English II Summer Activity Readings
Directions: Read each text carefully. You may mark up each text and take notes if you wish, and you will be able to use these notes in September.
Reading #1: “The Kiss” by Kate Chopin
1 It was still quite light out of doors, but inside with the curtains drawn and the smouldering fire sending out a dim, uncertain glow, the room was full of deep shadows.
2 Brantain sat in one of these shadows; it had overtaken him and he did not mind. The obscurity lent him courage to keep his eyes fastened as ardently as he liked upon the girl who sat in the firelight.
3 She was very handsome, with a certain fine, rich coloring that belongs to the healthy brune type. She was quite composed, as she idly stroked the satiny coat of the cat that lay curled in her lap, and she occasionally sent a slow glance into the shadow where her companion sat. They were talking low, of indifferent things which plainly were not the things that occupied their thoughts. She knew that he loved her—a frank, blustering fellow without guile enough to conceal his feelings, and no desire to do so. For two weeks past he had sought her society eagerly and persistently. She was confidently waiting for him to declare himself and she meant to accept him. The rather insignificant and unattractive Brantain was enormously rich; and she liked and required the entourage which wealth could give her.
4 During one of the pauses between their talk of the last tea and the next reception the door opened and a young man entered whom Brantain knew quite well. The girl turned her face toward him. A stride or two brought him to her side, and bending over her chair—before she could suspect his intention, for she did not realize that he had not seen her visitor—he pressed an ardent, lingering kiss upon her lips.
5 Brantain slowly arose; so did the girl arise, but quickly, and the newcomer stood between them, a little amusement and some defiance struggling with the confusion in his face.
6 “I believe,” stammered Brantain, “I see that I have stayed too long. I—I had no idea—that is, I must wish you good-bye.” He was clutching his hat with both hands, and probably did not perceive that she was extending her hand to him, her presence of mind had not completely deserted her; but she could not have trusted herself to speak.
7 “Hang me if I saw him sitting there, Nattie! I know it’s deuced awkward for you. But I hope you’ll forgive me this once—this very first break. Why, what’s the matter?”
8 “Don’t touch me; don’t come near me,” she returned angrily. “What do you mean by entering the house without ringing?”
9 “I came in with your brother, as I often do,” he answered coldly, in self-justification. “We came in the side way. He went upstairs and I came in here hoping to find you. The explanation is simple enough and ought to satisfy you that the misadventure was unavoidable. But do say that you forgive me, Nathalie,” he entreated, softening.
10 “Forgive you! You don’t know what you are talking about. Let me pass. It depends upon—a good deal whether I ever forgive you.”
11 At that next reception which she and Brantain had been talking about she approached the young man with a delicious frankness of manner when she saw him there.
12 “Will you let me speak to you a moment or two, Mr. Brantain?” she asked with an engaging but perturbed smile. He seemed extremely unhappy; but when she took his arm and walked away with him, seeking a retired corner, a ray of hope mingled with the almost comical misery of his expression. She was apparently very outspoken.
13 “Perhaps I should not have sought this interview, Mr. Brantain; but—but, oh, I have been very uncomfortable, almost miserable since that little encounter the other afternoon. When I thought how you might have misinterpreted it, and believed things”—hope was plainly gaining the ascendancy over misery in Brantain’s round, guileless face—“Of course, I know it is nothing to you, but for my own sake I do want you to understand that Mr. Harvy is an intimate friend of long standing. Why, we have always been like cousins—like brother and sister, I may say. He is my brother’s most intimate associate and often fancies that he is entitled to the same privileges as the family. Oh, I know it is absurd, uncalled for, to tell you this; undignified even,” she was almost weeping, “but it makes so much difference to me what you think of—of me.” Her voice had grown very low and agitated. The misery had all disappeared from Brantain’s face.
14 “Then you do really care what I think, Miss Nathalie? May I call you Miss Nathalie?” They turned into a long, dim corridor that was lined on either side with tall, graceful plants. They walked slowly to the very end of it. When they turned to retrace their steps Brantain’s face was radiant and hers was triumphant.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
15 Harvy was among the guests at the wedding; and he sought her out in a rare moment when she stood alone.
16 “Your husband,” he said, smiling, “has sent me over to kiss you.”
17 A quick blush suffused her face and round polished throat. “I suppose it’s natural for a man to feel and act generously on an occasion of this kind. He tells me he doesn’t want his marriage to interrupt wholly that pleasant intimacy which has existed between you and me. I don’t know what you’ve been telling him,” with an insolent smile, “but he has sent me here to kiss you.”
