Writing Test 23

[passage-header]Read the passage and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]    Among the old Tedas, it was customary for certain tribesmen to dress in the skins of the beasts they had slain, and thus to give themselves a fearsome air of brutality, which was calculated to strike dread into the hearts of their foes. Of course, it's a fair guess that a cheetah or bison skin would make a warm, comfortable outer coat for a man whose life was in the most brutal of conditions atop ridges.
    Many legends tell of these cavemen-like soldiers, also known as Badangas, and folklore has it that they were physically transformed into the beasts whose skins they wore. The most common animals that the warriors were transformed into were the bull-tiger and leopard. Rumours suggest that the skins carried the power of the beasts and, when worn, turned the wearer into that animal at the height of its capabilities. The fact is that no one has ever set sight on a Badanga in the flesh.
    The Badanga was an object of sheer horror, as his life's object was to challenge quiet villagers to a duel. As the then law of the land stood in the Teda tribe, a man who declined to accept a challenge from a Badanga forfeited all his worldly possessions, even his wife, over to the hands of his challenger. Therefore, the Badanga had any man he challenged at his mercy. If the Badanga slews him, the farmer's possessions became his, and if the poor fellow declined to fight, he lost all legal right to his property anyway. A Badanga would invite himself to any feast and contribute to the hilarity of the entertainment by killing in gory fashion any merrymaker who displeased him. He might even single one out to murder for no other reason than to practice his combat skills.
    It is not difficult to imagine that popular superstition went along with the popular dread of these animal-skinned aggressors and that they were believed to be filled with the force, as they certainly were with the ferocity, of the beasts whose skins they wore.
    In the unlikely event of a villager slaying a Badanga warrior, he was revered as a divine savior and had a temple devoted to him. It wasn't easy. Fire merely singed, a scythe landed a mere scratch, and a venomous spear just put him to sleep - what it took was a club made of the betel tree stump to fell this fiery warrior. Of course, it comes as no surprise that no one has heard of one such village victory yet. 

[passage-header][/passage-header]Akira came directly, breaking all tradition. Was that it? Had he followed form, had he asked his mother to speak to his father to approach a go-between would Chie have been more receptive? He came on a winters eve.
   He pounded on the door while a cold rain beat on the shuttered veranda, so at first Chie thought him only the wind. The maid knew better. Chie heard her soft scuttling footsteps, the creak of the door. Then the maid brought a calling card to the drawing room, for Chie.
   Chie was reluctant to go to her guest; perhaps she was feeling too cozy. She and Naomi were reading at a low table set atop a charcoal brazier. A thick quilt spread over the sides of the table so their legs were tucked inside with the heat.
   "Who is it at this hour, in this weather?" Chie questioned as she picked the name card off the maid's lacquer tray.
   "Shinoda, Akira. Kobe Dental College," she read.
   Naomi recognized the name. Chie heard a soft intake of air. 
   "I think you should go," said Naomi. 
   Akira was waiting in the entry. He was in his early twenties, slim and serious, wearing the black military-style uniform of a student. As he bowed his hands hanging straight down, black cap in one, a yellow oil-paper umbrella in the other--Chie glanced beyond him. In the glistening surface of the courtyards rain-drenched paving stones, she saw his reflection like a dark double.
   "Madame," said Akira, "forgive my disruption, but I come with a matter of urgency."
   His voice was soft, refined. He straightened and stole a deferential peek at her face.
   In the dim light, his eyes shone with sincerity. Chie felt herself starting to like him.
   "Come inside, get out of this nasty night. Surely your business can wait for a moment or two." 
   "I don't want to trouble you. Normally I would approach you more properly but I've received word of a position. I have an opportunity to go to America, as a dentist for Seattle's Japanese community." "Congratulations," Chie said with amusement. "That is an opportunity, I'm sure. But how am I involved?" 
   Even noting Naomi's breathless reaction to the name card, Chie had no idea. Akira's message, delivered like a formal speech, filled her with maternal amusement. You know how children speak so earnestly, so hurriedly, so endearingly about things that have no importance in an adults mind? That's how she viewed him, as a child.

