Full Cognition and Language Learning 1st Edition Sadia Belkhir Ebook All Chapters

Download as pdf or txt
Download as pdf or txt
You are on page 1of 49

Full download ebooks at https://ebookmeta.

com

Cognition and Language Learning 1st Edition


Sadia Belkhir

For dowload this book click link below


https://ebookmeta.com/product/cognition-and-language-
learning-1st-edition-sadia-belkhir/

OR CLICK BUTTON

DOWLOAD NOW
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Melodies Rhythm and Cognition in Foreign Language


Learning 1st Edition M. Carmen Fonseca-Mora

https://ebookmeta.com/product/melodies-rhythm-and-cognition-in-
foreign-language-learning-1st-edition-m-carmen-fonseca-mora/

Language, Expressivity and Cognition 1st Edition


Mikolaj Deckert

https://ebookmeta.com/product/language-expressivity-and-
cognition-1st-edition-mikolaj-deckert/

Heterogeneous Contributions to Numerical Cognition:


Learning and Education in Mathematical Cognition 1st
Edition

https://ebookmeta.com/product/heterogeneous-contributions-to-
numerical-cognition-learning-and-education-in-mathematical-
cognition-1st-edition/

Cognition Language and Aging 1st Edition Heather Harris


Wright

https://ebookmeta.com/product/cognition-language-and-aging-1st-
edition-heather-harris-wright/
Concepts, Frames and Cascades in Semantics, Cognition
and Ontology: 7 (Language, Cognition, and Mind, 7)
Sebastian Löbner (Editor)

https://ebookmeta.com/product/concepts-frames-and-cascades-in-
semantics-cognition-and-ontology-7-language-cognition-and-
mind-7-sebastian-lobner-editor/

Language Studies in India Cognition Structure Variation


Rajesh Kumar

https://ebookmeta.com/product/language-studies-in-india-
cognition-structure-variation-rajesh-kumar/

Deep Learning for Robot Perception and Cognition 1st


Edition Alexandros Iosifidis (Editor)

https://ebookmeta.com/product/deep-learning-for-robot-perception-
and-cognition-1st-edition-alexandros-iosifidis-editor/

Style Differences in Cognition Learning and Management


1st Edition Stephen Rayner Eva Cools

https://ebookmeta.com/product/style-differences-in-cognition-
learning-and-management-1st-edition-stephen-rayner-eva-cools/

African Women Writers and the Politics of Gender Sadia


Zulfiqar

https://ebookmeta.com/product/african-women-writers-and-the-
politics-of-gender-sadia-zulfiqar/
Cognition and
Language Learning
Cognition and
Language Learning
Edited by

Sadia Belkhir
Cognition and Language Learning

Edited by Sadia Belkhir

This book first published 2020

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data


A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2020 by Sadia Belkhir and contributors

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN (10): 1-5275-4482-6


ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-4482-6
To Zoltán Kövecses
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ................................................................................... ix

List of Illustrations .................................................................................... xi

List of Tables ........................................................................................... xiii

Chapter One ................................................................................................ 1


Cognition and Language Learning: An Introduction
Sadia Belkhir

Chapter Two ............................................................................................. 13


EFL Learners’ Metacognitive Awareness when Reading Narrative Texts
at Mouloud Mammeri University
Kamila Ammour

Chapter Three ........................................................................................... 25


Vocabulary Attrition Among Kabyle Multilingual Adults with L4 English
Fatima Zohra Chalal

Chapter Four ............................................................................................. 43


Does MIP Promote EFL Learners’ Cognitive Ability to Identify
Metaphors in Written Discourse?
Sadia Belkhir

Chapter Five ............................................................................................. 63


Perception of Greek Vowels by Arabic-Greek Bilinguals:
An Experimental Study
Georgios P. Georgiou

Chapter Six ............................................................................................... 73


The Use of Online Quizlets and Digital Flashcards to Enhance Students’
Cognitive Skills of Retention and Memorisation of Vocabulary
Amel Benaissa
viii Table of Contents

Chapter Seven........................................................................................... 93
Understanding EFL Learners’ Perceptions of Success and Failure
through Attribution Theory
Nora Achili

Chapter Eight .......................................................................................... 125


Anxiety and Cognitive Processing in Learning English as a Foreign
Language: The Case of First-Year Students at the University of Tizi-
Ouzou
Katia Berbar

Chapter Nine........................................................................................... 141


Students’ Perceptions of the Use of Code-Switching in EFL Classes
at Mouloud Mammeri University
Hanane Ait Hamouda

Notes on the Editor and Contributors ..................................................... 155


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The editor is grateful to the authors of the chapters in this volume for their
contributions, commitment and endeavours.
I am also thankful to a number of international scholars who kindly took
part in the double-blind peer review process; namely, Mario Brdar,
University of Osijek, Croatia; Gianina Iordăchioaia, University of Stuttgart,
Germany; Kim Ebensgaard Jensen, University of Copenhagen, Denmark;
Gladys Nyarko Ansah, University of Ghana, Legon, Ghana; Genevoix
Nana, Durham University, UK; Anastasia Georgountzou, National and
Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece; Anna Szczepaniak-Kozak,
Adam Mickiewicz University, PoznaĔ, Poland; Paraskevi Thomou,
University of Crete, Greece; Nadia Idri, University of Bejaia, Algeria; Sin
Wang Chong, the Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China;
Nihada Delibegoviü Džaniü, University of Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina;
Grzegorz DroĪdĪ, University of Silesia, Poland; Sergio Di Carlo, National
University of Córdoba, Argentina; and Roma Kriauþinjnienơ, Vilnius
University, Lithuania.
I also thank the publisher, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, and
particularly its commissioning editor, Adam Rummens, for inviting me to
publish this collection of chapters.
I also acknowledge Eleanor Moore, the proofreader of this volume, who
has shown incomparable conscientiousness and expert precision in her
work.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Fig. 4-1 Source-target domain mapping ................................................... 45


