Vocabulary Test 38

[passage-header]Read the passage and answer the question that follows:
[/passage-header]Their adobe house was the same as two decades before, four large rooms under a thatched roof and three square windows facing south with their frames painted sky blue. Lin stood in the yard facing the front wall while flipping over a dozen mildewed books he had left to be sunned on a stack of firewood. 64644Sure thing, he thought, Shuyu doesn't know how to take care of books. Maybe I should give them to my nephews. These books are of no use to me anymore.30311
   Beside him, 55737chickens were strutting and geese waddling. A few little chicks were passing back and forth through the narrow gaps in the paling that fenced a small vegetable garden. In the garden pole beans and 26122long cucumbers hung on trellises, 43939eggplants curved like ox horns, and lettuce heads were so robust that they covered up the furrows. In addition to the poultry, his wife kept two pigs and a goat for milk. 31915Their sow was oinking from the pigpen, which was adjacent to the western end of the vegetable garden. Against the wall of the pigpen, a pile of manure waited to be carted to their family plot, where it would go through high-temperature composting in a pit for two months before being put into the field.
   26735The air reeked of distillers' grains mixed in the pig feed. Lin disliked the 29422sour smell, which was the only uncomfortable thing to him here. 90914From the kitchen, where Shuyu was cooking, came the coughing of the bellows28098. In the south, elm and birch crowns shaded their neighbors' straw and tiled roofs. Now and then a dog barked from one of these homes.
   Having turned over all the books, Lin went  out of the front wall, which was three feet high and topped with thorny jujube branches. In one hand he held a dog-eared Russian dictionary he had used in high school. Having nothing to do, he sat on their grinding stone, thumbing through the old dictionary. He still remembered some Russian vocabulary and even tried to form a few short sentences in his mind with some words. But he couldn't recall the grammatical rules for the case changes exactly, so he gave up and let the books lie on his lap. Its pages fluttered a little as a breeze blew across. He raised his eyes to watch the villagers hoeing potatoes in a  distant field, which was so vast that a red flag was planted in the middle of it as a marker so that they could take a break when they reached the flag. Lin was fascinated by the sight, but he knew little about farm work.  
[passage-footer](1999)
The excerpt above is from Ha Jin's Waiting.[/passage-footer]

       "Promises Like Pie-Crust"
Promise me no promises,
So will I not promise you:
Keep we both our liberties,
Never false and never true:
Let us hold the die uncast,
Free to come as free to go:
For I cannot know your past,
And of mine what can you know?

In the second year of the reign of Valentinian and Valens, on the morning of the twenty-first day of July, the greatest part of the Roman world was shaken by a violent and destructive earthquake. 68146The impression was communicated to the waters53087; the shores of the Mediterranean were left dry, by the sudden retreat of the sea; 79737great quantities of fish were caught with the hand; large vessels were stranded on the mud; and 55567a curious spectator amused his eye, or rather his fancy, by contemplating the various appearance of valleys and mountains, which had never, since the formation of the globe, been exposed to the sun.31229 

Once Nanapush began talking, nothing stopped the spill of his words. The day receded and darkness broadened. At dusk, the wind picked up and cold poked mercilessly through the chinking of the cabin. The two wrapped themselves in quilts and continued to talk. The talk broadened, deepened. Went back and forth in time and then stopped time. The talk grew huge, of death and radiance, then shrunk and narrowed to the making of soup. The talk was of madness, the stars, sin, and death. The two spoke of all there was to know. And although it was in English, during the talk itself Nanapush taught language to Father Damien, who took out a small bound notebook and recorded words and sentences.  In common, they now had the love of music, though their definition of what composed music was dissimilar.

[passage-header]"Brass Spittoons"[/passage-header]Clean the spittoons, boy.
80511Detroit,
Chicago,
Atlantic city,
Palm Beach27033.
Clean the spittoons.
The steam in hotel kitchens,
And the smoke in hotel lobbies,
And the slime in hotel spittoons:
Part of my life.

