&&000 USA                                                                                                            US907X.TXT
7TH GRADE
5 publishers; ~10,000 Harc Brace; Macmillan; & Scott Foresman
& two more below added McGraw Hill 7th 9 July 2004
Added Houghon Mifflin #2 10 July 2004

Xeroxed and later scanned. Ocr'd  and edited by dph 21 June 2004

&&111


sky, they're new coins. The big drops are ten =centavo =2 pieces and the little ones are fives...."
With a satisfied expression he regarded the field of ripe corn with its kidney bean flowers, draped
in a curtain of rain. But suddenly a strong wind began to blow and together with the rain very
large hailstones began to fall. These truly did resemble new silver coins. The boys, exposing
themselves to the rain, ran out to collect the frozen pearls.
"It's really getting bad now," exclaimed the man, mortified.' "I hope it passes quickly."
It did not pass quickly. For an hour the hail rained on the house, the garden, the hillside, the
cornfield, on the whole valley. The field was white, as if covered with salt. Not a leaf remained
on the trees. The corn was totally destroyed. The flowers were gone from the kidney bean plants.
=Lencho's soul was filled with sadness. When the storm had passed, he stood in the middle of the
field and said to his sons:
"A plague of locusts would have left more than this... The hail has left nothing: this year we will
have no com or beans...."
That night was a sorrowful one:
"All our work, for nothing!"
"There's no one who can help us!"
"We'll all go hungry this year...."
But in the hearts of all who lived in that solitary' house in the middle of the valley, there was a
single hope: help from God.
"Don't be so upset, even though this seems like a total loss. Remember, no one dies of hunger!"
"That's what they say: no one dies of hunger...."
All through the night, =Lencho thought only of his one hope: the help of God, whose eyes, as he
had been instructed, see everything, even what is deep in one's conscience.
=Lencho was an ox of a man, working like an animal in the fields, but still he knew how to write.
The following Sunday, at daybreak, after having convinced himself that there is a protecting
spirit, he began to write a letter
Jack, who stood in silent admiration of the lovely photographs before asking Ernie several times,
"Are you sure you want to plant these?" Ernie was sure. It didn't take him very long, and when
the seeds all lay under the moist black earth, Ernie carried his empty packages inside the house
and spent the rest of the day spreading them across his bed in different arrangements. hat was in
June. For the next several Wednesdays at 7:00 a.m. =Ernie watched every movement of e
dark-haired woman behind the lighted windows of =StanHardware. =Jack watched =Ernie watch
=Dolores, and discreetly said nothing.
When =ernie's flowers began growing in July, =Ernie spent most of his time in the garden. He
would watch the garden for hours, as if he expected it suddenly to move or to impress him with a
quick trick. The fragile green stems of his flowers stood uncertainly in the soil, like baby colts on
their first legs, but the young plants performed no magic for =Ernie's eyes. They saved their
shows for the middle of the night and next day surprised Ernie with tender small blooms in all
the colors the photographs had promised.
The flowers grew fast and hardy, and one early Wednesday morning when they looked as big and
bright as their pictures on the empty packages, =Ernie pulled a glass canning jar off a dusty shelf
in the basement of his house. He washed the jar, half filled it with water, then carried it to the
garden where he placed in it one of every kind of flower he had grown. He met =Jack at the car
and rode off to the =BigBoy with the jar of flowers held tight between his small hands. =Jack
told him it was a beautiful bouquet.
When they reached the door of the =BigBoy, =Ernie stopped and pulled at =Jack's arm, pointing
to the building across the street. OK, =Jack said, and he led =Ernie to the front door of.


leaving the nymph to hide her blushes in the thick woods.
From that time on, =Echo would never show herself. Caves and mountain cliffs became her
home. Her body wasted away with grief and longing until all her flesh was gone. Her bones
changed into rocks. And nothing was left of her but her voice, with which she still replies to
anyone who calls.
Cruel =Narcissus! =Echo was not the only being whose heart he broke. But at last he got what he
deserved. A maiden whom he had spurned' asked the goddess of vengeance to take her part.
"Oh, may the time come," the girl prayed, "when =Narcissus may feel what it is to love and get
no love in return!"
=TAnd the avenging goddess heard.... here was a sparkling spring in the hills, to which for some
reason shepherds never
drove their flocks. Neither did mountain goats nor any beasts of the forest ever drink from it.
Fresh green grass grew all around, and rocks sheltered the spring from the sun. The water in the
pool was as clear as polished silver. Not a dead branch, not a dead leaf polluted it.
To this pool one day =Narcissus came, worn out with hunting, hot and thirsty. He stooped down
to drink-and saw his lovely image in the water.
"It is the water-spirit," he thought, for he had never seen his own reflection before. Enchanted, he
knelt down to look and could not take his gaze away. He bent close to place a kiss upon the
parted lips, and stretched out his arms to clasp the lovely being. At his touch the image dissolved
into a thousand ripples. But even as he watched, it came back as clear as before.
"Beautiful being," Narcissus said, "why do you flee from me? Surely my face cannot


hunter. You boys will mean a whole lot to him while he's a kit, but there'll come a day when you
won't mean a thing to him and he'll leave you shorn."'
For two weeks after that =Colin had nursed the cub, weaning it from milk to bits of meat. For a
year they were always together. The cub grew fast. It was soon following =Colin and me about
the barnyard. It turned out to be a patch fox, with a saddle of darker fur across its shoulders.
I haven't the words to tell you what the fox meant to us. It was far more wonderful owning him
than owning any dog. There was something rare and secret like the spirit of the woods about him,
and back of his calm, straw gold eyes was the sense of a brain the equal of a man's. The fox
became =Colin's whole life.
Each day, going and coming from school, =Colin and I took long side trips through the woods,
looking for =Bandit. Wild things' memories were short, we knew; we'd have to find him soon, or
the old bond would be broken.
Ever since I was ten, I'd been allowed to hunt with Father, so I was good at reading signs. But, in
a way, =Colin knew more about the woods and wild things than Father or me. What came to me
from long observation =Colin seemed to know by instinct.
It was =Colin who felt out, like an Indian, the stretch of woods where =Bandit had his den, who
found the first slim, small fox-print in the damp earth. And then, on an afternoon in March, we
saw him. I remember the day well, the racing clouds, the wind rattling the tops of the pine trees
and swaying the =Spanish moss. =Bandit had just come out of a clump of laurel; in the maze of
leaves behind him we caught a glimpse of a slim red vixen, so we knew he had found a mate. She
melted from sight like a shadow, but =Bandit turned. to watch us, his mouth open, his tongue
lolling as he smiled his

other boys appeared, some with barrows, some mysteriously alerted to the prospect of a
confrontation among their numbers.
"=Babes don't give orders to candidates around here, babe!"
Someone sniggered, and =Keevan knew, incredibly, that he must've been dropped from the
candidacy.
He yanked the shovel from =Beterli's loosened grasp. Snarling, the older boy tried to regain
possession, but =Keevan clung with all his strength to the handle, dragged back and forth as the
stronger boy jerked the shovel about.
With a sudden, unexpected movement, =Beterli rammed the handle into =Keevan's chest,
knocking him over the barrow handles. =Keevan felt a sharp, painful jab behind his left ear, an
unbearable pain in his right shin, and then a painless nothingness.

