تدریس

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تدریس تکنیکهای زبان ت پنجشنبه ۲۲ شهریور ۰۳ | ۱۹:۰۲ ۹ بازديد
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
MODULE - 6
Natural Resources
177
Air and Water
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Notes
Major Primary pollutants include:
Carbon monoxide (CO) is produced by incomplete combustion of fuels like
petrol, natural gas, coal or wood. It is a colourless and odourless gas but very
poisonous in nature.
Carbon dioxide (CO2
) is produced by complete combustion of fuels in motor
vehicles and various industries. It is a colourless, odourless and non-toxic gas. (A
person dies in atmosphere of carbon dioxide due to lack of oxygen and not due
to its toxic nature). (Read details in lesson 30, section 30.8.2)
Sulphur oxides (SOx) (mainly sulphur dioxide, SO 2
) are produced by combustion
of coal and petroleum and also produced in volcanoes. It is also produced in
various industrial processes. Oxidation of sulphur dioxide (SO2
) to sulphur
trioxide (SO3
) results in formation of sulphuric acid (H2
SO 4
) which causes acid
rain. (See Lesson-30, Section 30.8.4)
Nitrogen oxides (NOx) especially nitrogen dioxide, NO2 is a reddish brown gas
with pungent smell. It catalyses the oxidation of SO 2 to SO3 and indirectly causes
acid rain.
Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) include methane, benzene, toluene and
xylene. While methane is a major green house gas, others are suspected to be
carcinogens (cancer inducing).
Particulate matter consists of tiny particles of solids or liquids suspended in air.
These are also called ‘suspended particulate matter (SPM)’. The major sources
for these include volcanoes, dust storms and burning of fuels. These can cause
heart and lung diseases and breathing disorders.
Chloro-fluorocarbons (CFCs) are used as refrigerants in air conditioners and
refrigerators and are harmful to the ozone layer which protect us from harmful
ultraviolet rays. You shall read about the ozone hole in Lesson30, Section 30.8.1)
Major secondary pollutants include :
Photochemical smog (smoke + fog) formed by the action of ultraviolet light from
the sun on particulate matter or formed due to burning of coal and petrol in an
atmosphere containing SO2
. It prevents dissipation of pollutants and causes
breathing disorders. Read in detail from Lesson-30, Section 30.8.3
Ground level ozone (O3
) is formed from NOx and VOCs. It is a constituent of
smog. Normally ozone occurs in stratosphere and prevents UV radiations from
reaching earth’s surface. At ground level, when inhaled, it is harmful for health
of humans and animals.
 
 
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
MODULE - 6 Air and Water
Natural Resources
178
Notes
INTEXT QUESTIONS 26.3
1. What happens to atmospheric pressure as we climb a mountain?
___________________________________________________________
2. At high altitude the people find their nose bleeding. Why?
___________________________________________________________
3. Which layer of atmosphere is the closest to the earth’s surface and which is
the farthest from earth’s surface?
___________________________________________________________
4. In which layer of atmosphere is ozone layer present?
___________________________________________________________
5. Name (i) a green house gas (ii) gas responsible for acid rain (ii) chemicals
causing ozone hole
___________________________________________________________
26.4 WATER - ITS SOURCES AND PROPERTIES
Next to air, water is the most important substance needed for survival of living
beings. Living beings cannot live long without water. Water is available in plenty
on earth. More than three-fourth of the earth’s surface is covered with water in the
form of seas, rivers and lakes. It is also found inside the earth’s crust Most of the
water that we get from the wells comes from this source.
26.4.1 Sources of water
The natural sources of water are rain, springs, wells, rivers and seas.
(a) Rain water: Rain water is considered to be the purest form of natural water
(distilled water) free from impurities. Water from sea and rivers get evaporated
into water vapour by the heat of sun. During this process of evaporation,
impurities are left behind. When the water vapours go high up in the air they
condense to form clouds. The water drops come down as rain.
(b) Spring water: Springs are formed by percolation of rain water into soil.
Springs supply water to wells and lakes.
(c) Well water: The rain water seeps through the soil and goes down and is
stored over rocks or hard earth crust. On digging the well this underground water
 
 
MODULE - 6
Natural Resources
179
Air and Water
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Notes
becomes available to us. This is known as well water. This water may not be pure
and may contain impurities such as suspended particles, bacteria and other
microorganisms.
(d) River water: Rivers are formed by melting of snow on the mountain, and
also sometimes from the rain water. River water is also not pure and is not fit for
drinking.
(e) Sea water: Out of all the sources, sea water is the largest natural source of
water. However, it is also the source of common salt and other important
chemicals. It is the most impure form of water. All the impurities dissolved in river
water are carried into the sea. As such, sea water cannot be used for drinking
purpose because of high salinity and impurities.
26.4.2 Potable and Non-potable water
Potable water means water which is fit for drinking by humans and other animals.
It can be consumed with low risk of immediate or long term harm. Non-potable
water is that which is not safe for drinking. It may carry disease causing microbes,
and high levels of dissolved salts and minerals, heavy metals and suspended
solids. Drinking or using such water for cooking leads to illnesses and may even
cause death.
Contaminated or non-potable water can be treated to turn it into potable or
drinking water. Let us learn about simple methods of purifying water.
26.4.3 Purification of water to make it suitable for drinking
• By decantation, insoluble impurities can be removed. Decantation is the-
process of separation of solid from the liquid by allowing the former to settle
down and pouring off the latter. Water is kept in a vessel for some time. The
suspended insoluble impurities settle down at the bottom. Clean water can
now be carefully poured into another clean vessel without disturbing the
settled impurities which are left behind. But, this water has to be made fit for
drinking through further treatment.
• By filtration also, the insoluble impurities can be removed. It is a more
effective method than decantation and can remove even very fine particles of
insoluble impurities. A piece of clean and very fine cloth can be used as a cheap
and easily available filter. When water is poured through it, the insoluble
impurities are stopped by the filter and clean water passes through it.
Commercially available water filters use ‘candles’ made of porous material
(figure 26.5). Pure water passes through it leaving the impurities on its outer
surface. These candles must be cleaned and washed periodically to maintain their
effectiveness.
 
 
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
MODULE - 6 Air and Water
Natural Resources
180
Notes
• By boiling, bacteria and other germs in the
water get killed. When boiled water is allowed
to cool, heavy impurities collect at the bottom
and dissolved salts form a thin layer on the
surface called scum. Now if we filter the
water, it becomes safe for drinking.
• By chlorine treatment small living organisms
and bacteria are killed. If required, treated
water may be filtered to remove insoluble
impurities.
26.4.4 Properties of water
Water, is a common ordinary substance of everyday use. However it is its unusual
and unique properties which make its use important and essential in our daily life.
26.4.4a Water acts as universal solvent
Water is certainly one of the best and most useful solvents that we have. It has a
unique property of dissolving a large number of substances starting from solids
such as common salt, sugar, to gases like oxygen, carbon dioxide etc. Indeed, as
so many substances dissolve in water, it is called a universal solvent.-This
property of water is useful for plants to take their food materials and minerals from
the soil. It helps us to absorb food that we eat. Many chemical reactions also take
place only in aqueous solution.
26.4.4b Hard water and Soft water
Water forms lather with soap which is used for cleaning purposes. It is called soft
water. Sometimes water from some sources like rivers or hand pumps does not
produce any lather with soap. It is called hard water.
Water, which we get from taps, contain lesser amounts of dissolved salts in it than
water that we get from hand pumps. The dissolved salts are usually bicarbonates,
sulphates and chlorides of calcium and magnesium. Their presence prevents
formation of soap lather. But why?
Soap is a sodium salt called sodium stearate. It is soluble in water. When soap is
added to hard water, which contains calcium and magnesium ions, a precipitate
of Ca or Mg stearate is formed. These calcium and magnesium steartes are
insoluble in water and appears as a greasy scum. The formation of scum in place
of lather makes it more difficult to clean things.
Sodium stearate + Calcium sulphate ⎯→ Calcium stearate + Sodium sulphate
(Soap) (Scum)
Fig. 26.5 Candles
 
 
MODULE - 6
Natural Resources
181
Air and Water
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Notes
Accordingly, we can say that,
• Water which forms lather with soap is called soft water.
• Water which does not form lather is called hard water.
• The hardness of water is due to the presence of salts of magnesium and
calcium in water.
26.5.4c Conversion of hard water into soft water
Hard water does not form lather with soap. Can this hard water be converted into
soft water? Yes, hard water can be converted into soft water, by removal of Ca and
Mg ions which are responsible for hardness. This is called softening of water.
Hardness of water is of two types :
• Temporary hardness
• Permanent hardness
a) Temporary hardness
Temporary hardness of water is due to the presence of soluble bicarbonates of
calcium and magnesium. It is also called carbonate hardness. It can be removed
by boiling and by soda lime process.
(i) By boiling: Upon boiling hard water, calcium or magnesium bicarbonate present
in it are decomposed to give magnesium or calcium carbonate. These carbonate
salts are insoluble in water. They settle down easily and water can be decanted.
Ca (HCO 3
)2 Heat
⎯⎯⎯→ CaCO3 + H 2
O + CO 2
Calcium bicarbonate Calcium Carbonate
(Soluble) (Insoluble)
Mg (HCO 3
)2 Heat
⎯⎯⎯→ MgCO 3 + H2
O + CO 2
Magnesium bicarbonate Magnesium Carbonate
(Soluble) (Insoluble)
(ii) By soda lime process (Clark’s method): When a calculated amount of lime
is added to hard water, then the soluble bicarbonates are converted to insoluble
carbonates as follows:
Ca(HCO 3
)2 + Ca(OH) 2 Heat
⎯⎯⎯→ CaCO 3 + 2H 2
O
Lime (Insoluble)
Mg(HCO 3
)2 + Ca(OH) 2 Heat
⎯⎯⎯→ 2MgCO 3 + CaCO 3 + 2H 2
O
Lime (Insoluble)
 
 
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
MODULE - 6 Air and Water
Natural Resources
182
Notes
b) Permanent hardness
Permanent hardness of water is due to the presence of soluble chlorides and
sulphates of calcium and magnesium. It is also known as non-carbonate
hardness.
It can be removed by addition of washing soda or by the ion exchange method.
(i) By addition of washing soda: The hard water is treated with the ‘calculated’
quantity of washing soda (sodium carbonate). Washing soda reacts with chloride
and sulphate of calcium and magnesium to form precipitate of calcium and
magnesium carbonate.
The reactions are as follows.
CaCl2 + Na2
CO 3 Heat
⎯⎯⎯→ CaCO 3 + 2NaCl
Calcium chloride Sodium carbonate Calcium carbonate Sodium chloride
(Insoluble)
MgSO 4 + Na2
CO 3 Heat
⎯⎯⎯→ MgCO3 + Na2
SO 4
Magnesium sulphate Sodium carbonate Magnesium carbonate Sodium sulphate
(Insoluble)
The precipitate settles down and can be removed by decantation.
(ii) By ion. exchange method: Two types of ion exchangers can be used, namely,
inorganic ion exchanger and organic ion exchanger. In inorganic ion exchange
process, complex compounds known as Zeolite are used to soften the hard water.
The salts causing hardness of water are precipitated as insoluble zeolite of
calcium and magnesium and are replaced by soluble sodium salts. On the large
scale, this process is carried
out in tanks as shown in
figure 26.6. After using it
for sometime the zeolite is
regenerated by soaking it in
10% solution of NaCl (brine)
and then washing away
chlorides. The washings are
removed and are replaced
by soluble sodium salts.
By using organic ion
exchanger, water obtained is
free from cations and anions
and is known as deionized
water or demineralized
water.
Fig. 26.6 Obtaining soft water on a large
scale using tanks
 
 
MODULE - 6
Natural Resources
183
Air and Water
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Notes
26.5.4d Polar nature of water
Water is a very effective solvent for ionic compounds. Although water is an
electrically neutral molecule, it has a small positive charge (on the H atoms) and
a negative charge (on the O atom), Therefore, it is polar in nature and can dissolve
ionic compounds.
Fig 26.7 Structure of water
Let us perform an activity, which proves the polar nature of water
ACTIVITY 26.3
Aim: To study the polar nature of water
What is required? Burette, water, ebonite rod (negatively charged), glass rod
(positively charge) and burette stand.
What to do?
• Take a burette or a bottle with a fine opening and fill it with water.
• Fix the burette vertically in a burette stand/hold the put a clip a little above
the fine opening to regulate the water flow bottle in a suitable stand.
• Open the stopcock of the burette/clip of the bottle and allow the water to flow.
• Take an ebonite rod/ordinary straw (negatively charged by rubbing one end
with fur) near the water
What to observe?
You will see that the stream of water is attracted towards negatively charged rod
(figure 26.8a). Why? Because one end of water molecule has positive charge.
Similarly, now we take a glass rod/glass tumbler rubbed with fur near water,
which is positively charged. You will see the rod again attracts the stream of water.
This indicates that one end of water molecule also has negative charge (figure
26.8b). This proves the polar nature of water.
 
