Writing Test 24

[passage-header][/passage-header]Akira came directly, breaking all tradition. Was that it? Had he followed form, had he asked his mother to speak to his father to approach a go-between would Chie have been more receptive? He came on a winters eve.
   He pounded on the door while a cold rain beat on the shuttered veranda, so at first Chie thought him only the wind. The maid knew better. Chie heard her soft scuttling footsteps, the creak of the door. Then the maid brought a calling card to the drawing room, for Chie.
   Chie was reluctant to go to her guest; perhaps she was feeling too cozy. She and Naomi were reading at a low table set atop a charcoal brazier. A thick quilt spread over the sides of the table so their legs were tucked inside with the heat.
   "Who is it at this hour, in this weather?" Chie questioned as she picked the name card off the maid's lacquer tray.
   "Shinoda, Akira. Kobe Dental College," she read.
   Naomi recognized the name. Chie heard a soft intake of air. 
   "I think you should go," said Naomi. 
   Akira was waiting in the entry. He was in his early twenties, slim and serious, wearing the black military-style uniform of a student. As he bowed his hands hanging straight down, black cap in one, a yellow oil-paper umbrella in the other--Chie glanced beyond him. In the glistening surface of the courtyards rain-drenched paving stones, she saw his reflection like a dark double.
   "Madame," said Akira, "forgive my disruption, but I come with a matter of urgency."
   His voice was soft, refined. He straightened and stole a deferential peek at her face.
   In the dim light, his eyes shone with sincerity. Chie felt herself starting to like him.
   "Come inside, get out of this nasty night. Surely your business can wait for a moment or two." 
   "I don't want to trouble you. Normally I would approach you more properly but I've received word of a position. I have an opportunity to go to America, as a dentist for Seattle's Japanese community." "Congratulations," Chie said with amusement. "That is an opportunity, I'm sure. But how am I involved?" 
   Even noting Naomi's breathless reaction to the name card, Chie had no idea. Akira's message, delivered like a formal speech, filled her with maternal amusement. You know how children speak so earnestly, so hurriedly, so endearingly about things that have no importance in an adults mind? That's how she viewed him, as a child.

[passage-header][/passage-header]Akira came directly, breaking all tradition. Was that it? Had he followed form, had he asked his mother to speak to his father to approach a go-between would Chie have been more receptive? He came on a winters eve.
   He pounded on the door while a cold rain beat on the shuttered veranda, so at first Chie thought him only the wind. The maid knew better. Chie heard her soft scuttling footsteps, the creak of the door. Then the maid brought a calling card to the drawing room, for Chie.
   Chie was reluctant to go to her guest; perhaps she was feeling too cozy. She and Naomi were reading at a low table set atop a charcoal brazier. A thick quilt spread over the sides of the table so their legs were tucked inside with the heat.
   "Who is it at this hour, in this weather?" Chie questioned as she picked the name card off the maid's lacquer tray.
   "Shinoda, Akira. Kobe Dental College," she read.
   Naomi recognized the name. Chie heard a soft intake of air. 
   "I think you should go," said Naomi. 
   Akira was waiting in the entry. He was in his early twenties, slim and serious, wearing the black military-style uniform of a student. As he bowed his hands hanging straight down, black cap in one, a yellow oil-paper umbrella in the other--Chie glanced beyond him. In the glistening surface of the courtyards rain-drenched paving stones, she saw his reflection like a dark double.
   "Madame," said Akira, "forgive my disruption, but I come with a matter of urgency."
   His voice was soft, refined. He straightened and stole a deferential peek at her face.
   In the dim light, his eyes shone with sincerity. Chie felt herself starting to like him.
   "Come inside, get out of this nasty night. Surely your business can wait for a moment or two." 
   "I don't want to trouble you. Normally I would approach you more properly but I've received word of a position. I have an opportunity to go to America, as a dentist for Seattle's Japanese community." "Congratulations," Chie said with amusement. "That is an opportunity, I'm sure. But how am I involved?" 
   Even noting Naomi's breathless reaction to the name card, Chie had no idea. Akira's message, delivered like a formal speech, filled her with maternal amusement. You know how children speak so earnestly, so hurriedly, so endearingly about things that have no importance in an adults mind? That's how she viewed him, as a child.

