LANGUAGE EXPRESSIVENESS

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 873.

CHAPTER 1

PRACTICAL TRAINING FOR THE LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS

PART 3

Exercise 1. Read the following extracts, pay attention to the words in bold. What layer of the language do they belong to? In what way do they describe the situation of communication? What effect do they produce on the reader? Are all of them grammatically correct?

a) “You're at some sort of technical college” she said to Leo, not looking at him …

“Yes. I hate it though. I'm not good enough at maths. There's a chap there just down fromCambridge who puts us through it. I can't keep up. Were you good at maths?”

“Not bad. But I imagine school maths are different.”

“Well, yes, they are. I can't cope with this stuff at all, it's the whole way of thinking that's beyond me … I think I'm going to chuck it and take a job.”

b) Fred Hardy was a bad lot. Pretty women, chemin de fer, and an unlucky knack for backing the wrong horse had landed him in the bankruptcy court by the time he was twenty five ...

c) If he thought of his past it was with complacency; he had had a good time, he had enjoyed his ups and downs; and now, with good health and clear conscience, he was prepared to settle down as a country gentleman, damn it, bring up the kids as kids should be brought up; and when the old buffer who sat for his Constituency pegged out, by George, go into Parliament himself.

d) “Na Jess!” said the acquaintance, taking an imitation calabash pipe out of his mouth and then winking mysteriously.

“Na Jim!” returned Mr. Oakroyd. This ‘Na' which must once have been ‘Now', is the recognized salutation in Bruddersford, and the fact that it sounds more like a word of caution than a word of greeting is by no means surprising. You have to be careful in Bruddersford.

“Well,” said Jim, falling into step, “what did you think on 'em?”

“Think on 'em!” Mr. Oakroyd made a number of noises with his tongue to show what he thought of them.

“Ah'll tell tha what it is, Jess,” said his companion, pointing the stem of his pipe and becoming broader in his Yorkshire as he grew more philosophical. “If t' United had less brass to lake wi', they'd lake better football.” His eyes searched the past for a moment, looking for the team that had less money and had played better football. “Tha can remember when t' club had nivver set eyes on two thousand pahnds, when t' job lot wor not worth two thahsand pahnds, pavilion and all, and what sort of football did they lake then? We know, don't we? They could gi' thee summat worth watching then. Nah, it's all nowt, like t' ale an' baccy they ask so mich for – money fair thrawn away, ah calls it. Well, we mun 'a' teas and get over it. Behave thi-sen, Jess!” And he turned away, for the final word of caution was only one of Bruddersford's familiar good-buts.

“Ay,” replied Mr. Oakroyd dispiritedly. “So long, Jim!”

e) My wife has been kiddin' me about my friends ever since we was married. She says that they ain't nobody in the world got a rummier bunch of friends than me. I'll admit the most of them ain't, well, what you might call hot; they're different somehow than when I first hung around with them. They seem to be lost without a brass rail to rest their dogs on. But of course they are old friends and I can't give them the air.

Exercise 2. Read the following extracts. Pay attention to the words in bold print. What layer of the language do they belong to? What sphere of human knowledge do they describe?

a) The story of your romantic origin as related to me by mamma, withunpleasing comments, has naturally stirred the deepest fibres of my nature. Your Christian name has an irresistible fascination. The simplicity of your nature makes you exquisitely incomprehensible to me.

b) The shadow depression in the west of these islands is likely to move slowly in an easterly direction. There are no indications of any great change in the barometrical situation.

c) A bat had noiselessly appropriated the space between, a flittering weaving almost substanceless fragment of the invading dark. A collared dove groaned once in the final light. A pink rose reclining upon the big box hedge glimmered with contained electric luminosity. A blackbird, trying to metamorphose itself into a nightingale, began a long passionate complicated song.

d) “Sir,
in re Miss Ernestina Freeman

We are instructed by Mr. Ernest Freeman, the father of the above-mentioned Miss Ernestina Freeman, to request you to attend at these chambers at 3 o'clock this coming Friday. Your failure to attend will be regarded as an acknowledgement of our client's right to proceed.”

e) “I want you to keep an eye on that air-speed indicator. Remember that the airplane stays in the air because of its forward speed. If you let the speed drop too low, it stalls – and falls out of the air. Any time the ASI shows a reading near 120, you tell George instantly. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Captain, I understand.”

