Table of contents Предисловие Tasks for seminars Sentences and extracts for analysis

Tasks

I. Analyse the story. While analysing dwell on the following questions:
Is it a narration or an author’s story? Who is the main character of the story? What is her age? What can you say about her life? Point out artistic details which help to describe her life vividly.
What thing image is very meaningful in the story? What is its significance in?
What role does the image of nature play in the story? What is the date? Why is it so cold? Why does it become warm in the cemetery? What feelings do the old lady experience in the cemetery? Where does she feel more comfortable: at home or at the cemetery?
Is the image of the author perceptible in the story? Through what? What is the message of the story?
II. Give examples of books, stories, text elements which can be defined as precedent.

Seminar 10

Functional Styles

1. 
   Functional style as the basic notion of functional stylistics.
   
2. 
   Classifications of functional styles:
   

1. 
   scientific style;
   
2. 
   official style;
   
3. 
   publicistic style;
   
4. 
   poetic style;
   
5. 
   colloquial style;
   
6. 
   belles-lettre style;
   
7. 
   newspaper style.
   

Appendix I

Sentences and extracts for analysis

I

1. Money burns a hole in my pocket.
2. She was a pillow for your head and a footstool for your rheumatism. She was a valley of peace and joy.
3. She is a charming middle-aged lady with a face like a bucket of mud and if she has washed her hair since Coolidge’s second term, I’ll eat my spare tyre, rim and all.
4. I left her laughing. The sound was like a hen having hiccups.

