I. Make up a few questions on the passage and ask your comrades to answer them.

II. Think of a number of statements concerning events in the text and ask your comrades to find evidence in the text to support them.

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DON JUAN (an excerpt)

By G. G. Byron (1788-1824)

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But to our tale: the Donna Inez sent Her son to Cadiz only to embark; To stay there had not answered her intent, But why? - we leave the reader in the dark - 'T was for voyage the young man was meant, As if a Spanish ship were Noah's ark, To wean him from the wickedness of earth, And send him like a dove of promise forth.

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Don Juan bade his valet pack his things According to direction, then received A lecture and some money: for four springs He was to travel: and though Inez grieved (As every kind of parting has its stings), She hoped he would improve - perhaps believed: A letter, too, she gave (he never read it) Of good advice - and two or three of credit.

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In the mean time, to pass her hours away, Brave Inez now set up a Sunday school

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For naughty children, who would rather play (Like truant rogues) the devil, or the fool: Infants of three years old were taught that day, Dunces were whipt, or set upon a stool: The great success of Juan's .education Spurr'd her to teach another generation.

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Juan embark'd - the ship got under way, The wind was fair, the water passing rough; A devil of a sea rolls in that bay. As I, who've cross'd it oft, know well enough; And, standing upon the deck, the dashing spray Flies in one's face, and makes it weather-tough: And there he stood to take, and take again His first - perhaps his last - farewell of Spain.

XII

1 can't but say it is an awkward sight To see one's- native land receding through The growing waters; it unmans one quite, Especially when life is rather new; 1 recollect Great Britain's coast looks white, But almost every other country's blue, When gazing on them, mystified by distance, We enter on our nautical existence.

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So Juan stood, bewilder'd on the deck; The wind sung, cordage strain'd, and sailors swore, And the ship creak'd, the town became a speck, From which away so fair and fast they bore. The best of remedies is a beefsteak Against sea-sickness: try it, sir, before , You sneer, and I assure you this is true, For I have found it answer - so may you.

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

I. What do the stanzas tell you about Don Juan and Donna Inez and their mutual relations. And what do they tell about Byron'himself?

II. What stylistic devices have you noticed in the stanzas?

III. What other episodes from the poem do you remember?

IV. The following translation of the above stanzas from "Don Juan" is by P. Kozlov. Compare the translation with the original text and point out the parts that were left out by the translator. What parts of the translation do not correspond literally to the original?

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VIII

Но вновь к рассказу! В Кадис послан был Жуан, но мать ему велела строго Не оставаться в нем. Кто не грешил На суше, где соблазнов всяких много? Надеялась она, что сердца пыл Остудит в нем далекая дорога. На корабле, от шашней удален, Мог плавать как в ковчеге Ноя он.

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Напутствие прослушал наш повеса И, денег взяв, укладываться стал. Грустила, расставаясь с ним, Инесса (Он на четыре года уезжал). Без слез разлуки нет; но факт, что беса Сынок отгонит - донну утешал. С инструкцией (что впрочем не прочел он) Жуан сел на корабль, унынья полон.

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Инесса между тем, с сынком простясь, Устроила воскресные собрания, Чтобы отучать мальчишек от проказ; Им строгие давала назидания. Она пребольно секла их не раз. Так удалось Жуана воспитанье, Что поколенье новое от зла Спасти - ей мысль блестящая пришла.

XXII

It had been a day like other days at the office. Nothing special had happened. Harold hadn't come back from lunch until close on four o'clock. Where had he been? What had he been doing? He wasn't going to let his father know. Old Mr. Neave had happened to he in the hall, saying good-bye to a caller, when Harold walked in, perfectly dressed as usual, cool, smiling that peculiar little half-smile that women found so attractive.

Ah, Harold was too handsome, too handsome by far; that had been the trouble all the time. No man had a right to such eyes and such lips. As for his mother, his sisters, and the servants, it was not too much to say that they made a young god of him; they worshipped Harold, they forgave him everything; and he had needed some forgiving ever since the time when he was thirteen and he had stolen his mother's purse, taken the money and hidden the purse in the cook's

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bedroom. Old Mr. Neave struck sharply with his stick upon the pavement edge. But it wasn't only his family who spoiled Harold, |he thought, it was everybody; he had only to look and to smile, and down they went before him. So perhaps it wasn't strange that he expected the office to do the same. But it couldn't be done. No business - not even a successful, established, big paying business - could be played with. A man had either to put his whole heart and soul into it, or it went all to pieces before his eyes.

And then Charlotte and the girls were always asking him to hand the whole thing over to Harold, to retire, and to spend his time enjoying himself. Enjoying himself! Old Mr. Neave stopped under a group of ancient trees outside the Government buildings. Enjoying himself! Sitting at home, conscious all the time that his life's work was slipping away, disappearing through Harold's fine fingers, while Harold smiled...

