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Pitman Shorthand 700 Common Words Exercise No. 2-40
700 Common Words Exercise No. 2
“Words, words, words,” said a character in a
well-known play. So much was said, so little done. In a way, our life is made
is made up of words. It is through words that we give expression to our ideas
and through words that we can keep in touch with other people. We may write the
words for others to read or we may speak the words for others to hear, but in
either case it is through words that we have been able to pass on to others the
thoughts that are in our minds. Are words quite necessary to a highly developed
state of thought? Are they necessary for the development of man to a state of
increased knowledge and comfort? Can we, indeed, thin without words? Much has
been said and written on this last point, and some writers are quick to point
out that we can think in pictures without the use of words. Others believe that
our thoughts are dependent upon words that we do not think of the thing itself
but of the words representing the thing. Certainly, if we stop at any moment
and ask: What was I thinking of then? We find that we have been using words in
our thoughts. The use of words is one great difference that sets man apart from
other animals. It is true that most living things seem to use sounds of some
sort in their life with one another but they do not use language as man does.
So far as we can judge from historical records, man continued in a way early
state of development until he began to speak.
With the use of words he developed more quickly, and when he learned to
write down the words his development increased at a very great rate. The
written word seems necessary for the wide development of a people. With the
written words ideas can be passed on quickly and knowledge, won by experience
and hard work, can be passed on to others who can then use the knowledge for
their own purposes. At first, the written word could be used only by a few as
it was carefully and beautifully written by hand, and one copy only existed of
each piece of writing. Now, however, thousands of copies of a book can be
turned out in a very short time, and the thoughts and ideas of one man can be
read by millions. This has its dangers, of course, as well as its advantages
for it may happen and we have seen it happen that a person with a powerful use
of words can influence millions of people in the direction he desires. For
words are powerful things: people are moved to action by words, they are moved
to action by the ideas expressed in words. We know that in political life the
man who is most successful is generally the man with the power to speak well,
to use words in a way that influences people to believe what he says. We know
that in business the best salesman is the one who can overcome his customers
with words, who can make them believe that what he has to sell is better than
what other people have to sell. The successful writer is not always the one who
tells the bet story but the one who can best use words to express his ideas and
the feelings of his characters. Nor are shorthand writers any less dependent
upon words. Shorthand writers depend upon words for their very existence as
shorthand writers, for without words there is not shorthand in the sense in
which we understand it. Even the old picture writing was a form of shorthand,
for one picture had to express quite a long story. The modern shorthand writer
is like the successful story writer, the successful salesman, the successful
man in political life: he depends for his success upon his knowledge of words,
and the use he makes of his knowledge. The successful shorthand writer must
understand be able to use a very great number of words, and he must know the
word used in a very wide field of subjects. For the shorthand writer life is
indeed a matter of “words, words, words!
700 Common Words Exercise No. 3
The woman sat by herself in the small room at the back
of the house. She could hear the voices of the people sitting together in the
large front room and at times a few notes from a well-known air would reach her
from the radio set which was always kept near the door. Generally she liked to
sit with the others in the evening, hearing them talk about the event of the
day and expressing opinions on the news given out by B.B.C. The people were
employed in such different ways and they held such widely differing opinions
that she, who knew little about the arts in any form, believed that to sit in
that room was as good as going to watch a play. That night, however, she
continued to sit by herself in the small and rather plain back room that had
been used as an office for the past thirty years. She looked down at her hands
and saw on them signs of years of hard work. Not for her were the white hands
of her boarders, few if any of whom had ever done any really hard work in their
lives. Her hands were red and covered with little back lines. For as long as
she could remember she had had to work for her living, helping her mother and
afterwards working in the boarding house. That day her boarding house had been
bought. She herself had signed the papers that meant that the house would pass
into other hands next month. Another woman would own the boarding house and
would plan the meals for the boarders and would, or so she hoped, look after
their comfort and well-being. Nor had she any right to be upset about this
because she herself had put the house up for sale with the announcement: A
business for sale in good running order. The owner is willing to consider the
sale at a reasonable price of the boarding house known as High View. It faces
the sea and has room for 25 boarders. An interesting and profitable business
for anyone willing to work. There were, it seemed, many people willing to work,
for letters had been received from interested parties all over the country, and
she had been successful in selling the boarding house to a young woman who
would, she thought, run it on the same lines as she herself had done. Again she
looked down at her red and hard worked hands. For her the days of hard work
were over, for the sale had brought her a good round sum of money on which she
could live peacefully for the rest of her days on earth without doing any work
at all. A strange end to a strange life, she thought. She was 13 years old when
her mother had died, and she had gone to live with a relation who worked as a
housekeeper in a small boarding house at the seaside. She had become a maid of
all work, running about for everyone and getting little for her trouble. After
two years the owner of the boarding house, who was very old, had died, but the
two of them she and her relation just kept on working in the same way. It
appeared that no one was particularly interested in the old woman who had died,
and they had found it possible to buy the house for such a small sum that, with
the money paid by the boarders, they were easily able to make the necessary
monthly payments. They had, as it were, fallen heir to the property. They kept
the place very, very clean, and they gave the boarders good food and enough of
it, and as the years passed they were able to buy the house next door and the
house next door to that, until in the end High View became quite an important
building. The property had become her own 15 years ago. She had never married
like other women because the boarding house had been her life. Now, she was
growing old and there was no one to whom she could leave the place. It was
better sold to a young woman who would love it as she had done and would take
good care of the boarders. The voice of the B.B.C announcer reached her. And
that, he said, is the end of the news.
700 Common Words Exercise No. 4
I did not know the Blacks very well as a family, but I
had run up against them in the street from time to time. They had lived in a
large old house just off the High Street. The house was too large for their
requirements, and it was difficult to keep warm in winter. The bedrooms were
too big, and when the weather was cold people trying to find comfort in the
sitting room might just as well have been in the street outside for all the warmth
they received from the coals burning in the little fireplace. But the Blacks
did not move into a smaller and newer house. It did not come into their heads
to do so. The old house had always been their home. Father and mother had lived
there from the first day of their married life, and the two children had spent
all their days there. There they were and there they were likely to be in the
years to come. Modern and new houses were short in the days that followed the
war, and Black himself found the situation of the old place very satisfactory
because he ran an office in the High Street, and he could walk to or from his
work in a matter of five minutes. This saved him time, money, and trouble, and
he thought himself a very happy man in this respect. I doubt whether I ever
would have gone into that house had I not offered to try to get some money for
a good cause in which I was at that time interested. I went from house to house
which I was at that time interested. I went from house to house asking for money.
I may add that I did not like asking other people to give up their hard – won
money, but, on the other hand, I very much desired money for my cause, and so I
was able to steel myself to go my rounds. Most people gave willingly a little
perhaps, but a large enough number of small amounts can make a large sum, and I
was always thankful for anything down to the last penny. The door of the Black
house was opened by a little maid who showed me into the sitting-room. It was a
cold afternoon, and the mother and the girl were sitting near to the fire
reading. My surprise must have shown itself on my fact. I looked from one to
the other. The mother must have married quite young, for she was clearly under
40 while the girl was quite young, for she was clearly under 40 while the girl
was about 17. What surprised me was that the two faces looked just the same.
Not a line showed on the mother’s face, and her eyes, so clear and blue, were
no less beautiful that those of the girl. The faces were small and perfect in form.
Never had I before seen such a remarkable likeness between two people of such
different age. Yet there was a difference, and what a difference it was! Done
high up on the girl’s head, above those
blue eyes, was a wonderful mass of red-gold. Where were the modern painters, I
asked myself, waiting to paint this red-gold loveliness for future people to
look at? Such a wonderful thing should be seen by all the world. It was not
enough for it to be kept here, not known, not loved, except by her own family. How
long, I asked myself, could such colour last? It seemed to burn, and I had the
feeling that it would burn itself out. I turned my eyes back to the mother,
with her perfect face. Done high up on her head in the say way was a mass of
white. I looked, and not one touch of colour cold I see. My face must have
expressed only too clearly my thoughts, for the mother turned to me and said:
Yes, it is very beautiful. I was just like that once, and look at me now! All
the women in our family are white before they are 30.
700 Common Words Exercise No. 5
It seems
to me that there are three principal ways in which we can learn to do things or
to understand things looking reading, or hearing. We can watch things done by
other people, and copy their movements and actions. This is the way in we learn when we are very
young. Babies, and all young animals, of course, are very quick to copy the
acts of their mothers, and in this way they learn a very great amount in a
remarkable short time. We continue throughout our lives to learn in this ways
and then making some attempt to carry out like acts ourselves. When we grow up,
however, we are able to make observations within much wider limits, and we are
free to learn great numbers of things simply by watching. Not only can we see
the life going on round about us, but we have also brought right into the home
the moving picture and the TV set. There is, perhaps, no more interesting and
successful method of learning about other countries than to watch moving
pictures that have been taken in those places. Most of us find it much easier
to remember what we have seen than to remember what we have read in a book or
have been told. Even a very good writer, telling us of scenes and doings in far
off lands, cannot bring to our minds so clear a picture of those countries as
can a quite short moving picture in the course of instructions in subjects as
different from one another as history and science. In such subjects mere
reading is not enough to give a complete picture of the material under
consideration. We can, then, use of eyes when we want to learn, using our
powers of seeing and observation. We must also, however, use of powers of
hearing. To most of us this is a difficult way of learning, and we have often
to work quite hard to master the art of
learning through hearing. An exception is, of course, the subject of languages,
for clearly there is no better way to learn a language than to hear other
people speaking it. Mere book knowledge of a language is a poor thing, for a
language does not really live until it is used. When, however, we are dealing
with ideas learning through hearing becomes more difficult. We have to learn
first to pay attention. How often does a teacher say: Pay attention, please!”
And how necessary are the words. If no notes are being taken the words once
said have gone forever. If they live at all it must be in the memories of those
who have heard the words. When we first go to school we think we are learning
to write and to read and to do little sums, but in fact we are also learning something of even more
importance: we are learning to pay attention, to hear what the teacher says,
and to hold it is our memories. The person who is able to pay attention is a
much better learner than the person whose mind is always going off into other
fields of thought, even though the two people may have equally good minds in
other respects. Many people who attend public meetings find that their
attention is not always given to the person speaking, and it is indeed a good
man or woman who can hold our complete attention for half an hour or more. It
is probably true that most people learn most things most easily through
reading. They can read the material they wish to learn, and can read it again
many, many times if they do desire. They can memorize the written word with a
reasonable degree of ease, and can usually master a far larger amount of
material in this way in a given time than would be possible by another method.
Seeing, reading, and hearing all pay their part in our complete development as
we grow into men and women.
700 Common Words Exercise No. 6
May walked with long and quick steps as she went down
the short road that led to the sea. Ever since she had spent a week with some
relations who lived by the sea in the lovely summer month of June she had lived
for the day when she could return. How she had loved the little fishing town
and the beautiful blue sea during that week in June! How peaceful it had seemed
to her after the cares of city life! The sea to the limits of the eye had been
deep blue, and the water met the land with such a peaceful touch that one
hardly heard its sound. The ships at rest a little way out seemed not to move,
and the white sails of the little ones nearer to the land were still. And that
was her memory of it all. Stillness and peace, blue and white. May remembered
also the houses of the people who lived there. They were little houses so near
together that they seemed in places almost to touch one another. Surely, a hand
held out from one of those small upper windows could meet the hand held out
from the window on the other side of that little road. Although it was not
really a road, she thought. A road should be reasonably wide, and the houses
should be set well back, and there should be room for motor-cars to pass along
it. There should be room for people to pass each other without moving to one
side or the other. No, she could not really call it a road, but it was
certainly a place where people lived. Some of them, like her relations, had
lived there all their lives. Some of them, like her relations, had lived there
all their lives. Never had they heard the call of the cities of their own
country, and still less had the voice of other countries overseas called to
them. No, for them life had to end where it had begun, and throughout the years
they lived in those little, very little houses, lived as people were no longer
thought to live in this wonderful land of ours, with its wide streets and
modern houses and health services and picture-houses. May had seen the little
fishing town and had loved it. The call of the sea must be in my heart, she
thought as she walked once again on the hard city streets where she worked. Of
course, she told her friend all about it. Her friend worked in the same office and
until then they had generally seen eye-to-eye about the details of life. That
had been before May went to her relations at the sea for a week. She had
returned quite changed. From then on her one thought had been to save enough
money to take another week with them in the little house in the little fishing
town by the sea. Of course, the place was about as far away as it could be from
where she live, and it meant going without quite a few other things if May was
to get the money together. But she had done it, and now in the depth of winter
she walked down the road that led to the sea. She found that the blue sea of
summer had changed, and the water was now almost without colour. No ships were
at rest out there, and that was just as threw itself with fearful force upon
the stones and headlands, and the sound of its breaking would have over-powered
any other sound had there been any. But there were no other sounds, for the
town itself was resting. Men could not fish in such weather as this, when the
water threw itself up into the air as if trying to overcome the little town
that made so much use of it, a town indeed that lived wholly upon what it took
from those great waters. OH! May cried, as she held her body hard against the
forces of Nature. Oh, how wonderful! How truly wonderful! Gone was the
water-colour painting of the peaceful blue sea and the sweet little town, and
in its place was this great oil painting, this masterpiece of the forces of
water and land. She was watching the everlasting war between earth and water,
that everlasting attempt of one to the master of the other, an attempt that she
hoped would never meet with success. And she loved the sea and the land and the
little town more than ever, and she would willingly have spent the rest of her
life there, by the fearful and the peaceful sea.
