张汉熙《高级英语》第二册课文英语原文

Face to Face with Hurricane Camille

Joseph P. Blank

1 John Koshak, Jr., knew that Hurricane Camille would be bad.

Radio and television warnings had sounded throughout that Sunday, last

August 17, as Camille lashed northwestward across the Gulf of Mexico. It

was certain

to pummel

Gulfport, Miss., where the Koshers lived. Along the

coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, nearly 150,000 people fled

inland to safer 8round. But, like thousands of others in the coastal

communities, john was reluctant to abandon his home unless the family --

his wife, Janis, and their seven children, abed 3 to 11 -- was clearly

endangered.

2 Trying to reason out the best course of action, he talked with his

father and mother, who had moved into the ten-room house with the

Koshaks a month earlier from California. He also consulted Charles Hill, a

long time friend, who had driven from Las Vegas for a visit.

3 John, 37 -- whose business was right there in his home ( he

designed and developed educational toys and supplies, and all of Magna

Products'

correspondence

, engineering drawings and art work were there

on the first floor) -- was familiar with the power of a hurricane. Four years

earlier, Hurricane Betsy had demolished

undefined

his former home a few

miles west of Gulfport (Koshak had moved his family to a

motel

for the

night). But that house had stood only a few feet above sea level.

elevated 2a feet,

sea. The place has been here since 1915, and no hurricane has ever

bothered it. We' II probably be as safe here as anyplace else.

4 The elder Koshak, a gruff, warmhearted expert machinist of 67,

agreed.

batten down

and ride it out,

danger, we can get out before dark.

5 The men

methodically

prepared for the hurricane. Since water

mains might be damaged, they filled bathtubs and pails. A power failure

was likely, so they checked out batteries for the portable radio and

flashlights, and fuel for the lantern. John's father moved a small generator

into the downstairs hallway, wired several light bulbs to it and prepared a

connection to the refrigerator.

6 Rain fell steadily that afternoon; gray clouds

scudded

in from the

Gulf on the rising wind. The family had an early supper. A neighbor, whose

husband was in Vietnam, asked if she and her two children could sit out

the storm with the Koshaks. Another neighbor came by on his way in-land

—

would the Koshaks mind taking care of his dog?

7 It grew dark before seven o' clock. Wind and rain now whipped the

house. John sent his oldest son and daughter upstairs to bring down

mattresses and pillows for the younger children. He wanted to keep the

group together on one floor.

concerned about glass flying from storm-shattered

panes

. As the wind

mounted to a roar, the house began leaking- the rain seemingly driven

right through the walls. With mops, towels, pots and buckets the Koshaks

began a struggle against the rapidly spreading water. At 8:30, power

failed, and Pop Koshak turned on the

generator

.

8 The roar of the hurricane now was overwhelming. The house shook,

and the ceiling in the living room was falling piece by piece. The French

doors in an upstairs room blew in with an explosive sound, and the group

heard gun- like reports as other upstairs windows

disintegrated

. Water

rose above their

ankles

.

9 Then the front door started to break away from its frame. John and

Charlie put their shoulders against it, but a blast of water hit the house,

flinging open the door and shoving them down the hall. The generator was

doused, and the lights went out. Charlie licked his lips and shouted to

John.

reached the house, and the water was rising by the minute!

10

pass the children along between us. Count them! Nine!

11 The children went from adult to adult like buckets in a

fire brigade

.

But the cars wouldn't start; the electrical systems had been killed by water.

The wind was too Strong and the water too deep to flee on foot.

the house!

12 As they

scrambled

back, john ordered,

Frightened, breathless and wet, the group settled on the stairs, which were

protected by two

interior

walls. The children put the oat, Spooky, and a box

with her four kittens on the landing. She

peered

nervously at her litter. The

neighbor's dog curled up and went to sleep.

13 The wind sounded like the roar of a train passing a few yards away.

The house shuddered and shifted on its foundations. Water inched its way

up the steps as first- floor outside walls collapsed. No one spoke.

Everyone knew there was no escape; they would live or die in the house.

14 Charlie Hill had more or less taken responsibility for the neighbor

and her two children. The mother was on the verge of panic. She clutched

his arm and kept repeating,

15

end soon.

16 Grandmother Koshak reached an arm around her husband's

shoulder and put her mouth close to his ear.

He turned his head and answered,

usual gruffness.

17 John watched the water lap at the steps, and felt a crushing guilt.

He had

underestimated

the

ferocity

of Camille. He had assumed that

what had never happened could not happen. He held his head between his

hands, and silently prayed:

18 A moment later, the hurricane, in one mighty swipe, lifted the entire

roof off the house and skimmed it 40 feet through the air. The bottom steps

of the staircase broke apart. One wall began crumbling on the

marooned

group.

19 Dr. Robert H. Simpson, director of the National Hurricane Center in

Miami, Fla., graded Hurricane Camille as

ever to hit a populated area in the Western Hemisphere.

concentrated breadth of some 70 miles it shot out winds of nearly 200

m.p.h. and raised tides as high as 30 feet. Along the Gulf Coast it

devastated everything in its swath: 19,467 homes and 709 small

businesses were demolished or severely damaged. it seized a 600,

000-gallon Gulfport oil tank and dumped it 3 ~ miles away. It tore three

large cargo ships from their

moorings

and beached them. Telephone

poles and 20-inch-thick pines cracked like guns as the winds snapped

them.

20 To the west of Gulfport, the town of Pass Christian was virtually

wiped out. Several vacationers at the luxurious Richelieu Apartments there

held a hurricane party to watch the storm from their spectacular

vantage

point

. Richelieu Apartments were smashed apart as if by a gigantic fist,

and 26 people perished.

21 Seconds after the roof blew off the Koshak house, john yelled,

the stairs -- into our bedroom! Count the kids.

slashing rain within the circle of adults. Grandmother Koshak

implored

,

carried on alone for a few bars; then her voice trailed away.

22 Debris flew as the living-room fireplace and its chimney collapsed.

With two walls in their bedroom sanctuary beginning to disintegrate, John

ordered,

direction of the storm.

23 For an instant, John put his arm around his wife. Janis understood.

Shivering from the wind and rain and fear, clutching two children to her,

she thought, Dear Lord, give me the strength to endure what I have to. She

felt anger against the hurricane. We won't let it win.

24 Pop Koshak raged silently, frustrated at not being able to do

anything to fight Camille. Without reason, he dragged a

cedar chest

and a

double mattress from a bed-room into the TV room. At that moment, the

wind tore out one wall and extinguished the lantern. A second wall moved,

wavered

, Charlie Hill tried to support it, but it

toppled

on him, injuring his

back. The house, shuddering and rocking, had moved 25 feet from its

foundations. The world seemed to be breaking apart.

25

lean-to

against the wind. Get the kids under it. We can prop it up with our

heads and shoulders!

26 The larger children

sprawled

on the floor, with the smaller ones in a

layer on top of them, and the adults bent over all nine. The floor tilted. The

box containing the litter of kittens slid off a shelf and vanished in the wind.

Spooky flew off the top of a sliding bookcase and also disappeared. The

dog cowered with eyes closed. A third wall gave way. Water lapped across

the slanting floor. John grabbed a door which was still

hinged

to one closet

wall.

27 In that moment, the wind slightly diminished, and the water stopped

rising. Then the water began receding. The main thrust of Camille had

passed. The Koshaks and their friends had survived.

28 With the dawn, Gulfport people started coming back to their

homes. They saw human bodies -- more than 130 men, women and

children died along the Mississippi coast- and parts of the beach and

highway

were strewn with

dead dogs, cats, cattle. Strips of clothing

festooned

the standing trees, and blown down power lines

coiled

like black

spaghetti

over the roads.

29 None of the returnees moved quickly or spoke loudly; they stood

shocked, trying to absorb the shattering scenes before their eyes.

do we dot

30 By this time, organizations within the area and, in effect, the entire

population of the United States had come to the aid of the devastated

coast. Before dawn, the Mississippi

National Guard

and

civil-defense

units were moving in to handle traffic, guard property, set up

communications centers, help clear the debris and take the homeless by

truck and bus to refugee centers. By 10 a.m.,

the Salvation Army's

canteen trucks and Red Cross volunteers and staffers were going

wherever possible to distribute hot drinks, food, clothing and bedding.

31 From hundreds of towns and cities across the country came

several million dollars in donations; household and medical supplies

streamed in by plane, train, truck and car. The federal government shipped

4,400,000 pounds of food, moved in mobile homes, set up portable

classrooms, opened offices to provide low-interest, long-term business

loans.

32 Camille, meanwhile, had raked its way northward across

Mississippi, dropping more than 28 inches of rain into West Virginia and

southern Virginia, causing

rampaging

floods, huge mountain slides and

111 additional deaths before breaking up over the Atlantic Ocean.

33 Like many other Gulfport families, the Koshaks quickly began

reorganizing their lives, John divided his family in the homes of two friends.

