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Билет № 1

THE APPLE-TREE

During a late tea with eggs to it, cream and jam, and thin, fresh cakes, Garton spoke with enthusiasm about the Celts. He had learned that the girl came from Wales, and believed that he was a Celt himself.

He praised the refinement of the Welsh. Frank, as an Englishman, had not of course noticed the refinement and the emotional capacity of that Welsh girl!

Ashurst, who was lying full length on the sofa, smoked a pipe, and did not listen, thinking of the girl's face when she brought in tea and cakes. It had been exactly like looking at a flower, or some other pretty sight in Nature.

Let's go to the kitchen, "said Garton, "and see her again. "

The kitchen was a white-washed room; there were flower-pots on the window-sill, and guns hanging on nails, and portraits of Queen Victoria. A long, narrow table of wood was laid for supper; two dogs and three cats lay here and there. On one side of the fireplace sat two small boys; on the other sat a stout, red-faced youth, who who was cleaning a gun; between them Mrs. Narracombe slowly stirred some, stew in a large pot. Two other youths, with dark hair and rather sly faces were talking together, leaning against the wall; and a short, elderly man, sitting near the window, was looking at an old journal. The girl Megan seemed the only active creature — moving about the room and serving the table.

Seeing that they were going to eat, Garton said: "Ah! If you'll let us, we'll come back when supper is over," and without waiting for an answer they withdrew to the parlour. They sat down again, and Garton began talking about the girl. He said she was a very subtle study psychologically, and emotionally would be wonderful after awakening. But Ashurst smiled and smoked his pipe in silence. Subtle study! She was a wild flower. A creature it did you good to look at. Study! Awaken her! Garton seemed to him a fool just then. Ashurst opened the window and leaned out. What a wonderful night! He drew a deep breath.

Suddenly from overhead he heard little boys' voices and another voice, pretty and soft —the girl's putting them to bed, no doubt; and nine clear words: "No, Rick, you can't have the cat in bed"; then came a soft slap, and a low and pretty laugh. Then silence followed. Ashurst withdrew⁷ into the room and sat down; his knee hurt him, and he felt gloomy.

" You go to the kitchen," he said; "I'm going to bed."

Билет № 2

The Opera ghost really existed. He was not, as was long believed, a creature of the imagination of the artists, the superstition of the managers, or a product of the absurd and impressionable brains of the young ladies of the ballet, their mothers, the box-keepers, the cloak-room attendants or the concierge. Yes, he existed in flesh and blood, although he assumed the complete appearance of a real phantom; that is to say, of a spectral shade.

 When I began to ransack the archives of the National Academy of Music I was at once struck by the surprising coincidences between the phenomena ascribed to the "ghost” and the most extraordinary and fantastic tragedy that ever excited the Paris upper classes; and I soon conceived the idea that this tragedy might reasonably be explained by the phenomena in question. The events do not date more than thirty years back; and it would not be difficult to find at the present day, in the foyer of the ballet, old men of the highest respectability, men upon whose word one could absolutely rely, who would remember as though they happened yesterday the mysterious and dramatic conditions that attended the kidnapping of Christine Daae, the disappearance of the Vicomte de Chagny and the death of his elder brother, Count Philippe, whose body was found on the bank of the lake that exists in the lower cellars of the Opera on the Rue-Scribe side. But none of those witnesses had until that day thought that there was any reason for connecting the more or less legendary figure of the Opera ghost with that terrible story.

The truth was slow to enter my mind, puzzled by an inquiry that at every moment was complicated by events which, at first sight, might be looked upon as superhuman; and more than once I was within an ace of abandoning a task in which I was exhausting myself in the hopeless pursuit of a vain image. At last, I received the proof that my presentiments had not deceived me, and I was rewarded for all my efforts on the day when I acquired the certainty that the Opera ghost was more than a mere shade.

 On that day, I had spent long hours over The Memoirs of a Manager, the light and frivolous work of the too-skeptical Moneharmin, who, during his term at the Opera, understood nothing of the mysterious behavior of the ghost and who was making all the fun of it that he could at the very moment when he became the first victim of the curious financial operation that went on inside the "magic envelope.”

I had just left the library in despair, when I met the delightful acting-manager of our National Academy, who stood chatting on a landing with a lively and well-groomed little old man, to whom he introduced me gaily. The acting-manager knew all about my investigations and how eagerly and unsuccessfully I had been trying to discover the whereabouts of the examining magistrate in the famous Chagny case, M. Faure. Nobody knew what had become of him, alive or dead; and here he was back from Canada, where he had spent fifteen years, and the first thing he had done, on his return to Paris, was to come to the secretarial offices at the Opera and ask for a free seat. The little old man was M. Faure himself.

We spent a good part of the evening together and he told me the whole Chagny case as he had understood it at the time. He was bound to conclude in favor of the madness of the viscount and the accidental death of the elder brother, for lack of evidence to the contrary; but he was nevertheless persuaded that a terrible tragedy had taken place between the two brothers in connection with Christine Daae. He could not tell me what became of Christine or the viscount. When I mentioned the ghost, he only laughed. I was no longer able to doubt. No, the ghost was not a myth!

Билет № 3

THE WILD IN THE WILLOWS

The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing. It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said 'Bother!' and 'O blow!' and also 'Hang spring-cleaning!' and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat. Something up above was calling him imperiously, and he made for the steep little tunnel which answered in his case to the gravelled carriage-drive owned by animals whose residences are nearer to the sun and air. So he scraped and scratched and scrabbled and scrooged, and then he scrooged again and scrabbled and scratched and scraped, working busily with his little paws and muttering to himself, 'Up we go! Up we go!' till at last, pop! his snout came out into the sunlight, and he found himself rolling in the warm grass of a great meadow.

'This is fine!' he said to himself. 'This is better than whitewashing!' The sunshine struck hot on his fur soft breezes caressed his heated brow, and after the seclusion of the cellarage he had lived in so long the carol of happy birds fell on his dulled hearing almost like a shout. Jumping off all his four legs at once, in the joy of living and the delight of spring without its cleaning, he pursued his way across the meadow till he reached the hedge on the further side.

'Hold up!' said an elderly rabbit at the gap. 'Sixpence for the privilege of passing by the private road!' He was bowled over in an instant by the impatient and contemptuous Mole, who trotted along the side of the hedge chaffing the other rabbits as they peeped hurriedly from their holes to see what the row was about. 'Onion-sauce! Onion-sauce!' he remarked jeeringly, and was gone before they could think of a thoroughly satisfactory' reply. Then they all started grumbling at each other. 'How stupid you are! Why didn't you tell him 'Well, why didn't you say - You might have reminded him -' and so on in the usual way; but of course, it was then much too late, as is always the case.

It all seemed too good to be true. Hither and thither through the meadows he rambled busily, along the hedgerow's, across the copses, finding everywhere birds building, flowers budding, leaves thrusting - everything happy, and progressive, and occupied. And instead of having an uneasy conscience pricking him and whispering ’Whitewash!’ he somehow could only feel how jolly it was to be the only idle dog among all these busy citizens. After all, the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself, as to see all the other fellows busy working.

He thought his happiness was complete when, as he meandered aimlessly along, suddenly he stood by the edge of a full-fed river. Never in his life had he seen a river before - this sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh, to fling itself on fresh playmates that shook themselves free, and were caught and held again. All was a-shake and a-shiver - glints and gleams and sparkles, rustle and swirl, chatter and bubble. The Mole was bewitched, entranced, fascinated. By the side of the river he trotted as one trots, when very small, by the side of a man who holds one spellbound by exciting stories; and when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.

As he sat on the grass and looked across the river, a dark hole in the bank opposite, just above the water's edge, caught his eye, and dreamily he fell to considering what a nice snug dwelling- place it would make for an animal with few wants and fond of a bijou riverside residence, above flood-level and remote from noise and dust. As he gazed, something bright and small seemed to twinkle down in the heart of it, vanished, then twinkled once more like a tiny star. But it could hardly be a star in such an unlikely situation; and it was too glittering and small for a glow-worm. Then, as he looked, it winkled at him, and so declared itself to be an eye; and a small face began gradually to grow' up round it, like a frame round a picture.

Билет № 3

A GOOD LITTLE FEATURE

He was a shabby little old man, but his shabbiness was that of the country worker rather than the city poor. It was obvious that he had never been in a police station before.

"Do you want to make bond?" the desk sergeant asked.

"I dunno," he quavered, and it was plain that he did not understand what a bond was.

"You can put up one-hundred dollars cash to guarantee your-appearance in court tomorrow morning," the sergeant explained.

"That's a heap of money," the prisoner protested.

"You can telephone someone to come down and make your bond."

"Don't know nobody."

"I'll have to lock you up, then. The sergeant turned to a patrolman. "Search him and take him downstairs."

The prisoner did not like the idea of being searched, and when the officer discovered and removed a cotton bag pinned beneath his shirt, he protested volubly.

"Gimme back that, now. That's mine. You hain't no right to take it. You're a-robbin' me, and I won't stand fer it."

The desk sergeant gasped. "Say, old man, don't you know it's dangerous to carry all that money with you?"

At these words a young man sitting in one corner of the cage threw aside his magazine, arose, and strolled up to the desk.

"How much dough has he got, Sergeant?"

The officer pointed to a pile of bills he had removed from the cotton bag. "Must be at least five thousand dollars," he estimated.

"It's fifty-five hundred there," the prisoner corrected. "Silas Jones paid me that for my farm when me and Ma decided to move to town. Silas can tell you the same, and I'll thank you to give it back to me."

The police reporter, for the Riverton Evening Star was interested. He read aloud from the docket: "'Henry Tucker, Nine-one-six Tenth Street, petty larceny.' What'd he steal, Sergeant?"

"About seventy cents' worth of groceries from that chain store at the corner of Tenth and Cherry streets."

 "With all that money in his pockets!" the reporter marvelled.

"Tain't so!" the prisoner shrilled indignantly. "I warn't tryin't' get away, like they said. I was lookin' fer the feller in charge of that crazy store. I never stole nothin' in my life."

The reporter laughed. "He's probably telling the truth."

"Listen, old man," said the sergeant. "There's no need for you staying in jail when you have money to make bond."- Very carefully and patiently he explained the nature of a bond, and finally the prisoner was made to understand that his one hundred dollars would be returned to him after his case had been heard in court.

"And do I get the rest of my money back now?" the prisoner asked.

"Yes, but you better take it to a bank before somebody robs you."

"I been aimin' to, but me and Ma just got here and I hain't had time t' pick me out a good bank."

The little old man pinned his money under his shirt again and departed. The reporter looked at the ick.

"Almost time for the edition," he said. "Guess I'll drag into the office."

"Wait a minute, Charlie," the sergeant called. He followed the reporter to the door. "I wouldn't print anything about this if I were you."

"Why not? It's a good little feature."

"If you publish that story the old man will be robbed of his life savings before morning."

The reporter hesitated. "Guess you're right, Sergeant," he agreed reluctantly, "but I hate to lay off. I could have made a good funny story out of him. However, I don't want to get the old man robbed."

Nevertheless, the final edition of the Evening Star carried the story on the front page under a two- column head. And, as the reporter suggested, it was a good little feature. He had made the most of his material, treating the incident humorously but sympathetically.

Билет № 4

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA

The envelope was covered with mud and unstamped. It bore the words "To be handed to M. le Vicomte Raoul de Chagny," with the address in pencil. It must have been flung out in the hope that a passer-by would pick up the note and deliver it, which was what happened. The note had been picked up on the pavement of the Place de l'Opera.

Raoul read it over again with fevered eyes. No more was needed to revive his hope. The somber picture which he had for a moment imagined of a Christine forgetting her duty to herself made way for his original conception of an unfortunate, innocent child, the victim of imprudence and exaggerated sensibility. To what extent, at this time, was she really a victim? Whose prisoner was she? Into what whirlpool had she been dragged? He asked himself these questions with a cruel anguish; but even this pain seemed endurable beside the frenzy into which he was thrown at the thought of a lying and deceitful Christine. What had happened? What influence had she undergone? What monster had carried her off and by what means?.. .

By what means indeed but that of music? He knew' Christine's story’. After her father's death, she acquired a distaste of everything in life, including her art. She went through the conservatoire like a poor soulless singing-machine. And, suddenly, she awoke as though through the intervention of a god.

The Angel of Music appeared upon the scene! She sang Margarita in Faust and triumphed!...

The Angel of Music!... For three months the Angel of Music had been giving Christine lessons.... Ah, he was a punctual singing-master!. .. And now he was taking her for drives in the Bois!. ..

