He saw nothing, he had no knife or sharp instrument, the grating of the window was of iron and he had too often assured himself of its solidity. His furniture consisted of a bed, a chair, a table, a pail, and a jug. The bed had iron clamps, but they were screwed to the wall and it would have required a screwdriver to take them off.
Dantes had but one resource which was to break the jug and with one of the sharp fragments attack the wall. He let the jug fall on the floor and it broke in pieces. He concealed two or three of the sharpest fragments in his bed, leaving the rest on the floor. The breaking of the jug was too natural an accident to excite suspicion, and next morning the gaoler went grumblingly to fetch another, without giving himself the trouble to remove the fragments. Dantes heard joyfully the key grate in the lock as the guard departed.
Dantes heard the key grate in the lock when the
Answer: D
Correct answer: cell door was shut
The passage says he heard the key grate as the guard departed - the guard locking the cell behind him on his way out. Dantes hears it joyfully because the fragments he has hidden went unnoticed. No storeroom appears in the passage at all.
Please log in or register to report this question.
The guard left the fragments because he
Answer: C
Correct answer: was too lazy to bother
The passage says the gaoler went grumblingly to fetch another jug without giving himself the trouble to remove the fragments. That is indifference to the work, not a failure to see the pieces - and the passage adds that the accident was too natural to excite suspicion, so no punishment was intended.
Please log in or register to report this question.
Dantes probably broke the jug
Answer: B
Correct answer: during the night
The gaoler fetches a replacement next morning, which places the breakage before that morning; and Dantes has time in between to hide two or three fragments in his bed. The night is the only period the passage leaves for it.
Please log in or register to report this question.
Dantes was planning to
Answer: B
Correct answer: make his escape
Dantes surveys the cell for anything that might cut - a knife, the iron grating, the clamps that would need a screwdriver - and settles on breaking the jug so as to attack the wall with a sharp fragment. Working at the wall of a cell has only one purpose.
Please log in or register to report this question.
The world dismisses curiosity by calling it idle or mere idle curiosity even though curious persons are seldom idle. Parents do their best to extinguish curiosity in their children because it makes life difficult to be faced everyday with a string of unanswerable questions about what makes fire hot or why grass grows. Children whose curiosity survives parental discipline are invited to join our university. With the university, they go on asking their questions and trying to find the answers. In the eyes of a scholar, that is what a university is for. some of the questions which the scholars ask seem to the world to be scarcely worth asking, let alone answering. they asked questions too minute and specialised for you and me to understand without years of explanation. If the world inquires of one of them why he wants to know the answer to a particular question he may say especially if he is a scientist, that the answer will in some obscure way make possible a new machine or weapon or gadget. He talks that way because he knows that the world understands and respects utility.
But to you who are now part of the university, he will say that he wants to know the answer simply because he does not know it, the way the mountain climber wants to climb a mountain, simply because it is there. Similarly a historian asked by an outsider why he studies history may come out with the argument that he has learnt to respect to report on such occasions, something about knowledge of the past making it possible to understand the present and mould the future. But if you really want to know why a historian studies the past, the answer is much simpler, something happened and he would like to know what. All this does not mean that the answers which scholars find may have enormous consequences but these seldom form the reason for asking the question or pursuing the answers. It is true that scholars can be put to work answering questions for sake of the consequences as thousands are working now, for example, in search of a cure for cancer. But this is not the primary business of scholars. For the consequences are usually subordinate to the satisfication of curiosity.
Children whose curiosity survives parental discipline means
Answer: A
Correct answer: children retaining their curiosity in spite of being discouraged by their parents
Survives implies something that tried to end it, and the passage has just said parents do their best to extinguish curiosity in their children. The children in question are therefore the ones whose curiosity outlasted that effort.
Please log in or register to report this question.
According to their passage, the children make life difficult for their parents
Answer: A
Correct answer: by their ceaseless curiosity
The passage says it makes life difficult to be faced everyday with a string of unanswerable questions. The difficulty is the endlessness of the curiosity, not the profundity or irrelevance of any one question - the examples given, why fire is hot and why grass grows, are ordinary enough.
Please log in or register to report this question.
The common people consider some of the questions that the scholars ask unimportant
Answer: C
Correct answer: as it's beyond their comprehension
The passage says scholars ask questions too minute and specialised for you and me to understand without years of explanation. The questions seem not worth asking because the world cannot follow them, not because of any judgement about the scholars themselves.
Please log in or register to report this question.
A historian really studies the past
Answer: D
Correct answer: to understand the present and mould the future
This is the answer the passage gives in those words - the argument a historian has learnt to respect to report on such occasions. The passage does add that his real reason is simpler, that something happened and he would like to know what, but that answer is not among the options; of the four, only this one uses the passage's own formula.
Please log in or register to report this question.
According to their passage, parents do their best to discourage curiosity in their children
Answer: D
Correct answer: because they are unable to answer all the questions
The passage calls the children's questions unanswerable, and that is the word the answer turns on: what wears the parents down is not the number of questions but their own inability to meet them. Impatience and lack of time are consequences the passage does not name.
Please log in or register to report this question.
The casual horrors and real disasters are thrown at newspaper reader without discrimination. In the contemporary arrangements for circulating the news, an important element, evaluation is always weak and often wanting entirely. There is no point anywhere along the line where someone puts his foot down for certain and says, "This is important and that does not amount to a row of beans; deserves no one’s attention, and should travel the wires no farther". The junk is dressed up to look as meaningful as the real news.
The writer of the above passage
Answer: B
Correct answer: wants better evaluation of news before publication
The passage's complaint is that evaluation is always weak and often wanting entirely, and it imagines someone putting his foot down to stop the worthless items travelling the wires. The horrors are the symptom the writer uses, not the object of his shock, and it is the newspapers he wants to do the deciding, not himself.
Please log in or register to report this question.
