Miss Awful by Arthur Cavanaugh

DO NOW: Write a excuse for being late or absent to class that makes an impossible reason sound reasonable.  (For example, science fiction, magic, travel, etc.)

AIM: Is Roger's mother similar to or different from Laurie's mother?

HOMEWORK: Complete the vocabulary work sheet.

In class Work Sheet: VOCABULARY
In class reading: "Miss Awful"
“Miss Awful”   

by Arthur Cavanaugh

Vocabulary:

teetering

rambunctious

discharged

torpor

whimsical

inertia

scrupulosity

martial

infiltrated

remonstrated

The whole episode of Miss Awful began for the Clarks at their dinner table one Sunday afternoon.  Young Roger Clark was explaining why he could go to Central Park with his father instead of staying home to finish his homework -- Miss Wilson, his teacher, wouldn’t be at school tomorrow, so who'd know the difference?  “She has to take care of a crisis," Roger explained. “It's in Omaha.”

“What is?" his older sister, Elizabeth, inquired.  "For a kid in third grade, Roger, you talk dopey.  You fail to make sense."

Roger ignored the insult.  His sister was a condition of life he had had to live with, like lions.  Or snakes.  Poisonous ones.  Teetering, as always, on the tilted-back chair, feet wrapped around the legs, he continued, "Till Miss Wilson gets back we're having some other teacher.  She flew to Omaha yesterday.”   He pushed some peas on his plate and was silent a moment.  "I hope her plane don’t crash," he said.

Roger's mother patted his hand.  A lively, outgoing youngster, as noisy and rambunctious as any eight-year-old, he had another side, tender and soft, which worried about people.  Let the blind man who sold pencils outside the five-and-ten on Broadway be absent from his post, and Roger worried that catastrophe had overtaken him. When Mrs. Loomis, a neighbor of the Clarks in the Greenwich Village brownstone, had entered the hospital, Roger’s anxious queries had not ceased until she was discharged.  And recently there was the cat which had nested in the downstairs doorway at night.  Roger had carried down saucers of milk, clucking with concern. "Is the cat run away?  Don’t it have a home?“

Virginia Clark assured her son, "You’ll have Miss Wilson safely back before you know it. It's nice that you care so."

Roger beamed with relief. "Well, I like Miss Wilson, she's fun. Last week, for instance, when Tommy Miller got tired of staying in his seat and lay down on the floor--"

"He did what?" Roger's father was roused from his post-dinner torpor.

"Sure. Pretty soon the whole class was lying down. Know what Miss Wilson did?"

“If you'll notice, Mother," Elizabeth  interjected, "he hasn't touched a single pea."

“She lay down on the floor, too," Roger went on ecstatically. "She said we'd all have a rest, it was perfectly normal in the middle of the day. That's what I love about  St. Geoff 's.  It's fun."

"Fun," snorted his sister.  "School isn't supposed to be a fun fest.  It's supposed to be filling that empty noodle of yours." 

"Miss Wilson got down on the floor?" Mr. Clark repeated. He had met Roger's teacher on occasion; she had struck him as capable but excessively whimsical.  She was a large woman to be getting down on floors, Mr. Clark thought.  "What did the class do next?" he asked.

"Oh, we lay there a while, then got up and did a Mexican hat dance,'' Roger answered.  "It was swell." 

“I'm sure not every day is as frolicsome," Mrs. Clark countered, slightly anxious.  She brought in dessert, a chocolate mousse.  Roger's story sounded typical of St. Geoffrey's.  Not that she was unhappy with his school.  A small private institution, while it might be called overly permissive, it projected a warm, homey atmosphere which Mrs. Clark found appealing.  It was church-affiliated, which she approved of, and heaven knows its location a few blocks away from the brownstone was convenient.  True, Roger's scholastic progress wasn't notable -- his spelling, for example, remained atrocious.  Friendly as St. Geoffrey's was, Mrs. Clark sometimes did wish . . . 

Roger attacked dessert with a lot more zest than he had shown the peas.  "So can I go to the park with you, Dad?  I've only got spelling left, and who cares about that?" Before his mother could comment, he was up from the table and racing toward the coat closet. "Okay, Dad?"

“I didn't say you could go.  I didn't even say I'd take you," Mr. Clark objected.  He happened, at that moment, to glance at his waistline and reflect that a brisk hike might do him some good.  He pushed back his chair.  "All right, but the minute we return, it's to your room to finish your spelling."

“Ah, thanks, Dad.  Can we go to the boat pond first?"

“We will not," cried Elizabeth, elbowing into the closet.  "We'll go to the Sheep Meadow first."

Roger was too happy to argue. Pulling on his jacket, he remarked, “Gee, I wonder what the new teacher will be like.  Ready for your coat, Dad?"

It was just as well that he gave the matter no more thought.  In view of events to come, Roger was entitled to a few carefree hours.  Monday morning at school started off with perfect normalcy.  It began exactly like any other school morning.  Elizabeth had long since departed for the girls' school she attended uptown when Mrs. Clark set out with Roger for the short walk to St. Geoff's.  She didn’t trust him with the Fifth Avenue traffic yet.  They reached the school corner and Roger skipped away eagerly from her.  The sidewalk in front of school already boasted a large, jostling throng of children and his legs couldn't hurry Roger fast enough to join them.  Indeed it was his reason for getting to school promptly: to have time to play before the 8:45 bell.  Roger 's schoolbag was well equipped for play.  As usual, he'd packed a supply of baseball cards for trading opportunities; a spool of string, in case anybody brought a kite; a water pistol for possible use in the lavatory; and a police whistle for sheer noise value.  Down the Greenwich Village sidewalk he galloped, shouting the names of his third grade friends as he picked out faces from the throng. “Hiya, Tommy.  Hey, hiya, Bruce.  Hi, Steve, you bring your trading cards?”

By the time the 8:45 bell rang -- St. Geoff 's used a cowbell, one of the homey touches --  Roger had finished a game of tag, traded several baseball cards, and was launched in an exciting jump-the-hydrant contest.  Miss Gillis, the school secretary, was in charge of the bell, and she had to clang it extensively before the student body took notice.  Clomping up the front steps, they spilled into the downstairs hall, headed in various directions.  Roger’s class swarmed up the stairs in rollicking spirits, Tommy Miller, Bruce Reeves, Joey Lambert, the girls forming an untidy rear flank behind them, shrill with laughter.  

It wasn't until the front ranks reached the third-grade classroom that the first ominous note was struck.

"Hey, what's going on?" Jimmy Moore demanded, first to observe the changed appearance of the room.  The other children crowded behind him in the doorway.  Instead of a cozy semicircle --"As though we're seated round a glowing hearth," Miss Wilson had described it --the desks and chairs had been rearranged in stiff, rigid rows.  “Gee, look, the desks are in rows,” commented Midge Fuller, a plump little girl who stood blocking Roger's view.  Midge was a child given to unnecessary statements.  "It's raining today," she would volunteer to her classmates, all of them in slickers. Or, "There’s the lunch bell, gang."  The point to Roger wasn't that the desks had been rearranged. The point was, why?  As if in answer, he heard two hands clap behind him, as loud and menacing as thunder. 

"What's this, what's this?" barked a stern, raspish voice.  "You are not cattle milling in a pen. Enough foolish gaping! Come, come, form into lines."

