Short stories and selections for use in the secondary schools
General
Short stories and selections for use in the secondary schools
English prose literature; Readers; Short stories
The next morning every great paper in England
had the whole speech. I think it was the design of the men there to
break me down on that first speech, by fair means or foul, feeling that
if they could do that it would be trumpeted all over the land. I said to
them then and there, "Gentlemen, you may break me down now, but I have
registered a vow that I will never return home until I have been heard
in every county and principal town in the Kingdom of Great Britain. I am
not going to be broken down nor put down. I am going to be heard, and my
country shall be vindicated." Nobody knows better than I did what it is
to feel that every interest that touches the heart of a Christian man
and a patriotic man and a lover of liberty is being assailed wantonly,
to stand between one nation and your own, and to feel that you are in a
situation in which your country rises or falls with you. And God was
behind it all; I felt it and knew it; and when I got through and the
vote was called off, you would have thought it was a tropical
thunderstorm that swept through that hall as the ayes were thundered,
while the noes were an insignificant and contemptible minority. It had
all gone on our side, and such enthusiasm I never saw. I think it was
there that when I started to go down into the rooms below to get an
exit, a big burly Englishman in the gallery wanted to shake hands with
me, and I could not reach him, and he called out, "Shake my umbrella!"
and he reached it over; I shook it, and as I did so he shouted, "By
Jock! Nobody shall touch that umbrella again!"
--HENRY WARD BEECHER.
[Footnote: Henry Ward Beecher was born in 1813 and died in 1887. He was
a noted lecturer, reformer, author, and clergyman. He was also among the
most prominent of anti-slavery orators, and delivered many addresses in
England on subjects relating to the Civil War.
Why do you suppose Mr. Beecher was introduced as Henry Ward Beecher
Stowe? Name some characteristics of Mr. Beecher as revealed in this
selection. What qualities would you attribute to an English audience,
judging from this account? Do you know anything about the custom of
"heckling" in England? How much was the success of the speech due to Mr.
Beecher's sense of humor? Do you imagine that Mr. Beecher was successful
in his addresses to the English people? Why?]
A GREEN DONKEY DRIVER
There dwelt an old man in Monastier, [Footnote: Monastier: a little
village in southern France.] of rather unsound intellect according to
some, much followed by street-boys, and known to fame as Father Adam.
Father Adam had a cart, and to draw the cart a diminutive donkey, not
much bigger than a dog, the color of a mouse, with a kindly eye and a
determined under-jaw. There was something neat and high-bred, a
Quakerish elegance, about the rogue that hit my fancy on the spot.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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