READING FOR INFORMATION (Speech)

The Gettysburg Address

By: Abraham Lincoln


November 19, 1863
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth for this continent a new nation,
conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are
engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any action so conceived and so
dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to
dedicate a portion of that field, as final resting place for those who here gave their lives that
nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in larger sense, we cannot dedicate-we cannot consecrate-we cannot hallow-this
ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our
poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here. But
it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to
unfinished work which they who fought here have thus for nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us-that from these
honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure
devotion- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain-that this nation,
under God, shall have new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by people, for the
people, shall not perish from earth.


I have a Dream (Speech)
By: Martin Luther king, Jr.

August 28, 1963
I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustration of the moment I
still have dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day
this nation will rise up and the true meaning of its out creed. We hold these truths to be self-
evident, that all men are created equal. I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia
the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at
the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state sweltering with the
heat of injustice and oppression, will transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a
dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by
the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today. I have a dream
that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountains shall be made low, the rough
places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord
shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to south. With this faith we will be able
to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to
transform the jangling discord of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this
faith we will be able to work together, pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together,
knowing that we will be free one day. This will be the day when all of Gods children will be
able to sing with new meaning My country tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrims pride, from every mountainside, let freedom
ring. And if America is to be great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the
prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New
York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California! But not only that, let freedom ring
from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee! Let
freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom
ring. When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from
every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of Gods children, black
men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and
sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty we
are free at last!
READING FOR CRITICAL UNDERSTANDING

Birthday Party
By: Katherine Brush

They were couple in their late thirties, and they looked unmistakably married. They sat on
the banquette opposite us in little narrow restaurant, having dinner. The man had a round, self-
satisfied face, with glasses on it; the woman was fadingly pretty, in a big hat. There was nothing
conspicuous about them, nothing particularly noticeable, until the end of their meal, when it
suddenly became obvious that this was an Occasion-in fact, the husbands birthday, and the wife
had planned a little surprise for him.
It arrived, in the form of small but glossy birthday cake, with one pink candle burning in the
center. The headwaiter brought it in and placed it before the husband, meanwhile the violin and
piano orchestra played Happy birthday to you, and the wife beamed with shy pride over her
little surprise, and such few people as there were in the restaurant tried to help out because the
husband was not pleased. Instead he was hotly embarrassed, and indignant at his wife for
embarrassing him.
You looked at him and saw this and you thought, Oh, now dont be like that! But he was
like that, and as soon as the little cake had been deposited on the table, and the orchestra had
finished the birthday piece, and the general attention had shifted from the man and woman, I saw
him say something to her under his breath. Some punishing thing, quick and curt and unkind. I
couldnt bear to look at the woman then, so I stared at my plate and waited for quite a long time.
Not long enough, though. She was still crying when I finally glanced over there again. Crying
quietly and heartbrokenly and hopelessly, all to herself, under the gay big brim of her best hat.






The Vacuum
By: Howard Nemerov


The house is so quiet now
The vacuum cleaners sulks in the corner closet,
Its big limp as a stopped lung,
Its mouth grinning into the floor,
May be at my
Slovenly life, my dog-dead youth


Ive lived this way long enough,
But when my old woman died her soul
Went into that vacuum cleaner,
And I cant bear
To see the bag swell like a belly, eating the dust


Because there is old filth everywhere
She used to crawl,
In the corner and under the stair.
I know now how life is cheap as dirt,
And still the hungry, angry heart
Hangs on and howls, biting at air.







Those Winters Sunday
By: Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early
And put his clothes on in the blueback cold,
Then with cracked hands that ached
From labor in the weekday weather made
Banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.


Id wake and hear the cold splintering breaking.
When the rooms were warm, hed call,
And slowly I would rise and dress,
Fearing the chronic angers of that house,


Speaking indifferently to him,
Who had driven out cold?
And polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
Of loves austere and lonely offices?



The road not taken
By: Robert Frost



Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same


And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.


I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence
Two roads diverged in a wood and I
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.