Raoul's fingers clutched at his flesh, above his jealous heart, in his inexperience he now asked himself with terror what game the girl was playing? Up to what point could an opera-singer make a fool of a good-natured young man, quite new to love? О misery!...

Thus did Raoul's thoughts fly from one extreme to the other. He no longer blew whether to pity Christine or curse her; and he pitied and cursed her turn and turn about. At all events, he bought a white domino.

The hour of the appointment came at last. With his face in a mask trimmed with long, thick lace, looking like a Dierrot in his white wrap, the viscount thought himself very ridiculous. Men of the world do not go to the Opera ball in fency-dress! It was absurd. One thought, however, consoled the viscount: he would certainly never be recognized!

This ball was an exceptional affair, given some time before Shrovetide, in honor of the anniversary of the birth of a famous draftsman; and it was expected to be much gayer, noisier, more Bohemian than the ordinary masked ball. Numbers of artists had arranged to go, accompanied by a whole cohort of models and pupils, who, by midnight, began to create a tremendous din. Raoul climbed the grand staircase at five minutes to twelve, did not linger to look at the motley dresses displayed all the way up the marble steps, one of the richest settings in the world, allowed no facetious mask to draw him into a war of wits, replied to no jests and shook off the bold familiarity of a number of couples who had already become a trifle too gay. Crossing the crush-room and escaping from a mad whirl of dancers in which he was caught for a moment, he at last entered the room mentioned in Christine's letter. He found it crammed; for this small space was the point where all those who were going to supper in the Rotunda crossed those who were returning from taking a glass of champagne. The fun, here, waxed fast and furious.

Raoul leaned against a door-post and waited. He did not wait long. A black domino passed and gave a quick squeeze to the tips of his fingers. He understood that it was she and followed her:

"Is that you, Christine?" he asked, between his teeth.

The black domino turned round promptly and raised her finger to her tips, no doubt to warn him not to mention her name again. Raoul continued to follow her in silence.

He was afraid of losing her, after meeting her again in such strange circumstances. His grudge against her was gone. He no longer doubted that she had "nothing to reproach herself with," however peculiar and inexplicable her conduct might seem. He was ready to make any display of clemency, forgiveness or cowardice. He was in love. And, no doubt, he would soon receive a very natural explanation of her curious absence.

Билет № 5

THE DINNER PARTY

N. Monsarrat

There are still some rich people in the world. Many of them lead lives of particular pleasure. But rich people do have their problems. They are seldom problems of finance, since most rich people have enough sense to hire other people to take care of their worries. But there are other, more genuine problems. They are the problems of behaviour.

Let me tell you a story which happened to my uncle Octavian a full thirty years ago. At that time I myself was fifteen. My uncle Octavian was then a rich man. He was a charming and accomplished host whose villa was an accepted rendezvous of the great He was a hospitable and most amiable man—until January 3, 1925.

There was nothing special about that day in the life of my uncle Octavian, except that it was his fifty-fifth birthday. As usual on such a day he was giving a party, a party for twelve people. All of than were old friends.

I, myself, aged fifteen, was deeply privileged. I was staying with my uncle at his exquisite villa, on holiday from school, and as a special concession on this happy day, I was allowed to come down to dinner. It was exciting for me to be admitted to such company, which included a newspaper proprietor of exceptional intelligence and his fabulous American wife, a recent prime-minister of France and a distinguished German prince and princess.

At that age, you will guess, I was dazzled. Even today, 30 years later, one may fairly admit that the company was distinguished. But I should also stress that they were all old and intimate friends of my uncle Octavian.

Towards the end of a wonderful dinner, when dessert had been brought in and the servants had left, my uncle leant forward to admire a magnificent diamond ring on the princess's hand. She was a hand­some woman. She turned her hand gracefully towards my uncle. Across the table, the newspaper proprietor leant across and said: "May I also have a look?" She smiled and nodded. Then she took off the ring and held it out to him. "It was my grandmother's — the old empress," she said. "I have not worn it for many years. It is said to have once belonged to Genghis Khan."

There were exclamations of delight and admiration. The ring was passed from hand to hand. For a moment it rested on my own palm, gleaming splendidly. Then I passed it on to my neighbour. As I turned away again, I saw her pass it on.

It was some 20 minutes later when the princess stood up and said: "Before we leave you, may I have my ring back?"... There was a pause, while each of us looked expectantly at his neighbour. Then there was silence.

The princess was still smiling, though less easily. She was unused to asking for things twice. The silence continued, I still thought that it could only be a practical joke, and that one of us—probably the prince himself—would produce the ring with a laugh. But when nothing happened at all, I knew that the rest of the night would be dreadful.

I am sure that you can guess the sort of scene that followed. There was the embarrassment of the guests—all of them old and valued friends. There was a nervous search of the whole room. Hut it did not bring the princess's ring back again. It had vanished— an irreplaceable thing, worth possibly two hundred thousand pounds—in a roomful of twelve people, all known to each other.

No servants had entered the room. No one had left it for a moment. The thief (for now it could only be theft) was one of us, one of my uncle Octavian's cherished friends.

I remember it was the French cabinet minister who was most insistent on being searched, indeed, in his excitement he had already started to turn out his pockets, before my uncle held up his hand and stopped him. "There will be no search in my house," he commanded, "You are all my friends. The ring can only be lost. If it is not found"— he bowed towards the princess— "I will naturally make amends myself."

The ring was never found, it never appeared, either then or later.

To our family's surprise, Uncle Octavian was a comparatively poor man, when he died (which happened, in fact, a few weeks ago). And I should say that he died with the special sadness of a hospitable host who never gave a single lunch or dinner party for the last thirty years of his life.

NOTES:

fabulous — зд. - известна, роскошная

make amends (for) — зд. возместить ущерб

Билет №6

DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE (I)

By R. Gordon

     To a medical student the final examinations are something like death: an unpleasant inevitability to be faced sooner or later, one's state after which is determined by care spent in pre­paring for the event.

     An examination is nothing more than an investigation of a man's knowledge, conducted in a way that the authorities have found the most fair and convenient to both sides. But the medi­cal student cannot see it in this light. Examinations touch off his fighting spirit; they are a straight contest between himself and the examiners, conducted on well-established rules for both, and he goes at them like a prize-fighter.

     There is rarely any frank cheating in medical examinations, but the candidates spend almost as much time over the techni­cal details of the contest as they do learning general medicine from their textbooks.

       Benskin discovered that Malcolm Maxworth was the St. Swithin's representative on the examining Committee and thenceforward we attended all his ward rounds, standing at the front and gazing at him like impressionable music enthusiasts at the solo violinist. Meanwhile, we despondently ticked the days off the calendar, swotted up the spot questions, and ran a final breathless sprint down the well-trodden paths of medicine.

      The examination began with the written papers. A single in­vigilator sat in his gown and hood on a raised platform to keep an eye open for flagrant cheating. He was helped by two or three uniformed porters who stood by the door and looked dispassionately down at the poor victims, like the policemen that flank the dock at the Old Bailey.

     Three hours were allowed for the paper. About half-way through the anonymous examinees began to differentiate them­selves. Some of them strode up for an extra answer book, with an awkward expression of self-consciousness and superiority in their faces. Others rose to their feet, handed in their papers and left. Whether these people were so brilliant they were able to complete the examination in an hour and a half or whether this was the time required for them to set down unhurriedly their entire knowledge of medicine was never apparent from the nonchalant air with which they left the room. The invigilator tapped his bell half an hour before time; the last question was rushed through, then the porters began tearing papers away from gentlemen dissatisfied with the period allowed for them to express themselves and hoping by an incomplete sentence to give the examiners the impression of frustrated brilliance.

     I walked down the stairs feeling as if I had just finished an eight-round fight. In the square outside the first person I re­cognized was Grimsdyke.

     "How did you get on?" I asked.       

     "So-so," he replied. "However, I am not worried. They nev­er read the papers anyway. Haven't you heard how they mark the tripos at Cambridge, my dear old boy? The night before the results come out the old don totters bade, from hall and chucks the lot down the staircase. The ones that stick on the top flight are given firsts, most of them end up on the landing and get seconds, thirds go to the lower flight, and any reaching the ground floor are failed. This system has been working admirably for years without arousing any comment."

     The unpopular oral examination was held a week after the papers. The written answers have a certain remoteness about them, and mistakes and omissions, like those of life, can be made without the threat of immediate punishment. But the viva is judgement day. A false answer, and the god's brow threatens like imminent thunderstorm. If the candidate loses his nerve in front of this terrible displeasure he is finished: confusion breeds confusion and he will come to the end of his interrogation struggling like a cow in a bog.

      I was shown to a tiny waiting-room furnished with hard chairs, a wooden table, and windows that wouldn't open, like the condemned cell. There were six other candidates waiting, to go in with me, who illustrated the types fairly commonfy seen in viva waiting-rooms. There was the Nonchalant, lolling back on the rear legs of his chair with his feet on the table. Next to him, a man of the Frankly Worried class sat on the edge of his chair tearing little bits off his invitation card and jumping irritatingly every time the door opened. There was the Crammer, fondling the pages of his battered textbook in a desperate farewell embrace, and his opposite, the Old Stager, who treated the whole thing with the familiarity of a photographer at a wed­ding. He had obviously failed the examination so often he looked upon the viva simply as another engagement to be fitted into his day.

Commentary

 invigilator: a person who watches over students during examinations.

 Old Bailey: Central Criminal Court, situated in London in the street of the same name.

the tripos: examination for an honours degree in Cam­bridge University.

firsts, seconds, thirds: a system of grading degrees.

the viva: an oral examination.

Билет  № 7

DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE (II)

By R. Gordon

To a medical student the final examinations are something like death: an unpleasant inevitability to be faced sooner or later, one's state after which is determined by care spent in pre­paring for the event.

     An examination is nothing more than an investigation of a man's knowledge, conducted in a way that the authorities have found the most fair and convenient to both sides. The examination began with the written papers. A single in­vigilator sat in his gown and hood on a raised platform to keep an eye open for flagrant cheating. He was helped by two or three uniformed porters who stood by the door and looked dispassionately down at the poor victims, like the policemen that flank the dock at the Old Bailey.

The unpopular oral examination was held a week after the papers. The written answers have a certain remoteness about them, and mistakes and omissions, like those of life, can be made without the threat of immediate punishment. But the viva is judgement day. A false answer, and the god's brow threatens like imminent thunderstorm. If the candidate loses his nerve in front of this terrible displeasure he is finished: confusion breeds confusion and he will come to the end of his interrogation struggling like a cow in a bog.

      I was shown to a tiny waiting-room furnished with hard chairs, a wooden table, and windows that wouldn't open, like the condemned cell. There were six other candidates waiting, to go in with me, who illustrated the types fairly commonfy seen in viva waiting-rooms. The other occupant of the room was a woman. Women stu­dents - the attractive ones, not those who are feminine only through inescapable anatomic arrangements — are under dis­advantage in oral examinations.

     "You go to table four," the porter told me.

     I stood before table four. I didn't recognize the examiners. One was a burly, elderly man like a retired prize-fighter; the other was invisible, as he was occupied in reading the morn­ing's Times.

      "Well, how would you treat a case of tetanus?" My heart leaped hopefully. This was something I knew, as there had recently been a case at St. Swithin's. I started off confidentially, reeling out the lines of treatment and feeling much better. The examiner suddenly cut me short. "All right, all right," he said impatiently, "you seem to know that A girl of twenty comes to you complaining of gain­ing weight, what would you do?" I rallied my thoughts and stumbled through the answer...

     The days after the exam were black ones. It was like having a severe accident. For the first few hours I was numbed, unable to realize what had hit me. Then I began to wonder if I would ever make a recovery and win through. One or two of my friends heartened me by describing equally depressing experi­ences that had overtaken them previously and still allowed them to pass. I began to hope. Little shreds of success collected together and weaved themselves into a triumphal garland...

    We arrived in the examination building to find the same candidates there, but they were a subdued, muttering crowd, like the supporters of a home team who had just been beaten in a cup tie.

     We had heard exactly what would happen. At midday pre­cisely the Secretary of the Committee would descend the stairs and take his place, flanked by two uniformed porters. Under his arm would be a thick, leather-covered book containing the results. One of the porters would carry a list of candidates' numbers and call them out, one after the other. The candidate would step up closely to the Secretary, who would say simply "Pass" or "Failed". Successful men would go upstairs to re­ceive the congratulations and handshakes of the examiners and failures would slink miserably out of the exit to seek the opiate oblivion.