Fig. 4-2 Conceptual domain mapping ...................................................... 61
Fig. 4-3 TIME IS MONEY conceptual mapping ........................................... 61
Fig. 4-4 IDEAS ARE PEOPLE conceptual mapping ...................................... 62
Fig. 4-5 IDEAS ARE OBJECTS conceptual mapping..................................... 62
LIST OF TABLES

Table 2-1 Participants’ Reading Strategy Use and Metacognitive


Awareness ........................................................................................... 18
Table 3-1 Results ...................................................................................... 35
Table 3-2 Materials................................................................................... 41
Table 4-1 Numbers and percentages of identified metaphors
in Extract 1 .......................................................................................... 52
Table 4-2 Numbers and percentages of identified metaphors in Extracts
1, 2, 3, and 4........................................................................................ 53
Table 5-1 Assimilation of the stressed and unstressed Cypriot Greek
vowels to the Egyptian Arabic phonological categories ..................... 68
Table 5-2 Percentages of correct responses with regard to the
discrimination of Cypriot Greek vowel contrasts by both
Egyptian Arabic and Cypriot Greek speakers ..................................... 69
Table 6-1 The Role of Quizlet in Developing Vocabulary Acquisition.... 78
Table 6-2 The Independent-Samples T-test for each Vocabulary
(The Pre-test) ...................................................................................... 82
Table 6-3 The Independent-Samples T-test for each Vocabulary
(The Post-test) ..................................................................................... 83
Table 6-4 The Independent-Samples T-test for the Active Free
Vocabulary (The Post-test) ................................................................. 83
Table 6-5 Paired-Samples T-test for each Vocabulary Aspect
(The Control Group) ........................................................................... 84
Table 6-6 Paired-Samples T-test for each Vocabulary Aspect
(The Experimental Group) .................................................................. 84
Table 7-1 Cronbach’s Alpha Coefficient of the Causal Attribution
Scale .................................................................................................. 102
Table 7-2 Descriptive Statistics of the Participants to Success .............. 104
Table 7-3 Descriptive Statistics of the Participants to Success
according
to Locus ............................................................................................ 105
Table 7-4 Internal vs. External T-test Scores to Success ........................ 105
Table 7-5 Descriptive Statistics of the Participants to Failure ................ 106
Table 7-6 Descriptive Statistics of the Participants to Failure
according to Locus ............................................................................ 107
Table 7-7 Internal vs. External T-test Scores to Failure ......................... 107
xiv List of Tables

Table 7-8 Descriptive Statistics of the Participants to Controllability .... 108


Table 7-9 Causal Attributions (Based on Weiner, 1985) ........................ 120
Table 8-1 Descriptive Statistics for the Questionnaire Items ................. 133
Table 8-2 Anxiety Levels in Relation to the Language Learning Stage ... 137
CHAPTER ONE

COGNITION AND LANGUAGE LEARNING:


AN INTRODUCTION

SADIA BELKHIR

Abstract

The connection between cognition and language is of paramount


importance to language learning and teaching. Exploring this link may lead
to an understanding of the part played by cognition in the English as a
foreign language classroom. This is feasible by shedding light on the way
multiple cognitive devices operate in language learning activities. This
introductory chapter firstly gives a succinct account for the shift from
behavioural to cognitive theories of learning. Secondly, it provides a brief
overview of relevant research in the area of cognition and language learning.
Finally, it describes the major objectives of the present volume and
introduces its nine chapters.

1. Introduction
Research into the relationship between cognition and language is useful in
understanding the functioning of the cognitive mechanisms underlying any
language learning activities, particularly in educational settings. In the late
1950s, there seemed to be two different views concerning this relationship
(Harris 2003). The former relates to Chomsky’s ideas emerging out of his
mentalist theory of generative linguistics. One of the main tenets of his
theory is the existence of a mental innate capacity within all children that
permits them to acquire the grammar of a language. This innate capacity
which he called Language Acquisition Device (LAD), or Universal
Grammar (UG), is believed to be located in the brain (Chomsky 2000). The
second view characterising this relationship belongs to scholars in the fields
of cognitive science and cognitive linguistics who stood out from
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of A hat in the
radio ring
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.

Title: A hat in the radio ring

Author: Garret Smith

Release date: July 29, 2024 [eBook #74149]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: The Frank A. Munsey Company, 1928

Credits: Roger Frank and Sue Clark

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HAT IN THE


RADIO RING ***
A HAT IN THE RADIO RING
By Garret Smith

“The radio’s playin’ hell with politics!”