The neighbor with her two children went to a refugee center. Charlie Hill

found a room for rent. By Tuesday, Charlie's back had improved, and he

pitched in with

Seabees

in the worst volunteer work of all--searching for

bodies. Three days after the storm, he decided not to return to Las Vegas,

but to

34 Near the end of the first week, a friend offered the Koshaks his

apartment, and the family was reunited. The children appeared to suffer no

psychological damage from their experience; they were still awed by the

incomprehensible

power of the hurricane, but enjoyed describing what

they had seen and heard on that frightful night, Janis had just one delayed

reaction. A few nights after the hurricane, she awoke suddenly at 2 a.m.

She quietly got up and went outside. Looking up at the sky and, without

knowing she was going to do it, she began to cry softly.

35 Meanwhile, John, Pop and Charlie were picking through the

wreckage

of the home. It could have been depressing, but it wasn't: each

salvaged item represented a little victory over the

wrath

of the storm. The

dog and cat suddenly appeared at the scene, alive and hungry.

36 But the

blues

did occasionally

afflict

all the adults. Once, in a low

mood, John said to his parents,

together, so you could enjoy the children, and look what happened.

37 His father, who had made up his mind to start a

welding

shop

when living was normal again, said,

just start all over.

38

in it. It' s going to be better here than it ever was before.

39 Later, Grandmother Koshak

reflected

:

possessions, but the family came through it. When I think of that, I realize

we lost nothing important.

(from Rhetoric and Literature by P. Joseph Canavan)

NOTES

1. Joseph p. Blank: The writer published

Camille

2. Hurricane Camille: In the United States hurricanes are named

alphabetically and given the names of people like Hurricane Camille,

Hurricane Betsy, and so on; whereas in China Typhoons are given serial

numbers like Typhoon No. 1, Typhoon No. 2 and so on.

3. The Salvation Army: A Protestant religious body devoted to the

conversion of, and social work among the poor, and characterized by use

of military titles, uniforms, etc. It was founded in 1878 by

in London; now worldwide in operation.

4. Red Cross: an international organization ( in full International Red

Cross), founded in 1864 with headquarters and branches in all countries

signatory to the Geneva Convention, for the relief of suffering in time of war

or disaster

Marrakech

George Orwell

1 As the corpse went past the flies left the restaurant table

in a cloud and rushed after it, but they came back a few minutes

later.

2 The little crowd of mourners -- all men and boys, no

women --threaded their way across the market place between the

piles of

pomegranates

and the taxis and the camels, walling a

short chant over and over again. What really appeals to the flies is

that the corpses here are never put into coffins, they are merely

wrapped in a piece of rag and carried on a rough wooden

bier

on

the shoulders of four friends. When the friends get to the

burying-ground they hack an oblong hole a foot or two deep, dump

the body in it and fling over it a little of the dried-up, lumpy earth,

which is like broken brick. No gravestone, no name, no identifying

mark of any kind. The burying-ground is merely a huge waste of

hummocky

earth, like a derelict building-lot. After a month or two

no one can even be certain where his own relatives are buried.

3 When you walk through a town like this -- two hundred

thousand inhabitants of whom at least twenty thousand own

literally nothing except the rags they stand up in-- when you see

how the people live, and still more how easily they die, it is always

difficult to believe that you are

walking among human beings. All

colonial empires are in reality founded upon this fact. The people

have brown faces--besides, there are so many of them! Are they

really the same flesh as your self? Do they even have names? Or

are they merely a kind of

undifferentiated

brown stuff, about as

individual as bees or

coral insects

? They rise out of the earth

，

they sweat and starve for a few years, and then they sink back into

the nameless mounds of the graveyard and nobody notices that

they are gone. And even the graves themselves soon fade back

into the soil. Sometimes, out for a walk as you break your way

through the prickly pear, you notice that it is rather

bumpy

underfoot, and only a certain regularity in the bumps tells you that

you are walking over skeletons.

4 I was feeding one of the

gazelles

in the public gardens.

5 Gazelles are almost the only animals that look good to eat

when they are still alive, in fact, one can hardly look at their

hindquarters without thinking of a

mint

sauce. The gazelle I was

feeding seemed to know that this thought was in my mind, for

though it took the piece of bread I was holding out it obviously did

not like me. It nibbled

nibbled

rapidly at the bread, then lowered

its head and tried to

butt

me, then took another nibble and then

butted again. Probably its idea was that if it could drive me away

the bread would somehow remain hanging in mid-air.

6 An Arab

navvy

working on the path nearby lowered his

heavy hoe and

sidled

slowly towards us. He looked from the

gazelle to the bread and from the bread to the gazelle, with a sort

of quiet amazement, as though he had never seen anything quite

like this before. Finally he said shyly in French:

of that bread.

7 I tore off a piece and he stowed it gratefully in some secret

place under his rags. This man is an employee of the

municipality.

8 When you go through the Jewish Quarters you gather some

idea of what the medieval ghettoes were probably like. Under their

Moorish

Moorish

rulers the Jews were only allowed to own land in

certain restricted areas, and after centuries of this kind of

treatment they have ceased to bother about overcrowding. Many

of the streets are a good deal less than six feet wide, the houses

are completely windowless, and sore-eyed children cluster

everywhere in unbelievable numbers, like clouds of flies. Down the

centre of the street there is generally running a little river of urine.

9 In the bazaar huge families of Jews, all dressed in the long

black robe and little black skull-cap, are working in dark

fly-infested booths that look like caves. A carpenter sits

crosslegged at a prehistoric

lathe

, turning chairlegs at lightning

speed. He works the lathe with a bow in his right hand and guides

the chisel with his left foot, and thanks to a lifetime of sitting in this

position his left leg is

warped

out of shape. At his side his

grandson, aged six, is already starting on the simpler parts of the

job.

10 I was just passing the coppersmiths' booths when

somebody noticed that I was lighting a cigarette. Instantly, from

the dark holes all round, there was a frenzied rush of Jews, many

of them old grandfathers with flowing grey beards, all clamouring

for a cigarette. Even a blind man somewhere at the back of one of

the booths heard a rumour of cigarettes and came crawling out,

groping in the air with his hand. In about a minute I had used up

the whole packet. None of these people, I suppose, works less

than twelve hours a day, and every one of them looks on a

cigarette as a more or less impossible luxury.

11 As the Jews live in self-contained communities they follow

the same trades as the Arabs, except for agriculture. Fruitsellers,

potters, silversmiths, blacksmiths, butchers, leather-workers,

tailors, water-carriers, beggars, porters -- whichever way you look

you see nothing but Jews. As a matter of fact there are thirteen

thousand of them, all living in the space of a few acres. A good job

Hitlet wasn't here. Perhaps he was on his way, however. You hear

the usual dark rumours about Jews, not only from the Arabs but

from the poorer Europeans.

12

mon vieux

, they took my job away from me

and gave it to a Jew. The Jews! They' re the real rulers of this

country, you know. They‘ve got all the money. They control the

banks, finance -- everything.

13

labourer working for about a penny an hour?

14

They' re cunning, the Jews.

15 In just the same way, a couple of hundred years ago, poor

old women used to be burned for

witchcraft

when they could not

even work enough magic to get themselves a square meal.

square meal

16 All people who work with their hands are partly invisible,

and the more important the work they do, the less visible they are.

Still, a white skin is always fairly

conspicuous

. In northern

Europe, when you see a labourer ploughing a field, you probably

give him a second glance. In a hot country, anywhere south of

Gibraltar or east of Suez, the chances are that you don't even see

him. I have noticed this again and again. In a tropical landscape

one's eye takes in everything except the human beings. It takes in

the dried-up soil, the prickly pear, the palm tree and the distant

mountain, but it always misses the peasant hoeing at his patch.

He is the same colour as the earth, and a great deal less

interesting to look at.

17 It is only because of this that the starved countries of Asia

and Africa are accepted as tourist resorts. No one would think of

running cheap trips to the

Distressed Areas

. But where the

human beings have brown skins their poverty is simply not

noticed. What does Morocco mean to a Frenchman? An orange

grove or a job in Government service. Or to an Englishman?

Camels, castles, palm trees,

Foreign Legionnaires

, brass trays,

and

bandits

. One could probably live there for years without

noticing that for nine-tenths of the people the reality of life is an

endless back-breaking struggle to wring a little food out of an

eroded

soil.

18 Most of Morocco is so desolate that no wild animal bigger

than a hare can live on it. Huge areas which were once covered

with forest have turned into a treeless waste where the soil is

exactly like broken-up brick. Nevertheless a good deal of it is

cultivated, with frightful labour. Everything is done by hand. Long

lines of women, bent double like inverted capital Ls, work their way

slowly across the fields, tearing up the prickly weeds with their

hands, and the peasant gathering

lucerne

for

fodder

pulls it up

stalk by stalk instead of reaping it, thus saving an inch or two on

each stalk. The plough is a wretched wooden thing, so frail that

one can easily carry it on one's shoulder, and fitted underneath

with a rough iron spike which stirs the soil to a depth of about four

inches. This is as much as the strength of the animals is equal to.

It is usual to plough with a cow and a donkey

yoked

together. Two

donkeys would not be quite strong enough, but on the other hand

two cows would cost a little more to feed. The peasants possess

no narrows, they merely plough the soil several times over in

different directions, finally leaving it in rough

furrows

, after which

the whole field has to be shaped with hoes into small oblong

patches to conserve water. Except for a day or two after the rare

rainstorms there is never enough water. A long the edges of the

fields channels are hacked out to a depth of thirty or forty feet to

get at the tiny trickles which run through the subsoil.

