with pointed towers plunging upward into the gloom. His eyes made out the shadowy outlines of a palatial chateau; it was set on a high bluff, and on three sides of it cliffs dived down to where the sea licked greedy lips in the shadows.

“Mirage,” thought Rainsford. But it was no mirage, he found, when he opened the tall spiked iron gate. The stone steps were real enough; the massive door with a leering gargoyle for a knocker was real enough; yet above it all hung an air of unreality.

He lifted the knocker, and it creaked up stiffly, as if it had never before been used. He let it fall, and it startled him with its booming loudness. He thought he heard steps within; the door remained closed. Again Rainsford lifted the heavy knocker, and let it fall. The door opened then—opened as suddenly as if it were on a spring—and Rainsford stood blinking in the river of glaring gold light that poured out. The first thing Rainsford’s eyes discerned was the largest man Rainsford had ever seen—a gigantic creature, solidly made and black bearded to the waist. In his hand the man held a long-barreled revolver, and he was pointing it straight at Rainsford’s heart.

Out of the snarl of beard two small eyes regarded Rainsford.“Don’t be alarmed,” said Rainsford, with a smile which he hoped was disarming. “I’m no

robber. I fell off a yacht. My name is Sanger Rainsford of New York City.”

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For Discussion:

What is the significance of Rainsford’s discovery here?Does his finding the blood and cartridge make you apprehensive?

The menacing look in the eyes did not change. The revolver pointing as rigidly as if the giant were a statue. He gave no sign that he understood Rainsford’s words, or that he had even heard them. He was dressed in uniform—a black uniform trimmed with gray astrakhan.

“I’m Sanger Rainsford of New York,” Rainsford began again. “I fell off a yacht. I am hungry.”The man’s only answer was to raise with his thumb the hammer of his revolver. Then

Rainsford saw the man’s free hand go to his forehead in a military salute, and he saw him click his heels together and stand at attention.

Another man was coming down the broad marble steps, an erect, slender man in evening clothes. He advanced to Rainsford and held out his hand.

In a cultivated voice marked by a slight accent that gave it added precision and deliberateness, he said, “It is a very great pleasure and honor to welcome Mr. Sanger Rainsford, the celebrated hunter, to my home.”

Automatically Rainsford shook the man’s hand.“I’ve read your book about hunting snow leopards in Tibet, you see,” explained the man. “I

am General Zaroff.”Rainsford’s first impression was that the man was singularly handsome; his second was that

there was an original, almost bizarre quality about the general's face. He was a tall man past middle age, for his hair was a vivid white; but his thick eyebrows and pointed military mustache were as black as the night from which Rainsford had come. His eyes, too, were black and very bright. He had high cheekbones, a sharpcut nose, a spare, dark face—the face of a man used to giving orders, the face of an aristocrat. Turning to the giant in uniform, the general made a sign. The giant put away his pistol, saluted, withdrew.

“Ivan is an incredibly strong fellow,” remarked the general, “but he has the misfortune to be deaf and dumb. A simple fellow, but, I’m afraid, like all his race, a bit of a savage.”

“Is he Russian?”“He is a Cossack,” said the general, and his smile showed red lips and pointed teeth. “So am

I.”“Come,” he said, “we shouldn’t be chatting here. We can talk later. Now you want clothes,

food, rest. You shall have them. This is a most-restful spot.”Ivan had reappeared, and the general spoke to him with lips that moved but gave forth no

sound.“Follow Ivan, if you please, Mr. Rainsford,” said the general. “I was about to have my dinner

when you came. I’ll wait for you. You’ll find that my clothes will fit you, I think.”It was to a huge, beam-ceilinged bedroom with a canopied bed big enough for six men that

Rainsford followed the silent giant. Ivan laid out an evening suit, and Rainsford, as he put it on, noticed that it came from a London tailor who ordinarily cut and sewed for none below the rank of duke.

The dining room to which Ivan conducted him was in many ways remarkable. There was a medieval magnificence about it; it suggested a baronial hall of feudal times with its oaken panels, its high ceiling, its vast refectory tables where twoscore men could sit down to eat. About the hall were mounted heads of many animals—lions, tigers, elephants, moose, bears; larger or more perfect specimens Rainsford had never seen. At the great table the general was sitting, alone.

“You’ll have a cocktail, Mr. Rainsford,” he suggested. The cocktail was surpassingly good; and, Rainsford noted, the table appointments were of the finest—the linen, the crystal, the silver, the china.

They were eating borsch, the rich, red soup with whipped cream so dear to Russian palates. Half apologetically General Zaroff said, “We do our best to preserve the amenities of civilization

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here. Please forgive any lapses. We are well off the beaten track, you know. Do you think the champagne has suffered from its long ocean trip?”

“Not in the least,” declared Rainsford. He was finding the general a most thoughtful and affable host, a true cosmopolite. But there was one small trait of the general’s that made Rainsford uncomfortable. Whenever he looked up from his plate he found the general studying him, appraising him narrowly.

“Perhaps,” said General Zaroff, “you were surprised that I recognized your name. You see, I read all books on hunting published in English, French, and Russian. I have but one passion in my life, Mr. Rainsford, and it is the hunt.”

“You have some wonderful heads here,” said Rainsford as he ate a particularly well-cooked filet mignon.

“That Cape buffalo is the largest I ever saw.”“Oh, that fellow. Yes, he was a monster.”“Did he charge you?”“Hurled me against a tree,” said the general. “Fractured my skull. But I got the brute.”“I’ve always thought,” said Rainsford, “that the Cape buffalo is the most dangerous of all big

game.”For a moment the general did not reply; he was smiling his curious red-lipped smile. Then he

said slowly, “No. You are wrong, sir. The Cape buffalo is not the most dangerous big game.” He sipped his wine. “Here in my preserve on this island,” he said in the same slow tone, “I hunt more dangerous game.”

Rainsford expressed his surprise. “Is there big game on this island?”The general nodded. “The biggest.”“Really?”“Oh, it isn’t here naturally, of course. I have to stock the island.”“What have you imported, general?” Rainsford asked. “Tigers?”The general smiled. “No,” he said. “Hunting tigers ceased to interest me some years ago. I

exhausted their possibilities, you see. No thrill left in tigers, no real danger. I live for danger, Mr. Rainsford.”

The general took from his pocket a gold cigarette case and offered his guest a long black cigarette with a silver tip; it was perfumed and gave off a smell like incense.

“We will have some capital hunting, you and I,” said the general. “I shall be most glad to have your society.”

“But what game—” began Rainsford.“I’ll tell you,” said the general. “You will be amused, I know. I think I may say, in all modesty,

that I have done a rare thing. I have invented a new sensation. May I pour you another glass of port?”

“Thank you, general.”The general filled both glasses, and said, “God makes some men poets. Some He makes kings,

some beggars. Me He made a hunter. My hand was made for the trigger, my father said. He was a very rich man with a quarter of a million acres in the Crimea, and he was an ardent sportsman. When I was only five years old he gave me a little gun, specially made in Moscow for me, to shoot sparrows with. When I shot some of his prize turkeys with it, he did not punish me; he complimented me on my marksmanship. I killed my first bear in the Caucasus when I was ten. My whole life has been one prolonged hunt. I went into the army—it was expected of noblemen’s sons—and for a time commanded a division of Cossack cavalry, but my real interest was always the

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hunt. I have hunted every kind of game in every land. It would be impossible for me to tell you how many animals I have killed.”

The general puffed at his cigarette.“After the debacle in Russia I left the country, for it was imprudent for an officer of the Czar to

stay there. Many noble Russians lost everything. I, luckily, had invested heavily in American securities, so I shall never have to open a tearoom in Monte Carlo or drive a taxi in Paris. Naturally, I continued to hunt—grizzlies in your Rockies, crocodiles in the Ganges, rhinoceroses in East Africa. It was in Africa that the Cape buffalo hit me and laid me up for six months. As soon as I recovered I started for the Amazon to hunt jaguars, for I had heard they were unusually cunning. They weren’t.” The Cossack sighed. “They were no match at all for a hunter with his wits about him, and a high-powered rifle. I was bitterly disappointed. I was lying in my tent with a splitting headache one night when a terrible thought pushed its way into my mind. Hunting was beginning to bore me! And hunting, remember, had been my life. I have heard that in America businessmen often go to pieces when they give up the business that has been their life.”

“Yes, that’s so,” said Rainsford.The general smiled. “I had no wish to go to pieces,” he said. “I must do something. Now, mine

is an analytical mind, Mr. Rainsford. Doubtless that is why I enjoy the problems of the chase.”“No doubt, General Zaroff.”“So,” continued the general, “I asked myself why the hunt no longer fascinated me. You are

much younger than I am, Mr. Rainsford, and have not hunted as much, but you perhaps can guess the answer.”

“What was it?”“Simply this: hunting had ceased to be what you call ‘a sporting proposition.’ It had become

too easy. I always got my quarry. Always. There is no greater bore than perfection.”The general lit a fresh cigarette.“No animal had a chance with me any more. That is no boast; it is a mathematical certainty.

The animal had nothing but his legs and his instinct. Instinct is no match for reason. When I thought of this it was a tragic moment for me, I can tell you.”

Rainsford leaned across the table, absorbed in what his host was saying.“It came to me as an inspiration what I must do,” the

general went on.“And that was?”The general smiled the quiet smile of one who has faced

an obstacle and surmounted it with success. “I had to invent a new animal to hunt,” he said.

“A new animal? You’re joking.” “Not at all,” said the general. “I never joke about

hunting. I needed a new animal. I found one. So I bought this island, built this house, and here I do my hunting. The island is perfect for my purposes—there are jungles with a maze of trails in them, hills, swamps—”

“But the animal, General Zaroff?”“Oh,” said the general, “it supplies me with the most exciting hunting in the world. No other

hunting compares with it for an instant. Every day I hunt, and I never grow bored now, for I have a quarry with which I can match my wits.”

Rainsford's bewilderment showed in his face.

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For Discussion:

Does General Zaroff’s revelation that he is hunting men on the island surprise you?

“I wanted the ideal animal to hunt,” explained the general. “So I said, ‘What are the attributes of an ideal quarry?’ And the answer was, of course, ‘It must have courage, cunning, and, above all, it must be able to reason.’”

“But no animal can reason,” objected Rainsford.“My dear fellow,” said the general, “there is one that can.”“But you can’t mean—” gasped Rainsford.“And why not?”“I can’t believe you are serious, General Zaroff. This is a grisly joke.”“Why should I not be serious? I am speaking of hunting.”“Hunting? Great Guns, General Zaroff, what you speak of is murder.”The general laughed with entire good nature. He regarded Rainsford quizzically. “I refuse to

believe that so modern and civilized a young man as you seem to be harbors romantic ideas about the value of human life. Surely your experiences in the war—”

“Did not make me condone cold-blooded murder,” finished Rainsford stiffly.Laughter shook the general. “How extraordinarily droll you are!” he said. “One does not

expect nowadays to find a young man of the educated class, even in America, with such a naive, and, if I may say so, mid-Victorian point of view. It’s like finding a snuffbox in a limousine. Ah, well, doubtless you had Puritan ancestors. So many Americans appear to have had. I’ll wager you’ll forget your notions when you go hunting with me. You’ve a genuine new thrill in store for you, Mr. Rainsford.”

“Thank you, I’m a hunter, not a murderer.”“Dear me,” said the general, quite unruffled, “again that unpleasant word. But I think I can

show you that your scruples are quite ill founded.”“Yes?”“Life is for the strong, to be lived by the strong, and, if needs be, taken by the strong. The

weak of the world were put here to give the strong pleasure. I am strong. Why should I not use my gift? If I wish to hunt, why should I not? I hunt the scum of the earth: sailors from tramp ships—lassars, blacks, Chinese, whites, mongrels—a thoroughbred horse or hound is worth more than a score of them.”

“But they are men,” said Rainsford hotly.“Precisely,” said the general. “That is why I use them. It gives me pleasure. They can reason,

after a fashion. So they are dangerous.”“But where do you get them?”The general's left eyelid fluttered down in a wink. “This island is called Ship Trap,” he

answered. “Sometimes an angry god of the high seas sends them to me. Sometimes, when Providence is not so kind, I help Providence a bit. Come to the window with me.”

Rainsford went to the window and looked out toward the sea.“Watch! Out there!” exclaimed the general, pointing into the night. Rainsford's eyes saw only

blackness, and then, as the general pressed a button, far out to sea Rainsford saw the flash of lights.

The general chuckled. “They indicate a channel,” he said, “where there’s none; giant rocks with razor edges crouch like a sea monster with wide-open jaws. They can crush a ship as easily as I crush this nut.” He dropped a walnut on the hardwood floor and brought his heel grinding down on it. “Oh, yes,” he said, casually, as if in answer to a question, "I have electricity. We try to be civilized here.”

“Civilized? And you shoot down men?”

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A trace of anger was in the general's black eyes, but it was there for but a second; and he said, in his most pleasant manner, “Dear me, what a righteous young man you are! I assure you I do not do the thing you suggest. That would be barbarous. I treat these visitors with every consideration. They get plenty of good food and exercise. They get into splendid physical condition. You shall see for yourself tomorrow.”

“What do you mean?”“We’ll visit my training school,” smiled the general. “It’s in the cellar. I have about a dozen

pupils down there now. They're from the Spanish bark San Lucar that had the bad luck to go on the rocks out there. A very inferior lot, I regret to say. Poor specimens and more accustomed to the deck than to the jungle.” He raised his hand, and Ivan, who served as waiter, brought thick Turkish coffee. Rainsford, with an effort, held his tongue in check.

“It’s a game, you see,” pursued the general blandly. “I suggest to one of them that we go hunting. I give him a supply of food and an excellent hunting knife. I give him three hours' start. I am to follow, armed only with a pistol of the smallest caliber and range. If my quarry eludes me for three whole days, he wins the game. If I find him “—the general smiled— “he loses.”

“Suppose he refuses to be hunted?”“Oh,” said the general, “I give him his option, of course. He need not play that game if he

doesn’t wish to. If he does not wish to hunt, I turn him over to Ivan. Ivan once had the honor of serving as official knouter to the Great White Czar, and he has his own ideas of sport. Invariably, Mr. Rainsford, invariably they choose the hunt.”

“And if they win?”The smile on the general's face widened. “To date I have not lost,” he said. Then he added,

hastily: “I don’t wish you to think me a braggart, Mr. Rainsford. Many of them afford only the most elementary sort of problem. Occasionally I strike a tartar. One almost did win. I eventually had to use the dogs.”

“The dogs?”“This way, please. I’ll show you.”The general steered Rainsford to a window. The lights from the windows sent a flickering

illumination that made grotesque patterns on the courtyard below, and Rainsford could see moving about there a dozen or so huge black shapes; as they turned toward him, their eyes glittered greenly.

“A rather good lot, I think,” observed the general. “They are let out at seven every night. If anyone should try to get into my house—or out of it—something extremely regrettable would occur to him.” He hummed a snatch of song from the Folies Bergere.

“And now,” said the general, “I want to show you my new collection of heads. Will you come with me to the library?”

“I hope,” said Rainsford, “that you will excuse me tonight, General Zaroff. I’m really not feeling well.”

“Ah, indeed?” the general inquired solicitously. “Well, I suppose that’s only natural, after your long swim. You need a good, restful night’s sleep. Tomorrow you'll feel like a new man, I’ll wager. Then we’ll hunt, eh? I've one rather promising prospect—" Rainsford was hurrying from the room.

“Sorry you can’t go with me tonight,” called the general. “I expect rather fair sport—a big, strong, black. He looks resourceful—Well, good night, Mr. Rainsford; I hope you have a good night’s rest.”