With this sententious remark, a long speech for Boss Quaid, the
big fellow, who had just taken the end seat at the speakers’ table,
glared at the microphone opposite the toastmaster’s seat halfway
down the long alley of snowy linen. His pale little eyes betrayed
secret anxiety through their slits of fat.
“How so?” asked the lean, dapper gentleman at Quaid’s right.
“Why, it’s this way, Mr. Forsythe,” broke in the rat-faced little man
at the boss’s left. “Take this dinner tonight, for instance. In the old
days when we pulled a keynote dinner like this, that was to set the
pace for the campaign, we could pretty much keep it bottled up. We
had the newspaper boys fixed, and if anybody made the wrong turn,
or started puttin’ tacks on the pike, maybe we could keep it out of
the papers.
“Anyhow, we could get it toned down, or if worse came to worse,
have a statement of our own printed along with it. Now everybody
has a radio and gets the gas right hot from the cylinder. He should
worry about what the papers say next morning.”
“Barney’s right. They don’t even go to meetings any more,”
mourned the boss.
“Unless they’re hand-picked, like this one,” Barney chuckled.
“Barney’s right,” the boss echoed the chuckle.
Barney Fogarty, the big fellow’s secretary, was as loquacious by
nature and profession as his chief was silent. But his speech was the
thought of Quaid, O. K.’d by the big fellow’s guttural “Barney’s right.”
“I take it I better be careful what I say tonight,” the elegant
Forsythe murmured with mock anxiety, as if his utterances were to
be his own spontaneous outbursts.
“If you want the boss to get you nominated for Governor, you
had,” Barney laughed. “As long as you’re cagy about the State power
proposition, it doesn’t matter a whoop what else you say. It’s some
dark horse popping up here tonight that we’re afraid of. Every yahoo
in the State will know it as soon as we do.”
“Barney’s right,” Boss Quaid sighed again. “People hear too damn
much these days.”
Boss Quaid’s domain had for twenty years been practically a one-
party State, dominated by the machine which Quaid till lately held
tight in his fat hand. But lately he had felt his power slipping a little
with this ominous growth of modern publicity. Walls had developed
too many ears.
Now on the eve of the county conventions he was not quite sure
he would get enough hand-picked delegates to dominate the coming
State convention which would nominate a Governor this year. The
question of State control of water power on which the boss saw fit
to hedge was threatening internal disruption.
To-morrow was county convention day. He was hoping that
Forsythe’s speech at this dinner tonight would swing sentiment in
enough doubtful counties to give him a majority of pledged
delegates when the State convention opened.
But he was uncomfortably conscious of that great unseen radio
audience in a hundred thousand homes already settled before their
“speakers,” listening eagerly to the preliminary gossip of the
announcer as the faithful gathered around the tables.
He knew that a wrong note struck at this dinner might start a
thunderstorm up-State over which he would have no control.
Forsythe was worrying, too, under his suave exterior.
“Suppose somebody did break loose tonight,” he remarked,
leaning insinuatingly toward the boss’s secretary. “Couldn’t an
accident happen to the radio temporarily?”
“Oh, nothing raw like that!” Barney deprecated with outpushed
palm. “They’d smell something rotten to the end of the State. No, I
got a better way.”
He glanced at a smaller table adjoining the low platform on which
the speakers’ table stood. It was surrounded by a group of dashing
and determined-appearing young men. At the end of this table,
facing them, sat a dark youth, even more rat-visaged than the red-
headed Barney. He winked knowingly at the latter.
“Who’s that young gunman?” Forsythe asked a little distastefully.
“That’s Jim Neenan,” Barney told him. “He’s a vaudeville actor and
a friend of the organization. Jim and his little pals will kind of
unofficially supervise what goes over the radio. Watch ’em if
anything breaks.”
And something did break. It held off so long that less acute
observers of political nature than Boss Quaid were beginning to
breathe freely.
The harmless preliminary speakers had received polite applause.
Boss Quaid, after a glowing tribute from the toastmaster, had risen,
bobbed his head, grunted, and sat down to the tune of a thunderous
ovation and orchestral strains of “He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”
Then Forsythe, the favored son and real speaker of the evening,
had risen and said nothing dangerous, in burning, glittering
language and at considerable length.
But while his favorite was talking, the roving little eyes of the boss
had settled on the keen, quizzical face of a big, shaggy man at the
other end of the table. The man’s high, thoughtful brow corrugated
as the would-be candidate went on with his mellifluous platitudes.
The pleasant blue eyes, bent intently on the speaker, turned to gray
steel.
Quaid nudged Barney.
“Watch out for Hammond,” he whispered.
When Forsythe sat down, Hammond sat bolt upright in his chair
and stared hard at the toastmaster.
It was not on the cards to have any more speeches. Forsythe’s
address had been planned as the climax of the evening. A half dozen
lay figures and uncertain quantities remained at the speaker’s table
who would be called on as a matter of form. All were supposed to
know better than to do more than rise and bow.
While the prolonged applause for Forsythe was still ringing, the
newspaper men gathered up their notes and departed, leaving the
Associated Press man to let them know if anything unexpected broke
loose at the last minute, not amply covered by the radio.
Then, in its perfunctory course, the name of Martin W. Hammond
of Gainsport was called.
The big man arose promptly. But instead of sitting down with a
bow and a word of greeting, as the man before him had done, he
marched straight down the table to the speakers’ position in front of
the microphone.
“Gentlemen, I beg a moment’s indulgence,” he began in deep,
mellow tones that filled the suddenly silent hall and rang in the ears
of the greater radio audience in a hundred thousand homes. “I did
not come prepared to make a speech, but I cannot let this occasion
pass without saying certain things that the Honorable Mr. Forsythe
left unsaid.”
Boss Quaid grunted and kicked Barney’s shins. Barney turned and
winked at Jim Neenan at the little table.
Neenan and his gang jumped to their feet with a yell of “Hurrah
for Forsythe! Hurrah for the next Governor! Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!”
They chanted it in chorus, crowding to the edge of the platform,
and leaning almost over the speakers’ table, with their faces only a
few feet from the ringing microphone. They kept it up, their cheers
alternated with catcalls.
The tumult spread through the big hall like a contagion. The
