Passage One

(1) He had scarcely washed himself, and made everything tidy, by emptying the basin out of the window, agreeably to the Jew’s directions, when the Dodger returned: accompanied by a very sprightly young friend, whom Oliver had seen smoking on the previous night, and who was now formally introduced to him as Charley Bates.

(2) “Well,” said the Jew, glancing slyly at Oliver, and addressing himself to the Dodger, “I hope you’ve been at work this morning, my dears?”

(3) “Hard,” replied the Dodger.

(4) “As nails ,” added Charley Bates.

(5) “Good boys, good boys!” said the Jew. “What have you got, Dodger?”

(6) “A couple of pocket-books,” replied that young gentleman.

(7) “Lined?” inquired the Jew, with eagerness.

(8) “Pretty well,” replied the Dodger, producing two pocket-books; one green, and the other red.

(9) “Not so heavy as they might be,” said the Jew, after looking at the insides carefully; “but very neat and nicely made. Ingenious workman, ain’t he, Oliver?”

(10) “Very indeed, sir,” said Oliver. At which Mr. Charley Bates laughed uproariously; very much to the amazement of Oliver, who saw nothing to laugh at, in anything that had passed.

(11) “And what have you got, my dear?” said Fagin to Charley Bates.

(12) “Wipes,” replied Master Bates; at the same time producing four pocket-handkerchiefs.

(13) “Well,” said the Jew, inspecting them closely; “they’re very good ones, very. You haven’t marked them well, though, Charley; so the marks shall be picked out with a needle, and we’ll teach Oliver how to do it. Shall us, Oliver, eh? Ha! Ha! Ha! “

(14) “If you please, sir,” said Oliver.

(15) “You’d like to be able to make pocket-handkerchiefs as easy as Charley Bates, wouldn’t you, my dear?” said the Jew.

(16) “Very much, indeed, if you’ll teach me, sir,” replied Oliver.

(17) Master Bates saw something so exquisitely ludicrous in this reply, that he burst into another laugh; which laugh, meeting the coffee he was drinking, and carrying it down some wrong channel, very nearly terminated in his premature suffocation.

(18) “He is so jolly green!” said Charley when he recovered, as an apology to the company for his unpolite behaviour.

(19) The Dodger said nothing, but he smoothed Oliver’s hair over his eyes, and said he’d know better, by and by; upon which the old gentleman, observing Oliver’s colour mounting, changed the subject by asking whether there had been much of a crowd at the execution that morning. This made him wonder more and more; for it was plain from the replies of the two boys that they had both been there; and Oliver naturally wondered how they could possibly have found time to be so very industrious.

(20) When the breakfast was cleared away; the merry old gentleman and the two boys played at a very curious and uncommon game, which was performed in this way. The merry old gentleman, placing a snuff-box in one pocket of his trousers, a note-case in the other, and a watch in his waistcoat pocket, with a guard-chain round his neck, and sticking a mock diamond pin in his shirt: buttoned his coat tight round him, and putting his spectacle-case and handkerchief in his pockets, trotted up and down the room with a stick, in imitation of the manner in which old gentlemen walk about the streets any hour in the day. Sometimes he stopped at the fire-place, and sometimes at the door, making believe that he was staring with all his might into shop-windows. At such times, he would look constantly round him, for fear of thieves, and would keep slapping all his pockets in turn, to see that he hadn’t lost anything, in such a very funny and natural manner, that Oliver laughed till the tears ran down his face. All this time, the two boys followed him closely about: getting out of his sight, so nimbly, every time he turned round, that it was impossible to follow their motions. At last, the Dodger trod upon his toes, or ran upon his boot accidently, while Charley Bates stumbled up against him behind; and in that one moment they took from him, with the most extraordinary rapidity, snuff-box, note-case, watch-guard, chain, shirt-pin, pocket-handkerchief, even the spectacle-case. If the old gentleman felt a hand in any one of his pockets, he cried out where it was; and then the game began all over again.

(21) When this game had been played a great many times, Charley Bates expressed his opinion that it was time to pad the hoof. This, it occurred to Oliver, must be French for going out; for directly afterwards, the Dodger, and Charley went away together, having been kindly furnished by the amiable old Jew with money to spend.

