English for everyone

Once upon a time in a little cabin there lived a farmer, whose name was Mick. He worked very hard, but was very poor. His wife did what she could in order to help him, as their children were too young to work in the fields. The poor woman looked after the house, milked the cow, boiled the potatoes, and carried eggs to the market. At the end of the summer they had hardly had enough money to pay the landlord.
Then came a bad year. Day after day the rain poured down. Their small crop was spoiled, the chickens died. So they had no money to pay the landlord.
«What can we do, Molly?» said the farmer sadly to his wife.
«You must take the cow to the market, Mick, and sell her,» said Molly.
«I believe you are right, Molly. I’ll go tomorrow.»
Early next morning he took his stick in his hand, and drove his cow slowly along the road. It was a fine day and the sun shone brightly on the fields. After six long miles the farmer came to the top of the hill, which is now called Bottle Hill, but that was not the name of it at that time. Just then he met a man.
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There is a beautiful lake in the middle of a green valley just outside the Irish city of Cork. At the very bottom of this lake there are buildings and gardens far more beautiful than any you can see now. And this is how they came there.
Many years ago, long before Saxon foot pressed Irish ground, there was a great King, called Cork. His palace stood where the lake is now. There was a pure and clear spring not far from the palace. It was the wonder of all Ireland. Many people came from far and near to get some water from the wonderful spring.
The King was proud of having it, but people came in crowds to take the precious water of this spring, and he was afraid that in time it might become dry. So he ordered to build a high wall around it. This was a very great loss to the poor people living about the palace. Whenever the King wanted water for himself he would send his daughter to get it. He did not trust his servants, because they might give some of the water away.
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Monday is a Lucky Day by Yuri Teplyakov
from the magazine Youth
“Wind north-west, hurricane force. Vessel heavily coated with ice. Losing stability. Engines working at capacity.
Just before putting out to sea the captains of the fishing trawlers received a storm warning.
“If you run into trouble make for Russkaya Bay.”
But, there it is, in black on white, on the sea-going fishing vessel’s lienee: No limitations. That means you can sail off to any point on the oceans of the world. How are you going to get there if you spend your time waiting around for good weather? A storm? So what. After all, the heart of your ship throbs with the power of 300 horses and there are no limitations on your grazing grounds.
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How Kangaroo Got His Tail. Australian folktale
Long ago, before kangaroos had long tails and before wombats had flat heads, the animals played and lived together.
Kangaroo and Wombat were great friends and spent every day together. But at night each one liked to sleep a different way. Wombat liked to sleep indoors, warm and snug. Kangaroo liked to sleep outdoors beneath the stars. Each thought his way of sleeping was the best.
Then one night a terrible storm cracked open the sky, and harsh winds and rain scoured the land. Kangaroo was outside and was miserable in the cold, wet night. He knocked on Wombat’s house and called to Wombat to let him come in and warm up. But Wombat thought of how much room Kangaroo would take up, so he refused to let him in.
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from the magazine NEVA
Sergei Voronin was born in 1913. After finishing a technical school at the Leningrad Metal Works, he became a turner, and then worked with geological expeditions, and in journalism. In 1947 his first volume of short stories was published. He has written a full- length novel, On His Own Soil and a shorter one, Unwanted Fame.

So that was all. . . All that was left to do was to close the door and take the key from the lock. Right until that moment she had still been hoping. Perhaps he would come. Just come to see how they were getting on. After all, between them there had been something that would never be forgotten.
The room was quite empty. It was time to go. It was a gloomy room, the sun came in only in early morning, and that was in summer, no other time of year … Then it shone in at 5 a.m. At first it lit up the right-hand side and then the whole room was filled with golden air.
“What’s the time,” he glanced at his watch.
It was five.
“Must you go?”
“It doesn’t really matter now …”
“Why not?”
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Don’t blame the moon by Lev Sukharevsky, M.D.
A frantic mother brought her 10-year-old son to the children’s clinic. “There’s something wrong with the boy. He’s talking in his sleep. Sometimes he sits up in bed and even walks about the room. His eyes are open but he doesn’t see a thing.”
The boy had all the symptoms of somnambulism—a rather complicated disorder. Before describing the treatment the boy was given, I would like to say something about the disease itself.
Ilya Mechnikov, the Russian physiologist, demonstrated that the human body, while continuing to improve and develop, retains a number of vestigial organs and latent instincts—something inherited from the anthropoid ape, our remote ancestor. According to Mechnikov, sleepwalking—or in the scientific term, somnambulism—is one of these manifestations.
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He would yawn infuriatingly during lessons. He would screw up his eyes, wrinkle his nose and open great gaping jaws. After that he would shake his head vigorously to drive away sleep, and gaze intently at the blackboard. In a few minutes he would yawn again.
“Why do you keep yawning?” Zhenechka asked, convinced it was from boredom. There was no point in continuing her questioning, for he was one of those silent souls.
One day he brought a bunch of slender twigs into the classroom and put them in a jar of water. Everyone laughed at his twigs and somebody even tried to sweep the floor with them as if they were a birch broom.
He took them away and put them back in water. Every day he changed it.
Zhenechka laughed at him, too.
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