I. Give English equivalents for words and expressions.

A parsimony, a sob, to coax, to be shrunk to, to look blurred, sterling, a pier-glass, agile, a mighty pride, a janitor, curling irons, a truant schoolboy, to wiggle off, a scrutiny, a wit, the magi, a singed cat, ardent, a dandy, a manger, a hashed met­aphor, a mammoth task.

II. Translate into Russian.

1. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment.

2. Twenty dollars a week doesn't go far.

3. Had the Queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Delia would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majes­
ty's Jewels and gifts.

4. Where she stopped the sign read:»Mme. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds*. One flight up Delia ran, and col­lected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly,
hardly looked the «Sofronie*.

5. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in de­sign, property proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation, as all good
things should do.

 

III. Supply the required word or phrase from the text.

1. Poor fellow, he was only 22 and to be....... with a family!

2. Jim stopped inside the door, as.......... as a setter at the scent of quail.

3. But if you will unwrap that package you may see why you at first.

4. Rapidly she...... her hair and let it fall to its full length.

5. And then she...................... the hair again nervously and quickly.

6. I had my hair........ and sold it. It will........... again — you won't mind, will you?

IV. Translate into English.

1. В обстановке не то, чтобы вопиющая нищета, но ско­рее красноречиво молчащая бедность.

2. «Диллингем» развернулось во всю длину в недавний период благосостояния, когда обладатель указанно­го имени получал $30 в неделю.

3. Следующие два часа пролетели на розовых крыльях.

4. Дома оживление Деллы поулеглось и уступило мес­то предусмотрительности и расчету.

5. Как ни великолепны были его часы, а смотрел он на них часто с украдкой, потому что они висели на дрян­ном кожаном ремешке.

V. Comment on the role of the stylistic devices.

1. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man.

2. In a vestibule below was an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring.

3. Now the letters looked blurred, as though they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and un­assuming D.

4. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a grey cat walking a grey fence in a grey backyard.

5. So now Delia's beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters.

6. On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant spar­kle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door.

7. One flight up Delia ran.

8. The next 2 hours tripped by on rosy wings.

9. Grand as the watch was, he looked at it on the sly.

10. She went to work repairing the ravages made by gener­osity added to love.

11. Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake.

12. Delia leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, «Oh, oh!»

VI. For discussion.

1. Can we say that the life of Delia was «made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predomina­ting»?

2. Describe the James Dillingham Youngs apartment. What things prove the poverty of this family?

3. What was the problem that has been bothering Delia for a long time?

4. Why was it difficult for Delia to choose the present for her Jim? Was it the question of money only?

5. What were the possessions of the young couple in which they both took a mighty pride? What compari­sons help the reader to understand the great value of these things?

6. Delia was afraid that her husband would love her less with the short hair. How do these thoughts character­ize the young woman?

7. Was Jim ready to make the same sacrifices for Delia as his wife had done for him? Were all these offerings in title vain or did they show anything very impor­tant?

8. How do you understand the heading of the story?

WlLLlAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM

William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965), an outstanding English writer of the 20^th century is known to Russian rea­ders as a successful novelist and short story writer.

His first novel «Lisa of Lambeth» appeared in 1897. Du­ring World War I Maugham, a doctor by profession, enlisted with a Red Cross Ambulance Unit. Later he was transferred to the Intelligence Service. At the outbreak of World War 2 he was assigned to special work at the British Ministry of Information in Paris. During the Nazi occupation he managed to reach England, leaving behind him all his belongings and many of his unfinished manuscripts.

Maugham traveled a lot, gaining experience for his works. He spent long periods in the USA, the South Seas, China.

Maugham's keen and observant eye, subtle irony and bril­liant style made his books extremely popular all over the world.

Before you read look through the following sentences and try to guess what the story might be about:

1. I was in Thursday Island and I wanted - at the beginning
very much to go to New Guinea. of the story

2. He said that during those three years - in the middle of
he had seen such terrible things that he the story

had a horror of his fellow-men.

3. Then the pearl fisher would go back — at the end of
into his dinghy and the island once the story
more be deserted of man.

GERMAN HARRY

I was in Thursday Island and I wanted very much to go to New Guinea. Now the only way in which I could do this was by getting a pearling lugger to take me across the Arafura Sea. The pearl fishery at that time was in a bad way and a flock of neat little craft lay anchored in the harbour. I found a skipper with nothing much to do (the journey to Merauke and back could hardly take him less than a month) and with him I made the necessary arrangements. He engaged four Torres Straits islanders as crew (the boat was but nineteen tons) and we ran­sacked the local store for canned goods. A day or two before I sailed a man who owned a number of pearlers came to me and asked whether on my way I would stop at the island of Trebucket and leave a sack of flour, another of rice, and some magazines for the hermit who lived there.

I pricked up my ears. It appeared that the hermit had lived by himself on this remote and tiny island for thirty years, and when opportunity occurred provisions were sent to him by kindly souls. He said that he was a Dane, but in the Torres Straits he was known as German Harry. His history went back a long way. Thirty years before, he had been an able seaman on a sailing vessel that was wrecked in those trea­cherous waters. Two boats managed to get away and eventu­ally hit upon the desert island of Trebucket. This is well out of the line of traffic and it was three years before any ship sighted the castaways. Sixteen men had landed on the island, but when at last a schooner, driven from her course by stress of weather, put in for shelter, no more than five were left. When the storm abated the skipper took four of these on board and eventually landed them at Sydney. German Harry refused to go with them. He said that during those three years he had seen such terrible things that he had a horror of his fellow-men and wished never to live with them again. He would say no more. He was absolutely fixed in his determina­tion to stay, entirely by himself, in that lonely place. Though now and then opportunity had been given him to leave he had never taken it.

