'Consumerist Culture' by Cheriyan Alexander | SSLC English 1st Language Chapter 9 | #NuravClasses

  ENG1001-TB09

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The following is the Eighth chapter of Karnataka SSLC English 1^st Language.

ENG1001-TB09

Chapter 09

Consumerist Culture

- Cheriyan Alexander

Chapter Starts

   

1. Two months ago, I came across an advertisement put out by a posh shopping mall for bargain shoppers. In a band at the top of the ad were the words “Shop till you drop”. I couldn’t help noticing what an apt and ironic summing up this was of the media-driven mania of mindless consumption that characterizes our lives in these dawning years of the ‘globalised’ 21st Century.

The Make-Believe Merchants

2. Never before in human history have people all over the world bought and consumed such a bewilderingly diverse array of things on such a vast scale. And the surprising thing is that most of the merchandise is absolutely unessential to human health and happiness. Just a hundred years ago, our ancestors would have found it hard to believe that artificially coloured, flavoured and sweetened water would be sold in billions of plastic bottles and aluminium cans as a thirst-quenching drink. Imagine their shock if they had been told that this drink has absolutely no nutritive value, but rather has a damaging effect on the digestive system and the bones. And yet, Pepsi and Coca-Cola are sold even in the remotest nook and corner of the world today. These sellers of coloured, sweetened water are giant multinational corporations with revenues measured in billions of dollars, bigger than the combined GNP of nearly a score of the world’s poorest countries. There are parallel success stories that can be told of the purveyors of cigarettes and liquor, hamburgers and fried chicken, cosmetics and fashion wear – a seemingly never ending list.

3. Equally unprecedented in the world’s history is the size of the machinery of persuasion that has been set up in order to generate demand for this profusion of consumables. Without a doubt, global advertising today is the biggest and most sophisticated thought-control project ever undertaken. Some statistics reveal the true extent of this phenomenon. Global advertising expenditures, according to Benjamin Barber (in his book Jihad versus Mc World 1995) rose “seven-fold from 1950 to 1990 from a modest $ 39 bn to $ 256 bn.” Barber adds that per capita global spending went up from $ 15 in 1950 to nearly $ 50 in 1996. One single company, the hamburger giant McDonald, spends more than 1.4 bn dollars each year on advertising. All these figures are huge indeed and getting bigger all the time.

4. It is obvious then that unimaginably vast amounts of money and enormous resources are being spent world-wide in an all-out effort to persuade people to become buying machines incapable of figuring out how much of all that stuff they really need. Shopping has become more than a need. For increasing numbers of people today, it has become the chief form of entertainment, an obsessive compulsion they have little control over, and very often an end in itself. In a recent survey conducted in the United States it was discovered that most Americans spend roughly half their leisure time watching television. And the other half? No marks for guessing. At the shopping malls, of course. The connection between the two activities is self-evident. Television commercials provide the theory, which can then be acted upon in the shopping malls.

5. Until a decade or two ago, we Indians were relatively unaffected by all this. Not any longer. Trendy, brightly lit shopping centers overflowing with all kinds of goods and baubles have sprouted up all over the country, even in the smaller towns. The key word now is “choice.” At last, say thrilled shoppers, we are beginning to get the kind of choice that people in the West have enjoyed for a long time. Nevertheless, the fascination with choice can be carried to ridiculous lengths. A young man, after his first visit to the United States, once described to me-his eyes popping out in admiration and wonder – that “in America they have 83 different flavours of ice-cream to choose from.” He was longing for something like that to happen in India. It looks as if his dream has come true today. At least for the upper middle classes in India, the high-consumption life-styles of their First World counterparts is now well within reach. And they take to it like ducks to water. Luxury houses bursting at the seams with every imaginable material blessing are no longer rarities.

For everyone whose definitions of the good life are premised upon the abundance of material possessions, the times have never been better.

The Tragic Comedy of “Development”

6. The deep irony then is that while pockets of private prosperity are growing, there is an inexorable impoverishment of the resources that belong to the public realm. There is thus an amazing variety of sleek new car models to choose from, but the roads in our cities are in pretty bad shape and getting worse. Fashionable luxury resorts for the affluent are coming up everywhere, but lung spaces for public use – parks and playgrounds – are shrinking. It is much the same story with many other services in the public domain including transportation, health care, libraries and education. The trend is to push even the most essential services into the private realm so that some company or other can make a profit on them. In the process, the poor are being pushed into becoming consumers of increasingly expensive goods and utilities.

7. Advertisers and marketing professionals are working hard to see that even people who live at the subsistence level in remote rural pockets are lured and entranced into becoming passive consumers of everything from cola drinks to shampoos. All they see is a vast rural market waiting to be opened up for commercial exploitation. We are fast approaching the day when it will be easier to get a bottle of Coke rather than tender coconut or buttermilk in most of our villages. The increasing presence of plastic garbage in our rural areas is a clear warning signal.

8. It is interesting to see the connection between all this and what is being drummed up as “development,” by agencies like the World Bank, whose main objective is to make the way smooth for the unbridled expansion of the so-called “free market” economy into every corner of the globe. Enthusiasts of this vision of development are dreaming of a day when all of India will look like the United States with two cars in every garage and the reassuring glow of McDonald and Pepsi signs all along every highway. The final confirmation of our reaching the Promised Land will come on the day the sheer tonnage of the garbage we throw out–plastic cups, junked cars, refrigerators and TV sets – matches the levels of the land of the almighty dollar. When this happens we will no longer be called a “developing” country but will rejoice as the “advanced West,” our teacher and role model, finally certifies us as “developed.” It is to actualize this vision that millions of our youth are rushing to get their MBA degrees.

The Only Way Out

9. But wait a minute. How practical is this vision? It has been estimated that to make this paradigm of development a reality for all of India and China, leaving aside other “developing” nations, the resources of planet earth will prove horribly inadequate. We would need at least another three planets. It is clear then that this consumer paradise aggressively marketed by the giant global corporations will, besides paving the way for an ecological holocaust, prove to be – what an irony! – the most “unworldly” vision of all, simply because it will have run out of worlds before it is fully realized.

10. It isn’t hard to see then that any model of development based on simulating high consumption life-styles through aggressive advertising and limitless market expansion is not only unsustainable but also highly dangerous for the well-being of humanity. The price paid in ecological terms will make it the most suicidal enterprise the human race has ever embarked upon. We desperately need alternative models of development. It is not a wise thing to handover to businessmen the task of ruling the world as we have just done today. Businessmen cannot be counted upon to have the wisdom or the will to think of the welfare of all of humanity, leave alone the health of the planet. That is not part of the training of business administrators. They are mainly trained to do everything possible to maximize profits for the corporations that employ them.

11. The only way to restore sanity is for local communities, cooperatives, civil societies and democratic governments everywhere to take back the autonomy – and the initiative for their own development – which they recently traded away to the giant global business corporations. There is now a great need to re-awaken the numerous enabling spiritualities and wisdom traditions of the various people of the world. Mahatma Gandhi once said that the earth has enough for every man’s need but not enough for every man’s greed.

12. All human beings have a right to the basic material requirements for a life of dignity. But there comes a point beyond which it is necessary to say “enough” to the merely material. Then one should turn to the ‘commodities’ of the spirit – the arts, culture, community life – in order for life to be truly meaningful and sustainable. This is ultimately a spiritual and philosophical decision for both individuals and communities to make. Henry David Thoreau, the 19th century American philosopher, observed, “superfluous wealth can buy only superfluities… Money is not required to buy even one necessity of the soul.” One can only hope that humanity can muster up enough soul-force to contain the damage caused by unrestricted consumerism, lest we really shop till we drop and nothing of value is left standing on our beloved Mother Earth.