 
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
MODULE - 6 Air and Water
Natural Resources
184
Notes
26.4.4e Surface tension
Surface tension is the property of all the
liquids. Due to this tension water drops
try to occupy a minimum surface area.
Hence, water droplets always tend to take
the shape of a sphere.
The tension exerted by molecules of water
present on the surface layer is called
surface tension.
To understand this let us perform an
activity.
ACTIVITY 26.4
Aim: To study surface tension
What is required? Glass and razor blade.
What to do?
Take a glass full of water. Put a safety razor blade (having a coating of very thin
layer of wax), gently on the surface of water
What to observe?
You will find that the blade remains on the surface of water though it is heavier
than water.
Why is it so?
The upper layer of water acts like a tight sheet and holds the blade. Why is the
sheet tight? Due to intermolecular forces i.e. attractive forces between the
molecules on water surface and there is a tension or force acting on the surface
of the thin film of the liquid which behaves like a tight sheet.
26.4.4f Capillarity - Rise of water
When a capillary tube with a fine bore is dipped in water, water rises in the
capillary. The extent to which water rises depends on the diameter of the capillary.
The smaller the diameter of the capillary, the higher will be the rise of water in
the capillary tube.
This property of rise of water inside a capillary is called capillarity or capillary
action.
Fig. 26.8 a and b To show that water
is polar in nature
 
 
MODULE - 6
Natural Resources
185
Air and Water
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Notes
This is the property, by which water from the soil enters the leaves and branches
of the plants through the stems.
When a piece of cloth or blotting paper is placed in water, it soaks the water by
this process of capillary action. The thread strands in the cloth and cellulose of the
blotting paper serves like very fine capillaries for the water to rise.
26.4.4g Density of water
Water behaves in an unusual way when it is heated from 0°C. As the temperature
rises from 0°C to 4°C it actually contracts. However, from 4°C upwards it
expands like any other liquid. This means that water takes up the least space at
4°C. It has the highest density at this temperature and will sink through warmer
or colder water around it. The density of water at 4°c is 1g/m3
Because of this property of water, we can explain why it takes months for a lake
to freeze while a small bucket of water can freeze overnight on a bitterly cold day.
The surface water cools down to 4°C and sinks to the bottom of the lake due to
its high density and hotter water comes up to the surface. Gradually the whole
water cools down to 4°C. Further cooling decreases the temperature of surface
water which finally freezes. Ice being lighter than water keeps floating on the
surface. It acts as an insulator and slows down the cooling and freezing of the
lower layers of water. This explains why aquatic animals living in water bodies
of very cold regions do not die in severe wint

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تدریس تکنیکهای زبان ت پنجشنبه ۲۲ شهریور ۰۳ | ۱۸:۴۶ ۸ بازديد
 
 
 
 
 
40
Asia: Japan
The Mountain Village Development Act and
its impacts on sector policies
Most of Japan is mountainous land, mainly covered by forests which
have various important functions in this highly industrialised country.
Mountain communities ensure that their forests are managed in a sustain-
able way, but they have been partially neglected by national policy mak-
ers. In 1965, in response to the problems of depopulation of mountain vil-
lages, the Japanese government approved the Mountain Village
Development Act. One of the aims of this act is to eliminate socio-eco-
nomic differences between mountain and lowland areas.
As in many parts of the world, the moun-
tain areas in Japan lack well-developed trans-
portation and communication infrastructure
and adequate social services. As local
economies are often weak, mountain areas
face the serious problems of depopulation
and ageing. Young people migrate from these
areas, particularly in countries with vibrant
economies such as Japan.
An integrated approach...
The villages targeted by the 1965 Act are
those in need of development, located in
mountainous areas with high forest cover and
declining population. The main objectives of
the Act are:
1. To improve communication among
mountain villages, and between mountain
and lowland populations, through transporta-
tion and telecommunication infrastructure;
2. To ensure that mountain land, forest,
and water resources are effectively exploited
through such measures as road construction,
electric power generation, and improvement
of agricultural land;
3. To strengthen local industries and
increase employment in mountain areas
through measures such as the establishment
of modern forest management and farming
systems, development of processing industries
for agricultural and primary forestry prod-
ucts, introduction of tourism, and the cultiva-
tion of markets for unique, local products;
4. To control erosion and prevent natural
hazards such as landslides and avalanches, by
maintaining and conserving forests and key
infrastructure;
5. To increase access to social services by
building schools, hospitals, clinics, cultural
centres, and other facilities, in order to gen-
erally improve living and working conditions.
...implemented
through sectoral programmes
Within the framework of this law, 12 min-
istries and government agencies have adopt-
ed and implemented specific policies and
programmes.
Recently, the 1964 Forest and Forestry Act
was revised to better reflect the changes that
have taken place in the mountain areas. This
was a form of recognition of the long experi-
Sustainable Development in Mountain Areas
Below: Mt. Fuji from a dis-
tance. Volcanic landscapes
are an important feature
of mountain areas
in Japan.
(Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
Japan)
Right: Education in the
forest. Children measuring
the size of a tree,
Hokkaido.
(M. Sato)
 
 
41
ence of the Japan Forest Agency in undertak-
ing projects to revive mountain villages, such
as preservation activities and educational pro-
grammes.
But the sustainable development of moun-
tain areas requires a multidisciplinary
approach. While the Mountain Village
Development Act covers mainly the social and
the economic aspects of mountain develop-
ment, environmental aspects are addressed
by other policies and laws, such as the Basic
Environment Plan and the Nature
Conservation Law.
Some mountain areas are also protected by
other laws, such as the Natural Parks Law, the
Forest Law, and the Cultural Properties and
Protection Law.
Greater cooperation among sectors
Though no specific institution currently
deals with mountain issues, Japan is commit-
ted to a comprehensive and integrated
approach to sustainable development of its
mountain areas. 12 ministries and govern-
ment agencies are working together to
achieve this goal, and close cooperation
among them is increasingly essential. They
hold regular discussions on both the plan-
ning and implementation of their policies
and programmes. Without this collaboration,
individual ministries and agencies will not be
able to meet the overall goal of sustainable
development in mountain areas.
Maho Sato
National and regional experience
Left: Northern Japanese
Alps seen from Hakuba
Village, Nagano.
A significant proportion
of Japan’s territory is
mountainous.
(Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
Japan)
Within the framework
of the Mountain Village
Development Act passed
in 1965, 12 ministries
and government agencies
have adopted and imple-
mented specific policies
and programmes.
Environmental aspects are
addressed by other laws,
and through the Ministry
of Environment.
(Source: M. Sato)
Right: Kamikochi
Highlands, Nagano.
Recreation in
mountains and mountain
forests is an important
function in Japan’s highly
industrialised economy.
(Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
Japan)
Local
development
plans
The municipal govern-
ments of mountain vil-
lages are required to
elaborate develop-
ment plans that
include programmes
for various projects
designed to achieve
development goals.
 
 
42
Africa: Morocco
Elaborating a policy framework
for conservation and mountain development
To respond to the challenge of Chapter 13 of Agenda 21, and also
to the need to conserve forests subject to degradation, Morocco’s Ministry
of Water and Forest, in coordination with other departments concerned,
began in 1999 to draft a policy framework for conservation and inte-
grated development of the country’s mountain areas. This process led
to the adoption of a strategy for protection and development
of these areas. It also had an important impact in promoting recognition
of the importance of mountains.
A broad focus
Morocco’s mountains cover about a quarter
of the nation’s total land area. A series of stud-
ies and plans conducted at the national level
have concluded that the mountains have sig-
nificant potential in terms of natural
resources; that their economic, ecological,
and social systems are fragile; and that there
is a need to formulate a specific policy for
mountain development.
To respond to these insights and the
increasing threat of degradation of mountain
forests, the national forestry programme rec-
ommended the drafting of a policy and a law
for protection and integrated development of
the country’s mountains. There was broad
consensus that the policy should not be limit-
ed to strategies and measures at the technical
and/or administrative level. Increasingly, the
need became clear for a policy to mobilise the
government administration and local com-
munities and actors, in a voluntary and par-
ticipatory manner. One objective of the
process was to create national solidarity to
benefit the mountains and their integration
into national policy.
The process of consensus building
The first step was establishment of an inter-
ministerial task force on the initiative of the
Ministry of Water and Forest. This resulted in
various working groups that included both
technical staff and representatives of research
institutes and NGOs. The process received
financial and technical support from the
French government.
Workshops were held on topics such as
delineation of mountain areas, agricultural
development, commercialisation, the handi-
Sustainable Development in Mountain Areas
The introduction
of the national forest law
in the mid 1930s declared
forests, which were previ-
ously owned and managed
by the community,
to be state property.
Deforestation was induced
by the selling of logging
rights to external contrac-
tors. Interventions
in this fragile environment
were so drastic that forests
did not regenerate. Local
people were even forced to
extract dead tree trunks for
firewood.
A new national policy
aiming at the rehabilitation
of these degraded forest
areas and restoration
of responsibility
to the local communities
could be a promising way
of reversing negative
trends and moving towards
sustainable development.
(D. Maselli)
 
 
43
craft sector, tourism, transport and access,
natural resources, social services, institutional
instruments for mountain development, and
financial and economic regulatory frame-
works for implementing strategies.
The process also included meetings in the
field with local authorities and leaders as well
as elected officials, with the further aim of
establishing processes of mutual learning,
improving problem analysis, and increasing
public awareness of the process. Both work-
shops and meetings in the field allowed the
government to define a realistic strategy for
the protection and integrated development
of mountain areas.
Innovative elements in the policy
framework
The framework had two main objectives:
decreasing the social and economic imbal-
ance between mountain areas and the rest of
the country, and combating poverty by stimu-
lating local self-governance. These broad
objectives were addressed by the following
strategy:
– promotion of a territorial approach, to pro-
vide mountain areas with a socio-economic
framework that favours the organisation of
communities for the management of their
natural resources;
– integration of sectoral policies and activities
concerned with basic social needs in a new
partnership, to ensure greater stakeholder
involvement;
– adoption of a partnership and a participa-
tory approach for the conservation of natu-
ral resources;
– incentives to increase national solidarity on
behalf of mountain areas.
The strategy was adopted by the Inter-min-
isterial Council on Sustainable Development.
Preliminary conclusions
Consultation about the drafting of the law
for conservation and integrated development
of mountain areas is also underway, and a
high commission has begun implementation
of elements of the policy framework.
One crucial issue was that the particulari-
ties of different mountain areas, or massifs,
must be taken into account when defining
and implementing concrete measures,
orders, guidelines, and regulations. At this
concrete level, the involvement of the local
stakeholders will be essential.
Ghanam Mohamed, Hammou Jader
National and regional experience
Remote mountain areas
often suffer from out-
migration to modern urban
centres. However, newly
built terraces still lacking
bush and tree cover
are positive signs that
people intend to stay
and that they believe
in the future of their tradi-
tional livelihood.
(D. Maselli)
The Atlas Mountains cover
much of Morocco
and are home to about
20% of the total popula-
tion. Accessibility is still
poor, and in particular
young people tend to
leave for the cities. They
are thus no longer avail-
able to help maintain the
traditional terraced land-
use system. A comprehen-
sive development policy
for mountain areas must
therefore include
provisions that make
it possible to connect
these remote areas
with the modern world
by means of roads, electric-
ity, telecommunication,
sanitation, and health
services.
(D. Maselli)
 
 
44
Africa: Lesotho
Water policy and management: trade-offs
between mountains and downstream areas
Water is the principal natural resource that the land-locked Kingdom of
Lesotho sells to its neighbour, South Africa. In the 1980s South Africa’s
apartheid government signed an agreement with the military regime in
Lesotho to build the massive Lesotho Highlands Water Project. Two of five
large dams have now been completed. The project has brought water rev-
enues, hydroelectric power, and major infrastructure to Lesotho and
water to Gauteng Province, the metropolitan and industrial centre of
South Africa. While the benefits to South Africa are clear, the mountain
people of Lesotho have lost arable and grazing land, and remote moun-
tain communities have experienced major changes.
The mountain Kingdom of Lesotho:
water tower for southern Africa
The Kingdom of Lesotho, one of the poor-
est countries in Africa, is completely sur-
rounded by the Republic of South Africa, the
continent’s most powerful nation. Sometimes
referred to as the “Kingdom in the Sky”, the
Lesotho Highlands receive the greatest
amount of rainfall in the region and are the
origin of some of the most important rivers in
southern Africa.
Whereas South Africa dominates almost all
spheres of economic and political relations
between the two countries, the peripheral
mountain kingdom has been able to market
one asset to the South African lowlands: its
water. The Lesotho Highlands Water Project
is the largest civil engineering project in sub-
Saharan Africa. This gigantic inter-basin
transfer scheme is designed to divert about
50% of the water of the southwest-flowing
Senqu River (Orange River in South Africa)
north into the Vaal River system for use in the
province of Gauteng, which includes the
major cities of Johannesburg and Pretoria
(some 7 million people altogether), and the
Witwatersrand, which contains about 50% of
South Africa’s industry and generates almost
80% of its mining output. The Lesotho
Highlands Water Project appears to meet the
crucial requirement of sufficient water avail-
ability for further urban expansion and indus-
trial development.
The governments that signed the contract
for the Lesotho Highlands Water Project in
1986 were South Africa’s apartheid govern-
ment and a military regime in Lesotho, at a
time when downstream Namibia was gov-
erned by the United Nations Council. The
present democratic government of South
Africa also recognises the importance of the
project, since for example the promise of
more equal distribution of water supply
requires higher quantities of water for the
large townships.
Managing white gold …
Diverting this amount of water into a differ-
ent watershed requires several dams and
reservoirs, a series of pumping plants, and
interconnecting tunnels blasted through the
Highlands. The entire project consists of six
proposed dams, 225 km of water transfer tun-
nels, the 72-megawatt Muela hydropower sta-
tion, and construction or upgrading of 650
km of roads. It is expected to cost US$ 8 bil-
lion by the time it is completed in 2020. Plans
for the inter-basin water transfer scheme were
agreed in 1986 and construction started in
1991 with the first large dam, Katse (1950 mil-
lion cubic metres), delivering water in 1997.
At present, Mohale, the second large dam
(958 million cubic metres), is nearly complet-
ed. Further project phases will involve the
Sustainable Development in Mountain Areas
Livestock husbandry
is an integral part
of livelihood strategies
in the highlands
of Lesotho. Especially
the wetlands, which
provide a perennial water
supply, are used
as valuable grazing areas.
(M. Nüsser)
 
