The Verger – Somerset Maugham

The Verger – Somerset Maugham

Part – 1

Albert Edward Foreman was a verger at St. Peter’s Neville Square. He served as a verger of the church for sixteen years efficiently and promptly to fulfill the duties of his office to the satisfaction of everybody concerned to the church.

The new Vicar of the church was so energetic and wanted everything to be proper and correct. The Vicar discovered that the Verger, Albert Edward Foreman was an illiterate who could neither read nor write. He made it clear to Albert that his work was quite satisfactory and that he had the highest opinion both of his character and of his capacity.  But he did not want to take any risk of some accident that might happen owing to his lamentable ignorance. He explained that it was a matter of prudence as well as of principle.

It was a great blow to Albert and he could digest the insult. The Vicar gave him three months’ time to learn to read and write. Albert resisted the proposal, as it was somehow he did not like the new Vicar. When he rejected the proposal, the Vicar asked Albert that he would have to leave the church.

Thus, Albert Edward Foreman lost his job as a Verger of the church. His inability to read or write made him ineligible for the post. After his appointment sixteen years ago as a verger he had thought that the appointment was for life. But suddenly he became unemployed after a long service of sixteen years.

Part – 2

When Albert Edward Forman left the church, he was upset and deeply distressed. He strolled across the Square. He was sad and in deep thought. He did not take the street that led him home. He took the wrong turning. He walked slowly along. His heart was heavy. He did not know what he should do. He could not think of going back to domestic service after as a verger. He had saved a small sum but not enough to meet all his family requirements without doing anything.  He was a non-smoker but when he was tired, he used to enjoy a cigarette. It occurred to him now that a cigarette would comfort him. He could not find cigarette shop in the long street. It sounded strange to him. A tobacco shop in such a place would be profitable, he thought. The new idea that just occurred made him reflect seriously. He them turned and walked home. He considered the matter from every point of view. The next day he went along the street and by good luck found a little shop to let. It exactly suited him. The very next day he took the shop. He became business man. His wife said it was a dreadful to come down after being verger of St. Peter’s. But Albert had decided to move with the times to come. He did so well that in a year he began to think of taking a second shop. He got a good shop in another long street and started the business there. He put a manager in it. When the second shop was also a success, he searched all streets to find suitable places for his shops. Within the next ten years, he ran ten shops and made money. He went round to all of them himself every Monday, collected the week’s takings and took them to the bank.

Within short time, Albert had kept thirty thousand pounds in his savings account. One-day the manager of the bank called him and advised him to invest his amount in some safe securities. Albert said that he did not want to take risk and wanted his money safe in the bank. The manager told him that there were safe securities and he could invest his money without least fear. Albert said that he did not know how and in which securities he could invest. The manager said to him that the bank would do it for him and he had merely to put his signature. After setting up the business, Albert had learnt to sign. He asked the manager how he could know where he was investing. The manager said that he could read the document and then put his signature on that. Albert confessed that he could not read or write. It was a great surprise for the manager. It sounded him an extra-ordinary thing. Without knowing how to read or write Albert had amassed a huge sum. What he could have done had been a literate and educated. But Albert calmly answered him that if he knew to read and write he would have been the verger at St. Peter’s Neville Square and nothing more.

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BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF THE BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE -- Charles Lamb

BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF THE BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE

Charles Lamb

As a confirmed bachelor, Lamb has discovered a number of weaknesses in married people and has therefore found much consolation in his state of bachelor-hood. It is not the quarrels of husbands and wives that console him for having remained unmarried.  What offends him at the houses of married persons is that they are pretending as they are in love. He has found that a husband and a wife constantly try to produce the impression that they are very fond of each other.  This display of married happiness is an insult to a bachelor. If a man enjoys some monopoly, he should keep it as much out of sight as possible so that others may not question his right to the monopoly. But married people go out of their way to make bachelors conscious of the monopoly of marriage, which they enjoy. They air of complete satisfaction which a newly married couple wear on their faces is especially offensive to Lamb.

Married people often put on an expression of exaggerated self-importance. They regard bachelors a ignorant and incompetent persons. A young married lady once mocked at Lamb because he happened to offer an opinion about the most appropriate method of breeding oysters for the London market. She seemed to think that a bachelor could not be expected to have any knowledge of such matters.