angry voice roused him, and startled, he tried to throw back the covers, thinking he'd overslept.
But he couldn't move, so firmly was he tucked into his bed. And then the constriction of a
bandage on his head and the dull sickishness in his leg brought back recent occurrences.
"Hatching?" he cried.
"No, love," said =Mende, and her voice was suddenly very kind, her hand cool and gentle on his
forehead. "Though there's some as won't be at any hatching again." Her voice took on a stern
edge.
=Keevan looked beyond her to see the weyrwoman, who was frowning with irritation.
"=Keevan, will you tell me what occurred at the black-rock bunker? " =Lessa asked, but her
voice wasn't angry.
He remembered =Beterli now and the quaj over the shovel and ... what had Mende said about
some not being at any hatching? Much as he hated =Beterli, he couldn't bring himself to tattle on
Beterli and force him out of candidacy.
"Come, lad," and a note of impatience crept into the woman's voice. "I merely want to know what
happened from you, too. =Mende said she sent you for black rock. =Beterli and every =weyrling
in the cavern-seems to have been on the same errand. What happened?"
"=Beterli took the shovel. I hadn't finished with it."
"There's more than one shovel. What did he say to you?"
"He'd heard the news."
"What news?" The woman was suddenly amused.
"That . that there would have been changes."
"Is that what he said?"
"Not exactly."
"What did he say? come on lad. I've heard from everyone else, you know."
"He said for me to guess the news."
"And you fell for that old gag?" The =weyrwoman's irritation returned.
"Consider all the talk last night at supper, =Lessa," said =Mende. "Of course the boy would think
he'd been eliminated."
"In effect, he is. with a broken skull and leg." She touched his arm, a rare gesture of sympathy in
her. "Be that as it may, =Keevan, you'll have other Impressions. =Beterli will not. There are
certain rules that must be observed by all candidates, and his conduct proves him unacceptable to
the =weyr."
She smiled at =Mende and then left.     
"Now," said the big man (he was an =Englishman who had just moved into the bungalow), "don't
frighten him, and we'll see what he'll do."
It is the hardest thing in the world
to frighten a mongoose, because he is eaten up from nose to tail with curiosity. The motto of all
the mongoose family is "Run and Find Out;" and =Rikki-tikki was a true mongoose. He looked at
the cotton wool, decided that it was not good to eat, ran all round the table, sat up
and put his fur in order, scratched himself, and jumped on the small boy's shoulder.
"Don't be frightened, =Teddy," said his father. "That's his way of making friends."
"Ouch! He's tickling under my chin," said =Teddy.
=Rikki-tikki looked down between the boy's collar and neck, snuffed at his ear, and climbed
down to the floor, where he sat rubbing his nose.
"Good gracious," said =Teddy's mother, "and that's a wild creature! I suppose he's so tame
because we've been kind to him."
"All mongooses are like that," said her husband. "If =Teddy doesn't pick him up by the tail or try
to put him in a cage, he'll run in and out of the house all day long. Let's give him something to
eat."
They gave him a little piece of raw meat. =Rikki-tikki liked it immensely; and when it was
finished, he went out into the veranda and sat in the sunshine and fluffed up his fur to make it dry
to the roots. Then he felt better.
"There are more things to find out about in this house," he said to himself, "than all my family
could find out in all their lives. I shall certainly stay and find out."
He spent all that day roaming over the house. He nearly drowned himself in the bathtubs, put


ship. But when it was once inside, something happened to the ship and it never returned to the
sea."
Hidden in the galleon's hold, near the stump of the mainmast, were two chests filled with coins.
The coins were of pure gold. They showed three castles and the two flying doves that meant they
had been struck in the mint at =Lima, =Peru. The date marked upon each coin that we carried
away on the trips we had made was the Year of Our Lord =1612.
The two chests-each made of hard wood banded with iron straps and sealed with a hasp that had
rusted and fallen off-were well beneath the surface of the water, whether at low tide or in the
summer, when the stream ran low. This was fortunate, for had the chests been exposed, some
passing =Indian or =vaquero would have discovered them.
There were many things to do before the chests could be reached. Usually it took me half a day to
bring up a pouch of coins from the sunken ship.
The place where I dove, which was surrounded by jagged rocks and driftwood, was too narrow
for my father. He had tried to squeeze through when we first discovered the galleon, but partway
down he got stuck and I had to pull him back. It was my task, therefore, to go into the cavelike
hole. My father stood beside it and helped me to go down and to come up.
I buckled a strong belt around my waist and to it tied a =riata that was ten yards long and stout
enough to hold a stallion. I fastened my knife to my wrist-a two-edged blade made especially for
me by our blacksmith to protect myself against spiny rays and the big eels that could sting you to
death. In the many dives I had made, I never had seen a shark.
Taking three deep breaths, I prepared to let myself down into

turn. It looked as though they would miss it. But it was too late. They had avoided a head-on
crash, but the iceberg had struck a glancing blow along the =Titanic's starboard bow. Several tons
of ice fell on the ship's decks as the iceberg brushed along the side of the ship and passed into the
night. A few minutes later, the =Titanic came to a stop.
Many of the passengers didn't know the ship had hit anything. Because it was so cold, almost
everyone was inside, and most people had already gone to bed. =RuthBecker and her mother
were awakened by the dead silence. They could no longer hear the soothing hum of the vibrating
engines from below. =JackThayer was about to step into bed when he felt himself sway ever so
slightly. The engines stopped. He was startled by the sudden quiet.
Sensing trouble, =Ruth's mother looked out of the door of their second-class cabin and asked a
steward' what had happened. He told her that nothing was the matter so Mrs =Becker went back
to bed. But as she lay there, she couldn't help feeling that something was very wrong.
I believe it took me a day. Then, aloud, I read back, to myself, everything I'd written on the tablet.
Over and over, aloud, to myself, I read my own handwriting.
I woke up the next morning, thinking about those words-immensely proud to realize that not only
had I written so much at one time, but I'd written words that I never knew were in the world.
Moreover, with a little effort, I also could remember what many of these words meant. I reviewed
the words whose meanings I didn't remember. Funny thing, from the dictionary's first page right
now, that aardvark springs to my mind. The dictionary had a picture of it, a long-tailed,
long-eared, burrowing =African mammal, which lives off termites caught by sticking out its
tongue as an anteater does for ants.
=Jack heard running feet and voices in the hallway outside his first-class cabin. "I hurried into
my heavy overcoat and drew on my slippers. All excited, but not thinking anything serious had
occurred, I called in to my father and mother that I was going up on deck to see the fun.'
On deck, =Jack watched some third-class passengers playing with the ice that had landed on the
forward deck as the iceberg had brushed b, Some people were throwing chunks at each other,
while a few skidded about playing football with pieces of ice.
Down in the very bottom of the ship, things were very different. When the iceberg had struck,
there had been a noise like a big gun going off in one of the boiler rooms. A couple w stokers'
had been immediately hit by a jet of k, water. The noise and the shock of cold water had sent
them running for safety.
Twenty minutes after the crash, things looked very bad indeed to Captain =Smith. He and the
ship's builder, =ThomasAndrews, had made a rapid tour below decks to inspect the damage. The
mail room was filling up with water, and sacks of mail were floating about. Water was also
pouring into some of the forward holds an i two of the boiler rooms.
Captain =Smith knew that the =Titanic's hull was divided into a number of watertight
compartments. She had been designed so that she could still float if only the first four
compartments were flooded, but not any more than that. But water was pouring into the first five
compartments. And when the water filled them, it would spill over into the next compartment.
One by one all the remaining compartments would flood, and the ship would


how much warmth
love for =Eleanor and her brother. Usually she rut neglected them.
just before =Eleanor' turned fifteen, Grandmother =Hall decided to send her to boarding uhool in
England. The school she chose was= jllenswood, a private academy for girls Located on the
outskirts of =London.
It was at =Allenswood that =Eleanor, still :hinking of herself as an "ugly duckling," first -.fired to
believe that one day she might be able
become a swan.
At =Allenswood she worked to toughen herself physically. Every day she did exercises .1 the
morning and took a cold shower. \ithough she did not like competitive team 'ports, as a matter of
self-discipline she tried ut for field hockey. Not only did she make "he team but, because she
played so hard, also *on the respect of her teammates.
They called her by her family nickname, =Totty," and showed their affection for her by arcing
books and flowers in her room, as was
Under the guidance of the school's headmistress, Mademoiselle =Souvestre, (or "=Sou"), she
learned to ask searching questions and think for herself instead of just giving back on tests what
teachers had said.
She also learned to speak =French fluently, a skill she polished by traveling in =France, living for
a time with a =French family. Mademoiselle =Souvestre arranged for her to have a new red dress.
Wearing it, after all of the old, worn dresses Grandmother =Hall had given her, made her feel
very proud. 
=Eleanor was growing up, and the joy of young womanhood had begun to transform her
personality.
In =1902, nearly eighteen years old, she left Allenswood, not returning for her fourth year there.
Grandmother =Hall insisted that, instead, she must be introduced to society as a debutante-to go
to dances and parties and begin to take her place in the social world with other wealthy young
women.


