BARRIE
CALLAGHAN
CATHER

DICKINSON
FAULKNER
FROST
HARDY

ENGLISH
FOR TODAY

HEMINGWAY
HOUSMAN
HUXLEY
JOYCE

MOOREHEAD
NARAYAN
O'CONNOR
PRIESTLEY
S. RAMA RAU

SANDBURG
SAKI

SAROYAN
STEINBECK
WHITMAN
YEATS

LITERATURE
IN ENGLISH
INTERNATIONAL STUDENT EDITION

ENGLISH FOR TODAY

Book Six

LITERATURE IN ENGLISH

ENGLISH FOR TODAY

Book Six

LITERATURE IN ENGLISH
by The National Council of Teachers of English
Editor:

LUELLA B. COOK, Formerly, Consultant in Curriculum
Development for the Minneapolis, Minnesota,
Public Schools
Project Director:

WILLIAM R. SLAGER, Department of English
University of Utah
Adviser for Content:

BERNICE E. LEARY, Formerly, Curriculum Consultant
for the Madison, Wisconsin, Public Schools
INmNATIONAL STUDCNT WTION

McGRAW-HILL BOOK COMPANY
New York

Toronto

London

KOGAKUSHA COMPANY, LTD.
Tokyo

ENGLISH FOR TODAY— BOOK SIX
LITERATURE IN ENGLISH—STUDENT TEXT
INTERNATIONAL STUDENT EDITION

Exclusive rights by Kogakusha Co., Ltd. for manufacture and export from
Japan. This book cannot be re-exported from the country to which it is
consigned by Kogakusha Co., Ltd. or by McGraw-Hill Book Company or any
of its subsidiaries.
x

Copyright © 1964 by McGraw-Hill, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This book,
or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permis¬
sion of the publishers.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 62-17669

Copyright in the Philippines, 1964
The editors wish to thank the following for permission to reprint
material included in this anthology:
The Bodley Head, Ltd., London, for “The Open Window,” from The
Short Stories of Saki (H. H. Munro).
Jonathan Cape, Ltd., London, publishers within the British Common¬
wealth excluding Canada, for “A Clean, Well-lighted Place” by Ernest
Hemingway; also for permission to include the poems of A. E. Hous¬
man and “A Little Cloud," from Dubliners by James Joyce.
Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, N.Y., for the poems of Walt

Whitman.
Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., New York, for My Heart's in the High¬
lands, from Three Plays by William Saroyan, copyright 1939, 1940 by
Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.; also for “Nancy Hanks,” condensed
from Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years by Carl Sandburg, copyright
1926 by Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., renewed 1954 by Carl Sand¬
burg. Reprinted by permission of the publishers.
Trustees of the Hardy Estate for permission to reprint poems from The
Collected Poems of Thomas Hardy.
Harper & Row, Publishers, Incorporated, New York, for "Rashid's School
at Okhla,” from Home to India by Santha Rama Rau, copyright 1945
by Vasanthi Rama Rau; also for “A Most Forgiving Ape," from No
Room in the Ark by Alan Moorehead, copyright © 1959 by Alan

