UNIT Two

Men, Women and Children

My
heart Leaps Up When I Behold
William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth (1770-1850), English poet and worshipper of

nature and simplicity, was born in the Lake District. He spent some time in
France, where he became an enthusiastic republican until disillusioned by the
Terror which followed the French Revolution. In Somerset, with Coleridge, he
composed the Lyrical Ballads (1798), which attacked conventional poetry of the
18th century and which started the Romantic Movement in English. Then he
settled with his sister Dorothy in Grasmere in 1799. In 1802 he married Mary
hutchinson and they started living a life of "plain living and high thinking," and
he composed the poems that made him (after initial hostility) revered as the
greatest poet of his time. These poems include "Immortality Ode" (1807), many
fine sonnets, and pastoral poems such as "Michael" (1800). Radical in his youth,
he became conservative with age. In 1843, he was made poet laureate. His
autobiographical poem, The Prelude, was posthumously published in 1850.
Wordsworth says: "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of
powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotions recollected in
tranquillity." In this poem "My heart Leaps Up. .. he recollects an
experience of his childhood days and gives his emotion and feelings
a meaning.

My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky:

So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me
die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

GLOSSARYAND NOTES
my heart leaps up, i.e. with great joy; I feel great joy
 behold v. (old or poetic use) see
father, n a man who gives birth to something, i.e. from whom something
begins

piety, n. deep respect for God or religion

Exercises

UNDERSTANDING

I. Write in one sentence what the poem is about.

2. Explain the paradox in "The Child is father of the Man. "
3. Summarise the poem in a paragraph.

RHETORICAL STRATEGIES
A. Language in Use
Rhyme in poetry usually refers to the repetition of the
terminal sounds of words at the ends of lines of verse. Thus
in the poem, and old rhyme. Can you think of some other
words that rhyme with the following?

(a) old
(b) an

(c) now

(d) ant

(e) ate
B. Vocabulary
Look up in your dictionary and find out the

difference in meaning of the following words.

leap, jump, skip, vault, spring, hop, bounce.

C. Analysis of the Poem

I. Note that for Wordsworth poetry is "spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings recollected in tranquillity." Read the poem carefully and see
how this poem supports his view on poetry.
2. Analyse this poem and see how the ideas are put together.
lines 1 and 2: effect
lines 3 and 4: past and present
line 5: natural continuation in the future
line 6: a wish if continuation is broken
line 7 : the theme: the present is the
outcome of the past, so naturally the future will
be the outcome of the present
lines 8 and 9: a happy mood of relaxation after consolation.
3. Examine the poet's use of the present tense, the past tense, and the
future tense in this poem.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS / WRITING PRACTICE

1. Interpret the poem in any way you like.

2. What does the poet mean by "natural piety"?
Speaking of Children
Barbarra Holland

This extract is taken from Barbara Holland's

celebrated volume, Mother's Day or the View from In
Here, published in 1980. This essay delightfully
examines the idea of having more than one child and
the consequent expenses of parents.

One child is an appendage. More than one is a way of life.

One child is outnumbered. You can brainwash it. You can make
it do what you want it to do, carry it to parties and toss it on the bed with
the coats, lug it in a backpack through the Adirondacks, teach it to say
"How do you do?" and pass the hors d'oeuvres. Plural children are a
counter-culture in the house. You and your husband are outnumbered. A
creeping, irresistible tide of Leggos and 10 Lincoln Logs and doll clothes
and Matchbox cars seeps into the living room and cannot be turned back.
You no longer go to New York for the weekend, you go to Disneyland
instead, and dine at six instead of seven or eight. You up everything and
move because the schools are better somewhere else. You spend long
hours in social converse with people you would never otherwise have met
at all, because your children know their children.

Relentlessly, year by year, you are pushed backward, 20 shouting

helplessly, from your own life into theirs. Your own errands are wedged
into the time left over after you've taken the children somewhere and
brought them home again. When they get older, you're lucky if you get to
use your telephone one try out of six. With one child, you and your husband
are still yourselves; you have merely acquired an extra thing, like a
Yorkshire terrier or an electric toothbrush. More than one and you're a
family; and the piano keys are covered with jelly and
whenever you try to talk to each other somebody says
"Who's he? Do I know him? Why is she going to divorce him, doesn't she
like him anymore?" and after a while you give up.

I have read that it's terribly important to a healthy marriage that

the wife set aside some quiet private time to chat with the husband,
preferably when he gets home from work, or they get home from
work. Just half an hour. Peace, privacy, a couple of martinis, and
"How was your day, dear? Is the new man working out all right?"
I would like to get my personal hands on the people
 who keep suggesting this, and find out how I'm expected to manage.
"Now, I want everyone to play quietly and nicely in your rooms
for half an hour, while Mommy talks to Daddy."
"I want to talk to Daddy too!"
"Later, sweetie. Right now is going to be our private time
together, and then later you can have a private time with him, okay?"
'What are [you] going to talk about?"
I don't know. Things. Now you play nicely and don't interrupt us, all
right?"
"What if it's something important?"
"It better be terribly important."
Peace. Privacy. The well-chilled martini.
"And how was your day, dear?"
"Well, as a matter of fact—"
An ominous splintering crash overhead, and you both glance
apprehensively at the ceiling. Silence.
"As a matter of fact, something rather interesting
60 seems to be brewing. Scott was saying—"
Feet on the stairs. A child, and another child behind
it.
"I said not to interrupt us."
"You said if it's important. It's important, I have to ask you
something."
"What? Ask, and leave."
The eyes unfocused, the face blurs, the sneakered toe traces a pattern
on the carpet. "I'm trying to remember

70 "Hurry up. Mother and I were talking."

Theatrical hand on brow. "I can't remember. I've forgotten. It
was important, though. Can I taste your

"No. Go back to your room."

"Just a tiny taste?"
 "Go upstairs and play!"
Bitter looks. Feet stomp halfway up the stairs and then stop;
silence, not even a breath, in case of missing a single word from
below.
80 "Yes, well, you were saying?"
"I forget. Well. Did you have a nice day?"
Muted scuffling on the stairs.
"Oh yes. Very nice."
You gaze at each other, paralyzed with self-consciousness, each
wondering how you came to get stuck with this doltish stranger.
Besides, it's time to start the water for the spaghetti.
There's always bed, of course, but mothers of more than one
child fall asleep with startling suddenness and 90 finalities.
You could write each other notes. At least until the children learn to
read.
Some parents communicate in high school French, but my
husband took German instead.
We take to calling each other at our office when we have
anything to say.
 GLOSSARYAND NOTES
appendage, n. something permanently attached, like an arm or leg.
brainwash, v. to implant new ideas in the mind of a person and
eliminate established ones by subjecting him or her systematically
to great mental pressure
lug, v. to drag or carry with great effort
Adirondacks, n. a mountain range in NE New York State
hors d'oeuvre, n. an appetizer served at the beginning of a meal
counter-culture, n. a way of life opposed to that usually considered
normal
seep, v. percolate
Lego’s, Lincoln Logs, n. toy sets for children to play with by using
blocks to make various things
Disneyland, n. amusement park in California, founded by Walt
Disney and opened in 1955.

converse, n. talk

ominous, adj. threatening disaster

stamp, v. stamp

doltish, adj. dull or stupid

martini, n. alcoholic drink

Exercises

UNDERSTANDING

1. Summarize the main idea of the essay in one paragraph.

RHETORICAL STRATEGIES
 1. The main idea of this essay is clearly stated in the first sentence.
(When I had two children, Speaking of Children

discovered. . .). Where else in this essay is this idea repeated in

slightly different words? How does this repetition serve as a
transition to the rest of the essay?
2. Almost half the essay consists of conversations directly quoted.
What makes this conversation sound natural? Holland never
identifies the speakers— never writes "The child said. or "I said
still it is not hard to decide who the speakers are. How can you tell?
3. Holland deliberately uses a number of sentence fragments. Why are
they appropriate to this essay? What effect do they create?
4. What is the reason for the four single sentence paragraphs at the
end of the essay? Would you like it better if these four sentences
were combined into one paragraph? Why or why not?
5. Write a short essay in which you show a situation or event by
quoting what people say. Try to make at least one third of your
essay direct quotation.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS / WRITING PRACTICE