Heads turned in unison, mouths fell agape.  The children of St. Geoffrey's third grade had never formed into lines of any sort, but this was not the cause of their shocked inertia.  Each was staring, with a sensation similar to that of drowning, at the owner of the raspish voice.  She was tall and straight as a ruler, and was garbed in an ancient tweed suit whose skirt dipped nearly to the ankles.  She bore a potted plant in one arm and Miss Wilson's roll book in the other.  Rimless spectacles glinted on her bony nose.  Her hair was gray, like a witch's, skewered in a bun, and there was no question that she had witch's eyes.  Roger had seen those same eyes leering from the pages of Hansel and Gretel -- identical, they were. He gulped at the terrible presence.

"Form lines, I said. Girls in one, boys in the other."  Poking, prodding, patrolling back and forth, the new teacher kneaded the grade into position and ruefully inspected the result.  "Sloppiest I've ever beheld. March!"  She clapped time with her hands and the stunned ranks trooped into the classroom.  "One, two, three, one, two --  girls on the window side, boys on the wall. Stand at your desks.  Remove your outer garments.  You, little Miss, with the vacant stare.  What’s your name?"

“Ja—Ja-- " a voice squeaked.

“Speak up.  I won't have mumblers."  

“Jane Douglas."

“Well, Jane Douglas, you will be coat monitor.  Collect the garments a row at a time and hang them neatly in the cloakroom.  Did you hear me, child.  Stop staring.”  Normally slow-moving, Jane Douglas became a whirl of activity, charging up and down the aisles, piling coats on her arms.  The new teacher tugged at her tweed jacket.  “Class be seated, hands folded on desks,” she barked, and there was immediate compliance.  She next paraded to the windows and installed the potted plant on the sill.  Her witch’s hands fussed with the green leaves, straightening, pruning.  "Plants and children belong in classrooms," she declared, spectacles sweeping over the rows.  "Can someone suggest why?"

There was total silence, punctured by a deranged giggle, quickly suppressed.

"Very well, I will tell you. Plants and children are living organisms.  Both will grow with proper care. Repeat, proper. Not indulgent fawning, or giving in to whims  -- scrupulosity!"  With another tug at the jacket, she strode, ruler straight, to the desk in the front of the room.  "I am Miss Orville. 0-r-v-i-l-l-e," she spelled.  "You are to use my name in replying to all questions."

In the back of the room, Jimmy Moore whispered frantically to Roger.  "What did she say her name is?"

Miss Orville rapped her desk.  "Attention, please, no muttering in the back."  She cleared her voice and resumed.  "Prior to my retirement I taught boys and girls for forty-six years," she warned. "I am beyond trickery, so I advise you to try none.  You are to be in my charge until the return of Miss Wilson, however long that may be."  She clasped her hands in front of her and trained her full scrutiny on the rows.  "Since I have no knowledge of your individual abilities, perhaps a look at the weekend homework will shed some light.  Miss Wilson left me a copy of the assignment.  You have all completed it, I trust? Take out your notebooks, please.  At once, at once, I say."

Roger's head spun dizzily around.  He gaped at the monstrous tweed figure in dismay.  Book bags were being clicked open, notebooks drawn out -- what was he to do?  He had gone to his room after the outing in the park yesterday, but, alas, it had not been to complete his assignment.  He watches, horrified, as the tweed figure proceeded among the aisles and inspected notebooks.  What had she said her name was?  Awful -- was that it?  Miss Awful!  Biting his lip, he listened to her scathing comments.

“You call this chicken scrawl penmanship?”  R-r-rip! A page was torn out and thrust at its owner.  “Redo it at once, it assaults the intelligence.”  Then, moving on, “What is this maze of ill-spelled words?  Not a composition, I trust.”

“Ill-spelled words!”  He was in for it for sure.  The tweed figure was heading down his aisle. She was three desks away, no escaping it.  Roger opened his book bag.  It slid from his grasp and, with a crash, fell to the floor.  Books, pencil case spilled out.  Baseball cards, the water pistol, the police whistle, the spool of string . . .

“Ah," crowed Miss Awful, instantly at his desk, scooping up the offending objects.  "We have come to play, have we?"   And she fixed her witch's gaze on him.

Long before the week's end, it was apparent to Virginia Clark that something was drastically wrong with her son's behavior.  The go-lucky youngster had disappeared, as if down a well.  Another creature had replaced him, nervous, harried, continuously glancing over his shoulder, in the manner of one being followed.  Mrs. Clark’s first inkling of change occurred that same Monday.  She had been chatting with the other mothers who congregated outside St. Geoffrey’s at three every afternoon to pick up their offspring.  A casual assembly, the mothers were as relaxed and informal as the school itself, lounging against the picket fence, exchanging small talk and anecdotes.

"That darling cowbell," laughed one of the group at the familiar clang. "Did I tell you Anne's class is having a taffy pull on Friday?  Where else, in the frantic city of New York . . ."

The third grade was the last class to exit from the building on Monday.  Not only that, but Mrs. Clark noted that the children appeared strangely subdued.  Some of them were actually reeling, all but dazed.  As for Roger, eyes taut and pleading, he quickly pulled his mother down the block, signaling for silence.  When enough distance had been gained, words erupted from him.

"No, we don't have a new teacher," he flared wildly. "We got a witch for a new teacher. It's the truth. She's from Hansel and Gretel, the same horrible eyes -- and she steals toys.  Yes," he repeated in mixed outrage and hurt: "By accident, you happen to put some toys in your book bag, and she steals 'em. I'll fool her! I won't bring any more toys to school," he howled. "Know what children are to her?  Plants! She did, she called us plants.  Miss Awful, that's her name."

Such was Roger's distress that his mother offered to stop at the Schrafft's on Thirteenth Street and treat him to a soda.  "Who's got time for sodas?" he bleated.  "I have homework to do. Punishment homework.  Ten words, ten times each.  On account of the witch's spelling test."

"Ten words, ten times each?" Mrs. Clark repeated. "How many words were on the test?"

"Ten," moaned Roger. "Every one wrong. Come on, I've got to hurry home.  I don't have time to waste."  Refusing to be consoled, he headed for the brownstone and the desk in his room.

On Tuesday, together with the other mothers, Mrs. Clark was astonished to see the third grade march down the steps of St. Geoffrey's in military precision.  Clop, clop, the children marched, looking neither to the left nor right, while behind them came a stiff-backed, iron-haired woman in a pepper-and-salt suit. "One, two, three, one, two, three," she counted, then clapped her hands in dismissal. Turning, she surveyed the assemblage of goggle-eyed mothers.  "May I inquire if the mother of Joseph Lambert is among you?" she asked.

"I'm Mrs. Lambert," replied a voice meekly, whereupon Miss Orville paraded directly up to her.  The rest of the mothers looked on, speechless.

"Mrs. Lambert, your son threatens to grow into a useless member of society," stated Miss Orville in ringing tones that echoed down the street.  "That is, unless you term watching television useful.  Joseph has confessed that he views three hours per evening."

"Only after his homework's finished," Margery Lambert allowed. 

"Madame, he does not finish his homework.  He idles through it, scattering mistakes higgledy-piggledy.  I suggest you give him closer supervision.  Good day."  With a brief nod, Miss Orville proceeded down the street, and it was a full minute before the mothers had recovered enough to comment.  Some voted in favor of immediate protest to Dr. Jameson, St. Geoffrey's headmaster, on the hiring of such a woman, even on a temporary basis.  But since it was temporary, the mothers concluded it would have to be tolerated. 

Nancy Reeves, Bruce's mother, kept staring at the retreating figure of Miss Orville, by now far down the block. "I know her from somewhere, I'm sure of it," she insisted, shaking her head.

