-Q-
The other man took him by the arm.
"I think you ought to be told, ma'am," he said. "This gentleman's name is Blumberger. He is an architect. I work in the same office with him. He has been drawing a plan for a new city hall. It was a prize competition. He finished inking the lines yesterday. You know an architect always makes his drawing in pencil first. When it's done, he rubs out the pencil lines with stale bread. It's better than Indian rubber. Blumberger has been buying the bread here. Well, that butter, ma'am, isn't ... well. Blumberger's plan isn't good for anything now."
Miss Martha went to the back room. She took off her blue silk blouse and put on the old brown one she had always worn before.
Приложение 2
A Sympathetic Heart
by O'Henry
Miss Martha Meacham was a middle-aged woman with two false teeth and a sympathetic heart. She kept a little bakery. She began to take an interest in a customer, who always bought stale bread. He had worn clothes and good manners. Once when he came into the bakery to buy his stale bread, they heard a fire engine going by. The man looked out of the window and Miss Martha seized the opportunity: she made a deep cut in each loaf and put a large piece of butter inside.
The man, named Mr. Blumberger, was an architect. He was drawing a plan for a new city-hall. It was a prize competition. He had finished inking the lines and needed to rub out the pencil lines. He used stale bread to do this. Miss Martha's bread with butter ruined his work. It was not good for anything.
Литература
Нуждина М.А. К вопросу управления процессом порождения речевого произведения на основе текста//Иностр. языки в школе. - 2002. - № 2.
Е.В. Иличкина,
муниципальная Ближнеосиновская средняя общеобразовательная школа, х. Ближнеосиновский Суровиковского р-на Волгоградской обл.
FAMOUS SCOTS.
FAMOUS SCOTTISH WRITERS
"Of all the small nations of this earth, perhaps only the ancient Greeks surpass the Scots in their contribution to mankind."
Winston S. Churchill
ROBERT BURNS (1759 - 1796) POET
William Burnes (his children dropped the "e" from the name) moved to Alloway, Ayrshire to be a head-gardener on the estate of Dr. Ferguson.
He was a stern1, upright2 man and when he married he was determined that his family would grow up independent, educated and God-fearing. William's wife, Agnes Broun, daughter of a neighbouring tenant farmer in Ayrshire, couldn't read or write but she had a beautiful voice, and knew a lot of Scottish songs. And her son, Robert Burns, enjoyed her songs most of all.
Another person who influenced him was his mother's maid. "In my infant and boyhood days", wrote Robert "I owed much to an old maidservant of my mother's who was remarkable for her ignorance, credulity3, and superstition - she had, I suppose, the largest collection in the country of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies,
-Q-
witches, warlocks4, wraiths5, apparitions,6 cantrips7, giants, enchanted towers, dragons, and other trumpery8".
Robert's father was determined that his two sons should be well-educated. That's why when Robert was six years old, William Burnes sent his sons to the local school where the teacher, John Murdoch aged 18, had been interviewed and appointed by William Burnes and four of his neighbours, to teach their children.
The books that Murdoch used for their English lessons were The Spelling Book, the Bible, Fisher's English Grammar, and Mas-son's Collection of Prose and Verse.
Robert and his brother Gilbert committed themselves to learning the meaning of every word in each sentence they read. They also learnt to turn verse into prose. Later Robert Burns never had any difficulty in expressing himself clearly and precisely.
When John Murdoch moved to a school in Ayr in 1771, William Burnes sent Robert, aged 12, with him to continue his education, to learn French, to study Latin and to read. Robert was reading everything that he could get his hands on: Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Pope and Addison. Apart from the fiction of Henry Fielding, the philosophy and history of David Hume and William Robertson, Robert Burns knew the works of the predecessors9 in Scottish literature, Allan Ramsay and Robert Ferguson. He also read French and Latin. In literature, Burns was surely one of the educated young men of his generation.
There was a darker side to life. The family moved to a neighbouring farm at Mount Oliphant, seventy acres of badly drained ground where William Burnes struggled to make ends meet together10 for twelve years. During that time Robert performed a man's work. This hard work irreversibly11 damaged his heart. Gilbert believed that Robert's later melancholia and depression which haunted him all his adult life stemmed from this time. Robert Burns was often afflicted12 with a headache, which later was exchanged for a palpitation13 of the heart. And Robert's drastic measures to stop the palpitations included keeping a bucket of water at his bedside into which he stuck his head in the hope of relieving the spasm.
