Read the text and find in it the words and word combinations from the list, supply them with Russian equivalents
to get lost
a foundling
wiry and tough
to be homesick
bright
to improve
to make smth up
charitable
to turn one’s back on smb
a campus
to pepper smb with letters
Learn these words and expression by heart and be ready for the oral translation of sentences with them.
Translate the underlined passages.
Paraphrase the following using the words above.
- wanting to go home and thus unhappy
- university grounds
- to get better
- baby abandoned by its parents and found by someone else
- intelligent
5. Explain in English the meanings of these:
- to pepper smb with letters
- charitable
- tough
- to get lost
Complete the sentences with the words in ex. 1
1. It’s impossible to __________your__________on people.
2. I hope you won’t be _______________when you go abroad.
3. Judy became one of the ____________________students in her class.
4. It’s so easy to _____________in an unfamiliar place.
5. Your English is _____________every day.
6. Judy began ________________stories when she was a little girl.
7. Comment on the following:
· “A foundling asylum isn’t a young ladies’ finishing school”.
· “Being rich is such a very external quality”.
· “I'm a foreigner in the world and I don't understand the language.”
Translate the following sentences from Russian into English using the words from ex.1
1. В университетском городке можно с легкостью заблудиться.
2. Не отворачивайся от друзей, будь более снисходительным.
3. Этот студент действительно очень способный.
4. Подкидыш не может чувствовать тоску по дому, у него его никогда не было.
5. Мой друг забрасывает меня сообщениями.
6. Только гибкие и закаленные люди могут работать в цирке.
7. Не выдумывай никаких историй, расскажи правду, почему ты опоздал в этот раз?
9. Answer the following questions:
1. Judy’s impression of college.
2. Why did Judy feel like a “fire horse” all the time at college?
3. Where was Judy’s room situated? What were her neighbours?
4. What “advantage of being a foundling” did Judy mean?
5. Describe Judy’s first day of studying and the mistakes she made.
6. How did Judy furnish her room?
7. What can you say about Judy’s classmates.
8. What subjects did she have to study?
9. Why did Judy decide to change her name?
10. Do you agree with Judy that the aim of the John Grier Home was “to turn the ninety-seven orphans into ninety-seven twins”?
11. What did Judy tell Sallie about her life before college?
12. Speak about the sports in Judy’s life.
UNIT 4
Th November
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
Listen to what I've learned to-day.
The area of the convex surface of the frustum of a regular pyramid is half the product of the sum of the perimeters of its bases by the altitude of either of its trapezoids.
It doesn't sound true, but it is – I can prove it!
You've never heard about my clothes, have you, Daddy? Six dresses, all new and beautiful and bought for me – not handed down from somebody bigger. Perhaps you don't realize what a climax that marks in the career of an orphan? You gave them to me, and I am very, very, VERY much obliged. It's a fine thing to be educated – but nothing compared to the dizzying experience of owning six new dresses. Miss Pritchard, who is on the visiting committee, picked them out – not Mrs. Lippett, thank goodness. I have an evening dress, pink mull over silk (I'm perfectly beautiful in that), and a blue church dress, and a dinner dress of red veiling with Oriental trimming (makes me look like a Gipsy), and another of rose-coloured challis, and a grey street suit, and an every-day dress for classes. That wouldn't be an awfully big wardrobe for Julia Rutledge Pendleton, perhaps, but for Jerusha Abbott – Oh, my!
I suppose you're thinking now what a frivolous, shallow little beast she is, and what a waste of money to educate a girl?
But, Daddy, if you'd been dressed in checked ginghams all your life, you'd appreciate how I feel. And when I started to the high school, I entered upon another period even worse than the checked ginghams.
The poor box.
You can't know how I dreaded appearing in school in those miserable poor-box dresses. I was perfectly sure to be put down in class next to the girl who first owned my dress, and she would whisper and giggle and point it out to the others. The bitterness of wearing your enemies' cast-off clothes eats into your soul. If I wore silk stockings for the rest of my life, I don't believe I could obliterate the scar.
LATEST WAR BULLETIN!
News from the Scene of Action.
At the fourth watch on Thursday the 13th of November, Hannibal routed the advance guard of the Romans and led the Carthaginian forces over the mountains into the plains of Casilinum. A cohort of light armed Numidians engaged the infantry of Quintus Fabius Maximus. Two battles and light skirmishing. Romans repulsed with heavy losses.