There was ease in =Casey's manner as he stepped into his place, There was pride in =Casey's
bearing and a smile on =Casey's face; And when responding to the cheers he lightly doffed his
hat, No stranger in the crowd could doubt it was =Casey at the bat.

Ten thousand eyes were on him as he rubbed his hands with dirt, Five thousand tongues
applauded when he wiped them on his shirt; Then when the writhing pitcher ground the ball into
his hip, Defiance glanced in =Casey's eye, a sneer curled =Casey's lip.

And now the leather-covered sphere came hurtling through the air, And =Casey stood a-watching
it in haughty grandeur there. Close by the sturdy batsman the ball unheeded sped; "That ain't my
style," said =Casey. "Strike one," the umpire said.

From the benches, filled with people, there went up a muffled roar, Like the beating of the storm
waves on the stern and distant shore. "Kill him! Kill the umpire!" shouted someone on the stand;
And it's likely they'd have killed him had not =Casey raised his hand.

With a smile of honest charity great =Casey's visage shone; He stilled the rising tumult, he made
the game go on;
He signaled to the pitcher, and once more the spheroid flew; But =Casey still ignored it, and the
umpire said, "Strike two."

"Fraud!" cried the maddened thousands, and the echo answered "Fraud!" But one scornful look
from Casey and the audience was awed; They saw his face grow stern and cold, they saw his
muscles strain, And they knew that =Casey wouldn't let the ball go by again.

The sneer is gone from =Casey's lips, his teeth are clenched in hate, He pounds with cruel
vengeance his bat upon the plate; And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now he lets it go, And
now the air is shattered by the force of =Casey's blow.

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright,
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light; And somewhere men are
laughing, and somewhere children shout, But there is no joy in =Mudville: Mighty =Casey has
struck out.
simply running like a hare across country, and he had no idea in what direction he would find the
war bands of his own people. And at that moment he realized that he had no weapon. Nessan had
slipped her knife back into her belt after she had cut his bonds, and neither of them had thought
of it again. He was alone and unarmed in an enemy country. Well, there was nothing to do but
keep going and hope that he would not need to kill for food or run into any kind of trouble before
he found his own people.

Presently, well into the hills, he came upon a moorland pool, where two streamlets met. It was so
small and shallow that he could have waded through it in several places, and scarcely get wet to
the knee. And the moon, still high in the glimmering sky, showed him an upright black stone that
stood taller than a man, exactly between the two streamlets where they emptied themselves into
the pool. A black stone, in a countryside where other stones were grey; and twisted about the
narrowest part near the top, a withered garland of tough moorland flowers: ling and ragwort and
white-plumed bog-grasses.
=Dara stood staring at it with a feeling of awe. And as he did so, a little wind stirred the dry
garland, and from something fastened among the brittle flower heads, the moonlight struck out a
tiny blaze of brilliant blue fire! =Nessan's blue glass arm-ring! He caught his breath, realizing
that this must be the Goddess herself, the Black Mother. But at the same instant, he noticed the
spear


in him. And I was pretty sure that when he
saw me in that blue dress, he'd have a crush
on me right away, too.
On the day of the play,
all our families started
arriving at The Grove
theater a full hour before
we got started. It didn't
rain, and there wasn't
even one of those noisy =NovaScotian winds that shake the trees and keep you from hearing the
lines. My mother was hustling around backstage helping with clothes and makeup. Mostly she
was fussing with my face and my first costume and telling me how pretty I looked. We had
rigged up eight bedspreads, some torn and holey, some beautiful, depending on the fear or the
pride of the mothers who lent them; and behind this strung-out curtain, we prepared ourselves for
the two o'clock production. =Henrietta was moving quietly about on the stage, straightening
furniture, moving props, standing back to look at the effect. Later on, just before the curtain went
up, or rather was drawn aside, she went off and sat down against a tree, where she'd have a good
view of the performance, but where she'd be out of sight. If any of us needed anything, she could
 get it for us without the audience seeing what she was doing.
radiant court butterfly. But I put ail I had into this first scene, because when =Alphonse turns
down all the eligible and less beautiful women of the land and retires to a corner of the stage to
brood (with =GeorgeCruikshank standing nearby, munching grass), =Genevieve arrives on the
scene to a roll of drums (our wooden spoor on Mrs =Eisner's pickling kettle). As Alphonse turns
to look at her dazzling beauty, he recognizes her for what she is-not just a poor commoner, but a
young woman of great charm and loveliness, worthy of his hand. At this point, she places her
hand on her breast and does a deep and graceful curtsy. He stands up, bends to help her rise, and
in a tender and significant gesture kisses her outstretched hand
And that's exactly how we did it. right ther on the foxberry patch, which looked like a rich green
carpet with a red pattern. if you happened to have the kind of imagination to see it that way. I
thought I would  with the beauty of it all. Then the strip
 of  bedspreads was drawn across the scene. curtain hoops squeaking, and the applauding
audience awaited the final scene.
I didn't waste any time getting into my other costume. Dressed in my blue gown. I peeked
through the hole in Mrs =Powell's bedspread , assess the audience. I had not had time to look
until now, but =Mama had dressed me first, am she had six other girls to get read- for the ball
scene. The crowd outside was large. There must have been forty-five or fifty people of various
sizes and ages sitting on the cushions placed on top of the pine needles. The little kids were
crawling and squirming around like they always do, and mothers were passing out pacifiers and
bags of chips and  beans and suckers to keep them quiet during intermission. One little boy 
=JanetMorash's brother  was crying his head off, and I sure as fire hoped he'd stop all that racket
before the  could get out of those rags and emerge as the train went up. While I watched all this. I
How does =Juliette feel about wearing one of her mother's dresses?



nobleman ignores the beautiful
peasant girl, who comes on dressed in rags but heavily made up and therefore beautiful. He is of
course looking for a wife, but no one even thinks of her as a possible candidate. She does a lot of
sighing and weeping, and =Alphonse rides around on his horse (=GeorgeCruikshank) looking
handsome and tragic. =Harold did this very well. Still, I could hardly wait for the last scene, in
which I


=EddieAikau's memorial on =Waimea Bay, =Hawaii, was photographed by =Joli. '
reborn as they shoot out the end. They've written about the perfect wave. Their writing is full of
cliches. "The endless summer," they say. "Unreal."
Surfing is like a religion. Among the martyrs' are =GeorgeHelm, =KimoMitchell, and =Eddie
=Aikau. =Helm and =Mitchell were lost at sea riding their surfboards from =Kaho'olawe, where
they had gone to protest the =Navy's bombing of that island. =EddieAikau was a champion surfer
and lifeguard. A storm had capsized the =Hokule'a, the ship that traced the route that the
=Polynesian ancestors sailed from =Tahiti, and =EddieAikau had set out on his board to get help.
Since the ocean captivates our son, we decided to go with him to =Sandy's.
We got up before dawn, picked up his friend, =Marty, and drove out of =Honolulu. Almost all
the traffic was going in the opposite direction, the freeway comes to make more lanes into the
city. We came to a place where raw mountains rose on our left and the sea fell on our right,
smashing against the cliffs. The strip of cliff pulverized? into sand is =Sandy's. "Dangerous
Current Exist," said the ungrammatical sign.
=Earl and I sat on the shore with our blankets and thermos of coffee. =Joseph and =Marty put on
their fins and stood at the edge of the sea for a moment, touching the water with their fingers and
crossing their hearts before going in. There were fifteen boys out there, all about the same age,
fourteen to twenty, all with the same kind of lean v-shaped build, most of them with black hair
that made their wet heads look like sea lions. It was hard to tell whether our kid was one of those
who popped up after a big wave. A few had surfboards, which are against the rules at a
body-surfing beach, but the lifeguard wasn't on duty that day.


bound to get filled up with people afore long. And then we wouldn't remember what peace and
quiet were all about."
"Down at the foot of the hill is a stream, probably just jumping with fish," =Shirley said. "And
you can look far enough in both directions going and coming so you could spot a traveler and
think on him two days afore he got here."
"I don't know," =Claude said again. "Get down from the wagon, =Shirley, and see what you can
put together for supper.  I'll get our sleeping pallets out of the wagon and tend to the horses."
=Shirley unfolded her long legs, stuck her feet in her boots, hiked up her skirts, and climbed
down from the wagon. She took out the stew pot and set it on the ground under an old and
gnarled oak tree. Then she took down the rifle. She was going into the woods to find some fresh
meat for the table.
Suddenly she heard the rustle of small leaves, and she looked up to see a big bobcat on a branch
near her head. His narrow eyes were gleaming, his lips were pulled back in a snarl, and his tail
was twitching. =Shirley knew he was getting his mind set to spring.
Well, =Shirley stared that bobcat square in the eyes and said to him, "I've found my peaceful
place, and you're not going' to spoil it for me." She raised her rifle, aimed it dead center at the
bobcat, and pulled the trigger.
=Shirley's aim never was very good. The shot hit that old tree branch, snapping it with a crack
that flipped the bobcat in an arc right over the wagon. He came down so hard against a boulder
that the force knocked it loose, and it rolled down the hill, tearing up the turf.

