1.

Chief Seattle’s Speech:

There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea cover its
shell-paved floor, but that time long since passed away with the greatness of tribes that are now but
a mournful memory. I will not dwell on, nor mourn over, our untimely decay, nor reproach my
paleface brothers with hastening it, as we too may have been somewhat to blame. Youth is
impulsive. When our young men grow angry at some real or imaginary wrong, and disfigure their
faces with black paint, it denotes that their hearts are black, and that they are often cruel and
relentless, and our old men and old women are unable to restrain them. Thus it has ever been. Thus
it was when the white man began to push our forefathers ever westward. But let us hope that the
hostilities between us may never return. We would have everything to lose and nothing to gain.
Revenge by young men is considered gain, even at the cost of their own lives, but old men who stay
at home in times of war, and mothers who have sons to lose, know better.

2. An angel in disguise:

This woman had been despised, scoffed at, and angrily denounced by nearly every man, woman, and
child in the village; but now, as the fact of, her death was passed from lip to lip, in subdued tones,
pity took the place of anger, and sorrow of denunciation. Neighbours went hastily to the old tumble-
down hut, in which she had secured little more than a place of shelter from summer heats and
winter cold: some with grave-clothes for a decent interment of the body; and some with food for the
half-starving children, three in number. Of these, John, the oldest, a boy of twelve, was a stout lad,
able to earn his living with any farmer. Kate, between ten and eleven, was bright, active girl, out of
whom something clever might be made, if in good hands; but poor little Maggie, the youngest, was
hopelessly diseased. Two years before a fall from a window had injured her spine, and she had not
been able to leave her bed since, except when lifted in the arms of her mother.

“What is to be done with the children?” That was the chief question now. The dead mother would
go underground, and be forever beyond all care or concern of the villagers. But the children must
not be left to starve.

3. All summer in a Day:

“Do the scientists really know? Will it happen today, will it?”
“Look, look; see for yourself! ”The children pressed to each other like so many  roses, so many
weeds, intermixed, peering out for a look at the hidden sun. It rained. It had been raining for seven
years; thousands upon thousands of days compounded and filled from one end to the other with
rain, with the drum and gush of water, with the sweet crystal fall of showers and the concussion of
storms so heavy they were tidal waves come over the islands. A thousand forests had been crushed
under the rain and grown up a thousand times to be crushed again. And this was the way life was
forever on the planet Venus, and this was the schoolroom of the children of the rocket men and
women who had come to a raining world to set up civilization and live out their lives.