Section I
Text 1 — Cartoon
MICHAEL DZIEKAN
Happy Harold – ‘Cause All Children Should Smile
Text 2 — Prose Fiction extract
Desolate Dreaming
She stood at the window, balanced precariously upon her toes, face tensed. Wobbling
slightly, she pressed her tiny hands up against the glass to steady herself, straining to
keep her head above the sill. She curled her palms into two small circles, pressing her
nose flat against the windowpane as she stared through it. Her eyes narrowed as they
peered through the dim grey light. All was quiet and still; nothing moved through the
gentle blanket of black dust.
She had always stared, ever since she was old enough to reach the window. All children
did, though nobody could remember why. Most wrote it down to the inquisitive spirit
of youth, others said it was something more. Something in our nature. It didn’t matter,
nothing ever changed out there. The dust just kept falling.
Still, she seemed enthralled by the desolate rock which stretched out into the distance.
A flat grey ocean which stretched to the base of the towering mountains in the distance.
Nothing was built near the home. Well, except for the rail lines, sleeping under the
thick layer of dust. It had been a long time since the last train. Perhaps she stared out
imagining the crowded shanty towns below the mountains, gnarled creations of twisted
metal, rubbish and rubble, rebuilt over the workers’ tunnels after each dust storm.
JAMES PATTINSON
Desolate Dreaming
Text 3 — Nonfiction extract
Two events make me remember my tenth birthday—a sheet and pillowcase party, at which all
the children who went to Alice Murdock's party were assembled; and the glorious fact that on
my tenth birthday my parents gave me a Mason & Hamlin cabinet organ, most ornate , most
gorgeous, with a chromo of an autumn field on the centerpiece at the top.
It came from Chicago and was the town pride. That it was the most splendid organ in town,
where not more than three or four pianos rivaled it, of course, did not make me humble.
Music, since I can remember, has always been one of my chief delights. I can recall now, after
seventy years, hearing the El Dorado silver cornet band playing down in Burdette's grove by
the mill. The strains wafted across our creek to our place. I remember even that I was sitting
under the grapevines preparing my little stomach for a gorgeous bellyache, eating the half-green
grapes and listening to what I felt was heavenly music. It was the first band I had ever heard.
I "took lessons" in music, first from a Mrs. Charley Hobson and then from a most accomplished
musician—a Mrs. Fannie De Grasso Black... I never had to be lashed like a galley slave to my
practice at home. I was up and at it as soon as I did my chores, and probably before I had got
my woodbox filled for the day.
Always I had my lesson, for I loved to play the pieces I heard on the street or at school or at the
minstrel show or at a circus. The atmosphere of my life seemed to be charged with song and
dance.
My father saw it a year or so after the organ came. One day he pointed out an old whiskey-
soaked failure, whom the town jeered at - a man who gave fiddling lessons and played for
dances. He drank like a fish as everybody knew, and never paid his debts.
And one day, as he passed, my father called me to his chair on the front porch, where I stood
between his legs, and he put his arm about me and said, "Willie, see old Professor Mechem!
Pretty poor pickin's of a man, isn't he?" I agreed. "Just about frazzled out and gone to hell."
Again I agreed. "Do you know what's the matter with him?" I certainly knew. At least when my
father went on, I was not surprised: "Music! Just too damned much music. He wasn't such a bad
feller when he was young. I knew him back in Leavenworth - dressed well and very sporty. But
he just let himself go on music. And he's a dead beat and a whiskey sot and everything else
that's mean, and it's music. And now, Willie, what do you say that we stop music lessons? I
don't want you to grow up like that."
WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE
Adapted from The Autobiography of William Allen White
1
learn by ear hear how it should sound without the need to read music
Text 4 — Poem
Difference
My mind’s a map. A mad sea-captain drew it
Under a flowing moon until he knew it;
Winds with brass trumpets, puffy-cheeked as jugs,
And states bright-patterned like Arabian rugs.
“Here there be tygers.” “Here we buried Jim.”
Here is the strait where eyeless fishes swim
About their buried idol, drowned so cold
He weeps away his eyes in salt and gold.
A country like the dark side of the moon,
A cider-apple country, harsh and boon,
A country savage as a chestnut-rind,
A land of hungry sorcerers.
Your mind?
—Your mind is water through an April night,
A cherry-branch, plume-feathery with its white,
A lavender as fragrant as your words,
A room where Peace and Honor talk like birds,
Sewing bright coins upon the tragic cloth
Of heavy Fate, and Mockery, like a moth,
Flutters and beats about those lovely things.
You are the soul, enchanted with its wings,
The single voice that raises up the dead
To shake the pride of angels.
I have said.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
Text 5 — Prose fiction extract
My mistress being dead, and I once more alone, I had to look out for a new place. About this
time I might be a little—a very little—shaken in nerves. I grant I was not looking well, but, on
the contrary, thin, haggard, and hollow-eyed; like a sitter-up at night, like an overwrought
servant, or a placeless person in debt. In debt, however, I was not; nor quite poor; for though
Miss Marchmont had not had time to benefit me, as, on that last night, she said she intended,
yet, after the funeral, my wages were duly paid by her second cousin, the heir, an avaricious-
looking man, with pinched nose and narrow temples, who, indeed, I heard long afterwards,
turned out a thorough miser: a direct contrast to his generous kinswoman, and a foil to her
memory, blessed to this day by the poor and needy. The possessor, then, of fifteen pounds; of
health, though worn, not broken, and of a spirit in similar condition; I might still; in comparison
with many people, be regarded as occupying an enviable position. An embarrassing one it was,
however, at the same time; as I felt with some acuteness on a certain day, of which the
corresponding one in the next week was to see my departure from my present abode, while with
another I was not provided.
In this dilemma I went, as a last and sole resource, to see and consult an old servant of our
family; once my nurse, now housekeeper at a grand mansion not far from Miss Marchmont’s.
I spent some hours with her; she comforted, but knew not how to advise me. Still all inward
darkness, I left her about twilight; a walk of two miles lay before me; it was a clear, frosty night.
In spite of my solitude, my poverty, and my perplexity, my heart, nourished and nerved with
the vigour of a youth that had not yet counted twenty-three summers, beat light and not feebly.
Not feebly, I am sure, or I should have trembled in that lonely walk, which lay through still
fields, and passed neither village nor farmhouse, nor cottage: I should have quailed in the
absence of moonlight, for it was by the leading of stars only I traced the dim path; I should have
quailed still more in the unwonted presence of that which to-night shone in the north, a moving
mystery—the Aurora Borealis. But this solemn stranger influenced me otherwise than through
my fears. Some new power it seemed to bring. I drew in energy with the keen, low breeze that
blew on its path. A bold thought was sent to my mind; my mind was made strong to receive it.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
From ‘Turning a New Leaf’, Villette