19 Every afternoon a file of very old women passes down the

road outside my house, each carrying a load of firewood. All of

them are mummified with age and the sun, and all of them are tiny.

It seems to be generally the case in primitive communities that the

women, when they get beyond a certain age, shrink to the size of

children. One day poor creature who could not have been more

than four feet tall crept past me under a vast load of wood. I

stopped her and put a five-sou

sou

piece ( a little more than a

farthing

into her hand. She answered with a shrill wail, almost a

scream, which was partly gratitude but mainly surprise. I suppose

that from her point of view, by taking any notice of her, I seemed

almost to be violating a law of nature. She accept- ed her status as

an old woman, that is to say as a beast of burden. When a family

is travelling it is quite usual to see a father and a grown-up son

riding ahead on donkeys, and an old woman following on foot,

carrying the baggage.

20 But what is strange about these people is their invisibility.

For several weeks, always at about the same time of day, the file

of old women had

hobbled

past the house with their firewood, and

though they had registered themselves on my eyeballs I cannot

truly say that I had seen them. Firewood was passing -- that was

how I saw it. It was only that one day I happened to be walking

behind them, and the curious up-and-down motion of a load of

wood drew my attention to the human being beneath it. Then for

the first time I noticed the poor old earth-coloured bodies, bodies

reduced to bones and

leathery

skin, bent double under the

crushing weight. Yet I suppose I had not been five minutes on

Moroccan soil before I noticed the overloading of the donkeys and

was

infuriated

by it. There is no question that the donkeys are

damnably treated. The Moroccan donkey is hardly bigger than a

St. Bernard dog, it carries a load which in the British Army would

be considered too much for a fifteen-hands mule, and very often

its packsaddle is not taken off its back for weeks together. But

what is peculiarly pitiful is that it is the most willing creature on

earth, it follows its master like a dog and does not need either

bridle

or

halter

. After a dozen years of devoted work it suddenly

drops dead, whereupon its master tips it into the ditch and the

village dogs have torn its

guts

out before it is cold.

21 This kind of thing makes one's blood boil, whereas-- on the

whole -- the plight of the human beings does not. I am not

commenting, merely pointing to a fact. People with brown skins

are next door to invisible. Anyone can be sorry for the donkey with

its galled back, but it is generally owing to some kind of accident if

one even notices the old woman under her load of sticks.

22 As the

storks

flew northward the Negroes were marching

southward -- a long, dusty column,

infantry

, screw-gun

batteries

,

and then more infantry, four or five thousand men in all, winding

up the road with a clumping of boots and a clatter of iron wheels.

23 They were

Senegalese

, the blackest Negroes in Africa, so

black that sometimes it is difficult to see whereabouts on their

necks the hair begins. Their splendid bodies were hidden in

reach- me-down

khaki uniforms, their feet squashed into boots

that looked like blocks of wood, and every tin hat seemed to be a

couple of sizes too small. It was very hot and the men had

marched a long way. They slumped under the weight of their

packs and the curiously sensitive black faces were glistening with

sweat.

24 As they went past, a tall, very young Negro turned and

caught my eye. But the look he gave me was not in the least the

kind of look you might expect. Not hostile, not contemptuous, not

sullen

, not even inquisitive. It was the shy, wide-eyed Negro look,

which actually is a look of profound respect. I saw how it was. This

wretched boy, who is a French citizen and has therefore been

dragged from the forest to scrub floors and catch

syphilis

in

garrison

towns, actually has feelings of reverence before a white

skin. He has been taught that the white race are his masters, and

he still believes it.

25 But there is one thought which every white man (and in

this connection it doesn't matter twopence if he calls himself a

socialist) thinks when he sees a black army marching past.

much longer can we go on kidding these people? How long before

they turn their guns in the other direction?

26 It was curious really. Every white man there had this

thought stowed somewhere or other in his mind. I had it, so had

the other onlookers, so had the officers on their sweating

chargers

and the white

N. C. Os

marching in the ranks. It was a

kind of secret which we all knew and were too clever to tell; only

the Negroes didn't know it. And really it was like watching a flock

of cattle to see the long column, a mile or two miles of armed men,

flowing peacefully up the road, while the great white birds drifted

over them in the opposite direction, glittering like scraps of Paper.

(from Reading for Rhetoric, by Caroline Shrodes,

Clifford A. Josephson, and James R. Wilson)

NOTES

1. Orwell: George Orwell was the pseudonym of Eric Arthur Blair

(1903-50), an English writer who at one time served with the

Indian Imperial Police in Burma. He fought in the Spanish Civil

War, an experience he recorded in Homage to Catalonia. His

novels include Down and Out in Paris and London Burmese

Days Coming up for Air A Clergyman' s Daughter Keep the

Aspidistra Flying; Animal Farm; and 1984. The last two novels

vilify socialist society and communism. Among his well known

essays are: Shooting an Elephant A Hanging Marrakech and

Politics and the English Language.

2. Moorish: Moors, mixed Arabs and Berbers, and inhabitants of

Morocco. They set up a Moorish empire from the end of the 8th

century to the 12th century: by 12th century the empire included

North Africa to the borders of Egypt, as well as Mohammedan

Spain.

3. Mon vieux: a French phrase meaning,

4. Distressed Area: area where there is widespread

unemployment, poverty, etc., a slum area.

5. Foreign Legionnaires: France organized a foreign legion shortly

after the conquest of Algiers in 1830, enlisting recruits who were

not French subjects. Spain had a foreign legion, up till the

revolution in Morocco, and Holland in the Dutch East Indies.

6. fifteen- hands: unit of measurement, especially for the height of

horses; a hand, the breadth of the human palm, is now usually

taken to be 4 inches.

3 Pub Talk and the King' s English

Henry Fairlie

1 Conversation is the most sociable of all human

activities. And it is an activity only of humans. However

intricate

the ways in which animals communicate with each other, they do

not

indulge in

anything that deserves the name of conversation.

2 The charm of conversation is that it does not really start

from anywhere, and no one has any idea where it will go as it

meanders

or leaps and sparkles or just glows. The enemy of good

conversation is the person who has

Conversation is not for making a point. Argument may often be a

part of it, but the purpose of the argument is not to convince. There

is no winning in conversation. In fact, the best conversationalists

are those who are prepared to lose. Suddenly they see the

moment for one of their best

anecdotes

, but in a flash the

conversation has moved on and the opportunity is lost. They are

ready to let it go.

3 Perhaps it is because of my up- bringing in English pubs

that I think bar conversation has a charm of its own. Bar friends

are not deeply involved in each other's lives. They are

companions, not intimates. The fact that their marriages may be

on the rooks, or that their love affairs have been broken or even

that they got out of bed on the wrong side is simply not a concern.

They are like the musketeers of

Dumas

who, although they lived

side by side with each other, did not

delve into

,each other's lives

or the recesses of their thoughts and feelings.

4 It was on such an occasion the other evening, as the

conversation moved desultorily here and there, from the most

commonplace to thoughts of

Jupiter

, without any focus and with

no need for one, that suddenly the

alchemy

of conversation took

place, and all at once there was a focus. I do not remember what

made one of our companions say it--she clearly had not come into

the bar to say it, it was not something that was pressing on her

mind--but her remark fell quite naturally into the talk.

5

King's English' was a term of criticism, that it means language

which one should not properly use.

6 The glow of the conversation burst into flames. There were

affirmations and protests and denials, and of course the promise,

made in all such conversation, that we would look it up on the

morning. That would settle it; but conversation does not need to be

settled; it could still go ignorantly on.

7 It was an Australian who had given her such a definition of

tart

remarks

about what one could expect from the descendants of

convicts

.

We had traveled in five minutes to Australia. Of course, there

would be resistance to the King's English in such a society. There

is always resistance in the lower classes to any attempt by an

upper class to lay down rules for

8 Look at the language barrier between the

Saxon churls

and their

Norman

conquerors. The conversation had swung from

Australian convicts of the 19th century to the English peasants of

the 12th century. Who was right, who was wrong, did not matter.

The conversation was on wings.

9 Someone took one of the best-known of examples, which

is still always worth the reconsidering. When we talk of meat on

our tables we use French words; when we speak of the animals

from which the meat comes we use Anglo-Saxon words. It is a pig

in its

sty

; it is pork (porc) on the table. They are cattle in the fields,

but we sit down to beef (boeuf). Chickens become poultry (poulet),

and a calf becomes veal (veau). Even if our menus were not

wirtten in French out of snobbery, the English we used in them

would still be Norman English. What all this tells us is of a deep

class

rift

in the culture of England after the Norman conquest.

10 The Saxon peasants who tilled the land and reared the

animals could not afford the meat, which went to Norman tables.

The peasants were allowed to eat the rabbits that

scampered

over their fields and, since that meat was cheap, the Norman lords

of course turned up their noses at it. So rabbit is still rabbit on our

tables, and not changed into some

rendering

of lapin.