&&000


&&000 USA SCHOOLBOOKS                                                                  [U8S907C.TXT]

Publishers: HOUGHTON MIFFLIN:  SILVER BURDETT GINN
 
1990S

7TH GRADE

SCANNED. OCR'D AND EDITED BY DPH 27 JUNE 2004

&&111

"No, you don't understand. I come from =ChelmOne. I was on my way to =warsaw, and between
=ChelmOne and =Warsaw there is a =ChelmTwo. And that is where I am."
"What are you talking about. We all know you and you know all of us. Don't you recognize your
chickens?"
"No, I'm not in my town," =Shlemiel insisted. "But," he continued, "=Chelmtwo does have the
same people and the same houses as =ChelmOne, and that is why you are mistaken. Tomorrow I
will continue on to =Warsaw."
"In that case, where is my husband?" Mrs =Shlemiel inquired in a rage, and she proceeded to
berate =Shlemiel with all the curses she could think of.
"How should I know where your husband is?" =Shlemiel replied.
Some of the neighbors could not help laughing; others pitied the family. =Gimpel, the healer,
announced that he knew of no remedy for such an illness. After some time, everybody went
home.
Mrs =Shlemiel had cooked noodles and beans that evening, a dish that =Shlemiel liked
especially. She said to him: "You may be mad, but even a madman has to eat."
"Why should you feed a stranger?" =Shlemiel asked.
"As a matter of fact, an ox like you should eat straw, not noodles and beans. Sit down and be
quiet. Maybe some food and rest will bring you back to your senses."
"Mrs =Shlemiel, you're a good woman. My wife wouldn't feed a stranger. It would seem that
there is some small difference between the two =Chelms."
The noodles and beans smelled so good that =Shlemiel needed no further coaxing. He sat down
and as he ate he spoke to the children.
"My dear children, I live in a house that looks exactly like this one. I have a wife and she is as
like your mother as two peas are like



The Khan was just about to rise from the table when an officer of the life guard arrived and
announced that a prisoner had been captured by the sentries who were roaming the countryside,
just as he was about to creep into a hole in the ground.
Anyone who tried to flee condemned himself to death; everyone who had endured the "sieving"
process' and been declared a useful person knew this. Up to now no one had dared to make off
and seek a way back to freedom. The =Steppe offered too few hiding-places - and the =Gobi, that
deadly barrier, stood between them and the South.
"I wish to see him," ordered the Khan.
The man was dragged in by two life guards. His hands were tied together. His face was scratched.
There were traces of blood in his beard.
"He refused to walk," the Guards officer announced. "We had to drag him."
"Free him!" said the Khan. The horsemen freed him. The man fell
forward and remained lying down with his face pressed to the ground.
"Is he too weak to stand up?" inquired the Khan.   "He doesn't want to stand up," said the
officer. Then he pushed the
man with his foot. "Look here, won't you speak to the Khan?" he said.
The man on the ground did not utter a word.
"Lift him up!" ordered the Khan. "I want to see how he looks
at me."
The man was lifted up. He looked at the ground in front of him.
"I wish you to look at me!" said the Khan. "Look at me, or you will lose your eyes!"
The man stood there, his face unmoved. He did not
raise his eyes a hair's breadth.   

Without making a sound they crept through the stiff-frozen reeds towards the bridge. In the
distance they heard a few scattered shots and the sound of a car starting.
Crack! The ice snapped under =Boris's right foot. =Nadia turned on him indignantly.
=Sssssssh!"
=Boris made a face at her. How could he help it if the ice was thin?
Almost on all fours they made their way through the reeds to the bridge. Now they would have to
forsake the bank and entrust themselves to the ice. To his horror, =Boris saw that the water in the
middle under the bridge was not frozen. Dark, cold and threatening, it rippled in the icy wind.
Would the few feet of ice that had formed against the concrete sides of the bridge be strong
enough to hold them? =Boris felt terror creeping over him; under the bridge was just like his
nightmare: ice and black holes.
Even =Nadia hesitated. Then she stepped cautiously on to the ice. It held. Slowly she shuffled -
foot after foot, in =Serjozja's huge comical boots - on to the narrow strip of ice under the bridge.
Once there she turned and waved for him to follow.
=Boris glanced about himself in panic. Scenes from his nightmare flashed before his eyes: the
snow-covered plain that was Lake =Ladoga; the splintering ice; his father's hand gripping the
steering-wheel.
For a moment or two he stood trembling, struggling against fear. Then suddenly he could almost
hear his father talking to him, as he had before his last fatal ride.
"It's not a sin to be afraid, =Boris, for we can be brave at the same time."
"=Nadia was making frantic signs for him to hurry. Any second the soldiers might appear.
=Boris took a deep breath. With a mighty effort, he tried to think about his mother, about the
potatoes, about =Serjozja. Keeping his eyes turned away from the dark water, he stepped on to
the strip of ice which seemed to grow narrower and narrower.

But =Dicey suspected that he was doing this dull stuff first because he knew that once he handed
the papers back nobody would pay any attention to him. It wasn't his fault, it was just the way
classes went. You worked hard (or not so hard) for something, and when you got the results that
job was over. The teacher might not think it was over, but the students sure did. The grade told
you how well you had done (or what you got away with). The grade was what you looked for -
not the red circles around mistakes. Sometimes, a teacher wrote a comment, good work (or bad
work), and you looked at that, too. But mostly, everything they had to say they said in the grade.
If there was something more important than the grade, =Dicey wanted to know why didn't
teachers ever say anything about that, like write you a note about it on your paper. If it wasn't
worth his time to write down, how could he say it was worth hers?
She sat forward and sat back and sat forward. She looked at the clock - only fifteen minutes left;
he'd have to hand the papers back soon.
"Now," Mr =Chappelle said, "you may be interested in seeing your essays." He smiled at his own
joke, so a few kids made little fake laughing noises.
"Before I hand them out, there are two I'd like to read aloud to you." =Dicey made herself lean
back in her chair. She jammed her hands down into her pockets and stretched her legs out in front
of her. "To share with you," Mr =Chappelle said, and reached down into his briefcase. He took
out the pile of papers. He ran his hand through his red hair and looked around at everyone, his
eyes sliding along the rows. He tried another joke. "Both of these essays were written by girls,
but I don't want you boys to get discouraged. Everyone knows boys grow up more slowly."

