|àxÜtàâÜx MMOSDOSOSDOS PPRESSRESS - … of Quentin Reynolds “A Secret For Two” by Quentin Reynolds. Copyright © 1936, Crowell-Collier Publishing Co. Reprinted by permission

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EDITOR-IN-CHIEFJudith Factor

EXECUTIVE EDITORLibby Spero

CREATIVE/ART DIRECTORCarla Martin

ART/GRAPHICSAviva Gross

Shoshana HowittEva Martin

PROJECT MANAGER/COPY EDITORLaya Dewick

SENIOR EDITORAbigail Rozen

SENIOR WRITEREsther Schwarz

ASSOCIATE EDITORS/WRITERSJill Brotman

Aidel FishmanEtta Green

Selma HellmanSusan Polster

TEXT AND CURRICULUM ADVISORRabbi Ahron Dovid Goldberg

Copyright © 1999 by Mosdos Ohr Hatorah.

All rights reserved. Printed in Israel. Twelfth Printing.No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, orstored in a database or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from Mosdos Press.

ISBN 0-9671009-0-9


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ISBN 978-0-9671009-0-6 Student Edition

We would like to gratefully acknowledge the following sources for theirpermission to reprint their copyrighted material:Arcade Publishing “A Balmy Spring Wind” by Richard Wright. Copy-right © 1959 by Richard Wright, published by Arcade Publishing, Inc.,New York, N. Y.The Barbara Hogenson Agency “The Night the Bed Fell” by JamesThurber, from My Life and Hard Times. Copyright © 1933, 1961 JamesThurber. Reprinted by arrangement with Rosemary A. Thurber and TheBarbara Hogenson Agency.Elizabeth Barnett “The Courage That My Mother Had” by Edna St.Vincent Millay. From Collected Poems, HarperCollins. Copyright ©1928, 1954, 1955, 1982 by Edna St. Vincent Millay and Norma MillayEllis. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Elizabeth Barnett, lit-erary executor.Bill Berger Associates, Inc. “The Dinner Party” by Mona Gardner.Copyright © 1942, 1970 by SATURDAY REVIEW, reprinted by permis-sion of Bill Berger Associates, Inc.Gwendolyn Brooks “Home” by Gwendolyn Brooks. Copyright © 1991from “Maud Martha” (a novel) Third World Press, Chicago 1991.John Ciardi “The River Is a Piece of Sky” by John Ciardi. Copyright ©1994 by the family of John Ciardi.Don Congdon Associates, Inc. “The Third Level” by Jack Finney.Reprinted by permission of Don Congdon Associates, Inc. Copyright ©1950 by Crowell Collier; renewed 1977 by Jack Finney. “The Sound ofSummer Running” by Ray Bradbury. Reprinted by permission of DonCongdon Associates, Inc. Copyright © 1956 by the Curtis PublishingCo., renewed 1984 by Ray Bradbury. Slightly edited.Dell Publishing, a division of Random House “Look Back at the Sea”by Betsy Byars. From The Animal, The Vegetable and John D. Jones byBetsy Byars. Copyright © 1982 by Betsy Byars. Illustrations copyright ©1982 by Dell Publishing, a division of Random House. Used by permis-sion of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House,Inc.Doubleday, a Division of Random House “Bamboo Grove” by Bashoand “The New and The Old” by Shiki. From An Introduction To Haikuby Harold G. Henderson. Copyright © 1958 by Harold G. Henderson.“The Sloth” by Theodore Roethke. Copyright © 1950 from The Collect-ed Poems of Theodore Roethke by Theodore Roethke. “Florence Nightin-gale” from Living Biographies of Famous Women by Henry Thomas andDana Lee Thomas. Copyright © 1942, 1959 by Doubleday, a division ofBantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Used by permission ofDoubleday, a division of Random House, Inc. Slightly edited.Harcourt Brace & Company “The Hummingbird That Lived ThroughWinter” by William Saroyan, from My Kind of Crazy, Wonderful People:Seventeen Stories and a Play. Copyright © 1944 and renewed 1972 byWilliam Saroyan, reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace & Company.HarperCollins Publishers “Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Takethe Garbage Out” by Shel Silverstein. Copyright © 1974 by Evil Eye Music,Inc. “A Boy and a Man” by James Ramsey Ullman. Copyright © 1954 byJames Ramsey Ullman. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.Harvard University Press “I’m Nobody! Who Are You?” by Emily Dick-inson. Reprinted by permission of the publishers and the Trustees ofAmherst College from The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. John-son, editor, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard UniversityPress. Copyright © 1951, 1955, 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellowsof Harvard College.Edward D. Hoch “Zoo” by Edward D. Hoch. Copyright © 1958 byKing Size Publications; renewed 1986 by Edward D. Hoch. Reprinted bypermission of the author.Holiday House, Inc. “The Runner” by Jane and Paul Annixter. Copy-right © 1956 by Jane and Paul Annixter. Reprinted by permission of Hol-iday House, Inc.Henry Holt & Company, Inc. “The Road Not Taken” and “The Pas-ture” from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lath-em. Copyright © 1944, 1958 by Robert Frost. Copyright © 1967 by Les-ley Frost Ballantine. Copyright © 1916, 1930, 1939, © 1969 by HenryHolt & Company. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt & Company,Inc.Holt Rinehart and Winston “The Circuit” by Francisco Jiménez, fromAdventures for Readers, Athena Edition. Copyright © 1996 by HoltRinehart and Winston, reprinted by permission of the publisher.

International Creative Management, Inc. “Grandpa and the Statue” byArthur Miller. Reprinted by permission of International Creative Manage-ment, Inc. Copyright © 1945 by Arthur Miller, copyright renewed.Johnson Publishing Company, Inc. “My Journey Is Still Long” byCharles L. Sanders, Johnson Publishing Company, Inc. Full credit toEbony Magazine. Slightly edited.Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. “Pendulum” by John Updike, from The CarpenteredHen and Other Tame Creatures by John Updike. Copyright © 1982 byJohn Updike, reprinted by permission of Alfred A Knopf, Inc.Liveright Publishing Corporation “in Just—” by E .E. Cummings.Copyright 1923, 1951 © 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. CummingsTrust. Copyright © 1976 by George James Firmage, from COMPLETEPOEMS: 1904-1962 by E. E. Cummings, edited by George J. Firmage.Reprinted by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.William Morris Agency, Inc. “Roberto Clemente: A Bittersweet Mem-oir” by Jerry Izenberg. Copyright © 1976. Reprinted by permission ofWilliam Morris Agency, Inc. on behalf of the author. Slightly edited.Miriam Morton “The Sparrow” by Ivan Turgenev, which first appearedin A Harvest of Russian Children’s Literature, edited and with an Intro-duction by Miriam Morton, University of California Press, 1968.Notre Dame Press From “Barrio Boy” by Ernesto Galarza. Copyright ©1971 by University of Notre Dame Press. Used by permission of the pub-lisher. Slightly edited.Harold Ober Associates, Inc. “Cat on the Go” by James Herriot. Copy-right © as given by St. Martin’s Press. “Cats” by Eleanor Farjeon. Copy-right © 1957 by Eleanor Farjeon. “Stolen Day” by Sherwood Anderson.Copyright © 1941 by United Newspapers Magazine Corporation. Copy-right renewed 1969 by Eleanor Copenhaver Anderson. Reprinted by per-mission of Harold Ober Associates, Inc.Penguin Putnam Inc. “The Flower-Fed Buffaloes,” from Going to the Stars by Vachel Lindsay. Copyright © 1926 by D. Appleton & Co.,renewed 1954 by Elizabeth C. Lindsay. A Hawthorne Book. Used by permission of Dutton Children’s Books, a division of Penguin PutnamInc.Malcolm Reiss “Kid at the Stick” by Mike Miller first appeared in theAugust 1957 issue of Redbook Magazine. Reprinted by permission ofMalcolm Reiss.Estate of Quentin Reynolds “A Secret For Two” by Quentin Reynolds.Copyright © 1936, Crowell-Collier Publishing Co. Reprinted bypermission of the Estate of Quentin Reynolds. Slightly edited.The Jesse Stuart Foundation “The Clearing” by Jesse Stuart originallypublished in Ladies Home Journal, August 1954. Reprinted by permis-sion of the Jesse Stuart Foundation.Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster “A Day’s Wait” from WinnerTake Nothing by Ernest Hemingway. Copyright © 1933 Charles Scribn-er’s Sons. Copyright renewed © 1961 by Mary Hemingway. “RattlesnakeHunt” from Cross Creek by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Copyright ©1942 by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings; copyright renewed © 1970 by Norton Baskin. “Abrahan Lincoln Walks at Midnight” from The CollectedPoems of Vachel Lindsay. Copyright © 1925 by Macmillan PublishingCompany. Reprinted with permission of Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster. Simon & Schuster “Something Told the Wild Geese” by Rachel Field.Reprinted with the permission of Simon & Schuster. Copyright © 1934by McMillan Publishing.The Society of Authors “The Listeners” by Walter de la Mare. The Liter-ary Trustees of Walter de la Mare and The Society of Authors. “Road-ways” by John Masefield. The Society of Authors as the Literary Represen-tative of the Estate of John Masefield.TRO “This Land Is Your Land” words and music by Woody GuthrieTRO © Copyright 1956, 1958, 1970 Ludlow Music, Inc., New York,New York.University of Massachusetts “Seagulls” reprinted from Robert Francis;Robert Francis Collected Poems, 1936-1976. (Amherst: University ofMassachusetts, 1976) Copyright © 1944, 1976.

