Exercises

1. Listen to the chapter with your book closed and put the statements in the correct order.

1. Martin spent hours on end in the servant’s room reading.

2. The books in the library pressed upon Martin and crushed him.

3. Martin’s dwelling differed much from Ruth’s home.

4. Ruth had fired with love.

5. Martin liked his sister and nephew.

6. Martin did not exactly know how to behave in the company of such a girl as Ruth was.

7. Martin thought the library was a most lovely place for Ruth.

2. Learn the words from the text:

exclamation, irritation, aware, repulsive, mean, soothe, value, affectionate, crush, swear, vain, abandon, consent, obtain, dare, undergo, misadventure, vanish.

3. Complete the sentences using the words from the text. Make the changes where necessary.

1. He did not .......... say what he thought.

2. The newspaper reports of scandals are a constant source of .......... for the president.

3. The magician .......... in a puff of smoke.

4. They are .......... of dangers.

5. His mother .......... abandoned him when he was five years old.

6. What a .......... man.

7. The winner will receive a prize to the .......... of 10,000.

8. Don’t be so .......... to your little brother.

9. She was doing her best to .......... her crying baby.

4. Choose a word to match the following definitions.

1) to disappear suddenly

2) something that you say suddenly loudly

3) to experience something

4) a feeling of being annoyed or impatient

5) showing caring feelings and love for somebody

6) knowing about a situation or a fact

7) the amount of money that is something worth

8) very unpleasant

9) to make somebody who feels upset fell calmer

10) cruel or unkind

5. Find in the text the English equivalents for:

самый замечательный день в жизни, выместить свою досаду, библиотечные порядки, запас человеческих знаний, заполнить бланки, получить согласие, глядеть украдкой, в известном смысле, до этого времени, зажечь чувство любви.

6. Find the words in the text for which the following are synonyms:

suffer, declare, futile, permission, accident, break, offensive, annoyance, disappear, calm.

7. Say the following statements in your own words.

1. His sister visited her irritation upon one of her numerous progeny.

2. He was aware that the whole thing was repulsive and mean.

3. He had no idea of the value of money.

4. He wanted to be affectionate to his sister.

5. He had always been her favourite.

6. He did not know the way of libraries.

7. He had never dreamed that the fund of human knowledge bulked so big.

8. He abandoned his search.

9. He was walking near the home stealing glimpses at the windows.

10. Ruth had fired Martin with love.

8. Explain and expand on the following.

1. Next morning Martin awoke in a steamy atmosphere.

2. “A nickel would have been enough,” Gertrude said.

3. Martin wanted to be affectionate to his sister.

4. From every side the books seemed to press upon him and crush him.

5. He had never dreamed that the fund of human knowledge bulked so big.

6. One day he received another proof of enormous distance that separated Ruth from him.

7. In one way Martin had undergone a moral revolution.

8. The reform went deeper than mere outward appearance.

9. Answer the following questions.

1. How did Martin feel at home?

2. Why wasn’t Martin’s sister contented?

3. Why did Martin want to be affectionate to Gertrude?

4. Why did Martin decide to visit the Oakland Library?

5. What kind of books did he find there?

6. Why did he search for the books on etiquette?

7. Why did he make out application blanks for membership for all his family?

8. Why did he decide to change his life?

10. Correct the statements.

1. Next morning Martin awoke in his hotel room.

2. Martin wanted to give his nephew some money but he did not have any.

3. His sister was happy to learn that Martin had given a child a quarter.

4. Martin did not like his sister.

5. Martin went to the Oakland Library because Ruth worked there.

6. Martin had rather delicate manners.

7. Martin did not want to go to the library any more.

8. He spent days and nights near Ruth’s neighbourhood.

9. Martin had not changed a bit.

11. Develop the following statements.

1. Martin awoke next morning from the rosy scenes of dream to a steamy atmosphere of his dwelling.

2. Gertrude liked her brother who was her favourite.

3. Martin decided to visit the Oakland Library.

4. The books seemed to press upon Martin and crush him.

5. He had not found what he wanted.

6. Martin dared not go near Ruth’s neighbourhood at day time.

7. Martin had undergone a moral revolution.

12. Retell the chapter from the persons of Martin Eden, Martin’s sister Gertrude, the librarian.

Chapter III

A week of heavy reading had passed since the evening he first met Ruth Morse, and still he dared not call. He did not know the proper time to call, nor was there anyone to tell him, and he was afraid of making a blunder. Having shaken himself free from his old companions and old ways of life, and having no new companions, nothing remained for him but to read, and the long hours he devoted to it would have ruined a dozen pairs of ordinary eyes. But his eyes were strong.

