Supplementary reading for students of linguistics = Практикум по дополнительному чтению для студентов-лингвистов

Московский государственный
 институт международных отношений (университет)
МИД России
Одинцовский филиал

Н. Д. ПАРШИНА

SUPPLEMENTARY 
READING FOR STUDENTS 
OF LINGUISTICS

Москва
2022

УДК 811.111
ББК  81.2Англ
П18

Издание выпущено в свет при поддержке 
Программы стратегического академического лидерства «Приоритет – 2030»

 
Паршина Н. Д.
П18 
  
Supplementary reading for students of linguistics = Практикум по дополнительному 
чтению для студентов-лингвистов / Н. Д. Паршина. — М.: Издательство 
«Аспект Пресс», 2022. — 72 с. 

 
 
ISBN 978-5-7567-1193-6 

 
Практикум содержит аутентичные классические короткие рассказы с последующими 
тренировочными упражнениями. Выполнение предложенных заданий 
способствует расширению и отработке лексического состава языка, усвоению 
грамматических конструкций и правил, а также формированию навыков говорения 
и письма. 
 
Для студентов языковых факультетов, а также всех изучающих английский 
язык на продвинутом уровне. 
 
УДК 811.111
 
ББК 81.2Англ

ISBN 978-5-7567-1193-6 
© Паршина Н. Д., 2022
 
© Одинцовский филиал МГИМО МИД 
России, 2022
 
© ООО Издательство «Аспект Пресс», 2022

Учебное издание
Паршина Наталья Дмитриевна

SUPPLEMENTARY READING 
FOR STUDENTS OF LINGUISTICS = 
ПРАКТИКУМ ПО ДОПОЛНИТЕЛЬНОМУ ЧТЕНИЮ 
ДЛЯ СТУДЕНТОВ-ЛИНГВИСТОВ

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CONTENTS

 THE GIFT OF THE MAGI BY O. HENRY  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5

TASKS AND EXERCISES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11

THE WATER GHOST OF HARROWBY HALL 

BY JOHN KENDRICK BANGS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  21

TASKS AND EXERCISES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  31

THE BRAZILIAN CAT BY ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE   . . . . . . . .  40

TASKS AND EXERCISES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  62

O. Henry

THE GIFT OF THE MAGI

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents 
of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing 
the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheeks 
burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close deal-
ing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven 
cents. And the next day would be Christmas.
There was clearly nothing left to do but fl op down on the shabby 
little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral re-
fl ection that life is made up of sobs, sniffl  es, and smiles, with sniffl  es 
predominating.
While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the fi rst 
stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished fl at at $8 per 
week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that 
word on the look-out for the mendicancy squad.
 In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would 
go, and an electric button from which no mortal fi nger could coax a ring. 
Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name “Mr. James 
Dillingham Young ”
The “Dillingham” had been fl ung to the breeze during a former 
period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. 
Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, the letters of “Dillingham” 
looked blurred, as though they were thinking seriously of contracting 

O. HENRY

to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham 
Young came home and reached his fl at above he was called “Jim” and 
greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced 
to you as Della. Which is all very good.
Della fi nished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder 
rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a grey cat walk-
ing a grey fence in a grey backyard. To-morrow would be Christmas 
Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had 
been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty 
dollars a week doesn’t go far. Expenses had been greater than she had 
calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her 
Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for 
him. Something fi ne and rare and sterling — something just a little bit 
near to being worthy of the honour of being owned by Jim.
There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps 
you have seen a pier-glass in an $8 Bat. A very thin and very agile per-
son may, by observing his refl ection in a rapid sequence of longitudi-
nal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being 
slender, had mastered the art.
Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. 
Her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its colour within 
twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its 
full length.
Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs 
in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim’s gold watch that 
had been his father’s and his grandfather’s. The other was Della’s hair. 
Had the Queen of Sheba lived in the fl at across the airshaft, Della 
would have let her hair hang out of the window some day to dry just to 
depreciate Her Majesty’s jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the 
janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have 
pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his 
beard from envy.

THE GIFT OF THE MAGI

So now Della’s beautiful hair fell about her, rippling and shining 
like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made 
itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously 
and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear 
or two splashed on the worn red carpet.
On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a 
whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she clut-
tered out of the door and down the stairs to the street.
Where she stopped the sign read: ‘Mme Sofronie. Hair Goods of 
All Kinds.’ One Eight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Ma-
dame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the ‘Sofronie.’
“Will you buy my hair?” asked Della.
“I buy hair,” said Madame. “Take yer hat off  and let’s have a sight 
at the looks of it ”
Down rippled the brown cascade.
“Twenty dollars,” said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised 
hand.
“Give it to me quick” said Della.
Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the 
hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim’s present.
She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one 
else. There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned 
all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in 
design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by 
meretricious ornamentation — as all good things should do. It was even 
worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be 
Jim’s. It was like him. Quietness and value — the description applied 
to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried 
home with the 78 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be 
properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch 
was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather 
strap that he used in place of a chain.