Lamb does not understand why married people should be excessively proud of their children. After all, children are not a rarity. In fact, the poorest people have the largest number of children. Besides, children often go wrong and prove to be a cause of much disappointment to their parents. Married people's pride in their children is, therefore, hardly justified.  Married people are still less justified in expecting a bachelor to show a fond attention to their children. Why should a bachelor shower his affection on children? If a bachelor shows too much interest in children, their parents quickly send them out of the room. A bachelor therefore, finds himself on the horns of a dilemma in dealing with towards children. Should he or should he no, adopt a loving attitude towards children? If he should, what is to be the degree of the affection to all their eight, nine or ten children. There is certainly a proverb: "Love me, love my dog". But while it is possible to love a friend's dog or any other article that reminds a man of his friend, it may not be possible always to love a friend's children because children have a separate existence of their individual natures and temperaments. Lamb says that it has never been possible for him to feel affection for women and children indiscriminately.

Very soon after getting married, a man tends to become in different to a bachelor-friend no matter how long was the duration of friendship before the marriage. No wife can tolerate her husband's bachelor-friend if the friendship dates back to her pre-marriage days. No matter how long a man had been friendly with her husband before her marriage, she will so manage that her husband will before long become cool and distant towards him.

Women adopt different ways to bring to an end the friendship between their husbands and the bachelors with whom they may have had intimate relations before marriage.  A wife may laugh with a kind of wonder at everything that her husband's bachelor-friend may say. By her laughter she may produce the impression that her husband's friend is an oddity or a humorist, not fit to be introduced to ladies. Or, a wife may keep exaggerating the particular qualities of her husband's fiend in such a way that the husband's enthusiasm for his friend cools down. There is irony in this kind of exaggeration on the part of a wife. Another technique employed by a wife is to ask with a kind of innocent towards him. And became the basis of the friendship. By this method a wife tries to make her husband feel that he was mistaken in his assessment of his friend's qualities.

Bachelors invariably receive degrading treatment from married ladies. There was the case of a wife who kept Lamb, though he was invited as a guest, waiting several hours for dinner because her husband had been detained somewhere. This lady should have been considerate enough to serve dinner to Lamb if the husband had been detained for two or three hours beyond the usual hour of dinner. Then there was the case of a lady who passed on an excellent dish of morellos to her husband and recommended a less savoury dish of gooseberries to Lamb who was guest at the house. Lamb protests against such discourteous treatment from wives and threatens to disclose their names if they do not amend and improve their manners in future.  A wife ought to be informal with her husband, but she ought to show formal politeness to her husband's bachelor-friend.

Morellos: a type of dark cherry

Savoury: having a taste that is salty not sweet.

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EPISODE OF THE SPIDER AND THE BEE - Jonathan swift

EPISODE OF THE SPIDER AND THE BEE

 Jonathan swift

The episode of the Spider and the Bee is one of the most interesting incidents of The Battle of Books. Technically it is an episode because it is introduced as an interlude at a time when the ancients and the Moderns are hurling hot words at one another and are preparing to launch the offensive. In terms of its dramatic quality and intrinsic worth it is more than an episode.

The incident of the spider and the bee took place at a time when the Ancients and the Moderns were exchanging hot words and were fast moving towards a serious crisis. When the two parties were well-set for measuring their strength, the interesting incident of the spider and the bee occurred. A spider lived in his cobweb upon the highest corner of a large window in St. James's Library. A wandering bee entered into the library through a broken glass pane. He flew into the spider's web. With great difficulty he extracted himself unharmed and paused at a safe distance to cleanse his wings. The spider, whose web had been ruined, saw the culprit and shouted insults at him. He called the bee a rogue, a vagabond without hearth or home of his own living upon universal plunder of nature. The spider maintained his superiority by saying that he was a domestic animal living in a castle, which he had himself built. Moreover, he was furnished with a native stock within his own body. To all this, the bee replied courteously that though he wandered far and wide, he collected honey from flowers without harming them in any way. On the other hand, the spider could only gather dirt and poison by remaining at home. The bee said tat the spider turned everything, with which he came in contact, into poison.  The bee ridiculed the spider for his vaunted skill in Mathematics. The bee claimed that he had nature's choicest gifts -- wings and musical voice. The arrogant spider was on the verge of bursting with rage and pride, but the bee disdained further argumentation and flew away to a bed of flowers.

