Билет № 14

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THE MOST FAMOUS STAMP

It was in 1856. The Postmaster of British Guiana was in a difficulty. He had used all the stamps and new stamps, which they usually got from London, did not arrive yet. He did not know what to do. But then he found a way out: he asked a local printer to make some stamps which he used until the new ones arrived.

Seventeen years later, a schoolboy who lived in British Guiana no­ticed on an envelope of an old letter a strange stamp. It was dirty but the boy liked it and added it to his collection.

Some time later he showed his stamp to a well-known collector. This man gave him six shillings for the stamp. The boy took it for he hoped to find another stamp among those old letters. But he did not find it. That one which the boy had sold became the most famous of all the world's stamps. The stamp collector who bought it for six shillings did not know how valuable it was.

Some years later he sold the stamp. The man who had bought it later sold it in Paris to Philip von Terrary who had the greatest stamp collec­tion in the world. The stamp was in a poor state. But Philip von Terrary was very proud to have it, because he knew it was unique. He died in 1917 and the stamp was offered for sale. It was bought for $ 7,343 by a collector from the USA.

Зав. кафедрой Полушина Л.Н.

Билет № 15

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HYDE PARK

Londoners do not have to go far to find green fields and flowers, for London is very rich in parks and gardens. Londoners like their parks and are very proud of them. Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens today form one single park, the largest in London. Hyde Park is certainly the most popular of London's parks. It may be called a National Park. Londoners love it. On Sunday mornings in summer you can see lots of Londoners sitting with their families on the grass or listening to music. Some of them are bathing or boating on the Serpentine (the artificial lake running through the two parks). Some rich Londoners are riding on horseback - a very expensive pleasure. Hyde Park is a place for all kinds of national parades and mass meetings.

Hyde Park is like many other London parks, but there is a corner of it the like of which you will not find anywhere else in England, or anywhere else in the world. That is Speakers' Corner. Here on a Sunday morning you can find a number of strange-looking people, each standing on a box or a small platform which he has brought with him. Each is making a long and enthusiastic speech about something which he believes is very important.

Зав. кафедрой Полушина Л.Н.

Билет № 16

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LONDON'S DIFFERENT FACES

London is very different, it has many faces. You can find there beau­tiful mansions and red-brick buildings, tall and dirty that look like pris­ons; busy squares and streets full of well-dressed people and dusty nar­row streets where children play on the pavement. Clean and comfortable restaurants and cafes and eating rooms with unclean walls and tables with five or six persons sitting in a row at each table; big shops with carpets and soft seats everywhere and wonderful things for sale and small shops full of old clothes, some of them not even very clean. Past and present, old and modern, richness and poverty, beauty and ugliness.

London is full of customs and traditions. For a foreigner it seems noisy and overcrowded.

There is a lot of traffic in the streets of London: endless lines of bus­es, motor cars and taxies.

Most of London buses are the famous red double-deckers that have two platforms (or decks) for passengers. Brightly coloured, they look very nice in the grey streets of London.

There are also green-one-storied buses, they run from London to the countryside. You can also see brown buses in the streets which belong to British railways. Now there have appeared buses of different colors.

The first buses came on the streets of London in 1829. They were pulled by horses. The upper deck had no roof. The bus conductor gave passengers raincoats and umbrellas if it started raining. Nowadays there are buses of different colours.

Зав. кафедрой Полушина Л.Н.