Extra Credit Period 3 College Writing

Print out and read two short stories by American Feminist writer, Kate Chopin: "Desirees Baby" and "The Story of an Hour"
Click the links to find a copy of the stories

Write a personal response to each story.

Present your personal responses to the class on Tuesday, June 14.

Tuesday is your last day of your high school college writing course- treat it as your first day of college.

"The Story of an Hour"

"Desiree's Baby"

June 13 - 14

Commencement Speeches

Le Courage n'est pas de risquer sa vie, .........c'est de voir les autres risquer la leur!!

UN PLAN DE VIE
Marche deux heures tous les jours, dors sept heures toutes les nuits; couche-toi dès tu as envie de dormir; lève-toi dès que tu t’éveilles; travaille dès que tu es levé.
Ne manger qu’à ta faim, ne bois qu’à soif et toujours lentement. Ne parle que lorsqu’il le faut; n’écris que ce que tu peux signer; ne fais que ce que tu peux dire.
N’oublie jamais que les autres comptent sur toi te que tu as dois pas compter sur eux. N’estime par l’argent ni plus ni moins qu’il ne vaut; c’est un bon serviteur et un mauvais maitre.
Pardonne d’avance à tout le monde pour plus de sûreté; ne méprise pas les hommes, ne les hais pas sûreté et n’en ris pas outre mesure, plains les. Songe à la mort tous les matins en voyant la lumière et tous les soirs en rentrant dans l’ombre. Quand tu souffriras beaucoup, regarde la douleur en face; elle te consolera d’elle-même et t’apprendra quelque chose.
Alexandre Dumas fils

Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. -- Will Rogers

If you think you can, or you think you can't, you're right. -- Henry Ford

Experience is the worst teacher. It always gives the test first and the instruction afterward.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened. -- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

I prefer thieves to idiots, because they sometimes take a rest. -- Alexandre Dumas, fils

The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past. -- William Faulkner

Creative Writing June10-14 Final Portfolio

A Little Fable by Franz Kafka

“Alas,” said the mouse, “the whole world is growing smaller every day.  At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when at last I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into.”  You only need to change your direction,” said the cat, and ate it up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2ErdpxVcqQ

 

Give it up!

It was very early in the morning, the streets clean and deserted, I was on my way to the station. As I compared the tower clock with my watch I realized it was much later than I had thought and that I had to hurry; the shock of this discovery made me feel uncertain of the way, I wasn't very well acquainted with the town as yet; fortunately, there was a policeman at hand, I ran to him and breathlessly asked him the way. He smiled and said: "You asking me the way?" "Yes," I said, "since I can't find it myself." "Give it up! Give it up!" said he, and turned with a sudden jerk, like someone who wants to be alone with his laughter.

Using the short poems by Edgar Lee Masters, write a short story for each character.

The poems are about the people who lived in the town called Spoon River and what they were able to say once they were dead and in their graves.

Oscar Hummel

  I STAGGERED on through darkness,
  There was a hazy sky, a few stars
  Which I followed as best I could.
  It was nine o'clock, I was trying to get home.
  But somehow I was lost,
  Though really keeping the road.
  Then I reeled through a gate and into a yard,
  And called at the top of my voice:
  "Oh, Fiddler! Oh, Mr. Jones!"
  (I thought it was his house and he would show me the way home. )
  But who should step out but A. D. Blood,
  In his night shirt, waving a stick of wood,
  And roaring about the cursed saloons,
  And the criminals they made?
  "You drunken Oscar Hummel", he said,
  As I stood there weaving to and fro,
  Taking the blows from the stick in his hand
  Till I dropped down dead at his feet.
William Goode
  To all in the village I seemed, no doubt,
  To go this way and that way, aimlessly. .
  But here by the river you can see at twilight
  The soft—winged bats fly zig-zag here and there—
  They must fly so to catch their food.
  And if you have ever lost your way at night,
  In the deep wood near Miller's Ford,
  And dodged this way and now that,
  Wherever the light of the Milky Way shone through,
  Trying to find the path,
  You should understand I sought the way
  With earnest zeal, and all my wanderings
  Were wanderings in the quest.
Mrs. Sibley
  THE secret of the stars—gravitation.
  The secret of the earth—layers of rock.
  The secret of the soil—to receive seed.
  The secret of the seed—the germ.
  The secret of man—the sower.
  The secret of woman—the soil.
  My secret: Under a mound that you shall never find.

Trainor, the Druggist

  Only the chemist can tell, and not always the chemist,
  What will result from compounding
  Fluids or solids.
  And who can tell
  How men and women will interact
  On each other, or what children will result?
  There were Benjamin Pantier and his wife,
  Good in themselves, but evil toward each other;
  He oxygen, she hydrogen,
  Their son, a devastating fire.
  I Trainor, the druggist, a miser of chemicals,
  Killed while making an experiment,
  Lived unwedded.
Tom Merritt
  AT first I suspected something—
  She acted so calm and absent-minded.
  And one day I heard the back door shut
  As I entered the front, and I saw him slink
  Back of the smokehouse into the lot
  And run across the field.
  And I meant to kill him on sight.
  But that day, walking near Fourth Bridge
  Without a stick or a stone at hand,
  All of a sudden I saw him standing
  Scared to death, holding his rabbits,
  And all I could say was, "Don't, Don't, Don't,"
  As he aimed and fired at my heart.
Sam Hookey
  I RAN away from home with the circus,
  Having fallen in love with Mademoiselle Estralada,
  The lion tamer.
  One time, having starved the lions
  For more than a day,
  I entered the cage and began to beat Brutus
  And Leo and Gypsy.
  Whereupon Brutus sprang upon me,
  And killed me.
  On entering these regions
  I met a shadow who cursed me,
  And said it served me right. . . .
  It was Robespierre!
Minerva Jones
  I AM Minerva, the village poetess,
  Hooted at, jeered at by the Yahoos of the street
  For my heavy body, cock-eye, and rolling walk,
  And all the more when "Butch" Weldy
  Captured me after a brutal hunt.
  He left me to my fate with Doctor Meyers;
  And I sank into death, growing numb from the feet up,
  Like one stepping deeper and deeper into a stream of ice.
  Will some one go to the village newspaper,
  And gather into a book the verses I wrote?—
  I thirsted so for love
  I hungered so for life!

Julia Miller

  WE quarreled that morning,
  For he was sixty—five, and I was thirty,
  And I was nervous and heavy with the child
  Whose birth I dreaded.
  I thought over the last letter written me
  By that estranged young soul
  Whose betrayal of me I had concealed
  By marrying the old man.
  Then I took morphine and sat down to read.
  Across the blackness that came over my eyes
  I see the flickering light of these words even now:
  "And Jesus said unto him, Verily
  I say unto thee, To-day thou shalt
  Be with me in paradise."
Editor Whedon
  To be able to see every side of every question;
  To be on every side, to be everything, to be nothing long;
  To pervert truth, to ride it for a purpose,
  To use great feelings and passions of the human family
  For base designs, for cunning ends,
  To wear a mask like the Greek actors—
  Your eight-page paper—behind which you huddle,
  Bawling through the megaphone of big type:
  "This is I, the giant."
  Thereby also living the life of a sneak-thief,
  Poisoned with the anonymous words
  Of your clandestine soul.
  To scratch dirt over scandal for money,
  And exhume it to the winds for revenge,
  Or to sell papers,
  Crushing reputations, or bodies, if need be,
  To win at any cost, save your own life.
  To glory in demoniac power, ditching civilization,
  As a paranoiac boy puts a log on the track
  And derails the express train.
  To be an editor, as I was.
  Then to lie here close by the river over the place
  Where the sewage flows from the village,
  And the empty cans and garbage are dumped,
  And abortions are hidden.

