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प्रश्न
How did Rasheed lose all his money at the Lucky shop?
उत्तर
Rasheed was tempted to try his luck and win some big prize. He took several chances but won no expensive item. Thus he lost gill his money.
APPEARS IN
संबंधित प्रश्न
Who had these opinion about Einstein?
He was a freak.
The Narrative Present
Notice the incomplete sentences in the following paragraphs. Here the writer is using incomplete sentences in the narration to make the incident more dramatic or immediate. Can you rewrite the paragraph in complete sentences?
(You can begin: The vet and I made a dash back to the car. Bruno was still floundering…)
(i) A dash back to car. Bruno still floundering about on his stumps, but clearly weakening rapidly; some vomiting, heavy breathing, with heaving flanks and gaping mouth. Hold him everybody! In goes the hypodermic – Bruno squeals – 10 c.c. of the antidote enters his system without a drop being wasted. Then minutes later: condition unchanged! Another 10 c.c. injected! Ten minutes later: breathing less stertorous – Bruno can move his arms and legs a little although he cannot stand yet. Thirty minutes later: Bruno gets up and has a great feed! He looks at us disdainfully, as much as to say, ‘What’s barium carbonate to a big black bear like me?’ Bruno is still eating.
(ii) In the paragraphs above from the story the verbs are in the present tense (eg. hold, goes, etc.). This gives the reader an impression of immediacy. The present tense is often used when we give a commentary on a game (cricket, football, etc.), or tell a story as if it is happening now. It is, therefore, called the narrative present. You will read more about the present tense in Unit 10
Now rewrite the pair of sentences given below as one sentence.
You have nothing. That makes you very determined.
Answer the following question in one or two sentences.
Where was Abdul Kalam’s house?
Now read the story.
- One day last summer, I went to Pittsburgh-well, I had to go there on business.
- My chair-car was profitably well-filled with people of the kind one usually sees on chair-cars. Most of them were ladies in brown-silk dresses cut with square yokes, with lace insertion and dotted veils, who refused to have the windows raised. Then there was the usual number of men who looked as if they might be in almost any business and going almost anywhere. I leaned back idly in chair No. 7, and looked with tepidest curiosity at the small, black, bald-spotted head just visible above the back of No.9.
- Suddenly No.9 hurled a book on the floor between his chair and the window, and, looking, I saw that it was "The Rose Lady and Trevelyan," one of the best-selling novels of the present day. And then, the critic veered his chair toward the window, and I knew him at once for John A. Pescud of Pittsburgh, travelling salesman for a plate-glass company - an old acquaintance whom I had not seen in two years.
- In two minutes we were faced, had shaken hands, and had finished with such topics as rain, prosperity, health, residence, and destination. Politics might have followed next; but I was not so ill-fated.
- I wish you might know John A. Pescud. He is of the stuff that heroes are not often lucky enough to be made of. He is a small man with a wide smile, and an eye that seems to be fixed upon that little red spot on the end of your nose.
- He believes that "our" plate-glass is the most important commodity in the world, The Cambria Steel Works, the best company and that when a man is in his home town, he ought to be decent and law-abiding.
- During my acquaintance with him earlier I had never known his views on life, romance, literature and ethics. We had browsed, during our meetings, on local topics and then parted.
- Now I was to get more of his ideas. By way of facts, he told me that business had picked up since
the party conventions and that he was going to get off at Coketown. - "Say," said Pescud, stirring his discarded book with the hand, "did you ever read one of these
best-sellers? I mean the kind where the hero is an American swell-sometimes even from Chicago - who falls in love with a royal princess from Europe who is travelling under an alias and follows her to her father's kingdom or principality? I guess you have. They're all alike. - ____"Well, this fellow chases the royal chair-warmer home as I said, and finds out who she is. He meets her in the evening and gives us ten pages of conversation. She reminds him of the difference in their stations and that gives him a chance to ring in three solid pages about America's uncrowned sovereigns.
- "Well, you know how it runs on, if you've read any of 'em-he slaps the king's Swiss bodyguards around like every thing whenever they get in his way. He's a great fencer, too.
- "Yes," said Pescud, "but these kind of love-stories are rank on-the-level. I know something about literature, even if I am in plate-glass.
- "When people in real life marry, they generally hunt up somebody in their own station. A fellow usually picks out a girl who went to the same high-school and belonged to the same singing-society that he did."
- Pescud picked up the best-seller and hunted his page.