 
45
construction of additional dams at Mashai,
Tsoelike, and Ntoahae. However, the viability
of the last three phases will be reconsidered,
as growing concerns about serious economic,
social, and ecological impacts have been
expressed by various actors, including the
World Bank.
Whereas South Africa receives all of the
water from the project, Lesotho receives
annual payments for the sale of water. This
will be its largest single source of foreign
exchange and is expected to boost the coun-
try’s economy by US$ 40 million annually.
Moreover, Lesotho receives hydroelectric
power from the Muela plant and massive
infrastructure in the form of roads and trans-
mission lines. From the perspective of mod-
ernisation, these are important development
incentives. While the capital, Maseru, and
other urban areas in the lowlands of Lesotho
have become independent of other power
supplies, the mountain communities in the
upper tributaries do not benefit from the new
hydropower, as most of the high altitude
catchment areas have not yet been connected
to transmission lines.
… for whose benefit?
The project is managed by the Lesotho
Highlands Development Authority, a semi-
governmental organisation responsible for
resettlement and compensation issues, envi-
ronmental protection, and overall construc-
tion management. Critics of the controversial
highland-lowland project point to develop-
mental and environmental problems such as
the prospective loss of thousands of hectares
of arable or grazing land, the involuntary
resettlement of 2000 people, and dramatic
changes experienced by formerly remote
mountain communities, combined with insuf-
ficient and delayed compensation for the loss
of grazing land, fuelwood, and thatch grasses.
Moreover, the high expectations of non-
agrarian income opportunities for the local
population of the Lesotho Highlands have
not been fulfilled. Environmental concerns
include the serious effects on downstream
drainage patterns, such as reductions of water
availability and wetlands, as well as other eco-
logical consequences. These concerns led to
huge protests over the large dams in Lesotho,
and the realisation of further project phases is
bound to be controversial.
Marcus Nüsser
National and regional experience
Large tussock grasses
(Merxmuellera drakens-
bergensis) used for rope
making. Indigenous
knowledge of botanical
resources and multi-
functional utilisation
are part of the traditional
resource use systems
in Lesotho.
(M. Nüsser)
With a height of 185 m,
the Katse dam is the
highest in Africa.
(M. Nüsser)
The Katse dam is the key
element of the completed
Phase 1A of the Lesotho
Highlands Water Project.
The reservoir has
a storage capacity
of 1.95 km3
.
(M. Nüsser)
Due to the combination of
high quantity summer pre-
cipitation and regular win-
ter snow, the hydrology of
the Senqu River is charac-
terised by constant water
supply.
(M. Nüsser)
 
 
46
North America: United States
How the people of the Warm Springs Indian
Reservation defined their own policy
Strong tribal leadership and an insistence on receiving fair value for natu-
ral resources have seen the Warm Springs Indian Reservation through dif-
ficult times. Through capable decision-making coupled with persistence, a
long-term outlook, deliberate diversification, and an ability to adapt to
changing circumstances, the Warm Springs Indians have created a home-
land that offers decent jobs as well as cultural richness and landscape
beauty.
Indian reservations:
a unit for policy formulation
Ancestors of the people of Warm Springs
are believed to have occupied what is now
Oregon for at least 11,000 years. As a result of
the westward expansion of white settlers, a
treaty was signed in 1855 between the tribes
of middle Oregon and the US government.
This treaty ceded 4 million hectares of land in
return for the equivalent of US$ 150,000 in
tools, clothing, provisions, salaries, and the
right to continue fishing at traditional sites.
Over half a million acres of forest and range
mountain land on the edge of their tradition-
al range were set aside as the Warm Springs
Indian Reservation, where several tribes,
including the Wasco, Walla Walla, and Paiute,
were forced to relocate.
Leadership, committed to a vision
Many Indian reservations have lost much of
their area or have been terminated since their
establishment more than a century ago.
Warm Springs is lucky to have had leaders
who effectively fought the many attempts to
reduce the size of their reservation – includ-
ing privatisation and subsequent re-sale to
non-Indians, inaccurate surveys, and frequent
changes in the legal status of reservation land.
In 1957, a major setback – the loss of tradi-
tional salmon fishing sites on the Columbia
River, due to flooding caused by The Dalles
Sustainable Development in Mountain Areas
The People’s Plan, 1999
Nearly one quarter of the 4000 members
of the Warm Springs Indian Reservation
participated directly in developing a com-
prehensive plan that goes beyond eco-
nomic goals to consider what is good for
their culture and the health of their com-
munity.
The 20-year plan is not a dry bureaucratic
document but rather a keepsake book, in
a customised binder for each household.
The whole idea is to have a plan that fam-
ilies keep and value. In the words of plan-
ner Jolene Atencio, “Our sovereignty is
based on us knowing our culture.”
Below: Action-packed
Indian rodeo is popular
with tribal members of all
ages.
(D. McMechan)
Right: Warm Springs
Reservation with
Mt. Jefferson in the
background.
(D. McMechan)
 
 
47
dam – was turned to advantage. The tribes
negotiated a US$ 4 million settlement from
the US Army Corps of Engineers, and pro-
ceeded to invest this money wisely in their
own future. Rather than distributing the
entire settlement among tribal members – as
is commonly done – the money was held in
trust for the reservation as a whole.
The development path
of diversification
The first big expenditure was an Oregon
State College study of the reservation’s natu-
ral and human resources and their potential
for sustainable economic development. This
study, adopted in 1959, has proved to be a key
investment in developing land policies to pre-
serve the integrity of the reservation.
Deliberate diversification led to investment in
a number of economic activities, about half of
which were successful. Today, the fruits of this
policy include a forest products industry, a
luxury resort, a hydroelectric plant, rental
monies from two utility-owned dams, and cat-
tle ranching. The reservation is filled with
young people, and a lively museum/cultural
centre celebrates the cultures of the tribes,
both past and present.
The tribal organisation continues to work
toward effective governance, including clarity
in its own relationships, roles, and responsi-
bilities. In 1999, a People’s Plan was elaborat-
ed, which further bundles development
under the vision of sustainable development.
Common lessons to be learned
This example demonstrates how a relatively
independent territorial entity, an Indian
reservation, can succeed in defining, within
the legal boundaries of its autonomy, its own
vision and policy, for the benefit of sustain-
able development. Clearly, such examples can
have a positive impact on the policy discus-
sions as a whole. They can become true pio-
neers of sustainable development in moun-
tain areas.
Elizabeth Byers
National and regional experience
A vision for development
“We the people of the Confederated
Tribes of Warm Springs, since time imme-
morial, carry forth the inherent rights of
sovereignty and spirituality through unity
and a respect for the land, water, each
other and the many gifts given by the
Creator.”
The People’s Plan, 1999
Putting tribal values at the centre
“In my work with the community over the past five years, I have learned
the importance of having our inherent tribal values be the heart of our
plans. I feel we need to be very selective in adopting non-tribal models,
laws, and policies. If models are adopted, we need to be sure they are
‘alignable’ with tribalism. This will be one of our biggest challenges, since
much of our governmental success was built upon non-tribal structures
and thinking. Professionally, I have had to learn the tribal thinking to
begin to distinguish the difference. I thank my tribal people for these les-
sons.”
(Jolene E. Atencio, planner and coordinator for the “The People’s Plan”
for Warm Springs, as well as an enrolled tribal member)
Below left: Young girl
prepares for traditional
celebration (powwow)
at the Warm Springs Indian
Reservation.
(D. McMechan)
Below right: First day
of school for tribal youth.
Three native languages
are taught in elementary
school, but all of them
are in danger of dying out.
The Kiksht (Wasco) and
the Numu (Paiute) only
have five fluent speakers
each, none of them
under the age of fifty.
(D. McMechan)
Below: Guests at the Kah-
Nee-Ta Resort can choose
to stay in an Indian teepee
as part of cultural heritage
tourism initiatives on the
Warm Springs Indian
Reservation.
(D. McMechan)
 
 
48
North America: Canada
Integrated Resource Management (IRM)
as a policy for public lands management
Most of the mountainous area of western North America consists of pub-
lic lands managed by government agencies. Several decades ago, the
provincial government of Alberta, Canada, adopted the “philosophy” of
Integrated Resource Management (IRM) for management of the many
valuable natural resources on the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains.
Today, IRM continues with the same objectives: integration and sustain-
able development. But IRM strategies have evolved in order to make the
concept more effective.
IRM since 1977
The eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains
of Alberta, Canada, cover an area of roughly
90,000 km 2 of mountains and forested
foothills. The region supports forestry, oil and
gas development, mining, tourism and recre-
ation, and forms the headwaters of the
prairies’ major rivers.
The land is owned and managed by the
public sector, providing an opportunity to
manage land

f

تدریس تکنیکهای زبان ت پنجشنبه ۲۲ شهریور ۰۳ | ۱۸:۴۲ ۷ بازديد
he Internet is a global web of computers
connected to each other by wires, (mostly
phone lines). If you look at a map of big cities,
smaller towns, and scattered houses, each is
connected together with roads, railways, etc..
This is similar to the Internet, except with the
Internet, wires connect computers. The
Internet is a superhighway

ductile نرم شکل بذیر

تدریس تکنیکهای زبان ت پنجشنبه ۲۲ شهریور ۰۳ | ۱۸:۳۵ ۹ بازديد
ب

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تدریس تکنیکهای زبان ت پنجشنبه ۲۲ شهریور ۰۳ | ۱۸:۲۷ ۴ بازديد
29
Line of Nodes
• When the moon is on the line of nodes it is
crossing the Earth’s orbital plane
• At other times moon is slightly above or
below the Earth’s orbital plane
• If moon crosses the line of nodes near a new
or full phase an eclipse will occur

44

تدریس تکنیکهای زبان ت پنجشنبه ۲۲ شهریور ۰۳ | ۱۱:۳۸ ۷ بازديد
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
58
Appendix I
Overview of reforms in fiscal policy
LABOUR ( UNITED KINGDOM )
“Golden rule”(debt
only for investment,
balanced budget
over the economic
cycle, comprehensive
spending reviews (de-
partmental budgets
over three-year peri-
ods)
PVDA (NETHERLANDS )
“Zalm-Norm” (ex-
penditure lim-
its; additional
receipts for
debt reduction
and tax reduc-
tion)
SAP ( SWEDEN)
Yearly expendi-
ture limits
PS ( FRANCE)
—
SPD (GERMANY )
—
SD (DENMARK)
Commitment to
surplus over
the economic
cycle
BUDGET POLICY
Formal or in-
formal self-
c o m m i t -
ments
 
 
59
Adherence of con-
servative spending
plans, expansion
after consolidation
Raised indirect taxes
Consolidation
Expenditure lim-
its; lower in-
crease in ex-
penditure than
revenues
Tax reduction af-
ter consolida-
tion
Consolidation
T e m p o r a r i l y ,
cuts in social
benefits; ex-
pansion after
consolidation
Higher tax bur-
den for high
incomes
Consolidation
Moderate ex-
pansion of
expenditures
Tax reduction
Failed consoli-
dation
Zig-zag-course
Tax reduction
Failed consoli-
dation
Deficit-financed
spending pro-
gramme; no
significant ex-
penditure cuts
Raised indirect
taxes (eco-
taxes)
Consolidation
Expenditures
Revenues
Result
 
 
60
Appendix II
Overview of reforms in tax policy
TAX POLICY
Corporate taxation
Income taxation
SD (DENMARK)
Reduced
Reduced; (esp. lower
incomes), elimina-
tion of tax privi-
leges, later raised
upper rate of in-
come tax (59%)
SPD (GERMANY )
Reduced
Reduction, higher in-
comes benefited
more; upper rate
of income tax in
2005: 42%
PS ( FRANCE)
First raised, reduced
in 1999/2000,
special rates for
small and me-
dium companies
Small reduction
(esp. low in-
comes); small re-
duction of upper
rate of income
tax (52.5%)
LABOUR (UNITED KINGDOM)
Reduced, special
rates for small
and medium
companies and
R&D
Reduction for fami-
lies and low in-
comes (tax cred-
its; reduction of
lower rate of in-
come tax); upper
rate of income
tax: 40%
PVDA (HETHERLANDS )
Elimination of upper
rate of corpora-
tion tax, special
rates for start-ups
and R&D
Tax reform: simplifi-
cation and reduc-
tion (lower in-
comes benefited
more); upper
rate of income
tax: 52%
SAP ( SWEDEN)
Reduced, special
rates for small
and medium
companies
Almost no reduc-
tion; raised upper
rate of income
tax (55%)
 