700 Common Words Exercise No. 7
It was
not often that Mr. Wells left his house for every many hours with no one in it.
During the day Miss Black was there for most of the time. Miss Black could not
be called his housekeeper, as he himself kept watch on the stores and on the
money spent. In fact, he bought most of the food, cleaning materials, and so
on, on his way some from the office, and merely passed them to Miss Black to
put away. No, Miss Black could not be given the high-sounding name of
housekeeper, but neither could she be called the woman who did for him. She
fell somewhere between these two high and low points. She was a daily help of
the most valuable kind, and she looked after the house of Mr. Wells with as
much care as she would have looked after her own, and in the evening she went
off, and even Mr. Wells did not know where she went or what she did. During the
day, therefore, his house was in good hands. In the evening there was himself
and there was his brother. Generally they were both at home, for neither of
them was much given to going out. They did not like parties and they did not
like the pictures. They did not care to pay high prices to see plays which, in
their opinion, were generally not worth the money that had to be spent in
getting up to town and paying for a reasonable place. Neither of the men had
married, and neither had a regular girl friend. Their evenings were, therefore,
generally spent in the house, and it was the house that they both loved more
than any other thing in the world. It was certainly a lovely little house, for
enough away from the City to be almost in the country. It was peaceful and
there were good views from the windows. From the outside it looked in most ways
much like the home of anyone with a reasonably well-paid position in the City.
Few people ever stepped inside but those who did were greatly surprised, for
certainly the inside of the house was not in any way like the common run of
houses. It was full of the most valuable things, all carefully placed and
marked. What had been two living rooms had been made into one every large room
in the form of the letter L. The room was white and as clean as if it had been
in the hands of the painter that very day. Everything in the room was clearly a
show-piece, something bought at a sale and for which a high price had had to be
paid. The pictures were Old Masters and the books were beautiful covered .The
table and all other pieces had been carefully bought one by one, as opportunity
and money made such buying possible. It was such a room as one might expect to
find in one of the great houses built in a past age, but no one could possibly
except to see anything of the kind in such a place. The room was priceless, for
many of the objects could not be found for a second time. And so the brothers
spent their evenings and week-ends among their much-loved objects of art, and
tried to make still more perfect that which was already perfection. It was not
often, as we have said, that Mr. Wells left his house with neither his brother
nor Miss Black in it. But on that night he had done so. Work had kept him late
in the City, and his brother had not been well and had gone away to have a
small but necessary operation. Miss Black had left at 5.30 as usual. Mr. Wells
red his paper while waiting for the 8.45 train home, but the train was late in
starting as there was some mist in places along the line, and it stopped
several times before reaching his station. He got out and walked towards his home.
The mist in the air seemed to have a red touch, he thought, as he walked on.
Then he had a feeling of fear, of cold fear, for without doubt something was on
fire, something was burning. He broke into a run, and then he stopped. After
all, it was not his house that was on fire, his own most beautiful and loved
house. It was the house immediately behind his. But at the moment of his fear
he saw his life clearly for the first time. He saw that he had spent his years
loving cold and lifeless objects. He saw that he loved no living being and that
no living being loved him or cared that he was late home that night that he was
cold and had known fear.
700 Common Words Exercise No. 8
After the coldness of the winter months the lovely
days of April, May, and June call to us and ask us to go out and see the
beautiful countryside. During the long winter of the countryside has been
resting and waiting for the warmth of summer to make it colourful once more.
Some people feel that the countryside is more beautiful in the cold days of
winter than it is in the heat of summer. When the leaves have fallen the view
is wider, details show up more clearly, and the rivers are full. These are
plain facts, of course, but the truth is that most of us like the countryside
of the summer more than that of the winter. We like the warmth more than the
cold, and we like to see the fields full of the colour that summer brings. And
so we go out. We leave behind our TV and our books, and off we go. We are light
of heart and happy, and the open country is before us. Is it possible in these
days, however, to get right into the heart of the country not only to see it
but to hear it and to understand it in the way that the writer of The Story of
My Heart, Life of the Fields, and The Open Air did? It does not seem very
likely that it is possible, because there are so many people in so many
motor-cars all trying to find the happiness of the countryside at the same
time. It is plain enough that if masses of people all go to the same place at the
same time to find the peaceful life of the country they will not find it. The
ease with which it is now possible to reach the country places has made them
less worth reaching. There is, I think, nothing that we can do about it. Motor
cars are with us and are likely to be, and while we have them we shall without
doubt use them. There are, however, still places which are away from the wide
roads and great motorways. There are lovely little places in the byways of the
countryside which, because of the quality of the roads, are seen by few. The
best way to see such a place is to walk. Feet are certainly not used as much as
they used to be: we like to move more quickly than our feet will take us. Our
feet are still, however, quite the best means of seeing the countryside in the
lovely months of early summer. When I was a child my father had a number of
little books which set out walks of many kinds. There were short walks and long
walks, walks for the hour or for the day. These walks set out almost every step
of the way, and they kept the walker away from the roads as for as possible.
The landmarks were country buildings and farms and fields. A motor-car cannot
go across farmland, stopping while those in it watch the animals or look at the
growing plants: but the walker can, provided he keeps to certain parts and is
careful. It is still possible to walk in the countryside for a whole day
without going on to a wide motoring road. The motor-car is a remarkably good
way to get from one part of the country to another but it is not the best way
to see the details of the countryside: for the details we must walk. The
motorcar offers us the general view, and walking offers us the little things.
In the motor-car, too, we cannot hear the sounds of the countryside but the walker
hears and knows them all. Of course, not everyone likes the peace of the
countryside. I knew a young woman who lived all her young life right in the
heart of the country’s capital. She had never been away, and knew nothing
whatever about either the seaside or the countryside. After a year or two in an
office, however, she found that she had some money in hand and she heard the
other office workers talking about where they were going for their leave in the
summer. This caused her to make up her mind to go away somewhere, and she went
with a friend to a little seaside place well-known for its peacefulness and the
beautiful countryside round about it. She had booked a room for two weeks, but
after half a week she was back in town. I thought you were away at the seaside.
I said, when I met her in the street. Oh, I could not stand it for another day!
She said. There was just nothing to do!
700 Common Words Exercise No. 9
It was a lovely river. It was wide and full of water
in both summer and winter. In summer the water was usually blue, and its
never-ending movement towards the sea was so peaceful that it could not be seen
except by the most care observation. In winter the water often ran more quickly
and the colour became blacker, but even so it continued to be a good river. It
kept well within its high banks, it was clean, and it did not have places that
were dangerous for the little sailing ships that used it as play-ground. Not
all rivers are so kind to those who live near them. People used to live near or
right on the banks of rivers because they required clean water for the many
purposes of life. Today water can be brought to people over considerable
distances, and it is not necessary to live near a river to exist. In these days
people like to live near rivers because they like to look at them or to sail on
them. There are very few of us who do not find happiness in sitting and
watching a large body of water. Houses that have good views of a river or of
the sea or of any other mass of water can usually be sold at a high price.
There is always a demand for houses in such pleasing situation. High point was
such a house. It was one of a small number of large house built on a piece of
land some 200 or 300 feet above river and the little town through which it passed.
A young woman sat at a wide window of high Point, reading a book. The evening
light played on her golden colouring, and she was beautiful. She put down the
book and looked out over the well-kept grounds of the house and down to the
river. How lovely and peaceful it is here, she thought. There is still enough
light for me to have an hour on the river in Flying Sails before the day quite
dies. We have so few of these lovely days that we may as well make the best of
them when we have the opportunity. Perhaps she did not use just those words but
her thoughts were along those lines as she got up and moved away from the
window and towards the open door. Penny! She cried. Penny Yes? Came a distant
answer. What about an hour’s sail on the river before we go to bed? It is such
a waste to go early to bed on a night like this. As she was speaking she had
run up to her friend’s bedroom. Usually Penny would have come running out of
her room very quickly at the thought of going on the river, for she dearly
loved sailing, particularly in the evening or early morning when the lights on
the water gave her wonderful ideas for her water-colour paintings. Young as she
was, she was quite an expert in this art. She loved to spend a week or two at
High Point, not only because she liked the company of her gold friend, whom she
thought was the most beautiful girl she had ever seen, but also because there
were wonderful ideas for her water-colour paintings. Young as she was, she was
quite an expert in this art. She loved to spend a week or two at High Point,
not only because there were wonderful views from the house on all sides. To the
south there were the grounds failing away to the river, from the north were
miles and miles of English countryside at its best. To east and west were large
houses in beautiful grounds which, with little changes here and there, made
good subjects for her pictures. Yes, she liked spending time at High Point with
the weeks family. That evening, however, Penny did not come running from her
room. She sat at the table looking with no pleasure at all at one of her
paintings. What is the matter, Penny? Have you got the colours all wrong? Oh
no, the paintings is good enough. It will do. This remark greatly surprised her
friend because with Penny paintings did not just do. They had to be good, very
good. no, she said again, the painting will do. But I am not coming out. She
looked so different from her usual happy self that her friend went across the
room to her. What is it? She asked. Penny put her head down and cried. It is
your brother, she said. He is so wonderful, so much like you and he did not
even speak to me or look at me before he went away this morning. And she cried
again.
700 Common Words Exercise No. 10
It is regrettable that we so often hear it said that
young people get themselves into situations of trouble and difficulty simply
because they do not know how to spend their time usefully and happily. This is
a very poor state of things when we consider for a moment how many useful and
pleasurable things there are for us to do today. There are many happy ways of
passing the time, both at home and out of doors: there are things we can do to
help ourselves and, equally important or even more important, there are many
things we can do to help others. When I was growing up there was no TV but we
had a radio set and, of course, we had records. These were the old kind of
record now known as 78, and one side of a record played for about two and a
half minutes. My mother liked all of the family to be at home on Sunday
evenings; she did not like us to go out but we were free to ask to the house
any of our friend. The number of young people who sat down at table for the
evening meal was sometimes 20 and was always more than 12, so we were a large
and happy party. It became our custom, when the meal was at an end, to continue
to sit round the table for an hour or two while records were played. The
machine was not of the electric save-you trouble kind that we now use but had a
motor that required attention at the end of each side of a record, and, of
course, it played only one record at a time. This meant that one of our number
had to take on the responsibility of keeping the machine going and putting on
the records. My father used to bring home a new record most weekends, so that
we had a good many. People used to all out for a record they desired to hear,
and no one seemed to want to talk while the record was playing as is done so
often now. Therefore, we were able to hear the records in peace, and we go to
know every detail of them. We all loved this hour or two of record-playing very
much, and I know that it lives in the memories of all who were present on those
evenings. We had every good time at very little cost, and no one had the
smallest desire to go out and make life difficult for some other person. On the
Saturday evenings we generally had a party also, but they were much more free
and easy; and were certainly not planned with the idea of having a peaceful
time. We always asked the people next door to come to the parties so that they
would not be upset by the sounds that without doubt issued from our house. What
a good time we used to have! And it was a good time in which the whole family
and any of their friends who wished to played a part. I except my mother had to
work hard on Fridays, but we all did something to help, and there is no doubt
that everyone seemed to like those weekends. Then came Monday morning, and I am
sure that no one got out of bed a moment sooner than was really necessary particularly when it was cold! A week of hard
work was before us. Day school and home work, office and evening school, took
up our time, and there was almost no time at all for play. Life was serious,
and we really worked hard. Our life at that time was made up of working hard
throughout the week and playing hard at the weekend. And it was a good enough
way of growing up. Never for one moment did any of us ask ourselves what on
earth we could do next. There was always something waiting to be done, even if
it was only ironing a dress or making a new one. I grew up with the radio but
no TV, the motor-car but few planes. My mother grew up without TV, the radio,
the moving picture, or the motor-car. People walked long distances in her days,
but those who had enough money could keep horses. People had to make their own
pleasures because very few readymade pleasures existed. What we can be quite
sure of is that in my mother’s day young people did not take up wrong doing as
a way of passing the time because they could not think of anything good worth
doing. Wrong-doing was at that time thought of an connexion with people living
in very poor or bad conditions and without much hope in life. Living conditions
are better today, and endless opportunities for a happy and successful life
present themselves to young people who are willing to be good and to work hard.
I hope that my readers are not numbered among those who can think of nothing
worthwhile to do in their free time.
700 Common Words Exercise No. 11
From the lives of great men we learn many things, much
that is of value to us in our own lives. Not the least important thing,
perhaps, which the life of almost any great teaches us is that we have time to
do those things which we would do if only we had the time: as old people we
look back upon lost opportunities and wish that we had had the time to follow
this course of action, that line of training. But again and again, as we read
the stories of the lives of those who have done great things, of those whose
names will be forever remembered, the knowledge is forced upon us that our
trouble is not that we have too little time but we have too little desire. Our
desire to move in a certain direction is not strong enough to influence us to
take the necessary steps, to use for that purpose the hours which are being
spent in other and possibly less profitable ways. If the desire to act and the
will to work are there, then we shall find both the time and the opportunity.