Yee Bow

  THEY got me into the Sunday-school
  In Spoon River And tried to get me to drop
  Confucius for Jesus. I could have been no worse off
  If I had tried to get them to drop Jesus for Confucius.
  For, without any warning, as if it were a prank,
  And sneaking up behind me, Harry Wiley,
  The minister's son, caved my ribs into my lungs,
  With a blow of his fist.
  Now I shall never sleep with my ancestors in Pekin,
  And no children shall worship at my grave

"Ace" Shaw

  I NEVER saw any difference
  Between playing cards for money
  And selling real estate,
  Practicing law, banking, or anything else.
  For everything is chance.
  Nevertheless
  Seest thou a man diligent in business?
  He shall stand before Kings!

Margaret Fuller Slack

  I WOULD have been as great as George Eliot
  But for an untoward fate.
  For look at the photograph of me made by Penniwit,
  Chin resting on hand, and deep—set eyes—
  Gray, too, and far-searching.
  But there was the old, old problem:
  Should it be celibacy, matrimony or unchastity?
  Then John Slack, the rich druggist, wooed me,
  Luring me with the promise of leisure for my novel,
  And I married him, giving birth to eight children,
  And had no time to write.
  It was all over with me, anyway,
  When I ran the needle in my hand
  While washing the baby's things,
  And died from lock—jaw, an ironical death.
  Hear me, ambitious souls,
  Sex is the curse of life.
Mrs. Merritt
  SILENT before the jury
  Returning no word to the judge when he asked me
  If I had aught to say against the sentence,
  Only shaking my head.
  What could I say to people who thought
  That a woman of thirty-five was at fault
  When her lover of nineteen killed her husband?
  Even though she had said to him over and over,
  "Go away, Elmer, go far away,
  I have maddened your brain with the gift of my body:
  You will do some terrible thing."
  And just as I feared, he killed my husband;
  With which I had nothing to do, before
  God Silent for thirty years in prison
  And the iron gates of Joliet
  Swung as the gray and silent trusties
  Carried me out in a coffin.

Creative Writing 6-10

Creative Writing: Period 2 – by the end of this lesson students will see that a logical set of prompts can cause very different results- but there must be a logical set of prompts

E.L Doctorow once said that “Writing a novel is like driving a car at night.  You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

1. “Where’s Papa going with that ax?” said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.”

2. What does Fern’s mother say to Fern?

3. “I don’t see why he needs and ax,” continued Fern who was only eight.

4. What does Fern’s mother say next?

5. Fern shrieks in disagreement with what her mother says.  What are her words?

6. What does Fern’s mother say to Fern next?

7. How does Fern react?

8. Where does Fern go next?

9. What does Fern do next?

10. What does Fern’s father do next?

11. How does Fern react to her father now?

12. Where is Fern going next?

13. What is Fern’s mother doing while Fern and her father are outside?

14. What causes Fern and her father to return to the kitchen?

15. What does Fern say to her father?

16. What does Fern’s mother say to Fern?

17. What does Fern say to her nosey little brother?

18. Who is Fern’s mother calling on the phone?

19. Why is Fern’s father driving away?

College Writing June 10, 13, 14

On August 10, 1787 Thomas Jefferson penned a letter to his nephew, Peter Carr, who was entering his alma mater, The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. Jefferson advised him on several subjects but I am particularly interested in his counsel on how to approach the study of religion.   Annotate the sections where he gives his nephew Peter advice

Letter to Peter Carr

Jefferson's letter to his nephew, from Paris, August 10, 1787.

D ear Peter, — I have received your two letters of December 30 and April 18, and am very happy to find by them, as well as by letters from Mr. Wythe, that you have been so fortunate as to attract his notice & good will; I am sure you will find this to have been one of the most fortunate events of your life, as I have ever been sensible it was of mine. I enclose you a sketch of the sciences to which I would wish you to apply, in such order as Mr. Wythe shall advise; I mention, also, the books in them worth your reading, which submit to his correction. Many of these are among your father's books, which you should have brought to you. As I do not recollect those of them not in his library, you must write to me for them, making out a catalogue of such as you think you shall have occasion for, in 18 months from the date of your letter, & consulting Mr. Wythe on the subject. To this sketch, I will add a few particular observations.

Religion. Your reason is now mature enough to examine this object. In the first place, divest yourself of all bias in favor of novelty & singularity of opinion. Indulge them in any other subject rather than that of religion. It is too important, and the consequences of error may be too serious. On the other hand, shake off all the fears & servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. You will naturally examine first, the religion of your own country. Read the Bible, then as you would read Livy or Tacitus. The facts which are within the ordinary course of nature, you will believe on the authority of the writer, as you do those of the same kind in Livy & Tacitus. The testimony of the writer weighs in their favor, in one scale, and their not being against the laws of nature, does not weigh against them. But those facts in the Bible which contradict the laws of nature, must be examined with more care, and under a variety of faces. Here you must recur to the pretensions of the writer to inspiration from God. Examine upon what evidence his pretensions are founded, and whether that evidence is so strong, as that its falsehood would be more improbable than a change in the laws of nature, in the case he relates. For example, in the book of Joshua, we are told, the sun stood still several hours. Were we to read that fact in Livy or Tacitus, we should class it with their showers of blood, speaking of statues, beasts, &c. But it is said, that the writer of that book was inspired. Examine, therefore, candidly, what evidence there is of his having been inspired. The pretension is entitled to your inquiry, because millions believe it. On the other hand, you are astronomer enough to know how contrary it is to the law of nature that a body revolving on its axis, as the earth does, should have stopped, should not, by that sudden stoppage, have prostrated animals, trees, buildings, and should after a certain time gave resumed its revolution, & that without a second general prostration. Is this arrest of the earth's motion, or the evidence which affirms it, most within the law of probabilities? You will next read the New Testament. It is the history of a personage called Jesus. Keep in your eye the opposite pretensions: 1, of those who say he was begotten by God, born of a virgin, suspended & reversed the laws of nature at will, & ascended bodily into heaven; and 2, of those who say he was a man of illegitimate birth, of a benevolent heart, enthusiastic mind, who set out without pretensions to divinity, ended in believing them, and was punished capitally for sedition, by being gibbeted, according to the Roman law, which punished the first commission of that offence by whipping, & the second by exile, or death in fureâ. See this law in the Digest Lib. 48. tit. 19. §. 28. 3. & Lipsius Lib 2. de cruce. cap. 2. These questions are examined in the books I have mentioned under the head of religion, & several others. They will assist you in your inquiries, but keep your reason firmly on the watch in reading them all.
    Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you. If you find reason to believe there is a God, a consciousness that you are acting under his eye, & that he approves you, will be a vast additional incitement; if that there be a future state, the hope of a happy existence in that increases the appetite to deserve it; if that Jesus was also a God, you will be comforted by a belief of his aid and love. In fine, I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither believe nor reject anything, because any other persons, or description of persons, have rejected or believed it. Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable, not for the rightness, but uprightness of the decision. I forgot to observe, when speaking of the New Testament, that you should read all the histories of Christ, as well of those whom a council of ecclesiastics have decided for us, to be Pseudo-evangelists, as those they named Evangelists. Because these Pseudo-evangelists pretended to inspiration, as much as the others, and you are to judge their pretensions by your own reason, and not by the reason of those ecclesiastics. Most of these are lost. There are some, however, still extant, collected by Fabricius, which I will endeavor to get & send you.

   

College Writing in class writing 6/6

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."

—    Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

This final exam is based on the idea that while each student has been studying literature, he and she has been, simultaneously, involved in making a journey of  personal discovery toward graduation. 

For this part of the journey you will need you a pen and loose-leaf.   

In an essay of about 250 words, explain your thoughts about the above quote by Nietzsche.  Include specific examples from your own life, your knowledge of history, your plans for your post-secondary school life, and from the literature we have read and discussed in class. Present your essay as a Commencement Speech or a Memoir that you might like to share in celebration of your high school graduation.

