Alfred George Gardiner (–), a British journalist and author, is highly regarded in the literary arena. From he contributed to The Star under the pseudonym (pen name) Alpha of the Plough. The story behind the choosing of the name is interesting. At the time, The Star had several anonymous essayists whose pseudonyms were the names of blogger.comted Reading Time: 9 mins Alfred George Gardiner (2 June – 3 March ) was an English journalist, editor and author. His essays, written under the alias " Alpha of the Plough ", are highly regarded. He was also Chairman of the National Anti-Sweating League, an advocacy group which campaigned for a minimum wage in industry Apr 14, · In the essay On Superstitions by A.G. Gardiner we have the theme of fear, control, superstition, logic, tradition, insecurity and escape. Taken from his Alpha of the Plough Second Series collection the reader realises after reading the essay that Gardiner may be exploring the theme of fear. Man has a fear of the unknown and to alleviate this fear he creates superstitions which may or may Reviews: 8
ALL ABOUT A DOG ~ A.G. Gardiner
Introduction : This essay by A. Gardiner explores the issue of politeness as an extremely important and indispensable feature of civil society. Politeness, he argues, is that which keeps the social life of civilised man well oiled and friction-free. A good temper gives rise to naturally pleasant behaviour that radiates pleasantness all around. Conversely, bad temper breeds uncouth behaviour that poisons the stream of life.
Both good and bad behaviour are highly infectious. The problem is that good behaviour cannot be enforced by the law, a g gardiner essays. Finally, Gardiner argues that one may get the sweetest revenge against boorish individuals by being excessively polite towards them. The essay begins with the author recounting an incident of a lift attendant who threw a passenger out of his lift. The problem was that the a g gardiner essays, rather rudely, demanded a g gardiner essays be taken to the top floor.
Since the passenger refuses to use the word, the liftman threw the passenger out of the lift. Commenting on the incident, Gardiner points out that the action of the liftman cannot be condoned. He thinks so because impoliteness is not considered to be a legally punishable offence. Should a person use violence against a robber who has entered his house, or against anyone who has assaulted him, the law will side with him.
This is so because both robbery and assault are forbidden by the law. However, there can be no law against rude behaviour. Gardiner feels that, although we may feel sympathetic towards the liftman, we must agree that the law is right in not giving us the freedom to use violence against people whose manners or expression we do not like. For if we were given such liberty, our hands would be always busy hitting people and the drains of the city would run blood all the time.
The author says that the only penalty one has to pay for being rude or arrogant is that people will call him a rude fellow. The law, on the other hand, will protect rather than punish him. The law has no provision for defending people from moral or intellectual damages inflicted by uncouth people. Despite this, however, Gardiner asserts that such damages are in no way negligible. This must hurt more than a kick on his shins because he may get the law to act against the one who has kicked him and, in any case, the pain of a kick soon passes away, a g gardiner essays.
Gardiner imagines how the liftman must have brooded over the insult day and how, upon returning home, he must have given vent to his anger upon his wife in the evening. Bad manners easily infect people who come across them.
The author gives an example from a play, The Rivals, a g gardiner essays, by Sheridan to illustrate the point, a g gardiner essays. In the play, Sir Antony Absolute bullies his son who gets annoyed and passes on his annoyance to his personal servant who, in turn, goes and kicks one of the lower servants in the household.
Bad manners, in his opinion, are highly contagious and poison our life in general than the entire list of legally recognised crimes, a g gardiner essays. If a woman is boxed by an otherwise gentle husband, there are many more who suffer in silence from bad temper.
Yet the law cannot do anything in this regard. No Decalogue could make a list of all the harm inflicted by manners, moods, facial expressions and the like. Nor can these be dictated by any law. Although everybody must necessarily support the law in the case of the liftman, people will paradoxically feel sympathy for him, a g gardiner essays.