5. 
   The world drew its last breath and died.
   

6. Eyes looked at us, chestnut coloured eyes, set in faces that ranged from grey to deep black. Heads turned slowly and the eyes in them glistened and stared in the dead alien silence of another race.
7. He walked in delight, in his evening suit and a new hat.
8. He treated things with ingenious stupidity.
9. He had a battered face that looked as if it had been hit by everything but the bucket of a dragline.
10. The cook was a good cook, as cooks go, and as cooks go she went.
11. The pleasure was millenium-lasting, the pain was I-will-never-remember-it-again.
12. There were three of us in the queue: the Conscious, who stood in front, was nervous, the Not-Caring was just smiling and me… I was somewhat in the middle.
13. The train goes off, and off the hope goes.
14. Was I ever unfaithful to you? Was I ever dishonest? Ever rude? Bad? Cruel?
15. Must have caused you much trouble, this problem of your son’s.
16. She smiled at me, crimson in face, her eyes full of tears.
17. It was a long narrow room, not very clean, not very bright, not very cheerful.
18. “No white folks, brother. Jes’fo’ the coloured people. I’se sorry.”
19. He took his hand off the shirt and doubled it into a fist about the size and colour of a large egg-plant.
20. The bouncer went over with a table and smashed into the baseboard with a crash that must have been heard in Denver.
21. He lit half of a cigar and threw the match on the floor, where a lot of company was waiting for it.
22. Two rows of hard empty chairs stared at each other across a strip of tan fibre carpet.
23. Then suspicion climbed all over her face, like a kitten but not so playfully.
24. Her eyes had a peculiar glassiness. A murderous glassiness.
25. Suddenly I had enough of the scene, too much of it, far too much.
26. I went back to my car and got into it and drove back to the 77^th Street Division, and climbed upstairs to Nulty’s smelly little cubbyhole of an office on the second floor.
27. Montemar Vista was a few dozen houses of various sizes and shapes. Hanging by their teeth and eyebrows to a spur of mountain and looking as if a good sneeze would drop them down among the box lunches on the beach.
28. On the other hand I’m not much of a hero.
29. He leaned forward gracefully and smiled between his teeth. “How would you like a swift punch on the nose?”
30. But the more I know the fewer cups I break.
31. He danced back after a while with a bottle of Five-Star Martell and five nice crisp twenty-dollar bills. That made it a nice evening – so far.
32. I felt about eighty years old and slipping fast.
33. Her hair by daylight was pure auburn and on it she wore a hat with a crown the size of a whisky glass and a brim you could have wrapped the week’s laundry in.
34. “I hardly knew him. I thought he was a bit of a pansy. I didn’t like him very well.”
35. “Well –” the word hung in the air, like smoke in a closed room.
36. The coffee shop smell was strong enough to build a garage on.
37. I was half-way to the elevator before the thought hit me. It hit me without any reason or sense, like a dropped brick.
38. She stared at me coolly and missed nothing about me, probably not even the mole on my right shoulder blade.
39. A sixty-nine cent alarm clock ticked on the peeling grey-white paint of the bureau. It ticked loud enough to shake the walls.
40. I looked at the gun and the gun looked at me. Not too steadily. The hand behind it began to shake, but the eyes still blazed.
41. And there were flowers. There were a million flowers.
42. She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.
43. One was a tall thin sad-faced man with a stony chin and deep eyes and no colour in his face but an unhealthy yellow. He was a good sixty, or rather a bad sixty.
44. There’s not much money in it. There’s a lot of grief. But there’s a lot of fun, too. And there’s always a chance of a big case.
45. “Well – ” She looked at Anne Riordan. She waited. Her look said things.
Anne Riordan stood up.
46. The footman met me in the hall and gave me my hat, looking like the Great Stone Face.
47. “Sometimes I hate men. Old men, young men, football players, opera tenors, smart millionaires, beautiful men who are gigolos and almost-heels who are – private detectives.”
48. The wide curving street dozed peacefully in the sun.
49. The man from the panel truck that said Bay City Infant Service came out of the side door of the house dressed in the uniform so white and stiff and gleaming that it made me feel clean just to look at it.
50. And behind the desk a woman sat and smiled at me, a dry tight withered smile that would turn to powder if you touched it.
51. “Please do not fidget,” he said. “It breaks the waves, disturbs my concentration.”
“It makes the ice melt, the butter run and the car squawk,” I said.
52. “I think you are a very stupid person. You look stupid. You are in a stupid business. And you came here on a stupid mission.”
53. Then he sat like a stone lion outside the Public Library.
54. He bent me. I can be bent. I’m not the City Hall. He bent me.
55. He looked at the one with the moustache. The one with the moustache nodded and then turned and walked away, across the room.
56. There was a little more silence, more curves, more winding ribbons of concrete, more darkness, and more pain.
57. He went out. The door shut. The lock clicked. The steps growled into nothing.
58. This was the time to leave, to go far away. So I pushed the door open and stepped quietly in.
59. She came back with the glass and her fingers cold from holding the cold glass touched mine and I held them for a moment and then let them go slowly as you let go of a dream when you wake with the sun in your face and you have been in an enchanted valley.
60. It was a nice room. It would be a nice room to wear slippers in.
61. I was home in a sleeping world, a wold as harmless as a sleeping cat.
62. “I told you not to work on this case.”
“You’re not God. You’re not even Jesus Christ.”
63. “She likes you,” Randall said, like a polite F.B.I. man in a movie, a little sad, but very manly.
64. Her mouth opened wide and her teeth had the nice shiny look that comes from standing all night in a glass of solution.
65. What do you want me to do – retire and live on my fat?
66. The second floor was lighter and cleaner, but that didn’t mean that it was clean and light.
67. She sighed. “All men are the same.”
“So are all women – after the first nine.”
68. The Chief looked him over, feature by feature. He combed him and brushed him with his eyes.
69. The car drifted quietly along a quiet street of homes.
70. His grey eyes were lumps of ice.
71. Outside the narrow street fumed, the sidewalks swarmed with fat stomachs.
72. A male cutie with henna’s hair drooped at a bungalow grand piano and ticked the keys lasciviously and sang Stairway to the Stars in a voice with half the steps missing.
73. The three couples began to chew each other’s faces as soon as we left the shore.
74. The taxi slid up and down the swell with a sinister smoothness, like a cobra dancing.
75. The red neon pencils that outlined the Royal Crown faded off to the left and dimmed in the gliding grey ghosts of the sea, then shone out again, as bright as new marbles.
76. People in gay clothes and gay faces went past us and got into the taxi.
77. I went back to the seasteps and moved down them as cautiously as a cat on a wet floor.
78. The wet air was as cold as the ashes of love.
79. The slow hiss of the oil burners filled the air now and blanketed all other sounds. We turned towards the hiss through mountains of silent iron.
80. I walked three silent steps and listened.
