Visit the island of limericks.
Visit the Island of Limericks. Do one — or all — of the three R's required by local rites of passage: 'Rite, Read, or Recite a limerick.
CALLING NAMES - NEW AND INSPIRING!
Individually, design a new name for yourself. English, Russian, or Belarusian names are welcome. The name should be one-of-the-kind, and it should give your personality a totally new dimension.
THE PRIVATE SMILE
by Betty Bates
I. Pre-reading
1.1. SHARE some recollections of the most beautiful friendship you had when a young person. Has the friendship survived to this very day?
1.2. DISCUSS the problem of making friends in your late teens Are student years rich in new friendships?
1.3. FIND OUT, theoretically, who makes a perfect friend. Or a friend for a lifetime.
II. Reading
2.1. Understanding the title.
The title of the story implies something bigger than just a story about a beautiful friendship. How can the word 'private' be interpreted?
2.2. Reading for pleasure and enrichment.
Read the story and answer the question: How did Lymus change and why?
The following words will be helpful to understand the events better.
Inlet — a narrow area of water reaching from the sea into the land
Trim — to make something look neat by cutting small pieces
Surrender — to officially announce the end of the fighting
Hang around — to spend time somewhere without any purpose
Swap — to exchange
Run something — to be in charge of, to manage
Reel in — to make something move on/off a reel by winding
Puny — unimpressive, smallish
Rickety — ready to break
Lymus and I were fishing together for the last time. The tide from the ocean rippled into the inlet. The marsh grasses glowed warm in the May sunshine. A blue heron stood nearby, tall and skinny and still, listening for rustlings in the wet ground.
I couldn't leave all this. I just couldn't. I had grown up on this land. It was almost a part of me.
"You going to come and visit me, Lymus?"
"No way I can do that, Master Whit. Wish I could, though." He brushed a tick off his trousers. "Wish you weren't leavin'."
Did he mean that? During the past two or three years, during the latter part of the war, most of our servants had left us, but Lymus and his parents had stayed. Lymus's mother, Mattie, had been my nurse when I was young, but I was ten now, so she mostly helped Mother with the sewing; our field hands always needed clothes. Lymus's father, Sam, was Mother's gardener; he trimmed the holly hedge and grew our tomatoes, beans, corn, and squash. Lymus helped him.
I edged out of the sun and nestled against the trunk of a tippy old cedar tree. "You think I want to leave? It is the best place in the world."
Lymus grinned. "They say every frog must praise its own pond, even if it dry."
If he chose to put it that way, my pond was surely dry.
Last December, four months before General Lee surrendered, the Yankees came to our Georgia rice and cotton plantation and stole as much of our food as they could find, along with our horses and all the mules except Molasses — who's older than the moon, as Grandfather used to say. The soldiers burned the barn, the storehouse, and the stable. They even burned our hospital. And when they left, the rest of our field hands and house servants went with them, maybe on account of rumors of riches to be had. Those Yankees took all but the three who were left.
They also took our family silver and jewelry. And I was even anxious for my books, especially The Three Musketeers, which Grandmother had sent from New Orleans for my birthday. They left them alone, praise be.
Since Father was away fighting for our new country in the Confederate army, there was nothing he could do. But Mother tried. When the Yankees came, she hid Lymus and his folks in the attic. Then she took her stand in the front doorway, her tiny hands on her hips and fire in her green eyes. But those soldiers in their worn blue uniforms pushed her aside. As they left with their loot, she threw her head back and demanded of the sergeant, "How can you leave a woman and her young son without a crumb to eat?"
He just shrugged.
Luckily Mother had hidden a bag of corn with Sam, Mattie, and Lymus. And Sam could hunt wild turkeys and ducks, while Lymus and I were good at fishing. And now the spring crop of vegetables was ripening.
After the Yankees went away, Lymus found a couple of old wheels in the carriage house. With some lumber piled in the barn, and with his quick, sure hands, he built a cart we could use for hauling and getting around.
Being born about a month apart, Lymus and I had grown up together. Since Sam and Mattie were house servants, they lived in a cabin close to our big house rather than in the field hands' village. We often hung around his older brothers, who were boatmen, and we'd listen to them sing as they loaded Papa's cypress boats with rice for market:
Once I went out huntin'. I heard the possum sneeze. I holler back to Susan, "Put on the pot o' peas."
Sometimes, on Sunday afternoons, the two of us lay in the shade 0f the live oak by the barn swapping stories. Sometimes we played marbles or horseshoes with the other children in the field hands' village And sometimes we went fishing.
Now I asked Lymus, "What are you going to do when I'm gone?"