1. Does this essay speak in favor or against having many children? Give
reasons.
2. Write an essay on the Position of Women in your society.
3. Argue why child spacing may be important for a happy family life.
 Look at a Teacup
Patricia Hampl
Patricia Hampl was born in 1946 in Minnesota, USA
and educated at the University of Minnesota. Encouraged
by the literary community in her area, Hampl wrote
poetry, much of it about her town. Her first volume of
poems, Woman Before an Aquarium, was published in
1978 and the other volume, Resort, in 1983. Hampl has
always been fascinated by her community, her family and
her ancestral homeland in Czechoslovakia.
In "Look at a Teacup," first published in The New
Yorker (1976) Hampl reads her mother's history in a
delicate teacup. This essay shows how writing is a way of
finding out what one has to say, of discovering significance
in apparently minor events, and of making associations
between seemingly disparate elements. The mother has
escaped the magnitude of history by retreating into
pragmatism but Hampl, may have been attempting to
escape history by fighting it, by refusing to carry on old
traditions like marrying and bearing children.

She bought the teacup in 1939, of all years. It was on sale downtown,
because it was a discontinued pattern. Even on sale, it was an extravagance
as far as her new in-laws were concerned; it set her apart. She used to say how
she just put that money counter and let Aunt Gert sigh as loud as she pleased.
Nineteen thirty-nine. My mother was buying dishes that had come
from Czechoslovakia, because the best china and she was marrying an
Czech. Most of the teacups are still unbroken. mine now, because
I'm her daughter and out her china cabinet last week. Each
piece
"Czechoslovakia" stamped on the bottom. The cup thin—you can
almost see through its paleness empty; right now, there's tea in it,
and its level ca gauged from the shadow outside. The cup is water-
green imaginable. Sometimes, in certain lights is so pale it doesn't
seem green at all, just something
 white. It is shiny, and there are thin bands of gold 20 around the
edges of the saucer and cup, and again midway down the bowl of the
cup and at its base, which is subtly formed into a semi-pedestal. There
is also a band of gold on the inner circle of the saucer, but it has been
worn away, after so many years, except for a dulled, blurred line.
There is no other decoration on the outside of the cup—a bland
precision of lines and curved light.

But inside the cup there are flowers, as if someone had scattered a
bouquet and it had tumbled into separate blossoms, falling in a full circle
around the inside. Some 30 have fallen faster to the bottom of the cup, while
some are still floating. The blossoms don't seem to be pasted on the surface
like decals; they really appear to be caught in motion. And now, for the first
time, alone in my own house (I've never been, alone with one of these cups
before; they were her company dishes), I see that no two flowers on the cup
or the saucer are the same. Each a different flower—different colors,
different altitudes of falling, nothing to create a pattern. Yet the cup and
saucer together are pure light, something extremely $0 delicate but
definite. As refined as a face.
My mother's face, which has fallen into sadness. Nothing
tragic ever happened to her—"nothing big," she'll say. I am the
one who has wanted something big.

"I know the most important thing in the world," I told her when
I was ten.
"Well, what is it?" she asked.
"Work. Work is the most important thing
Her face showed fear. "Oh, no," she said quickly, trying to
sweep away the thought. "No. Family is the important thing.
Family, darling." Even then, her voice was sounding a farewell,
the first of all those good-byes mothers say to their daughters.
Or maybe our parting began one day when Dad came up
behind her in the kitchen. He kissed her on the back of the neck.
She thought they were alone, but my brother and I had followed
him into the kitchen. He kissed her neck just where the hair stops.
She turned from the sink like a swaying stem, with her hands all
full of soapsuds and put her stem arms around his neck. Her eyes
were closed, her arms heavy and soapy. Pure and Passionate soap
arms of my mother. He drew her down Suddenly in a swooping
joke of an embrace—a Valentino bend, an antic pose for us
giggling kids. He swept her in his arms and gave her lips a
clownish kiss. We giggled, and our father laughed and turned to
grin at his audience. "My dahling, I luff you!" he said to her
soulfully. Her body struggled awkwardly, her eyes flew open, and
she tried to rise from his clownish embrace.
"No, no," she said. No, no to any joke. She stood at the 70
edge of her red-petaled life. There are buds that never open. "Just let
me up," she said. "I've got these dishes to do. Let me up And she
plunged her hands back into the dishwat6r. Every night, she swam
with her thoughts in that small sea.

In the cup, amid the bundle of pastel falling flowers at the

bottom of the bowl, there is another firm, thin gold circlet. It
shines up just below the most deeply submerged flower, like a
shoreline submerged by a momentary tide of morning tea. The
engulfed flowers
become oranges and violets—those colors. Above the tea line there
are green leaves and several jots of blue flowers, not deep and bright like
cornflowers, but a powdery, toneless blue, a monochrome without
shadow or' cloud. Also, there is the shape of the flowers. Some are
plump, all curve and weight. There is a pale lavender rose on the
saucer, with a rounded, balled-up cabbage head of petals; and on the
opposite side a spiky, orange dahlia-like flower. None of the flowers
looks real. They are suggestions, pale, almost unfinished, with 90
occasional sparks of brightness, like a replica of memory itself. There is
a slur of recollection about them, something imprecise, seductive, and
foggy but held together with a bright bolt of accuracy—perhaps a piercing
glance from a long-dead uncle, whose face, all the features, has otherwise
faded and gone.
In 1939, in Chicago, my mother was a bride. That was the
first year of the war, when Europe began to eat itself raw. In the
newspaper picture announcing the marriage, her head had a halo. A
golden light was IOO around her head.
"I wasn't one for buying a lot of stuff," she tells me. "You only need
so much. I bought what I needed when I got married." In the past few
years, she's been giving me many of those things, piece by piece. Every
time I go over to visit, she says, "Well, you might as well take the
yellow tablecloth." Or there will be a pile of silverware she'll want me
to have. These teacups. I'm always walking off with something.
I try to get her to talk about her life, but she won't do that. It's not
that she thinks I'm prying. "Well, honey, what do you want to know?" she
says. "I mean, what's there to say?" And she pushes her hair, which is still
more blond than anything else, away from her face, and she looks really
beautiful. I start talking fast, saying how everybody knows the world has
changed a lot since the Second World War ended, and she was alive when
Hitler was in power, for God's sake, and she's lived through something,
and it's part of history.
"It wasn't that long ago," she says, and flips her honey hair
again and lights a cigarette. "Besides, you'd have to talk to somebody
from Europe about all that. They lived through it." Once she told me
that in high school she'd had an assignment to write an essay about
why Hitler was good for Germany. "Personally, I never liked him,"
she said. "We were always Democrats. But we had that assignment.
"
So I go over to visit, and we talk and I ask all these questions and
she says, "You sound like one of those oral history projects," and I say,
"No, really. I'm interested." 130 1'm always telling her, anything you can
remember, any detail—it's really important. Everybody's life is important,
I say. I'm interested. I can't even explain why.
Sometimes she says things like "You know, I bet you won't believe
this, but we girls, way back—and this
wasn't in the country, either—we used to use cotton strips all
bundled up, instead of Kotex. And we'd wash them out and use them
over again." Or, "The first pair of nylon stockings I bought, they lasted
two years. Then 140 stockings started not lasting." Once, she looked
across the kitchen table at me and said, almost experimentally as if
she wanted to hear how it would sound aloud, 'You know, one time
your father came home, just an ordinary day, and I looked up and I
wasn't even thinking, it just darted into my head: Someday he'll walk
in and I just won't be here, I'll just leave. But it never happened."
None of it amounts to anything, though. Her details don't add up to
a life story. Maybe that's why she's been giving me all these things the
past few years—her
 possessions, everything she bought in 1939, the year of her marriage.
This teacup, which I look at closely, for a long time, sitting at my
own white-and-yellow kitchen table, alone, across the city from
her.
The teacup was made in a country far away, of which other countries
knew little. An English politician (but you can't go just blaming him,
my mother says) shook a nation away as he tightly furled his black
umbrella. A country lost its absorption in peaceful work, lost its pure
science of flinging flowers onto the sides of teacups.
160 I tell her I believe that something could have been different.
What would have happened if someone with an important black
umbrella had considered the future of teacups, if powerful men
bowed their heads at the difficulties of implanting the waxy tulip
on porcelain? Old questions—certain people have tried to answer
them, there are books. But many of us still live with the details;
the souvenirs of some places are never broken. This cup is a
detail, a small uncharred finger from the midcentury bonfire.