I have the honour of being,
Your special correspondent from the front,
J. Abbott
PS. I know I'm not to expect any letters in return, and I've been warned not to bother you with questions, but tell me, Daddy, just this once – are you awfully old or just a little old? And are you perfectly bald or just a little bald? It is very difficult thinking about you in the abstract like a theorem in geometry.
Given a tall rich man who hates girls, but is very generous to one quite impertinent girl, what does he look like?
R.S.V.P.
Th December
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
You never answered my question and it was very important.
ARE YOU BALD?
I have it planned exactly what you look like – very satisfactorily – until I reach the top of your head, and then I AM stuck. I can't decide whether you have white hair or black hair or sort of sprinkly grey hair or maybe none at all.
Here is your portrait:
But the problem is, shall I add some hair?
Would you like to know what colour your eyes are? They're grey, and your eyebrows stick out like a porch roof (beetling, they're called in novels), and your mouth is a straight line with a tendency to turn down at the corners. Oh, you see, I know! You're a snappy old thing with a temper.
(Chapel bell.)
P.m.
I have a new unbreakable rule: never, never to study at night no matter how many written reviews are coming in the morning. Instead, I read just plain books – I have to, you know, because there are eighteen blank years behind me. You wouldn't believe, Daddy, what an abyss of ignorance my mind is; I am just realizing the depths myself. The things that most girls with a properly assorted family and a home and friends and a library know by absorption, I have never heard of. For example:
I never read Mother Goose or David Copperfield or Ivanhoe or Cinderella or Blue Beard or Robinson Crusoe or Jane Eyre or Alice in Wonderland or a word of Rudyard Kipling. I didn't know that Henry the Eighth was married more than once or that Shelley was a poet. I didn't know that people used to be monkeys and that the Garden of Eden was a beautiful myth. I didn't know that R. L. S. stood for Robert Louis Stevenson or that George Eliot was a lady. I had never seen a picture of the 'Mona Lisa' and (it's true but you won't believe it) I had never heard of Sherlock Holmes.
Now, I know all of these things and a lot of others besides, but you can see how much I need to catch up. And oh, but it's fun! I look forward all day to evening, and then I put an 'engaged' on the door and get into my nice red bath robe and furry slippers and pile all the cushions behind me on the couch, and light the brass student lamp at my elbow, and read and read and read one book isn't enough. I have four going at once. Just now, they're Tennyson's poems and Vanity Fair and Kipling's Plain Tales and – don't laugh – Little Women. I find that I am the only girl in college who wasn't brought up on Little Women. I haven't told anybody though (that WOULD stamp me as queer). I just quietly went and bought it with $1.12 of my last month's allowance; and the next time somebody mentions pickled limes, I'll know what she is talking about!
(Ten o'clock bell. This is a very interrupted letter.)
Saturday
Sir,
I have the honour to report fresh explorations in the field of geometry. On Friday last we abandoned our former works in parallelepipeds and proceeded to truncated prisms. We are finding the road rough and very uphill.
Sunday
The Christmas holidays begin next week and the trunks are up. The corridors are so filled up that you can hardly get through, and everybody is so bubbling over with excitement that studying is getting left out. I'm going to have a beautiful time in vacation; there's another Freshman who lives in Texas staying behind, and we are planning to take long walks and if there's any ice – learn to skate. Then there is still the whole library to be read – and three empty weeks to do it in!
Goodbye, Daddy, I hope that you are feeling as happy as am.
Yours ever,
Judy
PS. Don't forget to answer my question. If you don't want the trouble of writing, have your secretary telegraph. He can just say:
Mr. Smith is quite bald,
or
Mr. Smith is not bald,
or
Mr. Smith has white hair.
And you can deduct the twenty-five cents out of my allowance.
Goodbye till January – and a merry Christmas!
Towards the end of
The Christmas vacation.
Exact date unknown
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
Is it snowing where you are? All the world that I see from my tower is draped in white and the flakes are coming down as big as pop-corns. It's late afternoon – the sun is just setting (a cold yellow colour) behind some colder violet hills, and I am up in my window seat using the last light to write to you.
Your five gold pieces were a surprise! I'm not used to receiving Christmas presents. You have already given me such lots of things – everything I have, you know – that I don't quite feel that I deserve extras. But I like them just the same. Do you want to know what I bought with my money?
I. A silver watch in a leather case to wear on my wrist and get me to recitations in time.
II. Matthew Arnold's poems.
III. A hot water bottle.
IV. A steamer rug. (My tower is cold.)
V. Five hundred sheets of yellow manuscript paper. (I'm going to commence being an author pretty soon.)
VI. A dictionary of synonyms. (To enlarge the author's vocabulary.)
VII. (I don't much like to confess this last item, but I will.) A pair of silk stockings.
And now, Daddy, never say I don't tell all!
