then, you say ‘You was’; it should be ‘You were.’ You say ‘I seen’ for ‘I saw.’ You use the double negative…”
“What’s the double negative?” he demanded, then added humbly: “You see, I don’t even understand your explanations.”
“I’m afraid I didn’t explain that,” she smiled. “A double negative is… let me see – well, you say, ‘Never helped nobody.’ ‘Never’ is a negative. ‘Nobody’ is another negative. It is a rule that two negatives make a positive. ‘Never helped nobody’ means that, not helping nobody, they must have helped somebody.”
“That’s pretty clear,” he said. “I never thought of it before, and I’ll never say it again.”
“You’ll find it all in the grammar book,” she went on. “There’s something else I noticed in your speech. You say ‘don’t’ when you shouldn’t. ‘Don’t’ is a contraction, and stands for two words. Do you know them?”
He thought a moment, then answered: “‘Do not.’”
She nodded her head, and said: “And you use ‘don’t’ when you mean ‘does not.’”
He was puzzled over this.
“Give me an illustration,” he asked.
“Well…” she thought a moment. “’It don’t do to be hasty.’ Change ‘don’t’ to ‘do not,’ and it reads, ‘It do not do to be hasty,’ which is wrong. It must jar on your ear.”
“Can’t say that it does,” he replied judicially.
“Why didn’t you say, ‘Can’t say that it do?’”
“That sounds wrong,” he said slowly. “As for the other, I guess my ear ain’t had the trainin’ yours has.”
“There is no such word as ‘ain’t,’” she said emphatically.
Martin flushed again,
“And you say ‘ben’ for ‘been,’” she continued; “‘I come’ for ‘I came’; and the way you chop your endings is something dreadful.”
“What do you mean?” He leaned forward, feeling that he ought to get down on his knees before so marvellous a mind. “How do I chop?”
“You don’t complete the endings. ‘A-n-d’ spells ‘and.’ You pronounce it ‘an.’ ‘I-n-g’ spells ‘ing.’ Sometimes you pronounce it ‘ing,’ and sometimes you leave off the ‘g.’ And then you slur by dropping initial letters and diphthongs. ‘T-h-e-m’ spells ‘them.’ You pronounce it – oh, well, it is not necessary to go over all of them. What you need is a grammar book. I’ll get one and show you how to begin.”
When she returned with the book she drew a chair near his and sat down beside him. She turned the pages of the grammar and their heads were inclined towards each other.
For the moment the great gulf that separated them was bridged. He had been caught up into the clouds and carried to her.
Several weeks went by, during which Martin Eden studied the grammar book Ruth had given him, reviewed the books on etiquette, and read voraciously the books that caught his fancy.
Of his own class he saw nothing. The girls of the Lotus Club which he had frequented wondered what had become of him.
During those several weeks he saw Ruth half a dozen times. She helped him with his English, corrected his pronunciation, and started him on arithmetic. But their intercourse was not all devoted to elementary study; and there were times when their conversation turned on other themes – the last poetry he had read, the latest poet she had studied.
As her interest in Martin increased the remodelling of his life became a passion with her.
“I want to tell you about father’s friend Mr. Butler,” she said one afternoon when grammar and arithmetic and poetry had been put aside. “His father had come from Australia and when he died Mr. Butler, Charles Butler he was called, found himself alone in the world without any relatives in California. He went to work in a printing office – I have heard him tell of it many times – and he got three dollars a week at first. His income to-day is at least thirty thousand a year. How did he do it? He was honest and industrious and economical. He denied himself the enjoyments that most boys indulge in. He had his eyes fixed always on the future. He worked in the daytime and at night he went to night school. He was ambitious. He wanted a career, not a livelihood and he made sacrifices for his ultimate gain. He decided upon the law and he entered father’s office as an office boy, think of that, and got only four dollars a week.
But he had learned how to be economical and out of that four dollars he continued saving money. He studied bookkeeping and typewriting. He quickly became a clerk and made himself invaluable. Father appreciated him. It was on father’s suggestion that he went to law college. He became a lawyer and father took him in as junior partner. He is a great man. Such a life is an inspiration to all of us. It shows that a man with a will may rise superior to his environment.”
She paused for breath and to see how Martin was receiving it.
“Do you know,” he said, “I feel sorry for Mr. Butler. He robbed himself of life for the sake of thirty thousand dollars a year. Working all day and studying all night – just working, never having a good time!”
Martin was dissatisfied with Mr. Butler’s career. There was something paltry about it after all. Thirty thousand a year was all right, but inability to be humanly happy robbed such an income of its value.
Much of this he tried to express to Ruth and shocked her and made it clear that more remodelling was necessary. She could not guess that this man who had come from beyond her horizon had wider and deeper concepts than her own;
and she dreamed of helping him to see as she saw, of widening his horizon until it was identified with hers.
Exercises
1. Listen to the chapter with your book closed and mark the statements Y (yes) or N (no).
1. Nothing remained for Martin but to read.
2. The librarian was annoyed to see Eden every day.
3. The librarian did not give Eden any advice.
4. Martin decided to phone Ruth.
5. Ruth wondered if she could get some advice from Martin.
6. Martin’s grammar was awful.
7. Ruth explained to Martin how to speak correct English.
8. Ruth did not have any intention to remodel Martin’s life.
9. Ruth considered the life of Mr. Butler should be an inspiration to all.
10. Martin’s ideas did not surprise Ruth.
2. Learn the words from the text:
proper, devote, ordinary, attempt, contradiction, profoundly, solve, advice, tackle, interrupt, assist, hurt, demand, complete, ambitious, sacrifice, identify.
3.