Literature Studied— E7/E8

Mrs. Frontany	Mr. Hedges
·     William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and selected Sonnets ·     Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonus ·     George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” ·     Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” ·     Barack Obama’s Commencement Speeches to Wesleyan [2008] and US Coast Guard Academy [2011]	William Shakespeare’s “Othello” and  “Twelfth Night” Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” Henry David Thoreau’s Walden Pond Mark Twain’s “A Fable” Spensor Holst’s “The Zebra Storyteller” Barack Obama’s Commencement Speeches to Wesleyan [2008] and US Coast Guard Academy [2011] Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man

In your writing, be sure to address the Six Traits of Writing [Presentation not included]:

·       Ideas [Overall Purpose/Main Idea; Handling of the Prompt]

·       Organization [and Development]

·       Voice [Details, Imagery, Tone]

·       Word Choice [Use of Language]

·       Syntax [Sentence Structure]

·       Conventions [Grammar and Usage]

Twelfth Night In class writing assignment 6/6/11

 

Close Analysis – Act II scene II “Twelfth Night” by William Shakespeare

Write and essay of about 250 words or more to explain the speech.

1. I left no ring with her; what means this lady?
2. Fortune forbid my outside have not charm'd her!
3. She made good view of me; indeed, so much,
4. That methought her eyes had lost her tongue,
5. For she did speak in starts distractedly.
6. She loves me, sure: the cunning of her passion
7. Invites me in this churlish messenger.
8. None of my lord's ring! why, he sent her none.
9. I am the man; —if it be so,—as 'tis,—
10. Poor lady, she were better love a dream.
11. Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness
12. Wherein the pregnant enemy does much.
13. How easy is it for the proper-false
14. In women's waxen hearts to set their forms!
15. Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we;
16. For such as we are made of, such we be.
17. How will this fadge? My master loves her dearly,
18. And I, poor monster, fond as much on him;
19. And she, mistaken, seems to dote on me.
20. What will become of this? As I am man,
21. My state is desperate for my master's love;
22. As I am woman, now alas the day!
23. What thriftless sighs shall poor Olivia breathe!
24. O time, thou must untangle this, not I;
25. It is too hard a knot for me to untie!

Guidelines: Your essay should include responses to each of these questions

1. Who is speaking?
2. Who is being addressed?
3. What ring is being referred to?
4. What does the statement, “her eyes had lost her tongue” mean?
5. Why is it interesting that Shakespeare would use the word ring in the first line and charme’d in the next line?
6. What does “She made good view of me” mean?
7. What does it mean to speak in starts?
8. What is Shakespeare saying about the difference between appearances and reality in line 11.
9. Who is the speaker referring in lines 15 and 16?
10. What is Shakespeare saying about the true power of womanhood?
11. What are thriftless sighs (line 23)?
12. Explain lines 24 – 25
13. How does this part of the play relate to the final outcome of the plot?
14. If beauty is only skin deep, is Shakespeare saying, through the play “Twelfth Night” that gender is a mask?
15. Some characters fall in love with the mask, some with the person behind the mask.  Which characters in the play fall in love with the disguise, which with the natural person?

In your writing, be sure to address the Six Traits of Writing [Presentation not included]:

·       Ideas [Overall Purpose/Main Idea; Handling of the Prompt]

·       Organization [and Development]

·       Voice [Details, Imagery, Tone]

·       Word Choice [Use of Language]

·       Syntax [Sentence Structure]

·       Conventions [Grammar and Usage]

Creative Writing - Assignments 6/6/11 - 6/14

The poems are about the people who lived in the town called Spoon River and what they were able to say once they were dead and in their graves.

Version:

Two Lives at Spoon River

Create a story or a play or a poem of 300 words from these two poems by Edgar Lee Masters with characters, some alliteration, purpose, plot, differing points of view, table talk, imagery, description of a Sunday dinner, some good old fashioned religious back stabbing remarks, and a theme, (or an argument about a theme), a joke (it doesn’t have to be funny), and subplot about a mysterious stranger who returns to the town to pay respects to Mrs. Merritt’s grave, twenty-five years later, at midnight in the rain, and leaves behind him a poem that nobody reads except us, the reader of your original story.  Good Luck! 

Mrs. Merritt

 SILENT before the jury

Returning no word to the judge when he asked me

If I had aught to say against the sentence,

Only shaking my head.

What could I say to people who thought

That a woman of thirty-five was at fault

When her lover of nineteen killed her husband?

Even though she had said to him over and over,

"Go away, Elmer, go far away,

I have maddened your brain with the gift of my body:

You will do some terrible thing."

And just as I feared, he killed my husband;

With which I had nothing to do, before

God Silent for thirty years in prison

And the iron gates of Joliet

Swung as the gray and silent trusties

Carried me out in a coffin.

Minerva Jones

I am Minerva, the village poetess,

Hooted at, jeered at by the Yahoos of the street

For my heavy body, cock-eye, and rolling walk,

And all the more when "Butch" Weldy

Captured me after a brutal hunt.

He left me to my fate with Doctor Meyers;

And I sank into death, growing numb from the feet up,

Like one-stepping deeper and deeper into a stream of ice.

Will some one go to the village newspaper,

And gather into a book the verses I wrote?—

I thirsted so for love!

I hungered so for life!

------------------------------------------ 

Oscar Hummel

  I STAGGERED on through darkness,
  There was a hazy sky, a few stars
  Which I followed as best I could.
  It was nine o'clock, I was trying to get home.
  But somehow I was lost,
  Though really keeping the road.
  Then I reeled through a gate and into a yard,
  And called at the top of my voice:
  "Oh, Fiddler! Oh, Mr. Jones!"
  (I thought it was his house and he would show me the way home. )
  But who should step out but A. D. Blood,
  In his night shirt, waving a stick of wood,
  And roaring about the cursed saloons,
  And the criminals they made?
  "You drunken Oscar Hummel", he said,
  As I stood there weaving to and fro,
  Taking the blows from the stick in his hand
  Till I dropped down dead at his feet.
William Goode
  To all in the village I seemed, no doubt,
  To go this way and that way, aimlessly. .
  But here by the river you can see at twilight
  The soft—winged bats fly zig-zag here and there—
  They must fly so to catch their food.
  And if you have ever lost your way at night,
  In the deep wood near Miller's Ford,
  And dodged this way and now that,
  Wherever the light of the Milky Way shone through,
  Trying to find the path,
  You should understand I sought the way
  With earnest zeal, and all my wanderings
  Were wanderings in the quest.
Mrs. Sibley
  THE secret of the stars—gravitation.
  The secret of the earth—layers of rock.
  The secret of the soil—to receive seed.
  The secret of the seed—the germ.
  The secret of man—the sower.
  The secret of woman—the soil.
  My secret: Under a mound that you shall never find.

Trainor, the Druggist

  Only the chemist can tell, and not always the chemist,
  What will result from compounding
  Fluids or solids.
  And who can tell
  How men and women will interact
  On each other, or what children will result?
  There were Benjamin Pantier and his wife,
  Good in themselves, but evil toward each other;
  He oxygen, she hydrogen,
  Their son, a devastating fire.
  I Trainor, the druggist, a miser of chemicals,
  Killed while making an experiment,
  Lived unwedded.
Tom Merritt
  AT first I suspected something—
  She acted so calm and absent-minded.
  And one day I heard the back door shut
  As I entered the front, and I saw him slink
  Back of the smokehouse into the lot
  And run across the field.
  And I meant to kill him on sight.
  But that day, walking near Fourth Bridge
  Without a stick or a stone at hand,
  All of a sudden I saw him standing
  Scared to death, holding his rabbits,
  And all I could say was, "Don't, Don't, Don't,"
  As he aimed and fired at my heart.
Sam Hookey
  I RAN away from home with the circus,
  Having fallen in love with Mademoiselle Estralada,
  The lion tamer.
  One time, having starved the lions
  For more than a day,
  I entered the cage and began to beat Brutus
  And Leo and Gypsy.
  Whereupon Brutus sprang upon me,
  And killed me.
  On entering these regions
  I met a shadow who cursed me,
  And said it served me right. . . .
  It was Robespierre!
Minerva Jones
  I AM Minerva, the village poetess,
  Hooted at, jeered at by the Yahoos of the street
  For my heavy body, cock-eye, and rolling walk,
  And all the more when "Butch" Weldy
  Captured me after a brutal hunt.
  He left me to my fate with Doctor Meyers;
  And I sank into death, growing numb from the feet up,
  Like one stepping deeper and deeper into a stream of ice.
  Will some one go to the village newspaper,
  And gather into a book the verses I wrote?—
  I thirsted so for love
  I hungered so for life!