Moorehead.
TO8HO PBINTING CO., LTD., TOKYO, JAPAN

The Trustees of Amherst College and The President and Fellows of Har¬
vard College for ''There Is No Frigate Like a Book,” “I Never Saw a
Moor,” “A Bird Came down the Walk," "A Narrow Fellow in the
Grass,” “I Died for Beauty,” ''Because I Could Not Stop for Death,”
“Some Keep the Sabbath Going to Church,” “My Life Closed Twice
before Its Close,” “To Make a Prairie," “A Thought Went Up My
Mind Today," “The Sky Is Low,” “ 'Hope' Is the Thing with Feathers,”
from The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Thomas A. Johnson, Editor, The
Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., copyright
1951, 1955 by The President and Fellows of Harvard College.
The Executors of the Ernest Hemingway Estate for "A Clean, Welllighted Place.”
Hodder & Stoughton, Ltd., London, British publishers for The Will from
The Definitive Edition of the Plays of J. M. Barrie. Applications for
permission to perform the play must be made to Samuel French, Ltd.
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., New York, for “Loveliest of Trees,”
"Oh, When I Was in Love with You,” "When I Was One-and-twenty,”
"To an Athlete Dying Young," "Look Not in My Eyes,” "Oh, See
How Thick the Goldcup Flowers," “With Rue My Heart Is Laden,”
"Along the Field as We Came By,” from "A Shropshire Lad," author¬
ized edition, from Complete Poems by A. E. Housman, copyright ©
1959 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.; and for "The Laws of God.
the Laws of Man,” from Complete Poems by A. E. Housman, copy¬
right 1922 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., copyright renewed
1950 by Barclays Bank, Ltd.; also for "Bravado,” from The Complete
Poems of Robert Frost, copyright 1947 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
Inc.; and for "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” "The Road
Not Taken,” “Mending Wall,” "The Death of the Hired Man," “After
Apple-picking,” "Fire and Ice,” "Tree at My Window,” from The
Complete Poems of Robert Frost, copyright 1916, 1921, 1923, 1930,
1939 by Holt. Rinehart and Winston, Inc., copyright renewed 1944,
1951 by Robert Frost. Reprinted by permission of Holt. Rinehart and
Winston, Inc.
Sir Julian Huxley for a portion of "An Essay on Bird-mind.”
The Executors of the James Joyce Estate for "A Little Cloud,” from
Dubliners by James Joyce.
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, for "My Oedipus Complex” by Frank
O'Connor, reprinted from The Stories of Frank O'Connor, copyright
1950, 1952 by Frank O'Connor; also for "The Sculptor's Funeral,”
from Youth and the Bright Medusa by Willa Cather, copyright 1904,
1932 by Willa Cather.
The Macmillan Company, New York, for "The Man He Killed." "The
Darkling Thrush,” “The Oxen," "In Church," "By Her Aunt's Grave,”
"At the Draper's," "New Year's Eve,” from Collected Poems by

Thomas Hardy, copyright 1925 by The Macmillan Company; and for
“A Placid Man's Epitaph” from Winter Words by Thomas Hardy,
copyright 1928 by Florence E. Hardy and S. E. Cocherell, copyright
1956 by Lloyds Bank Ltd.; and for “Snow in the Suburbs” from Col¬
lected Poems by Thomas Hardy, copyright 1925 by The Macmillan
Company, copyright 1953 by Lloyds Bank Ltd. Also for “The Lake
Isle of Innisfree,” “Never Give All the Heart,” “When You Are Old,”
“The Sorrow of Love,” “The Ballad of Father Gilligan,” “The Song of
the Old Mother,” from Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats by W. B. Yeats,
copyright 1906 by The Macmillan Company, copyright 1934 by William
Butler Yeats; and for “The Wild Swans at Coole," from Collected
Poems of W. B. Yeats, copyright 1919 by The Macmillan Company,
copyright 1946 by Bertha Georgie Yeats; also for “For Anne Gregory,”
from the Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats, copyright 1933 by The
Macmillan Company, copyright 1961 by Bertha Georgie Yeats; for
“To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing.” from Collected
Poems of W. B. Yeats, copyright 1916 by The Macmillan Company,
copyright 1944 by Bertha Georgie Yeats; also for “The Leaders of the
Crowd,” from Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats, copyright 1 924 by The
Macmillan Company, copyright 1952 by Bertha Georgie Yeats.
Macmillan & Co., Ltd., London, for permission to reprint poems from
The Collected Poems of Thomas Hardy and from Collected Poems of
W. B. Yeats.
The Macmillan Co. of Canada, Limited, Toronto, for permission to re¬
print poems from The Collected Poems of Thomas Hardy.
Harold Matson Company, Inc., New York, for “The Snob” by Morley
Callaghan, from Morley Callaghan's Stories, 1959, The Macmillan Co.
of Canada, Limited, copyright 1961 by Morley Callaghan; also for per¬
mission to reprint “My Oedipus Complex” by Frank O'Connor.
McIntosh & Otis, Inc., New York, for “The Great Mountains,” from The
Long Valley by John Steinbeck, copyright 1938 by John Steinbeck.
William Morris Agency, Inc., New York, for "Over a Cup of Coffee" by
R. K. Narayan, from The Dateless Diary, published by Indian Thought
Publications, copyright 1960 by R. K. Narayan.
A. D. Peters, Literary Agent, London, for British Commonwealth rights
in reprinting “My Oedipus Complex” by Frank O'Connor; also for a
portion of “An Essay on Bird-mind” by Julian Huxley from Essays of
a Biologist, published by Chatto & Windus, Ltd., London; also for
“Reading in Bed about Foul Weather,” “Giving Advice,” “Departing
Guests,” “Dreams,” “Transport in Films,” “Making Stew,” “Moments
in the Morning,” from Delight by J. B. Priestley, published by William
Heinemann, Ltd., London.
Laurence Pollinger Limited for “A Most Forgiving Ape,” from No Room
in the Ark by Alan Moorehead, published by Hamish Hamilton Ltd.;

