Mrtin Eden / Мартин Иден (в сокращении). Книга для чтения на английском языке

A week of heavy reading had passed since the evening he first met Ruth Morse, and still he dared not call. He did not know the proper time to call, nor was there anyone to tell him, and he was afraid of making a blunder. Having shaken himself free from his old companions and old ways of life, and having no new companions, nothing remained for him but to read, and the long hours he devoted to it would have ruined a dozen pairs of ordinary eyes. But his eyes were strong.

It seemed to him, by the end of the week, that he had lived centuries, so far behind were the old life and outlook. He attempted to read books that required years of preliminary specialisation. One day he would read a book of antiquated philosophy, and the next day one that was ultra-modern, so that his head would be whirling with the conflict and contradiction of ideas. He would sit up in bed, and the dictionary was in front of him more often than the book. He looked up so many new words that, when they recurred, he had forgotten their meaning, and had to look them up again. He devised the plan of writing definitions in a notebook, and filled page after page with them. And still he could not always understand what he read.

He read much poetry, finding his greatest joy in the simpler poets, who were more understandable. He loved beauty, and there he found beauty. Poetry, like music, stirred him profoundly; and though he did not know it, he was preparing his mind for the heavier work that would come later.

The man at the desk in the library had seen Martin there so often that he had become quite pleasant, always greeting him with a smile and a nod when he entered.

One day Martin blurted out:

“Say, there’s something I’d like to ask you.”

The man smiled and paid attention.

“When you meet a young lady an’ she asks you to call, how soon can you call?”

“Why, I’d say any time,” the man answered.

“What is the best time to call? The afternoon – not too close to meal-time? Or the evening? Or Sunday?”

“I’ll tell you,” the librarian said, with a brightening face. “You call her up on the telephone and find out.”

“I’ll do it,” he said, picking up his books and starting away.

He turned back and asked: “When you’re speakin’ to a young lady – say, for instance, Miss Lizzie Smith – do you say ‘Miss Lizzie’ or ‘Miss Smith?’”

“Say ‘Miss Smith,’” the librarian stated authoritatively. “Say ‘Miss Smith’ always – until you know her better.”

So it was that Martin Eden solved the problem.

“Come down any time; I’ll be at home all afternoon,” was Ruth’s reply over the telephone to his stammered request as to when he could return the books she had given him.

She met him at the door herself, and her woman’s eye took in immediately the creased trousers, and the slight, but indefinable, change in him for the better.

Once they were seated in the drawing-room, he began to get on easily. She made it easy for him. They talked first of the borrowed books; she led the conversation on from subject to subject, while she pondered the problem of how she could help him. She had thought of this often since their first meeting. She wanted to help him.

“I wonder if I can get some advice from you”, he said. “You remember the other time I was here I said I couldn’t talk about books and things because I didn’t know how? Well, I’ve ben doin’ a lot of thinkin’ ever since.I’ve ben to the library a whole lot, but most of the books I’ve tackled have ben over my head. Mebbe I’d better begin at the beginnin’. I’ve worked pretty hard ever since I was a kid, an’ since I’ve ben to the library, lookin’ with new eyes at books – an’ lookin’ at new books, too – I’ve concluded that I ain’t ben reading the right kind. But I ain’t got to the point yet. Here it is: I want to make my way to the kind of life you have in this house. Now, how am I goin’ to get it? Where do I begin? I’m willin’ to work. Once I get started, I’ll work night an’ day. Mebbe you think it’s funny, me askin’ you about all this. I know you’re the last person in the world I ought to ask, but I don’t know anybody else I could ask…”

His voice died away. He feared he had made a fool of himself. Ruth did not speak immediately. Her face was all sympathy when she did speak.

“What you need you realize yourself, and it is education. You should go back and finish grammar-school, and then go through the high school and University.”

“But that takes money,” he interrupted.

“Oh!” she cried, “I had not thought of that. But, then, you have relatives – somebody who could assist you?”

He shook his head.

“My father and mother are dead. I’ve two sisters – one married, an’ the other’ll get married soon, I suppose. Then I’ve a string of brothers – I’m the youngest – but they never helped nobody. The oldest died in India. Two are in South Africa now, an’ another’s on a whaling voyage, an’ one’s travellin’ with a circus – he does trapeze-work. An’ I guess I’m just like them. I’ve taken care of myself since I was eleven – that’s when my mother died. I’ve got to study by myself I guess, an’ what I want to know is where to begin.”

“I should say the first thing of all would be to get a grammar book. Your grammar is…” She had intended saying “awful,” but she amended it to, “is not particularly good.”

He flushed and sweated.