The next morning, Roger refused to leave for school. "My shoes aren’t shined," he wailed. "Not what Miss Awful calls shined.  Where's the polish? I can't leave till I do 'em over."

“Roger, if only you'd thought of it last night," sighed Mrs. Clark. 

“You sound like her," he cried. "That's what she'd say," and it gave his mother something to puzzle over for the rest of the day.  She was still thinking about it when she joined the group of mothers outside St. Geoffrey’s at three.  She had to admit it was sort of impressive, the smart, martial air exhibited by the third grade as they trooped down the steps.  There was to be additional ceremony today.  The ranks waited on the sidewalk until Miss Orville passed back and forth in inspection.  Stationing herself at the head of the columns,  she boomed, “Good afternoon, boys and girls.  Let us return with pens tomorrow."

It was on Thursday that Nancy Reeves finally remembered where previously she had seen Miss Orville. Perhaps it was from the shock of having received a compliment from the latter.

"Mrs. Reeves, I rejoice to inform you of progress," Miss Orville had addressed her, after the third grade had performed its military display for the afternoon.  "On Monday, young Bruce's penmanship was comparable to a chicken's -- if a chicken could write.  Today, I was pleased to award him an A."

A tug at the tweed jacket, and the stiff-backed figure walked down the street.  Nancy Reeves stared after her until Miss Orville merged into the flow of pedestrians and traffic.  "I know who she is” Nancy suddenly remarked, turning to the other mothers.  "I knew I’d seen her before.  Those old ramshackle buildings near us on Hudson Street -- remember when they were torn down last year?" The other mothers formed a circle around her.  "Miss Orville was one of the tenants," Nancy Reeves went on.  "She'd lived there for ages, and refused to budge until the landlord got a court order and deposited her on the sidewalk.  I saw her there, sitting in a rocker on the sidewalk, surrounded by all this furniture and plants.  Her picture was in the papers.  Elderly retired schoolteacher . . . they found a furnished room for her on Jane Street, I think. Poor old thing, evicted like that  . . . I remember she couldn't keep any of the plants . . ."

On the way home, after supplying a lurid account of the day's tortures -- "Miss Awful made Walter Meade stand in the corner for saying a bad word" --Roger asked his mother, “Eviction.  What does that mean?" 

"It's when somebody is forced by law to vacate an apartment. The landlord gets an eviction notice, and the person has to leave.”

“Kicked her out on the street.  Is that what they did to the witch?”

“Don’t call her that, it's rude and impolite," Mrs. Clark said, as they turned into the brownstone doorway.  "I can see your father and I have been too easygoing where you're concerned."

"Huh, we've got worse names for her," Roger retorted.  "Curse names, you should hear 'em. We're planning how to get even with Miss Awful, just you see."  He paused, as his mother opened the downstairs door with her key.  "That's where the cat used to sleep, remember?" he said, pointing at a corner of the entryway.  His face was grave and earnest.  "I wonder where that cat went to.  Hey, Mom," he hurried to  catch up.  "Maybe it was evicted, too."

Then it was Friday at St. Geoffrey's.  Before lunch, Miss Orville told the class, "I am happy to inform you that Miss Wilson will be back on Monday."  She held up her hand for quiet.  "This afternoon will be my final session with you. Not that discipline will relax, but I might read you a story.  Robert Louis Stevenson, perhaps. My boys and girls always enjoyed him so. Forty-six years of them . . . Joseph Lambert, you're not sitting up straight. You know I don't permit slouchers in my class."

It was a mistake to have told the children that Miss Wilson would be back on Monday, that only a few hours of the terrible reign of Miss Awful were left to endure.  Even before lunch recess, a certain spirit of challenge and defiance had infiltrated into the room.  Postures were still erect, but not quite as erect.  Tommy Miller dropped his pencil case on the floor and did not request permission to pick it up.

"Ahhh, so what," he mumbled, when Miss Orville remonstrated with him.

"What did you say?" she demanded, drawing herself up.

"I said, so what," Tommy Miller answered, returning her stare without distress.

Roger thought that was neat of Tommy, talking fresh like that. He surprised, too, because Miss Awful didn't yell at Tommy or anything. A funny look came into her eyes, he noticed, and she just went on with the geography lesson.  And when Tommy dropped his pencil case again, and picked it up without asking, she said nothing.  Roger wasn't so certain that Tommy should have dropped the pencil case a second time. The lunch bell rang, then, and he piled out of the classroom with the others, not bothering to wait for permission.

At lunch in the basement cafeteria, the third grade talked of nothing except how to get even with Miss Awful. The recommendations showed daring and imagination. 

“We could beat her up," Joey Lambert suggested.  “We could wait at the corner till she goes by, and throw rocks at her.”

“We’d get arrested” Walter Meade pointed out.

“Better idea” said Bruce Reeves.  “We could go upstairs to the classroom before she gets back, and tie a string in front of the door.  She’d trip and break her neck.

“She’s old,” Roger Clark protested.  “We can’t hurt her like that.  She’s too old.”

It was one of the girls actually, who thought of the plant.  “That dopey old plant she’s always fussing over,” piped Midge Fuller.  “We could rip off all the dopey leaves.  That’d show her.”

Roger pushed back his chair and stood up from the table.  “We don’t want to do that,” he said, not understanding why he objected.  It was a feeling inside, he couldn’t explain… “Aw, let’s forget about it,” he said.  “Let’s call it quits.”

“The plant, the plant,” Midge Fuller squealed, clapping her hands.  

Postures were a good deal worse when the third grade reconvened after lunch.  “Well, you’ve put in an industrious week, I daresay…” Miss Orville commented.  She opened the frayed volume of Treasure Island which she had brought from home and turned the pages carefully to Chapter One.  “I assume the class is familiar with the tale of young Jim Hawkins, Long John Silver, and the other wonderful characters.”

“No, I ain't," said Tommy Miller.

 ''Ain't. What word is that?"

"It's the word ain't," answered Tommy.

 ''Ain't, ain't,'' somebody jeered.

Miss Orville lowered the frayed volume.  "No, children, you mustn't do this," she said with force.  "To attend school is a privilege you must not mock.  Can you guess how many thousands of children in the world are denied the gift of schooling?" Her lips quavered.  "It is a priceless gift.  You cannot permit yourselves to squander a moment of it." She rose from her desk and looked down at the rows of boys and girls.  "It isn't enough any longer to accept a gift and make no return for it, not with the world in the shape it's in," she said, spectacles trembling on her bony nose.  "The world isn't a playbox," she said.  "If I have been severe with you this past week, it was for your benefit. The world needs good citizens.  If I have helped one of you to grow a fraction of an inch, if just one of you--"

  She stopped speaking. Her voice faltered, the words dammed up.  She was staring at the plant on the windowsill, which she had not noticed before.  The stalks twisted up bare and naked, where the leaves had been torn off.  "You see," Miss Orville said after a moment, going slowly to the windowsill.  "You see what I am talking about? To be truly educated is to be civilized. Here, you may observe the opposite."  Her fingers reached out to the bare stalks.  "Violence and destruction . . ." She turned and faced the class, and behind the spectacles her eyes were dim and faded.  "Whoever  is responsible,  I beg of you only to be sorry," she said.  When she returned to her desk, her back was straighter than ever, but it seemed to take her longer to cover the distance.