The bed was good, and the pajamas of the softest silk, and he was tired in every fiber of his being, but nevertheless Rainsford could not quiet his brain with the opiate of sleep. He lay, eyes

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wide open. Once he thought he heard stealthy steps in the corridor outside his room. He sought to throw open the door; it would not open. He went to the window and looked out. His room was high up in one of the towers. The lights of the chateau were out now, and it was dark and silent; but there was a fragment of sallow moon, and by its wan light he could see, dimly, the courtyard. There, weaving in and out in the pattern of shadow, were black, noiseless forms; the hounds heard him at the window and looked up, expectantly, with their green eyes.

Rainsford went back to the bed and lay down. By many methods he tried to put himself to sleep. He had achieved a doze when, just as morning began to come, he heard, far off in the jungle, the faint report of a pistol.

General Zaroff did not appear until luncheon. He was dressed faultlessly in the tweeds of a country squire. He was solicitous about the state of Rainsford’s health.

“As for me,” sighed the general, “I do not feel so well. I am worried, Mr. Rainsford. Last night I detected traces of my old complaint.”

To Rainsford’s questioning glance the general said, “Ennui. Boredom.”Then, taking a second helping of crêpes Suzette, the general explained: “The hunting was not

good last night. The fellow lost his head. He made a straight trail that offered no problems at all. That's the trouble with these sailors; they have dull brains to begin with, and they do not know how to get about in the woods. They do excessively stupid and obvious things. It's most annoying. Will you have another glass of Chablis, Mr. Rainsford?”

“General,” said Rainsford firmly, “I wish to leave this island at once.”The general raised his thickets of eyebrows; he seemed hurt. “But, my dear fellow,” the

general protested, “you’ve only just come. You’ve had no hunting—”“I wish to go today,” said Rainsford. He saw the dead black eyes of the general on him,

studying him. General Zaroff's face suddenly brightened.He filled Rainsford’s glass with venerable Chablis from a dusty bottle.“Tonight,” said the general, “we will hunt—you and I.”Rainsford shook his head. “No, general,” he said. “I will not hunt.”The general shrugged his shoulders and delicately ate a

hothouse grape. “As you wish, my friend,” he said. “The choice rests entirely with you. But may I not venture to suggest that you will find my idea of sport more diverting than Ivan’s?”

He nodded toward the corner to where the giant stood, scowling, his thick arms crossed on his hogshead of chest.

“You don’t mean—” cried Rainsford.“My dear fellow,” said the general, “have I not told you

I always mean what I say about hunting? This is really an inspiration. I drink to a foeman worthy of my steel—at last.” The general raised his glass, but Rainsford sat staring at him.

“You’ll find this game worth playing,” the general said enthusiastically. “Your brain against mine. Your woodcraft against mine. Your strength and stamina against mine. Outdoor chess! And the stake is not without value, eh?”

“And if I win—” began Rainsford huskily.“I'll cheerfully acknowledge myself defeated if I do not find you by midnight of the third day,”

said General Zaroff. “My sloop will place you on the mainland near a town.” The general read what Rainsford was thinking.

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For Discussion:

What do we learn about Rainsford in this passage? Is he a more rounded character by the time we reach the line break?

“Oh, you can trust me,” said the Cossack. “I will give you my word as a gentleman and a sportsman. Of course you, in turn, must agree to say nothing of your visit here.”“I'll agree to nothing of the kind,” said Rainsford.“Oh,” said the general, “in that case—But why discuss that now? Three days hence we can discuss it over a bottle of Veuve Cliquot, unless—”The general sipped his wine.Then a businesslike air animated him. “Ivan,” he said to

Rainsford, “will supply you with hunting clothes, food, a knife. I suggest you wear moccasins; they leave a poorer trail. I suggest, too, that you avoid the big swamp in the southeast corner of the island. We call it Death Swamp. There’s quicksand there. One foolish fellow tried it. The deplorable part of it was that Lazarus followed him. You can imagine my feelings, Mr. Rainsford. I loved Lazarus; he was the finest hound in my pack. Well, I must beg you to excuse me now. I always take a siesta after lunch. You’ll hardly have time for a nap, I fear. You'll want to start, no doubt. I shall not follow till dusk. Hunting at night is so much more exciting than by day, don’t you think? Au revoir, Mr. Rainsford, au revoir.” General Zaroff, with a deep, courtly bow, strolled from the room.

From another door came Ivan. Under one arm he carried khaki hunting clothes, a haversack of food, a leather sheath containing a long-bladed hunting knife; his right hand rested on a cocked revolver thrust in the crimson sash about his waist.

Rainsford had fought his way through the bush for two hours. “I must keep my nerve. I must keep my nerve,” he said through tight teeth.

He had not been entirely clearheaded when the chateau gates snapped shut behind him. His whole idea at first was to put distance between himself and General Zaroff; and, to this end, he had plunged along, spurred on by the sharp rowers of something very like panic. Now he had got a grip on himself, had stopped, and was taking stock of himself and the situation. He saw that straight flight was futile; inevitably it would bring him face to face with the sea. He was in a picture with a frame of water, and his operations, clearly, must take place within that frame.

“I'll give him a trail to follow,” muttered Rainsford, and he struck off from the rude path he had been following into the trackless wilderness. He executed a series of intricate loops; he doubled on his trail again and again, recalling all the lore of the fox hunt, and all the dodges of the fox. Night found him leg-weary, with hands and face lashed by the branches, on a thickly wooded ridge. He knew it would be insane to blunder on through the dark, even if he had the strength. His need for rest was imperative and he thought, “I have played the fox, now I must play the cat of the fable.” A big tree with a thick trunk and outspread branches was near by, and, taking care to leave not the slightest mark, he climbed up into the crotch, and, stretching out on one of the broad limbs, after a fashion, rested. Rest brought him new confidence and almost a feeling of security. Even so zealous a hunter as General Zaroff could not trace him there, he told himself; only the devil himself could follow that complicated trail through the jungle after dark. But perhaps the general was a devil—

An apprehensive night crawled slowly by like a wounded snake and sleep did not visit Rainsford, although the silence of a dead world was on the jungle. Toward morning when a dingy gray was varnishing the sky, the cry of some startled bird focused Rainsford’s attention in that

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For Discussion:

At this point, do you expect Rainsford to win this deadly hunting match or not?

For Discussion:

Now what do you think Rainsford’s chances are?

direction. Something was coming through the bush, coming slowly, carefully, coming by the same winding way Rainsford had come. He flattened himself down on the limb and, through a screen of leaves almost as thick as tapestry, he watched.... That which was approaching was a man.

It was General Zaroff. He made his way along with his eyes fixed in utmost concentration on the ground before him. He paused, almost beneath the tree, dropped to his knees and studied the ground. Rainsford’s impulse was to hurl himself down like a panther, but he saw that the general's right hand held something metallic—a small automatic pistol.

The hunter shook his head several times, as if he were puzzled. Then he straightened up and took from his case one of his black cigarettes; its pungent incense-like smoke floated up to Rainsford’s nostrils.

Rainsford held his breath. The general’s eyes had left the ground and were traveling inch by inch up the tree. Rainsford froze there, every muscle tensed for a spring. But the sharp eyes of the hunter stopped before they reached the limb where Rainsford lay; a smile spread over his brown face. Very deliberately he blew a smoke ring into the air; then he turned his back on the tree and walked carelessly away, back along the trail he had come. The swish of the underbrush against his hunting boots grew fainter and fainter.

The pent-up air burst hotly from Rainsford’s lungs. His first thought made him feel sick and numb. The general could follow a trail through the woods at night; he could follow an extremely difficult trail; he must have uncanny powers; only by the merest chance had the Cossack failed to see his quarry.

Rainsford’s second thought was even more terrible. It sent a shudder of cold horror through his whole being. Why had the general smiled? Why had he turned back?

Rainsford did not want to believe what his reason told him was true, but the truth was as evident as the sun that had by now pushed through the morning mists. The general was playing with him! The general was saving him for another day’s sport! The Cossack was the cat; he was the mouse. Then it was that Rainsford knew the full meaning of terror.

“I will not lose my nerve. I will not.”He slid down from the tree, and struck off again into the woods. His face was set and he

forced the machinery of his mind to function. Three hundred yards from his hiding place he stopped where a huge dead tree leaned precariously on a smaller, living one. Throwing off his sack of food, Rainsford took his knife from its sheath and began to work with all his energy.

The job was finished at last, and he threw himself down behind a fallen log a hundred feet away. He did not have to wait long. The cat was coming again to play with the mouse.

Following the trail with the sureness of a bloodhound came General Zaroff. Nothing escaped those searching black eyes, no crushed blade of grass, no bent twig, no mark, no matter how faint, in the moss. So intent was the Cossack on his stalking that he was upon the thing Rainsford had made before he saw it. His foot touched the protruding bough that was the trigger. Even as he touched it, the general sensed his danger and leaped back with the agility of an ape. But he was not quite quick enough; the dead tree, delicately adjusted to rest on the cut living one, crashed down and struck the general a glancing blow on the shoulder as it fell; but for his alertness, he must have been smashed beneath it. He staggered, but he did not fall; nor did he drop his revolver. He stood there, rubbing his injured shoulder, and Rainsford, with fear again gripping his heart, heard the general's mocking laugh ring through the jungle.

“Rainsford,” called the general, “if you are within sound of my voice, as I suppose you are, let me congratulate you. Not many men know how to make a Malay mancatcher. Luckily for me I, too, have hunted in Malacca. You are proving interesting, Mr. Rainsford. I am going now to have my wound dressed; it’s only a slight one. But I shall be back. I shall be back.”

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When the general, nursing his bruised shoulder, had gone, Rainsford took up his flight again. It was flight now, a desperate, hopeless flight, that carried him on for some hours. Dusk came, then darkness, and still he pressed on. The ground grew softer under his moccasins; the vegetation grew ranker, denser; insects bit him savagely.

Then, as he stepped forward, his foot sank into the ooze. He tried to wrench it back, but the muck sucked viciously at his foot as if it were a giant leech. With a violent effort, he tore his feet loose. He knew where he was now. Death Swamp and its quicksand.

His hands were tight closed as if his nerve were something tangible that someone in the darkness was trying to tear from his grip. The softness of the earth had given him an idea. He stepped back from the quicksand a dozen feet or so and, like some huge prehistoric beaver, he began to dig.

Rainsford had dug himself in in France when a second’s delay meant death. That had been a placid pastime compared to his digging now. The pit grew deeper; when it was above his shoulders, he climbed out and from some hard saplings cut stakes and sharpened them to a fine point. These stakes he planted in the bottom of the pit with the points sticking up. With flying fingers he wove a rough carpet of weeds and branches and with it he covered the mouth of the pit. Then, wet with sweat and aching with tiredness, he crouched behind the stump of a lightning-charred tree.

He knew his pursuer was coming; he heard the padding sound of feet on the soft earth, and the night breeze brought him the perfume of the general’s cigarette. It seemed to Rainsford that the general was coming with unusual swiftness; he was not feeling his way along, foot by foot. Rainsford, crouching there, could not see the general, nor could he see the pit. He lived a year in a minute. Then he felt an impulse to cry aloud with joy, for he heard the sharp crackle of the breaking branches as the cover of the pit gave way; he heard the sharp scream of pain as the pointed stakes found their mark. He leaped up from his place of concealment.

Then he cowered back. Three feet from the pit a man was standing, with an electric torch in his hand.

“You've done well, Rainsford,” the voice of the general called. “Your Burmese tiger pit has claimed one of my best dogs. Again you score. I think, Mr. Rainsford, I’ll see what you can do against my whole pack. I'm going home for a rest now. Thank you for a most amusing evening.”

At daybreak Rainsford, lying near the swamp, was awakened by a sound that made him know that he had new things to learn about fear. It was a distant sound, faint and wavering, but he knew it. It was the baying of a pack of hounds.

Rainsford knew he could do one of two things. He could stay where he was and wait. That was suicide. He could flee. That was postponing the inevitable. For a moment he stood there, thinking. An idea that held a wild chance came to him, and, tightening his belt, he headed away from the swamp.

The baying of the hounds drew nearer, then still nearer, nearer, ever nearer. On a ridge Rainsford climbed a tree. Down a watercourse, not a quarter of a mile away, he could see the bush moving. Straining his eyes, he saw the lean figure of General Zaroff; just ahead of him Rainsford made out another figure whose wide shoulders surged through the tall jungle weeds; it was the giant Ivan, and he seemed pulled forward by some unseen force; Rainsford knew that Ivan must be holding the pack in leash.

They would be on him any minute now. His mind worked frantically. He thought of a native trick he had learned in Uganda. He slid down the tree. He caught hold of a springy young sapling and to it he fastened his hunting knife, with the blade pointing down the trail; with a bit of wild grapevine he tied back the sapling.

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Then he ran for his life. The hounds raised their voices as they hit the fresh scent. Rainsford knew now how an animal at bay feels.

He had to stop to get his breath. The baying of the hounds stopped abruptly, and Rainsford's heart stopped too. They must have reached the knife.

He shinned excitedly up a tree and looked back. His pursuers had stopped. But the hope that was in Rainsford’s brain when he climbed died, for he saw in the shallow valley that General Zaroff was still on his feet. But Ivan was not. The knife, driven by the recoil of the springing tree, had not wholly failed.

Rainsford had hardly tumbled to the ground when the pack took up the cry again.“Nerve, nerve, nerve!” he panted, as he dashed along. A blue gap showed between the trees

dead ahead. Ever nearer drew the hounds. Rainsford forced himself on toward that gap. He reached it. It was the shore of the sea. Across a cove he could see the gloomy gray stone of the chateau. Twenty feet below him the sea rumbled and hissed. Rainsford hesitated. He heard the hounds. Then he leaped far out into the sea....

When the general and his pack reached the place by the sea, the Cossack stopped. For some minutes he stood regarding the blue-green expanse of water. He shrugged his shoulders. Then be sat down, took a drink of brandy from a silver flask, lit a cigarette, and hummed a bit from Madame Butterfly.

General Zaroff had an exceedingly good dinner in his great paneled dining hall that evening. With it he had a bottle of Pol Roger and half a bottle of Chambertin. Two slight annoyances kept him from perfect enjoyment.

One was the thought that it would be difficult to replace Ivan; the other was that his quarry had escaped him; of course, the American hadn’t played the game—so thought the general as he tasted his after-dinner liqueur. In his library he read, to soothe himself, from the works of Marcus Aurelius. At ten he went up to his bedroom.

He was deliciously tired, he said to himself, as he locked himself in. There was a little moonlight, so, before turning on his light, he went to the window and looked down at the courtyard. He could see the great hounds, and he called, “Better luck another time,” to them. Then he switched on the light.

A man, who had been hiding in the curtains of the bed, was standing there.“Rainsford!” screamed the general. “How in God's name did you get here?”“Swam,” said Rainsford. “I found it quicker than walking through the jungle.”The general sucked in his breath and smiled. “I congratulate you,” he said. “You have won the

game.”Rainsford did not smile. “I am still a beast at bay,” he said, in a low, hoarse voice. “Get ready,

General Zaroff.”The general made one of his deepest bows. “I see,” he said. “Splendid! One of us is to furnish a

repast for the hounds. The other will sleep in this very excellent bed. On guard, Rainsford.” ...He had never slept in a better bed, Rainsford decided.

71

For Discussion:

What do you think of Rainsford at the end of this story? Has he changed at all?

The NecklaceGuy de Maupassant

The girl was one of those pretty and charming young creatures who sometimes are born, as if by a slip of fate, into a family of clerks. She had no dowry, no expectations, no way of being known, understood, loved, married by any rich and distinguished man; so she let herself be married to a little clerk of the Ministry of Public Instruction.

She dressed plainly because she could not dress well, but she was unhappy as if she had really fallen from a higher station; since with women there is neither caste nor rank, for beauty, grace and charm take the place of family and birth. Natural ingenuity, instinct for what is elegant, a supple mind are their sole hierarchy, and often make of women of the people the equals of the very greatest ladies.