81. He laughed lightly. “Go back to your post, Slim. I’ll look into this.”
82. He had a cat smile, but I like cats.
83. His forehead was narrow and brainy and his eyes held a delicate menace.
84. One of the velvety tough guys leaned against the middle of my spine with something that was probably not a fishing rod.
85. “You’ve been off the stage since five-thirty?”
“Not a minute, boss.”
“That’s no answer. An empire can fall in a minute.”
86. “The things I do,” he mused as if he was alone. “I run towns, I elect mayors, I corrupt police, I peddle dope, I hide out crooks, I heist old women strangled with pearls. What a lot of time I have.” He laughed shortly. “What a lot of time.”
87. “You took a long chance to hear so little.”
88. I nodded. A lie with a nod is still a lie, but it’s an easy lie.
89. I went out into the kitchenette and mixed a couple of drinks with hands that were not too steady.
90. All she did was take her hand – out of her bag, with a gun in it. All she did was point it at me and smile. All I did was nothing.
91. “It’s not that kind of story,” I said. “It’s not lithe and clever. It’s just dark and full of blood.”
92. Last night I had precisely nil hours’, nil minutes’ and nil seconds’ sleep.
93. Then she came closer and said ‘Nat’ in a special creepy way and I thought here we go, she’s going to tell me about what happened last night in one of those I’m-going-to-treat-you-like-a-grown-up talks.
94. ‘You know Henry the Eighth?’
‘Not personally.’
95. What a tough pair – we call them the Gruesome Twosome.
96. He’s not overburdened with brain cells…
97. I felt a bit bad, really I did. I hadn’t meant it. I’d just wanted to hurt him, I suppose, make him useless and humiliated – the way he’d made me feel. And now it looked like I had World War Three on my hands.
98. I turned into Mr. House-Husband, spending half my evenings elbow-deep in suds or hoovering like a dynamo and tutting at Jeff when he leaves his cups and plates all over the house the way Nat does.
99. On Sunday Rosie asked me about Christmas.
‘Da-a-a-a-dd-ee-ee?’ she says. So I know she wants something. Mostly she calls me Dad.
‘Ye-e-e-e-s, Ro-o-o-o-s-ee-ee?’
‘Silly! She hits me on the arm.
100. It’s not fair. Mum keeps picking on me while Rosie’s little Miss Perfect the whole time.
101. “Don’t say that, pal,” the big man purred softly, like four tigers after dinner.
102. Stupid his words are.
103. “All right,” I yelled. “I’ll go up with you. Just lay off carrying me. Let me walk. I’m fine. I’m all grown up. I go to the bathroom alone and everything. Just don’t carry me.”
104. There was silence. I looked at the barman. The barman looked at me. His eyes became thoughtful.
105. The barman froze. His mouth drooled. I listened. No other sound. I started quickly for the end of the counter. I had listened too long.
106. I went out of the Hotel Sans Souci and crossed the street to my car. It looked too easy. It looked much too easy.
107. He frowned. “Certainly not. I’m not in the habit of giving people grounds for blackmail.”
“It happens to the nicest people. I might say particularly to the nicest people.”
108. “You go out with this dame much?”
“Well – not infrequently,” he said stiffly.
109. The phone rang and I answered it absently. The voice had the cool hardness of a cop who thinks he is good. It was Randall. He didn’t bark. He was the icy type.
110. He stared down at her for a long time and then looked at me with a wolfish baring of his teeth.
111. “I’m telling you a few things,” he said, “just so you won’t go having any brainstorms. Just so you won’t go master-minding all over the landscape any more. Just so maybe for Christ’s sake you will let this one lay.”
112. He lifted his eyes until their glance rested on the top of my head. Then he lowered the lids until half the iris was covered. He looked at me like that for a long ten seconds. Then he smiled. He was doing an awful lot of smiling that day. Using up a whole week’s supply.
113. “I wonder whose lucky piece Marriott was,” I said.
“Not yours, pal.” His voice was acid – cold acid.
“Perhaps not yours either,” My voice was just a voice.
114. I got up on my feet and went over to the bowl in the corner and threw cold water on my face. After a little while I felt a little better, but very little. I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.
115. I got back into the boat. Mess-jacket looked at me with his silent sleek smile. I watched it until it was no longer a smile, no longer a face, no longer anything but a dark figure against the landing lights. I watched it and hungered.
116. “Fire! Fire! Fire!”
It was a short wait and a pleasant one. He came running hard along the hallway outside and his key jammed viciously into the lock and twisted hard.
117. The man at the back seat made a sudden flashing movement that I sensed rather than saw. A pool of darkness opened at my feet and was far, far deeper than the blackest night.
I dived into it. It had no bottom.
118. A lonely yacht was taking in toward the yacht harbour at Bay City. Beyond it the huge emptiness of the Pacific was purple-grey.
119. They read and studied and wrote and drilled. I laughed and played and talked and flunked.
120. Family quarrels are bitter things. They don’t go according to any rules. They’re not like ashes or wounds; they are more like splits in the skin that won’t heal because there’s not enough material.
121. The villages were full of women who did nothing but fight against dirt and hunger and repair the effects of friction on clothes.
122. The three with the medals were like hunting-hawks; and I was not a hawk, although I might seem a hawk to those who had never hunted.
123. Forsytes and tramps, children and lovers rested and wandered day after day, night after night seeking one and all some freedom from labour, from the reek and turmoil of the streets.
124. In rude health and small omnibuses, with considerable colour in their cheeks, they arrived daily from the various termini.
125. Her own marriage, poor thing, had not been successful, but having had the good sense and ability to force her husband into pronounced error, she herself had passed through the necessary divorce proceedings without incurring censure.
126. Nancy whispered something. Like nobody had made it, like it came from nowhere and went nowhere, until it was like Nancy was not there at all; that I had looked so hard at her eyes on the stairs that they had printed on my eyeballs, like the sun does when you have closed your eyes and there is no sun.
127. Music came to her ears. Rather, the beat of music, muffled, rhythmic, remote. Umpa-um, umpa-um, umpa-um-umm – Mr. “Fiddle” Baer and his band, hard at work on the first fox-trot of the night.
128. Then the door swung inward, admitting a blast of Mr. Fiddle Baer’s best, a whiff of perfume, and a girl.
129. I’ll try to say a little more:
Love went on and on
Until it reached an open door
Then Love Itself was gone.
130. They waited impatiently for the three bent figures to move off, and then she kissed him until the sky seemed to fade out and all her smiles and tears to vanish in an ecstasy of eternal seconds.
131. The long wires of the telegraph-poles doubled; two tracks ran up beside the train – three – four; came a succession of white-roofed houses, a glimpse of a trolley-car with frosted windows, streets – more streets – the city.
132. And then one afternoon in her second week she and Harry hovered on the edge of a dangerously steep quarrel. She considered that he precipitated it entirely, though the Serbia in the case was an unknown man who had not had his trousers pressed.
