Speaking clearly. Improving voice and articulation: Фонетический практикум. Фомиченко Л.Г. - 85 стр.

                                                                          85
body, but no sign could I find of the key. Then I stopped and looked
at the Count. There was a mocking smile on that ghastly face. A terrible
desire came upon me to rid the world of this monster. I seized a shovel.
I lifted it high. I struck downward at the hateful face. But as I did so the
head turned. The eyes fell full upon me, with all their blazing horror.
The sight seemed to paralyze me. The shovel fell from my hand. The
last glimpse I had was of that hideous face, blood-stained and fixed
with an evil grin which would have held its own in the bottom level of
hell. [Stoker «Dracula»]

                       Milgrig and the Tree Wilfs
                  (Something like Hans Christian Andersen)
       Once upon a time there was a little girl named Milgrig, believe it
or not. She lived in the middle of a deep, dark forest with her three ugly
sisters and their husbands, who were charcoal burners. Every night the
three ugly sisters used to take little Milgrig and pull out a strand of her
golden hair, so that by the time she was thirteen years old, she looked
something awful. And after the three sisters had pulled out her hair,
their three husbands (I forgot to tell you that the three husbands were
even uglier than the three sisters and much nastier) would stick pins
into little Milgrig until she looked like a war map.
       One night, when little Milgrig was so full of pins that she
couldn’t see straight, a fairy prince came riding up to the door of the
charcoal burners’ hut and asked if he had lost the way. «How should I
know?» replied the oldest sister, who was uglier than all the rest.
«What was your way?» — «My way was to the king’s castle,» replied
the prince, «and I must get there before midnight, for my father is
torturing my mother with red-hot irons.» — «Your father sounds
like a good egg,» replied the oldest husband, who was uglier than all
the rest. «We must ask him down some night.»
       The prince, however, did not think that this was very funny and
asked if little Milgrig might not be allowed to show him the way to
the castle.
       The ugly husbands and sisters, thinking that Milgrig would not
know the way and would get the prince lost in the forest, agreed
heartily to this suggestion, and the pins were pulled out of Milgrig to
make it possible for her to walk. «Good luck and a happy landing!»
they all called out after the two young people as they set forth on
their perilous journey.