“I know I must talk a lot of slang an’ words you don’t understand. But, then, they’re only words I know… how to speak. I’ve got other words in my mind – picked ’emup from books – but I can’t pronounce ’em, so I don’t use ’em.”

“It isn’t what you say so much as how you say it. You don’t mind my being frank, do you? I don’t want to hurt you.”

“No, no!” he cried; while he secretly blessed her for her kindness. “Fire away; I’ve got to know, and I’d sooner know from you than anybody else.”

“Well, then, you say ‘You was’; it should be ‘You were.’ You say ‘I seen’ for ‘I saw.’ You use the double negative…”

“What’s the double negative?” he demanded, then added humbly: “You see, I don’t even understand your explanations.”

“I’m afraid I didn’t explain that,” she smiled. “A double negative is… let me see – well, you say, ‘Never helped nobody.’ ‘Never’ is a negative. ‘Nobody’ is another negative. It is a rule that two negatives make a positive. ‘Never helped nobody’ means that, not helping nobody, they must have helped somebody.”

“That’s pretty clear,” he said. “I never thought of it before, and I’ll never say it again.”

“You’ll find it all in the grammar book,” she went on. “There’s something else I noticed in your speech. You say ‘don’t’ when you shouldn’t. ‘Don’t’ is a contraction, and stands for two words. Do you know them?”

He thought a moment, then answered: “‘Do not.’”

She nodded her head, and said: “And you use ‘don’t’ when you mean ‘does not.’”

He was puzzled over this.

“Give me an illustration,” he asked.

“Well…” she thought a moment. “’It don’t do to be hasty.’ Change ‘don’t’ to ‘do not,’ and it reads, ‘It do not do to be hasty,’ which is wrong. It must jar on your ear.”

“Can’t say that it does,” he replied judicially.

“Why didn’t you say, ‘Can’t say that it do?’”

“That sounds wrong,” he said slowly. “As for the other, I guess my ear ain’t had the trainin’ yours has.”

“There is no such word as ‘ain’t,’” she said emphatically.

Martin flushed again,

“And you say ‘ben’ for ‘been,’” she continued; “‘I come’ for ‘I came’; and the way you chop your endings is something dreadful.”

“What do you mean?” He leaned forward, feeling that he ought to get down on his knees before so marvellous a mind. “How do I chop?”

“You don’t complete the endings. ‘A-n-d’ spells ‘and.’ You pronounce it ‘an.’ ‘I-n-g’ spells ‘ing.’ Sometimes you pronounce it ‘ing,’ and sometimes you leave off the ‘g.’ And then you slur by dropping initial letters and diphthongs. ‘T-h-e-m’ spells ‘them.’ You pronounce it – oh, well, it is not necessary to go over all of them. What you need is a grammar book. I’ll get one and show you how to begin.”

When she returned with the book she drew a chair near his and sat down beside him. She turned the pages of the grammar and their heads were inclined towards each other.

For the moment the great gulf that separated them was bridged. He had been caught up into the clouds and carried to her.

Several weeks went by, during which Martin Eden studied the grammar book Ruth had given him, reviewed the books on etiquette, and read voraciously the books that caught his fancy.

Of his own class he saw nothing. The girls of the Lotus Club which he had frequented wondered what had become of him.

During those several weeks he saw Ruth half a dozen times. She helped him with his English, corrected his pronunciation, and started him on arithmetic. But their intercourse was not all devoted to elementary study; and there were times when their conversation turned on other themes – the last poetry he had read, the latest poet she had studied.

As her interest in Martin increased the remodelling of his life became a passion with her.

“I want to tell you about father’s friend Mr. Butler,” she said one afternoon when grammar and arithmetic and poetry had been put aside. “His father had come from Australia and when he died Mr. Butler, Charles Butler he was called, found himself alone in the world without any relatives in California. He went to work in a printing office – I have heard him tell of it many times – and he got three dollars a week at first. His income to-day is at least thirty thousand a year. How did he do it? He was honest and industrious and economical. He denied himself the enjoyments that most boys indulge in. He had his eyes fixed always on the future. He worked in the daytime and at night he went to night school. He was ambitious. He wanted a career, not a livelihood and he made sacrifices for his ultimate gain. He decided upon the law and he entered father’s office as an office boy, think of that, and got only four dollars a week.

But he had learned how to be economical and out of that four dollars he continued saving money. He studied bookkeeping and typewriting. He quickly became a clerk and made himself invaluable. Father appreciated him. It was on father’s suggestion that he went to law college. He became a lawyer and father took him in as junior partner. He is a great man. Such a life is an inspiration to all of us. It shows that a man with a will may rise superior to his environment.”

