CHRISTY
BY
CATHERINE MARSHALL
QUOTES FOR DISCUSSION
Nonetheless, I was standing on the spot which I had always longed to see - the site of the adventures recounted so vividly by my parents during all my growing -up years. In a sense, I had lived through those experiences too.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 15
Presently we were standing at the edge of the yard she knew so well. No one was around. It was like walking onto an empty stage setting or into one's own dream.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 18
The story aches to be told, Catherine. The secrets of the human spirit that Alice Henderson knew, the wisdom that she shared is needed by so many today. And the mountain people, my friends - Fairlight and Opal, Jeb Spencer and Aunt Polly Teague, Ruby Mae and Little Burl, my school children - I want people to know them as they really were. But Catherine, I'm not the one to put it on paper. You know, sometimes the dreams of the parents must be fulfilled in the children.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 19
And my brother George, hearing the announcement, had stumbled out of bed and down the stairs to the landing, where he had stood leaning sleepily on the banister, touseled hair in his eyes, to tell me good-bye.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 21
It was a lonely, formless landscape. I wondered sudddenly if I was going to be homesick even before I got to El Pano.
Now the snow was beginning ot fall again with the wind rising. It was a strange wind, a whimpering sobbing wind, with pain in it. Yet gales were nothing new to me. Asheville had always been known as a windy city. I had always had tohold onto my hat as I rounded the corner onto Grant Street, sometimes using physical force topush, push against the invisible yet mightly walls of wind.
But there was something different about this wind. It was not a single note, but many notes playing up and down the scale, harmonizing at one moment, discordant the next, retreating, advancing.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 27
"You come from a highfalutin' home" - I opened my mouth to speak, but the voice rushed on - "easy to tell that. Your clothes, pretty fancy do-dads- The way you talk. Oh I see a lot of folks, and if I do say so myself who shouldn't, I'm a pretty good judge of folks."
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 35
She could talk the hind legs off a donkey, the staion mand had said.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 35
"Cause nobody really knows, and me, I just saw wood and say nothin'."
I could scarcely visualize Mrs. Tatum "saying nothing" at any time,
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 36
"Hit ain't bad. Wait until I get acrost though, so you don't get no sway."
Standing on the bank, I felt sick at my stomach. I never had liked heights. There had been that time on the railroad trestle two hundred feet above the French Broad River when some friends and I were coming back from a picnic. It would not have been so bad except for the wide open spaces between the trestles. And when I had looked down, well - many times since then I had dreamed of it. And now here was my old nightmare come horribly true.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 45
"There's another way that's shorter. But that way is so up-tilted, you could stand straight up and bite the ground."
I wondered as I panted after him if any piece of land could be more up-tilted than this. There was a sudden gust of wind. The higher we climbed, the stronger the gale that blew from the north. Near the top, the bank to our right was not high enough to give much protection. There were moments when I was sure we were about to be blown over the cliff. Yet the man walking in front gave no indication that he even noticed the buffeting of the wind.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 46
It seemed so much longer. Was it only four weeks ago that I had followed Mr. Pentland up that mountain trail into this new life? Why, my life in Asheville seemd so far away that it could have ben months or years.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 92
Snow never lasted so long in Asheville, and of the second day it was always dirty from soot and traffic. I never knew that snow could be so beautiful until I saw it miles away from a city. Such sparkling pristine pure white.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 96
"Every bit of life, every single one of us has a dark side," she retorted. "When you decided to leave home and take this teaching job, you were venturing out of your particular ivory tower. I know, I was reared in an ivory tower too. When we get our first good look at the way life realy is, and a lot of us want to run back to shelter in a hurry."
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 101
"A Supreme Being with real power and real love wouldn't stand by and watch a little girl raped and a woman hanged. How could He?"
"He would have to, if He'd given us men and women a genuine freedom of choice." Miss Alice's voice was gentle. "I think it's like this... The Creator made the world a cooperative enterpirse. In order for it to be that way, God had to give us the privilege of going His way or of refusing to go His way."
