Paper 2 Q2: summary and synthesis

Source AAt the repair table

Source A is an account written in 2026 by a first-time visitor to a repair café, where volunteers help people mend their own belongings.

1. 1I arrived at the repair café with a lamp and no confidence. The sign said that visitors would do the repairs themselves, with help.
2. 2Inside, six tables stood beneath the old hall windows. I had booked a place, but nobody asked for a membership card.
3. 3At my table, Jo handed me a screwdriver. “You lead,” she said. My stomach tied itself in a knot.
4. 4The cable had come loose inside the plug. Jo pointed to the problem, then waited while I tried the screw.
5. 5I dropped it. Two children helped search the floor, and nobody laughed. When I finally tightened it, Jo checked my work.
6. 6The lamp lit. We cheered as though I had restored the sun. I had expected a quick service, not an afternoon of learning.
7. 7I paid nothing for the help. Before leaving, I wrote my name beside next month’s session and offered to make tea.
8. 8At home I put the lamp on my desk. Its ordinary light now seemed to belong, in a small way, to everyone at that table.

Written for this course. The people and events are invented for practice.

Source BNarrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

Source B is from the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845). Douglass was born into slavery in Maryland and escaped in 1838. Here he recalls how he learned to read as a boy in Baltimore.

1. 1The plan which I adopted, and the one by which I was most successful, was that of making friends of all the little white boys whom I met in the street.
2. 2As many of these as I could, I converted into teachers.
3. 3With their kindly aid, obtained at different times and in different places, I finally succeeded in learning to read.
4. 4When I was sent of errands, I always took my book with me, and by going one part of my errand quickly, I found time to get a lesson before my return.
5. 5I used also to carry bread with me, enough of which was always in the house, and to which I was always welcome; for I was much better off in this regard than many of the poor white children in our neighborhood.
6. 6This bread I used to bestow upon the hungry little urchins, who, in return, would give me that more valuable bread of knowledge.
7. 7I am strongly tempted to give the names of two or three of those little boys, as a testimonial of the gratitude and affection I bear them; but prudence forbids;—not that it would injure me, but it might embarrass them; for it is almost an unpardonable offence to teach slaves to read in this Christian country.
8. 8It is enough to say of the dear little fellows, that they lived on Philpot Street, very near Durgin and Bailey’s ship-yard.

Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845). Public domain; transcribed from Project Gutenberg eBook #23. Verbatim non-fiction extract; only whitespace, editorial line numbering and marked omissions differ from the linked text.

Source AWho gets a key?

Source A is an account written in 2026 by a newcomer to a shared town garden.

1. 1Our communal garden has no padlock. I noticed this on my first Saturday, when I came with a packet of beans and no idea where to plant them.
2. 2Leila showed me an empty bed. She said that the vegetables from it would be shared, whoever had done the watering.
3. 3The ground was hard as a biscuit. I borrowed a fork from the shed; all the tools were labelled with paint, not people’s names.
4. 4A boy planted his beans too close together. We moved them without scolding him, and he stayed to fill the watering cans.
5. 5At midday we ate bread on overturned crates. Three neighbours who had done no gardening came through the gate and joined us.
6. 6By the following month, the first leaves were through. Someone had also taken two lettuces before they were ready.
7. 7We put up a sign asking people to leave the small plants to grow. Nobody proposed buying a lock.
8. 8I cannot claim that everyone contributes equally. I can say that I now know who lives behind the windows I used to pass without looking.

Written for this course. The people and events are invented for practice.

Source BWalden

Source B is from Walden (1854), in which Henry David Thoreau describes growing beans beside Walden Pond in Massachusetts. Antæus is a giant from Greek myth who grew stronger whenever he touched the earth; woodchucks are burrowing animals.

1. 1Meanwhile my beans, the length of whose rows, added together, was seven miles already planted, were impatient to be hoed, for the earliest had grown considerably before the latest were in the ground; indeed they were not easily to be put off.
2. 2What was the meaning of this so steady and self-respecting, this small Herculean labor, I knew not.
3. 3I came to love my rows, my beans, though so many more than I wanted.
4. 4They attached me to the earth, and so I got strength like Antæus.
5. 5But why should I raise them?
6. 6Only Heaven knows.
7. 7This was my curious labor all summer,—to make this portion of the earth’s surface, which had yielded only cinquefoil, blackberries, johnswort, and the like, before, sweet wild fruits and pleasant flowers, produce instead this pulse.
8. 8What shall I learn of beans or beans of me?
9. 9I cherish them, I hoe them, early and late I have an eye to them; and this is my day’s work.
10. 10It is a fine broad leaf to look on.
11. 11My auxiliaries are the dews and rains which water this dry soil, and what fertility is in the soil itself, which for the most part is lean and effete.
12. 12My enemies are worms, cool days, and most of all woodchucks.
13. 13The last have nibbled for me a quarter of an acre clean.
14. 14But what right had I to oust johnswort and the rest, and break up their ancient herb garden?
15. 15Soon, however, the remaining beans will be too tough for them, and go forward to meet new foes.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854). Public domain; transcribed from Project Gutenberg eBook #205. Verbatim non-fiction extract; only whitespace, editorial line numbering and marked omissions differ from the linked text.

Source AAt the repair table

Source A is an account written in 2026 by a first-time visitor to a repair café, where volunteers help people mend their own belongings.

