CBSE Class 9 English Fiction Best Seller

Fiction

UNIT-5

1.  Before you read the story write down the answers to these questions.

Which was the latest book that you read?

Who was the author?

Who were the main characters?

When did you read the book?

How long did you take to complete reading it?

What genre did it belong to?

Why would/wouldn't you recommend it?

2 Now read the story.

1. One day last summer, I went to Pittsburgh-well, I had to go there on business.

2. My chair-car was profitably well-filled with people of the kind one usually sees on  chair-cars. Most of them were ladies in brown-silk dresses cut with square yokes,  with lace insertion and dotted veils, who refused to have the windows raised. Then  there was the usual number of men who looked as if they might be in almost any  business and going almost anywhere. I leaned back idly in chair No. 7, and looked  with tepidest curiosity at the small, black, bald-spotted head just visible above the  back of No.9.

3. Suddenly No.9 hurled a book to the floor between his chair and the window, and,  looking, I saw that it was "The Rose Lady and Trevelyan," one of the best-selling  novels of the present day. And then the critic veered his chair toward the window,  and I knew him at once for John A. Pescud of Pittsburgh, travelling salesman for a  plate-glass company - an old acquaintance whom I had not seen in two years.

4. In two minutes we were faced, had shaken hands, and had finished with such  topics as rain, prosperity, health, residence, and destination. Politics might have  followed next; but I was not so ill-fated.

5. I wish you might know John A. Pescud. He is of the stuff that heroes are not often  lucky enough to be made of. He is a small man with a wide smile, and an eye that  seems to be fixed upon that little red spot on the end of your nose.

6. He believes that "our" plate-glass is the most important commodity in the world the  Cambria Steel Works, the best company and that when a man is in his home town,  he ought to be decent and law-abiding.

7. During my acquaintance with him earlier I had never known his views on life,  romance, literature and ethics. We had browsed, during our meetings, on local  topics and then parted.

8. Now  I  was  to  get  more  of  his  ideas. By way of facts, he told me  that business had picked up since  the party conventions and that he  was going to get off at Coketown.

9. "Say,"  said  Pescud,  stirring  his  discarded  book  with  the  hand,  "did you ever read one of these  best-sellers?  I  mean  the  kind  where  the  hero  is  an  American  swell-sometimes  even  from  Chicago - who falls in love with a royal princess from Europe who is travelling  under an  aliasand follows her to her father's kingdom or principality? I guess you  have. They're all alike.

10. ____"Well, this fellow chases the royal chair-warmer home as I said, and finds out  who she is. He meets her in the evening and gives us ten pages of conversation.  She reminds him of the difference in their stations and that gives him a chance to  ring in three solid pages about America's uncrowned sovereigns.

11. "Well, you know how it runs on, if you've read any of 'em-he slaps the king's Swiss  bodyguards around like every thing whenever they get in his way. He's a great  fencer, too.

12. "Yes," said Pescud, "but these kind of love-stories are rank on-the-level. I know  something about literature, even if I am in plate-glass.

13. "When people in real life marry, they generally hunt up somebody in their own  station. A fellow usually picks out a girl who went to the same high-school and  belonged to the same singing-society that he did." 

14. Pescud picked up the best-seller and hunted his page.

15. "Listen to this," said he. "Trevelyan is sitting with the Princess Alwyna at the back  end of the tulip-garden. This is how it goes:

Please refer to the link below - CBSE Class 9 English Fiction Best Seller