These thoughts come to the mind upon reading a recently published book in which
the writer tells in outline the story of the lives of 15 great men. From the
many remarkable men who have lived during the past 500 years the writer has
taken those men who, by their thought and by their labour, were able to
discover a great principle, some deep truth about the laws of nature which had
not before been known men who in this way added greatly to the knowledge and
learning of the world and so took all men one big step forward in the long
march towards a better understanding of the forces which govern our world. It
is not possible to read this book or indeed any book of this nature without
feeling an increased respect for the power of man’s mind, an increased respect
for his learning, for his continued attempts to find the truth even when faced
with great difficulties. The life of each of these men, it need hardly be said,
differs in detail. Some of them showed themselves even as children to have
reasoning powers beyond what we regard as usual; others were just simple
children showing no special powers of any kind during their early years. Some
were one idea men, working only their special field: others developed
remarkable minds and became better than most men in most fields of learning.
But common to them all was the power to work for very long hours, hours spent
in deep thought, in careful planning, in the perfecting of ideas, and the
putting of results together piece by piece to make the whole a whole which was
to surprise the world. Most of them lived to an old age, few dying before
reaching 70 years of age and several living to be over 80. Naturally, the
thought must come: Was there any connection between these two facts? Did these
men work beyond the common person? Or did they owe their long lives to the fact
that they lived principally for their ideas, paying little attention to the
many pleasures which interest the masses, caring little for the food and drink
or for the company of other men and women? It is difficult to attempt an
answer. We cannot be certain. But long as was the life of the man himself, it
was short when measured by the life of his work. That work has influenced the
thoughts and the labours of many men for many years. It will continue to
influence man’s thought and man’s action as long as man is a thinking being, using
the knowledge of the past to increase in the present his control over natural
forces.
700 Common Words Exercise No. 12
The life story of the great man must end on the same
note as the life story of the least important of men. We must come in our reading
to the point where the great man gives up his work, leaving it to others to
carry on what he has begun. His life with all its wonderful interest is past,
and we who read are left with the memory of his life and with the results of
his work. We know that this must be so, but we do not always like a thing
better because we know that it is certainly waiting for us, and it is not
surprising to find that there are people who can take no pleasure in this form
of reading because they know from the outset what the end must be. It is,
however, no more profitable to run away, to run our fact from facts in reading
than it is in life itself, and it is better to take the wider view and to read
for the pleasure and the profit to be found in the consideration of the whole
life, with its many difficulties and its many success. In this way we can find
both comfort and help for ourselves, whose lives many seem without set purpose,
to have little value. We discover perhaps that some person whose name has been
to us like a great white light, for away, beyond our touch that person met in
his early days with many of the same difficulties which we are facing now, that
he, like us, had no special advantages, no clearly marked course to follow;
like us he had to make his own way, step by step, learning as he went. We find,
for example, that one man who became world-known began his working life as a
teacher, helping his brother in a small country school. Another worked on a
farm, and a third made his first special observation while holding a small and
not important position on a ship which was making its way to the South Seas.
But these men did not wait for opportunity to come to them; they took immediate
advantage of their conditions to make their own opportunity. In the book which
we have specially in mind we find that in most cases the man’s work was valued
during his lifetime. But the world is not always ready to take new ideas warmly
to its heart. In every age there are those who feel certain that here is
nothing left for man to discover; there are others who see in the new idea a
danger to their own special interests. It is not always easy to look at
something new with clear eyes, to judge truly the value either of our own work
or, the work of others. We find ourselves thinking that because a thing has
always been done in such and such a way in the past then that must be the best
possible way for it to be done, or because a certain thing has not been done
before then it should not be done now. We have to keep a careful watch upon
ourselves in this respect, and try to keep an open mind. If we try new methods
in our own work we shall sometimes be wrong, possibly we shall often be wrong,
but sometimes we shall meet with success which makes worthwhile all our earlier
labours. Probably no more than one or two men out of all the millions living
today can hope to do something so important that that it will influence world
thought and world action throughout the ages to come, but the methods which
have served the great men of any age and helped them in their great work have
value for us today in our less important work. By marking the course taken by
those who have been successful in their special fields we can learn better how
to deal with our own situation, our own difficulties, in the field of thought
and of action in which we are ourselves most interested.
700 Common Words Exercise No. 13
Time plays an important part in every action of every
person throughout the day, yet Time is something about which we know very
little and about which we understand even less. If, in our desire to understand
a little better the real meaning of Time, we read a modern book on the subject,
it is probably the experience of many of us that we understand it even less at
the end of our reading than at the beginning that we know, indeed, very little
about the world in which we live. We read, for example, that everything that
has been still is, that everything which is to come in the future already
exists. We read that the events which make up life are like the situations
along the railway line. A train is running along that line towards one of these
stations. It reaches the station, it perhaps waits there for a very little
while, and then it passes on, leaving the station behind it. But the station
existed before the train reached it and it continues to exist after the train
has left it. In the same way, it is said, the things which happen in life are
there all the time, waiting for us to reach them. We reach them and experience
them and pass on, leaving them behind us. According to the writers of these
modern books, these events existed before we knew of them and will continue to
exist when we ourselves are no more. They will exist, in fact, for as long as
anything as we understand it exists. We read these statements and think
carefully about them, and at first it seems that the statements cannot be true,
that we cannot seriously be expected to believe them. Then, perhaps, we
remember some of the things we were told as children and which we have always
believed to be true. As children we learned that many of the little points of
light which appeared above us at night are really great bodies which are
millions of miles away from the earth. Light, we were told, moves at the rate
of about 186,000 miles a second, but so far distant are these bodies from us
that the light which we see coming from them is the light which left them
thousands, and in some cases millions, of years ago. Because of this fact, we
learned, if we could discover some method by which our eyes could see not what
is happening today but what was happening ages and ages ago. If people
something like ourselves lived on those little points of light and if they
could see what was happening on one of these distant bodies, we should see not
what is happening today but what was happening ages and ages ago. If people
something like ourselves lived on those little points of light and if they
could see what was happening on our earth they, looking at us today, would see
not what is happening now but what happened thousands or millions of years ago,
according to the distance they are away. But even when we remember these facts
it is for most of us difficult to get more than the smallest suggestion of an
idea of what is meant when we are told that everything that has been still is
and always will be. It is difficult to believe that there will always be
somewhere the picture of you as you sit reading these words. If we think of
sound it helps us to understand this point a little better. We see a movement
very much more quickly than we hear the sound resulting from that movement, for
sound comes to us at only 1,100 feet a second as against the 186,000 miles a
second of light. Let us say that I live half a mile from a big manufacturing
plant, so that the sounds which come to me from the plant reach me about two
and a half seconds after the sounds were in fact made. Let us say also that you
live another half a mile down the road, away from the plant. You would hear the
same sounds two and a half second after I heard them, that is five seconds
after they were made.
700 Common Words Exercise No. 14
You would therefore make the statement that a certain
sound took place at, say, five seconds past the hour, I would say that it
happened at about two or three seconds past the hour, while the people at the
works would say that it took place just at the hour. So that when we say that a
certain thing happened at a certain time we really mean that it happened at
that time in relation to our own position at that moment. The relation of time
to distance and the relation of immediate time to time as a whole are subjects
in which people grow more and more interested. Two interesting plays have been
written round the idea that everything that has happened in the past is still
in existence, the point made by the plays being that a person who has a certain
special sense highly developed can go back into the past and experience old and
past events. But interesting as these ideas may be, there is another and much
more usual point of view from which to consider time. For all the general
purposes of everyday life we all understand time quite well. We know that each
day is made up of 24 hours, that there are never 23 hours to the day and never
25. We know that little hands marking the passing of the minutes and hours move
on and on at their even rate, and that although they work in our service they
work without any regard to our personal and special interests. They will work
no more quickly when life is taking us towards. Some specially pleasing event,
and they will not lessen their rate when we are moving towards something less
passing. We know that time influences us in the doing of every piece of work,
for all work, to have its highest value, has to be done to time. The Chief who
calls the members of the Board together for a certain time must be ready when
the Board meets with the facts, figures, or questions which he wishes to put to
the members. He depends not only upon his own work in this connection but upon
the work of all directly working with him, from the most experienced man in his
employ to the most recent of the office boys. The motor manufacturer must so
organize the year’s work of all his men that he not only supplies the day to
day demand of the public for his product but also has his new goods quite ready
for the market at the expected time. The manufacturer, whatever his product may
be, must supply present demand and at the same time organize future work. Goods
made for shipment overseas must be ready for shipment by the date on which the
ship is leaving the country. The kind of market in which we are interested
makes little difference goods must be put on the market when the market is
ready to receive them. But the principal difficulty of all planning comes from
the fact that we cannot see time. We have perhaps five months in which to do a
piece of work; there seems to be no need for an immediate start and the papers
in connection with it are put on one side. When the papers again see the light
of day we find, possibly, that we need information from another person. But to
the second man this piece of work is something just received, and he in his
turn sits on it for a little while, only to find when he looks seriously at the
work that it requires the attention of a third party. And valuable days pass
until we find that the work is either put through to time as a result of much
work and running about on the part of everyone interested or it is not put
through with resulting loss of money and goodwill. Even when man has done his
best Nature sometimes lets us down, and weather conditions hold up trains,
planes and ships, and the perfect piece of planning works out less perfectly
than we had hoped expected.
700 Common Words Exercise No. 15
We often hear it said of a man that he had had a long
life or that his life had been cut short”. What do we really mean when we use
the expressions long life and short life? In relations to what is the life of a
particular man long or short? We are, of course, measuring the life of the man
in relation to the number of years which men in the mass can reasonably expect
to live. When we speak of the life of one man in relation to the life of most
men we can with some degree of truth say that it was a long life. But can we
use such an expression if we think of the life of one man in relation to the
time during which man has lived on earth, and further, can we use such an
expression regarding the life of man on earth if we think of it in relation to
the time during which the earth itself has been in existence and in relation to
the time during which the earth is likely to continue in existence? The life of
one man and the life of man as a whole are short beyond statement when
considered in this way. Experts tell us that the difference kinds of material
found upon earth show beyond question that the earth has existed in a form more
or less like its present form for at least two or three thousand million years.
When we consider that we place events in history by using a measurement of time
which finds expression in dates such as 1000 A.D. and 1500 A.D. and that our
present date is less than 2000 A.D. ,we get some idea of how very short our own
history is when considered in relation to the history of the earth upon which
we live. The mind of man is small, and it is impossible for him to picture the
passing of two or three thousand million years. When we ask, How long has man
lived on earth? The experts give us widely differing answers. Their answers, in
fact, differ from the statement that man has lived possibly for a million years
to the statement that he has lived for three hundred thousand years. It is
always difficult not to feel some doubt when faced with such figures, but it
seems that we must at any rate believe that man certainly a very different man
from present man but al all events the beginning of man as he now is has lived
on earth for three hundred thousand years. Taking this figure, man is quite a
recent development, something strange on the face of the good old Earth. But we
cannot stop our questioning at this interesting point. We go further and ask,
For how long is the earth likely to continue in its present state? From the
answer given to us it is clear that we need not fear the immediate end of the
world. There is every reason to believe that life will be possible on earth, in
very much the same forms as at present, for millions of millions of years to
come. Man is but a baby, just starting out in life. It is said that if we take
the possible life of the earth as just one million years a low figure then man
has at least a million times as long to live as he has already lived. He is
like a baby who came into the world a little over half an hour ago and who has
before him a life of 75 years. It is a wonderful thing to think that man has
perhaps several million years in front of him in which to develop. He has
already shown that he can do wonderful things, and we cannot picture the
wonderful future which may before him. Life day by day is wonderful, the
developments of the future may be yet more wonderful they almost certainly will
be more wonderful and we feel that our own lives are too short, and we wish
that it were possible for us to see more than just a very little of that
development before we too become part of the past, however, which perhaps live
on.
700 Common Words Exercise No. 16
We can see, therefore, that the common expressions a
long life and a short life have real meaning only when thought of in relation
to the life of the man in the street, the number of years on which insurance
companies base their figures. But we seem at present ready to ask questions and
willing to hear the answers, so let us ask one or two further questions. What
do the words long and short mean when in regard to distances? What do we mean
when we say a place is near or far, when we say a thing is of light weight or
is heavy, when we say that we are moving more or less quickly? What do we mean
when we say that an object is great or is small? We find that all these
expressions have real meaning only when one object is considered in relation to
some other object. The life of a man is short almost beyond measure when
considered side by side with the life of man upon earth, past and future. So,
too, is any distance we have upon earth short beyond measure when considered side
by side with the distances which are beyond the earth. If we move round the
earth in a straight line the biggest distance we can cover is about 25 thousand
miles. But if we look far far out beyond the earth we are faced with distances
in relation to which 25 thousand miles are as nothing. The most distant object
of which observations can at present be made is thought to be 140 million
light-years away from the earth. Light, as we know, moves at 186,000 miles a
second which, it is agreed, is a considerable rate. One light-year is the
distance which light covers moving throughout the year at a rate of 186,000
miles a second. When, therefore, it is stated that something is at a distance
from us of 140 million light-years, a distance is represented which it is
beyond our powers to picture. Our earth is large if measured by other objects
upon the earth, but it is a small thing of no importance whatever when measured
by objects outside the earth, when measured by the size of some of the great
masses of burning matter which we see as points of light above us at night. We
tell our friends, perhaps, that our weight is this or is that, but here again
we meet with difficulties. Our weight is different in different parts of the
world, while if we found ourselves on a body smaller than the earth we should
be so light that we could move about with an ease impossible here. On the other
hand, if we found ourselves on a body much bigger than the earth, we should be
so heavy that we could hardly move at all. We read in the newspaper that a
plane has reached the wonderful rate of over 600 miles an hour, but what is a
rate like this when thought of side by side with the rate at which light moves?
