Microsoft’s Speech Recognition Transcripts
Introduction to Microsoft Speech Recognition
I am using the Microphone Wizard. It is adjusting the volume of my microphone.
This papaya tastes perfect.
Welcome to Microsoft's Speech Recognition Training Wizard. Please read the text in a natural and
even tone.
As you read the text, each recognized word is highlighted. A mispronunciation or mistake will cause
the wizard to stop highlighting words. The wizard will then back up to the last pause detected.
If you get stuck on a word that the system will not accept, click Skip Word to skip a word, after which
you may proceed with training.
Although each training session is short, you may with to take a break from time to time. To pause the
training session, click Pause. To resume training, click Resume. Note that the Skip Word button is
unavailable while training is paused.
If you happen to mispronounce a word, and the system recognizes it and continues, do not worry about
correcting this. The system will accommodate this without adverse affects.
Speech recognition is an exciting technology that promises to change the way we interact with
computers in the future. This technology has been under development for more than three decades at
university, corporate and government research labs.
Recent advances in speech recognition technology, coupled with the advent of modern operating
systems and high powered affordable personal computers, have culminated in the first speech
recognition systems that can be deployed to a wide community of users.
Although speech recognition technology has made great strides in recent years, scientists are still
working hard to overcome the remaining limitations of the technology.
Understanding some of these limitations will help you get the most out of this or any speech
recognition system that you encounter.
The first thing to remember is that the microphone hears everything, but sometimes it does not hear the
person speaking very well! Think about how many times you have heard a public address
announcement at an airport, train station or stadium, but you were unable to understand what was said.
There are many reasons that this may have been the case. Perhaps it was too noisy, or the person did
not speak carefully or spoke too quickly, or the microphone may have been of poor quality or adjusted
incorrectly. Maybe they just said something unexpected.
Each one of these problems affects the performance of speech recognition systems; noise, careless
speech, rapid speech, or simply saying something that the system isn't expecting. While speech
recognition systems attempt to compensate for each of these problems, eventually they cause the
system to function improperly.
Therefore it is important to keep noise to a minimum when speaking to the system. This can be greatly
aided by the proper use of a high quality headset microphone.
Ideally, just as you avoid leaning on the keyboard, you should leave the microphone turned off when
you are not planning to speak to the system.
When you do speak to the system, speak carefully and clearly using the words and phrases that the
application is designed to respond to.
If the system is not responding as you expect it to, please consider running the Microphone Setup
Wizard in addition to providing additional training sessions. You may also find it helpful to adjust the
recognition options that control accuracy and rejection. These controls are found in the Speech
Control Panel under Settings.
Thank you for taking the time to train Microsoft Speech Recognition so that it can better recognize the
words you speak. This now concludes the “Introduction to Microsoft Speech Recognition” training
session. Thank you very much for your time, and happy speaking!
Aesop’s Fables
The Two Pots
Two Pots had been left on the bank of a river, one of brass, and one of earthenware. When the tide rose
they both floated off down the stream.
Now the earthenware pot tried its best to keep aloof from the brass one, which cried out: Fear nothing,
friend, I will not strike you.
"But I may come in contact with you, said the other, "if I come too close; and whether I hit you, or you
hit me, I shall suffer for it.
The strong and the weak cannot keep company.
The Four Oxen and the Lion
A Lion used to prowl about a field in which Four Oxen used to dwell.
Many a time he tried to attack them; but whenever he came near they turned their tails to one another,
so that whichever way he approached them he was met by the horns of one of them.
At last, however, they fell to fighting among themselves, and each went off to pasture alone in a
separate corner of the field.
Then the Lion attacked them one by one and soon made an end of all four. United we stand, divided
we fall.
The Goose with the Golden Eggs
One day a countryman going to the nest of his Goose found there an egg all yellow and glittering.
When he took it up it was as heavy as lead and he was going to throw it away, because he thought a
trick had been played upon him.
But he took it home on second thoughts, and soon found to his delight that it was an egg of pure gold.
