II. What do you think the cause of Mr. Jones's illness was?

I. What story does the passage fit into?

I. Pick out all the proverbs in the story and give their Russian equivalents.

II. Write an end to the story using some of the following proverbs;

to take the bull by the horns; what must be must be; appearances are deceptive; strike while the iron is hot; second thoughts are best; he or she who makes no mistakes makes nothing; one good turn deserves another.

X

They were hardly settled in their new house when fresh trouble came to them.

"Have you heard about Jones?" said the old man one day with an anxious face.

"No," I answered.

"He's ill - some sort of fever, poor chap - has been ill for three days, and they never told me or sent for me."

From day to day I had reports from the old man of the progress of Jones's illness. "I sit with him every day," he said. "Poor chap, he was very bad yesterday for a while - mind wandered, quite delirious. I could hear him from the next room, seemed to think someone was hunting him. 'Is that damn old fool gone?' I heard him say."

"I went in and soothed him. 'There is no one here, my dear boy,' I said, 'no one, only me...' He turned over and groaned. Mrs. Jones begged me to leave him. 'You look quite used up,' she said. 'Go out into the open air,' 'My dear Mrs. Jones,' I said, 'what does it matter about me?'"

Eventually, thanks no doubt to the old man's care, Jones got well.

"Yes," said the old man to me a few weeks later, "Jones is all right again now, but his illness was a long hard pull. I haven't had an evening to myself since it began. But I'm paid, sir, now, more than paid for anything I've done. The gratitude of those two people - it's unbelievable."

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

XI

The second day out I was wandering around the boat deck and ran into his hide-out - a little nook where he had taken his deck chair.

We had caught glimpses of him before and, in fact, Betsy and I used him in the little game we played aboard the ship - trying to guess what business different people were in. I looked at the bushy hair, the ragged gray beard, the pullover sweater and the sandals, and violated my own rule by saying I thought he was an artist, a French artist.

Betsy laughed at me because we had long since agreed that people don't often look their business. She said she thought he was either a Greek archbishop or a member of the British parliament.

When I poked my nose into his hide-out he raised his head and gave me as nasty a scowl as you ever saw in your life. I started to back away, mumbling an apology, and then his expression changed.

"Wait!" he called out. "You are American?"

His English was good, and he asked me if I had a moment to help him with a small problem. He wanted to know if there was a United States Senator named Boat or Ship or Ferry. He showed me the ship's daily puzzle which he was trying to work out.

I sat down and puzzled over the thing. The definition was, "Senator who crosses a river." I thought of Senator Ford, the raconteur, but there were no Fords on the passenger list, and then I got it - Senator Bridges. There was a Miss Ethelyn Bridges on board.

My bearded friend swiftly lettered in the name "Bridges" on his puzzle sheet, and then leaped from his chair and went flying off down the deck.

I didn't see him again until next day, just before lunch, when he came into the main lounge, grabbed me by the arm and drew me off into a corner.

"Look!" he said in a hoarse whisper. In the palm of his big hand he was holding a man's wallet, made of pigskin.

"The prize!" he said. "I won it! You, my friend, are responsible. Come and have a cocktail with me."

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

I. How does (he passage fit info the story "One Coat of White"?

II. Bring out the meaning of "People don’t often look their business". Do you agree to the statement? Give examples to justify jour point of view.

XII

Travel is the name of a modern disease which became rampant in the mid-fifties and is still spreading. Its symptoms are easily recognizable. The patient grows restless in the early spring and starts rushing about from one travel agent to another collecting useless information about places he does not intend to visit, studying handouts, etc; then he, or usually she, will do a round of tailors, milliners, summer sales, sports shops, and spend three and a half times as much as he or she can afford; finally in August, the patient will board a plane, train, coach or car and proceed to foreign parts along with thousands of fellow-sufferers not because he is interested in or attracted by the place he is bound for, nor because he can afford to go, but simply because he cannot afford not to. The disease is highly infectious. Nowadays you catch foreign travel rather as you caught influenza in the twenties, only more so.

The result is that in the summer months (and in the last few years also during the winter season) everybody is on the move.

What is the aim of their travelling? Each nationality has its own different one. The Americans want to take photographs of themselves in:.(a) Trafalgar Square with the pigeons, (b) in St. Mark's Square, Venice, with the pigeons and (c) in front of the Arc de Tri-omphe, in Paris, without pigeons. The idea is simply to collect

documentary proof that they have been there. The German travels to check up on his guide-books: when he sees that the Ponte di Rialto is really at its proper venue, that the Leaning Tower is in its appointed place in Pisa and is leaning at the promised angle - he ticks these things off in his guide-book and returns home with the gratifying feeling that he has not been swindled. But why do the English travel?

First, because their neighbour does and they have caught the bug from him. Secondly, they used to be taught that travel broadens the mind and although they have by now discovered the sad truth that whatever travel may do to the mind, Swiss or German food certainly broadens other parts of the body, the old notion still lingers on. But lastly - and perhaps mainly - they travel to avoid foreigners. Here, in England, one is always exposed to the danger of meeting all sorts of peculiar aliens. Not so on one's journeys in Europe, if one manages things intelligently. I know many English people who travel in groups, stay in hotels where even the staff is English, eat roast beef and Yorkshire pudding on Sundays and Welsh rarebit and steak and kidney pudding on weekdays, all over Europe. The main aim ef the Englishman abroad is to meet people; I mean, of course, nice English people from next door or from the next street. Normally one avoids one's neighbour ('It is best to keep yourself to yourself - 'We leave other alone and want to be left alone' etc, etc). If you meet your next door neighbour in the High Street or at your front door you pretend not to see him or, at best, nod coolly; but if you meet him in Capri or Granada, you embrace him fondly and stand him a drink or two; and you may even discover that he is quite a nice chap after all and both of you might just as well have stayed at home.

(From "How to Be Inimitable" by George Mikes)

QUESTIONS FОR DISCUSSION

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