1. 1I arrived at the repair café with a lamp and no confidence. The sign said that visitors would do the repairs themselves, with help.
2. 2Inside, six tables stood beneath the old hall windows. I had booked a place, but nobody asked for a membership card.
3. 3At my table, Jo handed me a screwdriver. “You lead,” she said. My stomach tied itself in a knot.
4. 4The cable had come loose inside the plug. Jo pointed to the problem, then waited while I tried the screw.
5. 5I dropped it. Two children helped search the floor, and nobody laughed. When I finally tightened it, Jo checked my work.
6. 6The lamp lit. We cheered as though I had restored the sun. I had expected a quick service, not an afternoon of learning.
7. 7I paid nothing for the help. Before leaving, I wrote my name beside next month’s session and offered to make tea.
8. 8At home I put the lamp on my desk. Its ordinary light now seemed to belong, in a small way, to everyone at that table.

Written for this course. The people and events are invented for practice.

Source BNarrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

Source B is from the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845). Douglass was born into slavery in Maryland and escaped in 1838. Here he recalls how he learned to read as a boy in Baltimore.

1. 1The plan which I adopted, and the one by which I was most successful, was that of making friends of all the little white boys whom I met in the street.
2. 2As many of these as I could, I converted into teachers.
3. 3With their kindly aid, obtained at different times and in different places, I finally succeeded in learning to read.
4. 4When I was sent of errands, I always took my book with me, and by going one part of my errand quickly, I found time to get a lesson before my return.
5. 5I used also to carry bread with me, enough of which was always in the house, and to which I was always welcome; for I was much better off in this regard than many of the poor white children in our neighborhood.
6. 6This bread I used to bestow upon the hungry little urchins, who, in return, would give me that more valuable bread of knowledge.
7. 7I am strongly tempted to give the names of two or three of those little boys, as a testimonial of the gratitude and affection I bear them; but prudence forbids;—not that it would injure me, but it might embarrass them; for it is almost an unpardonable offence to teach slaves to read in this Christian country.
8. 8It is enough to say of the dear little fellows, that they lived on Philpot Street, very near Durgin and Bailey’s ship-yard.

Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845). Public domain; transcribed from Project Gutenberg eBook #23. Verbatim non-fiction extract; only whitespace, editorial line numbering and marked omissions differ from the linked text.

Source AAt the repair table

Source A is an account written in 2026 by a first-time visitor to a repair café, where volunteers help people mend their own belongings.

1. 1I arrived at the repair café with a lamp and no confidence. The sign said that visitors would do the repairs themselves, with help.
2. 2Inside, six tables stood beneath the old hall windows. I had booked a place, but nobody asked for a membership card.
3. 3At my table, Jo handed me a screwdriver. “You lead,” she said. My stomach tied itself in a knot.
4. 4The cable had come loose inside the plug. Jo pointed to the problem, then waited while I tried the screw.
5. 5I dropped it. Two children helped search the floor, and nobody laughed. When I finally tightened it, Jo checked my work.
6. 6The lamp lit. We cheered as though I had restored the sun. I had expected a quick service, not an afternoon of learning.
7. 7I paid nothing for the help. Before leaving, I wrote my name beside next month’s session and offered to make tea.
8. 8At home I put the lamp on my desk. Its ordinary light now seemed to belong, in a small way, to everyone at that table.

Written for this course. The people and events are invented for practice.

Source BNarrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

Source B is from the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845). Douglass was born into slavery in Maryland and escaped in 1838. Here he recalls how he learned to read as a boy in Baltimore.

1. 1The plan which I adopted, and the one by which I was most successful, was that of making friends of all the little white boys whom I met in the street.
2. 2As many of these as I could, I converted into teachers.
3. 3With their kindly aid, obtained at different times and in different places, I finally succeeded in learning to read.
4. 4When I was sent of errands, I always took my book with me, and by going one part of my errand quickly, I found time to get a lesson before my return.
5. 5I used also to carry bread with me, enough of which was always in the house, and to which I was always welcome; for I was much better off in this regard than many of the poor white children in our neighborhood.
6. 6This bread I used to bestow upon the hungry little urchins, who, in return, would give me that more valuable bread of knowledge.
7. 7I am strongly tempted to give the names of two or three of those little boys, as a testimonial of the gratitude and affection I bear them; but prudence forbids;—not that it would injure me, but it might embarrass them; for it is almost an unpardonable offence to teach slaves to read in this Christian country.
8. 8It is enough to say of the dear little fellows, that they lived on Philpot Street, very near Durgin and Bailey’s ship-yard.

Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845). Public domain; transcribed from Project Gutenberg eBook #23. Verbatim non-fiction extract; only whitespace, editorial line numbering and marked omissions differ from the linked text.

Source AAt the repair table

Source A is an account written in 2026 by a first-time visitor to a repair café, where volunteers help people mend their own belongings.

1. 1I arrived at the repair café with a lamp and no confidence. The sign said that visitors would do the repairs themselves, with help.
2. 2Inside, six tables stood beneath the old hall windows. I had booked a place, but nobody asked for a membership card.
3. 3At my table, Jo handed me a screwdriver. “You lead,” she said. My stomach tied itself in a knot.
4. 4The cable had come loose inside the plug. Jo pointed to the problem, then waited while I tried the screw.
5. 5I dropped it. Two children helped search the floor, and nobody laughed. When I finally tightened it, Jo checked my work.
6. 6The lamp lit. We cheered as though I had restored the sun. I had expected a quick service, not an afternoon of learning.
7. 7I paid nothing for the help. Before leaving, I wrote my name beside next month’s session and offered to make tea.
8. 8At home I put the lamp on my desk. Its ordinary light now seemed to belong, in a small way, to everyone at that table.

Written for this course. The people and events are invented for practice.

Source BNarrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

Source B is from the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845). Douglass was born into slavery in Maryland and escaped in 1838. Here he recalls how he learned to read as a boy in Baltimore.