170 I visit my mother. We sit in her blue-and-white kitchen. My mother

stands up for the future. "Life goes on, you can't keep going over
things," she says. "It's the flow of life that counts." She wants me
to ride forward into the golden light that she says is the future and
all its possibility. "Look ahead," she tells me.
 I try, but everything drives me into the past that she insists sis
safely gone. How can I ride forward on her errand when all the world,
even the smallest object, sends me back, sets me wondering over and
over about 180 our own strange life and country, always trying to
understand history and sexuality. Details, however small, get sorted
into their appropriate stories, all right, but I am always holding out
for the past and thinking how it keeps coming back at us. No details
are disparate, I tell her. Mother, the cups were discontinued because
a country was discontinued.
"Oh, but now you're talking politics," she says, and clears
off the kitchen table. "Over my head, over my head," she says.
190 But it's not. That's what makes me mad. She knows. They all
do, those brides who chose their china in 1939. Many things fell that
year, for those brides—not only flowers into teacups. Their bodies
fell, paired with other bodies, on beds together for the first time. "But
that was no tragedy," she says, smiling, with her hands on the back
of a chair. Smiling because she knows after all our talks that I think
something was wasted when she first fell. Because I have refused to
fall. "Some people just don't want to get married—I know that," she
says 200 broadmindedly. But she knows I'm saying marriage isn't
there anymore; the flowered flannel nightgown isn't being hung on a
peg in a closet next to a pair of striped drawstring pajamas anymore.
We don't get married anymore, Mother. Don't blame me; I didn't
think it up.
"Don't talk like a sausage," she'll say. "Some people— there
are always some people who do not want to get married. I
understand this. I understand you. You don't want to get married.
Fine. It's fine. That's just fine.

Many people live that way."

Her own marriage, I agree, was no tragedy. It was the old
bow pulled across the cello, making its first sexual sound
again. Another generation joining the long, low moan. The
falling of flowers down the sides of teacups, the plunging
bodies on white sheets. I know people could
 take any amount of this pain. But the falling of the other bodies,
the rain of bodies in Europe, that happened that year too, Mother.
Marriage, that's one thing; we agree that for her it was no
tragedy, wasn't the end, really. But Europe was already broken, broken
for good; there was no replacing a nation of glassblowers. Bodies fell
that year in Madrid, too. In the cities of Spain, women looked up at the
sky in terror. In Barcelona, almost for the first time in history, a woman
carrying home a branch of forsythia wrapped in waxed paper ran for
cover, hiding from the air. In that war, bombs fell on women from the
air, and it was planned.
My mother says she can't get over how I'm always
connecting things.
"Everybody I know talks this way," I say. "Does it embarrass
you?"
"No. Just—well, tell the truth."
"I will. I'll try to."
The only real difference between us, between my mother and
me, is all the talking I do. Her cello voice was drowned somewhere in
the sound of falling flowers, in marriage, in the new thought of bombs
falling on women with flowers, with teacups. But this particular tea cup
and its golden shoreline escaped, and she and I have both sat with it in
our kitchens. She gave it to me.
Mothers know their daughters go to their bedrooms and try on
the strange clothes women wear and look at themselves in the
full-length mirror, trying to understand the future, the lipstick, the
bras. Is there a mother who gives a daughter a teacup and thinks
it is not also inspected?

"Mother," I said last week when I was over to visit and she
was putting red tulips in a vase, talking about how 250 everybody she
knew smoked and how she was glad I'd never taken it up. "Mother,
everybody I know, they're always talking about their parents, trying to
figure out their mothers. Did you do that? My friends, we all do that."
"No," she said. "We didn't, I guess. We didn't talk the way you
do. We didn't, you know, have relationships. Then she
remembered about the teacups, and we changed the conversation.
 If she were alone having a cup of tea, as I am now, 260 she
would be smoking a cigarette, staring dreamily out the kitchen window,
absently rubbing her index finger over the nail of her thumb (she still
uses nail polish) in circle after circle. The smoke would be circling
around her head of honey-and-smoke hair. Just sitting. I can see her.
This afternoon, though, it is my finger looped in the ear of this
European cup. She is not the only submerged figure I see—she and this
buoyant cabbage-head rose. There is so much sinking, no hand can hold
all that has 270 happened.
We sit around a kitchen table, my friends and I, and try to
describe even one thing, but it flies apart in words. Whole
afternoons go. Women often waste time this way. But history has
to get written somehow. There are all these souvenirs in our houses.
We have to wash and dust them. They get handed down when
there's no way of explaining things. It's as if my mother has always
been saying, Darling, look at the teacup, It has more to say.

GLOSSARYAND NOTES
This essay begins with the mention of the year 1939, and later
many other incidents associated with that year have been described.
It was the year when the Second World War began. In the war the
Allies (Britain, the Commonwealth, France, the USSR, the USA and
China) defeated the Axis powers (principally Germany, Italy and
Japan). Britain and France declared war on Germany (Sept. 3, 1939)
as a result of German invasion of
Poland (Sept. 1, 1939). Italy entered the war on June 10, 1940
shortly before the collapse of France (armistice signed June 22, 1940),
On June 22, 1941 Germany attacked the Soviet Union and on Dec.
7, 1941 the Japanese attacked the US at Pearl Harbour. On Sept. 8,
1943 Italy surrendered, the war in Europe ending on May 7, 1945
with the unconditional surrender of the Germans. The Japanese
capitulated on Aug. 14, 1945 An estimated 55 million lives were
lost, 20 million of them citizens of the USSR.

extravagance, n. excessive spending of money in-

laws, n. relatives by marriage
china, n. wares made from china clay
 gauge, v. measure
bowl of the cup, the hollow part of the cup
bland, adj. gentle, mild tumble, v. fall headlong
decals, n. a transferred design. This word is a short form of
decalcomania which refers to a process of transferring a design from
prepared paper onto another surface, such as glass or paper.
soapsuds, n. froth of soap and water
stem arms, i.e. because her mother's hands were soapy
Valentino, n. Rudolph Valentino (1895-1926) US silent film
actor, born in Italy, in his time a symbol of a romantic hero.
dahling, i.e. darling
luff, i.e. love soulfully, adv. with deep feeling monochrome, n.
picture done in one colour or different tones of this.
replica, n. copy or model, especially on a smaller scale

prying, v. being inquisitive

flip, v. flick or toss something in the air
assignment, n. task
souvenir, n. memento of an occasion, place, etc.
sort, v. put in order
disparate, adj. essentially different; not comparable
the mid-century bonfire, the reference is to the devastating effect
of the Second World War
flannel nightgown. . . drawstring pajamas, suggests contrasts
between marriage in those days and sexual relations in
modern days.
cello, n. bass instrument of the violin family

forsythia, n. a shrub with bright yellow flowers

tulip, n. a kind of cup-shaped flower

 relationships, n. (colloquial) emotional (especially sexual)
associations between two people

ear, n. the small ear-shaped handle of a teacup

submerged, adj. placed or gone under water

Exercises

UNDERSTANDING

1. Explain "The cup is a detail, a small uncharred finger from the

mid-century bonfire."
2. What do you mean by "Many things fell that year"?

