7. How can you explain the title of the story?
8. Retell the story.
14. Заполните таблицу:
The Man Who Would Manage
They say – and I can believe it – that at nineteen months of age he wept because his grandmother did not allow him to feed her with a spoon, and that at three and a half he was trying to teach a frog to swim.
Two years later he nearly injured his left eye, when he was showing the cat how to carry kittens safely, and about the same period he was dangerously hurt by a bee when he was trying to replace it from one flower to another, where, as he thought, there was more honey.
His desire was always to help others. He could spend whole mornings explaining to elderly hens how to hatch eggs,[65] and he cancelled his afternoon’s walk to sit at home and crack nuts for his pet squirrel. Before he was seven he was arguing with his mother upon the management of children,[66] and reprove his father for incorrect education.
As a child he liked to mind other children.[67] It was not important to him whether the other children were older than himself or younger, stronger or weaker, whenever and wherever he found them he began to mind them. Once, during a school treat, the teacher heard piteous cries from a distant part of the wood. The teacher discovered him upon the ground, his cousin, a boy twice his own weight,[68] was sitting upon him and steadily whacking him. The teacher rescued him and asked:
“Why don’t you play with the little boys? What are you doing with him?”
“Please, sir,” was the answer, “I was minding him.”
He was a good-natured lad, and at school he was always allowing the whole class to copy from his paper. Unfortunately, his answers were awfully wrong, and the result to his followers was bad. So they were waiting for him outside later and punching him.
All his energies went to the instruction of others. He took young boys to his house taught them to box.
“Now, try and hit me on the nose,” he offered. “Don’t be afraid. Hit as hard as you can.”
And they did it. When he had recovered from his surprise, and a little lessened the bleeding,[69] he explained to them how they had done it all wrong.
Twice at golf he lamed himself[70] for over a week, when he was showing how to play. After that he had a long argument with the umpire.
During a stormy Channel passage,[71] he rushed excitedly upon the bridge in order to inform the captain that he had “just seen a light about two miles away to the left”; and when he is on the top of an omnibus he generally sits beside the driver, and shows him how to drive.
It was upon an omnibus where I met him. I was sitting behind two ladies when the conductor came up to collect fares. One of them gave him a sixpence and told him to take to Piccadilly Circus,[72] which was twopence.
“No,” said the other lady to her friend, and gave the man a shilling, “I owe you sixpence, you give me fourpence and I’ll pay for the two.”
The conductor took the shilling, gave two twopenny tickets, and then began to think about the change.
“That’s right,” said the lady who had spoken last, “give my friend fourpence.”
The conductor did so.
“Now you give that fourpence to me.”
The friend handed it to her.
“And you,” she concluded to the conductor, “give me eightpence, then we shall be all right.”
The conductor gave her the eightpence – the sixpence he had taken from the first lady, with a penny and two halfpennies [73] out of his own bag – distrustfully, and retired, muttering something about calculation.
“Now,” said the elder lady to the younger, “I owe you a shilling.”
I thought the incident closed, when suddenly a florid gentleman on the opposite seat said loudly:–
“Hi, conductor! you’ve cheated these ladies out of fourpence.”
“What about fourpence, then?” replied the indignant conductor from the top of the steps, “it was a twopenny fare.”
“Two twopences don’t make eightpence,” retorted the florid gentleman hotly. “How much did you give the conductor, my dear?” he asked the first of the young ladies.
“I gave him sixpence,” replied the lady. “And then I gave you fourpence, you know,” she said to her companion.
“Expensive tickets, aren’t they?” noticed a common-looking man[74] on the seat behind.
“Oh, that’s impossible, dear,” returned the other, “because I owed you sixpence in the beginning.”