One such custom of civilised man is to acknowledge service. These courtesies allow us to live in a society without friction. Besides, these words help to keep cooperation between human beings on a level of friendliness and goodwill, instead of dividing us into superiors who order and inferiors who are ordered about. The author says that only a very vulgar person will order for a service which he can have by merely asking.
This is so because, whereas a request will provide the service with goodwill, an order might provide the service — but only with resentment.
He a g gardiner essays to add that by calling a particular conductor polite, he does not mean to imply that all other conductors are impolite. In fact, he says, given the difficult nature of their jobs, most conductors go about their work in a very good-natured manner.
There are, of course, exceptions. Here and there one meets resentful conductors who look upon the passengers as their enemies who have to be kept in check through aggression.
But such a g gardiner essays are fewer than they used to be, and Gardiner thinks that this is because the Underground Railway Company, which manages the bus service, a g gardiner essays a certain standard of polite behaviour in the men who work for them. This, he feels, is an important bit of social service that also benefits the passengers. Having made it clear that he has nothing against conductors in general, Gardiner tells us about a g gardiner essays first interaction with the polite conductor.
It happens one day when he boards the bus without realising that he has left home without any money in his pocket. This being an experience common to most people, the author feels that the reader will know the feeling such a situation evokes. One feels either like a fool or a crook. One almost expects the conductor to look at him suspiciously and imply that this is a common trick played by crooks and be asked to get off the bus. Even if the conductor believes him and is kind, he is still left with the necessity of going back home for his wallet, a g gardiner essays, wasting a lot of time, and not being able to do what he had set out to do.
Finding no coins at all in his pockets, Gardiner tells the conductor that he must go back home to fetch some money. At this, a g gardiner essays, the conductor tells him that he does not need to get off. Flourishing his bundle of tickets, he offers to give the author a ticket to wherever he may want to go. When the author told him the destination the conductor handed him the ticket, but when the former wanted to know where he should send the money, the cheerful reply he got was that he was bound to meet the latter someday a g gardiner essays some bus.
Luckily for Gardiner, he found a coin in his pocket at last and managed to pay the fare, a g gardiner essays. The joy, however, that such pleasantness on the part of the conductor gave him, did not diminish even a tiny bit. When he asked Gardiner if he were hurt the latter reassured him that he was not — even though in point of fact he was what is illustrated here is the effect of politeness and how good behaviour evinces good behaviour.
From that incident onwards the author begins to take note of the polite conductor and his actions. He seems to have a limitless supply of patience and goodwill towards his passengers. As caring as a son to the elderly and as a father to children, a g gardiner essays, he goes out of his way to make passengers comfortable.
Be it by letting people on the top know that there are seats lower down when it rains, or by cracking jokes with young people to make them laugh, or to set down a blind person up on the footpath and safely on his way, a g gardiner essays, the polite conductor always exuded such good-temper and kindliness that Gardiner says that a journey with him taught one what natural courtesy and good manners were.
Gardiner then goes on to show us the benefit of such behaviour. The polite conductor never had any difficulty in doing his work. Just as rudeness begets rudeness, likewise a sunny disposition begets pleasantness in others. The poet Keats had claimed that he always felt cheerful when the weather was sunny, and, says Gardiner, cheerful people come to us like the blessing of sunny weather.
His politeness, his readiness to accommodate, his pleasant manner of conducting himself resulted in making his passengers happy, which, in turn, made his own work easy. That is why Gardiner points out that his politeness was not a waste but a very good investment. Although sad that the polite conductor is no longer on his route, the author hopes that it means that he has carried his cheerfulness to another route. The world at large is a rather dull place, he says, and so such cheerfulness needs to be spread as widely a g gardiner essays possible.
Moreover, Gardiner is not apologetic about writing a piece in praise of an unknown conductor. He feels that just as William Wordsworth, the English romantic poet, a g gardiner essays, could learn lessons from the humble leech gatherer and the lonely moor, ordinary people too could learn from a man who elevated his modest job through good temper and kindness.