whole place was in an uproar. For a minute or two Hammond stood
facing the clamor, a sardonic smile on his face. Then as the noise
continued he leaned over the microphone and tried to go on with his
speech in an effort to reach his radio audience at least.
But the young cheer leaders bent closer to the instrument and
redoubled their efforts. The ether waves bore only an inarticulate
roar.
Twice when the confusion subsided a little he tried it again, only to
be thwarted by a renewal of the racket.
Here and there through the throng there were cries of protest
from the fairer-minded. There were growing indications that the
meeting might break up in a riot.
The toastmaster stood helpless, his eyes fixed on the boss, who
regarded him with an indulgent grin.
At length Hammond gave it up altogether. With a bow and a smile,
he turned and walked out of the hall.
At this gesture a partial hush fell on the crowd. There were cries
of “Shame!” “Call him back!” “Give him a chance!”
Several fist fights were threatened among some of the more
explosive of the faithful. The toastmaster began gesturing for
silence.
Then Jim Neenan leaped to the center of the speakers’ table and
gave an elaborate caricature of the presiding officer’s gestures. As
soon as he could make himself heard, he shouted:
“Gentlemen, inasmuch as Mr. Hammond had to catch a train and
could not make a long speech, I’ve been asked to go on with it.”
Thereupon the vaudeville artist launched into a parody of a
political speech that in a few minutes had restored the crowd to
hilarious good humor. At length the orchestra struck up “Home,
Sweet Home,” and the crowd filed out, most of them convinced that
the whole episode had been a bit of horseplay staged to give a light
touch to a successful occasion.
II.
Boss Quaid was chuckling contentedly as he entered his limousine
with Forsythe, Barney Fogarty, and Jim Neenan. He had expressed
his satisfaction and his gratitude to the manipulators by giving the
dignitaries the slip, with the exception of Forsythe, and inviting the
trio to supper at his favorite roadhouse where neither henchmen nor
reporters would search him out.
“Now we’re all set,” Barney assured Forsythe as they rolled away.
“There were three or four possible bad eggs there tonight,
Hammond among ’em. Hammond was the only one that hatched,
and we squashed him before he got out of the shell, laughed him to
death.”
“Barney’s right,” Quaid agreed.
But for once Barney was wrong. How amazingly, mysteriously
wrong, he learned two and a half hours later, when the party
stopped at an all-night news-stand on the way home and bought
copies of the Press and the Sentinel, the capital city’s two morning
papers.
MARTIN W. HAMMOND
THROWS HAT IN RING
This was the flaring headline that smote his eyes from one front
page, at the top of the dinner story.
HAMMOND FLOUTS FORSYTHE,
DECLARES HIMSELF CANDIDATE
This blazed at him from the other newspaper.
“What!” the boss exploded. “The damned traitor! Sent ’em a
statement! Hell’s bells!”
“Statement nothing!” Barney ejaculated. “These papers are full of
prunes, both of ’em! Why, they say he made this speech as the
dinner feature of the occasion, the Sentinel calls it.”
For several minutes, under the glare of the dome light in Quaid’s
limousine, the four men read, pop-eyed with amazement, the silence
broken only by occasional crackling profanity. There was no doubt
but that both papers had seemingly gone mad.
According to their accounts, Hammond had actually completed a
ringing speech of some twenty minutes’ duration at the dinner, and
at its conclusion had received tumultuous applause. He had
scathingly picked Forsythe’s empty mouthings to pieces, keenly
analyzed the State power proposition, declaring it must be put in the
hands of experts to determine the right policy as between State and
local control. He was personally engaged in such a study now, he
declared, and the State could have his services as Governor to direct
such a study and carry out its results.
There was added a brief account of Hammond’s career as a
successful engineer who had served the State for one term as
engineer ten years before.
Quaid finished reading and dashed the paper to the floor in a
purple rage.
“Sentinel office, George,” he ordered the chauffeur.
The Sentinel was controlled by Quaid. Boon, its managing editor,
and handy man to the boss, was just about to go home when the
enraged and mystified quartet stormed in.
“What the hell?” Quaid demanded, slapping the paper down on
the desk and pointing one pudgy finger at the offensive and mystic
headline. “Are you fellows crazy or drunk?”
“That’s what I wonder!” Boon returned with unwonted spirit.
“We’ve been hunting you boys for two hours, almost lost the trains
on the first two editions, waiting for you to give orders on the
handling of this yarn. Why didn’t you tell us you were going to flop
to Hammond? All we could do was to print the news.”
“News, hell!” Quaid snorted. “Damned lies! Hammond never made
a speech. Tried to; got hooted out.”
Boon leaned close and got a good sample of the breath the
quartet had acquired at the roadhouse, drawing erroneous but not
unnatural conclusions as to their sobriety.
“Say that again slow,” he requested. “I don’t get you.”
Barney said it for him, making from two to four words grow where
one grew before.
“Now I say you ought to get out an extra denying this rot,” Barney
wound up, looking about for confirmation.
“Barney’s right,” declared the boss.
“Now, listen,” Boon exclaimed. “I was glued to that radio horn
from the time your dinner opened until the orchestra stopped
playing ‘Home, Sweet Home.’ Don’t try to tell me I don’t know what
I heard. Half the rest of the office heard it too. About twenty other
people who listened in on the radio in Gobel’s drug store drilled in
here to get the inside dope. The men over in the Press heard it too.
They had me on the wire, asking for a statement from you.”
“Now we all heard Hammond called on at the end of the evening.
We heard him get a whale of a demonstration and some kidding.
Then we heard his speech to the finish and the cheering he got
afterward. We got his speech right from the radio by shorthand.
They heard it all over the State too. We’ve had wires from papers
from one end of the State to the other asking for dope.
“Now, in the face of that, do you want to make an ass of the
whole party by a statement that your keynote dinner was so wet
that you were all too drunk to hear the key speech?”
“Did your reporter hear that speech?” Quaid demanded in
bewilderment.
“No. The boys all left when Forsythe got through. The A. P. man
stayed, but he must have been drunk and gone to sleep. We couldn’t
get anything out of him.”
“Listen, boss,” Barney broke in. “Somebody double crossed us,
unless the spooks have been at work. I bet Hammond played in with
the broadcasting station some way and got ’em to let him break in.
The whole mischief’s been done for tonight. We better lie low till we
find out how it was done.”
“Barney’s right,” Quaid decided, and stalked out.