At the close of class that afternoon, there was no forming of lines.  Miss Orville merely dismissed the boys and girls and did not leave her desk.  The children ran out, some in regret, some silent, others cheerful and scampering.  Only Roger Clark stayed behind.

He stood at the windows, plucking at the naked plant on the sill.  Miss Orville was emptying the desk of her possessions, books, pads, a folder of maps.  "These are yours, I believe," she said to Roger.  In her hands were the water pistol, the baseball cards, the spool of string.  "Here, take them," she said.

Roger went to the desk.  He stuffed the toys in his coat pocket without paying attention to them.  He stood at the desk, rubbing his hand up and down his coat.

“Yes?” Miss Orville asked.

Roger stood back, hands at his side, and lifted his head erectly. “Flower," he spelled. "F- l-o-w-e-r." He squared his shoulders and looked at Miss Orville's brimming eyes. "Castle," Roger spelled.  “C-a-s-t-l-e.” 

Then he walked from the room.

————— end————————

http://files.district70.org/files/7th%20Grade%20Holt%20Audio%20Files/10-02%20Miss%20Awful%20By%20Arthur%20Cavanaugh.m4a

Vocabulary:

teetering

rambunctious

discharged

torpor

whimsical

inertia

scrupulosity

martial

infiltrated

remonstrated

Questions on the Story

 Why does Roger decide he does not have to do homework?

What does the narrator tell you directly about Roger’s personality?

What does Roger think school is good for?

  What does his sister think?

What does Roger’s mother like about the school and what does she find troublesome?

The Vacuum By Howard Nemerov

Do Now: Using at least five wintery images, write a poem about yesterday.  Then, using at least five springtime images, write a poem about today.

AIM: What is the point of view in the poem?

HOMEWORK: Thinking about winter?

Skipping a line, write four sentences ending each with any of the words listed below:
bleak, cold, chilly, chill, frosty, freezing, icy, snowy, blizzardy, arctic, glacial, bitter, raw 

What does winter look like? What does winter smell like? What does winter feel like? Write 4 sentences, skipping a line, using the words bleak, cold, chilly, chill, frosty, freezing, icy, snowy, blizzard, arctic, glacial, bitter, raw. Then, in between, make your rhymes!
Now, write about what winter feels like?
In between your answers, write 4 more sentences but rhyme your answer with the words your picked.



The Vacuum

By Howard Nemerov

The house is so quiet now

The vacuum cleaner sulks in the corner closet,   

Its bag limp as a stopped lung, its mouth   

Grinning into the floor, maybe at my

Slovenly life, my dog-dead youth.

I’ve lived this way long enough,

But when my old woman died her soul

Went into that vacuum cleaner, and I can’t bear   

To see the bag swell like a belly, eating the dust   

And the woolen mice, and begin to howl

Because there is old filth everywhere

She used to crawl, in the corner and under the stair.   

I know now how life is cheap as dirt,   

And still the hungry, angry heart   

Hangs on and howls, biting at air.

Questions on the poem:

1. What hint does the poet give us to help us understand why the house is quiet now?
2. What are some of the interesting ways the narrator describes the stuff a vacuum cleaner is designed to clean up?
3. Slovenly, when describing a person means messy, dirty, it can also mean lazy, and careless.  What judgment does the narrator of the poem think the vacuum makes about him?
4. Personification is when you give human qualities to something nonhuman.  Can you find an example of personification in the first group of the poem?
5. Personification is when you give human qualities to something nonhuman.  Can you find an example of personification in the second group of the poem?
6. The last group of lines in the poem suggest that the narrator may not be a person.  What are the hints and what do you guess?
7. We all know what a vacuum cleaner is, right?  Is a description of one in the poem?  Find it.  
8. In addition to vacuum cleaner being a thing, there is also evidence in that the poem that the words vacuum and vacuum cleaner are being used to represent something emotional.  Can you find those instances in the poem?
9. What is the point of view of the poem?  Is the poem being shared by a person, an object, a ghost, a mineral, or an animal?  Explain how you know, using evidence from the poem.
10. Compare and contrast"The Vacuum" with "The Snow Man"
11. How does the point of view differ?

The Snow Man - by Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

LAD: A DOG BY ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE - Chapter 1

Find the 1962 film on Youtube: http://youtu.be/8_FhW910zWI
LAD: A DOG 

BY ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE

Lady was as much a part of Lad's everyday happiness as the sunshine itself. She seemed to him quite as perfect, and as gloriously indispensable. He could no more have imagined a Ladyless life than a sunless life. It had never occurred to him to suspect that Lady could be any less devoted than he—until Knave came to The Place.

Lad was an eighty-pound collie, thoroughbred in spirit as well as in blood. He had the benign dignity that was a heritage from endless generations of high-strain ancestors. He had, too, the gay courage of a d'Artagnan, and an uncanny wisdom. Also—who could doubt it, after a look into his mournful brown eyes—he had a Soul.

His shaggy coat, set off by the snowy ruff and chest, was like orange-flecked mahogany. His absurdly tiny forepaws—in which he took inordinate pride—were silver white.

Three years earlier, when Lad was in his first prime (before the mighty chest and shoulders had filled out and the tawny coat had waxed so shaggy), Lady had been brought to The Place. She had been brought in the Master's overcoat pocket, rolled up into a fuzzy gold-gray ball of softness no bigger than a half-grown kitten.

The Master had fished the month-old puppy out of the cavern of his pocket and set her down, asprawl and shivering and squealing, on the veranda floor. Lad had walked cautiously across the veranda, sniffed inquiry at the blinking pigmy who gallantly essayed to growl defiance up at the huge welcomer—and from that first moment he had taken her under his protection.

First it had been the natural impulse of the thoroughbred—brute or human—to guard the helpless. Then, as the shapeless yellow baby grew into a slenderly graceful collie, his guardianship changed to stark adoration. He was Lady's life slave.

And she bullied him unmercifully—bossed the gentle giant in a shameful manner, crowding him from the warmest spot by the fire, brazenly yet daintily snatching from between his jaws the choicest bone of their joint dinner, hectoring her dignified victim into lawn-romps in hot weather when he would far rather have drowsed under the lakeside trees.

Her vagaries, her teasing, her occasional little flurries of temper, were borne by Lad not meekly, but joyously. All she did was, in his eyes, perfect. And Lady graciously allowed herself to be idolized, for she was marvelously human in some ways. Lad, a thoroughbred descended from a hundred generations of thoroughbreds, was less human and more disinterested.

Life at The Place was wondrous pleasant for both the dogs. There were thick woods to roam in, side by side; there were squirrels to chase and rabbits to trail. (Yes, and if the squirrels had played fair and had not resorted to unsportsmanly tactics by climbing trees when close pressed, there would doubtless have been squirrels to catch as well as to chase. As for the rabbits, they were easier to overtake. And Lady got the lion's share of all such morsels.)

There was the ice-cool lake to plunge into for a swim or a wallow, after a run in the dust and July heat. There was a deliciously comfortable old rug in front of the living-room's open fire whereon to lie, shoulder to shoulder, on the nights when the wind screamed through bare trees and the snow scratched hungrily at the panes.

Best of all, to them both, there were the Master and the Mistress; especially the Mistress.

Any man with money to make the purchase may become a dog's owner. But no man—spend he ever so much coin and food and tact in the effort —may become a dog's Master without the consent of the dog. Do you get the difference? And he whom a dog once unreservedly accepts as Master is forever that dog's God.