(22) “There, my dear,” said Fagin. “That’s a pleasant life, isn’t it? They have gone out for the day.”

(23) “Have they done work, sir?” inquired Oliver.

(24) “Yes,” said the Jew, “that is, unless they should unexpectedly come across any, when they are out; and they won’t neglect it, if they do, my dear, depend upon it. Make them your models, my dear. Make them your models,” tapping the fire-shovel on the hearth to add force to his words; “do everything they bid you, and take their advice in all matters—especially the Dodger’s, my dear. He’ll be a great man himself, and will make you one too, if you take pattern by him.—Is my handkerchief hanging out of my pocket, my dear?” said the Jew, stopping short.

(25) “Yes, sir,” said Oliver.

(26) “See if you can take it out, without my feeling it; as you saw them do, when we were at play this morning.”

(27) Oliver held up the bottom of the pocket with one hand, as he had seen the Dodger hold it, and drew the handkerchief lightly out of it with the other.

(28) “Is it gone?” cried the Jew.

(29) “Here it is. sir,” said Oliver, showing it in his hand.

(30) “You’re a clever boy, my dear,” said the playful old gentleman, patting Oliver on the head approvingly. “I never saw a sharper lad. Here’s a shilling for you. If you go on, in this way, you’ll be the greatest man of the time. And now come here, and I’ll show you how to take the marks out of the handkerchiefs.”

(31) Oliver wondered what picking the old gentleman’s pocket in play, had to do with his chances of being a great man. But, thinking that the Jew, being so much his senior, must know best, he followed him quietly to the table, and was soon deeply involved in his new study.

Passage Two

(1) From the Chrysler Corporation to the Central Intelligence Agency, cultural diversity programs are flourishing in American organizations today. Firms can no longer safely assume that every employee walking in the door has similar beliefs or expectations. Whereas North American white males may believe in challenging authority, Asians tend to respect and defer to it. In Hispanic cultures, people often bring music, food, and family members to work, a custom that U. S. businesses have traditionally not allowed. A job applicant who won’t make eye contact during an interview may be rejected for being unapproachable, when according to her culture, she was just being polite.

(2) As a larger number of women, minorities, and immigrants enter the U. S. work force, the workplace is growing more diverse. It is estimated that by 2008 women will make up about 48 percent of the U. S. work force, and African Americans and Hispanics will each account for about 11 percent; by the year 2050, minorities will make up over 50 percent of the American population.

(3) Cultural diversity refers to the differences among people in a work force due to race, ethnicity, and gender. Increasing cultural diversity is forcing managers to learn to supervise and motivate people with a broader range of values systems. According to a recent survey by the American Management Association, half of all U.S. employers have established some kind of formal initiative to promote and manage cultural diversity. Although demographics isn’t the only reason for the growth of these programs, it is a compelling one. An increasing number of organizations have come to believe that diversity, like quality and customer service, is a competitive edge. A more diverse work force provides a wider range of ideas and perspectives and fosters creativity and innovation. Avenues for encouraging diversity include recruiting at historically black colleges and universities, training and development, mentoring, and revamped promotion review policies. To get out the message about their commitment to diversity, many organizations establish diversity councils made up of employees, managers, and executives.

(4) Although many Fortune 500 companies are making diversity part of their strategic planning process, some programs stand out from the crowd.

(5) At Texas Instruments, strategies for enhancing diversity include an aggressive recruiting plan, diversity training, mentoring, and an incentive compensation program that rewards managers for fostering diversity. Each business unit has a diversity manager who implements these strategies and works closely with the company’s Diversity Network. The network provides a forum of employees to share ideas, solicit support, and build coalitions.

(6) Convinced that strengthening diversity is a business imperative, Du Pont has established several programs to achieve that goal. In addition to training workshops and mentoring, Du Pont has established over 100 multicultural networks through which employees share work and life experiences and strive to help women and minorities reach higher levels of leadership and responsibility within the organization. Over half of Du Pont’s new hires for professional and managerial positions are minorities and women.