In 1777 Robert's father decided to take the lease 14 of Lochlie Farm. In farming terms, it was a better bargain15 than Mount Oliphant.
For the next four years the family enjoyed a more comfortable lifestyle and Robert found new friends in the nearby farms and villages.
In 1780 the Tarbolton Bachelors' Club was founded and Robert became one of its leading lights16, gaining confidence through taking part in discussions and singing songs. He also joined the Tarbolton Dancing Class and later the Masonic Lodge. It is believed that due to this early masonic commitment Robert Burns found his later entry into Edinburgh made easier.
In 1784 his father William Burnes died bankrupt. Robert was 24 and he and brother Gilbert moved the family to a rented farm at nearby Mossgiel.
In 1785, his first illegitimate17 child, a daughter, was born to Elizabeth Paton, one of the servants on the farm. By the end of the same year Robert Burns had wooed18 and won Jean Armour. Soon he married Jean Armour; it was a happy marriage and they had several children.
It was for Jean that he wrote the most beautiful and touching love song ever written:
O my luve is like a red, red rose That's newly sprung in June; O my luve is like the melodie That's sweetly play'd in tune. As fair art thou, my bonie lass, So deep in luve am I; And I will luve thee still, my dear, Till a' the seas gang dry.
Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks melt wi' the sun; And I will luve thee still, my dear, While the sands o' life shall run. And fare thee weel, my only luve! And fare thee weel a while! And I will come again, my luve, Tho' it were ten thousand mile!
There are no finer similes19 in love poetry than those with which the song opens, simple, beautiful and sincere. In the second stanza the song thrills us with its picture of love that conquers time and space.
On 31st July 1786 the Kilmarnock edition of Burns' Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect was published and in one month the total 612 copies were sold out. It caused an immediate stir in literary circles. He was called "wonder" and the drawing rooms of aristocratic Edinburgh opened up to him in November
-Q-
1786, though they hailed him as a "heaven-taught ploughman". It was in Edinburgh that he wrote his Address to a Haggis. It is one of Burns' most spirited poems, written in a mock-heroic manner. The haggis - consisting of the heart, lungs, and liver of a sheep, chopped up, and mixed with oatmeal, minced suet20 and onions - is a simple food. But every detail of the feast is described in very high and poetic style. The humorous effect is heightened further, when the Frenchman is contrasted with the Scotsman, haggis-fed and too strong to be defeated. Two years later Burns wrote what is probably the best known song in the world, Auld Lang Syne:
Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And never brought to mind? Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And auld lang syne!
It is based on an old song, but Robert Burns made his own by the force of his genius. The first and the last verses have been adopted the world over as the song of friendship and good fellowship.
Some years later he wrote Tam o'Shanter in which he reflects on his own life :
But pleasures are like poppies spread, You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed; Or like the snow falls in the river, A moment white - then melts for ever, Or like the borealis race That flit ere you can point their place; Or like the rainbow's lovely form Evanishing amid the storm.
This famous poem was composed almost as quickly as the poet could write it. To the end of his life he considered it his best poem.
On 21st July, 1796, at the age of 37 Robert Burns died. He was not neglected in death as he had feared. His body was carried in its coffin to the Dumfries Council Chambers where a military funeral by the Royal Dumfries Volunteers took place. He was buried in St. Michael's Churchyard.
Robert Burns lived only in Scotland, yet his poetry and song had universal appeal. Burns was a firm patriot, and his popularity with the Scots is reaffirmed21 annually in the Burns Night celebrations held worldwide on his birthday, 25th January
WALTER SCOTT (1777 - 1832) NOVELIST AND POET
Walter Scott was the creator of the historical novel combining past events with the sense of adventure. But he did more than this. Before his Waverley novels, and his ballads, the Scots were almost completely ignorant of Scotland's past. It is also said that his writings were responsible for the Romantic movement in France which yielded22 such writer as Victor Hugo and painters such as Corot and Millet.
Walter Scott was born on 15th August, 1771, in the family of Walter Scott, a solicitor. When he was 18 months old, a paralysis struck him and he lost all power of his right leg. The next three years the boy spent at his grandfather's in the Borders, absorbing stories and legends.
He attended Edinburg
Для дальнейшего прочтения статьи необходимо приобрести полный текст. Статьи высылаются в формате PDF на указанную при оплате почту. Время доставки составляет менее 10 минут. Стоимость одной статьи — 150 рублей.