 
61
Capital taxation
Indirect taxation
VAT and reduced
VAT-rates
Result
Maintained low rates
(DIT)
Introduction of eco-
taxes
VAT unchanged:
25%
High progression,
high tax burden
for all incomes
Changes in details
without effects
Introduction of eco-
taxes
VAT: 16% (7%)
Alleviated redistribu-
tion
Raised
Maintained property
tax, introduction
of eco-taxes, re-
duced indirect
taxation
VAT: 19.6% (3%,
6%, 12%)
R e d i s t r i b u t i o n
strengthened
Raised rates in land
and property,
higher tax ex-
emptions, re-
duced rates for
dividends
Introduction of eco-
taxes; raised indi-
rect taxation
VAT: 17.5% (5%)
Targeted relief for
low incomes, no
redistribution in
general
Introduction of a flat
rate
Introduction of eco-
taxes
VAT: 19% (6%)
Progression slightly
s t r e n g t h e n e d ;
work-incentives
for spouses, pro-
motion of part-
time work
Maintained low rates
(DIT)
Maintained property
tax ; raised eco-
taxes;
VAT: 25% (6%,
12%)
High progression,
high tax burden
for all incomes
 
 
62
Appendix III
Overview of reforms in employment policy
Individual reintegration plans
with sanctions
Labour market programmes
with temporary public em-
ployment
Relevance and impact of job sub-
sidies
Cutbacks in the level of unem-
ployment benefits
Shortening of duration of pay-
ment of unemployment insur-
ance
Tightening of eligibility criteria
of unemployment schemes
LABOUR (UNITED
KINGDOM )
Yes
No
High
No
No
No
PVDA (NETHERLANDS )
Yes
Comprehensive
High
Yes
No
Yes
SPD (GERMANY )
Rudiments
No
High
Since 2005
Since 2005
Since 2005
PS ( FRANCE)
Rudiments
For young unem-
ployed
Low
No
No
No
SD (DENMARK)
Yes
For old unem-
ployed
Medium
No
Yes
Yes
SAP ( SWEDEN)
Yes
For long-time un-
employed
Medium
Temporarily
Yes
Yes
ACTIVATING LABOUR MARKET
POLICIES
PASSIVE LABOUR MARKET POLICIES
 
 
63
Regular employment
Flexible employment
Share of regular public employ-
ment
Summary
Deregulated sta-
tus quo main-
tained
Deregulated sta-
tus quo main-
tained
Small increase
from an aver-
age level
ALMP with a
deregulated la-
bour market
Deregulation
D e r e g u l a t i o n ,
more rights
for part-time
workers
Small decrease
from a low
level
ALMP with a flex-
ible labour
market
Regulated status
quo main-
tained
Slight deregula-
tion
Small decrease
from a low
level
Little ALMP and
almost un-
changed la-
bour market
regulations
Regulated status
quo main-
tained
Regulated status
quo main-
tained
Small decrease
from a an av-
erage level
Little ALMP and
unchanged la-
bour market
regulations
Deregulated sta-
tus quo main-
tained
Deregulated sta-
tus quo main-
tained
Constantly on a
high level
ALMP with a flex-
ible labour
market
Regulated status
quo main-
tained
Deregulated sta-
tus quo main-
tained
Small decrease
from a high
level
ALMP with com-
p r e h e n s i v e
education and
training pro-
grammes
EMPLOYMENT PROTECTION LEGISLATION
AND PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT
Note: ALMP — Activating Labour Market Policies.
 
 
 
 
 
65
Social democracy on the defence
I intend to address the question of public intervention in the
economy in a necessarily very fragmentary manner, given the
enormous breadth of the topic. I shall assume from the outset
that there is no distinction between levels in the state or, if you
will, the public levels at which intervention will be carried out.
I am not going to enter into the discussion of essentially na-
tional intervention versus EU intervention, for example.
Though it is a very important problem, I do not plan to deal with
it here.
The public opinion environment in relation to issues of the
role of the market economy and the role of the state in the
economy is beginning to change for the better. In fact, from
my point of view, over the last 25 years socialist or social demo-
cratic thinking has been completely supplanted by neo-
liberal thinking. Various circumstances were involved in this
change.
Central areas for public intervention in the economy:
changes in the relationship between state and market
J OÃO FERREIRA DO AMARAL1
1 ISEG — Universidade Técnica de Lisboa.
 
 
66
In the first place, it was connected with the actual economic
theory that emerged in the 1970s (which is in decline today,
except in the institutions of the Treaty of Maastricht), the so-
called New Classical Economy. This school of economic thought
emerged as an important support for neoliberal ideas.
In the second place, it was related to the decline and fall of
the Soviet Union, which led to the hurried conclusion that, with
the Soviet regime coming to an end, the only alternative model
was purely and simply the market economy, the neoliberal market
economy. In fact, this did not have to be the conclusion, precisely
because the gulf between social democratic regimes and the
Soviet regime was tremendous.
In the third place, within the idea itself that the neoliberal
model was the only one, an attempt was made somehow to make
this universal adoption of the neoliberal model inescapable, by
observing the trends in the development of the economy and
world society as a whole and arguing that only the marke

vv

تدریس تکنیکهای زبان ت پنجشنبه ۲۲ شهریور ۰۳ | ۰۰:۱۴ ۵ بازديد
 
 
 
 
“It Had to Be Murder”
4
Ten minutes or so later, there was another matchwink, still from that same living room window. He couldn’t sleep.
The night brooded down on both of us alike, the curiosity-monger in the bay window, the chain-smoker in the fourth-floor
flat, without giving any answer. The only sound was that interminable cricket.
I was back at the window again with the first sun of morning. Not because of him. My mattress was like a bed of hot coals.
Sam found me there when he came in to get things ready for me. “You’re going to be a wreck, Mr. Jeff,” was all he said.
First, for awhile, there was no sign of life over there. Then suddenly I saw his head bob up from somewhere down out of sight
in the living room, so I knew I’d been right; he’d spent the night on a sofa or easy chair in there. Now, of course, he’d look in at her,
to see how she was, find out if she felt any better. That was only common ordinary humanity. He hadn’t been near her, so far as I
could make out, since two nights before.
He didn’t. He dressed, and he went in the opposite direction, into the kitchen, and wolfed something in there, standing up and
using both hands. Then he suddenly turned and moved off side, in the direction in which I knew the flat-entrance to be, as if he had
just heard some summons, like the doorbell.
Sure enough, in a moment he came back, and there were two men with him in leather aprons. Expressmen. I saw him standing
by while they laboriously maneuvered that cubed black wedge out between them, in the direction they’d just come from. He did
more than just stand by. He practically hovered over them, kept shifting from side to side, he was so anxious to see that it was done
right.
Then he came back alone, and I saw him swipe his arm across his head, as though it was he, not they, who was all heated up
from the effort.
So he was forwarding her trunk, to wherever it was she was going. That was all.
He reached up along the wall again and took something down. He was taking another drink. Two. Three. I said to myself, a
little at a loss: Yes, but he hasn’t just packed a trunk this time. That trunk has been standing packed and ready since last night.
Where does the hard work come in? The sweat and the need for a bracer?
Now, at last, after all those hours, he finally did go in to her. I saw his form pass through the living room and go beyond, into
the bedroom. Up went the shade, that had been down all this time. Then he turned his head and looked around behind him. In a
certain way, a way that was unmistakable, even from where I was. Not in one certain direction, as one looks at a person. But from
side to side, and up and down, and all around, as one looks at—an empty room.
He stepped back, bent a little, gave a fling of his arms, and an unoccupied mattress and bedding upended over the foot of a
bed, stayed that way, emptily curved. A second one followed a moment later.
She wasn’t in there.
They use the expression “delayed action.” I found out then what it meant. For two days a sort of formless uneasiness, a
disembodied suspicion, I don’t know what to call it, had been flitting and volplaning around in my mind, like an insect looking for
a landing place. More than once, just as it had been ready to settle, some slight thing, some slight reassuring thing, such as the
raising of the shades after they had been down unnaturally long, had been enough to keep it winging aimlessly, prevent it from
staying still long enough for me to recognize it. The point of contact had been there all along, waiting to receive it. Now, for some
reason, within a split second after he tossed over the empty mattresses, it landed—zoom! And the point of contact expanded—or
exploded, whatever you care to call it—into a certainty of murder.
In other words, the rational part of my mind was far behind the instinctive, subconscious part. Delayed action. Now the one
had caught up to the other. The thought-message that sparked from the synchronization was: He’s done something to her!
I looked down and my hand was bunching the goods over my kneecap, it was knotted so tight. I forced it to open. I said to
myself, steadyingly: Now wait a minute, be careful, go slow. You’ve seen nothing. You know nothing. You only have the negative
proof that you don’t see her any more.
Sam was standing there looking over at me from the pantryway. He said accusingly: “You ain’t touched a thing. And your
face looks like a sheet.”
It felt like one. It had that needling feeling, when the blood has left it involuntarily. It was more to get him out of the way and
give myself some elbow room for undisturbed thinking, than anything else, that I said: “Sam, what’s the street address of that
building down there? Don’t stick your head too far out and gape at it.”
“Somep’n or other Benedict Avenue.” He scratched his neck helpfully.
“I know that. Chase around the corner a minute and get me the exact number on it, will you?”
“Why you want to know that for?” he asked as he turned to go.
“None of your business,” I said with the good-natured firmness that was all that was necessary to take care of that once and
for all. I called after him just as he was closing the door: “And while you’re about it, step into the entrance and see if you can tell
from the mailboxes who has the fourth-floor rear. Don’t get me the wrong one now. And try not to let anyone catch you at it.”
He went out mumbling something that sounded like, “When a man ain’t got nothing to do but just sit all day, he sure can
think up the blamest things—“ The door closed and I settled down to some good constructive thinking.
I said to myself: What are you really building up this monstrous supposition on? Let’s see what you’ve got. Only that there
were several little things wrong with the mechanism, the chain-belt, of their recurrent daily habits over there. 1. The lights were on
all night the first night. 2. He came in later than usual the second night. 3. He left his hat on. 4. She didn’t come out to greet him—
she hasn’t appeared since the evening before the lights were on all night. 5. He took a drink after he finished packing her trunk. But
he took three stiff drinks the next morning, immediately after her trunk went out. 6. He was inwardly disturbed and worried, yet
 
 
“It Had to Be Murder”
5
superimposed upon this was an unnatural external concern about the surrounding rear windows that was off-key. 7. He slept in the
living room, didn’t go near the bedroom, during the night before the departure of the trunk.
Very well. If she had been ill that first night, and he had sent her away for her health, that automatically canceled out points 1,
2, 3, 4. It left points 5 and 6 totally unimportant and unincriminating. But when it came up against 7, 1 hit a stumbling block.
If she went away immediately after being ill that first night, why didn’t he want to sleep in their bedroom last night?
Sentiment? Hardly. Two perfectly good beds in one room, only a sofa or uncomfortable easy chair in the other. Why should he stay
out of there if she was already gone? just because he missed her, was lonely? A grown man doesn’t act that way. All right, then she
was still in there.
Sam came back parenthetically at this point and said: “That house is Number 525 Benedict Avenue. The fourth-floor rear, it
got the name of Mr. and Mrs. Lars Thorwald up.”
“Sh-h,” I silenced, and motioned him backhand out of my ken.
“First he wants it, then he don’t,” he grumbled philosophically, and retired to his duties.
I went ahead digging at it. But if she was still in there, in that bedroom last night, then she couldn’t have gone away to the
country, because I never saw her leave today. She could have left without my seeing her in the early hours of yesterday morning.
I’d missed a few hours, been asleep. But this morning I had been up before he was himself, I only saw his head rear up from the
sofa after I’d been at the window for some time.
To go at all she would have had to go yesterday morning. Then why had he left the bedroom shade down, left the mattresses
undisturbed, until today? Above all, why had he stayed out of that room last night? That was evidence that she hadn’t gone, was
still in there. Then today, immediately after the trunk had been dispatched, he went in, pulled up the shade, tossed over the
mattresses, and showed that she hadn’t been in there. The thing was like a crazy spiral.
No, it wasn’t either. Immediately after the trunk had been dispatched
The trunk.
That did it.
I looked around to make sure the door was safely closed between Sam and me. My hand hovered uncertainly over the
telephone dial a minute. Boyne, he’d be the one to tell about it. He was on Homicide. He had been, anyway, when I’d last seen him.
I didn’t want to get a flock of strange dicks and cops into my hair. I didn’t want to be involved any more than I had to. Or at all, if
possible.
They switched my call to the right place after a couple of wrong tries, and I got him finally.
“Look, Boyne? This is Hal Jeffries—“
“Well, where’ve you been the last sixty-two years?” he started to enthuse.
“We can take that up later. What I want you to do now is take down a name and address. Ready? Lars Thorwald. Five
twenty-five Benedict Avenue. Fourth-floor rear. Got it?”
“Fourth-floor rear. Got it. What’s it for?”
“Investigation. I’ve got a firm belief you’ll uncover a murder there if You start digging at it. Don’t call on me for anything
more than that—just a conviction. There’s been a man and wife living there until now. Now there’s just the man. Her trunk went
out early this morning. If you can find someone who saw her leave herself—“
Marshaled aloud like that and conveyed to somebody else, a lieutenant of detectives above all, it did sound flimsy, even to me.
He said hesitantly, “Well, but—“ Then he accepted it as was. Because I was the source. I even left my window out of it completely. I
could do that with him and get away with it because he’d known me years, he didn’t question my reliability. I didn’t want my
room all cluttered up with dicks and cops taking turns nosing out of the window in this hot weather. Let them tackle it from the
front.
“Well, we’ll see what we see,” he said. “I’ll keep you posted.”
I hung up and sat back to watch and wait events. I had a grandstand seat. Or rather a grandstand seat in reverse. I could only
see from behind the scenes, but not from the front. I couldn’t watch Boyne go to work. I could only see the results, when and if
there were any.
Nothing happened for the next few hours. The police work that I knew must be going on was as invisible as police work
should be. The figure in the fourth-floor windows over there remained in sight, alone and undisturbed. He didn’t go out. He was
restless, roamed from room to room without staying in one place very long, but he stayed in. Once I saw him eating again—sitting
down this time—and once he shaved, and once he even tried to read the paper, but he didn’t stay with it long.
Little unseen wheels were in motion around him. Small and harmless as yet, preliminaries. If he knew, I wondered to myself,
would he remain there quiescent like that, or would he try to bolt out and flee? That mightn’t depend so much upon his guilt as
upon his sense of immunity, his feeling that he could outwit them. Of his guilt I myself was already convinced, or I wouldn’t have
taken the step I had.
At three my phone rang. Boyne calling back. “Jeffries? Well, I don’t know. Can’t you give me a little more than just a bald
statement like that?”
“Why?” I fenced. “Why do I have to?”
“I’ve had a man over there making inquiries. I’ve just had his report. The building superintendent and several of the neighbors
all agree she left for the country, to try and regain her health, early yesterday morning.”
“Wait a minute. Did any of them see her leave, according to your man?”
 