Gardiner asserts that those civilities must be restored to make life with one another easier. This cannot be done with the help of a g gardiner essays or the law — which are necessary for creatures like man who are far from perfect. He calls it the victory over oneself — the only victory that matters to end the piece, he recounts the story of the witty Lord Chesterfield for the edification of the liftman.
Here Chesterfield came face to face with an uncouth fellow who refused to step into the mud to allow Chesterfield to pass.
Gardiner hopes that the liftman will understand that this revenge was much better than throwing the fellow into the mud. Lord Chesterfield was not only a man of letters but was also very famous for his brilliant wit and pithy comments on the many aspects of life.
Can we, first of all, ask ourselves the question, what does technique mean? Then again, you find this particular author often beginning with a specific event from which he moves on to a broader rumination on the matter. The following paragraphs will help you understand a g gardiner essays style and technique of Gardiner better. Most of the essays of A. Gardiner start with the a g gardiner essays of a chance bit of conversation overheard, a small incident either experienced or read about or something similar that provides the author with an opening to move on to more significant, though perhaps general, matters related to it.
Here, too, he begins by telling us about an incident in the city where a liftman threw a passenger out of the lift when the latter refused to be polite.
The two brothers are discussing the difficulties they face when they try to write letters, even though, apparently, both are soldiers in a momentous war. This becomes the starting point for Gardiner to move on to a meditation upon the art of letter writing a g gardiner essays why the art is beginning to die.
The author tells us about an incident that takes place one day onboard the bus by which he is travelling. There happens to be a rather fashionable lady who boards the bus with a small Pekinese dog in her lap. The conductor of the bus — a rather unpleasant individual — refuses to let the lady travel inside the lower part of the bus, and insists that she go to the top although it is bitterly cold.
Such is his mastery over technique that the reader often does not even realise that his thoughts and responses are being cleverly manipulated by the author. He achieves this by using language that seems to be aimed at a particular reader who is reading the essay.
In other words, he uses a language that forms an intimate bond between him and his reader, giving rise to the feeling that the reader is actually sitting opposite him in an informal, intimate and cosy tete-a-tete. Thus the reader follows him readily and willingly through all the diversions from the main issue often realizing much later how these seeming side issues are important aspects of the main issue. It is only in hindsight that we realize that this is a very pertinent point relating not only to the public behaviour of a g gardiner essays personnel but also to the necessity of using good behaviour to beget good behaviour.
That firm control can also be seen when one traces the development of the essay. In a seemingly desultory fashion, the author begins with the anecdote of the liftman and then distressed to a discussion on manners in general.
Thus, the first half of the essay starts with the rude behaviour of the passenger and its repercussion and then moves on to a discussion on uncouth behaviour and how it harms society by multiplying itself, as it were. Gardiner also uses an example from a play by Sheridan to prove his point. Then, adroitly, he turns the topic to polite behaviour and civility. And just when we thought that he was done, he brings back the liftman who had begun all the rumination, in the first place and recommends to him the anecdote about Lord Chesterfield.
In Defence of Ignorance by blogger.comer for LT grade exam 2018 \u0026 others
, time: 9:00On Saying Please: Summary, Analysis and Questions and Answers - Smart English Notes
Apr 11, · “Rule of the Road” is an essay by one of the greatest International essayist A.G. Gardiner who wrote mostly under a pseudonym “Alpha of the Plough”. The essay is preceded by “ All About A Dog” as the two together convey the great message that laws are and should always be constituted for the welfare, wellbeing, and convenience of the general public Jul 13, · This essay was in"Gleanings from English Literature which was prescribed for us in in the sixth standard at blogger.com'blogger.comm. I had written about this text book inan early issue of 'The Apr 14, · In the essay On Superstitions by A.G. Gardiner we have the theme of fear, control, superstition, logic, tradition, insecurity and escape. Taken from his Alpha of the Plough Second Series collection the reader realises after reading the essay that Gardiner may be exploring the theme of fear. Man has a fear of the unknown and to alleviate this fear he creates superstitions which may or may Reviews: 8
No comments:
Post a Comment