Every morning the same thing occurred, and he soon became rich by selling his eggs. As he grew rich
he grew greedy; and thinking to get at once all the gold the Goose could give, he killed it and opened it
only to find nothing. Greed oft o'er reaches itself.
The Wind and the Sun
The Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger. Suddenly they saw a traveler coming
down the road, and the Sun said:
I see a way to decide our dispute. Whichever of us can cause that traveler to take off his cloak shall be
regarded as the stronger. You begin.
So the Sun retired behind a cloud, and the Wind began to blow as hard as it could upon the traveler.
But the harder he blew the more closely did the traveler wrap his cloak round him, till at last the Wind
had to give up in despair. Then the Sun came out and shone in all his glory upon the traveler, who soon
found it too hot to walk with his cloak on. Kindness effects more than severity.
The Fox and the Lion
When first the Fox saw the Lion he was terribly frightened, and ran away and hid himself in the wood.
Next time however he came near the King of Beasts he stopped at a safe distance and watched him
pass by.
The third time they came near one another the Fox went straight up to the Lion and passed the time of
day with him, asking him how his family were, and when he should have the pleasure of seeing him
again; then turning his tail, he parted from the Lion without much ceremony. Familiarity breeds
contempt.
The Man and the Wooden God
In the old days men used to worship stocks and stones and idols, and prayed to them to give them luck.
It happened that a Man had often prayed to a wooden idol he had received from his father, but his luck
never seemed to change.
He prayed and he prayed, but still he remained as unlucky as ever. One day in the greatest rage he went
to the Wooden God, and with one blow swept it down from its pedestal. The idol broke in two, and
what did he see? An immense number of coins flying all over the place.
The Young Thief and His Mother
A young Man had been caught in a daring act of theft and had been condemned to be executed for it.
He expressed his desire to see his Mother, and to speak with her before he was led to execution, and of
course this was granted.
When his Mother came to him he said: "I want to whisper to you," and when she brought her ear near
him, he nearly bit it off. All the bystanders were horrified, and asked him what he could mean by such
brutal and inhuman conduct.
"It is to punish her," he said. "When I was young I began with stealing little things, and brought them
home to Mother. Instead of rebuking and punishing me, she laughed and said: "It will not be noticed."
It is because of her that I am here today."
"He is right, woman," said the Priest; "the Lord has said:
"Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old he will not depart from it."
This concludes the “Aesop’s Fables” training session. Thank you very much for your time, and happy
speaking!
Bill Gates describes -The Road Ahead, Second Version
In November Nineteen Ninety Five the first edition of “The Road Ahead” was published. In it, I wrote
about how the patterns of our lives are being affected by the incredible revolution in computing and
communications.
Two weeks later, on December seventh, Nineteen Ninety Five, I announced a new direction for
Microsoft, as an Internet-centric company.
It was one of the most dramatic course corrections in U.S. corporate history, but it was necessary for
Microsoft to remain competitive in the fast-changing world of software and technology.
In November Nineteen Ninety Six, the second edition of “The Road Ahead” was released. I and my
co-authors, Nathan Myhrvold and Peter Rinearson, rewrote the book, just as I rewrote Microsoft’s
business strategy, to reflect the fast and far-reaching effects of the Internet’s explosive popularity.
The central themes of the book haven’t changed. I still talk about how society is being affected by the
technological revolution.
But the book now puts the revolution almost entirely in the context of the Internet. As a company,
we’re betting the future on the Internet, and this new edition of the book will help you see why.
About one-third of the content of the book is new, and it has grown about twenty percent in length.
I’ve thoroughly revised several chapters, and the CD-ROM in the U.S. English language version has
been updated as well and includes video clips in which I respond to questions about the Internet.
The Japanese printing of the second edition will include a CD-ROM this time, too.
My goal with the second edition of “The Road Ahead”, as with the first, was to provide a guide for a
nontechnical audience interested in the various trends, technologies and issues of the Information Age.