O. HENRY

When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to pru-
dence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and 
went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. 
Which is always a tremendous task dear friends — a mammoth task.
Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying 
curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She 
looked at her refl ection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.
“If Jim doesn’t kill me,” she said to herself, “before he takes a sec-
ond look at me, he’ll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what 
could I do — oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty-seven cents?”
At 7 o’clock the coff ee was made and the frying-pan was on the 
back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.
Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat 
on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then 
she heard his step on the stair away down on the fi rst fl ight, and she 
turned white for just a moment. She had a habit of saying little silent 
prayers about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: 
“Please, God, make him think I am still pretty ”
The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin 
and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two — and to be bur-
dened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was with out 
gloves.
Jim stepped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent 
of quail. His eyes were fi xed upon Della, and there was an expression 
in them that she could not read, and it terrifi ed her. It was not anger, 
nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments 
that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fi xedly with that 
peculiar expression on his face.
Della wriggled off  the table and went for him.
“Jim, darling,” she cried, “don’t look at me that way. I had my 
hair cut off  and sold it because I couldn’t have lived through Christmas 

THE GIFT OF THE MAGI

without giving you a present. It’ll grow out again — you won’t mind, 
will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say ‘Merry 
Christmas!’ Jim, and let’s be happy. You don’t know what a nice-what 
a beautiful, nice gift I’ve got for you ”
“You’ve cut off  your hair?” asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not 
arrived at that patent fact yet, even after the hardest mental labour.
“Cut it off  and sold it,” said Della. “Don’t you like me just as well, 
anyhow? I’m me without my hair, ain’t I?”
Jim looked about the room curiously.
“You say your hair is gone?” he said, with an air almost of idiocy.
“You needn’t look for it,” said Della. “It’s sold, I tell you — sold 
and gone, too. It’s Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for 
you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered,” she went on with 
a sudden serious sweetness, “but nobody could ever count my love for 
you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?”
Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Del-
la. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconse-
quential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million 
a year — what is the diff erence? A mathematician or a wit would give 
you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was 
not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.
Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the 
table.
“Don’t make any mistake, Dell,” he said, “about me. I don’t think 
there’s anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that 
could make me like my girl any less. But if you’ll unwrap that package 
you may see why you had me going a while at fi rst ”
White fi ngers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an 
ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to hys-
terical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all 
the comforting powers of the lord of the fl at.

O. HENRY

For there lay The Combs — the set of combs, side and back, that 
Della had worshipped for long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, 
pure tortoise-shell, with jewelled rims — just the shade to wear in the 
beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her 
heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope 
of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have 
adorned the coveted adornments were gone
But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to 
look up with dim eyes and a smile and say: “My hair grows so fast, Jim!
And then Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, “Oh, oh!
Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him 
eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to {lash 
with a refl ection of her bright and ardent spirit
“Isn’t it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to fi nd it. You’ll have 
to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. 
I want to see how it looks on it.
Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his 
hands under the back of his head and smiled
“Dell,” said he, “let’s put our Christmas presents away and keep ‘em 
a while. They’re too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the 
money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on.
The magi, as you know, were wise men — wonderfully wise men — 
who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of 
giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise 
ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. 
And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two 
foolish children in a fl at who most unwisely sacrifi ced for each other 
the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of 
these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the 
wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Every-
where they are wisest. They are the magi.

TASKS AND EXERCISES

TASKS AND EXERCISES

Pre-reading Tasks

1. The title of the story is “The Gift of the Magi”. Does it help 
anticipate the content? What do you think is the key word in 
the title?
2. What do you know about the Magi?
3. Do you like to give or receive presents?
4. What are your criteria for giving presents?
5.  Study the vocabulary of the writer. Speak of the main facts of 
his life.

O. Henry (1862–1910) was born William Sydney Porter in Green-
boro, North Carolina. His father, Algernon Sidney Porter, was a phy-
sician. When William was three, his mother died, and he was raised 
by his parental grandmother and paternal aunt. William was an avid 
reader, but at the age of fi fteen he left school, and then worked in a 
drug store and on a Texas ranch. He continued to Houston, where he 
had a number of jobs, including that of bank clerk. After moving in 
1882 to Texas, he worked on a ranch in LaSalle County for two years. 
In 1887 he married Athol Estes Roach; they had one daughter and 
one son.
In 1894 Porter started a humorous weekly The Rolling Stone. 
It was at this time that he began heavy drinking. When the weekly 
failed, he joined the Houston Post as a reporter and columnist. In 
1894 cash was found to have gone missing from the First National 
Bank in Austin, where Porter had worked as a bank teller. In 1897 he 
was convicted of embezzling money, although there has been much 
debate over his actual guilt. Porter entered in 1898 a penitentiary at 
Columbus, Ohio.