about pison

William Somerset Maugham was born in Paris, the sixth and youngest son of the solicitor to the British embassy. Maugham learned French as his native tongue. At the age of 10, Maugham was orphaned and sent to England to live with his uncle, the Reverend Henry MacDonald Maugham. Educated at King's School, Canterbury, where he developed a stammer that he never outgrew, and Heidelberg University, Maugham then studied six years medicine in London. He qualified in 1897 as doctor from St. Thomas' medical school, but abandoned medicine after the success of his first novels and plays.
Maugham lived in Paris for ten years as a struggling young author. In 1897 appeared his first novel, LIZA OF LAMBETH, which drew on his experiences of attending women in childbirth. Maugham named his daughter and only child, Elizabeth 'Liza' Mary Maugham, after the title character. His first play, A MAN OF HONOUR, was produced in 1903. Four of his dramas ran simultaneously in London in 1904. Maugham's breakthrough novel was the semi-autobiographical OF HUMAN BONDAGE (1915), which is usually considered his outstanding achievement. The story follows the childhood, youth, and early manhood of Philip Carey, who is born with a clubfoot. Philip never knew his father and his mother only for a brief space. He is raised by a religious aunt and uncle, but the real process of his education, after the end of an unsatisfactory social life, begins in Heidelberg. Philip goes to Paris to study art, and at the age of thirty he qualifies as a doctor. Finally he marries Sally Athelny, a normal, healthy, happy girl.
With the outbreak of WW I, Maugham volunteered for the Red Cross, and was stationed in France for a period. There he met Gerald Haxton (1892-1944), an American, who became his companion. Disguising himself as a reporter, Maugham served as an espionage agent for British Secret Intelligence Service in Russia in 1916-17, but his stuttering and poor health hindered his career in this field. In 1917 he married Syrie Barnardo Wellcome, an interior decorator; they were divored in 1927-8. On his return from Russia, he spent a year in a sanatorium in Scotland. Maugham then set off with Haxton on a series of travels to eastern Asia, the Pacific Islands, and Mexico. In many novels the surroundings also are international. Maugham's most famous story, which became the play RAIN and was made into several movies, was inspired by a missionary and prostitute among his fellow passengers on a trip to Pago Pago.
THE MOON AND THE SIXPENCE (1919) was the story of Charles Strickland (or actually Paul Gauguin), an artist, whose rejection of Western civilization led to his departure for Tahiti. There he is blinded by leprosy but still continues painting. Maugham reused elements of his Pacific diaries in TREMBLING OF A LEAF (1921), which included the story 'Rain,' adapted to the stage by John Colton and Clemence Randolph in 1922.
In 1928 Maugham settled in Cape Ferrat in France. His plays, including THE CIRCLE (1921), a satire of social life, OUR BETTERS (1923), about Americans in Europe, and THE CONSTANT WIFE (1927), about a wife who takes revenge on her unfaithful husband, were performed in Europe and in the United States. During World War II Maugham lived in Hollywood, where he worked on the screen adaptation of his novel RAZORS EDGE (1944). "This book consists of my recollections of a man with whom I was thrown into close contact only at long intervals, and I have little knowledge of what happened to him in between," Maugham said in the beginning of the story. "I have invented nothing." Maugham tells of a young American veteran who moves through superbly described settings: Italy, London, the Riviera, Montparnasse. He seeks in the end relief in India from the horrors of war and gains a sense of being at one with the Absolute, through the Indian philosophical system known as Vedanta. Maugham himself had in 1938 visited India, where fainted in an ashram, and met a holy man named Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi.
As an agent and writer Maugham was a link in the long tradition  Ben Johnson and Daniel Defoe to the modern day writers John Le Carré, John Dickson Carr, Alec Waugh and Ted Allbeury, who all have worked for the secret service. It is said that the modern spy story began with Maugham's ASHENDEN: OR THE BRITISH AGENT (1928), a collection of six short stories set in Switzerland, France, Russia, and Italy. It was partly based on the author's own experiences. The protagonist, Ashenden, appeared also in CAKES AND ALE (1930) and The Moon and the Sixpence. Alfred Hitchcock used in Secret Agent (1936) specifically the stories 'The Traitor' and 'The Hairless Mexican'. In the film, set in Switzerland, an agents kill a wrong man and then goes after the right one. A chocolate factory is used by the crooks' as a headquarters.

human resourceof dell

Human resource of dell

Dell's been a results-driven company for a long time. For many years, we were results-driven almost to the exclusion of everything else! In many ways, that has accounted for our success in the marketplace. One of the things I discovered is that when your stock is going up 300 to 400 per cent a year, no one pays a lot of attention to issues around "effective management" or making people feel like they're on a career track; and people are willing to work really hard for really long periods because the payoff is so huge.