She paused for breath and to see how Martin was receiving it.

“Do you know,” he said, “I feel sorry for Mr. Butler. He robbed himself of life for the sake of thirty thousand dollars a year. Working all day and studying all night – just working, never having a good time!”

Martin was dissatisfied with Mr. Butler’s career. There was something paltry about it after all. Thirty thousand a year was all right, but inability to be humanly happy robbed such an income of its value.

Much of this he tried to express to Ruth and shocked her and made it clear that more remodelling was necessary. She could not guess that this man who had come from beyond her horizon had wider and deeper concepts than her own;

and she dreamed of helping him to see as she saw, of widening his horizon until it was identified with hers.

Exercises

1. Listen to the chapter with your book closed and mark the statements Y (yes) or N (no).

1. Nothing remained for Martin but to read.

2. The librarian was annoyed to see Eden every day.

3. The librarian did not give Eden any advice.

4. Martin decided to phone Ruth.

5. Ruth wondered if she could get some advice from Martin.

6. Martin’s grammar was awful.

7. Ruth explained to Martin how to speak correct English.

8. Ruth did not have any intention to remodel Martin’s life.

9. Ruth considered the life of Mr. Butler should be an inspiration to all.

10. Martin’s ideas did not surprise Ruth.

2. Learn the words from the text:

proper, devote, ordinary, attempt, contradiction, profoundly, solve, advice, tackle, interrupt, assist, hurt, demand, complete, ambitious, sacrifice, identify.

3. Complete the sentences using the words from the text. Make the changes where necessary.

1. “I’m sorry, I didn’t want to .......... you.”

2. Nothing is in its .......... place.

3. She .......... her carrier to bring up her children.

4. He .......... most of her time to his music.

5. The suspect .......... by a witness.

6. It was just an .......... Sunday evening.

7. He was an .......... hard working young clerk.

8. He thinks money .......... all his problems.

9. “Please, don’t .......... her while she is sleeping.”

10. The government is determined to .......... inflation.

11. “Can you give some .......... about buying a car?”

4. Choose a word to match the following definitions.

1) to say in a very firm way that you want something

2) right, appropriate or correct

3) to make somebody unhappy or upset

4) to spend a lot of time or effort doing something

5) determined to be successful, rich, famous, etc.

6) an act of trying to do something

7) to help someone or something

8) to find or provide a way of dealing with a problem

9) normal or average

10) an opinion you give someone about what they should do

5. Find in the text the English equivalents for:

неделя усиленного чтения, порвать с прежними привычками, столкновение идей, когда угодно, попросить совета, добраться до главного, выставить себя в глупом свете, куча родственников, резать слух, увлечь воображение, предаваться удовольствиям, человек с сильной волей.

6. Find the words in the text for which the following are synonyms:

dedicate, finish, common, suitable, effort, apprehend, deeply, claim (inquire), suggestion, help.