Glossary

consumerism : the belief or practice which supports and encourages the buying of products and services. posh (informal) : fashionable and expensive ironic : a statement which conveys the opposite of what it is saying globalize : develop or operate worldwide bewildering : puzzling array : range merchandise : goods for sale. GNP : Gross National Product purveyors : manufacturers and suppliers machinery of persuasion : the attractive and convincing ways of advertising a product through different media. profusion : a great amount of something. sophisticated : highly developed and complex. trendy : very fashionable or up-to-date bauble : a small, showy trinket or decoration premised upon : based on the reasoning inexorable : impossible to stop or prevent impoverishment : scarcity lured : tempted to do something entranced : filled with wonder unbridled : uncontrolled paradigm (n) : a model holocaust : total destruction embarked upon : engaged, undertaken civil societies : groups which strive towards an exploitation–free society based on humanitarian lines. superfluous : more than is needed; unnecessary.

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'A Village Cricket Match' by A.G. Macdonell | SSLC English 1st Language Chapter 8 | #YPN

  SCI10-SQPBEO01

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The following is the Eighth chapter of Karnataka SSLC English 1^st Language.

ENG1001-TB08

Chapter 08

A Village Cricket Match

- A.G. Macdonell

Chapter Starts

   

The crisis was now desperate. The fieldsmen drew nearer and nearer to the batsman, excepting the youth in the blue jumper. Livingstone balanced himself on his toes. Mr. Shakespeare Pollock hopped about almost on top of the batsman, and breathed excitedly and audibly. Even the imperturbable Mr. Southcott discarded the piece of grass which he had been chewing so steadily. Mr. Hodge took himself off and put on the Major, who had by now somewhat lived down the quart and a half.

2. The batsmen crouched down upon their bats and defended stubbornly. A snick through the slips brought a single. A ball which eluded the publisher’s gigantic pads brought a bye. A desperate sweep at a straight half-volley sent the ball off the edge of the bat over third - man’s head and in normal circumstances would have certainly scored one, and possibly two, but Mr. Harcourt was on guard at third man, and the batsmen, by nature cautious men one being old and the sexton, the other the postman and therefore a Government official, were taking no risks. Then came another single off a mis-hit, and then an interminable period in which no wicket fell and no run was scored. It was broken at last disastrously, for the postman struck the ball sharply at Mr. Pollock, and Mr. Pollock picked it up and, in an ecstasy of zeal, flung it madly at the wicket. Two overthrows resulted.

3. The scores were level and there were two wickets to fall. Silence fell. The gaffers, victims simultaneously of excitement and senility could hardly raise their pint pots- for it was past 6 O’clock, and the front door of Three Horse-shoes was now as wide open officially as the back door had been unofficially all afternoon.

4. The Major, his red face redder than ever and his chin sticking out almost as far as the Napoleonic Mr. Ogilvy’s bowled a fast half-volley on the leg-stump. The sexton, a man of iron muscle from much digging, hit it fair and square with the middle of the bat, and it flashed like a thunderbolt, waist-high, straight at the youth in the blue jumper. With a shrill scream the youth sprang backwards out of its way and fell over on his back. Immediately behind him, so close were the fieldsmen clustered, stood the mighty Boone. There was no chance of escape for him. Even if he had possessed the figure and the agility to perform back-somersaults, he would have lacked the time.

He had been unsighted by the youth in the jumper. The thunderbolt struck him in the midriff like a red-hot cannon-ball upon a Spanish galleon, and with the sound of a drumstick upon an insufficiently stretched drum. With a fearful oath, Boone clapped his hands to his outraged stomach and found that the ball was in the way. He looked at it for a moment in astonishment and then threw it down angrily and started to massage the injured spot while the field rang with applause at the brilliance of the catch.

5 Donald walked up and shyly added his congratulations. Boone scowled at him.

6. ‘I didn’t want to catch the darned thing,’ he said sourly, massaging away like mad.

7. ‘But it may save the side’, ventured Donald.

8. ‘Blast the side’, said Boone.

9. Donald went back to his place.

10.The scores were level and there was one wicket to fall. The last man in was the blacksmith, leaning heavily upon the shoulder of the baker, who was going to run for him, and limping as if in great pain. He took guard and looked around, savagely. He was clearly still in great rage.

11.The first ball he received he lashed at wildly and hit straight up into the air to an enormous height. It went up and up, until it became difficult to focus on it properly against the deep, cloudless blue of the sky, and it carried with it the hopes and fears of an English village. Up and up it went, then at the top it seemed to hang motionless in the air, poised like a hawk, fighting as it were, a heroic but forlorn battle against the chief invention of Sir Isaac Newton, and then it began its slow descent.

12.In the meanwhile things were happening below, on the

terrestrial sphere. Indeed, the situation was rapidly becoming what the French call mouvemente. In the first place, the blacksmith forgot his sprained ankle and set out at a capital rate for the other end, roaring in a great voice as he went, “Come on, Joe!” The baker, who was running on behalf of the invalid, also set out, and he also roared, “Come on, Joe,” and side by side, like a pair of high-stepping hackneys, the pair cantered along. From the other end Joe set out on his mission, and he roared. “Come on, Bill!” So all three came on. And everything would have been all right, so far as the running was concerned, had it not been for the fact that Joe, very naturally, ran with his head thrown back and his eyes goggling, at the hawk-like cricket-ball. And this in itself would not have mattered if it had not been for the fact that the blacksmith and the baker, also very naturally, ran with their heads turned not only upwards but also backwards as well, so that they too gazed at the ball, with an alarming sort of squint and a truly terrific kink in their necks. Half-way down the pitch the three met with a magnificent clang, reminiscent of early, happy days in the tournament-ring at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, and the hopes of the village fell with the resounding fall of their three champions.

13.But what of the fielding side? Things were not so well with them. If there was doubt and confusion among the warriors of Fordenden, there was also uncertainty and disorganization among the ranks of the invaders. Their main trouble was the excessive concentration of their force in the neighbourhood of the wicket. Napoleon laid it down that it was impossible to have too many men upon a battlefield, and he used to do everything in his power to call up every available man for a battle. Mr. Hodge, after a swift glance at the ascending ball and a swift glance at the disposition of his troops, disagreed profoundly with the Emperor’s dictum. He had too many men, far too many. And all, except the youth in the blue silk jumper, and the mighty Boone, were moving towards strategical positions underneath the ball, and not one of them appeared to be aware that any of the other existed. Boone had not moved because he was more or less in the right place, but then Boone was not likely to bring off the catch, especially after the episode of the last ball. Major Hawker, shouting, ‘Mine, mine!’ in a magnificently self-confident voice, was coming up from the bowler’s end like a battle-cruiser. Mr. Harcourt had obviously lost sight of the ball altogether, if indeed, he had ever seen it for he was running round and round Boone and giggling foolishly. Livingstone and Southcott, the two cracks, were approaching competently. Either of them would catch it easily. Mr. Hodge had not only to choose between them and, coming to a swift decision, he yelled above the din, “Yours, Livingstone!” Southcott, a disciplined cricketer, stopped dead. Then Mr. Hodge made a fatal mistake. He remembered Livingstone’s two missed sitters, and he reversed his decision and roared, ‘Yours, Bobby!’ Mr. Southcott obediently started again, while Livingstone, who had not heard the second order, went straight on. Captain Hodge had restored the status quo.

14.In the meantime the professor of ballistics had made a lightning calculation of angles, velocities, density of the air, barometer-readings and temperatures, and had arrived at the conclusion that the critical point, the spot which ought to be marked in the photographs with an X, was one yard to the north-east of Boone, and he proceeded to take up station here, colliding on the way with Donald and knocking him over. A moment later Bobby Southcott came racing up and tripped over the recumbent Donald and was shot head first into the Abraham-like bosom of Boone. Boone stepped backward under the impact and came down with his spiked boot, upon the professor’s toe. Almost simultaneously, the portly wicket-keeper, whose movements were a positive triumph of the spirit over the body, bumped the professor from behind. The learned man was thus neatly sandwiched between Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and the sandwich was instantly converted into a ragout by Livingstone, who made up for his lack of extra weight- for he was always in perfect training- by his extra momentum. And all the time Mr. Shakespeare Pollock hovered alertly upon the out-skirts like a rugby scrum-half, screaming American University cries in a piercingly high tenor voice.

