Just So Stories for Little Children / Просто сказки. Книга для чтения на английском языке

The Camel’s hump is an ugly[38]

lumpWhich well you may see at the Zoo;
But uglier yet is the hump we get
From having too little to do.

Kiddies and grown-ups too-oo-oo,

If we haven’t enough to do-oo-oo,
We get the hump —
Cameelious hump —
The hump that is black and blue!

We climb out of bed with frowzy[39]

headAnd a snarly-yarly voice.
We shiver and scowl and we grunt and we growl[40]
At our bath and our boots and our toys;

And there ought to be a corner for me

(And I know there is one for you)
When we get the hump —
Cameelious hump —
The hump that is black and blue!

The cure for this ill is not to sit still,

Or frowst with a book by the fire;
But to take a large hoe and a shovel also,
And dig till you gently perspire[41];

And then you will find that the sun and the wind,

And the Djinn of the Garden too,
Have lifted the hump —
The horrible hump —
The hump that is black and blue!

I get it as well as you-oo-oo —

If I haven’t enough to do-oo-oo!
We all get hump —
Cameelious hump —
Kiddies and grown-ups too!

Questions and tasks

1. What animals came to the Camel? What did they offer to the Camel and what was the answer?

2. Why were the animals very angry after the

Man had talked to them?

3. Retell the story from the moment the Djinn appeared in it.

4. What did the Djinn do for making the Camel work?

5. What ‘advantages’ did the hump on the back give to the Camel?

6. Retell the story.

How the Rhinoceros [42] Gt His Skin

Once upon a time, on an uninhabited island on the shores of the Red Sea, there lived a Parsee from whose hat the rays of the sun were reflected in more-than-oriental splendour[43]. And the Parsee lived by the Red Sea with nothing but his hat and his knife and a cooking-stove of the kind that you must particularly never touch. And one day he took flour and water and currants and plums and sugar and things, and made himself one cake which was two feet across and three feet thick[44]. It was indeed a Superior Comestible (that’s Magic), and he put it on the stove because he was allowed to cook on that stove, and he baked it and he baked it till it was all done brown and smelt most sentimental[45]. But just as he was going to eat it there came down to the beach from the Altogether Uninhabited Interior one Rhinoceros with a horn on his nose, two piggy eyes, and few manners[46]. In those days the Rhinoceros’s skin fitted him quite tight[47]. There were no wrinkles in it anywhere. He looked exactly like[48] a Hoah’s Ark Rhinoceros, but of course much bigger. All the same, he had no manners then, and he has no manners now, and he never will have any manners. He said, ‘How!’ and the Parsee left that cake and climbed to the top of palm-tree with nothing on but his hat, from which the rays of the sun were always reflected in more-than-oriental splendour. And the Rhinoceros upset the oil-stove with his nose, and the cake rolled on the sand, and he spiked that cake on the horn of his nose, and he ate it, and he went away, waving his tail, to the desolate and Exclusively Uninhabited Interior which abuts on the islands of Mazanderan, Socotra, and the Promontories of the Larger Equinox[51]. Then the Parsee came down from his palm-tree and put the stove on its legs and recited the following Sloka, which, as you have not heard, I will now proceed to relate: —

‘Them that takes cakes
Which the Parsee-man bakes
Makes dreadful mistakes.’