ENGLISH, TRAVEL and MY LIFE

By Edith Warton Chapter 1: BEGINNINGS Winter in Starkfield If you know Starkfield Massachusetts, you know the post office there. If you know the post office, you have probably seen Ethan Frome driving up to it in his buggy; and you have probably wondered who he was. It was there that, several years ago, I saw him for the first time. He was a noticeable figure. His tall, strong body was badly twisted, and much shorter on the right side than on the left. He moved slowly and painfully, pulling himself along. Just a few steps from his buggy to the post office were clearly difficult for him. His face has a sad, grim look. It was the face and body of an old man, and I was surprised to hear that that he was only fifty-two. I learnt this from Harmon Gow, a man who knew all the families around Starkfield. "He's been like that since his bad accident, nearly twenty-four years ago", said Harmon. "But Fromes don't die young, Ethan'll live to a hundred, probab...

Every President of the United States takes an oath, to preserve, protect, and defend the Nation they serve. The pledge demands courageous and difficult decisions. When bold leaders risk all to do what they see as right, their choices can change the course of history. These are the decisions that shook the World. "We all make tough choices, but when you are sitting in the Oval Office as President of the United States, the decisions you make will affect millions of people. Now as Americans are about to decide who is going to be our next President, we are going to look into the heart of some of the most crucial presidential decisions that shook our World. And still do. Imaging it's 1940, and you are Flanklin Roosevelt, Hitler's Nazis have taken most of Europe, and Hitler is about to invade England. The British Prime Minister, Wiston Churchill, is pleading for help. But most Americans want to stay away from the war in Europe. Now you're about to run for re-elect...

April, 1865, a country barely recovering from death, on an unimaginable scale is now plunged into a new type of mourning, just as the guns were falling silence on four years of Civil War. The man who has held the country together through that war has been felled in his hour of triumph by an assassin's bullet. During his four years in the While House, the United States has been changed forever. Despite being torn by secession and Civil War, it was a single country again. And slavery, the ultimate cause of the war has been banished into memory. Now, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President has joined 620,000 of his countrymen as a victim of the War. As his funeral train approached Springfield Illinois, it was completing a great American journey. Once that had begun in complete obscurity. ======================================================================== "When first my father settle here, twas then the frontier line. The panther's scream filled n...