also for "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," "The Road Not
Taken," "After Apple-picking," “Mending Wall," "The Death of the
Hired Man," "Tree at My Window," “Fire and Jee," "Bravado," from
The Complete Poems of Robert Frost, British edition, published by
Jonathan Cape, Ltd., London.
Random House. Inc., New York, for “Speech on Receiving the Nobel
Prize" by William Faulkner, from The Faulkner Reader, copyright
1954 by William Faulkner (Random House, Inc.).
Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, for “A Clean, Well-lighted Place,"
from Winner Take Nothing by Ernest Hemingway. Copyright 1933 by
Charles Scribner's Sons, renewal copyright © 1961 by Ernest Heming¬
way; also for The Will from Half Hours by J. M. Barrie, copyright
1914 by Charles Scribner's Sons, renewal copyright 1942 by Cynthia

Asquith.
The Society of Authors for the poems of A. E. Housman (as the Literary
Representative of the Estate of the late A. E. Housman).
Mrs. W. B. Yeats for permission to reprint poems from Collected Poems
of W. B. Yeats.
The Viking Press, Inc., New York, for “A Little Cloud," from Dubliners
by James Joyce, all rights reserved; also for “The Open Window" from
The Short Stories of Saki (H. H. Munro), all rights reserved.

Advisory Board
Linguistics:

HAROLD B. ALLEN, University of Minnesota, Chairman
GERALD DYKSTRA. Teachers College, Columbia University
CHARLES A. FERGUSON, Center for Applied Linguistics
ARCHIBALD HILL, University of Texas
ALBERT H. MARCKWARDT, Princeton University (also repre¬
senting the Modem Language Association of America)
CLIFFORD H. PRATOR, University of California at Los Angeles
JAMES SLEDD, Northwestern University
W. FREEMAN TWADDELL, Brown University

Literature:
DOROTHY BETHURUM, Connecticut College for Women
(representing the Modern Language Association of America)
J. N. HOOK, University of Illinois
RUSSEL B. NYE, Michigan State University
Science and Social Science:
JOHN N. HAEFNER. State University of Iowa
G. ETZEL PEARCY. Geographer, United States Department of State
MERRIAM HARTWICK TRYTTEN, National Academy of Science.
National Research Council

Preface

Literature in English, the sixth and last book of the English for
Today series, offers a wide range of well-known contemporary writers
who come from many parts of the English-speaking world England,
the United States, Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, and Scotland.
These writers show the rich variety of modern literature in English,
both in their style and in the subjects they treat. One story concerns
a young Canadian college student who snubs his own father; another
is about an old and lonely man who sits late at night and drinks brandy
in a Spanish cafe; and another portrays a would-be poet in Dublin
who suddenly sees his life for what it really is. Other selections arc
about a visit to a village school in India and a meeting with a gorilla
in the jungles of Africa. There are two 1-act plays, one that takes
place in a lawyer's office in London, and another that takes place on
the front porch of a small house in a little California town. Through
the eyes of two well-known poets in English, you will also get a
glimpse of New England and of Ireland.
But this is only a beginning. Today, English is being used increas¬
ingly as a literary language all over the world. On every continent
you will find writers expressing in English the spirit of their own coun¬
try, the thoughts of their own people, and the meanings of their own
way of life. Literature will give you an insight into these places, ideas,
and customs that you can get in no other way.