It was a very low motive, if you must know it, that prompted the silk stockings. Julia Pendleton comes into my room to do geometry, and she sits cross-legged on the couch and wears silk stockings every night. But just wait – as soon as she gets back from vacation I shall go in and sit on her couch in my silk stockings. You see, Daddy, the miserable creature that I am but at least I'm honest; and you knew already, from my asylum record, that I wasn't perfect, didn't you?
To recapitulate (that's the way the English instructor begins every other sentence), I am very much obliged for my seven presents. I'm pretending to myself that they came in a box from my family in California. The watch is from father, the rug from mother, the hot water bottle from grandmother who is always worrying for fear I shall catch cold in this climate – and the yellow paper from my little brother Harry. My sister Isabel gave me the silk stockings, and Aunt Susan the Matthew Arnold poems; Uncle Harry (little Harry is named after him) gave me the dictionary. He wanted to send chocolates, but I insisted on synonyms.
You don't object, do you, to playing the part of a composite family?
And now, shall I tell you about my vacation, or are you only interested in my education as such? I hope you appreciate the delicate shade of meaning in 'as such'. It is the latest addition to my vocabulary.
The girl from Texas is named Leonora Fenton. (Almost as funny as Jerusha, isn't it?) I like her, but not so much as Sallie McBride; I shall never like any one so much as Sallie – except you. I must always like you the best of all, because you're my whole family rolled into one. Leonora and I and two Sophomores have walked 'cross country every pleasant day and explored the whole neighbourhood, dressed in short skirts and knit jackets and caps, and carrying shiny sticks to whack things with. Once we walked into town – four miles – and stopped at a restaurant where the college girls go for dinner. Broiled lobster (35 cents), and for dessert, buckwheat cakes and maple syrup (15 cents).
Nourishing and cheap.
It was such a lark! Especially for me, because it was so awfully different from the asylum – I feel like an escaped convict every time I leave the campus. Before I thought, I started to tell the others what an experience I was having. The cat was almost out of the bag when I grabbed it by its tail and pulled it back. It's awfully hard for me not to tell everything I know. I'm a very confiding soul by nature; if I didn't have you to tell things to, I'd burst.
We had a molasses candy pull last Friday evening, given by the house matron of Fergussen to the left-behinds in the other halls. There were twenty-two of us altogether, Freshmen and Sophomores and juniors and Seniors all united in amicable accord. The kitchen is huge, with copper pots and kettles hanging in rows on the stone wall – the littlest casserole among them about the size of a wash boiler. Four hundred girls live in Fergussen. The chef, in a white cap and apron, fetched out twenty-two other white caps and aprons – I can't imagine where he got so many – and we all turned ourselves into cooks.
It was great fun, though I have seen better candy. When it was finally finished, and ourselves and the kitchen and the door-knobs all thoroughly sticky, we organized a procession and still in our caps and aprons, each carrying a big fork or spoon or frying pan, we marched through the empty corridors to the officers' parlour, where half-a-dozen professors and instructors were passing a tranquil evening. We serenaded them with college songs and offered refreshments. They accepted politely but dubiously. We left them sucking chunks of molasses candy, sticky and speechless.
So you see, Daddy, my education progresses!
Don't you really think that I ought to be an artist instead of an
author?
Vacation will be over in two days and I shall be glad to see the girls again. My tower is just a trifle lonely; when nine people occupy a house that was built for four hundred, they do rattle around a bit.
Eleven pages – poor Daddy, you must be tired! I meant this to be just a short little thank-you note – but when I get started I seem to have a ready pen.
Goodbye, and thank you for thinking of me – I should be perfectly happy except for one little threatening cloud on the horizon. Examinations come in February.
Yours with love,
Judy
PS. Maybe it isn't proper to send love? If it isn't, please excuse. But I must love somebody and there's only you and Mrs. Lippett to choose between, so you see – you'll HAVE to put up with it, Daddy dear, because I can't love her.
On the Eve
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
You should see the way this college is studying! We've forgotten we ever had a vacation. Fifty-seven irregular verbs have I introduced to my brain in the past four days – I'm only hoping they'll stay till after examinations.
Some of the girls sell their text-books when they're through with them, but I intend to keep mine. Then after I've graduated I shall have my whole education in a row in the bookcase, and when I need to use any detail, I can turn to it without the slightest hesitation. So much easier and more accurate than trying to keep it in your head.