- "Listen to this," said he. "Trevelyan is sitting with the Princess Alwyna at the back end of the tulip-garden. This is how it goes:
- "Say not so, dearest and sweetest of earth's fairest flowers. Would I aspire? You are a star set high above me in a royal heaven; I am only-myself. Yet I am a man and I have a heart to do and dare. I have no title save that of an uncrowned sovereign; but I have an arm and a sword that yet might free Schutzenfestenstein from the plots of traitors."
- "Think of a Chicago man packing a sword, and talking about freeing anything that sounded as much like canned sardines!"
- "I think I understand you, John," said I. "You want fiction- writers to be consistent with their scenes and characters. They shouldn't mix Turkish pashas with Vermont farmers, or English Dukes with Long Island clamdiggers or Cincinnati agents with the Rajahs of India." "Or plain business men with aristocracy high above 'em," added Pescud. "It doesn't jibe. I don't see why people go to work and buy hundreds of thousands of books which are best sellers. You don't see or hear of any such capers in real life."
- "Well John," said I, "I haven't read a best-seller in a long time. May be I've had notions about them somewhat like yours. But tell me more about yourself. Getting along all right with the company?"
- "Bully," said Pescud, brightening at once. "I've had my salary raised twice since I saw you, and I get a commission, too. I've bought a neat slice of real estate. Next year the firm is going to sell me some shares of stock. Oh, l'm in on the line of General Prosperity.
- "Met your affinity yet, John?" I asked.
- "Oh, I didn't tell you about that, did I?" said Pescud with a broader grin.
- "O-ho!" I said. "So you've taken off enough time from your plate-glass to have a romance?"
- "No, no," said John. "No romance-nothing like that! But I'll tell you about it,
- "I was on the south-bound, going to Cincinnati, about eighteen months ago, when I saw, across the aisle, the finest looking girl I'd ever laid eyes on. Nothing spectacular, you know, but just the sort you want for keeps."
- She read a book and minded her business, which was, to make the world prettier and better just by residing in it. I kept on looking out of the side-doors of my eyes, and finally the proposition got out of the carriage into a case of cottage with a lawn and vines running over the porch. I never thought of speaking to her, but I let the plate glass business go to smash for a while."
- "She changed cars at Cincinnati and took a sleeper to Louisville. There she bought another ticket and went on through Shelbyville, Frankford, and Lexington. Along there, I began to have a hard time keeping up with her. The trains came along when they pleased, and didn't seem to be going anywhere in particular, except to keep on the track and on the right way as much as possible. Then they began to stop at junctions instead of towns, and at last they stopped altogether
- "I contrived to keep out of her sight as much as I could, but I never lost track of her. The last station she got off at was away down in Virginia, about six in the evening. There were about fifty houses.
- "The rest was red mud, mules, and speckled hounds.
- "A tall old man, with a smooth face and white hair, looking as proud as Julius Caesar was there to meet her. His clothes were frazzled but I didn't notice that till later. He took her little satchel, and they started over the plank walks and went up a road along the hill. I kept along a pace behind 'em, trying to look like I was hunting a garnet ring in the sand that my sister had lost at a picnic, the previous Saturday.
- "They went in a gate on top of the hill. It nearly took my breath away when I looked up. Up there in the biggest grove, I had ever seen was a huge house with round white pillars, about a thousand feet high, and the yard was so full of rose-bushes and box-bushes and lilacs that you couldn't have seen the house if it hadn't been as big as the Capitol at Washington.
- " 'Here's where I have to trail,' say I to myself. I thought before that she seemed to be in moderate circumstances, at least. This must be the Governor's mansion, or the Agricultural Building of a new World Fair, anyhow. I'd better go back to the village and get posted by the postmaster, for some information.
- "In the village, I found a fine hotel called the Bay View House. The only excuse for the name was a bay horse grazing in the front yard. I set my sample-case down, and tried to be ostensible. I told the landlord, I was taking orders for plate-glass".
- "By-and-by, I got him down to local gossip and answering questions.
- _"'Why?', says he, 'I thought everybody knew who lived in the big white house on the hill. It's Colonel Allyn, the biggest man and finest quality in Virginia, or anywhere else. They're the oldest family in the State. That was his daughter who had got off the train. She's been up to Illinois to see her aunt, who is sick.'
- "I registered at the hotel, and on the third day I caught the young lady walking in the front yard, down next to the paling fence. I stopped and raised my hat - there wasn't any other way.
- 'Excuse me,' says I, 'can you tell me where Mr. Hinkle lives?'
- "She looks at me as cool as if I was the man come to see about the weeding of the garden, but I thought I saw just a slight twinkle of fun in her eyes.
