Unit 1: Part 2 Vocabulary

“Can’t see it,” remarked Rainsford, trying to peer through the dank tropical night that was palpable as it pressed its thick warm blackness in upon the yacht.

“Thank you, I’m a hunter, not a murderer.”
“Dear me,” said the general, quite unruffled, “again that unpleasant word. But I think I can show you that your scruples are quite ill founded.”

Rainsford, reclining in a steamer chair, indolently puffed on his favorite brier.

The lights from the windows sent a flickering illumination that made grotesque patterns on the courtyard below, and Rainsford could see moving about there a dozen or so huge black shapes; as they turned toward him, their eyes glittered greenly.

Laughter shook the general. “How extraordinarily droll you are!” he said. “One does not expect nowadays to find a young man of the educated class, even in America, with such a naive, and, if I may say so, mid-Victorian point of view. It’s like finding a snuff-box in a limousine. Ah, well, doubtless you had Puritan ancestors. So many Americans appear to have had. I’ll wager you’ll forget your notions when you go hunting with me. You’ve a genuine new thrill in store for you, Mr. Rainsford.”

He saw that straight flight was futile; inevitably it would bring him face to face with the sea.

There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

Had the queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty’s jewels and gifts.

So now Della’s beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters.

Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet.

When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason.

For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year—what is the difference?

My brothers and I would peer into the medicinal herb shop, watching old Li dole out onto a stiff sheet of white paper the right amount of insect shells, saffron-colored seeds, and pungent leaves for his ailing customers.

I quickly put the box down next to him on the bench and displayed my retort.

“Little sister, been a long time since I play with dolls,” he said, smiling benevolently.

By my ninth birthday, I was a national chess champion. I was still some 429 points away from grand-master status, but I was touted as the Great American Hope, a child prodigy and a girl to boot.

Seated across from me was an American man, about the same age as Lau Po, maybe fifty. I remember that his sweaty brow seemed to weep at my every move. He wore a dark, malodorous suit.

My parents made many concessions to allow me to practice. One time I complained that the bedroom I shared was so noisy that I couldn’t think. Thereafter, my brothers slept in a bed in the living room facing the street.

At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitely settled—but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved, precluded the idea of risk.

A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser.

“My friend, no. It is not the engagement, but the severe cold with which I perceive you are afflicted. The vaults are insufferably damp. They are encrusted with niter.”

I had told them that I should not return until the morning, and had given them explicit orders not to stir from the house.

“You jest,” he exclaimed, recoiling a few paces. “But let us proceed to the Amontillado.”

When at last the clanking subsided, I resumed the trowel, and finished without interruption the fifth, the sixth, and the seventh tier.

Once inside the supermarket, her hands firmly around the handle of the cart, she would lapse into a kind of reverie and wheel toward the produce.

The bag boy seemed a wonderful contrast to the perfectly beautiful house she had been forced to accept as her home, to the history she hated, to the loneliness she had become used to, and she couldn’t wait to come back for more of his awkwardness and dishevelment.

For some perverse reason she would not have been able to articulate, the girl did not bring her cart up to the bag boy’s checkout when her shopping was done. And the bag boy let her leave the store, pretending no notice of her.

They also say that when all of Africa is not choking under a drought, Hasodzi lies in a very fertile lowland in a district known for its good soil.

What I am sure of is that when I came out of the land of sweet, soft silence into the world of noise and comprehension, the first topic I met was my legs.

“Looking at such a man, we have to be humble and admit that after all, God’s children are many...”