If readers are able to benefit from even one “aha!” by reading the book, then it will have been a
success.
If they are able to understand more completely the many challenges and opportunities presented by the
Internet and the PC revolution, so much the better.
As with the first edition, my proceeds from the second edition will be donated to non-profit
organizations that support efforts to incorporate computers into the classroom.
This concludes the training session describing the second edition of the Bill Gates book, “The Road
Ahead”.
Excerpts from – The Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell
In the following pages I have confined myself in the main to those problems of philosophy in regard to
which I thought it possible to say something positive and constructive, since merely negative criticism
seemed out of place.
For this reason, theory of knowledge occupies a larger space than metaphysics in the present volume,
and some topics much discussed by philosophers are treated very briefly, if at all.
I have derived valuable assistance from unpublished writings of G. E. Moore and J. M. Keynes: from
the former, as regards the relations of sense-data to physical objects, and from the latter as regards
probability and induction.
I have also profited greatly by the criticisms and suggestions of Professor Gilbert Murray.
CHAPTER ONE-APPEARANCE AND REALITY
Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it? This
question, which at first sight might not seem difficult, is really one of the most difficult that can be
asked.
When we have realized the obstacles in the way of a straightforward and confident answer, we shall be
well launched on the study of philosophy –
for philosophy is merely the attempt to answer such ultimate questions, not carelessly and
dogmatically, as we do in ordinary life and even in the sciences, but critically after exploring all that
makes such questions puzzling, and after realizing all the vagueness and confusion that underlie our
ordinary ideas.
In daily life, we assume as certain many things which, on a closer scrutiny, are found to be so full of
apparent contradictions that only a great amount of thought enables us to know what it is that we really
may believe.
In the search for certainty, it is natural to begin with our present experiences, and in some sense, no
doubt, knowledge is to be derived from them.
But any statement as to what it is that our immediate experiences make us know is very likely to be
wrong.
It seems to me that I am now sitting in a chair, at a table of a certain shape, on which I see sheets of
paper with writing or print.
By turning my head I see out of the window buildings and clouds and the sun.
I believe that the sun is about ninety-three million miles from the earth; that it is a hot globe many
times bigger than the earth; that, owing to the earth's rotation, it rises every morning, and will continue
to do so for an indefinite time in the future.
I believe that, if any other normal person comes into my room, he will see the same chairs and tables
and books and papers as I see, and that the table which I see is the same as the table which I feel
pressing against my arm.
All this seems to be so evident as to be hardly worth stating, except in answer to a man who doubts
whether I know anything.
Yet all this may be reasonably doubted, and all of it requires much careful discussion before we can be
sure that we have stated it in a form that is wholly true.
To make our difficulties plain, let us concentrate attention on the table. To the eye it is oblong, brown
and shiny, to the touch it is smooth and cool and hard; when I tap it, it gives out a wooden sound.
Any one else who sees and feels and hears the table will agree with this description, so that it might
seem as if no difficulty would arise; but as soon as we try to be more precise our troubles begin.
Although I believe that the table is 'really' of the same color all over, the parts that reflect the light look
much brighter than the other parts, and some parts look white because of reflected light.
I know that, if I move, the parts that reflect the light will be different, so that the apparent distribution
of colors on the table will change.
It follows that if several people are looking at the table at the same moment, no two of them will see
exactly the same distribution of colors, because no two can see it from exactly the same point of view,
and any change in the point of view makes some change in the way the light is reflected.
For most practical purposes these differences are unimportant, but to the painter they are all-important:
the painter has to unlearn the habit of thinking that things seem to have the color which common sense
says they 'really' have, and to learn the habit of seeing things as they appear.
Here we have already the beginning of one of the distinctions that cause most trouble in philosophy -the distinction between 'appearance' and 'reality', between what things seem to be and what they are.
The painter wants to know what things seem to be, the practical man and the philosopher want to know
what they are; but the philosopher's wish to know this is stronger than the practical man's, and is more
troubled by knowledge as to the difficulties of answering the question.
