Vocabulary Test 37

[passage-header]This passage is adapted from Taras Grescoe, Straphanger:
Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile. 2012 by Taras Grescoe.[/passage-header]Though there are 600 million cars on the planet, and counting, there are also seven billion people, which means that for the vast majority of us getting around involves taking buses, ferryboats, commuter trains, streetcars, and subways.37478 In other words, traveling to work, school, or the market means being a straphanger: somebody who, by choice or necessity, relies on public transport, rather than a privately owned automobile. 38548

[passage-header]Read the passage given below and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]This passage is adapted from MacDonald Harris, The Balloonist. (c) 2011, The Estate of Donald Heiney. During the summer of 1897, the narrator of this story, a fictional Swedish scientist, has set out for the North Pole in a hydrogen-powered balloon.   

[passage-header]This passage is adapted from Thor Hanson, Feathers,2011 by Thor Hanson. [/passage-header]Scientists have long debated how the ancestors of birds evolved the ability to fly. The ground-up theory assumes they were fleet-footed ground dwellers that captured prey by leaping and flapping their upper limbs. The tree-down theory assumes they were tree climbers that leapt and glided among branches.
27015At field sites around the world, Ken Dial saw a pattern in how young pheasants, quail, tinamous, and other ground birds ran along behind their parents.93021 They jumped up like popcorn, he said, describing how they would flap their half-formed wings and take short hops into the air.91128 So when a group of graduate students 55410challenged him to come up with new data on the age-old ground-up-tree-down debate, he designed a project to see what clues might lie in how baby game birds learned to fly.97764 

       [A street in London]
Enter LORD MAYOR (Sir Roger Otley) and EARL OF LINCOLN
LINC: My Lord Mayor, you have sundry times
feasted myself, and many courtiers more;
Seldom or never can we be so king
To make requital of your courtesy.
But, leaving this, I hear my cousin Lacy
Is much affected to your daughter Rose.
L. MAYOR: True, My good Lord, and she loves him so well
That I mislike her boldness in the chase.
LINC: Why, my Lord Mayor, think you it then a
shame
To join a Lacy with an Otley's name?
L. MAYOR: Too mean is my poor girl for his high
birth;
Poor citizens must not with courtiers wed,
Who will in silks and gay apparel spend
More in one year than I am worth by far;
Therefore your honour need not doubt my girl.
LINC: Take heed, my Lord, advise you what you do;
A verier unthrift lives not in the world
Than is my cousin; for I'll tell you what,
'Tis now almost a year since he requested
To travel countries for experience;
I furnish'd him with coin, bills of exchange,
Letters of credit, men to wait on him,
Solicited my friends in Italy
Well to respect him; but to see the end:
Scant had he journey'd through half Germany
But all his coin was spent, his men cast off, 
His bills embezzl'd, and my jolly coz,
Asham'd to show his bankrupt presence here,
Became a shoemaker in Wittenberg.
99804A goodly science for a gentleman
Of such descent!78796 Now judge the rest by this:
Suppose your daughter have a thousand pound,
He did consume me more in one half-year:
And make him heir to all the wealth you have,
One twelvemonth's rioting will wast it all.
Then seek, my Lord, some honest citizen
To wed your daughter to.
L.MAYOR: I thank your lordship.
(Aside) 64980Well, fox, I understand your subtlety.
As for your nephew, let your lordship's eye
But watch his actions, and you need not fear,
For I have sent my daughter far enough.
And yet your cousin Rowland might do well
Now he hath learn'd an occupation;
(Aside.) And yet I scorn to call him son-in-law.

LINC: Ay, but I have a better trade for him;
I thank His Grace he hath appointed him
Chief colonel of all those companies
Muster'd in London and the shires about
To serve His Highness in those wars of France.
See where he comes.

       "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?

[passage-header]This passage is adapted from Carrie Chapman Catt's 1917 "Address to the United States Congress." Catt served as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association; the closing arguments of her speech are excerpted below.[/passage-header]   Your party platforms have pledged woman suffrage. Then why not be honest, frank friends of our cause, adopt it in reality as your own, make it a party program and "fight with us"? As a party measure--a measure of all parties--why not put the amendment through Congress and the Legislatures? 57494We shall all be better friends, we shall have a happier nation, we women will be free to support loyally the party of our choice, and we shall be far prouder of our history89594.
   "77138There is one thing mightier than kings and armies"--aye, than Congress and political parties-- "the power of an idea when its time has come to move72572." The time for woman suffrage has come. The woman's hour has struck. If parties prefer to postpone action longer and thus do battle with this idea, they challenge the inevitable. The idea will not perish; the party which opposes it may. Every delay, every trick, every political dishonesty from now on will 33487antagonize the women of the land more and more, and 89420when the party or parties which have so delayed woman suffrage finally let it come, their sincerity will be doubted and their appeal to the new voters will be met with suspicion28207. This is the psychology of the situation. Can you afford the risk? Think it over.
   We know you will meet opposition. 99188There are a few "woman haters" left, a few "old males of the tribe," as Vance Thompson calls them73179, whose duty they believe it to be to keep women in the places they have carefully picked out for them. Treitschke, made world-famous by war literature, said some years ago, "Germany, which knows all about Germany and France, knows far better what is good for Alsace-Lorraine than that miserable people can possibly know." A few American Treitschkes we have who know better than women what is good for them. There are women, too ... But the world does not wait for such as these, nor does Liberty pause to heed the plaint of men and women with a grouch. She does not wait for those who have a special interest to serve, nor a selfish reason for depriving other people of freedom. Holding her torch aloft, Liberty is pointing the way onward and upward and saying to America, "Come."
   23976To you the supporters of our cause, in Senate and House, and the number is large, the suffragists of the nation express their grateful thanks33649. This address is not meant for you. We are more truly appreciative of all you have done than any words can express. We ask you to make a last, hard fight for the amendment during the present session. 40978Since last we asked a vote on this amendment your position has been fortified by the addition to suffrage territory of Great Britain, Canada, and New York24604.
   Some of you have been too indifferent to give more than casual attention to this question. 32158It is worthy of your immediate consideration--a question big enough to engage the attention of our Allies in war time, is too big a question for you to neglect16514...
   17943Gentlemen, we hereby petition you, our only designated representatives, to 37885redress our grievances by the immediate passage of the influence to secure its ratification in your own state15813, 50281in order that the women of our nation may be endowed with political freedom that our nation may resume its world leadership in democracy33481.
   45406Woman suffrage is coming--you know it. Will you, Honorable Senators and Members of the House of Representatives, help or hinder it?

"There Is No Frigate Like a Book"
There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!

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 

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.

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.