To ease readability, some selections in the public domain have been slightly abridged.

Note: We have expended much effort to contact all copyright holders toreceive permission to reprint their works. We will correct any omissionsbrought to our attention in future editions.

acknowledgments

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Italics indicate selection.Roman indicates biographical information.

Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight, 326After Twenty Years, 231Anderson, Sherwood, 47, 46Annixter, Jane and Paul, 217, 216Balmy Spring Wind, A, 302Bamboo Grove, 302Barnum’s First Circus, 73Barrio Boy, 373Basho, 302, 301 Bearded Man, The, 308Beneath the Crags of Malpelo Island, 421Benét, Laura, 73, 72Blake, William, 263, 262Bogan, Louise, 242, 240 Boy and a Man, A, 135Bradbury, Ray, 185, 184Brooks, Gwendolyn, 203, 202Brooks, Van Wyck, 379, 378 Byars, Betsy, 37, 36Cat!, 252Cat on the Go, 353Child Pioneer, 209Children’s Hour, The, 264Chute, B. J., 171, 170Ciardi, John, 296, 295Circuit, The, 193Clearing, The, 163Cloud, the, 275Courage That My Mother Had, The, 330Cummings, E. E., 299, 298Day’s Wait, A, 19de la Mare, Walter, 284, 283 Dickinson, Emily, 333, 332 Dinner Party, The, 101Farjeon, Eleanor, 252, 250 Feld, Thelma, 435, 434 Field, Rachel, 341, 339 Finney, Jack, 105, 104Flack, Ambrose, 55, 54Florence Nightingale, 397Flower-Fed Buffaloes, The, 241Fog, 272Francis, Robert, 278, 277 Frost, Robert, 288, 311, 286Galarza, Ernesto, 373, 372 Gardner, Mona, 101, 100Grandpa and the Statue, 445Guthrie, Woody, 287, 286 Helen Keller, 379Hemingway, Ernest, 19, 18Henry, O., 231, 230Herriot, James, 353, 352Hoch, Edward D., 157, 156Home, 203Home on the Range, 171Hummingbird That Lived Through Winter, The, 147I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, 269I’m Nobody! Who Are You?, 333in Just—, 299Irving, Washington, 115, 114Izenberg, Jerry, 387, 386 Jiménez, Francisco, 193, 192Kid at the Stick, 25Kipling, Rudyard, 5, 4Laughing Song, 263Lear, Edward, 308, 307Lindbergh, Anne Morrow, 407, 406Lindsay, Vachel, 241, 326, 240Listeners, The, 284Lofting, Hugh, 460

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 264, 320, 262 Look Back at the Sea, 37Lowell, Amy, 251, 250 Magnificent Bull, The, 248Masefield, John, 340, 339 Millay, Edna St. Vincent, 330, 329 Miller, Arthur, 445, 444 Miller, Mike, 25, 24Miracles, 281Morley, Christopher, 258, 255 Morning—“The Bird Perched for Flight,” 407Morrow, Honoré Willsie, 209, 208Mouse in Her Room, A, 308“My Journey Is Still Long,” 91New and the Old, The, 302Night the Bed Fell, The, 367Pasture, The, 288, 286Paul Revere’s Ride, 320Pendulum, 305Penicillin and Company, 435Rattlesnake Hunt, 413Rawlings, Marjorie K., 413, 412 Reynolds, Quentin, 83, 82Rieseberg, Harry Earl, 421, 420 Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, 5Riley, James Whitcomb, 256, 255Rip Van Winkle, 115River Is a Piece of Sky, The, 296Road Not Taken, The, 311Roadways, 340Roberto Clemente: A Bittersweet Memoir, 387Robin Hood and Little John, 314Roethke, Theodore, 346, 344Runner, The, 217Sandburg, Carl, 272, 271 Sanders, Charles L., 91, 90Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out, 336Saroyan, William, 147, 146Sea Shell, 251Seagulls, 278Secret for Two, A, 83Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 275, 274 Shiki, 302, 301 Silverstein, Shel, 336, 335Sloth, The, 346Smells, 258Something Told the Wild Geese, 341Sound of Summer Running, The, 185Sparrow, The, 153Stevenson, Robert Louis, 292, 345, 291Stolen Day, 47Strangers That Came To Town, The, 55Stuart, Jesse, 163, 162Tafolla, Carmen, 243, 240There Was an Old Man of Peru, 308Third Level, The, 105This Land Is Your Land, 287Thomas, Henry and Dana Lee, 397, 396 Thurber, James, 367, 366Train Tune, 242Turgenev, Ivan, 153, 152Ullman, James Ramsey, 135, 134Updike, John, 305, 304Vagabond, The, 292Voyage, 243Voyages of Dr. Dolittle, The, 461When the Frost Is on the Punkin, 256Whitman, Walt, 281, 280Wind, The, 345Wordsworth, William, 269, 268Wright, Richard, 302, 301Zoo, 157

index of authors & titles

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ANTHOLOGY SERIES

RUBY

CORAL

PEARL

JADE

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sShort StoriesRecognizing Plot

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi Rudyard Kipling . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4A Day’s Wait Ernest Hemingway . . . . . . . . . . 18

Kid at the Stick Mike Miller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24Look Back at the Sea Betsy Byars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Defining CharacterStolen Day Sherwood Anderson . . . . . . . . . 46

The Strangers That Came to Town Ambrose Flack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54Barnum’s First Circus Laura Benét . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

A Secret for Two Quentin Reynolds . . . . . . . . . . . 82“My Journey Is Still Long” Charles L. Sanders . . . . . . . . . . 90

Exploring SettingThe Dinner Party Mona Gardner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

The Third Level Jack Finney . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104Rip Van Winkle Washington Irving . . . . . . . . . . . 114

A Boy and a Man James Ramsey Ullman . . . . . . . 134The Hummingbird That

Lived Through Winter William Saroyan . . . . . . . . . . . . 146

Understanding ThemeThe Sparrow Ivan Turgenev . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152

Zoo Edward D. Hoch . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156The Clearing Jesse Stuart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162

Home on the Range B. J. Chute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170The Sound of Summer Running Ray Bradbury . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184

Pulling It All TogetherThe Circuit Francisco Jiménez . . . . . . . . . . . 192

Home Gwendolyn Brooks . . . . . . . . . . 202Child Pioneer Honoré Willsie Morrow . . . . . . . 208

The Runner Jane and Paul Annixter . . . . . . . 216After Twenty Years O. Henry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230

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PoetryPoetic Sound

The Flower-Fed Buffaloes Vachel Lindsay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240Train Tune Louise Bogan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242

Voyage Carmen Tafolla . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243The Magnificent Bull Dinka Traditional . . . . . . . . . . . . 247

Sea Shell Amy Lowell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250Cat! Eleanor Farjeon . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252