1. 1The plan which I adopted, and the one by which I was most successful, was that of making friends of all the little white boys whom I met in the street.
2. 2As many of these as I could, I converted into teachers.
3. 3With their kindly aid, obtained at different times and in different places, I finally succeeded in learning to read.
4. 4When I was sent of errands, I always took my book with me, and by going one part of my errand quickly, I found time to get a lesson before my return.
5. 5I used also to carry bread with me, enough of which was always in the house, and to which I was always welcome; for I was much better off in this regard than many of the poor white children in our neighborhood.
6. 6This bread I used to bestow upon the hungry little urchins, who, in return, would give me that more valuable bread of knowledge.
7. 7I am strongly tempted to give the names of two or three of those little boys, as a testimonial of the gratitude and affection I bear them; but prudence forbids;—not that it would injure me, but it might embarrass them; for it is almost an unpardonable offence to teach slaves to read in this Christian country.
8. 8It is enough to say of the dear little fellows, that they lived on Philpot Street, very near Durgin and Bailey’s ship-yard.

Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845). Public domain; transcribed from Project Gutenberg eBook #23. Verbatim non-fiction extract; only whitespace, editorial line numbering and marked omissions differ from the linked text.

Source AAcross the estuary

Source A is an account written in 2026 by a ferry passenger delayed by fog on the way to a hospital appointment.

1. 1The ferry should have left at eight, but fog had rubbed the far bank off the map. Our departure board simply said WAIT.
2. 2I had a hospital appointment, not a sightseeing trip. A man with a bicycle kept checking the time beside me.
3. 3The skipper came out of the cabin and explained that we would remain tied up until she could see the first marker.
4. 4Nobody argued. The café owner carried mugs down to the quay, and the cyclist held mine while I found my phone.
5. 5I called the clinic. They moved my appointment to the afternoon. My shoulders, which had been almost touching my ears, came down.
6. 6When the fog thinned, the skipper walked along the rail, counting passengers. She checked the count twice before we boarded.
7. 7The journey itself took minutes. I watched the empty water without wishing that we had crossed it sooner.
8. 8I arrived late but calm. Waiting had felt like a failure until I understood what a successful crossing required.

Written for this course. The people and events are invented for practice.

Source BAn Inland Voyage

Source B is from An Inland Voyage (1878), Robert Louis Stevenson’s account of a canoe journey through Belgium and France. Here he is swept out of his canoe on the River Oise. Arethusa is the name of his canoe; the Cigarette is the name used for his companion and the companion’s canoe; Burns is a farm worker watching from a hill.

1. 1The tree caught me about the chest, and while I was yet struggling to make less of myself and get through, the river took the matter out of my hands, and bereaved me of my boat.
2. 2The Arethusa swung round broadside on, leaned over, ejected so much of me as still remained on board, and thus disencumbered, whipped under the tree, righted, and went merrily away down stream.
3. 3I do not know how long it was before I scrambled on to the tree to which I was left clinging, but it was longer than I cared about.
4. 4My thoughts were of a grave and almost sombre character, but I still clung to my paddle.
5. 5The stream ran away with my heels as fast as I could pull up my shoulders, and I seemed, by the weight, to have all the water of the Oise in my trousers-pockets.
6. 6You can never know, till you try it, what a dead pull a river makes against a man.
7. 7Death himself had me by the heels, for this was his last ambuscado, and he must now join personally in the fray.
8. 8And still I held to my paddle.
9. 9At last I dragged myself on to my stomach on the trunk, and lay there a breathless sop, with a mingled sense of humour and injustice.
10. 10A poor figure I must have presented to Burns upon the hill-top with his team.
11. 11But there was the paddle in my hand.
12. 12On my tomb, if ever I have one, I mean to get these words inscribed: ‘He clung to his paddle.’ The Cigarette had gone past a while before; for, as I might have observed, if I had been a little less pleased with the universe at the moment, there was a clear way round the tree-top at the farther side.
13. 13He had offered his services to haul me out, but as I was then already on my elbows, I had declined, and sent him down stream after the truant Arethusa.
14. 14The stream was too rapid for a man to mount with one canoe, let alone two, upon his hands.
15. 15So I crawled along the trunk to shore, and proceeded down the meadows by the river-side.
16. 16I was so cold that my heart was sore.
17. 17I had now an idea of my own why the reeds so bitterly shivered.
18. 18I could have given any of them a lesson.
19. 19The Cigarette remarked facetiously that he thought I was ‘taking exercise’ as I drew near, until he made out for certain that I was only twittering with cold.
20. 20I had a rub down with a towel, and donned a dry suit from the india-rubber bag.
21. 21But I was not my own man again for the rest of the voyage.

Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage (1878). Public domain; transcribed from Project Gutenberg eBook #534. Verbatim non-fiction extract; only whitespace, editorial line numbering and marked omissions differ from the linked text.

Source AWho gets a key?

Source A is an account written in 2026 by a newcomer to a shared town garden.

1. 1Our communal garden has no padlock. I noticed this on my first Saturday, when I came with a packet of beans and no idea where to plant them.
2. 2Leila showed me an empty bed. She said that the vegetables from it would be shared, whoever had done the watering.
3. 3The ground was hard as a biscuit. I borrowed a fork from the shed; all the tools were labelled with paint, not people’s names.
4. 4A boy planted his beans too close together. We moved them without scolding him, and he stayed to fill the watering cans.
5. 5At midday we ate bread on overturned crates. Three neighbours who had done no gardening came through the gate and joined us.
6. 6By the following month, the first leaves were through. Someone had also taken two lettuces before they were ready.
7. 7We put up a sign asking people to leave the small plants to grow. Nobody proposed buying a lock.
8. 8I cannot claim that everyone contributes equally. I can say that I now know who lives behind the windows I used to pass without looking.