To return to the table. It is evident from what we have found, that there is no color which preeminently
appears to be the color of the table, or even of any one particular part of the table –
it appears to be of different colors from different points of view, and there is no reason for regarding
some of these as more really its color than others.
And we know that even from a given point of view the color will seem different by artificial light, or to
a color-blind man, or to a man wearing blue spectacles, while in the dark there will be no color at all,
though to touch and hearing the table will be unchanged.
This color is not something which is inherent in the table, but something depending upon the table and
the spectator and the way the light falls on the table.
When, in ordinary life, we speak of the color of the table, we only mean the sort of color which it will
seem to have to a normal spectator from an ordinary point of view under usual conditions of light.
But the other colors which appear under other conditions have just as good a right to be considered
real; and therefore, to avoid favoritism, we are compelled to deny that, in itself, the table has any one
particular color.
The same thing applies to the texture. With the naked eye one can see the gram, but otherwise the table
looks smooth and even.
If we looked at it through a microscope, we should see roughnesses and hills and valleys, and all sorts
of differences that are imperceptible to the naked eye.
Which of these is the 'real' table? We are naturally tempted to say that what we see through the
microscope is more real, but that in turn would be changed by a still more powerful microscope.
If, then, we cannot trust what we see with the naked eye, why should we trust what we see through a
microscope? Thus, again, the confidence in our senses with which we began deserts us.
The shape of the table is no better. We are all in the habit of judging as to the 'real' shapes of things,
and we do this so unreflectingly that we come to think we actually see the real shapes.
But, in fact, as we all have to learn if we try to draw, a given thing looks different in shape from every
different point of view. If our table is 'really' rectangular, it will look, from almost all points of view, as
if it had two acute angles and two obtuse angles.
If opposite sides are parallel, they will look as if they converged to a point away from the spectator; if
they are of equal length, they will look as if the nearer side were longer.
All these things are not commonly noticed in looking at a table, because experience has taught us to
construct the 'real' shape from the apparent shape, and the 'real' shape is what interests us as practical
men.
But the 'real' shape is not what we see; it is something inferred from what we see.
And what we see is constantly changing in shape as we, move about the room; so that here again the
senses seem not to give us the truth about the table itself, but only about the appearance of the table.
This concludes “The Problems of Philosophy” training session. Thank you very much for your time,
and happy speaking!
Excerpts from “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe
During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung
oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary
tract of country;
and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy
House of Usher.
I know not how it was; but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom
pervaded my spirit.
I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic,
sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or
terrible.
I looked upon the scene before me, upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the
domain, upon the bleak walls, upon the vacant eye-like windows, upon a few rank sedges
and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to
no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveler upon opium the bitter lapse
into everyday life, the hideous dropping off of the veil.
There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart, an unredeemed dreariness of thought which
no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime.
What was it, I paused to think, what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of
Usher?
It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I
pondered.
I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion that while, beyond doubt, there are
combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the
analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth.
It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the
details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful
impression;
and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay
in unruffled luster by the dwelling, and gazed down
but with a shudder even more thrilling than before—upon the remodeled and inverted images of the
gray sedge, and the ghastly tree stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.
Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a sojourn of some weeks. Its
proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of my boon companions in boyhood; but many years had
elapsed since our last meeting.
A letter, however, had lately reached me in a distant part of the country—a letter from him—which, in
its wildly importunate nature, had admitted of no other than a personal reply.
The letter gave evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute bodily illness, of a mental
disorder which oppressed him, and of an earnest desire to see me, as his best, and indeed his only
personal friend, with a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my society, some alleviation of his
malady.
It was the manner in which all this, and much more, was said it was the apparent heart that went with
his request which allowed me no room for hesitation;
and I accordingly obeyed forthwith what I still considered a very singular summons. Although, as
boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I really knew little of my friend. His reserve had been
always excessive and habitual.