Julia Miller

  WE quarreled that morning,
  For he was sixty—five, and I was thirty,
  And I was nervous and heavy with the child
  Whose birth I dreaded.
  I thought over the last letter written me
  By that estranged young soul
  Whose betrayal of me I had concealed
  By marrying the old man.
  Then I took morphine and sat down to read.
  Across the blackness that came over my eyes
  I see the flickering light of these words even now:
  "And Jesus said unto him, Verily
  I say unto thee, To-day thou shalt
  Be with me in paradise."
Editor Whedon
  To be able to see every side of every question;
  To be on every side, to be everything, to be nothing long;
  To pervert truth, to ride it for a purpose,
  To use great feelings and passions of the human family
  For base designs, for cunning ends,
  To wear a mask like the Greek actors—
  Your eight-page paper—behind which you huddle,
  Bawling through the megaphone of big type:
  "This is I, the giant."
  Thereby also living the life of a sneak-thief,
  Poisoned with the anonymous words
  Of your clandestine soul.
  To scratch dirt over scandal for money,
  And exhume it to the winds for revenge,
  Or to sell papers,
  Crushing reputations, or bodies, if need be,
  To win at any cost, save your own life.
  To glory in demoniac power, ditching civilization,
  As a paranoiac boy puts a log on the track
  And derails the express train.
  To be an editor, as I was.
  Then to lie here close by the river over the place
  Where the sewage flows from the village,
  And the empty cans and garbage are dumped,
  And abortions are hidden.

Yee Bow

  THEY got me into the Sunday-school
  In Spoon River And tried to get me to drop
  Confucius for Jesus. I could have been no worse off
  If I had tried to get them to drop Jesus for Confucius.
  For, without any warning, as if it were a prank,
  And sneaking up behind me, Harry Wiley,
  The minister's son, caved my ribs into my lungs,
  With a blow of his fist.
  Now I shall never sleep with my ancestors in Pekin,
  And no children shall worship at my grave

"Ace" Shaw

  I NEVER saw any difference
  Between playing cards for money
  And selling real estate,
  Practicing law, banking, or anything else.
  For everything is chance.
  Nevertheless
  Seest thou a man diligent in business?
  He shall stand before Kings!

Margaret Fuller Slack

  I WOULD have been as great as George Eliot
  But for an untoward fate.
  For look at the photograph of me made by Penniwit,
  Chin resting on hand, and deep—set eyes—
  Gray, too, and far-searching.
  But there was the old, old problem:
  Should it be celibacy, matrimony or unchastity?
  Then John Slack, the rich druggist, wooed me,
  Luring me with the promise of leisure for my novel,
  And I married him, giving birth to eight children,
  And had no time to write.
  It was all over with me, anyway,
  When I ran the needle in my hand
  While washing the baby's things,
  And died from lock—jaw, an ironical death.
  Hear me, ambitious souls,
  Sex is the curse of life.
Mrs. Merritt
  SILENT before the jury
  Returning no word to the judge when he asked me
  If I had aught to say against the sentence,
  Only shaking my head.
  What could I say to people who thought
  That a woman of thirty-five was at fault
  When her lover of nineteen killed her husband?
  Even though she had said to him over and over,
  "Go away, Elmer, go far away,
  I have maddened your brain with the gift of my body:
  You will do some terrible thing."
  And just as I feared, he killed my husband;
  With which I had nothing to do, before
  God Silent for thirty years in prison
  And the iron gates of Joliet
  Swung as the gray and silent trusties
  Carried me out in a coffin.

Regents English - Extra Help: Critical Lens Prince & Pauper // Silas Marner

The Prince and the Pauper Radio Play


Below you will find two excepts from two novels,  THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER BY MARK TWAIN and SILAS MARNER by George Eliot.  These excerpts contain many examples of the literary devices you will need for the ELA Regents and many examples for your critical lens essay.


THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER BY MARK TWAIN


Chapter I. The birth of the Prince and the Pauper.
In the ancient city of London, on a certain autumn day in the second quarter of the sixteenth century, a boy was born to a poor family of the name of Canty, who did not want him.  On the same day another English child was born to a rich family of the name of Tudor, who did want him. All England wanted him too.  England had so longed for him, and hoped for him, and prayed God for him, that, now that he was really come, the people went nearly mad for joy.  Mere acquaintances hugged and kissed each other and cried. Everybody took a holiday, and high and low, rich and poor, feasted and danced and sang, and got very mellow; and they kept this up for days and nights together.  By day, London was a sight to see, with gay banners waving from every balcony and housetop, and splendid pageants marching along.  By night, it was again a sight to see, with its great bonfires at every corner, and its troops of revellers making merry around them.  There was no talk in all England but of the new baby, Edward Tudor, Prince of Wales, who lay lapped in silks and satins, unconscious of all this fuss, and not knowing that great lords and ladies were tending him and watching over him—and not caring, either.  But there was no talk about the other baby, Tom Canty, lapped in his poor rags, except among the family of paupers whom he had just come to trouble with his presence.

By-and-by Tom's reading and dreaming about princely life wrought such a strong effect upon him that he began to ACT the prince, unconsciously. His speech and manners became curiously ceremonious and courtly, to the vast admiration and amusement of his intimates.  But Tom's influence among these young people began to grow now, day by day; and in time he came to be looked up to, by them, with a sort of wondering awe, as a superior being.  He seemed to know so much! and he could do and say such marvellous things! and withal, he was so deep and wise!  Tom's remarks, and Tom's performances, were reported by the boys to their elders; and these, also, presently began to discuss Tom Canty, and to regard him as a most gifted and extraordinary creature.  Full-grown people brought their perplexities to Tom for solution, and were often astonished at the wit and wisdom of his decisions.  In fact he was become a hero to all who knew him except his own family—these, only, saw nothing in him.

Privately, after a while, Tom organised a royal court!  He was the prince; his special comrades were guards, chamberlains, equerries, lords and ladies in waiting, and the royal family.  Daily the mock prince was received with elaborate ceremonials borrowed by Tom from his romantic readings; daily the great affairs of the mimic kingdom were discussed in the royal council, and daily his mimic highness issued decrees to his imaginary armies, navies, and viceroyalties.
After which, he would go forth in his rags and beg a few farthings, eat his poor crust, take his customary cuffs and abuse, and then stretch himself upon his handful of foul straw, and resume his empty grandeurs in his dreams.
And still his desire to look just once upon a real prince, in the flesh, grew upon him, day by day, and week by week, until at last it absorbed all other desires, and became the one passion of his life.
One January day, on his usual begging tour, he tramped despondently up and down the region round about Mincing Lane and Little East Cheap, hour after hour, bare-footed and cold, looking in at cook-shop windows and longing for the dreadful pork-pies and other deadly inventions displayed there—for to him these were dainties fit for the angels; that is, judging by the smell, they were—for it had never been his good luck to own and eat one. There was a cold drizzle of rain; the atmosphere was murky; it was a melancholy day.  At night Tom reached home so wet and tired and hungry that it was not possible for his father and grandmother to observe his forlorn condition and not be moved—after their fashion; wherefore they gave him a brisk cuffing at once and sent him to bed.  For a long time his pain and hunger, and the swearing and fighting going on in the building, kept him awake; but at last his thoughts drifted away to far, romantic lands, and he fell asleep in the company of jewelled and gilded princelings who live in vast palaces, and had servants salaaming before them or flying to execute their orders.  And then, as usual, he dreamed that HE was a princeling himself.
All night long the glories of his royal estate shone upon him; he moved among great lords and ladies, in a blaze of light, breathing perfumes, drinking in delicious music, and answering the reverent obeisances of the glittering throng as it parted to make way for him, with here a smile, and there a nod of his princely head.
And when he awoke in the morning and looked upon the wretchedness about him, his dream had had its usual effect—it had intensified the sordidness of his surroundings a thousandfold.  Then came bitterness, and heart-break, and tears.