When the Frost Is on the Punkin James Whitcomb Riley . . . . . . . 255Smells Christopher Morley . . . . . . . . . . 258

Poetic LanguageLaughing Song William Blake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262

The Children’s Hour Henry Wadsworth Longfellow .264I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud William Wordsworth . . . . . . . . . 268

Fog Carl Sandburg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271from The Cloud Percy Bysshe Shelley . . . . . . . . 274

Seagulls Robert Francis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277Miracles Walt Whitman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280

The Listeners Walter de la Mare . . . . . . . . . . . 283

Poetic FormThis Land Is Your Land Woody Guthrie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286

The Pasture Robert Frost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288The Vagabond Robert Louis Stevenson . . . . . . 291

The River Is a Piece of Sky John Ciardi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295in Just— E. E. Cummings . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298

Bamboo Grove Basho . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301The New and the Old Shiki . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301A Balmy Spring Wind Richard Wright . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301

Pendulum John Updike . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304The Bearded Man Edward Lear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307

A Mouse in Her Room Anonymous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307There Was an Old

Man of Peru Anonymous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307

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Poetic ThemeThe Road Not Taken Robert Frost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310

Robin Hood and Little John Old English Ballad . . . . . . . . . . . 313Paul Revere’s Ride Henry Wadsworth Longfellow .319

Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight Vachel Lindsay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325The Courage That My Mother Had Edna St. Vincent Millay . . . . . . . 329

I’m Nobody! Who Are You? Emily Dickinson . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout

Would Not Take the Garbage Out Shel Silverstein . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335

Pulling It All TogetherRoadways John Masefield . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339

Something Told the Wild Geese Rachel Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341The Wind Robert Louis Stevenson . . . . . . 344The Sloth Theodore Roethke . . . . . . . . . . . 346

NonfictionHuman Interest

Cat on the Go James Herriot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352The Night the Bed Fell James Thurber . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 366

Biographies and AutobiographiesBarrio Boy Ernesto Galarza . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372

Helen Keller Van Wyck Brooks . . . . . . . . . . . . 378Roberto Clemente:

A Bittersweet Memoir Jerry Izenberg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386

Historical EssaysFlorence Nightingale Henry Thomas

and Dana Lee Thomas . . . . . . . 396Morning—

“The Bird Perched for Flight” Anne Morrow Lindbergh . . . . . 406

Adventure EssaysRattlesnake Hunt Marjorie K. Rawlings . . . . . . . . . 412

Beneath the Crags of Malpelo Island Harry Earl Rieseberg . . . . . . . . . 420

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DramaPenicillin and Company Thelma Feld . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 434Grandpa and the Statue Arthur Miller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444

The NovelThe Voyages of Dr. Dolittle Hugh Lofting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Part I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460Part II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500Part III . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 528Part IV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 556Part V . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 584Part VI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 614

Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 644

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and nature. As the plot unfolds, tension

builds by adding suspense until the

climax when the conflict is finally

resolved.

The short story unit of

your anthology is

divided into five

parts. The first four

groups explore each

of the major literary

elements of fiction.

The last group

combines all the components and

helps the reader to understand how

they all work together to create an

overall effect.

Most readers enjoy short stories

because they are a quick, entertaining

way to visit new and interesting places

(“My Journey Is Still Long”), meet

different types of people (The Strangers

That Came to Town), attend exciting

events (Barnum’s First Circus), and

consider different points of view (The

Clearing). Short

stories are the brief

afternoon trips that

take us to a

different place

and then bring us

speedily home

again.

Fiction is imaginativeliterature —a story created and

developed in the imagination of its

author. It transports the readers beyond

the limits of their own experience.

Short story writers must develop their

plots quickly, capturing the reader’s

attention as soon as the story begins.

Through the elements of plot,

characterization, setting, and theme, the

author can introduce the reader to new

events, interesting people, and faraway

places. The fiction you are about to read

explores these basic literary elements

through fantasy, humor, suspense,

science fiction, and drama.

Short stories revolve around a central

conflict. The conflict can be internal or

external, between man and himself,

man and man, man and

society, or between man

Camel ride!

Cologneneighborhood

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Recognizing Plot

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi Rudyard Kipling . . . . . . . . . . . . 4A Day’s Wait Ernest Hemingway . . . . . . . . . . 18

Kid at the Stick Mike Miller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24Look Back at the Sea Betsy Byars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

DefiningCharacter

Stolen Day Sherwood Anderson . . . . . . . . 46The Strangers That Came to Town Ambrose Flack . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Barnum’s First Circus Laura Benét . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72A Secret for Two Quentin Reynolds . . . . . . . . . . . 82

“My Journey Is Still Long” Charles L. Sanders . . . . . . . . . . 90

Exploring Setting

The Dinner Party Mona Gardner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100The Third Level Jack Finney . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104Rip Van Winkle Washington Irving . . . . . . . . . . 114

A Boy and a Man James Ramsey Ullman . . . . . . 134The Hummingbird That

Lived Through Winter William Saroyan . . . . . . . . . . . . 146

mini table of contents

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UnderstandingTheme

The Sparrow Ivan Turgenev . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152Zoo Edward D. Hoch . . . . . . . . . . . . 156

The Clearing Jesse Stuart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162Home on the Range B. J. Chute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170

The Sound of Summer Running Ray Bradbury . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184

Pulling It AllTogether

The Circuit Francisco Jiménez . . . . . . . . . . 192Home Gwendolyn Brooks . . . . . . . . . . 202

Child Pioneer Honoré Willsie Morrow . . . . . . 208The Runner Jane and Paul Annixter . . . . . . 216

After Twenty Years O. Henry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230

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Most pages are omitted from this preview.

This content is included with purchase of the book.

MOSDOS PRESS

Into • The Strangers That Came to Town

Have you ever been “the new kid on the block”? Did you ever go to a summercamp where everyone knew everyone else—except for you? Have you everjoined a class that had been together for years? How were you treated? How didyou feel? How long did it take until you felt as though you were part of thegroup? Now, let’s take a look at how you, the newcomer, behaved to everyoneelse. Were you friendly, or were you very shy? Did you greet people first, or didyou wait to be greeted? Did you volunteer to help others or did you worry onlyabout yourself? What about when you were part of an old group and somebodyelse was new? Were you friendly to newcomers, or did you ignore them? Wereyou the first to welcome someone, or were you afraid your friends would laughat you if you did? The Strangers That Came to Town is about the changes thattake place when some new people come to an old town.

FocusWhy do people behave the way they do? Sometimes they are imitating others;sometimes they are doing what they are told to do; sometimes they have certainprinciples by which they live. In The Strangers That Came to Town, you will readabout many types of behavior, some of it admirable, some of it, not. Whatmakes each character behave a certain way? Another way of asking thisquestion is, what motivates each character? People may be motivated byfeelings like idealism, greed, fear, or love. As you read the selection, ask yourselfwhat is motivating the behavior of each character. The author wants you to askthis question, because the message of the story can be found in its answer.

FOR READINGBlueprint FOR READING

54 / Short Stories

About the AuthorAmerican author AMBROSE FLACK was born in 1902, and grew up in Syracuse,New York. His family members were great admirers of the twenty-sixth presidentof the United States, Theodore Roosevelt. He describes his meeting with thePresident in a well-known story, Theodore Roosevelt and My Gold Fountain Pen.Ambrose Flack wrote many stories with children as the central characters. TheStrangers That Came to Town is such a story. Many of his writings werepublished in popular magazines.

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The Strangers That Came to Town / 55

The first of April came dark andstormy, with silver whips of lightningcracking open the lowering clouds thatseemed to skim the treetops. My brotherTom and I, recovering from chest colds,tired of reading and listening to theradio, turned to the big living-roomwindow of our house on Syringa Street.

“Here they come, Mother,” criedTom when a big truck drove up in theteeming rain and stopped in front of theempty cottage across the street.

Mother hurried in from the kitchenand we three looked out. That truck, weknew, contained the Duvitch family andall their earthly possessions.