Written for this course. The people and events are invented for practice.

Source BWalden

Source B is from Walden (1854), in which Henry David Thoreau describes growing beans beside Walden Pond in Massachusetts. Antæus is a giant from Greek myth who grew stronger whenever he touched the earth; woodchucks are burrowing animals.

1. 1Meanwhile my beans, the length of whose rows, added together, was seven miles already planted, were impatient to be hoed, for the earliest had grown considerably before the latest were in the ground; indeed they were not easily to be put off.
2. 2What was the meaning of this so steady and self-respecting, this small Herculean labor, I knew not.
3. 3I came to love my rows, my beans, though so many more than I wanted.
4. 4They attached me to the earth, and so I got strength like Antæus.
5. 5But why should I raise them?
6. 6Only Heaven knows.
7. 7This was my curious labor all summer,—to make this portion of the earth’s surface, which had yielded only cinquefoil, blackberries, johnswort, and the like, before, sweet wild fruits and pleasant flowers, produce instead this pulse.
8. 8What shall I learn of beans or beans of me?
9. 9I cherish them, I hoe them, early and late I have an eye to them; and this is my day’s work.
10. 10It is a fine broad leaf to look on.
11. 11My auxiliaries are the dews and rains which water this dry soil, and what fertility is in the soil itself, which for the most part is lean and effete.
12. 12My enemies are worms, cool days, and most of all woodchucks.
13. 13The last have nibbled for me a quarter of an acre clean.
14. 14But what right had I to oust johnswort and the rest, and break up their ancient herb garden?
15. 15Soon, however, the remaining beans will be too tough for them, and go forward to meet new foes.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854). Public domain; transcribed from Project Gutenberg eBook #205. Verbatim non-fiction extract; only whitespace, editorial line numbering and marked omissions differ from the linked text.

Source ASaving the voices

Source A is an account written in 2026 by a volunteer who records older people’s memories for a town archive.

1. 1The first recording in our town archive was my grandmother describing a shop that no longer exists. She forgot its name halfway through.
2. 2I nearly stopped the recorder, but she began to describe the bell above its door. Suddenly I could hear the place myself.
3. 3Our volunteers record people in their kitchens. Before anything goes online, the speaker hears it and can ask us to remove a section.
4. 4We keep the pauses. We also add written summaries, so visitors can find a subject without listening to every recording.
5. 5Last week a listener corrected a date in one account. We added a note rather than silently changing what the speaker had said.
6. 6The project is not a machine for manufacturing certainty. Memories can disagree, and the disagreement sometimes tells us where to look next.
7. 7We have no grand building. The files are copied to a second location, while a small display at the library invites new contributors.
8. 8My grandmother says that strangers now know more about her childhood than her neighbours once did. She sounds amused, then asks who will listen in fifty years.

Written for this course. The people and events are invented for practice.

Source BThe Autobiography of Charles Darwin

Source B is from Charles Darwin’s autobiography, first published in 1887 in The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, edited by his son Francis. Darwin explains how he recorded and organised evidence for his scientific work. The ellipsis (…) marks where text has been left out.

1. 1I had, also, during many years followed a golden rule, namely, that whenever a published fact, a new observation or thought came across me, which was opposed to my general results, to make a memorandum of it without fail and at once; for I had found by experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape from the memory than favourable ones.
2. 2Owing to this habit, very few objections were raised against my views which I had not at least noticed and attempted to answer. … As in several of my books facts observed by others have been very extensively used, and as I have always had several quite distinct subjects in hand at the same time, I may mention that I keep from thirty to forty large portfolios, in cabinets with labelled shelves, into which I can at once put a detached reference or memorandum.
3. 3I have bought many books, and at their ends I make an index of all the facts that concern my work; or, if the book is not my own, write out a separate abstract, and of such abstracts I have a large drawer full.
4. 4Before beginning on any subject I look to all the short indexes and make a general and classified index, and by taking the one or more proper portfolios I have all the information collected during my life ready for use.

Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin (1887). Public domain; transcribed from Project Gutenberg eBook #2010. Verbatim non-fiction extract; only whitespace, editorial line numbering and marked omissions differ from the linked text.

Source AAcross the estuary

Source A is an account written in 2026 by a ferry passenger delayed by fog on the way to a hospital appointment.

1. 1The ferry should have left at eight, but fog had rubbed the far bank off the map. Our departure board simply said WAIT.
2. 2I had a hospital appointment, not a sightseeing trip. A man with a bicycle kept checking the time beside me.
3. 3The skipper came out of the cabin and explained that we would remain tied up until she could see the first marker.
4. 4Nobody argued. The café owner carried mugs down to the quay, and the cyclist held mine while I found my phone.
5. 5I called the clinic. They moved my appointment to the afternoon. My shoulders, which had been almost touching my ears, came down.
6. 6When the fog thinned, the skipper walked along the rail, counting passengers. She checked the count twice before we boarded.
7. 7The journey itself took minutes. I watched the empty water without wishing that we had crossed it sooner.
8. 8I arrived late but calm. Waiting had felt like a failure until I understood what a successful crossing required.

Written for this course. The people and events are invented for practice.

Source BAn Inland Voyage

Source B is from An Inland Voyage (1878), Robert Louis Stevenson’s account of a canoe journey through Belgium and France. Here he is swept out of his canoe on the River Oise. Arethusa is the name of his canoe; the Cigarette is the name used for his companion and the companion’s canoe; Burns is a farm worker watching from a hill.

