Unit 2: Vocabulary from Readings 2

Philoprogenitiveness, says we, is strong in semi-rural communities; therefore, and for other reasons, a kidnapping project ought to do better there than in the radius of newspapers that send reporters out in plain clothes to stir up talk about such things.

We knew that Summit couldn’t get after us with anything stronger than constables and, maybe, some lackadaisical bloodhounds and a diatribe or two in the Weekly Farmers’ Budget.

There was a sylvan attitude of somnolent sleepiness pervading that section of the external outward surface of Alabama that lay exposed to my view

“I ain’t attempting,” says he, “to decry the celebrated moral aspect of parental affection, but we’re dealing with humans, and it ain’t human for anybody to give up two thousand dollars for that forty-pound chunk of freckled wildcat. I’m willing to take a chance at fifteen hundred dollars. You can charge the difference up to me.”

“Great Pirates of Penzance,” says I; “of all the impudent—”

Faustin remembered that the evening before he had looked at the sky and seen that the moon was almost in the middle phase.

The old man watched the activity in the picture intently but with a slight smile on his face.

A deer bounded away frightened.

We look in your direction for guidance. We ask for your protection.

Indeed several minutes later the man lumbered over to a pile of rocks and gathered several handsize ones.

Inside Moon’s mother, an unassuming woman of gentle demeanor, the picture of the gaunt, brown-faced Pakistani boy—dry thin lips, small straight nose, enormous frightened eyes—abruptly winked out.

A jovial older cousin had called him Moon some years ago, for a reason Moon could no longer remember.

The words in the book flickered and pulsated in the torrent of drums and music.

He looked small and frightened behind the podium, but he thrust out his hands defiantly to show his fingers.

Moon felt a coldness in his heart, and the impotence that was the prologue to rage.