Text 5 Honeymoon under Capricorn

Text 4 MOMI: Museum of the Moving Image

Lights … Cameras … Action … Come to the award-winning Museum of the Moving Image and discover the fascinating and magical world of film and television. Both a museum and an experience, MOMI is an exciting blend of entertainment and education with plenty of hands-on fun. Enjoy a magic lantern show, “fly” over the Thames like Superman, be interviewed by Barry Norman or audition for a Hollywood screen test.

The perfect place for that once-in-a-lifetime (hopefully) dreamtime? How about a thousand miles east of Africa, under Capricorn¹, on a sugar-and-spice island that dips its toes in the Indian Ocean? An island where casuarinas pines sway across white talcum powder sand and a coral reef keeps the sharks at a safe distance. Where the people are charming, the service in the hotels irreproachable and the food is terrific. If this is your idea of a honeymoon base, then go to Mauritius. After no less than five visits, it’s still one of my favourite islands.

From somewhere few people in the west had heard of 18 years ago, Mauritius has become a prize destination in the brochures. Tourism has been a tremendous boost to the island’s economy and the capital, Port Louis, has grown from a dusty old port into a sprawling commercial center, but elsewhere the island’s beauty spots remain unspoilt.

Most of the hotels are in splendid isolation or little groups. You wake up not to the sound of traffic but to the musical notes of the little red cardinals or bull-bulls who later sneak beakfuls of sugar from the breakfast tables.

Choose the old-colonial graciousness of the St. Geran. Princess Caroline of Monaco sleeps here and so does Frederick Forsyth². one of his short stories is set in this hotel.

On the island you can play Hemingway and go deep-sea fishing. This is one of the world’s best areas to catch the big marlin and yellow-fish tuna.

But save that Frederick Forsyth story until you’re back at home. You’ll see why when you read The Emperor in No Comebacks.

¹ refers to the Tropic of Capricorn, an imaginary line around the earth 23.5º south of the Equator.

² an English writer of thrillers

Text 6 Declaration of Independence (Thomas Jefferson)

When in the Course of human events it be­comes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separa­tion.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness; That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such princi­ples, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Objects, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Gov­ernment, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right ines­timable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time after such dissolutions to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise, the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of in­vasions from without and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the popula­tion of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners, refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for es­tablishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies, without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of, and superior to, the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitutions and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us;

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States;

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world;

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent;

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury;

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offenses;

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighboring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies;

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering, fundamentally, the Forms of our Governments;

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with Power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the execu­tioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms. Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable juris­diction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inev­itably interrupt our connections and corre­spondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must therefore acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our Separation and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America in General Congress Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do in the Name and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly pub­lish and declare that these United Colonies are and of right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Alle­giance to the British Crown, and that all polit­ical connection between them and the State of Great Britain is and ought to be totally dis­solved, and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, con­clude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Com­merce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Di­vine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

Text 7 Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech (William Faulkner)

I feel that this award was not made to me as a man but to my work – a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit some­thing which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it com­mensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pin­nacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand here where I am standing.

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: when will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing be­cause only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it for­ever, leaving no room in his workshop for any­thing but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed – love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of de feats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and worst of all with out pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he relearns these things he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is im­mortal simply because he will endure, that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talk­ing. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely he the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

Text 8 Life Without Principle (extract) (Henry David Thoreau)

Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives.

This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! I am awaked almost every night by the panting of the locomo­tive. It interrupts my dreams. There is no sabbath. It would be glorious to see man­kind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work. I cannot easily buy a blankbook to write thoughts in; they are commonly ruled for dollars and cents. An Irishman, seeing me making a minute in the fields, took it for granted that I was calculating my wages. If a man was tossed out of a window when an infant, and so made a cripple for life, or scared out of his wits by the Indians, it is regretted chiefly because he was thus incapacited for – business! I think that there is noth­ing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business.

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. As if a town had no interest in its forests but to cut them down!

Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now. For instance: just after sunrise, one summer morning, I noticed one of my neighbors walking beside his team, which was slowly dragging a heavy hewn stone swung under the axle, surrounded by an atmosphere of industry – his day’s work begun, - his brow commenced to sweat – a reproach to all sluggards and idlers – pausing abreast the shoulders of his oxen, and half turning round with his merciful whip while they gained their length on him. And I thought, such a labor which the American Congress exists to protect, - honest, manly toil, - honest as the day is long, - that makes his bread taste sweet, and keeps society sweet, - which all men, respect and have consecrated; one of the sacred band, doing the needful but irksome drudgery. Indeed, I felt a slight reproach, because I observed this from a window, and was not abroad and stirring about a similar business. The day went by, and at evening I passed the yard of another neighbor, who keeps many servants, and spends much money foolishly, while he adds nothing to the common stock, and there I saw the stone of the morning lying beside a whimsical structure intended to adorn this Lord Timothy Dexter's premises, and the dignity forthwith departed from the teamster's labor, in my eyes. In my opinion, the sun was made to light worthier toil than this. I may add that his employer has since run off, in debt to a good part of the town, and, after passing through Chancery, has settled somewhere else, there to become once more a patron of the arts.

The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more than the wages, which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself.

The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job”, but to perform well a certain work. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it …

Text 9 maggie and milly and molly and may (e. e. cummings)

maggie and milly and molly and may

went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang

so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles, and

milly befriended a stranded star

whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing

which raced sideways while blowing bubbles and

may came home with a smooth round stone

as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)

it' s always ourselves we find in the sea

Text 10 Return to Dust (George Bamber)

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