133. But Amy was not consoled. “I hate her!” she cried desperately. “Red- headed thing! Calling me ‘darling’ and ‘honey’ and s-sending me handkerchiefs for C-Christmas – and then sneaking off behind closed doors and k-kissing my h-husband – ”
134. Two evening gowns appeared and made for the dressing table in a bee line.
135. Never a word of love – not for months. This novel and exciting companionship was enough… depths of personality to explore – in glimpses! Sometimes they roamed over the hills, gay and carefree.
136. Spring. A house-party in the country, warm and dry after the last of the rains. After dinner they had sat about on the terraces, smoking, drinking, listening to a group singing within, admiring the ‘ruins’ of a Roman temple at the foot of the lawn lit by a blazing moon.
137. They argued, she smiled, they scowled, blamed and cried – as she packed.
138. The camp, the pulpit and the law
For rich men’s sons are free.
139. Such was the background of the wonderful, cruel, enchanting, bewildering, fatal city.
140. Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare.
141. Dora plunged at once into privileged intimacy and into the middle of the room.
142. In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
It struggles and howls at fits.
143. And this maiden she lived with no other thought than to love and be loved by me.
144. Better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven.
145. “His wife,” I said. “W-I-F-E. Homebody. Helpmate. Didn’t he tell you?”
146. “Appeeeee Noooooyeeeeeerr!”
147. I was stunned like a dervish, weak like an old car, defenceless like a beaver’s belly and as sure of success as a ballet dancer with a wooden leg.
148. For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven, a time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted.
149. I have changed in many things, in this I have not.
150. We always love those who admire us, but we do not always love those whom we admire. (La Rochefoucould)
151. The thought was like some sweet, disarranging poison to Clyde.
152. People sang,
People cried,
People fought,
People loved,
People hated.
153. The world was tipsy with its own perfection.
155. Little shreds of success collected together and weaved themselves into a triumphant garland.
156. If you had any part – I don’t say what – in this attack, or if you know anything about it – I don’t say how much – or if you know who did it – I do know closer – you did an injury to me that’s never to be forgiven.
157. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
158. How would the Pentagon react?
159. All that most maddens and torments, all that stirs up the leers of things, all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought, all evil to crazy Arab, were visibly personified and made practically assailable in Moby Dick.
160. All animals are equals, but some animals are more equal than others.
161. A very likable young man, Bill Smith. Age at a guess 25, big and rather ungainly in his movements, a pleasantly ugly face, a splendid set of white teeth and a pair of honest blue eyes.
162. I’m so mad I can chew nails.
163. It was dark outside and a handful of stars were standing naked beyond the window.
164. In the State of Denmark there was the odor of decay...
165. Within two minutes, I'd say, I was garbed all in the color of Moby Dick and vanilla ice cream. Ugly.
166. So Childe Random to the dark tower came, yeah, gun in one hand, blade in the other.
167. Then I just sat there, smoking and being rained on. It was a good feeling and I didn't move to change anything else, not for hours.
168. Her gaze locked with Julian's own, a pair of icebergs reflecting frigid infinities.
169. “Julian has no friends,” she said. “That icy personality of his is thawed only by thoughts of himself.
170. “… You se the earth takes twenty-four hours to turn round on its axis.” – “Talking of axes”, said the Dormouse, “chop off her head!”
171. “There was a cold bitter taste in the air, and new-lighted lamps looked sad. Sad were the lights in the houses opposite.”
171. Just as daylight laid its steel-gray fingers on the parchment window, Jacob Kent awoke.
172. They grew frightened, sitting thus and facing their own apprehensions and a callous, tobacco-smoking audience.
173. There were two girls working there. One a tall tennis-anyone type, the other a bespectacled mouse type. I opted for Minnie-Four-Eyes.
174. I suspect that the Noes and Don’t Knows would far outnumber the Yesses.
175. A boss is a person who’s always early when you’re late and always late when you’re early.
176. A baby-sitter is a teenager acting like an adult, while the adults are out acting like teenagers.
177. Has the Church failed mankind, or has mankind failed the Church?
178. When water turns to ice does it remember one time when it was water? When ice turns back into water does it remember it was ice?
179. Here’s champagne to our real friends, and real pain to our sham friends.
180. Why do we drive on a parkway and park on a driveway?
181. The two greatest menaces: drivers under 25 going over 65 and drivers over 65 going under 25.
182. A man is a person who will pay two dollars for one-dollar item he wants. A woman will pay one dollar for two-dollar item she doesn’t want.
183. You can change your faith without changing your gods. And vice versa.
184. In England I would rather be a man, a horse, a dog, or a woman, in that order. In America, I think, the order would be reversed.
185. Some things have to be seen to be believed and some things have o be believed to be seen.
186. Infantile love follows the principle; “I love you because I am loved.”
Mature love follows the principle: “I am loved because I love.”
Immature love follows the principle: “I love you because I need you.”
Mature love follows the principle: “I need you because I love you.”
187. Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend M. was obligingly to read and to explain to me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw.
188. So he (Pooh) started to climb out of the hole. He pulled with his front paws, and pushed with his back paws, and in a little while his nose was out in the open again… and then his ears… and then his front paws… and then his shoulders and then – “Oh, help!” said Pooh, “I’d better go back”.
189. Something was shining on the wall ahead. They approached slowly, squinting through the darkness. Foot-high words had been daubed on the wall between two windows, shimmering in the light cast by the flaming torches.
THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED. ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE.
190. What can you say about a twenty-five year-old girl who died? That she was beautiful. And brilliant. That she loved Mozart and Bach. And the Beatles. And me.
191.Once upon a long ago
There were dragons as you know.
192. It was a large, high, long room, and so full of furniture and mirrors and pictures and books and chandeliers and hangings and refracted angles of light that the eye could at first glimpse in no way assess its dimensions.
193. Slughorn stood up, his bald head gleaming in the candlelight, his big waistcoated belly casting the table into shadow.
194. The Bluebottle: A Broom for All the Family – safe, reliable, and with Built-in Anti-Burgler Buzzer ...Mrs. Shower's All Purpose Magical Mess Remover: No Pain, No Stain! ...Gladrags Wizardwear – London, Paris, Hogsmeade...
195. If they really were Death Eaters, they worked very hard to keep out of Azkaban when You-Know-Who lost power, and told all sorts of lies about him forcing them to kill and torture people.
196. "To the Prime Minister of Muggles. Urgent we meet. Kindly respond immediately. Sincerely, Fudge."