The doctor asked if there was anything else that Mr =Cook worried about: His wife? His
children? His job?
"I lie awake in the morning and worry about them all," said Mr =Cook. "And about that huge
garden in that awful state ..." "What garden?"
"Our garden. It's huge and it's been let go wild and I ought to get it in order, I suppose, and - oh, I
don't know! I'm no gardener."
"Perhaps you shouldn't have a garden that size," suggested the doctor. "Perhaps you should
consider moving into a house with no garden, or at least a really manageable one. Somewhere,
say, with just a patio, in =Walchester."
"That's what we moved from," said Mr =Cook. "Less than six months ago."
"Oh, dear!" said the doctor. He called Mrs =Cook into the surgery, and suggested that her
husband might be suffering from overwork. Mr =Cook was struck by the idea; Mrs =Cook less
so. The doctor suggested a week off, to see what that would do.
That week marked the climax of Mr =Cook's illness; it drove Mrs =Cook nearly out of her wits,
and =Judy to urgent inquiries.
The week came at the very beginning of June, an ideal month in which to try to recover from
overwork. =Judy and =Mike were at school all day, so that everything was quiet at home for their
father. The sun shone, and Mr =Cook planned to sit outside in a deckchair and catch up on lost
sleep. Then, when the children came home, he would go to bed early with the portable television
set. (He assumed that rest would be dealing with fogginess of vision.)
Things did not work out like that at all. During that week Mr =Cook was seized with a terrible
restlessness. It seemed impossible for him to achieve any repose at all. He tried only once to
watch television;

that the =Truce of the =Games would last them back to their own states, but no further; and the
longer the silence lasted, the more they remembered.
From beyond the quiet of the Enclosure came all the sounds of the great concourse breaking up;
voices calling, the stamping of impatient horses. "By this time tomorrow everyone will be gone,"
=Amyntas said at last. "It will be just as it was before we came, for another four years."
"The =Corinthians are off already."
"Catching the cool of the morning for those fine chariot horses," =Amyntas said, and thought,
There's so little time, why do we have to waste it like this?
"One of the charioteers had that hunting knife with the silver inlay. The one you took a fancy to.
Why didn't you buy it after all?"
"I spent the money on something else." For a moment Amyntas was afraid that Leon would ask
what. But the other boy only nodded and let iti go.
He wished suddenly that he could give =Leon something, but there was nothing among his few
belongings that would make sense in the =Spartan's world. It was a world so far off from his
own. Too far to reach out, too far to call. Already they seemed to be drifting away from each
other, drifting back to a month ago, before they had even met. He put out a hand quickly, as
though to hold the other boy back for one more moment, and =Leon's hand came to meet it.
"It has been good. All this month it has been good," =Leon said.
"It has been good," =Amyntas agreed. He wanted to say, "Until the next =Games, then." But
manhood and military service were only a few months away for both of them; if they did meet at
another Games, there would be the faces of dead comrades, =Spartan and =Athenian, between
them; and like enough, for one of them or both, there might be no other Games. Far more likely,
if they ever saw each other again, it would be over the tops of their shields.
He had noticed before how, despite their different worlds, he

as she felt for the matching seam, her fingers struck against a switch plate.
It was too dark to see what it looked like. There were holes in it, a radial design, perhaps a plug
of some sort. She looked back at the lumpies, wondering if they knew it was a security gateor if
they knew what lay behind it. One lumpie got up slowly and came over to join her. At close
range it smelled of grass and berries and a mustard-like scent of its own. It stood erect, peered
nearsightedly at the thing her touch had found, then reached past her and fit its fingertips into the
holes.
"Very good!" she said, and then was interrupted by the hum of a motor. A faint crack of light
appeared along the floor and grew slowly higher. "This can't be!" =Lian informed the trio, who
gazed at the light in wide-eyed simpleness, the one beside her with its hand still on the switch.
"What's in there?" She reached up and pulled that supple hand away from the switch plate. The
gate continued to rise. She began to back away, just in case. It was probably an old power cell
still functioning by freakish circumstances ... but just in case there was anything alive . . .
There was not.
The Counter looked out upon a small and rather monstrous alien and three of its responsibilities.
It hummed the greeting signal.


MOUNT =VESUVIUS BLOWS ITS STACK

In late August of =AD =79 the earth began to rumble and shake. Streams and well water
disappeared as if dried up by some great heat. The sea heaved and churned. Animals became
restless. =MtVesuvius was about to blow its stack.
At about one o'clock in the afternoon of =August =24, =79, =Pompeians were eating lunch or
preparing to rest. Suddenly a deafening sound was heard. The top of =Mtvesuvius blasted off.
Expanding gases from deep inside the volcano hurled volcanic ash and red-hot stones thousands
of feet into the air. Fountains of fire, smoke, and molten lava gushed out of the mouth of the
volcano. Violent earthquakes shook the ground for miles around. Volcanic dust covered the sky
and completely blotted out the sun. The day became darker than the blackest night. The sea
roared and rose up in great waves.
Volcanic matter shot out of =MtVesuvius, forming a giant mushroom-shaped cloud that rose
twelve miles into the sky. The cloud spread over =Pompeii and the =Sarno plain and released a
rain of ash and lava stone. Volcanic debris accumulated at the rate of six inches an hour. It piled
on top of roofs until they crushed under its weight. It fell until the city was covered under a
blanket twelve feet thick. The harbor became so filled with volcanic deposits that no ships could
sail.



=Diana would have the =Sun behind her as she sailed straight down the solar wind. And as the
old-time sailors often said, it was easy to handle a boat when the wind was blowing over your
shoulder.
His other worry was =Lebedev, still dogging his heels three hundred miles astern. The =Russian
yacht had shown remarkable maneuverability, thanks to the four great panels that could be tilted
around the central sail. All her flip-overs as she rounded Earth had been carried out with superb
precision; but to gain maneuverability she must have sacrificed speed. You could not have it both
ways. In the long, straight haul ahead, =Merton should be able to hold his own. Yet he could not
be certain of victory until, three or four days from now, Diana went flashing past the far side of
the =Moon.
And then, in the fiftieth hour of the race, near the end of the second orbit around =Earth,
=Markoff sprang his little surprise.
"Hello, =John," he said casually, over the ship-to-ship circuit. "I'd like you to watch this. It
should be interesting."
=Merton drew himself across to the periscope and turned up the magnification to the limit. There
in the field of view, a most improbable sight against the background of the stars,

on one end, and to one of the balloons on the other. The balloons were all carefully unfolded and
laid out flat on the ground, and the nets and ropes which attached them to the boats were
carefully placed around and beside them so that they wouldn't get tangled up when the balloons
were filled with gas. Slowly the balloons started to fill with hydrogen, the ones nearest the pumps
filling faster than the others. They lazily lifted themselves off the ground with the children
watching them carefully, constantly straightening the ropes so they wouldn't get tangled. Soon
they were all full of hydrogen and straining at the boats, which were roped to the ground. All
forty children were present, working efficiently on the =Merry-Go-Round, although it was
apparent that there was only room for fourteen of them on this trip. There was room for two in
each boat, making a total of sixteen seats, but Mr =F and I were going to occupy two of the seats.
There was no arguing among the children as to whose turn it was; they must have had some sort
of passenger schedule they followed closely. I sat in a boat with Mr =F.'s son, =F-1, and Mr =F
sat with a child in a boat which was on the opposite side of the big pole from ours. "This will
make the =Merry-Go-Round balance better," said =F-l.
There were two children on the ground near each boat. When we were all aboard, they detached
the silk


&&000 USA   grade 7, 1990s                                                                       [US907SF.TXT]
Houghton Mifflin and Siulver Burdett Ginn
Xeroxed, then later scanned, ocr'd  and edited by dph 21 June 2004
&&111
didn't need them. "Got me an animal of my own, standing still over there," says =Bill, pointing
out a giant panther that he'd fought` to a standstill. "And this is what I'll use for a quirt."
"Good heavens!" says =Bowleg, for he saw that =PecosBill had tamed a huge rattlesnake, that
just lay limp and smiling in =Bill's big brown paw.
Well, when the two of them rode into camp, =Bill's mount and his quirt; as well as his size and
his looks in general, made the men sit up straight and blink. =Bill jumped off his panther,
cracked his rattlesnake quirt, wiped his wet brow with a handful of prickly pear cactus, and
walked over to the fire.
There he asked the question Bowleg had told him to ask. "Who," he said, "is the boss of this here
outfit, huh?"
A big cowboy going on seven feet high cleared his throat and answered him back in a low voice,
"I  I was, until you turned up. What're your orders, sir?"
Anybody else but =PecosBill probably would have been surprised by this, and puzzled as to what
to do. But =Bill had been boss of the coyotes so long that he expected exactly this sort of thing to
happen. And he'd learned from the coyotes, too, that a varmint was loco if he stuck out his neck
too far, without knowing what might happen to what was
whether we need to make any changes."
Well, " what =PecosBill found in the cowboy business was very much like the sort of thing 
=PaulBunyan had found, at the start, in the lumber business. Everything was' in its infancy, and
more messed up than a baby that has dumped a bowl of strained spinach over its head.
Leading his friend, =BowlegGerber; to the side, =Bill said, "What's this pack doing?"
"They're cowboys," =Bowleg told him. "They stay out here in this shack near the water.
Wandering around in the country hereabouts are a good many head of cattle. Every morning,
each of these fellows takes a rope, puts a loop at the end, and lays the loop on the ground. He
puts some bait in the loop-maybe a hunk of salt, or some sweet-smelling hay, or a cowslip. Then
he takes the other end of the rope and hides behind a tree or cactus with it. Then he waits."
"So far," =Pecos Bill said, "the whole show sounds as if it'd bore a body plumb to death. Never,
in all my days as a coyote, did I fiddle around in such a dull way."
"The exciting point comes next," =Bowleg said. "After while, a cow or a bull comes along to get
a drink of water. Before or after drinking, the critter may see the bait. If the critter steps up to get
the bait,