(7) Disney World’s director of diversity wants theme park guests to see themselves reflected in the diversity of Disney’s employees. Working to attract diverse employees, Disney hopes to convince them that the organization understands, respects, and values who they are. By holding a variety of diversity celebrations every year—including Dr. Martin Luther King’s Birthday, Asian-Pacific Heritage Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, Disability Awareness Month, and Native American Heritage Month—Disney opens the door to this kind of understanding.

(8) What do we learn from strong, successful diversity program such as these, as well as similar programs at Microsoft, Xerox, Procter & Gamble and Digital Equipment Corporation? First, they can go a long way toward eliminating prejudice in the workplace and removing barriers to advancement. Second, to be more than just the latest corporate buzzword, diversity programs require commitment from the top and a culture that supports an inclusive environment.

Passage Three

(1) In the northern Italian city of Treviso, a Polish pianist, Slawomir Zubrzycki, sits down at an instrument that resembles a harpsichord and starts pumping a pedal with his right foot. As his hands float over the keyboard, the sound reaching his audience is as singular as it is beautiful: simultaneously reminiscent of the harpsichord, organ and a string quartet. The instrument is based on sketches Leonardo da Vinci made in his notebooks of a “viola organista” with the dream of simulating a viola ensemble that could be played from a keyboard. Hitting one or more keys brings the same number of strings inside the casing into contact with one of four bow-wheels spun by the pedal.

(2) Mr Zubrzycki’s concert was among the more unusual commemorations of the 500th anniversary of da Vinci’s death, which falls on May 2nd. It was also a reminder that, even in an age of polymaths, the breadth of the Tuscan master’s interests was exceptional. It encompassed not only painting, architecture, mathematics, engineering and numerous branches of science, but music too. “How many specialists would we need today to attempt Leonardo’s researches?” asks Martin Kemp, emeritus professor of the history of art at Oxford University. “At least 13. Maybe more.”

(3) Like many an autodidact, da Vinci was long on inquisitiveness but short on intellectual self-discipline. He had astonishing powers of observation, an extraordinary talent for making connections between different areas of knowledge, a readiness to challenge contemporary beliefs and an uncanny ability to anticipate future discoveries. But his life yielded an endless succession of untested contraptions, unpublished studies and unfinished artworks.

(4) Anniversaries are normally opportunities for reappraising the legacy of the great man or woman concerned. Da Vinci’s highlights the fact that, outside the field of painting, his legacy—as distinct from his genius—was modest. He had brilliant intuitions in fields as diverse as anatomy and hydraulics, but because he failed to publish his theories and findings, hundreds of years were to pass before they were discovered by someone else.

(5) Even his artistic oeuvre, though sublime, is minute. Fewer than 20 finished works are generally attributed to da Vinci. He failed to complete some of his most important commissions such as the “Adoration of the Magi”. His ill-fated experimentation with materials ruined others, including “The Last Supper”. Hence the paucity (缺乏) of exhibitions devoted to his art in what should be his year of years. Florence is commemorating him with a show devoted to his master, Verrocchio.

(6) Born in 1452, the son of a notary and a peasant woman, da Vinci had a lonely childhood and—probably left-handed—grew up something of a misfit. He spent much of his life outside his native Tuscany in Milan, Rome and finally France as the guest of King Francis I. He died at Amboise in 1519.

(7) Such is the status he has acquired as the definitive, universal genius that the few questions raised in his quincentenary year are being put almost surreptitiously, as in a show at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome that largely comprises models based on da Vinci’s designs. It opens with a display of treatises and often exquisite drawings by other Tuscan artist-engineers, including Francesco di Giorgio Martini, that show da Vinci was far from unique in combining technology with painting—and that some of his peers managed to get a lot more built or printed than he did.

(8) Paradoxically, the most direct applications of da Vinci’s researches outside art are to be found within his art. His understanding of physics, botany and geology vastly enhanced his painting. His study of light enabled him to develop sfumato (晕染法), the technique that gives the outlines of his subjects their naturally undefined quality. “And if he hadn’t studied anatomy, he wouldn’t have been able to paint the most enigmatic smile in the history of painting,” says Fiorenzo Galli, the director-general of the Leonardo da Vinci National Museum of Science and Technology in Milan.