 
“It Had to Be Murder”
6
“No.”
‘Then all you’ve gotten is a second-hand version of an unsupported statement by him. Not an eyewitness account”
“He was met returning from the depot, after he’d bought her ticket and seen her off on the train.”
“That’s still an unsupported statement, once removed.”
“I’ve sent a man down there to the station to try and check with the ticket agent if possible. After all, he should have been
fairly conspicuous at that early hour. And we’re keeping him under observation, of course, in the meantime, watching all his move-
ments. The first chance we get we’re going to jump in and search the place.”
I had a feeling that they wouldn’t find anything, even if they did.
“Don’t expect anything more from me. I’ve dropped it in your lap. I’ve given you all I have to give. A name, an address, and
an opinion.”
“Yes, and I’ve always valued your opinion highly before now, Jeff—“
“But now you don’t, that it?’
“Not at all. The thing is, we haven’t turned up anything that seems to bear out your impression so far.”
“You haven’t gotten very far along, so far.”
He went back to his previous cliché. “Well, we’ll see what we see. Let you know later.”
Another hour or so went by, and sunset came on. I saw him start to get ready to go out, over there. He put on his hat, put his
hand in his pocket and stood still looking at it for a minute. Counting change, I guess. It gave me a peculiar sense of suppressed
excitement, knowing they were going to come in the minute he left. I thought grimly, as I saw him take a last look around: If you’ve
got anything to hide, brother, now’s the time to hide it
He left. A breath-holding interval of misleading emptiness descended on the flat. A three-alarm fire couldn’t have pulled my
eyes off those windows. Suddenly the door by which he had just left parted slightly and two men insinuated themselves, one
behind the other. There they were now. They closed it behind them, separated at once, and got busy. One took the bedroom, one
the kitchen, and they started to work their way toward one another again from those extremes of the flat. They were thorough. I
could see them going over everything from top to bottom. They took the living room together. One cased one side, the other man
the other.
They’d already finished before the warning caught them. I could tell that by the way they straightened up and stood facing
one another frustratedly for a minute. Then both their heads turned sharply, as at a tip-off by doorbell that he was coming back.
They got out fast.
I wasn’t unduly disheartened, I’d expected that. My own feeling all along had been that they wouldn’t find anything
incriminating around. The trunk had gone.
He came in with a mountainous brown-paper bag sitting in the curve of one arm. I watched him closely to see if he’d discover
that someone had been there in his absence. Apparently he didn’t. They’d been adroit about it.
He stayed in the rest of the night. Sat tight, safe and sound. He did some desultory drinking, I could see him sitting there by
the window and his hand would hoist every once in awhile, but not to excess. Apparently everything was under control, the
tension had eased, now that—the trunk was out
Watching him across the night, I speculated: Why doesn’t he get out? If I’m right about him, and I am, why does he stick
around after it? That brought its own answer: Because he doesn’t know anyone’s on to him yet. He doesn’t think there’s any hurry.
To go too soon, right after she has, would be more dangerous than to stay awhile.
The night wore on. I sat there waiting for Boyne’s call. It came later than I thought it would. I picked the phone up in the dark.
He was getting ready to go to bed, over there, now. He’d risen from where he’d been sitting drinking in the kitchen, and put the
light out. He went into the living room, lit that He started to pull his shirttail up out of his belt. Boyne’s voice was in my ear as my
eyes were on him, over there. Three-cornered arrangement
“Hello, Jeff? Listen, absolutely nothing. We searched the place while he was out.”
I nearly said, “I know you did, I saw it,” but checked myself in time.
“—and didn’t turn up a thing. But—“ He stopped as though this was going to be important. I waited impatiently for him to go
ahead.
“Downstairs in his letter box we found a post card waiting for him. We fished it up out of the slot with bent pins—“
“And?”
“And it was from his wife, written only yesterday from some farm up-country. Here’s the message we copied: ‘Arrived OK.
Already feeling a little better. Love, Anna.’ “
I said, faintly but stubbornly: “You say, written only yesterday. Have you proof of that? What was the postmark-date on it?”
He made a disgusted sound down in his tonsils. At me, not it. “The postmark was blurred. A comer of it got wet, and the ink
smudged.”
“All of it blurred?”
“The year-date,” he admitted. “The hour and the month came out OK. August. And seven thirty p.m., it was mailed at.”
This time I made the disgusted sound, in my larynx. “August, seven thirty p.m.—1937 or 1939 or 1942. You have no proof how
it got into that mail box, whether it came from a letter carrier’s pouch or from the back of some bureau drawer!”
“Give up, Jeff,” he said. “There’s such a thing as going too far.”
 
 
“It Had to Be Murder”
7
I don’t know what I would have said. That is, if I hadn’t happened to have my eyes on the Thorwald flat living room windows
just then. Probably verve little. The post card had shaken me, whether I admitted it or not. But I was looking over there. The light
had gone out as soon as he’d taken his shirt off. But the bedroom didn’t light up. A match-flare winked from the living room, low
down, as from an easy chair or sofa. With two unused beds in the bedroom, he was still staying out of there.
“Boyne,” I said in a glassy voice, “I don’t care what post cards from the other world you’ve turned up, I say that man has done
away with his wife! Trace that trunk he shipped out. Open it up when you’ve located it-and I think you’ll find her!”
And I hung up without waiting to hear what he was going to do about it. He didn’t ring back, so I suspected he was going to
give my suggestion a spin after all, in spite of his loudly proclaimed skepticism.
I stayed there by the window all night, keeping a sort of deathwatch. There were two more match-flares after the first, at about
half-hour intervals. Nothing more after that. So possibly he was asleep over there. Possibly not I had to sleep some myself, and I
finally succumbed in the flaming light of the early sun. Anything that he was going to do, he would have done under cover of
darkness and not waited for broad daylight. There wouldn’t be anything much to watch, for a while now. And what was there that
he needed to do any more, anyway? Nothing, just sit tight and let a little disarming time slip by.
It seemed like five minutes later that Sam came over and touched me, but it was already high noon. I said irritably: “Didn’t
you lamp that note I pinned up, for you to let me sleep?”
He said: “Yeah, but it’s your old friend Inspector Boyne. I figured you’d sure want to—“
It was a personal visit this time. Boyne came into the room behind him without waiting, and without much cordiality.
I said to get rid of Sam: “Go inside and smack a couple of eggs together.”
Boyne began in a galvanized-iron voice: “Jeff, what do you mean by doing anything like this to me? I’ve made a fool out of
myself thanks to you. Sending my men out right and left on wild-goose chases. Thank God, I didn’t put my foot in it any worse
than I did, and have this guy picked up and brought in for questioning.”
“Oh, then you don’t think that’s necessary?” I suggested, dryly.
The look he gave me took care of that. “I’m not alone in the department, you know. There are men over me I’m accountable to
for my actions. That looks great, don’t it, sending one of my fellows one-half-a-day’s train ride up into the sticks to some
God-forsaken whistle-stop or other at departmental expense—“
“Then you located the trunk?”
“We traced it through the express agency,” he said flintily.
“And you opened it?”
“We did better than that. We got in touch with the various farmhouses in the immediate locality, and Mrs. Thorwald came
down to the junction in a produce-truck from one of them and opened it for him herself, with her own keys!”
Very few men have ever gotten a look from an old friend such as I got from him. At the door he said, stiff as a rifle barrel: “Just
let’s forget all about it, shall we? That’s about the kindest thing either one of us can do for the other. You’re not yourself, and I’m
out a little of my own pocket money, time and temper. Let’s let it go at that. If you want to telephone me in future I’ll be glad to
give you my home number.”
The door went whopp! behind him.
For about ten minutes after he stormed out my numbed mind was in a sort of straitjacket. Then it started to wriggle its way
free. The hell with the police. I can’t prove it to them, maybe, but I can prove it to myself, one way or the other, once and for all.
Either I’m wrong or I’m right. He’s got his armor on against them. But his back is naked and unprotected against me.
I called Sam in. “Whatever became of that spyglass we used to have, when we were bumming around on that cabin-cruiser
that season?”
He found it some place downstairs and came in with it, blowing on it and rubbing it along his sleeve. I let it lie idle in my lap
first. I took a piece of paper and a pencil and wrote six words on it: What have you done with her?
I sealed it in an envelope and left the envelope blank. I said to Sam: “Now here’s what I want you to do, and I want you to be
slick about it. You take this, go in that building 525, climb the stairs to the fourth-floor rear, and ease it under the door. You’re fast,
at least you used to be. Let’s see if you’re fast enough to keep from being caught at it. Then when you get safely down again, give
the outside doorbell a little poke, to attract attention.”
His mouth started to open.
“And don’t ask me any questions, you understand? I’m not fooling.”
He went, and I got the spyglass ready.
I got him in the right focus after a minute or two. A face leaped up, and I was really seeing him for the first time. Dark-haired,
but unmistakable Scandinavian ancestry. Looked like a sinewy customer, although he didn’t run to much bulk.
About five minutes went by. His head turned sharply, profilewards. That was the bell-poke, right there. The note must be in
already.
He gave me the back of his head as he went back toward the flat-door. The lens could follow him all the way to the rear, where
my unaided eyes hadn’t been able to before.
He opened the door first, missed seeing it, looked out on a level. He closed it. Then dipped, straightened up. He had it. I could
see him turning it this way and that.
He shifted in, away from the door, nearer the window. He thought danger lay near the door, safety away from it. He didn’t
know it was the other way around, the deeper into his own rooms he retreated the greater the danger.
 