Mr. Duvitch and the biggest boycarefully helped Mrs. Duvitch from theseat and walked her into the house, sup-porting her all the way. Another big boy,carrying a well-bundled baby, followed.A stream of young Duvitches, accompa-nied by a big brown houndlike dog,poured out of the back of the truck andstood in a huddle in the rain.

The barnyard sounds we heardescaped from two crates of hens theDuvitches had fetched along and from aburlap bag in which a small flock ofducks had been stowed. While the live-stock made noises according to its kind,the Duvitches were quiet—almostsolemn. They showed no elation at find-ing themselves in a new neighborhoodand a very pretty neighborhood at that.

All afternoon Mother, Tom andmyself had been watching out for them,with rather mixed emotions. For theDuvitches were immigrants and the firstof their nationality to settle in our smallsmug town. Coming to our obscure partof the state a year before, they hadmoved into a rotting old farmhouse twomiles north of town, long abandoned.After the slashing hurricane of mid-March, the moss-rotten dwelling lookedlike the house in the fairy tale thatremained standing only because it didnot know which way to fall and theDuvitches were forced to give it up.

“I wonder if Mrs. Duvitch is ill,”murmured Mother, looking through therain at the dreary street scene.

“She must be,” said Tom. “I wonderif it’ll be all right for Andy and me tohelp ’em move in their stuff.”

This request, as Mother well knew, wasnot inspired by genuine feeling for theDuvitches but by curiosity and she shookher head. It was a strict family rule thatany illness which kept us out of schoolwould automatically keep us indoors.

But the Duvitches got along verywell without help from us. As it turnedout, they were old hands at moving. Foryears before coming to America theyhad been on the move, to escape starva-tion, separation, possible assassination.Every child capable of two-legged loco-motion pitched in and helped carry the

teeming (TEEM ing) v.: swarming, as with people or animals; falling intorrents, as with rain

elation (ee LAY shun) n.: delight

obscure (ub SKYOOR) adj.: remote and secluded; not prominent orfamous

WordBank

The Strangers That Came to TownThe Strangers That Came to Town

Ambrose Flack

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things from the truck. In no time at all,it seemed, the truck was empty and theDuvitches were shut up tight in theirnew home.

That was the signal for Mother to stepinto the kitchen. She returned swathedin her hooded raincoat, carrying a bas-ket containing a vacuum jug of chickensoup, a baked tuna-fish dish, steaminghot; a loaf of fresh bread and a choco-late cake. These she took to the houseacross the street and gave basket and allto the boy who answered her knock. Itwasn’t her plan to stop for a visit thatday but to wait a week or so and callwhen the Duvitches were all settled.

The next day when the three ofus—Mother, Tom and myself—werehaving lunch, we heard a faint tap at theback door. I answered it and there stooda pale dark-eyed boy, looking verysolemn, holding our basket. It containedthe empty vacuum jug, casserole dishand cake plate, all of which shone, anda tiny very shapely potted rose tree, anexquisite pink-tipped bud, the hand-somest plant—and the only plant of itskind—ever seen in that neighborhood.

“I send them a few scraps of food,”murmured Mother, a few seconds later,deeply touched, “and get this queenlygift!”

That was our last traffic with theDuvitch family for over two years. WhenMother stopped to visit them a week aftertheir coming, the little girl who openedthe door a few inches said, “Mammasick; she stay in bed today.” Mrs. Duvitchnever crossed the street to our houseand Mother, a rather formal woman,made no further attempts to see thefamily. But Father disagreed when sheremarked that she thought the Duvitchesprobably wished to be left alone.

Syringa Street seemed to be a friend-ly street. It was a crooked maple-shadycountry lane that wound through thetown without losing its charm. The side-walk here and there was almost lost inweeds and the ditches, in places, werebrightened by clumps of orange daylilies. Widely spaced cottages, some ofthem smothered in vines, only seemedto make the neighborhood more rural.There were brilliant flower gardens,vegetable plots, fruit trees—and a fewhenhouses. The children, who enjoyedall the benefits of country life whileactually living in town, were quitenumerous. Behind the facades of thestreet’s dwellings there was probably nomore greed, envy, superstition or intol-erance than lurked behind the doors ofany average dwelling in any averageAmerican town. The cardinal1 virtues,no doubt, were all represented. Yes,Syringa Street seemed to be a friendlystreet.

But the Duvitches were marked peo-ple. They were the one struggling fami-ly in a prosperous community—andpoverty, amid prosperity, is oftenembarrassing and irritating to the pros-perous. They were considered unattrac-tive physically. They were so meek! The Duvitches never fought back.

The women started in on Mrs.Duvitch because she “never showed herface.” It is true, she was rarely if everseen in the daytime, emerging from herdwelling only after dark in warm weath-er, to sit on the veranda, where shefound privacy behind the ragged trum-pet creeper. But this gave rise to therumor that she was the victim of anobscure skin disease and that everymorning she shook scales out of the bed sheet. (When my father heard thatone, he went out to the pantry andmixed himself a tall drink.)

swathed (SWAWTHD) v.: wrapped WordBank

1. Cardinal (KAR din al) means most important.

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Mr. Duvitch, too, was classified asan untouchable. His job, a rather mal-odorous2 one, was with the local render-ing plant as a laborer. It followed thatthe Syringa Street young, meeting himon the street, sometimes stopped theirnoses as they passed him by—a form oftorment all the more acute when Mr.Duvitch had to share it with the childrenthat happened to be with him.

Black hard luck seemed to be theirlot.

A few weeks after they moved toSyringa Street they suffered a tragedythey were all summer in recoveringfrom—Mr. Duvitch lost two weeks’ paywhile gathering mushrooms inTamarack Swamp. Inside of a year anda half, three Duvitch boys had lost,among them, by various mishaps, twofingers, one eye and an ear lobe. Theywere forever being cut up, bruised,mutilated by things falling, breaking,cracking and exploding.

A mild case of typhoid, mass casesof whooping cough and measles—allplagued the family within a year of theirarrival. Their only bright spot here wasDr. Switzer, one of the town’s kindliestsouls. He declined to accept fees, butwas several times seen leaving theDuvitch cottage, carrying off a hand-some house plant and looking verypleased. The Duvitches’ dog, Kasimar,acted just like the family to which hebelonged—like one of the world’s poor-est canine relations. He seemed to beafraid of his own shadow and no onehad ever heard him bark or growl.

Because they cast their eyes on thesidewalk as one passed them by andspoke only when spoken to, the youngDuvitches, like their parents, were con-sidered antisocial. They were regarded

as born scavengers too, for they spenthours foraging3 in the town dump,where they often picked up their foot-gear, some of their pants and shirts andfurnishings for the house as well. Theywent on country excursions to gatherwatercress, dandelion greens, mush-rooms and wild berries; and the fewapples and tomatoes they occasionallyconcealed under their blouses didn’tmake the farmers on whom theypoached much poorer. Tom and I raidedtomato patches and robbed apple treesjust for the fun of it.

That first September fourDuvitches—Irving, Benny, Abe andEsther—registered at the local grammarschool. Mrs. Lovejoy, the principal, saidthey were bright, conscientious, patheti-cally eager but almost pathologically4

shy. Before she could put a stop to it,some of their classmates scoffed at theleaf-lard-and-black-bread sandwichesthey ate for lunch, huddled in one cor-ner of the recreation room, dressed intheir boiled-out ragpickers’ clothes. Afterschool they headed straight for home,never lingering on the playground.

Even the tradesmen to whom theDuvitches gave good money were eithercurt with them or downright rude. Mrs.Frithjof Kinsella, the proprietor of thegeneral store and a big jolly Viking whocould be heard two blocks away,extended credit to almost everybody intown and had a way of insulting hercustomers so heartily that they all lovedher for it. The Duvitches, however, Mrs.Kinsella very carefully did not insult (aform of insult in itself) and neither didshe extend them credit.

But Mother, remembering the pottedrose tree, always had a friendly wordand a smile for the young Duvitches

canine (KAY nyn) n.: dog WordBank

2. Malodorous (mal OWE dur ess) means strongor bad-smelling.3. Foraging (FOR uh jing) means searching about.4. Pathologically (PATH uh LAHJ ik lee) meansabnormally.