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS / WRITING PRACTICE

1. Discovering meaning of this essay depends on discovering a

thread of associations. Discuss.
2. What is the relationship among falling flowers and teacups,
falling bodies and beds, and the falling of bombs onto women
and falling countries?"

3. How does Hampl see herself and her mother connected by the
teacup?
4. How can writing sharpen an image that is only dimly recalled?
5. What does this essay/story tell us about marriage? about
mother-daughter relationship? about the importance of family?
about women?
6. What does the story tell us about being a woman?
 A Worn Path
Eudora Welty

Eudora Welty, US novelist and short story writer,

was born in 1909 in Jackson, Mississippi. She was
educated at Mississippi State College for Women, the
University of Wisconsin, and for a brief period, at the
school of business at Columbia University, where she
studied advertising. During the Depression she returned
to Mississippi to write for newspapers and radio stations
and to photograph and interview local residents for the
Works Progress Administration. During the 1930s
Welty also began to publish her short stories in such
magazines as The Southern Review, The New Yorker,
and The Atlantic Monthly. She continued to live in
Jackson where she wrote an impressive body of fiction
that evokes a strong sense of "place." Her works reflect
life in the US South and are notable for their creation of
character and accurate rendition of local dialect. Her
books include Delta Wedding (1946), Ponder Heart
(1954), Losing Battles (1970), and The Optimist's
Daughter (1972), which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.
Welty's collection of essays, The Eye of the Story,
appeared in 1977. In One Writer's Beginnings (1984)
she gave an account of the forces that shaped her own
writing career.
"A Worn Path" is an exquisitely controlled story of
unconscious heroism. Miss Welty takes us into old
Phoenix's mind with great delicacy and discloses her firm
dignity. This story is taken from A Curtain of Green and
Other Stories (1941).

it was December—a bright frozen day in the early mmorning. Far

out in the country there was an old Negro woman with her head tied in
a red rag, coming along a path through the pinewoods. Her name was
Phoenix Jackson. She was very old and small and she walked slowly in
the dark pine shadows, moving a little from side to side in her
steps, with the balanced heaviness and lightness of a pendulum in a
grandfather clock. She carried a thin, small cane made from an 10
umbrella, and with this she kept tapping the frozen earth in front of her.
This made a grave and persistent noise in the still air, that seemed
meditative, like the chirping of a solitary little bird.
She wore a dark striped dress reaching down to her shoetops,
and an equally long apron of bleached sugar sacks, with a full pocket;
all neat and tidy, but every time she took a step she might have fallen
over her shoe-laces, which dragged from her unlaced shoes. She
looked straight ahead. Her eyes were blue with age. Her skin 20 had a
pattern all its own of numberless branching wrinkles and as though a
whole little tree stood in the middle of her forehead, but a golden color
ran underneath, and the two knobs of her cheeks were illuminated by
a yellow burning under the dark. Under the red rag her hair came
down on her neck in the frailest of ringlets, still black, and with an odor
like copper.
Now and then there was a quivering in the thicket. Old Phoenix
said, "Out of my way, all you fox, owls, beetles, 30 jack rabbits, coons,
and wild animals! . . . Keep out from under these feet, little bobwhites.
Keep the big wild hogs out of my path. Don't let none of those come
running my direction. I got a long way." Under her small black-
freckled hand her cane, limber as a buggy whip, would switch at the
brush as if to rouse up any hiding things.
On she went. The woods were deep and still. The sun made the
pine needles almost too bright to look at, up where the wind rocked.
The cones dropped as light as 40 feathers. Down in the hollow was the
mourning dove—it was not too late for him.
The path ran up a hill. "Seem like there is chains about my feet,
time I get this far," she said, in the voice of argument old people
keep to use with themselves. "Something always take a hold on this
hill—pleads I should stay."

After she got to the top she turned and gave a full, severe look
behind her where she had come. "Up through pines," she said at
length. "Now down through oaks."
gently. Her eyes opened their widest the bottom and she of the started

down gently but before she got to the bottom of the hill a bush

caught her dress.

Her fingers were busy and intent, but her skirts were full and
long, so that before she could pull them free in one place they were
caught in another. It was not possible to allow the dress to tear. "I
in the thorny bush she said. "Thorns, you doing your appointed
work. Never want to let folks past—no sir. Old eyes thought you
was a pretty little green bush."

Finally, trembling all over, she stood free, and after a moment dared
to stoop for her cane.
"Sun so high!" she cried, leaning back •and looking; while the
thick tears went over her eyes. "The time getting all gone here."
At the foot of this hill was a place where a log was laid across
the creek.
"Now comes the trial," said Phoenix.
Putting her right foot out, she mounted the log and shut her
eyes. Lifting her skirt, leveling her cane fiercely 70 before her, like a
festival figure in some parade, she began to march across. Then she
opened her eyes and she was safe on the other side.
"I wasn't as old as I thought," she said.
But she sat down to rest. She spread her skirts on the bank
around her and folded her hands over her knees. Up above her was a
tree in a pearly cloud of mistletoe. She did not dare to close her eyes,
and when a little boy brought her a little plate with a slice of marble-
cake on it she spoke to him. "That would be acceptable," she said. 80
But when she went to take it there was just her own hand in the
air.
So she left that tree, and had to go through a barbed
wire fence. There she had to creep and crawl, spreading her knees
and stretching her fingers like a baby trying to climb the steps.
But she talked loudly to herself: she could not let her dress be
torn now, so late in the day, and
 she could not pay for having her arm or her leg sawed off if she
got caught fast where she was.
At last she was safe through the fence and risen up 90 out in
the clearing. Big dead trees, like black men with one arm, were
standing in the purple stalks of the withered cotton field. There sat a
buzzard. "Who you watching 7. "
In the furrow she made her way along.
"Glad this not the season for bulls," she said, looking
sideways, "and the good Lord made his snakes to curl up and
sleep in the winter. A pleasure I don't see no two headed snake
coming around that tree, where it come once. It took a while to
get by him, back in the summer."
She passed through the old cotton and went into a field of dead corn.
It whispered and shook, and was taller than her head. "Through
the maze now," she said, for there was no path.
Then there was something tall, black, and skinny there, moving
before her.
At first she took it for a man. It could have been a man dancing
in the field. But she stood still and listened, and it did not make a
sound. It was as silent as a ghost.
"Ghost," she said sharply, "who be you the ghost of?
For I have heard of nary death close by."
But there was no answer, only the ragged dancing in the wind.
She shut her eyes, reached out her hand, and touched a sleeve.
She found a coat and inside that an emptiness, cold as ice.
"You scarecrow," she said. Her face lighted. "I ought to be shut
up for good," she said with laughter. "My senses is gone. I too old. I
the oldest people I ever know. Dance, old scarecrow," she said, "while
I dancing with 120 you."
She kicked her foot over the furrow, and with mouth drawn
down shook her head once or twice in a little
strutting way. Some husks blew down and whirled in streamers
about her skirts.
 Then she went on, parting her way from side to side with the
cane, through the whispering field. At last she came to the end,
to a wagon track, where the silver grass blew between the red
ruts. The quail were walking around like pullets, seeming all
dainty and Unseen.
"Walk pretty," she said. "This the easy Place. This the easy going."
She followed the track, swaying through the quiet bare fields,
through the little strings of trees silver in their dead leaves, past
cabins silver from weather, with the doors and windows boarded
shut, all like old Women under a spell sitting there. "I walking
in their sleep," she said, nodding her head vigorously.
In a ravine she went where a spring was silently flowing
through a hollow log. Old Phoenix bent and 140 drank. "Sweetgum
makes the water sweet," she said, and drank more. "Nobody knows
who made this well, for it was here when I was born."
The track crossed a swampy part where the moss hung as
white as lace from every limb. "Sleep on, alligators, and blow
your bubbles." Then the track went into the road.
Deep, deep the road went down between the high green-
colored banks. Overhead the live-oaks met, and it was as dark
as a cave.
A black dog with a lolling tongue came up out of the weeds by the
ditch. She was meditating, and not ready, and when he came at
her she only hit him a little with her cane. Over she went in the
ditch, like a little puff of milk-weed.
Down there, her senses drifted away. A dream visited her, and
she reached her hand up, but nothing reached down and gave her a pull.
So she lay there and presently went to talking. "Old woman," she said
to herself, "that black dog come up out of the weeds to stall you off, and
160 now there he sitting on his fine tail, smiling at you.