11 As we listen today to the arguments about bilingual

education, we ought to think ourselves back into the shoes of the

Saxon peasant. The new ruling class had built a cultural barrier

against him by building their French against his own language.

There must have been a great deal of cultural humiliation felt by

the English when they revolted under Saxon leaders like

Hereward the Wake.

then --had become French. And here in America now, 900 years

later, we are still the heirs to it.

12 So the next morning, the conversation over, one looked it

up. The phrase came into use some time in the 16th century.

Intercepting Certaine Letters

of someone,

Shakespeare? That would be the confirmation that it was in

general use. He uses it once, when Mistress Quickly in

Wives of Windsor

here will be an old

abusing

of God's patience and the King's

English,

13 One could have expected that it would be about then that

the phrase would be coined. After five centuries of growth, o1f

tussling with the French of the Normans and the

Angevins and

the Plantagenets

and at last absorbing it, the conquered in the

end conquering the conqueror. English had come royally into its

own.

14 There was a King's (or Queen' s) English to be proud of.

The

Elizabethans

blew on it as on a dandelion

clock

, and its

seeds multiplied, and floated to the ends of the earth.

English

racial discrimination.

15 Yet there had been something in the remark of the

Australian. The phrase has always been used a little

pejoratively

and even

facetiously

by the lower classes. One feels that even

Mistress Quickly--a servant--is saying that Dr. Caius--her

master--will lose his control and speak with the vigor of ordinary

folk. If the King's English is

claim is often mocked by the underlings, when they say with a jeer

dominance is still there.

16 There is always a great danger, as Carlyle put it, that

reality, but only representations of it, and the King's English, like

the Anglo-French of the Normans, is a class representation of

reality. Perhaps it is worth trying to speak it, but it should not be

laid down as an

edict

, and made immune to change from below.

17 I have an unending love affair with dictionaries-Auden

once said that all a writer needs is a pen, plenty of paper and

best dictionaries he can afford

said that dictionaries are instruments of

common sense

. The

King's English is a model

—

a rich and instructive one--but it ought

not to be an

ultimatum

.

18 So we may return to my beginning. Even with the most

educated and the most literate, the King's English slips and slides

in conversation. There is no worse conversationalist than the one

who punctuates his words as he speaks as if he were writing, or

even who tries to use words as if he were composing a piece of

prose for print. When E. M. Forster writes of

the sinister

corridor

of our age,

even terror in the image. But if E. M. Forster sat in our living room

and said,

corridor of our age,

19 Great authors are constantly being asked by foolish

people to talk as they write. Other people may celebrate the lofty

conversations in which the great minds are supposed to have

indulged in the great salons of 18th century Paris, but one

suspects that the great minds were gossiping and judging the

quality of the food and the wine. Henault, then the great president

of the First Chamber of the

Paris Parlement

, complained bitterly

of the

on to observe that the only difference between her cook and the

supreme chef, Brinvilliers , lay in their intentions.

20 The one place not to have dictionaries is in a sit ting room

or at a dining table. Look the thing up the next morning, but not in

the middle of the conversation. Other wise one will bind the

conversation, one will not let it flow freely here and there. There

would have been no conversation the other evening if we had

been able to settle at one the meaning of

would never hay gone to Australia, or leaped back in time to the

Norman Conquest.

21 And there would have been nothing to think about the

next morning. Perhaps above all, one would not have been

engaged by interest in the musketeer who raised the subject,

wondering more about her. The bother about teaching

chimpanzees

how to talk is that they will probably try to talk sense

and so ruin all conversation.

(from The Washington Post (

华盛顿邮报

), May 6, 1979)

NOTES

1. Fairlie: Henry Fairlie (1924--) is a contributing editor to The New

Republic as well as a contributor to other journals. He is author of:

The Kennedy Promise The Life of Politics and The Spoiled

Child of the Western World. 2. The Washington Post: an influential

and highly respected U.S. newspaper with a national distribution

3. pub: contracted from

licensed for the sale of alcoholic drinks

4. musketeers of Dumas: characters created by the French

novelist, Alexandre Dumas (1802--1870) in his novel The Three

Musketeers

5. Jupiter: referring perhaps to the planet Jupiter and the

information about it gathered by a U.S. space probe

6. descendants of convicts: in 1788 a penal settlement was

established at Botany Bay, Australia by Britain. British convicts,

sentenced to long term imprisonment, were often transported to

this penal settlement. Regular settlers arrived in Australia about

1829.

7. Saxon churls: a farm laborer or peasant in early England; a term

used pejoratively by the Norman conquerors to mean an ill-bred,

ignorant English peasant

8. Norman conquerors: the Normans, under William I, Duke of

Normandy (former territory of N. France) conquered England after

defeating Harold, the English king, at the Battle of Hastings

(1066).

9. lapin: French word for

rd the Wake: Anglo-Saxon patriot and rebel leader. He

rose up against the Norman conquerors but was defeated and

slain (1071).

: Thomas Nash (1567--1601), English satirist. Very little is

known of his life .Although his first publications appeared in 1589,it

was not until Pierce Penniless His Supplication to the Devil

(1592),a bitter satire on contemporary society ,that his natural and

vigorous style was fully developed .His other publications include:

Summer' s Last Will and Testament; The Unfortunate Traveler;

and The Isle of Dogs.

: Thomas Dekker (1572.'? --16327), English dramatist

and pamphleteer. Little is known of his life except that he

frequently suffered from poverty and served several prison terms

for debt. Publications: The Shoe- maker' s Holiday The Seven

Deadly Sins of London The Gull' s Hand- book; etc.

13...here will be an old abusing:

from Shakespeare's

4, lines5 --6

ns and Plantagenets: names of ruling Norman dynasties

in England (1154--1399), sprung from Geoffrey, Count of Anjou

(former province of W. France)

ethans: people, especially writers, of the time of Queen

Elizabeth I of England (1533--1603)

16.(dandelion) clock: the downy fruiting head of the common

dandelion

: W.H. Auden (1907 --73), British-born poet, educated at

Oxford. During the Depression of the 1930' s he was deeply

affected by Marxism. His works of that period include Poems

(1930) and The Orators (1932), prose and poetry, bitter and witty,

on the impending collapse of British middle-class ways and a

coming revolution. Auden went to the U.S. in 1939 and became an

American citizen in 1946. In the 1940's he moved away from

Marxism and adopted a Christian existential view.

18. Forster: Edward Morgan Forster (1879--1970), English author,

one of the most important British novelists of the 20th century.

Forster's fiction, conservative in form, is in the English tradition of

the novel of manners. He explores the emotional and sensual

deficiencies of the English middle class, developing his themes by

means of irony, wit, and symbolism. Some of his well known

novels are: Where Angels Fear to Tread The Longest Journey A

Room with a View Howard' s End and A Passage to India.

19. Henault: Jean-Francois Henault (? --1770), president of the

Paris Parlement, and lover of Mme Deffand

20. Paris Parlement: the

judicature under the ancien regime in France. It was later divided

into several chambers.

21. Mme. Deffand: Deffand, Marie De Vichy-Chamrond,

Marquisse Du (1679--1780), a leading figure in French society,

famous for her letters to the Duchesse de Choiseul, to Voltaire and

to Horace Walpole. She was married at 21 to her kinsman, Jean

Baptiste de la lande, Marquis du Deffand, from whom she

separated in 1722. She later became the mistress of the regent,

Philippe, duc d' Orleans. She also lived on intimate terms with

Jean- Francois Henault, president of the Parlement of Paris till his

death in 1770.

Inaugural Address

(January 20, 1961)

John F. Kennedy

1 We observe today not a victory of party but a

celebration of freedom, symbolizing an end as well as a beginning,

signifying renewal as well as change. For I have sworn before you

and Almighty God the same

solemn oath

our forebears

prescribed

nearly a century and three-quarters ago.

2 The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal

hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all

forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary belief for

which our forebears fought is still at issue around the globe, the

belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the

state but from the hand of God.

3 We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first

revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend

and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation

of Americans, born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by

a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage, and

unwilling to witness or permit the slow

undoing

of these human

rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to

which we are committed today at home and around the world.

4 Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or i11, that

we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship,

support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the

success of liberty.

5 This much we pledge--and more.

6 To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we

share, we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends. United, there is little

we cannot do in a host of co-operative

ventures

. Divided, there is

little we can do, for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at

odds

and split

asunder

.

7 To those new states whom we welcome to the ranks of the

free, we pledge our word that one form of colonial control shall not

have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron

tyranny. We shall not always expect to find them supporting our

view. But we shall always hope to find them strongly supporting

their own freedom, and to remember that, in the past, those who

foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up

inside.

8 To those peoples in the huts and villages of half the globe

struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best

efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is

required, not because the Communists may be doing it, not

because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free

society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few

who are rich.

9 To our sister republics south of our border, we offer a

special pledge: to convert our good words into good deeds, in a

new

alliance

for progress, to assist free men and free

governments in casting off the chains of poverty. But this peaceful

revolution of hope cannot become the

prey

of hostile powers. Let

all our neighbors know that we shall join with them to oppose

aggression or

subversion

anywhere in the Americas. And let

every other power know that this hemisphere intends to remain

the master of its own house.