uncovered something far more valuable than potter's clay.
It was a stone. A fairly average stone, perhaps two kilograms in weight: flat and more or less
trapezoidal in shape. The thing was valueless by itself, but over the years it had managed to stay
in precisely the right position while the root of a tree grew around it. She worked with her chisel
nail to cut the root at the treeward end, leaving a handle still attached to the stone.
It was a =Neanderthal's dream-the perfect implement for bashing things.
Stone and root were united inseparably. The hatchet-shaped head was not the right material for
fashioning an edge, but this didn't matter. She used the thing as a maul for making firewood, and
in this role alone, the Bashing Tool, as she came to call it, saved her hours of-work every day.
The time spent in food gathering was also shortened. Instead of using a stick to laboriously
scrape a trench around the base of a sword fern, and then severing the innumerable rootlets from
the main root with a small, hand-held stone, she could now flail away with Bashing Tool,
accomplishing as much in ten minutes as had taken forty, earlier.
She had by now decided that. the making of an aluminum artifact could not
practicality.  
for show and tell: a waste of valuable time.
wment with crucibles Rather titan expP2~
11Q1~~~ ~ ` ~
and molds, she built a squat framework of wood. It was shaped like a bird cage. The rounded
dome reached no higher than her knee, but it still took a great deal of work. The interlaced
branches had to be securely lashed together, for if the device were to function, the joins needed to
resist a crushing action similar to that of a powerful vise.
Beneath the dome went a stout, removable floor, also made of branches. None of the openings in
either the dome or the floor of the cage was large enough to permit the escape of anything larger
than a table tennis ball.
Next, she cut a doorway in the side of the structure, about twenty centimeters in width. Across
the opening she suspended a small door, hinged at the top with loops made from a scrap of
barbed wire. The door was counterbalanced. When pushed from the outside, the door opened
inward and one could reach inside the cage. Withdraw the hand, and the stone weight of the
counterbalance automatically swung the door shut.
A creature pushing from the inside would not be able to get out.
There remained one problem: What would be the best way of lowering the trap into the water?


country. He and =Forever-Mountain both threw some salt into the ring. It was said that this drove
away evil spirits.
Then the other wrestler, moving his stomach somewhat out of the way, raised his foot and
brought it down with a fearful stamp. He glared fiercely at =Forever-Mountain as if to say, "Now
you stamp, you poor frightened man!"
=Forever-Mountain raised his foot. He brought it down.
There was a sound like thunder, the earth shook, and the other wrestler bounced into the air and
out of the ring, as gracefully as any soap bubble.
He picked himself up and bowed to the Emperor's screen.
"The earth-god is angry. Possibly there is something the matter with the salt," he said. "I do not
think I shall wrestle this season." And he walked out, looking very suspiciously over one
shoulder at =Forever-Mountain.
Five other wrestlers then and there decided that they were not wrestling this season, either.
From then on, =Forever-Mountain brought his foot down lightly. As each wrestler came into the
ring, he picked him up very gently, carried him out, and placed him before the Emperor's screen,
bowing most courteously every time.
The court ladies' eyebrows went up even higher. The gentlemen looked disturbed and a little
afraid. They loved to see fierce, strong men tugging and grunting at each other, but
=Forever-Mountain was a little too much for them. Only the Emperor was happy. With the
wrestling over so quickly, he would have that much more time to write his poems. He ordered all
the prize money handed over to =Forever-Mountain.
"But," he said, "you had better not wrestle any more." He stuck a finger through his screen and
waggled it at the other wrestlers, who were sitting on the ground weeping with disappointment
like great fat babies.
=Forever-Mountain promised not to wrestle any more. Everybody

looked relieved. The wrestlers sitting on the ground almost smiled.

"I think I shall become a -farmer," Forever-Mountain said.


you're probably hungry. How about a turnover?"
"What do I have to turn over?" =Fausto asked, thinking she was talking about yard work or
something like turning trays of dried raisins.
"No, no, dear, it's a pastry." She took him by the elbow and guided him to a kitchen that sparkled
with copper pans and bright yellow wallpaper. She guided him to the kitchen table and gave him
a tall glass of milk and something that looked like an =empanada.  Steamy waves of heat escaped
when he tore it in two. He ate with both eyes on the man and woman who stood arm-in-arm
smiling at him. They were strange, he thought. But nice.
"That was good," he said after he finished the turnover. "Did you make it, ma'am?"
"Yes, I did. Would you like another?" "No, thank you. I have to go home now. "
As =Fausto walked to the door, the man opened his wallet and took out a bill. "This is for you,"
he said. "=Roger is special to us, almost like a son."
=Fausto looked at the bill and knew he was in trouble. Not with these nice folks or with his
parents but with himself. How could he have been so deceitful? The dog wasn't lost. It was just
haying a fun Saturday walking around.
"No, I don't."
"Now don't be silly," said the lady. She took the bill from her husband and stuffed it into
=Fausto's shirt pocket. "You're a lovely child. Your parents are lucky to have you. Be good. And
come see us again, please."
=Fausto went out, and the lady closed the door. =Fausto clutched the bill through his shirt
pocket.
He felt like ringing the doorbell and begging them to please take the money back, but he knew
they would refuse. He hurried away, and at the end of the block, pulled the bill from his shirt
pocket: it was a crisp twenty-dollar bill.
"Oh, man, I shouldn't have lied," he said under his breath as he started up the street like a zombie.
He wanted to run to church for Saturday confession, but it was past four-thirty, when confession
stopped.
He returned to the bush where he had hidden the rake and his sister's bike and rode home slowly,
not daring to touch the money in his pocket. At home, in the privacy of his room, he examined
the twenty-dollar bill. He had never had so much money. It was probably enough to buy a
secondhand guitar. But he felt bad, like the time he stole a dollar from the secret fold inside his
older brothels, wallet.
Fausto went outside and sat on the fence. "Yeah," he said. "I can probably get a guitar for twenty.
Maybe at a yard


place where no writing existed; and then human memories and mouths and ears were the only
ways those human beings could store and relay information. They said that we who live in the
Western culture are so conditioned to the "crutch of print" that few among us comprehend what a
trained memory is capable of.
Since my forefather had said his name was "=Kin-tay" properly spelled "=Kinte," they said-and
since the =Kinte clan was old and well known in The =Gambia, they promised to do what they
could to find a griot who might be able to assist my search.
Back in the =UnitedStates, I began devouring books on =African history. It grew quickly into
some kind of obsession to correct my ignorance concerning the earth's second-largest continent.
It embarrasses me to this day that up to then my images about =Africa had been largely derived
or inferred from =Tarzan movies and my very little authentic knowledge had come from only
occasional leafing through the =NationalGeographic. All of a sudden now, after reading all day,
I'd sit on the edge of my bed at night studying a map of =Africa, memorizing the different
countries' relative positions and the principal waters where slave ships had operated.
After some weeks, a registered letter came from The =ambia; it suggested that when possible, I
should come back.

