The Silent Readers: Sixth Reader. Albert Lindsay Rowland
In making an outline it is not necessary to put in every single idea in the piece you are outlining.
Now, after going through the selection to see how the outline is made, you can easily answer the following questions:
1. How does it happen that you do not have to depend on your own family for the things you eat and wear and use? Make a list of the people who help you to get the things necessary for every-day life. Your list might begin with the baker, the milk-man, and the shoemaker.
2. Try to draw a picture of the outside of the Eskimo's winter house as it is described here.
3. Make a list of the things you think an Eskimo boy or girl about your age would do from morning to night—his day's program, you may call it.
4. Do you think the Eskimo is glad when summer comes? Why?
5. Tell a story that a "huskie" might tell of his experiences.
6. Make a list of raw materials, such as wood, that would make the life of the Eskimo more comfortable.
SCOTTISH BORDER WARFARE
From your study of the way to make an outline of "The Eskimo", you will be able to make an outline of "Scottish Border Warfare" yourself.
Read the selection through, and then go back and write topics that cover the main points.
Legends of the Scottish borders tell the exciting stories of a warfare that went on for a hundred years, in the days before England and Scotland were united. The "Borders" consisted of that part of the country in the South of Scotland where the boundary was not properly fixed. The King of England might claim a piece of land that the King of Scotland thought was his, and the King of Scotland might do the same by the King of England. And so, because things were never really settled in these parts, and men thought they could do pretty much as they liked, a constant warfare sprang up between the families who lived on the English side of the border and those who lived on the Scottish side. These families formed great clans, almost like the Highland clans, and every man in the clan rose in arms at the bidding of his chief.
The warfare which they carried on was not honest fighting so much as something that sounds to us very much like stealing; only in these old plundering, or "reiving" days, as they were called, people were not very particular about other people's property, and right was often decided by might. So when these old Border chieftains found that their larders were getting empty, they sent messages around the countryside to their retainers, telling them to meet them that night at some secret trysting-place, and ride with them into England to steal some English yeoman's flock of sheep.
In the darkness, groups of men, mounted on rough, shaggy ponies, would assemble at some lonely spot among the hills and ride stealthily into Cumberland or Northumberland, and surround some Englishman's little flock of sheep, or herd of cattle, and drive them off, setting fire, perhaps, to his cottage and haystacks at the same time.
The Englishman might be unable to retaliate at the moment, but no sooner were the reivers' backs turned than he betook himself with all haste to his chieftain, who, in his turn, gathered his men together, and rode over into Scotland to take vengeance, and, if possible, bring back with him a larger drove of sheep and cattle than had been stolen, or "lifted", by the Scotch.
And so things went merrily on, with raids and counter-raids, and fierce little encounters, and brave men slain. You can read the accounts of many of these raids in Sir Walter Scott's "Border Minstrelsy"—about "Kinmont Willie," "Dick o' the Cow," "Jamie Telfer of the Fair Dodhead," "Johnnie Armstrong," and "the Raid of the Reidswire"—and if you ever chance to be traveling between Hawick and Carlisle you can look out of the window, as the train carries you swiftly down Liddesdale, and people the hillsides, in your imagination, with companies of reivers setting out to harry their "auld enemies", the English.
—From "A Peep at Scotland", by Elizabeth Grierson.
Questions
1. What were the "Borders"?
2. From the way they are used, tell what you think the following words mean: "reiving," larders, retainers, clan, trysting-place, yeoman, retaliate, "lifted," harry.
THE NEW WONDERLAND
You have probably, like Betty, the little girl in this story, read "Alice in Wonderland". If you haven't, you will find out, before you have read very far on this page, when Alice lived. Glance at the first part of the story and see.
Alice, in the book that Betty had been reading, had wonderful adventures in a strange country, where rabbits and caterpillars talked, and where certain kinds of cake made you grow taller or shorter, and where people put pepper in tea. Anybody would think a country like that was a Wonderland; but you will see that Alice found our everyday, twentieth-century world is a Wonderland, too. See if you can tell why she thought so.
Betty laid down her book with a sigh. It had been a lovely book, and she was sorry it was finished. "Such a humdrum old world!" she said discontentedly. "I wish I had a chance to go to Wonderland, like Alice."
"Why," said a voice from the doorway, "isn't this Wonderland, then?"
Betty looked up, startled. She saw a little girl of about her own age, with long, light, straight hair hanging to her waist, with wide, wondering blue eyes, and dressed in the simplest, most old-fashioned of little white frocks.
"Who are you?" inquired Betty.
"Why, don't you know me? I'm Alice," said the quaint little girl.
"How did you get here? I thought you lived a long time ago, in 1850 or so."
"Oh, yes, I did begin to live then; but you see I've been traveling in Wonderland so long that I've never had time to grow up."
"Aren't you sorry to have come back to real life, and begin to do lessons, and mind what the older people say, and all?"
"Oh, but I haven't! Of course, I suppose the people in Wonderland don't know they are queer, and so that's why you don't know you live there."
"Well," said Betty scornfully, "I'm sure I don't see anything to wonder at in this old place—" Just then a bell rang sharply, and Betty hurried to answer the telephone. It was her father speaking. She took his message and returned to her guest.
"What in the world," said Alice, "made you talk into that little black cup?"
"Why, that's the telephone."
"What's a telephone? We didn't have them in my time, I'm sure."
"Oh, everybody has one now. It lets you talk to somebody 'way off, over an electric wire."
"Of course, we read about Franklin and his kite and all that. Let me try it." But when the operator's voice saying "Number, please?" came to Alice's ear, she was so frightened that she dropped the receiver.
"I can show you lots more things we do with electricity," said Betty, beginning to understand that things which were commonplace to her were wonders to her visitor. "You see it's getting dark? Now watch." Going to the push-button in the wall she snapped on the light; Alice jumped at its suddenness.
"Why, at home we had to find matches and light a lamp," she said in amazement.
"That's nothing," said Betty. "Come along." She led her new friend into the dining room, and showed her how, by pressing a button, the rack could be heated for toasting bread, or heat supplied for the coffee pot. Then they went on into the kitchen, and she showed Alice the gas stove, where a flame sprang into life at the turning of a handle; and the washing-machine, where the pressing of another button set the