A white man finally came along and found her—a hunter, a

young man, with his dog on a chain.
"Well, Granny!" he laughed. "What are you doing
 "Lying on my back like a June-bug waiting to be turned
over, mister," she said, reaching up her hand.
He lifted her up, gave her a swing in the air, and set her
down, "Anything broken, Granny?"
"No sir, them old dead weeds is springy enough," said 170
Phoenix, when she had got her breath. "I thank you for your
trouble."
"Where do you live, Granny?" he asked, while the two dogs
were growling at each other.
"Away back yonder, sir, behind the ridge. You can't even see
it from here.
"On your way home?"
"No sir, I going to town."
"Why, that's too far! That's as far as I walk when I come out
myself, and I get something for my trouble." He 180 patted the stuffed
bag he carried, and there hung down a little closed claw. It was one of
the bobwhites, with its beak hooked bitterly to show it was dead. "Now
you go on home, Granny!"
"I bound to go to town, mister," said Phoenix. "The time come
around."
He gave another laugh, filling the whole landscape. "I know
you colored people! Wouldn't miss going to town to see Santa
Claus!"
But something held Old Phoenix very still. The deep 190 lines
in her face went into a fierce and different

radiation. Without warning she had seen with her own eyes a
flashing nickel fall out of the man's pocket on to the ground.
"How old are you, Granny?" he was saying.
"There is no telling, mister," she said, "no telling."
Then she gave a little cry and clapped her hands, and said, "Git
on away from here, dog! Look! Look at that dog!" She laughed
as if in admiration. "He ain't scared of nobody. He a big black
dog." She whispered, "Sick him!"
"Watch me get rid of that cur," said the man. "Sick him, Pete! Sick
him!"
Phoenix heard the dogs fighting and heard the man running
and throwing sticks. She even heard a gunshot. But she was slowly
bending forward by that time, further and further forward, the lids
stretched down over her eyes, as if she were doing this in her sleep.
Her chin was lowered almost to her knees the yellow palm of her hand
came out from the fold of her apron. Her fingers slid down and along
the ground under the piece of money 210 with the grace and care they
would have in lifting an egg from under a sitting hen. Then she slowly
straightened up, she stood erect, and the nickel was in her apron
pocket. A bird flew by. Her lips moved. "God watching me the whole
time. I come to stealing."
The man came back, and his own dog panted about them.
"Well, I scared him off that time," he said, and then he
laughed and lifted his gun and pointed it at Phoenix.
She stood straight arid faced him.
"Doesn't the gun scare you?" he said, still pointing it.
"No sir, I seen plenty go off closer by, in my day, and for less than
what I done," she said, holding utterly still.
He smiled, and shouldered the gun. "Well, Granny," he said,
"you must be a hundred years old, and scared of nothing. I'd
give you a dime if I had any money with me. But you take my
advice and stay home, and nothing will happen to you."

"I bound to go on my way, mister," said Phoenix. She inclined her

head in the red rag. Then they went in

230 different directions, but she could hear the gun shooting again
and again over the hill.
She walked on. The shadows hung from the oak trees to the
road like curtains. Then she smelled wood-smoke,
and smelled the river, and she saw a steeple and the cabins on
their steep steps. Dozens of little black children whirled around
her. There ahead was Natchez shining. Bells were ringing. She
walked on.
 In the paved city it was Christmas time. There were red and
green electric lights strung and criss-crossed 240 everywhere, and all
turned on in the daytime. Old Phoenix would have been lost if she
had not distrusted her eyesight and depended on her feet to know
where to take her.
She paused quietly on the sidewalk, where people were

passing by. A lady came along in the crowd, carrying an armful

of red-, green-, and silver-wrapped presents; she gave off perfume
like the red roses in hot summer, and Phoenix stopped her.
"Please, missy, will you lace up my shoe?" She held up 250
her foot.
"What do you want, Grandma?"
"See my shoe," said Phoenix. "Do all right for out in the
country, but wouldn't look right 'to go in a big building. "
"Stand still then, Grandma," said the lady. She put the
packages down carefully on the sidewalk beside her and laced
and tied both shoes tightly.
"Can't lace 'em with a cane," said Phoenix. "Thank you,
missy. I doesn't mind asking a nice lady to tie up my 260 shoe when
I gets out on the street."
Moving slowly and from side to side, she went into the

stone building and into a tower of steps, where she walked up

and around and around until her feet knew to stop.

She entered a door, and there she saw nailed up on the wall
the document that had been stamped with the gold seal and
framed in the gold frame which matched the dream that was
hung up in her head.
"Here I be," she said. There was a fixed and 270 ceremonial
stiffness over her body.
"A charity case, I suppose," said an attendant who sat at the
desk before her.
But Phoenix only looked above her head. There was sweat on
her face; the wrinkles shone like a bright net.
 "Speak up, Grandma," the woman said. "What's your name?
We must have your history, you know. Have you been here
before? What seems to be the trouble with
Old Phoenix only gave a twitch to her face as if a fly were
bothering her.
"Are you deaf?" cried the attendant.
But then the nurse came in.
"Oh, that's just old Aunt Phoenix," she said. "She doesn't come
for herself—she has a little grandson. She makes these trips just
as regular as clockwork. She lives away back off the Old Natchez
Trace." She bent down. "Well, Aunt Phoenix, why don't you just
take a seat? We won't keep you standing after your long trip."
She pointed.
The old woman sat down, bolt upright in the chair.
"Now, how is the boy?" asked the nurse.
Old Phoenix did not speak.
"I said, how is the boy 9."
But Phoenix only waited and stared straight ahead, her face
very solemn and withdrawn into rigidity.
"Is his throat any better?" asked the nurse. "Aunt Phoenix,
don't you hear me? Is your grandson's throat any better since the
last time you came for the medicine?" With her hand on her
knees, the old woman waited, silent, erect and motionless, just as
if she were in armor.
"You mustn't take up our time this way. Aunt Phoenix," the nurse said.
"Tell us quickly about your grandson and get it over. He isn't
dead, is he?"
At last there came a flicker and then a flame of comprehension
across her face, and she spoke.
"My grandson. It was my memory had left me. There I sat and
forgot why I made my long trip.
"Forgot?" The nurse frowned. "After you came so far?"
Then Phoenix was like an old woman begging a dignified
forgiveness for waking up frightened in the 310 night. "I never did
go to school—I was too old at the Surrender," she said in a soft
 voice. "I'm an old woman without an education. It was my memory
fail me. My little grandson, he is just the same, and I forgot it in the
coming.
"Throat never heals, does it?" said the nurse, speaking in a
loud, sure voice to Old Phoenix. By now she had a card with
something written on it, a little list. "Yes. Swallowed lye. When
was it—January—two—three years ago—"
Phoenix spoke unasked now. "No, missy, he not dead, he just the
same. Every little while his throat begins to close up again, and
he not able to swallow. He not gets his breath. He not able to
help himself. So the time come around, and I go on another trip
for the soothing medicine."
"All right. The doctor said as long as you came to get it you
could have it," said the nurse. "But it's an obstinate case.
"My little grandson, he sits up there in the house all 330
wrapped up, waiting by himself," Phoenix went on. "We is the only
two left in the world. He suffer and it don't seem to put him back at
all. He got a sweet look. He going to last. He wears a little patch quilt
and peep out, holding his mouth open like a little bird. I remember so
plain now. I not going to forget him again, no, the whole enduring
time. I could tell him from all the others in creation."
"All right." The nurse was trying to hush her now. She
brought her a bottle of medicine. "Charity," she said, 340 making a
check mark in a book.
Old Phoenix held the bottle close to her eyes and then carefully
put it into her pocket.
"I thank you," she said.
"It's Christmas time, Grandma," said the attendant. "Could I give
you a few pennies out of my purse?
 "Five pennies is a nickel," said Phoenix stiffly.
"Here's a nickel," said the attendant.
Phoenix rose carefully and held out her hand. She received the
nickel and then fished the other nickel out of
350 her pocket and laid it beside the new one. She stared at her palm
closely, with her head on one side.
Then she gave a tap with her cane on the floor.
"This is what come to me to do," she said. "I going to the store
and buy my child a little windmill they sells made out of paper.
He going to find it hard to believe there such a thing in the world.
I'll march myself back where he waiting, holding it straight up in
this hand."
She lifted her free hand, gave a little nod, turned round,' and
walked out of the doctor's office. Then her 360 slow step began on the
stairs, going down.

