材穝じ瞴地ゅ獵ゅ厩贱
ゅ厩陆亩舱ゅい亩絑
叫ノいゅ陆亩絞璣ゅ絑
1. If
it were true that she was in love, she was certainly very quiet about it, but
the doctor was of course prepared to admit that her quietness might mean
volumes. She had told Morris
Townsend that she would not mention him to her father, and she saw no reason to
retract this vow of discretion. It
was no more than decently civil, of course, that, after having dined in
Washington Square, Morris should call there again; and it was no more than
natural that, having been kindly received on this occasion, he should continue
to present himself. He had had
plenty of leisure on his hands; and thirty years ago, in New York, a young man
of leisure had reason to be thankful for aids to self-oblivion. Catherine said nothing to her father
about these visits, though they had rapidly become the most important, the most
absorbing thing in her life. The
girl was very happy. She knew not
as yet what would come of it; but the present had suddenly grown rich and
solemn. If she had been told she
was in love, she would have been a good deal surprised; for she had an idea
that love was an eager and exacting passion, and her own heart was filled in
these days with the impulse of self-effacement and sacrifice.
------ from Henry James: Washington
Square
2. Never are there such departures as from the dock at HonoluluThe senators were garlanded and bedecked with flowers. Senator Jeremy Sambrookeˇs stout neck and portly bosom were burdened with a dozen wreaths. Out of this mass of bloom and blossom projected his head and the greater portion of his freshly sunburned and perspiring face. He thought the flowers an abomination, and as he looked out over the multitude on the wharf it was with a statistical eye that saw none of the beauty, but that peered into the labor power, the factories, the railroads, and the plantations that lay back of the multitude and which the multitude expressed. He saw resources and thought development, and he was too busy with dreams of material achievement and empire to notice his daughter at his side, talking with a young fellow in a natty summer suit and straw hat, whose eager eyes seemed only for her and never left her face. Had Senator Jeremy had eyes for his daughter, he would have seen that, in place of the young girl of fifteen he had brought to Hawaii a short month before, he was now taking away with him a woman.
------
from Jack London: Aloha Oe
3. The
characters chiefly noted in American English by all who have discussed it are,
first, its general uniformity throughout the country; second, its impatient
disregard for grammatical, syntactical and phonological rule and precedent; and
third, its large capacity (distinctly greater than that of the English of
present-day England) for taking in new words and phrases from outside sources,
and for manufacturing them of its own materials.
The first of these characters has struck every observer, native and foreign. In place of the discordant local dialects of all the other major countries, including England, we have a general Volkssprache for the whole nation, and if it is conditioned at all it is only by minor differences in pronunciation and vocabulary, and by the linguistic struggles of various groups of newcomers. No other country can show such linguistic solidarity, nor and approach to it not even Canada, for there a large minority of the population resists speaking English altogether. The Little Russian of the Ukraine is unintelligible to the citizen of Moscow; the Northern Italian can scarcely follow a conversation in Sicilian; the Low German from Hamburg is a foreigner in Munich; the Breton flounders in Gascony. Even in the United Kingdom there are wide divergences. ¨When we remember,〃 says the New International Encyclopaedia, ¨that the dialects of the countries in England have marked differences so marked, indeed, that it may be doubted whether a Lancashire miner and a Lincolnshire farmer could understand each other we may well be proud that our vast country has strictly speaking, only one language.〃
------ from H.L. Mencken: The
American Language