10 To that world assembly of

sovereign

states, the United

Nations, our last best hope in an age where the instruments of war

have far outpaced the instruments of peace, we renew our pledge

of support: to prevent it from becoming merely a forum for

invective

, to strengthen its shield of the new and the weak, and to

enlarge the area in which its

writ

may run.

11 Finally, to those nations who would make themselves our

adversary

, we offer not a pledge but a request: that both sides

begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of

destruction unleashed by science

engulf

all humanity in planned

or accidental self-destruction.

12 We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our

arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt

that they will never be employed.

13 But neither can two great and powerful groups of nations

take comfort from our present course--both sides overburdened by

the cost of modern weapons, both rightly alarmed by the steady

spread of the deadly atom, yet both racing to

alter

that uncertain

balance of terror that stays the hand of mankind's final war.

14 So let us begin anew, remembering on both sides that

civility

is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always

subject

to

proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to

negotiate.

15 Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of

belaboring

those problems which divide us.

16 Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and

precise proposals for the inspection and control of arms and bring

the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute

control of all nations.

17 Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science

instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the

deserts, eradicate disease,

tap

the ocean depths and encourage

the arts and commerce.

18 Let both sides unite to heed in all corners of the earth the

command of

Isaiah

to

oppressed go free

19 And if a

beachhead

of co-operation may push back the

jungle of suspicion, let both sides join in creating a new

endeavor

,

not a new balance of power, but a new world of law, where the

strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved.

20 All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days.

Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life

of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this

planet. But let us begin.

21 In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than mine, will rest

the final success or failure of our course. Since this country was

founded, each generation of Americans has been summoned to

give

testimony

to its national loyalty. The graves of young

Americans who answered the call to service surround the globe.

22 Now the trumpet summons us again-- not as a call to bear

arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though

embattled we are; but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight

struggle, year in and year out,

tribulation

,

tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.

23 Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global

alliance, North and South, East and West, that can assure a more

fruitful life for all mankind? Will you join in the historic effort?

24 In the long history of the world, only a few generations

have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of

maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility; I

welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places

with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the

faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our

country and all who serve it, and the glow from that fire can truly

light the world.

25 And so, my fellow Americans ask not what your country

can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.

26 My fellow citizens of the world, ask not what America will

do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

27 Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of

the world, ask of us here the same high standards of strength and

sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good

conscience

our only

sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go

forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help,

but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own.

(from A Treasury of the World's Great Speeches, 1965)

NOTES

1. inaugural address: since 1937, Inauguration Day has been

changed to Jan. 20. On this day every four years the newly

elected president of the United States faces the people for the first

time, takes the presidential oath of office and delivers his

inaugural address.

2. solemn oath: the presidential oath, traditionally administered by

the Chief Justice, is prescribed in Article II, section 1 of the

Constitution of the United States. The oath runs as follows:

solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of

President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability,

preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

3. The belief that the rights of man.., hand of God: refers to a

passage in the American Declaration of Independence:

these truths to be self- evident, that all men are created equal, that

they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,

that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

4. command of Isaiah: one of the greatest Hebrew prophets

whose writings are extant (late 8th century B. C. ) venerated by

rabbis as 2nd only to Moses. The Book of Isaiah, a book in the Old

Testament of the Bible of the Christian, is believed to be a work of

two authors of different periods; chapters 1--39 relate to the

history of the Israelites; chapters 40--66 foretell the coming of the

Messiah. The quotation in the text is taken from chapter 58, verse

6:

wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed

go free, and that ye break every yoke?

Love is a Fallacy

Max Shulman

1 Charles Lamb,

as merry and

enterprising

a fellow

as you will meet in

a

month of Sundays

,

unfettered the

informal essay with

his memorable Old

China and Dream's

Children. There

follows an informal

essay that ventures

even beyond Lamb's

frontier, indeed,

quite the right word to describe this essay;

flaccid

or possibly

2 Vague though its category, it is without doubt an essay.

It develops an argument; it cites instances; it reaches a

conclusion. Could

Carlyle

do more? Could

Ruskin

?

3 Read, then, the following essay which undertakes to

demonstrate that logic, far from being a dry,

pedantic

discipline

, is a living, breathing thing, full of beauty, passion,

and

trauma

--Author's Note

4 Cool was I and logical. Keen, calculating,

perspicacious

,

acute

and

astute

--I was all of these. My brain

was as powerful as a dynamo, as precise as a chemist's

scales, as penetrating as a

scalpel

. And--think of it! --I was

only eighteen.

5 It is not often that one so young has such a giant

intellect. Take, for example, Petey Butch, my roommate at the

University of Minnesota. Same age, same background, but

dumb as an ox. A nice enough young fellow, you understand,

but nothing upstairs. Emotional type. Unstable.

Impressionable. Worst of all, a

faddist

. Fads, I

submit

, are the

very negation of reason. To be swept up in every new craze

that comes along, to surrender yourself to idiocy just because

everybody else is doing it--this, to me, is the acme of

mindlessness. Not, however, to Petey.

6 One afternoon I found Petey lying on his bed with an

expression of such distress on his face that I immediately

diagnosed

appendicitis

.

laxative

. I'll get a doctor.

7

8

9

raccoon

coat,

10 I perceived that his trouble was not physical, but

mental.

11

temples.

Charleston

came back. Like a fool I spent all my money for

textbooks, and now I can't get a raccoon coat.

12

incredulously

,

actually wearing raccoon coats again?

13

Where've you been?

14

Big Men on Campus

15 He leaped from the bed and paced the room,

to have a raccoon coat,

16

unsanitary. They shed. They smell bad. They weight too much.

They're unsightly. They--

17

the thing to do. Don't you want to be in the swim?

18

19

raccoon coat. Anything!

20 My brain, that

precision instrument

, slipped into high

gear.

21

22 I stroked my chin thoughtfully. It so happened that I

knew where to set my hands on a raccoon coat. My father had

had one in his undergraduate days; it lay now in a trunk in the

attic back home. It also happened that Petey had something I

wanted. He didn't have it exactly, but at least he had first rights

on it. I refer to his girl, Polly Espy.

23 I had long

coveted

Polly Espy. Let me emphasize that

my desire for this young woman was not emotional in nature.

She was, to be sure, a girl who excited the emotions but I was

not one to let my heart rule my head. I wanted Polly for a

shrewdly calculated, entirely

cerebral

reason.

24 I was a freshman in law school. In a few years I would

be out in practice. I was well aware of the importance of the

right kind of wife in furthering a lawyer's career. The successful

lawyers I had observed were, almost without exception,

married to beautiful, gracious, intelligent women. With one

omission, Polly fitted these specifications perfectly.

25 Beautiful she was. She was not yet of

pin- up

proportions

but I felt sure that time would supply the lack She

already had the makings.

26 Gracious she was. By gracious I mean full of graces.

She had an erectness of carriage, an ease of bearing, a poise

that clearly indicated the best of breeding, At table her

manners were exquisite. I had seen her at the Kozy Kampus

Korner eating the specialty of the house--a sandwich that

contained scraps of

pot roast

, gravy, chopped nuts, and a

dipper of

sauerkraut

--without even getting her fingers moist.

27 Intelligent she was not. in fact, she

veered

in the

opposite direction. But I believed that under my guidance she

would

smarten up

. At any rate, it was worth a try. It is, after all,

easier to make a beautiful dumb girl smart than to make an

ugly smart girl beautiful.

28

29

if you'd call it love. Why?

30

arrangement with her? I mean are you going steady or

anything like that?

31

other dates. Why?

32

particular fondness?

33

34 I nodded with satisfaction.

out of the picture, the field would be open. Is that right?

35

36

suitcase out of the closet.

37

38

bag.

39

you're home, you couldn't get some money from your old man,

could you, and lend it to me so I can buy a raccoon coat?

40

wink and closed my bag and left.

41

morning. I threw open the suitcase and revealed the huge,

hairy, gamy object that my father had worn in his

Stutz

Bearcat

in 1925.

42

Holy Toledo

!

rever ently

. He plunged his

hands into the raccoon coat and then his face.

he repeated fifteen or twenty times.

43

44

pelt

to him.

Then a canny look came into his eyes.

it?

45

mincing no words

.

46

Polly?

47

48 He flung the coat from him.

49 I shrugged.

guess it's your business.

50 I sat down in a chair and pretended to read a book, but

out of the corner of my eye I kept watching Petey. He was a

torn man. First he looked at the coat with the expression of a

waif at a bakery window. Then he turned away and set his jaw

resolutely. Then he looked back at the coat, with even more

longing in his face. Then he turned away, but with not so much

resolution this time. Back and forth his head

swiveled

, desire

waxing

, resolution

waning

. Finally he didn't turn away at all;

he just stood and stared with mad lust at the coat.

51

thickly.

52

53

54

55

casual kick

--just a few laughs, that's

all.

56

57 He complied. The coat bunched high over his ears and

dropped all the way down to his shoe tops. He looked like a

mound of dead raccoons.

58 I rose from my chair.

my hand.

59 He swallowed.

hand.