     One minute to twelve. The room had suddenly come to a frightening, unexpected silence and stillness, like an unexploded bomb. A clock tingled twelve in the distance. My palms were as wet as sponges. Someone coughed, and I expected the windows to rattle. With slow scraping feet that could be heard before they appeared the Secretary and the porters came solemnly down the stairs. The elder porter raised his voice.

     "Number one hundred and sixty-one," he began. "Number three hundred and two. Number three hundred and six." Grimsdyke punched me hard in the ribs, "Go on," he hissed. "It's you!"

     I jumped and struggled my way to the front of the restless crowd. My pulse shot in my ears. My face was burning hot and I felt my stomach had been suddenly plucked from my body. Suddenly I found myself on top of the Secretary.

     “Number three oh six?" the Secretary whispered, without looking up from the book. "R. Gordon?" "Yes," I croaked.

      The world stood still. The traffic stopped, the plants ceased growing, men were paralysed, the clouds hung in the air, the winds dropped, the tides disappeared, the sun halted in the sky.

     "Pass," he muttered.

     Blindly, like a man just hit by a blackjack, I stumbled up­stairs.

Билет  № 8

From: TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

By Harper Lee

            Atticus was half-way through his speech to fee jury. He had evidently pulled some papers from his briefcase feat rested be­side his chair, because they were on his table. Tom Robinson was toying wife them".       "...absence of any corroborative evidence, this man was in­dicted on a capital charge and is now on trial for his life..."

      I punched Jem. "How long's he been at it?"

       "He's just gone over fee evidence," Jem whispered... We looked down again. Atticus was speaking easily, wife the kind of detachment he used when he dictated a letter. He walked slowly up and down in front of fee jury, and fee jury seemed to be attentive: their heads were up, and they followed Atticus's route with what seemed to be appreciation. I guess it was be­cause Atticus wasn't a thunderer.

      Atticus paused, then he did something he didn't ordinarily do. He unhitched his watch and chain and placed them on fee table, saying, "With the court's permission —"

     Judge Taylor nodded, and then Atticus did something I never saw him do before or since, in public or in private: he unbuttoned his vest, unbuttoned his collar, loosened his tie, and took off his coat. He never loosened a scrap of his clothing until he undressed at bedtime, and to Jem and me, this was fee equivalent of him standing before us stark naked. We ex­changed horrified glances.

      Atticus put his hands in his pockets, and as he returned to the jury, I saw his gold-collar button and the tips of his pen and pencil winking in fee light.

      "Gentlemen," he said. Jem and I again looked at each other: Atticus might have said "Scout". His voice had lost its aridity, its detachment, and he was talking to fee jury as if they were folks on fee post office corner.

      "Gentlemen," he was saying. "I shall be brief, but I would like to use my remaining time with you to remind you that this case is not a difficult one, it requires no minute sifting of com­plicated, facts, but it does require you to be sure beyond all reasonable doubt as to the guilt of the defendant. To begin with, this case should never have come to trial. This case is as simple as black and white.

      "The state has not produced one iota of medical evidence to the effect that the crime Tom Robinson is charged with ever took place. It has relied instead upon the testimony of two wit­nesses whose evidence has not only been called into serious question on cross-examination, but has been flatly contradicted by the defendant. The defendant is not guilty, but somebody in this court is.

      “I have nothing but pity in my heart for the chief witness for the state, but my pity does not extend so far as to her put­ting a man's life at stake, which she had done in an effort to get rid of her own guilt.

      "I say guilt, gentlemen, because it was guilt that motivated her. She has committed no crime, she has merely broken a rigid and time-honored code of, our society, a code so severe that whoever breaks it is hounded from our midst as unfit to live with. She is the victim of cruel poverty and ignorance, but I cannot pity her: she is white. She knew full well the enormity of her offense, but because her desires were stronger than the code she was breaking, she persisted in breaking it. She persist­ed, and her subsequent reaction is something that all of us have known at one time or another. She did something every child has done — she tried to put the evidence of her offense away from her. But in this case she was no child hiding stolen contra­band: she struck out at her victim — of necessity she must put him away from her — he must be removed from her presence, from this world. She must destroy the evidence of her offense.

      "What was the .evidence of her offense? Tom Robinson, a human being. She must put Tom Robinson away from her. Tom Robinson was her daily reminder of what she did. What did she do? She tempted a Negro.

      "She was white, and she tempted a Negro. She did some­thing that in our society is unspeakable: she kissed a black man. Not an old Uncle, but a strong young Negro man. No code mattered to her before she broke it, but it came crashing down on her afterwards.

      "Her father saw it, and the defendant has testified as to his remarks. What did her father do? We don't know, but there is circumstantial evidence to indicate that Mayella Ewell was beaten savagely by someone who led almost exclusively with his left. We do know in part what Mr Ewell did: he did what any God-fearing, persevering, respectable white man would do under the circumstances — he swore out a warrant, no doubt signing it with his left hand, and Tom Robinson now sits before you, having taken the oath with the only good hand he pos­sesses — his right hand.

Билет  № 9

By L. P. Hartley

     The First postcard came from Forfar. "I thought you might like a picture of Forfar," it said. "You have always been so interested in Scotland, and that is one reason why I am interested in you. I have enjoyed all your books, but do you really get to grips with people? I doubt it. Try to think of this as a handshake from your devoted admirer, W.S."

     Like other novelists, Walter Streeter was used to getting communications from strangers. Usually they were friendly but sometimes they were critical. In either case he always answered them, for he was conscientious. But answering them took up the time and energy he needed for his writing, so that he was rather relieved that W.S. had given no address. The photograph of Forfar was uninteresting and he tore it up. His anonymous correspondent's criticism, however, lingered in his mind. Did he really fail to come to grips with his characters? Perhaps he did. He was aware that in most cases they were either projections of his own personality or, in different forms, the antithesis of it. The Me and the Not Me. Perhaps W.S. had spotted this. Not for the first time Walter made a vow to be more objective.

     About ten days later arrived another postcard, this time from Berwick-on-Tweed. "What do you think of Berwick-on-Tweed?" it said. "Like you, it's on the Border. I hope this doesn't sound rude. I don't mean that you are a borderline case! You know how much I admire your stories. Some people call them otherworldly. I think you should plump for one world or the other. Another firm handshake from W.S."

     Walter Streeter pondered over this and began to wonder about the sender. Was his correspondent a man or a woman? It looked like a man's handwriting — commercial, unselfconscious — and the criticism was like a man's. On the other hand, it was like a woman to probe — to want to make him feel at the same time flattered and unsure of himself. He felt the faint stirrings of curiosity but soon dismissed them: he was not a man to experiment with acquaintances. Still it was odd to think of this unknown person speculating about him, sizing him up. Other-worldly, indeed! He re-read the last two chapters he had written. Perhaps they didn't have their feet firm on the ground. Perhaps he was too ready to escape, as other novelists were nowadays, into an ambiguous world, a world where the conscious mind did not have things too much its own way. But did that matter? He threw the picture of Berwick-on-Tweed into his November fire and tried to write; but the words came haltingly, as though contending with an extra-strong barrier of self-criticism. And as the days passed he became uncomfortably aware of self-division, as though someone had taken hold of his personality and was pulling it apart. His work was no longer homogeneous, there were two strains in it, unreconciled and opposing, and it went much slower as he tried to resolve the discord. Never mind, he thought: perhaps I was getting into a groove. These difficulties may be growing pains, I may have tapped a new source of supply. If only I could correlate the two and make their conflict fruitful, as many artists have!

     The third postcard showed a picture of York Minster. "I know you are interested in cathedrals," it said. "I'm sure this isn't a sign of megalomania in your case, but smaller churches are sometimes more rewarding. I'm seeing a good many churches on my way south. Are you busy writing or are you looking round for ideas? Another hearty handshake from your friend W. S."

      It was true that Walter Streeter was interested in cathedrals. Lincoln Cathedral had been the subject of one of his youthful fantasies and he had written about it in a travel book. And it was also true that he admired mere size and was inclined to under-value parish churches. But how could W.S. have known that? And was it really a sign of megalomania? And who was W.S. anyhow?

      For the first time it struck him that the initials were his own. No, not for the first time. He had noticed it before, but they were such commonplace initials; they were Gilbert's they were Maugham's, they were Shakespeare's — a common possession. Anyone might have them. Yet now it seemed to him an odd coincidence and the idea came into his mind — suppose I have been writing postcards to myself? People did such things, especially people with split personalities. Not that he was one, of course. And yet there were these unexplained developments — the cleavage in his writing, which had now extended from his thought to his style, making one paragraph languorous with semicolons and subordinate clauses, and another sharp and incisive with main verbs and full stops.

      He looked at the handwriting again. It had seemed the perfection of ordinariness — anybody's hand — so ordinary as perhaps to be disguised. Now he fancied he saw in it resemblances to his own. He was just going to pitch the postcard in the fire when suddenly he decided not to. I'll show it to somebody, he thought.

Commentary

Other-worldly, indeed! "Other-worldly" means more concerned with spiritual matters than with daily life. The exclamation "indeed" is used to express surprise, annoyance or lack of belief.

Lincoln Cathedral is in the ancient town of Lincoln, North Midlands. The magnificent Cathedral Church of St.Mary, rising to 271 ft, was built between the 11th and 14th centuries and its honey-coloured stone is said to change colour in varying light.

Gilbert, William Schwenck: (1836-1911), an English dramatist and poet.

Билет  № 10

RAGTIME

By E.L. Doctorow

     One afternoon, a Sunday, a new model T-Ford slowly came up the hill and went past the house. The boy, who hap­pened to see it from the porch, ran down the steps and stood on the sidewalk. The driver was looking right and left as if try­ing to find a particular address; he turned the car around at the comer and came back. Pulling up before the boy, he idled his throttle and beckoned with a gloved hand. He was a Negro. His car shone. The brightwork gleamed... I am looking for a young woman of color whose name is Sarah, he said. She is said to reside in one of these houses.

     The boy realized he meant the woman in the attic. Site's here. The man switched off the motor, set the brake and jumped down.

     When Mother came to the door the colored man was respectful, but there was something disturbingly resolute and self-important in the way he asked her if he could please speak with Sarah. Mother could not judge his age. He was a stocky man with a red-complected shining brown face, high cheek­bones and large dark eyes so intense as to suggest they were about to cross. He had a neat moustache. He was dressed in the affection of wealth to which colored people lent them­selves.

     She told him to wait and closed the door. She climbed to the third floor. She found the girl Sarah not sitting at the window as she usually did but standing rigidly, hands folded in front of her, and facing the door. Sarah, Mother said, you have a caller. The girl said nothing. Will you come to the kitchen? The girl shook her head. You don't want to see him? No, ma'am, the girl finally said softly, while she looked at the floor. Send him away, please. This was the most she had said in all the months she had lived in the house. Mother went back downstairs and found the fellow not at the back door but in the kitchen where, in the warmth of the corner near the cookstove, Sarah's baby lay sleeping in his carriage. The black man was kneeling beside the carriage and staring at the child. Mother, not thinking clearly, was suddenly outraged that he had presumed to come in the door. Sarah is unable to see you, she said and she held the door open. The colored man took another glance at the child, rose, thanked her and departed.

     Such was the coming of the colored man in the car to Broadview Avenue. His name was Cualhouse Walker Jr. Beginning with that Sunday he appeared every week, always knocking at the back door. Always turning away without complaint upon Sarah's refusal to see him. Father considered the visits a nuisance and wanted to discourage them. I'll call the police, he said. Mother laid her hand on his arm. One Sunday the colored man left a bouquet of yellow chrysanthe­mums which in this season had to have cost him a pretty penny.

     The black girl would say nothing about her visitor. They had no idea where she had met him, or how. As far as they knew she had no family nor any friends from the black community in the downtown section of the city. Apparently she had come by herself from New York to work as a servant. Mother was exhilarated by the situation. She began to regret Sarah's intransigence. She thought of the drive from Harlem, where Coalhouse Walker Jr. lived, and the drive back, and she decided the next time to give him more of a visit. She would serve tea in the parlor. Father questioned the propriety of this. Mother said, he is well-spoken and conducts himself as a gentleman. I see nothing wrong with it. When Mr Roosevelt was in the White House he gave dinner to Booker T. Washington. Surely we can serve tea to Coalhouse Walker Jr.