—

Contents

xi

Preface
UNIT I:

1

FICTION

(English)
(Canadian)
(Irish)
(American)

(Irish)
(American)
(American)

Said (H. H. Munro)
The Open Window

3

Morley Callaghan

The Snob
Frank O'Connor
My Oedipus Complex
Ernest Hemingway
A Clean, Well-lighted Place

7
13
26

James Joyce
A Little Cloud
John Steinbeck

32

The Great Mountains

47

Willa Cather

The Sculptor's Funeral
UNIT II: NONFICTION

William Faulkner
Speech on Receiving the Nobel Prize ...
(Indian)
Santha Rama Rau
Rashid's School at Okhla
(Australian) Alan Moorehead
A Most Forgiving Ape
J. B. Priestley
(English)
Delight: Dreams
Transport in Films
Reading in Bed about Foul Weather .
Moments in the Morning ....

61

79

(American)

81
84
90
101
102
103
104
zM

105

Making Stew
Giving Advice

105

106

Departing Guests
(American)

(English)
(Indian)

Carl Sandburg
Nancy Hanks
Julian Huxley
The Emotional Life of Birds
R. K. Narayan
Over a Cup of Coffee

109

116

124

UNIT III: DRAMA
(Scottish)

129

J. M. Barrie

The Will
(American)

132

William Saroyan

My Heart's in the Highlands

158

UNIT IV: POETRY
(American )

Robert Frost
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
The Road Not Taken

197

.

. 201
201

202
203

After Apple-picking
Mending Wall
The Death of the Hired Man
Tree at My Window
Fire and Ice
(English)

xiv

204

210
210

Bravado
A. E. Housman

211

Oh, When I Was in Love with You . .
When I Was One-and-twenty
Look Not in My Eyes
Oh, See How Thick the Goldcup Flowers .
With Rue My Heart Is Laden
•.
.
Loveliest of Trees
To an Athlete Dying Young
Along the Field as We Came By . . .
The Laws of God, the Laws of Man . .

216
216

.

217
217

.

218
219
219

.221
.221

7

( American )

-

Emily Dickinson
A Bird Came down the Walk
A Narrow Fellow in the Grass
There Is No Frigate Like a Book

225

....

I Never Saw a Moor
To Make a Prairie
A Thought Went Up My Mind Today .
The Sky Is Low The Clouds Are Mean
“Hope” Is the Thing with Feathers
I Died for Beauty
Because I Could Not Stop for Death .
My Life Closed Twice before Its Close
Some Keep the Sabbath Going to Church

—

.
(Irish)

'

(English)

. .
. .
. .
.
.
.

(American)

228
229

229
230

. 230
.231
. 232

William Butler Yeats
Never Give all the Heart
For Anne Gregory
The Sorrow of Love
When You Arc Old
The Song of the Old Mother
The Lake Isle of Innisfrec
The Wild Swans at Coole
To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing
The Leaders of the Crowd
The Ballad of Father Gilligan

236

236
237
238

238
238

239
240
241
241

Thomas Hardy

The Oxen
In Church
By Her Aunt's Grave
At the Draper's
A Placid Man's Epitaph
Snow in the Suburbs
The Man He Killed
New Year's Eve
The Darkling Thrush

'

226
227
228
228

Walt Whitman
When I Heard the Leam'd Astronomer
A Noiseless Patient Spider

247
247
248

248
249

249
250

251
252

. .

257
257
XT

On the Beach at Night Alone
There Was a Child Went Forth ....
Chant 6 from “Song of Myself' ....
Chant 48 from “Song of Myself' ....
Chant 52 from “Song of Myself' ....
Glossary