197. 
     “To me he is power – he is the primitive, the wild wolf, the striking rattlesnake, the stinging centipede,” said Arellano.
     
198. 
     Peacocks may not be unlucky; but pride is unlucky. Cracked mirrors may not be unlucky; but cracked brains are unlucky. And red may need not be unlucky; but there is something that is more red…
     

199. Bellatrix's astounded face glowed red in the blaze of a third unique of flame, which shot from the wand, twisted with the others, and bound itself thickly around their clasped hands, like a rope, like a fiery snake.
200. It was a magnificent mirror, as high as the ceiling, with an ornate gold frame, standing on two clawed feet. There was an inscription carved around the top: Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi.
201. He was so kind and holy and often and often she thought and thought could she work a rushed teacosy with embroidered floral design for him as a present or a clock but they had a clock she noticed on the mantelpiece white and gold with a canary bird that came out of a little house to tell the time the day she went there about the flowers for the forty hours' adoration because it was hard to know what sort of a present to give or perhaps an album of illuminated views of Dublin or some place…
202. “When the clock strikes midnight, Little Cindy Ella is dancing with the President of the Ku Klux Klan, says Moms, but at the stroke of twelve, Cindy Ella turns black to her natural self, black, and her blonde wig turns to a stocking cap – and her trial comes up next week.”
203. Already in this first half-hour of bombardment hundreds upon hundreds of men would have been violently slain, smashed, torn, gouged, crushed, mutilated.
204. Listen: a fourworded wavespeech: seesoo, hrss,rsseeiss ooos.
In cups of rocks it slops: flop, slop, slap: bounded in barrels.
And spent, its speech ceases. It flows purling, widely flowing,
floating foampool, flower unfurling.
205. It was in that heavenly moment that Fanny heard a twing-twing-tootle-tootle, and a light strumming.
206. She jumped up, her heart beating. My darling! No, it’s not too late! It’s all been a mistake, a terrible dream! Oh, that white hair! How could she have done it? She hasn’t done it. Oh, heavens! Oh, what happiness! She is free, young, and nobody knows her secret!.. She realized that now at last for the first time in her life – she had never imagined any feeling like it before – she knew what it was to be in love, but – in – love!
207. From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were: I have not seen
As others saw: I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
208. Tempo ist richtung. You’ve learnt your lesson well.
209. “AS-I-WAS-SAYING,” said Eyore loudly and sternly, “as I was saying when I was interrupted by various Loud Sounds, I feel that –”
210. “MODEL?/WRITER?/ WOMAN?” the headline demanded, like a jeering crowd calling for an execution.
211.I congr8ul8 U!
212. Hey ppl 2day is wed.yea cuz tom. I am goin 2 sixflags w/my church all day woohoo! Last nite ambur decided she wanted red hair so we put koolaid in her hair and left it over nite! Lot but she had 2 go home so we haven’t washed it out yet. We watched tha ring and it wus cool but I don’t like tha beginning!!! That wus icky. Ok well g2g.
213. Between the hounds and the horses and the twins there was a kinship deeper than that of their constant companionship. They were all healthy, thoughtless young animals, sleek, graceful, high-spirited, the boys as mettlesome as the horses they rode, mettlesome and dangerous but, withal, sweet-tempered to those who knew how to handle them.
214. Mammy felt that she owned the O'Haras, body and soul, that their secrets were her secrets; and even a hint of a mystery was enough to set her upon the trail as relentlessly as a bloodhound.
215. Mammy emerged from the hall, a huge old woman with the small, shrewd eyes of an elephant.
216. She was shining black, pure African, devoted to her last drop of blood to the O'Haras, Ellen's mainstay, the despair of her three daughters, the terror of the other house servants.
217. "Is de gempmum gone? Huccome you din' ast dem ter stay fer supper, Miss Scarlett? Ah done tole Poke ter lay two extry plates fer dem. Whar's yo' manners?"
218. She loved him and she wanted him and she did not understand him.
219. Then the hand of Fate and a hand of poker combined to give him the plantation which he afterwards called Tara, and at the same time moved him out of the Coast into the upland country of north Georgia.
220. With unerring African instinct, the negroes had all discovered that Gerald had a loud bark and no bite at all, and they took shameless advantage of him.
221. Quick though her brain was, it was not made for analysis, but she half-consciously realized that, for all the Tarleton girls were as unruly as colts and wild as March hares, there was an unworried single-mindedness about them that was part of their inheritance.
222. When first she looked at the crowd, Scarlett's heart had thumpthumped with the unaccustomed excitement of being at a party, but as she half-comprehendingly saw the high-hearted look on the faces about her, her joy began to evaporate.
223. There'll always be wars because men love wars. Women don't, but men do – yea, passing the love of women.
224. Fight and fall back! Fight and fall back! For seventy miles and twenty-five days the Confederates had fought almost daily.
225. Autumn with its dusty, breathless heat was slipping in to choke the suddenly quiet town, adding its dry, panting weight to tired, anxious hearts.
226. The house was very still. Far off there was a sound which might have been beating surf or cars zooming along a highway, or wind in pine trees. It was the sea, of course, breaking far down below. I sat there and listened to it and thought long, careful thoughts.
227. The garage was full of nothing. There were a few battered old-fashioned trunks not worth breaking up for firewood. Rusted gardening tools, old cans, plenty of those, in cartons. On each side of the doors, in the angle of the wall a nice fat black widow spider sat in its casual untidy web.
228. The bouncer didn’t quite laughed. He studied the big man’s clothes, his brown shirt and yellow tie, his rough grey coat and the white golf balls on it. He moved his thick head around delicately and studied all this from various angles. He looked down at the alligator shoes. He chuckled lightly. He seemed amused. I felt sorry for him.
229. 1644 West 54^th Place was a dried-out brown house with a dried out brown lawn in front of it. There was a large bare patch around a tough-looking palm tree. On the porch stood one lonely wooden rocker, and the afternoon breeze made the unpruned shoots of last year’s poinsettias tap-tap against the cracked stucco wall. A line of stiff yellowish half-washed clothes jittered on a rusty wire in the side yard.
230. In the next house a window curtain was drawn aside and a narrow intent face was close to the glass, peering, an old woman’s face with white hair and sharp nose.
Old Nosey checking up on the neighbours. There’s always at least one like her to the block. I waved my hand at her. The curtain fell.
231. “And it will cost him a hundred bucks as a retainer,” I added, trying to look as if it was a nickel.
“Huh?” Suspicious again. Stick to basic English.
“Hundred dollars,” I said. “Iron men. Fish. Bucks to the number of one hundred. Me no money, me no come. Savvy?” I began to count a hundred with my both hands.
232. He went up the two back steps and slid a knife blade neatly into the crack of the door and lifted the hook. That put us in the screen porch. It was full of cans and some of the cans were full of flies.
233. There, indeed, Mr. Costello was. Mr. Billy Costello, manager, proprietor, monarch of all he surveyed. From the doorway of the big room where the little tables herded in a ring around the waxen floor, he surveyed Mrs. Brady, and in such a way that Mrs. Brady, momentarily forgetting about her bad heart, walked fast, scurried faster, almost ran.

