The Secret of the Machines

The Secret of the Machines

-by Rudyard Kipling

1st Stanza

We were taken from the ore-bed and the mine,  

Machines are made from the metal that comes from the ores dug out of mines

We were melted in the furnace and the pit—  

The metal is melted in hot furnaces and the pits used to make it liquid

We were cast and wrought and hammered to design,  

The liquid metal is molded and beaten with hammer according to the design

We were cut and filed and tooled and gauged to fit.  

Then the designed part is cut, rubbed, shaped and calculated to fit correctly to make the machine

Some water, coal, and oil is all we ask,

All that the machines need is water, fuel, and lubricating oil

And a thousandth of an inch to give us play:  

The machines can move perfectly even within one-thousandth of an inch

And now, if you will set us to our task,

Once the machine is ready, we can give it some work

We will serve you four and twenty hours a day!

The machines are ready to work for us throughout the day

 

2nd Stanza

We can pull and haul and push and lift and drive,  

The machines can pull, move, push, lift and drive heavy things

We can print and plough and weave and heat and light,

The machines can do jobs like printing books, plowing fields, weaving clothes, heat our things and give us lighting for us

We can run and race and swim and fly and dive,  

Machines can go fast, race, they can work in water, swim, fly and dive underwater

We can see and hear and count and read and write!

The machines can look for us (cameras and scanners), they can listen for us (audio equipment), count (calculators, computers) write (typewriters, computers)

 

3rd Stanza

Would you call a friend from half across the world?

Do you want to call a friend who is very far away?

If you’ll let us have his name and town and state,

All we have to give the machine is his name and address

You shall see and hear your crackling question hurled

We can hear our voice asking a question being sent

Across the arch of heaven while you wait.  

As we wait for the call to be connected our voice goes high in the sky across the globe

Has he answered? Does he need you at his side?

Within seconds, we will know whether he answered our call or whether he needs your help

You can start this very evening if you choose,  

If we want to do it, we can do it this evening itself

And take the Western Ocean in the stride

We can go across the Atlantic Ocean with the help of

Of seventy thousand horses and some screws!

A ship with a propeller having seventy thousand horsepower

 

4th Stanza

The boat-express is waiting for your command!  

the ship is waiting for you

You will find the Mauretania at the quay,

The ship’s name is Mauretania and it is in the harbor

Till her captain turns the lever ’neath his hand,  

It will be there until the captain switches the power on with his hand

And the monstrous nine-decked city goes to sea.

Soon the huge nine-storied ship enters the sea

 

5th Stanza

Do you wish to make the mountains bare their head  

Do we want to dig the mountains?

And lay their new-cut forests at your feet?  

Or do we want to cut forests?

Do you want to turn a river in its bed,

Or do we want to change the course of a river?

Or plant a barren wilderness with wheat?

Or do we want to grow wheat in lands where there are no crops previously

Shall we pipe aloft and bring you water down

Do we want the machines to lift water up to a tank and bring it down in our homes.

From the never-failing cisterns of the snows,  

The water is pumped from storage tanks of ice and snow

To work the mills and tramways in your town,

The machines are ready to run our mills and railways

And irrigate your orchards as it flows?

They are also ready to help us in growing plants and gardens

 

6th Stanza

It is easy! Give us dynamite and drills!

With the help of some dynamite to blast and drill to dig it is easy for machines

Watch the iron-shouldered rocks lie down and quake  

To break strong rocks into pieces

As the thirsty desert-level floods and fills,

The machines can make bring water to deserts

And the valley we have dammed becomes a lake.

They can fill valleys and make them as lakes

 

7th Stanza

But remember, please, the Law by which we live,  

But we have to remember that machines work according to rules

We are not built to comprehend a lie,

Machines cannot understand (no thinking power) and tell lies

We can neither love nor pity nor forgive.

Machines do not know feelings like love, pity, or forgiveness

If you make a slip in handling us you die!  

If we make any mistake in operating machines, it can be dangerous

We are greater than the Peoples or the Kings—

Machines are more powerful than people and kings

Be humble, as you crawl beneath our rods!

We have to be careful when working with the machines

Our touch can alter all created things,

With a single push of a switch, machines can change all the things

We are everything on earth—except The Gods!

Machines can do anybody’s work - they cannot do the work of Gods

 

8th Stanza

Though our smoke may hide the Heavens from your eyes,

Machines make a lot of smoke and it makes sun and stars not visible to us

It will vanish and the stars will shine again,

After the pollution is gone, we can see stars again

Because, for all our power and weight and size,  

The machines have great power, they are heavy and they are huge

We are nothing more than children of your brain!

In spite of all this, machines are made by human brains!

 

The Midnight Visitor

Introduction:

The story ‘The Midnight Visitor’ is written by Robert Arthur. It is about a secret spy from Paris whose physical appearance is far from a typical dashing and daring agent. But he shows exceptional intelligence. The story revolves around three characters, two rival spies named Ausable and Max and one mystery writer Fowler.

About the author:

Robert Jay Arthur was born on November 10, 1909 in the Philippines. He was a mystery writer known for ‘The Mysterious Traveler’ radio series and his ‘Three Investigators’ series of novels. He also wrote a number of mystery books, mostly for children.

Summary:

Ausable is a chubby, and clumsy man while Max is slender and rugged. Ausable meets Fowler, a writer fascinated by spies. Ausable is expecting a sensitive document to arrive that night. Disappointed at Ausable’s appearance, Fowler follows Ausable to his room on the 6^th floor.

They are startled by the presence of Max, the rival spy with a gun. He threatens Ausable to hand over the documents to him as soon as they arrive. Acting composed Ausable sits down and complains about the balcony window that he thought Max used to break into his room. Max claims that he used ta passkey key to get inside.  

Suddenly there is a knock at the door. Ausable says that it must be the police. He reveals that he had asked the police to protect the document. Max gets anxious and asks Ausable to send them away. He intends to hide in the balcony. Max jumps out of the window and falls down. There is no balcony at all. A waiter brings Ausable’s drinks. There are no police. Fowler is impressed by Ausable’s presence of mind.

Meanings of words and phrases:

• musty: smelling unpleasantly old and slightly wet
• gloomy: dark or poorly lit place
• romantic: of, characterized by, or suggestive of an idealized view of reality
• wheezily: breathing with a whistling or rattling sound in the chest
• grunting: a low, rough noise
• scarcely: hardly
• accent: a distinctive way of pronouncing a language, especially one associated with a particular country, area, or social class
• passably: satisfactory but not excellent
• spy: a person employed by a government or other organization to secretly obtain information on an enemy or competitor
• espionage: the discovering of secrets, especially political or military information of another country or the industrial information of a business
• envisioned: to imagine as a future possibility
• sloppy: something or someone careless and unsystematic
• prosaic: without interest, imagination, and excitement
• chuckled: laugh quietly
• frustrated: annoyed or less confident
• disillusioned: disappointed and unhappy because of discovering the truth about something or someone that you liked or respected
• authentic: real or true
• thrill: a feeling of extreme excitement
• crafty: clever, especially in a dishonest or secret way
• countenance: a person s face or facial expression
• menacing: the presence of danger
• raise the devil: cause a commotion
• grimly: a very serious, gloomy, or depressing manner
• nuisance: annoying or causing trouble
• inflection: a time of sudden, noticeable, or important change
• passkey: a key to the door of a restricted area, given only to those who are officially allowed access
• explanatorily: a way in which an explanation is given about something
• stiffly: not relaxed or friendly
• gesture: a movement of the hands, arms, or head, etc. to express an idea or feeling
• evilly: morally wrong or bad
• grasped: seize and hold firmly
• deftly: a skillful, clever, or quick way
• uncorked: to open a bottle by pulling out its cork
• stammered: to speak or say something with unusual pauses or repeated sounds

Character Sketch:

Ausable:

Ausable proves to be a very clever man, in spite of his looks and mannerism. He thinks of a plan to get rid of Max as soon as he saw him.  He creates the impression that there is a balcony just beneath the window. He is aware that the waiter will be coming to deliver his drinks. He makes Max believe that there are police at the door to protect the missile documents. Max intends to hide in the balcony and warns Ausable to send away the police. Poor Max jumps through the window to his death, falling from the 6th-floor window. Thus, we see that although Ausable doesn’t match the description of a typical spy, he surely has the brains of one.

Textual Questions and Answers: (Page 14)

Q. How is Ausable different from other secret agents?

Ausable is different from other secret agents because he was very fat, lived in a room on the top floor of a gloomy French hotel, and could only speak French passably although he had been living in Paris for over 20 years. His voice still had an American touch to it. He used to receive messages via telephone instead of dark-eyed beauties getting him his messages. So he was very different from the way other secret agents are.

Q. Who is Fowler and what is his first authentic thrill of the day?

Fowler is a young writer who comes to meet Ausable. He is bored sitting with Ausable in a music hall as he had thought that the country’s secret agent would be thrilling and exciting but nothing of that sort happened. After some time when they were coming back to Ausable’s room, Fowler saw a man holding a gun standing in the room. So that is when he feels that the life of a secret agent can be exciting.

(Page 15)

Q. How has Max got in?

Max had got in with a master key or passkey.

Q. How does Ausable say he got in?

Ausable says that he thought that Max had got in through the balcony. He said that it was a nuisance as it was not even his own balcony and that it was the second time somebody had got in using that same balcony.

(Page 18)

Q. How does Ausable manage to make Max believe that there is a balcony attached to his room? Look back at his detailed description of it. What makes it a convincing story?

When Ausable says that he had complained to the management earlier about someone entering the room from the balcony that is beneath his window., Max started thinking that had he known there was a balcony, it would have been much easier for him to get to Ausable’s room. Ausable then tells Max that he wanted extra protection for the papers that were supposed to come in that day and that he had informed the police who were knocking on the door, checking on him. This made Max very nervous and he thought that he would wait for the police to go on the balcony. Without realizing it, he jumped out of the window and did not realize that there was no balcony. So the way Ausable thinks calmly and quickly makes the story a lot more convincing.

The Road Not Taken

You may watch a video explaining the poem by clicking here.

Meanings:

Word Meaning: Stanza 1

diverged: separated and took a different direction

yellow wood: a forest with decomposing leaves

undergrowth: dense growth of plants and bushes means the forest)

Word Meaning: Stanza 2

fair: As good as the other one,

claim: Better option

grassy: unused

wanted wear: had not been used

Word Meaning: Stanza 3

trodden means walked over.

Word Meaning: Stanza 4

sigh: Deep breath

hence: here, in the future

Summary:

The poet says that once he was walking down a path in a forest. He reached a place on the road where it was divided into two paths. He could take only one of the paths. He took the time to choose the right path. He observed both ways to decide which one would be a better option for him. He chose the one which seemed to be less walked over. He kept the other one for some other day although he knew that he would never get the chance to travel on it. He would go further on the chosen path and he would not get a chance to return. As he walked on the chosen path, he realized that both paths were similar. He felt that his future depended on the choice that he made.

The speaker thinks of how he will tell about this incident in the future with a sigh. He chooses the road he thinks to be less worn and says “That has made all the difference.”

Literary Devices:

1. Rhyme Scheme: abaab

2. Symbolism: two roads which represent two or more choices in our life

3. Anaphora: ‘and’ repeated at the beginning of lines 2, 3 and 4

4. Alliteration: Wanted Wear ‘w’ sound is repeating

1. ‘first for’ – ‘f’ sound is repeating

2. ‘though, that’- ‘th’ sound is repeating

 5. Repetition: ‘Ages’ is repeated. ‘Two roads diverged in a wood’- this sentence is repeated in stanzas 1 and  4.

Textual Question and Answers:

1. Where does the traveller find himself? What problem does he face?

A. The traveller finds himself standing at the junction where the road had divided into two roads. He is in confusion as he must choose one path. He is unable to decide which one to choose.

2. Discuss what these phrases mean to you.

(i) a yellow wood

‘Yellow wood’ refers to the forest which has withering leaves as in the season of autumn. It represents a world of aging people.

(ii) it was grassy and wanted wear

 It means that the path had a lot of grass on it. This means that it had yet to be walked over by many people. It had to be worn out by the steps of the people who walked on it.

(iii) the passing there

 It means that when the poet walked over the path that he had chosen.

(iv) leaves no step had trodden black

It means no one had walked over the leaves as they were fresh. If they had been walked over, they would have turned black.

(v) How way leads on to way

 It means that as we walk on a path, the path divides and we come across more options. We have to make further choices. We have to continue walking choosing our paths.

3. Is there any difference between the two roads as the poet describes them?

(i) in stanzas two and three?

The two paths were similar. In the beginning, the poet felt that one of them was grassy and had not been walked over by many people, but when he walked on it for a while, he realized that it was like the other road.

(ii) in the last two lines of the poem?

Here, again the poet talks of his initial decision when he thought that the roads were different and chose the one that had been walked over by a lesser number of people.

4. What do you think the last two lines of the poem mean? (Looking back, does the poet regret his choice or accept it)

The speaker thinks of how he will tell about this incident in the future with a sigh. He chooses the road he thinks to be less worn and says “That has made all the difference.” 

I think that the poet neither regrets nor feels happy over the decision. He sounds philosophical. He accepts his choice as a matter of fact.

II. 1. Have you ever had to make a difficult choice (or do you think you will have difficult choices to make)? How will you make the choice (for what reasons)?

I think I will have a difficult choice to make when I must decide between Physical Sciences and Biological Sciences. I have to take the decision in my Intermediate Course. I like both subjects equally. I will take the decision depending on my performance in the board examinations.

2. After you have made a choice do you always think about what might have been, or do you accept the reality?

After my choice is made, I will never think about what might have been. I will take responsibility of the results of my decision and accept them.