Chapter III. Tom's meeting with the Prince.
Tom got up hungry, and sauntered hungry away, but with his thoughts busy with the shadowy splendours of his night's dreams. He wandered here and there in the city, hardly noticing where he was going, or what was happening around him.  People jostled him, and some gave him rough speech; but it was all lost on the musing boy.  By-and-by he found himself at Temple Bar, the farthest from home he had ever travelled in that direction.  He stopped and considered a moment, then fell into his imaginings again, and passed on outside the walls of London.  The Strand had ceased to be a country-road then, and regarded itself as a street, but by a strained construction; for, though there was a tolerably compact row of houses on one side of it, there were only some scattered great buildings on the other, these being palaces of rich nobles, with ample and beautiful grounds stretching to the river—grounds that are now closely packed with grim acres of brick and stone.
Tom discovered Charing Village presently, and rested himself at the beautiful cross built there by a bereaved king of earlier days; then idled down a quiet, lovely road, past the great cardinal's stately palace, toward a far more mighty and majestic palace beyond—Westminster. Tom stared in glad wonder at the vast pile of masonry, the wide-spreading wings, the frowning bastions and turrets, the huge stone gateway, with its gilded bars and its magnificent array of colossal granite lions, and other the signs and symbols of English royalty.  Was the desire of his soul to be satisfied at last?  Here, indeed, was a king's palace.  Might he not hope to see a prince now—a prince of flesh and blood, if Heaven were willing?
At each side of the gilded gate stood a living statue—that is to say, an erect and stately and motionless man-at-arms, clad from head to heel in shining steel armour.  At a respectful distance were many country folk, and people from the city, waiting for any chance glimpse of royalty that might offer.  Splendid carriages, with splendid people in them and splendid servants outside, were arriving and departing by several other noble gateways that pierced the royal enclosure.
Poor little Tom, in his rags, approached, and was moving slowly and timidly past the sentinels, with a beating heart and a rising hope, when all at once he caught sight through the golden bars of a spectacle that almost made him shout for joy.  Within was a comely boy, tanned and brown with sturdy outdoor sports and exercises, whose clothing was all of lovely silks and satins, shining with jewels; at his hip a little jewelled sword and dagger; dainty buskins on his feet, with red heels; and on his head a jaunty crimson cap, with drooping plumes fastened with a great sparkling gem.  Several gorgeous gentlemen stood near—his servants, without a doubt.  Oh! he was a prince—a prince, a living prince, a real prince—without the shadow of a question; and the prayer of the pauper-boy's heart was answered at last.
Tom's breath came quick and short with excitement, and his eyes grew big with wonder and delight.  Everything gave way in his mind instantly to one desire:  that was to get close to the prince, and have a good, devouring look at him.  Before he knew what he was about, he had his face against the gate-bars.  The next instant one of the soldiers snatched him rudely away, and sent him spinning among the gaping crowd of country gawks and London idlers.  The soldier said,—
"Mind thy manners, thou young beggar!"
The crowd jeered and laughed; but the young prince sprang to the gate with his face flushed, and his eyes flashing with indignation, and cried out,—
"How dar'st thou use a poor lad like that?  How dar'st thou use the King my father's meanest subject so?  Open the gates, and let him in!"
You should have seen that fickle crowd snatch off their hats then. You should have heard them cheer, and shout, "Long live the Prince of Wales!"
The soldiers presented arms with their halberds, opened the gates, and presented again as the little Prince of Poverty passed in, in his fluttering rags, to join hands with the Prince of Limitless Plenty.
Edward Tudor said—
"Thou lookest tired and hungry:  thou'st been treated ill.  Come with me."
Half a dozen attendants sprang forward to—I don't know what; interfere, no doubt.  But they were waved aside with a right royal gesture, and they stopped stock still where they were, like so many statues.  Edward took Tom to a rich apartment in the palace, which he called his cabinet.  By his command a repast was brought such as Tom had never encountered before except in books.  The prince, with princely delicacy and breeding, sent away the servants, so that his humble guest might not be embarrassed by their critical presence; then he sat near by, and asked questions while Tom ate.
"What is thy name, lad?"
"Tom Canty, an' it please thee, sir."
"'Tis an odd one.  Where dost live?"
"In the city, please thee, sir.  Offal Court, out of Pudding Lane."
"Offal Court!  Truly 'tis another odd one.  Hast parents?"
"Parents have I, sir, and a grand-dam likewise that is but indifferently precious to me, God forgive me if it be offence to say it—also twin sisters, Nan and Bet."
"Then is thy grand-dam not over kind to thee, I take it?"
"Neither to any other is she, so please your worship.  She hath a wicked heart, and worketh evil all her days."
"Doth she mistreat thee?"
"There be times that she stayeth her hand, being asleep or overcome with drink; but when she hath her judgment clear again, she maketh it up to me with goodly beatings."
A fierce look came into the little prince's eyes, and he cried out—
"What!  Beatings?"
"Oh, indeed, yes, please you, sir."
"BEATINGS!—and thou so frail and little.  Hark ye:  before the night come, she shall hie her to the Tower.  The King my father"—
"In sooth, you forget, sir, her low degree.  The Tower is for the great alone."
"True, indeed.  I had not thought of that.  I will consider of her punishment.  Is thy father kind to thee?"
"Not more than Gammer Canty, sir."
"Fathers be alike, mayhap.  Mine hath not a doll's temper.  He smiteth with a heavy hand, yet spareth me:  he spareth me not always with his tongue, though, sooth to say.  How doth thy mother use thee?"
"She is good, sir, and giveth me neither sorrow nor pain of any sort. And Nan and Bet are like to her in this."
"How old be these?"
"Fifteen, an' it please you, sir."
"The Lady Elizabeth, my sister, is fourteen, and the Lady Jane Grey, my cousin, is of mine own age, and comely and gracious withal; but my sister the Lady Mary, with her gloomy mien and—Look you:  do thy sisters forbid their servants to smile, lest the sin destroy their souls?"
"They?  Oh, dost think, sir, that THEY have servants?"
The little prince contemplated the little pauper gravely a moment, then said—
"And prithee, why not?  Who helpeth them undress at night?  Who attireth them when they rise?"
"None, sir.  Would'st have them take off their garment, and sleep without—like the beasts?"
"Their garment!  Have they but one?"
"Ah, good your worship, what would they do with more?  Truly they have not two bodies each."
"It is a quaint and marvellous thought!  Thy pardon, I had not meant to laugh.  But thy good Nan and thy Bet shall have raiment and lackeys enow, and that soon, too:  my cofferer shall look to it.  No, thank me not; 'tis nothing.  Thou speakest well; thou hast an easy grace in it.  Art learned?"
"I know not if I am or not, sir.  The good priest that is called Father Andrew taught me, of his kindness, from his books."
"Know'st thou the Latin?"
"But scantly, sir, I doubt."
"Learn it, lad:  'tis hard only at first.  The Greek is harder; but neither these nor any tongues else, I think, are hard to the Lady Elizabeth and my cousin.  Thou should'st hear those damsels at it!  But tell me of thy Offal Court.  Hast thou a pleasant life there?"
"In truth, yes, so please you, sir, save when one is hungry. There be Punch-and-Judy shows, and monkeys—oh such antic creatures! and so bravely dressed!—and there be plays wherein they that play do shout and fight till all are slain, and 'tis so fine to see, and costeth but a farthing—albeit 'tis main hard to get the farthing, please your worship."
"Tell me more."
"We lads of Offal Court do strive against each other with the cudgel, like to the fashion of the 'prentices, sometimes."
The prince's eyes flashed.  Said he—
"Marry, that would not I mislike.  Tell me more."
"We strive in races, sir, to see who of us shall be fleetest."
"That would I like also.  Speak on."
"In summer, sir, we wade and swim in the canals and in the river, and each doth duck his neighbour, and splatter him with water, and dive and shout and tumble and—"
"'Twould be worth my father's kingdom but to enjoy it once! Prithee go on."
"We dance and sing about the Maypole in Cheapside; we play in the sand, each covering his neighbour up; and times we make mud pastry—oh the lovely mud, it hath not its like for delightfulness in all the world!—we do fairly wallow in the mud, sir, saving your worship's presence."
"Oh, prithee, say no more, 'tis glorious!  If that I could but clothe me in raiment like to thine, and strip my feet, and revel in the mud once, just once, with none to rebuke me or forbid, meseemeth I could forego the crown!"
"And if that I could clothe me once, sweet sir, as thou art clad—just once—"
"Oho, would'st like it?  Then so shall it be.  Doff thy rags, and don these splendours, lad!  It is a brief happiness, but will be not less keen for that.  We will have it while we may, and change again before any come to molest."
A few minutes later the little Prince of Wales was garlanded with Tom's fluttering odds and ends, and the little Prince of Pauperdom was tricked out in the gaudy plumage of royalty.  The two went and stood side by side before a great mirror, and lo, a miracle: there did not seem to have been any change made!  They stared at each other, then at the glass, then at each other again.  At last the puzzled princeling said—
"What dost thou make of this?"
"Ah, good your worship, require me not to answer.  It is not meet that one of my degree should utter the thing."
"Then will _I_ utter it.  Thou hast the same hair, the same eyes, the same voice and manner, the same form and stature, the same face and countenance that I bear.  Fared we forth naked, there is none could say which was you, and which the Prince of Wales.  And, now that I am clothed as thou wert clothed, it seemeth I should be able the more nearly to feel as thou didst when the brute soldier—Hark ye, is not this a bruise upon your hand?"
"Yes; but it is a slight thing, and your worship knoweth that the poor man-at-arms—"
"Peace!  It was a shameful thing and a cruel!" cried the little prince, stamping his bare foot.  "If the King—Stir not a step till I come again! It is a command!"
In a moment he had snatched up and put away an article of national importance that lay upon a table, and was out at the door and flying through the palace grounds in his bannered rags, with a hot face and glowing eyes.  As soon as he reached the great gate, he seized the bars, and tried to shake them, shouting—
"Open!  Unbar the gates!"
The soldier that had maltreated Tom obeyed promptly; and as the prince burst through the portal, half-smothered with royal wrath, the soldier fetched him a sounding box on the ear that sent him whirling to the roadway, and said—
"Take that, thou beggar's spawn, for what thou got'st me from his Highness!"
The crowd roared with laughter.  The prince picked himself out of the mud, and made fiercely at the sentry, shouting—
"I am the Prince of Wales, my person is sacred; and thou shalt hang for laying thy hand upon me!"
The soldier brought his halberd to a present-arms and said mockingly—
"I salute your gracious Highness."  Then angrily—"Be off, thou crazy rubbish!"