[passage-header][/passage-header]Akira came directly, breaking all tradition. Was that it? Had he followed form, had he asked his mother to speak to his father to approach a go-between would Chie have been more receptive? He came on a winters eve.
   He pounded on the door while a cold rain beat on the shuttered veranda, so at first Chie thought him only the wind. The maid knew better. Chie heard her soft scuttling footsteps, the creak of the door. Then the maid brought a calling card to the drawing room, for Chie.
   Chie was reluctant to go to her guest; perhaps she was feeling too cozy. She and Naomi were reading at a low table set atop a charcoal brazier. A thick quilt spread over the sides of the table so their legs were tucked inside with the heat.
   "Who is it at this hour, in this weather?" Chie questioned as she picked the name card off the maid's lacquer tray.
   "Shinoda, Akira. Kobe Dental College," she read.
   Naomi recognized the name. Chie heard a soft intake of air. 
   "I think you should go," said Naomi. 
   Akira was waiting in the entry. He was in his early twenties, slim and serious, wearing the black military-style uniform of a student. As he bowed his hands hanging straight down, black cap in one, a yellow oil-paper umbrella in the other--Chie glanced beyond him. In the glistening surface of the courtyards rain-drenched paving stones, she saw his reflection like a dark double.
   "Madame," said Akira, "forgive my disruption, but I come with a matter of urgency."
   His voice was soft, refined. He straightened and stole a deferential peek at her face.
   In the dim light, his eyes shone with sincerity. Chie felt herself starting to like him.
   "Come inside, get out of this nasty night. Surely your business can wait for a moment or two." 
   "I don't want to trouble you. Normally I would approach you more properly but I've received word of a position. I have an opportunity to go to America, as a dentist for Seattle's Japanese community." "Congratulations," Chie said with amusement. "That is an opportunity, I'm sure. But how am I involved?" 
   Even noting Naomi's breathless reaction to the name card, Chie had no idea. Akira's message, delivered like a formal speech, filled her with maternal amusement. You know how children speak so earnestly, so hurriedly, so endearingly about things that have no importance in an adults mind? That's how she viewed him, as a child.

[passage-header]This passage is from Charlotte Brontë, The Professor, originally published in 1857.[/passage-header]No man likes to acknowledge that he has made a mistake in the choice of his profession, and every man, worthy of the name, will row long against wind and tide before he allows himself to cry out, "I am baffled!" and submits to be floated passively back to land. From the first week of my residence in X--I felt my occupation irksome. The thing itself--the work of copying and translating business letters--was a dry and tedious task enough, but had that been all, I should long have borne with the nuisance; I am not of an impatient nature, and influenced by the double desire of getting my living and justifying to myself and others the resolution I had taken to become a tradesman, I should have endured in silence the rust and cramp of my best faculties; I should not have whispered, even inwardly, that I longed for liberty; I should have pent in every sigh by which my heart might have ventured to intimate its distress under the closeness, smoke, monotony, and joyless tumult of Bigben Close, and its panting desire for freer and fresher scenes; I should have set up the image of Duty, the fetish of Perseverance, in my small bedroom at Mrs. Kings lodgings, and they two should have been my household gods, from which my darling, my cherished-in-secret, Imagination, the tender and the mighty, should never, either by softness or strength, have severed me. But this was not all; the antipathy which had sprung up between myself and my employer striking deeper root and spreading denser shade daily, excluded me from every glimpse of the sunshine of life; and I began to feel like a plant growing in humid darkness out of the slimy walls of a well. Antipathy is the only word which can express the feeling Edward Crimsworth had for me--a feeling, in a great measure, involuntary, and which was liable to be excited by every, the most trifling movement, look, or word of mine. My southern accent annoyed him; the degree of education evinced in my language irritated him; my punctuality, industry, and accuracy, fixed his dislike, and gave it the high flavour and poignant relish of envy; he feared that I too should one day make a successful tradesman. Had I been in anything inferior to him, he would not have hated me so thoroughly, but I knew all that he knew, and, what was worse, he suspected that I kept the padlock of silence on mental wealth in which he was no sharer. If he could have once placed me in a ridiculous or mortifying position, he would have forgiven me much, but I was guarded by three faculties--Caution, Tact, Observation; and prowling and prying as was Edwards malignity, it could never baffle the lynx-eyes of these, my natural sentinels. Day by day did his malice watch my tact, hoping it would sleep, and prepared to steal snake-like on its slumber; but tact, if it be genuine, never sleeps.

[passage-header][/passage-header]Akira came directly, breaking all tradition. Was that it? Had he followed form, had he asked his mother to speak to his father to approach a go-between would Chie have been more receptive? He came on a winters eve.
   He pounded on the door while a cold rain beat on the shuttered veranda, so at first Chie thought him only the wind. The maid knew better. Chie heard her soft scuttling footsteps, the creak of the door. Then the maid brought a calling card to the drawing room, for Chie.
   Chie was reluctant to go to her guest; perhaps she was feeling too cozy. She and Naomi were reading at a low table set atop a charcoal brazier. A thick quilt spread over the sides of the table so their legs were tucked inside with the heat.
   "Who is it at this hour, in this weather?" Chie questioned as she picked the name card off the maid's lacquer tray.
   "Shinoda, Akira. Kobe Dental College," she read.
   Naomi recognized the name. Chie heard a soft intake of air. 
   "I think you should go," said Naomi. 
   Akira was waiting in the entry. He was in his early twenties, slim and serious, wearing the black military-style uniform of a student. As he bowed his hands hanging straight down, black cap in one, a yellow oil-paper umbrella in the other--Chie glanced beyond him. In the glistening surface of the courtyards rain-drenched paving stones, she saw his reflection like a dark double.
   "Madame," said Akira, "forgive my disruption, but I come with a matter of urgency."
   His voice was soft, refined. He straightened and stole a deferential peek at her face.
   In the dim light, his eyes shone with sincerity. Chie felt herself starting to like him.
   "Come inside, get out of this nasty night. Surely your business can wait for a moment or two." 
   "I don't want to trouble you. Normally I would approach you more properly but I've received word of a position. I have an opportunity to go to America, as a dentist for Seattle's Japanese community." "Congratulations," Chie said with amusement. "That is an opportunity, I'm sure. But how am I involved?" 
   Even noting Naomi's breathless reaction to the name card, Chie had no idea. Akira's message, delivered like a formal speech, filled her with maternal amusement. You know how children speak so earnestly, so hurriedly, so endearingly about things that have no importance in an adults mind? That's how she viewed him, as a child.

[passage-header][/passage-header]Akira came directly, breaking all tradition. Was that it? Had he followed form, had he asked his mother to speak to his father to approach a go-between would Chie have been more receptive? He came on a winters eve.
   He pounded on the door while a cold rain beat on the shuttered veranda, so at first Chie thought him only the wind. The maid knew better. Chie heard her soft scuttling footsteps, the creak of the door. Then the maid brought a calling card to the drawing room, for Chie.
   Chie was reluctant to go to her guest; perhaps she was feeling too cozy. She and Naomi were reading at a low table set atop a charcoal brazier. A thick quilt spread over the sides of the table so their legs were tucked inside with the heat.
   "Who is it at this hour, in this weather?" Chie questioned as she picked the name card off the maid's lacquer tray.
   "Shinoda, Akira. Kobe Dental College," she read.
   Naomi recognized the name. Chie heard a soft intake of air. 
   "I think you should go," said Naomi. 
   Akira was waiting in the entry. He was in his early twenties, slim and serious, wearing the black military-style uniform of a student. As he bowed his hands hanging straight down, black cap in one, a yellow oil-paper umbrella in the other--Chie glanced beyond him. In the glistening surface of the courtyards rain-drenched paving stones, she saw his reflection like a dark double.
   "Madame," said Akira, "forgive my disruption, but I come with a matter of urgency."
   His voice was soft, refined. He straightened and stole a deferential peek at her face.
   In the dim light, his eyes shone with sincerity. Chie felt herself starting to like him.
   "Come inside, get out of this nasty night. Surely your business can wait for a moment or two." 
   "I don't want to trouble you. Normally I would approach you more properly but I've received word of a position. I have an opportunity to go to America, as a dentist for Seattle's Japanese community." "Congratulations," Chie said with amusement. "That is an opportunity, I'm sure. But how am I involved?" 
   Even noting Naomi's breathless reaction to the name card, Chie had no idea. Akira's message, delivered like a formal speech, filled her with maternal amusement. You know how children speak so earnestly, so hurriedly, so endearingly about things that have no importance in an adults mind? That's how she viewed him, as a child.