1. 1The tree caught me about the chest, and while I was yet struggling to make less of myself and get through, the river took the matter out of my hands, and bereaved me of my boat.
2. 2The Arethusa swung round broadside on, leaned over, ejected so much of me as still remained on board, and thus disencumbered, whipped under the tree, righted, and went merrily away down stream.
3. 3I do not know how long it was before I scrambled on to the tree to which I was left clinging, but it was longer than I cared about.
4. 4My thoughts were of a grave and almost sombre character, but I still clung to my paddle.
5. 5The stream ran away with my heels as fast as I could pull up my shoulders, and I seemed, by the weight, to have all the water of the Oise in my trousers-pockets.
6. 6You can never know, till you try it, what a dead pull a river makes against a man.
7. 7Death himself had me by the heels, for this was his last ambuscado, and he must now join personally in the fray.
8. 8And still I held to my paddle.
9. 9At last I dragged myself on to my stomach on the trunk, and lay there a breathless sop, with a mingled sense of humour and injustice.
10. 10A poor figure I must have presented to Burns upon the hill-top with his team.
11. 11But there was the paddle in my hand.
12. 12On my tomb, if ever I have one, I mean to get these words inscribed: ‘He clung to his paddle.’ The Cigarette had gone past a while before; for, as I might have observed, if I had been a little less pleased with the universe at the moment, there was a clear way round the tree-top at the farther side.
13. 13He had offered his services to haul me out, but as I was then already on my elbows, I had declined, and sent him down stream after the truant Arethusa.
14. 14The stream was too rapid for a man to mount with one canoe, let alone two, upon his hands.
15. 15So I crawled along the trunk to shore, and proceeded down the meadows by the river-side.
16. 16I was so cold that my heart was sore.
17. 17I had now an idea of my own why the reeds so bitterly shivered.
18. 18I could have given any of them a lesson.
19. 19The Cigarette remarked facetiously that he thought I was ‘taking exercise’ as I drew near, until he made out for certain that I was only twittering with cold.
20. 20I had a rub down with a towel, and donned a dry suit from the india-rubber bag.
21. 21But I was not my own man again for the rest of the voyage.

Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage (1878). Public domain; transcribed from Project Gutenberg eBook #534. Verbatim non-fiction extract; only whitespace, editorial line numbering and marked omissions differ from the linked text.

Source AWho gets a key?

Source A is an account written in 2026 by a newcomer to a shared town garden.

1. 1Our communal garden has no padlock. I noticed this on my first Saturday, when I came with a packet of beans and no idea where to plant them.
2. 2Leila showed me an empty bed. She said that the vegetables from it would be shared, whoever had done the watering.
3. 3The ground was hard as a biscuit. I borrowed a fork from the shed; all the tools were labelled with paint, not people’s names.
4. 4A boy planted his beans too close together. We moved them without scolding him, and he stayed to fill the watering cans.
5. 5At midday we ate bread on overturned crates. Three neighbours who had done no gardening came through the gate and joined us.
6. 6By the following month, the first leaves were through. Someone had also taken two lettuces before they were ready.
7. 7We put up a sign asking people to leave the small plants to grow. Nobody proposed buying a lock.
8. 8I cannot claim that everyone contributes equally. I can say that I now know who lives behind the windows I used to pass without looking.

Written for this course. The people and events are invented for practice.

Source BWalden

Source B is from Walden (1854), in which Henry David Thoreau describes growing beans beside Walden Pond in Massachusetts. Antæus is a giant from Greek myth who grew stronger whenever he touched the earth; woodchucks are burrowing animals.

1. 1Meanwhile my beans, the length of whose rows, added together, was seven miles already planted, were impatient to be hoed, for the earliest had grown considerably before the latest were in the ground; indeed they were not easily to be put off.
2. 2What was the meaning of this so steady and self-respecting, this small Herculean labor, I knew not.
3. 3I came to love my rows, my beans, though so many more than I wanted.
4. 4They attached me to the earth, and so I got strength like Antæus.
5. 5But why should I raise them?
6. 6Only Heaven knows.
7. 7This was my curious labor all summer,—to make this portion of the earth’s surface, which had yielded only cinquefoil, blackberries, johnswort, and the like, before, sweet wild fruits and pleasant flowers, produce instead this pulse.
8. 8What shall I learn of beans or beans of me?
9. 9I cherish them, I hoe them, early and late I have an eye to them; and this is my day’s work.
10. 10It is a fine broad leaf to look on.
11. 11My auxiliaries are the dews and rains which water this dry soil, and what fertility is in the soil itself, which for the most part is lean and effete.
12. 12My enemies are worms, cool days, and most of all woodchucks.
13. 13The last have nibbled for me a quarter of an acre clean.
14. 14But what right had I to oust johnswort and the rest, and break up their ancient herb garden?
15. 15Soon, however, the remaining beans will be too tough for them, and go forward to meet new foes.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854). Public domain; transcribed from Project Gutenberg eBook #205. Verbatim non-fiction extract; only whitespace, editorial line numbering and marked omissions differ from the linked text.

Source ASaving the voices

Source A is an account written in 2026 by a volunteer who records older people’s memories for a town archive.

1. 1The first recording in our town archive was my grandmother describing a shop that no longer exists. She forgot its name halfway through.
2. 2I nearly stopped the recorder, but she began to describe the bell above its door. Suddenly I could hear the place myself.
3. 3Our volunteers record people in their kitchens. Before anything goes online, the speaker hears it and can ask us to remove a section.
4. 4We keep the pauses. We also add written summaries, so visitors can find a subject without listening to every recording.
5. 5Last week a listener corrected a date in one account. We added a note rather than silently changing what the speaker had said.
6. 6The project is not a machine for manufacturing certainty. Memories can disagree, and the disagreement sometimes tells us where to look next.
7. 7We have no grand building. The files are copied to a second location, while a small display at the library invites new contributors.
8. 8My grandmother says that strangers now know more about her childhood than her neighbours once did. She sounds amused, then asks who will listen in fifty years.