To both Lad and Lady, from the first, the man who bought them was not the mere owner but the absolute Master. To them he was the unquestioned lord of life and death, the hearer and answerer, the Eternal Law; his the voice that must be obeyed, whatever the command.

From earliest puppyhood, both Lad and Lady had been brought up within the Law. As far back as they could remember, they had known and obeyed The Place's simple code.

For example: All animals of the woods might lawfully be chased; but the Mistress' prize chickens and the other little folk of The Place must be ignored no matter how hungry or how playful a collie might chance to be. A human, walking openly or riding down the drive into The Place by daylight, must not be barked at except by way of friendly announcement. But anyone entering the grounds from other ingress than the drive, or anyone walking furtively or with a tramp slouch, must be attacked at sight.

Also, the interior of the house was sacrosanct. It was a place for perfect behavior. No rug must be scratched, nothing gnawed or played with. In fact, Lady's one whipping had followed a puppy-frolic effort of hers to "worry" the huge stuffed bald eagle that stood on a papier-maché stump in the Master's study, just off the big living-room where the fireplace was.

That eagle, shot by himself as it raided the flock of prize chickens, was the delight of the Master's heart. And at Lady's attempt on it, he had taught her a lesson that made her cringe for weeks thereafter at bare sight of the dog-whip. To this day, she would never walk past the eagle without making the widest possible detour around it.

But that punishment had been suffered while she was still in the idiotic days of puppyhood. After she was grown, Lady would no more have thought of tampering with the eagle or with anything else in the house than it would occur to a human to stand on his head in church.

Then, early one spring, came Knave—a showy, magnificent collie; red-gold of coat save for a black "saddle," and with alert topaz eyes.

Knave did not belong to the Master, but to a man who, going to Europe for a month, asked him to care for the dog in his absence. The Master, glad to have so beautiful an ornament to The Place, had willingly consented. He was rewarded when, on the train from town, an admiring crowd of commuters flocked to the baggage-car to stare at the splendid-looking collie.

The only dissenting note in the praise-chorus was the grouchy old baggage-man's.

"Maybe he's a thoroughbred, like you say, "drawled the old fellow to the Master, "but I never yet saw a yellow-eyed, prick-eared dog I'd give hell-room to."

Knave showed his scorn for such silly criticism by a cavernous yawn.

"Thoroughbred?" grunted the baggage-man. "With them streaks of pinkish-yeller on the roof of his mouth? Ever see a thoroughbred that didn't have a black mouth-roof?"

But the old man's slighting words were ignored with disdain by the crowd of volunteer dog-experts in the baggage-car. In time the Master alighted at his station, with Knave straining joyously at the leash. As the Master reached The Place and turned into the drive, both Lad and Lady, at sound of his far-off footsteps, came tearing around the side of the house to greet him.

On simultaneous sight and scent of the strange dog frisking along at his side, the two collies paused in their madly joyous onrush. Up went their ruffs. Down went their heads.

Lady flashed forward to do battle with the stranger who was monopolizing so much of the Master's attention. Knave, not at all averse to battle (especially with a smaller dog), braced himself and then moved forward, stiff-legged, fangs bare.

But of a sudden his head went up; his stiff-poised brush broke into swift wagging; his lips curled down. He had recognized that his prospective foe was not of his own sex. (And nowhere, except among humans, does a full-grown male ill-treat or even defend himself against the female of his species.)

Lady, noting the stranger's sudden friendliness, paused irresolute in her charge. And at that instant Lad darted past her. Full at Knave's throat he launched himself.

The Master rasped out:

"Down, Lad! Down!"

Almost in midair the collie arrested his onset—coming to earth bristling, furious and yet with no thought but to obey. Knave, seeing his foe was not going to fight, turned once more toward Lady.

"Lad," ordered the Master, pointing toward Knave and speaking with quiet intentness, "let him alone. Understand? Let him alone."

And Lad understood—even as years of training and centuries of ancestry had taught him to understand every spoken wish of the Master's. He must give up his impulse to make war on this intruder whom at sight he hated. It was the Law; and from the Law there was no appeal.

With yearningly helpless rage he looked on while the newcomer was installed on The Place. With a wondering sorrow he found himself forced to share the Master's and Mistress' caresses with this interloper. With growing pain he submitted to Knave's gay attentions to Lady, and to Lady’s evident relish of the guest's companionship. Gone were the peaceful old days of utter contentment.

Lady had always regarded Lad as her own special property—to tease and to boss and to despoil of choice food-bits. But her attitude toward Knave was far different. She coquetted, human-fashion, with the gold-and-black dog—at one moment affecting to scorn him, at another meeting his advances with a delighted friendliness.

She never presumed to boss him as she had always bossed Lad. He fascinated her. Without seeming to follow him about, she was forever at his heels. Lad, cut to the heart at her sudden indifference toward his loyal self, tried in every way his simple soul could devise to win back her interest. He essayed clumsily to romp with her as the lithely graceful Knave romped, to drive rabbits for her on their woodland rambles, to thrust himself, in a dozen gentle ways, upon her attention.

But it was no use. Lady scarcely noticed him. When his overtures of friendship chanced to annoy her, she rewarded them with a snap or with an impatient growl. And ever she turned to the all-conquering Knave in a keenness of attraction that was all but hypnotic.

As his divinity's total loss of interest in himself grew too apparent to be doubted, Lad's big heart broke. Being only a dog and a Grail-knight in thought, he did not realize that Knave's newness and his difference from anything she had known, formed a large part of Lady's desire for the visitor's favor; nor did he understand that such interest must wane when the novelty should wear off.

All Lad knew was that he loved her, and that for the sake of a flashy stranger she was snubbing him.

As the Law forbade him to avenge himself in true dog-fashion by fighting for his Lady's love, Lad sadly withdrew from the unequal contest, too proud to compete for a fickle sweetheart. No longer did he try to join in the others' lawn-romps, but lay at a distance, his splendid head between his snowy little forepaws, his brown eyes sick with sorrow, watching their gambols.

Nor did he thrust his undesired presence on them during their woodland rambles. He took to moping, solitary, infinitely miserable. Perhaps there is on earth something unhappier than a bitterly aggrieved dog. But no one has ever discovered that elusive something.

Knave from the first had shown and felt for Lad a scornful indifference. Not understanding the Law, he had set down the older collie's refusal to fight as a sign of exemplary, if timorous prudence, and he looked down upon him accordingly. One day Knave came home from the morning run through the forest without Lady. Neither the Master's calls nor the ear-ripping blasts of his dog-whistle could bring her back to The Place. Whereat Lad arose heavily from his favorite resting-place under the living-room piano and cantered off to the woods. Nor did he return.

Several hours later the Master went to the woods to investigate, followed by the rollicking Knave. At the forest edge the Master shouted. A far-off bark from Lad answered. And the Master made his way through shoulder-deep underbrush in the direction of the sound.

In a clearing he found Lady, her left forepaw caught in the steel jaws of a fox-trap. Lad was standing protectingly above her, stooping now and then to lick her cruelly pinched foot or to whine consolation to her; then snarling in fierce hate at a score of crows that flapped hopefully in the tree-tops above the victim.

The Master set Lady free, and Knave frisked forward right joyously to greet his released inamorata. But Lady was in no condition to play—then nor for many a day thereafter. Her forefoot was so lacerated and swollen that she was fain to hobble awkwardly on three legs for the next fortnight.

It was on one pantingly hot August morning, a little later, that Lady limped into the house in search of a cool spot where she might lie and lick her throbbing forefoot. Lad was lying, as usual, under the piano in the living-room. His tail thumped shy welcome on the hardwood floor as she passed, but she would not stay or so much as notice him.