15.At last the ball came down. To Mr. Hodge it seemed a long time before the invention of Sir Isaac Newton finally triumphed. And it was a striking testimony to the mathematical and ballistical skill of the Professor that the ball landed with a sharp report upon the top of his head. Thence it leapt up into the air a foot or so, cannoned on to Boone’s head, and then trickled slowly down the colossal expanse of the wicketkeeper’s back, bouncing slightly as it reached the massive lower portions. It was only a foot from the ground when Mr. Shakespeare Pollock sprang into the vortex with a last ear-splitting howl of victory and grabbed it off the seat of the wicket – keeper’s trousers. The match was a tie. And hardly anyone on the field knew it except Mr. Hodge, the youth in the blue jumper and Mr. Pollock himself. For the two batsmen and the runner, undaunted to the last, had picked themselves up and were bent on completing the single that was to give Fordenden the crown of victory. Unfortunately, dazed with their falls, with excitement and with the noise, they all three ran for the same wicket, simultaneously realized their error, and all three turned and ran for the other- the blacksmith, ankle and all, in the centre leading by a yard, so that they looked like pictures of the Russian troika. But their effort was in vain, for Mr. Pollock had grabbed the ball and the match was a tie.

16.And both the teams spent the evening at The Three Horse-shoes, and Mr. Harcourt made a speech in Italian about the glories of England and afterwards fell asleep in a corner, and Donald got home to Royal Avenue at 1 O’clock in the morning, feeling that he had not learnt very much about the English from his experience of their national game.

Glossary

jumper : outer garment coming up to the hips
imperturbable : calm
lived down the quart and a half : got over the effects of liquor
crouch : bend very low almost to the ground
eluded : escaped
sexton : person who does the works of the church like ringing the bell, cleaning, digging graves in the churchyard etc.
leg-bye : a run scored when the ball touches the batsman’s legs
intermittently : every now and then
ecstasy : joy, happiness, thrill
gaffers : elderly persons in the village
senility : old age, weakness of mind and body
pint pots : beer pots
The Three Horse-shoes: name of an inn
thunderbolt : sudden event which causes shock and anxiety
midriff : a humorous reference to the belly
Spanish galleon : a large ship used by the Spaniards in the 16th and 17th Centuries
darned : damn
lashed at : hit wildly
forlorn : unlikely to succeed
mouvemente : a French word indicating a dramatic incident
terrestrial : earthly
hackney : a horse
cantered : galloped
goggling : rolling
squint : eyes looking in different directions
kink in their neck : backward turn of their neck
clang : loud sound
Fordenden : the village where the match was played
dictum : saying, maxim
recumbent : lying down
surmounted : overcame
portly : round and fat
ragout : mixture of vegetable and meat cooked stuff
vortex : a mass of water or air that spins round and round so fast that it pulls objects into its centre
Ashby-de-la-Zouch : a village in Leicestershire, scene of a medieval tournament described in Scott’s famous novel, “Ivanhoe.”
status quo : the previous position
Abraham-like bosom : capacious bosom.
report : an explosive sound, like that of a gun being fired.
Troika : a Russian vehicle drawn by three horses
cracks : experts
Rugby Scrum-half : the half-back who puts the ball into the Scrum

'The Girl who was Anne Frank' by Louis De Jong | SSLC English 1st Language Chapter 7 | #YPN

  SCI10-SQPBEO01

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The following is the seventh chapter of Karnataka SSLC English 1^st Language.

ENG1001-TB07

Chapter 07

The Girl who was Anne Frank

- Louis De Jong

Chapter Starts

   

“And how do you know that the human race is worth saving?” an argumentative young student once asked his professor. Said the professor: “I have read Anne Frank’s Diary.”

How this diary of a teenage girl came to be written and saved is a story as dramatic as the diary itself. No one foresaw the tremendous impact that the small book would have-not even her father, who had it published after Anne’s death in a Nazi concentration camp.

The Diary of Anne Frank has now been published in 19 languages including German, and has sold nearly two million copies. Made into a play by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and, in the 1956-1957 season alone, played in 20 different countries to two million people. In London it ran for nearly six months at the Phoenix Theatre. Twentieth Century-Fox turned it into a film.

To understand this amazing response it is necessary first to understand the girl who was Anne Frank.

When Hitler came to power, Otto Frank was a banker, living in Germany. He had married in 1925. In 1926 his first daughter, Margot, was born and three years later his second, Annelies Marie. She was usually called “Anne,” sometimes, “Tender one.”

In the autumn of 1933, when Hitler was issuing one anti-Jewish decree after another, Otto Frank decided to emigrate to the hospitable Netherlands. He started a small firm in Amsterdam. Shortly before the outbreak of war he took in a partner, Mr. Van Daan, a fellow refugee. Mostly they traded in spices. Business was often slow. Once Otto Frank was forced to ask his small staff to accept a temporary cut in their modest wages. No one left. They all liked his warm personality. They admired his courage and the evident care he took to give his two girls a good education.

As a pupil Anne was not particularly brilliant. Most people believed with her parents that Margot, her elder sister, was more promising. Anne was chiefly remarkable for the early interest she took in other people. She was emotional and strong willed; “a real problem child,” her father once told me, “a great talker and fond of nice clothes.” Life in town, where she was usually surrounded by a chattering crowd of girl-friends, suited her exactly. This was a lucky fact because the Frank family could only rarely afford a holiday. Nor did they own a car.

When the Nazis invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, the Franks were trapped. Earlier than most Jews in Amsterdam, Otto Frank realized that the time might come when he and his family would have to go into hiding. He decided to hide in his own business office, which faced one of Amsterdam’s tree-lined canals. A few derelict rooms on the upper floors, called the "Annexe" were secretly prepared to house both the Frank and the Van Daan families.

Early in July 1942, Margot Frank was called up for deportation, but she did not go. Straight way the Franks moved into their hiding place, and the Van Daans followed shortly afterwards. Four months later they took into their cramped lodgings another Jew, a dentist.

Song-Bird in Hiding: They were eight hunted people. Any sound, any light might betray their presence. A tenuous link with the outside was provided by the radio and by four courageous members of Otto Frank’s staff, two of them typists, who in secret brought food, magazines, books. The only other company they had was a cat.

While in hiding, Anne decided to continue a diary which her parents had given her on her 13th birthday. She described life in the “Annexe” with all its inevitable tensions and quarrels. But she created first and foremost a wonderfully delicate record of adolescence, sketching with complete honesty a young girl’s thoughts and feelings, her longing and loneliness. “I feel like a song bird whose wings have been brutally torn out and who is flying in utter darkness against the bars of its own cage,” she wrote when she had been isolated from the outside world for nearly 16 months. Two months later she had filled every page of the diary, a small book bound in a tartan cloth, and one of the typists, Miep, gave her an ordinary exercise book. Later she used Margot’s chemistry exercise book.

Her diary reveals the trust she puts in a wise father; her grief because, as she feels it, her mother does not understand her; the ecstasy of a first, rapturous kiss, exchanged with the Van Daans’ 17-year-old son; finally, the flowering personality, eager to face life with adult courage and mature self-insight.

On a slip of paper Anne wrote faked names which she intended to use in case of publication. For the time the diary was her own secret which she wanted to keep from everyone, especially from the grumpy dentist with whom she had to share her tiny bed room. Her father allowed her to put her diaries in his briefcase.

He never read them until after her death.

Courageous Leader: On August 4, 1944, one German and four Dutch Nazi policemen suddenly stormed upstairs. (How the secret of the Annexe had been revealed is not known) “Where are your money and jewels?” they shouted. Mrs. Frank and Mrs. Van Daan had some gold and jewellery. It was quickly discovered. Looking round for something to carry it in, one of the policemen noticed Otto Frank’s briefcase. He emptied it on to the floor, barely giving a glance at the notebooks. Then the people of the Annexe were arrested.