Barney was right when he said the mischief had been done. But
the following day only increased the mystery of how.
First thing in the morning, the fatal morning of the county
conventions, Quaid began getting wires from leaders all over the
State, asking instructions, and confirming the fact that every radio
user outside of the dinner hall had heard the speech.
Also he had innumerable phone calls from people who had been at
the dinner, asking what it was all about and confirming the fact that
no one at the dinner had heard Hammond’s speech.
Following Barney’s hint, the staff at the radio broadcasting station
were given the third degree. They swore that Hammond’s speech
had come over the regular wire along with the rest of the dinner
program.
Their announcer on duty at the hall that night could shed no
further light, as he had gone home after the Forsythe speech,
arranging with the toastmaster to give the radio “good night.”
Hammond himself, who had a reputation for truth telling, issued a
statement to the afternoon papers exonerating the broadcasting
staff.
“I was invited to speak at the dinner, and I did,” he told the
reporters. “That’s all. I’ll swear to you I made the whole speech right
there. I’m sorry if the gentlemen at the dinner couldn’t hear it, but I
have the statement of my radio audience about a thousand to one
against theirs.”
That’s all they got out of him, and the twinkle in his eye indicated
that he was enjoying himself immensely.
But the speech was on record. That was the important and
practical fact.
Events pressed too fast to waste further time over a puzzle as to
how it got there. Early reports from the counties decided Quaid to
hold off his own statement for another day till he could count noses
of instructed delegates.
It was a worried group who met with him in his office the day
after the county conventions. Forsythe, under his air of debonair
indifference, was decidedly anxious for fear his sponsor might decide
to drop him for the new entrant.
“Give ’em the dope, Barney,” the boss ordered.
“Well, we figure just about forty per cent of the delegates pledged
or sure for Forsythe, and just about the same number for Hammond.
That leaves about twenty per cent waiting to be shown.”
“And that kind hates a dude,” Quaid remarked, looking hard at
Forsythe.
“Meaning that’s what I am?” he asked.
“No! No!” Barney assured him. “He means that’s what they might
figure if you go to talk to ’em personally. They’re shy of city men.
You’re a polished gentleman. Hammond’s sort of rough and ready.
Other things equal, they’d be for him if they got a look at you both.
And it’s a cinch Hammond’ll go around and talk to ’em. I expect Mr.
Quaid would like to keep you both out of sight of those birds. For
once he’d like a straight radio campaign.”
“Barney’s right!” rumbled the boss.
“Perhaps I’d better begin wearing soft shirts and a slouch hat,”
Forsythe suggested wryly.
“Be yourself,” grunted the boss. “I’m for you.”
Forsythe departed, content with this assurance of the boss’s
support, but not altogether optimistic as to the final outcome.
Barney Fogarty retired thoughtfully to his own private office and
went into the silences.
After a little of this, some cryptic phoning resulted in a luncheon
appointment in a discreet back room of one of the city’s quietest
speakeasies.
Late that afternoon Jim Neenan, the handy impersonator and
general utility man, presented himself on private business at the
offices of Thomas Forsythe, who rather distastefully granted the
caller’s request for a confidential conference.
“Look here,” Neenan opened, “I hear you and the boss are honin’
for a pre-convention campaign that’ll limit you an’ Hammond to radio
speeches, figgerin’ it would give you a better break.”
“That seems to be Mr. Quaid’s idea,” Forsythe admitted dryly.
“I suppose you know Hammond has a different idea?”
“I have heard as much.”
“How much would it be worth to you to have it arranged so that
Hammond would be glad of a chance to make it a radio campaign?”
“It might be worth quite a little, but I fail to see what is the
practical use of discussing it.”
“Just this. For a price I might be able to bring it about.”
Forsythe laughed.
“Judging from such of your methods as I have seen I feel safe in
saying I’d pay as high as a thousand dollars if my opponent is
persuaded to such a course and you can convince me that you were
instrumental in bringing it about.”
“Is that a promise?” Neenan demanded.
“It is,” Forsythe agreed again with another cynical laugh. “And if
your machinations result in my nomination I’ll make it another
thousand. And that’s a promise. Now I’ll bid you good day, as I have
another appointment.”
Neenan departed, a crafty smile on his narrow features.
III.
That same evening Warren Hammond arose from a hurried dinner
and gave his pretty young wife an affectionate goodnight kiss.
“Don’t wait up for me, ladybird,” he warned her. “I’ve got to speak
at two meetings, and I may be out till all hours.”
“I wish I could go with you to your first meeting. I’ll be thinking of
you. I’m so proud of my big boy.”
“Even if he does traffic with the powers of darkness and employ
black magic to make himself invisible,” he laughed.
“I think you’re mean, Warren, not to tell me the truth about that
mysterious radio speech. I think everybody there must have been
drunk as one of the papers hinted, and you don’t want to let me
know it.”
Hammond laughed boyishly.
“Why, it was so simple I’m ashamed to tell it. When I do tell you,
you’ll be ashamed to think you didn’t guess it.”
“But do you think it’s nice to fib to everybody about it?”
“Nary a fib,” he denied. “I’ve told nothing but the truth, so help
me. Now stop worrying and go to bed early.”
He kissed her again and was off.
But Warren Hammond did not get to his first meeting. In fact, he
got no more than a scant hundred yards down the narrow country
road that led from his suburban home into the capital city.
He was just shifting his gears into first when he felt the front end
of the car swaying violently back and forth. He threw out the clutch
and jammed on the brakes, but it was too late.
The front of the car lurched over to one side, dropped to the
ground, and plowed down into the ditch at the roadside. He was
thrown forward felt a stinging blow on the head, and then went
unconscious.
A few minutes later a passing car saw the wreck and stopped.
Hammond came to in the ditch beside his car to find a neighbor
applying first aid.
Besides the blow on the head, which had left an ugly welt across
his scalp, both legs were broken. Fortunately the glass in his car was
nonbreakable, and he had suffered no disfiguring cuts.
The cause of the accident proved to be a loose front wheel, which
had come off, completely tipping the car half over. It had all occurred
so suddenly that he had no clear notion of just what had happened
to him, but he assumed that his head had hit one of the top braces,
and that his legs had been broken when he was thrown over the
door.