Mathilde suffered ceaselessly, feeling herself born to enjoy all delicacies and all luxuries. She was distressed at the poverty of her dwelling, at the bareness of the walls, at the shabby chairs, the ugliness of the curtains. All those things, of which another woman of her rank would never even have been conscious, tortured her and made her angry. The sight of the little Breton peasant who did her humble housework aroused in her despairing regrets and bewildering dreams. She thought of silent antechambers hung with Oriental tapestry, illumined by tall bronze candelabra, and of two great footmen in knee breeches who sleep in the big armchairs, made drowsy by the oppressive heat of the stove. She thought of long reception halls hung with ancient silk, of the dainty cabinets containing priceless curiosities and of the little coquettish perfumed reception rooms made for chatting at five o’clock with intimate friends, with men famous and sought after, whom all women envy and whose attention they all desire.

When she sat down to dinner, before the round table covered with a tablecloth in use three days, opposite her husband, who uncovered the soup tureen and declared with a delighted air, “Ah, the good soup! I don’t know anything better than that,” she thought of dainty dinners, of shining silverware, of tapestry that peopled the walls with ancient personages and with strange birds flying in the midst of a fairy forest; and she thought of delicious dishes served on marvellous plates and of the whispered gallantries to which you listen with a sphinxlike smile while you are eating the pink meat of a trout or the wings of a quail.

She had no gowns, no jewels, nothing. And she loved nothing but that. She felt made for that. She would have liked so much to please, to be envied, to be charming, to be sought after.

She had a friend, a former schoolmate at the convent, who was rich, and whom she did not like to go to see any more because she felt so sad when she came home.

But one evening her husband reached home with a triumphant air and holding a large envelope in his hand.

“There,” said he, “there is something for you.”She tore the paper quickly and drew out a printed card which bore these words:The Minister of Public Instruction and Madame Georges Ramponneau request the honor of

M. and Madame Loisel’s company at the palace of the Ministry on Monday evening, January 18th.Instead of being delighted, as her husband had hoped, she threw the invitation on the table

crossly, muttering:“What do you wish me to do with that?”“Why, my dear, I thought you would be glad. You never go out, and this is such a fine

opportunity. I had great trouble to get it. Every one wants to go; it is very select, and they are not giving many invitations to clerks. The whole official world will be there.”

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She looked at him with an irritated glance and said impatiently:“And what do you wish me to put on my back?”He had not thought of that. He stammered:“Why, the gown you go to the theatre in. It looks very well to me.”He stopped, distracted, seeing that his wife was weeping. Two great tears ran slowly from the

corners of her eyes toward the corners of her mouth.“What’s the matter? What’s the matter?” he answered.By a violent effort she conquered her grief and replied in a calm voice, while she wiped her

wet cheeks:“Nothing. Only I have no gown, and, therefore, I can’t go to this ball. Give your card to some

colleague whose wife is better equipped than I am.”He was in despair. He resumed:“Come, let us see, Mathilde. How much would it cost, a suitable gown, which you could use on

other occasions--something very simple?”She reflected several seconds, making her calculations

and wondering also what sum she could ask without drawing on herself an immediate refusal and a frightened exclamation from the economical clerk.

Finally she replied hesitating:“I don’t know exactly, but I think I could manage it with

four hundred francs.”He grew a little pale, because he was laying aside just that

amount to buy a gun and treat himself to a little shooting next summer on the plain of Nanterre, with several friends who went to shoot larks there of a Sunday.

But he said:“Very well. I will give you four hundred francs. And try to have a pretty gown.”The day of the ball drew near and Madame Loisel seemed sad, uneasy, anxious. Her frock was

ready, however. Her husband said to her one evening:“What is the matter? Come, you have seemed very queer these last three days.”And she answered:“It annoys me not to have a single piece of jewelry, not a single ornament, nothing to put on. I

shall look poverty-stricken. I would almost rather not go at all.”“You might wear natural flowers,” said her husband. “They're very stylish at this time of year.

For ten francs you can get two or three magnificent roses.”She was not convinced.“No; there’s nothing more humiliating than to look poor among other women who are rich.”“How stupid you are!” her husband cried. “Go look up your friend, Madame Forestier, and ask

her to lend you some jewels. You’re intimate enough with her to do that.”She uttered a cry of joy:“True! I never thought of it.”The next day she went to her friend and told her of her distress.Madame Forestier went to a wardrobe with a mirror, took out a large jewel box, brought it

back, opened it and said to Madame Loisel:“Choose, my dear.”She saw first some bracelets, then a pearl necklace, then a Venetian gold cross set with

precious stones, of admirable workmanship. She tried on the ornaments before the mirror, hesitated and could not make up her mind to part with them, to give them back. She kept asking:

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For Discussion:

Who is the hero of this story? Do we want for her what she wants?

“Haven’t you any more?”“Why, yes. Look further; I don’t know what you like.”Suddenly she discovered, in a black satin box, a superb diamond necklace, and her heart

throbbed with an immoderate desire. Her hands trembled as she took it. She fastened it round her throat, outside her high-necked waist, and was lost in ecstasy at her reflection in the mirror.

Then she asked, hesitating, filled with anxious doubt:“Will you lend me this, only this?”“Why, yes, certainly.”She threw her arms round her friend’s neck, kissed her passionately, then fled with her

treasure.The night of the ball arrived. Madame Loisel was a great success. She was prettier than any

other woman present, elegant, graceful, smiling and wild with joy. All the men looked at her, asked her name, sought to be introduced. All the attaches of the Cabinet wished to waltz with her. She was remarked by the minister himself.

She danced with rapture, with passion, intoxicated by pleasure, forgetting all in the triumph of her beauty, in the glory of her success, in a sort of cloud of happiness comprised of all this homage, admiration, these awakened desires and of that sense of triumph which is so sweet to woman's heart.

She left the ball about four o'clock in the morning. Her husband had been sleeping since midnight in a little deserted anteroom with three other gentlemen whose wives were enjoying the ball.

He threw over her shoulders the wraps he had brought, the modest wraps of common life, the poverty of which contrasted with the elegance of the ball dress. She felt this and wished to escape so as not to be remarked by the other women, who were enveloping themselves in costly furs.

Loisel held her back, saying: “Wait a bit. You will catch cold outside. I will call a cab.”But she did not listen to him and rapidly descended the stairs. When they reached the street

they could not find a carriage and began to look for one, shouting after the cabmen passing at a distance.

They went toward the Seine in despair, shivering with cold. At last they found on the quay one of those ancient night cabs which, as though they were ashamed to show their shabbiness during the day, are never seen round Paris until after dark.

It took them to their dwelling in the Rue des Martyrs, and sadly they mounted the stairs to their flat. All was ended for her. As to him, he reflected that he must be at the ministry at ten o’clock that morning.

She removed her wraps before the glass so as to see herself once more in all her glory. But suddenly she uttered a cry. She no longer had the necklace around her neck!

“What is the matter with you?” demanded her husband, already half undressed.She turned distractedly toward him.“I have—I have—I’ve lost Madame Forestier’s necklace,” she cried.He stood up, bewildered.“What!—how? Impossible!”They looked among the folds of her skirt, of her cloak, in her pockets, everywhere, but did not

find it.“You’re sure you had it on when you left the ball?” he asked.“Yes, I felt it in the vestibule of the minister’s house.”“But if you had lost it in the street we should have heard it fall. It must be in the cab.”“Yes, probably. Did you take his number?”

74 For Discussion: How would you describe the story problem?

“No. And you—didn’t you notice it?”“No.”They looked, thunderstruck, at each other. At last Loisel put on his clothes.“I shall go back on foot,” said he, “over the whole route, to see whether I can find it.”He went out. She sat waiting on a chair in her ball dress, without strength to go to bed,

overwhelmed, without any fire, without a thought.Her husband returned about seven o’clock. He had found nothing.He went to police headquarters, to the newspaper offices to offer a reward; he went to the cab

companies—everywhere, in fact, whither he was urged by the least spark of hope.She waited all day, in the same condition of mad fear before this terrible calamity.Loisel returned at night with a hollow, pale face. He had discovered nothing.“You must write to your friend,” said he, “that you have broken the clasp of her necklace and

that you are having it mended. That will give us time to turn round.”She wrote at his dictation.At the end of a week they had lost all hope. Loisel, who had aged five years, declared:“We must consider how to replace that ornament.”The next day they took the box that had contained it and went to the jeweler whose name was

found within. He consulted his books.“It was not I, madame, who sold that necklace; I must simply have furnished the case.”Then they went from jeweler to jeweler, searching for a necklace like the other, trying to recall

it, both sick with chagrin and grief.They found, in a shop at the Palais Royal, a string of diamonds that seemed to them exactly

like the one they had lost. It was worth forty thousand francs. They could have it for thirty-six.So they begged the jeweler not to sell it for three days yet. And they made a bargain that he

should buy it back for thirty-four thousand francs, in case they should find the lost necklace before the end of February.

Loisel possessed eighteen thousand francs which his father had left him. He would borrow the rest.

He did borrow, asking a thousand francs of one, five hundred of another, five louis here, three louis there. He gave notes, took up ruinous obligations, dealt with usurers and all the race of lenders. He compromised all the rest of his life, risked signing a note without even knowing whether he could meet it; and, frightened by the trouble yet to come, by the black misery that was about to fall upon him, by the prospect of all the physical privations and moral tortures that he was to suffer, he went to get the new necklace, laying upon the jeweler's counter thirty-six thousand francs.

When Madame Loisel took back the necklace Madame Forestier said to her with a chilly manner:

“You should have returned it sooner; I might have needed it.”She did not open the case, as her friend had so much feared. If she had detected the

substitution, what would she have thought, what would she have said? Would she not have taken Madame Loisel for a thief?

Thereafter Madame Loisel knew the horrible existence of the needy. She bore her part, however, with sudden heroism. That dreadful debt must be paid. She would pay it. They dismissed their servant; they changed their lodgings; they rented a garret under the roof.

She came to know what heavy housework meant and the odious cares of the kitchen. She washed the dishes, using her dainty fingers and rosy nails on greasy pots and pans. She washed the soiled linen, the shirts and the dishcloths, which she dried upon a line; she carried the slops

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down to the street every morning and carried up the water, stopping for breath at every landing. And dressed like a woman of the people, she went to the fruiterer, the grocer, the butcher, a basket on her arm, bargaining, meeting with impertinence, defending her miserable money, sou by sou.

Every month they had to meet some notes, renew others, obtain more time.Her husband worked evenings, making up a tradesman's accounts, and late at night he often

copied manuscript for five sous a page.This life lasted ten years.At the end of ten years they had paid everything, everything, with the rates of usury and the

accumulations of the compound interest.Madame Loisel looked old now. She had become the woman of impoverished households—

strong and hard and rough. With frowsy hair, skirts askew and red hands, she talked loud while washing the floor with great swishes of water. But sometimes, when her husband was at the office, she sat down near the window and she thought of that gay evening of long ago, of that ball where she had been so beautiful and so admired.

What would have happened if she had not lost that necklace? Who knows? who knows? How strange and changeful is life! How small a thing is needed to make or ruin us!

But one Sunday, having gone to take a walk in the Champs Elysees to refresh herself after the labors of the week, she suddenly perceived a woman who was leading a child. It was Madame Forestier, still young, still beautiful, still charming.

Madame Loisel felt moved. Should she speak to her? Yes, certainly. And now that she had paid, she would tell her all about it. Why not?

She went up.“Good-day, Jeanne.”The other, astonished to be familiarly addressed by this plain good-wife, did not recognize her

at all and stammered:“But—madame!—I do not know—You must have mistaken.”“No. I am Mathilde Loisel.”Her friend uttered a cry.“Oh, my poor Mathilde! How you are changed!”“Yes, I have had a pretty hard life, since I last saw you, and great poverty—and that because of

you!”“Of me! How so?”“Do you remember that diamond necklace you lent me to wear at the ministerial ball?”“Yes. Well?”“Well, I lost it.”“What do you mean? You brought it back.”“I brought you back another exactly like it. And it has taken us ten years to pay for it. You can

understand that it was not easy for us, for us who had nothing. At last it is ended, and I am very glad.”

Madame Forestier had stopped.“You say that you bought a necklace of diamonds to replace mine?”“Yes. You never noticed it, then! They were very similar.”And she smiled with a joy that was at once proud and ingenuous.Madame Forestier, deeply moved, took her hands.“Oh, my poor Mathilde! Why, my necklace was paste! It was worth at most only five hundred

francs!”

76 For Discussion: What does this ending make you feel?

An Occurrence at Owl Creek BridgeAmbrose Bierce

A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man’s hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the ties supporting the rails of the railway supplied a footing for him and his executioners—two private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a short remove upon the same temporary platform was an officer in the uniform of his rank, armed. He was a captain. A sentinel at each end of the bridge stood with his rifle in the position known as “support,” that is to say, vertical in front of the left shoulder, the hammer resting on the forearm thrown straight across the chest—a formal and unnatural position, enforcing an erect carriage of the body. It did not appear to be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring at the center of the bridge; they merely blockaded the two ends of the foot planking that traversed it.

Beyond one of the sentinels nobody was in sight; the railroad ran straight away into a forest for a hundred yards, then, curving, was lost to view. Doubtless there was an outpost farther along. The other bank of the stream was open ground—a gentle slope topped with a stockade of vertical tree trunks, loopholed for rifles, with a single embrasure through which protruded the muzzle of a brass cannon commanding the bridge. Midway up the slope between the bridge and fort were the spectators—a single company of infantry in line, at “parade rest,” the butts of their rifles on the ground, the barrels inclining slightly backward against the right shoulder, the hands crossed upon the stock. A lieutenant stood at the right of the line, the point of his sword upon the ground, his left hand resting upon his right. Excepting the group of four at the center of the bridge, not a man moved. The company faced the bridge, staring stonily, motionless. The sentinels, facing the banks of the stream, might have been statues to adorn the bridge. The captain stood with folded arms, silent, observing the work of his subordinates, but making no sign. Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette silence and fixity are forms of deference.

The man who was engaged in being hanged was apparently about thirty-five years of age. He was a civilian, if one might judge from his habit, which was that of a planter. His features were good—a straight nose, firm mouth, broad forehead, from which his long, dark hair was combed straight back, falling behind his ears to the collar of his well fitting frock coat. He wore a moustache and pointed beard, but no whiskers; his eyes were large and dark gray, and had a kindly expression which one would hardly have expected in one whose neck was in the hemp. Evidently this was no vulgar assassin. The liberal military code makes provision for hanging many kinds of persons, and gentlemen are not excluded.

The preparations being complete, the two private soldiers stepped aside and each drew away the plank upon which he had been standing. The sergeant turned to the captain, saluted and placed himself immediately behind that officer, who in turn moved apart one pace. These movements left the condemned man and the sergeant standing on the two ends of the same

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For Discussion:

What is this story going to be about? What do you expect to happen by the end of it? What do you want to happen?

plank, which spanned three of the cross-ties of the bridge. The end upon which the civilian stood almost, but not quite, reached a fourth. This plank had been held in place by the weight of the captain; it was now held by that of the sergeant. At a signal from the former the latter would step aside, the plank would tilt and the condemned man go down between two ties. The arrangement commended itself to his judgement as simple and effective. His face had not been covered nor his eyes bandaged. He looked a moment at his “unsteadfast footing,” then let his gaze wander to the swirling water of the stream racing madly beneath his feet. A piece of dancing driftwood caught his attention and his eyes followed it down the current. How slowly it appeared to move! What a sluggish stream!