In the beginning of September, while the Allied armies were rapidly approaching the Netherlands, the Franks and Van Daans and the dentist were carried in cattle-trucks to Auschwitz - the Nazi death-camp in southern Poland. There the Nazisseparated Otto Frank from his wife and daughters without giving them time to say farewell. Mrs. Frank, Anne and Margot were marched into the women’s part of the camp, where Mrs. Frank died from exhaustion. The Van Daans and the dentist, too, lost their lives.

Anne proved to be a courageous leader of her small Auschwitz group. When there was nothing to eat, she dared to go to the kitchen to ask for food. She constantly told Margot never to give in. Once she passed hundreds of Hungarian Jewish children who were standing naked in freezing rain, waiting to be led to the gas chambers, unable to grasp the horrors inflicted upon them in the world of adults. “Oh look, their eyes...” she whispered.

Later in the autumn she and her sister were transported to another camp, Belsen, between Berlin and Hamburg. A close friend saw her there: “cold and hungry, her head shaved and her skeleton-like form draped in the coarse, shapeless, striped garb of the concentration camp.” She was pitifully weak, her body racked by typhoid fever. She died early in March 1945, a few days after Margot. Both were buried in a mass grave.

In Auschwitz, Otto Frank had managed somehow to stay alive. He was freed early in 1945 by the Russians and in the summer he arrived back in liberated Amsterdam. A friend had told him that his wife had died, but he kept on hoping that Anne and Margot would return. After six weeks of waiting he met someone who had to tell him that both had perished. It was only then that Miep, his former typist, handed him Anne’s diaries.

Mission in Life: A week after the Frank family had been arrested, Miep had boldly returned to the Annexe. A heap of papers lay on the floor. Miep recognized Anne’s handwriting and decided to keep the diary but not to read it. Had she read it, she would have found detailed information on the help she and other people had given the Frank family at the risk of their own lives, and she might well have decided to destroy the diary for reasons of safety.

It took Otto Frank many weeks to finish reading what his dead child had written. He broke down after every few pages. As his old mother was still alive – she had emigrated to Switzerland where other near relatives lived – he started copying the manuscript for her. Some passages which he felt to be too intimate or which might hurt other people’s feelings were left out by him. The idea of publishing the diary did not enter his mind. He gave one typed copy to a close friend, who lent it to a professor of Modern History. Much to Otto Frank's surprise, the Professor devoted an article to it in a Dutch newspaper. His friends now urged Otto Frank to have Anne’s diary published as she herself had wished; in one passage she had written, “I want to publish a book entitled ‘The Annexe after the war...’ my diary can serve this purpose.” When Anne’s father finally consented to publication, the manuscript was refused by two well-known Dutch publishers. A third decided to accept it and he sold more than 150,000 copies of the Dutch edition.

Other editions followed – 250,000 sold in Britain, a like number in Japan, 435,000 in the United States. Otto Frank began to receive hundreds of letters. One, from Italy, was addressed: “Otto Frank, father of Anne Frank, Amsterdam.” A few people doubted the authenticity of the diary; most wrote to express their admiration and grief. Girls of Anne’s age poured out their troubles: “Oh, Mr. Frank,” wrote one girl, “she is so much like me that sometimes I do not know where myself begins and Anne Frank ends.” Numerous people sent small presents. Some exquisite dolls were made for him by Japanese girls. A Dutch sculptress presented him with a statue of Anne. On the birthdays of Anne and Margot flowers arrived anonymously.

So many letters poured in that Otto Frank was forced to retire from business. The care of his daughter’s diary had become his passion, his mission in life. All royalties were devoted to humanitarian causes which, he felt, would have been approved by Anne. All letters were answered by him personally. Every day new ones sadly reminded him of the losses he had suffered, but he felt that there was truth and consolation in what the headmistress of one of England’s largest schools wrote to him: “It must be a source of deep joy to you – in all your sorrow – to know that Anne’s brief life is, in the deepest sense, only just the beginning.”

The most remarkable response came from Germany. When the book’s first printing of 4,500 copies came out in Germany in 1950, many booksellers were afraid to put it in their windows.

Mass Appeal: When the play opened in seven German cities simultaneously, no one knew how the audiences would react. The drama progressed through its eight brief scenes. No Nazis were seen on the stage, but their ominous presence made itself felt every minute. Finally, at the end, Nazi jackboots were heard storming upstairs to raid the hiding place. At the close of the epilogue only Anne’s father was on the stage, a lonely old man. Quietly he told how he received news that his wife and daughters had died. Picking up Anne’s slim diary, he turned back the pages to find a certain passage and, as he found it, her young, confident voice was heard, saying: “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”

Packed audiences received Anne Frank’s tragedy in a silence heavy with remorse. In Dusseldorf people did not even go out during the interval. “They sat in their seats as if afraid of the lights outside, ashamed to face each other,” someone reported. The Dusseldorf producer, Kuno Epple, explained: “Anne Frank has succeeded because it enables the audience to come to grips with history, personally and without denunciation. We watch it as an indictment, in the most humble, pitiful terms, of inhumanity to fellow men. No one accuses us as Germans. We accuse ourselves.”

For years Germany’s post-war administrators toiled to make people feel the senseless and criminal nature of the Nazi regime. On the whole they failed. The Diary of Anne Frank succeeded. Leading actors received dozens of letters. “I was a good Nazi”, a typical letter read, “but I never knew what it meant until the other night.” German school children sent Otto Frank letters signed by entire classes, telling him that Anne’s diary had opened their eyes to the viciousness of racial persecution. In West Berlin an Anne Frank Home was opened, devoted to social work for young people. The people of Berlin had chosen her name “to symbolize the spirit of racial and social tolerance.” Elsewhere in Germany an organization was set up, named after her, to combat remaining vestiges of Anti-Semitism. In Vienna, money was collected for Anne Frank forest, to be planted in Israel.

In March 1957, a Hamburg student suggested that flowers should be laid on the mass graves in Bergen-Belsen, where Anne Frank had found her last resting place. More than 2000 young people eagerly answered his appeal. Hundreds peddled on bikes 120 kilometers in lashing rain. Standing in front of one of the mass graves, a seventeen-year-old school girl expressed what all felt: “Anne Frank was younger than we are when her life was so horribly ended. She had to die because others had decided to destroy her race. Never again among our people must such a diseased and inhuman hatred arise.”

Anne’s brief life is, indeed, only a beginning. She carries the message of courage and tolerance all over the world. She lives even after death.

Chapter Ends

Glossary

Nazi Party : the political party led by Adolf Hitler which controlled Germany from 1933 to 1945.
concentration camp : a prison consisting of a set of buildings inside a fence, where political prisoners were kept in very bad conditions.
decree : an order having the force of a law.
emigrate : to leave the country permanently and go to live in another.
derelict : in bad condition.
annexe : a wing added to a building
deportation : forcing to leave the country
cramped : not having enough space, narrow
tenuous : so light that it hardly exists
inevitable : certain to happen.
adolescence : period of time in a person’s life when he/she is developing into an adult.
tartan : woollen cloth with a woven pattern of straight lines of different colours crossing at right angles
ecstasy : state of extreme happiness
rapturous : expressing great delight
grumpy : bad-tempered.
racked (v) : caused to suffer
authenticity : genuineness, truthfulness
exquisite : delicate
anonymously : unidentified
ominous : threatening
jackboot : a long boot which covers the leg up to the knee
epilogue : concluding speech
remorse : shame
denunciation : condemnation
indictment : accusation
viciousness : cruelty and violence
persecution : treating somebody in a cruel way
vestiges : traces
anti-Semitism : hatred, cruel treatment of Jewish people

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  SCI10-SQPBEO01

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The following post consists of the Solved Question Paper for SSLC Students by BEO, Dharwad.