Never at any time did he suspect that his accident had been
inspired and carefully planned.
But a few days later Jim Neenan, with a smile more deeply
insinuating than ever, again called at the offices of Thomas Forsythe.
He carried with him a copy of an afternoon paper just off the press.
“Perhaps you’ve noticed that I’ve made good on that radio
campaign stuff,” he announced, pointing to a story on the front
page.
Forsythe took the paper and read an announcement by
Hammond’s political manager. The latter would be confined to his
room and bed until long after the State convention, his doctor had
predicted, but would doubtless be restored to complete health by
election time.
In the meantime the physician saw no reason why the patient
should not carry on such mental labor as the pre-convention
campaign required, as soon as he had completely recovered from
the first shock of the accident. It had therefore been arranged that
he should deliver a limited number of speeches by radio, from a
telephone in his room connecting with the broadcasting station.
He would also have a final statement to deliver at the convention
in the same manner, assuming the privilege of a regularly elected
delegate and a leading candidate for head of the ticket.
“How’s that?” Neenan gloated. “Barney tells me you are going to
swing back with a big show of doing the sporting thing by agreeing
to the same program yourself. So we’ve got our wish, and little
Jimmie’s come for his pay.”
“How’s that?”
“Wasn’t I to get one grand if I arranged it so that Hammond
would consent to a radio campaign?”
Forsythe was frankly puzzled for a moment, then saw a light.
“Look here, you young thug, do you mean you deliberately
wrecked Hammond’s car? Suppose you’d killed him! Good Lord, did
you think I meant anything like that? We talked about persuading.”
Neenan grinned.
“We’re practical politicians, ain’t we? There’s different kinds of
persuadin’. Mind, I’m not confessin’ anything, but I leave it to your
judgment if that looks just like an accident. There wasn’t a chance in
the world of his being killed, with a guy hidden in the back of the car
to stop him if he got to goin’ too fast with his wheel loosened up.
“Wasn’t it funny he wasn’t marred up, nothing wrong but a little
tap on the head and a couple of broken legs that laid him up proper
without any permanent hurt? He never guessed that he got that biff
on the bean from a blackjack from behind him, and that his legs was
broken nice and quiet by hand afterwards.”
“You cold-blooded devil!” Forsythe began, but checked himself on
second thought. After all he couldn’t afford to antagonize this crafty
little man.
“Look here,” he went on. “I haven’t got a thousand on hand just
now, and I didn’t mean just that, but here’s a hundred cash on
account, and I’ll make good on the two thousand all right if you can
show you’ve put over my nomination without any more physical
brutality and no danger of a comeback.”
There was a little argument over it, but in the end Neenan left
with his hundred and a promise that he’d earn the big money yet
IV.
So the novel pre-convention radio campaign opened and
developed presently a pitch of excitement seldom exceeded by a
closely contested Presidential election. Twice a week alternately the
courtesy of the capital city’s broadcasting station was extended to
one of the contestants, Hammond reading his speech from his bed
in his little farmhouse in the suburbs, Forsythe delivering his from
the hotel suite which he had taken as headquarters till after the
State convention.
Harking back to the famous “Front Porch” campaigns of certain
Presidential candidates, this campaign of Hammond’s was facetiously
dubbed a “Bedside Campaign.” Forsythe made much of it in his
glittering speeches which continued to evade anything but
generalities regarding the State water power issue.
On the whole the two contestants continued to run neck and neck.
They continued to hold their original blocks of instructed or definitely
committed delegates, each falling some ten per cent short of the
required majority.
And the little block of uncommitted delegates from the rural
districts who held the balance of power, despite repeated rumors of
a break after each radio speech, remained uncommitted and stuck
together.
There had been no personal mud slinging on either hand. They
admired the finished oratory of Forsythe. But equally they admired
Hammond’s clear, cold analysis of the power situation.
They were suspending judgment until the final summing up of
recommendations he promised to make when they assembled for
the convention.
So the time of the State convention arrived, and, as Boss Quaid
had feared, the fight was carried to its floor with the chance of
victory ready to fall either way according to the words a sick man
might utter into his telephone in the privacy of his bedroom.
For when the convention opened, Warren Hammond was really ill,
broken down by the strain of the campaign on top of the shock of
his injuries. With great effort he had finished dictating his final radio
statement which he hoped to read over the wire to the convention.
Now there were grave doubts whether he would be able to read it
himself.
The morning of the convention dawned at last. Into the city’s
convention hall the delegates poured.
Quaid snorted at the spectacle.
“Don’t look much like the old-time batch of handmade ones,” the
big fellow mourned to Barney as they watched from the gallery.
“Nope,” his satellite admitted. “Especially with the skirts in on the
game. But the women ain’t nuthin’ to this Hammond. He’s a woman
and a devil and one of the Lord Almighty’s mysterious ways wrapped
up in one bundle. He’s been one trick ahead of us at every jump.
That accident of his was either plain dumb good luck or fixed by
himself intentional. The poor invalid stuff’s got the women going.
The boys that are feeling him out say even those in the neutral
crowd are leanin’ his way. I’m afraid he’s got us licked, chief.”
“You’ve said it, Barney—afraid I’m about through.”
An out-of-town man under the edge of the gallery hailed a local
acquaintance. “Hello, Dick! Is this the place where you held the
ghost dinner?”
Barney and his chief grinned at each other ruefully.
“They’ll always believe we fellows were blind and dumb that
night,” Barney replied.
“And I’ll always believe those radio people double crossed us
somehow,” Quaid added.
And the big fellow clung to that belief to his dying day.
A good sized knot of delegates came in, making the roof ring with
cheers for Forsythe. Another knot across the hall tried to drown
them out with counter cheers for Hammond.
“Hello, you bedroomers!” Shouted a Forsythe man above the din.
“Go on, you ghost walkers,” a man from the other ranks retorted.
And in Hammond’s sick room out in the little suburban farmhouse,
the invalid was listening to the tumult in the convention hall as it
came to him over his radio. A vigilant wife and nurse kept him
constantly under their eye, shutting off the blaring instrument