As for movement to the north or to the south, to the east or to the west, we
know that our movement can be judge only in relation to some other object which
is at rest or which can be said to be moving at a given rate away from or
towards us. The earth itself turning at a great rate and we do not feel this
movement of itself. We can judge the movement of the earth only in relation to
some other object which is not moving with it. We have probably all had the
experience of not being able to tell which way a train is moving at night when
we cannot see anything out of the windows. We cannot tell which way we are
moving or act what rate we are moving except in relation to another object
which is not moving with us. And so we find that many of the common expressions
of daily life have no meaning in themselves and become real for us only when considered
in relation to some other fact or object.
700 Common Words Exercise No. 17
When some time ago we were giving a little thought to
the strange nature of Time, we let ourselves take some comfort from the
certainty that at least we knew that each day was made up of 24 hours. A day,
we lightly stated, had in it just 24 hours, never 23 and never 25. But were we
right in thinking that we knew this to be the case? Perhaps not, for when the
expert comes along he informs us that a day lasts 48 hours and at the same time
does not exist at all. We open our eyes a little wider with surprise and ask:
How can such things be? And we are given a quite simple reason. As we all
learned at school, our earth is always turning away from the west, and the
nearer a place is to the east the earlier is the hour of day-break at that
place. If, for example, we were living in a country at a point on the earth
where the distance round the world is as great as it can be, and we were to
leave that country and go to another country which is, let us say, a little
over one thousand miles more distant round the world) we would find that day
break was an hour earlier in our new home than it had been in our old home. If
we moved only five hundred miles towards the east we would find the difference
to be only half an hour, and if we moved only 50 miles we would find the
difference to be as little as three minutes. If we look at a table of lighting
up times we note that these times differ widely for different parts of the same
country. But long, long ago, before the present age with its planes and TV, men
found that any form of exchange between nations was made very difficult when
there was no order in the method of stating the time in different parts of the
world. So, to make it possible for anyone in any part of the world to know just
what time it was in any other part of the world, the following course was
agreed upon. Man had already cut up the day into 24 hours, and he now agreed to
cut up the earth into 24 division each division, of course, measuring about one
thousand miles at its widest point. The time over the whole of each division
was to be the same, the time in each division differing by just one hour from
the time in the next division. We, therefore, have a system whereby the minutes
and the seconds are the same all over the world, but the hour is one hour
earlier for each division as we move towards the east. Now we will say that in
the “first” of these divisions New Year’s Day begins. Hour by hour New Year’s
Day reaches and passes through one of the 24 divisions until at the end of 24
hours it is in the last division. By that time the day is coming to an end in
the first division, and the second of January is beginning. But the last
division, too, must have its full day and 24 hours must pass before New Year’s
Day really comes to an end and dies in the last of the 24 divisions. The first
of January lives for 48 hours. But while the first of January has been
continuing its life in this way the second of January has been moving round the
world. The first hour of the second of January reaches the last division just
as the 24th hour of the first of January dies, and at the same moment the third
of January begins in the first division. And so we are faced with the strange
truth that while a day lasts 48 hours there is between the first and 3rd of
January no break at all. People in one country can hear “Five Hours Back”
coming to them over the air, hearing in another country. And the people of that
country can have the equally remarkable experience of hearing “Five Hours
Forward.” They can hear the people of another country “seeing the New Year in
“while it is for them the early evening of the last day of old year. And if we
are covering a long distance by ship we have the experience of finding that a
certain day can last only 23 hours or for as long as 25 hours!.
700 Common Words Exercise No. 18
This is the story which my friend sometimes tells on a
long summer evening, as we sit together by the open window, finding pleasure in
the sweet clear air after the still heat of the day. In those days I was an
even better walker than I am today, and as you know I still very much like a
good, quick walk. Well, on that particular August morning I set out quite
early, before the day was too warm for easy walking. I carried with me enough
food to meet my small needs and was therefore able to keep away from towns of
any kind. I was healthy in the way that the young are healthy, and I walked
with quick easy steps, covering the first eight miles of the road in just under
two hours. But with the increasing warmth of the day I found that I was doing
very little more than two and a half miles an hour. Even the small additional
weight of the food I was carrying troubled me, and as it was by this time
several hours since my last meal it seemed reasonable that I should look out
for a place where I could rest and have a meal in peace. After a time I reached
a point where the road comes very near to a small river, and I was pleased
enough by that time to walk across the field and to find near the water some
undergrowth high enough to offer me some cover from the full light and heat of
the open countryside round about. I took water from the clear, quick-running
river, and built a small fire upon some stones, and so made my simple meal.
Such was the heat of the day that it was as much as I could do to keep my eyes
open, but, using all my will-power, I was about to clear away the rest of the
food when I saw standing before me a little old woman. So lined was her face that
it seemed to me there was no room left upon it for any personal expression or
feeling, and her dress was as old as her face. Standing there, she appeared to
me to be not of this day, not of yesterday, and not of tomorrow, but to
represent Time itself. But when she began to speak I found her words were
common-place enough. Sir, she said, Could you give me some bread and perhaps
some milk? I immediately began to clean up the piece of ground which had served
as a table for me, making a place for the old woman to sit. I saw, however,
that she took almost nothing of the food and drink offered to her, and as she
sat without speaking I watched her face. Tell me, old woman, I said, to my own
complete surprise, were you always as you are now or were you once young and
beautiful? Had you once a home and a family, or have you always walked these
roads and fields? The old woman turned her head and looked at me for a long
time without speaking. The lines on her face grew even deeper, and her old blue
eyes were serious as she answered: Young man, I cannot remember. For long eggs
I have walked these roads and these fields. I have walked other roads and other
fields. Always I have walked and always I shall walk. I am old, and perhaps I
have never been young. I am plain, and perhaps I have never been beautiful. But
you, you are young and you are beautiful. You are strong and you have health.
You have all the qualities of the young. Because of these things I am speaking
to you now. Shall I tell her to go away? I thought, She does not know what she
is talking about anyway. I will stand up and get my things together and
continue my walk. I moved, but immediately the voice of this strange old woman
came to me again, No, do not go. You must hear what I have to say. Yes, I
thought. I will wait and hear what she has to say, for if she is as wise as she
is old her words may be of some use to me in the future. But the seconds passed
and no words came. I looked again and no one was there. Not feeling very
pleased with myself at the thought that I must have been weak enough to fall
off for a few minutes, and believing that these had not really happened, I
began to clear up what was left of my meal. And then I knew that the old woman,
had been there, for my bread was gone and in its place was this. At this point
in his story my friend opens his hand, and on it rests a lovely clear blue
stone, in a beautiful setting of gold. I always carry this about with me now,
he adds, and I know that someday I shall see that old woman again, and find out
what it was she had to say.
700 Common Words Exercise No. 19
It was a beautiful night. Although it was very warm
the air clear, and it was possible to make out the distant line of the higher
land to the east. The leaves moved a little as the night air played among them,
and we could hear the sounds of the movement as we walked along. The fireflies
were out in their hundreds, and their lights came and went as they flew along.
We could follow their course by watching the coming and the going of their little
lights. When we first got out of the car and began to walk we thought that
everything was still and soundless, but as we grew used to the night we found
that all was sound and movement. Masses of little living things were on the
move, and they all in turn gave voice to their desires or needs as they went on
their way, perhaps looking for food, perhaps moving for no reason at all except
the desire not to be still. It was dangerous, people said, to walk about after
night had fallen. Animals were out under cover of the night, and would not be
seen until it was too late. The great water-loving animals, who kept in the
water by day, came on land at night, and with their great heavy bodies they
could overturn a car. They could run, too, and it would be very difficult for
man or woman to move quickly enough to get out of their way once they charged.
Just stories, we thought. You would not get these things happening so near to
houses and a town, we said. It was only a small town, but still it was a town,
and one did not in these days get charged by animals in streets and among
houses. But, of course we were no longer on the streets, and the lights of the
nearest houses could not be seen. The only lights we saw were the little ones
of the fireflies as they went on their way, for purposes known only to
themselves. It was the kind of night on which anything could happen, for not
often in life are nights quite so perfect, quite so cut off from all that is
real and earthly. We made our way little by little to the water. At last we
came into the open, and there in front of us was a mighty inland sea, a piece
of water two hundred miles and more across. The water was still and was touched
by little points of light copied from the millions of white bodies over our
heads. They looked so near in that clear night that we had the feeling that we
could touch them if we sailed on the waters. If only we had a little sailing
ship now! We cried. If only we could sail away, out and out on this still,
beautiful water. If we sailed away, out and out on this still, beautiful water.
If we sailed away now, said one, I am sure we could never come back. That water
is not of this world, I am sure, and when daylight came we should find
ourselves in the great unknown. We did not really believe this, and yet it
seemed possible. Anything seemed possible on such a night and in such a place.
Then we heard the strangest sound and, looking in its direction, we saw our
eyes now used to the blackness great animals coming out of the water and on to
the land, about two hundred yards away. Without speaking we turned away, trying
not to call attention to our movements. When we were out of the open and among
the undergrowth once more we walked quickly. As we got near to the car we said:
You see, those stories are not true. The things keep near to the water. They
would not come all this way. But when we reached our car we found it on its
side, and the footmarks of a large animals were clearly to be seen on the earth
nearby.
700 Common Words Exercise No. 20
The woman sat at the open window and looked out upon
the peaceful and well-known scene. It was June and the countryside was looking
its best. The leaves were fully out but had not yet lost the sweet light
colours of the early summer months. The scene was indeed beautiful because of
its lovely colours, for the form of the land itself was rather without
interest. There were no highlands and no lowlands to break up the great plain
which went on and on for many miles. The place was dependent upon the little
things to make it interesting and pleasing to the eye, having no great land
masses to hold the eye and the attention. All those little details were
well-known to the woman who watched from her window on that June day. She knew
just how much growth had been added to the plants under her window since June
had last come and gone; she knew just what would appear from each part of the
ground round the house, when to expect it, and how to care for it. Her
knowledge of the countryside and of her own little piece of land had grown up
naturally within her during the 15 years that she had lived in that old stone
house. It was quite a small house with two rooms looking out on to the road and
two bedrooms above. It was simple and plain but it met her needs and the needs
of her small family. The first of her children a boy, was at school and another
hour would pass before the would return, running along the little road that led
to the house. The younger of her children was a little girl, and the woman
could see her at play from where she sat. she was happy, healthy-looking young
girl of 8, with the lovely natural colouring that results from good food and
enough of it, and good clean air. While the mother sat at the window she was
not thinking either of the loveliness of the countryside or of the healthy
colour in her children’s faces. Those were the things that were part of life
itself and they were the things in danger of being lost, lost forever. If once
she and her little family left there they would never return, of that she was
certain. And it was of that possible going away that she thought to seriously
as she sat by the little window on that peaceful June Day. Father had been
offered a good position in the City and, while he said that he would do
whatever she wished in the matter, while he left it to her to say yes or no, he
desired very, very much to take up the position, and she knew that this was so.
Nor did she think him wrong. He had, she knew, a good, quick mind, a mind that
was never still, a mind ever at work on some idea or another. On the long
nights of the long winters he would read his books and work out idea and plans,
and in the mornings he would go off to his work which made no demands at all he
would go off to his work which made no demands at all upon that clear mind. His
voice was never heard speaking against his work or his way of life, but because
she loved him she knew that deep inside him was the desire for something more
than that easy, peacefully life gave him. A month ago two gentlemen from the
big city had called at his office in connection with some business and out of
that call had come this officer of employment at a rate of pay that would offer
them great advantages. There would be money for better education for the
children, which was a big consideration. On the other hand, thought the woman,
the good health of the children might be lost if they lived near the city with
no fields to play in, no river by which to fish, no well-known friends. Her
brother’s children were very weakly and they had been brought up in a big town.
On and on went the thoughts. Father had said that she must be the one to say
yes or no, but thinking of him she would have to say yes. If, however, she told
him that he must be the one to say yes or no he would think of her and say no.
I must begin to sort our things out, she said. Father must have his
opportunity. He has worked so hard for it.
