—H. W. Longfellow: The Courtship of Miles Standish.
Meanwhile the quick-tempered captain strode wrathfully away to the council, which he found already assembled, and impatiently waiting his coming. They were middle-aged men, stern and grave in bearing. Only one of them was old, the excellent Elder of Plymouth, but he still stood erect, though his hair was white—like the snow cap on a tall mountain.
Exercise 72.—Paraphrase the following; try to express the thought so simply that people who know less than you do can understand it.
1. It was not until the year 1776 that the fur trade regained its old channels; but it was then pursued with much avidity and emulation by individual merchants, and soon transcended its former bounds.—Washington Irving: Astoria.
2. It is characteristic of such a people [the Aztecs] to find a puerile pleasure in a dazzling and ostentatious pageantry; to mistake show for substance; vain pomp for power; to hedge round the throne itself with barren and burdensome ceremonial, the counterfeit of real majesty.—W. H. Prescott: The Conquest of Mexico.
3. The messenger found access to the benignant princess and delivered the epistle of the friar. Isabella had always been favorably disposed to the proposition of Columbus. She wrote in reply to Juan Perez, thanking him for his timely service, and requesting that he would repair immediately to the court, leaving Columbus in confident hope until he should hear further from her.—Washington Irving: Life of Columbus.
4. It cannot be disputed that the light toil requisite to cultivate a moderately sized garden imparts such zest to kitchen vegetables as is never found in those of the market gardener. Childless men, if they would know something of the bliss of paternity, should plant a seed with their own hands and nurse it from infancy to maturity altogether by their own care.—Nathaniel Hawthorne: Mosses from an Old Manse.
5. Dorcas nourished her apprehensions in silence till one afternoon when Reuben awoke from an unquiet sleep and seemed to recognize her more perfectly than at any previous time. She saw that his intellect had become composed, and she could no longer restrain her filial anxiety.—From the same.
Exercise 73.—Paraphrase the following passages:—
1. Ah, no longer wizard Fancy
Builds her castles in the air,
Luring me by necromancy
Up the never-ending stair.
But instead she builds me bridges
Over many a dark ravine,
Where beneath the gusty ridges
Cataracts dash and roar unseen.
—H. W. Longfellow: The Bridge of Cloud.