 
“It Had to Be Murder”
8
He’d torn it open, he was reading it. God, how I watched his expression. My eyes clung to it like leeches. There was a sudden
widening, a pulling—the whole skin of his face seemed to stretch back behind the ears, narrowing his eyes to Mongoloids. Shock.
Panic. His hand pushed out and found the wall, and he braced himself with it. Then he went back toward the door again slowly. I
could see him creeping up on it, stalking it as though it were something alive. He opened it so slenderly you couldn’t see it at all,
peered fearfully through the crack. Then he closed it, and he came back, zigzag, off balance from sheer reflex dismay. He toppled
into a chair and snatched up a drink. Out of the bottle neck itself this time. And even while he was holding it to his lips, his head
was turned looking over his shoulder at the door that had suddenly thrown his secret in his face.
I put the glass down.
Guilty! Guilty as all hell, and the police be damned!
My hand started toward the phone, came back again. What was the use? They wouldn’t listen now any more than they had
before. “You should have seen his face, etc.” And I could hear Boyne’s answer: “Anyone gets a jolt from an anonymous letter, true
or false. You would yourself.” They had a real live Mrs. Thorwald to show me—or thought they had. I’d have to show them the
dead one, to prove that they both weren’t one and the same. I, from my window, had to show them a body.
Well, he’d have to show me first.
It took hours before I got it. I kept pegging away at it, pegging away at it, while the afternoon wore away. Meanwhile he was
pacing back and forth there like a caged panther. Two minds with but one thought, turned inside-out in my case. How to keep it
hidden, how to see that it wasn’t kept hidden.
I was afraid he might try to light out, but if he intended doing that he was going to wait until after dark, apparently, so I had a
little time yet— Possibly he didn’t want to himself, unless he was driven to it—still felt that it was more dangerous than to stay.
The customary sights and sounds around me went on unnoticed, while the main stream of my thoughts pounded like a
torrent against that one obstacle stubbornly damming them up: how to get him to give the location away to me, so that I could give
it away in turn to the police.
I was dimly conscious, I remember, of the landlord or somebody bringing in a prospective tenant to look at the sixth-floor
apartment, the one that had already been finished. This was two over Thorwald’s; they were still at work on the in-between one. At
one point an odd little bit of synchronization, completely accidental of course, cropped up. Landlord and tenant both happened to
be near the living room windows on the sixth at the same moment that Thorwald was near those on the fourth. Both parties moved
onward simultaneously into the kitchen from there, and, passing the blind spot of the wall, appeared next at the kitchen windows.
It was uncanny, they were almost like precision-strollers or puppets manipulated on one and the same string. It probably wouldn’t
have happened again just like that in another fifty years. Immediately afterwards they digressed, never to repeat themselves like
that again.
The thing was, something about it had disturbed me. There had been some slight flaw or hitch to mar its smoothness. I tried
for a moment or two to figure out what it had been, and couldn’t. The landlord and tenant had gone now, and only Thorwald was
in sight. My unaided memory wasn’t enough to recapture it for me. My eyesight might have if it had been repeated, but it wasn’t.
It sank into my subconscious, to ferment there like yeast, while I went back to the main problem at hand.
I got it finally. It was well after dark, but I finally hit on a way. It mightn’t work, it was cumbersome and roundabout, but it
was the only way I could think of. An alarmed turn of the head, a quick precautionary step in one certain direction, was all I
needed. And to get this brief, flickering, transitory give-away, I needed two phone calls and an absence of about half an hour on his
part between them.
I leafed a directory by matchlight until I’d found what I wanted: Thorwald, Lars. 525 Bndct.... SWansea 5-2114.
I blew out the match, picked up the phone in the dark. It was like television. I could see to the other end of my call, only not
along the wire but by a direct channel of vision from window to window.
He said “Hullo?” gruffly.
I thought: How strange this is. I’ve been accusing him of murder for three days straight, and only now I’m hearing his voice
for the first time.
I didn’t try to disguise my own voice. After all, he’d never see me and I’d never see him. I said: “You got my note?”
He said guardedly: “Who is this?”
“Just somebody who happens to know.”
He said craftily: “Know what?”
“Know what you know. You and I, we’re the only ones.”
He controlled himself well. I didn’t hear a sound. But he didn’t know he was open another way too. I had the glass balanced
there at proper height on two large books on the sill. Through the window I saw him pull open the collar of his shirt as though its
stricture was intolerable. Then he backed his hand over his eyes like you do when there’s a light blinding you.
His voice came back firmly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Business, that’s what I’m talking about. It should be worth something to me, shouldn’t it? To keep it from going any further.”
I wanted to keep him from catching on that it was the windows. I still needed them, I needed them now more than ever. “You
weren’t very careful about your door the other night.. Or maybe the draft swung it open a little.”
That hit him where he lived. Even the stomach-heave reached me over the wire. “You didn’t see anything. There wasn’t
anything to see.”
“That’s up to you. Why should I go to the police?” I coughed a little. “If it would pay me not to.”
 
 
“It Had to Be Murder”
9
“Oh,” he said. And there was relief of a sort in it. “D’you want to—see me? Is that it?”
“That would be the best way, wouldn’t it? How much can you bring with you for now?”
“I’ve only got about seventy dollars around here.”
“All right, then we can arrange the rest for later. Do you know where Lakeside Park is? I’m near there now. Suppose we make
it there.” That was about thirty minutes away. Fifteen there and fifteen back. “There’s a little pavilion as you go in.”
“How many of you are there?” he asked cautiously.
“Just me. It pays to keep things to yourself. That way you don’t have to divvy up.”
He seemed to like that too. “I’ll take a run out,” he said, ‘just to see what it’s all about.”
I watched him more closely than ever, after he’d hung up. He flitted straight through to the end room, the bedroom, that he
didn’t go near any more. He disappeared into a clothes-closet in there, stayed a minute, came out again. He must have taken
something out of a hidden cranny or niche in there that even the dicks had missed. I could tell by the piston-like motion of his hand,
just before it disappeared inside his coat, what it was. A gun.
It’s a good thing, I thought, I’m not out there in Lakeside Park waiting for my seventy dollars.
The place blacked and he was on his way.
I called Sam in. “I want you to do something for me that’s a little risky. In fact, damn risky. You might break a leg, or you
might get shot, or you might even get pinched. We’ve been together ten years, and I wouldn’t ask you anything like that if I could
do it myself. But I can’t, and it’s got to be done.” Then I told him. “Go out the back way, cross the back yard fences, and see if you
can get into that fourth-floor flat up the fire escape. He’s left one of the windows down a little from the top.”
“What do you want me to look for?”
“Nothing.” The police had been there already, so what was the good of that? “There are three rooms over there. I want you to
disturb everything just a little bit, in all three, to show someone’s been in there. Turn up the edge of each rug a little, shift every
chair and table around a little, leave the closet doors standing out. Don’t pass up a thing. Here, keep your eyes on this.” I took off
my own wrist watch, strapped it on him. “You’ve got twenty-five minutes, starting from now. If You stay within those twenty-five
minutes, nothing will happen to you. When you see they’re up, don’t wait any longer, get out and get out fast.”
“Climb back down?”
“No.” He wouldn’t remember, in his excitement, if he’d left the windows up or not. And I didn’t want him to connect danger
with the back of his place, but with the front— I wanted to keep my own window out of it. “Latch the window down tight, let
yourself out the door, and beat it out of the building the front way, for your life!”
“I’m just an easy mark for you,” he said ruefully, but he went.
He came out through our own basement door below me, and scrambled over the fences. If anyone had challenged him from
one of the surrounding windows, I was going to backstop for him, explain I’d sent him down to look for something. But no one did.
He made it pretty good for anyone his age. He isn’t so young any more. Even the fire escape backing the flat, which was drawn up
short, he managed to contact by standing up on something. He got in, lit the light, looked over at me. I motioned him to go ahead,
not weaken.
I watched him at it. There wasn’t any way I could protect him, now that he was in there. Even Thorwald would be within his
rights in shooting him down—this was break and entry. I had to stay in back behind the scenes, like I had been all along. I couldn’t
get out in front of him as a lookout and shield him. Even the dicks had had a lookout posted.
He must have been tense, doing it. I was twice as tense, watching him do it. The twenty-five minutes took fifty to go by.
Finally he came over to the window, latched it fast. The lights went, and he was out. He’d made it. I blew out a bellyful of breath
that was twenty-five minutes old.
I heard him keying the street door, and when he came up I said warningly: “Leave the light out in here. Go and build yourself
a great big two-story whisky punch; you’re as close to white as you’ll ever be.”
Thorwald came back twenty-nine minutes after he’d left for Lakeside Park. A pretty slim margin to hang a man’s life on. So
now for the finale of the long-winded business, and here was hoping. I got my second phone call in before he had time to notice
anything amiss. It was tricky timing but I’d been sitting there with the receiver ready in my hand, dialing the number over and
over, then killing it each time. He came in on the 2 of 5-2114, and I saved that much time. The ring started before his hand came
away from the light switch.
This was the one that was going to tell the story.
“You were supposed to bring money, not a gun; that’s why I didn’t show up.” I saw the jolt that threw him. The window still
had to stay out of it— “I saw you tap the inside of your coat, where you had it, as you came out on the street” Maybe he hadn’t, but
he wouldn’t remember by now whether he had or not. You usually do when you’re packing a gun and aren’t an habitual carrier.
“Too bad you had your trip out and back for nothing. I didn’t waste my time while you were gone, though. I know more now
than I knew before.” This was the important part—I had the glass up and I was practically fluoroscoping him. ‘I’ve found out
where it is. You know what I mean. I know now where you’ve got it. I was there while you were out.”
Not a word. just quick breathing.
“Don’t you believe me? Look around. Put the receiver down and take a look for yourself. I found it.”
He put it down, moved as far as the living room entrance, and touched off the lights. He just looked around him once, in a
sweeping, all-embracing stare, that didn’t come to a head on any one fixed point, didn’t center at all.
 
 
“It Had to Be Murder”
10
He was smiling grimly when he came back to the phone. All he said, softly and with malignant satisfaction, was: “You’re a
liar.”
Then I saw him lay the receiver down and take his hand off it. I hung up at my end.
The test had failed. And yet it hadn’t— He hadn’t given the location away as I’d hoped he would. And yet that “You’re a liar”
was a tacit admission that it was there to be found, somewhere around him, somewhere on those premises. In such a good place
that he didn’t have to worry about it, didn’t even have to look to make sure.
So there was a kind of sterile victory in my defeat. But it wasn’t worth a damn to me.
He was standing there with his back to me, and I couldn’t see what he was doing. I knew the phone was somewhere in front of
him, but I thought he was just standing there pensive behind it. His head was slightly lowered, that was all. I’d hung up at my end.
I didn’t even see his elbow move. And if his index finger did, I couldn’t see it.
He stood like that a moment or two, then finally he moved aside. The lights went out over there; I lost him. He was careful not
even to strike matches, like he sometimes did in the dark.
My mind no longer distracted by having him to look at, I turned to trying to recapture something else—that troublesome little
hitch in synchronization that had occurred this afternoon, when the renting agent and he both moved simultaneously from one
window to the next. The closest I could get was this: it was like when you’re looking at someone through a pane of imperfect glass,
and a flaw in the glass distorts the symmetry of the reflected image for a second, until it has gone on past that point. Yet that
wouldn’t do, that was not it. The windows had been open and there had been no glass between. And I hadn’t been using the lens at
the time.
My phone rang. Boyne, I supposed. It wouldn’t be anyone else at this hour. Maybe, after reflecting on the way he’d jumped all
over me—I said “Hello” unguardedly, in my own normal voice.
There wasn’t any answer.
I said: “Hello? Hello? Hello?” I kept giving away samples of my voice.
There wasn’t a sound from first to last—
I hung up finally. It was still dark over there, I noticed.
Sam looked in to check out. He was a bit thick-tongued from his restorative drink. He said something about “Awri’ if I go
now?” I half heard him. I was trying to figure out another way of trapping him over there into giving away the right spot. I
motioned my consent absently.
He went a little unsteadily down the stairs to the ground floor and after a delaying moment or two I heard the street door
close after him. Poor Sam, he wasn’t much used to liquor.
I was left alone in the house, one chair the limit of my freedom of movement—
Suddenly a light went on over there again, just momentarily, to go right out again afterwards. He must have needed it for
something, to locate something that he had already been looking for and found he wasn’t able to put his hands on readily without
it. He found it, whatever it was, almost immediately, and moved back at once to put the lights out again. As he turned to do so, I
saw him give a glance out the window. He didn’t come to the window to do it, he just shot it out in passing.
Something about it struck me as different from any of the others I’d seen him give in all the time Id been watching him. If you
can qualify such an elusive thing as a glance, I would have termed it a glance with a purpose. It was certainly anything but vacant
or random, it had a bright spark of fixity in it. It wasn’t one of those precautionary sweeps I’d seen him give, either. It hadn’t started
over on the other side and worked its way around to my side, the right. It had hit dead-center at my bay window, for just a split
second while it lasted, and then was gone again. And the lights were gone, and he was gone.
Sometimes your senses take things in without your mind translating them into their proper meaning. My eyes saw that look.
My mind refused to smelter it properly. “It was meaningless,” I thought. “An unintentional bull’s-eye, that just happened to hit
square over here, as he went toward the lights on his way out.”
Delayed action. A wordless ring of the phone. To test a voice? A period of bated darkness following that, in which two could
have played at the same game—stalking one another’s window-squares, unseen. A last-moment flicker of the lights, that was bad
strategy but unavoidable. A parting glance, radioactive with malignant intention. All these things sank in without fusing. My eyes
did their job, it was my mind that didn’t—or at least took its time about it.
Seconds went by in packages of sixty. It was very still around the familiar quadrangle formed by the back of the houses. Sort
of a breathless stillness. And then a sound came into it, starting up from nowhere, nothing. The unmistakable, spaced clicking a
cricket makes in the silence of the night. I thought of Sam’s superstition about them, that he claimed had never failed to fulfill itself
yet If that was the case, it looked bad for somebody in one of these slumbering houses around here—
Sam had been gone only about ten minutes. And now he was back again, he must have forgotten something. That drink was
responsible. Maybe his hat, or maybe even the key to his own quarters uptown. He knew I couldn’t come down and let him in, and
he was trying to be quiet about it, thinking perhaps I’d dozed off. All I could hear was this faint jiggling down at the lock of the
front door. It was one of those old-fashioned stoop houses, with an outer pair of storm doors that were allowed to swing free all
night, and then a small vestibule, and then the inner door, worked by a simple iron key. The liquor had made his hand a little
unreliable, although he’d had this difficulty once or twice before, even without it. A match would have helped him find the keyhole
quicker, but then, Sam doesn’t smoke. I knew he wasn’t likely to have one on him.
 