     And so it happened on the next Sunday that the Negro took tea. Father noted that he suffered no embarrassment by being in the parlor with a cup and saucer in his hand. On the contrary, he acted as if it was the most natural thing in the world. The surroundings did not awe him nor was his manner deferential. He was courteous and correct. He told them about himself. He was a professional pianist and was now more or less permanently located in New York, having secured a job with the Jim Europe Clef Club Orchestra, a well-known ensemble that gave regular concerts at the Manhattan Casino on 155th Street and Eighth Avenue. It was important, he said, for a musician to find a place that was permanent, a job that required no travelling... I am through travelling, he said. I am through going on the road. He spoke so fervently that Father realized the message was intended for the woman upstairs. This irritated him. What can you play? he said abruptly. Why don't you play something for us?

     The black man placed tea, on the tray. He rose, patted his lips with the napkin, placed the napkin beside his cup and went to the piano. He sat on the piano stool and immediately rose and twirled it till the height was to his satisfaction. He sat down again, played a chord and turned to them. This piano is badly in need of a tuning, he said. Father's face reddened. Oh, yes, Mother said, we are terrible about that. The musician turned again to the keyboard. "Wall Street Rag," he said. Composed by the great Scott Joplin. He began to play. Ill-tuned or not the Aeolian had never made such sounds. Small clear chords hung in the air like flowers. The melodies were like bouquets. There seemed to be no other possibilities for life than those delineated by the music. When the piece was over Coalhouse Walker turned on the stool and found in his audience the entire family: Mother, Father, the boy, Grandfather and Mother's Younger Brother, who had come down from his room in shirt and suspenders to see who was playing.

Билет  № 11

UNDERSTANDING  MUSIC

If we were asked to explain the purpose of music, our im­mediate reply might be "to give pleasure". That would not be far from the truth, but there are other considerations.

We might also define music as "expression in sound", or "the expression of thought and feeling in an aesthetic form", and still not arrive at an understanding of its true purpose. We do know, however, even if we are not fully conscious of it that music is a part of living that it has the power to awaken, in us sensations and emotions of a spiritual kind.

 Listening to music can be an emotional experience or an in­tellectual exercise. If we succeed in blending the two; without excess in either case, we are on the road to gaining the ulti­mate pleasure from music. Haying mastered the gift of listen­ing to, say, a Haydn symphony, the ear and mind should be ready to admit Mozart, then to absorb Beethoven, then Brahms. After that, the pathway to the works of later composers will be found to be less bramblestrewn than we at first imagined.

Music, like language, is a living, moving thing. In early .times organised music belonged to the church; later it became the property of the privileged few. Noble families took the best composers and the most talented performers into their service.

While the status of professional musicians advanced, amateur musicians found in music a satisfying means of self-expression, and that form of expression broadened in scope to embrace forms and styles more readily digested by the masses.

It is noteworthy that operas at first were performed private­ly, that the first "commercial" operatic venture took place early in the seventeenth century, this leading to the opening of opera houses for the general public in many cities.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, composers were finding more and more inspiration of their heritage. The time had come to emancipate the music of their country from the domination of "foreign" concepts and conventions.

One of the first countries to raise the banner was Russia, which had various sources of material as bases of an indepen­dent musical repertory, Russian folk songs and the music of the old Russian Church.

The composer to champion this cause was Glinka, who sub­merged Western-European influences by establishing a new national school.

In early times instrumental music broke away from occa­sion associated i^hsaqred worship into secular channels. In succeeding genenations instrumental players were engaged to provide music forvarious public functions. Humble bands of players developed into small orchestras, these in time to sym­phony orchestras. Later, orchestras of the cafe type assumed in-creased numerical strength and more artistic responsibility, while "giving the public what it wants".

 For many generations Band Music — music played by military bands, brass bands, and pipe bands on the march, in public parks, and in concert halls — has held its place in public favour, especially in Great Britain.

At the turn of the present century American popular music was still clinging to established European forms and conven­tions. Then a new stimulus arrived by way of the Afro-Ameri­cans who injected into their music-making African chants and rhythms which were the bases of their spirituals and work songs.

One of the first widespread Afro-American influences was Ragtime, essentially a style of syncopated piano-playing that reached its peak about 1910. Ragtime music provided the stim­ulus for the spontaneous development of jazz, a specialized style in music which by the year 1920 had become a dominat­ing force in popular music, and New Orleans, one of the first cities to foster it.

While many self-appointed prophets were condemning jazz as vulgar, and ethers smugly foretelling its early death, some notable European composers attempted to weave the jazz idiom into their musical works. These included Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, Shostakovitch.

The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and many other leading groups and individual performers from the early sixties onward based their music on the sound of electric guitars and percussion.

Now what? In this technological age it is not surprising that electronics should have invaded the field of music. This new phase has brought experiments intended to give music of the popular genre a new sound. Though many may be alarmed at such explorative tampering with sound, it must be admitted that the possibilities of electronically-produced music are immense. Never before has music — all kinds of music — been so popular. Never before has the world had greater need of its stimulation and comfort. We find the ultimate satisfaction in music, be it "classical" or "popular", when we have learnt how to reject the spurious and accept the genuine; when we have learnt how to listen.

Билет  № 12

THE LUMBER-ROOM

By H. Munro

     The children were to be driven, as a special treat, to the. sands at Jagborough. Nicholas was not to be one of the party; he was in disgrace. Only that morning he had refused to eat his wholesome bread-and-milk on the seemingly frivolous ground that there was a frog in it. Older and wiser and better people had told him that there could not possibly be a frog in his bread-and-milk and that he was not to talk nonsense; he continued, nevertheless, to talk what seemed the veriest non­sense, and described with much detail the coloration and mark­ing of the alleged frog. The dramatic part of the incident was that there really was a frog in Nicholas's basin of bread-and-milk; he had put it there himself, so he felt entitled to know something about it. The sin of taking a frog from the garden and putting it into a bowl of wholesome bread-and-milk was enlarged on at great length, but the fact that stood out clearest in the whole affair, as it presented itself to the mind of Nicho­las, was that the older, wiser, and better people had been proved to be profoundly in error in matters about which they had expressed the utmost assurance.

     "You said there couldn't possibly be a frog in my bread-and-milk; there was a frog in my bread-and-milk," he repeated, with the insistence of a skilled tactitian who does not intend to shift from favourable ground.

     So his boy-cousin and girl-cousin and his quite uninterest­ing younger brother were to be taken to Jagborough sands that afternoon and he was to stay at home. His cousins' aunt, who insisted, by an unwarranted stretch of imagination, in styling herself his aunt also, had hastily invented the Jagborough ex­pedition in order to impress on Nicholas the delights that he had justly forfeited by his disgraceful conduct at breakfast-table. It was her habit, whenever one of the children fell from grace, to improvise something of a festival nature from which the offender would be rigorously debarred, if all the children sinned collectively theywere suddenly informed of a circus in a neighbouring town, a circus of unrivalled merit and uncounted elephants, to which, but for their depravity, they would have been taken that very day.

      A few decent tears-were looked for on the part of Nicholas when the moment for the departure of the expedition arrived. As a matter of fact, however, all the crying was done by his girl-cousin, who scraped her knee rather painfully against the step of the carriage as she was scrambling in.

      "How did she howl," said Nicholas cheerfully as the party drove off without any of the elation of high spirit that should have characterized it.

     "She'll soon get over that," said the aunt, "it will be a glori­ous afternoon for racing about over those beautiful sands. How they will enjoy themselves!"

     "Bobby won't enjoy himself much, and he won't race much either," said Nicholas with a grim chuckle; "his boots are hurt­ing him. They're too tight."

      "Why didn't he tell me they were hurting?" asked the aunt with some asperity.

      "He told you twice, but you weren't listening. Ypu often don't listen when we tell you important things."

     "You are not to go into the gooseberry garden," said the aunt, changing the subject.

     "Why not?" demanded Nicholas.

"Because you are in disgrace," said the aunt loftily.

      Nicholas did not admit the flawlessness of the reasoning; he felt perfectly capable of being in disgrace and in a gooseberry garden at the same moment. His face took an expression of considerable obstinacy. It was clear to his aunt that he was de­termined to get into the gooseberry garden, "only," as she re­marked to herself, "because I have told him he is not to."

     Now the gooseberry garden had two doers by which it might be entered, and once a small person like Nichplas could slip in there he could effectually disappear from view amid the masking growth of artichokes, raspberry canes, and fruit bush­es. The aunt had many other things to do that afternoon, but she spent an hour or two in trivial gardening operations among flowerbeds and shrubberies, whence she could keep a watchful eye on the two doors that led to forbidden paradise. She was a woman of few ideas, with immense power of concentration.

     Nicholas made one or two sorties into the front garden, wriggling his way with obvious stealth of purpose towards one or other of the doors, but never able for a moment to evade the aunt's watchful eye. As a matter of fact, he had no intention of trying to get into the gooseberry garden, but it was extremely convenient for him that his aunt should believe that he had; it was a belief that would keep her on self-imposed sentry-duty for the greater part of the afternoon. Having thoroughly con­firmed and fortified her suspicions, Nicholas slipped back into the house and rapidly put into execution a plan of action that had long germinated in his brain. By standing on a chair in the library one could reach a shelf on which reposed a fat, important-looking key. The key was as important as it looked; it was the instrument which kept the mysteries of the lumber-room secure from unauthorized intrusion, which opened a way only for aunts and such-like privileged persons. Nicholas had not had much experience of the art of fitting keys into keyholes and turning locks, but for some days past he had practised with the key of the school-room door; he did not believe in trusting too much to luck and accident. The key turned stiffly in the lock, but it, turned. The door opened, and Nicholas was in an unknown land, compared with which the gooseberry gar­den was a stale delight, a mere material pleasure.

Билет  № 13

THE LUMBER-ROOM

By H. Munro

Often and often Nicholas had pictured to himself what the lumber-room might be like, that region that was so carefully sealed from youthful eyes and concerning which no questions were ever answered. It came up to his expectations. In the first place it was large and dimly lit, one high window opening on to the forbidden garden being its only source of illumination. In the second place it was a storehouse of unimagined treasure. The aunt-by-assertion was one of those people who think that things spoil by use and consign them to dust and damp by way of preserving them. Such parts of the house as Nicholas knew best were rather bare and cheerless, but here there were won­derful things for the eyes to feast on. First and foremost there was a piece of framed tapestry that was evidently meant to be a fire-screen. To Nicholas it was a living breathing story; he sat down on a roll of Indian hangings, glowing in wonderful colour beneath a layer of dust and took in all the details of the tapes­try picture. A man, dressed in the hunting costume of some re­mote period, had just transfixed a stag with an arrow, it could not have been a difficult shot because the stag was only one or two paces away from him; in the thickly growing vegetation that the picture suggested it would not have been difficult to creep up to a feeding stag, and the two spotted dogs that were springing forward to join in the chase had evidently been trained to keep to heel till the arrow was discharged. That part of the picture was simple, if interesting, but did the huntsman see, what Nicholas saw, that four galloping wolves were com­ing in his direction through the wood? There might be more than four of them hidden behind the trees, and in any case would the man and his dogs be able to cope with four wolves if they made an attack? The man had only two arrows left in his quiver, and he might miss with one or both of them; all one knew about his skill in shooting was that he could hit a large stag at a ridiculously short range. Nicholas sat for many golden minutes revolving the possibilities of the scene; he was inclined to think that there were more than forty wolves and that the man and his dogs were in a tight corner.

     But there were other objects of delight and interest claim­ing his instant attention: there were quaint twisted candlesticks in the shape of snakes, and. a teapot fashioned like a china duck, out of whose open beak the tea was supposed to come. How dull and shapeless the nursery teapot seemed in compari­son! Less promising in appearance was a large square book with plain black covers; Nicholas peeped into it, and, behold, it was full of coloured pictures of birds. And such birds! A whole portrait gallery of undreamed-of creatures. And as he was ad­miring the colouring of the mandarin duck and assigning a life-history to it, the voice of his aunt came from the gooseber­ry garden without. She had grown suspicious at his long disap­pearance, and had .leapt to the conclusion that he had climbed over the wall behind the sheltering screen of lilac bushes; she was now engaged in energetic and rather hopeless search for him among the artichokes and raspberry canes.

     "Nicholas, Nicholas!" she screamed, "you are to come out of this at once. It's no use trying to hide there; I can see you all the time."

     It was probably the first time for twenty years that any one had smiled in that lumber-room.

    Presently the angry repetitions of Nickolas’ name gave way to a shriek, and a cry for somebody to come quickly. Nicholas shut the book, restored it carefully to its place in a corner, and shook some dust from a neighbouring pile of newspapers over it. Then he crept from the room, locked the door, and replaced the key exactly where he had found it. His aunt was still call­ing his name when he sauntered into the front garden.

