34. AN ACCIDENT.

Two boys are rowing on a lake. Their boat capsizes. One of them swims to the shore; the other cannot swim, but clings to the skiff until he is rescued by a bystander.

Describe the rescue (1) in the words of the boy who swam to the shore, deserting his companion; (2) as if you were the bystander; (3) as if you were the father of the boy who clung to

the skiff.

35. THE BROKEN WINDOW.

Two boys are playing ball in the street. Suddenly their ball crashes through a large plate-glass window in a drug store. One boy runs away and hides behind a bush. The other boy walks up to the drug store, explains the accident to the proprietor, and asks what he can do to make up for the damage.

Tell the story (1) as the second boy might have told it upon his return home, including the conversation between him and the proprietor; (2) as the angry druggist might have told it; (3) from the point of view of the boy who hid behind the bush.

36. THE LOST CHILD.

A little girl follows a procession. She is lost and tries to find her way home. She is met and recognized by the milkman, who carries her with him over his route, and returns her to her home in the evening.

1. Tell the story as if it happened in the city; in the country. 2. Report the incident for a newspaper.

3. Recite the incident, placing it in the country.

4. Tell it as the milkman might rehearse it.

5. Report the child's version of the story.

6. Tell the whole story as the child's mother might recite it afterwards.

37. Prepare to tell the story of Phaethon.1 Read the story, then make a careful outline for use in telling it to the class. 1 See Gayley's "Classic Myths" or Bulfinch's "Age of Fable."

SECTION 127.

DESCRIPTION.

Sections 127-9 contain three characteristic specimens of description. Dana's "Iceberg" is an extract from his Two Years Before the Mast"; it is direct and unpretentious in style. Dickens's "Old Boat" is a good example of the use of details to produce the effect of reality. Miss Mitford's "Country in Winter" is somewhat more formal; it expresses the feelings of a cultivated mind toward nature.

AN ICEBERG.

By R. H. DANA.

This day the sun rose fair, but it ran too low in the heavens to give any heat, or thaw out our sails and rigging; yet the sight of it was pleasant, and we had a steady "reef-top-sail breeze" from the westward. The atmosphere, which had previously been clear and cold, for the last few hours grew damp, and had a disagreeable, wet chilliness in it; and the man who came from the wheel said he heard the captain tell "the passenger" that the thermometer had fallen several degrees since morning, which he could not account for in any other way than by supposing that there must be ice near us; though such a thing had never been heard of in this latitude at this season of the year. At twelve o'clock we went below, and had just got through dinner, when the cook put his head down the scuttle and told us to come on deck and see the finest sight that we had ever seen.

"Where away, cook?" asked the first man who was up. "On the larboard bow."

And there lay, floating on the ocean, several miles off, an immense, irregular mass, its top and points covered with snow, and its centre of a deep indigo color. This was an iceberg, and

of the largest size, as one of our men said who had been in the Northern ocean. As far as the eye could reach, the sea in every direction was of a deep blue color, the waves running high and fresh, and sparkling in the light, and in the midst lay this immense mountain-island, its cavities and valleys thrown into deep shade, and its points and pinnacles glittering in the sun. All hands were soon on deck, looking at it, and admiring in various ways its beauty and grandeur. But no description can give any idea of the strangeness, splendor, and, really, the sublimity, of the sight. Its great size, for it must have been from two to three miles in circumference and several hundred feet in height; — its slow motion, as its base rose and sank in the water, and its high points nodded against the clouds; the dashing of the waves upon it, which, breaking high with foam, lined its base with a white crust; and the thundering sound of the cracking of the mass, and the breaking and tumbling down of huge pieces; together with its nearness and approach, which added a slight element of fear, all combined to give to it the character of true sublimity. The main body of the mass was, as I have said, of an indigo color, its base crusted with frozen foam; and as it grew thin and transparent toward the edges and top, its color shaded off from a deep blue to the whiteness of snow.