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when she saw them and a bone forKasimar when he found courage to ven-ture across the road. Father was the onlyman on Syringa Street who tipped hishat to sixteen-year-old Maria Duvitch,when he met her coming home from herpiece-work job in Miller’s Box Factory.It may have been that their Europeantravail5 made it easy for them to enduresuch a trifle as humiliation in America.

“I think,” said Father one fineSaturday morning in July two yearsafter the Duvitches had come to SyringaStreet, “that it would be very pleasantfor Andy, Tom and myself to pitch ourtent out at Durston’s Pond and spendthe night. We could fish and swim. Thatis,” he added, “if Mother can spare us.”

“I can spare you very well,” Mothersaid cheerfully.

She had a notion it did menfolk goodto get away occasionally and in thisinstance the sacrifice came easily,because camp life was little to her liking.She packed a hamper of food, Tom and I fetched a tent from the attic and Fatherlooked over his fishing tackle. An hourafter lunch we were driving throughrolling farm country out to Durston’sPond, four miles north of town.

We often had the serene little lake allto ourselves but on our arrival that after-noon we found half a dozen maleDuvitches in possession. They had beenfishing for several hours, casting fromthe shore, dropping their lines over thewooden bridge that spanned Cat Creekwhere it flowed into the pond andtrolling for bass from a flat-bottomedrowboat.

Tom and I, Philistines6 like ourfriends, ignored the Duvitch boys butFather went up to Mr. Duvitch, whowas fishing from the shore, and put outhis hand.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Duvitch! It’snice to see you and the boys here. Whata beautiful day! Are Mrs. Duvitch andthe girls all well?”

Mr. Duvitch was a little fellow, alean starveling of a man with wateryblue eyes and a kicked-about look.Gratitude for being agreeably noticedshowed in his mosquito-bitten face ashe took Father’s hand and his tremuloussmile showed broken teeth.

“I know the mosquitoes are biting,”Father went on pleasantly, “but are the fish?”

Proudly, oh, so proudly, Mr. Duvitchexhibited the catch that would probablyfeed his family for the better part of aweek: a fine mess of bass, perch andsunfish, all of them alive, as far as Icould see, and swimming around in theoaken washtub in which they had beendropped. Father gave Mr. Duvitchhearty congratulations and said wecouldn’t hope to do as well but thatwe’d try.

We three pitched the tent on a littleknoll over the pond, and then Father,with a happy sigh, lay down on theblanket for a nap in the sun. Tom and Iplayed a game of chew-the-peg on thegrassy bank above the water and, lateron, made several trips to the tent, for thecamera, the field glasses, the sun lotion.On a trip for a cold drink from the vacu-um jug and to fetch towels and soap, westopped to look again at the Duvitches’catch of fish.

Mr. Duvitch and the boys had movedaway and were fishing in a small arm ofthe pond below us. None of themseemed visible. Tom and I, our glancesmeeting over the big cake of soap in myhand, were similarly and wickedlyinspired—the thing was irresistible. Weheld a brief whispering conversation;and then, egged on by him and quitewilling on my own, I played a shameful

5. Their travail (truh VAYL) means their agonyand intense pain.6. Here, Philistines (FILL ih STEENZ) refers topeople with little to no sensitivity.

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trick on the Duvitches, the memory ofwhich will come back to the end of mydays to plague me. Without consideringfurther, I dropped the cake of soap intothe tub of fish.

“Let’s go,” whispered Tom after we had watched the soap sink to thebottom.

We swam out to the raft, diving andfrolicking in the deep water. After awhile the Duvitches, calling it a day,assembled at a spot on the shore belowour tent, happy in the knowledge of agood catch to take home.

In a little while Tom and I could heartheir muffled exclamations of disbeliefand dismay. Father woke up and joinedour neighbors in a conclave,7 lookingdown at the tub of fish near his feet.After a few moments he produced thewhistle he carried on all our country

excursions and blew it piercingly threetimes, the proclamation of emergency.This meant that Tom and I must come at once.

Looking as guilty as we felt, weswam in and joined the group gatheringaround the tub. In the midst of ourstricken neighbors stood Father, holdingthe half-melted cake of soap in his palmsilently but accusingly, for the fish hadperished miserably in the soapy waterand were unfit to eat. Not only had Tomand I snatched precious food from theirmouths but we had brazenly8 advertisedthe contempt in which we held them.

Father’s eyes were narrow slits of

7. A conclave (KAHN klayv) is a privategathering.8. Brazenly (BRAY zin lee) means boldly andshamelessly.

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blue fire in his white face. I had neverseen him so angry. One look at Tom andme told him everything. Words wouldhave been superfluous and my brotherand I bowed our heads in acknowledg-ment of our guilt.

“You will begin,” Father said in avoice I didn’t recognize, “by sayingyou’re sorry.”

Our stunned neighbor wiped hisblinking eyes as he listened to ourmumbled words, which Father made usrepeat when they were inaudible. Butthere was no hostility, no animositytoward us in the man and it was obviousalso that he considered himself toohumble to receive an apology, finding it,like most of life’s troubles, a mockeryto be endured without protest. His sonsshowed no resentment, either, only akind of resignation in their minds,which carried almost atavisticmemories9 of century-old oppression bycountry barons and landed gentry.

One-eyed Manny Duvitch, as itturned out, had told Father he had seenme drop something in the tub of fish(before he learned that it had been acake of soap). Now he looked guiltierthan Tom and I. Because he had beenthe witness and accuser, it was as if heconsidered himself to be the trouble-maker, deserving the punishment. Thetwo real culprits were the young lordsof the ruling manor, with unlimitedlicense, exempt from chastisement.10

To Manny, the fortunate, the well-to-do,were also the privileged.

“Do you realize,” said Father coldly,looking from Tom to me, “that in cer-tain primitive communities the sort of

stunt you’ve pulled would be punishableby death?”

Tom and I did not reply.“Turn over the tub,” said Father

abruptly, addressing us as if we werestrangers.

We turned it over. The gray soapywater ran away in bubbly rivulets, dis-appearing in the coarse mat of turf, andthe poisoned fish lay exposed on thegrass—quiet, strangled, open-mouthed—and somehow looking as ifthey were mutely protesting their horridunnatural fate.

“Count the fish,” Father ordered us,his voice like steel.

Tom and I got down on our knees.“How many are there?” demanded

Father.“Sixty-one,” I said.“How many bass?”“Twelve.”Father handed Mr. Duvitch two dol-

lars, the price of a day’s rental of therowboat. Then, looking both the avengingangel and executioner, he ordered Tomand me, with our tackle and bait, off theland we had disgraced—into exile, outon Durston’s Pond.

“And you are not to come back,” hegave out in the same steely tones, “untilyou’ve caught sixty-one fish to repayMr. Duvitch. See to it that among themyou bring in at least a dozen bass.”

Father stepped up to the tent on theknoll to fetch our shirts and dungarees.These he rolled into a tight ball and shotlike a bolt into the rowboat. He thenturned his back to us and, thus disowned,Tom and I lost no time in rowing out onthe pond. Father’s decisions, even withMother present, were never reversedand swift execution, from which therewas no appeal, followed his sentences.

9. Atavistic (AT uh VISS tik) memories arememories inherited from prior generations.10. Exempt from chastisement (CHASS tyz mint)means not subject to punishment.

contempt (kun TEMPT) n.: scorn

superfluous (suh PER floo uss) adj.: being more than is sufficient;unnecessary; needless

animosity (AN ih MAHS ih tee) n.: ill-will; dislike

mutely (MYOOT lee) adv.: silently

WordBank

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Out in the middle of the big pond wedropped anchor, threaded our steel rodsand, baiting our hooks, began to fish. Iknew that if it took us all summer tocatch them, we dared not set foot ashorewithout sixty-one fish. Almost at onceTom pulled in a good-sized bass and tenminutes later two yellow perch wereadded to our string. The crestfallenDuvitches went home. Father threwhimself on the blanket, furiously smok-ing a cigar. That was about four in theafternoon.

Oh, the mosquitoes! They were badenough at the time, and while the lightheld, but after we had been fishing forthree hours and had caught eight fish,they swarmed out of the swamplandsurrounding the pond in legions.