II

1. His arrival was always amid a bedlam of hounds barking and small black children shouting as they raced to meet him, quarreling for the privilege of holding his horse and squirming and grinning under his good-natured insults. The white children clamored to sit on his knee and be trotted, while he denounced to their elders the infamy of Yankee politicians; the daughters of his friends took him into their confidence about their love affairs, and the youths of the neighborhood, fearful of confessing debts of honor upon the carpets of their fathers, found him a friend in need.

2. He was worth looking at. He wore a shaggy borsalino hat, a rough grey sports coat with white golf balls on it for buttons, a brown shirt, a yellow tie, pleated grey flannel slacks and alligator shoes with white explosions on the toes. From his outer breast pocket cascaded a show handkerchief of the same brilliant yellow as his tie. There were a couple of coloured feathers tucked into the band of his hat, but he didn’t really need them. Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.

3. “There ain’t nothing of the joint,” he complained. “They was a little stage and a band and cute little rooms where a guy could have fun. Velma did some warbling. A redhead she was. Cute as lace pants. We was to of been married when they hung the frame on me.”

I took my second whisky sour. I was beginning to have enough of adventure. “What frame?” I asked.
“Where you figure I been them eight years I said about?”
“Catching butterflies.”
He prodded his chest with a forefinger like a banana. “In the caboose. Malloy is the name. They call me Moose Malloy, on account of I’m large. The Great Bend bank job. Forty grand. Solo job. Ain’t that something?”

4. Something sailed across the sidewalk and landed in the gutter between two parked cars. It landed on its hands and knees and made a high keening noise like a cornered rat. It got up slowly, retrieved a hat and stepped back on to the sidewalk. It was a thin narrow-shouldered brown youth in a lilac coloured suit and a carnation. It had slick black hair. It kept its mouth open and whined for a moment. People stared it vaguely. Then it settled its hat jauntily, sidled over to the wall and walked silently splayfooted off along the block.

Silence. Traffic resumed. I walked along to the double doors and stood in front of them. They were motionless now. It wasn’t any of my business. So I pushed them open and looked in.
A hand I could sat in came out of the darkness and took hold of my shoulder and squashed it to a pulp.

5. “No peekin’,” she said, and went out of the room again, hitting the door frame with her shoulder.

I heard her fumbling steps going into the back part of the house.
The poinsettia shoots tap-tapped dully against the front wall. The clothes line creaked vaguely at the side of the house. The ice cream peddler went by ringing his bell. The big new handsome radio in the corner whispered of dancing and love with a deep soft throbbing note like the catch in a torch singer’s voice.
Then from the back of the house there were various types of crashing sounds. A chair seemed to fall over backwards, a bureau drawer was pulled out too far and crashed to the floor, there was fumbling and thudding and muttered thick language. Then the slow click of a lock and the squeak of a trunk top going up. More fumbling and banging. A tray landed on the floor. I got up from the davenport and sneaked into the dining-room and from that into a short hall. I looked around the edge of an open door.

6. “You are Philip Marlowe, a private detective?”

“Check.”
“Oh – you mean, yes. You have been recommended to me as a man who can be trusted to keep his mouth shut. I should like you to come to my house at seven o’clock this evening. We can discuss a matter. My name is Lindsay Marriott and I live at 4212 Cabrillo Street, Montemar Vista. Do you know where that is?”
“I know where Montemar Vista is, Mr. Marriott.”
“Yes. Well, Cabrillo Street is rather hard to find. The streets down here are all laid out in a pattern of interesting but intricate curves. I should suggest that you walk up the steps from the sidewalk cafe. If you do that, Cabrillo is the third street you come to and my house is the only one on the block. At seven then?”
“What is the nature of employment, Mr. Marriott?”
“I should prefer not to discuss that over the phone.”
“Can’t you give me some idea? Montemar Vista is quite a distance.”
“I shall be glad to pay your expenses, if we don’t agree. Are you particular about the nature of employment?”
“Not as long it’s legitimate.”
The voice grew icicles. “I should not have called you, if it were not.
A Harvard boy. Nice use of the subjunctive mood. The end of my foot itched, but my bank account was still trying to crawl under a duck. I put honey into my voice and said: “Many thanks for calling me, Mr. Marriott. I’ll be there.”
I hang up and that was that.

7. The bid foreign car drove itself, but I held the wheel for the sake of appearances.

For two minutes we figure-eighted back and forth across the face of the mountain and then popped out right beside the sidewalk cafe. I could understand now why Marriott had told me to walk up the steps. I could have driven about it in those curving, twisting streets for hours without making any more yardage that an angle-worm in a bait can…
On the highway the lights of the streaming cars made an almost solid beam in both directions. The big corn-poppers were rolling north growling as they went and festooned all over with green and yellow overhang lights. Three minutes of that and we turned inland, by a big service station, and wound along the flank of the foothills. It got quiet. There was loneliness and the smell of kelp and the smell of wild sage from the hills. A yellow window hung here and there, all by itself, like the last orange. Cars passed, spraying the pavement with cold white light, then growled off into the darkness. Wisps of fog chased the stars down the sky…
We slid down a broad avenue lined with unfinished electroliers and weed-grown sidewalks. Some realtor’s dream had turned into a hangover there. Crickets chirped and bullfrogs whooped in the darkness behind the overgrown sidewalks.