I again visited Cousin =Georgia in =KansasCity-something had urged me to do so, and I found
her quite ill. But she was thrilled to hear both what I had learned and what I hoped to learn. She
wished me Godspeed, and I flew then to =Africa.
The same men with whom I had previously talked told me now in a rather matter-of-fact manner
that they had caused word to be put out in the back country, and that a griot very knowledgeable
of the =Kinte clan had indeed been found-his name, they said, was


naturally get up with the light and go to bed with the dark."
Link went outside and brushed his teeth at the pump and then went to bed. When he blew out the
lamp, complete darkness descended. There were no distant street lights outside his window and
no occasional flash of headlights. The room was so totally black that it bothered him. He glanced
at his watch just to be certain that nothing had happened to his eyes. After about ten minutes he
was able to make out the square of his window, a slightly grayer shade of black in the black wall.
Suddenly he heard something rustling around outside. It sounded enormous. =CharleyHorse had
put new screens on the windows, but would a screen discourage a bear? He tried to convince
himself that if iron bars had been needed, they would have been put on. The rustling was
suddenly replaced by a gnawing sound as though a rat the size of a bear were gnawing down a
big tree. There were lots of trees, he decided, one or more less would make no difference as long
as it didn't fall on him. He had just become resigned to the gnawing, when suddenly the night
was pierced with a blood-chilling screech: "=Oouuooouuuoo, oh oh oh!" This brought him bolt
upright in bed. Then he lay back down again. He'd read of screech owls. The screech was
repeated, and then in the distance he heard a high-pitched barking, like a dog but still not a dog.
The peace and quiet of, the deep . woods! he thought disgustedly. What he needed was a few
trucks or cement mixers driving down the street so he could get to sleep. He covered his ears
with his pillow and closed his eyes.
He drifted off to sleep in spite of the strange noises, and the next thing he knew it was light and
he was awake. He could smell coffee. He got dressed, went out to the pump, and sloshed cold
water over his face. On his wav back he noticed the broom that had been left

&&000

&&000 USA SCHOOLBOOKS                                                                 [US907MCG.TXT]

McGRAW-HILL

1998

7TH GRADE LITERATURE

XEROXED AT BROCKPORT, SCANNEDM OCR'D AND EDITED BY DPH 9JULY 2004

&&111


fit into definite types. There were the =Counters, for instance: fast-walking men, red-cheeked
women, keeping score of how many times they walked around the dack, reveling in how fit they
were. Then there were the =StylishStrollers, the Huffers and =Puffers, the =Lovebirds, leaning on
each other, the =QueasyStomachs who clutched the railing and hoped for (he best.
"You notice there's no one our age," =Andrea said.
That was true. We had seen young people who were probably in their twenties, children who
were =Edward's age, and of course the majority who were our parents' age or older. But no one
who might be in seventh or eighth grade or even high school.
=Andrea jumped from her chair. "I'm going to explore."
Normally I would have gone with her but I hadn't had a chance yet to get my fill of the ocean. It
was the same ocean as I'd had in =Peitaiho' and I looked and looked. I walked up to the top deck
where I could see the whole circle of water around me. I was smack in the middle of no place, I
thought. Not in =China, not in =America, not in the past, not in the future. In between everything.
It was nice.
By the time I went back to my chair, =Andrea had returned from her explorations.
"There really is no one our age on board," she reported. "Well, we can play shuffleboard and
deck tennis. There are lots of things we can do."
Andrea sighed. "I was hoping for some boys."
I knew that =Andrea had begun to like boys. She said that everyone at the =Shanghai =American
=School had a crush on someone else and when your love was requited  well, that was the cat 's.
What I couldn't understand was how someone could be in love with =JohnGilbert and a kid in
knickers at the same time. I suppose =Andrea could see that I was trying to figure out the boy
business. She gave me a curious look. "Just how do you picture your school in =Washington, she
asked?
there was an island.  It was an island with
trees and meadows, and many kinds of animals. There were mice, rabbits and deer, squirrels,
foxes and several kinds of birds.
All the animals on the island depended on the plants and the other animals for their food and
well-being. Some animals ate grass or other plants; some ate insects; some ate other animals. The
island - animals were healthy. There was plenty of food for all.
A family of wolves lived on the island, too, a male wolf, a female, and their five cubs.
One day the wolf cubs were playing on the beach while their mother and father slept. The cubs 
found a strange object at the edge of the water.
and those that function underwater need none of the timeconsuming decompression that prevents
pressure sickness or death in humans. =Gloria and =DeepTow are two of the "seeing ears" that
use sonar to explore the structures on the ocean bottom. Robots can build and repair submarine
installations and lay pipelines and cables, leaving human beings to do less dangerous work.
Someday robots will be used to build offshore airports, loading docks, and power plants. They
may even help to construct small communities on the surface of the ocean. Plans for an
=Aquapolis or a =TritonCity envision a doughnutshaped apartment and shopping complex atop a
circle of long columns rising from the sea.
Some remote instruments work twenty-four hours a day, all year long. They are buoys that bob
about on the ocean's surface and collect information about weather conditions, surface currents
and waves, and the temperature and composition of the water. A newly-designed monster buoy
can take one hundred different air and water measurements while continuing to function in winds
up to =160 miles per hour and in seas =sixty feet high.
The data that's gathered by buoys is often transmitted to the most spectacular of all remote
instruments-the earth orbiting oceanographic satellites. The first of these =SeasatI was launched
in =1978. From its =500-mile high vantage point, =Seasat could scan about =ninety-five percent
of the world ocean every =thirty-six hours. The =NimbusI is another such satellite. It carries a
special instrument that accurately measures the distribution of color on the ocean's surface. This
color shows the location of oil slicks, the presence of marine life, the meanderings of currents,
and the areas where rivers spread their sediment and pollution into the sea.
Plans are being made for the launching of other oceanographic satellites. =TOPEX will measure
ocean currents more accurately than has ever been done before.
With robots prowling the ocean and satellites keeping a tireless vigil from space, it may
sometimes seem that human beings are being pushed to the sidelines in the exploration of the
world ocean. The opposite is true. Only humans have the ability to make quick decisions and to
direct these remote instruments. Only humans have the ability to analyze the data
"The =PTA meeting's next week again," I told my husband one evening. "I'm going to find
Charles's mother there."
"Ask her what happened to =Charles," my husband said. "I'd like to know."
"I'd like to know myself," I said.
On Friday of that week things were back to normal. "You now what =Charles did today?"
=Laurie demanded at the lunch able, in a voice slightly awed. "He told a little girl to say a Word
and she said it and the teacher washed her mouth out =Pith soap and =Charles laughed."
"What word?" his father asked unwisely, and =Laurie said,
I'll have to whisper it to you, it's so bad." He got down off his lair and went around to his father.
Hisfather bent his head and =Laurie whispered joyfully. His father's eyes widened.
"Did =Charles tell the little girl to say that?" he asked respectfully.
"She said it twice," =Laurie said. "=Charles told her to say it twice."
"What happened to =Charles?" my husband asked.
"Nothing," =Laurie asked. "He was passing out the crayons." Monday morning =Charles
abandoned the little girl and said the evil word himself three or four times, getting his mouth
washed out with soap each time.  He also threw chalk. My husband came to the door with me
that evening as I set down for the =PTA meeting. "Invite her over for a cup of tea after the
meeting," he said. "I want to get a look at her." "If only she's there," I said prayerfully.
"She'll be there," my husband said. "I don't see how they would hold a =PTA meeting without
=Charles's mother."
At the meeting I sat restlessly, scanning each comfortable iatronly face, trying to determine
which one hid the secret of =Charles. None of them looked to me haggard enough. No one stood
up in the meeting and apologized for the way her son had been acting. No one mentioned
=Charles. After the meeting I identified and sought out =Laurie's kindergarten teacher. She had a
plate with a cup of tea and a piece of chocolate cake; I had a plate with a cup of tea and a piece of
iarshmallow cake. We maneuvered up to one another cauously, and smiled.
"I've been so anxious to meet you," I said. "I'm =Laurie's Mother."

wrested from the wilderness. They had tamed the bush, and in return it yielded them their food
and their scant living from trap lines and a wood lot, but the struggle to keep it in subjection was
endless. They had retained their =Finnish identity complete when they left their homeland,
exchanging only one country's set of solitudes and vast lonely forests for another's, and as yet
their only real contact with the new world that lay beyond their property line was through their
ten-year-old daughter =Helvi, who knew no other homeland. =Helvi walked the lonely miles to
the waiting school bus each day, and through her they strengthened their roots in the security of
the =NewWorld, and were content meanwhile with horizons limited by their labor.
On the Sunday afternoon that the beaver dam broke, a day of some relaxation, =Helvi was down
by the river, skipping flat stones across the water, and wishing that she had a companion; for she
found it difficult to be entirely fair in a competition always held against herself. The riverbank
was steep and high here, so she was quite safe when a rushing torrent of water, heralded by a
great curling wave, swept past. She stood watching it, fascinated by the spectacle, thinking that
she must go and tell her father, when her eye was caught by a piece of debris that had been
whirling around in a back eddy and was now caught on some boulders at the edge of the bank.
She could see what looked like a small, limp body on the surface. She ran along by the boiling
water to investigate, scrambling down the bank, to stand looking pityingly at the wet, bedraggled
body, wondering what it was, for she had never seen anything like it before. She dragged the
mass of twigs and branches further up on land, then ran to call her mother.
Mrs =Nurmi was out in the yard by an old wood stove which she still used for boiling the
vegetable dyes for her weaving, or peelings and scraps for the hens. She followed =Helvi, calling
out to her husband to come and see this strange animal washed up by an unfamiliar, swift-surging
river.
He came, with his unhurried countryman's walk and quiet thoughtful face, and joined the others
to look down in silence at the small limp body, the darkly plastered fur betraying its slightness,
the frail skull bones and thin crooked tail mercilessly exposed. Suddenly he bent down and
pulled back the skin above and below one eye and looked more closely.