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 102
I happen to know that a certain man for two days disregarded a strong inner impulse to go to her. Finally he did go, but it was too late. So God's clear order went unheeded. And evil had its day. The result of our disobedience can be that simple, that terrible.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 104
I awoke to a sunshiny morning feeling so good that at first I had trouble remembering what I had been so gloomy about the night before. Oh, yes - the O'Teale cabin and my feelings of inadequacy as a teacher. But nothing could be that bad. I thought, as I stood before the front window savoring my view, feeling the warmth of the sun through the glass.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 106
...if we will let God, He can use even our disappointments, even our annoyances to bring us a blessing. There's a practical way to start the process too: by thanking Him for whatever happens, no matter how disagreeable it seems.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 116
Though I understood Miss Alice's effots to underscore the fine heritage of these people and to build on that, I could also see just by looking around me how we tend to over-romanticize history. Life in those other centuries had not been all knights-and-ladies stuff. There was nothing romantic about cottages where eight or ten people slept in one room with no privacy; where there were no bathrooms, not even outside privies - even if the cottage did happen to have picturesque thatch on the roof. There was nothing glamourous in any century about no running water in which to bathe or about fleas on human beings or about the blackgum twigs with which some of the women right now , in 1912, dipped snuff and then rubbed their teeth and gums. So many of the people had terrible looking teeth or no teeth at all. And the eye trouble that was so prevalent. I had learned that it was trachoma and that it was a dangerous infection which, if unchecked resulted in blindness.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 122
As they struggled along the Indian trails or followed the river-routes to make their way in a new land, they had looked upon the same trees I was seeing now.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 129
"The point is Dr. Ferrand won't accept any money unless he knows the individual has had inner direction to giv it. He feels that money donnned out of people won't be blessed for the workd anyway."
These were new ideas to me but I respected them In fact, in the light of such a philosophy of giving, now I thought I saw what was wrong with the never-ending pleas for funds from charitable organizations and pulpits; most of the time these solicitors were trying to pry money out of people by riding roughshod over their individual right of choice.
But Miss Alice continued, "I believe each person has something special he's meant to do. That being the case, surely we have no right to foist "causes' - even our favorite ones - only present them. Dr. Ferrand believes - and I agree - that only one motive is good enought to warrant giving: because the self, without pressure, freely chooses to make the gift.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 146
Every Monday morning of each successive day handed me problems in school teaching for which no Teacher's Training Course could ever had prepared me.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 150
What was I to do about the body ordors of children, who were disinclined to take any baths during the cold months; who, if theyowned anyunderwear, usually had it dewsn on for the winter?
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 150
This led directly to the idea of including a hygine or health lesson in each day's curriculum.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 151
In addition, as I saw how closely the children watched "Teacher," how much they wanted to be like me and in how many ways they were copying me, I tried to be more meticulous about grooming than I had ever been, wearing freshly starched and ironed shirtwaists, always keeing my hair clean and shining.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 151
Then as time went on, I made an amazing discovery; the odors ("funks" as my children said, using a sturdy Shakespearean word) were no longer so much of a problem for me.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 151
It was not that my hygiene lessons had yet made that much difference nor that I had accustomed to the smells because in other situations my crazy nose bothered me as much as always. It was rather that as I came to know the children and to think of them as persons rather than names in my grade book, I forgot my reactions and began to love them. I suppose the principle was that higher affection will always expel the lower whenever we give the higher affection sway.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 152
Naturally wiht sixty-seven pupils in all grades to teach, it was hard to find time for such individual attention. Nor did it seem right to give most of my time to the dull, slow children rather than to the bright ones. Par of this was solved by appointing Junior Teachers to hlep me These were my oldest and best pupils.... They in turn profited from the experience of teaching the younger ones.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 157
(a suprising number of these people lived and died without going more than a few miles from home) bred a self-contained individualism. Set down on its own hollow, each household had to depend on itself - and did. The Cove people were suspicious about joining any group efort or organization.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 159
"...if God loves ever'body, then we'uns got to love ever'body too?"
So once I shut down my privilege of disliking anyone I chose and holding myself aloof if I could manage it, greater understanding, growing compassion came to me, more love for the children, and as time passed, for the older people too.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 160
The grace and gesture and the long tapering fingers (even though they were red and rough with cipped and broken nails) caught my attention. I stood there thinking that these should be the hands of a lady handling an ivory fan or smoothing her skirts of velvet or satin. They were the hands of an aristocrat, and here they were on a mountain woman, buried at the back of beyond.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 164
I thought of how hard my parents had tried to give me some appreication for good music. Yet somehow I could not deprecate the hmescpun minstrelsy I was hearing now. I sat there thinking about how all real music has to be born in the human spirit. Well these ballads surely had been.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 167
How is it that sometimes a melody and a lyric will wing their way into mind and heart to lodge there like a homing bird?
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 168
VOCABULARY - CHRISTY
counterpin, pg 165
South Midland and Southern U.S. bedspread
mawkish, pg 156
having an insipid often unpleasant taste
probably from Old Norse mathkr
characterized by sickly sentimentality; weakly emotional; maudlin. 2. having a mildly sickening flavor; slightly nauseating.