 
“It Had to Be Murder”
11
The sound had stopped now. He must have given up, gone away again, decided to let whatever it was go until tomorrow. He
hadn’t gotten in, because I knew his noisy way of letting doors coast shut by themselves too well, and there hadn’t been any sound
of that sort, that loose slap he always made.
Then suddenly it exploded. Why at this particular moment, I don’t know. That was some mystery of the inner workings of my
own mind. It flashed like waiting gunpowder which a spark has finally reached along a slow train. Drove all thoughts of Sam, and
the front door, and this and that completely out of my head. It had been waiting there since midafternoon today, and only now—
More of that delayed action. Damn that delayed action.
The renting agent and Thorwald had both started even from the living room window. An intervening gap of blind wall, and
both had reappeared at the kitchen window, still one above the other. But some sort of a hitch or flaw or jump had taken place,
right there, that bothered me. The eye is a reliable surveyor. There wasn’t anything the matter with their timing, it was with their
parallel-ness, or whatever the word is. The hitch had been vertical, not horizontal. There had been an upward “jump.”
Now I had it, now I knew. And it couldn’t wait— It was too good. They wanted a body? Now I had one for them.
Sore or not, Boyne would have to listen to me now. I didn’t waste any time, I dialed his precinct—house then and there in the
dark, working the slots in my lap by memory alone. They didn’t make much noise going around, just a light click. Not even as
distinct as that cricket out there—
“He went home long ago,” the desk sergeant said.
This couldn’t wait. “All right, give me his home phone number.”
He took a minute, came back again. “Trafalgar,” he said. Then nothing more.
“Well? Trafalgar what?” Not a sound.
“Hello? Hello?” I tapped it. “Operator, I’ve been cut off. Give me that party again.” I couldn’t get her either.
I hadn’t been cut off. My wire had been cut. That had been too sudden, right in the middle of— And to be cut like that it
would have to be done somewhere right here inside the house with me. Outside it went underground.
Delayed action. This time final, fatal, altogether too late. A voiceless ring of the phone. A direction-finder of a look from over
there. “Sam” seemingly trying to get back in a while ago.
Suddenly, death was somewhere inside the house here with me. And I couldn’t move, I couldn’t get up out of this chair. Even
if I had gotten through to Boyne just now, that would have been too late. There wasn’t time enough now for one of those
camera-finishes in this. I could have shouted out the window to that gallery of sleeping rear-window neighbors around me, I
supposed. It would have brought them to the windows. It couldn’t have brought them over here in time. By the time they had even
figured which particular house it was coming from, it would stop again, be over with, I didn’t open my mouth. Not because I was
brave, but because it was so obviously useless.
He’d be up in a minute. He must be on the stairs now, although I couldn’t hear him. Not even a creak. A creak would have
been a relief, would have placed him. This was like being shut up in the dark with the silence of a gliding, coiling cobra somewhere
around you.
There wasn’t a weapon in the place with me. There were books there on the wall, in the dark, within reach. Me, who never
read. The former owner’s books. There was a bust of Rousseau or Montesquieu, I’d never been able to decide which, one of those
gents with flowing manes, topping them. It was a monstrosity, bisque clay, but it too dated from before my occupancy.
I arched my middle upward from the chair seat and clawed desperately up at it. Twice my fingertips slipped off it, then at the
third raking I got it to teeter, and the fourth brought it down into my lap, pushing me down into the chair. There was a steamer rug
under me. I didn’t need it around me in this weather, I’d been using it to soften the seat of the chair. I tugged it out from under and
mantled it around me like an Indian brave’s blanket. Then I squirmed far down in the chair, let my head and one shoulder dangle
out over the arm, on the side next to the wall. I hoisted the bust to my other, upward shoulder, balanced it there precariously for a
second head, blanket tucked around its ears. From the back, in the dark, it would look—I hoped—
I proceeded to breathe adenoidally, like someone in heavy upright sleep. It wasn’t hard. My own breath was coming nearly
that labored anyway, from tension.
He was good with knobs and hinges and things. I never heard the door open, and this one, unlike the one downstairs, was
right behind me. A little eddy of air puffed through the dark at me. I could feel it because my scalp, the real one, was all wet at the
roots of the hair right then.
If it was going to be a knife or head-blow, the dodge might give me a second chance, that was the most I could hope for, I
knew. My arms and shoulders are hefty. I’d bring him down on me in a bear-hug after the first slash or drive, and break his neck or
collarbone against me. If it was going to be a gun, he’d get me anyway in the end. A difference of a few seconds. He had a gun, I
knew, that he was going to use on me in the open, over at Lakeside Park. I was hoping that here, indoors, in order to make his own
escape more practicable—
Time was up.
The flash of the shot lit up the room for a second, it was so dark. Or at least the corners of it, like flickering, weak lightning.
The bust bounced on my shoulder and disintegrated into chunks.
I thought he was jumping up and down on the floor for a minute with frustrated rage. Then when I saw him dart by me and
lean over the window sill to look for a way out, the sound transferred itself rearwards and downwards, became a pummeling with
hoof and hip at the street door. The camera-finish after all. But he still could have killed me five times.
 
 
“It Had to Be Murder”
12
I flung my body down into the narrow crevice between chair arm and wall, but my legs were still up, and so was my head and
that one shoulder.
He whirled, fired at me so close that it was like looking at sunrise in the face. I didn’t feel it, so—it hadn’t hit.
“You—” I heard him grunt to himself. I think it was the last thing he said. The rest of his life was all action, not verbal.
He flung over the sill on one arm and dropped into the yard. Two-story drop. He made it because he missed the cement,
landed on the sod-strip in the middle. I jacked myself up over the chair arm and flung myself bodily forward at the window, neatly
hitting it chin first.
He went all right. When life depends on it, you go. He took the first fence, rolled over that bellywards. He went over the
second like a cat, hands and feet pointed together in a spring. Then he was back in the rear yard of his own building. He got up on
something, just about like Sam had— The rest was all footwork, with quick little corkscrew twists at each landing stage. Sam had
latched his windows down when he was over there, but he’d reopened one of them for ventilation on his return. His whole life
depended now on that casual, unthinking little act—
Second, third. He was up to his own windows. He’d made it. Something went wrong. He veered out away from them in
another pretzel-twist— flashed up toward the fifth, the one above. Something sparked in the darkness of one of his own windows
where he’d been just now, and a shot thudded heavily out around the quadrangle-enclosure like a big bass drum.
He passed the fifth, the sixth, got to the roof. He’d made it a second time. Gee, he loved life! The guys in his own windows
couldn’t get him, he was over them in a straight line and there was too much fire escape interlacing in the way.
I was too busy watching him to watch what was going on around me. Suddenly Boyne was next to me, sighting. I heard him
mutter: “I almost hate to do this, he’s got to fall so far.”
He was balanced on the roof parapet up there, with a star right over his head. An unlucky star. He stayed a minute too long,
trying to kill before he was killed. Or maybe he was killed, and knew it.
A shot cracked, high up against the sky, the window pane flew apart all over the two of us, and one of the books snapped
right behind me.
Boyne didn’t say anything more about hating to do it. My face was pressing outward against his arm. The recoil of his elbow
jarred my teeth. I blew a clearing through the smoke to watch him go.
It was pretty horrible. He took a minute to show anything, standing up there on the parapet. Then he let his gun go, as if to
say: “I won ‘t need this any more.” Then he went after it. He missed the fire escape entirely, came all the way down on the outside.
He landed so far out he hit one of the projecting planks, down there out of sight. It bounced his body up, like a springboard. Then it
landed again—for good. And that was all.
I said to Boyne: “I got it. I got it finally. The fifth-floor flat, the one over his, that they’re still working on. The cement kitchen
floor, raised above the level of the other rooms. They wanted to comply with the fire laws and also obtain a dropped living room
effect, as cheaply as possible. Dig it up—“
He went right over then and there, down through the basement and over the fences, to save time. The electricity wasn’t turned
on yet in that one, they had to use their torches. It didn’t take them long at that, once they’d got started. In about half an hour he
came to the window and wigwagged over for my benefit. It meant yes.
He didn’t come over until nearly eight in the morning; after they’d tidied up and taken them away. Both away, the hot dead
and the cold dead. He said: “Jeff, I take it all back. That damn fool that I sent up there about the trunk-well, it wasn’t his fault, in a
way. I’m to blame. He didn’t have orders to check on the woman’s description, only on the contents of the trunk. He came back and
touched on it in a general way. I go home and I’m in bed already, and suddenly pop! into my brain—one of the tenants I questioned
two whole days ago had given us a few details and they didn’t tally with his on several important points. Talk about being slow to
catch on!”
“I’ve had that all the way through this damn thing,” I admitted ruefully. “I called it delayed action. It nearly killed me.”
“I’m a police officer and you’re not.”
“That how you happened to shine at the right time?”
“Sure. We came over to pick him up for questioning. I left them planted there when we saw he wasn’t in, and came on over
here by myself to square it up with you while we were waiting. How did you happen to hit on that cement floor?”
I told him about the freak synchronization. “The renting agent showed up taller at the kitchen window in proportion to
Thorwald, than he had been a moment before when both were at the living room windows together. It was no secret that they were
putting in cement floors, topped by a cork composition, and raising them considerably. But it took on new meaning. Since the top
floor one has been finished for some time, it had to be the fifth. Here’s the way I have it lined up, just in theory. She’s been in ill
health for years, and he’s been out of work, and he got sick of that and of her both. Met this other
“She’ll be here later today, they’re bringing her down under arrest—”
“He probably insured her for all he could get, and then started to poison her slowly, trying not to leave any trace. I imagine—
and remember, this is pure conjecture—she caught him at it that night the light was on all night. Caught on in some way, or caught
him in the act. He lost his head, and did the very thing he had wanted all along to avoid doing. Killed her by violence—
strangulation or a blow. The rest had to be hastily improvised. He got a better break than he deserved at that. He thought of the
apartment upstairs, went up and
looked around. They’d just finished laying the floor, the cement hadn’t hardened Yet, and the materials were still around. He
gouged a trough out of it just wide enough to take her body, put her in it, mixed fresh cement and recemented over her, possibly
 
 
“It Had to Be Murder”
13
raising the general level of the floor an inch or two so that she’d be safely covered. A permanent, odorless coffin. Next day the
workmen came back, laid down the cork surfacing on top of it without noticing anything, I suppose held used one of their own
trowels to smooth it. Then he sent his accessory upstate fast, near where his wife had been several summers before, but to a
different farmhouse where she wouldn’t be recognized, along with the trunk keys. Sent the trunk up after her, and dropped himself
an already used post card into his mailbox, with the year-date blurred. In a week or two she would have probably committed
‘suicide’ up there as Mrs. Anna Thorwald. Despondency due to ill health. Written him a farewell note and left her clothes beside
some body of deep water. It was risky, but they might have succeeded in collecting the insurance at that.”
By nine Boyne and the rest had gone. I was still sitting there in the chair, too keyed up to sleep. Sam came in and said: “Here’s
Doc Preston.”
He showed up rubbing his hands, in that way he has. “Guess we can take that cast off your leg now. You must be tire

s

تدریس تکنیکهای زبان ت چهارشنبه ۲۱ شهریور ۰۳ | ۲۰:۳۴ ۵ بازديد

One day a father of a very wealthy family took his son on a trip to the country with the purpose of
showing his son how the poor people live so he could be thankful for his wealth.
They spent a couple of days and nights on the farm of what would be considered a very poor family.
On their return from their trip, the father asked his son, “How was the trip?” “It was great, Dad.”
“Did you see how poor people can be?” the father asked. “Oh yeah” said the son. “So what did you
learn from the trip?” asked the father.
The son answered, “I saw that we have one dog and they had four.
We have a pool that reaches to the middle of our garden and they
have a creek that has no end.” “We have imported lanterns in our
garden and they have the stars at night.” “Our patio reaches to the
front yard and they have the whole horizon.” “We have a small
piece of land to live on and they have fields that go beyond our
sight.” “We have servants who serve us, but they serve others.”
“We buy our food, but they grow theirs.” “We have walls around
our property to protect us; they have friends to protect them.”
With this the boy’s father was speechless. Then his son added, “Thanks dad for showing me how
poor we are.”
A HOLE IN THE FENCE
There once was a little boy who had a bad temper. His Father gave him a bag of nails and told him
that every time he lost his temper, he must hammer a nail into the back of the fence.
The first day the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence. Over the next few weeks, as he learned to
control his anger, the number of nails hammered daily gradually dwindled down. He discovered it
was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence....
Finally the day came when the boy didn’t lose his temper at all. He told his father about it and the
father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his
temper. The day passed and the young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were
gone. The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence. He said, “You have done well,
my son, but look at the holes in the fence.”
The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one.
You can put a knife in a man and draw it out. It won’t matter how many times you say I’m sorry,
the wound is still there. A verbal wound is as bad as a physical one.
Friends and loved ones are a very rare jewel, indeed.
They make you smile and encourage you to succeed.
They lend an ear, they share a word of praise, and they
always want to open their hearts to us. Water your
relationships with kindness… and they will grow. So be
careful little lips what you say…! And you won't chase
friendships away.