“Back to you, George … I want you to unlock the autopilot – it's clearly marked on the control column – and take the airplane yourself. George, you watch the artificial horizon … Climb and descent indicator should stay at zero.”

Exercise 3. Read the following sentences. Pay attention to the structure of the words in bold print. Comment on their expressive power.

1. If they'd anything to say to each other, they could hob-nob over beef-tea in a perfectly casual and natural manner.

2. No sooner had he departed than we were surrounded by cats, six of them, all miaowing piteously at once.

3. Professor Pringle was a thinnish, baldish, dispeptic-lookingish cove with an eye like a haddock.

4. A man who had permitted himself to be made a thorough fool of is not anxious to broadcast the fact.

5. “He must be a very handsome fellow,” said Sir Eustace. – “Some young whipper-snapper in Durban.”

6. In South Africa you at once begin to talk about a stoep – I do know what a stoep is – it's the thing round a house and you sit on it. In various other parts of the world you call it a veranda, a piazza, and a ha-ha.

7. I don't like Sunday evenings: I feel so Mondayish.

8. All about him black metal pots were boiling and bubling on huge stoves, and kettles were hissing, and pans were sizzling, and strange iron machines were clanking and spluttering.

9. I took the lib of barging in.

10. Lady Malvern tried to freeze him with a look, but you can't do that sort of thing to Jeeves. He is look-proof.

11. I'd work for him, slave for him, steal for him, even beg or borrow for him.

12. Better sorts of lip-stick are frequently described in advertisements as kissproof. Some building materials may be advertised as fireproof. Certain technical devices are foolproof meaning that they are safe even in a fool's hands.

13. I've been meaning to go to the good old exhibish for a long time.

14. Twenty years of butling had trained him to wear a mask.

15. Any pro will tell you that the worst thing possible is to overrehearse.

Exercise 4. Read the following extracts. Pay attention to the words in bold print. Write out from a dictionary their definitions. Analyze their connotational meaning and stylistic reference.

I. “I've got that queer feeling,” he said, “that I used to have as a child, and I haven't had for years.”

Niall watched her eyes. She was not angry, he saw that at once, and he was relieved. Nor was she smiling. She looked tired, rather strange.

I haven't been well for quite a while. I keep getting an odd sort of pain.

It seemed a little quaint that she should refer to the boys as children.

II. Chattering Frenchmen with voluble wives, and English tourists, and all the sallow individuals of no known nationality who travel for ever upon Continental trains, biting upon cigars.

Mr. Kellada was chatty. He spoke of New York and of San Francisco.

He was hearty, jovial, loquacious and argumentative.

She is a talkative woman and certainly a gossip.

III. And she began to shake with silent laughter because it was so funny.

She flung the window wide, and a stream of cold air blew down across the room. She shivered, and moved towards the fireplace.

Her mouth was quivering and she was on the verge of panic.

Felicity was trembling with cold. She got her vest on and began to fumble with her dress.

“You had so many photographs about the room in your unregenerate days,” I said vaguely. – “It makes me shudder to think of them. I've made them into a huge brown-paper parcel and hidden them in an attic.”

“I say, old chap,” his voice wavered, “get me out, will you?”

IV. It was a horrible evening. I shall never forget it. That awful party at the Greek Park or whatever the hotel was called.

“It's queer,” she said, “but I don't feel this is happening to me at all. This is some other person going through my day. It's a dreadful feeling. I can't explain it.”

“And honesty counts for something, doesn't it?” – “One doesn't know,” said Niall. That's the frightful thing.”

Pappy had a fearful theory that when we die we go to a theatre, and we sit down and see the whole of our lives re-acted before us.

All was well, Doctor, until three days ago. Then I began to have pains … Something shocking, Doctor.

V. “Wait for me, wait for me,” cried Celia, and hampered by her plump body and her short legs she would inevitably fall.

She had neither Maria's grace nor her beauty. But was a stout heavy little girl with red cheeks and mousy hair.

There were policemen everywhere, as thick as tom-cats in a fish market.

When Truda's back was turned she put out her tongue at a fat woman covered with jewels, who was surveying her through a lorgnette.