After an hour of it we wanted to leapoverboard. They got in our ears, ournoses, our eyes, even in our mouths,and nestling in our hair, they bit throughto our scalps. I remembered tales ofIndian prisoners in Alaska, turned looseon the tundra11 by their captors, where

they died of the mosquitoes in twohours. Several times we slipped over theside of the boat, immersing ourselves inthe water to escape the bloodthirstyclouds. The night dragged on while thewhining swarms grew thicker.

“Andy, what time is it?”“Ten o’clock, Tom.”“Is that all?” Tom groaned and

pulled in another bass and killed six oreight mosquitoes in one slap. Two hourspassed and midnight was ghostly onDurston’s Pond.

The moon, bright as day, sailed highin the purple sky, dimming the starfire,casting a great white shaft of quiveringradiance on the water, but it was allhideous. The big yellow disk sank in agauzy cloud bank, then disappeared forgood and the stars shone out withrenewed splendor.

“Andy, what time is it?”“Two o’clock, Tom.”

11. Tundra (TUN druh) is any of the vast, nearlytreeless plains of the world’s arctic regions.


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The treetops whispered as if in con-spiracy against us. Owls hooted—mock-ingly we thought—and bats circled overour heads, making us feel thoroughlyalone. Our only solace was the campfireFather kept burning near the tent, whichflared like a beacon of light in the dark.We went on fishing as our tormentorsbit and sang. Each hour was an eternityof frenzy and I fairly panted for thelight of dawn to come, but even now Icannot decide which was worse, thatnight with the mosquitoes on Durston’sPond or the following day in the blister-ing heat.

“Andy—”“It’s four o’clock, Tom, and we’ve

got sixteen fish.” Dawn came but even I, a highly

impressionable youngster of seventeen,did not enjoy that calm effulgent12

majesty of daybreak. A long stretch onDurston’s Pond, under the July sun, stillfaced us.

The rising sun was red, casting glim-mering circles of rose-colored light onthe windless surface of the pond. Themosquitoes thinned, the fish continuedto bite. But as we fished the sun mount-ed steadily and by eleven it had fulfilledits awful prophecy and became a ball offire in the cloudless skies. Tom and Ibegan to bake in the heat waves thatshimmered over the pond and we weresteamed in the scalding vapory mist.

“I wish it was night again, Andy,”groaned Tom after sweating out twohours of it. “This is worse than the mos-quitoes.”

“At least we won’t get any infectionsfrom our bites, Tom,” I said feebly.

“The sun’s cauterizing them.”“We might get sunstrokes, though.

We’re liable to, without our hats. But I don’t care if I do. I’d rather be uncon-scious.”

Tom was only fifteen and I think hehated me that day. I, the older, shouldhave been his protector against partici-pation in crime, not his accomplice. Iwanted to row him in, then come backto finish the business alone, but there onthe green Eden-like shore stood Father,stationed there barring the way.

Tom and I weighed our hooks downto the deep cold water. We caught twomore bass and half a dozen sunfish.

By one o’clock groups of peoplegathered on the shore, for word of thedrama that was being enacted onDurston’s Pond had spread through thetown. Some of the visitors praisedFather for his stern discipline; othersberated him. He went right on readinghis magazine and smoking his cigar, asindifferent to their praise as he was totheir criticism.

Local fishermen who knew the lakeand something about the angling abilityof the average youngster made gloomyestimates as to the possible length ofour exile on the water. A few had usfishing until the snow flew. They madebets too. Would Tom and I have the gutsto stick it out? Most of the bets wereagainst us.

But we sat there in the rowboat,without food, through the hottest day ofthe summer.

No breeze stirred. No cloud obscuredthe sun. Even the bird life of theswamp, usually a medley of song, wassilent and dead. Tom was drooping visi-bly in the glare and I tried hard not tolook at his scorched face.

Between three and four we droppedlines in a school of yellow perch andpulled up no less than twenty. The bass

12. Effulgent (ih FUL jint) is a brilliant radiance.

solace (SAHL uss) n.: comfort

cauterizing (KAUT er IZE ing) v.:burning, with a hot iron

berated (bee RAYT id) v.: scolded;expressed sharp, stern disapproval of

WordBank

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continued to bite in the deep black holesoff the swamp, which bristled with treetrunks. Benumbed, half-blinded, mov-ing like automatons,13 Tom and I gearedourselves for the home stretch.

When the sun, dropping low, had lost its fury and the hard blue enamel of the sky began to pale, I pulled up thethirteenth bass, which was our sixty-first fish.

Turned lobster-red, fairly devoured,famished and drooping from lack ofsleep, we put together our rods and withour remaining strength rowed to whereFather was waiting.

He received us coolly, making nocomment on our condition. At once heasked to see the fish and we held themup by the strings.

“Count them,” he said.Obviously we would receive permis-

sion to land only when we had pro-duced the required number, which wasthe price of our freedom.

“Sixty-one,” said Tom.“Including thirteen bass,” I added.“Very good,” said Father in busi-

nesslike tones. “We will now restore toMr. Duvitch his rightful property.”

Tom and I took care not to play the part of triumphant heroes, even of redeemed sinners—that would nothave suited our parent. Certainly, in

13. Automatons (aw TOM uh tahnz) are machine-like robots.


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appearance, we were more condemnedthan redeemed. But when we totteredout of the rowboat something in me wasquietly rejoicing. I guessed that Fatherwas secretly proud of our fortitude and Irealized, too, that all through the nighthe had suffered with us.

We walked through the crowd of vis-itors on the lake shore, climbed into thecar and silently drove to the Duvitchcottage. Mrs. Duvitch and the childrenwere not visible but we found Mr.Duvitch sitting on the porch.

When he saw Tom and me and wesilently handed him the strings of fish,he gulped and swallowed hard. For amoment he could not speak. Then, in avoice that was raw with emotion, heprotested that he had not wished us tosuffer so. Suppose we had fallen over-board in the dark?

“Will you shake hands with theboys?” asked Father.

Instead, Mr. Duvitch broke down.My brother and I did not know where tolook and during those moments we suf-fered more acutely than we had sufferedin the clouds of mosquitoes and underthe broiling sun. After our neighbor hadcomposed himself, he seized our handsand bowed his head over them. Therewas something Biblical in the man’sgesture. Anyway, it was my greatest les-son in humility.

When Mother, who had heard aboutour exile on the pond from a neighbor,saw us she burst into tears. She tried toembrace us but we drew back painfully.While she was rubbing salves and oint-ments on our seared backs and necks,somebody knocked at the kitchen doorand Father opened it to find Mrs.Duvitch standing there—the first timeshe had crossed the street to our house.

In her pale swaying hand Mrs.Duvitch held a porcelain teacup, orna-mented with pink rosebuds and golden

leaves—a relic from the old countryand, as it turned out, her most cherishedpossession.

Her voice, thin and wispy from frightand shock, was difficult to follow. Butwe gathered that she had brought theteacup over as a peace offering and as aplea for our forgiveness to her familyfor the living purgatory,14 no matterwhose fault, through which my brotherand I had passed. When Motherdeclined the teacup and assured Mrs.Duvitch that she would not have it oth-erwise with Tom and me, our neighbor,unable to find her tongue, made a littleeloquent sign with her hands that wasfor thanks and that looked like a silentblessing. She quietly turned and wentaway; and again I felt that I had wit-nessed a profound moment.

Mother continued her ministrations15

to Tom and me and put us to bed.Despite our skin, which stuck to sheetand pillowcase, we slept like creaturesdrugged.

“It is high time,” Tom and I heardFather say calmly, sanely, to Motheraround noon the next day when wewoke up, “for this senseless feelingagainst the Duvitches to stop and I’mwilling to do still more to stop it.Tonight we are having supper withthem. I’ve just seen Mr. Duvitch and heremarked that since Andy and Tomcaught the fish, he’d feel better if we allshared in them. I suggested a fish-frypicnic supper and with a few hints fromme, and some encouragement, he invit-ed us over. It may be an ordeal but weought to be able to bear it.”

We walked across the street at sixo’clock, not knowing what to expect.

14. Here, purgatory (PURG uh TOR ee) meansdrawn-out punishment.15. Ministrations (MIN ih STRAY shunz) are actsof aid and relief.

