2. Answer the following questions (using your active vocabulary).
1. Why did Pete and Adams share the room?
2. What was the last contest for the two fellows?
3. How did the young men prepare for the lecture?
4. Why was Adams the first to read the lecture?
5. Why was Pete in despair after Adams lecture?
6. Why did the committee choose Pete for the post? How did the Dean explain their decision to the public?
7. Do you think the Dean guessed what had happened?
3. Retell the story on the part of a) Peter b) Adams c) the Dean d) the third person
4. Make up a conversation between Peter and Adams after the lecture.
5. Translate the sentences using the words and expressions from Task 1.
1. ? 2. , . 3. ? 4. ? 5. , . 6. , . 7. , ? 8. . 9. , , , . 10. , . 11. ? 12. -? 13. , . 14. , .
THE GREEN DOOR (by OHenry)
Rudolf Steiner, a young piano salesman, was a true adventurer. Few were the evenings when he did not go to look for the unexpected. It seemed to him that the most interesting things in life might lie just around the corner. He was always dreaming of adventures.
Once when he was walking along the street his attention was attracted by a Negro handing out a dentist's cards. The Negro slipped a card into Rudolf's hand. He turned it over and looked at it. Nothing was written on one side of the card; on the other three words were written: "The Green Door". And then Rudolf saw, three steps in front of him, a man throw away the card the Negro had given him as he passed. Rudolf picked it up. The dentist's name and address were printed on it.
The adventurous piano salesman stopped at the corner and considered. Then he returned and joined the stream of people again. When he was passing the Negro the second time, he again got a card. Ten steps away he examined it. In the same handwriting that appeared on the first card "The Green door" was written upon it. Three or four cards were lying on the pavement. On all of them were the name and the address of the dentist. Whatever the written words on the cards might mean, the Negro had chosen him twice from the crowd.
Standing aside from the crowd, the young man looked at the building in which he thought his adventure must lie. It was a five-storey building. On the first floor there was a store. The second up were apartments. After finishing his inspection Rudolf walked rapidly up the stairs into the house. The hallway there was badly lighted. Rudolf looked toward the nearer door and saw that it was green. He hesitated for a moment, then he went straight to the green door and knocked on it. The door slowly opened. A girl not yet twenty stood there. She was very pale and as it seemed to Rudolf was about to faint. Rudolf caught her and laid her on a sofa. He closed the door and took a quick glance round the room.
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Neat, but great poverty was the story he read.
"Fainted, didn't I?" the girl asked weakly. "Well, no wonder. You try going without anything to eat for three days and see."
"Heavens!" cried Rudolf, jumping up. "Wait till I come back." He rushed out of the green door and in twenty minutes he was back with bread and butter, cold meat, cakes, pies, milk and hot tea.
"It is foolish to go without eating. You should not do it again," Rudolf said. "Supper is ready."
When the girl cheered up a little she told him her story. It was one of a thousand such as the city wears with indifference every day a shop girl's story of low wages; of time lost through illness; and then of lost jobs, lost hope and unrealised dreams and the knock of the young man upon the door.
Rudolf looked at the girl with sympathy. "To think of you going through all that," he exclaimed. "And you have no relatives or friends in the city?"
"None whatever."
"As a matter of fact, I am all alone in the world too," said Rudolf after a pause.
"I am glad of that," said the girl, and somehow it pleased the young man to hear that she approved of his having no relatives.
Then the girl sighed deeply. "'I'm awfully sleepy," she said.
Rudolf rose and took his hat. "How did it happen that you knocked at my door?" she asked.
"One of our piano tuners lives in this house. I knocked at your door by mistake."
There was no reason why the girl should not believe him.
In the hallway he looked around and discovered to his great surprise that all the doors were green.
In the street he met the same Negro. "Will you tell me why you gave me these cards and what they mean?" he asked.
Pointing down the street to the entrance to a theatre with a bright electric sign of its new play, "The Green Door", the Negro told Rudolf that the theatre agent had given him a dollar to hand out a few of his cards together with the dentist's.
"Still it was the hand of Fate that showed me the way to her," said Rudolf to himself.