     "Who's calling?" he asked.

     "Me," came the answer from the other side of the wall; "didn't you hear me? I've been looking for you in the goose­berry garden, and I've slipped into the rain-water tank. Luckily there's no water in it, but the sides are slippery and I can't get out. Fetch the little ladder from under the cherry tree —"

     "I was told I wasn't to go into the gooseberry garden," said Nicholas promptly.

     "I told you not to, and now I tell you that you may," came the voice from the rain-water tank, rather impatiently.

     "Your voice doesn't sound like aunt's," objected Nicholas; "you may be the Evil One tempting me to be disobedient. Aunt often tells me that the Evil One tempts me and that I always yield. This time I'm not going to yield."

     "Don't talk nonsense," said the prisoner in the tank; "go and fetch the ladder."

     "Will there be strawberry jam for tea?" asked Nicholas in­nocently.

     "Certainly there will be," said the aunt, privately resolving that Nicholas should have none of it.

     "Now I know that you are the Evil One and not aunt," shouted Nicholas gleefully; "when we asked aunt for strawber­ry jam yesterday she said there wasn't any. I know there are four jars of it in the store cupboard, because I looked, and of course you know it's there, but she doesn't because she said there wasn't any. Oh, Devil, you have sold yourself!" There was an unusual sense of luxury in being able to talk to an aunt as though one was talking to the Evil One, but Nicholas knew, with, childish discernment, that such luxuries were not to be over-indulged in. He walked noisily away, and it was a kitchen-maid, in search of parsley, who eventually rescued the aunt from the rain-water tank.

     Билет  № 14

GROWING UP WITH THE MEDIA

By P. G.Aldrich

     What do you remember most about your childhood? Run­ning through the long dewy grass of a meadow or the Saturday morning TV cartoons? Sitting in the kitchen watching your mother cook supper or sitting in the living-room watching Captain Kangaroo? (a TV programme) Which came first on Sunday morning — breakfast or the comics?

     Now bring your memories up to date. What did you and your friends talk about, at least part of the time, before class? An item from a newspaper? An ad that you noticed in a maga­zine or a television commercial? An episode from a popular TV series? A movie? Or a new record that you heard on the radio?

     If your answers parallel those of most young people, you add to the proof that mass media play a large and influential part in your life. Your answers also prove just how casually you accept the media, just as you accept the house you live in, cars, electricity, telephones, your school, and your family as part of your environment. Parents and teachers agree that all young people growing up with the media learn from them sometimes more than adults wish you to. (And this is the cause for alarm.)

     The major media can be divided into two kinds, print and electronic. The print media — newspapers, magazines, books, pamphlets, catalogues, circulars, brochures, anything you read — are the oldest, dating back to the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century. The electronic media — radio, television, films of all kinds, records, tapes, anything that is transmitted by the use of electricity — are less than a hundred years old.

     One of the problems facing us today is being reached by the media when we really don't choose to be. Do you some­times find it difficult to locate a moment of complete silence in your environment or a time when your eyes are not presented with signs, billboard, or pictures demanding attention?

     Another meaning the word mass suggests is "the people", a phrase too often associated with adjectives like dull-witted, credulous, ill-informed, uncritical, and passive. Or are the mass of people well-informed, sophisticated, thoughtful, and active? Which are you? How much of what you know about yourself has been taught you by the media? You may not realize how greatly the media influence you because in your lifetime they have always been there, hi fact, short of deliberate isolation on a mountain top or being lost in a forest and reared by wolves, no one will ever again grow up without the presence and influ­ence of the mass media. 

      Is this good or bad?

     An experiment recently conducted in Europe by the Society for Rational Psychology showed that watching television is psychologically addictive. The idea of becoming addicted to tele­vision brings up questions involving subtle conditioning and brainwashing that could be friendly or vicious, altruistic or self-serving.

      In a commercial society the media's ability to stimulate motivation to buy — almost as though people were puppets on strings — builds other people's power. It can be power for good or power for bad, but it is always power for control.

     All these negative aspects of growing up with the media need consideration, at the same time you are enjoying the posi­tive aspects of immediately knowing what's going on in the world, sharing great entertainment and historical events with everyone else in our "global village", and having the fun of try­ing out a new product that you wouldn't have known about without advertising.

     According to a recent research report, more than a third of all children by the age of three are viewing TV with some regularity and more than half are listening to books read to them. Before they are old enough for school — a third of the children are looking through magazines, 40 percent are listen­ing to radio, and 80 percent are viewing television. At age sev­en, newspapers enter a child's life, usually through the comic strips. You are one of these children. As you grew, you absorbed uncritically, as children do.

     The journalism, urgent issues, news, or information-giving portion of media output is selected, edited, produced, placed in time slots or positioned in the newspaper or magazine to reflect and support the owner's policies. These policies are sometimes intricate and interwoven strands, difficult to isolate individually, because ownership is a giant conglomerate made up of inter­twining sections of the current commercial-military-governmental complex. However, no reporter, photographer, film or copy editor, script or continuity writer in either print or electronic media has ever needed to be told specifically what the boss's policies are. You pick them up through your pores within a week or two of accepting a job, and you work accordingly.

     The owner's policies, therefore, determine the response that the media wish from you even if it's only to keep quiet and ac­cept. Then the material is written, staged, photographed with or without audio, printed and/or broadcast. We — counted in the millions, the mass audience of mass media —^are then pro­grammed to buy, vote, contribute, believe, and support other people's interests, interests which may be commercial, political, charitable, philosophical, or educational. Sometimes these in­terests will coincide with your own; sometimes they won't. Most of the time, the response comes in as programmed; occa­sionally it doesn't, or there is an additional, unexpected re­sponse. Some of the media's output has long lasting value and worth; some is not only cheap, tawdry, and superficial stuff, but physically, emotionally, and intellectually harmful.

Билет  № 15

A CUP OF TEA

by K. Mansfield

Rosemary Fell was not exactly beautiful. She was young, brilliant, extremely modern, well dressed and amazingly well read in the newest of the new books. Rosemary had been married two years, and her husband was very fond of her. They were rich, really rich, not just comfortably well-off, so if Rosemary wanted to shop, she would go to Paris as you and I would go to Bond Street.

One winter afternoon she went into a small shop to look at a little box which the shopman had been keeping for her. He had shown it to nobody as yet so that she might be the first to see it.
"Charming!" Rosemary admired the box. But how much would he charge her for it? For a moment the shopman did not seem to hear. The lady could certainly afford a high price. Then his words reached her, "Twenty-eight guineas, madam." "Twenty-eight guineas." Rosemary gave no sign. Even if one is rich... Her voice was dreamy as she answered: "Well, keep it for me, will you? I'll..." The shopman bowed. He would be willing of course, to keep it for her forever.

Outside rain was falling, there was a cold, bitter taste in the air, and the newly lighted lamps looked sad... At that very moment a young girl, thin, dark, appeared at Rosemary's elbow and a voice, like a sigh, breathed: "Madam, may I speak to you a moment?" "Speak to me?" Rosemary turned. She saw a little creature, no older than herself who shivered as though she had just come out of the water. "Madam," came the voice, "would you let me have the price of a cup of tea?" "A cup of tea?" There was something simple, sincere in that voice; it couldn't be the voice of a beggar. "Then have you no money at all?" asked Rosemary. "None, madam", came the answer. "How unusual!" Rosemary looked at the girl closer. And suddenly it seemed to her such an adventure. Supposing she took the girl home? Supposing she did one of those things she was always reading about or seeing on the stage? What would happen? It would be thrilling. And she heard herself saying afterwards to the amazement of her friends: "I simply took her home with me." And she stepped forward and said to the girl beside her: "Come home to tea with me."

The girl gave a start. "You're — you're not taking me to the police station?" There was pain in her voice.
"The police station!" Rosemary laughed out. "Why should I be so cruel? No, I only want to make you warm and to hear — anything you care to tell me. Come along." Hungry people are easily led. The footman held the door of the car open, and a moment later they were riding through the dusk. "There!" cried Rosemary, as they reached her beautiful big bedroom. "Come and sit down", she said, pulling her big chair up to the fire. "Come and get warm. You look so terribly cold." "I daren't, madam," hesitated the girl. "Oh, please," — Rosemary ran forward — "you mustn't be frightened, you mustn't, really." And gently she half pushed the thin figure into the chair.

There was a whisper that sounded like "Very good, madam," and the worn hat was taken off.
"And let me help you off with your coat, too," said Rosemary. The girl stood up. But she held on to the chair with one hand and let Rosemary pull. Then she said quickly, but so lightly and strangely: "I'm very sorry, madam, but I'm going to faint. I shall fall, madam, if I don't have something." "Good heavens, how thoughtless I am!" Rosemary rushed to the bell. "Tea! Tea at once! And some brandy immediately."
The maid was gone and the girl almost burst into tears. She forgot to be shy, forgot everything except that they were both women, and cried out: "I can't go on any longer like this. I can't stand it. I wish I were dead. I really can't stand it!" "You won't have to. I'll look after you. I'll arrange something. Do stop crying. Please."

The other did stop just in time for Rosemary to get up before the tea came. And really the effect of that slight meal was amazing. When the tea-table was carried away, a new girl, a light creature with dark lips and deep eyes lay back in the big chair. At that moment the door-handle turned.
"Rosemary, can I come in?" It was Philip, her husband. "Of course." He came in. "Oh, I'm so sorry," he said, as if apologizing, and stopped and stared. "It's quite all right," said Rosemary, smiling. "This is my friend, Miss —"
"Smith, madam," said the figure in the chair. "Smith," said Rosemary. "We are going to have a little talk."
Philip smiled his charming smile. "As a matter of fact," he said, "I wanted you to come into the library for a moment. Will Miss Smith excuse us?"

The big eyes were raised to him, but Rosemary answered for her: "Of course she will", and they went out of the room together. "I say," said Philip, when they were alone. "Explain, who is she? What does it all mean?"
Rosemary, laughing, leaned against the door and said: "I picked her up in the street. Really. She asked me for the price of a cup of tea and I brought her home with me." "Congratulations!" Philip sounded as though he were joking. "But what on earth are you going to do with her?"

"Be nice to her", said Rosemary quickly, "look after her. I don't know how. We haven't talked yet. Just show her — treat her — make her feel …"
"You absurd creature!" said Rosemary, and she went out of the library, but not back to her bedroom. She went to her writing-room and sat down at her desk. Pretty! Absolutely lovely! Her heart beat like a heavy bell. She opened a drawer, took out five pound notes, looked at them, put two back, and holding the three in her hand, went back to her bedroom.
Half an hour later Philip was still in the library, when Rosemary came in.
"I only wanted to tell you," said she, and she leaned against the door again, "Miss Smith won't dine with us tonight."
Philip put down the paper. "Oh, what's happened? Previous engagement?"
Rosemary came over and sat down on his knee. "She insisted on going," she said, "so I gave the poor little thing a present of money. I couldn't keep her against her will, could I?" she added softly.
There was a pause.
Then Rosemary said dreamily: "I saw a wonderful little box today. It cost twenty-eight guineas. Can I have it?"
"You can, little wasteful one," said he. "You know I can't deny you anything."
But that was not really what Rosemary wanted to say.
"Philip," she whispered, "am I pretty?"

Билет  № 16

A CUSTOM HOUSE INCIDENT

by Nigel Balchin

Among the passengers, travelling home by train from Florence there was a certain Miss Bradley.
I only noticed her when passing down the corridor, because of her really remarkable plainness. She was rather a large, awkward woman of about thirty-five with a big, red nose, and large spectacles. Later on, when I went to the dining-car, Miss Bradley was already seated, and the attendant placed me opposite her.

I think we may have exchanged half a dozen words at dinner, when passing one another the sugar or the bread. But they were certainly all we exchanged, and after we left the dining-car, I did not see Miss Bradley again until we reached Calais Maritime. And then our acquaintance really began, and it began entirely on my initiative. There were plenty of porters, and I called one without difficulty from the window of the train. But as I got off, I saw Miss Bradley standing on the platform with two large very old suit-cases. The porters were passing her by.
I am quite sure that had she been an even slightly attractive woman, I should not have gone up to her, but she was so ugly, and looked so helpless that I approached her, and said: "My porter has a barrow. Would you like him to put your cases on it too?" Miss Bradley turned and looked at me. "Oh — thank you. It is very kind of you."