I was aware, however, that his very ancient family had been noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar
sensibility of temperament, displaying itself, through long ages, in many works of exalted art,
and manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent, yet unobtrusive charity, as well as in a
passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhaps even more than to the orthodox and easily recognizable
beauties, of musical science.
I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact that the stem of the Usher race, all time-honored as it was,
had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch;
in other words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling
and very temporary variation, so lain.
It was this deficiency, I considered, while running over in thought the perfect keeping of the character
of the premises with the accredited character of the people,
and while speculating upon the possible influence which the one, in the long lapse of centuries, might
have exercised upon the other
it was this deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the consequent undeviating transmission, from
sire to son, of the patrimony with the name, which had, at length, so identified the two as to merge the
original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal appellation of the House of Usher
an appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and
the family mansion.
I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment of looking down within the tarn
had been to deepen the first singular impression.
There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid increase of my superstition for why should I
not so term it? served mainly to accelerate the increase itself.
Such, I have long known, is the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis.
And it might have been for this reason only, that, when I again uplifted my eyes to the house itself,
from its image in the pool, there grew in my mind a strange fancy a fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that I
but mention it to show the vivid force of the sensations which oppressed me.
I had so worked upon my imagination as really to believe that about the whole mansion and domain
there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity
an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed
trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn
a pestilent and mystic vapor, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued.
This concludes the “The Fall of the House of Usher” training session. Thank you very much for your
time, and happy speaking!
Excerpts from SUMMER, by Edith Wharton
SUMMER by Edith Wharton
A girl came out of Lawyer Royall’s house, at the end of the one street of North Dormer, and stood on
the doorstep.
t was the beginning of a June afternoon. The spring like transparent sky shed a rain of silver sunshine
on the roofs of the village, and on the pastures and larchwoods surrounding it.
A little wind moved among the round white clouds on the shoulders of the hills, driving their shadows
across the fields and down the grassy road that takes the name of street when it passes through North
Dormer.
The place lies high and in the open, and lacks the lavish shade of the more protected New England
villages.
The clump of weeping- willows about the duck pond, and the Norway spruces in front of the Hatchard
gate, cast almost the only roadside shadow between lawyer Royall's house and the point where, at the
other end of the village, the road rises above the church and skirts the black hemlock wall enclosing
the cemetery.
The little June wind, frisking down the street, shook the doleful fringes of the Hatchard spruces, caught
the straw hat of a young man just passing under them, and spun it clean across the road into the duckpond.
As he ran to fish it out the girl on lawyer Royall's doorstep noticed that he was a stranger, that he wore
city clothes, and that he was laughing with all his teeth, as the young and careless laugh at such
mishaps.
Her heart contracted a little, and the shrinking that sometimes came over her when she saw people with
holiday faces made her draw back into the house and pretend to look for the key that she knew she had
already put into her pocket.
A narrow greenish mirror with a gilt eagle over it hung on the passage wall, and she looked critically at
her reflection.
She wished for the thousandth time that she had blue eyes like Annabel Balch, the girl who sometimes
came from Springfield to spend a week with old Miss Hatchard, straightened the sunburnt hat over her
small swarthy face, and turned out again into the sunshine.
"How I hate everything!" she murmured. The young man had passed through the Hatchard gate, and
she had the street to herself.
North Dormer is at all times an empty place, and at three o'clock on a June afternoon its few ablebodied men are off in the fields or woods, and the women indoors, engaged in languid household
drudgery.
The girl walked along, swinging her key on a finger, and looking about her with the heightened
attention produced by the presence of a stranger in a familiar place.
What, she wondered, did North Dormer look like to people from other parts of the world?
She herself had lived there since the age of five, and had long supposed it to be a place of some
importance.
But about a year before, Mr. Miles, the new Episcopal clergyman at Hepburn, who drove over every
other Sunday--when the roads were not ploughed up by hauling-- to hold a service in the North
Dormer church,
had proposed, in a fit of missionary zeal, to take the young people down to Nettleton to hear an
illustrated lecture on the Holy Land;
and the dozen girls and boys who represented the future of North Dormer had been piled into a farmwaggon, driven over the hills to Hepburn, put into a way-train and carried to Nettleton.