On she limped, into the Master's study, where an open window sent a faint breeze through the house. Giving the stuffed eagle a wide berth, Lady hobbled to the window and made as though to lie down just beneath it. As she did so, two things happened: she leaned too much weight on the sore foot, and the pressure wrung from her an involuntary yelp of pain; at the same moment a crosscurrent of air from the other side of the house swept through the living-room and blew shut the door of the adjoining study. Lady was a prisoner.

Ordinarily this would have caused her no ill-ease, for the open window was only thirty inches above the floor, and the drop to the veranda outside was a bare three feet. It would have been the simplest matter in the world for her to jump out, had she wearied of her chance captivity.

But to undertake the jump with the prospect of landing her full weight and impetus on a forepaw that was horribly sensitive to the lightest touch—this was an exploit beyond the sufferer's will-power. So Lady resigned herself to imprisonment. She curled herself up on the floor as far as possible from the eagle, moaned softly and lay still.

At sound of her first yelp, Lad had run forward, whining eager sympathy. But the closed door blocked his way. He crouched, wretched and anxious, before it, helpless to go to his loved one's assistance.

Knave, too, loping back from a solitary prowling of the woods, seeking Lady, heard the yelp. His prick-ears located the sound at once. Along the veranda he trotted, to the open study window. With a bound he had cleared the sill and alighted inside the room.

It chanced to be his first visit to the study. The door was usually kept shut, that drafts might not blow the Master's desk-papers about. And Knave felt, at best, little interest in exploring the interior of houses. He was an outdoor dog, by choice.

He advanced now toward Lady, his tail a-wag, his head on one side, with his most irresistible air. Then, as he came forward into the room, he saw the eagle. He halted in wonder at sight of the enormous white-crested bird with its six-foot sweep of pinion. It was a wholly novel spectacle to Knave; and he greeted it with a gruff bark, half of fear, half of bravado. Quickly, however, his sense of smell told him this wide-winged apparition was no living thing. And ashamed of his momentary cowardice, he went over to investigate it.

As he went, Knave cast over his shoulder a look of invitation to Lady to join him in his inspection. She understood the invitation, but memory of that puppyhood beating made her recoil from accepting it. Knave saw her shrink back, and he realized with a thrill that she was actually afraid of this lifeless thing which could harm no one. With due pride in showing off his own heroism before her, and with the scamp-dog's innate craving to destroy, he sprang growling upon the eagle.

Down tumbled the papier-maché stump. Down crashed the huge stuffed bird with it; Knave's white teeth buried deep in the soft feathers of its breast.

Lady, horror-struck at this sacrilege, whimpered in terror. But her plaint served only to increase Knave's zest for destruction.

He hurled the bird to the floor, pinned it down with his feet and at one jerk tore the right wing from the body. Coughing out the mouthful of dusty pinions, he dug his teeth into the eagle's throat. Again bracing himself with his forelegs on the carcass, he gave a sharp tug. Head and neck came away in his mouth. And then before he could drop the mouthful and return to the work of demolition, he heard the Master's step.

All at once, now, Knave proved he was less ignorant of the Law—or, at least, of its penalties—than might have been supposed from his act of vandalism. In sudden panic he bolted for the window, the silvery head of the eagle still, unheeded, between his jaws. With a vaulting spring, he shot out through the open casement, in his reckless eagerness to escape, knocking against Lady's injured leg as he passed.

He did not pause at Lady's scream of pain, nor did he stop until he reached the chicken-house. Crawling under this, he deposited the incriminating eagle-head in the dark recess. Finding no pursuer, he emerged and jogged innocently back toward the veranda.

The Master, entering the house and walking across the living-room toward the stairs, heard Lady's cry. He looked around for her, recognizing from the sound that she must be in distress. His eye fell on Lad, crouching tense and eager in front of the shut study door.

The Master opened the door and went into the study.

At the first step inside the room he stopped, aghast. There lay the chewed and battered fragments of his beloved eagle. And there, in one corner, frightened, with guilt writ plain all over her, cowered Lady. Men have been "legally" done to death on far lighter evidence than encompassed her.

The Master was thunderstruck. For more than two years Lady had had the free run of the house. And this was her first sin—at that, a sin unworthy any well-bred dog that has graduated from puppyhood and from milk-teeth. He would not have believed it. He could not have believed it. Yet here was the hideous evidence, scattered all over the floor.

The door was shut, but the window stood wide. Through the window, doubtless, she had gotten into the room. And he had surprised her at her vandal-work before she could escape by the same opening.

The Master was a just man—as humans go; but this was a crime the most maudlin dog-spoiler could not have condoned. The eagle, moreover, had been the pride of his heart—as perhaps I have said. Without a word, he walked to the wall and took down a braided dog-whip, dust-covered from long disuse.

Lady knew what was coming. Being a thoroughbred, she did not try to run, nor did she roll for mercy. She cowered, moveless, nose to floor, awaiting her doom.

Back swished the lash. Down it came, whistling as a man whistles whose teeth are broken. Across Lady's slender flanks it smote, with the full force of a strong driving-arm. Lady quivered all over. But she made no sound. She who would whimper at a chance touch to her sore foot, was mute under human punishment.

But Lad was not mute. As the Master's arm swung back for a second blow, he heard, just behind, a low, throaty growl that held all the menace of ten thousand wordy threats.

He wheeled about. Lad was close at his heels, fangs bared, eyes red, head lowered, tawny body taut in every sinew.

The Master blinked at him, incredulous. Here was something infinitely more unbelievable than Lady's supposed destruction of the eagle. The Impossible had come to pass.

For, know well, a dog does not growl at its Master. At its owner, perhaps; at its Master, never. As soon would a devout priest blaspheme his deity.

Nor does a dog approach anything or anybody, growling and with lowered head, unless intent on battle. Have no fear when a dog barks or even growls at you, so long as his head is erect. But when he growls and lowers his head—then look out. It means but one thing.

The Master had been the Master—the sublime, blindly revered and worshiped Master—for all the blameless years of Lad's life. And now, growling, head down, the dog was threatening him.

It was the supreme misery, the crowning hell, of Lad's career. For the first time, two overpowering loves fought with each other in his Galahad soul. And the love for poor, unjustly blamed, Lady hurled down the superlove for the Master.

In baring teeth upon his lord, the collie well knew what he was incurring. But he did not flinch. Understanding that swift death might well be his portion, he stood his ground.

(Is there greater love? Humans—sighing swains, vow-laden suitors—can any of you match it? I think not. Not even the much-lauded Antonys. They throw away only the mere world of earthly credit, for love.)

The Master's jaw set. He was well-nigh as unhappy as the dog. For he grasped the situation, and he was man enough to honor Lad's proffered sacrifice. Yet it must be punished, and punished instantly—as any dog-master will testify. Let a dog once growl or show his teeth in menace at his Master, and if the rebellion be not put down in drastic fashion, the Master ceases forever to be Master and degenerates to mere owner. His mysterious power over his dog is gone for all time.

Turning his back on Lady, the Master whirled his dog-whip in air. Lad saw the lash coming down. He did not flinch. He did not cower. The growl ceased. The orange-tawny collie stood erect. Down came the braided whiplash on Lad's shoulders—again over his loins, and yet again and again.