700 Common Words Exercise No. 21
The heat of the day had been such that even the houses
seemed to be on fire. If you put out a hand to touch one of the old stones of
which the houses were built you took your hand away quickly, feeling that it
had been burned. The air itself could be seen, never still but moving upwards
from the streets and the houses and the distant fields. It was not usually for
the little town to be so very warm. For some years past the summer had been
rather cold with poor weather, and the people kept to their warm dresses and
did not trouble to spend time and money on buying light things which they might
put on perhaps once only in a year. Nature, however, has her own little ways of
interesting herself and us, and she loves nothing better than to do something
that is not expected of her. To give us a very cold day in January and a very
cold day in January and a very warm once in August is easy. There is no
interest for Mother Nature in that, and she loves to play with us, giving us a
warm December and a cold August. Still, if she did that every year that, too,
would become the expected, so this year she has given the little town where we
live the warmest August on record. At first the people loved it, and put up
with their heavy winter dress, but after several days they began to feel a
little weak. It is lovely, they said, but of course we are not used to it. Less
and less covering were placed on the beds at night, and the few stores in the
little town son sold all their summer dresses and wired to the wholesalers for
more. The men continued, of course, to put on each day their heavy things for
it is difficult for a man to change his ways. Nearly all the men were employed
in the great new works that had been built just outside the town shortly after
the war. From the high ground about two miles beyond the town you could see the
sea to the south, but the down were between the town and the sea, and no
suggestion of sea air reached the people as they went to and from their labour.
The air was heavy and the people seemed to feel its weight as they walked
about. Plants were dying just when they should have been at their best, and the
lovely colours were going from the countryside. If you sat at your door in the
evening you could hear little pieces of the talk going on among friends, for
all doors and window were kept open until the last light of day had gone. I
shall die if it lasts much longer, says a high young voice, a voice full of
health. I shall just die. Die you will not, answers an old and rather weak
voice. Die you surely will not just because of a little heat. Heat? Now when I
was your age And the story of those past days is told, only to be followed by
another story from some still more aged person going back still further into
the past. What is the matter with you all, to be sure? Asks a strong young man.
It is a change from being cold, anyway. Then from quite nearby comes the sweet
young voice of a girl talking to a boy. It would be lovely to see the sea, she
is saying. Do you think it would be worth the trouble of walking to the down
and looking out at the sea? It must look so still and peaceful and beautiful. I
would walk to the end of the world for you, Penny. Even in this heat? Even in
this heat, he answered. Two people in the little town found life to their
liking.
700 Common Words Exercise No. 22
I happened yesterday to hear on the radio the
question: If you could be some other person who would you want to be? And the
answer was: Myself. At this the first man asked again: Why, what is so
wonderful about being you? And this time the answer was: There is nothing so
wonderful about it but it is very comfortable. All this was not, of course,
meant to be taken seriously, but I could not help thinking that really it is
comfortable to be just ourselves even though it is not particularly wonderful.
The question who would you like to be? Is not a new once, and I am sure all of us
have played at time with the idea of being some other person. If we are girls
or women we think at first, perhaps, that it would be lovely to be a very, very
beautiful person. Then we think that perhaps it would be still better to have
masses and masses of money so that we could buy whatever we desired at the
moment we desired it. We might perhaps think that it would be wonderful to be
able to marry the most good-looking man in the world. If it is a man thinking
along these lines he will probably want to be a person well known in science or
in the political field; he will want to be a person well in the public eye. He,
too, might find the idea of having masses and masses of money rather pleasing,
but it is not very likely that he will wish to be outstanding good-looking.
There is nothing particularly wrong about playing with the idea of being very
beautiful or very well-to-do or well-known because we all know at the same time
that wishing will not make it so There are indeed some other words that we
still hear from time to time on the radio. They are: Whatever will be will. The
future is not ours to see. What will be will be. The future certainly is not
ours to see, but there is one thing about the future that is certain, and that
is that we shall continue to be ourselves and shall not get out of bed one
morning to find that we are some other person. And this is just as well because
we can be sure that, however many troubles and difficulties we may have in our
lives, it is still much more comfortable to be ourselves than to be another
person. It would be very strange indeed to get up one day and find everything
changed, to see everything with different eyes, to feel everything with
different hands, to think with a different mind, and to have a different store
of thoughts and memories. The most serious of the changes would probably be to
find ourselves thinking with a different mind. If we have always believed in
telling the truth and in being kind to others, we could find little pleasure in
the mind of a person who believed in reaching his or her own end regardless of
truth or kindness. If we have always looked at the world with eyes that have
found. Nature beautiful and wonderful, it would be hard to find ourselves
without a moment in which to interest ourselves in the daily movement and
change round about us. Even less pleasing is the idea of the loss of our own
memories. All the things, all the people and events we have loved in the past,
would be lost to us, and we should find in our minds in place of them another
set of memories of people and events, and they would certainly be of a
different order from our own. Of course, you will say that these things would
not really matter because if we became another person we should think and act
as that person and we should like it, having no memory at all of our old
selves. That, no doubt, is true but the important point is that in wanting to
be that other person we should have to take all the other changes as well. We
could not just have the good looks or the money or the good opinion of the
world. It would be all or nothing and our personality would be lost to us. In
its place would be another and quite different personality. It seems a great
comfort, therefore, to know that we shall never have the opportunity to make such
a change. We shall go on just being ourselves.
700 Common Words Exercise No. 23
How we say a thing is generally just as important as
what we say. Sometimes it is important because we can change the meaning of the
words we use by the way we say them. If we place weight on one word rather than
on another we can change the feeling of our words. By changing the expression
of our voice we can suggest that we are serious or that we are speaking only in
Play. For example, you may say to friend: You really are the most senseless
person I ever met! With such a remark you could break with your friend forever,
but in 9 cases out of 10 such a remark will have been made lightly, as if in
play, and if under the words there is just a suggestion of seriousness your friend
is free not to remark upon it because you have made the statement so lightly.
Sometimes people do not wish it to be said that they are not speaking the
truth, and yet they do not want to speak the truth. They therefore take words
which in themselves could be true but use them in such a way as to suggest a
different meaning. It is not, however, only in connection with meaning or the
results of our words that it is important to be careful. How we use voices is
important in itself. We often hear such remarks as: She has such a pleasing
speaking voice or Her voice really gets me down. I simply could not live with
it. And it is true that there are voices we like to hear and voices that we do
not like to hear. Few of us really know the sound of our own voices. It seems
that our hearing is not planned in such a way as to let us hear ourselves
perfectly. We therefore often go through life thinking we speak in one way
when, in fact, we speak in some quite different way. Our opportunities for
hearing our own voices are much better than they used to be because recording
machines are now quite common, and most of us can find an opportunity at some
time or another to speak into such a machine and then have the record played
back. Generally such an experience is a surprise. I was personally very much
surprised at my own voice. The first time I heard a record of it was some years
ago. I was in a strange town, and I went into a big store. This store offered
for quite a small sum to let you speak into the recording machine and they
would then send the record of your voice to any part of the world. I thought it
would be good to send a few words home to my mother, and I accordingly thought
up a few words, said them, paid, and went away. Some weeks afterwards I heard
the record. It was a surprise but no just the kind of surprise I like. I had
always thought I had a rather light voice and said my words reasonably quickly.
I found that on the record my voice was low, almost deep, and that I had been
speaking at a very rate. More recently I made a full-size record speaking
throughout at 100 words a minute, but the result was just the same. On the
play-back I heard a low, rather deep voice, speaking at about 10 words a
minute! We can never really know ourselves what we look like, what we sound
like, how our actions appear to others. Perhaps this is just as well because,
even if we cannot really see ourselves as we are, it is equally certain that
other people do not see us as we really are, either. The opinions each person
holds about another person are influenced by that person’s many experiences, as
well as by the quality of the person’s own hearing and seeing. There is one
thing that we can do, however, and that is to train ourselves to speak and act
in a way that we ourselves believe to be satisfactory. If we cannot please
others we can at least try to please ourselves, but it is important, highly
important in fact, that we try to follow only the best examples.
700 Common Words Exercise No. 24
Paper itself has come to us from the Far East where it
was first used, but the word paper has come down to us from the Near East and
different forms of the word are found in several languages. Paper is certainly
one of the most common things in the modern world. Every day masses of it are used:
very day masses of it are burnt: and every day masses more of it are made and
supplied to the waiting people of the world. People always want paper and the
manufacturer of it need not fear that the demand for his product will fall off.
Without paper our modern life would, at least for a time, come to a complete
stop. It is indeed very much to be questioned whether our modern life could
ever have come about had there been no paper or time other product of a like
nature which was cheap, lasting, and serviceable. Without paper we could not
write letters to one another. Millions of letters are written every day, some
very important and some of little importance, and they are all written on
paper. Before the use of paper, writing had first to be done by cutting the
characters out of stone and later by using materials which cost so much that
only such people as Kings and army leaders could have them. The common people
could not write and it would have been useless had they been able to write
because there would have been nothing on which to write. And, of course, we can
see at once how impossible it would be to teach people to write if there was no
cheap material on which to write. Today, we in this country all go to school as
children and there we learn to write and to read, and as soon as we can write
and read simple words we begin to learn other things until most of us end by
knowing something about quite a number of things. Some know more and some know
rather less, but it is just about impossible to find anyone in this country
today has not had the opportunity to learn. And for this happy state of things
we generally thank the Government. Little more than a hundred years ago it was
by no means a natural thing for all children to go to school: but the Governments
that have followed one another throughout the years have made it more and more
possible for young people to go to school until we have reached the state today
when we believe that not only should all children go to school and so learn to
read and to write, but we believe further that all children should be given the
opportunity to receive higher education if they show themselves able to take
advantage of such training. The Government have been very wise and helpful in
passing all the Acts which have brought us to this happy state, but the fact is
that it was really the supply of cheap paper in great amounts that made it
possible for us all to learn. Can we picture what school life would be like
without our notebooks and our instruction books? There would stand a teacher
and facing him would sit 20, 30, or 40 little children longing, let us say, to
read and to write, to learn about the history of their own country and of other
countries, to learn about their own land and about other lands. But the teacher
has no books because he has no paper, and the children have nothing on which
they can write and then take away their work and learn it. Everything must be
done from memory. The teacher has to remember what he has been told and the
children in their turn have to remember what they have been told. Memory is
often a poor help. Nearly everyone finds it easier to learn through reading
words than through hearing them. If we wish we can read the words in a book
over and over again but the words of the teacher, once said, are lost for ever.
We can, of course, ask him to say them over again, but the time taken to learn
wholly in this way would be so great that the children would end up by knowing
very little in most cases. Learning became general when books became general.
While books were the property of the few, learning was also the property of the
few. Now books may be had for the asking and learning, too, may be had for the
asking. It is only our personal qualities that limit the field of our
knowledge.
700 Common Words Exercise No. 25
Do you take an interest in life? You might well answer
that it all depends upon what taking an interest means, and you would do well
to answer in that way because much trouble is caused in life through people not
expressing themselves in a clear enough way. If by taking an interest in life
is meant that we would rather be living than dying, it is probable that almost
every living person is interested. If, however, we take it as given that
everyone would rather live than die, we must find other meanings for the words.
We can indeed be interested in life from very many points of view. Many
well-to-do and highly successful business men have reached that happy state
because they have found a great interest in living their own lives to the full
and not paying too much attention to other people’s actions. They have got up
each day ready to overcome any difficulties that may face them and willing to
meet any demands that life may make upon them. When times have been bad they
have not lost hope; when times have been good they have not lost their heads
but have remembered that the years in front of them might not always be so
good. They have given of their best in their daily lives, and in return they
have found success. It is not everyone, however, who can find working life so
satisfactory in itself. It is not everyone who can find work that meets all the
needs of the mind. Such people demand pleasures beyond those of labour, and
they try to find an interest in life in other dictions. But the directions are
so many that it is not easy to know in which direction to look. Happily, we do
not as a rule have to look far for we seem to have natural interests. It seems
to come quite naturally to us to sort our feelings, and from the great number
of possible fields of interest we find forces pulling us this way or that. The
interests of some people change considerably with the passing of the years;
other people seem to hold an interest in the same kind of things throughout
their whole lives. Some people, for example, have a life-long interest in
getting together sets of books, particularly copies of the first publication of
a book. Others like to buy pictures, and they always hope that one day they
will have the pleasure of buying an old picture very cheaply only to be told
afterwards by the experts that it is a true Old Master and is worth many
thousands of pounds. Such finds were certainly possible in times past, but it
is doubtful whether in these days there are many Old Masters which have been
put away and which no one has afterwards remembered, so they are now just
waiting for the day when an expert will discover their true worth. Too many
people have for too long been finding an interest in the buying and selling of
pictures to make it possible for such an event to happen often. Still, people
go on hoping and quite rightly so. With books there may be the some hope: one
day a person may have the happiness of buying an old second hand-book for a few
pennies only to discover afterwards that it is a very valuable book indeed, and
would get a high price if offered for sale. There are people who have a deep
interest in show business of all kinds, serious or otherwise. Some people find
their interest in the open air life, and they are never so happy as when waling
over the downs or through the fields; or perhaps their love for the open air
leads them to take a very great interest in the large or small piece of land
round their house. It must be kept perfect, they feel, and very lovely such
places generally look. There are many persons, young ones particularly, who
find much pleasure in playing records. They will sit beside their record player
for hours, playing over the most recent records they have bought. For some
people “taking an interest in life” means keeping up-to-date in their knowledge
of passing events. They read books and newspapers which keep them informed
about the most recent developments in science or in the political field, and in
industry or engineering. At all costs they wish to be well informed on daily
events. What form our interest may take, it is important to have such an
interest.