His face was red, a broad, fleshy face, with a large mouth under a stubble of grey moustache.

VI. Nothing's worth while if you don't fight for it first, if you haven't a pain in your belly beforehand.

My hands and my feet and my tummy got colder and colder through the day.

Shut your eyes and listen for the sound, but you have to feel it in your feet and your finger-tips too, and in the pit of your stomach.

VII. Maria leapt from rock to rock down on the shore, or stood for a moment poised on a ledge before diving.

She bounced about on the little seat facing the driver, her mouth stubborn.

We no longer chased each other in pyjamas about the room, and jumped across the beds.

They came out always at this time and shouted and called to one another, and skipped with skipping ropes, and hopped, and played.

“Jane,” cried Mrs. Tower, springing to her feet. “I wasn't expecting you today.”

VIII. You could put him next to a very boring old lady and count on him to be as charming and amusing with her as he knew how.

To talk about himself seemed a very pleasant way of passing time that was beginning to grow tedious.

You are a dull fellow, Mor.

IX. The drawing-room shone and glistened with the spotlessness of a house without children.

The grass on the lawn, wet with dew, sparkled in the sun.

The lake glittered through the branches of the trees.

A sarcastic smile played upon Machiavelli's thin lips and his eyes gleamed.

Tim lifted up a diamond necklace and swung it gently to and fro, holding it by one end. With a rippling movement the stones flashed.

I watched their heads, grouped round the desk, their faces glowing with their purpose.

X. “You thieving young bastard. We'll teach you how to steal money that doesn't belong to you.” I turned my head around: “Mam,” I called out, “get my lawyer on the blower, will you?” “Clever, aren't you?' he said in a very unfriendly way.

The only trouble with purposes is their intellect. They may be smarter than we are.

However, we must admit that ant farms are owned by quite reasonable, even extremely intelligent people.

Furthermore, when the monkey was put back into the harness to indicate whether he wanted to go again or not, he was sensible enough to refuse.

“Here's just the thing for you … I know the doctor personally. A most excellent gentle man and a fine clinician … You will learn a great deal from him. And the remuneration, Doctor!” – “All right, I'll take it.” – “You're very wise, I think.”

He was inexperienced, of course, but quick-witted, more so than his Uncle Biagio, who though good and honest, was of mediocre intelligence.

Exercise 5. Read the following sentences. Analyze the words in bold print. Find out their difference through the definitions. Arrange them in accordance to the degree of expressiveness.

1. The consequence was that one evening, just after she had helped him out of light place with the word “disestablishmentarianism”, the boy suddenly awoke to the truth and realized that she was all the world to him – or, as he put it to himself from force of habit, precious, beloved, darling, much-loved, highly esteemed and valued.

2. You wish to woo, court, and become betrothed, engaged, affianced to this girl, but you find yourself unable, incapable, incompetent, impotent and powerless.

3. Every time you attempt it, your vocal cords, fail, fall short,areinsufficient, wanting, deficient, and go blooey.

4. “Why, Mr. Mulliner!” she exclaimed, “What has been happening? Your clothes are torn, rent, ragged, tattered, and your hair is all disheveled, untrimmed, hanging loose or negligently, at loose ends!”

5. George smiled a wan smile. “You are right,” he said. “And what is more, I am suffering from extreme fatigue, weariness, lassitude, exhaustion, prostration, and languor.

6. The girl gazed at him, a divine pity in her soft eyes. “I'm sorry,” she murmured. “So very sorry, grieved, distressed, afflicted, pained, mortified, dejected, and upset.

7. Susan, I love you. Will you be my wife, married woman, matron, spouse, help-meet, consort, partner, or better half?

8. “Oh, George!” said Susan. “Yes, yea, ay, aye! Decidedly, unquestionably, indubitably, incontrovertibly, and past all dispute!”

9. Coming on top of the violent emotions through which he had been passing all day, it seemed to work on him like some healing spell, charm, or incantation.

10. “My darling,” said George, “for purely personal and private reasons into which I need not enter, I must now leave you.”

Exercise 6. Read the following extracts. Analyze the words in bold print. Comment on their expressive value.