MATH1001-QPS01

Solution

Science Model Question Paper by BEO - 01 Solution

- Dharwad District

Chapter Starts

   

I had the compartment to myself up to Rohana and then a girl got in. The couple who saw her off were probably her parents; they seemed very anxious about her comfort, and the woman gave the girl detailed instructions as to where to keep her things, when not to lean out of the window, and how to avoid speaking to strangers. They said their good-byes; the train pulled out of the station.

As I was totally blind at the time, my eyes sensitive only to light and darkness, I was unable to tell what the girl looked like; but I knew she wore slippers from the way they slapped against her heels. It would take me some time to discover something about her looks, and perhaps I never would. But I liked the sound of her voice, and even the sound of her slippers.

“Are you going all the way to Dehra?” I asked.

I must have been sitting in a dark corner because my voice startled her. She gave a little exclamation and said, “I didn’t know anyone else was here.”

Well, it often happens that people with good eyesight fail to see what is right in front of them. They have too much to take in, I suppose. Whereas people who cannot see (or see very little) have to take in only the essentials, whatever registers most tellingly on their remaining senses.

“I didn’t see you either,” I said. “But I heard you come in.”

I wondered if I would be able to prevent her from discovering that I was blind, I thought. “Provided I keep to my seat, it shouldn’t be too difficult.”

The girl said, “I’m getting down at Saharanpur. My aunt is meeting me there.”

“Then I had better not be too familiar,” I said. “Aunts are usually formidable creatures.”

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“To Dehra, and then to Mussoorie.”

“Oh, how lucky you are! I wish I were going to Mussoorie. I love the hills especially in October.”

“Yes, this is the best time” I said, calling on my memories. “The hills are covered with wild dahlias, the sun is delicious, and at night you can sit in front of a log-fire and listen to some music. Many of the tourists have gone, and the roads are quiet and almost deserted. Yes, October is the best time.”

She was silent, and I wondered if my words had touched her, or whether she thought me a romantic fool. Then I made a mistake “What’s it like?” I asked.

She seemed to find nothing strange in the question. Had she noticed already that I could not see? But her next question removed my doubts.

“Why don’t you look out of the window?” she asked.

I moved easily along the berth and felt for the window-ledge. The window was open, and I faced it, making a pretence, of studying the landscape. I heard the panting of the engine, the rumble of the wheels, and in my mind’s eye, I could see the telegraph post flashing by.

“Have you noticed,” I ventured, “that the trees seem to be moving while we seem to be standing still?”

“That always happens,” she said. “Do you see any animals? Hardly any animals left in the forests near Dehra.”

I turned from the window and faced the girl, and for a while we sat in silence.

“You have an interesting face,” I remarked. I was becoming quite daring, but it was a safe remark. Few girls can resist flattery.

She laughed pleasantly, a clear, ringing laugh.

“It’s nice to be told I have an interesting face. I’m tired of people telling me I have a pretty face.”

Oh, so you do have a pretty face thought I, and aloud I said: "Well, an interesting face can also be pretty.”

“You are a very gallant young man,” she said. “But why are you so serious?”

I thought then that I would try to laugh for her; but the thought of laughter only made me feel troubled and lonely.

“We will be at your station,” I said.

“Thank goodness it’s a short journey. I can’t bear to sit in a train for more than two or three hours.”

Yet I was prepared to sit there for almost any length of time just to listen to her talking. Her voice had the sparkle of a mountain stream. As soon as she left the train, she would forget our brief encounter; but it would stay with me for the rest of the journey, and for some time after.

The engine’s whistle shrieked, the carriage wheels changed their sound and rhythm.

The girl got up and began to collect her things. I wonder if she wore her hair in a bun, or it was plaited, or if it hung loose over her shoulders, or if it was cut very short.

The train drew slowly into the station. Outside there was the shouting of porters and vendors and a high-pitched female voice near the carriage door which must have belonged to the girl’s aunt.

“Good-bye,” said the girl.

She was standing very close to me, so close that the perfume from her hair was tantalizing. I wanted to raise my hand and touch her hair; but she moved away, and only the perfume still lingered where she had stood.

“You may break, you may shatter the vase if you will, but the scent of the roses will linger there still...”

There was some confusion in the doorway. A man, getting into the compartment, stammered an apology. Then the door banged shut, and the world was shut out again. I returned to my berth. The guard blew his whistle and we moved off. Once again, I had a game to play with a new fellow-traveller.

The train gathered speed, the wheels took up their song, the carriage groaned and shook. I found the window and sat in front of it, staring into the daylight that was darkness for me.

So many things happening outside the window. It could be a fascinating game, guessing what went on out there.

The man who had entered the compartment broke into my reverie.

"You must be disappointed,” he said, "I’m sorry I’m not as attractive a travelling companion as the one who just left.”

“She was an interesting girl,” I said. “Can you tell me - did she keep her hair long or short?”

“I don’t remember,” he said, sounding puzzled. “It was her eyes I noticed, not her hair. She had beautiful eyes - but they were of no use to her, she was completely blind. Didn’t you notice?”

Chapter Ends

Glossary

slapp : the sound produced by the slipper when it hits the soul of her feet.
startled : surprised
formidable : powerful/causing fear
registers (v) : records
romantic fool : a stupid person, who is highly emotional
window ledge : window sill, a narrow shelf below a window
mind’s eye : imagination
venture : to say or do something which involves risk
landscape : all the features of an area that can be seen when looking across it.
gallant : brave
thank goodness : an expression used in conversation to express relief.
tantalizing : making him desire her presence all the more.
linger : stay for a while
reverie : day-dream

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  ENG1001-TB05

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The follwing posts consists of the 5th Chapter of English Textbook for SSLC students of Karnataka. The lesson can be read out load on Desktop Computers.

ENG1001-TB05

Chapter 05

What is Moral Action?

- M.K. Gandhi

Chapter Starts

   

When can it be said that a particular action is moral? In asking this question, the intention is not to contrast moral with immoral actions, but to consider many of our everyday actions against which nothing can be said from the conventional standpoint and which some regard as moral. Most of our actions are probably non-moral; they do not necessarily involve morality. For the most part we act according to the prevailing conventions. Such conventional behaviour is often necessary. If no such rules are observed, anarchy would be the - result, and society - social intercourse - would come to an end. Still the mere observance of custom and usage cannot properly be called morality.

A moral act must be our own act; must spring from our own will. If we act mechanically, there is no moral content in our act. Such action would be moral, if we think it proper to act like a machine and do so. For, in doing so, we use our discrimination. We should bear in mind the distinction between acting mechanically and acting intentionally. It may be moral of a king to pardon a culprit. But the messenger bearing the order of pardon plays only a mechanical part in the king’s moral act. But if the messenger were to bear the king’s order, considering it to be his duty, his action would be a moral one. How can a man understand morality who does not use his own intelligence and power of thought, but lets himself be swept along like a log of wood by a current? Sometimes a man defies convention and acts on his own with a view to (doing) absolute good. Such a great hero was Wendell Phillips. Addressing an assembly of people, he once said, “Till you learn to form your own opinions and express them, I do not care much what you think of me.” Thus when we all care only for what our conscience says, then alone can we be regarded to have stepped on to the moral road. We shall not reach this stage, as long as we do not believe - and experience the belief - that God within us, the God of all, is the ever present witness to all our acts.

It is not enough that an act done by us is in itself good; it should have been done with the intention to do good. That is to say, whether an act is moral or otherwise depends upon the intention of the doer. Two men may have done exactly the same thing; but the act of one may be moral, and that of the other the contrary. Take, for instance, a man who out of great pity feeds the poor and another who does the same, but with the motive of winning prestige or with some such selfish end. Though the action is the same, the act of the one is moral and that of the other non-moral. The reader here ought to remember the distinction between the two words, non-moral and immoral. It may be that we do not always see good results flowing from a moral act. While thinking of morality, all that we need to see is that the act is good and is done with good intention. The result of an action is not within our control. God alone is the giver of fruit. Historians have called Emperor Alexander “great”. Wherever he went (in the course of his conquests), he took the Greek language and Greek culture, arts and manners, and today we enjoy the benefits of Greek civilization. But the intention of Alexander behind all this was only conquest and renown. Who can therefore say that his actions were moral? It was all right that he was termed “great”, but moral he cannot be called.