46241Hey, boy!
A nickel,
A dime,
A dollar,
Two dollars a day.
67417Hey, boy!
A nickel,
A dime,
A dollar,
93286Two dollars
18824Buys shoes for the baby.
House rent to pay.
God on Sunday
My God!

Babies and church
and woman and Sunday
all mixed up with dimes and
dollars and clean spittoons
and house rent to pay
22882Hey, Boy!

91570A bright bowl of brass is beautiful to the Lord.
81704Bright polished brass like the cymbals
57107Of King David's dancers,
12404Like the wine cups of Solomon.
75938Hey, Boy!
61858A clean spittoon on the altar of the Lord.
25571A clean bright spittoon all newly polished,-
At least I can offer that.
49112Com'mere boy! [passage-footer]

* a spittoon is a receptacle for spit (usually in a public place)

"Brass Spittoons" was written by Langston Hughes, one of the most prominent figures of the Harlem Renaissance.

[/passage-footer]

Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business. For 31388expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs come best from those that are learned. To spend to much time in studies is sloth; to use them to much for ornament is affectation; to make judgement wholly by their rules is the humor of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience: for 96203natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions to much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn* studies, simple men 48692admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.

[passage-header]"There Is No Frigate Like a Book"[/passage-header]73011There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away
Nor any 89174coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
18632This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears the human soul!
[passage-footer]"There Is No Frigate Like a Book" was written by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886). Her simple poems are filled with imagery.[/passage-footer]

[passage-header]Elegy[/passage-header]99738Let them buy your big eyes,
In the secret earth securely,
74509Your thin fingers and your fair,
Soft, indefinite-coloured hair,
All of these in some way, surely,
From the secret earth shall rise;
Not for these I sit and stare;
Broken and bereft completely:
Your young flesh that sat so neatly
On your little bones will sweetly
Blossom in the air.

But your voice ... never the rushing
Of a river underground,
69037Not the 44497rising of the wind
In the trees before the rain,
Not the Woodcock's watery call,
Not the note white-throat utters,
Not the feet of children 26412pushing
90664Yellow leaves along the gutters
In the blue and bitter 57536fall,
38995Shall content my musing mind.
For the beauty of that sound
That in no new way at all
Ever 75043will be heard again

Sweetly through the sappy stalk
Of the vigorous weed
Holding all it held before,
21980Cherished by the faithful sun,
On and on eternally
Shall your altered fluid run,
Bud and bloom and go to seed:
But your singing days are done;
But the music of your talk
Never shall the chemistry
Of the secret earth restore.
All your lovely words are spoken.
Once the ivory box is broken,
Beats the golden bird no more.
[passage-footer]
[/passage-footer]

[passage-header]Read the passage and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]   47811Maman Nainaine said that when figs were 12143ripe Babette might go to visit her cousins down on the Bayou-Lafourche where the sugar cane grows. Not that the ripening of figs had the least thing to do with it, but that is the way Maman Nainaine was.
   It seemed to Babette a very long time to wait; for the leaves upon the trees were tender yet, and the figs were like little hard green marbles42733.
   But warm rain comes along and plenty of strong sunshine and 74890though Maman Nainaine was as 16336patient as the statue of la-Madone and Babette as 64173restless as a hummingbird, the first thing they both knew it was hot summertime. Everyday Babette 58009danced out to where fig-trees were in a long line against the fence. She walked slowly beneath them, carefully peering between the gnarled, spreading branches. But each time she came disconsolate away again. What she saw there finally was something that made her sing and dance the whole long day. [passage-footer]
[/passage-footer]

[passage-header]"Fable" [/passage-header]In heaven
Some little blades of grass
Stood before God.
"What did you do?"
Then all save one of the little blades
Began eagerly to relate
The merits of their lives.
This one stayed a small way behind,
Ashamed.
Presently, God said,
"And what did you do?"
The little blade answered. "O my Lord,
Memory is bitter to me,
For if I did good deeds
I know not of them."
Then God, in all his splendor,
Arose from his throne.
"O best little blade of grass!" he said.