8. Jules Amthor, Psychic Consultant. Consultations By Appointment Only. Give him enough time and pay him enough money and he’ll cure anything from a jaded husband to a grasshopper plague. He would be an expert in frustrated love affairs, women who slept alone and didn’t like it, wandering boys and girls who didn’t write home, sell the property now or hold it for another year, will this part hurt me with my public or make me seem more versatile? Men would sneak in on him too, big strong guys that roared like lions around their offices and were cold mush under their vests. But mostly it would be women, fat women that panted and thin women that burned, old women that dreamed and young women that thought they might have Electra complexes, women of all sizes, shapes and ages, but with one thing in common – money. No Thursdays at the County Hospital for Mr. Jules Amthor. Cash on the line for his. Rich bitches who had to be dunned for their milk bills would pay him right now.

A fakeloo artist, a hoopla spreader, and a lad who had his card rooled up inside sticks of tea, found on a dead man.
This was going to be good. I reached for the phone and asked the O-operator for the Stillwood Heights number.

9. A woman’s voice answered, a dry, husky-sounding foreign voice:

“Allo.”
“May I talk to Mr. Amthor?”
“Ah, no. I regret. I am ve-ry sor-ry. Amthor never speaks upon the telephone. I am hees secretary. Weel I take the message?”
“What’s the address out there? I want to see him.”
“Ah, you weesh to consult Amthor professionally? He weel be ve-ry pleased. But he ees ve-ry beesy. When you weesh to see him?”
“Right away. Some time to-day.”
“Ah,” the voice regretted, “that cannot be. The next week per’aps. I weel look at the book.”

10. “Huh. Me Second Planting. Me Hollywood Indian.”

“Have a chair Mr. Planting.”
He snorted and his nostrils got very wide. They had been wide enough for mouseholes to start with.
“Name Second Planting. Name no Mister Planting.”
“What can I do for you?”
He lifted his voice and began to intone in a deep-chested sonorous boom. “He say come quick. Great white father say come quick. He say me bring you in a fiery chariot. He say – ”
“Yeah. Cut out the pig Latin,” I said. “I’m no schoolmarm at the snake dances.”
“Nuts,” the Indian said.

11. The driver looked as if he was half asleep but he passed the fast boys in the convertible sedans as though they were being towed. They turned on all the green lights for him. Some drivers are like that. He never missed one.

We curved through the bright mile or two of the Strip, past the antique shops with famous screen names on them, past the windows full of point lace and ancient pewter, past the gleaming new night clubs with famous chefs and equally famous gambling rooms, run by polished graduates of the Purple Gang, past the Georgian-Colonial vogue, now old hat, past the handsome modernistic buildings in which Hollywood flesh-peddlers never stop talking money, past a drive-in lunch which somehow didn’t belong, even though the girls wore white silk blouses and drum majorettes’ shakos and nothing below the hips but glazed kid Hessian boots. Past all this and down a wide smooth curve to the bridle path of Beverly Hills and lights to the south. All colours of the spectrum and crystal clear in the evening without fog, past the shadowed mansions up on the hills to the north, past Beverly Hills altogether and up into the twisting foothill boulevard and the sudden cool dusk and the drift of the wind from the sea.
It had been a warm afternoon, but the heat was gone. We whipped past a distant cluster of lighted buildings and an endless series of lighted mansions, not too close to the road. We dipped down to skirt a huge green polo field with another equally huge practice field beside it, soared again to the top of a hill and swung mountain-ward up a steep hill road of clean concrete that passed orange groves, some rich man’s pet because this is not orange country, and then little by little windows of millionaires’ homes were gone and the road narrowed and this was Stillwood Heights.
The smell of sage drifted up from a canyon and made me think of a dead man and a moonless sky. Straggly stucco houses were moulded flat to the side of the hill, like bas-reliefs. The there were no more houses, just the still dark foothills with an early star or two above them, and the concrete ribbon of road and a sheer drop on one side into a tangle of scrub oak and manzanita where sometimes you can hear the call of the quails if you stop and keep still and wait. One the other side of the road was a raw clay bank at the edge of which a few unbeatable flowers hung on like naughty children that won’t go to bed.
Then the road turned into a hairpin turn and the big tyres scratched over loose stones, and the car tore less soundlessly up a long driveway lined with the wild geraniums. At the top of this, faintly lighted, lonely as a lighthouse, stood an eyrie, an eagle’s nest, an angular building of stucco and glass brick, raw and modernistic and yet not ugly and altogether a swell place for a psychic consultant to hang out his shingle. Nobody would be able to hear any screams.

12. I sat down, got a cigarette into my mouth and rolled it along my lips without lighting it. I looked him over. He was thin, tall and straight as a steel rod. He had the palest finest white hair I ever saw. It could have been strained through silk gauze. His skin was as fresh as a rose petal. He might have been thirty-five or sixty-five. He was ageless. His hair was brushed straight back from as good a profile as Barrymore ever had. His eyebrows were coal black, like the walls and ceiling and floor. His eyes were deep, far too deep. They were the depthless drugged eyes of the somnambulist. They were like a well I read about once. It was nine hundred years old, in an old castle. You could drop a stone into it and wait. You could listen and wait and then you would give up waiting and laugh and then just as you were ready to turn away a faint, minute splash would come back up to you from the bottom of that well, so tiny, so remote that you could hardly believe a well like that possible.

His eyes were deep like that. And they were also eyes without expression, without soul, eyes that could watch lions tear a man to pieces and never change, that could watch a man impaled and screaming in the hot sun with his eyelids cut off.

