Doc Marlowe

by James Thurber

F

ar from being disturbed by the letter, Doc Marlowe was plainly amused. He took off his glasses, after he finished it and laughed, his hand to his brow and his eyes closed. I was pretty mad, because I had liked the Hardmans, and because they had liked him. Doc Marlowe put the letter carefully back into its envelope and tucked it away in his inside coat pocket, as if it were something precious. Then he picked up a pack of cards and began to lay out a solitaire hand. "Want to set in a little seven-up game, Jimmy?" he asked me. I was furious. "Not with a cheater like you!" I shouted, and stamped out of the room, slamming the door. I could hear him chuckling to himself behind me.

      The last time I saw Doc Marlowe was just a few days before he died. I didn't know anything about death, but I knew that he was dying when I saw him. His voice was very faint and his face was drawn; they told me he had a lot of pain. When I got ready to leave the room, he asked me to bring him a tin box that was on his bureau. I got it and handed it to him. He poked around in it for a while with unsteady fingers and finally found what he wanted. He handed it to me. It was a quar­ter, or rather it looked like a quarter, but it had heads on both sides. "Never let the other fella call the turn, Jimmy, my boy," said Doc, with a shadow of his old twinkle and the echo of his old chuckle. I still happen to have the two-headed quarter. For a long time I didn't like to think about it, or about Doc Marlowe, but I do now.

Notes and exercises:

1.   The prefixes “de–” and “di–” are often mistake. Learn the spelling of the following words:

decide	decay	deceased	despise	divert	decision
derision	derive	detraction	description	destruction	divest
denote	demean	desire	destroy	dimension	diverge
demand	devote	despair	design	divide	divorce
delay	devotion	describe	destructive	diminish	dilute

2.   Fill in the blanks with “e” or “I”:

d_code	d_stress	d_pend	d_lute	d_livery	d_shevelled
d_lude	d_duce	d_stinct	d_sdain	d_sguise	d_sservice
d_vour	d_tain	d_canter	d_ssipate	d_clare	d_scussion
d_scern	d_vorcee	d_ceit	d_signate	d_triment	d_licious
d_note	d_sciple	d_lay	d_spute	d_mension	d_fence

3.   Insert “e” or “I” in the following phrases:

d_cided d_fference	d_ciduous trees	a d_cisive battle	d_clining years
a d_crepit horse	national d_fence	d_ficient in courage	clearly d_fined boundaries
to d_flate a tyre	a d_liberate lie	a telephone d_rectory	to d_ssemble one’s emotions
d_licious smell	without d_mur	a d_mure young lady	rock d_nuded of soil
d_serted streets	d_ssert spoon	d_sultory reading	a nuclear d_vice
a d_ligent student	to obtain a d_vorce	a d_bilitating climate

4.   Give the plural forms of the following nouns and read them:

bureau

adieu

tableau

plateau

chateau

beau

trousseau

portmanteau

5.   Word study:

solitaire      a card game for one player (also called patience)

a quarter    US 25¢ (Look up a nickel, a dime, a quarter, a half dollar!)

head(s)       that side of a coin on which the head of a person appears, the other side being “tails,” or “the tail”: Heads or tails?—Heads—I win.” (said when tossing a coin up in the air to decide something by chance)

glasses      (pl. tantum)—spectacles; glass (sg.)—a hard brittle transparent substance. Here are some kinds of glass: pebble glass, lead glass, frosted glass, green glass, wired/armoured glass, window/sheet glass, stained/coloured glass

6.   Translate the following expressions and use them in sentences of your own:

The Olympic games, he plays a good game at cards, to play the game, to have the game in one’s hands, to be off one’s game, the game is 15 to 30, a draw game, game all, to make game of, to speak in game, what game!, none of your little games, nix on that game!, his game is up, to play a winning/losing game, the game is not worth the candle