SILAS MARNER BY GEORGE ELIOT

CHAPTER IX

Godfrey rose and took his own breakfast earlier than usual, but lingered in the wainscoted parlour till his younger brothers had finished their meal and gone out; awaiting his father, who always took a walk with his managing-man before breakfast. Every one breakfasted at a different hour in the Red House, and the Squire was always the latest, giving a long chance to a rather feeble morning appetite before he tried it. The table had been spread with substantial eatables nearly two hours before he presented himself—a tall, stout man of sixty, with a face in which the knit brow and rather hard glance seemed contradicted by the slack and feeble mouth. His person showed marks of habitual neglect, his dress was slovenly; and yet there was something in the presence of the old Squire distinguishable from that of the ordinary farmers in the parish, who were perhaps every whit as refined as he, but, having slouched their way through life with a consciousness of being in the vicinity of their "betters", wanted that self-possession and authoritativeness of voice and carriage which belonged to a man who thought of superiors as remote existences with whom he had personally little more to do than with America or the stars. The Squire had been used to parish homage all his life, used to the presupposition that his family, his tankards, and everything that was his, were the oldest and best; and as he never associated with any gentry higher than himself, his opinion was not disturbed by comparison.
He glanced at his son as he entered the room, and said, "What, sir! haven't you had your breakfast yet?" but there was no pleasant morning greeting between them; not because of any unfriendliness, but because the sweet flower of courtesy is not a growth of such homes as the Red House.
"Yes, sir," said Godfrey, "I've had my breakfast, but I was waiting to speak to you."
"Ah! well," said the Squire, throwing himself indifferently into his chair, and speaking in a ponderous coughing fashion, which was felt in Raveloe to be a sort of privilege of his rank, while he cut a piece of beef, and held it up before the deer-hound that had come in with him. "Ring the bell for my ale, will you? You youngsters' business is your own pleasure, mostly. There's no hurry about it for anybody but yourselves."
The Squire's life was quite as idle as his sons', but it was a fiction kept up by himself and his contemporaries in Raveloe that youth was exclusively the period of folly, and that their aged wisdom was constantly in a state of endurance mitigated by sarcasm. Godfrey waited, before he spoke again, until the ale had been brought and the door closed—an interval during which Fleet, the deer-hound, had consumed enough bits of beef to make a poor man's holiday dinner.
"There's been a cursed piece of ill-luck with Wildfire," he began; "happened the day before yesterday."
"What! broke his knees?" said the Squire, after taking a draught of ale. "I thought you knew how to ride better than that, sir. I never threw a horse down in my life. If I had, I might ha' whistled for another, for my father wasn't quite so ready to unstring as some other fathers I know of. But they must turn over a new leaf—they must. What with mortgages and arrears, I'm as short o' cash as a roadside pauper. I've told Winthrop to go to Cox this very day. The lying scoundrel told me he'd be sure to pay me a hundred last month. He takes advantage because he's on that outlying farm, and thinks I shall forget him."
The Squire had delivered this speech in a coughing and interrupted manner, but with no pause long enough for Godfrey to make it a pretext for taking up the word again. He felt that his father meant to ward off any request for money on the ground of the misfortune with Wildfire, and that the emphasis he had thus been led to lay on his shortness of cash and his arrears was likely to produce an attitude of mind the utmost unfavourable for his own disclosure. But he must go on, now he had begun.
"It's worse than breaking the horse's knees—he's been staked and killed," he said, as soon as his father was silent, and had begun to cut his meat. "But I wasn't thinking of asking you to buy me another horse; I was only thinking I'd lost the means of paying you with the price of Wildfire, as I'd meant to do. Dunsey took him to the hunt to sell him for me the other day, and after he'd made a bargain for a hundred and twenty with Bryce, he went after the hounds, and took some fool's leap or other that did for the horse at once. If it hadn't been for that, I should have paid you a hundred pounds this morning."
The Squire had laid down his knife and fork, and was staring at his son in amazement, not being sufficiently quick of brain to form a probable guess as to what could have caused so strange an inversion of the paternal and filial relations as this proposition of his son to pay him a hundred pounds.
"The truth is, sir—I'm very sorry—I was quite to blame," said Godfrey. "Fowler did pay that hundred pounds. He paid it to me, when I was over there one day last month. And Dunsey bothered me for the money, and I let him have it, because I hoped I should be able to pay it you before this."
The Squire was purple with anger before his son had done speaking, and found utterance difficult. "You let Dunsey have it, sir? And how long have you been so thick with Dunsey that you must collogue with him to embezzle my money? Are you turning out a scamp? I tell you I won't have it. I'll turn the whole pack of you out of the house together, and marry again. I'd have you to remember, sir, my property's got no entail on it;—since my grandfather's time the Casses can do as they like with their land. Remember that, sir. Let Dunsey have the money! Why should you let Dunsey have the money? There's some lie at the bottom of it."
"There's no lie, sir," said Godfrey. "I wouldn't have spent the money myself, but Dunsey bothered me, and I was a fool, and let him have it. But I meant to pay it, whether he did or not. That's the whole story. I never meant to embezzle money, and I'm not the man to do it. You never knew me do a dishonest trick, sir."
"Where's Dunsey, then? What do you stand talking there for? Go and fetch Dunsey, as I tell you, and let him give account of what he wanted the money for, and what he's done with it. He shall repent it. I'll turn him out. I said I would, and I'll do it. He shan't brave me. Go and fetch him."
"Dunsey isn't come back, sir."
"What! did he break his own neck, then?" said the Squire, with some disgust at the idea that, in that case, he could not fulfil his threat.
"No, he wasn't hurt, I believe, for the horse was found dead, and Dunsey must have walked off. I daresay we shall see him again by-and-by. I don't know where he is."
"And what must you be letting him have my money for? Answer me that," said the Squire, attacking Godfrey again, since Dunsey was not within reach.
"Well, sir, I don't know," said Godfrey, hesitatingly. That was a feeble evasion, but Godfrey was not fond of lying, and, not being sufficiently aware that no sort of duplicity can long flourish without the help of vocal falsehoods, he was quite unprepared with invented motives.