13. I was sitting on the side of my bed in my pyjamas, thinking about getting up, but not yet committed. I didn’t feel very well, but I didn’t feel as sick as I ought to, not as sick as I would feel if I had a salaried job. My head hurt and felt large and hot and my tongue was dry and had gravel on it and my throat was stiff and my jaw not untender. But I had had worse mornings.

It was a grey morning with high fog, not yet warm but likely to be. I heaved up off the bed and rubbed the pit of my stomach where it was sore from vomiting. My left foot felt fine. It didn’t have an ache in it. So I had to kick the corner of my bed with it.

14. A shiny black bug with a pink head and pink spots on it crawled slowly along the polished top of Randall’s desk and waved a couple of feelers around, as if testing the breeze for take-off. It wobbled a little as it crawled, like an old woman carrying too many parcels. A nameless dick sat at another desk and kept talking into an old-fashioned hushaphone telephone mouthpiece, so that his voice sounded like someone whispering in a tunnel. He talked with his eyes half closed, a big scarred hand on the desk in front of him holding a burning cigarette between the knuckles of the first and the second fingers.

The bug reached the end of the Randall’s desk and marched straight off into the air. It fell on its back on the floor, waved a few thin worn legs in the air feebly and then played dead. Nobody cared, so it began waving the legs again and finally struggled over on its face. It trundled slowly off into a corner towards nothing, going nowhere.

15. Promptly at quarter of ten p.m. Mrs. Brady descended the steps of the elevated. She purchase from the newsdealer in the cubbyhole beneath them a next month’s magazine and a tomorrow morning’s newspaper and, with these tucked under one plump arm, she walked. She walked two blocks north on Sixth Avenue, turned and went west. But not far west. Westward half a block only, to the place where the gray green awning marked “Club Français” paints a stripe of shade across the glimmering sidewalk. Under this awning Mrs. Brady halted briefly, to remark to the six-foot doorman that it looked like rain and to await his performance of his professional duty. When the small green door yawned open, she sighed deeply and plodded in.

16. Between eleven o’clock and one Mrs. Brady was very busy indeed. Never for more than a moment was the dressing room empty. Often it was jammed, full to over flowing with curled cropped heads, with ivory arms and shoulders, with silk and lace and chiffon, with legs. The door flapped in and back, in and black. The mirrors caught and held – and lost – a hundred different faces. Powder veiled the dressing table with a thin white dust; cigarette stubs, scarlet at the tips, choked the ash receiver. Dimes and quarters clattered into Mrs. Brady’s saucer – and were transferred to Mrs. Brady’s purse. The original seventy cents remained. That much, and no more, would Mrs. Brady gamble on the integrity of womankind.

17. I followed, up three stairs and down a corridor past two closed doors, The third one to my left was open, and the maid indicated I should enter it. I did so, then paused on the threshold.

Like all libraries, it was full of books. It also held three paintings, two indicating quiet landscapes and one a peaceful seascape. The floor was heavily carpeted in green. There was a big globe beside the big desk with Africa facing me and a wall-to-wall window behind it, eight stepladders of glass. But none of these was the reason I'd paused. The woman behind the desk wore a wide-collared, V-necked dress of blue-green, had long hair and low bangs, all of a cross between sunset clouds and the outer edge of a candle flame in an otherwise dark room, and natural, I somehow knew, and her eyes behind glasses I didn't think she needed were as blue as Lake Erie at three o'clock on a cloudless summer afternoon; and the color of her compressed smile matched her hair. But none of these was the reason I'd paused.
I knew her, from somewhere, though I couldn't say where.

18. Dabbing at his streaming nose, Filch squinted unpleasantly at Harry who waited with bated breath for his sentence to fall.

But as Filch lowered his quill, there was a great BANG! on the ceiling of the office, which made the oil lamp rattle.
«PEEVES!» Filch roared, flinging down his quill in a transport of rage. «I'll have you this time, I'll have you!»
And without a backward glance at Harry, Filch ran flat-footed from the office, Mrs. Norris streaking alongside him.
Peeves was the school poltergeist, a grinning, airborne menace who lived to cause havoc and distress. Harry didn't much like Peeves, but couldn't help feeling grateful for his timing. Hopefully, whatever Peeves had done (and it sounded as though he'd wrecked something very big this time) would distract Filch from Harry.
Thinking that he should probably wait for Filch to come back, Harry sank into a moth-eaten chair next to the desk. There was only one thing on it apart from his half-completed form: a large, glossy, purple envelope with silver lettering on the front. With a quick glance at the door to check that Filch wasn't on his way back, Harry picked up the envelope and read: Kwikspell. A Correspondence Course in Beginners' Magic.
Intrigued, Harry flicked the envelope open and pulled out the sheaf of parchment inside. More curly silver writing on the front page said:
Feel out of step in the world of modern magic? Find yourself making excuses not to perform simple spells? Ever been taunted for your woeful wandwork? There is an answer!
Kwikspell is an all-new, fail-safe, quick-result, easy-learn course. Hundreds of witches and wizards have benefited from the Kwikspell method!
Madam Z. Nettles of Topsham writes: «I had no memory for incantations and my potions were a family joke! Now, after a Kwikspell course, I am the center of attention at parties and friends beg for the recipe of my Scintillation Solution!»
Warlock D. J. Prod of Didsbury says: «My wife used to sneer at my feeble charms, but one month into your fabulous Kwikspell course and I succeeded in turning her into a yak! Thank you, Kwikspell!»
Fascinated, Harry thumbed through the rest of the envelope's contents. Why on earth did Filch want a Kwikspell course? Did this mean he wasn't a proper wizard? Harry was just reading «Lesson One: Holding Your Wand (Some Useful Tips)» when shuffling footsteps outside told him Filch was coming back. Stuffing the parchment back into the envelope, Harry threw it back onto the desk just as the door opened.
Filch was looking triumphant.

19.