1. I started life with the ghastly monnicker George Plumb in 1934 in a suburban semi-detached four miles from Birmingham's Bullring, where the sun bakes down every morning on a lot of snotty-nosed toreros with their waterproof muletas shuffling through the sand on their way to their offices in New Street. My old man was one such snotty-nosed torero and his daily corrida was performed in the District and National Bank.

2. I've thought over this demarche of hers.

3. I must leave these minutiae to the younger men.

4. They had given him carte blanche, so here he was, dropping in.

5. Eddie brought one hand out of his pocket and pinched a heavy moiré fold of the curtain by which he stood.

6. Arts and crafts had succeeded Sturm und Drang.

7. On the whole, they walked abreast out as far apart as they could; at times they converged so close that they jogged elbows, if they split up into twos, the twos called across to each other – this was daylight, there was no tête-à-tête.

8. The twitch of the coral ball did not disturb the apathy of the library cat – this furious mouser had been introduced when mice began to get at the belles letters, but he only worked by night.

9. The pause was underlined by the swimming entrance of Phyllis, who changed the plates and brought in strawberry compote.

10. Whatever manias might possess him in solitude, making some haunted landscape in which cupboard and tables looked like cliffs or opaque bottomless pools, the effect (at least to a woman) coming in here was, that this was how this fundamentally plain and rather old-fashioned fellow lived when en pantoufles.

11. “Respect's a broad human instinct,” said Mr. Pipe, letting one eye wander to meet the soufflé.

12. Father Rothschild fluttered a diplomatic laissez-passer and disappeared in the large car that had been sent to meet him.

13. The magistrate was known to Gerald at his club as a professional bon-viveur, intelligent and sharp, but given to over-elaborate unsuccessful witticism.

14. “Little Kay will have hors d`oeuvre,” said Inge; “it's the same as our favourite smaabrod you know, but not so good, perhaps,” she laughed.

15. While the chill night winds whipped my nightgown around my trembling legs, my blood turned to sherbet and my teeth clattered like castanets.

Exercise 7. Read the following extracts. Pay attention to the fragments in bold print. Comment on their meaning and function.

1. The magi, as you know, were wise men – wonderfully wise men – who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents.

2. There was an endless round of institutions, municipal and eleemosynary, on which he might set out and receive lodging and food accordant with the simple life. But to one of Soapy's proud spirit the gifts of charity are encumbered. If not in coin you must pay in humiliation of spirit for every benefit received at the hands of philanthropy. As Caesar had his Brutus, every bed of charity must have its toll of a bath, every loaf of bread its compensation of a private and personal inquisition.

3. About three in the afternoon I throwed my bridle over a mesquite limb and walked the last twenty yards into Uncle Emsley's store. I got up on the counter and told Uncle Emsley that the signs pointed to the devastation of the fruit crop of the world. In a minute I had a bag of crackers and a long-handled spoon, with an open can each of apricots and pineapples and cherries and green-gages beside of me with Uncle Ensley busy chopping away with the hatchet at the yellow clings. I was feeling like Adam before the apple stampede, and was digging my spurs into the side of the counter and working with my twenty-four-inch spoon when I happened to look out of the window into the yard of Uncle Emsley's house, which was next to the store.

4. The men went outside and conferred with Bobby. Trinidad pictured the glories of the Christmas tree and presents in lively colors. “And, moreover, my young friend,” added the Judge, “Santa Claus himself will personally distribute the offerings that will typify the gifts conveyed by the shepherds of Bethlehem to –”

5. The most pathetic sight in New York – except the manners of the rush-hour crowds – is the dreary march of the hopeless army of Mediocrity. Here Art is no benignant goddess, but a Circe who turns her wooers into mewing Toms and Tabbies who linger about the doorsteps of her abode, unmindful of the flying brickbats and boot-jacks of the critics.

6. There remained to her but one thing – a life of brilliant but irremediable error. Vermont was a shrine that she never would dare to approach again. But she would not sink – there were great and compelling ones in history upon whom she would model her meteoric career – Camille, Lola Montez, Royal Mary, Zaza – such a name as one of these would that of Medora Martin be to future generations.

7. A lank, strong, red-faced man with a Wellington beak and small, fiery eyes tempered by flaxen lashes, sat on the station platform at Los Pinos swinging his legs to and fro.