whenever he showed signs of getting nervous.
“Remember, Warren, if you overstrain your nerves, the doctor
won’t let you read your speech,” Mrs. Hammond warned him at
intervals.
“I’ve got to read that speech if it kills me,” he told her. “If I don’t
know what’s going on beforehand I won’t be able to put the right
spirit in it.”
And he managed to grin at her cheerily, although it was an
evident effort.
In Forsythe’s headquarters at the hotel near the convention hall,
the other candidate was nervously rehearsing his speech in the
intervals when he was listening in on the radio. Little Jim Neenan
was in constant attendance upon him these days, acting as general
handy man.
The crafty one had taken a room of his own down the corridor
from Forsythe’s suite where he could be on hand night and day to
make himself useful. He was charging nothing for these services, but
he hadn’t forgotten the main chance.
“Remember you’re going to owe me a fat two grand in the course
of the next day or two,” he reminded his self-selected chief at
frequent intervals.
But Forsythe vouchsafed him nothing more by way of reply than a
sarcastic lifting of the eyebrows. At times Neenan studied him
reflectively, and worry lines appeared in the narrow brow. Then
there was a flash of dangerous light in the cold, close-set eyes.
The convention moved through two days of tense suspense and
excitement. During the routine business of organizing, whenever
there was opportunity for a test vote, the original line-up continued
firm.
This was discernible on the second day also, in the cheering and
speeches accompanying the putting of Forsythe and Hammond in
nomination for Governor. The neutrals were still standing in a firm
bloc, waiting for Hammond’s statement.
Then, on the morning of the third day came the long awaited
opportunity. The session opened with a motion that the convention
proceed to ballot for Governor.
Before it was seconded, a Hammond adherent, as previously
arranged with the presiding officer, arose, and after a brief eulogy of
the sick man announced that he had just been informed by
telephone that Mr. Hammond’s doctor had given permission to the
patient to read his address to the convention over the radio that
morning. He therefore moved that the convention extend this
courtesy to Mr. Hammond as one of the nominees.
The motion was carried unanimously, and the time for the address
set at ten thirty, one-half hour away. Then, in accordance also with
agreement, the same privilege was sought and obtained for
Forsythe, and his time set at twelve o’clock.
During the few minutes that remained before Hammond’s voice
was due to be heard over the wire, there was an atmosphere of
electric suspense in no wise mitigated by the blaring of the band
which filled in the interval. In the sick man’s bedroom miles away,
the doctor had just examined the patient and ordered every one else
out of the room but himself and the nurse in order that the invalid
speaker might be as little disturbed as possible.
Pale and trembling he sat propped up in the bed, his manuscript
on a tray before him, and the telephone transmitter on an extension
bracket at his lips. Downstairs his family and immediate friends were
in front of the radio which would hurl back to them the speech he
was about to send out.
In a voice deep and resonant in spite of his weakness he began
his brief statement. The listeners below and the great crowds in the
convention hall down in the city sat breathless.
After outlining his purposes toward the party in case he were
selected, he summarized his finding in the water power problem in
words eloquent for their simple clearness. Finally came the closing
section in which he was to give his long awaited policy.
His councilors listening downstairs, who had worked with him over
the manuscript, knew his suggestion for a long term nonpartisan
commission by heart.
But as he began this section they heard words strangely
unfamiliar. They stared at each other in amazement. Down in the
convention hall it was as though the assemblage had been struck by
a bolt of lightning.
They heard Hammond, the supposed scientific progressive,
deliberately proposing as his conclusions that the State keep its
hands off the water power forever, and leave it in the grasp of the
present private corporations. As his words ceased, it was evident
that in a few brief sentences, Hammond had torn down all the
esteem that he had built up, and with it his hopes of the nomination.
There was a moment of silence in the great hall, and then
pandemonium broke loose. Boss Quaid and Barney Fogarty pounded
each other on the backs and shouted with glee. Hammond had gone
further than Quaid in his most arrogant moments had ever dared go.
“The guy’s gone crazy!” Barney roared.
“Barney, you’re right,” roared the big fellow.
In the Hammond farmhouse the doctor came out of the speaker’s
room to face a horrified group.
“Doctor—has it been too much for him? Is he delirious?” Mrs.
Hammond gasped.
“Oh, no; he’s all right. Seems to be a great relief to him to get it
off his mind,” the doctor reassured her.
“But, doctor, you heard what he said at the last!” Hammond’s
partner insisted. “Altogether different from what he’d planned.”
“Oh, I didn’t notice what he said,” the doctor told him calmly. “I
was busy counting his heart beats.”
V.
A few minutes later, down in the city, little Jim Neenan drove
hurriedly up to the hotel where Forsythe had headquarters, leaped
from his car and made his way up to the Forsythe suite with all
speed.
Forsythe was closeted in his private office, going over for the last
time, the address that he was to deliver over the radio in a few
minutes, but Jim burst in on him unannounced.
“Now do you owe me the two grand?” he demanded triumphantly.
“I do not! What for? Get out of here. Can’t you see I’m busy!”
Forsythe snapped at him.
“What for?” Neenan snarled. “Why, for putting Hammond out of
the running! Didn’t you know I did it?”
Forsythe stared at him in contempt.
“You did it!” he sneered. “That’s a delightful bluff, but I’m too busy
to be amused. I don’t owe you two thousand dollars, and never will.
Now get out, I tell you.”
“But listen, I can prove—”
Neenan got no further. Forsythe stood over him menacingly.
“Another word from you and I’ll ring for a cop and have you
arrested for conspiracy. Remember I know who broke Hammond’s
legs.”
Neenan stared back at him for a moment with eyes turned to steel
gimlets, white hot at the points. Then without a word he left the
room and the suite and hurried down the corridor to his own
apartment.
A few minutes later the eloquent voice of Forsythe was being
poured into the convention hall. He was surpassing himself in his
flights of oratory.
He wound up, deprecating his opponent’s position on the water
power question, and pledging himself to continue a safe and sane
policy of watchful waiting until the time was ripe for the State to act.
Forsythe laid down his manuscript and turned to receive the
plaudits of the group around him.