It seemed to be drifting slowly toward the north, so that we kept away and avoided it. It was in sight all the afternoon; and when we got to leeward of it, the wind died away, so that we lay-to quite near it for a great part of the night. Unfortunately, there was no moon, but it was a clear night, and we could plainly mark the long, regular heaving of the stupendous mass, as its edges moved slowly against the stars, now revealing them, and now shutting them in. Several times in our watch loud cracks were heard, which sounded as though they must have run through the whole length of the iceberg, and several pieces fell down with a thundering crash, plunging heavily into the sea. Toward morning, a strong breeze sprang up, and we filled away, and left it astern, and at daylight it was out of sight.

SECTION 128.

THE OLD BOAT.1

BY DICKENS.

Ham was waiting for us at the public-house; and asked me how I found myself, like an old acquaintance. I did not feel, at first, that I knew him as well as he knew me, because he had never come to our house since the night I was born, and naturally he had the advantage of me. But our intimacy was much advanced by his taking me on his back to carry me home. He was, now, a huge, strong fellow of six feet high, broad in proportion, and round-shouldered; but with a simpering boy's face and curly light hair that gave him quite a sheepish look. He was dressed in a canvas jacket, and a pair of such very stiff trousers that they would have stood quite as well alone, without any legs in them. And you could n't so properly have said he wore a hat, as that he was covered in a-top, like an old building, with something pitchy.

Ham carrying me on his back and a small box of ours under his arm, and Peggotty carrying another small box of ours, we turned down lanes bestrewn with bits of chips and little hillocks of sand, and went past gas-works, rope-walks, boat-builders' yards, shipwrights' yards, ship-breakers' yards, caulkers' yards, riggers' lofts, smiths' forges, and a great litter of such places, until we came out upon the dull waste I had already seen at a distance; when Ham said, "Yon 's our house, Mas'r Davy!"

I looked in all directions, as far as I could stare over the wilderness, and away at the sea, and away at the river, but no house could I make out. There was a black barge, or some other kind of superannuated boat, not far off, high and dry on the ground, with an iron funnel sticking out of it for a chimney and smoking very cosily; but nothing else in the way of a habitation that was visible to me.

1 From "David Copperfield."

"That's not it?" said I. "That ship-looking thing?

"That's it, Mas'r Davy," returned Ham.

If it had been Aladdin's palace, roc's egg and all, I suppose I could not have been more charmed with the romantic idea of living in it. There was a delightful door cut in the side, and it was roofed in, and there were little windows in it; but the wonderful charm of it was, that it was a real boat which had no doubt been upon the water hundreds of times, and which had never been intended to be lived in, on dry land. That was the captivation of it to me. If it had ever been meant to be lived in, I might have thought it small, or inconvenient, or lonely; but never having been designed for any such use, it became a perfect abode.

It was beautifully clean inside, and as tidy as possible. There was a table, and a Dutch clock, and a chest of drawers, and on the chest of drawers there was a tea-tray with a painting on it of a lady with a parasol, taking a walk with a military-looking child who was trundling a hoop. The tray was kept from tumbling down, by a Bible; and the tray, if it had tumbled down, would have smashed a quantity of cups and saucers and a teapot that were grouped around the book. On the walls there were some common colored pictures, framed and glazed, of scripture subjects; such as I have never seen since in the hands of pedlars, without seeing the whole interior of Peggotty's brother's house again, at one view. Abraham in red going to sacrifice Isaac in blue, and Daniel in yellow cast into a den of green lions, were the most prominent of these. Over the little mantel-shelf, was a picture of the Sarah Jane lugger,1 built at Sunderland, with a real little wooden stern stuck on to it; a work of art, combining composition 2 with carpentry, which I considered to be one of the most enviable possessions that the world could afford. There were some hooks in the beams of the ceiling, the use of which I did not divine then; and some lockers and boxes and conveniences of that sort, which served for seats and eked out the chairs.

1 A kind of sailing vessel.

2 In the artist's sense (see the Dictionary).