• Understand the structure and the general idea of the story

•Learn to analyze characters in the story

•Learn to retell the story

•Solve your own questions about the story

Philip Ross 1939-

lAn American writer based in New York.

lAfter working as a newspaper reporter for four years, he turned to freelance writing.

lMany of his articles have appeared in the New Yorker,Reader’s           Digestand New York Times. 

lThis text is taken from Strategies for SuccessfulWriting: A Rhetoric and Reader, 3rd edition published by PrenticeHall, Inc. in 1993 in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.

The Beginning of Banking

1.Banks first emerged in the Middle Ages when people grew tired of carrying around all their gold and began leaving their money with the goldsmith. 

2.Until the founding of the Bank of England in 1694, England's goldsmiths were itsfirst bankers. They kept money and other valuables in safe custody for theircustomers. They also dealt in gold bullion and foreign exchange. They profited from acquiring and sorting coins of all kinds. To attract coins, the smiths were willing to pay interest.

3.The goldsmiths noticed that deposits remained at a fairly steady level over long periods of time. Deposits and withdrawals tended to balance each other because customers only wanted enough money on hand to meet everyday needs. This allowed the smiths to loan out at interest cash that would otherwise be idle. From this practice emerged the modern facets of banking:keeping deposits, making loans, and maintaining reserves.

4.Another practice of the goldsmiths, by which a customer could arrange totransfer part of his balance to another party by a written order, was the startof the modern check-writing system.

A Short Story

Plot:a man embarrasses himself by blindly  interfering with a bank officer’s “unfair” rejection when a boy requeststo withdraw money 

Setting:  in a bank in New York at noon one day 

Characters: thenarrator, a boy, and a fortyish bank officer 

Theme  of the story:what do you think?

Task：Please turn the story into a short play, and act it out.