- 'No one of that name lives in Birchton,' says she. 'That is,' she goes on, 'as far as I know'.
- "Well, that tickled me. 'No kidding,' says I. 'I'm not looking for smoke, even if I do come from Pittsburgh.'
- 'You are quite a distance from home,' says she.
- 'I'd have gone a thousand miles farther,' says I.
- 'Not if you hadn't woken up when the train started in Shelbyville,' says she; and then she turned almost as red as one of the roses on the bushes in the yard. I remembered I had dropped off to sleep on a bench in the Shelbyville station, waiting to see which train she took, and only just managed to wake up in time.
- "And then I told her why I had come, as respectful and earnest as I could. And I told her everything about myself, and what I was making, and how that all I asked was just to get acquainted with her and try to get her to like me.
- "She smiles a little, and blushes some, but her eyes never get mixed up. They look straight at whom so ever she's talking to.
- 'I never had any one talk like this to me before, Mr. Pescud,' says she. 'What did you say your name is-John?'
- 'John A.,' says I.
- " 'And you came mighty near missing the train at Powhatan Junction, too,' says she, with a laugh that sounded as good as a mileage-book to me."
- " 'How did you know?' I asked.
- " 'Men are very clumsy,' said she. 'I know you were on every train. I thought you were going to speak to me, and I'm glad you didn't.
- "Then we had more talk; and at last a kind of proud, serious look came on her face, and she turned and pointed a finger at the big house.
- 'The Allyns,' says she, 'have lived in Elmcroft for a hundred years. We are a proud family. Look at that mansion. It has fifty rooms. See the pillars and porches and balconies. The ceilings in the reception-rooms and the ball-room are twenty-eight feet high. My father is lineal descendant of the Belted Earls.'
- " 'Of course,' she goes on, 'my father wouldn't allow a drummer to set his foot in Elmcroft. If he knew that I was talking to one over the fence, he would lock me in my room.'
- " 'Would you let me come there?' says I. 'Would you talk to me if I was to call? For,' I goes on, 'if you said yes,I might come and see you?'
- " 'I must not talk to you,' she says, 'because we have not been introduced. It is not exactly proper. So I will say good-bye, Mr.--'
- 'Say the name,' says I. 'You haven't forgotten it.'"
- 'Pescud,' says she, a little mad.
- 'The rest of the name!' I demands, as cool as I could be."
- 'John,' says she.
- 'John-what?' I says.
- 'John A.,' says she, with her head high. 'Are you through, now?'
- 'I'm coming to see the belted earl tomorrow,' I says.
- 'He'll feed you to his fox-hounds,' says she, laughing.
- 'If he does, it'll improve their running,' says I. 'I'm something of a hunter myself.'"
- 'I must be going in now,' says she. 'I oughtn't to have spoken to you at all. I hope
you'll have a pleasant trip back to Minneapolis-or Pittsburgh, was it? Good-bye!' - " 'Good-night,' says I, 'and it wasn't Minneapolis. What's your name, first, please?'
- "She hesitated. Then she pulled a leaf off a bush, and said:
- " 'My name is Jessie,' says she.
- " 'Good-night, Miss Allyn', says I.
- "The next morning at eleven, sharp, I rang the doorbell of that World Fair main building. After about three quarters of an hour, an old man of about eighty showed up and asked what I wanted. I gave him my business card, and said I wanted to see the Colonel. He showed me in.
- "Say, did you ever crack open a wormy English walnut? That's what that house was like. There wasn't enough furniture in it to fill an eight-dollar flat. Some old horsehair lounges and three-legged chairs and some framed ancestors on the walls were all that met the eye. But when Colonel Allyn comes in, the place seemed to light up. You could almost hear a band playing, and see a bunch of oldtimers in wigs and white stockings dancing a quadrille. It was the style of him, although he had on the same shabby clothes I saw him wear at the station. For about nine seconds he had me rattled, and I came mighty near getting cold feet and trying to sell him some plate-glass. But I got my nerve back pretty quick. He asked me to sit down, and I told him everything. I told him how I had followed his daughter from Cincinnati, and what I did it for, and all about my salary and prospects, and explained to him my little code of living - to be always decent and
right in your home town. At first, I thought he was going to throw me out of the window, but I kept on talking. - "Well, that got him laughing, and I'll bet that was the first laugh those ancestors and horsehair sofa had heard in many a day.