The episode of Spider and the Bee is a significant aside to the main battle between the books. The spider stands for modern innovators and scientists who thought that only mechanical inventions could help the mankind. The spider is an architect. He builds his castle out of material spun out by himself without depending on nature to assist him. The bee depends on the help from flowers, wings and voice. The spider for modern scientists who believe that science is a powerful instrument of progress. But swift was against the inventions of science and later on made fun of scientists in The Gulliver's Travels. He was of the view that the path of progress is not the spider's way but of the bee. The moderns live on controversies and personal animosities. Whereas the ancients did not indulge in poisonous polemics. The ancients writers like Homer and Virgil brought out sweetness and light, collecting the two after ranging widely over the realms of matter and mind.

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Tintern Abbey - William Wordsworth

Tintern Abbey - William Wordsworth

When Wordsworth has first visited the Wye In 1793, the sights and sounds of Nature intoxicated him. Nature was then a passion with him and the spontaneous joy of senses thrilled him. On his second visit to the place, he finds that the earlier delight is lost to him. The beautiful sights of nature no more throw him into that rapture, that ecstasy which he had known five years back. This change in his attitude towards Nature is to be traced in the sad events of the French Revolution, which left Wordsworth a thoroughly disillusioned and sad man. Wordsworth in his early life was an ardent supporter of liberty and republican principles. When French revolutionaries tried to overthrow the crushing yoke of monarchy, Wordsworth greeted the new movement with great enthusiasm and fervour. To Him the Revolution symbolized the regeneration of the suffering humanity. He identified himself completely with the cause of the Revolution as is evident from these lines.

Europe at that time was thrilled with joy,

Franca standing on the top of golden hours,

And human nature seeming born again.

But bitter disillusionment was in store for him. The Revolution, which had started as a cry for liberty, equality, and fraternity, for recognition of the innate dignity of man, was soon turned into an instrument for annihilating these very ideals. From a fight for liberty it was turned into a war of conquest. This pained Wordsworth greatly and all his hopes were dashed to the ground. He lost his faith in humanity, Nature and even in God. Recoiling from this disappointment, he tried vanity to seek shelter in the dry intellectualism of Godwin, but it was not the balm he so badly needed to comfort his hurt soul. For a long time Wordsworth’s vision was obscured by this spiritual crisis which had brought inner darkness and despair in its train. However, he gradually recovered his confidence in Nature and human nature, thanks largely to the healing influence of Dorothy. He confesses his debt to her.

                      She gave me eyes, she gave me ears;

                      And humble tears, and delicate fears;

                      A heart, the fountain of sweet tears,

                      And love, and thought, and joy.

Therefore, when Wordsworth visits Tintern Abbey a second time he is not the same buoyant person who had come there five years ago. Now he is a sad person, one who has submitted himself to the chastening influence of suffering.

Thus Wordsworth is deprived of his early raptures, yet he is compensated by Nature in others ways. The impact of suffering on his mind has quickened his sensibilities and sharpened his insight into the life of things. He now discovers a spiritual life in Nature in contemplation of which he seeks his consolation. He realizes that truth which was to sustain him in his after life. It is the firm belief of Wordsworth that there is a preconceived harmony between Nature and the mind of Man. This mystical philosophy is the cornerstone of Wordsworth’s poetry.

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Tenses

Tenses

Simple Present Tense
I	go write drink	to Bangalore. a letter. tea / coffee.
We
He She It	goes writes drinks
They	go, write drink

 

Present Continuous Tenses
I	am	going writing drinking	to Bangalore. a letter. tea / coffee.
We	are
He She It	is
They	are

Present Perfect Tenses
I	have	gone written drunk	to Bangalore. a letter. tea / coffee.
We
He She It	has
They	have

Present Perfect Continuous Tenses
I	have	been	going writing drinking	to Bangalore. a letter. tea / coffee.
We
He She It	has
They	have

   

Simple Past Tenses
I	Went wrote drank	to Bangalore. a letter. tea / coffee.
We
He She It
They

Past Continuous Tenses
I	was	going writing drinking	to Bangalore. a letter. tea / coffee.
We	were
He She It	was
They	were