7. Say the following statements in your own words.

1. A week of heavy reading had passed.

2. Nothing remained for Martin but to read.

3. His head would be whirling with the conflict and contra-diction of ideas.

4. Ruth’s woman’s eye took in the slight but indefinable change in Martin for the better.

5. His voice died away.

6. He feared he had made a fool of himself.

7. Martin read voraciously the books that caught his fancy.

8. A man with a will may rise superior to his environment.

9. She could not guess that this man who had come from beyond her horizon had wider and deeper concepts than her own.

8. Explain and expand on the following.

1. Martin was afraid of making a blunder.

2. He attempted to read books that required years of preliminary specialisation.

3. Once Ruth and Martin were seated in the drawing-room he began to get on easily.

4. Martin feared he had made a fool of himself.

5. Ruth thought Martin needed to realise himself.

6. Martin’s grammar was awful.

7. Ruth’s interest in Martin increased.

8. Ruth dreamed of helping Martin to see as she saw.

9. Answer the following questions.

1. Why didn’t Martin call Ruth?

2. Why did it seem to Martin that he had lived centuries?

3. What kind of books did he read?

4. What advice did the librarian give Eden?

5. What change in Martin did Ruth feel?

6. What did they speak about?

7. What did Martin tell Ruth?

8. What was Martin’s origin?

9. What lesson did Ruth teach Martin?

10. What story did Ruth tell Martin?

11. Why was Eden dissatisfied with Mr. Butler’s career?

10. Correct the statements.

1. Martin could not get rid of his old companions.

2. Reading did not change his life at all.

3. The librarian was very annoyed when he saw Eden in the library every day.

4. Ruth guessed that Martin had not changed a bit.

5. Martin irritated Ruth.

6. Martin descended from a noble family.

7. Martin did not want to learn proper English.

8. Martin was fascinated with Mr. Butler’s career.

9. Ruth guessed that Martin was wiser than she was.

11. Develop the following statements.

1. A week of heavy reading had passed.

2. It seemed to Martin that he had lived centuries.

3. The librarian paid attention to Eden.

4. Ruth saw that Martin had changed for the better.

5. Martin wanted to turn to Ruth for advice.

6. Martin’s voice died away.

7. Ruth taught him to speak correctly.

8. Martin increased the remodelling of his life.

9. Martin was dissatisfied with Mr. Butler’s career.

12. Retell the chapter from the persons of Martin Eden, Ruth.

Back from sea Martin Eden came, homing for California.

When his store of money was exhausted, he had shipped on a treasure-hunting schooner; and after eight months of failure to find treasure, the expedition had broken up.

The men had been paid off in Australia, and Martin had immediately returned to San Francisco. Not only had those eight months earned him enough money to stay on land for many weeks, but they had enabled him to do a great deal of studying and reading.

He went through the grammar he had taken again and again, until his brain had mastered it. He noticed the bad grammar used by his shipmates. Now a double negative jarred him like a discord.

After he had mastered the grammar book, he took up the dictionary, and added twenty words a day to his vocabulary. He found that this was no light task, and at wheel or lookout he steadily went over and over his lengthening list of pronunciations and definitions.

The captain of the schooner had somehow fallen into possession of a complete Shakespeare, which he never read, and Martin had washed his clothes for him, and in return he had been permitted access to the precious volumes.

The eight months had been well spent, and, in addition to what he had learned of right speaking and high thinking, he had learned much of himself. Along with his humbleness, because he knew so little, there arose a conviction of power. He decided that he would describe many of the bits of South Sea beauty to Ruth. The creative spirit in him flamed up and then came the great idea. He would write. He would be one of the eyes through which the world saw, one of the ears through which it heard, one of the hearts through which it felt. He would write – everything – poetry and prose, fiction and description, and plays like Shakespeare. There was career and the way to win Ruth. The men of literature were the world’s giants and he conceived them to be far finer than the Mr. Butlers who earned thirty thousand a year.

Once the idea had germinated, it mastered him, and the return voyage to San Francisco was like a dream. To write! The thought was fire in him. He would begin as soon as he got back. The first thing he would do would be to describe the voyage of the treasure-hunters. He would sell it to some San Francisco newspaper. He would not tell Ruth anything about it, and she would be surprised and pleased when she saw his name in print. While he wrote he could go on studying. There were twenty-four hours in each day. He knew how to work, and the citadels would go down before him. Of course, he cautioned himself, it would be hard at first, and for a time he would be content to earn enough money by his writing to enable him to go on studying. And then, after some time – a very indeterminate time – when he had learned and prepared himself, he would write the great things, and his name would be on all men’s lips. But, greater than that – infinitely greater and greatest of all – he would have proved himself worthy of Ruth. Fame was all very well, but it was for Ruth that this splendid dream arose.

When he returned to Oakland, he took up his old room at Bernard Higginbotham’s and set to work. He did not even let Ruth know he was back. He would go and see her when he finished the article on the treasure-hunters. Three days, at white heat, completed his narrative, but when he had copied it carefully, in a large scrawl that was easy to read, he learned from a rhetoric he had picked up in the library that there were such things as paragraphs and quotation marks. He had never thought of such things before, and he promptly set to work writing the article over, referring continually to the pages of the rhetoric, and learning more in a day about composition than the average schoolboy in a year. When he had copied the article a second time and rolled it up carefully, he read in a newspaper an item on hints to beginners, and discovered the iron law that manuscripts should never be rolled, and that they should be written on one side of the paper. Also, he learned from the item that first-class papers paid a minimum of ten dollars a column. So, while he copied the manuscript a third time, he consoled himself by multiplying ten columns by ten dollars. The product was always the same – one hundred dollars – and he decided that that was better than seafaring. One hundred dollars in three days! It would have taken him three months and longer on the sea to earn a similar amount. A man was a fool to go to sea when he could write, he concluded, though the money in itself meant nothing to him. Its value was in the liberty it would get him, the clothes it would buy him, all of which would bring him nearer – swiftly nearer – to the slender, pale girl who had turned his life back upon itself and given him inspiration.

He mailed the manuscript in a flat envelope, and addressed it to the editor of the San Francisco Examiner. He had an idea that anything accepted by a paper was published immediately, and as he had sent the manuscript in on Friday he expected it to come out on the following Sunday.