18 She felt like a chess player who, by the clever handling of his pieces, sees the game taking the course intended. Her eyes were bright and tender with a smile as they glanced up into his; and her lips looked hungry for the kiss which they invited.
19 “But, you know,” he went on quietly, “I didn’t tell him so, it would have seemed ungrateful, but I can tell you. I’ve stopped kissing women; it’s dangerous.”
20 Well, she had Brantain and his million left. A person can’t have everything in this world; and it was a little unreasonable of her to expect it.
Reading #2: from Why Write? by Paul Auster
1 I was eight years old. At that moment in my life, nothing was more important to me than baseball. My team was the New York Giants, and I followed the doings of those men in the black-and-orange caps with all the devotion of a true believer. Even now, remembering that team which no longer exists, that played in a ballpark which no longer exists, I can reel off the names of nearly every player on the roster. Alvin Dark, Whitey Lockman, Don Mueller, Johnny Antonelli, Monte Irvin, Hoyt Wilhelm. But none was greater, none more perfect nor more deserving of worship than Willie Mays, the incandescent Say-Hey Kid.
2 That spring, I was taken to my first big-league game. Friends of my parents had box seats at the Polo Grounds, and one April night a group of us went to watch the Giants play the Milwaukee Braves. I don’t know who won, I can’t recall a single detail of the game, but I do remember that after the game was over my parents and their friends sat talking in their seats until all the other spectators had left. It got so late that we had to walk across the diamond and leave by the centerfield exit, which was the only one still open. As it happened, that exit was right below the players’ locker rooms.
3 Just as we approached the wall, I caught sight of Willie Mays. There was no question about who it was. It was Willie Mays, already out of uniform and standing there in his street clothes not ten feet away from me. I managed to keep my legs moving in his direction and then, mustering every ounce of my courage, I forced some words out of my mouth. “Mr. Mays,” I said, “could I please have your autograph?”
4 He had to have been all of twenty-four years old, but I couldn’t bring myself to pronounce his first name.
5 His response to my question was brusque but amiable. “Sure, kid, sure,” he said. “You got a pencil?” He was so full of life, I remember, so full of youthful energy, that he kept bouncing up and down as he spoke.
6 I didn’t have a pencil, so I asked my father if I could borrow his. He didn’t have one either. Nor did my mother. Nor, as it turned out, did any of the other grown-ups.
7 The great Willie Mays stood there watching in silence. When it became clear that no one in the group had anything to write with, he turned to me and shrugged. “Sorry, kid,” he said. “Ain’t got no pencil, can’t give no autograph.” And then he walked out of the ballpark into the night.
8 I didn’t want to cry, but tears started falling down my cheeks, and there was nothing I could do to stop them. Even worse, I cried all the way home in the car. Yes, I was crushed with disappointment, but I was also revolted at myself for not being able to control those tears. I wasn’t a baby. I was eight years old, and big kids weren’t supposed to cry over things like that. Not only did I not have Willie Mays’s autograph, I didn’t have anything else either. Life had put me to the test, and in all respects I had found myself wanting.
9 After that night, I started carrying a pencil with me wherever I went. It became a habit of mine never to leave the house without making sure I had a pencil in my pocket. It’s not that I had any particular plans for that pencil, but I didn’t want to be unprepared. I had been caught empty-handed once, and I wasn’t about to let it happen again.
10 If nothing else, the years have taught me this: if there’s a pencil in your pocket, there’s a good chance that one day you’ll feel tempted to start using it.
11 As I like to tell my children, that’s how I became a writer.
Reading #3: “Mays Pays Homage to Jackie Robinson” by George Vecsey
1 Willie Mays sat in the Mets’ clubhouse yesterday before their 4-2 victory here over the Giants and pronounced himself “blessed.” Then he traced his blessing back to one human being named Jack Roosevelt Robinson.
2 “Without Jackie, I wouldn’t have gotten out of Birmingham,” said one of the greatest baseball players ever.
3 In this 50th anniversary of Robinson’s debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers, everybody wants to pay tribute. The Mets are planning a celebration at their April 15 game against the Dodgers, complete with video highlights of Robinson’s life.
4 Mays feels so strongly about his old opponent that he made a special trip to the ball park yesterday to talk about Robinson. They played for baseball’s two greatest rivals, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants, but they had something much more important in common.
