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    THURBER The Unicorn in The Garden

    Uploaded by

    Juan Rizzo
    A man saw a unicorn eating roses in his garden one morning. When he told his wife, she did not believe him and threatened to have him committed to an asylum. Later, when he saw the unicorn eating a lily, he told his wife again. She called the police and a psychiatrist, telling them her husband saw a unicorn. They came and seized the wife, determining she was insane since unicorns are mythical. They committed her to an asylum while the husband was proven sane and lived happily.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    THURBER The Unicorn in The Garden

    Uploaded by

    Juan Rizzo
    64 views2 pages
    A man saw a unicorn eating roses in his garden one morning. When he told his wife, she did not believe him and threatened to have him committed to an asylum. Later, when he saw the unicorn eating a lily, he told his wife again. She called the police and a psychiatrist, telling them her husband saw a unicorn. They came and seized the wife, determining she was insane since unicorns are mythical. They committed her to an asylum while the husband was proven sane and lived happily.

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    THURBER the Unicorn in the Garden

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    A man saw a unicorn eating roses in his garden one morning. When he told his wife, she did not believe him and threatened to have him committed to an asylum. Later, when he saw the unicorn eating a lily, he told his wife again. She called the police and a psychiatrist, telling them her husband saw a unicorn. They came and seized the wife, determining she was insane since unicorns are mythical. They committed her to an asylum while the husband was proven sane and lived happily.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    64 views2 pages

    THURBER The Unicorn in The Garden

    Uploaded by

    Juan Rizzo
    A man saw a unicorn eating roses in his garden one morning. When he told his wife, she did not believe him and threatened to have him committed to an asylum. Later, when he saw the unicorn eating a lily, he told his wife again. She called the police and a psychiatrist, telling them her husband saw a unicorn. They came and seized the wife, determining she was insane since unicorns are mythical. They committed her to an asylum while the husband was proven sane and lived happily.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 2

    T HE U NICORN IN THE G ARDEN

    by James Thurber, reprinted from Fables For Our Time

    1 Once upon a sunny morning a man who sat in a breakfast nook looked
    2 up from his scrambled eggs to see a white unicorn with a golden horn
    3 quietly cropping the roses in the garden. The man went up to the
    4 bedroom where his wife was still asleep and woke her. “There’s a
    5 unicorn in the garden,” he said. “Eating roses.” She opened one
    6 unfriendly eye and looked at him.
    7 “The unicorn is a mythical beast,” she said, and turned her back on
    8 him. The man walked slowly downstairs and out into the garden. The
    9 unicorn was still there; now he was browsing among the tulips. “Here,
    10 unicorn,” said the man, and he pulled up a lily and gave it to him. The
    11 unicorn ate it gravely. With a high heart, because there was a unicorn in
    12 his garden, the man went upstairs and roused his wife again. “The
    13 unicorn,” he said, “ate a lily.” His wife sat up in bed and looked at him
    14 coldly. “You are a booby,” she said, “and I am going to have you put in
    15 the booby-hatch.”
    16 The man, who had never liked the words “booby” and “booby-
    17 hatch,” and who liked them even less on a shining morning when there
    18 was a unicorn in the garden, thought for a moment. “We’ll see about
    19 that,” he said. He walked over to the door. “He has a golden horn in the
    20 middle of his forehead,” he told her. Then he went back to the garden
    21 to watch the unicorn; but the unicorn had gone away. The man sat down
    22 among the roses and went to sleep.
    23 As soon as the husband had gone out of the house, the wife got up
    24 and dressed as fast as she could. She was very excited and there was a
    25 gloat in her eye. She telephoned the police and she telephoned a
    26 psychiatrist; she told them to hurry to her house and bring a strait-
    27 jacket. When the police and the psychiatrist arrived they sat down in
    28 chairs and looked at her, with great interest.
    29 “My husband,” she said, “saw a unicorn this morning.” The police
    30 looked at the psychiatrist and the psychiatrist looked at the police. “He
    31 told me it ate a lily,” she said. The psychiatrist looked at the police and
    32 the police looked at the psychiatrist. “He told me it had a golden horn
    33 in the middle of its forehead,” she said. At a solemn signal from the
    34 psychiatrist, the police leaped from their chairs and seized the wife.
    35 They had a hard time subduing her, for she put up a terrific struggle,
    1
    36 but they finally subdued her. Just as they got her into the strait-jacket,
    37 the husband came back into the house.
    38 “Did you tell your wife you saw a unicorn?” asked the police. “Of
    39 course not,” said the husband. “The unicorn is a mythical beast.” “That’s
    40 all I wanted to know,” said the psychiatrist. “Take her away. I’m sorry,
    41 sir, but your wife is as crazy as a jaybird.”
    42 So they took her away, cursing and screaming, and shut her up in an
    43 institution. The husband lived happily ever after.
    44 Moral: Don’t count your boobies until they are hatched.

    GLOSSARY

    booby: in this context, a crazy person (probably from the name of a stupid
    extinct bird).
    booby-hatch: a mental institution, a place where the insane are kept.
    breakfast nook: a little side room for eating breakfast.
    browsing: sampling or tasting here and there.
    “crazy as a jaybird”: extremely crazy or hopelessly insane.
    cropping: clipping or cutting close to the root.
    cursing: using dirty or obscene speech.
    “Don’t count your boobies until they are hatched”: from the American
    expression “Don’t count your chickens before they are hatched,” meaning
    “Don’t count on things to turn out exactly as you planned them.”
    gloat: a look of malice or greed.
    institution: a mental institution, an insane asylum.
    jaybird (jay): a bird of the crow family that is noisy and brightly colored.
    moral: in this context, the “lesson” of the story.
    mythical: relating to a myth, hence not real.
    psychiatrist: a mental doctor.
    solemn: grave or serious.
    strait-jacket: an armless belted jacket used to confine the violently insane
    subdue, subduing: capturing, seizing.
    unicorn: a mythical beast which looks like a horse with a horn in the center
    of the head.
    Source: http://english.glendale.cc.ca.us/unicorn1.html

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