My porter, without great enthusiasm, added her luggage to mine; and in a few minutes we found ourselves on board the Channel ferry. Before the boat had been under way for ten minutes, I realized that Miss Bradley was a remarkable bore. Shyly and hesitantly she kept on talking about nothing, and made no remark worth taking notice of. I learned that she had been in Italy a fortnight, visiting her sister who was married to an Italian. She had never been out of England before. I did not look forward to travelling to London with her for another four hours, so excusing myself I went along to the booking-office on board the boat and booked myself a seat on the Golden Arrow. Miss Bradley was travelling by the ordinary boat train, so this would mean that we should part at Dover.
At Dover I hired one of the crew to carry our luggage.

Normally, passengers for the Golden Arrow are dealt with by the customs first, as the train leaves twenty minutes before the ordinary boat train. When the boy asked if we were going on the Golden Arrow, I hesitated and then said "Yes".

It was too difficult to explain that one of us was and one of us wasn't, and then it would get Miss Bradley through the customs quickly.

As we went towards the Customs Hall, I explained carefully to her that my train left before hers, but that I would see her through the customs; the boy would then take the luggage to our trains, and she could sit comfortably in hers till it left. Miss Bradley said, "Oh, thank you very much."
The boy, of course, had put our suit-cases together on the counter, and Miss Bradley and I went and stood before them. In due course the customs examiner reached us, looked at the four suitcases in that human X-ray manner which customs examiners must practice night and morning, and said, "This is all yours?" I was not quite sure whether he was speaking to me, or me and Miss Bradley. So I replied, "Well — mine and this lady's". The examiner said, "But you're together?" "For the moment," I said rather foolishly, smiling at Miss Bradley.

"Yes," said the customs man patiently. "But are you travelling together? Is this your joint luggage?" "Well, no. Not exactly. We're just sharing a porter " I pointed my cases out. I had nothing to declare, and declared it. Without asking me to open them, the examiner chalked the cases and then, instead of moving to my left and dealing with Miss Bradley, moved to the right, and began X-raying somebody else's luggage.
The boy took my cases off the counter. I hesitated for a moment, but then decided it was no use waiting for Miss Bradley since we were about to part, so I said:
"Well, I'll say good-bye now, and go and find my train. I expect the examiner will come back and do you next. The porter will stay and bring our luggage up to the trains when you're through. Good-bye."
Miss Bradley said, "Oh... good-bye and thank you so much." We shook hands and I left.
I found my seat in the Golden Arrow and began to read.
It must have been about twenty minutes later that I suddenly realized the train was due to leave in five minutes and that the porter had not yet brought my luggage. I was just going to look for him when he appeared, breathing heavily, with my suit-cases. I asked him rather what he had been doing.

"The lady is still there," said the boy, "and will be for some time, I think. They are going through her things properly." "But why?" "Well, they'd found forty watches when I came away, and that was only the start, so I thought maybe you wouldn't want me to wait."

I have often wondered whether, when Miss Bradley stood so helplessly on the platform at Calais, she had already chosen me as the person to come to her rescue, or whether she was just sure that somebody would.
Looking back, I think, she must have chosen me. I am fairly sure of that though exactly how, I have never been clear. I am quite sure she never made the slightest effort to make my acquaintance.

Билет  № 17

A DEAL OF PAINT

by Elizabeth Ayrton

I am a painter. I like painting more than anything else, except obvious things like food and drink, that all sensible people like. As a painter, I have quite a lot of talent — I'm not sure yet how much — and a fairly complete mastery of most of the technical requirements; that is, I am an instinctive colourist, and my composition is interesting.

I have my difficulties, but who does not? I get on fairly well with people, and I ought to be quite as successful as a dozen other painters — but I am not. I never have been since my very first one-man show, when I was discovered by the critics, taken up — and very quickly put down again — and sold out.

"Sold out" is the just phrase. I was twenty-two after that show. Apart from quite a lot of money, the way I understand it, I had one oil painting left, three drawings, and very little common sense, my most valuable remaining possession. The common sense prevented me from believing what the critics said and considering myself a genius, and not only a genius but a painter who would always be able to live by painting exactly what he wanted to paint when he wanted to paint it.

I did, however, think that I could probably afford to marry Leila, rent my own studio, and stop being a student. But I have never had another show which sold like that first one, although I am a better painter than I was then. My work is as contemporary as any; of course it is; how can anyone intelligent and honest paint behind his time, deliberately or by accident? But more and more critics support what is called Action Painting and Other Art, when a painter is trying to be as different from anyone else as he can. Anyway, it has been clear ever since that first sell-out show that I have an old way of seeing things and am really an academic. My second show went fairly well because Other Art had not then got very far. But ever since. Not that I don't sell a certain amount privately. I do. To the uneducated and even the half-educated my work seems to give a good deal of pleasure.

However, in the last two years things have got very tight. We can't pay the quarter's rent and we can't afford not to, so something had to be done. So my applying for a most unpleasant job which my uncle could give me. I got it. Start next Monday. When I got back from the interview, Leila was sitting in the studio, which she seldom does, as it was a working-room entirely. She said, "Hi, Bill. You'll never guess what's happened."
I thought it was something awful because she hadn't even asked me about the job. I said, "What?"
"Garrard came — just before lunch." Garrard is my dealer, and I'd been trying to get him to come and look at my work and arrange for a show for the last year. Dealers!

Leila went bright pink and opened her eyes much too wide as she does when she's surprised. She said, "It's the most extraordinary thing. It's really awfully funny, I suppose, but I think you'll be furious. I was just cleaning up in here a bit as you were out".

The studio has a parquet floor, and to protect it I have a large piece of hardboard in front of my easel to catch the worst drips of paint. Now the piece was on the easel and my still life was leaning against the wall. Leila jumped up too and stood between me and the easel. "Bill, listen a minute. It's Garrard. Not me. Of course I wouldn't." "Garrard? What do you mean?" "He was looking at the pictures explaining how the gallery was booked up for a year and how he couldn't really promise you a show till next year and saying, "Mm," to each picture instead of "Ah," like he does when he likes them, and suddenly he saw the hardboard leaning against the wall."
"What was it doing there?" "I told you, I was cleaning. I'd picked it up to sweep underneath it." He said, "Ah," at once, and then he stepped back and said, "Ah ha!" with his head on one side.
"And then he turned to me and said, "Leila, my dear, I'm very glad to have this opportunity to talk to you with Bill not here. I thought — I felt — that there must be something like this. Tell me — why is he holding out on us?"
I saw it all, but I couldn't really believe it.
"He didn't really think it was an abstract?"
"He did. He not only thought it was an abstract, he thought it was wonderful. He said he'd always known you had it in you, as soon as you caught up with contemporary thought. That was why he'd never worried you, and always tried to help us keep going. You can't hurry genius. And he'd known you were that ever since he gave you your first show."
We rocked with laughter. I moved to take the board off the easel again.
Leila held my arm. "Listen, Bill. He wants to buy it."
"Buy it? Didn't you tell him?"
She opened her eyes again. "No, I didn't. I couldn't really. I suppose I should have, but it would have made him look too silly. He'd have hated us for ever after." I just said I didn't think you'd sell it."
"I sure won't..."

Билет  № 18

A PIECE OF ADVICE

                                                                                                                              by W.S. Maugham

It is a dangerous thing to order the lives of others and I have often wondered at the self-confidence of the politicians, reformers and suchlike who are prepared to force upon their fellows measures that must alter their manners, habits, and points of view. I have always hesitated to give advice, for how can one advise another how to act unless one knows that other as well as one knows himself? Heaven knows. I know little enough of myself: I know nothing of others. We can only guess at the thoughts and emotions of our neighbours. Each one of us is a prisoner in a solitary tower and he communicates with the other prisoners, who form mankind, by conventional signs that have not quite the same meaning for them as for himself.

And life, unfortunately, is something that you can lead but once; mistakes are often irreparable and who am I that I should tell this one and that how he should lead it? Life is a difficult business and I have found it hard enough to make my own a complete and rounded thing; I have not been tempted to teach my neighbour what he should do with his. But there are men who flounder at the journey's start, the way before them is confused and hazardous and on occasion, however unwillingly, I have been forced to point the finger of fate. Sometimes men have said to me, what shall I do with my life? and I have seen myself for a moment wrapped in the dark cloak of Destiny.

Once I know that I advised well. I was a young man, and 1 lived in a modest apartment in London near Victoria Station. Late one afternoon, when I was beginning to think that I had worked enough for that day, I heard a ring at the bell. I opened the door to a total stranger. He asked me my name; I told him. He asked if he might come in. "Certainly." I led him into my sitting-room and begged him to sit down. He seemed a trifle embarrassed. I offered him a cigarette and he had some difficulty in lighting it without letting go off his hat. When he had satisfactorily achieved this feat I asked him if I should not put it on a chair for him. He quickly did this and while doing it dropped his umbrella.

"I hope you don't mind my coming to see you like this," he said. "My name is Stephens and I am a doctor. You're in the medical, I believe?" "Yes, but I don't practise." "No, I know. I've just read a book of yours about Spain and I wanted to ask you about it." "It's not a very good book, I'm afraid." "The fact remains that you know something about Spain and there's no one else I know who does. And I thought perhaps you wouldn't mind giving me some information." "I shall be very glad."

He was silent for a moment. He reached out for his hat and holding it in one hand absent-mindedly stroked it with the other. I surmised that it gave him confidence. "I hope you won't think it very odd for a perfect stranger to talk to you like this." He gave an apologetic laugh. "I'm not going to tell you the story of my life."

When people say this to me I always know that it is precisely what they are going to do. I do not mind. In fact I rather like it. "I was brought up by two old aunts. I've never been anywhere. I've never done anything. I've been married for six years. I have no children. I'm a medical officer at the Camberwell Infirmary. I can't stick it any more."

There was something very striking in the short, sharp sentences he used. They had a forcible ring. I had not given him more than a cursory glance, but now I looked at him with curiosity. He was a little man, thick-set and stout, of thirty perhaps; with a round red face from which shone small, dark and very bright eyes. His black hair was cropped close to a bullet-shaped head. He was dressed in a blue suit a good deal the worse for wear. It was baggy at the knees and the pockets bulged untidily.

"You know what the duties are of a medical officer in an infirmary. One day is pretty much like another. And that's all I've got to look forward to for the rest of my life. Do you think it's worth it?"
"It's a means of livelihood," I answered. "Yes. I know. The money's pretty good." "I don't exactly know why you've come to me." "Well, I wanted to know whether you thought there would be any chance for an English doctor in Spain?" "Why Spain?" "I don't know, I just have a fancy for it." "It's not like Carmen, you know."

"But there's sunshine there, and there's good wine, and there's colour, and there's air you can breathe. Let me say what I have to say straight out. I heard by accident that there was no English doctor in Seville. Do you think I could earn a living there? Is it madness to give up a good safe job for an uncertainty?"
"What does your wife think about it?" "She's willing." "It's a great risk." "I know. But if you say take it, I will; if you stay where you are, I'll stay."

He was looking at me intently with those bright dark eyes of his and I knew that he meant what he said.

Билет  № 19

A PIECE OF SOAP

after H. Munro

Norman Gortsby was sitting on a bench hidden behind the bushes in Hyde Park. It was a warm May evening. The sun had already set and it was rather dark, but he could still make out the faces of the people who were walking past him and hear the sound of their voices. He was a philosopher, and liked sitting in the Park watching people whom he didn't know. While he was wondering who they were and where they were going, a young man came up to the bench, gave a quick look at him and threw himself down by his side. The newcomer was well-dressed and looked like a gentleman. His face was sad and he sighed deeply.

"You don't seem to be in a very good mood," said Norman. The young man was silent. He only looked at Norman again and there was an expression in his eyes that Norman didn't like.

"I really don't know how it all happened." he began at last, "but I've done the silliest thing that I've ever done in my life." He spoke in a low voice, almost in a whisper.

"Yes" said Norman coldly.

"I came to London this afternoon," the young man went on. "I had a meal at the hotel, sent a letter to my people, giving them the address and then went out to buy a piece of soap. They are supposed to give you soap at the hotel but it's always so bad that I decided to buy some for myself. I bought it, had a drink at a bar, and looked at the shops. When I wanted to go back to the hotel, I suddenly realized that I didn't remember its name or even what street it was in. Of course I can write to my people for the address, but they won't get my letter till tomorrow. The only shilling I had on me when I came out was spent on the soap and the drink and here I am with twopence in my pocket and nowhere to go for the night."
There was a pause after he told the story.

"I'm afraid you don't believe me," he added.