“Stop! Just a moment, Mr. Forsythe!” came an unfamiliar voice of
thunder from the amplifier of the convention hall, and from the radio
horn in the Forsythe suite. “You have something to confess, Mr.
Forsythe. Do it now, before I’m compelled not only to confess it for
you, but to make a further statement that will make you a fugitive
from justice.”
The booming voice ceased, and for a moment there was absolute
silence.
Then another voice came from the radio. Forsythe started, and
turned deadly pale. He had not spoken a word, but the voice that he
was hearing was seemingly his own.
“I am afraid I will have to confess,” the voice was saying. “My
opponent, Mr. Hammond, has been the victim of a conspiracy. The
closing words of his speech which led you to condemn him just now
were not his own, but the artful interpolation of an impostor clever
at disguising his voice. If you will go to the woodland near the home
of Mr. Hammond, just outside the city, through which the telephone
line passes that brought his speech this morning from his bedroom
to the broadcasting station, you will find still dangling from one of
the poles a wire which the impostor had cut into the telephone line.
It was a simple thing for him to attach a telephone to the end of
that wire and listen in while Mr. Hammond read his speech. When
my opponent reached his long-waited-for conclusion regarding State
water power, the impostor cut him out of the line, and cleverly
imitating Mr. Hammond’s voice, he delivered the false statement
which you heard with so much consternation. What Mr. Hammond
actually read, and you can prove it by getting his manuscript, was in
substance as follows:”
The simulated voice of Forsythe then gave a close approximation
of what Hammond had intended them to hear.
“That is all I have to say,” concluded the pseudo Forsythe.
The real Forsythe, still deathly pale, whirled away from the radio.
“That damned little rat of a Neenan! He double crossed me
because I wouldn’t bribe him! He played the same trick on me that
he did on Hammond. Down to his room quick!”
The group rushed pell-mell down the hall and burst into the room
which Neenan had occupied. But Mr. Neenan had gone, taking with
him the sweet flavor of his revenge.
Over the window sill dangled a wire attached to a telephone
instrument. It ran out along the ledge and connected with the
special wire that had been installed in Forsythe’s suite.
The crafty Neenan had lately feared that his service to Forsythe
would be repudiated, and had prepared the instrument of his
revenge beforehand.
And in the convention hall at this moment the uproar had
subsided to the point where one of Forsythe’s former adherents
could make himself heard.
“Mr. Chairman,” he said, “I move that we dispense with the roll call
and instruct the secretary of the convention to cast one ballot for Mr.
Warren Hammond as our candidate for Governor.”
It was seconded and carried without a dissenting voice.
A few minutes later a local man came across Boss Quaid as he
was slipping quietly out of a side entrance of the convention hall.
“Not leaving us, are you, chief?” the other asked.
“Yep,” he sighed. “Barney’s been intimating lately that I’m a has-
been. Barney’s right.”
VI.
A week after Warren Hammond had taken the oath of office as
Governor of the State, he dropped a line to one Joseph Morris, a
radio announcer employed by the local broadcasting station,
suggesting to Mr. Morris that it might be to his advantage to call and
see him.
“Mr. Morris,” the new Governor began when the young man
appeared, “I feel that I owe you an apology and a reward as well, in
case anything in the line of jobs that I have to dispose of would
appeal to you. I’ve looked you up, and the only thing I find against
you is that on a certain evening when you were acting as announcer
at our party’s keynote pre-convention dinner, you took a chance and
went home early, thereby making me Governor of the State.”
He paused and chuckled at Morris’s utter bewilderment.
“Well, it’s the answer to the ghost story that’s been puzzling a lot
of people since last spring—how I was able to get a speech of mine
from that dinner when I apparently wasn’t there. It’s so darn simple!
“When I left the table licked that night and went out the side door,
I almost ran into your little sound-proof announcer’s booth with its
handy little microphone all ready for use, and its handy little switch
to cut off the microphone out on the table so that I was able to stay
right there and substitute my speech for Mr. Jim Neenan’s horseplay,
switching back to catch his applause and give it to my radio
audience as my own. At that I guess I owe Jim something, too. But
if there is anything I can do for you, let me know.”
THE END

Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the October 1923


issue of McClure’s Magazine.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HAT IN THE
RADIO RING ***

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will
be renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S.


copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in
these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it
in the United States without permission and without paying
copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of
Use part of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™
concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything
for copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is
very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as
creation of derivative works, reports, performances and research.
Project Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given
away—you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with
eBooks not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject
to the trademark license, especially commercial redistribution.

START: FULL LICENSE


THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free


distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work (or
any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at
www.gutenberg.org/license.

Section 1. General Terms of Use and


Redistributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree
to and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your
possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be
bound by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund
from the person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in
paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be


used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people
who agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a
few things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic
works even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.
See paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with
Project Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this
agreement and help preserve free future access to Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.

You might also like