- "We talked two hours. I told him everything I knew; and then he began to ask questions and I told him the rest. All I asked of was to give me a chance. If I couldn't make a hit with the little lady, I'd clear out, and not bother them any more. At last he says:
- 'There was a Sir Courtenay Pescud in the time of Charles I, if I remember rightly.'
- 'If there was,' says I 'he can't claim kin with our bunch. We've always lived in and around Pittsburgh. I've got an uncle in the real-estate business, and one in trouble somewhere out in Kansas. You can inquire about any of the rest of us from anybody in the old Smoky Town, and get satisfactory replies. Did you ever run across that story about the captain of the whaler, who tried to make a sailor say his prayers?' says I.
- 'It occurs to me that I have never been so fortunate,' says the Colonel.
- "So I told it to him. Laugh! I was wishing to myself that he was a customer. What a bill of glass, I'd sell him! And then he says:
- 'The relating of anecdotes and humorous occurrences has always seemed to me, Mr. Pescud, to be a particularly agreeable way of promoting and perpetuating amenities between friends. With your permission, I will relate to you a fox-hunting story with which I was personally connected, and which may furnish you some amusement
- "Two evenings later, I got a chance to speak a word with Miss Jessie alone on the porch while the Colonel was thinking up another story.
" 'It's going to be a fine evening,' says I. - 'He's coming,' says she. 'He's going to tell you, this time, the story about the old African and the green watermelons. It always comes after the one about the Yankees and the game rooster. There was another time; she goes on, 'that you nearly got left- it was at Pulaski City.'
- " 'Yes,' says I, 'I remember. My foot slipped as I was jumping on the step, and I nearly tumbled off.'
- " 'I know,' says she. 'And - and I- I was afraid you had, John A. I was afraid you had. '
- "And then she skips into the house through one of the big windows."
- "Coketown!" droned the porter, making his way through the slowing car.
- Pescud gathered his hat and baggage with the leisurely promptness of an old traveller.
- "I married her a year ago," said John, "I told you I built a house in the East End. The belted- I mean the Colonel-is there, too. I find him waiting at the gate whenever I get back from a trip to hear any new story, I might have picked up on the road,"
- I glanced out of the window. Coketown was nothing more than a ragged hillside dotted with a score of black dismal huts propped up against dreary mounts of slag and clinkers. It rained in slanting torrents, too and the rills foamed and splashed down through the black mud to the railroad- tracks.
- "You won't sell much plate-glass here, John," said I. "Why do you get off at this end-o'-the-world?"
- "Why?," said Pescud, "the other day I took Jessie for a little trip to Philadelphia, and coming back she thought she saw some petunias in a pot in one of those windows over there just like some she used to raise down in the old Virginia home. So I thought, I'd drop off here for the night, and see if I could dig up some of the cuttings or blossoms for her. Here we are. Good-night, old man. I gave you the address. Come out and see us when you have time."
- The train moved forward. One of the dotted brown ladies insisted on having windows raised, now that the rain had started beating against them. The porter came along with his mysterious wand and began to light the car.
- I glanced downward and saw the best-seller. I picked it up and set it carefully farther along on the floor of the car, where the raindrops would not fall upon it. And then, suddenly, I smiled, and seemed to see that life has no geographical bounds
- "Good-luck to you, Trevelyan," I said. "And may you get the petunias for your
princess!"
About the Author
O. Henry is the pseudonym of William Sydney Porter (1862-1910),an American writer
of short stories, best known for his ironic plot twists and surprise endings. Born and
raised in Greensboro, North Carolina, O. Henry was fascinated by New York street
life, which provided a setting for many of his later stories. During the last ten years of
his life, O. Henry became one of the most popular writers in America publishing over
500 short stories in dozens of widely read periodicals. His style of storytelling became
a model not only for short fiction, but also for American motion pictures and television
programmes. Writing at the rate of more than one story per week, O. Henry published
ten collections of stories during a career that barely spanned a decade. In 1919, the
O. Henry Memorial Awards were founded by the Society of Arts and Science for the
best American short stories published each year.
Now read the poem.
Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts, and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.
No nightingale did ever chant
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt.
Among Arabian Sands
A voice so thrilling ne' er was heard
In spring-time from the cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.
Will no one tell me what she sings?
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day ?
Same natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
that has been, and may be again ?
Whate'er the theme, the maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;
I listen'd, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.
About the Poet
William Wordsworth was born on 7th April 1770, in Cockermouth in the Lake District,
England. When many poets still wrote about ancient heroes in their grandiloquent
style, Wordsworth focused on nature, children, the poor, common people and used
ordinary words to express his feelings. He defined poetry as "the spontaneous
overflow of powerful feelings" arising from "emotions recollected in tranquility". He
died at Rydal Mount on April 23, 1850.