It seemed to him, by the end of the week, that he had lived centuries, so far behind were the old life and outlook. He attempted to read books that required years of preliminary specialisation. One day he would read a book of antiquated philosophy, and the next day one that was ultra-modern, so that his head would be whirling with the conflict and contradiction of ideas. He would sit up in bed, and the dictionary was in front of him more often than the book. He looked up so many new words that, when they recurred, he had forgotten their meaning, and had to look them up again. He devised the plan of writing definitions in a notebook, and filled page after page with them. And still he could not always understand what he read.

He read much poetry, finding his greatest joy in the simpler poets, who were more understandable. He loved beauty, and there he found beauty. Poetry, like music, stirred him profoundly; and though he did not know it, he was preparing his mind for the heavier work that would come later.

The man at the desk in the library had seen Martin there so often that he had become quite pleasant, always greeting him with a smile and a nod when he entered.

One day Martin blurted out:

“Say, there’s something I’d like to ask you.”

The man smiled and paid attention.

“When you meet a young lady an’ she asks you to call, how soon can you call?”

“Why, I’d say any time,” the man answered.

“What is the best time to call? The afternoon – not too close to meal-time? Or the evening? Or Sunday?”

“I’ll tell you,” the librarian said, with a brightening face. “You call her up on the telephone and find out.”

“I’ll do it,” he said, picking up his books and starting away.

He turned back and asked: “When you’re speakin’ to a young lady – say, for instance, Miss Lizzie Smith – do you say ‘Miss Lizzie’ or ‘Miss Smith?’”

“Say ‘Miss Smith,’” the librarian stated authoritatively. “Say ‘Miss Smith’ always – until you know her better.”

So it was that Martin Eden solved the problem.

“Come down any time; I’ll be at home all afternoon,” was Ruth’s reply over the telephone to his stammered request as to when he could return the books she had given him.

She met him at the door herself, and her woman’s eye took in immediately the creased trousers, and the slight, but indefinable, change in him for the better.

Once they were seated in the drawing-room, he began to get on easily. She made it easy for him. They talked first of the borrowed books; she led the conversation on from subject to subject, while she pondered the problem of how she could help him. She had thought of this often since their first meeting. She wanted to help him.

“I wonder if I can get some advice from you”, he said. “You remember the other time I was here I said I couldn’t talk about books and things because I didn’t know how? Well, I’ve ben doin’ a lot of thinkin’ ever since.I’ve ben to the library a whole lot, but most of the books I’ve tackled have ben over my head. Mebbe I’d better begin at the beginnin’. I’ve worked pretty hard ever since I was a kid, an’ since I’ve ben to the library, lookin’ with new eyes at books – an’ lookin’ at new books, too – I’ve concluded that I ain’t ben reading the right kind. But I ain’t got to the point yet. Here it is: I want to make my way to the kind of life you have in this house. Now, how am I goin’ to get it? Where do I begin? I’m willin’ to work. Once I get started, I’ll work night an’ day. Mebbe you think it’s funny, me askin’ you about all this. I know you’re the last person in the world I ought to ask, but I don’t know anybody else I could ask…”

His voice died away. He feared he had made a fool of himself. Ruth did not speak immediately. Her face was all sympathy when she did speak.

“What you need you realize yourself, and it is education. You should go back and finish grammar-school, and then go through the high school and University.”

“But that takes money,” he interrupted.

“Oh!” she cried, “I had not thought of that. But, then, you have relatives – somebody who could assist you?”

He shook his head.

“My father and mother are dead. I’ve two sisters – one married, an’ the other’ll get married soon, I suppose. Then I’ve a string of brothers – I’m the youngest – but they never helped nobody. The oldest died in India. Two are in South Africa now, an’ another’s on a whaling voyage, an’ one’s travellin’ with a circus – he does trapeze-work. An’ I guess I’m just like them. I’ve taken care of myself since I was eleven – that’s when my mother died. I’ve got to study by myself I guess, an’ what I want to know is where to begin.”

“I should say the first thing of all would be to get a grammar book. Your grammar is…” She had intended saying “awful,” but she amended it to, “is not particularly good.”

He flushed and sweated.

“I know I must talk a lot of slang an’ words you don’t understand. But, then, they’re only words I know… how to speak. I’ve got other words in my mind – picked ’emup from books – but I can’t pronounce ’em, so I don’t use ’em.”

“It isn’t what you say so much as how you say it. You don’t mind my being frank, do you? I don’t want to hurt you.”

“No, no!” he cried; while he secretly blessed her for her kindness. “Fire away; I’ve got to know, and I’d sooner know from you than anybody else.”

“Well, then, you say ‘You was’; it should be ‘You were.’ You say ‘I seen’ for ‘I saw.’ You use the double negative…”

“What’s the double negative?” he demanded, then added humbly: “You see, I don’t even understand your explanations.”

