Write a précis of the following passage in about 120 words and suggest a

suitable title:
During my vacation last May, I had a hard time choosing a tour. Flights to
Japan, Hong Kong and Australia are just too common. What I wanted was
somewhere exciting and exotic, a place where I could be spared from the
holiday tour crowds. I was so happy when John called up, suggesting a trip to
Cherokee, a county in the state of Oklahoma. I agreed and went off with the
preparation immediately.
We took a flight to Cherokee and visited a town called Qualla Boundary
surrounded by magnificent mountain scenery, the town painted a paradise
before us. With its Oconaluftee Indian Village reproducing tribal crafts and
lifestyles of the 18th century and the outdoor historical pageant Unto These
Hills playing six times weekly in the summer nights, Qualla Boundary tries to
present a brief image of the Cherokee past to the tourists.
Despite the language barrier, we managed to find our way to the souvenir
shops with the help of the natives. The shops were filled with rubber
tomahawks and colourful traditional war bonnets, made of dyed turkey
feathers. Tepees, cone-shaped tents made from animal skin, were also pitched
near the shops. "Welcome! Want to get anything?" We looked up and saw a
middle-aged man smiling at us. We were very surprised by his fluent English.
He introduced himself as George and we ended up chatting till lunch time
when he invited us for lunch at a nearby coffee shop.
"Sometimes, I've to work from morning to sunset during the tour season.
Anyway, this is still better off than being a woodcutter ..." Remembrance
weighed heavy on George's mind and he went on to tell us that he used to cut
firewood for a living but could hardly make ends meet. We learnt from him
that the Cherokees do not depend solely on trade for survival. During the tour
off-peak period, the tribe would have to try out other means for income. One
of the successful ways is the "Bingo Weekend". On the Friday afternoons of the
Bingo weekends, a large bingo hall was opened, attracting huge crowds of
people to the various kinds of games like the Super Jackpot and the Warrior
Game Special. According to George, these forms of entertainment fetch them
great returns.
Our final stop in Qualla Boundary was at the museum where arts, ranging from
the simple hand-woven oak baskets to wood and stone carvings of wolves,
ravens and other symbols of Cherokee cosmology are displayed. Back at home,
I really missed the place and I would of course look forward to the next trip to
another exotic place.

Write a précis of the following passage in about 120 words and suggest a
suitable title:
All the evils in this world are brought about by the persons who are always up
and doing, but do not know when they ought to be up nor what they ought to
be doing. The devil, I take it, is still the busiest creature in the universe, and I
can quite imagine him denouncing laziness and becoming angry at the smallest
waste of time. In his kingdom, I will wager, nobody is allowed to do nothing,
not even for a single afternoon. The world, we all freely admit, is in a muddle
but I for one do not think that it is laziness that has brought it to such a pass. It
is not the active virtues that it lacks but the passive ones; it is capable of
anything but kindness and a little steady thought. There is still plenty of energy
in the world (there never were more fussy people about), but most of it is
simply misdirected. If, for example, in July 1914, when there was some capital
idling weather, everybody, emperors, Kings, arch dukes, statesmen, generals,
journalists, had been suddenly smitten with an intense desire to do nothing,
just to hang about in the sunshine and consume tobacco, then we should all
have been much better off than we are now. But no, the doctrine of the
strenuous life still went unchallenged; there must be no time wasted;
something must be done. Again, suppose our statesmen, instead of rushing off
to Versailles with a bundle of ill-digested notions and great deal of energy to
dissipate had all taken a fortnight off, away from all correspondence and
interviews and what not, and had simply lounged about on some hillside or
other apparently doing nothing for the first time in their energetic lives, then
they might have gone to their so-called peace conference and come away
again with their reputations still unsoiled and the affairs of the world in good
trim. Even at the present time, if half of the politicians in Europe would
relinquish the notion that laziness is crime and go away and do nothing for a
little space, we should certainly gain by it. Other examples come crowding into
mind. Thus, every now and then, certain religious sects hold conferences; but
though there are evils abroad that are mountains high, though the fate of
civilization is still doubtful, the members who attend these conferences spend
their time condemning the length of ladies’ skirts and the noisiness of dance
bands. They would all be better employed lying flat on their backs somewhere,
staring at the sky and recovering their mental health.
Write a précis of the following passage in about 120 words and suggest a
suitable title:
It is in the temperate countries of northern Europe that the beneficial effects
of cold are most manifest. A cold climate seems to stimulate energy by acting
as an obstacle. In the face of an insuperable obstacle our energies are numbed
by despair; the total absence of obstacles, on the other hand leaves no room
for the exercise and training of energy; but a struggle against difficulties that
we have a fair hope of over-coming, calls into active operation all our powers.