60 I had my first date with Polly the following evening. This

was in the nature of a survey; I wanted to find out just how

much work I had to do to get her mind up to the standard I

required. I took her first to dinner. < /p>

（

=delicious

）

dinner,

I took her to a movie.

movie,

home.

as she bade me good night.

61 I went back to my room with a heavy heart. I had

gravely underestimated the size of my task. This girl's lack of

information was terrifying. Nor would it be enough merely to

supply her with information First she had to be taught to think.

This

loomed

as a project of no small dimensions, and at first I

was tempted to give her back to Petey. But then I got to

thinking about her abundant physical charms and about the

way she entered a room and the way she handled a knife and

fork, and I decided to make an effort.

62 I went about it, as in all things, systematically. I gave

her a course in logic. It happened that I, as a law student, was

taking a course in logic myself, so I had all the facts at my

finger tips.

next date,

Knoll

and talk.

63

this girl: you would go far to find another so agreeable.

64 We went to the Knoll, the campus trysting place, and

we sat down under an old oak, and she looked at me

expectantly.

65

66 She thought this over for a minute and decided she

liked it.

67

thinking. Before we can think correctly, we must first learn to

recognize the common fallacies of logic. These we will take up

tonight.

68

Wow- dow

!

delightedly.

69 I winced, but went bravely on.

fallacy called

Dicto Slmpliciter

.

70

71,

unqualified

generalization. For example: Exercise is good.

Therefore everybody should exercise.

72

wonderful. I mean it builds the body and everything.

73

Exercise is good is an unqualified generalization. For instance,

if you have heart disease, exercise is bad, not good. Many

people are ordered by their doctors not to exercise. You must

qualify the generalization. You must say exercise is usually

good, or exercise is good for most people. Otherwise you have

committed a Dicto Simplioiter. Do you see?

74

morel

75

her, and when she desisted, I continued:

fallacy called

Hasty Generalization

. Listen carefully: You can't

speak French. I can't speak French. Petey Burch can't speak

French. I must therefore conclude that nobody at the University

of Minnesota can speak French.

76

77 I hid my exasperation.

generalization is reached too hastily. There are too few

instances to support such a conclusion.

78

79 I fought off a wave of despair. I was getting nowhere

with this girl absolutely nowhere. Still, I am nothing if not

persistent. I continued.

80

Post Hoc

. Listen to this: Let's not take Bill

on our picnic. Every time we take him out with us, it rains.

81

back home--Eula Becker, her name is, it never falls. Every

single time we take her on a picnic--

82

doesn't cause the rain. She has no connection with the rain.

You are guilty of Post Hoc if you blame Eula Becker.

83

you mad at me?

84 I sighed deeply.

85

86

Contradictory Premises

.

87

88 I frowned, but plunged ahead.

Contradictory Premises: If God can do anything, can He make

a stone so heavy that He won't be able to lift it?

89

90

pointed out.

91

can't make the stone.

92

93 She scratched her pretty, empty head.

cofused,

94

argument contradict each other, there can be no argument. If

there is an irresistible force, there can be no immovable object.

If there is an immovable object, there can be no irresistible

force. Get it?

95

eagerly.

96 I cousulted my watch.

I'll take you home now, and you go over all the things you've

learned. We'll have another session tomorrow night.

97 I deposited her at the girls' dormitory, where she

assured me that she had had a perfectly terrif evening, and I

went glumly to my room. Petey lay snoring in his bed, the

raccoon coat huddled like a great hairy beast at his feet. For a

moment I considered waking him and telling him that he could

have his girl back. It seemed clear that my project was doomed

to failure. The girl simply had a logic-proof head.

98 But then I reconsidered. I had wasted one evening: I

might as well waste another. Who knew? Maybe somewhere in

the extinct

crater

of her mind, a few

embers

still smoldered.

Maybe somehow I could fan them into flame. Admittedly it was

not a prospect

fraught with

hope, but I decided to give it one

more try.

99 Seated under the oak the next evening I said,

fallacy tonight is called

Ad Misericordiam

.

100 She quivered with delight.

101

the boss asks him what his qualifications are, he replies that he

has a wife and six children at home, the wife is a helpless

cripple, the children have nothing to eat, no clothes to wear, no

shoes on their feet, there are no beds in the house, no coal in

the cellar, and winter is coming.

102 A tear rolled down each of Polly's pink cheeks.

this is awful, awful,

103

man never answered the boss's questions about his

qualifications. Instead he appealed to the boss's sympathy. He

committed the fallacy of Ad Misericordiam. Do you

understand?

104

105 I handed her a handkerchief and tried to keep from

screaming while she wiped her eyes.

carefully controlled tone,

False Analogy

. Here

is an example: Students should be allowed to look at their

textbooks during examinations. After all, surgeons have X-rays

to guide them during an operation, lawyers have briefs to guide

them during a trial, carpenters have blueprints to guide them

when they are building a house. Why, then, shouldn't students

be allowed to look at their textbooks during an examination?

106

marvy idea I've heard in years.

107

Doctors, lawyers, and carpenters aren't taking a test to see

how much they have learned, but students are. The situations

are altogether different, and you can't make an analogy

between them.

108

109

Doggedly

I pressed on.

try

Hypothesis

Contrary to Fact.

110

yummy

,

111

photographic plate in a drawer with a chunk of pitchblende (n.

沥青油矿

), the world today would not know about radium .

112

see the movie? Oh, it just

knocked me out

. That Walter

Pidgeon is so dreamy. I mean he fractures me.

113

coldly,

Maybe Madame Curie would have discovered radium at some

later date. Maybe somebody else would have discovered it.

Maybe any number of things would have happened. You can't

start with a hypothesis that is not true and then draw any

supportable conclusions from it.

114

said Polly.

115 One more chance, I decided. But just one more.

There is a limit to what flesh and blood can bear.

fallacy is called

Poisoning the Well

.

116

117

and says, ?My opponent is a notorious liar. You can't believe a

word that he is going to say. '... Now, Polly, think. Think hard.

What's wrong?

118 I watched her closely as she knit her creamy brow in

concentration. Suddenly, a g1immer of intelligence

—

the first I

had seen--came into her eyes.

indignation.

man got if the first man calls him a liar before he even begins

talking?

119

It's not fair. The first man has poisoned the well before

anybody could drink from it. He has

hamstrung

his opponent

before he could even start. … Polly, I‘m proud of you.

120

Pshaw

121

have to do is concentrate. Think-- examine

—

evaluate. Come

now, let's review everything we have learned.‖

122

123 Heartened by the knowledge that Polly was not

altogether a

cretin

, I began a long, patient review of all I had

told her. Over and over and over again I cited instances

pointed out flaws, kept hammering away without

let-up

. It was

like digging a tunnel. At first everything was work, sweat, and

darkness. I had no idea when I would reach the light, or even if

I would. But I persisted. I pounded and clawed and

scraped

,

and finally I was rewarded. I saw a chink of light. And then the

chink got bigger and the sun came pouring in and all was

bright.

124 Five grueling nights this took, but it was worth it. I had

made a logician out of Polly; I had taught her to think. My job

was done. She was worthy of me at last. She was a fit wife for

me, a proper hostess for my many mansions, a suitable mother

for my well-heeled children.

125 It must not be thought that I was without love for this

girl. Quite the contrary, Just as

Pygmalion

loved the perfect

woman he had fashioned, so I loved mine. I determined to

acquaint her with my feeling at our very next meeting. The time

had come to change our relationship from academic to

romantic.

126

127

128

th a smile, ―we have

now spent five evenings together. We have gotten along

splendidly. It is clear that we are well matched.‖

129 ―Hasty Generalization,‖ said Polly brightly.

130 ―I beg your pardon,‖ said I.

131 ―Hasty Generalization,‖ she repeated.

―How can you

say that we are well matched on the basis of only five dates?‖

132 I chuckled with amusement. The dear child had

learned her lessons well.

a tolerant manner,

to eat a whole cake to know it's good.

133

I'm a girl.‖

134 I chuckled with somewhat less amusement. The dear

child had learned her lessons perhaps too well. I decided to

change

tactics

. Obviously the best approach was a simple,

strong, direct declaration of love. I paused for a moment while

my massive brain chose the proper words. Then I began:

135

the moon and the stars and the

constellations

of outer space.

Please, my darling, say that you will go steady with me, for if

you will not, life will be meaningless. I will languish (vi.

憔悴

). I

will refuse my meals. I will wander the face of the earth, a

shambling (

摇摇晃晃地走

), hollow-eyed hulk.

136 There, I thought, folding my arms, that ought to do it.

137

138 I ground my teeth. I was not Pygmalion; I was

Frankenstein

, and my monster had me by the throat.

Frantically I fought back the tide of panic surging through me.

At all costs I had to keep cool.

139

have learned your fallacies.

140

141

142

143

my dear? If I hadn't come along you never would have learned

about fallacies.

144

145 I dashed perspiration from my brow.

croaked

,

this is just classroom stuff. You know that the things you learn

in school don't have anything to do with life.

146

playfully.

147 That did it. I leaped to my feet, bellowing like a bull.

148

149

150

would go steady with him.