In the course of that incredible day Charity Royall had, for the first and only time, experienced
railway- travel, looked into shops with plate-glass fronts,
tasted coconut pie, sat in a theatre, and listened to a gentleman saying unintelligible things before
pictures that she would have enjoyed looking at if his explanations had not prevented her from
understanding them.
This initiation had shown her that North Dormer was a small place, and developed in her a thirst for
information that her position as custodian of the village library had previously failed to excite.
For a month or two she dipped feverishly and disconnectedly into the dusty volumes of the Hatchard
Memorial Library; then the impression of Nettleton began to fade, and she found it easier to take North
Dormer as the norm of the universe than to go on reading.
The sight of the stranger once more revived memories of Nettleton, and North Dormer shrank to its
real size.
As she looked up and down it, from lawyer Royall's faded red house at one end to the white church at
the other, she pitilessly took its measure.
There it lay, a weather-beaten sunburnt village of the hills, abandoned of men, left apart by railway,
trolley, telegraph, and all the forces that link life to life in modern communities.
It had no shops, no theatres, no lectures, no "business block"; only a church that was opened every
other Sunday if the state of the roads permitted, and a library for which no new books had been bought
for twenty years, and where the old ones mouldered undisturbed on the damp shelves.
This now concludes this training session.
Excerpts from The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
Book One- The Coming of the Martians-Chapter One-The Eve of the War
“But who shall dwell in these worlds if they be inhabited? Are we, or they Lords of the World? And
how are all things made for man?” -- Kepler
No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being
watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own;
that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps
almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and
multiply in a drop of water.
With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their
assurance of their empire over matter.
It is possible that the creatures under the microscope do the same.
No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of
them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable.
It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied
there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a
missionary enterprise.
Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish,
intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and
surely drew their plans against us.
And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.
The planet Mars, I scarcely need remind the reader, revolves about the sun at a mean distance of one
hundred forty million miles, and the light and heat it receives from the sun is barely half of that
received by this world.
It must be, if the nebular hypothesis has any truth, older than our world; and long before this earth
ceased to be molten, life upon its surface must have begun its course.
The fact that it is scarcely one seventh of the volume of the earth must have accelerated its cooling
to the temperature at which life could begin.
It has air and water and all that is necessary for the support of animated existence.
Yet so vain is man, and so blinded by his vanity, that no writer, up to the very end of the nineteenth
century, expressed any idea that intelligent life might have developed there far, or indeed at all,
beyond its earthly level.
Nor was it generally understood that since Mars is older than our earth, with scarcely a quarter of the
superficial area and remoter from the sun, it necessarily follows that it is not only more distant from
time's beginning but nearer its end.
The secular cooling that must someday overtake our planet has already gone far indeed with our
neighbor.
Its physical condition is still largely a mystery, but we know now that even in its equatorial region the
midday temperature barely approaches that of our coldest winter.
Its air is much more attenuated than ours, its oceans have shrunk until they cover but a third of its
surface, and as its slow seasons change huge snowcaps gather and melt about either pole and
periodically inundate its temperate zones.
That last stage of exhaustion, which to us is still incredibly remote, has become a
present-day problem for the inhabitants of Mars.
The immediate pressure of necessity has brightened their intellects, enlarged their powers, and
hardened their hearts.
And looking across space with instruments, and intelligences such as we have scarcely dreamed of,
they see, at its nearest distance only 35,000,000 of miles sunward of them, a morning star of hope, our
own warmer planet,
green with vegetation and grey with water, with a cloudy atmosphere eloquent of fertility, with
glimpses through its drifting cloud wisps of broad stretches of populous country and narrow, navycrowded seas.
And we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must be to them at least as alien and lowly as are the
monkeys and lemurs to us.