He closed his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his wife and children. The water, touched to gold by the early sun, the brooding mists under the banks at some distance down the stream, the fort, the soldiers, the piece of drift—all had distracted him. And now he became conscious of a new disturbance. Striking through the thought of his dear ones was sound which he could neither ignore nor understand, a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith’s hammer upon the anvil; it had the same ringing quality. He wondered what it was, and whether immeasurably distant or near by— it seemed both. Its recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death knell. He awaited each new stroke with impatience and—he knew not why—apprehension. The intervals of silence grew progressively longer; the delays became maddening. With their greater infrequency the sounds increased in strength and sharpness. They hurt his ear like the trust of a knife; he feared he would shriek. What he heard was the ticking of his watch.

He unclosed his eyes and saw again the water below him. “If I could free my hands,” he thought, “I might throw off the noose and spring into the stream. By diving I could evade the bullets and, swimming vigorously, reach the bank, take to the woods and get away home. My home, thank God, is as yet outside their lines; my wife and little ones are still beyond the invader’s farthest advance.”

As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words, were flashed into the doomed man’s brain rather than evolved from it the captain nodded to the sergeant. The sergeant stepped aside.

II

Peyton Farquhar was a well to do planter, of an old and highly respected Alabama family. Being a slave owner and like other slave owners a politician, he was naturally an original secessionist and ardently devoted to the Southern cause. Circumstances of an imperious nature, which it is unnecessary to relate here, had prevented him from taking service with that gallant army which had fought the disastrous campaigns ending with the fall of Corinth, and he chafed under the inglorious restraint, longing for the release of his energies, the larger life of the soldier, the opportunity for distinction. That opportunity, he felt, would come, as it comes to all in wartime. Meanwhile he did what he could. No service was too humble for him to perform in the aid of the South, no adventure to perilous for him to undertake if consistent with the character of a civilian who was at heart a soldier, and who in good faith and without too much qualification assented to at least a part of the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war.

One evening while Farquhar and his wife were sitting on a rustic bench near the entrance to his grounds, a gray-clad soldier rode up to the gate and asked for a drink of water. Mrs. Farquhar

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was only too happy to serve him with her own white hands. While she was fetching the water her husband approached the dusty horseman and inquired eagerly for news from the front.

“The Yanks are repairing the railroads,” said the man, “and are getting ready for another advance. They have reached the Owl Creek bridge, put it in order and built a stockade on the north bank. The commandant has issued an order, which is posted everywhere, declaring that any civilian caught interfering with the railroad, its bridges, tunnels, or trains will be summarily hanged. I saw the order.”

“How far is it to the Owl Creek bridge?” Farquhar asked.“About thirty miles.”“Is there no force on this side of the creek?”“Only a picket post half a mile out, on the railroad, and a single sentinel at this end of the

bridge.”“Suppose a man—a civilian and student of hanging—should elude the picket post and perhaps

get the better of the sentinel,” said Farquhar, smiling, “what could he accomplish?”The soldier reflected. “I was there a month ago,” he replied. “I observed that the flood of last

winter had lodged a great quantity of driftwood against the wooden pier at this end of the bridge. It is now dry and would burn like tinder.”

The lady had now brought the water, which the soldier drank. He thanked her ceremoniously, bowed to her husband and rode away. An hour later, after nightfall, he repassed the plantation, going northward in the direction from which he had come. He was a Federal scout.

III

As Peyton Farquhar fell straight downward through the bridge he lost consciousness and was as one already dead. From this state he was awakened—ages later, it seemed to him—by the pain of a sharp pressure upon his throat, followed by a sense of suffocation. Keen, poignant agonies seemed to shoot from his neck downward through every fiber of his body and limbs. These pains appeared to flash along well defined lines of ramification and to beat with an inconceivably rapid periodicity. They seemed like streams of pulsating fire heating him to an intolerable temperature. As to his head, he was conscious of nothing but a feeling of fullness—of congestion. These sensations were unaccompanied by thought. The intellectual part of his nature was already effaced; he had power only to feel, and feeling was torment. He was conscious of motion. Encompassed in a luminous cloud, of which he was now merely the fiery heart, without material substance, he swung through unthinkable arcs of oscillation, like a vast pendulum. Then all at once, with terrible suddenness, the light about him shot upward with the noise of a loud splash; a frightful roaring was in his ears, and all was cold and dark. The power of thought was restored; he knew that the rope had broken and he had fallen into the stream. There was no additional strangulation; the noose about his neck was already suffocating him and kept the water from his lungs. To die of hanging at the bottom of a river!—the idea seemed to him ludicrous. He opened his eyes in the darkness and saw above him a gleam of light, but how distant, how inaccessible! He was still sinking, for the light became fainter and fainter until it was a mere glimmer. Then it began to grow and brighten, and he knew that he was rising toward the surface—knew it with reluctance, for he was now very comfortable. “To be hanged and drowned,” he thought, “that is not so bad; but I do not wish to be shot. No; I will not be shot; that is not fair.”

He was not conscious of an effort, but a sharp pain in his wrist apprised him that he was trying to free his hands. He gave the struggle his attention, as an idler might observe the feat of a

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juggler, without interest in the outcome. What splendid effort!—what magnificent, what superhuman strength! Ah, that was a fine endeavor! Bravo! The cord fell away; his arms parted and floated upward, the hands dimly seen on each side in the growing light. He watched them with a new interest as first one and then the other pounced upon the noose at his neck. They tore it away and thrust it fiercely aside, its undulations resembling those of a water snake. “Put it back, put it back!” He thought he shouted these words to his hands, for the undoing of the noose had been succeeded by the direst pang that he had yet experienced. His neck ached horribly; his brain was on fire, his heart, which had been fluttering faintly, gave a great leap, trying to force itself out at his mouth. His whole body was racked and wrenched with an insupportable anguish! But his disobedient hands gave no heed to the command. They beat the water vigorously with quick, downward strokes, forcing him to the surface. He felt his head emerge; his eyes were blinded by the sunlight; his chest expanded convulsively, and with a supreme and crowning agony his lungs engulfed a great draught of air, which instantly he expelled in a shriek!

He was now in full possession of his physical senses. They were, indeed, preternaturally keen and alert. Something in the awful disturbance of his organic system had so exalted and refined them that they made record of things never before perceived. He felt the ripples upon his face and heard their separate sounds as they struck. He looked at the forest on the bank of the stream, saw the individual trees, the leaves and the veining of each leaf—he saw the very insects upon them: the locusts, the brilliant bodied flies, the gray spiders stretching their webs from twig to twig. He noted the prismatic colors in all the dewdrops upon a million blades of grass. The humming of the gnats that danced above the eddies of the stream, the beating of the dragon flies’ wings, the strokes of the water spiders’ legs, like oars which had lifted their boat—all these made audible music. A fish slid along beneath his eyes and he heard the rush of its body parting the water.

He had come to the surface facing down the stream; in a moment the visible world seemed to wheel slowly round, himself the pivotal point, and he saw the bridge, the fort, the soldiers upon the bridge, the captain, the sergeant, the two privates, his executioners. They were in silhouette against the blue sky. They shouted and gesticulated, pointing at him. The captain had drawn his pistol, but did not fire; the others were unarmed. Their movements were grotesque and horrible, their forms gigantic.

Suddenly he heard a sharp report and something struck the water smartly within a few inches of his head, spattering his face with spray. He heard a second report, and saw one of the sentinels with his rifle at his shoulder, a light cloud of blue smoke rising from the muzzle. The man in the water saw the eye of the man on the bridge gazing into his own through the sights of the rifle. He observed that it was a gray eye and remembered having read that gray eyes were keenest, and that all famous marksmen had them. Nevertheless, this one had missed.

A counter-swirl had caught Farquhar and turned him half round; he was again looking at the forest on the bank opposite the fort. The sound of a clear, high voice in a monotonous singsong now rang out behind him and came across the water with a distinctness that pierced and subdued all other sounds, even the beating of the ripples in his ears. Although no soldier, he had frequented camps enough to know the dread significance of that deliberate, drawling, aspirated chant; the lieutenant on shore was taking a part in the morning’s work. How coldly and pitilessly—with what an even, calm intonation, presaging, and enforcing tranquility in the men—with what accurately measured interval fell those cruel words:

“Company!… Attention!… Shoulder arms!… Ready!… Aim!… Fire!”Farquhar dived—dived as deeply as he could. The water roared in his ears like the voice of

Niagara, yet he heard the dull thunder of the volley and, rising again toward the surface, met shining bits of metal, singularly flattened, oscillating slowly downward. Some of them touched

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him on the face and hands, then fell away, continuing their descent. One lodged between his collar and neck; it was uncomfortably warm and he snatched it out.

As he rose to the surface, gasping for breath, he saw that he had been a long time under water; he was perceptibly farther downstream—nearer to safety. The soldiers had almost finished reloading; the metal ramrods flashed all at once in the sunshine as they were drawn from the barrels, turned in the air, and thrust into their sockets. The two sentinels fired again, independently and ineffectually.

The hunted man saw all this over his shoulder; he was now swimming vigorously with the current. His brain was as energetic as his arms and legs; he thought with the rapidity of lightning:

“The officer,” he reasoned, “will not make that martinet’s error a second time. It is as easy to dodge a volley as a single shot. He has probably already given the command to fire at will. God help me, I cannot dodge them all!”

An appalling splash within two yards of him was followed by a loud, rushing sound, DIMINUENDO, which seemed to travel back through the air to the fort and died in an explosion which stirred the very river to its deeps! A rising sheet of water curved over him, fell down upon him, blinded him, strangled him! The cannon had taken an hand in the game. As he shook his head free from the commotion of the smitten water he heard the deflected shot humming through the air ahead, and in an instant it was cracking and smashing the branches in the forest beyond.

“They will not do that again,” he thought; “the next time they will use a charge of grape. I must keep my eye upon the gun; the smoke will apprise me—the report arrives too late; it lags behind the missile. That is a good gun.”

Suddenly he felt himself whirled round and round—spinning like a top. The water, the banks, the forests, the now distant bridge, fort and men, all were commingled and blurred. Objects were represented by their colors only; circular horizontal streaks of color—that was all he saw. He had been caught in a vortex and was being whirled on with a velocity of advance and gyration that made him giddy and sick. In few moments he was flung upon the gravel at the foot of the left bank of the stream—the southern bank—and behind a projecting point which concealed him from his enemies. The sudden arrest of his motion, the abrasion of one of his hands on the gravel, restored him, and he wept with delight. He dug his fingers into the sand, threw it over himself in handfuls and audibly blessed it. It looked like diamonds, rubies, emeralds; he could think of nothing beautiful which it did not resemble. The trees upon the bank were giant garden plants; he noted a definite order in their arrangement, inhaled the fragrance of their blooms. A strange roseate light shone through the spaces among their trunks and the wind made in their branches the music of AEolian harps. He had not wish to perfect his escape—he was content to remain in that enchanting spot until retaken.

A whiz and a rattle of grapeshot among the branches high above his head roused him from his dream. The baffled cannoneer had fired him a random farewell. He sprang to his feet, rushed up the sloping bank, and plunged into the forest.

All that day he traveled, laying his course by the rounding sun. The forest seemed interminable; nowhere did he discover a break in it, not even a woodman’s road. He had not known that he lived in so wild a region. There was something uncanny in the revelation.

By nightfall he was fatigued, footsore, famished. The thought of his wife and children urged him on. At last he found a road which led him in what he knew to be the right direction. It was as wide and straight as a city street, yet it seemed untraveled. No fields bordered it, no dwelling

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For Discussion:

What does this section of the story make you feel?

anywhere. Not so much as the barking of a dog suggested human habitation. The black bodies of the trees formed a straight wall on both sides, terminating on the horizon in a point, like a diagram in a lesson in perspective. Overhead, as he looked up through this rift in the wood, shone great golden stars looking unfamiliar and grouped in strange constellations. He was sure they were arranged in some order which had a secret and malign significance. The wood on either side was full of singular noises, among which—once, twice, and again—he distinctly heard whispers in an unknown tongue.

His neck was in pain and lifting his hand to it found it horribly swollen. He knew that it had a circle of black where the rope had bruised it. His eyes felt congested; he could no longer close them. His tongue was swollen with thirst; he relieved its fever by thrusting it forward from between his teeth into the cold air. How softly the turf had carpeted the untraveled avenue—he could no longer feel the roadway beneath his feet!

Doubtless, despite his suffering, he had fallen asleep while walking, for now he sees another scene—perhaps he has merely recovered from a delirium. He stands at the gate of his own home. All is as he left it, and all bright and beautiful in the morning sunshine. He must have traveled the entire night. As he pushes open the gate and passes up the wide white walk, he sees a flutter of female garments; his wife, looking fresh and cool and sweet, steps down from the veranda to meet him. At the bottom of the steps she stands waiting, with a smile of ineffable joy, an attitude of matchless grace and dignity. Ah, how beautiful she is! He springs forwards with extended arms. As he is about to clasp her he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck; a blinding white light blazes all about him with a sound like the shock of a cannon—then all is darkness and silence!

Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.

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For Discussion:

Did this ending surprise you? Why do you think Bierce ended the story this way?

The SniperLiam O’Flaherty

The long June twilight faded into night. Dublin lay enveloped in darkness but for the dim light of the moon that shone through fleecy clouds, casting a pale light as of approaching dawn over the streets and the dark waters of the Liffey. Around the beleaguered Four Courts the heavy guns roared. Here and there through the city, machine guns and rifles broke the silence of the night, spasmodically, like dogs barking on lone farms. Republicans and Free Staters were waging civil war.

On a rooftop near O’Connell Bridge, a Republican sniper lay watching. Beside him lay his rifle and over his shoulders was slung a pair of field glasses. His face was the face of a student, thin and ascetic, but his eyes had the cold gleam of the fanatic. They were deep and thoughtful, the eyes of a man who is used to looking at death.

He was eating a sandwich hungrily. He had eaten nothing since morning. He had been too excited to eat. He finished the sandwich, and, taking a flask of whiskey from his pocket, he took a short drought. Then he returned the flask to his pocket. He paused for a moment, considering whether he should risk a smoke. It was dangerous. The flash might be seen in the darkness, and there were enemies watching. He decided to take the risk.

Placing a cigarette between his lips, he struck a match, inhaled the smoke hurriedly and put out the light. Almost immediately, a bullet flattened itself against the parapet of the roof. The sniper took another whiff and put out the cigarette. Then he swore softly and crawled away to the left.

Cautiously he raised himself and peered over the parapet. There was a flash and a bullet whizzed over his head. He dropped immediately. He had seen the flash. It came from the opposite side of the street.

He rolled over the roof to a chimney stack in the rear, and slowly drew himself up behind it, until his eyes were level with the top of the parapet. There was nothing to be seen—just the dim outline of the opposite housetop against the blue sky. His enemy was under cover.

Just then an armored car came across the bridge and advanced slowly up the street. It stopped on the opposite side of the street, fifty yards ahead. The sniper could hear the dull panting of the motor. His heart beat faster. It was an enemy car. He wanted to fire, but he knew it was useless. His bullets would never pierce the steel that covered the gray monster.

Then round the corner of a side street came an old woman, her head covered by a tattered shawl. She began to talk to the man in the turret of the car. She was pointing to the roof where the sniper lay. An informer.

The turret opened. A man’s head and shoulders appeared, looking toward the sniper. The sniper raised his rifle and fired. The head fell heavily on the turret wall. The woman darted toward the side street. The sniper fired again. The woman whirled round and fell with a shriek into the gutter.

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For Discussion:

Whose side are you on in the beginning of this story? Who are you cheering for?

Suddenly from the opposite roof a shot rang out and the sniper dropped his rifle with a curse. The rifle clattered to the roof. The sniper thought the noise would wake the dead. He stooped to pick the rifle up. He couldn’t lift it. His forearm was dead. “I’m hit,” he muttered.

Dropping flat onto the roof, he crawled back to the parapet. With his left hand he felt the injured right forearm. The blood was oozing through the sleeve of his coat. There was no pain—just a deadened sensation, as if the arm had been cut off.