GLOSSARYAND NOTES
Phoenix Jackson. The name Phoenix reminds one of the
mythical bird of this name, which was the only one of its kind.
Every 500 years it burnt itself on a pyre and rose anew from the
ashes to live again.
meditative, adj. thoughtful
odor, n. (Brit. odour) smell
coon, n. (Brit. raccoon) N. American mammal with a bushy tail and
a sharp snout
bobwhite, n. a common N. American quail
black-freckled, adj. black-spotted
limber, adj. flexible mourning dove, a brown N. American dove
with a plaintive song
appointed adj. assigned (work)
creek, n. stream
mistletoe, n. a parasitic plant with white berries growing on apple
and other trees
 buzzard, n. a large bird of the hawk family
furrow, n. a narrow trench-like depression
maze, n. a network of paths and hedges
nary, adv. (dialect) not, never
scarecrow n. human figure dressed in old cloth and set up in a field to
scare birds away
in a strutting way, proudly
rut, n. deep track made by the passage of wheels
quail, n. small game bird related to partridge
pullet, n. young hen, especially less than one-year-old
ravine, n. deep narrow gorge
sweetgum, n. a tree found in N. America lolling, adj. (of tongue)
hanging loosely milkweed, n. a kind of plant that secretes a milky juice
stall, v. stop (as a vehicle, engine, etc. because of overload on the
engine or inadequate supply of fuel in it).
June-bug, n. a kind of large brown beetle
springly, adj. elastic colored people, black people
Santa Claus, n. a person said to bring children presents on Christmas
Eve [from St. Nicholas]
radiation, n. bright light
nickel, n. five-cent coin
sick, v. make sick
cur, n. a mangy ill-tempered dog
pant, v. take short quick breaths

dime, n. US ten-cent coin steeple, n. a tall tower, especially with a

spire, in a church
twitch, n. (of muscles, etc.) sudden involuntary contraction
flicker, v. (of flame or light) shine or burn unsteadily; (of hope) waver
frown, v. wrinkle one's brows, especially in displeasure
lye, n. water made alkaline with wood ashes
an obstinate case, a case where medicine does not work
Exercises
UNDERSTANDING

1. Trace the various obstacles Old Phoenix comes up against

between the Valley where we first pick her up and the wagon
track, and describe how she deals with each.
2. What does old Phoenix do when she is knocked down by the dog?
3. In Egyptian mythology the Phoenix was a bird of great splendour
that every five hundred years consumed itself by fire and rose
renewed from its own ashes. In what way is Phoenix Jackson like
the bird?
4. Why does Phoenix keep talking to herself? What do her
monologues add to the total portrait of her?
5. What is the meaning of the episode in which Phoenix steals the
nickel? Does the act offend our sense of honesty? Explain your
answer.
6. What significance can you attach to the fact that the journey takes
place at Christmas time?

RHETORICAL STRATEGIES

1. How does Phoenix describe her situation to the white man who
helps her up?
2. How does she feel about stealing the nickel he dropped?
3. How does she explain where she is going to him? How do we
know how much old Phoenix loves her grandson?
4. How does Phoenix know she is in the doctor's office?
5. Analyze Phoenix's language. What is conveyed through her
speech?
6. Point out some specific instances of humor.
7. In lines 298—299 we read: "With her hand on her knees, the old
woman waited, silent, erect and motionless, just as if she were
in armor." What meaning do you attribute to this passage?

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS / WRITING PRACTICE

1. Why is Phoenix taking the long trip to town?
2 What happens when old Phoenix is spoken to by the receptionist and
the nurse?
3. What does old Phoenix plan to do with the money she has got
during the day? Why?
4. Using your imagination, describe Phoenix's journey home. Make
your scenes descriptive by selecting

details that support a dominant impression.

 Three Day Blow
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) was born in Oak Park,
Illinois, and had his only formal education in high school there.
He worked for a short time as a reporter for the Kahsas City Star
and then went to Italy, where he served as an ambulance driver
and in the Italian infantry during the First World War. He was
severely wounded there, as is the hero of A Farewell to Arms
(1929), which draws on this experience. During the 1920s he
lived in Paris, writing his early short stories and The Sun Also
Rises (1926). In the *early 1930s he wrote To Have and Have
Not (1937). Later in the decade he became deeply concerned
with the Spanish Civil War; during it he was a reporter in
Spain and wrote a splay and his novel, For Whom the Bell
Tolls (1940) about it.
He also served as a correspondent during the Second World War,
about which he wrote Across the River and Into the Trees (1950).
The Old Man and the Sea (1952) is a product of his last years,
when he lived in Cuba, and earned him the Nobel Prize in 1954.
He died by his own hand in 1961.
In "The Three Day Blow," the analogy between the three day blow
and the mental ordeal Nick goes through is complete. The movement
from conflict, through suffering and separation, to reconciliation
ends. The story conveys the fullness of a formal ritual.

The rain stopped as Nick turned into the road that went up through the orchard.
The fruit had been picked and the fall wind blew through the bare trees, Nick
stopped and picked up a Wagner apple from beside the road, shiny in the brown
grass from the rain. He put the apple in the pocket of his Mackinaw coat.
The road came out of the orchard on to the top of the hill. There was the
cottage, the porch bare, smoke coming from the chimney. In back was the
garage, the
10 chicken coop and the second-growth timber like a hedge against the woods
behind. The big trees swayed far over in the wind as he watched. It was
the first of the autumn storms.
 The Three Day Blow / 85

As Nick crossed the open field above the orchard the door of the
cottage opened and Bill came out. He stood on the porch looking out.
"Well, Wemedge," he said.
"Hey, Bill," Nick said, coming up the steps.
They stood together looking out across the country, 20 down over
the orchard, beyond the road, across the lower fields and the woods of the
point to the lake. The wind was blowing straight down the lake. They could
see the surf along Ten Mile point.
"She's blowing," Nick said.
"She'll blow like that for three days," Bill said.
"Is your dad in?" Nick asked.
"No. He's out with the gun. Come on in."
Nick went inside the cottage. There was a big fire in the fireplace.
The wind made it roar. Bill shut the door. "Have a drink?" he said.
He went out to the kitchen and came back with two glasses and a pitcher of
water. Nick reached the whisky bottle from the shelf above the fireplace.
"All right?" he said.
"Good," said Bill.
They sat in front of the fire and drank the Irish whisky and water.
"It's got a swell, smoky taste," Nick said, and looked at the fire through
the glass.
"That's the peat," Bill said.
"You can't get peat into liquor," Nick said.
"That doesn't make any difference," Bill said. "You ever seen

any peat?" Nick asked.

"No," said Bill.

"Neither have I," Nick said.
His shoes, stretched out on the hearth, began to steam in front of the
fire.
 "Better take your shoes off," Bill said.
"I haven't got any socks on."