8. I herded sheep for five days on the Rancho Chiquito; and then the wool entered my soul. That getting next to Nature certainly got next to me. I was lonesomer than Crusoe's goat.

9. I coughed, and tried to feel less wrathful toward Tripp. I saw my duty. Cunningly I had been inveigled, but I was securely trapped. Tripp's first dictum to me had been just and correct. The young lady must be sent back to Greenburg that day. She must be argued with, convinced, assured, instructed, ticketed, and returned without delay. I hated Hiram and despised George; but duty must be done. Noblesse oblige and only five silver dollars are not strictly romantic compatibles, but sometimes they can be made to jibe. It was me to be Sir Oracle, and then pay the freight. So I assumed an air that mingled Solomon's that of the general passenger agent of the Long Island Railroad.

10. That Denver Galloway was sure a relief to the eye. Six feet two he was, red-headed, and pink-gilled as a sun-perch. And the air he had! Court of Saint James, Chauncey Olcott, Kentucky colonels, Count of Monte Cristo, grand opera – all these things he reminded you of when he was doing the honors. When he raised his finger the hotel porters and bell boys skated across the floor like cockroaches, and even the clerk behind the desk looked as meek and unimportant as Andy Carnegie.

11. I desire to interpolate here that I am a Southerner. But I am not one by profession or trade. I eschew the string tie, the slouch hat, the Prince Albert, the number of bales of cotton destroyed by Sherman, and plug chewing. When the orchestra plays “Dixie” I do not cheer. I slide a little lower on the leather-cornered seat and, well, order another Wurzberger and wish that Longstreet had – but what's the use?

12. He spoke of his wife, traced her descent back to Eve, and profanely denied any possible rumor that she may have had relations in the land of Nod.

13. This Negro stood by a carriage so old that Ham himselfmight have started a hack line with it after he left the ark with the two animals hitched to it.

14. The lights of the great Garden were out; the benches in the Square were filled with sleepers in postures so strange that beside them the writhing figures in Dore's illustrations of the Inferno would have straightened into tailor's dummies.

15. The honest but ignorant settler, bent on saving the little plot of land he called home, elbowed the wary land shark who was searching the records for evidence to oust him; the lordly cattle baron, relying on his influence and money, stood at the Commissioner's desk side by side with the preemptor, whose little potato patch lay like a minute speck of island in the vast, billowy sea of his princely pastures, and played the old game of “freeze-out”, which is as old as Cain and Abel.

Exercise 8. Compare the following pairs of sentences and state the differences between them.

1. We can get into the house only if you have the key. – Only if you have the key can we get into the house.

2. Should the weather get any colder, we'll turn on the heating. – If the weather gets any colder, we'll turn on the heating.

3. No sooner had he entered the house than the telephone rang. – He had just entered the house when the telephone rang.

4. He visits us so rarely that I can hardly remember what he looks like. – So rarely does he visit us that I can hardly remember what he looks like.

5. He spoke to me only after I spoke to him. – Only after I spoke to him did he speak to me.

6. Janet won't get on the plane under any circumstances. – Under no circumstances will Janet get on a plane.

7. She didn't know that her wish would come true. – Little did she know that her wish would come true.

8. It is Tom who made all the possible. – Tom is the person who made all the possible.

9. Why were you late today? – Why was it that you were late today?

10. It is impossible for him to find money to pay the ransom. – On no account can he find money to pay the ransom.

Exercise 9. Read the following extracts. Analyze the sentences. Comment on their structure and function.

1. “Don't get excited,” said Gerston. “Let me show you something.” He pointed to a word in black paint at the bottom corner. It took me a few seconds to recognize it. It was the signature of Lautisse.

“But … but I don't get it,” I stammered. “Why … what … where is he?”

2. “Look, gentlemen,” I said. “I'm businessman. I don't know anything about painting. I mean painting pictures. But I do know a thing or two about painting a fence. A mule could have held a paint brush in his teeth and done almost as good a job on that fence as Lautisse did.”

3. When he learnt that it was a form of rheumatism that made him unfit for further service his heart exulted, for he could go home; and he did not bother, in fact he scarcely listened, when the doctors told him that he would never again be quite well. What did he care when he was going back to the little island he loved so well and the girl who was waiting for him?