These reflections prove that it is not enough for a moral act to have been done with a good intention, but it should have been done without compulsion. There is no morality whatever in my act, if I rise early out of the fear that, if I am late for my office, I may lose my situation. Similarly there is no morality in my living a simple and unpretentious life if I have not the means to live otherwise. But plain, simple living would be moral if, though wealthy, I think of all the want and misery in the world about me – and feel that I ought to live a plain, simple life and not one of ease and luxury. Likewise it is only selfish, and not moral, of an employer to sympathize with his employees or to pay them higher wages lest they leave him. It would be moral if the employer wished well of them and treated them kindly realizing how he owed his prosperity to them. This means that for an act to be moral it has to be free from fear and compulsion. When the peasants rose in revolt and with bloodshot eyes went to King Richard II of England demanding their rights, he granted them the rights under his own seal and signature. But when the danger was over, he forced them to surrender the letters. It would be a mistake for anyone to say that King Richard’s first act was moral and the second immoral. For, his first act was done only out of fear and had not an iota of morality about it.

Just as a moral action should be free from fear or compulsion so should there be no self-interest behind it. This is not to say that actions prompted by self-interest are all worthless, but only that to call them moral would detract from the (dignity of the) moral idea. That honesty cannot long endure which is practised in the belief that it is the best policy. As Shakespeare says, love born out of the profit motive is no love.

Just as an action prompted by the motive of material gain here on earth is non-moral, so also another done for considerations of comfort and personal happiness in another world is non- moral. That action is moral which is done only for the sake of doing good. A great Christian, St. Francis Xavier, passionately prayed that his mind might always remain pure. For him devotion to God was not for enjoying a higher seat after death. He prayed because it was man’s duty to pray. The great Saint Theresa wished to have a torch in her right hand and a vessel of water in her left so that with the one she might burn the glories of heaven and with the other extinguish the fires of hell, and men might learn to serve God from love alone without fear of hell and without temptation of heavenly bliss. To preserve morality thus demands a brave man prepared to face even death. It is cowardice to be true to friends and to break faith with enemies. Those who do good out of fear and haltingly have no moral virtue. Henry Clay, known for his kindliness, sacrificed his convictions to his ambition. Daniel Webster, for all his great intellect and his sense of the heroic and the sublime, once sold his intellectual integrity for a price. By a single mean act he wiped out all his good deeds. This shows how difficult it is to judge the morality of man’s action because we cannot penetrate the depths of his mind. We have also the answer to the question raised at the outset of this chapter: what is a moral action? Incidentally, we also saw which kind of men could live up to that morality.

Chapter Ends

Glossary

slapp : the sound produced by the slipper when it hits the soul of her feet.
startled : surprised
formidable : powerful/causing fear
registers (v) : records
romantic fool : a stupid person, who is highly emotional
window ledge : window sill, a narrow shelf below a window
mind’s eye : imagination
venture : to say or do something which involves risk
landscape : all the features of an area that can be seen when looking across it.
gallant : brave
thank goodness : an expression used in conversation to express relief.
tantalizing : making him desire her presence all the more.
linger : stay for a while
reverie : day-dream

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The following is the Fourth chapter of Karnataka SSLC English 1^st Language.

ENG1001-TB04

Chapter 04

Louis Pasteur, Conqueror of Disease

- E. H. Carter

On the field of battle in one of his campaigns, Napoleon decorated for bravery a certain tanner named Pasteur. This brave soldier had an equally brave son, Louis Pasteur, born seven years after Waterloo. He was not a soldier, but he was a fighter.

He fought disease. He devoted his life to the study of what we sometimes call germs, which men of science call bacteria, a Greek word meaning ‘little rods.’ Bacteria are vegetable organisms – little rod-shaped plants – which exist in the air, water and soil, and in the bodies of animals and plants; some but not all are the causes of diseases, some convert matter into food for plants.

Louis Pasteur had a very busy and interesting life. He not only made some exciting discoveries about germs but he was able to use his discoveries in very practical ways. He worked hard in his laboratory with test tubes and all kinds of experiments, but nearly all the time he was working to help people who were suffering in some special way from disease. Among the people whom Pasteur was able to help were brewers, breeders of silk worms, and cow keepers, all of whom were trying to carry on important industries in France. Pasteur was always very proud of being able to help his country in this way.

Louis Pasteur, born in a little French country town, was interested in chemistry when he was very young. After studying hard in Paris and showing great promise, he began to teach and lecture as Professor of Chemistry. He became a Professor at Strasburg in Alsace, and he married a wife who was always to be his closest companion and assistant.

Pasteur was deeply interested in all the new experiments that were being made in chemistry, and decided to solve some of the difficult problems that were worrying chemists and other scientists. Sometimes he used to sit for hours, quite silent and motionless, thinking hard about one of his difficulties. He found this the easiest way to solve a problem; and when he thought of a solution, his kind, tired looking face would brighten with pleasure and excitement and he would rush round to tell his discovery to his wife and to others who were helping him.

In 1854 Pasteur was appointed Head of a College of Science at Lille, a busy manufacturing town in the north-east of France. He was pleased about this, because he always felt that trades and industries could be helped very much by the researches of men of science. His chance to be useful soon came.

Pasteur, as a young chemist, had always been interested in the problems of why and how living things decay, why milk turns sour, why meat goes bad, why wine ferments. He started to give some lectures in Lille on fermentation. One of the chief industries in Lille was the manufacture of alcohol from beetroot, and he was fortunate in being able to carry out experiments in some of the breweries. One manufacturer consulted Pasteur about his beer, which was turning out badly, and Pasteur by helping this brewer managed to discover all sorts of things that he did not know before about yeast. Yeast is used to make beer foam and bread rise up lightly. Pasteur became certain that yeast was alive, made up of tiny living cells. When these cells were healthy the yeast acted well, but if they were diseased, the yeast and the beer went wrong.

After a few years, Pasteur was made Director of Scientific Studies at a famous college in Paris. He was still thinking about decay and yeast and germs and one of the problems that he was trying to answer was this : “Do germs form from other germs, or do they just come of themselves?” People like Pasteur believed that germs were carried in the air and might infect other things that came in contact with them. Others believed in what they called “spontaneous generation” – i.e., they believed that germs had no parents but just occurred by themselves.

Pasteur proved that he was right by a very simple and clever experiment. He put some soup into some bottles and then he boiled it in order to destroy any germs that might already be in the soup. After that he heated and pulled out the neck of each bottle until it formed a long narrow ‘neck’ with a big bend in the middle. The soup remained there for a long time and it never went bad as it would have done if it had been standing in a bowl in the kitchen. “That,’’ said Pasteur, “is because there are no parent germs in the soup, and they cannot reach it because of the bend in the long tube.” So, he took one of the bottles and spilt a little of the soup down the tube so that it settled in the bend. This soup went bad. We often speak of "dust traps." Well, this bend in the tube was a dust trap, because the dust – which, as we now know, may carry germs with it - could get as far as the bend but no farther, and it settled there and infected the soup.

This is only one of many hundreds of experiments which Pasteur made to show how full the air is of dust particles and how germs may be carried by this dust. One very useful experiment was made to show the difference between pure and stale air. Pasteur again filled some bottles with soup. He took some into a little hotel bedroom where the air hardly ever changed, broke their necks off so that the air could enter freely, and after a few minutes sealed them up again. He then took some bottles into a field near by and did the same with them. Finally he opened some on the top of a high mountain and again sealed them up. What was the result? When they were examined, the bottles opened in the hotel bedroom were full of soup which had gone completely mouldy; the bottles opened in the field were mouldy, but not quite so bad; those opened on the mountain had no germs in them at all.