XVi

258

259

261
262

263
266

UNIT I: FICTION

—

Joseph Conrad, a famous English novelist, said that his goal as a
writer was “to make you hear, to make you feel it is, before all,
to make you see. That and no more, and it is everything.” A good
short story tries to give the reader a sense of the actual experience.
Often it leaves a single sharp impression to be turned over and over
in the mind. After he finishes the story, the reader should have
something to think about: the pathos or humor of life, its ironies,
or the unpredictability of human behavior.
The reader cannot appreciate a short story fully he cannot hear
and feel and see unless he reacts not only to what has been said
but also to how it has been said. He must look for style and structure
as well as for content. Style grows out of the writer's own personality
and can be seen in the choice of words and phrases, the arrangement
of sentences, the rhythm and tone. Structure refers to the architecture
of the story the ways in which the details arc selected and arranged
to produce the desired effect.
Plot is the arrangement of incidents moving toward a climax or
point of highest suspense. A good short story usually progresses
toward an ending in which the conflict is resolved, the issue is defined,
the mystery is explained. As you read the seven short stories that
follow, try to look first for an opening situation that poses a question
or a problem or presents a situation to be later answered or solved
or clarified. Then watch how the plot is revealed step by step.
But the plot itself is only a sequence of events. This sequence will
have a meaning, which is called the theme. The theme may express
an important truth about everyday life or about human nature. In
“A Little Cloud,” for example, the plot is really very simple: Little
Chandler meets an old friend who supposedly has become a success¬
ful newspaperman in London. They have a few drinks and they talk.
Then Little Chandler goes home, and we have a brief picture of his
family life. Not very much seems to happen. But these simple events
mean a great deal. Because of them, in a few hours Little Chandler
realizes the truth about what his life is really like: the difference be¬
tween his dream world and the real world. This is the theme.
As you read the stories that are presented here, you should be
prepared to encounter several kinds of English. The characters in
the stories are from many different backgrounds and social levels;

—

—

—

—

1

they will often use words and phrases that do not appear in the
standard writing of newspapers and magazines and books. They may
use specialized terms and slang. The stories also have wide geo¬
graphical range, from Willa Cather's small town, Sand City, in the
Middle West to James Joyce's Dublin. Dublin English and Sand
City English arc very different. In addition, because literature uses
language in a special way to achieve part of its artistic effect, some
of these short stories will contain words and phrases used figuratively
that is, they may have a symbolic meaning as well as the literal
meaning found in the dictionary. The footnotes will attempt to give
you some help in these matters: nonstandard English, dialectal forms,
and figurative language.
When you began to study English, the vocabulary and structure
were carefully controlled to allow you to learn the basic words and
sentence patterns efficiently. Now you are going to encounter a
language used with all its variety and complexity, a language used
by many people in many different countries to express complex
truths about human life that cannot be simply expressed. The stories
you arc about to read are often difficult even for people who have
spoken English all their lives. They must be read and reread and
talked about and thought about. So you need not despair if the
going is difficult. The rewards will be great. The rewards of literature

—

always are.

2

THE OPEN WINDOW
BY SAKI (H. H. MUNRO)
In this story a very imaginative young lady of fifteen plays an
amusing trick on a chance visitor to her aunt's house. As you read,
watch closely how smoothly she conducts herself. The story is told
with a charm and grace that is characteristic of this English author
(1870-1916), who commonly wrote under the pen name of Saki.

“My aunt will be down presently, Mr. Nuttel,” said a very selfpossessed young lady of fifteen; “in the meantime you must try and
put up with me.” 1
Framton Nuttel endeavoured to say the correct something which
should duly flatter the niece of the moment without unduly dis¬
counting - the aunt that was to come. Privately he doubted more
than ever whether these formal visits on a succession of total strangers
would do much towards helping the nerve cure which he was sup¬
posed to be undergoing.
“1 know how it will be," his sister had said when he was preparing
to migrate to this rural retreat; "you will bury yourself down there
and not speak to a living soul, and your nerves will be worse than
ever from moping. I shall just give you letters of introduction to
all the people I know there. Some of them, as far as I can remember,
were quite nice."
Framton wondered whether Mrs. Sappieton, the lady to whom he
was presenting one of the letters of introduction, came into the
nice division.
“Do you know many of the people round here?" asked the niece,
when she judged that they had had sufficient silent communion.
“Hardly a soul,” said Framton. “My sister was staying here, at
the rectory 3 you know, some four years ago, and she gave me letters
of introduction to some of the people here.”
1
put up with me: tolerate me.
a unduly discounting: showing too little respect for.
3
rectory: a house in which a minister lives. This helps set the scene.
One would expect the truth to be told in a rectory.