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All the Duvitches, dressed in theirSunday best, bright and flushed andshining as we had never seen them,received us at the door as if we hadbeen royalty. They looked at Tom andme and delicately looked away—I shud-dered when I thought of what my broth-er and I would have had to endure hadthis been any other family.

Instead of a wretched abode wefound a scantily furnished home thatshone with cleanliness and smelled ofspicy garden pinks. In its almost barrensimplicity there was something come-ly.16 A few of the stands, chairs andtables had the intimate quality of whatis fashioned by the human hand. These,together with odds and ends the familyhad brought from the old country andothers resurrected from the town dumpand mended, painted, waxed and pol-ished, made for a kind of native house-hold harmony. The house plants (nowindow was without several) delightedMother. Mrs. Duvitch was raising littleorange and lemon trees from seed andexperimenting with a pineapple plantgrowing in a butter tub.

At once we were conscious of aremarkable difference in the demeanorof the family. The children, thrilled bytheir first party, by the family’s firstrecognition in this country, kept show-ing their pleasure in wide delightedsmiles. I couldn’t believe they were thesame timid downcast youngsters onemet on the street and saw in school;they seemed to have been touched by awand. The Duvitches’ home was theircastle: sustained and animated17 by thesecurity of its four walls, shut awayfrom a world of contempt and hostility,they were complete human beings. Intheir own house their true personalitiesemerged.

As the host Mr. Duvitch was a manwe were seeing for the first time.

Overjoyed to have neighbors in hishouse, he was so full of himself that Iwas conscious of an invisible stature inhim which made him seem quite as tallas Father. He beamed and feasted hiseyes on us. Saying very little, he man-aged to make us feel a great deal and heconstantly sought his wife’s eyes withglances of delight over the wonder ofwhat was happening.

David, the oldest boy, helped hisfather serve a bottle of homemadeblackberry wine.

We ate fried fish and good food ofthe American picnic variety at a longplank table set out in the back yardunder an apple tree. The youngDuvitches passed things politely, neverhelping themselves first, and theirthanks upon receiving a dish werealmost ceremonial. They waited patient-ly for their plates and ate every scrap of food.

Father kept the conversation going.His every word was listened to, everychildish eye riveted on him while hespoke.

Tom and I, fascinated by the family’smetamorphosis, almost forgot about ourblisters and our stings. As father toldstories and jokes, we discovered that theDuvitches had a gift for gaiety, forlaughter, all but extinguished but stillcapable of resurrection. They weremerry people who had suffered toomuch. How strange to see the boys and

demeanor (dih MEEN ur) n.:conduct, behavior; facialappearance

metamorphosis (MET uh mor FO

siss) n.: a profound change

WordBank

16. Comely (KUM lee) means pleasing andattractive.17. Sustained and animated means supportedand given life.

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girls throw back their heads and laughwhen Father said something that wasfunny, but not terribly funny.

After supper we were ushered to theopen summer kitchen, the coolest roomin the house, for entertainment.

David played folk songs on hisaccordion. Mr. Duvitch turned out to bean amateur ventriloquist; he made thedog Kasimar talk Polish, the cat Jan talkRussian and a doll named Sophia, talkEnglish. Mrs. Duvitch read aloud to us,translating as she went along, a letterher mother had received from the greatactress Modjeska, whom her family hadknown long ago.

I could tell that the Duvitches were agreat revelation to Father and that hehad enjoyed the evening tremendously.

“To think,” he murmured as if talk-ing to himself, while we were crossingthe street, “that they should turn out tobe gentle people of cultivation andaccomplishment. Looked down on andignored by their inferiors!”

I like to believe that the oil paintingsof George Washington, AbrahamLincoln and Thomas Jefferson, whichhung in our living room, helped toestablish the Duvitches in our commu-nity. Even the fountain tinkling in thelily pool in our garden might havehelped. In that town, oil paintings andflowing fountains were the symbols ofwealth and aristocracy. Only a few man-sions on Sycamore Hill were adornedwith such.

Because our home was graced withthese symbols, we had always beenclassified with the town’s great, whichgave us such prestige in the neighbor-hood that people often followed ourlead. Obviously the Duvitches wereimportant in Father’s eyes, shown bythe rigorous sentence he had imposedon Tom and me for our misuse of them.Added to that, we had recognized the

family by taking a meal with them intheir own house. People, often persuad-ed to accept what we accepted, tobelieve what we believed, began tothink the Duvitches must really count,after all. Most of our neighbors decidedthat if they were good enough for ahighly educated man like Father (theonly college graduate on SyringaStreet), they were good enough forthem. The galvanized community beganto look upon things in a different lightand it soon became the fashion to givethe Duvitches the favorable nod.

Mother invited Mrs. Duvitch to a teaparty, where her delicate manners, andthe fine needlework which engaged her,won the approval of the local house-wives who were present. On hot daysour neighbor asked one of her big boysto carry the pineapple plant (whichMother had advertised well) into theback yard; and since botanical raritieswere irresistible in that town of gardens,people were soon stopping by the fencefor a look at the tropical specimen.After a while Mrs. Duvitch foundcourage to ask these people into herhouse and, if Mr. Duvitch was at home,he told the visitors stories about life inthe old country. It was then that theneighborhood learned about the family’sEuropean past.

The children ceased stopping theirnoses when Mr. Duvitch passed themby and it wasn’t long before the youngDuvitches were able to enjoy outsidecompanionship when they found time toplay. They blossomed out in school andthey were soon shining in school playsand festivals. Even Kasimar began to

galvanized (GAL vuh nyzd) v.:motivated

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take on the ways of an American dog,daring to bark and growl on occasion.

Nathan Duvitch, who was seventeen,could throw and hit a baseball as far asanybody his age in town. When Ilearned this, and let it be known, he wasasked to join one of the local ball clubs.David, invited to play his accordion at acountry dance, turned out to be a magi-cian with the instrument and ended upbeing one of the community’s mostpopular players. Mrs. Frithjof Kinsellagave One-eyed Manny an after-schooljob in her store and later on told Motherhe was worth three boys put together.

The community presently had reasonto be grateful for Mrs. Duvitch’s pres-ence. It turned out that she had a greatgift for nursing, and no fear of death, nofear of disease, contagious or otherwise.In times of severe illness Dr. Switzeroften suggested that she be sentfor—her own girls could take over athome. There were almost no nurses intown and the nearest hospital was over ahundred miles away. When Mrs.Duvitch quietly slipped into a sickroom,she never failed to bring along a seda-tive influence, a kind of sanity. After anhour or two of her serene presence, thepatient was calmed and comforted andthe family reassured.

People began to turn to theDuvitches in all kinds of trouble. A boywho got in a bad scrape, a bitter familyquarrel, a baby who had come into theworld deformed—the elder Duvitches,

with their old-world wisdom and giftfor accepting the inevitable, could sit bythe hour and argue gently and convinc-ingly against disgrace, false pride, grief,fear.

Most surprising of all, Mr. Duvitch,in one respect, turned out to be charac-teristically American. One Saturdayafternoon when my ball team was play-ing Nathan’s, Father met him in thelocal ball park.

“Chust like de American boy,” Mr.Duvitch exploded when Nathan made atimely hit that drove in two runs. Ourneighbor choked with pride and wenton: “Nathan’s battering averich threehunnert tventy-sevened!”

On a cold snowy afternoon in winterMr. Duvitch stopped at our house andpresented Father (who had enormoushands, much bigger than any of theDuvitches’) with a handsome pair ofleather mittens, lined with fur, whichhad a slightly acrid ashy odor.

“No doubt one of the boys resurrect-ed them from a heap of ashes in thedump,” remarked Father, drawing on themittens, which fitted perfectly. “Whyshould I value them any the less? Whowould have dreamed that the Duvitcheswould have so much more to offer usthan we have to offer them?”

sedative (SED uh TIV) adj.:tending to calm or soothe

acrid (AK rid) adj.: bitter

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Recalling1. What brought the Duvitches to the neighborhood?