[passage-header][/passage-header]Akira came directly, breaking all tradition. Was that it? Had he followed form, had he asked his mother to speak to his father to approach a go-between would Chie have been more receptive? He came on a winters eve.
   He pounded on the door while a cold rain beat on the shuttered veranda, so at first Chie thought him only the wind. The maid knew better. Chie heard her soft scuttling footsteps, the creak of the door. Then the maid brought a calling card to the drawing room, for Chie.
   Chie was reluctant to go to her guest; perhaps she was feeling too cozy. She and Naomi were reading at a low table set atop a charcoal brazier. A thick quilt spread over the sides of the table so their legs were tucked inside with the heat.
   "Who is it at this hour, in this weather?" Chie questioned as she picked the name card off the maid's lacquer tray.
   "Shinoda, Akira. Kobe Dental College," she read.
   Naomi recognized the name. Chie heard a soft intake of air. 
   "I think you should go," said Naomi. 
   Akira was waiting in the entry. He was in his early twenties, slim and serious, wearing the black military-style uniform of a student. As he bowed his hands hanging straight down, black cap in one, a yellow oil-paper umbrella in the other--Chie glanced beyond him. In the glistening surface of the courtyards rain-drenched paving stones, she saw his reflection like a dark double.
   "Madame," said Akira, "forgive my disruption, but I come with a matter of urgency."
   His voice was soft, refined. He straightened and stole a deferential peek at her face.
   In the dim light, his eyes shone with sincerity. Chie felt herself starting to like him.
   "Come inside, get out of this nasty night. Surely your business can wait for a moment or two." 
   "I don't want to trouble you. Normally I would approach you more properly but I've received word of a position. I have an opportunity to go to America, as a dentist for Seattle's Japanese community." "Congratulations," Chie said with amusement. "That is an opportunity, I'm sure. But how am I involved?" 
   Even noting Naomi's breathless reaction to the name card, Chie had no idea. Akira's message, delivered like a formal speech, filled her with maternal amusement. You know how children speak so earnestly, so hurriedly, so endearingly about things that have no importance in an adults mind? That's how she viewed him, as a child.

[passage-header][/passage-header]Akira came directly, breaking all tradition. Was that it? Had he followed form, had he asked his mother to speak to his father to approach a go-between would Chie have been more receptive? He came on a winters eve.
   He pounded on the door while a cold rain beat on the shuttered veranda, so at first Chie thought him only the wind. The maid knew better. Chie heard her soft scuttling footsteps, the creak of the door. Then the maid brought a calling card to the drawing room, for Chie.
   Chie was reluctant to go to her guest; perhaps she was feeling too cozy. She and Naomi were reading at a low table set atop a charcoal brazier. A thick quilt spread over the sides of the table so their legs were tucked inside with the heat.
   "Who is it at this hour, in this weather?" Chie questioned as she picked the name card off the maid's lacquer tray.
   "Shinoda, Akira. Kobe Dental College," she read.
   Naomi recognized the name. Chie heard a soft intake of air. 
   "I think you should go," said Naomi. 
   Akira was waiting in the entry. He was in his early twenties, slim and serious, wearing the black military-style uniform of a student. As he bowed his hands hanging straight down, black cap in one, a yellow oil-paper umbrella in the other--Chie glanced beyond him. In the glistening surface of the courtyards rain-drenched paving stones, she saw his reflection like a dark double.
   "Madame," said Akira, "forgive my disruption, but I come with a matter of urgency."
   His voice was soft, refined. He straightened and stole a deferential peek at her face.
   In the dim light, his eyes shone with sincerity. Chie felt herself starting to like him.
   "Come inside, get out of this nasty night. Surely your business can wait for a moment or two." 
   "I don't want to trouble you. Normally I would approach you more properly but I've received word of a position. I have an opportunity to go to America, as a dentist for Seattle's Japanese community." "Congratulations," Chie said with amusement. "That is an opportunity, I'm sure. But how am I involved?" 
   Even noting Naomi's breathless reaction to the name card, Chie had no idea. Akira's message, delivered like a formal speech, filled her with maternal amusement. You know how children speak so earnestly, so hurriedly, so endearingly about things that have no importance in an adults mind? That's how she viewed him, as a child.