Written for this course. The people and events are invented for practice.

Source BThe Autobiography of Charles Darwin

Source B is from Charles Darwin’s autobiography, first published in 1887 in The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, edited by his son Francis. Darwin explains how he recorded and organised evidence for his scientific work. The ellipsis (…) marks where text has been left out.

1. 1I had, also, during many years followed a golden rule, namely, that whenever a published fact, a new observation or thought came across me, which was opposed to my general results, to make a memorandum of it without fail and at once; for I had found by experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape from the memory than favourable ones.
2. 2Owing to this habit, very few objections were raised against my views which I had not at least noticed and attempted to answer. … As in several of my books facts observed by others have been very extensively used, and as I have always had several quite distinct subjects in hand at the same time, I may mention that I keep from thirty to forty large portfolios, in cabinets with labelled shelves, into which I can at once put a detached reference or memorandum.
3. 3I have bought many books, and at their ends I make an index of all the facts that concern my work; or, if the book is not my own, write out a separate abstract, and of such abstracts I have a large drawer full.
4. 4Before beginning on any subject I look to all the short indexes and make a general and classified index, and by taking the one or more proper portfolios I have all the information collected during my life ready for use.

Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin (1887). Public domain; transcribed from Project Gutenberg eBook #2010. Verbatim non-fiction extract; only whitespace, editorial line numbering and marked omissions differ from the linked text.

Source AThe streak

Source A is a magazine column written in 2026 by a writer who used a phone app to learn Spanish every day.

1. 1For two hundred and twelve days I did not miss a single Spanish lesson.
2. 2I know the number exactly because my phone told me every morning, in a cheerful font,
3. 3and because I had begun to guard it more carefully than my bank card.
4. 4The lessons themselves took five minutes. Protecting the number took rather longer.
5. 5I did a lesson in the queue at the post office and another, once, in a hospital car park.
6. 6On a camping trip in Wales I climbed a hill at dusk to find a signal,
7. 7not because I wanted to learn the Spanish for ‘the cat is under the table’,
8. 8but because I could not bear to watch the count return to zero.
9. 9I should say clearly that the streak worked. Before it, I had started Spanish four times and abandoned it
10. 10four times, usually in the second week of January. The daily count turned a vague ambition into a small,
11. 11specific appointment. It asked for very little, and very little, it turns out, is something most of us can
12. 12give. Anyone who has revised for an exam will recognise the relief of a task with edges.
13. 13But somewhere around day ninety the number stopped measuring my Spanish and started measuring my fear of losing it.
14. 14I began choosing the easiest lesson, one I had already done, because it would keep the count alive in
15. 15ninety seconds. I was protecting the record of the habit instead of the habit itself.
16. 16My vocabulary grew slowly; my streak grew beautifully.
17. 17On day two hundred and thirteen my grandfather was taken into hospital, and I forgot.
18. 18I noticed at midnight, sitting beside his bed while he slept, and my first feeling was not guilt but
19. 19relief, as if a small, bossy stranger had finally left the room.
20. 20The next morning the app sent a message: ‘You’ve lost your streak!’
21. 21It sounded heartbroken, which is more than it had ever sounded about my grammar.
22. 22I started again, and I still count. I have simply changed what I count.
23. 23Instead of days, I keep a paper notebook in which I write one sentence in Spanish each evening,
24. 24about something that actually happened. Some evenings the sentence is terrible.
25. 25Some evenings I skip it altogether, and the notebook, being made of paper, says nothing either.
26. 26My grandfather, who worked as a joiner for forty years, used to say that you should measure twice and
27. 27cut once. He did not mean that measuring was the job.
28. 28Numbers are good servants. They make a start easier and a drift visible.
29. 29But a count that is never allowed to break is no longer keeping a record.
30. 30It is giving the orders.

Written for this course. The people and events are invented for practice.

Source BAn Autobiography

Source B is from An Autobiography by the Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope, published in 1883, the year after his death. Trollope wrote dozens of novels while also working full time for the Post Office. Here he explains the system he used to make himself write.