Our crisis of conscience came in 2001 when, for the first time, we had to lay people off. In mid to late 2001 we went through a self-discovery process where we started to ask, "If we aren't going to be a company where you can come in and be rich by noon tomorrow, what are we? What do we aspire to? What kind of company do we want to be?" Late in 2001 our president Kevin Rollins and CEO Michael Dell began a dialogue about the need and what it really means to be a "great company" and a "great place to work."

In the end we came up with what probably looks to outsiders like a beliefs-and-values statement. We call it "The Soul of Dell." In truth it is a statement of our aspirations as a company. There are five aspects to the Soul of Dell: the Dell Team, Customers, Direct Relationships, Global Citizenship and Winning. We shared early drafts of the documents with all of our Vice Presidents around the world, and had some great dialogue about what we together aspired to become.

The biggest gap was between where we were and where we wanted to be with the Dell Team. So we started to talk about what it would mean to be a winning culture. What that came to mean for us was that we would have to broaden the definition of what we cared about, beyond just results. We continue to care very much about what was accomplished, but also how it was accomplished. As you might expect, when you come out with a beliefs-and-values statement after focusing more on the outcome for the last 15 years, employees are going to be a little bit skeptical. In the first year, we had a series of programs, town-hall meetings, brown-bag sessions and other discussions to talk about what we were aspiring to do-all of which were met with great enthusiasm and great skepticism at the same time. The enthusiasm was driven by the common view that we needed to do more to become a truly great place to work over time. The skepticism was driven by a concern about whether or not we believed and were committed to what we were saying.

Last year, we put some teeth in our effort to improve the quality of management and improve the culture of the company. We have an employee opinion survey, "Tell Dell." We decided to administer the survey twice a year, and we asked that every vice president and every director get 20 percent better results than in the survey before. In some parts of the organization, it was driven down to every manager. But we wanted to send a signal: The results are important, but how you get results is also important. At first people said, "Yeah, that's nice. Will they really pay attention?" But the major change we made was to identify metrics, based on responses by employees at every level, that measured how well managers managed and how well leaders led. In short, we decided employees would vote on whether or not we had made any progress.

Summary of the beggar

Summary

Skvortsoff was a well-to-do advocate. One day a beggar came to his door. His name was Lushkoff. He was wearing a fawn-coloured tattered overcoat. He had dull, drunken eyes. He had red spot on either cheek.

The beggar said that he had been a village school teacher but he had lost his job. He had no money and so he was forced to beg.

Skvortsoff recalled that he had seen the beggar the other day in another street. There he had said that he had been a student who had been expelled. He was angry with the beggar for telling a shameless lie. He threatened to call the police and have him arrested for trying to cheat people.

For a while the beggar stuck to what he had said. But soon he broke down. He admitted that he had been telling lies to make people take pity on him. In fact he had been a singer in a Russian choir. He was a drunkard and had been dismissed. Now he had no work to do and no way to support himself. He lived by begging.

Skvortsoff told him that he must work to earn a living. Lushkoff pleaded that he was willing to work but no one offered him any work to do. Skvortsoff asked him if he would chop wood for him. Lushkoff had to say that he would.

Skvortsoff called his cook Olga. He told her to lead Lushkoff to the woodshed and let him chop wood. Lushkoff followed Olga unwillingly. In fact he had never meant to chop wood but he had been trapped by his own words.

Skvortsoff hurried into the dining room. From there he watched the cook leading the beggar to the woodshed. She opened the door of the woodshed. She flung an axe down at his feet. He lifted the axe and hit a piece of wood irresolutely. It was a feeble effort. Skvortsoff was sorry to have set that menial work to that drunkard beggar who was not fit for thai work. He came back to his study.

After an hour Olga came in. She told Skvortsoff that Lushkoff had chopped the wood. Skvortsoff was pleased. He gave her half a rouble foi Lushkoff. He said that if Lushkoff desired he could come to chop wood on the first of every month.

Lushkoff came to chop wood regularly on the first of every month. He was always given work and he earned a little money every time.