"Take them off and dry them and I'll get you some " Bill said. He went
upstairs into the loft and Nick heard him walking about overhead.
Upstairs was open under the roof and was where Bill and his father and
he, Nick sometimes slept. In back was a dressing room. They moved the
cots back out of the rain and covered them with rubber blankets.
Bill came down with a pair of heavy wool socks.
"It's getting too late to go around without socks," he said.
"I hate to start them again," Nick said. He pulled the socks on and slumped
back in the chair, putting his feet up on the screen in front of the fire.
"You'll dent in the screen," Bill said. Nick swung his feet over to the
side of the fireplace.
"Got anything to read?" he asked.
"Only the paper."
"What did the Cards do?"
"Dropped a double header to the Giants."
"That ought to cinch it for them."
"It's a gift," Bill said. "As long as McGraw can buy every good ball player in
the league there's nothing to it." "He can't buy them all," Nick said.
"He buys all the ones he wants," Bill said. "Or he
makes them discontented so they have to trade them to

"Like Heinie mm," Nick agreed.

"That bonehead will do him a lot of good."
Bill stood up.
 The Three Day Blow/ 87
"He can hit," Nick offered. The heat from the fire was baking his
legs.
"He's a sweet fielder, too," Bill said. "But he loses ball
games."
"Maybe that's what McGraw wants him for," Nick
suggested.
"Maybe," Bill agreed.
"There's always more to it than we know about," Nick said.
"Of course. But we've got pretty good dope for being so far
away."
"Like how much better you can pick them if you don't see the horses.'
"That's it."
Bill reached down the whisky bottle. His big hand went all the
way around it. He poured the whisky into the glass Nick held out.
"How much water?"
"Just the same."
He sat down on the floor beside Nick's chair.
"It's good when the fall storms come, isn't it?" Nick 100 said.
"It's swell."
"It's the best time of year," Nick said.
'Wouldn't it be hell to be in town?" Bill said.

"I'd like to see the World Series," Nick said.

"Well, they're always in New York or Philadelphia now," Bill
said, "That doesn't do us any good."
"I wonder if the Cards will ever win a pennant?" "Not in
our lifetime," Bill said.
"Gee, they'd go crazy," Nick said.
"Do you remember when they got going that once before they had the train
wreck?"
"Boy!" Nick said, remembering.
Bill reached over to the table under the window for the book that lay
there, face down, where he had put it when he went to the door. He held
 88 / The Magic of Words
his glass in one hand and the book in the other, leaning back against
Nick's chair.
"What are you reading.
" 'Richard Feverel."'
"I couldn't get into it."

"It's all right," Bill said. "It ain't a bad book

Wemedge."
"What else have you got I haven't read?" Nick asked.
"Did you read the 'Forest Lovers'
"Yup. That's the one where they go to bed every night with the
naked sword between them."
"That's a good book, wemedge."
"It's a swell book. What I couldn't ever understand was what good
the sword would do. It would have to stay edge up all the time because if
it went over flat you could 130 roll right over it and it wouldn't make any
trouble." "It's a symbol." Bill said.
"Sure," said Nick, "but it isn't practical."
"Did you ever read 'Fortitude'9"
"It's fine," Nick said. "That's a real book. That's where his old
man is after him all the time. Have you got any more by Walpole?"
"'The Dark Forest,'" Bill said. "It's about Russia." "What does he
know about Russia?" Nick asked.
"I don't know. You can't ever tell about those guys. 140
Maybe he was there when he was a boy. He's got a lot of dope on it."
"I'd like to meet him," Nick said.
"I'd like to meet Chesterton," Bill said.
"I wish he was here now," Nick said. "We'd take him fishing to the
'Voix tomorrow."
"I wonder if he'd like to go fishing," Bill said.
"Sure," said Nick. "He must be about the best guy there is. Do you
remember the 'Flying Inn'?"

" 'If an angel out of heaven

 Gives you something else to drink,
Thank him for his kind intentions; Go and
pour them down the sink.'

"That's right," said Nick. "I guess he's a better guy than
Walpole."
"Oh, he's a better guy all right," Bill said.
"But Walpole's a better writer."
"I don't know," Nick said. "Chesterton's a classic." 160
"Walpole's a classic, too," Bill insisted.
"I wish we had them both here," Nick said. "We'd take them both
fishing to the 'Voix tomorrow." "Let's get drunk," Bill said.
"All right," Nick agreed.
"-My old man -won't care," Bill said.
"Are you sure?" said Nick.
"I know it," Bill said.
"I'm a little drunk now," Nick said.
"You aren't drunk," Bill said.
He got up from the floor and reached for the whisky bottle. Nick held out
his glass. His eyes fixed on it while Bill poured.
Bill poured the glass half full of whisky.
"Put in your own water," he said. "There's just one more shot."
"Got any more?" Nick asked.

"There's plenty more but dad only likes me to drink what's open."
"Sure," said Nick.
"He says opening bottles is what makes drunkards Bill explained.
"That's right," said Nick. He was impressed. He had never
thought of that before. He had always thought it was solitary
drinking that made drunkards.
"How is your dad?" he asked respectfully.
"He's all right," Bill said. "He gets a little wild sometimes."
 90 / The Magic of Words
"He's a swell guy," Nick said. He poured water into his glass out
of the pitcher. It mixed slowly with the whisky. 190 There was more
whisky than water.
"You bet your life he is," Bill said.
"My old man's all right," Nick said.
"You're damn right he is," said Bill.
"He claims he's never taken a drink in his life," Nick said, as
though announcing a scientific fact.
"Well, he's a doctor. My old man's a painter. That's different."
"He's missed a lot," Nick said sadly.
"You can't tell," Bill said. "Everything's got its
compensations."
"He says he's missed a lot himself," Nick confessed.
"Well, dad's had a tough time," Bill said.
"It all evens up," Nick said.
They sat looking into the fire and thinking of th is profound
truth.
"I'll get a chunk from the back porch," Nick said. He had
noticed while looking into the fire that the fire was dying down.
Also he wished to show he could hold his liquor and be practical.
Even if his father had never
touched a drop Bill was not going to get him drunk before he himself
was drunk.
"Bring one of the big beech chunks," Bill said. He was also being
consciously practical.
Nick came in with the log through the kitchen and in passing
knocked a pan off the kitchen table. He laid the log down and picked
up the pan. It had contained dried apricots, soaking in water. He
carefully picked up all the apricots off the floor, some of them had
gone under the stove, and put them back in the pan. He dipped some
more water onto them from the pail by the table. He felt quite proud of
himself. He had been thoroughly practical.
He came in carrying the log and Bill got up from the chair and
helped him put it on the fire.
 "That's a swell log," Nick said.
"I'd been saving it for the bad weather," Bill said. "A log like that
will burn all night."
"There'll be coals left to start the fire in the morning," Nick said.
"That's right," Bill agreed. They were conducting the

conversation on a high plane.

"Let's have another drink," Nick said.
"I think there's another bottle open in the locker," Bill said.
He kneeled down in the corner in front of the locker and brought
out a square-faced bottle.
"It's Scotch," he said.
"I'll get some more water," Nick said. He went out into the
kitchen again. He filled the pitcher with the dipper dipping cold spring
water from the pail. On his way back to the living room he passed a mirror
in the dining room and looked in it. His face looked strange. He smiled at
the face in the mirror and it grinned back at him. He winked at it and went
on. It was not his face but it didn't make any difference.
Bill had poured out the drinks.
"That's an awfully big shot," Nick said.
"Not for us, Wemedge," Bill said.
"What'll we drink to?" Nick asked, holding up the glass.

"Let's drink to fishing," Bill said.

"All right," Nick said. "Gentlemen, I give you fishing."
"All fishing," Bill said. "Everywhere." "Fishing," Nick said.
"That's what we drink to." "It's better than baseball," Bill
said.
"There isn't any comparison," said Nick. "How did we ever get
talking about baseball?"
"It was a mistake," Bill said. "Baseball is a game for louts."