A strange man and a strange story. I learned more about him as we sailed across the desolate sea. The Torres Straits are peppered with islands and at night we anchored on the one or other of them. Of late new pearling grounds have been discovered near Trebucket and in the autumn pearlers, visiting it now and then, have given German Harry various necessities so that he has been able to make himself suffi­ciently comfortable. They bring him papers, bags of flour and rice, and canned meats. He has a whale boat and used to go fishing in it, but now he is no longer strong enough to manage its unwieldy bulk. There is abundant pearl shell on the reef that surrounds his island and this he used to collect and sell to the pearlers for tobacco, and sometimes he found a good pearl for which he got a considerable sum. It is be­lieved that he has, hidden away somewhere, a collection of magnificent pearls. During the war no pearlers came out and for years he never saw a living soul. For all he knew, a terri­ble epidemic had killed off & the entire human race and he was the only man alive. He was asked later what he thought.

«I thought something had happened,* he said.

He ran out of matches and was afraid that his fire would go out, so he only slept in snatches, putting wood on his fire from time to time all day and all night. He came to the end of his provisions and lived on chickens, fish and coconuts. Some­times he got a turtle.

During the last four months of the year there may be two or three pearlers about and not infrequently after the day's work they will row in and spend an evening with him. They try to make him drunk and then they ask him what happened during those three years after the two boat-loads came to the island. How was it that sixteen landed and at the end of that time only five were left? He never says a word. Drunk or sober he is equally silent on that subject and if they insist grows angry and leaves them.

I forget if it was four or five days before we sighted the hermit's little kingdom. We had been driven by bad weather to take shelter and had spent a couple of days at an island on the way. Trebucket is a low island, perhaps a mile round, covered with coconuts, just raised above the level of the sea and surrounded by a reef so that it can be approached only on

one side. There is no opening in the reef and the lugger had to anchor a mile from the shore. We got into a dinghy with the provisions. It was a stiff pull and even within the reef the sea was choppy. I saw the little hut, sheltered by trees, in which German Harry lived, and as we approached he saun­tered down slowly to the water's edge. We shouted a greet­ing, but he did not answer. He was a man of over seventy, very bald, hatchet-faced, with a grey beard, and he walked with a roll so that you could never have taken him for any­thing but a sea-faring man. His sunburn made his blue eyes look very pale and they were surrounded by wrinkles as though for long years he had spent interminable hours scanning the vacant sea. He wore dungarees and a singlet, patched, but neat and clean. The house to which he presently led us con­sisted of a single room with a roof of corrugated iron. There was a bed in it, some rough stools which he himself had made, a table, and his various household utensils. Under a tree in front of it was a table and a bench. Behind was an enclosed run for his chickens.

I cannot say that he was pleased to see us. He accepted our gifts as a right, without thanks, and grumbled a little be­cause something or other he needed had not been brought. He was silent and morose. He was not interested in the news we had to give him, for the outside world was no concern of his: the only thing he cared about was his island. He looked upon it with a jealous, proprietary right; he called it «my health resort» and he feared that the coconuts that covered it would tempt some enterprising trader. He looked at me with suspi­cion. He was sombrely curious to know what I was doing in these seas. He used words with difficulty, talking to himself rather than to us, and it was a little uncanny to hear him mumble away as though we were not there. But he was moved when my skipper told him that an old man of his own age whom he had known for a long time was dead.

«Old Charlie dead-that's too bad. Old Charlie dead.»

He repeated it over and over again. I asked him if he read.

«Not much,» he answered indifferently.

He seemed to be occupied with nothing but his food, his dogs and his chickens. If what they tell us in books were true his long communion with nature and the sea should have taught him many subtle secrets. It hadn't. He was a savage. He was nothing but a narrow, ignorant and cantankerous sea-faring man. As I looked at the wrinkled, mean old face I wondered what was the story of those three dreadful years that had made him welcome this long imprisonment. I sought to see behind those pale blue eyes of his what secrets they were that he would carry to his grave. And then I foresaw the end. One day a pearl fisher would land on the island and German Harry would not be waiting for him, silent and sus­picious, at the water's edge. He would go up to the hut and there, lying on the bed, unrecognisable, he would see all that remained of what had once been a man. Perhaps then he would hunt high and low for the great mass of pearls that has haunted the fancy of so many adventurers. But I do not believe he would find it: German Harry would have seen to it that none should discover the treasure, and the pearls would rot in their hiding place. Then the pearl fisher would go back into his dinghy and the island once more be deserted of man.

EXERCISES

I. Memorize the following words:

Lugger, craft, castaway, abate, lee, choppy, in snatches, dungaree, singlet, uncanny, cantankerous, hermit.

II. Give the English equivalents for:

Обчистить, предательский, закончился запас спичек, урывками, продолговатое лицо с острыми чертами, рабочие брюки из грубой бумажной ткани, огороженное место для кур, мрачный, мореплаватель, сварливый, морщинистый, шлюпка, отшельник.

III. Translate into English:

1. Я навострил уши.

 

2. Он сказал, что за эти три года он видел такие страш­ные вещи, что он просто боится своих собратьев и не хотел бы вновь с ними жить.

3. Все, что он знал, было то, что ужасная эпидемия погубила человеческую расу, и он единственный ос­тался жив.

4. Так как у него кончились спички и, боясь, что кос­тер потухнет, он спал урывками, подбрасывать вре­мя от времени и днем, и ночью поленья в огонь. Казалось, что он ни о чем больше не заботился, кро­ме как о еде, и о своих собаках, и курах.