[passage-header]This passage is from Charlotte Brontë, The Professor, originally published in 1857.[/passage-header]No man likes to acknowledge that he has made a mistake in the choice of his profession, and every man, worthy of the name, will row long against wind and tide before he allows himself to cry out, "I am baffled!" and submits to be floated passively back to land. From the first week of my residence in X--I felt my occupation irksome. The thing itself--the work of copying and translating business letters--was a dry and tedious task enough, but had that been all, I should long have borne with the nuisance; I am not of an impatient nature, and influenced by the double desire of getting my living and justifying to myself and others the resolution I had taken to become a tradesman, I should have endured in silence the rust and cramp of my best faculties; I should not have whispered, even inwardly, that I longed for liberty; I should have pent in every sigh by which my heart might have ventured to intimate its distress under the closeness, smoke, monotony, and joyless tumult of Bigben Close, and its panting desire for freer and fresher scenes; I should have set up the image of Duty, the fetish of Perseverance, in my small bedroom at Mrs. Kings lodgings, and they two should have been my household gods, from which my darling, my cherished-in-secret, Imagination, the tender and the mighty, should never, either by softness or strength, have severed me. But this was not all; the antipathy which had sprung up between myself and my employer striking deeper root and spreading denser shade daily, excluded me from every glimpse of the sunshine of life; and I began to feel like a plant growing in humid darkness out of the slimy walls of a well. Antipathy is the only word which can express the feeling Edward Crimsworth had for me--a feeling, in a great measure, involuntary, and which was liable to be excited by every, the most trifling movement, look, or word of mine. My southern accent annoyed him; the degree of education evinced in my language irritated him; my punctuality, industry, and accuracy, fixed his dislike, and gave it the high flavour and poignant relish of envy; he feared that I too should one day make a successful tradesman. Had I been in anything inferior to him, he would not have hated me so thoroughly, but I knew all that he knew, and, what was worse, he suspected that I kept the padlock of silence on mental wealth in which he was no sharer. If he could have once placed me in a ridiculous or mortifying position, he would have forgiven me much, but I was guarded by three faculties--Caution, Tact, Observation; and prowling and prying as was Edwards malignity, it could never baffle the lynx-eyes of these, my natural sentinels. Day by day did his malice watch my tact, hoping it would sleep, and prepared to steal snake-like on its slumber; but tact, if it be genuine, never sleeps.

[passage-header](This passage is adapted from Saki, “The Schartz-Metterklume Method.”)
[/passage-header]Lady Carlotta stepped out onto the platform of the small wayside station and took a turn or two up and down its uninteresting length, to kill time till the train should be pleased to proceed on its way. Then, in the roadway beyond, she saw a horse struggling with a more than ample load, and a carter of the sort that seems to bear a sullen hatred against the animal that helps him to earn a living. Lady Carlotta promptly betook her to the roadway and put rather a different complexion on the struggle. Certain of her acquaintances were wont to give her plentiful admonition as to the undesirability of interfering behalf of a distressed animal, such interference being none of her business. Only once had she put the doctrine of non-interference into practice, when one of its most eloquent exponents had been besieged for nearly three hours in a small and extremely uncomfortable may-tree by an angry boar-pig, while Lady Carlotta, on the other side of the fence, had proceeded with the water-colour sketch she was engaged on and refused to interfere between the board and his prisoner. It is to be feared that she lost the friendship of the ultimately rescued lady. On this occasion, she merely lost the train, which gave way to the first sign of impatience it had shown throughout the journey and steamed off without her. She bore the desertion with philosophical indifference; her friends and relations were thoroughly well used to the fact of her luggage arriving without her. She wired a vague non-committal message to her destination to say that she was coming on by another train. Before she had time to think what her next move might be she was confronted by an imposingly attired lady, who seemed to be taking a prolonged mental inventory of her clothes and looks. 
You must be Miss Hope, the governess I've come to meet, said the apparition, in a tone that admitted of very little argument.
Very well, if I must I must, said Lady Carlotta herself with dangerous meekness.
I am Mrs. Quabarl, continued the lady; and where, pray, is your luggage? 
Its gone astray, said the alleged governess, falling in with the excellent rule of life that the absent are always to blame; the luggage had, in point of fact, behaved with perfect correctitude.
I've just telegraphed about it, she added, with a nearer approach to truth.
How provoking, said Mrs. Quabarl; these railway companies are so careless. However, my maid can lend you things for the night, and she led the way to her car. During the drive to the Quabarl mansion Lady Carlotta was impressively introduced to the nature of the charge that had been thrust upon her; she learned that Claude and Wilfrid were delicate, sensitive young people, that Irene had the artistic temperament highly developed, and that Viola was something or other else of a mould equally commonplace among children of that class and type in the twentieth century.
I wish them not only to be TAUGHT, said Mrs.Quabarl, but INTERESTED in what they learn. In their history lessons, for instance, you must try to make them feel that they are being introduced to the life-stories of men and women who really lived, not merely committing a mass of names and dates to memory. French, of course, I shall expect you to talk at mealtimes several days in the week.
I shall talk French four days of the week and Russian in the remaining three.
Russian? My dear Miss Hope, no one in the house speaks or understands Russian.
That will not embarrass me in the least, said Lady Carlotta coldly. Mrs. Quabarl, to use a colloquial expression, was knocked off her perch. She was one of those imperfectly self-assured individuals who are magnificent and autocratic as long as they are not seriously opposed. The least show of unexpected resistance goes a long way towards rendering them cowed and apologetic. When the new governess failed to express wondering admiration of the large newly-purchased and expensive car, and lightly alluded to the superior advantages of one or two makes which had just been put on the market, the discomfiture of her patroness became almost abject. Her feelings were those which might have animated general of ancient warfaring days, on beholding his heaviest battle-elephant ignominiously driven off the field by slingers and javelin throwers.