4. So I came to Aden and began looking about. What I was looking for was three sailors; I fancied we could do with that; and one of those queer small boats with green keels. Sails, of course. Well, I found two sailors, just the men I was looking for.

5. “Did she get over it?' asked my wife. – “I don't think so,” said the American lady. “She wouldn't eat anything. And wouldn't sleep at all. I've tried so very hard, but she doesn't seem to take an interest in anything. She doesn't care about things. I couldn't have her marrying a foreigner.”

6. Now, wasn't it a curious thing that Bill, who wouldn't trouble to put another two hundred thousand pounds in his pocket, was keen as mustard to make a hundred pounds or so in a Port Said gambling den?

7. The man upstairs was a Greek too, but not the kind that you would count on meeting; he seemed worse than I'd been warned against. As we walked in he looked at us, each in turn, and it was when he looked at you that his eyes seemed to light up, and the blood seemed to pale in his face, and the man's power and energy went to those eyes.

8. One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a shaggy gray eyebrow. “She has one chance in – let us say, ten,” he said, as he shook down the mercury in his clinical thermometer. “And that chance is for her to want to live. Your little lady has made up her mind that she's not going to get well. Has she anything on her mind?” – “She – she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day,” said Sue. – “Paint? – bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking about twice – a man, for instance?” – “A man?” said Sue. “Is a man worth – but, no, doctor; there is nothing of the kind.”

9. Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death. It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there, too near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard's name leading the list of “Killed”. He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.

10. And yet she loved him – sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognizes as the strongest impulse of her being! “Free! Body and soul free!” she kept whispering.

Exercise 10. Make the linguistic analysis of the following extracts.

1. Rosemary had been married two years. She had a duck of a boy. No, not Peter-Michael. And her husband absolutely adored her. They were rich, really rich, not just comfortably well-off, which is odious and stuffy and sounds like one's grandparents. But if Rosemary wanted to shop she would go to Paris as you and I would go to Bond Street. If she wanted to buy flowers, the car pulled up at that perfect shop in Regent Street, and Rosemary inside the shop just gazed in her dazzled, rather exotic way, and said: “I want those and those and those. Give me four bunches of those. And that jar of roses. Yes, I'll have all the roses in the jar. No, no lilac. I hate lilac. It's got no shape.” The attendant bowed and put the lilac out of sight, as though this was only too true; lilac was dreadfully shapeless. “Give me those stumpy little tulips. Those red and white ones.” And she was followed to the car by a thin shop-girl, staggering under an immense white paper armful that looked like a baby in long clothes.

2. The discreet door shut with a click. She was outside on the step, gazing at the winter afternoon. Rain was falling, and with the rain it seemed the dark came too, spinning down like ashes. There was a cold bitter taste in the air, and the new-lighted lamps looked sad. Sad were the lights in the houses opposite. Dimly they burned as if regretting something. And people hurried by, hidden under their hateful umbrellas. Rosemary felt a strange pang. She pressed her muff against her breast; she wished she had the little box, too, to cling to. Of course the car was there. She'd only to cross the pavement. But still she waited. There are moments, horrible moments in life, when one emerges from shelter and looks out, and it's awful. One oughtn't to give way to them. One ought to go home and have an extra-special tea. But at the very instant of thinking that, a young girl, thin, dark, shadowy – where had she come from? – was standing at Rosemary's elbow and a voice like a sigh, almost like a sob, breathed: “Madam, may I speak to you a moment?” – “Speak to me?” Rosemary turned. She saw a little battered creature with enormous eyes, someone quite young, no older than herself, who clutched at her coat=collar with reddened hands, and shivered as though she had just come out of the water. – “M-madam,” stammered the voice. “Would you let me have the price of a cup of tea?” – “A cup of tea?” there was something simple, sincere in that voice; it wasn't in the least the voice of a beggar. “Then have you no money at all?” asked Rosemary. – “None, madam,” came the answer. – “How extraordinary!” Rosemary peered through the dusk and the girl gazed back at her. How more than extraordinary! And suddenly it seemed to Rosemary such an adventure. It was like something out of a novel by Dostoyevsky, this meeting in the dusk. Supposing she took the girl home? Supposing she did do one of those things she was always reading about or seeing on the stage, what would happen? It would be thrilling. And she heard herself saying afterwards to the amazement of her friends: “I simply took her home with me,” as she stepped forward and said to that dim person beside her: “Come home to tea with me.”

3. Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath them. He was past sixty and he had been always about to paint a masterpiece, but had never yet begun it. He earned a little by serving as a model to those young artists in the colony who could not pay the price of a professional. He drank gin to excess, and still talked of his coming masterpiece. For the rest he was a fierce little old man, who regarded himself as the protector of the two young artists in the studio above.

Sue found Behrman smelling strongly of jumper berries in his dimly lighted den below. In one corner was a blank canvas on an easel that had been waiting there for twenty-five years to receive the first line of the masterpiece. She told him of Johnsy's fancy, and how she feared she would, indeed, light and fragile as a leaf herself, float away, when her slight hold upon the world grew weaker.

Old Behrman, with his red eyes plainly streaming, shouted his contempt and derision for such idiotic imaginings. “Vass!” he cried. “Is dere people in de world mit der foolishness to die because leafs dey drop off from a confounded vine? I haf not heard of such a thing. No, I will not bose as a model for your fool hermit-dunderhead. Vy do you allow dot silly pusiness to come in der prain of her? Ach, dot poor leetle Miss Yohnsy.”

“She is very ill and weak,” said Sue, “and the fever has left her mind morbid and full of strange fancies. Very well, Mr. Behrman, if you do not care to pose for me, you needn't. But I think you are a horrid old – old flibbertigibbet.”

“You are just like a woman!” yelled Behrman. “Who said I will not bose? Go on. I come mit you. For half an hour I haf peen trying to say dot I am ready to bose. Gott! Dis is not any blace in which one so goot as Miss Yohnsy shall lie sick. Some day I will baint masterpiece, and ve shall all go away. Gott! Yes.”

4. One winter morning he looked out of his window as he was dressing. He did not hate the Winter now, for he knew that it was merely the Spring asleep, and that the flowers were resting.

Suddenly he rubbed his eyes in wonder and looked and looked. It certainly was a marvelous sight. In the farthest corner of the garden was a tree quite covered with lovely white blossoms. Its branches were golden, and silver fruit hung down from them, and underneath it stood the little boy he had loved.

Downstairs ran the Giant in great joy, and out into the garden. He hastened across the grass, and came near the child. And when he came quite close his face grew red with anger, and he said, “Who hath dared to wound thee?”

For on the palms of the child's hands were the prints of two nails, and the prints of two nails were on the little feet.

“Who hath dared to wound thee?” cried the Giant; “tell me, that I may take my big sword and slay him.”

“Nay,” answered the child, “but these are the wounds of Love.”

“Who art thou?” said the Giant, and a strange awe fell on him, and he knelt before the little child.

And the child smiled on the Giant, and said to him, “You let me play once in your garden, to-day you shall come with me to my garden, which is Paradise.”

And when the children ran in that afternoon, they found the Giant lying dead under the tree, all covered with white blossoms.

5. It was a hard enough life. All through the fishing season towards evening he set out in his boat with one of his brothers for the fishing grounds. It was a long pull of six or seven miles, and he spent the night catching the profitable cuttlefish. Then there was the long row back again in order to sell the catch in time for it to go on the early boat to Naples. At other times he was working in his vineyard from dawn till the heat drove him to rest and then again, when it was a trifle cooler, till dusk. Often his rheumatism prevented him from doing anything at all and then he would lie about the beach, smoking cigarettes, with a pleasant word for everyone notwithstanding the pain that racked his limbs. The foreigners who came down to bathe and saw him there said that these Italian fishermen were lazy devils.

Sometimes he used to bring his children down to give them a bath. They were both boys and at this time the elder was three and the younger less than two. They sprawled about at the water's edge stark naked and Salvatore standing on a rock would dip them in the water. The elder one bore it with stoicism, but the baby screamed lustily. Salvatore had enormous hands, like legs of mutton, coarse and hard from constant toil, but when he bathed his children, holding them so tenderly, drying them with delicate care; upon my word they were like flowers. He would seat the naked baby on the palm of his hand and hold him up, laughing a little at his smallness, and his laugh was like the laughter of an angel. His eyes then were as candid as his child's.