 
 

100 Moral Stories 17 www.islamicoccasions.com
A frail old man went to live with his son, daughter-in-law, and four-year old grandson. The old
man’s hands trembled, his eyesight was blurred, and his step faltered. The family ate together at
the table. But the elderly grandfather’s shaky hands and failing sight made eating difficult. Peas
rolled off his spoon onto the floor. When he grasped, the glass, milk spilled on the tablecloth.
The son and daughter-in-law became irritated with the mess. “We must do something about
Grandfather,” said the son. “I’ve had enough of his spilled milk, noisy eating, and food on the
floor.” So the husband and wife set a small table in the corner. There, Grandfather ate alone while
the rest of the family enjoyed dinner. Since Grandfather had broken a dish or two, his food was
served in a wooden bowl. When the family glanced in Grandfather’s direction, sometimes he had a
tear in his eye as he sat alone. Still, the only words the couple had for him were sharp admonitions
when he dropped a fork or spilled food. The four-year-old watched it all in silence.
One evening before supper, the father noticed his son playing with wood scraps on the floor. He
asked the child sweetly, “What are you making?” Just as sweetly, the boy responded, “Oh, I am
making a little bowl for you and Mama to eat your food in when I grow up.” The four-year-old
smiled and went back to work. The words so struck the parents that they were speechless. Then
tears started to stream down their cheeks. Though no word was spoken, both knew what must be
done.
That evening the husband took Grandfather’s hand and gently led him back to the family table.
For the remainder of his days he ate every meal with the family.
And for some reason, neither husband nor wife seemed to care
any longer when a fork was dropped, milk spilled, or the
tablecloth soiled.
Children are remarkably perceptive. Their eyes ever observe, their ears ever listen, and their minds
ever process the messages they absorb. If they see us patiently provide a happy home atmosphere
for family members, they will imitate that attitude for the rest of their lives. The wise parent
realizes that every day the building blocks are being laid for the child’s future. Let’s be wise builders
and role models.
“Life is about people connecting with people, and making a positive difference.
Take care of yourself, ... and those you love, ... today, ... and everyday!”
FATHERS EYES
A teenager lived alone with his father, and the two of them had a very special relationship. The
father believed in encouragement. Even though the son was always on the bench, his father was
always in the stands cheering. He never missed a game.
This young man was the smallest of the class when he entered high school. His father continued to
encourage him but also made it very clear that he did not have to play football if he didn’t want to.
But the young man loved football and decided to hang in there. He was determined to try his best
at every practice, and perhaps he’d get to play when he became a senior. All through high school he
never missed a practice or a game, but remained a bench warmer all four years. His faithful father
was always in the stands, always with words of encouragement for him. When the young man went
GRANDPA’S TABLE
“Little Things Affect Little Minds”
BENJAMIN DISRAELI

 
 

100 Moral Stories 18 www.islamicoccasions.com
to college, he decided to try out for the football team as a “walk-on.”
Everyone was sure he could never make the cut, but he did. The coach admitted that he kept him
on the roster because he always puts his heart and soul to every practice, and at the same time,
provided the other members with the spirit and hustle they badly needed. The news that he had
survived the cut thrilled him so much that he rushed to the nearest phone and called his father.
His father shared his excitement and was sent season tickets for all the college games. This
persistent young athlete never missed practice during his four years at college, but he never got to
play in the game.
It was the end of his senior football season, and as he trotted onto the practice field shortly before
the big play off game, the coach met him with a telegram. The young man read the telegram and he
became deathly silent. Swallowing hard, he mumbled to the coach, “My father died this morning.
Is it all right if I miss practice today?”
The coach put his arm gently around his shoulder and said, “Take the rest of the week off, son.
And don’t even plan to come back to the game on Saturday.” Saturday arrived, and the game was
not going well.
In the third quarter, when the team was ten points behind, a silent young man quietly slipped into
the empty locker room and put on his football gear. As he ran onto the sidelines, the coach and his
players were astounded to see their faithful team-mate back so soon.
“Coach, please let me play. I’ve just got to play today,” said the young man.
The coach pretended not to hear him. There was no way he wanted his worst player in this close
playoff game. But the young man persisted, and finally feeling sorry for the kid, the coach gave in.
“All right,” he said. “You can go in.” Before long, the coach, the players and everyone in the stands
could not believe their eyes. This little unknown, who had never played before, was doing
everything right. The opposing team could not stop him. He ran, he passed, blocked and tackled
like a star. His team began to triumph.
The score was soon tied. In the closing seconds of the game, this kid intercepted a pass and ran all
the way for the winning touchdown. The fans broke loose. His team-mates hoisted him onto their
shoulders. Such cheering you’ve never heard!
Finally, after the stands had emptied and the team had
showered and left the locker room, the coach noticed
that the young man was sitting quietly in the corner all
alone. The coach came to him and said, “Kid, I can’t
believe it. You were fantastic!”
Tell me what got into you? How did you do it? He
looked at the coach, with tears in his eyes, and said,
“Well, you knew my dad died, but did you know that my
dad was blind?” The young man swallowed hard and
forced a smile, “Dad came to all my games, but today
was the first time he could see me play, and I wanted to
show him I could do it!”

 
 

100 Moral Stories 19 www.islamicoccasions.com
A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared; he sat and watched the
butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole. Then it seemed
to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could and it could go no
farther.
Then the man decided to help the butterfly, so he took a pair of scissors
and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon. The butterfly then
emerged easily. But it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings.
The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that, at any
moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the
body, which would contract in time.
Neither happened! In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling
around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It never was able to fly.
What this man in his kindness and haste did not understand was that the
restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get
through the tiny opening were nature's way of forcing fluid from the body
of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it
achieved its freedom from the cocoon.
Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life. If nature allowed us to go
through our life without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not be as strong
as what we could have been. And we could never fly...
THE OBSTACLE IN OUR PATH
In ancient times, a king had a boulder placed on a roadway. Then he hid himself and watched to
see if anyone would remove the huge rock. Some of the king’s wealthiest merchants and courtiers
came by and simply walked around it.
Many loudly blamed the king for not keeping the roads clear, but none did anything about getting
the big stone out of the way. Then a peasant came along carrying a load of vegetables. On
approaching the boulder, the peasant laid down his burden and tried to move the stone to the side
of the road. After much pushing and straining, he finally succeeded. As the peasant picked up his
load of vegetables, he noticed a purse lying in the road where the boulder had been.
The purse contained many gold coins and a note from the
king indicating that the gold was for the person who
removed the boulder from the roadway. The peasant
learned what many others never understand.
Every obstacle presents an opportunity to
improve one’s condition.
BUTTERFLY AND COCOON

 
 

100 Moral Stories 20 www.islamicoccasions.com
A Wolf found great difficulty in getting at the sheep owing to the vigilance of the
shepherd and his dogs. But one day it found the skin of a sheep that had been
flayed and thrown aside, so it put it on over its own pelt and strolled down
among the sheep. The Lamb that belonged to the sheep, whose skin the Wolf
was wearing, began to follow the Wolf in the Sheep’s clothing; so, leading the
Lamb a little apart, he soon made a meal off her, and for some time he
succeeded in deceiving the sheep, and enjoying hearty meals.
Appearances are deceptive.
DON’T JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER!
A lady in a faded gingham dress and her husband, dressed in a homespun threadbare suit, stepped
off the train in Boston and walk timidly without an appointment into the Harvard University
President’s outer office.
The secretary could tell in a moment that such backwoods, country hicks had no business at
Harvard and probably didn’t even deserve to be in Cambridge.
“We want to see the president,” the man said softly.
“He’ll be busy all day,” the secretary snapped.
“We’ll wait,” the lady replied.
For hours the secretary ignored them, hoping that the couple would finally become discouraged
and go away. They didn’t and the secretary grew frustrated and finally decided to disturb the
president, even though it was a chore she always regretted.
“Maybe if you see them for a few minutes, they’ll leave,” she said to him.
He sighed in exasperation and nodded. Someone of his importance obviously didn’t have the time
to spend with them, but he detested gingham dresses and homespun suits cluttering up his outer
office.
The president, stern faced and with dignity, strutted toward the couple.
The lady told him, “We had a son who attended Harvard for one year. He loved Harvard. He was
happy here. But about a year ago, he was accidentally killed. My husband and I would like to erect a
memorial to him, somewhere on campus.”
The president wasn’t touched.... He was shocked.
“Madam,” he said, gruffly, “we can’t put up a statue for every person who attended Harvard and
died. If we did, this place would look like a cemetery.”
“Oh, no,” the lady explained quickly. “We don’t want to erect a statue. We thought we would like to
give a building to Harvard.”
THE WOLF IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING

 
 

100 Moral Stories 21 www.islamicoccasions.com
The president rolled his eyes. He glanced at the gingham dress and homespun suit, and then
exclaimed, “A building! Do you have any earthly idea how much a building costs? We have over
seven and a half million dollars in the physical buildings here at Harvard.”
For a moment the lady was silent.
The president was pleased. Maybe he could get rid of them now.
The lady turned to her husband and said quietly, “Is that all it
costs to start a university? Why don’t we just start our own?”
Her husband nodded.
The president’s face wilted in confusion and bewilderment. Mr.
and Mrs. Leland Stanford got up and walked away, traveling to
Palo Alto, California where they established the University that
bears their name, Stanford University, a memorial to a son that
Harvard no longer cared about.
You can easily judge the character of others by how
they treat those who they think can do nothing.
MOUNTAIN STORY
A son and his father were walking on the mountains.
Suddenly, his son falls, hurts himself and screams: “AAAhhhhhhhhhhh!”
To his surprise, he hears the voice repeating, somewhere in the mountain: “AAAhhhhhhhhhhh!”
Curious, he yells: “Who are you?”
He receives the answer: “Who are you?”
And then he screams to the mountain: “I admire you!”
The voice answers: “I admire you!”
Angered at the response, he screams: “Coward!”
He receives the answer: “Coward!”
He looks to his father and asks: “What’s going on?”
The father smiles and says: “My son, pay attention.”
Again the man screams: “You are a champion!”
The voice answers: “You

sherlok

تدریس تکنیکهای زبان ت سه شنبه ۲۰ شهریور ۰۳ | ۲۳:۳۳ ۹ بازديد
My dear Mr. Sherlock Holmes:
“You really did it very well. You took
me in completely. Until after the alarm of
fire, I had not a suspicion. But then, when
I found how I had betrayed myself, I be-
gan to think. I had been warned against
you months ago. I had been told that if the
King employed an agent it would certainly
be you. And your address had been given
me. Yet, with all this, you made me reveal
what you wanted to know. Even after I be-
came suspicious, I found it hard to think
evil of such a dear, kind old clergyman.
But, you know, I have been trained as an
actress myself. Male costume is nothing
new to me. I often take advantage of the
freedom which it gives. I sent John, the
coachman, to watch you, ran up stairs, got
into my walking-clothes, as I call them,
and came down just as you departed.
“Well, I followed you to your door, and
so made sure that I was really an ob-
ject of interest to the celebrated Mr. Sher-
lock Holmes. Then I, rather imprudently,
wished you good-night, and started for
the Temple to see my husband.
“We both thought the best resource was
flight, when pursued by so formidable an
antagonist; so you will find the nest empty
when you call to-morrow. As to the pho-
tograph, your client may rest in peace. I
love and am loved by a better man than
he. The King may do what he will without
hindrance from one whom he has cruelly
wronged. I keep it only to safeguard my-
self, and to preserve a weapon which will
always secure me from any steps which
he might take in the future. I leave a pho-
tograph which he might care to possess;
and I remain, dear Mr. Sherlock Holmes,
— “Very truly yours,
“Irene Norton, n´ee Adler.”
“What a woman—oh, what a woman!” cried the
King of Bohemia, when we had all three read this
epistle. “Did I not tell you how quick and resolute
she was? Would she not have made an admirable
queen? Is it not a pity that she was not on my level?”
“From what I have seen of the lady she seems
indeed to be on a very different level to your Majesty,”
said Holmes coldly. “I am sorry that I have not been
able to bring your Majesty’s business to a more suc-
cessful conclusion.”
“On the contrary, my dear sir,” cried the King;
“nothing could be more successful. I know that her
word is inviolate. The photograph is now as safe as if
it were in the fire.”
“I am glad to hear your Majesty say so.”
“I am immensely indebted to you. Pray tell me in
what way I can reward you. This ring—” He slipped
an emerald snake ring from his finger and held it out
upon the palm of his hand.
“Your Majesty has something which I should value
even more highly,” said Holmes.
“You have but to name it.”
“This photograph!”
The King stared at him in amazement.
“Irene’s photograph!” he cried. “Certainly, if you
wish it.”
“I thank your Majesty. Then there is no more to
be done in the matter. I have the honour to wish
you a very good-morning.” He bowed, and, turning
away without observing the hand which the King had
stretched out to him, he set off in my company for his
chambers.
And that was how a great scandal threatened to af-
fect the kingdom of Bohemia, and how the best plans
of Mr. Sherlock Holmes were beaten by a woman’s
wit. He used to make merry over the cleverness of
women, but I have not heard him do it of late. And
when he speaks of Irene Adler, or when he refers to
her photograph, it is always under the honourable
title of the woma

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تدریس تکنیکهای زبان ت سه شنبه ۲۰ شهریور ۰۳ | ۲۳:۲۹ ۶ بازديد
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