[passage-header]This passage is from Charlotte Brontë, The Professor, originally published in 1857.[/passage-header]No man likes to acknowledge that he has made a mistake in the choice of his profession, and every man, worthy of the name, will row long against wind and tide before he allows himself to cry out, "I am baffled!" and submits to be floated passively back to land. From the first week of my residence in X--I felt my occupation irksome. The thing itself--the work of copying and translating business letters--was a dry and tedious task enough, but had that been all, I should long have borne with the nuisance; I am not of an impatient nature, and influenced by the double desire of getting my living and justifying to myself and others the resolution I had taken to become a tradesman, I should have endured in silence the rust and cramp of my best faculties; I should not have whispered, even inwardly, that I longed for liberty; I should have pent in every sigh by which my heart might have ventured to intimate its distress under the closeness, smoke, monotony, and joyless tumult of Bigben Close, and its panting desire for freer and fresher scenes; I should have set up the image of Duty, the fetish of Perseverance, in my small bedroom at Mrs. Kings lodgings, and they two should have been my household gods, from which my darling, my cherished-in-secret, Imagination, the tender and the mighty, should never, either by softness or strength, have severed me. But this was not all; the antipathy which had sprung up between myself and my employer striking deeper root and spreading denser shade daily, excluded me from every glimpse of the sunshine of life; and I began to feel like a plant growing in humid darkness out of the slimy walls of a well. Antipathy is the only word which can express the feeling Edward Crimsworth had for me--a feeling, in a great measure, involuntary, and which was liable to be excited by every, the most trifling movement, look, or word of mine. My southern accent annoyed him; the degree of education evinced in my language irritated him; my punctuality, industry, and accuracy, fixed his dislike, and gave it the high flavour and poignant relish of envy; he feared that I too should one day make a successful tradesman. Had I been in anything inferior to him, he would not have hated me so thoroughly, but I knew all that he knew, and, what was worse, he suspected that I kept the padlock of silence on mental wealth in which he was no sharer. If he could have once placed me in a ridiculous or mortifying position, he would have forgiven me much, but I was guarded by three faculties--Caution, Tact, Observation; and prowling and prying as was Edwards malignity, it could never baffle the lynx-eyes of these, my natural sentinels. Day by day did his malice watch my tact, hoping it would sleep, and prepared to steal snake-like on its slumber; but tact, if it be genuine, never sleeps.

[passage-header]This passage is from Charlotte Brontë, The Professor, originally published in 1857.[/passage-header]No man likes to acknowledge that he has made a mistake in the choice of his profession, and every man, worthy of the name, will row long against wind and tide before he allows himself to cry out, "I am baffled!" and submits to be floated passively back to land. From the first week of my residence in X--I felt my occupation irksome. The thing itself--the work of copying and translating business letters--was a dry and tedious task enough, but had that been all, I should long have borne with the nuisance; I am not of an impatient nature, and influenced by the double desire of getting my living and justifying to myself and others the resolution I had taken to become a tradesman, I should have endured in silence the rust and cramp of my best faculties; I should not have whispered, even inwardly, that I longed for liberty; I should have pent in every sigh by which my heart might have ventured to intimate its distress under the closeness, smoke, monotony, and joyless tumult of Bigben Close, and its panting desire for freer and fresher scenes; I should have set up the image of Duty, the fetish of Perseverance, in my small bedroom at Mrs. Kings lodgings, and they two should have been my household gods, from which my darling, my cherished-in-secret, Imagination, the tender and the mighty, should never, either by softness or strength, have severed me. But this was not all; the antipathy which had sprung up between myself and my employer striking deeper root and spreading denser shade daily, excluded me from every glimpse of the sunshine of life; and I began to feel like a plant growing in humid darkness out of the slimy walls of a well. Antipathy is the only word which can express the feeling Edward Crimsworth had for me--a feeling, in a great measure, involuntary, and which was liable to be excited by every, the most trifling movement, look, or word of mine. My southern accent annoyed him; the degree of education evinced in my language irritated him; my punctuality, industry, and accuracy, fixed his dislike, and gave it the high flavour and poignant relish of envy; he feared that I too should one day make a successful tradesman. Had I been in anything inferior to him, he would not have hated me so thoroughly, but I knew all that he knew, and, what was worse, he suspected that I kept the padlock of silence on mental wealth in which he was no sharer. If he could have once placed me in a ridiculous or mortifying position, he would have forgiven me much, but I was guarded by three faculties--Caution, Tact, Observation; and prowling and prying as was Edwards malignity, it could never baffle the lynx-eyes of these, my natural sentinels. Day by day did his malice watch my tact, hoping it would sleep, and prepared to steal snake-like on its slumber; but tact, if it be genuine, never sleeps.