A.

Vocabulary Development
Context Clues: Pick out the word which does not belong to the group.

1. The man was shouting blasphemous ideas about different religions.

a. authentic b. nonsense c. distracting d. humiliating
2. The audience ignored the man’s clamor for change on social injustice.
a. yell b. cry c. scream d. silence
3. They were spoken by a man who had false ideas as to what is convincing in elocution.
a. deliver b. inarticulatec. expression d. utterance
4. The lawyers could not easily counterfeit his arguments.
a. simulate b. reverse c. imitate d. fabricate
5. The lady was wearing a bourgeois dress just like any other woman in their locale.
a. traditional b. common c. original d. conservative
6. He can forget the entreaties made which was agreed upon for quite some time.
a. answer b. petition c. request d. appeal

B. Reading Proper
Drain in a Train: Read the text below entitled By the Railway Side by Alice Meynell and reflect on
the questions enclosed in boxes.

How can your character affect others?

By the Railway Side

by Alice Meynell

My train drew near to the Via Reggio platform on a day between two of the harvests of a hot
September; the sea was burning blue, and there were a sombreness and a gravity in the very excesses
of the sun as his fires brooded deeply over the serried, hardy, shabby, seaside ilex-woods. I had come
out of Tuscany and was on my way to the Genovesato: the steep country with its profiles, bay by bay, of
successive mountains grey with olive-trees, between the flashes of the Mediterranean and the sky; the
country through the which there sounds the twanging Genoese language, a thin Italian mingled with a
little Arabic, more Portuguese, and much French.
I was regretful at leaving the elastic Tuscan speech, canorous in its vowels set in emphatic L's
and m's and the vigorous soft spring of the double consonants. But as the train arrived its noises were
drowned by a voice declaiming in the tongue I was not to hear again for months--good Italian.
The voice was so loud that one looked for the audience: Whose ears was it seeking to reach by
the violence done to every syllable, and whose feelings would it touch by its insincerity? The tones were
insincere, but there was passion behind them; and most often passion acts its own true character poorly,
and consciously enough to make good judges think it a mere counterfeit.

What would you do if you were on that train?

Hamlet, being a little mad, feigned madness. It is when I am angry that I pretend to be angry, so
as to present the truth in an obvious and intelligible form. Thus even before the words were
distinguishable it was manifest that they were spoken by a man in serious trouble who had false ideas
as to what is convincing in elocution.
When the voice became audibly articulate, it proved to be shouting blasphemies from the broad
chest of a middle-aged man--an Italian of the type that grows stout and wears whiskers. The man was in
bourgeois dress, and he stood with his hat off in front of the small station building, shaking his thick fist
at the sky. No one was on the platform with him except the railway officials, who seemed in doubt as to
their duties in the matter, and two women.
Of one of these there was nothing to remark except her distress. She wept as she stood at the
door of the waiting-room. Like the second woman, she wore the dress of the shopkeeping class
throughout Europe, with the local black lace veil in place of a bonnet over her hair. It is of the second
woman--O unfortunate creature!--that this record is made--a record without sequel, without
consequence; but there is nothing to be done in her regard except so to remember her. And thus much I
think I owe after having looked, from the midst of the negative happiness that is given to so many for a
space of years, at some minutes of her despair. She was hanging on the man's arm in her entreaties
that he would stop the drama he was enacting. She had wept so hard that her face was disfigured.
Across her nose was the dark purple that comes with overpowering fear. Haydon saw it on the face of a
woman whose child had just been run over in a London street.
I remembered the note in his journal as the woman at Via Reggio, in her intolerable hour, turned
her head my way, her sobs lifting it. She was afraid that the man would throw himself under the train.
She was afraid that he would be damned for his blasphemies; and as to this her fear was mortal fear. It
was horrible, too, that she was humpbacked and a dwarf.

What would you feel if you were in that woman’s shoes?

Not until the train drew away from the station did we lose the clamour. No one had tried to silence
the man or to soothe the woman's horror. But has any one who saw it forgotten her face? To me for the
rest of the day it was a sensible rather than a merely mental image.
Constantly a red blur rose before my eyes for a background, and against it appeared the dwarf's
head, lifted with sobs, under the provincial black lace veil. And at night what emphasis it gained on the
boundaries of sleep! Close to my hotel there was a roofless theatre crammed with people, where they
were giving Offenbach. The operas of Offenbach still exist in Italy, and the little town was placarded with
announcements of La Bella Elena. The peculiar vulgar rhythm of the music jigged audibly through half
the hot night, and the clapping of the town's-folk filled all its pauses. But the persistent noise did but
accompany, for me, the persistent vision of those three figures at the Via Reggio station in the profound
sunshine of the day.

C. Comprehension Check
Answer the following questions.
1. What is implied by these lines found in the first paragraph- “ the sea was burning blue and
there were sombreness and a gravity in the very excesses of the sun?”
2. How is the setting described?
3. Why was the man speaking at the top of his voice in the station? What was his purpose?
4. How do you think people reacted to him? What do they feel and why?
5. Who do you think was the woman trying to stop the man from talking nonsense?
6. If you were one of the passengers on that train who saw the incident, how would you react?

D. Evaluation
Scan the text once again and list three (3) people in the train. Analyze how the author described
and felt as they witnessed what happened.
Character Description of how they felt Analysis in terms of
implications to real-life
Answer the following questions:
1. What is implied by these lines found in the first paragraph - “the sea was burning
blue and there were somberness and a gravity in the very excesses of the sun.”
• The paragraph describes the color of the sea as very bright and also describes
the feeling of summer being hot and humid
2. How is the setting described?
• The setting is described in the train platform, in the Via Reggio, it was a place
in Tuscany in Italy. The author described the setting as a hot and humid environment.
3. What would you feel if you were in that woman’s shoes?
• I feel so nervous and I would really cry if I was in that woman’s shoes. Because
one of my loved ones can disappear in just a few seconds at that moment.
4. Why was the man speaking at the top of his voice in the station? What was his
purpose?
• The man was speaking at the top of his voice in the station because he wanted
people to notice him. He wanted someone to see him. He wanted everyone on
the station to know what he was going to do. He is speaking for attention