"Why will you be so unreasonable, Father? There's absolutely no need for you to go to the office. It only makes it very awkward for us when people say how tired you're looking. Here's this huge house and garden. Surely you could be happy in it for a change. Or you could take up some hobby."

And Lola, the youngest, said, "All men ought to have hobbies. It makes life impossible if they haven't."

"Well, well!" He couldn't help a bitter smile as painfully he began to climb the hill that led into Harcourt Avenue. Where would Lola and her sisters and Charlotte be, if he'd taken up hobbies? Hobbies couldn't pay for the town house and the seaside bungalow, and their horses, and the sixty-guinea gramophone in the music room for them to dance to. But he was not complaining. No, they were smart, good-looking girls, and Charlotte was a remarkable woman; it was natural for them to be modern in their ideas. As a matter of fact no other house in the town was as popular as theirs; no other family had so many visitors. And how many times old Mr. Neave, pushing the cigar-box across the smoking-room table, had listened to praises of his wife, his girls, of himself even.

"You're an ideal family, sir, an ideal family. It's like something one reads about or sees on the stage."

"That's all right, my boy," old Neave would reply. "Try one of these cigars. I think you'll like them. And if you care to smoke in the garden, you'll find the girls there, I dare say."

That was why the girls never married, so people said. They could have married anybody. But they had too good a time at home. They were too happy together, the girls and Charlotte. H'm, h'm. Well, well! Perhaps so...

By this time he had walked the length of fashionable Harcourt Avenue; he had reached the corner house, their house. The carriage gates were pushed back; there were fresh marks of wheels on the drive. And then he faced the big white-painted house, with its wide-open windows, its curtains floating outwards. On each side of the entrance pinkish, bluish masses of flowers lay like light among the

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spreading leaves. And somehow it seemed to old Mr. Neave that the house and the flowers, and even the fresh marks on the drive, were saying, "There is young life here. There are girls - "

From the music room sounded the piano, quick, loud and impatient. Through the drawing-room door that was half-open voices floated.

Suddenly the music-room door opened and Lola dashed out. She started, she nearly screamed, at the sight of old Mr. Neave.

"Oh, Father? What a fright you gave me! Have you just come home? Why isn't Charles here to help you off with your coat?"

Her face was red with playing, her eyes shone, the hair fell over her forehead. And she breathed as though she had come running through the dark and was frightened. Old Mr. Neave stared at his youngest daughter; he felt he had never seen her before. So that was Lola, was it? But she seemed to have forgotten her father; it was not for him that she was waiting there. The telephone rang. A-sh! Lola gave a cry and dashed past him. The door of the telephone'room shut noisily, and at the same moment Charlotte called, "Is that you, •Father?"

"You're tired again," said Charlotte. "Did you walk back?"

"Yes, I walked home," said old Mr. Neave, and he sank into one of the immense drawing-room chairs.

"But why didn't you take a cab?" said Ethel. "There are hundreds of cabs at that time."

"My dear Ethel," said Marion, "if Father prefers to tire himself out, I really don't see what business it is of ours to interfere."

"Children! Children!" said Charlotte. "Did Harold leave the office before you, dear?"

"I'm not sure," said old Mr. Neave. "I'm not sure. I didn't see him after four o'clock."

(From "An Ideal Family" by Katherine Mansfield)

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

I. What have you learned about Mr. Neave's family? Was there much understanding between Mr. Neave and his family?

II. What did he mean by saying: "... it was natural for them to be modern in their ideas"? Was he old-fashioned?

III. What was the cause of Mr. Neave's anxiety?

IV. Think of a number of statements concerning events in the text and ask your comrades to find evidence in the text to support them.

V. What is the author's attitude to her characters?

VI. Comment on the title of the story.

VII. Using the story as a basis make up several exercises to activate the word combinations given below. Act as teacher and ask your fellow-sludents to do your exercises:

to be annoyed at smth or with smb; to confide one's troubles to smb; to give smb to understand; on the face of it; to draw the line somewhere

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XXIII

The girl plunged like a wind-driven storm-petrol on her way. She looked up at the ragged sierras of cloud-capped buildings that rose above the streets, shaded by the night lights. They were so like the wintry mountains of her Western home that she felt a satisfaction such as the hundred-thousand-dollar house had seldom brought her.

A policeman caused her to waver on a corner, just by his eye and weight.

"Hello, Mabel!" said he. "Kind of late for you to be out, ain't it?"

"I - I am just going to the drug store," said the girl, hurrying past him.

Turning eastward, the direct blast cut down her speed one half. She made zigzag tracks in the snow; but she was as tough as a pine-tree sapling, and bowed to it as gracefully. Suddenly the studio-building loomed before her, a familiar landmark, like a cliff above some well-remembered canon. The haunt of business and its hostile neighbour, art, was darkened and silent. The elevator stopped at ten.

Up eight flights of stairs the girl climbed, and rapped firmly at the door numbered "89". She had been there many times before, with her uncle.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION