Posted: April 12th, 2019

discussion

 
DEFINITION WRITING
In this discussion assignment, we will be practicing definition writing.  Please read the following story about fate in the life of young David Swan.  The prompt is at the end of the story.
DAVID  SWAN                        Nathaniel Hawthorne
     David Swan, at the age of twenty, was journeying on foot from his native New Hampshire to the city of Boston, where his uncle, a small dealer in groceries, was to take him behind the counter. David was born of respectable parents and had received an ordinary school education. After journeying on foot from sunrise till nearly noon of a summer’s day, his weariness and the increasing heat forced him to sit down in the first convenient shade and await the coming up of the stage-coach. He flung himself down under a tree, pillowing his head upon some shirts and a pair of trousers which were tied up in a striped cotton handkerchief. The sunbeams could not reach him; a spring murmured drowsily beside him; the branches of the tree waved dreamily across the blue sky overhead; and a deep sleep fell upon David Swan.
    While he lay sound asleep in the shade, other people were wide awake, and passed to and fro, afoot, on horseback, and in all sorts of vehicles, along the sunny road by his bedchamber. Some looked neither to the right hand nor the left, and knew not that he was there; some merely glanced that way; some laughed to see how soundly he slept. A middle-aged widow, when nobody else was near, vowed that the young fellow looked charming in his sleep.
    He had slept only a few moments when a brown carriage, drawn by a handsome pair of horses, bowled easily along, and was brought to a standstill nearly in front of David’s resting-place, as one of the wheels had slid off. The damage was slight, and occasioned merely a momentary alarm to an elderly merchant and his wife, who were returning to Boston in the carriage. While the coachman and a servant were replacing the wheel, the lady and gentleman sheltered themselves beneath the maple-trees, and there espied the bubbling fountain, and David Swan asleep beside it.  The merchant trod as lightly as the gout would allow; and his spouse took good heed not to rustle her silk gown, lest David should start up all of a sudden.
     “How soundly he sleeps!” whispered the old gentleman. “Such sleep as that would be worth more to me than half my income; for it would suppose health and an untroubled mind.”
    “And youth, besides,” said the lady.
    The longer they looked the more did this elderly couple feel interested in the unknown youth. Perceiving that a stray sunbeam glimmered down upon his face, the lady contrived to twist a branch aside, so as to intercept it. And having done this little act of kindness, she began to feel like a mother to him.
    “Providence seems to have laid him here,” whispered she to her husband, “and to have brought us hither to find him, after our disappointment in our cousin’s son. I can see a likeness to our departed Henry. Shall we waken him?”
    “To what purpose?” said the merchant, hesitating. “We know nothing of the youth’s character.”
    “That open face!” replied his wife, in the same hushed voice, yet earnestly. “This innocent sleep!”
     While these whispers were passing, the sleeper’s heart did not throb nor his features betray the least token of interest. Yet Fortune was bending over him, just ready to let fall a burden of gold. 

     The old merchant had lost his only son, and had no heir to his wealth except a distant relative, with whose conduct he was dissatisfied. In such cases, people sometimes do stranger things than to act like a magician, and awaken a young man to splendor who fell asleep in poverty.
    “Shall we not waken him?” repeated the lady persuasively.
    “The coach is ready, sir,” said the servant, behind.
The old couple started, reddened, and hurried away, mutually wondering that they should ever have dreamed of doing anything so very ridiculous. The merchant threw himself back in the carriage, and occupied his mind with the plan of a magnificent asylum for unfortunate men of business. Meanwhile, David Swan enjoyed his nap.