On the basis of your understanding of the poem, answer the following question
by ticking the correct choice.
'The Solitary Reaper' is a narrative poem set to music. This form of verse is called
a______.
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
Read the lines given above and answer the question that follow.
What happens to the poet when he is sometime in a pensive mood?
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the presence in the room he said,
"What writest thou?"..... The vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord,
Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord."
Read the lines given above and answer the following question.
Why was Abou not afraid?
The boy looked up. He took his hands from his face and looked up at his teacher. The light from Mr. Oliver’s torch fell on the boy’s face, if you could call it a face. He had no eyes, ears, nose or mouth. It was just a round smooth head with a school cap on top of it.
And that’s where the story should end, as indeed it has for several people who have had similar experiences and dropped dead of inexplicable heart attacks. But for Mr. Oliver, it did not end there. The torch fell from his trembling hand. He turned and scrambled down the path, running blindly through the trees and calling for help. He was still running towards the school buildings when he saw a lantern swinging in the middle of the path. Mr. Oliver had never before been so pleased to see the night watchman. He stumbled up to the watchman, gasping for breath and speaking incoherently.
What is it, Sahib? Asked the watchman, has there been an accident? Why are you running?
I saw something, something horrible, a boy weeping in the forest and he had no face.
No face, Sahib?
No eyes, no nose, mouth, nothing.
Do you mean it was like this, Sahib? asked the watchman, and raised the lamp to his own face. The watchman had no eyes, no ears, no features at all, not even an eyebrow. The wind blew the lamp out and Mr. Oliver had his heart attack.
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
Why did the torch fall from Mr Oliver’s hand? Why was his hand trembling?
Margot stood apart from these children who could never remember a time when there wasn’t rain and rain and rain. They were all nine years old, and if there had been a day, seven years ago, when the sun came out for an hour and showed its face to the stunned world, they could not recall. Sometimes, at night, she heard them stir, in remembrance, and she knew they were dreaming and remembering an old or a yellow crayon or a coin large enough to buy the world with. She knew they thought they remembered a warmness, like a blushing in the face, in the body, in the arms and legs and trembling hands. But then they always awoke to the tatting drum, the endless shaking down of clear bead necklaces upon the roof, the walk, the gardens, the forests, and their dreams were gone. All day yesterday they had read in class about the sun. About how like a lemon it was, and how hot. And they had written small stories or essays or poems about it:
I think the snn is a flower,
That blooms for just one hour.
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
What did the children read in class all day long?
Margot stood alone. She was a very frail girl who looked as if she had been lost in the rain for years and the rain had washed out the blue from her eyes and the red from her mouth and the yellow from her hair. She was an old photograph dusted from an album, whitened away, and if she spoke at all her voice would be a ghost. Now she stood, separate, staring at the rain and the loud wet world beyond the huge glass. “What’re you looking at ?” said William. Margot said nothing. “Speak when you’re spoken to.” He gave her a shove. But she did not move; rather she let herself be moved only by him and nothing else. They edged away from her, they would not look at her. She felt them go away. And this was because she would play no games with them in the echoing tunnels of the underground city. If they tagged her and ran, she stood blinking after them and did not follow. When the class sang songs about happiness and life and games her lips barely moved. Only when they sang about the sun and the summer did her lips move as she watched the drenched windows.
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
When did Margot react ?
Read the following sentences.
a) If she knows we have a cat, Paati will leave the house.
(b) She won’t be so upset if she knows about the poor beggar with sores on his feet.
c) If the chappals do fit, will you really not mind? Notice that each sentence consists of two parts. The first part begins with ‘if’. It is known as if-clause.
Rewrite each of the following pairs of sentences as a single sentence. Use ‘if’ at the beginning of the sentence
Work hard. You’ll pass the examination in the first division
How did the dog repay to his masters?
Why did the farmer think of having a pet?
How did Ray communicate with him?
What are the games or human activities which use trees, or in which trees also ‘participate’?
Multiple Choice Question:
What does the kite flier do in the last?
Use a, an or the in the blanks.
There was once ______ play which became very successful. ………… famous actor was acting in it. In ………. play his role was that of ……….. aristocrat who had been imprisoned in …………. castle for twenty years. In……… last act of ……….. play someone would come on ……… stage with ………… letter which he would hand over to ……….. prisoner. Even though …………. aristocrat was not expected to read ………. letter at each performance, he always insisted that ………… letter be written out from beginning to end.