1. Give Russian equivalents for the following words and expressions from the text. Reproduce the situations in which they are used. Use them in the sentences of your own.
| adventure | to faint |
| to dream of smth | neat |
| to attract ones attention | poverty |
| to slip smth | to cheer (smb) up |
| to turn over smth | as a matter of fact |
| to hesitate | to please smb |
| to knock on/at the door | to (dis)approve of smb/smth |
| to seem to smb | by mistake |
| to be about to do smth |
2. Answer the following questions (using your active vocabulary).
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1. What did Rudolf do for a living?
2. What kind of person was he?
3. What happened to Rudolf when once he was walking along the street?
4. Why did Rudolf pass the Negro for the second time?
5. Why did he think that the words on the card meant a new adventure for him? 6. Why did he hesitate a bit before knocking at the green door?
7. Why was the girl so weak?
8. Was the story she told Rudolf typical for a big city? Prove it.
9. How did it happen that he was near the girl the moment she fainted?
10. What do you think about their future?
3. Retell the story on the part of a) Rudolf b) the girl c) the Negro
4. Make up a conversation which took place between a) Rudolf and the girl when she cheered up b) the Negro and Rudolf when the latter had left the girls place.
5. Translate the sentences using the words and expressions from Task 1.
1. . 2. . 3. , . 4. ?! 5. , , . 6. , . 7. - ? , . 8. , - , . 9. , , . 10. . 11. , . 12. . 13. , ? 14. , .
THE LAST LEAF (by OHenry)
At the top of an old three-story brick house in New York two young painters Sue and Johnsy had their studio. They had often met in a cheap café on the East Side, where the two girls came for lunch almost every day. Sue was from Maine, on the east coast, Johnsy from California, in the west. Johnsy was small and quiet, with big blue eyes and light hair; Sue was dark, and bigger and stronger than Johnsy. Perhaps because they were so different, or perhaps because they soon discovered that they liked the same poems and salads, and their views on life, music and art were the same, they became friends very good friends and they decided to live together and paint pictures and try to become great artists. They didnt have much money, but they were young and full of hope, and life seemed good to them. Some time later they found a room that was suitable for a studio and began to live even more economically than before. That was in May.
In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors called Pneumonia, came to New York. He went into a few houses in the streets and squares where the rich people lived, but on the East Side he visited almost every family. He went from place to place in the district where the girls lived, touching people here and there with his icy fingers. Mr Pneumonia was not what you would call a kind old gentleman. He didnt go near Sue, but he put his cold hands on little Johnsy. It was hardly fair of him to pick out a little woman like Johnsy who was obviously unfit to stand the strain of the suffering, but he did, and she lay on her narrow bed, with no strength to move, looking through the small Dutch windowpanes at the blank side of the next brick house.
After examining Johnsy one morning the doctor called Sue out of the room and gave her a prescription, saying: "I don't want to frighten you, but at present she has one chance in, let us say, ten, and that chance is for her to want to live. But your little lady has made up her mind that she isn't going to get well, and if a patient loses interest in life, it takes away 50 per cent from the power of medicine. If you could somehow get her to ask one question about the new winter styles in hats, I would promise you a one-in-five chance for her."
After the doctor had gone, Sue went out into the hall and cried. As soon as she could manage to check her tears, she walked gaily back into the room, whistling a merry tune. Johnsy lay with her eyes towards the window. Thinking that Johnsy was asleep, Sue stopped whistling. She arranged her drawing board and began working. Soon she heard a low sound, several time repeated. She went quickly to the bedside. Johnsy's eyes were wide open. She was looking out of the window and counting counting backward. "Twelve," she said, and a little later, "eleven;" then "ten" and "nine", and then "eight" and "seven" almost together.
Sue looked out of the window. What was there to count? There was only the blank side of the brick house twenty feet away. An old ivy-vine climbed half way up the brick wall. The cold autumn winds had blown off its leaves until it was almost bare.
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"What is it, dear?" asked Sue.
"Six," said Johnsy almost in a whisper. "They're falling faster now. Three days ago there were almost a hundred. It made my head ache to count them. But now its easy. There goes another one. There are only five left now."
"Five what, darling? Tell me."
"Leaves. On the ivy-vine. When the last one falls, I must go, too. I've known that for three days. Didn't the doctor tell you?"
"How can the doctor have told me this nonsense?" Sue said, trying to control her voice.
"He told me this morning your chances were ten to one. Try to take some broth now and let me finish my drawing so that I could sell it and buy some port wine for you."