Past Perfect Tenses
I	had	gone written drunk	to Bangalore. a letter. tea / coffee.
We
He She It
They

Past Perfect Continuous Tenses
I	had	been	going writing drinking	to Bangalore. a letter. tea / coffee.
We
He She It
They

Simple Future Tense
I	will/shall	go write drink	to Bangalore. a letter. tea/coffee.
We
He She It
They

Future Continuous Tense
I	will/shall	be	going writing drinking	to Bangalore. a letter. tea/coffee.
We
He She It
They

Future Perfect Tense
I	will/shall	have	gone written drunk	to Bangalore. a letter. tea/coffee.
We
He She It
They

Future Perfect continuous
I	will/shall	have	been	going writing drinking	to Bangalore. a letter. tea/coffee.
We
He She It
They

Yamini - Chudamani Raghavan

Yamini - Chudamani Raghavan

Yamini a novel of social problem deals with child marriage. Despite the imposition of a ban on this problem, some of the traditional families of Tamil Nadu went ahead in performing such activities against to the will of their children. Chudamani Ragahvan scintillates the very idea of social problem in an unleashing story of Yamini. From childhood, Yamini loved nothing better than solitude. She did not seek friends, and avoided close physical contract with anybody, even her parents. She spent hours looking up at the night sky, drinking in its ineffable beauty. To her the blackness of night was not an absence of light, but the womb out of which all light springs. Yamini felt a deep oneness with Nature.

With unobtrusive ardour Chudamani expolres the mystery of the human mind, and its essential solitariness. Every individual has a core, an inner life. She suggests that to violate this core of privacy is to set off a kind of cataclysm within the mind. And because of the nature of human relationship, that cataclysm will raise relentless echoes in the lives of others.

The novel is set in Madras and spans a period of around twenty years between the 1950’s and the 1970’s. This was a time of transition for traditional Brahmin society. Despite the ban imposed on child marriage by the Sharada Act of the late 1920’s, conservative families continued to “marry off” their pre-pubescent and teenage girls until the 1950’s, convinced that to do otherwise was to disturb social stability. The prevailing belief was that every girl was born to get married and to bring forth children, and that it was her father’s duty to find a husband for her from within the strictly codified circle of caste, sub-caste, and religion.  A mother would look anxiously at her little daughter and say, “Who knows in which house your rice-pot will be set to boil?”

Often, marriages were arranged between the children of brother and a sister. This was a relatively easy way out of the formal and often oppressive conditions in which marriages were arranged and conducted. Usually the arrangement of marriage followed a time-honoured protocol. It began with the exchange of horoscopes and elaborate enquiries about the antecedents of each family. Once these hurdles were cleared and the parents of the bride and groom had agreed on the match, a formal “bride-viewing” followed. Although the groom had the privilege of rejecting the bride at this stage, the girl herself was not expected to express an opinion in the matter. The process culminated in a wedding rich in ritual and replete with customs, which strengthened social and familial bonds.

It was unthinkable for any girl to resist marriage. Those human beings, especially women, found happiness and fulfillment only through marriage was a fundamental belief. It was Nature’s way, the order of the universe as reflected in human society.  For Purundevi, Yamini’s mother, all this was common sense. A woman who rejected marriage and preferred to live a solitary life was denying herself life’s sweetest joys. She must be drawn back from the abyss of self-absorption --- even it had to be done by force.

Yamini is forced into marriage—a common enough event prevalent even today in sections of Indian society. For a girl still in her teens and brought up to obey and to conform, coercion by parents who are convinced that they are doing good by their daughter is difficult to resist.  Even a spirited girl like Yamini is quelled. But there is a cost. Yamini’s inner life has been laid waste. Nothing will grow in it, not even the feelings of a mother towards her own child. Perundevi thinks that motherhood will evoke tender human feelings in her, but the sight of her infant only intensifies Yamini’s feeling of having been violated.

Parallel to her story is the story of her daughter Geetha, who seems different from her in every way, until she too begins to act strangely. Perundevi goes through an agony of suspense—“Will the old story repeat itself” –until Geetha reveals what has been on her mind. Fortunately, Society is not as conservative now as it was dating her mother’s girlhood. Geetha’s grandparents too have suffered grief and have consequently changed their views on marriage.  Geetha is listened to, and her wishes respected.

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