151 I reeled back, overcome with the infamy of it. After he

promised, after he made a deal, after he shook my hand!

The

rat!

I shrieked, kicking up great chunks of

turf

.

with him, Polly. He's a liar. He's a cheat. He's a rat.

152

think shouting must be a fallacy too.

153 With an immense effort of will, I modulated my voice.

logically. How could you choose Petey Burch over me? Look at

me--a brilliant student, a tremendous intellectual, a man with

an assured future. Look at Petey--a

knothead

, a

jitterbug

, a

guy who'll never know where his next meal is coming from.

Can you give me one logical reason why you should go stead

with Petey Burch?

154

coat.

(from Rhetoric in a Modern Modeby James K. Bell and Adrian

A. Cohn)

knot head

NOTES

1. Max Shulman (1919-- ): one of America's best-known

humorists. Max Shulman is a writer of many talents. He has

written novels, stories, Broadway plays, movie scenarios, and

television scripts. He is the author of Barefoot Boy with Cheek,

The Feather Merchant, and Rally Round the Flag, Boys as well

as of the TV series Dobie Gillis.

Men on Campus: important and popular people in the

university

Bearcat: name of an automobile

Toledo: an interjectional compound (like holy cow! holy

smoke! ) to express astonishment, emphasis, etc.

's Polly to me, or me to Polly? : perhaps a parody of

for her?

Ⅱ

, scene 2

6. delish, marvy, sensaysh, terrif, magnif: clipped, vulgar forms

for delicious, marvelous, sensational, terrific and magnificent

7. Dicto Simpliciter: clipped form of

dictum secundum quid

saying (taken too) simply to a saying according to what (it

really is)

provisos

8. Post Hoc: clipped form of post hoc, ergo propter hoc, a Latin

phrase meaning

in logic of thinking that a happening which follows another must

be its result

9. Ad Misericordiam: a Latin phrase meaning

in logic of appealing to pity or compassion

10. Walter Pidgeon: a Hollywood film actor

11. fracture: American slang meaning

reaction in someone; to cause to react with enthusiasm

12. Pygmalion: (Greek mythology) a king of Cyprus, and a

sculptor, who fell in love with his own statue of Galatea, later

brought to life by the goddess of love, Aphrodite, at his prayer

13. Frankenstein: the title character in a novel (1818) by Mary

Wollstonecraft Shelley: he is a young medical student who

creates a monster that destroys Him

DISAPPEARING THR0UGH THE SKYLIGHT

Osborne Bennet Hardison Jr.

1 Science is committed to the universal. A sign of this

is that the more successful a science becomes, the broader

the agreement about its basic concepts: there is not a separate

Chinese or American or Soviet thermodynamics, for example;

there is simply

thermodynamics

For several decades of the

twentieth century there was a Western and a Soviet

genetics

,

the latter associated with Lysenko's theory that environmental

stress can produce genetic

mutations

. Today Lysenko's

theory is

discredited

, and there is now only one genetics.

2 As the corollary of science, technology also exhibits the

universalizing

tendency. This is why the spread of technology

makes the world look ever more

homogeneous

. Architectural

styles, dress styles, musical styles-- even eating styles--tend

increasingly to be world styles. The world looks more

homogeneous because it is more homogeneous. Children who

grow up in this world therefore experience it as a sameness

rather than a

diversity

, and because their identities are

shaped by this sameness, their sense of differences among

cultures and individuals diminishes. As buildings become more

alike, the people who inhabit the buildings become more alike.

The result is described precisely in a phrase that is already

familiar.

3 The automobile illustrates the Point With great clarity. A

technological

innovation

like

streamlining

or all-welded body

construction may be rejected initially, but if it is important to the

efficiency or economics of automobiles, it will reappear in

different ways until it is not only accepted but universally

regarded as an

财富

. Today's automobile is no longer unique

to a given company or even to a given national culture, its

basic features are found, with variations, in automobiles in

general, no matter who makes them.

4 A few years ago

the Ford Motor Company

came up

with the Fiesta, which it called the

showed it surrounded by the flags of all nations. Ford

explained that the

cylinder block

was made in England, the

carburetor

in Ireland, the

transmission

in France, the wheels

in Belgium, and so forth.

5 The Fiesta appears to have sunk Without a trace. But

the idea of a world car was inevitable. It was the automotive

equivalent of the International Style. Ten years after the Fiesta,

all of the large automakers were international. Americans had

Plants in Europe, Asia, and South America, and Europeans

and Japanese had plants in America and South America, and

in the Soviet Union Fiat

Fiat

(= Fabbrica Italiana Automobile

Torino ) workers refreshed themselves with Pepsi-Cola). In the

fullness of time international automakers will have plants in

Egypt and India and the People's Republic of China.

6 As in architecture, so in automaking. In a given cost

range, the same technology tends to produce the same

solutions. The visual evidence for this is as obvious for cars as

for buildings. Today, if you choose models in the same price

range, you will be

hard put

at 500 paces to tell one

make

from

another. In other words, the specifically American traits that

lingered in American automobiles in the 1960s--traits that

linked American cars to American history--are disappearing.

Even the

Volkswagen Beetle

has disappeared and has taken

with it the visible evidence of the history of streamlining that

extends from D'Arcy Thompson to Carl Breer to Ferdinand

Porsche.

7 If man creates machines, machines in turn shape their

creators. As the automobile is universalized, it universalizes

those who use it. Like the World Car he drives, modern man is

becoming universal. No longer quite an individual, no longer

quite the product of a unique geography and culture, he moves

from one climate-controlled shopping mall to another, from one

airport to the next, from one Holiday Inn to its successor three

hundred miles down the road; but somehow his location never

changes. He is

cosmopolitann

. The price he Pays is that he

no longer has a home in the traditional sense of the word. The

benefit is that he begins to suspect home in the traditional

sense is another name for limitations, and that home in the

modern sense is everywhere and always surrounded by

neighbors.

8 The universalizing

imperative

of technology is

irresistible. Barring the

catastrophe

of nuclear war, it will

continue to shape both modern culture and the consciousness

of those who inhabit that culture.

9 This brings us to art and history again. Reminiscing on

the early work of Francis Picabia and Marcel Duchamp,

Madame Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia wrote of the discovery of the

machine aesthetic in 1949:

artist thought he owed it to himself to turn his back on the

Eiffel

Tower

, as a protest against the architectural

blasphemy

with

which it filled the sky.... The discovery and

rehabilitation

of ...

machines soon generated propositions which evaded all

tradition, above all, a mobile, extra human

plasticity

which

was absolutely new....‖

10 Art is, in one definition, simply an effort to name the

real world. Are machines

the real world that easy to find? Science has shown the in

substantiality

of the world. It has thus

undermined

an article

of faith: the thingliness of things. At the same time, it has

produced images of orders of reality underlying the thingliness

of things. Are images of cells or of

molecules

or of

galaxies

more or less real than images of machines? Science

has also produced images that are pure artifacts. Are images

of

self-squared dragons

more or less real than images of

molecules?

11 The skepticism of modern science about the

thingliness of things implies a new appreciation of the

humanity of art entirely consistent with Kandinsky's

observation in On the Spiritual in Art that beautiful art

from inner need, which springs from the soul.

opens on a world whose reality is not

defined as things seen from a middle distance but

the soul or the mind. It is a world radically emptied of history

because it is a form of perception rather than a content.

12 The disappearance of history is thus a liberation-- what

Madame Buffet-Picabia refers to as the discovery of

extra-human plasticity which [is] absolutely new.

modern art often expresses this feeling of liberation through

play--in painting in the playfulness of Picasso and Joan Miro

and in poetry in the nonsense of

Dada

and the mock heroics of

a poem like Wallace Stevens's

C.

13 The playfulness of the modern aesthetic is, finally, its

most striking--and also its most serious and, by corollary, its

most disturbing-- feature. The playfulness imitates the

playfulness of science that produces

game theory

and

virtual

particles

and black holes and that, by introducing human

growth genes into cows, forces students of ethics to reexamine

the definition of

cannibalism

. The importance of play in the

modern aesthetic should not come as a surprise. It is

announced in every city in the developed world by the fantastic

and playful buildings of postmodernism and neo- modernism

and by the fantastic

juxtapositions

of architectural styles that

typify

collage city

and urban

adhocism

.

14 Today modern culture includes the geometries of the

International Style, the fantasies of

facadism

, and the

gamesmanship of

theme parks and museum villages

. It

pretends at times to be static but it is really dynamic. Its

buildings move and sway and reflect dreamy visions of

everything that is going on around them. It surrounds its

citizens with the linear sculpture of pipelines and interstate

highways and high-tension lines and the delicate

virtuosities

of the surfaces of the Chrysler Airflow and the Boeing 747 and

the lacy weavings of circuits etched on silicon, as well as with

the brutal assertiveness of oil tankers and bulldozers and the

Tinkertoy complications of

trusses

and geodesic

domes

and

lunar landers. It abounds in images and sounds and values

utterly different from those of the world of natural things seen

from a middle distance.