Nowadays, we pay a great deal of attention to pure air, open windows, to freedom from dust, to garden cities. Pasteur was one of the first to show how necessary all these are if we are to fight against germs and disease.

Another very useful discovery of Pasteur’s while he was working in Paris was the process which we now call, after him, "pasteurization". Some French wine-growers were troubled by a germ which had turned their wine sour. Pasteur showed that by heating the wine, or milk, or whatever it might be to a temperature of 50 or 60 degrees centigrade, the germs were made harmless. Pasteurized milk is milk which has been treated in this way and then sealed to prevent more germs from entering.

Louis Pasteur was what we should call an "all round" scientist. All the research which he did in his laboratories was meant to help his fellow human beings. It would be impossible to imagine Pasteur experimenting with explosives or poison gas.

Pasteur founded the branch of science called "bacteriology", or the study of bacteria, and he showed what a wide range it had by studying the bacteria in all sorts of different activities. For three years he spent all his time and energy in tracking down the cause of a disease which had ruined the silkworm industry. He began to believe that most, if not all, infectious diseases were due to certain bacteria which, if they got into the blood, multiplied there and caused disease.

Many other men were working and experimenting against those bacteria which were the enemies of man and which were invisible but present everywhere and always ready to attack. Dr. Jenner in England had already discovered vaccination for smallpox, but ‘inoculation’ against other diseases had not yet started.

Pasteur was trying to discover a cure for the terrible disease called anthrax, which men sometimes get from infected shaving brushes, and which was attacking cows and sheep in France and killing them off very quickly. He found out first of all that a cow could not have anthrax twice. Then he began to wonder whether it would not be possible to make a cow and even a man just a little ill with anthrax, so that they might not get it again. Perhaps this could be done by giving the cows or sheep very weak old germs to make them safe or ‘immune’ for the future. One can imagine how dangerous this idea of giving people germs must have seemed in those days. Many scientists were angry about it, but they agreed to allow Pasteur to prove it by a public experiment.

So, Pasteur collected some sheep, goats and cows, and divided them into two lots. To one lot he gave injections of his weak anthrax germs. The other lot was left alone. Then on a certain day all the animals were injected with the most deadly anthrax germs that could be produced. On the third day after the experiment, a crowd of people gathered round the sheds to see what had happened to the animals. Pasteur, even though he was so sure of himself, must have felt nervous. All the two dozen animals that had first been protected by the weak germs were perfectly well. The deadly injection had done them no harm at all. Of the other two dozen animals, twenty-two were dead and the other two were dying. When the news spread that Pasteur had discovered a cure for anthrax, hundreds of people wrote to him for supplies of “vaccine” or weak germs, and he had to turn his laboratory into a kind of small germ factory.

Pasteur received many honours from the French Government, and in 1881 he came to a big medical Congress in London. When he walked down the hall, there was a storm of applause. He looked round, thinking that the cheers must be for some royal person, for Pasteur could hardly believe that the applause was meant for him.

One of his last experiments was in connection with the terrible disease which attacks a person who is bitten by a dog with rabies, a ‘mad’ dog as we call it. Pasteur had grown very sure about the power of inoculation, and he decided to try out the same idea in cases of rabies. At that time nearly every one died who was bitten by a diseased dog. In 1885 Pasteur made his first experiment on a young Alsatian boy who came to him in Paris covered with bites from a mad dog. The boy’s mother told Pasteur, “If you can cure animals, you can cure my son.” So Pasteur inoculated him with some weak rabies germs and the boy recovered.

Although Dr. Jenner had already discovered how to vaccinate against small pox, he did not really understand about bacteria. Pasteur after giving his life to this study was able to prove the value of inoculation, and to find out ways of varying it for different diseases.

During the First World War (1914-18), the troops going abroad were inoculated against such diseases as typhoid and enteric fever, and the very low death-rate from these illnesses among the troops, even in unhealthy places, was a great tribute to Pasteur’s work.

Pasteur’s memory is still honoured in the Institute Pasteur in Paris, where bacteriology is studied by men of all nations. At the opening of the Institute in 1888, Pasteur said, “Two opposing laws seem to me now in contest – the one, a law of blood and death, opening out each day new methods of destruction, forces nations to be always ready for the battle; the other, a law of peace, work and health, whose only aim is to deliver man from the disasters which surrounded him. The one seeks violent conquests, the other the relief of mankind..... Which of these two laws will prevail God only knows; but of this we may be sure, that science in obeying the law of humanity will always labour to enlarge the frontiers of life.”

Someone who knew Pasteur well in his old age described him thus: “Weary, with deep lines on his face, the skin and beard both white, his hair still thick and nearly always covered with a black cap; the broad forehead wrinkled, marked with the lines of genius, the mouth slightly drawn by paralysis, but full of kindness..... and above all, the living thought which still flashes from the eyes beneath the deep shadow of the eyebrows.”

On Pasteur’s 70th birthday his jubilee was celebrated almost like a national festival. Like Lord Lister, he was honoured in his old age by the scientists of all nations. At the crowded meeting in the great hall of the University of Paris, the old man was too overcome to speak, and his speech was read to the distinguished audience by his son.

“The future,” he said, “will belong to those who shall have done the most for suffering humanity.” To the young students he addressed a special word, ‘First ask yourselves, “What have I done for my education?” Then as you advance in life, “What have I done for my country?” ‘so that some day that supreme happiness may come to you, the consciousness of having contributed in some measure to the progress and welfare of humanity.’

Pasteur himself certainly knew that happiness. He died in 1895 when he was 75, and no name in science is more honoured or will longer be remembered.

Chapter Ends

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  - O. Henry
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The following is the Fourth chapter of Karnataka SSLC English 1^st Language.

ENG1001-TB04

Chapter 04

Louis Pasteur, Conqueror of Disease

- E. H. Carter

On the field of battle in one of his campaigns, Napoleon decorated for bravery a certain tanner named Pasteur. This brave soldier had an equally brave son, Louis Pasteur, born seven years after Waterloo. He was not a soldier, but he was a fighter.

He fought disease. He devoted his life to the study of what we sometimes call germs, which men of science call bacteria, a Greek word meaning ‘little rods.’ Bacteria are vegetable organisms – little rod-shaped plants – which exist in the air, water and soil, and in the bodies of animals and plants; some but not all are the causes of diseases, some convert matter into food for plants.

Louis Pasteur had a very busy and interesting life. He not only made some exciting discoveries about germs but he was able to use his discoveries in very practical ways. He worked hard in his laboratory with test tubes and all kinds of experiments, but nearly all the time he was working to help people who were suffering in some special way from disease. Among the people whom Pasteur was able to help were brewers, breeders of silk worms, and cow keepers, all of whom were trying to carry on important industries in France. Pasteur was always very proud of being able to help his country in this way.

Louis Pasteur, born in a little French country town, was interested in chemistry when he was very young. After studying hard in Paris and showing great promise, he began to teach and lecture as Professor of Chemistry. He became a Professor at Strasburg in Alsace, and he married a wife who was always to be his closest companion and assistant.

Pasteur was deeply interested in all the new experiments that were being made in chemistry, and decided to solve some of the difficult problems that were worrying chemists and other scientists. Sometimes he used to sit for hours, quite silent and motionless, thinking hard about one of his difficulties. He found this the easiest way to solve a problem; and when he thought of a solution, his kind, tired looking face would brighten with pleasure and excitement and he would rush round to tell his discovery to his wife and to others who were helping him.

In 1854 Pasteur was appointed Head of a College of Science at Lille, a busy manufacturing town in the north-east of France. He was pleased about this, because he always felt that trades and industries could be helped very much by the researches of men of science. His chance to be useful soon came.