Quickly he drew his knife from his pocket, opened it on the breastwork of the parapet, and ripped open the sleeve. There was a small hole where the bullet had entered. On the other side there was no hole. The bullet had lodged in the bone. It must have fractured it. He bent the arm below the wound. T he arm bent back easily. He ground his teeth to overcome the pain.

Then taking out his field dressing, he ripped open the packet with his knife. He broke the neck of the iodine bottle and let the bitter fluid drip into the wound. A paroxysm of pain swept through him. He placed the cotton wadding over the wound and wrapped the dressing over it. He tied the ends with his teeth.

Then he lay still against the parapet, and, closing his eyes, he made an effort of will to overcome the pain.

In the street beneath all was still. The armored car had retired speedily over the bridge, with the machine gunner’s head hanging lifeless over the turret. The woman’s corpse lay still in the gutter.

The sniper lay still for a long time nursing his wounded arm and planning escape. Morning must not find him wounded on the roof. The enemy on the opposite roof covered his escape. He must kill that enemy and he could not use his rifle. He had only a revolver to do it. Then he thought of a plan.

Taking off his cap, he placed it over the muzzle of his rifle. Then he pushed the rifle slowly upward over the parapet, until the cap was visible from the opposite side of the street. Almost immediately there was a report, and a bullet pierced the center of the cap. The sniper slanted the rifle forward. The cap clipped down into the street. Then catching the rifle in the middle, the sniper dropped his left hand over the roof and let it hang, lifelessly. After a few moments he let the rifle drop to the street. Then he sank to the roof, dragging his hand with him.

Crawling quickly to his feet, he peered up at the corner of the roof. His ruse had succeeded. The other sniper, seeing the cap and rifle fall, thought that he had killed his man. He was now standing before a row of chimney pots, looking across, with his head clearly silhouetted against the western sky.

The Republican sniper smiled and lifted his revolver above the edge of the parapet. The distance was about fifty yards—a hard shot in the dim light, and his right arm was paining him like a thousand devils. He took a steady aim. His hand trembled with eagerness. Pressing his lips together, he took a deep breath through his nostrils and fired. He was almost deafened with the report and his arm shook with the recoil.

Then when the smoke cleared, he peered across and uttered a cry of joy. His enemy had been hit. He was reeling over the parapet in his death agony. He struggled to keep his feet, but he was slowly falling forward as if in a dream. The rifle fell from his grasp, hit the parapet, fell over, bounded off the pole of a barber’s shop beneath and then clattered on the pavement.

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For Discussion:

How does this turn of events make you feel? Are you glad the sniper hit his mark?

Then the dying man on the roof crumpled up and fell forward. The body turned over and over in space and hit the ground with a dull thud. Then it lay still.

The sniper looked at his enemy falling and he shuddered. The lust of battle died in him. He became bitten by remorse. The sweat stood out in beads on his forehead. Weakened by his wound and the long summer day of fasting and watching on the roof, he revolted from the sight of the shattered mass of his dead enemy. His teeth chattered, he began to gibber to himself, cursing the war, cursing himself, cursing everybody.

He looked at the smoking revolver in his hand, and with an oath he hurled it to the roof at his feet. The revolver went off with a concussion and the bullet whizzed past the sniper’s head. He was frightened back to his senses by the shock. His nerves steadied. The cloud of fear scattered from his mind and he laughed.

Taking the whiskey flask from his pocket, he emptied it a drought. He felt reckless under the influence of the spirit. He decided to leave the roof now and look for his company commander, to report. Everywhere around was quiet. There was not much danger in going through the streets. He picked up his revolver and put it in his pocket. Then he crawled down through the skylight to the house underneath.

When the sniper reached the laneway on the street level, he felt a sudden curiosity as to the identity of the enemy sniper whom he had killed. He decided that he was a good shot, whoever he was. He wondered did he know him. Perhaps he had been in his own company before the split in the army. He decided to risk going over to have a look at him. He peered around the corner into O’Connell Street. In the upper part of the street there was heavy firing, but around here all was quiet.

The sniper darted across the street. A machine gun tore up the ground around him with a hail of bullets, but he escaped. He threw himself face downward beside the corpse. The machine gun stopped.

Then the sniper turned over the dead body and looked into his brother’s face.

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For Discussion:

Why do you think O’Flaherty ended his story this way? What point do you think he was trying to make?

Exercise & Grammar Keys

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Just the smell of my aunt’s cooking nauseates me and makes my palms sweat.

Rich Mullins wrote the kind of music that set people’s feet dancing but also got their minds whirring.

Frank’s grandfather did nothing but sit in front of a floor-length mirror and sigh heavily.

Whatever Milford McAfanaffie did, people rolled their eyes and sighed in exasperation.

Not enoughToo much

LESSON 4 EXERCISES

Which type of sentence is each of the following? Circle one.

1. The rocket ship flashed across the night sky. MOVIE CONCEPT

2. Hydrogen is extremely flammable. MOVIE CONCEPT

3. Jill’s puppy loves bacon. MOVIE CONCEPT

4. Jill’s puppy barks and wags its tail whenever she cooks bacon. MOVIE CONCEPT

5. The man was angry. MOVIE CONCEPT

6. Mr. Smith threw a brick through his garage window. MOVIE CONCEPT

Turn these concept sentences into movie sentences by using images, sounds, etc., to convey the original concept. For instance:

Frank was really hot. Sweat poured down Frank’s forehead.

7. My aunt’s cooking is gross. ____________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________

8. Rich Mullins wrote great music. ________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________

9. Frank’s grandfather was unhappy. _______________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________

10. Milford McAfanaffie always does dumb stuff. _____________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________

Under most circumstances, would the following sentences give us too much information or not enough information? Write “too much” or “not enough” next to each sentence.

11. ______________ Eskimos are cool.

12. ______________ The police officer fired twice at the fleeing suspect, then holstered his pistol and slid behind the wheel of his new squad car, which was equipped with a cool new computer that was connected to the Internet.

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Too much

The Eskimos fascinate me because their way of life is so utterly different from my own and has been handed down to them from ancestors time out of mind.

The police officer fired twice at the fleeing suspect, then, holstering his pistol, slid behind the wheel.

The life of Abraham Lincoln was by no means ordinary; his climb to fame from humble beginnings, his painful family life, and his courageous and unusual decisions as president are all compelling.

Janet had gorgeous hair, and she could show it to advantage thanks to her Uncle Fred, who worked for a cosmologist and was able to give her expensive shampoo.

Not enough13. ______________ Abraham Lincoln had a weird life.

14. ______________ Janet had gorgeous hair, mostly because she inherited genetically balanced follicles that distributed the red pigment proteins latent in her subdural glands evenly across her scalp, but also because her Uncle Fred worked for a cosmologist and was able to give her expensive shampoo.

Now rewrite these four sentences so they are enough to create the intended emotion, but not so much that the emotion becomes lost or ineffective.

15. Eskimos are cool.

______________________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________________

16. The police officer fired twice at the fleeing suspect, then holstered his pistol and slid behind the wheel of his new squad car, which was equipped with a cool new computer that was connected to the Internet.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________________

17. Abraham Lincoln had a weird life.

______________________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________________

18. Janet had gorgeous hair, mostly because she inherited genetically balanced follicles that distributed the red pigment proteins latent in her subdural glands evenly across her scalp, but also because her Uncle Fred worked for a cosmologist and was able to give her expensive shampoo.

______________________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________________

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LESSON 5 EXERCISES

For each general noun on the left write five specific nouns.

car roadster convertible sedan limo S U V

1. man grocer gentleman fireman migrant worker plumber

2. ball American football volleyball golfball pool ball basketball

3. sport rugby lacrosse gymnastics cross-country skiing hockey

4. weapon club machine gun pistol bow and arrows ax lance

5. building strip mall pavilion hut high-rise train station

6. pet parakeet puggle Burmese cat miniature pony hamster

7. tree aspen rainbow eucalyptus palm tree elm Banyan tree

8. art watercolor painting sculpture collage oil portrait mural

9. utensil fork wooden spatula pen feather quill tongs

10. book comic encyclopedia poetry anthology cookbook atlas

How could this paragraph be more interesting by using specific nouns instead of general nouns (underlined)? Write a specific noun next to each general one below.

The man got out of a car and crossed the street. He wore a mask and a black suit that shimmered in the sun. He carried a weapon in one hand and a piece of luggage in the other. He walked slowly, with careful, measured steps, as though each click of his shoes on the pavement were part of some larger plan. When he reached the building, he paused for a moment and then walked through the entrance. Less than a minute later, the place exploded.

11. man janitor, spy, clown, businessman 12. car corvette, station wagon, utility truck, mini coupe

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13. street avenue, alleyway, thoroughfare, highway 14. mask ski mask, masquerade mask, gorilla mask 15. weapon handgun, knife, scimitar, mace, shuriken

16. luggage briefcase, purse, suitcase, trunk, knapsack

17. shoes tennis shoes, loafers, slippers, boots, cleats

18. building bank, daycare, senior home, shopping center, barn

19. entrance revolving door, archway, sliding door, door, entryway

20. place fitness center, classroom, porch, synagogue, salon

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LESSON 6 EXERCISES

For each vague adjective write three precise ones that are more specific and meaningful.

good honest tasty gripping

1. ugly drab repulsive mean (as in an ugly look) 2. rich prosperous ornate heavy (as in rich food)3. weird disturbing unusual ambiguous 4. gross slimy infected stinky 5. awesome impressive beautiful thrilling 6. mad furious insane annoyed 7. smart shrewd clever wise 8. bad rotten evil talentless

9. big widespread overweight generous 10. nice compassionate friendly satisfactory

Rewrite this paragraph by replacing the vague adjectives (underlined) with precise ones. You don’t have to copy out every word; just write a precise adjective next to each vague one listed to the left on the next page.

I had a fantastic summer! The day after school ended, I went to a great place called Philmont Scout Camp. I hiked 100 miles in ten days. I saw many beautiful things like mountains, waterfalls and moose. I watched the sunrise from a place called the Tooth of Time. I also saw some scary animals, including a mean bear and a pack of loud wolves. Hiking was hard and I was hungry a lot. The food was terrible, but I couldn’t get enough of it anyway. We had to carry everything, including our meals. I learned how to climb ponderosa pines with a big strap and some heel spikes, and I practiced axe-throwing. Some day I want to go back.

11. fantastic adventurous

12. great exciting13. scary dangerous14. mean enraged15. loud howling16. terrible canned and bland17. big wide and strong

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LESSON 7 EXERCISES

For each boring verb on the left write five interesting verbs that describe the same action in a more specific way.

walked stole crept tiptoed limped snuck

1. took grabbed snuck accepted walked (as in a path) snatched

2. ate nibbled wolfed down chewed consumed ordered in

3. laughed guffawed sniggered howled giggled mocked

4. sat squatted plunked down perched flopped down eased down

5. talked chattered lectured scolded gossiped explained

6. ran dashed hurried sprinted jogged organized (as in an event)

7. gave presented spooned out handed shared distributed

8. looked peered glanced investigated observed spied

9. placed arranged settled dropped flung down inserted

10. stood slouched got to their feet arose straightened up guarded

Read this paragraph and look for vague verbs, then choose a more active replacement word for each underlined verb or verb/adverb pair by writing it in the space below.

Carson left his hiding place and walked quietly through the baggage compartment. The dark storage area of the cruise liner bulged with duffel bags, suitcases, and steamer trunks. It smelled terrible. At the doorway he waited for a moment and reached for the knife he always had in his back pocket.

11. walked quietly tiptoed, snuck

12. smelled terrible reeked

13. had stowed, hid

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Rewrite each sentence by changing the verb(s) in a way that helps indicate a particular emotion. Feel free to change more than just the verb in order to communicate emotion.

Frank ran after the speeding truck, waving his arms.

22. (Happy) Frank tried to keep up with the speeding truck, waving excitedly.

23. (Scared) Frank raced after the speeding truck, frantically flagging it down.

24. (Angry) Frank charged after the speeding truck, shaking his fists.

Jennifer put down the phone and ran to her room.

25. (Happy) Jennifer replaced the phone with trembling hands and fairly danced her way to her room.26. (Scared) Jennifer dropped the phone and fled to her room.27. (Angry) Jennifer flung the phone down and stomped to her room.

Bob walked to the mailbox.

28. (Happy) Bob scampered to the mailbox.29. (Scared) Bob sped to the mailbox, fearing the worst.30. (Angry) Bob charged to the mailbox.

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LESSON 8 EXERCISES

For each sentence, replace the verb+adverb pair with a single precise verb that creates a vivid movie in the mind.

Priscilla ate her sandwich ravenously, hardly pausing to breathe. Priscilla devoured her sandwich, hardly pausing to breathe.

1. The ninja hid ominously in the shadows.

The ninja crouched in the shadows.2. Paul swam bravely through the ring of circling sharks.

Paul charged through the ring of circling shark. 3. King Arthur swiftly pulled the sword from the anvil and held it aloft.

King Arthur drew the sword from the anvil and held it aloft. 4. The cowboy stood heavily on the kid’s knuckles with the steel toes of his boots.

The cowboy crushed the kid’s knuckles with the steel toes of his boots. 5. Jessica spoke angrily and walked quickly away.

Jessica yelled and stormed away.

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Swimsuits clinging to their skin, the two five-year-olds, covered in goose bumps and chilled to the bone, shrieked as they made a break for it right through the spray of the lawn sprinkler that streaked the night sky like glinting arrows.

At the airport, the man in the khaki uniform glowered and grunted with annoyance as he knelt and hauled up the little boy and slung him over his shoulder.

The olympian covered her face with her hands as she crossed the finished line, her head down; when she exposed her face to glance at the score board, her lips were pressed into a tight line. Quickly, she shaded her eyes again to hide streaming tears.

Mariah finished reading the letter and let out a soft, wistful sigh before getting up and slowly making her way out of the living room, envelope in tightly-clenched hand.

LESSON 9 EXERCISES

The sentences below try to create a sense of happiness through sensory images. Circle the images that create a positive feeling. Then rewrite each sentence to create the opposite emotion. Show the reader what sadness or disappointment look like. Be sure to use sensory images, not concepts. Don’t tell us, “she was sad.” For example, turn a sentence like this:

A birthday cake sits next to a gallon of ice cream and a stack of brightly wrapped boxes.

... into something like this:

A birthday cake sags next to a dripping carton of room-temperature ice cream. The smoldering candles have melted into its frosting. A stack of neatly-wrapped packages waits nearby, under the greenish light of a microwave clock that reads 1:13am.

1. Swimsuits clinging to their skin, the two five-year-olds shrieked as they charged through the glittering spray of the lawn sprinkler.

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2. At the airport, the man in the khaki uniform laughed as he knelt and scooped the little boy into his arms.

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3. The olympian pumped her fists in the air as she crossed the finished line, her head back, her mouth open, her eyes streaming tears of joy.

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4. Mariah finished reading the letter and let out a loud whoop before dancing through the living room, envelope in hand.

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He balled his fists, unclenched them, only to ball them up again. When he turned to look at me, brow lowered, barely concealed hatred burned in his eyes; I took a step back.

The young man pretended to read, but pages turned too seldom, and every few seconds his head turned to catch the drift of a conversation next to him. Now and again he ventured an appreciative, but surreptitious smile their way, then quickly hid his face in his book again.

Between craning her neck to try and see over the shelves and intermittently calling for her associate to tell her what was going on, the sales assistant’s answer to my question came out as garbled nonsense.

He tried to concentrate on what his daughter was saying, but waves of nausea buffeted him and he felt so clammy he was forced to dig out a sweater from his bottom drawer and make some hot tea. When would the phone ring?

There was so much to do to get dinner ready, but time and again she found herself compelled to poke her head around the kitchen door and take another good, long look at her son. The soup ended up too salty and she forgot the rolls and reduced them to blackened boulders, but pulling out the cake she had prepared yesterday, they just ate dessert.