3

He made the last statement in a tone of distinct regret.
“Then you know practically nothing about my aunt?” pursued
the self-possessed young lady.4
“Only her name and address,” admitted the caller. He was wonder¬
ing whether Mrs. Sappieton was in the married or widowed state. An
undefinable something about the room seemed to suggest masculine

habitation?
“Her great tragedy happened just three years ago,” said the child;
“that would be since your sister's time.”
"Her tragedy?” asked Framton; somehow in this restful country
spot tragedies seemed out of place.
“You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an
October afternoon,” said the niece, indicating a large French window
that opened on to a lawn.
“It is quite warm for the time of the year,” said Framton; “but
has that window got anything to do with the tragedy?”
“Out through that window, three years ago to a day, her husband
and her two young brothers went off for their day's shooting. They
never came back. In crossing the moor to their favourite snipe¬
shooting ground they were all three engulfed in a treacherous piece
of bog? It had been that dreadful wet summer, you know, and places
that were safe in other years gave way suddenly without warning.
Their bodies were never recovered. That was the dreadful part of
it.” Here the child's voice lost its self-possessed note and became
falteringly human. “Poor aunt always thinks that they will come
back some day, they and the little brown spaniel that was lost with
them, and walk in at that window just as they used to do. That is
why the window is kept open every evening till it is quite dusk. Poor
dear aunt, she has often told me how they went out, her husband
with his white waterproof coat over his arm, and Ronnie, her youngest
brother, singing, 'Bertie, why do you bound?' as he always did to
tease her, because she said it got on her nerves. Do you know,
sometimes on still, quiet evenings like this, I almost get a creepy
feeling that they will all walk in through that window ”
She broke off with a little shudder. It was a relief to Framton

—

Note this question well, for it looks forward to the whole point of the story.
“ seemed to suggest masculine habitation: gave Frdmton the idea that there
were men living in the house.
•engulfed in a treacherous piece of bog: swallowed up by a swamp.
4

4

when the aunt bustled into the room with a whirl of apologies for
being late in making her appearance.
“I hope Vera has been amusing you?” she said.
“She has been very interesting," said Framton.
“I hope you don't mind the open window,” said Mrs. Sappieton
briskly; "my husband and brothers will be home directly from shoot¬
ing, and they always come in this way. They've been out for snipe
in the marshes today, so they'll make a fine mess over my poor
carpets. So like you menfolk, isn't it?”
She rattled on cheerfully about the shooting and the scarcity of
birds, and the prospects for duck in the winter. To Framton it was
all purely horrible. He made a desperate but only partially successful
effort to turn the talk on to a less ghastly topic; he was conscious
that his hostess was giving him only a fragment of her attention, and
her eyes were constantly straying past him to the open window and
the lawn beyond. It was certainly an unfortunate coincidence that
he should have paid his visit on this tragic anniversary.
“The doctors agree in ordering me complete rest, an absence
of mental excitement, and avoidance of anything in the nature of
violent physical exercise,” announced Framton, who laboured under
the tolerably wide-spread delusion 7 that total strangers and chance
acquaintances are hungry for the least detail of one's ailments and
infirmities, their cause and cure. “On the matter of diet they are
not so much in agreement," he continued.
“No?" said Mrs. Sappieton, in a voice which only replaced a
yawn at the last moment. Then she suddenly brightened into alert
attention but not to what Framton was saying.
“Here they are at last!” she cried. “Just in time for tea, and don't
they look as if they were muddy up to the eyes!”
Framton shivered slightly and turned towards the niece with a
look intended to convey sympathetic comprehension. The child
was staring out through the open window with dazed horror in her
eyes. In a chill shock of nameless fear Framton swung round in
his seat and looked in the same direction.
In the deepening twilight three figures were walking across the lawn
towards the window; they all carried guns under their arms, and one

—

7

laboured under the tolerably wide-spread delusion: believed in a common,

but false, idea.