"Why not?" said Norman. "I did the same thing once in a foreign capital. So I can understand you very well."

"I'm glad you do," the young man said with a pleasant smile. "And now I must go. I hope by the time it gets quite dark I'll have found a man who'll believe me like you did, and will agree to lend me some money."

"Of course," said Norman slowly. "The weak point of your story is that you can't produce the soap."The young man put his hand into his pocket and suddenly got up.

"I've lost it," he said angrily.

"It's too much to lose a hotel and a piece of soap on the same day," said Norman.

But the young man did not hear him. He was running away.

"It was a good idea to ask him about the soap, and so simple," Norman thought as he rose to go. But at that moment he noticed a small packet lying by the side of the bench. It could be nothing but a piece of soap, and it had evidently fallen out of the young man's coat pocket when he threw himself down on the bench. Turning red, Norman picked it up.

"I just can't allow him to go away like this," he thought, and started running after the young man.
"Stop!" cried Norman when he saw him at the Park gate. The young man obeyed.

"Here's your piece of soap," Norman said. "I found it under the bench. Don't lose it again, it's been a good friend to you. And here's a pound, if it can help you".

"Thanks," said the young man, and quickly put the money into his pocket.

"Here's my card with my address," continued Norman. "You can return the money any day this week."The young man thanked him again and quickly went away.

"It's a good lesson to me," Norman thought, and went back to the Park. When he was passing the bench where the little drama had taken place, he saw an old gentleman looking for something.
"Have you lost anything, sir?" Norman asked.

"Yes, sir, a piece of soap".

Билет  № 20

AT THE RESTAURANT

by A. J. Cronin

Stephen Desmonde had returned home after several years at Oxford, where he had been taking a course of theology. Stephen himself did not want to be a parson and had only taken up the course because his father wished him to do so. He was fond of painting and wanted to devote his life to art.

Against his father's will he left England to study painting in France. On arriving in Paris he entered Professor Dupret's Art School. The extract given below is an account of his meeting with other students from England.

At one o'clock a bell rang. Immediately a cry went up from everywhere and all around the students began crowding towards the door, pushing Stephen forward against his will. Suddenly he heard a pleasant voice behind him.

"You're English, aren't you? I noticed you come in. My name's Harry Chester."

Stephen turned his head and discovered a good-looking young man of about his own age smiling down at him. "I'll wait for you downstairs," Chester called out as the crowd carried him away.

Outside Chester offered his hand. "I hope you don't mind my speaking to you." Stephen, who felt lonely in Paris, was glad to find a friend. When Stephen had introduced himself Chester paused for a moment, then exclaimed: "How about lunching with me?" They started off together along the street. The restaurant they went to was quite near, a narrow, low-ceilinged room, opening into a dark little kitchen. Already the place was crowded, mainly by students, but Chester led the way through to a little yard and, calmly removing the card marked 'Reserved' from a table at the far end, invited Stephen to be seated.

Immediately a stout, red-faced woman in black ran out of the kitchen in protest.

"No, no, Harry ... this place is reserved for Monsieur Lambert."

"Do not get excited, Madame Chobert," Chester smiled. "You know Monsieur Lambert is my good friend. Besides, he is always late."

Madame Chobert was not pleased; she tried to argue, but in the end Harry Chester's pleasant manner was too much for her. She stopped arguing and offered the title-card for their inspection.

At Chester's suggestion they ordered tomato soup, steak and cheese. Beer was already on the table.
"Strange, isn't it," Chester said, "how you can always tell a University man. Philip Lambert is one too. After Harrow" — he shot a quick glance at Stephen — "I should have gone to Cambridge myself... if I hadn't given it up for art." He went on to say, with a smile, that his father had been a well-known tea-planter in Ceylon. His mother, now a widow, lived in England and was quite rich. Naturally she spoiled him by giving him too much money. He had been in Paris eighteen) months.

"It's a lot of fun," he said finally.

They had finished their coffee. People were beginning to leave.

"Your friend Lambert doesn't seem to be coming," Stephen said at last, to break the silence. Chester laughed, "You never quite know when he'll turn up. His habits are quite irregular."

After a few more remarks about Philip Lambert, Harry Chester suddenly sat up."Here's Philip now."

Following Chester's look, Stephen saw a slim man of about thirty entering the restaurant. When he came over, he began taking off a lemon-yellow glove, meanwhile looking at Chester with amusement.

"Thank you for keeping my table, dear boy. But now you must be off. I'm expecting a guest at two o'clock." "We're just going, Philip," Chester said in reply. "Look here, I'd like you to meet4 Desmonde. He joined us at Dupret's today."

Lambert took a look at Stephen, then he bowed politely as if appreciating the young man's tactful silence.
"Stephen Desmonde only came down from Oxford last term," Chester added quickly.
"Indeed!" exclaimed Lambert.

Holding out a small hand to Stephen, he said, "I am happy to meet you. I myself was at the House. You needn't hurry. I can easily find another table."

"No, no," said Stephen, rising, "we've quite finished."

"Well, then" said Lambert, "come to tea at my house one of these days. We are at home most Wednesdays at five. Harry will bring you along. Then we'll be two men from Oxford and one" — with a smile towards Chester — "who so nearly went to Cambridge."

The bill, quickly produced by Madame Chobert, now lay on the table. Since Chester did not seem to see it, Stephen picked it up and, in spite of Harry's sudden and energetic protests, paid.

Билет  № 21

BILL'S EYES

by W.March

The nurse came into the room where Bill sat and glanced around to assure herself that everything was in readiness for the doctor. They weren't used to such famous men in hospitals of this sort, and she was afraid each time he came to see Bill that he would ask some question which she could not answer, some technical thing which she had learned in her probationary days and had promptly forgotten, such as, "Define lymph, Miss Connors, and state briefly the purpose it serves in the economy of the body."

She dragged her forefinger over the table, examined it critically for smudges, and looked briskly about her for a dustcloth. Since there was none, she lifted her uniform above her knees and held it away from her body while she wiped the table clean with her underskirt. She was conscious of the exposure of her thighs, and she turned her head slowly and looked at Bill. He was a strong, thickset man with a muscular neck and a chest so solid that it seemed molded from the metals with which he had once worked. He was, she judged, about twenty-five. The fact that such a young, full-blooded man could neither see the charms that she exhibited, nor react to them, because of his blindness, as a man should, excited her, and she began to talk nervously: "Well, I guess you'll be glad to get this over with. I guess you'll be glad to know for certain, one way or the other."

"I know now" said Bill. "I'm not worrying. There's no doubt in my mind now, and there never was."
"I must say you've been a good patient. You haven't been upset like most of them are."
"Why should I worry?" asked Bill. "I got the breaks this time, if ever a man did. If there ever was a lucky man it's me, if you know what I mean. I was lucky to have that big-time doctor operate on me for nothing just because my wife wrote and asked him to." He laughed contentedly. "Christ! Christ, but I got the breaks! ... From the way he's treated me, you'd think I was a millionaire or the President of the United States or something."
"That's a fact," said Miss Connors thoughtfully. "He's a fine man." She noticed that she still held her uniform above her knees, and she dropped it suddenly, smoothing her skirt with her palms. "What's he like?" asked Bill.

"Wait!" she said. "You've waited a long time now, and if you wait a little longer maybe you'll be able to see what he looks like for yourself.'
"I'll be able to see all right, when he takes these bandages off," said Bill. "There's no question of maybe. I'll be able to see all right.'

"You're optimistic," said the nurste. "You're not downhearted. I'll say that for you."
Bill said: "What have I got to worry about? This sort of operation made him famous, didn't it? If he can't make me see again, who can?'
"That's right," said the nurse. "What you say is true."

Bill laughed tolerantly at her doubts; "They bring people to him from all over the world, don't they? You told me that yourself, Sister!.. Well, what do you think they do it for? For the sea voyage?'
"That's right," said the nurse. "You got me there. I don't want to be a wet blanket. I just said maybe.'
"You didn't have to tell me what a fine man he is," said Bill after a long silence. He chuckled, reached out and tried to catch hold of Miss Connors' hand, but she laughed and stepped aside. "Don't you think I knew that myself?" he continued. "I knew he was a fine man the minute he came into the hospital and spoke to me. I knew." Then he stopped, leaned back in his chair, and rubbed the back of one hand with the fingers of the other < He had stopped speaking, he felt, just in time to prevent his sounding ridiculous. There was no point in explaining to Miss Connors, or anybody else, just how he felt in his heart about the doctor, or of his gratitude to him. There was no sense in talking about those things.

Miss Connors went to the table and rearranged the bouquet of asters which Bill's wife had brought for him the day before, narrowing her eyes and holding her face away from the flowers critically. She stopped all at once and straightened up. "Listen!" she said. "That's him now."
"Yes," said Bill.

Miss Connors went to the door and opened it. "Well, Doctor, your patient is all ready and waiting for you." She backed away, thinking of the questions that a man of such eminence could ask if he really put his mind to it. "I'll be outside in the corridor," she went on. "If you want me, I'll be waiting."
The doctor came to where Bill sat and looked at him professionally, but he did not speak at once. He went to the window and drew the dark, heavy curtains. He was a small, plump man, with a high, domed forehead, whose hands were so limp, so undecided in their movements that it seemed impossible for them to perform the delicate operations that they did. His eyes were mild, dark blue and deeply compassionate.
"We were just talking about you before you came in," said Bill. "The nurse and me, I mean. I was trying to get her to tell me what you look like."
The doctor pulled up a chair and sat facing his patient. "I hope she gave a good report, I hope she wasn't too hard on me".
"She didn't say," said Bill. "It wasn't necessary. I know what you look like without being told."
"Tell me your idea and I'll tell you how right you are."

Билет  № 22

HE OVERDID IT

by O. Henry

Miss Posie Carrington had begun life in the small village of Cranberry Corners. Then her name had been Posie Boggs. At the age of eighteen she had left the place and become an actress at a small theatre in a large city, and here she took the name of Carrington. Now Miss Carrington was at the height of her fame, the critics praised her, and in the next season she was going to star in a new play about country life. Many young actors were eager to partner Miss Posie Carrington in the play, and among them was a clever young actor called Highsmith.

"My boy", said Mr Goldstein, the manager of the theatre, when the young man went to him for advice, "take the part if you can get it. The trouble is Miss Carrington won't listen to any of my suggestions. As a matter of fact she has turned down a lot of the best imitators of a country fellow already, and she says she won't set foot on the stage unless her partner is the best that can be found. She was brought up in a village, you know, she won't be deceived when a Broadway fellow goes on the stage with a straw in his hair and calls himself a village boy. So, young man, if you want to play the part, you'll hate to convince Miss Carrington. Would you like to try?" "I would with your permission," answered the young man. "But I would prefer to keep my plans secret for a while."

Next day Highsmith took the train for Cranberry Corners. He stayed three days in that small and distant village. Having found out all he could about the Boggs and their neighbours, Highsmith returned to the city...
Miss Posie Carrington used to spend her evenings at a small restaurant where actors gathered after performances.
One night when Miss Posie was enjoying a late supper in the company of her fellow-actors, a shy, awkward young man entered the restaurant. It was clear that the lights and the people made him uncomfortable. He upset one chair, sat in another one, and turned red at the approach of a waiter.

"You may fetch me a glass of beer', he said, in answer to the waiter's question. He looked around the place and then seeing Miss Carrington, rose and went to her table with a shining smile.

"How're you, Miss Posie?" he said. "Don't you remember me — Bill Summers — the Summerses that used to live next door to you? I've grown up since you left Cranberry Corners. They still remember you there. Eliza Perry told me to see you in the city while I was here. You know Eliza married Benny Stanfield, and she says —" "I say", interrupted Miss Carrington brightly, "Eliza Perry married. She used to be so stout and plain." "Married in June," smiled the gossip. "Old Mrs Blither sold her place to Captain Spooner; the youngest Waters girl ran away with a music teacher."

"Oh!" Miss Carrington cried out. "Why, you people, excuse me a while — this is an old friend of mine — Mr — what was it? Yes, Mr Summers — Mr Goldstein, Mr Ric-ketts. Now, Bill, come over here and tell me some more." She took him to a vacant table in a corner.

"I don't seem to remember any Bill Summers," she said thoughtfully, looking straight into the innocent blue eyes of the young man. "But 1 know the Summerses all right, and your face seems familiar when I come to think of it. There aren't many changes in the old village, are there? Have you seen any of my people?"
And then Highsmith decided to show Miss Posie his abilities as a tragic actor.