700 Common Words Exercise No. 26
It was just a day at the office like any other. Being
there first, as she nearly always was, Penny took the cover off her machine and
have the machine a quick clean. This did not take long because Penny did it
each day, and the machine was, therefore, kept in very good condition. From
time to time she oiled it is well, and because of these kind attention the
machine caused her no trouble. She then cleaned Mr. White’s table, making quite
sure that everything was ready and in order. Mr. White was quite a good
employer and easy to work with, as a rule, but he did sometimes make a scene if
small things went wrong. So Penny had found out that the best thing to do was
to make sure that nothing went wrong. By the time all these small matters had
been seen to, Miss West had come in. Penny and Miss West both worked for Mr.
White. Penny was only 17 years of age and had been in the office for less than
a year, whereas Miss West was 22 and had been in the office for less than a
year, whereas Miss West was 22 and had been with Mr. White for 4 years. Penny
did not mind being under Miss West because she knew that she had not yet had
enough experience to take the full responsibilities herself, and moreover Miss
West was almost always kind and helpful. Of course, if Mr. White made life
difficult for Miss West for any reason, she then passed it on and made things
difficult for Penny, but on the whole all was quite peaceful and such upsets
did not last long. Miss West opened her notebook and began to complete letters
left over from the day before, while Penny put answered letters away and placed
copies of letters sent out into the Letter Book. They worked without speaking
for about half an hour. Then the door opened once again and Mr. White passed
through the office on the way to his own room, which opened out of the general
office. He was small man with quick movements, a man who seemed to be able to
get through a great amount of work in no time at all. He seemed, too, to
remember the smallest details of everything that had happened. He remembered
the names of all of his customers, and he always considered their personalities
when writing or speaking to them. He often used to remark that it was not only
the quality of a product that made it easy to sell a thing: it was also an
understanding of the person to whom the goods were to be sold. If the customer
liked you and believed that you liked him, he used to say, the sale was already
half way towards being made. Having read through the morning’s letters which he
liked to open himself Mr. White called Miss West into his office to take down
some answers. Penny went off, as she did each morning during the winter months,
to heat up some milk. She took this in for Mr. White and Miss West. Often,
however, Miss West’s milk went cold because, as she said: He never stops
speaking for long enough for me to touch it! In the summer months, of course,
the morning drink was something very cold, and Miss West’s trouble was that it
became warm before she could touch it! In the summer months, of long enough for
me to touch it! In the summer months, of course, the morning drink was
something very cold, and Miss West’s trouble was that it became warm before she
could touch it! And so the events of the day were much as they always were. As
it was a Wednesday, however, Penny went out at 12.30 to a little place near to
the office where the meals were rather better than at most places which were
within her means. The meal cost a little more than on other days of the week
but she went there happily because six girls of her own age and from her
old school met there each Wednesday to
have a meal together and to exchange news and views. Penny looked forward to
these Wednesday meetings very much. The girls talked freely of any difficulties
they met with in their work, and she was able to learn more about office life
in this way than would have been possible in one small office.
700 Common Words Exercise No. 27
Time, as we have remarked before, is the most valuable
thing that we have to spend. We can use our time or we can waste it, just as we
can use of waste our money. There is one very important difference between time
and money, however. All the people who are reading these words won different
amounts of money no two people, in all probability, would be found to have just
the same sum, down to the last penny, if all the money to which they had a
right were put down on the table. But everyone has the same amount of time. We
all have our 24 hours each day, and for every one of us the hour will supply
just sixty minutes of time, no more and no less. The minute will give us sixty
seconds, no more and no less. The minute will give us sixty seconds, no more
and no less and there is nothing whatever that we can do about it, try as we
may. Sometimes we long to make time pass more quickly because we are waiting
for something wonderful to happen, and sometimes we long to make the time pass
less quickly because we like the present moment so much. Science, which has
done such wonderful things, has not yet found a way to change this regular
passing of time. It does not seem certain, however, that time is really quite
the same for every one of us. It is true that we cannot get away from the
seconds, minutes and hours of each day, but it is possible that some people
have a feeling for time which is different from that of other people. This may
account for the fact that there are people who seem to be able to get through a
great amount of work in quite a short time while there are others who, no
matter how hard they work, seem to get very little done. This is not the result
of any real difference in time itself, however; it is probably owing to a
difference in the way that our minds work. If one person has a mind that is
very quick, that sees the point of some remark at once, that knows the answer
to a question almost before the question has been asked then that person is
certainly likely to do more in any given time than the person who needs to look
this way and that before seeing the point of a remark, and who has to think
hard and long before being able to answer a question. That is a difference in
the mind, not in the passing of time. Much of our time is spent at work, in
school, office or home, but it is a poor day that offers us no time at all to
spend how we like, and the way we spend those few hours that we have to
ourselves differ from person to person. In these days quite a considerable part
of people’s free time is spent in watching TV. Before the coming of TV people
spent more time with the radio. Before the radio came three were the pictures,
and before that there were books. All these ways of spending time now exist
together, and we have many ways of keeping ourselves interested. It has always
been considered respectable to read books. Even when a person spent rather too
much time upon reading, sitting up at night when he should have been in bed, he
was in some way respected for this. To read was to learn and to get knowledge
was a good thing. But, of course, many people did not read to learn. Many read
light books love stories, for example and when young people read such stories
their mothers would say that they were wasting time and that they did not read
such things where they were young. When it came to going to the pictures the
pictures were not considered quite respectable. It was perhaps all right to go
to the pictures, say once a week but to go more often was somehow not quite the
thing, and when young people did anything wrong it was put down to the bad
influence of the pictures. The possible bad influence of the pictures. The
possible bad influence of light reading was no longer remembered, and the old
people of the new day would say that they did not go to the pictures in their
young days. Today it is the turn of TV. Watching YV night after night is often
said to be the cause of wrong acts committed by young people because, of
course, the old people of the still newer age did not watch TV in their young
days. Perhaps a form of pleasure has to be more or less out of- date before we
can consider it a respectable way of passing the time?
700 Common Words Exercise No. 28
The young woman walked from room to room of the house.
It was not a very large house; it was, indeed, a house like so many others up
and down the country. It had in it 5 rooms, two down with 3 bedrooms above. It
had electric fires in all the bedrooms and an electric water-heating system.
The fact that her house was just like thousands of other small houses did not
influence the judgement of the young woman at all. In one way it was quite
different from all the other houses, for it was hers. It was her own house to
live in and to make comfortable and beautiful. It was her own house, and she
had made up her mind to live happily in it and to make all who lived in it
happy as well. Her mind was serious as she moved about, but her heart was
light. I am a married woman now, she thought. I am married woman with all the
responsibility that goes with marriage, but how happy I am! And, of course, she
ought to have been happy. Her name was Penny. Two weeks before she had been
Penny Wills: now she was Penny Read, and had been married for two weeks. Only
the day before she had returned from the seaside to begin her life in her new
home. The house itself was not new but it was quite modern, and she had spent
much time during the last few weeks buying materials and making up her mind
about colours. The point work she had kept light in colour, but in each room
she had employed a different basic colour. One room, for example, was light
blue white another was done in a very, very light golden colour. The paint in
the sitting-room and in the best bedroom was, however, white. It was all very
pleasing, even to the eye of a person not particularly interested, and to Penny
it was just wonderful. She had received many presents, for she was a girl with
an agreeable nature and many friends, and those presents she was not putting
out, taking care that each thing should go in the best possible place for it.
She had received six pictures and each picture had to be placed in such a way
that it showed to the best advantage. She did not want a picture where so
little light fell on it that it could not be seen clearly; but, on the other
hand, she did not want the full light to fall on it in such a way that no one
could see the picture. Every detail was important to Penny as she carried on
with her happy work, and she did everything with loving care. Before her work
had come to an end, however, she had to leave it and to think of food. Her
special friend was calling on her that afternoon. It would be the first time in
her life that she had had a friend call on her in her own home, and it was
quite, quite necessary that everything should be perfect. She had been trained
in the arts of housekeeping, and it was not long before all sorts of good
things were ready. To set the table for two was a small matter, but even that
seemed to take a long time, so carefully was it done. Then Penny had to change
her dress. The dress she had on was pleasing enough but it was not new. Her
friend had already seen it. Penny believed that as a married woman she ought to
put on a new dress so that they would look just as different in the eyes of her
friend as she was feeling in her own heart.
700 Common Words Exercise No. 29
Today we have so many different means of getting
comfortably and quickly from one place to another that we perhaps do not value
some of these means as much as we ought. In the early days of man’s
development, he had to walk or to run if he desired to get from one to another.
Then, after many years, he discovered that he could sit on the back of an
animal if he moved on land, and in this way he sat at east while the animal laboured
for him. The animal used naturally differed in different countries. A very
important development came when men discovered that they could move across
water. The object that carried them over the water in those far-off days could
not be called a ship as we understand that word today. Poor as the methods may
have been, however, they did let men reach place that would be otherwise cut
off by water. For thousands of years there was no development beyond this.
There existed no quick means of movement. Life was simple and hard. But thins
do not stand still. We must, we are told, move onwards or move back, and men
seem always to have desired to move forward. No matter what point they reach,
they always see something more calling them onwards. Out of this desire for a
better material life came good roads, big ships, railways, motorcars and
planes. So used are we to wonderful planes and to powerful motor-cars that we
are in danger of under valuing the railway, that rather out-of-date method of
moving across the country! Few people in these days use the railway for
pleasure: they use it because it is a useful means a getting somewhere
reasonably quickly. If a friend tells us that he is going somewhere by plane we
are immediately interested. If he tells that he has bought a handsome new car
and is going to such a place we are likely to be interested. If he going
overseas in one of the large and modern ships all his friends will want to see
him off. Let him go by rail, however, and no one will take the smallest interest
in him. Railways are all right in their way, but they are not news! Yet the
railway has played an important part in the greatness of our country. Railways
have quite a long history if we go back to the times when the trains were led
by horses, but they have a history of only a hundred or so years when we speak
of the railway in its modern form. The present heavy railway, with great
engines and iron or steel railway lines, was developed in this country, and
from here it was soon sent to most parts of the world. The English built
railways were found not only in this country but in other countries overseas,
and in a remarkably short time engines were carrying trains full of people and
goods at rates as high as those used today. These rates do not seem very remarkable
today, used as we are to hearing of planes moving at 500 or a thousand miles an
hour, but they seemed very remarkable to people a hundred years ago. There were
no motor-cars and the horse was used as the quickest, safest and best means of
getting about on roads that were for the most part very bad indeed. Quite small
distances often took days to cover. In such conditions as these it is natural
that the railway seemed a thing of most outstanding importance. It is certain
that without it this country could not have gone forward in the wonderful way
it has. It is doubtful whether even the plane in this age has really been so
important for the country as the train was in the earlier age. In the building
of railways this country led the world, but in recent years certain other
countries have shown more drive in keeping their railways clean and up-to-date.
700 Common Words Exercise No. 30
Sometimes it seems that the more we know and the more
we learn, the less remarkable we consider our learning and our knowledge to be.
When other people can do something that we ourselves cannot do we think that
they must be of much more worth than we ourselves are. Yet, as soon as we can
do that same thing we think nothing of it, and begin to look round for
something new to learn or to do. It even seems that we act in this same way in
our thoughts about the new goods and the new machines that are so often and so
readily put before us in these days. It is, perhaps, difficult to continue to
find each new thing so very remarkable when new and better things follow one
another at such a great rate. We still find ourselves greatly interested,
however, when something quite new comes along. The first plane to fly over
water looks a very poor thing if we see it now, but it certainly caused more
talk and general interest than the largest and most modern plane causes today,
let it have four engines or eight engines, or as many as the engineers wish.
Planes are no longer new, and they are hardly even news. The public expects its
engineers and its men of science to bring out newer and larger and better
planes. For what does the public pay taxes, if not for such things, one might
ask? The first manmade object to free itself from the earth’s pull and to fly
off to outer distances may be worth several lines in the newspaper. The second
such object may be much bigger and it may leave the earth much more quickly,
but because it is not the first it cannot hope to get the interest of the
public in the say way. In these days we have the most wonderful machines to do
for us addition, division and other sums. A thousand sums in a second is
nothing to such a machine. Quickly and still more quickly the figures fly, but
the public hardly cares. It is probable that there was much more interest three
hundred years ago in the first adding machine ever made. That first machine was
made by a young man in the attempt to lessen the labours of his father, who was
responsible for taxation and who worked long hours adding up figures. Further
machines followed, and it is interesting to note that all those early machines
were made by people working by themselves, all on their own. In these days the
usual thing is for organized workers to act together in such matters. The first
machine could work only country during the Machine Age, a hundred or more years
ago, brought with it a growing demand for adding machines. Business and
industrial growth took place side by side with the growth in the size of the
banks and increased use of the credit system. It was natural that the time soon
came when most banks and offices could not think of operating without the help
of adding machines. Now we have machines that can do the most surprising and
difficult pieces of work. Difficult sums that might take a man a year or more
to do are carried out in a matter of minutes. If the machine goes wrong it
knows that it has done so, and it takes action to put things right. These
machines are said to have a memory; they are even said by some to think. In
fact, some man somewhere has to do the thinking first, and the machine acts
afterwards according to that man’s instructions. It cannot act by itself but
can do only what it is told to do. It cannot, therefore, by said to have a mind
and to be able to think. The machine can, however, store facts and figures and
make use of them later, and in that way it perhaps can be said to have a
memory. The machines are certainly wonderful but in our daily lives we hardly
give them a thought. They represent just one of so many remarkable things,
after all.