5

of them was additionally burdened with a white coat hung over
his shoulders. A tired brown spaniel kept close at their heels.
Noiselessly they neared the house, and then a hoarse young voice
chanted out of the dusk: “I said, Bertie, why do you bound?"
Framton grabbed wildly at his stick and hat; the hall-door, the
gravel-drive, and the front gate were dimly noted stages in his
headlong retreat. A cyclist coming along the road had to run into
the hedge to avoid imminent collision.
“Here we are, my dear,” said the bearer of the white mackintosh,
coming in through the window; "fairly muddy, but most of it's dry.
Who was that who bolted out as we came up?"
“A most extraordinary man, a Mr. Nuttel," said Mrs. Sappieton;
“could only talk about his illnesses, and dashed off without a word
of good-bye or apology when you arrived. One would think he had
seen a ghost.”
“I expect it was the spaniel,” said the niece calmly; “he told me
he had a horror of dogs. He was once hunted into a cemetery some¬
where on the banks of the Ganges by a pack of pariah dogs, and
had to spend the night in a newly dug grave with the creatures
snarling and grinning and foaming just above him. Enough to make
any one lose their nerve."
Romance at short notice was her specialty.

To Tost Your Comprehension

1. How did it happen that Mr. Nuttel came to call on the Sappietons?
How did this fact give Vera an advantage over him?
2. Why did Mr. Nuttel react with horror to Mrs. Sappieton's rattling
on and on cheerfully about the open window?

3. When Vera saw the returning hunters, was her “dazed horror”
real or pretended?

4. Why did Mr. Nuttel make such a “headlong retreat” from the
room without saying good-bye?
5. In what other way, besides deceiving Mr. Nuttel, does Vera
was her specialty”?
prove that “romance .

..

6

THE SNOB

BY MORLEY CALLAGHAN
Morley Callaghan (born in 1903) began to write short stories
while he was still a student. Later, encouraged by Ernest Heming¬
way whom he had met in Paris during the late twenties he pub¬
lished his stories in a wide range of American magazines. For
nine successive years he was represented in Edward O'Brien's Best

—

—

Short Stories, an annual anthology of distinguished writing. These
short stories, along with his later novels, made him one of Canada's
best-known writers.
In “The Snob," Callaghan shows some of Hemingway's keen
awareness of the hidden conflicts that determine people's behavior.
What is the nature of snobbery? How can it affect our lives? John
Harcourt, the young man in the story, is suddenly confronted with
a situation in which "something very precious that he wanted to hold
seemed close to destruction."

It was at the book counter in the department store that John Har¬
a glimpse of his father. At first he could
not be sure in the crowd that pushed along the aisle, but there was
something about the color of the back of the elderly man's neck,
something about the faded felt hat, that he knew very well. Harcourt
was standing with the girl he loved, buying a book for her. All
afternoon he had been talking to her, eagerly, but with an anxious
diffidence, as if there still remained in him an innocent wonder that
she should be delighted to be with him. From underneath her widebrimmed straw hat, her face, so fair and beautifully strong with its
expression of cool independence, kept turning up to him and
sometimes smiled at what he said. That was the way they always
talked, never daring to show much full, strong feeling. Harcourt
had just bought the book, and had reached into his pocket for the
money with a free, ready gesture to make it appear that he was
accustomed to buying books for young ladies, when the white-haired
court, the student, caught

7

man in the faded felt hat, at the other end of the counter, turned
half-toward him, and Harcourt knew he was standing only a few
feet away from his father.
The young man's easy words trailed away and his voice became
little more than a whisper, as if he were afraid that everyone in the
store might recognize it. There was rising in him a dreadful uneasi¬
ness; something very precious that he wanted to hold seemed close
to destruction. His father, standing at the end of the bargain counter,
was planted squarely on his two feet, turning a book over thought¬
fully in his hands. Then he took out his glasses from an old, worn
leather case and adjusted them on the end of his nose, looking down
over them at the book. His coat was thrown open, two buttons on
his vest were undone, his hair was too long, and in his rather shabby
clothes he looked very much like a workingman, a carpenter perhaps.
Such a resentment rose in young Harcourt that he wanted to cry
out bitterly, “Why does he dress as if he never owned a decent suit...