2. Why didn’t the Duvitch family have any friends?

3. What sort of prank did Tom and Andy play on the Duvitches?

4. How did Tom and Andy’s father react to their prank? How did Mr.Duvitch react?

5. What was Tom and Andy’s punishment?

6. What caused the neighborhood to finally accept the Duvitches?

Interpreting7. Why do you think Father disagreed with Mother “when she remarked

that she thought the Duvitches probably wished to be left alone”?

8. What does the narrator mean when he states, “their European travailmade it easy for them to endure such a trifle as humiliation inAmerica”?

9. After Tom and Andy came back to dry land after bringing in all thefish, “something in [Andy] was quietly rejoicing.” What was Andyrejoicing about?

10. How did the Duvitches act within the confines of their own home?Describe the interior of the Duvitch home. Were their manners andtheir home what you would have expected?

11. Father remarks at the end of the story, “Who would have dreamedthat the Duvitches would have so much more to offer us than we haveto offer them?” In what ways did the Duvitches enrich theircommunity?

Concluding12. To “justify” means: to “provide good grounds or reasons for

something.” Why do people try to justify their behavior, even whenthey know that what they have done is wrong?

THE SELECTIONStudying THE SELECTION

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Examining FictionUnderstanding a character’s motives gives you deeper understanding of astory. Think about the main characters in The Strangers That Came to Town.

1. What caused the boys to pull the prank on the Duvitches? Do you thinkit was out of malicious intent, or out of mischief?

2. What motivated Father to punish Tom and Andy the way he did? Doyou think the punishment was too severe, or do you think thepunishment was appropriate?

Thinking About FictionWhat motivates an individual? If you know that about a person, you mustunderstand that person well. Usually, we look at a person’s actions andcome to certain conclusions about what motivated those actions. Writers offiction often show us a character’s actions and leave it to us to determinewhat the character’s motivation is. It sometimes requires a lot of observingand thinking to figure out just what motivated a person to take certainaction. Often, two observers will come to different conclusions about whatsomeone’s motives were in a certain situation.

1. What motivated the children of the town to ridicule the Duvitches?

2. What motivated Father to invite the Duvitches to dinner?

3. What motivated the community to finally accept the Duvitches?Frequently, people have mixed motives, some good, some selfish. Doany of the characters in the story have fixed motives?

Creating and WritingImagine that you are one of the Duvitches. Write a diary entry about whatlife was like for you, when you first moved to town. Describe how you feltstarting in a new school and being treated in a demeaning way. Then writea second diary entry, describing life after having supper with yourneighbors. Include details about how life began to change for the better.

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MOSDOS PRESS

po

etr

y

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Cloud), or repetition (Train Tune).

Visual and auditory images reflect

the poems’ themes. Poets may use

the concrete form of the poem

(Pendulum) as a way of maximizing

the impact of their poetry.

Poets are artists who have created a

literary form that is emotional,

moving, inspiring, and invigorating.

In many ways, poetry is the most

graceful and rewarding form of

literature.

Poets are experts in exposing the beauty

and rhythm of language

using a small number of

words. Poets begin with

broad, universal concepts and

employ many methods in

order to capture the meaning

of these concepts and create

finely tuned, highly effective

poems. They carefully examine every

phrase and consider the effectiveness

of the words they use.

Most poetry is written in stanzas. Each

stanza is composed of several lines.

Each line contains well-chosen words

effectively arranged. Poets realize that

each word in the English language has

its own specific sounds, associations,

form, and rhythm. Poets analyze these

four components and modify words to

create the desired effect. Poets may use

alliteration (Sea Shell), onomatopoeia

(Cat!), simile (I Wandered Lonely as a

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mini table of contents

Poetic SoundThe Flower-Fed Buffaloes Vachel Lindsay . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240

Train Tune Louise Bogan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242Voyage Carmen Tafolla . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243

The Magnificent Bull Dinka Traditional . . . . . . . . . . . . 247Sea Shell Amy Lowell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250

Cat Eleanor Farjeon . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252When the Frost Is on the Punkin James Whitcomb Riley . . . . . . 255

Smells Christopher Morley . . . . . . . . . 258

Poetic LanguageLaughing Song William Blake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262

The Children’s Hour Henry Wadsworth Longfellow . 264I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud William Wordsworth . . . . . . . . 268

Fog Carl Sandburg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271from The Cloud Percy Bysshe Shelley . . . . . . . . 274

Seagulls Robert Francis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277Miracles Walt Whitman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280

Laughing Song Walter de la Mare . . . . . . . . . . . 283

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Poetic FormThis Land Is Your Land Woody Guthrie . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286

The Pasture Robert Frost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288The Vagabond Robert Louis Stevenson . . . . . . 291

The River Is a Piece of Sky John Ciardi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295in Just— E. E. Cummings . . . . . . . . . . . . 298

Bamboo Grove Basho . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301The New and the Old Shiki . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301A Balmy Spring Wind Richard Wright . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301

Pendulum John Updike . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304The Bearded Man Edward Lear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307

A Mouse in Her Room Anonymous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307There Was an Old Man of Peru Anonymous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307

Poetic ThemeThe Road Not Taken Robert Frost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310

Robin Hood and Little John Old English Ballad . . . . . . . . . . 313Paul Revere’s Ride Henry Wadsworth Longfellow . 319

Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight Vachel Lindsay . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325The Courage That My Mother Had Edna St. Vincent Millay . . . . . . 329

I’m Nobody! Who Are You? Emily Dickinson . . . . . . . . . . . . 332Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout

Would Not Take the Garbage Out Shel Silverstein . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335

Pulling It AllTogether

Roadways John Masefield . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339Something Told the Wild Geese Rachel Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341

The Wind Robert Louis Stevenson . . . . . . 344The Sloth Theodore Roethke . . . . . . . . . . 346

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MOSDOS PRESS

Into • The Road Not Taken

In reading poetry, the reader’s biggest challenge may be understanding thepoet’s reason for writing the poem. The poet’s purpose gives the poem itstheme. Therefore, the poet always shares feelings and ideas that areinspiring, and to which the poet must give voice. It is this central messagethat is the main idea, or theme, of the poem. Without it, the poem wouldlack a reason to be.

FocusThe Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost, is one of the best known and mostbeloved pieces of modern American poetry. The poem’s popularity is surelybecause of Frost’s skill, but its theme, which is slowly revealed to thereader, speaks to our hearts and minds. By the end of this important poem,hopefully you will grasp its meaning, and Frost’s need to write the poem.

FOR READINGBlueprint FOR READING

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The Road Not Taken / 311

Two roads diverged1 in a yellow wood,And sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveler, long I stoodAnd looked down one as far as I could

5 To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,And having perhaps the better claim,Because it was grassy and wanted wear;Though as for that the passing there

10 Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally layIn leaves no step had trodden black.Oh, I kept the first for another day!Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

15 I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sighSomewhere ages and ages hence:Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by,

20 And that has made all the difference.

1. diverged (DIH vurjd): went in different directions

The Road Not TakenRobert Frost

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• The Road Not Taken

Recalling1. Describe the setting of the poem.

2. What decision was the speaker faced with?

3. Which road does the speaker choose?

4. What is the meaning of the speaker’s final statement?

Interpreting5. Why did the speaker choose one road and not the other? Explain what

the speaker means.

6. What does Frost mean in Lines 13-15?

7. What do the two roads symbolize? What is the theme of the poem?

Concluding8. Have you ever had to make a difficult choice? What did your decision

concern? Why did you make the choice you did?

Examining PoetryReread the Frost selection, and concentrate on the symbolism in thepoem. Remember, a symbol is one thing that represents something else.For example, the American flag is a symbol of national pride andpatriotism. In literature the appearance of dark clouds, lightning, andthunder is often used as an indication that something bad is about tohappen. Symbols may be suggestive of future events.

What was symbolic about the speaker taking the road that “was grassyand wanted wear”?

Creating and WritingLook back at your answer to question 8. Think again about the choice youmade. Now think about the choice that the speaker made in The Road NotTaken. Try to write your own poem about important choices.

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|àxÜtàâÜx MMOSDOSOSDOS PPRESSRESS - … of Quentin Reynolds “A Secret For Two” by Quentin Reynolds. Copyright © 1936, Crowell-Collier Publishing Co. Reprinted by permission