"You don't know? I tell you what it is, sir. You've been up to some trick, and you've been bribing him not to tell," said the Squire, with a sudden acuteness which startled Godfrey, who felt his heart beat violently at the nearness of his father's guess. The sudden alarm pushed him on to take the next step—a very slight impulse suffices for that on a downward road.
"Why, sir," he said, trying to speak with careless ease, "it was a little affair between me and Dunsey; it's no matter to anybody else. It's hardly worth while to pry into young men's fooleries: it wouldn't have made any difference to you, sir, if I'd not had the bad luck to lose Wildfire. I should have paid you the money."
"Fooleries! Pshaw! it's time you'd done with fooleries. And I'd have you know, sir, you must ha' done with 'em," said the Squire, frowning and casting an angry glance at his son. "Your goings-on are not what I shall find money for any longer. There's my grandfather had his stables full o' horses, and kept a good house, too, and in worse times, by what I can make out; and so might I, if I hadn't four good-for-nothing fellows to hang on me like horse-leeches. I've been too good a father to you all—that's what it is. But I shall pull up, sir."
Godfrey was silent. He was not likely to be very penetrating in his judgments, but he had always had a sense that his father's indulgence had not been kindness, and had had a vague longing for some discipline that would have checked his own errant weakness and helped his better will. The Squire ate his bread and meat hastily, took a deep draught of ale, then turned his chair from the table, and began to speak again.
"It'll be all the worse for you, you know—you'd need try and help me keep things together."
"Well, sir, I've often offered to take the management of things, but you know you've taken it ill always, and seemed to think I wanted to push you out of your place."
"I know nothing o' your offering or o' my taking it ill," said the Squire, whose memory consisted in certain strong impressions unmodified by detail; "but I know, one while you seemed to be thinking o' marrying, and I didn't offer to put any obstacles in your way, as some fathers would. I'd as lieve you married Lammeter's daughter as anybody. I suppose, if I'd said you nay, you'd ha' kept on with it; but, for want o' contradiction, you've changed your mind. You're a shilly-shally fellow: you take after your poor mother. She never had a will of her own; a woman has no call for one, if she's got a proper man for her husband. But your wife had need have one, for you hardly know your own mind enough to make both your legs walk one way. The lass hasn't said downright she won't have you, has she?"
"No," said Godfrey, feeling very hot and uncomfortable; "but I don't think she will."
"Think! why haven't you the courage to ask her? Do you stick to it, you want to have her—that's the thing?"
"There's no other woman I want to marry," said Godfrey, evasively.
"Well, then, let me make the offer for you, that's all, if you haven't the pluck to do it yourself. Lammeter isn't likely to be loath for his daughter to marry into my family, I should think. And as for the pretty lass, she wouldn't have her cousin—and there's nobody else, as I see, could ha' stood in your way."
"I'd rather let it be, please sir, at present," said Godfrey, in alarm. "I think she's a little offended with me just now, and I should like to speak for myself. A man must manage these things for himself."
"Well, speak, then, and manage it, and see if you can't turn over a new leaf. That's what a man must do when he thinks o' marrying."
"I don't see how I can think of it at present, sir. You wouldn't like to settle me on one of the farms, I suppose, and I don't think she'd come to live in this house with all my brothers. It's a different sort of life to what she's been used to."
"Not come to live in this house? Don't tell me. You ask her, that's all," said the Squire, with a short, scornful laugh. "I'd rather let the thing be, at present, sir," said Godfrey. "I hope you won't try to hurry it on by saying anything."
"I shall do what I choose," said the Squire, "and I shall let you know I'm master; else you may turn out and find an estate to drop into somewhere else. Go out and tell Winthrop not to go to Cox's, but wait for me. And tell 'em to get my horse saddled. And stop: look out and get that hack o' Dunsey's sold, and hand me the money, will you? He'll keep no more hacks at my expense. And if you know where he's sneaking—I daresay you do—you may tell him to spare himself the journey o' coming back home. Let him turn ostler, and keep himself. He shan't hang on me any more."
"I don't know where he is, sir; and if I did, it isn't my place to tell him to keep away," said Godfrey, moving towards the door.
"Confound it, sir, don't stay arguing, but go and order my horse," said the Squire, taking up a pipe.
Godfrey left the room, hardly knowing whether he were more relieved by the sense that the interview was ended without having made any change in his position, or more uneasy that he had entangled himself still further in prevarication and deceit. What had passed about his proposing to Nancy had raised a new alarm, lest by some after-dinner words of his father's to Mr. Lammeter he should be thrown into the embarrassment of being obliged absolutely to decline her when she seemed to be within his reach. He fled to his usual refuge, that of hoping for some unforeseen turn of fortune, some favourable chance which would save him from unpleasant consequences—perhaps even justify his insincerity by manifesting its prudence. And in this point of trusting to some throw of fortune's dice, Godfrey can hardly be called specially old-fashioned. Favourable Chance, I fancy, is the god of all men who follow their own devices instead of obeying a law they believe in. Let even a polished man of these days get into a position he is ashamed to avow, and his mind will be bent on all the possible issues that may deliver him from the calculable results of that position. Let him live outside his income, or shirk the resolute honest work that brings wages, and he will presently find himself dreaming of a possible benefactor, a possible simpleton who may be cajoled into using his interest, a possible state of mind in some possible person not yet forthcoming. Let him neglect the responsibilities of his office, and he will inevitably anchor himself on the chance that the thing left undone may turn out not to be of the supposed importance. Let him betray his friend's confidence, and he will adore that same cunning complexity called Chance, which gives him the hope that his friend will never know. Let him forsake a decent craft that he may pursue the gentilities of a profession to which nature never called him, and his religion will infallibly be the worship of blessed Chance, which he will believe in as the mighty creator of success. The evil principle deprecated in that religion is the orderly sequence by which the seed brings forth a crop after its kind.