In like manner, while intense cold numbs human energies, and a hot climate
affords little motive for exertion, moderate cold seems to have a bracing effect
on the human race. In a moderately cold climate man is engaged in an
arduous, but no hopeless struggles and with the inclemency of the weather. He
has to build strong houses and procure thick clothes to keep himself warm. To
supply fuel for his fires, he must hew down trees and dig coal out of the earth.
In the open air, unless he moves quickly, he will suffer pain from the biting
wind. Finally, in order to replenish the expenditure of bodily tissue caused by
his necessary exertions, he has to procure for himself plenty of nourishing
food.
Quite different is the lot of man in the tropics. In the neighbourhood of the
equator there is little need of clothes or fire, and it is possible with perfect
comfort and no danger to health, to pass the livelong day stretched out on the
bare ground beneath the shade of a tree. A very little fruit or vegetable food is
required to sustain life under such circumstances, and that little can be
obtained without much exertion from the bounteous earth.
We may recognize must the same difference between ourselves at different
seasons of the year, as there is between human nature in the tropics and in
temperate climes. In hot weather we are generally languid and inclined to take
life easily; but when the cold season comes, we find that we are more inclined
to vigorous exertion of our minds and bodies.
Write a précis of the following passage in about 120 words and suggest a
suitable title:
I think modern educational theorists are inclined to attach too much
importance to the negative virtue of not interfering with children, and too little
to the positive merit of enjoying their company. If you have the sort of liking
for children that many people have for horses or dogs, they will be apt to
respond to your suggestions, and to accept prohibitions, perhaps with some
good-humoured grumbling, but without resentment. It is no use to have the
sort of liking that consists in regarding them as a field for valuable social
endeavour, or what amounts to the same thing as an outlet for power-
impulses. No child will be grateful for an interest in him that springs from the
thought that he will have a vote to be secured for your party or a body to be
sacrificed to king and country. The desirable sort of interest is that which
consists in spontaneous pleasure in the presence of children, without any
ulterior purpose. Teachers who have this quality will seldom need to interfere
with children's freedom, but will be able to do so, when necessary, without
causing psychological damage.
Unfortunately, it is utterly impossible for over-worked teachers to preserve an
instinctive liking for children; they are bound to come to feel towards them as
the proverbial confectioner's apprentice does towards macaroons. I do not
think that education ought to be anyone's whole profession: it should be
undertaken for at most two hours a day by people whose remaining hours are
spent away from children. The society of the young is fatiguing, especially
when strict discipline is avoided. Fatigue, in the end, produces irritation, which
is likely to express itself somehow, whatever theories the harassed teacher
may have taught himself or herself to believe. The necessary friendliness
cannot be preserved by self-control alone. But where it exists, it should be
unnecessary to have rules in advance as to how "naughty" children are to be
treated, since impulse is likely to lead to the right decision, and almost any
decision will be right if the child feels that you like him. No rules, however
wise, are a substitute for affection and tact.
Write a précis of the following passage in about 120 words and suggest a
suitable title:
Manto was a victim of some kind of social ambivalence that converged on self-
righteousness, hypocrisy, and mental obtuseness. His detractors branded him
as vulgar and obscene and implicated him into a long-dawn legal battle
questioning the moral validity of his writings. Without being deterred by their
negative tactics, he remained firm in his commitment to exploring the stark
realities of life offensive to the conservative taste of some self-styled purists. In
the line of Freud, he sought to unravel the mysteries of sex not in an abstract,
non-earthly manner but in a palpable, fleshy permutation signifying his deep
concern for the socially disabled and depressed classes of society, like petty
wage-earners, pimps, and prostitutes.
For Manto, man is neither an angel nor a devil, but a mix of both. His middle
and lower middle class characters think, feel and act like human beings.
Without feigning virtuosity, he was able to strike a rapport with his readers on
some of the most vital sociomoral issues concerning them. As a realist, he was
fully conscious of the yawning gap between appearance and reality; in fact,
nothing vexed him more than a demonstrable duality in human behaviour at
different levels of the social hierarchy. He had an unjaundiced view of man’s
faults and follies. As a literary artist, he treated vulgarity discreetly --- without
ever sounding vulgar in the process. Like Joyce, Lawrence, and Caldwell, in
Manto’s work too, men and women of the age find their own restlessness
accurately mirrored. And like them, Manto was also ‘raised above his own self
by his sombre enthusiasm’.