(9) The “Mona Lisa” has become the world’s best-known painting. Da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man” is the world’s best-known drawing. Does that make him the greatest artist in the Western tradition? Even Professor Kemp, who has spent a lifetime studying da Vinci’s achievements, hesitates to go that far, stressing instead the Tuscan master’s huge influence on other painters. “If you were looking for someone who did as much to divert the stream of art, then you would have to keep searching until you came to Picasso,” he says. Da Vinci revolutionised Madonna and Child compositions, and altered the portrayal of narrative subjects and the way portraits were composed. Jonathan Nelson, who teaches art history at Syracuse University in Florence, notes that he was also the first artist to give women realistic bodies “with anatomically identifiable musculature, but looking soft and feminine”.

(10) The notion that da Vinci stands alongside Michelangelo and Raphael at the very pinnacle of artistic achievement is nonetheless relatively modern. Until well into the 19th century, he was seen as a genius, but on a level below the others. As Donald Sassoon, a British historian, has recounted in his book, “Becoming Mona Lisa”, published in 2001, it was anti-clerical French historians who initiated the “cult of Leonardo”, seeing in him an ally in the fight against religious obscurantism: “He was not afraid to dissect corpses; he did not paint halos on his religious figures…Unlike Raphael and Michelangelo, he was never the servant of popes. He put Man at the centre of creation.”

(11) Those and other factors have endeared him to a wider, contemporary public. Da Vinci abhorred the slaughter of animals and was probably a vegetarian. He satisfies the modern requirement for artists to be outsiders with an eccentric streak. And his creative record chimes perfectly with the spirit of an age that tolerates, even venerates, unfinished work—all the more so if it is cryptic. Surveying the events this year to celebrate da Vinci’s genius, Professor Nelson says “I think these shows tell us more about us than about him. “

Passage Four

(1) Our next task is to consider the policies and principles a ruler ought to follow in dealing with his subjects or with his friends. Since I know many people have written on this subject, I am concerned it may be thought presumptuous for me to write on it as well, especially since what I have to say, as regards this question in particular, will differ greatly from the recommendations of others. But my hope is to write a book that will be useful, at least to those who read it intelligently, and so I thought it sensible to go straight to a discussion of how things are in real life and not waste time with a discussion of an imaginary world. For many authors have constructed imaginary republics and principalities that have never existed in practice and never could; for the gap between how people actually behave and how they ought to behave is so great that anyone who ignores everyday reality in order to live up to an ideal will soon discover he has been taught how to destroy himself, not how to preserve himself. For anyone who wants to act the part of a good man in all circumstances will bring about his own ruin, for those he has to deal with will not all be good So it is necessary for a ruler, if he wants to hold on to power, to learn how not to be good, and to know when it is and when it is not necessary to use this knowledge.

(2) Let us leave to one side, then, all discussion of imaginary rulers and talk about practical realities. I maintain that all men, when people talk about them, and especially rulers, because they hold positions of authority, are described in terms of qualities that are inextricably linked to censure or to praise. So one man is described as generous, another as a miser; one is called open-handed, another tight-fisted; one man is cruel, another gentle; one untrustworthy, another reliable; one effeminate and cowardly, another bold and violent; one sympathetic, another self-important; one promiscuous, another monogamous; one straightforward, another duplicitous; one tough, another easy-going; one serious, another cheerful; one religious, another atheistical; and so on.

(3) Now I know everyone will agree that if a ruler could have all the good qualities I have listed and none of the bad ones, then this would be an excellent state of affairs. But one cannot have all the good qualities, nor always act in a praiseworthy fashion, for we do not live in an ideal world. You have to be canny enough to avoid being thought to have those evil qualities that would make it impossible for you to retain power; as for those that are compatible with holding on to power, you should avoid them if you can; but if you cannot, then you should not worry too much if people say you have them. Above all, do not be upset if you are supposed to have those vices a ruler needs if he is going to stay securely in power, for, if you think about it, you will realize there are some ways of behaving that are supposed to be virtuous, but would lead to your downfall, and others that are supposed to be wicked, but will lead to your welfare and peace of mind.

Passage Three

Passage Four