Chapter XIV

And when the sunshine grew strong and lasting, so that the buttercups were thick in the meadows, Silas might be seen in the sunny midday, or in the late afternoon when the shadows were lengthening under the hedgerows, strolling out with uncovered head to carry Eppie beyond the Stone-pits to where the flowers grew, till they reached some favourite bank where he could sit down, while Eppie toddled to pluck the flowers, and make remarks to the winged things that murmured happily above the bright petals, calling "Dad-dad's" attention continually by bringing him the flowers. Then she would turn her ear to some sudden bird-note, and Silas learned to please her by making signs of hushed stillness, that they might listen for the note to come again: so that when it came, she set up her small back and laughed with gurgling triumph. Sitting on the banks in this way, Silas began to look for the once familiar herbs again; and as the leaves, with their unchanged outline and markings, lay on his palm, there was a sense of crowding remembrances from which he turned away timidly, taking refuge in Eppie's little world, that lay lightly on his enfeebled spirit.
As the child's mind was growing into knowledge, his mind was growing into memory: as her life unfolded, his soul, long stupefied in a cold narrow prison, was unfolding too, and trembling gradually into full consciousness.
It was an influence which must gather force with every new year: the tones that stirred Silas's heart grew articulate, and called for more distinct answers; shapes and sounds grew clearer for Eppie's eyes and ears, and there was more that "Dad-dad" was imperatively required to notice and account for. Also, by the time Eppie was three years old, she developed a fine capacity for mischief, and for devising ingenious ways of being troublesome, which found much exercise, not only for Silas's patience, but for his watchfulness and penetration. Sorely was poor Silas puzzled on such occasions by the incompatible demands of love. Dolly Winthrop told him that punishment was good for Eppie, and that, as for rearing a child without making it tingle a little in soft and safe places now and then, it was not to be done.
"To be sure, there's another thing you might do, Master Marner," added Dolly, meditatively: "you might shut her up once i' the coal-hole. That was what I did wi' Aaron; for I was that silly wi' the youngest lad, as I could never bear to smack him. Not as I could find i' my heart to let him stay i' the coal-hole more nor a minute, but it was enough to colly him all over, so as he must be new washed and dressed, and it was as good as a rod to him—that was. But I put it upo' your conscience, Master Marner, as there's one of 'em you must choose—ayther smacking or the coal-hole—else she'll get so masterful, there'll be no holding her."
Silas was impressed with the melancholy truth of this last remark; but his force of mind failed before the only two penal methods open to him, not only because it was painful to him to hurt Eppie, but because he trembled at a moment's contention with her, lest she should love him the less for it. Let even an affectionate Goliath get himself tied to a small tender thing, dreading to hurt it by pulling, and dreading still more to snap the cord, and which of the two, pray, will be master? It was clear that Eppie, with her short toddling steps, must lead father Silas a pretty dance on any fine morning when circumstances favoured mischief.
For example. He had wisely chosen a broad strip of linen as a means of fastening her to his loom when he was busy: it made a broad belt round her waist, and was long enough to allow of her reaching the truckle-bed and sitting down on it, but not long enough for her to attempt any dangerous climbing. One bright summer's morning Silas had been more engrossed than usual in "setting up" a new piece of work, an occasion on which his scissors were in requisition. These scissors, owing to an especial warning of Dolly's, had been kept carefully out of Eppie's reach; but the click of them had had a peculiar attraction for her ear, and watching the results of that click, she had derived the philosophic lesson that the same cause would produce the same effect. Silas had seated himself in his loom, and the noise of weaving had begun; but he had left his scissors on a ledge which Eppie's arm was long enough to reach; and now, like a small mouse, watching her opportunity, she stole quietly from her corner, secured the scissors, and toddled to the bed again, setting up her back as a mode of concealing the fact. She had a distinct intention as to the use of the scissors; and having cut the linen strip in a jagged but effectual manner, in two moments she had run out at the open door where the sunshine was inviting her, while poor Silas believed her to be a better child than usual. It was not until he happened to need his scissors that the terrible fact burst upon him: Eppie had run out by herself—had perhaps fallen into the Stone-pit. Silas, shaken by the worst fear that could have befallen him, rushed out, calling "Eppie!" and ran eagerly about the unenclosed space, exploring the dry cavities into which she might have fallen, and then gazing with questioning dread at the smooth red surface of the water. The cold drops stood on his brow. How long had she been out? There was one hope—that she had crept through the stile and got into the fields, where he habitually took her to stroll. But the grass was high in the meadow, and there was no descrying her, if she were there, except by a close search that would be a trespass on Mr. Osgood's crop. Still, that misdemeanour must be committed; and poor Silas, after peering all round the hedgerows, traversed the grass, beginning with perturbed vision to see Eppie behind every group of red sorrel, and to see her moving always farther off as he approached. The meadow was searched in vain; and he got over the stile into the next field, looking with dying hope towards a small pond which was now reduced to its summer shallowness, so as to leave a wide margin of good adhesive mud. Here, however, sat Eppie, discoursing cheerfully to her own small boot, which she was using as a bucket to convey the water into a deep hoof-mark, while her little naked foot was planted comfortably on a cushion of olive-green mud. A red-headed calf was observing her with alarmed doubt through the opposite hedge.
Here was clearly a case of aberration in a christened child which demanded severe treatment; but Silas, overcome with convulsive joy at finding his treasure again, could do nothing but snatch her up, and cover her with half-sobbing kisses. It was not until he had carried her home, and had begun to think of the necessary washing, that he recollected the need that he should punish Eppie, and "make her remember". The idea that she might run away again and come to harm, gave him unusual resolution, and for the first time he determined to try the coal-hole—a small closet near the hearth.
"Naughty, naughty Eppie," he suddenly began, holding her on his knee, and pointing to her muddy feet and clothes—"naughty to cut with the scissors and run away. Eppie must go into the coal-hole for being naughty. Daddy must put her in the coal-hole."
He half-expected that this would be shock enough, and that Eppie would begin to cry. But instead of that, she began to shake herself on his knee, as if the proposition opened a pleasing novelty. Seeing that he must proceed to extremities, he put her into the coal-hole, and held the door closed, with a trembling sense that he was using a strong measure. For a moment there was silence, but then came a little cry, "Opy, opy!" and Silas let her out again, saying, "Now Eppie 'ull never be naughty again, else she must go in the coal-hole—a black naughty place."
The weaving must stand still a long while this morning, for now Eppie must be washed, and have clean clothes on; but it was to be hoped that this punishment would have a lasting effect, and save time in future—though, perhaps, it would have been better if Eppie had cried more.
In half an hour she was clean again, and Silas having turned his back to see what he could do with the linen band, threw it down again, with the reflection that Eppie would be good without fastening for the rest of the morning. He turned round again, and was going to place her in her little chair near the loom, when she peeped out at him with black face and hands again, and said, "Eppie in de toal-hole!"
This total failure of the coal-hole discipline shook Silas's belief in the efficacy of punishment. "She'd take it all for fun," he observed to Dolly, "if I didn't hurt her, and that I can't do, Mrs. Winthrop. If she makes me a bit o' trouble, I can bear it. And she's got no tricks but what she'll grow out of."
"Well, that's partly true, Master Marner," said Dolly, sympathetically; "and if you can't bring your mind to frighten her off touching things, you must do what you can to keep 'em out of her way. That's what I do wi' the pups as the lads are allays a-rearing. They will worry and gnaw—worry and gnaw they will, if it was one's Sunday cap as hung anywhere so as they could drag it. They know no difference, God help 'em: it's the pushing o' the teeth as sets 'em on, that's what it is."
So Eppie was reared without punishment, the burden of her misdeeds being borne vicariously by father Silas. The stone hut was made a soft nest for her, lined with downy patience: and also in the world that lay beyond the stone hut she knew nothing of frowns and denials.