700 Common Words Exercise No. 31
If a book is really successful the public may buy it
in very large numbers. Sometimes we see figure, showing that several hundred
thousand copies of a book have been bought. It is of interest to ask: What does
the public ask for in the books which it reads for pleasure? In this field as
with all other arts, there is the man or the woman who says: I do not know much
about writing, but I do know what books I like to read. And if we may judge
from the books which have been great successes it seems safe to say that what
the masses of the people ask for in their reading is a book which tells a good
story about interesting people, a book with movement and life in it. There are
always people ready to give the public what it asks for in such respects, and
writers who wish to make money from their writing have been almost forced to
write books of the kind which please the people who make up the largest market
for their work. Now a book writing with this public in view may still be a good
book, but very often it is not the book which the writer would have written had
he been quite free to follow his own wishes. The form of book provided by many
writers is the book which tells a clear story, which gives a picture of a
number of men and women who at the beginning of the book are in one set of
conditions, and who move step by step throughout the book into a different and
more pleasing set of conditions. Such a book gives the reader a sense of order.
The people in these books act and think along certain lines, and it is only in
details that the stories differ. But during recent years the more thoughtful
writers have been attempting a new form. It is said that the course which our
lives take depends upon our personal thoughts, the thoughts which, if told at
all, are told only to those nearest or dearest to us. It is in these personal
thoughts that the writers are interested. The important thing, they say, is to
set down the life which goes on in a man’s mind not so much the thoughts which
result from the day to day happenings, but the long line of thoughts which
makes up his real life. But both old and the new form of book are subject to
material considerations and it not possible for every event or every thought to
be set down. All writers have to face this question of what to use and what to
leave out. The writer of the book with a story uses those events or thoughts
which help on the telling of his story. The wish of the writer of the new form
of book is to give complete picture of the minds of the people he is telling us
about. So he makes his book, or each part of his book, cover only a short time,
and gives a complete picture of what is happening in the minds of the people
during he is telling us about. So he makes his book, or each part of his book,
cover only a short time, and gives a complete picture of what is happening in
the minds of the people during that time. This new form is not always pleasing
to readers used only to the old form, as there are no clear steps in the story
told, and there is nothing final at the end of the book. But while a reader may
find pleasure in reading a book which shows for the hundredth time that two and
two make four, it that purpose. Without doubt he finds pleasure in the book
line by line and page by page. The story is not a really necessary part of his
pleasure in reading, and it is probably that with the development of the new
form the general reader may come to like it more.
700 Common Words Exercise No. 32
Oh, for the good old days!” How often have we heard
those words! How often have we been told of those good old days and of how
happy they were? In those days the weather during all the months of the summer
was perfect; in the winter it was just what winter weather should be. Life was
more peaceful; events did not follow one another quite so quickly; friends were
more true and more understanding. There was more respect for family life, men
were happy in their work, and life was a very good thing. Those past days, we
are told, were very different from the present days of restlessness and doubt,
of the wrong weather in both summer and winter. Perhaps we ask: “When were
those happy times, when all men were brothers, and life was so easy and free?”
Some will answer that they were the years before World War I. Other will place
them round about 1900, while others will place them in the “90’s.” In our
reading also we come upon stories of the golden days of the past, but we find
here that at all times during the past two thousand years men have been
pointing back to the happy days of old, attempting to paint for us a picture of
those happy days, and to show us how much better those days were than the times
in which they were then living. What is the reason for this looking back into
the past to find happiness? Perhaps it is that at almost any time there are
many people who are leading happy lives but who do not talk or write about it:
but there are also many others who were happy in their young days but who have
not changed with the ever changing conditions of the life going on about them.
For these people the world used to be a better place than it is at present.
There are few of us who cannot look into the past and find happy days. As
children, we have little or no control over the details of our lives, but we are
generally happy because we are able more easily not to regard these details if
they do not please us. We can cut ourselves off from the outside world and
build up a happy world of our own. It might be easy for us to believe these
people who find good only in the conditions of the past were it not for the
fact that these same people will, at other times, tell us how different things
were when they were young, how hard they were forced to work, for what long
hours they were kept at their worked, how few pleasures they had, and so on.
And for every book which we read telling us the good old days there will be
another telling us of the bad old days, of the hard lives of the masses of the
people. Most of us would not be willing to return to the conditions of life as
it was lived 30, 40 or 50 years ago. We believe that it is better to be living
in the present, with all the troubles of the present day. We know that we have
no right to expect to be happy all the time, and we know also that by keeping
in touch with the life and the thought and the interests of our own times, we
can help to make the present days happy ones, both for ourselves and for
others. We can be certain too, that at some time in the future old people will
look back to these present days and will speak of them as the good old
days.” 626 Words
700 Common Words Exercise No. 33
There are few of us who do not find pleasure in the
knowledge that we hold in our hands a new book, and that we have before us the
necessary hour of rest and peace in which to read it. As we open the book what
do we hope to find in its pages? Are we hoping to increase our knowledge of
some particular subject? Are we expecting to find beauty in the language of the
book and in the writer’s expression of his thoughts? Or are we going to read
the book simple for the pleasure to be found in the story which it will tell?
Some of us will hope to find one thing and others will hope to find a different
thing. But if we are reading just for the story, what kind of story do we hope
the book will tell? What do we wish the book to give us? Do we want the story
to put before us a picture of life as it is, showing us its dangers as well as
its comforts, its troubles as well as its happiness? Or do we want the story to
take us away from the real world and to open out for us a world of they make
believe, to show us life as it might be if this world were perfect, or as it
might be in a quite different world which exists only in the mind of the
writer? Our answers to these questions will depend partly upon the state of our
minds at the time of the question being asked and partly upon the general
purpose of our reading. If we read with no set purpose in mind we shall
probably like best the books of the second kind: if we are reading because we
regard the art of writing as something valuable in itself, because we love to
read well written matter, because we value expression of thought and idea, then
we shall probably want to read books of the first kind, the books which attempt
to paint a picture of life as it is lived day by day, by people in different
countries and in different stations of life. Books of this kind are very often
well written, for it is the writer with the most power over words who can most
successfully put before us these living pictures so that as we read we say:
“Yes, that is so. I have seen that; I have experienced that.” The writer is
writing of what he knows and of what he has seen. Such books develop our minds,
help us to think clearly, and add to our own experience the experience of the
writer. Many years ago a very well-known writer of the time said that there
were two kinds of book, the books of the hour and the books of all time. The
difference, he continued, was not one of quality only it was not merely that
the good book would last while the bad book would not. It was a difference of
kind, for there were good books for the hour and good books for all time, bad
books for the hour and bad books for all time. The book of the make believe
world is generally a book of the hour; it gives us pleasure while we read, but
once it has been read it is not long remembered. Whether it is a good or a bad
book depends upon the quality of the mind of the writer and whether or not he
has something of value to say. On the other hand, we may keep in our minds
forever the memory of a book which shows us the real world, but this is only
possible if, again the writer has had something of value to say and has
expressed his thoughts in language which in itself gives us pleasure. The
reading public grows yearly and the number of books issued grows yearly. Which
of last year’s books will still be read in the years to come? Few of us would
care to express an opinion. 688 Words.
700 Common Words Exercise No. 34
I want to talk for a little while this week about
shorthand writing. How many words a minute can you write at present? How many
words a minute would you like to be able to write? Are you taking any steps to
increase your present rate of writing? I think that there are very few of us
who do not feel that we would like to be able to write more quickly: whether we
can take down good shorthand notes at 50 words a minute or at 250 words a
minute, there is always present a desire to add another 10, 20 or 50 words to
our rate of writing. I think also that it is probably true to say that very few
people ever reach the highest rate at which they could write. I believe that
most writers could, with a little training and work, write more quickly. A
question often asked is: “What rate of writing is required to meet the needs of
most office workers?” Often you will find that the answer given is to the
effect that 80 words a minute will be good enough to carry the writer through
most of his daily work. But experience can show that in many offices this is not
the case, and I think that those of you who are at present writing at 50 or 80
words a minute should make up your minds that you will continue your training
until you can write at 120 words a minute or over. If, when you leave your day
school, you aer able to write at 80, make up your minds to use a little of your
free time each week in perfecting your knowledge of the system and in
increasing your rate of writing. You will not find it a waste of time to do
this. The good situations in offices are given to those who can do better than
the masses. There is, too, the question of your finding happiness in your work.
If, when you get out of bed each morning, you know that you are going into an
office where you will be asked to do just a little more than you are able to
do, you will not feel very happy about it. You will perhaps feel like the
little girl who was five years old and had been at school for three weeks. She
was asked by her mother; “Well, and how do you like school?” “Oh,” said the
little girl, “I wish I was married and out of it all.” If you take a real
interest in your work and know that you can easily meet the demands which will
be made upon you, then you are likely to find happiness in it. Therefore, it is
time well used in your early days if you work hard to become an expert writer.
When you reach a rate of 80 words a minute, do not regard it as the end of the
shorthand road, but rather as a step on the road. Happily, our system of
shorthand is such that it is very easy to reach 120 and 140 words a minute, and
with a little work much higher rates can be reached. A few points for you to
note are: Always use good quality paper for our shorthand notes. Write lightly,
passing quickly from one outline to the next and from the end of one line to
the beginning of the next. A light and easy touch is a sure way to increase the
rate of writing. Make sure that you have a good knowledge of the general rules
of the system and of the special short forms. Read and copy as better written
shorthand as possible. While taking down do not think of other things: think
only of the words being read out of the outlines you are writing. Once you know
the outline for a word or a set of words, there is no reason why you should not
write that outline as quickly as the expert writer. 691 words
700 Common Words Exercise No. 35
A little while ago we considered the rather strange
fact that it is very often the people who talk most about the good old days who
at other times tell us about the very hard times they had in their own early
days. In these easy going days, they say, young people do not know what it is
to work really hard, and, they continue, it is as a direct result of their own
hard work that they are today the men they are. And we, of course, are left in
no doubt whatever that we of the present can never hope to be as good men and
women as our fathers and mothers. If this is the case, the country today is in
a very bad way. But is it the case? If the young people of today are of poorer
quality than their fathers and mothers, we may ask whether the old people of
today are in their turn of poorer quality than their fathers and mothers, who
no doubt had to face even les easy conditions. Clearly, this cannot be the
case, for if we are today any better than the people of a thousand or two
thousand years ago, it is because on the whole the young people at any given
time have been as good as the old people, and even a little better. The
material conditions of life for the masses of the people of this country are
better today than they have ever been. People generally have better food,
better houses and better schools. More care is taken to see that young people,
as far as possible, take up work of a kind which will interest them. And almost
all large business houses now provide playing fields for their workers. Not
only are these better conditions offered to the people it is of equal
importance to note that the people are making full use of the better
conditions. Authorities all over the country have provided schools where those
who are at work during the day may increase their knowledge in their free time,
either without charge or at a very low cost; and the attendances at such
schools are growing yearly. Women all over the country and in every station of
life are learning the food values of different kinds of food, and people
generally are moving into the better kind of houses as soon as it is possible
for them to do so. More people own their own houses today than at any time in
our history. It is quite true that to learn to face up to troubles and a hard
life is a valuable part of our training, but even though the material
conditions of our lives are better, we still have enough troubles to face and
to overcome in our own times without wishing to turn our steps back into the
past in order to find still more. That girls and young women are today in a
better position than their mothers were would not be questioned by many. They
can lead very much wider and happier lives, and it is certainly not the women
who talk with love about the good old days. But men have been doing it
throughout the years. Here is one example. An old man writes: “The minds of the
young people are full of plays and shows; and if they are so interested in
these things, what room is left over in their minds for learning? And, he adds,
“The teachers are just as bad. With them, too, such subjects supply the
material for talk more often than any others. We feel that we have heard these
words before. But when were they written? Nearly two thousand years ago! Have
we, after all, changed so very much? 642 Words.