"You needn't buy any more wine," said Johnsy with her eyes still on the window. "There goes another. No? I dont want any broth. That leaves just four. I want to see the last one fall before it gets dark. Then I'll go, too."
"Johnsy, dear," said Sue, bending over her. "I must go and call Behrman to be my model. Will you promise me to keep your eyes closed and not look at those leaves until I come back? I'll be back in a minute."
"Tell me when I may open my eyes," Johnsy said, "because I want to see the last one fall. I'm tired of waiting. I want to go sailing down like one of those poor tired leaves."
Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor below them. He was past sixty and had been a painter for forty years, but he hadn't achieved anything in art. However, he wasn't disappointed, and hoped he would some day paint a masterpiece. Meantime he earned his living by doing various jobs, often serving as a model to those young painters who could not pay the price of a professional. He sincerely thought it his duty to protect the two girls upstairs.
Sue found Behrman in his poorly-lighted room and told him of Johnsy's fancy, and that she didn't know how to handle the situation.
"I can't keep her from looking at those leaves! I just can't!" she cried out. "And I can't draw the curtains in the daytime. I need the light for my work!"
"What!" the old man shouted. "Why do you allow such silly ideas to come into her head? No, I won't pose for you! Oh, that poor little Miss Johnsy!"
"She is very ill and weak, and the fever has left her mind morbid and full of strange fancies. Very well, Mr Behrman," Sue said, "If you don't want to pose for me, you needn't. I wish I hadn't asked you. But I think you're a nasty oldold ". And she walked towards the door with her chin in the air.
"Who said I wouldn't pose?" shouted Behrman. "I'm coming with you. This isn't a place for Miss Johnsy to be ill in! Some day I'll paint a masterpiece, and we'll all go away!"
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Johnsy was asleep when they went upstairs. Sue and Behrman looked out of the window at the ivy-vine. Then they looked at each other without speaking. A cold rain was falling, mixed with snow. They started working...
When Sue woke up next morning, she found Johnsy looking at the drawn curtains with wide-open eyes.
"Open the curtains; I want to see!" she commanded in a whisper. Sue obeyed. The rain was beating against the windows and a strong wind was blowing, but one leaf still stood out against the brick wall. It was the last on the vine. It hung bravely from a branch about twenty feet above the ground.
It is the last one, said Johnsy. I thought it would surely fall during the night. I heard the wind. It will fall today, and I shall die at the same time.
Dear, dear! said Sue, leaning her worn face down to the pillow, think of me, if you wont think of yourself. What would I do?
But Johnsy did not answer.
The day wore away, and even through the twilight they could see the lonely leaf on its branch against the wall. And then with the coming of the night the north wind blew again with greater force, and the rain still beat against the windows.
When it was light enough, Johnsy ordered Sue to open the curtains. The vine leaf was still there. Johnsy lay for a long time looking at it and then she called to Sue, who was stirring her chicken broth over the gas stove.
"I've been a bad girl, Sue. I wish I hadn't been so wicked. Something has made that last leaf stay there to show me how wicked I was when I wanted to die. You may bring me a little soup now and some milk with a little port wine in it, and no, bring me a hand-mirror first and pack some pillows about me, I want to sit and watch you cook."
The doctor came in the afternoon and said Johnsy was out of danger. "And now I must see another patient downstairs," he added. "His name's Behrman some kind of artist, I believe. Pneumonia, too. He's a weak old man and there's obviously no hope for him."
Next day Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay and put one arm around her. "I've something to tell you, white mouse," she said. "I got a note this morning. Mr Behrman died of pneumonia in hospital today. He was ill only two days, so he didn't suffer long. The janitor found him in the morning of the first day in his room helpless with pain. His shoes and clothes were wet through and icy cold. They couldn't imagine where he had been on such a terrible night. And then they found a lantern still lighted, and a ladder that had been taken from its place, and some brushes lying here and there, and green and yellow paint, and look out of the window, dear, at the last leaf on the wall. Didn't you wonder why it never moved when the wind blew? Ah, darling, it's Behrman's masterpiece he painted it there the night the last leaf fell."
1. Give Russian equivalents for the following words and expressions from the text. Reproduce the situations in which they are used. Use them in the sentences of your own.