Without moving—head up, dark tender eyes unwinking—the hero-dog took the scourging. When it was over, he waited only to see the Master throw the dog-whip fiercely into a corner of the study. Then, knowing Lady was safe, Lad walked majestically back to his "cave" under the piano, and with a long, quivering sigh he lay down.

His spirit was sick and crushed within him. For the first time in his thoroughbred life he had been struck. For he was one of those not wholly rare dogs to whom a sharp word of reproof is more effective than a beating—to whom a blow is not a pain, but a damning and overwhelming ignominy. Had a human, other than the Master, presumed to strike him, the assailant must have fought for life.

Through the numbness of Lad's grief, bit by bit, began to smolder and glow a deathless hate for Knave, the cause of Lady's humiliation. Lad had known what passed behind that closed study door as well as though he had seen. For ears and scent serve a true collie quite as usefully as do mere eyes.

The Master was little happier than was his favorite dog. For he loved Lad as he would have loved a human son. Though Lad did not realize it, the Master had "let off" Lady from the rest of her beating, in order not to increase her champion's grief. He simply ordered her out of the study.

And as she limped away, the Master tried to rekindle his own indignation and deaden his sense of remorse by gathering together the strewn fragments of the eagle. It occurred to him that though the bird was destroyed, he might yet have its fierce-eyed silvery head mounted on a board, as a minor trophy.

But he could not find the head.

Search the study as he would, he could not find it. He remembered distinctly that Lady had been panting as she slunk out of the room. And dogs that are carrying things in their mouths cannot pant. She had not taken the head away with her. The absence of the head only deepened the whole annoying domestic mystery. He gave up trying to solve any of the puzzle—from Lady's incredible vandalism to this newest turn of the affair.

Not until two days later could Lad bring himself to risk a meeting with Lady, the cause and the witness of his beating. Then, yearning for a sight of her and for even her grudged recognition of his presence, after his forty-eight hours of isolation, he sallied forth from the house in search of her.

He traced her to the cool shade of a lilac clump near the outbuildings. There, having with one paw dug a little pit in the cool earth, she was curled up asleep under the bushes. Stretched out beside her was Knave.

Lad's spine bristled at sight of his foe. But ignoring him, he moved over to Lady and touched her nose with his own in timid caress. She opened one eye, blinked drowsily and went to sleep again.

But Lad's coming had awakened Knave. Much refreshed by his nap, he woke in playful mood. He tried to induce Lady to romp with him, but she preferred to doze. So, casting about in his shallow mind for something to play with, Knave chanced to remember the prize he had hidden beneath the chicken-house.

Away he ambled, returning presently with the eagle's head between his teeth. As he ran, he tossed it aloft, catching it as it fell—a pretty trick he had long since learned with a tennis-ball.

Lad, who had lain down as near to sleepily scornful Lady as he dared, looked up and saw him approach. He saw, too, with what Knave was playing; and as he saw, he went quite mad. Here was the thing that had caused Lady's interrupted punishment and his own black disgrace. Knave was exploiting it with manifest and brazen delight.

For the second time in his life—and for the second time in three days—Lad broke the law. He forgot, in a trice, the command "Let him alone!" And noiseless, terrible, he flew at the gamboling Knave.

Knave was aware of the attack, barely in time to drop the eagle's head and spring forward to meet his antagonist. He was three years Lad's junior and was perhaps five pounds heavier. Moreover, constant exercise had kept him in steel-and-whale-bone condition; while lonely brooding at home had begun of late to soften Lad's tough sinews.

Knave was mildly surprised that the dog he had looked on as a dullard and a poltroon should have developed a flash of spirit. But he was not at all unwilling to wage a combat whose victory must make him shine with redoubled glory in Lady's eyes.

Like two furry whirlwinds the collies spun forward toward each other. They met, upreared and snarled, slashing wolf-like for the throat, clawing madly to retain balance. Then down they went, rolling in a right unloving embrace, snapping, tearing, growling.

Lad drove straight for the throat. A half-handful of Knave's golden ruff came away in his jaws. For except at the exact center, a collie's throat is protected by a tangle of hair as effective against assault as were Andrew Jackson's cotton-bale breast works at New Orleans. And Lad had missed the exact center.

Over and over they rolled. They regained their footing and reared again. Lad's saber-shaped tusk ripped a furrow in Knave's satiny forehead; and Knave's half deflected slash in return set bleeding the big vein at the top of Lad's left ear.

Lady was wide awake long before this. Standing immovable, yet wildly excited—after the age-old fashion of the female brute for whom males battle and who knows she is to be the winner's prize—she watched every turn of the fight.

Up once more, the dogs clashed, chest to chest. Knave, with an instinctive throwback to his wolf forebears of five hundred years earlier, dived for Lad's forelegs with the hope of breaking one of them between his foaming jaws.

He missed the hold by a fraction of an inch. The skin alone was torn. And down over the little white forepaw—one of the forepaws that Lad was wont to lick for an hour a day to keep them snowy—ran a trickle of blood.

That miss was a costly error for Knave. For Lad's teeth sought and found his left shoulder, and sank deep therein. Knave twisted and wheeled with lightning speed and with all his strength. Yet had not his gold-hued ruff choked Lad and pressed stranglingly against his nostrils, all the heavier dog's struggles would not have set him free.

As it was, Lad, gasping for breath enough to fill his lungs, relaxed his grip ever so slightly. And in that fraction of a second Knave tore free, leaving a mouthful of hair and skin in his enemy's jaws.

In the same wrench that liberated him—and as the relieved tension sent Lad stumbling forward—Knave instinctively saw his chance and took it. Again heredity came to his aid, for he tried a manœuver known only to wolves and to collies. Flashing above his stumbling foe's head, Knave seized Lad from behind, just below the base of the skull. And holding him thus helpless, he proceeded to grit and grind his tight-clenched teeth in the slow, relentless motion that must soon or late eat down to and sever the spinal cord.

Lad, even as he thrashed frantically about, felt there was no escape. He was well-nigh as powerless against a strong opponent in this position as is a puppy that is held up by the scruff of the neck.

Without a sound, but still struggling as best he might, he awaited his fate. No longer was he growling or snarling.

His patient, bloodshot eyes sought wistfully for Lady. And they did not find her.

For even as they sought her, a novel element entered into the battle. Lady, hitherto awaiting with true feminine meekness the outcome of the scrimmage, saw her old flame's terrible plight, under the grinding jaws. And, proving herself false to all canons of ancestry—moved by some impulse she did not try to resist—she jumped forward.  Forgetting the pain in her swollen foot, she nipped Knave sharply in the hind leg. Then, as if abashed by her unfeminine behavior, she drew back, in shame.

But the work was done.

Through the red war lust Knave dimly realized that he was attacked from behind—perhaps that his new opponent stood an excellent chance of gaining upon him such a death-hold as he himself now held.

He loosed his grip and whizzed about, frothing and snapping, to face the danger. Before Knave had half completed his lightning whirl, Lad had him by the side of the throat.

It was no death-grip, this. Yet it was not only acutely painful, but it held its victim quite as powerless as he had just now held Lad. Bearing down with all his weight and setting his white little front teeth and his yellowing tusks firmly in their hold, Lad gradually shoved Knave's head sideways to the ground and held it there.

The result on Knave's activities was much the same as is obtained by sitting on the head of a kicking horse that has fallen. Unable to wrench loose, helpless to counter, in keen agony from the pinching of the tender throat-skin beneath the masses of ruff, Knave lost his nerve. And he forthwith justified those yellowish streaks in his mouth-roof whereof the baggage-man had spoken.