For each emotion, write one or two sentences that create a picture of what the emotion looks like.

5. Anger

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6. Loneliness________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

7. Curiosity

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8. Fear________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

9. Joy______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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Yesterday we went swimming. When we got up in the morning and

opened the curtains, the plants in our yard drooped and the cicada sirens could be heard even from within the house. Clambering into our

old car, we cranked down the windows and braved the heat for an hour on the noisy interstate to reach my aunt’s house in the country. They

live in a small town outside Kansas City. Despite the heat, my cousins were waiting for us at the mailbox when we arrived, already in their

swim things. We quickly changed clothes and hurried to the backyard. The first plunge into the water took my breath away, but it felt great.

After a long swim we picnicked inside, under their only ceiling fan, on an old sheet. Between the pool chemicals and the hot wind, my eyes stung and drooped on the way home. I hope we can go back soon!

LESSON 11 EXERCISES

Make this paragraph more interesting by changing its concepts into images. That is, rewrite the concept sentences into movie sentences. Feel free to change as much as you need to in order to communicate the same basic story in a detailed way. When finished, underline the rock star sentence in the paragraph.

Yesterday we went swimming. It was very hot outside. My family got into our old car and drove an hour to my aunt’s house in the country. They live in a small town outside Kansas City. My cousins were excited when we arrived. We quickly changed clothes and hurried to the backyard. The water in their big pool was cold at first, but it felt great. After a long swim we had a good lunch. I was tired on the way home. I hope we can go back soon!

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A

A

B

B

A

LESSON 18 EXERCISES

The limerick is a form of poem that depends heavily on both rhythm and rhyme. Limericks are five lines long and almost always funny. Limericks tell a story, though sometimes the story is a little nonsensical. The limerick structure looks like this. The “DA”s in all capital letters indicate syllables that get the most emphasis.

1. da da DA da da DA da da DA


3. da da DA da da DA

4. da da DA da da DA


The letters A and B to the right refer to the rhyming pattern, called the “rhyming scheme.” Lines 1, 2 and 5 all rhyme. Lines 3 and 4 also rhyme. Here is an example-- probably the most famous limerick ever, though no one knows who penned it. Keep in mind that the emphasized syllables in limericks do not always perfectly match the diagram above, as long as the rhythm of the poem’s rhythm works anyway, as with the poem below.

There was a young lady of Niger

Who smiled as she rode on a tiger;

They returned from the ride

With the lady inside,

And the smile on the face of the tiger.

Now that you have read the limerick at least once, read it aloud. Underline the words or parts of words that correspond to the “DA” syllables shown in the structure above. The first line is done for you. Notice that is does not quite follow the rule.

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The concert held in Fellowship Hall last Tuesday was a great success. Sarah Hughes provided accompaniment on the piano, as usual.

The community outreach committee has recruited 15 volunteers to visit people who are not affiliated with any church.

The music for today's service was composed by George Friedrich Handel, and was chosen in celebration that today is the 300th anniversary of his birth.

Donations for the memorials of the deceased should be placed in an envelope marked with the name of the deceased person you want memorialized.

Please consider donating to the choir robe fund. New robes are desperately needed due to the addition of several new choir members and the deterioration of some older robes.

LESSON 37 EXERCISES

Rewrite each funny church bulletin mistake below to make the intended meaning more clear.

The community outreach committee has recruited 15 volunteers to visit people who are not afflicted with any church.

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The music for today's service was composed by George Friedrich Handel in celebration of the 300th anniversary of his birth.

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The concert held in Fellowship Hall last Tuesday was a great success. Sarah Hughes provided accompaniment on the piano, which fell upon her as usual.

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Donations for the memorials of the deceased should be placed in an envelope along with the deceased person you want memorialized.

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Please consider donating to the choir robe fund. New robes are desperately needed due to the addition of several new choir members and the deterioration of some older ones.

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LESSON 58 EXERCISES

Metaphors

Take a few minutes to write down some metaphors that highlight the specified trait below. (For instance, to highlight intelligence, you might say, “That kid is a brain!”)

Intelligence! That kid is a brain!

1. Strength

That kid is a battleship—he just plows through life’s worst storms!

2. Cleanliness

I am amazed at my little girl. She’s a walking all-purpose cleaner.

3. Humor

Her uncle’s life is an endless blooper reel.

4. Rich/Expensive

This fabric can only be the work of Titania’s fairy servants!

5. Impressive

The architecture of this treehouse is a professional work of art!

Similes

A simile is a comparison as well, but it uses the word “like” or “as.” For instance, you may have heard people say things like, “He’s as dumb as an ox,” or “She’s as quiet as a mouse.”

Below, write a simile that communicates each message on the left.

The bed is soft! The bed is as soft as a cloud.

6. He runs fast He runs as fast as Time.

7. Jill is very pretty Jill is as pretty as a field of wildflowers at dawn.

8. Todd jumps well Todd jumps as well as a cricket.

9. Mary is strong Mary is as strong as an East Indian logging elephant.

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10. The package is hard The package is as hard as a rock.

11. The cookies are sweet The cookies are as sweet as my mother’s smile.

12. The concert was noisy The concert was as noisy as a street protest.

13. The bag was light The bag was as light as a pillow.

Personification

Now read The Sniper by Liam O’Flaherty, printed on the next pages. As you read, look for the metaphors, similes, and personification O’Flaherty uses. Highlight what you find.

To the teacher: There is additional figurative language in The Sniper that is not a metaphor, simile, or personification. For example, the line “the heavy guns roared,” in paragraph 1 compares the sound of the guns to a roaring animal. This is not personification because the comparison is to an animal not a person, but it is figurative language. If your student highlights this, you should make the distinction, but commend the student’s insight.

The SniperLiam O’Flaherty

The long June twilight faded into night. Dublin lay enveloped in darkness but for the dim light of the moon that shone through fleecy clouds, casting a pale light as of approaching dawn over the streets and the dark waters of the Liffey. Around the beleaguered Four Courts the heavy guns roared. Here and there through the city, machine guns and rifles broke the silence of the night, spasmodically, like dogs barking on lone farms. Republicans and Free Staters were waging civil war.

On a rooftop near O’Connell Bridge, a Republican sniper lay watching. Beside him lay his rifle and over his shoulders was slung a pair of field glasses. His face was the face of a student, thin and ascetic, but his eyes had the cold gleam of the fanatic. They were deep and thoughtful, the eyes of a man who is used to looking at death.

He was eating a sandwich hungrily. He had eaten nothing since morning. He had been too excited to eat. He finished the sandwich, and, taking a flask of whiskey from his pocket, he took a short drought. Then he returned the flask to his pocket. He paused for a moment, considering whether he should risk a smoke. It was dangerous. The flash might be seen in the darkness, and there were enemies watching. He decided to take the risk.

Placing a cigarette between his lips, he struck a match, inhaled the smoke hurriedly and put out the light. Almost immediately, a bullet flattened itself against the parapet of the roof. The sniper took another whiff and put out the cigarette. Then he swore softly and crawled away to the left.

Cautiously he raised himself and peered over the parapet. There was a flash and a bullet whizzed over his head. He dropped immediately. He had seen the flash. It came from the opposite side of the street.

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He rolled over the roof to a chimney stack in the rear, and slowly drew himself up behind it, until his eyes were level with the top of the parapet. There was nothing to be seen—just the dim outline of the opposite housetop against the blue sky. His enemy was under cover.

Just then an armored car came across the bridge and advanced slowly up the street. It stopped on the opposite side of the street, fifty yards ahead. The sniper could hear the dull panting of the motor. His heart beat faster. It was an enemy car. He wanted to fire, but he knew it was useless. His bullets would never pierce the steel that covered the gray monster.

Then round the corner of a side street came an old woman, her head covered by a tattered shawl. She began to talk to the man in the turret of the car. She was pointing to the roof where the sniper lay. An informer.

The turret opened. A man’s head and shoulders appeared, looking toward the sniper. The sniper raised his rifle and fired. The head fell heavily on the turret wall. The woman darted toward the side street. The sniper fired again. The woman whirled round and fell with a shriek into the gutter.

Suddenly from the opposite roof a shot rang out and the sniper dropped his rifle with a curse. The rifle clattered to the roof. The sniper thought the noise would wake the dead. He stooped to pick the rifle up. He couldn’t lift it. His forearm was dead. “I’m hit,” he muttered.

Dropping flat onto the roof, he crawled back to the parapet. With his left hand he felt the injured right forearm. The blood was oozing through the sleeve of his coat. There was no pain—just a deadened sensation, as if the arm had been cut off.

Quickly he drew his knife from his pocket, opened it on the breastwork of the parapet, and ripped open the sleeve. There was a small hole where the bullet had entered. On the other side there was no hole. The bullet had lodged in the bone. It must have fractured it. He bent the arm below the wound. The arm bent back easily. He ground his teeth to overcome the pain.

Then taking out his field dressing, he ripped open the packet with his knife. He broke the neck of the iodine bottle and let the bitter fluid drip into the wound. A paroxysm of pain swept through him. He placed the cotton wadding over the wound and wrapped the dressing over it. He tied the ends with his teeth.

Then he lay still against the parapet, and, closing his eyes, he made an effort of will to overcome the pain.

In the street beneath all was still. The armored car had retired speedily over the bridge, with the machine gunner’s head hanging lifeless over the turret. The woman’s corpse lay still in the gutter.

The sniper lay still for a long time nursing his wounded arm and planning escape. Morning must not find him wounded on the roof. The enemy on the opposite roof covered his escape. He must kill that enemy and he could not use his rifle. He had only a revolver to do it. Then he thought of a plan.

Taking off his cap, he placed it over the muzzle of his rifle. Then he pushed the rifle slowly upward over the parapet, until the cap was visible from the opposite side of the street. Almost immediately there was a report, and a bullet pierced the center of the cap. The sniper slanted the rifle forward. The cap clipped down into the street. Then catching the rifle in the middle, the sniper dropped his left hand over the roof and let it hang, lifelessly. After a few moments he let the rifle drop to the street. Then he sank to the roof, dragging his hand with him.

Crawling quickly to his feet, he peered up at the corner of the roof. His ruse had succeeded. The other sniper, seeing the cap and rifle fall, thought that he had killed his man. He was now standing before a row of chimney pots, looking across, with his head clearly silhouetted against the western sky.

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The Republican sniper smiled and lifted his revolver above the edge of the parapet. The distance was about fifty yards—a hard shot in the dim light, and his right arm was paining him like a thousand devils. He took a steady aim. His hand trembled with eagerness. Pressing his lips together, he took a deep breath through his nostrils and fired. He was almost deafened with the report and his arm shook with the recoil.

Then when the smoke cleared, he peered across and uttered a cry of joy. His enemy had been hit. He was reeling over the parapet in his death agony. He struggled to keep his feet, but he was slowly falling forward as if in a dream. The rifle fell from his grasp, hit the parapet, fell over, bounded off the pole of a barber’s shop beneath and then clattered on the pavement.

Then the dying man on the roof crumpled up and fell forward. The body turned over and over in space and hit the ground with a dull thud. Then it lay still.

The sniper looked at his enemy falling and he shuddered. The lust of battle died in him. He became bitten by remorse. The sweat stood out in beads on his forehead. Weakened by his wound and the long summer day of fasting and watching on the roof, he revolted from the sight of the shattered mass of his dead enemy. His teeth chattered, he began to gibber to himself, cursing the war, cursing himself, cursing everybody.

He looked at the smoking revolver in his hand, and with an oath he hurled it to the roof at his feet. The revolver went off with a concussion and the bullet whizzed past the sniper’s head. He was frightened back to his senses by the shock. His nerves steadied. The cloud of fear scattered from his mind and he laughed.

Taking the whiskey flask from his pocket, he emptied it a drought. He felt reckless under the influence of the spirit. He decided to leave the roof now and look for his company commander, to report. Everywhere around was quiet. There was not much danger in going through the streets. He picked up his revolver and put it in his pocket. Then he crawled down through the skylight to the house underneath.

When the sniper reached the laneway on the street level, he felt a sudden curiosity as to the identity of the enemy sniper whom he had killed. He decided that he was a good shot, whoever he was. He wondered did he know him. Perhaps he had been in his own company before the split in the army. He decided to risk going over to have a look at him. He peered around the corner into O’Connell Street. In the upper part of the street there was heavy firing, but around here all was quiet.

The sniper darted across the street. A machine gun tore up the ground around him with a hail of bullets, but he escaped. He threw himself face downward beside the corpse. The machine gun stopped.

Then the sniper turned over the dead body and looked into his brother’s face.

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LESSON G1

Which type of sentence is it? Some of these are a bit tricky, because sometimes a sentence could arguably be more than one type. Choose the type that makes the most sense given the context.

1. That sound you are making is irritating. Statement/declarative

2. Would you be so kind as to stop doing that? Question/interrogative

3. I am getting a headache. Statement/declarative

4. Why would you think I am making that up? Question/interrogative

5. Give it a rest! Command/request/imperative (some students may mark this one as an exclamation because of the exclamation mark.)

6. Thank you! Exclamation/exclamatory

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horse

horse

I

Everybody

Penelope

Clouds

defeat

LESSON G2

Write the simple subject in the blank to the right.

Montana Jack’s horse was faster than lightning.

1. My own chubby horse raced like a snail, only with fur.

2. I thought about the story The Tortoise and the Hare.

3. Everybody loves an unexpected victory from an underdog.

4. Even slow, plodding Penelope could have an hour of glory.

5. Clouds of dust whirled up in front of us as we tried to keep up.

6. How did defeat surprise me after all?

Identify the complete subject.

Henry’s prize rifle lay in the grass. Henry’s prize rifle

1. Next to it rested the keys to his front door. the keys to his front door

2. Henry’s heart skipped a beat, well, several. Henry’s heart

3. Racing up the front steps, a frantic, frightened Henry turned the door knob.

a frantic, frightened Henry

4. Nine bullet holes formed a perfectly executed ‘X‘ in the wood. Nine bullet holes

5. Henry’s mysterious enemy was a straight shot. Henry’s mysterious enemy

6. Stepping back from the doorway, Henry’s T-shirt clung to him, drenched with sweat.

Henry’s T-shirt

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Write the simple predicate in the blank.

Jenna rode into the sunset. rode

1. The proud heads of the ostriches cast long shadows beneath her chariot wheels. cast

2. The day spent itself in a lavish display of color. spent

3. Jenna’s feelings of hope plummeted with the dark that swiftly followed. plummeted

4. Yes, ostriches ran like the wind. ran

5. But not even the wind could outrun the vengeance of the king. could outrun

6. She closed her eyes briefly. closed

Identify the complete predicate.

The hurricane swept away every house. swept away every house

1. Cranberry Avenue was now strictly a heap of debris.

was now strictly a heap of debris

2. She still counted off the house numbers to herself.

still counted off the house numbers to herself

3. She always paused longest in front of her vanished gate.

always paused longest in front of her vanished gate

4. She wished so powerfully and helplessly for the past.

wished so powerfully and helplessly for the past

5. But wishes gave her nothing but further pain.

wishes gave her nothing but further pain

6. She vowed to herself again and again to rebuild.

vowed to herself again and again to rebuild

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Identify each sentence as either a simple sentence or a compound sentence by circling S or C.

1. I have a tendency to oversleep. S C

2. It causes me no end of problems, but I can’t seem to shake the habit. S C

3. Why does everybody but me wake up when an alarm clock goes off? S C

4. I turn the volume up as high as it will go, and I still don’t hear it. S C

5. I am thinking of rigging up a bucket of water above my pillow. S C

6. I wish my alarm clock could pull on the rope and douse me with water. S C

Circle the independent clause in each sentence below. Remember that an independent clause can stand on its own. An independent clause can function as a simple sentence.

