Sir Isaac Pitman Shorthand Common Words Exercises Plain Format 1-40 Complete

 Name: Ghulam Mustafa Name of Institute: Pakistan Shorthand Institute (Ghulam Mustafa) Personal Assistant in Women Development Department, Punjab Civil Secretariat Lahore.

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700 Common Words Exercise No. 1 Longhand
The young man and the young woman looked even younger than their years as they left offices of Country Properties, Limited, with a few “Orders to View” in their hands. They were indeed two young people, very much in love and recently married, and they were looking for a house. They had been married for just six months, and when they got married on that cold December day they had believed that they would soon find a place to let, and it did not seem necessary to wait for that happy day before setting up home together. So they had gone to live with his mother, having only one room of their own and they had been very, very happy. It was an old house, however, with no modern changes. It was in a street lined on both sides with old houses just like it, and when April had come and the days grew longer the young married people all at once began to long for a little house of their own, with their own things in the rooms, with a little land at the back and in the front where they could plant things and watch them grow. It did not seem very much to ask, yet it was something that was being asked by thousands of other young people. There seemed little enough hope of their being able to get such a place because all the small houses were for sale and not to let, and they had no capital. Will, the young man was an engineer, and May, a beautiful young person with eyes so clear and true, had been a maid in a big boarding house at the seaside before her marriage. Neither of them had had any opportunity to save money, and to buy even the smallest house it was necessary to have some capital to put down for the first payment. There had been times during that month of April when May thought that Will had lost interest in her. He sat so often deep in thought and without speaking. When she asked him what he was thinking about he would answer shortly: “Work.” And then one day he told the truth. The big engineering works were he spent his days had set a competition for their workers. The company desired to cut its operating costs and, being a forward-thinking undertaking, it believed that the workers themselves, who had to do the work, might probably be able to think of ways and the means of improving methods. The first prize was to be £500 if the best suggestion put forward seemed worth that sum. So will had thought and thought, and had put in his own ideas for the improvement of methods. The following day, he told May, the employees were to learn who had won the prizes. Many put her hands in his, for she saw that he cared very much, that he had high hopes, but she could not help feeling that the £500 would never be theirs. She was wrong. Will won the prize, and his suggestions were considered to be so outstanding that the directors of the company had marked him down as a man worth watching. So on that lovely day in June Will and May had some houses to look over, houses in the country with rooms with a view: The first of the houses turned out to be much too large spent on it before it would be any good at all. The second house, on the other hand, was too small. It was a pleasing little place, very clean and well planned, but far too small. May was beginning to have a heavy heart. Perhaps even with the money in the bank it would still be impossible for them to get a house to meet their requirements – and their requirements, she believed, were some simple. They walked to the third house. It was a little way out of the small market town, off the principal street, and the road leading to it had not been made up. They had to walk carefully in order not to fall into the many holes that were in the road. “Oh, dear, this is no good! Though May and then they saw the house. Set well back from the road it was placed by itself in a wide piece of land. It was white, and the windows and doors were covered with clean blue paint. The windows were low and long, and the rooms inside were clean and light. The grounds had been well cared for. Oh, what a wonderful place! May cried, and she knew that she must live her married life in that house and in no other. And the hearts of those two young people were light and they seemed to walk on air as they returned to the property office to put down some money and sign papers.
700 Common Words Exercise No. 2 Longhand

“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 with Longhand

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 with Longhand and Shorthand

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 Longhand & Shorthand

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 Longhand and Shorthand

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 Longhand & Shorthand

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 LONGHAND

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 Longhand

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 Longhand

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 Longhand

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 Longhand

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 Longhand

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 Longhand

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 Longhand

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 Longhand

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 Longhand

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 Longhand

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 Longhand

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 Longhand

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 Longhand

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 Longhand

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 Longhand

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 Longhand

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 Longhand

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 Longhand

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 Longhand

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 Longhand


 

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 Longhand

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 Longhand

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 Longhand

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 Longhand

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 Longhand

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 Longhand

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 Longhand

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 Longhand

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 Longhand

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 Longhand

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 Longhand

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 Longhand

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.