700 Common Words Exercise No. 36
We considered recently a few points regarding
shorthand writing, and it may be of interest if we now deal with those points
in a little more detail. You may remember that our first point was that you, as
shorthand writers, should not regard any sort of paper as good enough for
shorthand notes. If the paper you use is of poor quality you are making it less
easy for yourself in your attempts to write at a higher rate. Your writing materials
should always be of the best quality, both in your school work and at the
office. Also, you must train yourself to
turn over a page very quickly. Otherwise you will find that by the time you
have turned the page the reader will be too many words in front of you. It has
been found that many shorthand writers fail to pass shorthand tests simply
because they have taken too long to turn over the page, and so have lost
several words. It is easy to understand this when you consider that when you
are writing one word a second; the rate of 60 words a minute you are writing
one word a second; when you are writing at 120 words a minute you are writing
two words a second. It I quite clear, therefore, that you must not waste 5 or
more of your valuable seconds on turning over a page. It must be turned without
the waste of one second. Our next point was that the writer should develop a
light and easy touch, passing very quickly from one outline to the next and
from the end of one line to the beginning of the next. We very often see
shorthand writers in the early days of their training, writing much too
heavily. Every attempt should be made to overcome this, and it is never too
soon to begin. You can find out in the following way whether you yourself are
writing too heavily. When you have written a page of shorthand turn to the back
of the page and see whether any marks of your writing not writing lightly
enough to get the best results. The notes of the good shorthand writer can
never be seen on the back of the paper. The third point was that you should
have a really good knowledge of the rules of the system and of the special
Short Forms, as you cannot hope to build up a high rate of writing if you do
not know the rules of the system. The Short Forms, by the way, represent a
large part of any matter which you are likely to be called upon to take down in
shorthand, and it will be of great value to you if you can write them easily
and quickly, without trouble. Read and copy well-written shorthand. In this way
you will form in your mind pictures of the outlines for a great many words.
When matter is read out to you these pictures will come at once to your mind
and you will be able to put the outlines on to paper without loss of time. If,
when taking down, there is a doubt in your mind as to what is the right outline
for a word, write something which represents the sound of the word. Afterwards,
take steps to find out what the outline should be and write it until you feel
certain that you know it and will in future be able to write it quickly.
Finally, never let yourself think of other things while you are taking
shorthand notes. Think only of what you are writing. At the end of a take you
should be able to give a short account of the subject matter without looking at
your notes. If you cannot do this, it shows that you were not thinking of the
sense of the matter while you were writing 668 Words.
700 COMMON WORDS EXERCISE NO. 37
The Englishman, it is widely believed, is always
talking about the weather. It is probably true that the people of this country
do talk about the weather more than is the case in some other countries, but
that is merely because the English weather gives us more to talk about. We simply do not know from one day to the
next what sort of weather we shall get, and sometimes we really do not know
from hour to hour. And so it has become natural to us to talk about the
weather, and when we meet a friend we usually make some such remark as: “What a
lovely day!” or perhaps: “What weather!” according to how we feel. Nor do most of us water like most of the
weather. It I either too warm or too cold; water comes down upon us in such
amounts that we feel like turning into fishes, or it does not come at all and
all the plants we have so carefully put in the ground are in danger of dying.
No, we do not really like our weather, but we are willing to state to any who
are willing to hear that our weather is the best in the world. Far from us, we
say, is the desire for lovely warm days throughout the whole of the year and so
on. The fact that we state that our weather is the best in the world does not,
of course, mean that we have to like it. And like it we do not, most of the
time. Perhaps that is why so many people go to other countries to their two or
three weeks leave in the summer. They are willing to put up with the changing
weather while they go about their day to day working lives, but for those
wonderful weeks, when they are free from work they want something better, some
measure of certainty that the days will be kind to them. Yet, when all is said
and done, we know that there is nothing quite like a lovely English summer day,
a summer day with warmth but without great heat and that is a very real
difference a summer day when the evenings are long and we can sit outside or at
our windows and watch the beautiful golden and read colours of the dying day.
How peaceful are those sweet hours, as we rest and talk, or read a little, or
tell ourselves once more that the world is all right; it is the people living
in it that make it seem all wrong!” Sweet indeed are such hours, and we feel
all the better for experiencing them. And how lovely are the first warm days
towards the end of the winter. There is nothing quite like the pleasure, after
the hard and cold days of winter, of getting up one morning and finding a new
warmth in the air, of seeing the first signs of little leaves breaking through
once again, and feeling new life beginning all about us. Perhaps that is why the English weather is
said to be the best in the world. Days such as these make so deep a mark on our
minds that we remember them always. There are countries in the world whose
advertisements state that they have such days all the year round. But, of
course, that is not possible. Those first warm days after winter when plant and
animal life grows a new are wonderful just because they are exceptional. They
just could not happen in the same form on every day of the year and without the
hard winter days coming first. Where the weather never changes there can be no
surprises, and it is the surprise of those first warm days after winter that is
part of the pleasure. Even days in winter can be good. We do not mind feeling
cold when we are dressed for it. It is quite wonderful to go for a long, quick
walk on a winter’s day, when the ground under our feet is white and hard and
the air is so clear that we can see for miles. Probably one of the biggest
troubles about the English weather is to be found not in the weather itself but
in ourselves. We just will not take the weather seriously, and we just will not
do the things that would help to make us more comfortable. When it is very,
very cold and we find that our supply of water is no longer waiting for us we
are quite surprised. We get out of bed and at once we feel very, very cold. Of
course, we ought to have put in some form of heating throughout the house years
ago but our windows let in the cold air. We ought and that is the way it is
with us, the English. Really, we just love our weather and all that it does to
us! 827 Words.
700 Common Words Exercise No. 38
From the ship the man was looking at the land in the
distance. He had been on the high seas for nearly three months, and the ship
had touched land several times. Those land falls had meant little to him, however,
because the only country he now had any desire to see was the country ahead of
him. At present it was hardly more than a point showing above the water. That
country was home, his homeland that he had left six years before. His mind went
quickly over those six years of his life. He was a young man of 24 when he had
gone away. At 30 he believed himself to be quite old, and he certainly looked
more than his 30 years. On the other hand, he looked the picture of health. Six
years of trying to make money in mines and on farms in the far off countries of
the world had made him hard and strong. Weather now had no personal meaning for
him. To be warm or to be cold was all the same so far as his personal feelings
went. Weather interested him only through its influence on his work, whether he
was in the mines, in the building trade, or on a farm. Weather influenced
production and was, therefore, important; but it did not influence him. His
face was quite heavily lined for his years, the result of some of the hard
times he had experienced before finally making the big money that he was
looking for. He knew what it was to be in the open through long cold nights,
and also what it was like to walk for mile after mile in the burning heat. He
knew what it was like to go without food for several days at a time, and he had
experienced hours when he would have given his whole future life for a simple
drink of water. He knew the value of water all right, and he had made up his
mind that, however long he might live in the homeland; he would never touch a
hard drink. Water had brought him back to life when he was almost dying for
want of it. He would always remember the experience of opening his eyes to see
a man beside him and to feel the touch of water at last. The man had had a
horse, and together they had reached the next town, weak though he was. From
that day on he had never drunk anything but water or milk, and, he told himself
as he continued to look at that point of land standing up out of the water he
would not change his mind when he reached there safely. Not one penny of the
hundreds of thousands of pounds that he now had in the bank would be spent on
hard drink, either for himself or for his friends. In his early days he had
several times nearly drunk himself out of this world and into the next. The
money had had labored so hard to get in the mines or on the farms had been
spent over night, with not a penny left to show for it. But things had changed
after he reached that town with the man on horseback who had saved his life.
They had become friends, and life had taken on a new color. The man was looking
for gold. He knew where to find it, he said, but it was necessary for the two
men to work together. One man on his own could not take advantage of the
opportunities. To his great surprise his friend was speaking the truth. They
found the fold, and before a year had passed they both had all the money that
anyone could desire. Then the man on the ship remembered something more. He had
left a girl behind. Here eyes were so wide open and blue when she looked at him
and said that she would wait that he had complete trust in her words. Now he
could not help feeling doubtful. Would a girl wait for a man if she heard
nothing from him for six years? Common sense said “No” but his heart said
“Yes.” 707 Words.
700 Common Words Exercise No. 39
The girl was 18 years old when he went away. There
came before his eyes a memory of her so clear that he was surprised. In all of
his six years he had never remembered here in that way. She was as lovely as a
summer morning, and she was sweet and good. The waters of all the seas that he
had seen were not as blue as her eyes, and no gold that he had mined was more
beautiful than the expression on her face when first he told her that he loved
her and asked her to wait for him. Being young, she was willing enough to wait
but she did not want him to go far away. He would never return, she said. So
many of the old people she knew in that little town in the Highlands had
brothers or children who had gone away to make money and who had never
returned. Many of them had never been heard of again. He offered here comfort
for her fears, and said with his hand on his heart that he would return to her.
“I shall turn up again, my love,” he said, “like a bad penny. But,” he added,
“I shall not come back with bad pennies in my hand but with good gold in the
bank.” Who said I wished for gold?” she cried, in her fear. “A little farm in
our lovely Highlands is good enough for me.” But he made light of such an idea.
He told her that she was a girl in a million, and he would make a million
pounds for her. When he was going away he made here tell him once again that
she would wait for him, and then he stepped on to the ship, leaving her crying.
As he thought of all these things he saw that the land had become much clearer.
Quite soon he would be home. He had wired May as well as his family, asking
them to meet him. When he was far away he had been full of certainty. His
family would be just as he had left them, and May would not have changed. There
she would be standing waiting for him, her lovely face full of happiness. His
old mother, too, would be there, and his brother Will. But all at once a real
fear touched his heart. Why should things be just the same at home when life
had changed so much for him? Why should be expect them all to run to see him at
the first opportunity when he had left them almost without news for so long? He
found that he could not understand how he went through all those years without
writing to his home more than two or three times. To May he had never written.
When he was doing badly and had no money he did not wish to write and let them
know that he had had no success. When he was successful and making money he had
had no time for writing letters. If no one was there to meet him, what would he
do? He began to walk up and down, up and down, trying to pass the hours until
the ship reached land. At last his ship was within a mile of the homeland. The
details of buildings began to show up clearly, and quite quickly they were very
near. Then they were moving little by little, and with a last movement the ship
came to rest. At first he could see no one he knew. There were others on the
ship who also expected their families or friends to meet them, and about a
hundred people were down there, looking up at the great ship and crying out
when they saw their dear ones on board. Then he saw five people standing on
their own, away from the others. An old man and woman, a young man and a young
woman, and a little boy of about two years of age. He saw them clearly now, his
father and mother grown aged in those six years, and his own May with his
brother Will, each holding a hand of the little boy. The truth came to him. The
girl really did want the simple life of the Highlands! She had married his
young brother Will.
700 Common Words Exercise No. 40
How old is old? How old are you and how old is your
father? Again how old is his father? Maybe that last age seems very old to you
who are young. But are you young? What is the age of the youngest baby in your
family, either in your own home or in the homes of your relations? Perhaps the
baby has lived for only a few months or even a few hours, and you at sixteen
years of age must seem quite old to the baby’s mother. Age is, indeed, anything
but a simple thing. You cannot be said to be young or old except in relation to
the age of some other person or thing. To the young girls, starting life in the
office for the first time, her immediate chief may seem quite old. That chief
is probably, however, no more than 30 to 35 years of age, and he feels very
young indeed when he is with his Director, who is nearly 70. But when the man
who is nearly 70 sees the picture in the newspaper of a happy old man or woman
who has reached one hundred years of age, he is in his turn feels young and
almost boyish! Again, everyone, whatever
his age may be, is so young as almost not to have lived at all if his age is
considered side by side with that of the earth on which he lives and has being.
The earth has been in existence for millions of years, and the age of mankind
is as nothing if judged by the age of the earth itself. As we go through life
we are forced to the belief that too much importance is given to a person’ age.
It is not the date on a pie of paper that matters: it is the person’s state of
health in body and mind. Some people are quite old at 25 and others are still
young at 70. We might perhaps all be happier if less importance were paid to
age. Young people who express an opinion are often told that they are too young
to know, and as a result very little attention is paid to such expressions of
opinion. Yet it is possible that the young person has formed the opinion as a
result of reading, followed by careful thought, and he has every right to his
point of view. It is even possible that the young person is at times right
while the person of more years is wrong. People do not always get wiser as they
increase in age sometimes they do and sometimes they not. If it were not for the
new ideas of the younger people new developments might often not take place.
Equally wrong, however, is it for young people to make light of the opinions of
their fathers and mothers. Young people too often take no account of the
opinions of the old because it is so easy to tell the old people that they are
out of date. The father and mother of a young person have lived longer and have
had more experience. The War between the young and the old is not, we think, in
the least necessary. What is probably necessary is a small change in outlook.
In place of thinking of people’s ages we should think of them as being at
different parts of the road through life. If some people set out for a walk at 8 in the morning, those
who set out for the same walk at 9 do not regard those in front of them as
being quite out of the running and not worth consideration. Those who set out
an hour later still are quite willing to regard the earlier and having
therefore covered a little more distance. Those who are in front look back to
those who are behind them, and perhaps feel some pleasure because they have
already covered more ground, but they respect the others neither more nor less
because they are in a different position. We are all in different position on
the road through life. Some of us began our walk on the road early, and some
set out a little later. Some have hardly taken the first steps. We are all on
the same road together, and the distance we have covered is of very little
importance because we have all to walk the road to the end of our lives, even
though the distances covered are not all quite the same. Judged by the age of
the earth the difference in the number of years of our lives is as nothing. 791
Words.