"Oh, I be fine, Master Whit. I be just fine."
I gave him a quick look. He was smiling to himself. A private
smile-He wasn't our property anymore. He was free. I remembered when Father had come home on leave the first fall of the war, when I was six. Just before suppertime, I found him standing at the edge of the veranda. He was looking out over the flower and vegetable gardens to the workers' village, and beyond that to the fields, where sheaves of rice had been loaded onto carts. When I came up next to him, he dropped his big hand on my shoulder. "This is all going to be yours someday, Whit. We're going to see to that."
It would all be mine. The land, the harvest, and the people. Mine. I was excited, and a little scared.
Then a peculiar thing happened. The Yankees won the war.
There was nothing left here for Father, Mother, and me. We were going to Philadelphia, where Father had a distant cousin and would seek employment as a bookkeeper. Lymus and his folks would run this place as best they could without helpers.
My fish pole bobbled and bent. "Whoo-ee! I got a bite." I stood up, planted my bare feet in the mud, and reeled in the line. Sure enough. Flopping on the hook was a speckled trout, all sea-green and silvery and almost as long as my arm.
"You got a beauty, Master Whit."
"Ought to make us a fine supper." I took the fish off my hook and rebaited it with another baby crab.
Before the bell rang for supper, we each had a string of trout. "They bitin' all right," said Lymus. "If my daddy don't need me, guess I come back here tomorrow."
Tomorrow.
After tomorrow I might never see him again. I might never know what became of him. He couldn't write to me. He didn't know how. It would not be easy in Philadelphia, there I knew no one. It would be a trial for me, a Southerner, to get used to Yankees, and for them to get used to me, a Rebel. Would Lymus truly miss me?
I wanted to leave something for him. But what? I didn't have much now. He already had some of my clothes, and the Yankees had taken Grandfather's watch and chain, which Father had been saving for me.
There was nothing. Unless ...
We had trout for supper, and again for breakfast. Now it was time to go. Mother and Father were already out in the courtyard, where Sam had Molasses hitched to the cart, ready to take us and our puny belongings to the steamboat landing. Without that cart we would have had to walk. I held The Three Musketeers out to Lymus. "This is so you won't forget me. Maybe you'll learn to read it someday."
His eyes sparkled. "Oh, I do thank you, Master Whit. I'll learn. 1 surely will." He hugged the book to his chest.
He would learn somehow.
"Bye, Lymus."
"Bye, Master Whit." He still called me. master out of habit, but I guess we were equals now. The private smile lighted his face. "Hope my cart hold together for you." My cart.
It may have been the first time in his life he had used the word "my." It was only a rickety homemade cart, but it made the difference. He owned things now. His clothes. His book. The cart that he had made.
I reached out to shake his hand. I had begun to understand that smile
2.3. True or false?
The narrator of the story, a boy from the South ...
was looking forward to his departure.
thought highly of the Yankees.
would prefer to stay in Georgia.
was proud of his most prized possession, an expensive ring.
couldn't figure out what his friend's smile meant.
was ready for his new life in the North.
2.4. Understanding points of view.
Scan the story and try to explain what the characters meant by saying the following.
They left them [ books ] alone, praise be.
He was smiling to himself. A private smile. 3.1 had begun to understand that smile.
They say every frog must praise its own pond, even if it is dry.
It may have been the first time in his life he had used the word "my.
He still called me master out of habit, but I guess we were equals now.
It would be a trial for me, a Southerner, to get used to Yankees, and for them to get used to me, a Rebel
2.5. Storing vocabulary.
Paraphrase or translate the following using the verbs you came - across in the story.
1. What happened to him later?
2. I'll try to attend to this business.
3. Устраивайся вот тут, возле стенки, и слушай внимательно.
4. Костер горел так сильно, что пришлось отодвинуться от огня.
5. The little boy slowly removed himself from his mother's reach.
6. He беспокойся, я точно присмотрю, чтобы все было в порядке.
7. She made herself comfortable pressing her body against the tree trunk.
Verbs to be used: to edge out of, to nestle against, to become of, to see to.
2.6. Colloquial English.
There are several phrases
spoken in colloquial English. Could you possibly "translate"
them into literary English?
No way I can do that, Master Whit.
Wish I could, though.
If my daddy don't need me, guess I come back here tomorrow.
Hope my cart hold together for you.
They left them alone, praise be.
You going to come to visit me, Lymus?
Oh, I be fine, I be just fine.
2.7. Better expression.
Sure enough, you understood the story well. Speak for its characters now.
Whit's father
Lymus
all the Black people