When Skvortsoff moved into another house, he asked Lushkoff to help in packing and hauling the furniture. He hardly did anything. He walked behind the wagons hanging his head. But Skvortsoff believed that he had done his job well. He gave Lushkoff a rouble. Lushkoff knew how to read and write. Skvortsoff gave him a letter and asked Lushkoff to go to a friend who would give him some copying work to do. Lushkoff went away. He never came back again.
Two years passed. One evening Skvortsoff saw Lushkoff at the tickel window of a theatre. He was well dressed. He was buying a ticket. He told Skvortsoff that he was a notary and got thirty-five roubles a month.

Skvortsoff was delighted because he had been able to push a depraved beggar on the right path. Lushkoff thanked him for his kindness because he had pulled him oul of a sinking pit. But he said that the true credit for changing him went tc Olga. Naturally, this surprised Skvortsoff. Lushkoff explained that he had never chopped a single piece of wood. Olga chopped the wood for hinr and gave him the money. She would chide him. She would tell him that he would go to hell.There was no hope for him. She wept for him. She suffered for him. Her words, her sacrifice and her suffering for him had an inexplicable influence on him. He began to change. He stopped drinking He was grateful to her. He could never forget .

THE LUNCHEON

Summary of 'The Luncheon'

The writer of 'The Luncheon' William Somerset Maugham, in this short story,relates about a lady who is an admirer of his stories. She wins the author's favour and expresses her wish to meet him at a high class restaurant.William exposes the false motives of modest eating habits, of the middle classes with a touch of humour.
Twenty years ago the author was living in Paris, when he had met a lady, who is an admirer of his stories. She had met him at a play and relates to him the incident during the interval which had occurred at that time. She had read a book written by him, and had written a letter to him about her views. Another letter was posted, stating about her visit to Paris and her desire to have a little luncheon at the Foyots, a restaurant where French senators eat. William was not a rich man and had never even thought of visiting that restaurant, nor did he possess the art of refusing her request.
Estimating the cost of a luncheon, which should not cost more than fifteen Francs,he decided to cut down coffee from his menu, so that he could have enough for himself for the next two weeks. His meeting was fixed on Thursday, at half past twelve, through correspondence.The lady was in her Forties, talkative, and not attractive. She had ordered for Salmon,and Caviare, while the Salmon was being prepared.William had ordered for the cheapest dish mutton- chops.
After the meal, she had ordered for white champagne. She kept enjoying the meal, and chatting about art, literature, and music, while William kept wondering about the bill.The bill of fare was soaring above that which he had anticipated.When the waiter had come with the bill she waived him aside with an air of gesture and ordered for Asparagus, the horribly expensive dish.

The Road Not Taken" (1916)
The narrator comes upon a fork in the road while walking through a yellow wood. He considers both paths and concludes that each one is equally well-traveled and appealing. After choosing one of the roads, the narrator tells himself that he will come back to this fork one day in order to try the other road. However, he realizes that it is unlikely that he will ever have the opportunity to come back to this specific point in time because his choice of path will simply lead to other forks in the road (and other decisions). The narrator ends on a nostalgic note, wondering how different things would have been had he chosen the other path.
Analysis
This poem is made up of four stanzas of five lines, each with a rhyme scheme of ABAAB.
Along with “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” this poem is one of Frost’s most beloved works and is frequently studied in high school literature classes. Since its publication, many readers have analyzed the poem as a nostalgic commentary on life choices. The narrator decided to seize the day and express himself as an individual by choosing the road that was “less traveled by.” As a result of this decision, the narrator claims, his life was fundamentally different that it would have been had he chosen the more well-traveled path.
This reading of the poem is extremely popular because every reader can empathize with the narrator’s decision: having to choose between two paths without having any knowledge of where each road will lead. Moreover, the narrator’s decision to choose the “less traveled” path demonstrates his courage. Rather than taking the safe path that others have traveled, the narrator prefers to make his own way in the world.
However, when we look closer at the text of the poem, it becomes clear that such an idealistic analysis is largely inaccurate. The narrator only distinguishes the paths from one another after he has already selected one and traveled many years through life. When he first comes upon the fork in the road, the paths are described as being fundamentally identical. In terms of beauty, both paths are equally “fair,” and the overall “…passing there / Had worn them really about the same.”
It is only as an old man that the narrator looks back on his life and decides to place such importance on this particular decision in his life. During the first three stanzas, the narrator shows no sense of remorse for his decision nor any acknowledgement that such a decision might be important to his life. Yet, as an old man, the narrator attempts to give a sense of order to his past and perhaps explain why certain things happened to him. Of course, the excuse that he took the road “less traveled by” is false, but the narrator still clings to this decision as a defining moment of his life, not only because of the path that he chose but because he had to make a choice in the first place.

introduction

myself ablok singh