"Miss Posie," said Bill Summers, "I was at your people's house just two or three days ago. No, there aren't many changes to speak of. And yet it doesn't look the same place that it used to be."

"How's Ma?" asked Miss Carrington.

"She was sitting by the front door when I saw her last," said Bill. "She's older than she was, Miss Posie. But everything in the house looked just the same. Your Ma asked me to sit down.

"William," said she. "Posie went away down that road and something tells me she'll come back that way again when she gets tired of the world and begins to think about her old mother. She's always been a sensible girl."

Miss Carrington looked uncomfortable.

"Well," she said, "I am really very glad to have seen you, Bill. Come round and see me at the hotel before you leave the city." After she had left, Highsmith, still in his make-up, went up to Goldstein. "An excellent idea, wasn't it?" said the smiling actor. "The part is mine, don't you think? The little lady never once guessed."

"I didn't hear your conversation," said Goldstein, "but your make-up and acting were perfect. Here's to your success. You'd better visit Miss Carrington early tomorrow and see how she feels about you."

At 11.45 the next morning Highsmith, handsome and dressed in the latest fashion, sent up his card to Miss Carrington at her hotel.

He was shown up and received by the actress's French maid.

"I am sorry," said the maid, "but I am to say this to everybody. Miss Carrington has cancelled all engagements on the stage and has returned to live in that — what do you call that pace? — Cranberry Corners!"

Билет  № 23

A FUTURE BUSINESSMAN

by Th.Dreiser

Buttonwood Street, Philadelphia, where Frank Cowperwood spent the first ten years of his life, was a lovely place for a boy to live in. There were mainly red brick houses there with small marble steps leading up to the front doors. There were trees in the street — a lot of them. Behind each house there was a garden with trees and grass and sometimes flowers.

The Cowperwoods, father and mother, were happy with their children. Henry Cowperwood, the father of the family, started life as a bank clerk, but when Frank, his elder son, was ten, Henry Cowperwood became a teller at the bank.

As his position grew more responsible, his business connections increased. He already knew a number of rich businessmen who dealt with the bank where he worked. The brokers knew him as representing a well-known film and considered him to be a most reliable person.

Young Cowperwood took an interest in his father's progress. He was quite often allowed to come to the bank on Saturdays, when he would watch with great interest the quick exchange of bills. He wanted to know where all the different kinds of money came from, and what the men did with all the money they received. His father, pleased at his interest, was glad to explain, so that even at this early age — from ten to fifteen — the boy gained a wide knowledge of the condition of the country financially. He was also interested in stocks and bonds, and he learned that some stocks and bonds were not even worth the paper they were written on, and others were worth much more than their face value showed.

At home also he listened to considerable talk of business and financial adventure.
Frank realized that his father was too honest, too careful. He often told himself that when he grew up, he was going to be a broker, or a financier, or a banker, and do some of the risky things he so often used to hear about.

Just at this time there came to the Cowperwoods an uncle, Seneca Davis, who had not appeared in the life of the family before.

Henry Cowperwood was pleased at the arrival of this rather rich relative, for before that Seneca Davis had not taken much notice of Henry Cowperwood and his family.

This time, however, he showed much more interest in the Cowperwoods, particularly in Frank.
"How would you like to come down to Cuba and be a planter, my boy?" he asked him once.
"I am not so sure that I'd like to," replied the boy.

"Well, that's frank enough. What have you against it?"

"Nothing, except that I don't know anything about it."

"What do you know?" The boy smiled, "Not very much, I guess."

"Well, what are you interested in?"

"Money."

He looked at Frank carefully now. There was something in the boy ... no doubt of it.

"A smart boy!" he said to Henry, his brother-in-law. "You have a good family."

Uncle Seneca became a frequent visitor to the house and took an increasing interest in Frank.

"Keep in touch with me," he said to his sister one day. "When that boy gets old enough to find out what he wants to do, I think I'll help him to do it." She told him she was very grateful. He talked to Frank about his studies, and found that the boy took little interest in books or most of the subjects he had to take at school.

"I like book-keeping and mathematics," he said. "I want to get out and get to work, though. That's what I want to do."

"You're very young, my son," his uncle said. "You're only how old now? Fourteen?" "Thirteen."

"Well, you can't leave school much before sixteen. You'll do better if you stay until seventeen or eighteen. It can't do you any harm. You won't be a boy again."

"I don't want to be a boy. I want to get to work."

"Don't go too fast, son. You'll be a man soon enough. You want to be a banker, don't you?"

"Yes. sir."

"Well, when the time comes, if everything is all right and you've behaved well and you still want to, I'll help you get a start in business. If you are going to be a banker, you must work with some good company a year or so. You'll get a good training there. And, meantime, keep your health and learn all you can."

And with these words he gave the boy a ten-dollar gold piece with which to start a bank-account.

Билет  № 24

THREE MEN IN A BOAT

by Jerome K. Jerome

We got out at Sonning, and went for a walk round the village. It is the most fairy-like little nook on the whole river. It is more like a stage village than one built of bricks and mortar. Every house is smothered in roses, and now, in early June, they were bursting forth in clouds of dainty splendour. If you stop at Sonning, put up at the “Bull,” behind the church. It is a veritable picture of an old country inn, with green, square courtyard in front, where, on seats beneath the trees, the old men group of an evening to drink their ale and gossip over village politics; with low, quaint rooms and latticed windows, and awkward stairs and winding passages.

We roamed about sweet Sonning for an hour or so, and then, it being too late to push on past Reading, we decided to go back to one of the Shiplake islands, and put up there for the night. It was still early when we got settled, and George said that, as we had plenty of time, it would be a splendid opportunity to try a good, slap-up supper. He said he would show us what could be done up the river in the way of cooking, and suggested that, with the vegetables and the remains of the cold beef and general odds and ends, we should make an Irish stew.

It seemed a fascinating idea. George gathered wood and made a fire, and Harris and I started to peel the potatoes. I should never have thought that peeling potatoes was such an undertaking. The job turned out to be the biggest thing of its kind that I had ever been in. We began cheerfully, one might almost say skittishly, but our light-heartedness was gone by the time the first potato was finished. The more we peeled, the more peel there seemed to be left on; by the time we had got all the peel off and all the eyes out, there was no potato left – at least none worth speaking of. George came and had a look at it – it was about the size of a pea-nut. He said:

“Oh, that won’t do! You’re wasting them. You must scrape them.”

So we scraped them, and that was harder work than peeling. They are such an extraordinary shape, potatoes – all bumps and warts and hollows. We worked steadily for five-and-twenty minutes, and did four potatoes. Then we struck. We said we should require the rest of the evening for scraping ourselves.

I never saw such a thing as potato-scraping for making a fellow in a mess. It seemed difficult to believe that the potato-scrapings in which Harris and I stood, half smothered, could have come off four potatoes. It shows you what can be done with economy and care.

George said it was absurd to have only four potatoes in an Irish stew, so we washed half-a-dozen or so more, and put them in without peeling. We also put in a cabbage and about half a peck of peas. George stirred it all up, and then he said that there seemed to be a lot of room to spare, so we overhauled both the hampers, and picked out all the odds and ends and the remnants, and added them to the stew. There were half a pork pie and a bit of cold boiled bacon left, and we put them in. Then George found half a tin of potted salmon, and he emptied that into the pot.

He said that was the advantage of Irish stew: you got rid of such a lot of things. I fished out a couple of eggs that had got cracked, and put those in. George said they would thicken the gravy.

I forget the other ingredients, but I know nothing was wasted; and I remember that, towards the end, Montmorency, who had evinced great interest in the proceedings throughout, strolled away with an earnest and thoughtful air, reappearing, a few minutes afterwards, with a dead water- rat in his mouth, which he evidently wished to present as his contribution to the dinner; whether in a sarcastic spirit, or with a genuine desire to assist, I cannot say.

We had a discussion as to whether the rat should go in or not. Harris said that he thought it would be all right, mixed up with the other things, and that every little helped; but George stood up for precedent. He said he had never heard of water-rats in Irish stew, and he would rather be on the safe side, and not try experiments.

Harris said:

“If you never try a new thing, how can you tell what it’s like? It’s men such as you that hamper the world’s progress. Think of the man who first tried German sausage!”

It was a great success, that Irish stew. I don’t think I ever enjoyed a meal more. There was something so fresh and piquant about it. One’s palate gets so tired of the old hackneyed things: here was a dish with a new flavour, with a taste like nothing else on earth.

Билет  № 25

BEGINNER’S LUCK

by Chris Rose

James Milner’s hands were shaking as he sat down at his desk. The man sitting at the computer terminal next to him laughed.

“First time on one of these machines, is it?”
“No!” lied James, as convincingly as he could. “I could use one of these things in my sleep!” James looked at the computer screen in front of him with its mysterious programme, and hoped that he was a convincing liar.
“That’s a good job then” laughed his new colleague, “because I often do!” They both laughed again. James hoped that his laugh would cover up how nervous he was. His new colleague sitting next to him turned back to his computer screen and started typing furiously, then shouting lots of instructions into the telephone headset he had. James put on the telephone headset he had by the side of his desk. “At least if I put this on I’ll look like I know what I’m doing”, he thought. Then he stared at the computer screen in front of him with the mysterious programme. There were hundreds of numbers and dates and names of cities written on it, as well as lots of strange names like “NYSE” and “CAC40” and other things. He had no idea what any of it meant.

The telephone headset was ok though. At least he knew what that was. His only other job ever had been in a fast food restaurant in London. They used the telephone headsets there too. But in the fast food restaurant it was easy. The instructions he heard through his telephone headset in the fast food restaurant were nothing more complicated than “two cheeseburgers without ketchup!”, “extra french fries now!”, “triple special burger with extra cheese!”. All he had had to do was listen to the instructions, put the pieces of frozen food in the microwave oven, then pull them out again after a few seconds, put them in a little box and give them to the person next to him. That had been easy. This job, his new job, his first “real” job, he now realised, was going to be a lot more difficult.

When he put the telephone headset on here he didn’t hear orders for extra french fries and different types of hamburgers, but excited men in faraway places shouting orders at him like “2000 Taipei heavy! Sell! Sell!! Sell!!!” or “Drop coming up on the NYSE! Buy! Buy!! Buy!!!” At first he sat there and tried to pretend he knew what he was doing. He tried pressing a few keys on the computer in front of him, but nothing seemed to happen to the screen. Lots of numbers appeared, frequently. Then they disappeared. After the first couple of hours on his new job, he turned round to the man sitting next to him, and tried to laugh again.
“Phew! This is pretty tiring, isn’t it?”
“This is nothing!” said the other man. “You’d better be thankful that today is a quiet day!!” He laughed his big laugh again. Then he held out a big hand to James and said “Davy. Davy Peterson. Good to meet you. Sorry I didn’t introduce myself before, but it always a bit busy here first thing in the morning, catching the late end of the Asian markets…you know how it is!!!”
“Yeah, sure!” laughed James, even though he didn’t have a clue about how it was.

Next Monday James was sitting there in front of a computer which he had no idea how to use, apparently controlling the financial fortunes of Western Europe.

Even though he was worried at first, James soon learned how to use the computer and how to do his new job. It wasn’t that difficult after all, he soon learned. The people around him weren’t all that intelligent or clever, he realised. He even thought that it wasn’t really that different to working in the fast food restaurant. Instructions came through either on his telephone headset or on his computer screen and he followed them – when he understood them. Mostly the work consisted of buying and selling things. It was like a market. Instead of stocks and shares and personal fortunes, James imagined that he was selling carrots and cabbages and cauliflowers. When he had to make his own decisions, James took a coin out of his pocket, threw it up in the air, and depending on which side it landed on, he bought or sold.

It was amazing, he couldn’t believe it, but he started to be successful. After two weeks on the job, one of his bosses came up to him and said “Great work James!” James didn’t even know what he had done. He just kept on doing the same thing, buying or selling when he felt like it. “Beginner’s luck!” laughed his friend Davy next to him, every time that James seemed to manage to earn or save a fortune just by clicking the right keys on his computer.

James began to get more courageous. He put bigger and bigger numbers into his computer. Bigger numbers seemed to create even bigger numbers. It was great fun, he thought. The bigger the number, the bigger the reward. Buy 1000 shares! Sell 100 000! Buy a million, then sell them again ten minutes later.

Then his boss came to his desk holding a huge bottle of vintage champagne. “This is for you James! Great work on the Singapore bank takeover there! We were risking a lot, but I was following you and I cold see that you knew exactly what you were doing! You kept cool throughout it all!”