Pristine, pg 96
1. a. Remaining in a pure state; uncorrupted by civilization. b. Remaining free from dirt or decay; clean [Latin pristinus; akin to Latin prior. Date: 1534 ]
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 15
Presently we were standing at the edge of the yard she knew so well. No one was around. It was like walking onto an empty stage setting or into one's own dream.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 18
The story aches to be told, Catherine. The secrets of the human spirit that Alice Henderson knew, the wisdom that she shared is needed by so many today. And the mountain people, my friends - Fairlight and Opal, Jeb Spencer and Aunt Polly Teague, Ruby Mae and Little Burl, my school children - I want people to know them as they really were. But Catherine, I'm not the one to put it on paper. You know, sometimes the dreams of the parents must be fulfilled in the children.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 19
And my brother George, hearing the announcement, had stumbled out of bed and down the stairs to the landing, where he had stood leaning sleepily on the banister, touseled hair in his eyes, to tell me good-bye.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 21
It was a lonely, formless landscape. I wondered sudddenly if I was going to be homesick even before I got to El Pano.
Now the snow was beginning ot fall again with the wind rising. It was a strange wind, a whimpering sobbing wind, with pain in it. Yet gales were nothing new to me. Asheville had always been known as a windy city. I had always had tohold onto my hat as I rounded the corner onto Grant Street, sometimes using physical force topush, push against the invisible yet mightly walls of wind.
But there was something different about this wind. It was not a single note, but many notes playing up and down the scale, harmonizing at one moment, discordant the next, retreating, advancing.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 27
"You come from a highfalutin' home" - I opened my mouth to speak, but the voice rushed on - "easy to tell that. Your clothes, pretty fancy do-dads- The way you talk. Oh I see a lot of folks, and if I do say so myself who shouldn't, I'm a pretty good judge of folks."
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 35
She could talk the hind legs off a donkey, the staion mand had said.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 35
"Cause nobody really knows, and me, I just saw wood and say nothin'."
I could scarcely visualize Mrs. Tatum "saying nothing" at any time,
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 36
"Hit ain't bad. Wait until I get acrost though, so you don't get no sway."
Standing on the bank, I felt sick at my stomach. I never had liked heights. There had been that time on the railroad trestle two hundred feet above the French Broad River when some friends and I were coming back from a picnic. It would not have been so bad except for the wide open spaces between the trestles. And when I had looked down, well - many times since then I had dreamed of it. And now here was my old nightmare come horribly true.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 45
"There's another way that's shorter. But that way is so up-tilted, you could stand straight up and bite the ground."
I wondered as I panted after him if any piece of land could be more up-tilted than this. There was a sudden gust of wind. The higher we climbed, the stronger the gale that blew from the north. Near the top, the bank to our right was not high enough to give much protection. There were moments when I was sure we were about to be blown over the cliff. Yet the man walking in front gave no indication that he even noticed the buffeting of the wind.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 46
It seemed so much longer. Was it only four weeks ago that I had followed Mr. Pentland up that mountain trail into this new life? Why, my life in Asheville seemd so far away that it could have ben months or years.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 92
Snow never lasted so long in Asheville, and of the second day it was always dirty from soot and traffic. I never knew that snow could be so beautiful until I saw it miles away from a city. Such sparkling pristine pure white.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 96
"Every bit of life, every single one of us has a dark side," she retorted. "When you decided to leave home and take this teaching job, you were venturing out of your particular ivory tower. I know, I was reared in an ivory tower too. When we get our first good look at the way life realy is, and a lot of us want to run back to shelter in a hurry."
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 101
"A Supreme Being with real power and real love wouldn't stand by and watch a little girl raped and a woman hanged. How could He?"
"He would have to, if He'd given us men and women a genuine freedom of choice." Miss Alice's voice was gentle. "I think it's like this... The Creator made the world a cooperative enterpirse. In order for it to be that way, God had to give us the privilege of going His way or of refusing to go His way."