&&000

&&000 USA SCHOOLBOOKS                                                                   [US907HM2.TXT]

PUBLISHER: HOUGHTON MIFFLIN

7TH GRADE

1990

XEROXED FROM BROCKPORT, SCANNED, OCR'D AND EDITED BY DPH 10 July 2004

&&111

chance is there for a guy like =EddieBrown or somebody like that coming down to see me in this
town?" "You have to remember that =EddieBrown's the big shot," I said, "the great =Yankee
scout."
"Sure," the kid said. "I never even saw him, and I'll never see him in this place. I have an idea
that if they ever ask =Dall about me he keeps knocking me down."
"Why don't you go after =Dall?" I said. "I had trouble like that once myself, but I figured out a
way to get attention."
"You did?" the kid said.
"I threw a couple of  balls over the first baseman's head," I said. "I threw a couple of games away,
and that really got the manager sore. I was lousing up his ball club and his record. So what does
he do? He blows the whistle on me, and what happens? That gets the brass curious, and they send
down to see what's wrong."
"Is that so?" the kid said. "What happened?"
"Two weeks later," I said, "I was up with =Columbus."
"Is that right?" the kid said.
"Sure," I said, egging him on. "What have you got to lose?"
"Nothing," the kid said. "I haven't got anything to lose."
"I'd try it," I said.
"I might try it," the kid said. "I might try it tonight if the spot comes up."
I could see from the way he said it that he was madder than he'd said. Maybe you think this is
mean to steam a kid up like this, but I do some strange things.
"Take over," I said. "Don't let this guy ruin your career."
"I'll try it," the kid said. "Are you coming out to the park tonight?"
"I wouldn't miss it," I said. "This will be better than making out route sheets and sales orders."
It's not much of a ball park in this town-old wooden bleachers and an old wooden fence and
about four =hundred people in the stands. The first game wasn't much either, with the home club
winning something like =8 to =1.
This made the cyclone so furious it didn't know where it was going. It raced across =Arizona. It
dug in its toes as it went and tore a gulley through the heart of the mountains. This put
=PecosBill in a worse fix than ever. He not only had to dodge the original mountains the cyclone
had picked up and the =thousands of trees swirling in every direction, but now the air was
becoming so full of dust and pieces of rock that he had to blow with all his might before he could
take a full breath.
His only safety lay in his dodging so fast that the cyclone couldn't get its eyes on him. If it ever
had found out where he really was, for a minute, it would have buried him under a mighty pile of
earth and rocks.
=Pecos was just beginning to think he couldn't last much longer when the cyclone came to the
same conclusion. A busted broncho couldn't have felt worse. And no matter what the cyclone
did, it just naturally couldn't get rid of =PecosBill.
Just then, however, it had another bright idea. It would rain out from under him! Now as soon as
=Pecos saw what was happening he said to himself: "This is the same tactics a broncho uses
when he rears over on his back. The only thing left for me to do now is to jump."
The water beneath him was falling in torrents and regular waterspouts. So fast was the downfall
that the water rushed through the great gully that the cyclone had just cut between the mountains,
and quick as a wink made the =GrandCanyon of the =Colorado.
=PecosBill began to look hard in every direction to see where he'd better jump. If the sky beyond
the edge of the cyclone hadn't been clear, he wouldn't have known in the least where he was, for
by this time he was a thousand feet above the limit of the very highest clouds.
Beneath him lay huge piles of jagged rock and he couldn't help remembering how =OldSatan
looked after he had been dragged down from the top of =Pike'sPeak. So he turned his eyes in
other directions. =Pecos did not for a minute doubt his own ability to grow a complete new
skeleton if he had to. But he didn't want to waste


kid had a lemonade, and I told him a few stories and he turned out to be a real good listener.
"But what do you do now, Mr. Franklin?" he said after a while.
"I sell hardware," I said. "I can think of some things I'd like better, but I was going to ask you
how you like playing in this league."
"Well," the kid said, "I suppose it's all right. I guess I've got no kick coming."
"Oh, I don't know," I said, "I understand you're too
good for this league. What are they trying to do to you?" "I don't know," the kid said. "I can't
understand it." "What's the trouble?"
"Well," the kid said, "I don't get along very well here. I mean there's nothing wrong with my
playing. I'm hitting .365 right now. I lead the league in stolen bases. There's nobody can field
with me, but who cares?"
"Who manages this ball club?"
"=AlDall," the kid said. "You remember, he played in the outfield for the =Yankees for about
four years." "I remember."
"Maybe he is all right," the kid said, "but I don't get along with him. He's on my neck all the
time."
"Well," I said, "that's the way they are in the minors sometimes. You have to remember the guy is
looking out for himself and his ball club first. He's not worried about you."
"I know that," the kid said. "If I get the big hit or make the play he never says anything. The other
night I tried to take second on a loose ball and I got caught in the run-down. He bawls me out in
front of everybody. There's nothing I can do."
"Oh, I don't know," I said. "This is probably a guy who knows he's got a good thing in you, and
he's looking to keep you around. You people lead the league, and that makes him look good. He
doesn't want to lose you to =KansasCity or the =Yankees."
"That's what I mean," the kid said. "When the =Yankees sent me down here they said, `Don't
worry. We'll keep an eye on you.' So =Dall never sends a good report on me. Nobody ever comes
down to look me over. 
=Rip! =RipVanWinkle!
=RipVanWinkle!
=Rip's dog barks offstage; thunder rumbles. =Rip peers anxiously in the direction of the sounds,
then jumps back in astonishment.)
Why, what are those fellows doing up here?
=Rip steps further back as four sailors enter, followed by =HendrikHudson. All wear
old-fashioned clothing; =Hudson wears a plumed hat. First sailor carries a large water keg.
Second sailor carries a sack of mugs; third and fourth sailors carry ninepins and balls.
=RIP nervous, but ready to help: Here, let me hold that! Takes keg and sets it down. By thunder,
that's heavy! Why are you carrying a water keg all the way up the mountain?
=FIRSTSAILOR gruffly: It's =Hudson River water, man-the-best in the world. We've not tasted
it for many a year.
=HUDSON to second sailor: You there, pour out some water, it's been a long climb. Second
sailor hands out mugs. =Hudson takes two, hands one to =Rip. You, friend, have a mug with us
and join the game! Third and fourth sailors set up the ninepins.
=RE: Thank you, Captain. Drinks and smacks his lips. Ah, this is the best water I've ever tasted,
though I drank from the =Hudson River only this morning. Must be improved when you carry it
so far. I'm still lightheaded, though, so I won't join the game  just watch. =Rip yawns. Sailors
bowl noisily. =Rip sits down near left curtain, then lies down slowly. Getting sleepy
just for a minute or two lies down just out of sight. This allows =Rip as old man to take his place
unseen.
=HUDSON smiling after =Rip: Just for a minute or two -right, men?
Sailors chortle quietly, gather up belongings, and leave; laughter and thunder trail off into
silence. Lights dim and =8'o out. In a minute, lights brighten. =Rip as old man Yawns, then
slowly gets up. Clothing is same as before, but looks old and ragged. He has a long white beard.

&&000