1. While Amina slept, Greg noiselessly snuck her teddybear from beneath her arm.

2. Amina’s forehead creased in sleep.

3. Would she wake up?

4. He let out a long, slow breath, watching as her features relaxed.

5. If the surprise was going to work, he needed to act fast.

6. Quickly, Greg dressed the bear in the pirate costume.

Circle the dependent clause or clauses (there may be more than one or none at all) in each sentence below. Unlike an independent clause, a dependent clause cannot stand on its own.

1. Some people have all the luck, getting to live where they please.

2. My friend Craig could buy land and house wherever and whenever he wanted to. None!

3. Hearing him talk about his future plans, I sometimes feel sick at heart.

4. When will I ever have the chance to leave this town, never mind this country? None!

5. I want to see the world, finding adventure, seeking—perhaps even winning—my own good fortune.

6. I want to see the tables turn. None!

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Turn the simple sentences below into complex sentences by adding one or more dependent clauses to the independent clause of the sentence. There are many correct ways to do this, so be creative!

Merlin lived his life backwards.

According to legend, Merlin lived his life backwards.

or

Strange as it might sound, Merlin lived his life backwards.

1. The wolf pack slunk away.

Even as I fainted away, the wolf pack slunk away.

2. She ate as much and as fast as she could.

Pouncing on the loaf of bread, she ate as much and as fast as she could.

3. Jack was even afraid of rubber ducks.

Not only was he afraid of the ducks in the pond, Jack was even afraid of rubber ducks.

4. The grieving woman kept to her room.

Afraid to be reproached for crying so much, the grieving woman kept to her room.

5. Nothing could deter him from reaching his goal.

Whatever people might say, nothing could deter him from reaching his goal.

6. She secretly believed her Lego people could come to life.

Ever since reading The Little Princess, she secretly believed her Lego people could come to life.

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LESSON G3

Identify each sentence as a fragment or a complete sentence by circling F or C.

1. Some silly people. F C

2. Crisp fried donuts are my favorite. F C

3. I also like the hard cores of pineapples. F C

4. When you hear thunder. F C

5. Coming around the corner. F C

Identify each sentence as a run-on or a complete sentence by circling R or C.

1. The trees swayed violently the clouds moved so fast. R C

2. A leaf flew straight into my face and it stuck there. R C

3. I brushed it away it smelled of the earth and a lump formed in my throat. R C

4. I loved this countryside, even if I did want to make a new life for myself. R C

5. Tornadoes were pretty normal here I was still terrified every time one struck. R C

Correct each fragment or run-on sentence by rewriting it below.

1. If you think about it, rabbits are so cute they have strangely shaped, exaggerated bodies.

If you think about it, rabbits are so cute because they have strangely shaped, exaggerated bodies.

2. Their distinctive ears.

Their distinctive ears are strangely adorable.

3. Tuck up their legs in shy embarrassment.

When they sit, they seem to tuck up their legs in shy embarrassment.

4. I love how their whiskers twitch like they tickle their noses the fur is so silky soft.

I love how their whiskers twitch as if they tickle their noses, and I love that their fur is so silky soft.

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5. If I could hop like that I would just laugh and laugh with joy the rabbits are so quiet.

If I could hop like that, I would just laugh with joy, but the rabbits are so quiet.

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XXX

XX

X X

LESSON G4

Circle the nouns in the sentences below. Underline the pronouns.

1. I’m missing my weapons!

2. I can’t believe I—a trained warrior—misplaced them.

3. After all, a warrior’s weapons are second only to his courage in importance.

4. I will have to retrace my steps and hope that no one else has made off with them.

5. If I can’t find them, I will just have to wrest new ones from my enemies with bare hands.

Write an adjective for each of these nouns:

canopy cotton

spoon silver

darkness oppressive

crescent waxing

cloak fur

muffins blueberry

Circle the verbs, and draw an X over the adverbs.

1. I could hear voices rising and falling anxiously around me.

2. The blanket over me made me itch terribly and I wanted desperately to throw it off.

3. I felt, though, as if there was another heavy blanket completely covering my mind.

4. I tried hard to follow the conversation but it felt like trudging through knee-high snow.

5. Slowly, tremblingly, I raised my arm and pushed the blanket off my chest.

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Circle the preposition(s).

1. She found what she sought under the last stone she overturned.

2. Beneath the dirt she could see the dull flash of the emerald turtle on the box lid.

3. She brushed off the dirt and ran her fingers over the gems, fingering the lock.

4. From within her left boot, she pulled out the key and fitted it into the lock.

5. Inside, as she had hoped, she found the packet of letters.

Circle the conjunction(s).

1. The elderly gentleman turned to us and he looked as though he wanted to speak.

2. His lips moved but we could hear nothing, not even indistinct mumbling.

3. “What are you trying to say and who are you?”

4. Approaching him, April took his arm because she saw he was shaking.

5. “We’re safe, and you can trust us.”

Circle the interjection(s).

1. Oh no! Can that really be true?

2. Wow, I would never have imagined that he would do such a thing.

3. Ouch! That stung!

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staggers is sees

has is makes

finishes is

crawls doubles

joins swells

dance seems waver

is tilts

swings tucks

LESSON G5

Which tense is the sentence written in, past, present or future?

1. Steam billowed from the opening in the earth, rising up in a slowly twisting column. past

2. Uncle Stefan has a very unusual way of walking—loping, really—that I love to watch. present

3. I did not make a single friend on that trip, but I was so busy I didn’t mind. past

4. I will enjoy as many bubble baths as I can when my sister goes off to college. future

5. She spends so many hours in the bathroom that I never get the chance. present

6. Did anyone else hear that owl hooting last night? past

7. I love owls and I really want to see one. present

8. Helen says she sees owls all the time on her farm. present

9. She is going to send me photo evidence. future

10. Did she really take these pictures or did she find them on the Internet? past

Change the following paragraph from Rudyard Kipling’s Captains Courageous from past tense to present tense by crossing out any necessary word and writing the correct conjugations above them. The first two sentences have been done for you.

Harvey staggered over the wet decks to the nearest rail. He was very unhappy; but he saw the deck-steward

lashing chairs together, and, since he had boasted before the man that he was never seasick, his pride made

him go aft to the second-saloon deck at the stern, which was finished in a turtle-back. The deck was

deserted, and he crawled to the extreme end of it, near the flagpole. There he doubled up in limp agony, for

the Wheeling “stogie” joined with the surge and jar of the screw to sieve out his soul. His head swelled;

sparks of fire danced before his eyes; his body seemed to lose weight, while his heels wavered in the

breeze. He was fainting from seasickness, and a roll of the ship tilted him over the rail on to the smooth lip

of the turtle-back. Then a low, grey mother-wave swung out of the fog, tucked Harvey under one arm, so to

114

pulls closes goesspeak, and pulled him off and away to leeward; the great green closed over him, and he went quietly to

sleep.

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prepare

explode

vibrate

squeal

enjoy

peer

practice

come

spin

go

prepare

explodes

vibrates

squeal

enjoy

peers

practice

come

spins

go

spins

drive

are

go

tips

flounce

excels

study

suffers

is

LESSON G6

Write the correct present tense form of each verb listed to the right in the blank spaces below.

1. Athletes ___________________ for the State championship.

2. The big oil tanker ___________________ in a flash of light.

3. The box ___________________ inside my closed fist.

4. The toddlers ___________________ happily.

5. Dragons ___________________ flying more than walking.

6. The ant ___________________ out from the safety of the grassland.

7. Paul and Scott ___________________ all day for the drama tryouts.

8. The onion skins ___________________ off easily.

9. The universe ___________________ so slowly!

10. We ___________________ to bed early in this house.

Write the correct form of each verb after crossing out the prepositional phrase that separates the subject from the verb.

1. The spider on my ceiling ____________ a huge web. spin

2. The bug bites on my elbow _________________ me crazy! drive

3. The books on the top shelf _________________ my favorites. be

4. Some of the girls in my class _________________ fishing. go

5. The fellow in my seat _________________ his hat to me. tip

6. Girls in white dresses _________________ across the stage. flounce

7. The ethnic group up in the mountains _________________ at archery. excel

8. People from that country _________________ many languages. study

9. The woman under the blanket _________________ from malaria. suffer

10. Resolve under pressure ___________________ rare. be

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I

She

us

us

them

LESSON G7

Circle the pronoun on the right that could correctly replace the underlined words in the sentence on the left.

1. Coach Kelly gave the trophy to Lisa and Jennifer.

2. Sheila and I camped by the river.

3. The trail and the open road were both dangerous.

4. The camp staff found Patrick and me hiding in the bus.

5. Maria gave Carly a withering look.

6. Travis and Jack tried to apologize to Christine without success.

7. Travis and Jack eventually wrote Christine a letter.

8. Some of the guys decided to go on a camping trip.

9. The trip cost the guys a lot more money than they expected.

10. Lisa and Jennifer laughed at the guys.

Write the correct pronoun in the blank space.

1. Daryl and _________ went down to the dump to shoot rats.

2. _________ donated her shoes to the orphanage.

3. Can anyone tell _________ where to go from here?

4. Some of _________ would like to go out for dinner.

5. I wish I knew what to make of _________.

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they them

We Us

They Them

we us

She Her

she her

They Them

They Them

they them

They Them

I me

She Her

we us

we us

they them

Is the underlined word in these sentences the subject or an object of an action? Circle the answer.

1. Do you know how to get us home? subject object

2. Karim and I are worried. subject object

3. Yeah, we are good and lost now. subject object

4. How could you take us on this trip without a map? subject object

5. We are really disappointed in you. subject object

6. Don’t look at me like that! subject object

7. Getting angry is not helping us. subject object

8. But you’re the one who’s from the area. subject object

9. It’s no use knowing the area when it’s this dark. subject object

10. I can’t believe it! subject object

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LESSON G8

Underline the prepositions in the first paragraph of The Sniper.

The long June twilight faded into night. Dublin lay enveloped in darkness but for the dim light of the moon

that shone through fleecy clouds, casting a pale light as of approaching dawn over the streets and the dark

waters of the Liffey. Around the beleaguered Four Courts the heavy guns roared. Here and there through

the city, machine guns and rifles broke the silence of the night, spasmodically, like dogs barking on lone

farms. Republicans and Free Staters were waging civil war.

Underline the prepositions in the first paragraph of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.

A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet

below. The man’s hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his

neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack fell to the level of his knees.

Some loose boards laid upon the ties supporting the rails of the railway supplied a footing for him and his

executioners—two private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant who in civil life may have

been a deputy sheriff. At a short remove upon the same temporary platform was an officer in the uniform of

his rank, armed. He was a captain. A sentinel at each end of the bridge stood with his rifle in the position

known as “support,” that is to say, vertical in front of the left shoulder, the hammer resting on the forearm

thrown straight across the chest—a formal and unnatural position, enforcing an erect carriage of the body. It

did not appear to be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring at the center of the bridge; they

merely blockaded the two ends of the foot planking that traversed it.

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Underline the prepositions in the first paragraph of The Interlopers.

In a forest of mixed growth somewhere on the eastern spurs of the Karpathians, a man stood one winter

night watching and listening, as though he waited for some beast of the woods to come within the range of

his vision, and, later, of his rifle. But the game for whose presence he kept so keen an outlook was none that

figured in the sportsman’s calendar as lawful and proper for the chase; Ulrich von Gradwitz patrolled the

dark forest in quest of a human enemy.

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LESSON G9

Underline the conjunctions in this paragraph from The Most Dangerous Game.

He struggled up to the surface and tried to cry out, but the wash from the speeding yacht slapped him in the

face and the salt water in his open mouth made him gag and strangle. Desperately he struck out with strong

strokes after the receding lights of the yacht, but he stopped before he had swum fifty feet. A certain

coolheadedness had come to him; it was not the first time he had been in a tight place. There was a chance

that his cries could be heard by someone aboard the yacht, but that chance was slender and grew more

slender as the yacht raced on. He wrestled himself out of his clothes and shouted with all his power. The

lights of the yacht became faint and ever-vanishing fireflies; then they were blotted out entirely by the

night.

Underline the conjunctions in this paragraph from The Lady, or the Tiger?

In the very olden time there lived a semi-barbaric king, whose ideas, though somewhat polished and

sharpened by the progressiveness of distant Latin neighbors, were still large, florid, and untrammeled, as

became the half of him which was barbaric. He was a man of exuberant fancy, and, withal, of an authority

so irresistible that, at his will, he turned his varied fancies into facts. He was greatly given to self-

communing, and, when he and himself agreed upon anything, the thing was done. When every member of

his domestic and political systems moved smoothly in its appointed course, his nature was bland and

genial; but, whenever there was a little hitch, and some of his orbs got out of their orbits, he was blander

and more genial still, for nothing pleased him so much as to make the crooked straight and crush down

uneven places.

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LESSON G10

Add commas where needed.

1. We are out of eggs, milk, butter, and bread.

2. Before we go shopping for all of those things, let’s watch a movie.

3. By then I’ll be so tired, hungry, and thirsty that I won’t want to go at all.

4. We could go to the store, and then we could go the movie theatre afterward.

5. That’s a much better idea, but I still want to know when we’ll get to eat.

6. On the way to the movie theatre, there are several cheap places to eat.

7. There had better be something besides pizza, which is always greasy, or subs, which I hate.

8. You are just full of joy, excitement, and good ideas today.

9. Well, I have had a hard week, which is saying something, because my job is always hard.

10. All the more reason for you to go out, something you don’t do enough, and relax a little.

11. Well, I just don’t have the time, money, or energy.

12. Good thing I have plenty of all of that, and I am just as stubborn as you are.

13. Let’s go before I get angry, and before I eat that bag of stale marshmallows.

14. That hungry? I’ll drive since you are so near death, and we’ll get food first.

15. Since you are rich, why don’t you pay for a nice sit-down dinner, fill up my tank, and buy me a

new big-screen TV?

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Incorrect

Incorrect

Incorrect

Correct

Incorrect

Correct

Incorrect

Incorrect

Incorrect

Incorrect

Incorrect

Correct

Incorrect

Incorrect

Incorrect

LESSON G11

Write CORRECT or INCORRECT next to each sentence based on whether or not the apostrophe is used properly. Correct the incorrect sentences.

1. I love all miniature animals so it’s hard to choose a favorite.

2. A lot of people are familiar with miniature ponies’s adorable looks.

3. When I see them come galloping out of our barn I can’t help giggling.

4. They just look so cute it’s hard to believe they are real.

5. They think as much of themselves as if they were as big as dad’s racehorses.

6. But if you haven’t heard of teacup pigs, you are in for a wonderful surprise.

7. I can spend hours looking at photos of them on my parents’ computer.

8. Teacup pigs’s size and intelligence has made them popular as pets.

9. Still, it’s important to know how to properly care for animals, even tiny ones.

10. Don’t get carried away by cuteness and buy a pet you can’t handle.

11. My sister Macie’s pygmy hedgehogs, for example, have to have special vets.

12. What I want is a miniature donkey. Donkeys’ faces are just so sad and sweet.

13. I’ve been building my future pet its own yard. It’s smaller than the ponies’s area.

14. It’s so important for every animal to be in its natural habitat, if possible.

15. But I guess by now a yard is a donkey’s natural habitat, not the wild.

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LESSON G12

Place quotation marks where appropriate.

1. Tom said, “I don’t want to go for a walk.”

2. “Would you rather work on our poem?” Olina asked.

3. “I don’t know,” he answered, shrugging, “I don’t even know if it’s worth finishing.”

4. Tom and Olina had been working on an epic called “The Sinking of the Last Rubber Duck.”

5. Secretly, Tom thought it was dumb, nothing as cool as “Cornflake Armada,” Garrett’s poem.

6. There was a great line in “Cornflake Armada,” “We’ve got seconds before we turn to mush!”

7. Every time he read that he wanted to scream “Go! Go! Go!”—and sometimes he really did.

8. “You’re weird,” Garrett would say. “That’s only supposed to be funny because it’s lame.”

