1. Reproduce the situations from the chapters where these lexical items are used.

2. Comment on or paraphrase the following sentences from the chapters.

• …plunged in that solitude that is supposed to be the essential condition of philosophic speculation;

• I wanted no attachments;

• New York is a good city for a man who prefers to be alone. It is the easiest city in the world to enjoy solitude;

• I was not paid for solitary heroics;

• Thou shalt not steal (thou shalt not do a lot of things);

• This is a hotel you have to keep up appearances;

• But it had been an effort not to look up at the shelf;

• This country is in full decay. Nobody moves;

• I wasn’t conscious of feeling any emotion, not fear, or exhilaration, or regret;

• I wanted to give the impression of being a solid citizen…modestly prosperous (not wealthy)

• I couldn’t help wondering how all the treasure lying in those locked boxes, the greenbacks, the stocks and bonds, the jewelry, had been accumulated, what sweat expended, what crimes enacted, through whose hands all those stones and all that luxuriously printed paper had passed before coming to rest in this sanctified cold steel cave;

• I had no lease (was on a month-to-month arrangement);

• Everything up to now had been almost mechanical, act following act…my movements ordered and precise, as though I had been following a program learned…

• Now I had to make decisions, consider possibilities, scan the horizon for danger;

• It had to be bribery of some sort, a payoff, blackmail;

• This was when the scandals of the second Nixon administration were just beginning to surface, when we all discovered that perfectly respectable people, pillars of the community, had developed the habit of secretly carrying huge sums of money around in attaché cases, and, stuffing hundreds of thousands of dollars in office desks so it didn’t occur to me, as it could have later, that I might have stumbled on an amateurish and comparatively undangerous political technique;

• In one moment in the tag end of a cold winter night, I had become an outlaw who could look only to himself for safety;

• Lie for the sheer pleasure of lying.

3.Answer the questions.

• Why didn’t Grimes want any attachments?

• What were Grimes’s routine activities like after moving to a new place?

• What happened on that unforgettable (memorable) night on the 16th of January?

• What did Grimes do in the dead man’s room?

• What was in the dead man’s hand?

• What conclusions did Grimes make after examining the dead man’s body?

• What made Grimes take the tube with the money?

• What was the reason for the man’s death?

• Why did Grimes take the dead body to the room from the corridor?

• Why didn’t Grimes tell anything to the police about the found tube?

• Why did Grimes invite one of the policemen to drink a little (for a drink)?

• Why did Grimes conceal his name while sending a telegram?

• Why did Grimes steal the tube with the banknotes?

• How much money was there in the tube?

• What actions did Grimes do (effect) with the bills?

• What plan did Grimes have on packing all the bills?

• Why was Grimes sure that one day somebody would appear to look for the money?

• How do you account for Grimes’s extreme calmness in the bank?

• Why didn’t Grimes leave his actual address in the bank?

• Why did Grimes fail to give up the habit of betting on horses?

• Why did Grimes decide to call the St.Augustine hotel?

• Who made inquiries about the dead man?

• Was Grimes ready for the dramatic (radical) changes in his life?

• Was Grimes afraid of those men who followed (chased) the dead man?

• What were the rules Grimes set (invent) for himself?

• What mistakes did Grimes make?

• What made Grimes think of travelling abroad?