They drank all that was in their glasses.

"Now let's drink to Chesterton."
 92 / The Magic of Words
"And Walpole," Nick interposed.
Nick poured out the liquor. Bill poured in the water. They looked
at each other. They felt very fine.
"Gentlemen," Bill said, "I give you Chesterton and
Walpole."
"Exactly, gentlemen," Nick said.
They drank. Bill filled up the glasses. They sat down in the big
chairs in front of the fire.
"You were very wise, Wemedge," Bill said.
"What do you mean?" asked Nick.
"To bust off that Marge business," Bill said.
"I guess so," said Nick.

"It was the only thing to do. If you hadn't, by now

you'd be back home working trying to get enough money to get

married."
Nick said nothing.
"Once a man's married he's absolutely bitched," Bill went
on. "He hasn't got anything more. Nothing. Not a damn thing. He's
done for. You've seen the guys that get 280 married."
Nick said nothing.
"You can tell them," Bill said. "They get this sort of fat

married look. They're done for."

"Sure," said Nick.
"It was probably bad busting it off," Bill said. "But you
always fall for somebody else and then it's all right. Fall for them
but don't let them ruin you.

"Yes," said Nick.

"If you'd have married her you would have had to 290 marry
the whole family. Remember her mother and that guy she married."
 Nick nodded.
"Imagine having them around the house all the time and going to
Sunday dinners at their house, and having them over to dinner and her
telling Marge all the time what to do and how to act."
Nick sat quiet.
"You came out of it damned well," Bill said. "Now she can
marry somebody of her own sort and settle down and 300 be happy. You
can't mix oil and water and you can't mix that sort of thing any more
than if I'd marry Ida that works for Strattons. She'd probably like it, too."
Nick said nothing. The liquor had all died out of him and left
him alone. Bill wasn't there. He wasn't sitting in front of the fire or going
fishing tomorrow with Bill and his dad or anything. He wasn't drunk. It
was all gone. All he knew was that he had once had Marjorie and that he
had lost her. She was gone and he had sent her away. That was all that
mattered. He might never see her 3 10 again. Probably he never would.
It was all gone, finished.
"Let's have another drink," Nick said.
Bill poured it out. Nick splashed in a little water.
"If you'd gone on that way we wouldn't be here now Bill said.
That was true. His original plan had been to go down home and
get a job. Then he had planned to stay in Charlevoix all winter so
he could be near Marge. Now he did not know what he was going
to do.
"Probably we wouldn't even be going fishing tomorrow," Bill said. "You
had the right dope, all right." "I couldn't help it," Nick said.
"I know. That's the way it works out," Bill said.
"All of a sudden everything was over," Nick said. "I don't know
why it was. I couldn't help it. Just like when the three-day blows
come now and rip all the leaves off the trees."
"Well, it's over. That's the point," Bill said.
"It was my fault," Nick said.
330 "It doesn't make any difference whose fault it was," Bill said.
"No, I suppose not," Nick said.
The big thing was that Marjorie was gone and that probably he
would never see her again. He had talked to her about how they
 94 / The Magic of Words
would go to Italy together and the fun they would have. Places they
would be together. It was all gone now. Something gone out of him.
"So long as it's over that's all that matters," Bill said. "I tell you,
Wemedge, I was worried while it was going on. You played it right, I
understand her mother is sore as hell. She told a lot of people you were
engaged."
"We weren't engaged." Nick said.
"It was all around that you were."
"I can't help it," Nick said. "We weren't."
"Weren't you going to get married?" Bill asked.
"Yes. But we weren't engaged," Nick said.
 The Three Day Blow/ 95
"What’s the difference?" Bill asked judicially. "I
don't know. There's a difference." "I don't see it," said
Bill.
"All right," said Nick. "Let's get drunk."
"All right," Bill said. "Let's get really drunk." "Let's get
drunk and then go swimming," Nick said. He drank off his
glass.
"I'm sorry as hell about her but what could I do?" he said. "You
know what her mother was like!"
"She was terrible," Bill said.
"All of a sudden it was over," Nick said. "I oughtn't to talk
about it."
"You aren't," Bill said, "I talked about it and now I'm 160
through. We won't ever speak about it again. You don't want to think
about it. You might get back into it again.
Nick had not thought about that. It had seemed so absolute. That
was a thought. That made him feel better.
"Sure," he said. "There's always that danger."
He felt happy now. There was not anything that was irrevocable.
He might go into town Saturday night. Today was Thursday.
"There's always a chance," he said.
"You'll have to watch yourself." Bill said.
"I'll watch myself," he said.
He felt happy. Nothing was finished. Nothing was ever lost. He
would go into town on Saturday. He felt lighter, as he had felt before
Bill started to talk about it. There was always a way out.
"Let's take the guns and go down to the point and look for your
dad," Nick said.
"All right."
Bill took down the two shotguns from the rack on the wall. He
opened a box of shells. Nick put on his Mackinaw coat and his shoes.
His shoes were stiff from
 the drying. He was still quite drunk but his head was clear.
"How do you feel?" Nick asked.
"Swell. I've just got a good edge on." Bill was buttoning up his
sweater.
"There's no use getting drunk."
"No. We ought to get outdoors."
They stepped out the door. The wind was blowing a gale.
"The birds will lie right down in the grass with this " Nick said.
They struck down toward the orchard.
"I saw a woodcock this morning," Bill said.
"Maybe we'll jump him." Nick said.
"You can't shoot in this wind," Bill said.
Outside now the Marge business was no longer so tragic. It was
not even very important. The wind blew everything like that away.
"It's coming right off the big lake," Nick said.
Against the wind they heard the thud of a shotgun. "That's dad," Bill
said, "He's down in the swamp." "Let's cut down that way,"
Nick said.
"Let's cut across the lower meadow and see if we jump anything,"
Bill said.
"All right," Nick said.
None of it was important now. The wind blew it out of his head.
Still he could always go into town Saturday night. It was a good thing
to have in reserve.

GLOSSARY AND NOTES

fall, n. autumn
coop, n. cage for keeping poultry
the second growth, the plant growth that follows the destruction of
virgin forest
surf, n. foam of the sea breaking on the shore
pitcher, n. a large jug with a lip and a handle
swell, adj. (US colloquial) excellent, fine
 The Three Day Blow/ 97

peat, n. partly carbonised vegetable matter used for fuel

slump, v. sit or fall heavily
loft, n. attic
dent, v. make a slight hollow or depression by a blow or pressure
screen, n. a fixed or movable partition
double header, n. two games played in one day between same two teams
cinch, v. make sure of
bonehead, n. (informal) a stupid or obstinate person
fielder, n. (cricket, baseball) a player in the field
ball game n. (US) baseball
dope, n. (Informal) information
hold out, v. stretch forth
World Series, a series of baseball championship matches played after
the end of the season between the champions of the two major US
professional baseball leagues, the American League and the
National leage

pennant, n. a triangular or swallow-tailed flag awarded to sports winners

chunk, n. a thick piece (of wood, etc.)
even up, v. make or become equally balanced
hold one's liquor, drink and not be intoo adicated
locker, n. cupboard
dipper, n, ladle
an awfully big shot, a large quantity of drink
lout, n. a rough mannered person
bust off, v. separate
bitch, v. to spoil
done for, v. ruined
sore, n. source of distress or annoyance
98 / The
irrevocable, adj. unalterable
shell, n. cartridge
struck v. (past tense of 'strike') took a specified direction
woodcock n. a game bird related to the snipe

thud, n. low dull sound

swamp, n. area of water-logged ground

Exercises

UNDERSTANDING

1. Describe the setting in which the writer locates his characters.

RHETORICAL STRATEGIES

1. What has the weather condition to do with the sequence of events?

2. The story is presented in a sequence of approximately seven scenes
(excluding the opening exposition). Can you find them?

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS / WRITING PRACTICE

1. Discuss "The Three Day Blow" as a dramatic story.