The intellectual side of man already admits that life is an incessant struggle for existence, and it would
seem that this too is the belief of the minds upon Mars.
Their world is far gone in its cooling and this world is still crowded with life, but crowded only with
what they regard as inferior animals.
To carry warfare sunward is, indeed, their only escape from the destruction that, generation after
generation, creeps upon them.
And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our
own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its
inferior races.
This concludes the “War of the Worlds” training session. Thank you very much for your time, and
happy speaking!
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz – by L. Frank Baum
Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt
Em, who was the farmer’s wife.
Their house was small, for the lumber to build it had to be carried by wagon many miles.
There were four walls, a floor and a roof, which made one room; and this room contained a rusty
looking cookstove, a cupboard for the dishes, a table, three or four chairs, and the beds.
Uncle Henry and Aunt Em had a big bed in one corner, and Dorothy a little bed in another corner.
There was no garret at all, and no cellar-except a small hole dug in the ground, called a cyclone cellar,
where the family could go in case one of those great whirlwinds arose, mighty enough to crush any
building in its path.
It was reached by a trap door in the middle of the floor, from which a ladder led down into the small,
dark hole.
When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she could see nothing but the great gray
prairie on every side.
Not a tree nor a house broke the broad sweep of flat country that reached to the edge of the sky in all
directions.
The sun had baked the plowed land into a gray mass, with little cracks running through it.
Even the grass was not green, for the sun had burned the tops of the long blades until they were the
same gray color to be seen everywhere.
Once the house had been painted, but the sun blistered the paint and the rains washed it away, and now
the house was as dull and gray as everything else.
When Aunt Em came there to live she was a young, pretty wife. The sun and wind had changed her,
too.
They had taken the sparkle from her eyes and left them a sober gray; they had taken the red from her
cheeks and lips, and they were gray also.
She was thin and gaunt, and never smiled now.
When Dorothy, who was an orphan, first came to her, Aunt Em had been so startled by the child's
laughter that she would scream and press her hand upon her heart whenever Dorothy's merry voice
reached her ears; and she still looked at the little girl with wonder that she could find anything to laugh
at.
Uncle Henry never laughed. He worked hard from morning till night and did not know what joy was.
He was gray also, from his long beard to his rough boots, and he looked stern and solemn, and rarely
spoke.
It was Toto that made Dorothy laugh, and saved her from growing as gray as her other surroundings.
Toto was not gray; he was a little black dog, with long silky hair and small black eyes that twinkled
merrily on either side of his funny, wee nose.
Toto played all day long, and Dorothy played with him, and loved him dearly.
Today, however, they were not playing. Uncle Henry sat upon the doorstep and looked anxiously at the
sky, which was even grayer than usual. Dorothy stood in the door with Toto in her arms, and looked at
the sky too. Aunt Em was washing the dishes.
From the far north they heard a low wail of the wind, and Uncle Henry and Dorothy could see where
the long grass bowed in waves before the coming storm.
There now came a sharp whistling in the air from the south, and as they turned their eyes that way they
saw ripples in the grass coming from that direction also.
Suddenly Uncle Henry stood up. "There's a cyclone coming, Em," he called to his wife. "I'll go look
after the stock." Then he ran toward the sheds where the cows and horses were kept.
Aunt Em dropped her work and came to the door.
One glance told her of the danger close at hand. "Quick, Dorothy!" she screamed. "Run for the cellar!"
Toto jumped out of Dorothy's arms and hid under the bed, and the girl started to get him. Aunt Em,
badly frightened, threw open the trap door in the floor and climbed down the ladder into the small,
dark hole. Dorothy caught Toto at last and started to follow her aunt.
When she was halfway across the room there came a great shriek from the wind, and the house shook
so hard that she lost her footing and sat down suddenly upon the floor.
Then a strange thing happened. The house whirled around two or three times and rose slowly through
the air. Dorothy felt as if she were going up in a balloon.
This concludes the “Wonderful Wizard of Oz” training session. Thank you very much for your time,
and happy speaking!