Test IX

1. He was bored by the same faces, the same idiotic small talk, the same dreary scandals, and he had gradually withdrawn from the set who ate, drank, and danced together day in and night out. (J.H. Chase)

2. “A situation has arisen: tricky and strictly confidential. A friend of mine may need a false passport.”

Blackie gave an imperceptible start but enough to puncture his gum with the sharp point of the toothpick.

“A passport?” he repeated as if he had never heard of the word.(J.H. Chase)

3. It was a look he had never seen in any other woman’s eyes: it said plainly: you are the centre of my universe, without you there would be no sun, no moon, no starts, no nothing. It was a look of complete and candid love. (J.H. Chase)

4. “Oh, Steve! I’m so frightened! If only you would go to the police! I’m sure …” (J.H. Chase)

5. The subject of the Inspector’s thoughts had had a siesta and now went back to his office to see what was happening to his brother. (J.H. Chase)

6. Well, I hope you’ll like living with yourself from now on. I hope you’ll have fun with all your money. I hope you’ll be able to get her out of your mind, but I don’t think you will. (J.H. Chase)

7. On the pleasant shore of the French Riviera, about half-way between Marseilles and the Italian border, stands a large, proud, rose-coloured hotel. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

8. I had to dive and dive and dive all morning. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

9. “The day before you came, the married man, the one with the name that sounds like a substitute for gasoline or butter – ”

“McKisco?" (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

10. The chauffeur, a Russian Czar of the period of Ivan the Terrible, was self-appointed guide, and the resplendent names – Cannes, Nice, Monte Carlo – began to glow through their torpid camouflage, whispering of old kings come here to dine and die, of rajahs tossing Buddha’s eyes to English ballerinas, of Russian princes turning the weeks into Baltic twilights in the lost caviare days. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

11. In her mother’s lap afterward Rosemary cried and cried. (F. Sc.Fitzgerald)

12. “I love him, Mother, I’m desperately in love with him – I never knew I could feel that way about anybody. And he’s married and I like her too – it’s just hopeless. Oh, I love him so!” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

13. I am going to save your reason – I’m going to give you a hat to wear on the beach. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

14. “Going home?”

“Home? I have no home. I’m going to a war.”

“What war?”

“What war? Any war. I haven’t seen a paper lately but I suppose there’s a war – there always is.” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

15. They had been at table half an hour and a perceptible change had set in – person by person had given up something, a preoccupation, an anxiety, a suspicion, and now they were only their best selves and the Divers’ guests. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

Text X

1. He tried breaking into other dialogue, but it was like continually shaking hands with a glove from which the hand had been withdrawn.

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

2. Then Mary North with a face so merry that it was impossible not to smile back into the white mirrors of her teeth – the whole area around her parted lips with a lovely little circle of delight. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

3. A shutter opened suddenly in a room two storeys above and an English voice spat distinctly:

“Will you kaindlay stup tucking!”

Again the iron shutter parted above and the same British voice said: “Rilly, this must stup immejetely.”(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

4. “I’ve made lots of mistakes in my life – many of them. But I’ve been one of the most prominent – in some ways – ” He gave this up and puffed at a dead cigarette. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

5. We’ve been married twelve years, we had a little girl seven years old and she died and after that you know how it is. We both played around on the side a little, nothing serious but drifting apart – she called me a coward out there tonight. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

6. She resented his speaking of it as a circus, with McKisco as the tragic clown. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

7. There she was – the schoolgirl of a year ago, hair down her back and rippling out stiffly like the solid hair of a Tanagra figure; there she was – so young and innocent – the product of her mother’s loving care; there she was – embodying all the immaturity of the race, cutting a new cardboard paper doll to pass before its empty harlot’s mind. She remembered how she had felt in that dress, especially fresh and new under the fresh young silk. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

8. Daddy’s girl. Was it a ‘itty-bitty bravekins and did it suffer? Ooo-ooo-tweet, de tweetest thing, wasn’t she dest too tweet?’ (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

9. But the girl talking to her, in the starched blue shirt with the bright blue eyes and the red cheeks and the very grey suit, a poster of a girl, had begun to play up. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

10. Only after a hundred years did the train stop. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

11. He saw, not without panic, that the affair was sliding to rest; it could not stand still, it must go on or go back. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

12. “As a child she was a darling thing – everybody was crazy about her, everybody that came into contact with her. She was as smart as a whip and happy as the day is long. She liked to read or draw or dance or play the piano – anything. I’ve got an older girl too, and there was a boy that died, but Nicole was – Nicole was – Nicole – ”.

He broke off and Doctor Dohmler helped him. “She was a perfectly normal, bright, happy child.” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

13. “Oh, yes,” said Doctor Dohmler, nodding his venerable head, as if, like Sherlock Holmes, he had expected a valet and only a valet to be introduced at this point. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

14. “Of course, I’ve read about women getting lonesome and thinking there’s a man under the bed and all that, but why should Nicole get such an idea? We were in Lake Forest – that’s a summer place near Chicago where we have a place – and she was out all day playing golf or tennis with boys. And some of them pretty gone on her at that.” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

15. Across the bridge from it lies my ancestor Lavater, who would not be buried in any church. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)