5 “They knew Jackie was hard-headed and they said, ‘You give us two years and we’ll give all your friends a chance,’” Mays said. “If he had gotten in a fight within those two years, it would have been all over.”
6 Maybe yes, maybe no, but it certainly seemed that way at the time. The hopes of every young black athlete were riding on Jackie Robinson that April.
7 “Don’t forget Larry Doby,” Mays cautioned. “Larry came right after Jackie in the American League. From what I hear, Jackie had Pee Wee Reese and Gil Hodges and Ralph Branca, but Larry didn’t have anybody.”
8 It is a little unnerving to an old Brooklyn fan like me to hear Willie Mays speaking with such reverence for the Dodgers, but Mays says that is exactly what it was like in 1947.
9 “We all rooted for the Dodgers,” he said. “From the day he signed, I knew I had a chance to play major league ball. When I got married, my wife was a Dodgers fan.”
10 By the time Mays came up, four years after Robinson, the worst of the racial slurs had vanished, at least from the dugouts. “And I had Leo,” Mays says softly, referring to the fiery Leo Durocher, who had previously managed Robinson. “Leo took care of me. A lot of people took care of me.
11 “For a while we couldn’t stay in the same hotels. We’d get to Chicago, we’d get off on the South side, they’d get off on the North Side. But they gave us $40 in meal money instead of $20, and we could have a lot of fun with that.” Mays will always appreciate what Robinson went through.
12 “Don’t forget his wife, Rachel,” Mays said. “She was there when he came home. He had somebody to relate to. The Dodgers picked him because he and his wife were educated people.
13 “He would have made the Hall of Fame anyway, but he was also a great player. I remember that last day of the 1951 season. We won our game up in Boston, and they needed to win to get into the playoff. Jackie caught a ball over second base to save the game, and then he won it a few innings later.”
14 The Giants won that three-game playoff on Bobby Thomson’s homer, still a sore point with fans of a certain age, but Mays said there was a softer side to the rivalry.
15 “Campy had a liquor store in Harlem,” Mays said of the Dodgers’ catcher, Roy Campanella. “Junior Gilliam lived over in New Jersey. Joe Black used to come up to Harlem. Don Newcombe came around, but he would still knock me down every chance he got. Jackie lived in Connecticut. He didn’t come around.”
16 After the wraps came off, Robinson became the most fiery Dodger, even the enforcer, who wiped out Davey Williams, the Giants’ second baseman, damaging his back and shortening his career.
17 “Jackie didn’t start that,” Mays said softly. “Sal Maglie started that by throwing at him. Jackie bunted down the first-base line and he even slowed down, but Maglie wouldn’t come over. Whitey Lockman picked up the ball and threw to Williams who was covering first, and Jackie ran into Williams.
18 “Right after that we had a meeting in the dugout. We agreed that the first guy to get to second base would just keep going. Alvin Dark was the first guy. He ran to third and he knocked the ball right out of Jackie’s hands. Jackie reached down, picked up the ball, rubbed it, and threw it back to the pitcher.
19 “Jackie knew there were times when you don’t fight, you just play harder. That was one thing I learned from him.
20 You know, we traded for Jackie after 1956, but he wouldn’t play for the Giants. I could understand that, but still I would have loved to play with him, just to learn from him.”
21 The great Giant knows one thing about the great Dodger: “I couldn’t have done what he did.”
Reading #4: “The Author to Her Book” by Anne Bradstreet
In 1650, Anne Bradstreet noticed that some of her poems had been published without her permission. This poem recounts her feelings about the experience and her efforts to improve her poetry.
Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,
Who after birth did’st by my side remain,
Till snatched from thence by friends, less wise than true,
Who thee abroad exposed to public view;
5 Made thee in rags, halting, to the press to trudge,
Where errors were not lessened, all may judge.
At thy return my blushing was not small,
My rambling brat (in print) should mother call;
I cast thee by as one unfit for light,
10 Thy visage was so irksome in my sight;
Yet being mine own, at length affection would
Thy blemishes amend, if so I could:
I washed thy face, but more defects I saw,
And rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw.
15 I stretched thy joints to make thee even feet,
Yet still thou run’st more hobbling than is meet;
In better dress to trim thee was my mind,
But nought save homespun cloth, in the house I find.
In this array, ’mongst vulgars may’st thou roam.
20 In criticks hands beware thou dost not come;
And take thy way where yet thou are not known.
If for thy Father asked, say thou had’st none;
And for thy Mother, she alas is poor,
Which caused her thus to send thee out of door.