ENGLISH FOR JUNIOR STUDENTS

Try and answer the following questions:
1. Can you find Coombe, Surrey, and Oxford on the map? 2. What
can you tell of England’s history and life at Galsworthy’s time?
3. When did Queen Victoria reign? What was she famous for? 4. In
front of what famous building is a monument to Queen Victoria
erected in London? 5. What do you know of King Edward VII?
6. What periods in England’s history are called Victorian and
Edwardian? What are these periods characterized by? 7. What
can you tell of Galsworthy’s life and literary career? 8. What are the
chief characteristics of Galsworthy’s works?
6
THE APPLE TREE
(an extract)
On the first of May, after their last year together at college,
Frank Ashurst and his friend Robert Garton were on a tramp. They
had walked that day from Brent, intending to make Chagford, but
Ashurst’s football knee had given out, and according to their map
they had still some seven miles to go. They were sitting on a bank
beside the road, where a track crossed alongside a wood, resting
the knee and talking of the universe, as young men will. Both were
over six feet, and thin as rails; Ashurst pale, idealistic, full of absence;
Garton queer, round-the-corner, knotted, curly, like some primeval
beast. Both had a literary bent; neither wore a hat. Ashurst’s hair
was smooth, pale, wavy, and had a way of rising on either side of
his brow, as if always being flung back; Garton’s was a kind of
dark unfathomed mop. They had not met a soul for miles.
“My dear fellow,” Garton was saying, “pity’s only an effect of
self-consciousness; it’s a disease of the last five thousand years.
The world was happier without.”
Ashurst, following the clouds with his eyes, answered:
“It’s the pearl in the oyster, anyway.”
“My dear chap, all our modern unhappiness comes from pity.
Look at animals, and Red Indians, limited to feeling their own
occasional misfortunes; then look at ourselves – never free from
feeling the toothaches of others. Let’s get back to feeling for nobody,
and have a better time.”