15 It is a human world, but one that is human in ways no

one expected. The image it reveals is not the worn and

battered face that stares from Leonardo's self-portrait much

less the one that stares, bleary and uninspired, every morning

from the bathroom mirror. These are the faces of history. It is,

rather, the image of an eternally playful and eternally youthful

power that makes order whether order is there or not and that

having made one order is quite capable of putting it aside and

creating an entirely different or the way a child might build one

structure from a set of blocks and then without malice and

purely in the spirit of play demolish it and begin again. It is an

image of the power that made humanity possible in the first

place.

16 The banks of the nineteenth century tended to be

neoclassic structures of

marble

or

granite

faced with

ponderous rows of columns. They made a statement

solid. We are permanent. We are as reliable as history. Your

money is safe in our vaults.

17 Today's banks are airy structures of steel and glass, or

they are store- fronts with slot-machinelike terminals, or trailers

parked on the lots of suburban shopping malls.

18 The vaults have been replaced by magnetic tapes. In a

computer, money is sequences of digital signals endlessly

recorded, erased, processed, and reprocessed, and endlessly

modified by other computers. The statement of modern banks

is

Palace. If we exist at all, we exist as an airy medium in which

your transactions are completed and your wealth increased.

19 That, perhaps, establishes the logical limit of the

modern aesthetic. If so, the limit is a long way ahead, but it can

be made out, just barely, through the haze over the road. As

surely as nature is being swallowed up by the mind, the banks,

you might say, are disappearing through their own skylights.

(from Disappearing Through The Skylight )

NOTES

1. Hardison: Osborne Bennet Hardison Jr. was born in San

Diego, California in 1928. He was educated at the University of

North Carolina and the University of Wisconsin. He has taught

at Princeton and the University of North Carolina. He is the

author of Lyrics and Elegies (1958), The Enduring Monument

(1962), English Literary Criticism: The Renaissance (1964),

Toward Freedom and Dignity: The Humanities and the Idea of

Humanity (1973), Entering the Maze: Identity and Change in

Modern Culture (1981) and Disappearing Through the Skylight

(1980).

2. Ford Motor Company: one of the largest car manufacturing

companies of America

3. International Style: as its name indicates, an architectural

style easily reproduced and accepted by countries throughout

the world. These structures use simple geometric forms of

straight lines, squares, rectangles, etc., in their designs. It is

often criticized as a rubber-stamp method of design. These

structures are meant to be simple, practical and cost-effective.

4. Fiat: the biggest Italian car manufacturing company. Fiat is

an acronym of the Italian name, Fabbrica Italiana Automobile

Torina.

5. Pepsi-Cola: a brand name of an American soft drink. It is a

strong competitor of another well-known American soft drink,

Coca-Cola.

6. Volkswagen Beetle: model name of a car designed and

manufactured by the German car manufacturing company,

Volkswagen

7.D'Arcy Thompson: D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson

(1860-1948) placed biology on a mathematical foundation. In

his book On Growth and Form. Thompson invented the term

Airflow to describe the curvature imposed by water on the body

of a fish, The airflow or streamling influenced the future

designing of cars and airplanes to increase their speed and

reduce air friction. 8. Carl Breer: auto-designer, who designed

the Chrysler Airflow of 1934.

9. Ferdinand Porshe: auto-designer of the original Volkswagen

10. Holiday Inn: name adopted by a hotel chain

11. Picabia: Francis Picabia (1878-1953). French painter. After

working in an impressionist style, Picabia was influenced by

Cubism and later was one of the original exponents of Dada in

Europe and the United States.

p: Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), French painter.

Duchamp is noted for his cubist- futurist painting Nude

Descending a Staircase, depicting continuous action with a

series of overlapping figures. In 1915 he was a cofounder of a

Dada group in New York.

13. Madame Gabrille Buffet- Picabia: perhaps wife of Francis

Picabia

14. Eiffel Tower: a tower of iron framework in Paris, designed

by A.G. Eiffel and erected in the Champ-de-Mars for the Paris

exposition of 1889

15. self-squared dragons: a picture of a four-dimensional

dragon produced by computer technique

16. Kandinsky: Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), Russian

abstract painter and theorist. He is usually regarded as the

originator of abstract art. In 1910 he wrote an important

theoretical study, Concerning the Spiritual in Art.

17. Picasso: Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Spanish painter and

sculptor, who worked in France. His landmark painting

Guernica is an impassioned allegorical condemnation of

facism and war.

18. Miro: Joan Miro (1893-1983), Spanish surrealist painter.

After studying in Barcelona, Miro went to Paris in 1919. In the

1920s he came into contact with cubism and surrealism. His

work has been characterized as psychic automatism, an

expression of the subconscious in free form.

19. Dada: a movement in art and literature based on deliberate

irrationality and negation of traditional artistic values; also the

art and literature produced by this movement

20. Stevens: Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), American poet,

educated at Harvard and the New York University Law School.

A master of exquisite verse, Stevens was specifically

concerned with creating some shape of order in the

wilderness

21. game theory: a mathematical theory of transactions

developed by John Von Neumann. He called this theory, which

has important applications in economic, diplomacy, and

national defense,

serious, however, the games are often so intricate and their

rules so strange that the game becomes overtly playful.

22. virtual particles: particles that serve all practical purposes

though they do not exist in reality

23. black hole: A star in the last phases of gravitational

collapse is often referred to as a

escape the black hole but is turned back by the enormous pull

of gravitation. Therefore it can never be observed directly. 24.

lunar lander: a vehicle designed to land on the surface of the

moon

25. collage city: Collage City (1975) by Colin Rowe. In it he

calls for a city that is a rich mixture of styles. It also implies the

preservation of many bits and pieces of history. collage: an

artistic composition made of various materials (as paper, cloth

or wood) glued on a picture surface

26. adhocism: This is a key term used by Charles Jencks in his

book. The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (1977). The

ad hoc city is intended to avoid the horrors of the totally

planned city. The ad hoc city clearly shows a fondness for

clashing styles and queer postmodern buildings as well as

fantastic architectural complexes.

27. facadism: It is a form of mosaic architecture. In mosaic

architecture bits and pieces of older buildings are combined

with bits and pieces of modern buildings. In facadism fronts of

nineteenth-century buildings may be propped up while entirely

new buildings are created behind them and often beside and

above them.

28. theme parks and museum villages: Such places try to

reproduce history certain themes through architectural

complexes. For example, Disneyland Anaheim, California, tries

to reproduce the main street of a typical nineteenth centutry

American town, but everything is stage set and nothing is real.

29. Chrysler Airflow: a car model manufactured by the Chrysler

Corporation of America

30. Boeing 747: an airplane model manufactured by the

Boeing Company of America

31. Tinkertoy: a trademark for a toy set of wooden dowels,

joints, wheels etc., used by children to assemble structures 32.

Crystal Palace: building designed by Sir Joseph Paxton and

erected in Hyde Park, London, for the great exhibition in 1851.

In 1854 it was removed to Sydenham, where, until its damage

by fire in 1936, it housed a museum of sculpture, pictures, and

architecture and was used for concerts. In 1941 it demolition

was completed because it served as a guide to enemy

bombing planes. The building was constructed of iron, glass,

and laminated wood One of the most significant examples of

19th century proto-modern architec ture, it was widely imitated

in Europe and America.

The Libido for the Ugly

H. L. Mencken

1 On a Winter day some years ago, coming out of

Pittsburgh

on one of the expresses of the

Pennsylvania

Railroad, I rolled eastward for an hour through the coal and

steel towns of Westmoreland county. It was familiar ground;

boy and man, I had been through it often before. But somehow

I had never quite sensed its

appalling

desolation. Here was

the very heart of industrial America, the center of its most

lucrative and characteristic activity, the boast and pride of the

richest and grandest nation ever seen on earth--and here was

a scene so dreadfully

hideous

, so intolerably bleak and

forlorn that it reduced the whole

aspiration

of man to a

macabre

and depressing

joke

. Here was wealth beyond

computation, almost beyond imagination--and here were

human habitations so abominable that they would have

disgraced a race of alley cats.

2 I am not speaking of mere filth. One expects steel towns

to be dirty. What I allude to is the unbroken and

agonizing

ugliness, the sheer revolting monstrousness, of every house in

sight. From East Liberty to Greensburg, a distance of

twenty-five miles, there was not one in sight from the train that

did not insult and lacerate the eye. Some were so bad, and

they were among the most

pretentious

--churches, stores,

warehouses, and the like--that they were down-right startling;

one blinked before them as one blinks before a man with his

face shot away. A few linger in memory, horrible even there: a

crazy little church just west of Jeannette, set like a

dormer-window on the side of a bare

leprous

hill; the

headquarters of the Veterans of Foreign Wars at another

forlorn

town, a steel stadium like a huge rattrap somewhere

further down the line. But most of all I recall the general

effect --of hideousness without a break. There was not a single

decent house within eyerange from the Pittsburgh to the

Greensburg yards. There was not one that was not misshapen,

and there was not one that was not shabby.

3 The country itself is not uncomely, despite the grime of

the endless mills. It is, in form, a narrow river valley, with deep

gullies running up into the hills. It is thickly settled, but not:

noticeably overcrowded. There is still plenty of room for

building, even in the larger towns, and there are very few solid