Julia Pendleton dropped in this evening to pay a social call, and stayed a solid hour. She got started on the subject of family, and I COULDN'T switch her off. She wanted to know what my mother's maiden name was – did you ever hear such an impertinent question to ask of a person from a foundling asylum? I didn't have the courage to say I didn't know, so I just miserably plumped on the first name I could think of, and that was Montgomery. Then she wanted to know whether I belonged to the Massachusetts Montgomerys or the Virginia Montgomerys.
Her mother was a Rutherford. The family came over in the ark, and were connected by marriage with Henry the VIII. On her father's side they date back further than Adam. On the topmost branches of her family tree there's a superior breed of monkeys with very fine silky hair and extra long tails.
I meant to write you a nice, cheerful, entertaining letter tonight, but I'm too sleepy – and scared. The Freshman's lot is not a happy one.
Yours, about to be examined,
Judy Abbott
Sunday
Dearest Daddy-Long-Legs,
I have some awful, awful, awful news to tell you, but I won't begin with it; I'll try to get you in a good humour first.
Jerusha Abbott has commenced to be an author. A poem entitled, 'From my Tower', appears in the February Monthly – on the first page, which is a very great honour for a Freshman. My English instructor stopped me on the way out from chapel last night, and said it was a charming piece of work except for the sixth line, which had too many feet. I will send you a copy in case you care to read it.
Let me see if I can't think of something else pleasant – Oh, yes! I'm learning to skate, and can glide about quite respectably all by myself. Also I've learned how to slide down a rope from the roof of the gymnasium, and I can vault a bar three feet and six inches high – I hope shortly to pull up to four feet.
We had a very inspiring sermon this morning preached by the Bishop of Alabama. His text was: 'Judge not that ye be not judged.' It was about the necessity of overlooking mistakes in others, and not discouraging people by harsh judgments. I wish you might have heard it.
This is the sunniest, most blinding winter afternoon, with icicles dripping from the fir trees and all the world bending under a weight of snow – except me, and I'm bending under a weight of sorrow.
Now for the news – courage, Judy! – you must tell.
Are you SURELY in a good humour? I failed in mathematics and Latin prose. I am tutoring in them, and will take another examination next month. I'm sorry if you're disappointed, but otherwise I don't care a bit because I've learned such a lot of things not mentioned in the catalogue. I've read seventeen novels and bushels of poetry – really necessary novels like ‘Vanity Fair’ and ‘Richard Feverel’ and ‘Alice in Wonderland’. Also Emerson's ‘Essays’ and Lockhart's ‘Life of Scott’ and the first volume of Gibbon's ‘Roman Empire’ and half of Benvenuto Cellini's ‘Life’ – wasn't he entertaining? He used to saunter out and casually kill a man before breakfast.
So you see, Daddy, I'm much more intelligent than if I'd just stuck to Latin. Will you forgive me this once if I promise never to fail again?
Yours in sackcloth,
Judy
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
This is an extra letter in the middle of the month because I'm rather lonely tonight. It's awfully stormy. All the lights are out on the campus, but I drank black coffee and I can't go to sleep.
I had a supper party this evening consisting of Sallie and Julia and Leonora Fenton – and sardines and toasted muffins and salad and fudge and coffee. Julia said she'd had a good time, but Sallie stayed to help wash the dishes.
I might, very usefully, put some time on Latin tonight but, there's no doubt about it, I'm a very languid Latin scholar. We've finished Livy and De Senectute and are now engaged with De Amicitia (pronounced Damn Icitia).
Should you mind, just for a little while, pretending you are my grandmother? Sallie has one and Julia and Leonora each two, and they were all comparing them tonight. I can't think of anything I'd rather have; it's such a respectable relationship. So, if you really don't object – When I went into town yesterday, I saw the sweetest cap of Cluny lace trimmed with lavender ribbon. I am going to make you a present of it on your eighty-third birthday.
! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
That's the clock in the chapel tower striking twelve. I believe I am sleepy after all.
Good night, Granny.
I love you dearly.
Judy
The Ides of March
Dear D.-L.-L.,
I am studying Latin prose composition. I have been studying it. I shall be studying it. I shall be about to have been studying it. My re-examination comes the 7th hour next Tuesday, and I am going to pass or BUST. So you may expect to hear from me next, whole and happy and free from conditions, or in fragments.
I will write a respectable letter when it's over. Tonight I have a pressing engagement with the Ablative Absolute.
Yours – in evident haste
J. A.
TASKS