He made the air vibrate with his abject howls of pain and fear. He was caught. He could not get away. Lad was hurting him horribly. Wherefore he ki-yi-ed as might any gutter cur whose tail is stepped upon.

Presently, beyond the fight haze, Lad saw a shadow in front of him—a shadow that resolved itself in the settling dust, as the Master. And Lad came to himself.

He loosed his hold on Knave's throat, and stood up, groggily. Knave, still yelping, tucked his tail between his legs and fled for his life—out of The Place, out of your story.

Slowly, stumblingly, but without a waver of hesitation, Lad went up to the Master. He was gasping for breath, and he was weak from fearful exertion and from loss of blood. Up to the Master he went—straight up to him.

And not until he was a scant two yards away did he see that the Master held something in his hand—that abominable, mischief-making eagle's head, which he had just picked up! Probably the dog-whip was in the other hand. It did not matter much. Lad was ready for this final degradation. He would not try to dodge it, he the double breaker of laws.

Then—the Master was kneeling beside him. The kind hand was caressing the dog's dizzy head, the dear voice—a queer break in it—was saying remorsefully:

"Oh Lad! Laddie! I'm so sorry. So sorry!  You're—you're more of a man than I am, old friend. I'll make it up to you, somehow!"

And now besides the loved hand, there was another touch, even more precious—a warmly caressing little pink tongue that licked his bleeding foreleg.

Lady—timidly, adoringly—was trying to stanch her hero's wounds.

"Lady, I apologize to you too," went on the foolish Master. "I'm sorry, girl."

Lady was too busy soothing the hurts of her newly discovered mate to understand. But Lad understood. Lad always understood.

Catch a Little Rhyme By Eve Merriam

DO NOW:  Copy the list.  To the right of each word write a sentence that ends with a different word but one that that sounds very close to the word on the left

• at ------- The wolf ate the whole cat and got very very fat.  
• bite
• cry
• dare
• earth
• find
• grow
• hedges
• itch
• jam
• kid
• lamp
• mop
• neighbor
• ocean
• pat
• quickly
• risk
• swindle
• tap
• untie
• vector
• water
• xylophone
• year
• zag

AIM: What is "Rhyme" 

Definition: Rhyme, also spelled rime,  the correspondence of two or more words with similar-sounding final syllables placed so as to echo one another. 

HOMEWORK: Memorize this poem for next class.  You may practice with your group, time permitting.

CLASS WORK: COPY AND PRACTICE SAYING THE POEM OUT LOUD IN YOUR GROUP

Catch a Little Rhyme   By Eve Merriam

Once upon a time

I caught a little rhyme

I set it on the floor

but it ran right out the door

I chased it on my bicycle

but it melted to an icicle

I scooped it up in my hat

but it turned into a cat

I caught it by the tail

but it stretched into a whale

I followed it in a boat

but it changed into a goat

When I fed it tin and paper

it became a tall skyscraper

Then it grew into a kite

and flew far out of sight …

Eve Merriam

1916–1992

Eve Merriam was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and attended Cornell as well as the University of Pennsylvania. Merriam was a poet, playwright, and teacher, who wrote more than 50 books of poetry and prose. She is best-known for her controversial book Inner City Mother Goose, which was adapted into the Broadway musical Inner City.

How To Eat a Poem

by Eve Merriam

Don't be polite.

Bite in.

Pick it up with your fingers and lick the juice that

may run down your chin.

It is ready and ripe now, whenever you are.

You do not need a knife or fork or spoon

or plate or napkin or tablecloth.

For there is no core

or stem

or rind

or pit

or seed

or skin

to throw away.

HOMEWORK: Write a short poem about a common household object, such as a glass, or a chair, or a dish.
Make the poem look like the object you are writing about.  

The Landlady by Roald Dahl

DO NOW:   

1. YOU HAVE A STUFFED ANIMAL ?  
2. WHAT STUFFED ANIMALS DO CHILDREN LOVE?
3. WHY DO PEOPLE LOVE STUFFED ANIMALS?  (iTS A BIG INDUSTRY, SO THINK ABOUT IT!)

AIM: WHAT CHOICES MADE BY THE FILM MAKER SURPRISE YOU?

FILM MAKERS, LIKE WRITERS ARE TRYING TO GET MESSAGES ACROSS.  
FILM MAKERS USE 
IMAGES
CAMERA  ANGLES
 SOUNDS
 COSTUMES
COLOR/B&W


DO NOW: Is there a reason why people naturally like to collect things?  Did you collect things, like seashells or stamps or coins?  Are you a collector?  

AIM: Is there anything in the story that suggests Billy might not be a comfortable staying at the BED AND BREAKFAST as he (and the reader) supposes?  

HOMEWORK:  On loose-leaf, write your answers to ALL the questions on the Landlady hand-out.  Due: Next Class



THE LANDLADY - (Band G) 

by ROALD DAHL  — Who wrote the kids' classics Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, and James and the Giant Peach?  Guess!

Link to the story

PARAGRAPH WRITING: Do you think that if a person CAN work, like at some kind of a job, that they should work?  At what age could a child be given some kind of work, earn money, and learn responsibility?

AIM: What’s wrong with Billy having a real job if he can do it?

Each group is assigned two questions to answer on loose-leaf.    A third, (17 or 18) gives the whole group extra credit!

Red: 1, 9

Orange: 2, 10

Yellow: 3, 11

Green: 4, 12

Blue: 5, 13

Indigo: 6, 14

Violet: 7, 15

Striped: 8, 16

”But the air was deadly cold and the wind was like a flat blade of ice on his cheeks.” — What is the name for the literary devise that is being used in this sentence?

How old was Billy?

How was Billy walking?

Why was walking so briskly?— (What does brisk even mean? Does it mean fast? energetic? abrupt? quick? vigorous? Or does it mean slow? sluggish? languid? )

How does Billy’s brisk walk show he is concerned about being accepted by adults and he doesn’t want to disappoint anyone?

Billy had never been to the town of Bath before.  Why was he going there?

Who told Billy to go to The Bell and Dragon? — Why was it recommended to him?

What did Billy notice as he walked down the wide street after he started looking for The Bell and Dragon?

What caused him to notice the sign that said BED AND BREAKFAST?

What did Billy do when the landlady answered the door?  Why did he react that way?

“We have it all to ourselves,” she said, smiling at him over her shoulder as she led the way upstairs”  What might be a little unsettling about that line in the story?

Is Billy suspicious that things might go terribly and horribly wrong at this point in the story?  Are you suspicious that things might go terribly and horribly wrong later on in the story when you get to this point?  

What do you think causes Billy to become more and more observant?   Let’s list the  things he notices?

Does the landlady seem to notice that Billy is getting nervous?

What does Billy learn about the bird and the dog?  Everybody loves snuggly stuffed animals!  Right?  What’s the problem with those that the Landlady has?

What does Billy start to imagine about the others who had stayed at the Bed and Breakfast?

Why do you suppose the Landlady wanted Billy to sign the book?

The Landlady is very organized, isn’t she?  But, where’s her name in the story?

HOMEWORK: Write your answer to these two questions on loose-leaf, due next class. Does the story end?  Or is this a “Cliffhanger?”  — A “cliffhanger” is a story where the reader has to supply the ending.  Oh NO!Write an ending to this story, about 1/2 to 1 side of loose-leaf.  You may add a character, if you need to.  You may write a conversation between Billy and the Landlady where Billy outsmarts the Landlady, or the opposite.