    The carriage could not have gone above a mile or two, when a pretty young girl came along with a tripping pace, which showed precisely how her little heart was dancing.  She turned aside into the shelter of the maple-trees, and there found a young man asleep by the spring! Blushing as red as any rose that she should have intruded into a gentleman’s bedchamber, and for such a purpose, too, she was about to make her escape on tiptoe. But there was peril near the sleeper. A monster of a bee had been wandering overhead–buzz, buzz, buzz–now among the leaves, now flashing through the strips of sunshine, and now lost in the dark shade, till finally he appeared to be settling on the eyelid of David Swan. The sting of a bee is sometimes deadly. As free hearted as she was innocent, the girl attacked the intruder with her handkerchief, brushed him soundly, and drove him from beneath the mapleshade. How sweet a picture! This good deed accomplished, with quickened breath, and a deeper blush, she stole a glance at the youthful stranger for whom she had been battling with a dragon in the air.
    “He is handsome!” thought she, and blushed redder yet.
    How could it be that no dream of bliss grew so strong within him, that, shattered by its very strength, it should part asunder, and allow him to perceive the girl among its phantoms? Why, at least, did no smile of welcome brighten upon his face? She was come, the maid whose soul, according to the old and beautiful idea, had been severed from his own, and whom, in all his vague but passionate desires, he yearned to meet. Her, only, could he love with a perfect love; him, only, could she receive into the depths of her heart; and now her image was faintly blushing in the fountain, by his side; should it pass away, its happy lustre would never gleam upon his life again.
    “How sound he sleeps!” murmured the girl.
    She departed, but did not trip along the road so lightly as when she came.
    Now, this girl’s father was a thriving country merchant in the neighborhood, and happened, at that identical time, to be looking out for just such a young man as David Swan. Had David formed a wayside acquaintance with the daughter, he would have become the father’s clerk, and all else in natural succession. So here, again, had good fortune–the best of fortunes–stolen so near that her garments brushed against him; and he knew nothing of the matter.
    The girl was hardly out of sight when two men turned aside beneath the maple shade. Both had dark faces, set off by cloth caps, which were drawn down aslant over their brows. Their dresses were shabby, yet had a certain smartness. These were a couple of rascals who got their living by whatever the devil sent them, and now, in the interim of other business, had staked the joint profits of their next piece of villany on a game of cards, which was to have been decided here under the trees. But, finding David asleep by the spring, one of the rogues whispered to his fellow,”Hist!–Do you see that bundle under his head?”
    The other villain nodded, winked, and leered.
    “I’ll bet you a horn of brandy,” said the first, “that the chap has either a pocket-book, or a snug little hoard of small change, stowed away amongst his shirts. And if not there, we shall find it in his pantaloons pocket.”
    “But how if he wakes?” said the other.
    His companion thrust aside his waistcoat, pointed to the handle of a dirk, and nodded.
    “So be it!” muttered the second villain.

    They approached the unconscious David, and, while one pointed the dagger towards his heart, the other began to search the bundle beneath his head. Their two faces, grim, wrinkled, and ghastly with guilt and fear, bent over their victim, looking horrible enough to be mistaken for fiends, should he suddenly awake. Nay, had the villains glanced aside into the spring, even they would hardly have known themselves as reflected there. But David Swan had never worn a more tranquil aspect, even when asleep on his mother’s breast.
    “I must take away the bundle,” whispered one.
    “If he stirs, I’ll strike,” muttered the other.
    But, at this moment, a dog scenting along the ground, came in beneath the maple-trees, and gazed alternately at each of these wicked men, and then at the quiet sleeper. He then lapped out of the fountain.
    “We can do nothing now,” said one villain. “The dog’s master must be close behind.”
    “Let’s take a drink and be off,” said the other
    The man with the dagger thrust back the weapon into his bosom, and drew forth a pocket pistol, but not of that kind which kills by a single discharge. It was a flask of liquor, with a block-tin tumbler screwed upon the mouth. Each drank a comfortable dram, and left the spot, with so many jests, and such laughter at their unaccomplished wickedness, that they might be said to have gone on their way rejoicing. In a few hours they had forgotten the whole affair, nor once imagined that the recording angel had written down the crime of murder against their souls, in letters as durable as eternity. As for David Swan, he still slept quietly, neither conscious of the shadow of death when it hung over him, nor of the glow of renewed life when that shadow was withdrawn.
    He slept, but no longer so quietly as at first. An hour’s repose had snatched, from his elastic frame, the weariness with which many hours of toil had burdened it. Now he stirred–now, moved his lips, without a sound–now, talked, in an inward tone, to the noonday spectres of his dream. But a noise of wheels came rattling louder and louder along the road, until it dashed through the dispersing mist of David’s slumber-and there was the stage-coach. He started up with all his ideas about him.
    “Hallo, driver!–Take a passenger?” shouted he.
    “Room on top!” answered the driver.
    Up mounted David, and bowled away merrily towards Boston, without so much as a parting glance at that fountain of dreamlike vicissitude. He knew not that a phantom of Wealth had thrown a golden hue upon its waters–nor that one of Love had sighed softly to their murmur–nor that one of Death had threatened to crimson them with his blood–all, in the brief hour since he lay down to sleep. Sleeping or waking, we hear not the airy footsteps of the strange things that almost happen. Does it not argue a superintending Providence that, while viewless and unexpected events thrust themselves continually athwart our path, there should still be regularity enough in mortal life to render foresight even partially available?                 The End
Assignment:  Write a definition paragraph.  Define fate, using examples from the
story “David Swan.”  Quote once from the story above in your paragraph.  Your 
paragraph must be at least seven sentences.