Pasteur, as a young chemist, had always been interested in the problems of why and how living things decay, why milk turns sour, why meat goes bad, why wine ferments. He started to give some lectures in Lille on fermentation. One of the chief industries in Lille was the manufacture of alcohol from beetroot, and he was fortunate in being able to carry out experiments in some of the breweries. One manufacturer consulted Pasteur about his beer, which was turning out badly, and Pasteur by helping this brewer managed to discover all sorts of things that he did not know before about yeast. Yeast is used to make beer foam and bread rise up lightly. Pasteur became certain that yeast was alive, made up of tiny living cells. When these cells were healthy the yeast acted well, but if they were diseased, the yeast and the beer went wrong.

After a few years, Pasteur was made Director of Scientific Studies at a famous college in Paris. He was still thinking about decay and yeast and germs and one of the problems that he was trying to answer was this : “Do germs form from other germs, or do they just come of themselves?” People like Pasteur believed that germs were carried in the air and might infect other things that came in contact with them. Others believed in what they called “spontaneous generation” – i.e., they believed that germs had no parents but just occurred by themselves.

Pasteur proved that he was right by a very simple and clever experiment. He put some soup into some bottles and then he boiled it in order to destroy any germs that might already be in the soup. After that he heated and pulled out the neck of each bottle until it formed a long narrow ‘neck’ with a big bend in the middle. The soup remained there for a long time and it never went bad as it would have done if it had been standing in a bowl in the kitchen. “That,’’ said Pasteur, “is because there are no parent germs in the soup, and they cannot reach it because of the bend in the long tube.” So, he took one of the bottles and spilt a little of the soup down the tube so that it settled in the bend. This soup went bad. We often speak of "dust traps." Well, this bend in the tube was a dust trap, because the dust – which, as we now know, may carry germs with it - could get as far as the bend but no farther, and it settled there and infected the soup.

This is only one of many hundreds of experiments which Pasteur made to show how full the air is of dust particles and how germs may be carried by this dust. One very useful experiment was made to show the difference between pure and stale air. Pasteur again filled some bottles with soup. He took some into a little hotel bedroom where the air hardly ever changed, broke their necks off so that the air could enter freely, and after a few minutes sealed them up again. He then took some bottles into a field near by and did the same with them. Finally he opened some on the top of a high mountain and again sealed them up. What was the result? When they were examined, the bottles opened in the hotel bedroom were full of soup which had gone completely mouldy; the bottles opened in the field were mouldy, but not quite so bad; those opened on the mountain had no germs in them at all.

Nowadays, we pay a great deal of attention to pure air, open windows, to freedom from dust, to garden cities. Pasteur was one of the first to show how necessary all these are if we are to fight against germs and disease.

Another very useful discovery of Pasteur’s while he was working in Paris was the process which we now call, after him, "pasteurization". Some French wine-growers were troubled by a germ which had turned their wine sour. Pasteur showed that by heating the wine, or milk, or whatever it might be to a temperature of 50 or 60 degrees centigrade, the germs were made harmless. Pasteurized milk is milk which has been treated in this way and then sealed to prevent more germs from entering.

Louis Pasteur was what we should call an "all round" scientist. All the research which he did in his laboratories was meant to help his fellow human beings. It would be impossible to imagine Pasteur experimenting with explosives or poison gas.

Pasteur founded the branch of science called "bacteriology", or the study of bacteria, and he showed what a wide range it had by studying the bacteria in all sorts of different activities. For three years he spent all his time and energy in tracking down the cause of a disease which had ruined the silkworm industry. He began to believe that most, if not all, infectious diseases were due to certain bacteria which, if they got into the blood, multiplied there and caused disease.

Many other men were working and experimenting against those bacteria which were the enemies of man and which were invisible but present everywhere and always ready to attack. Dr. Jenner in England had already discovered vaccination for smallpox, but ‘inoculation’ against other diseases had not yet started.

Pasteur was trying to discover a cure for the terrible disease called anthrax, which men sometimes get from infected shaving brushes, and which was attacking cows and sheep in France and killing them off very quickly. He found out first of all that a cow could not have anthrax twice. Then he began to wonder whether it would not be possible to make a cow and even a man just a little ill with anthrax, so that they might not get it again. Perhaps this could be done by giving the cows or sheep very weak old germs to make them safe or ‘immune’ for the future. One can imagine how dangerous this idea of giving people germs must have seemed in those days. Many scientists were angry about it, but they agreed to allow Pasteur to prove it by a public experiment.

So, Pasteur collected some sheep, goats and cows, and divided them into two lots. To one lot he gave injections of his weak anthrax germs. The other lot was left alone. Then on a certain day all the animals were injected with the most deadly anthrax germs that could be produced. On the third day after the experiment, a crowd of people gathered round the sheds to see what had happened to the animals. Pasteur, even though he was so sure of himself, must have felt nervous. All the two dozen animals that had first been protected by the weak germs were perfectly well. The deadly injection had done them no harm at all. Of the other two dozen animals, twenty-two were dead and the other two were dying. When the news spread that Pasteur had discovered a cure for anthrax, hundreds of people wrote to him for supplies of “vaccine” or weak germs, and he had to turn his laboratory into a kind of small germ factory.

Pasteur received many honours from the French Government, and in 1881 he came to a big medical Congress in London. When he walked down the hall, there was a storm of applause. He looked round, thinking that the cheers must be for some royal person, for Pasteur could hardly believe that the applause was meant for him.

One of his last experiments was in connection with the terrible disease which attacks a person who is bitten by a dog with rabies, a ‘mad’ dog as we call it. Pasteur had grown very sure about the power of inoculation, and he decided to try out the same idea in cases of rabies. At that time nearly every one died who was bitten by a diseased dog. In 1885 Pasteur made his first experiment on a young Alsatian boy who came to him in Paris covered with bites from a mad dog. The boy’s mother told Pasteur, “If you can cure animals, you can cure my son.” So Pasteur inoculated him with some weak rabies germs and the boy recovered.

Although Dr. Jenner had already discovered how to vaccinate against small pox, he did not really understand about bacteria. Pasteur after giving his life to this study was able to prove the value of inoculation, and to find out ways of varying it for different diseases.

During the First World War (1914-18), the troops going abroad were inoculated against such diseases as typhoid and enteric fever, and the very low death-rate from these illnesses among the troops, even in unhealthy places, was a great tribute to Pasteur’s work.

Pasteur’s memory is still honoured in the Institute Pasteur in Paris, where bacteriology is studied by men of all nations. At the opening of the Institute in 1888, Pasteur said, “Two opposing laws seem to me now in contest – the one, a law of blood and death, opening out each day new methods of destruction, forces nations to be always ready for the battle; the other, a law of peace, work and health, whose only aim is to deliver man from the disasters which surrounded him. The one seeks violent conquests, the other the relief of mankind..... Which of these two laws will prevail God only knows; but of this we may be sure, that science in obeying the law of humanity will always labour to enlarge the frontiers of life.”

Someone who knew Pasteur well in his old age described him thus: “Weary, with deep lines on his face, the skin and beard both white, his hair still thick and nearly always covered with a black cap; the broad forehead wrinkled, marked with the lines of genius, the mouth slightly drawn by paralysis, but full of kindness..... and above all, the living thought which still flashes from the eyes beneath the deep shadow of the eyebrows.”

On Pasteur’s 70th birthday his jubilee was celebrated almost like a national festival. Like Lord Lister, he was honoured in his old age by the scientists of all nations. At the crowded meeting in the great hall of the University of Paris, the old man was too overcome to speak, and his speech was read to the distinguished audience by his son.

“The future,” he said, “will belong to those who shall have done the most for suffering humanity.” To the young students he addressed a special word, ‘First ask yourselves, “What have I done for my education?” Then as you advance in life, “What have I done for my country?” ‘so that some day that supreme happiness may come to you, the consciousness of having contributed in some measure to the progress and welfare of humanity.’

Pasteur himself certainly knew that happiness. He died in 1895 when he was 75, and no name in science is more honoured or will longer be remembered.

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