9. But Tom didn’t see anything lame in “Cornflake Armada” or its sequel “Breakfast for Lunch.”

10. “Come on,” Olina said, unzipping her backpack. “We’ve only got to write the final scene.”

11. “Nah,” Tom said. “I think I’ll read Huckleberry Finn.”

12. “Suit yourself,” Olina sighed. “But I think you’ve given up.”

13. Olina decided to write Garrett a letter. “Hey Garrett,” she wrote, “Tell Tom not to quit.”

14. She also told him how mad she was that he mocked Tom’s love of “Cornflake Armada.”

15. “You should be proud to have a brother who believes in you,” she wrote. “Sincerely, Olina.”

124

Unit Tests and AnswersThe unit tests on pages 126 to 137 may be copied for academic use by parents and/or teachers in the scope of administrating this course. Duplication or distribution for any other purpose is strictly prohibited.

125

UNIT TEST ONE

Student Name: ______________________________________ Date: __________________

1. A theme is

A. an idea.

B. a shared characteristic or trait.

C. a personal interest or hobby.

D. a type of costume.

2. A sentence is

A. the smallest unit of grammatical measurement.

B. more artistic if it has long words in it.

C. a way of expressing a single thought or idea.

D. a thing with a question mark at the end of it.

3. A noun is

A. a person.

B. a place.

C. a thing.

D. A, B and C.

4. Circle the statement that is not true.

A. General nouns can include many types of a thing.

B. Specific nouns describe fewer things.

C. Specific nouns are not very useful.

D. Most people use many general words when they speak.

5. Adjectives modify

A. nouns.

B. verbs.

C. adverbs.

D. B and C.

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Cover Story

UNIT TEST ONE

6. Passive verbs

A. are any form of the verb to be or to have.

B. are usually linked to concept sentences.

C. end in ed.

D. A and B.

7. Adverbs

A. are never useful.

B. modify nouns.

C. tell us how something happened.

D. B and C.

8. Movie sentences

A. are usually better at creating emotion than concept sentences.

B. are not really necessary for most storytelling.

C. do not depend on specific images.

D. are usually funny.

9. Brainstorming involves

A. thinking about anything you want.

B. identifying useful connections related to your subject.

C. trying to forget that you are thinking.

D. A and C.

10. Paragraphs

A. are usually built around one “rock-star” sentence.

B. often have two or more “rock-star” sentences.

C. need not be indented.

D. are the smallest building blocks of any story.

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UNIT TEST TWO


1. This most important structural element of any type of poetry is

A. its rhyme scheme.

B. the line break.

C. syllable count.

D. rhythm and meter.

2. Acrostics

A. are a relatively new form of poetry.

B. must only have one word per line.

C. are not real poetry if they don’t rhyme.

D. spell a word or phrase with the first letter of each line or stanza.

3. The cinquain

A. is a six-line poem with 17 syllables per line.

B. must have the same number of words on each line.

C. has five lines and a specific word or syllable count for each line.

D. is always depressing.

4. The haiku

A. originated in China hundreds of years ago.

B. includes a seasonal reference.

C. is always written in past tense.

D. A and B.

5. Most poetry

A. focuses on the expression of feelings.

B. uses distinctive style and rhythm.

C. tries to make one main point.

D. All of the the above.

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UNIT TEST TWO

6. The limerick

A. depends heavily on rhythm and rhyme.

B. is always funny.

C. rarely tells a story.

D. was invented in 1963 by Adelaide Crapsey.

7. The five Ws

A. are often taught in journalism classes.

B. sometimes include a sixth element.

C. help you to understand the basic facts of a story.

D. All of the above.

8. Which strategy for turning an interview into a non-fiction article was not discussed?

A. Action

B. Chronological

C. Flashback

D. Unfolding Past

9. Which outlining section was not discussed?

A. Hook

B. Evidence

C. Judgment

D. Clincher

10. Write one sentence for each ____________.

A. theme.

B. strategy.

C. thought.

D. paragraph.

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UNIT TEST THREE


1. Snail mail letters

A. are completely irrelevant at this time.

B. have five basic parts.

C. are only used in for business purposes.

D. are always formal in tone.

2. Letters

A. are too rigid to be used in stories.

B. always depend on fictional characters.

C. often try to make one main point.

D. A and B.

3. Which one of the following is not one of the five parts of a letter?

A. heading

B. salutation

C. footer

D. body

4. Which of the following is not true?

A. Stories are about meaningful change.

B. All stories try to create emotion.

C. Short stories usually try to make one main point.

D. Some stories are too short to employ any storytelling techniques.

5. Which of the following is not true about good story heroes?

A. They want something the reader can understand.

B. They are often someone the reader can relate to.

C. They have a problem.

D. They always win and get what they want.

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UNIT TEST THREE

6. The four key ingredients of a short story as discussed in this program are:

A. Character, Change, Desire, Problem.

B. Character, Meaning, Problem, Identity.

C. Meaning, Identity, Problem, Change.

D. Change, Character, Plot, Theme.

7. Readers will not care about a story if they don't care about

A. the main character.

B. the wording of each sentence.

C. the magazine’s theme.

D. the pictures that accompany it.

8. Story problems

A. must be clearly understood by the reader.

B. should be shown through movie sentences.

C. should be personal.

D. should grow as the story progresses.

E. All of the above.

9. Conflict in a story

A. should move towards a resolution.

B. should be spontaneous and random.

C. always means a fist fight.

D. decreases as the story progresses.

10. Which of the following elements is not usually included in a story opening?

A. The main character

B. The setting

C. Dialogue

D. The resolution

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UNIT TEST FOUR


1. The first layer of meaning refers to

A. what you think a story means when you first read it.

B. words and symbols.

C. the most obvious thing about a story.

D. None of the above.

2. The second layer of meaning refers to

A. what you think a story means after you’ve thought about it for a while.

B. relevance.

C. theme.

D. sentences.

3. Context means

A. everything that comes before and after.

B. what’s relevant in a story.

C. your life.


4. Which of the following would not weaken a blog?

A. Strong writing

B. Lack of focus

C. Inconsistency

D. Bad grammar

5. Hyperbole is another word for

A. setting.

B. humor.

C. exaggeration.

D. relevance.

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UNIT TEST FOUR

6. Which of the following would not usually be good advice for writing a humor piece?

A. Make one main point.

B. Use repetition.

C. Exaggerate the truth.

D. Employ formal language.

7. The two most important aspects of any humor piece are

A. repetition and timing.

B. character and timing.

C. character and repetition.

D. hyperbole and funny words.

8. Which of the following is not true.

A. All stories involve violent action.

B. All stories involve meaningful conflict.

C. The goal of every story is to create emotion.

D. Stories are about people with problems.

9. In most forms of creative writing, it is important to

A. use unusual words.

B. describe events in chronological order.

C. make the reader cry.


10. Good timing in stories means

A. making things happen at the right moment.

B. making things take a long time to happen.

C. putting things off till the end of the story.


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UNIT TEST FIVE


1. The first step in researching answers to a difficult question is

A. looking up the answers on the Internet.

B. considering different perspectives so you can target your research.

C. going to the library.


2. Most difficult questions have

A. two possible answers.

B. three or more possible answers.

C. no right answers.


3. Which of the following is not a likely source of creditable information?

A. A rumor you overheard in a cafeteria.

B. An interview with a credentialed specialist.

C. An article in a trade magazine.

D. An eyewitness.

4. The Most Dangerous Game is about a character who

A. shows no signs of changing by the end of the story.

B. changes a little by the end of the story.

C. wants to prove his manliness by leaping from a yacht.


5. Conflict means

A. someone is angry.

B. someone is fighting.

C. a clash: two things in opposition.

D. the tying up of loose ends.

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UNIT TEST FIVE

6. Personality means

A. being the life of the party.

B. whatever makes you a person.

C. A and B.

D. the combination of traits that form someone’s unique character.

7. Which principle does not apply when writing dialogue?

A. Put spoken words in quotation marks.

B. Avoid filler words.

C. Start a new paragraph for each new speaker.

D. Reproduce actual conversations as much as possible.

8. The personality of your characters should be reflected in

A. their dialogue.

B. their actions.

C. their thoughts.


9. Which of the following is not essential to a great story opening?

A. Hook the reader.

B. Introduce the main character.

C. Use beautiful language.

D. Tell us what sort of story we are about to read.

10. Which of the following is not a technique of comparison?

A. Simile.

B. Metaphor.

C. Characterization.

D. Personification.

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UNIT TEST SIX


1. To keep your audience engaged, give them story events that produce

A. expectation and surprise.

B. surprise and shock.

C. relevance and shock.

D. exaggeration and timing.

2. Which of the following is not a characteristic of a senryu?

A. A 5-7-5 sylable structure.

B. A funny or witty observation at the end.

C. A clear rhyme scheme.

D. Precise observations and details.

3. A found poem

A. is any poem by another writer that you found and like.

B. is a poem based on another written work.

C. is a poem based on random words.


4. Free verse poetry

A. has none of the traditional conventions of poetry.

B. uses line breaks for shape and definition.

C. is not really poetry.


5. Ballads have their origin in

A. song.

B. ancient literature.

C. Australia.

D. story.

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UNIT TEST SIX

6. Which of the following is not a characteristic of ballads?

A. They are written in four- or five-line stanzas.

B. They are driven by character change.

C. They sometimes focus on death, murder, revenge or supernatural events.

D. The 2nd and 4th stanza of each line rhyme.

7. Which of the following is not true?

A. All stories try to create emotion.

B. All stories are about meaningful conflict.

C. Stories are about people with problems.

D. Only A and C are true.

8. Which of the following is not necessarily an element of a well-written ad?

A. A web address.

B. A headline.

C. A benefit.

D. A call to action.

9. The headline is the part of an ad that

A. tells the reader to do something.

B. always tells the truth.

C. tries to get the reader’s attention.

D. contains fine print.

10. Which of the following is not true about good page layout?

A. Readers like white space and images.

B. Every page needs dominance.

C. Using lots of different fonts will make your magazine more readable.

D. Good images are essential to good page design.

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138

Unit Test Answer Keys

UNIT TEST ONE

1. B 2. C 3. D 4. C 5. A 6. D 7. C 8. A 9. B 10. A

UNIT TEST TWO

1. B 2. D 3. C 4. B 5. D 6. A 7. A 8. A 9. D 10. C

UNIT TEST THREE

1. B 2. C 3. C 4. D 5. D 6. A 7. A 8. E 9. A 10. D

UNIT TEST FOUR

1. B 2. D 3. A 4. A 5. C 6. D 7. B 8. A 9. B 10. A

UNIT TEST FIVE

1. B 2. B 3. A 4. B 5. C 6. D 7. D 8. D 9. C 10. C

UNIT TEST SIX

1. A 2. C 3. B 4. B 5. A 6. B 7. D 8. A 9. C 10. C

Recording GradesThe grading sheets on pages 140 to 145 may be copied for academic use by parents and/or teachers in the scope of administrating this course. Duplication or distribution for any other purpose is strictly prohibited.

139

Student Book Lesson GradesFirst Semester

Award up to 30 points per lesson.

140

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LESSON 20: ________

LESSON 21: ________

LESSON 22: ________

LESSON 23: ________

LESSON 24: ________

TOTAL:

LESSON 25: ________

LESSON 26: ________

LESSON 27: ________

LESSON 28: ________

LESSON 29: ________

LESSON 30: ________

LESSON 31: ________

LESSON 32: ________

LESSON 33: ________

LESSON 34: ________

LESSON 35: ________

LESSON 36: ________

TOTAL:

1 2 3

Student Name _______________________________________________

Student Book Lesson GradesSecond Semester

Award up to 30 points per lesson.

141

LESSON 37: ________

LESSON 38: ________

LESSON 39: ________

LESSON 40: ________

LESSON 41: ________

LESSON 42: ________

LESSON 43: ________

LESSON 44: ________

LESSON 45: ________

LESSON 46: ________

LESSON 47: ________

LESSON 48: ________

TOTAL:

LESSON 49: ________

LESSON 50: ________

LESSON 51: ________

LESSON 52: ________

LESSON 53: ________

LESSON 54: ________

LESSON 55: ________

LESSON 56: ________

LESSON 57: ________

LESSON 58: ________

LESSON 59: ________

LESSON 60: ________

TOTAL:

LESSON 61: ________

LESSON 62: ________

LESSON 63: ________

LESSON 64: ________

LESSON 65: ________

LESSON 66: ________

LESSON 67: ________

LESSON 68: ________

LESSON 69: ________

LESSON 70: ________

LESSON 71: ________

LESSON 72: ________

TOTAL:

4 5 6

Total Lesson Grade points:(add units 1 through 6)2,160 points possible

Student Name _______________________________________________

Journal Points

Award up to 5 points per day, 25 points per week, 100 points per unit.

142

Week 1 : ________

Week 2 : ________

Week 3 : ________

Week 4 : ________

TOTAL:

Week 5: ________

Week 6: ________

Week 7: ________

Week 8: ________

TOTAL:

Week 9 : ________

Week 10: ________

Week 11: ________

Week 12: ________

TOTAL:

1 2 3

Student Name _______________________________________________

Week 13: ________

Week 14: ________

Week 15: ________

Week 16: ________

TOTAL:

Week 17: ________

Week 18: ________

Week 19: ________

Week 20: ________

TOTAL:

Week 21: ________

Week 22: ________

Week 23: ________

Week 24: ________

TOTAL:

4 5 6

Total Journal points:(add units 1 through 6)600 points possible

Unit Test Scores

Each test is worth up to 100 points.

143

Student Name _______________________________________________

4 5 6

Total Unit Test points:(add units 1 through 6)600 points possible

1 2 3

Completed Works

144

1 2

Student Name _______________________________________________

Total Completed Works points:(add semesters 1 and 2)1,400 points possible

Week 4 - Review (90 points max) : ________

Week 5 - Three poems (90 points max) : ________

Week 6 - Four poems (120 points max) : ________

Week 8 - One article (120 points max) : ________

Week 9 - Three letters (90 points max) : ________

Week 12 - One short story (200 points max) : ________

TOTAL:

Week 14 - One blog post (30 points max) : ________

Week 15 - One humor piece (50 points max) : ________

Week 16 - Two articles (120 points max) : ________

Week 17 - One column (80 points max) : ________

Week 20 - One short story (240 points max) : ________

Week 21 - Three poems (90 points max) : ________

Week 22 - One ballad (80 points max) : ________

TOTAL:

Grammar Lessons(optional)

145

Student Name _______________________________________________

Total Grammar points:(add sections 1 and 2)403 points possible

1 2

G1 (6 points max) : ________

G2 (48 points max) : ________

G3 (15 points max) : ________

G4 (67 points max) : ________

G5 (54 points max) : ________

G6 (30 points max) : ________

TOTAL:

G7 (25 points max) : ________

G8 (59 points max) : ________

G9 (19 points max) : ________

G10 (27 points max) : ________

G11 (29 points max) : ________

G12 (24 points max) : ________

TOTAL:

Final Grade

146

Student Name _______________________________________________

Lesson Grade points:

Journal points:

Unit Test scores:

Completed works:

TOTAL SCORE:4,760 points possible

Final Grade (with Grammar)

147

Student Name _______________________________________________

Lesson Grade points:

Journal points:

Unit Test scores:

Completed works:

Grammar Lessons:

TOTAL SCORE:5,163 points possible

Teacher’s Guide · The Ransom of Red Chief, by O. Henry 42 The Interlopers, by Saki 49 The Lady,...

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Transcript of Teacher’s Guide · The Ransom of Red Chief, by O. Henry 42 The Interlopers, by Saki 49 The Lady,...