[2] From "David Copperfield," by Charles Dickens.
Expression: The two stories which you have just read were written by two of the greatest masters of fiction in English literature. Talk with your teacher about George Eliot and Charles Dickens, and learn all that you can about their works. Which of these two stories do you prefer? Why?
Reread the conversation on pages [14] and [15]. Imagine yourself to be Tom or Maggie, and speak just as he or she did. Read the conversation on pages [16] and [17] in the same way. Reread other portions that you like particularly well.
In what respect does the second story differ most strongly from the first? Select the most striking passage and read it with expression sad feeling.
THE DEPARTURE FROM MISS PINKERTON'S[3]
I
One sunshiny morning in June, there drove up to the great iron gate of Miss Pinkerton's Academy for young ladies, on Chiswick Mall, a large family coach, with two fat horses in blazing harness, driven by a fat coachman in a three-cornered hat and wig, at the rate of four miles an hour.
A black servant, who reposed on the box beside the fat coachman, uncurled his bandy legs as soon as the equipage drew up opposite Miss Pinkerton's shining brass plate; and as he pulled the bell, at least a score of young heads were seen peering out of the narrow windows of the stately old brick house. Nay, the acute observer might have recognized the little red nose of good-natured Miss Jemima Pinkerton herself, rising over some geranium pots in the window of that lady's own drawing room.