“I’m afraid I didn’t explain that,” she smiled. “A double negative is… let me see – well, you say, ‘Never helped nobody.’ ‘Never’ is a negative. ‘Nobody’ is another negative. It is a rule that two negatives make a positive. ‘Never helped nobody’ means that, not helping nobody, they must have helped somebody.”

“That’s pretty clear,” he said. “I never thought of it before, and I’ll never say it again.”

“You’ll find it all in the grammar book,” she went on. “There’s something else I noticed in your speech. You say ‘don’t’ when you shouldn’t. ‘Don’t’ is a contraction, and stands for two words. Do you know them?”

He thought a moment, then answered: “‘Do not.’”

She nodded her head, and said: “And you use ‘don’t’ when you mean ‘does not.’”

He was puzzled over this.

“Give me an illustration,” he asked.

“Well…” she thought a moment. “’It don’t do to be hasty.’ Change ‘don’t’ to ‘do not,’ and it reads, ‘It do not do to be hasty,’ which is wrong. It must jar on your ear.”

“Can’t say that it does,” he replied judicially.

“Why didn’t you say, ‘Can’t say that it do?’”

“That sounds wrong,” he said slowly. “As for the other, I guess my ear ain’t had the trainin’ yours has.”

“There is no such word as ‘ain’t,’” she said emphatically.

Martin flushed again,

“And you say ‘ben’ for ‘been,’” she continued; “‘I come’ for ‘I came’; and the way you chop your endings is something dreadful.”

“What do you mean?” He leaned forward, feeling that he ought to get down on his knees before so marvellous a mind. “How do I chop?”

“You don’t complete the endings. ‘A-n-d’ spells ‘and.’ You pronounce it ‘an.’ ‘I-n-g’ spells ‘ing.’ Sometimes you pronounce it ‘ing,’ and sometimes you leave off the ‘g.’ And then you slur by dropping initial letters and diphthongs. ‘T-h-e-m’ spells ‘them.’ You pronounce it – oh, well, it is not necessary to go over all of them. What you need is a grammar book. I’ll get one and show you how to begin.”

When she returned with the book she drew a chair near his and sat down beside him. She turned the pages of the grammar and their heads were inclined towards each other.

For the moment the great gulf that separated them was bridged. He had been caught up into the clouds and carried to her.

_______

Several weeks went by, during which Martin Eden studied the grammar book Ruth had given him, reviewed the books on etiquette, and read voraciously the books that caught his fancy.

Of his own class he saw nothing. The girls of the Lotus Club which he had frequented wondered what had become of him.

During those several weeks he saw Ruth half a dozen times. She helped him with his English, corrected his pronunciation, and started him on arithmetic. But their intercourse was not all devoted to elementary study; and there were times when their conversation turned on other themes – the last poetry he had read, the latest poet she had studied.

As her interest in Martin increased the remodelling of his life became a passion with her.

“I want to tell you about father’s friend Mr. Butler,” she said one afternoon when grammar and arithmetic and poetry had been put aside. “His father had come from Australia and when he died Mr. Butler, Charles Butler he was called, found himself alone in the world without any relatives in California. He went to work in a printing office – I have heard him tell of it many times – and he got three dollars a week at first. His income to-day is at least thirty thousand a year. How did he do it? He was honest and industrious and economical. He denied himself the enjoyments that most boys indulge in. He had his eyes fixed always on the future. He worked in the daytime and at night he went to night school. He was ambitious. He wanted a career, not a livelihood and he made sacrifices for his ultimate gain. He decided upon the law and he entered father’s office as an office boy, think of that, and got only four dollars a week.

But he had learned how to be economical and out of that four dollars he continued saving money. He studied bookkeeping and typewriting. He quickly became a clerk and made himself invaluable. Father appreciated him. It was on father’s suggestion that he went to law college. He became a lawyer and father took him in as junior partner. He is a great man. Such a life is an inspiration to all of us. It shows that a man with a will may rise superior to his environment.”

She paused for breath and to see how Martin was receiving it.

“Do you know,” he said, “I feel sorry for Mr. Butler. He robbed himself of life for the sake of thirty thousand dollars a year. Working all day and studying all night – just working, never having a good time!”

Martin was dissatisfied with Mr. Butler’s career. There was something paltry about it after all. Thirty thousand a year was all right, but inability to be humanly happy robbed such an income of its value.

Much of this he tried to express to Ruth and shocked her and made it clear that more remodelling was necessary. She could not guess that this man who had come from beyond her horizon had wider and deeper concepts than her own;

and she dreamed of helping him to see as she saw, of widening his horizon until it was identified with hers.