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 102
I happen to know that a certain man for two days disregarded a strong inner impulse to go to her. Finally he did go, but it was too late. So God's clear order went unheeded. And evil had its day. The result of our disobedience can be that simple, that terrible.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 104
I awoke to a sunshiny morning feeling so good that at first I had trouble remembering what I had been so gloomy about the night before. Oh, yes - the O'Teale cabin and my feelings of inadequacy as a teacher. But nothing could be that bad. I thought, as I stood before the front window savoring my view, feeling the warmth of the sun through the glass.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 106
...if we will let God, He can use even our disappointments, even our annoyances to bring us a blessing. There's a practical way to start the process too: by thanking Him for whatever happens, no matter how disagreeable it seems.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 116
Though I understood Miss Alice's effots to underscore the fine heritage of these people and to build on that, I could also see just by looking around me how we tend to over-romanticize history. Life in those other centuries had not been all knights-and-ladies stuff. There was nothing romantic about cottages where eight or ten people slept in one room with no privacy; where there were no bathrooms, not even outside privies - even if the cottage did happen to have picturesque thatch on the roof. There was nothing glamourous in any century about no running water in which to bathe or about fleas on human beings or about the blackgum twigs with which some of the women right now , in 1912, dipped snuff and then rubbed their teeth and gums. So many of the people had terrible looking teeth or no teeth at all. And the eye trouble that was so prevalent. I had learned that it was trachoma and that it was a dangerous infection which, if unchecked resulted in blindness.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 122
As they struggled along the Indian trails or followed the river-routes to make their way in a new land, they had looked upon the same trees I was seeing now.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 129
"The point is Dr. Ferrand won't accept any money unless he knows the individual has had inner direction to giv it. He feels that money donnned out of people won't be blessed for the workd anyway."
These were new ideas to me but I respected them In fact, in the light of such a philosophy of giving, now I thought I saw what was wrong with the never-ending pleas for funds from charitable organizations and pulpits; most of the time these solicitors were trying to pry money out of people by riding roughshod over their individual right of choice.
But Miss Alice continued, "I believe each person has something special he's meant to do. That being the case, surely we have no right to foist "causes' - even our favorite ones - only present them. Dr. Ferrand believes - and I agree - that only one motive is good enought to warrant giving: because the self, without pressure, freely chooses to make the gift.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 146
Every Monday morning of each successive day handed me problems in school teaching for which no Teacher's Training Course could ever had prepared me.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 150
What was I to do about the body ordors of children, who were disinclined to take any baths during the cold months; who, if theyowned anyunderwear, usually had it dewsn on for the winter?
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 150
This led directly to the idea of including a hygine or health lesson in each day's curriculum.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 151
In addition, as I saw how closely the children watched "Teacher," how much they wanted to be like me and in how many ways they were copying me, I tried to be more meticulous about grooming than I had ever been, wearing freshly starched and ironed shirtwaists, always keeing my hair clean and shining.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 151
Then as time went on, I made an amazing discovery; the odors ("funks" as my children said, using a sturdy Shakespearean word) were no longer so much of a problem for me.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 151
It was not that my hygiene lessons had yet made that much difference nor that I had accustomed to the smells because in other situations my crazy nose bothered me as much as always. It was rather that as I came to know the children and to think of them as persons rather than names in my grade book, I forgot my reactions and began to love them. I suppose the principle was that higher affection will always expel the lower whenever we give the higher affection sway.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 152
Naturally wiht sixty-seven pupils in all grades to teach, it was hard to find time for such individual attention. Nor did it seem right to give most of my time to the dull, slow children rather than to the bright ones. Par of this was solved by appointing Junior Teachers to hlep me These were my oldest and best pupils.... They in turn profited from the experience of teaching the younger ones.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 157
(a suprising number of these people lived and died without going more than a few miles from home) bred a self-contained individualism. Set down on its own hollow, each household had to depend on itself - and did. The Cove people were suspicious about joining any group efort or organization.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 159
"...if God loves ever'body, then we'uns got to love ever'body too?"
So once I shut down my privilege of disliking anyone I chose and holding myself aloof if I could manage it, greater understanding, growing compassion came to me, more love for the children, and as time passed, for the older people too.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 160
The grace and gesture and the long tapering fingers (even though they were red and rough with cipped and broken nails) caught my attention. I stood there thinking that these should be the hands of a lady handling an ivory fan or smoothing her skirts of velvet or satin. They were the hands of an aristocrat, and here they were on a mountain woman, buried at the back of beyond.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 164
I thought of how hard my parents had tried to give me some appreication for good music. Yet somehow I could not deprecate the hmescpun minstrelsy I was hearing now. I sat there thinking about how all real music has to be born in the human spirit. Well these ballads surely had been.
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 167
How is it that sometimes a melody and a lyric will wing their way into mind and heart to lodge there like a homing bird?
Catherine Marshall, Christy, pg 168
VOCABULARY - CHRISTY
counterpin, pg 165
South Midland and Southern U.S. bedspread
mawkish, pg 156
having an insipid often unpleasant taste
probably from Old Norse mathkr
characterized by sickly sentimentality; weakly emotional; maudlin. 2. having a mildly sickening flavor; slightly nauseating.
Pristine, pg 96
1. a. Remaining in a pure state; uncorrupted by civilization. b. Remaining free from dirt or decay; clean [Latin pristinus; akin to Latin prior. Date: 1534 ]
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.