1. 1I had previously to this arranged a system of task-work for myself, which I would strongly recommend to those
2. 2who feel as I have felt, that labour, when not made absolutely obligatory by the circumstances of the hour,
3. 3should never be allowed to become spasmodic. There was no day on which it was my positive duty to
4. 4write for the publishers, as it was my duty to write reports for the Post Office.
5. 5I was free to be idle if I pleased. But as I had made up my mind to undertake
6. 6this second profession, I found it to be expedient to bind myself by certain self-imposed laws.
7. 7When I have commenced a new book, I have always prepared a diary, divided into weeks,
8. 8and carried it on for the period which I have allowed myself for the completion of the work.
9. 9In this I have entered, day by day, the number of pages I have written,
10. 10so that if at any time I have slipped into idleness for a day or two,
11. 11the record of that idleness has been there, staring me in the face, and demanding of me increased labour,
12. 12so that the deficiency might be supplied. According to the circumstances of the time,—whether my other business might be
13. 13then heavy or light, or whether the book which I was writing was or was not wanted with speed,—I
14. 14have allotted myself so many pages a week. The average number has been about 40.
15. 15It has been placed as low as 20, and has risen to 112.
16. 16And as a page is an ambiguous term, my page has been made to contain 250 words;
17. 17and as words, if not watched, will have a tendency to straggle, I have had every word counted as
18. 18I went. In the bargains I have made with publishers I have,—not, of course, with their knowledge,
19. 19but in my own mind,—undertaken always to supply them with so many words, and I have never put a
20. 20book out of hand short of the number by a single word.
21. 21I may also say that the excess has been very small.
22. 22I have prided myself on completing my work exactly within the proposed dimensions.
23. 23But I have prided myself especially in completing it within the proposed time,—and I have always done so.
24. 24There has ever been the record before me, and a week passed with an insufficient number of pages has
25. 25been a blister to my eye, and a month so disgraced would have been a sorrow to my heart.
26. 26I have been told that such appliances are beneath the notice of a man of genius.
27. 27I have never fancied myself to be a man of genius, but had I been so I think I
28. 28might well have subjected myself to these trammels. Nothing surely is so potent as a law that may not
29. 29be disobeyed. It has the force of the water-drop that hollows the stone.
30. 30A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.
31. 31It is the tortoise which always catches the hare. The hare has no chance.
32. 32He loses more time in glorifying himself for a quick spurt than suffices for the tortoise to make half
33. 33his journey. I have known authors whose lives have always been troublesome and painful because their tasks have never
34. 34been done in time. They have ever been as boys struggling to learn their lesson as they entered the
35. 35school gates. Publishers have distrusted them, and they have failed to write their best because they have seldom written
36. 36at ease. … There are those who would be ashamed to subject themselves to such a taskmaster,
37. 37and who think that the man who works with his imagination should allow himself to wait till—inspiration moves him.
38. 38When I have heard such doctrine preached, I have hardly been able to repress my scorn.
39. 39To me it would not be more absurd if the shoemaker were to wait for inspiration,
40. 40or the tallow-chandler for the divine moment of melting. … I was once told that the surest aid to
41. 41the writing of a book was a piece of cobbler's wax on my chair.
42. 42I certainly believe in the cobbler's wax much more than the inspiration.

obligatory: required. spasmodic: done in sudden, irregular bursts. trammels: restrictions. Hercules: a hero of Greek myth, famous for his strength. tallow-chandler: a maker of candles. cobbler's wax: sticky wax used by shoemakers.

Anthony Trollope, An Autobiography (1883). Public domain; transcribed from Project Gutenberg eBook #5978. Verbatim extract. Only line breaks, editorial line numbers and the printed edition's page numbers differ from the linked text; each omission is marked with an ellipsis (…).

Source AAcross the estuary

Source A is an account written in 2026 by a ferry passenger delayed by fog on the way to a hospital appointment.

1. 1The ferry should have left at eight, but fog had rubbed the far bank off the map. Our departure board simply said WAIT.
2. 2I had a hospital appointment, not a sightseeing trip. A man with a bicycle kept checking the time beside me.
3. 3The skipper came out of the cabin and explained that we would remain tied up until she could see the first marker.
4. 4Nobody argued. The café owner carried mugs down to the quay, and the cyclist held mine while I found my phone.
5. 5I called the clinic. They moved my appointment to the afternoon. My shoulders, which had been almost touching my ears, came down.
6. 6When the fog thinned, the skipper walked along the rail, counting passengers. She checked the count twice before we boarded.
7. 7The journey itself took minutes. I watched the empty water without wishing that we had crossed it sooner.
8. 8I arrived late but calm. Waiting had felt like a failure until I understood what a successful crossing required.

Written for this course. The people and events are invented for practice.

Source BAn Inland Voyage

Source B is from An Inland Voyage (1878), Robert Louis Stevenson’s account of a canoe journey through Belgium and France. Here he is swept out of his canoe on the River Oise. Arethusa is the name of his canoe; the Cigarette is the name used for his companion and the companion’s canoe; Burns is a farm worker watching from a hill.

1. 1The tree caught me about the chest, and while I was yet struggling to make less of myself and get through, the river took the matter out of my hands, and bereaved me of my boat.
2. 2The Arethusa swung round broadside on, leaned over, ejected so much of me as still remained on board, and thus disencumbered, whipped under the tree, righted, and went merrily away down stream.
3. 3I do not know how long it was before I scrambled on to the tree to which I was left clinging, but it was longer than I cared about.
4. 4My thoughts were of a grave and almost sombre character, but I still clung to my paddle.
5. 5The stream ran away with my heels as fast as I could pull up my shoulders, and I seemed, by the weight, to have all the water of the Oise in my trousers-pockets.
6. 6You can never know, till you try it, what a dead pull a river makes against a man.
7. 7Death himself had me by the heels, for this was his last ambuscado, and he must now join personally in the fray.
8. 8And still I held to my paddle.
9. 9At last I dragged myself on to my stomach on the trunk, and lay there a breathless sop, with a mingled sense of humour and injustice.
10. 10A poor figure I must have presented to Burns upon the hill-top with his team.
11. 11But there was the paddle in my hand.
12. 12On my tomb, if ever I have one, I mean to get these words inscribed: ‘He clung to his paddle.’ The Cigarette had gone past a while before; for, as I might have observed, if I had been a little less pleased with the universe at the moment, there was a clear way round the tree-top at the farther side.
13. 13He had offered his services to haul me out, but as I was then already on my elbows, I had declined, and sent him down stream after the truant Arethusa.
14. 14The stream was too rapid for a man to mount with one canoe, let alone two, upon his hands.
15. 15So I crawled along the trunk to shore, and proceeded down the meadows by the river-side.
16. 16I was so cold that my heart was sore.
17. 17I had now an idea of my own why the reeds so bitterly shivered.
18. 18I could have given any of them a lesson.
19. 19The Cigarette remarked facetiously that he thought I was ‘taking exercise’ as I drew near, until he made out for certain that I was only twittering with cold.
20. 20I had a rub down with a towel, and donned a dry suit from the india-rubber bag.
21. 21But I was not my own man again for the rest of the voyage.

Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage (1878). Public domain; transcribed from Project Gutenberg eBook #534. Verbatim non-fiction extract; only whitespace, editorial line numbering and marked omissions differ from the linked text.

Source AWho gets a key?

Source A is an account written in 2026 by a newcomer to a shared town garden.

1. 1Our communal garden has no padlock. I noticed this on my first Saturday, when I came with a packet of beans and no idea where to plant them.
2. 2Leila showed me an empty bed. She said that the vegetables from it would be shared, whoever had done the watering.
3. 3The ground was hard as a biscuit. I borrowed a fork from the shed; all the tools were labelled with paint, not people’s names.
4. 4A boy planted his beans too close together. We moved them without scolding him, and he stayed to fill the watering cans.
5. 5At midday we ate bread on overturned crates. Three neighbours who had done no gardening came through the gate and joined us.
6. 6By the following month, the first leaves were through. Someone had also taken two lettuces before they were ready.
7. 7We put up a sign asking people to leave the small plants to grow. Nobody proposed buying a lock.
8. 8I cannot claim that everyone contributes equally. I can say that I now know who lives behind the windows I used to pass without looking.

Written for this course. The people and events are invented for practice.

Source BWalden

Source B is from Walden (1854), in which Henry David Thoreau describes growing beans beside Walden Pond in Massachusetts. Antæus is a giant from Greek myth who grew stronger whenever he touched the earth; woodchucks are burrowing animals.

1. 1Meanwhile my beans, the length of whose rows, added together, was seven miles already planted, were impatient to be hoed, for the earliest had grown considerably before the latest were in the ground; indeed they were not easily to be put off.
2. 2What was the meaning of this so steady and self-respecting, this small Herculean labor, I knew not.
3. 3I came to love my rows, my beans, though so many more than I wanted.
4. 4They attached me to the earth, and so I got strength like Antæus.
5. 5But why should I raise them?
6. 6Only Heaven knows.
7. 7This was my curious labor all summer,—to make this portion of the earth’s surface, which had yielded only cinquefoil, blackberries, johnswort, and the like, before, sweet wild fruits and pleasant flowers, produce instead this pulse.
8. 8What shall I learn of beans or beans of me?
9. 9I cherish them, I hoe them, early and late I have an eye to them; and this is my day’s work.
10. 10It is a fine broad leaf to look on.
11. 11My auxiliaries are the dews and rains which water this dry soil, and what fertility is in the soil itself, which for the most part is lean and effete.
12. 12My enemies are worms, cool days, and most of all woodchucks.
13. 13The last have nibbled for me a quarter of an acre clean.
14. 14But what right had I to oust johnswort and the rest, and break up their ancient herb garden?
15. 15Soon, however, the remaining beans will be too tough for them, and go forward to meet new foes.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854). Public domain; transcribed from Project Gutenberg eBook #205. Verbatim non-fiction extract; only whitespace, editorial line numbering and marked omissions differ from the linked text.

Source ASaving the voices

Source A is an account written in 2026 by a volunteer who records older people’s memories for a town archive.

1. 1The first recording in our town archive was my grandmother describing a shop that no longer exists. She forgot its name halfway through.
2. 2I nearly stopped the recorder, but she began to describe the bell above its door. Suddenly I could hear the place myself.
3. 3Our volunteers record people in their kitchens. Before anything goes online, the speaker hears it and can ask us to remove a section.
4. 4We keep the pauses. We also add written summaries, so visitors can find a subject without listening to every recording.
5. 5Last week a listener corrected a date in one account. We added a note rather than silently changing what the speaker had said.
6. 6The project is not a machine for manufacturing certainty. Memories can disagree, and the disagreement sometimes tells us where to look next.
7. 7We have no grand building. The files are copied to a second location, while a small display at the library invites new contributors.
8. 8My grandmother says that strangers now know more about her childhood than her neighbours once did. She sounds amused, then asks who will listen in fifty years.

Written for this course. The people and events are invented for practice.

Source BThe Autobiography of Charles Darwin

Source B is from Charles Darwin’s autobiography, first published in 1887 in The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, edited by his son Francis. Darwin explains how he recorded and organised evidence for his scientific work. The ellipsis (…) marks where text has been left out.

1. 1I had, also, during many years followed a golden rule, namely, that whenever a published fact, a new observation or thought came across me, which was opposed to my general results, to make a memorandum of it without fail and at once; for I had found by experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape from the memory than favourable ones.
2. 2Owing to this habit, very few objections were raised against my views which I had not at least noticed and attempted to answer. … As in several of my books facts observed by others have been very extensively used, and as I have always had several quite distinct subjects in hand at the same time, I may mention that I keep from thirty to forty large portfolios, in cabinets with labelled shelves, into which I can at once put a detached reference or memorandum.
3. 3I have bought many books, and at their ends I make an index of all the facts that concern my work; or, if the book is not my own, write out a separate abstract, and of such abstracts I have a large drawer full.
4. 4Before beginning on any subject I look to all the short indexes and make a general and classified index, and by taking the one or more proper portfolios I have all the information collected during my life ready for use.

Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin (1887). Public domain; transcribed from Project Gutenberg eBook #2010. Verbatim non-fiction extract; only whitespace, editorial line numbering and marked omissions differ from the linked text.