Work out a word in a hard or older text

Grade 11 Reading Worksheet - Challenge Me

Circle the best answer.

1. Read this first

   The Master Who Sold the Books (invented history essay)

   [1] In the spring of 1791 the parish of Little Harrow, in the north of England, did something its neighbors thought unwise: it taxed itself to pay for a school. [2] The county was watching closely, and it piloted the same scheme in two other parishes before it decided, two years later, to extend it to all thirty. [3] Little Harrow's first schoolmaster, Josiah Pell, arrived with a reference from his old vicar, who wrote that he "may answer for the sobriety of Mr. Pell's conversation these nine years, having never seen him in an alehouse nor heard of him at a card table, and finding him much given to reading." [4] The parish was pleased, and the reference was framed, which is a way of saying that nobody checked it again.

   [5] Within four years Pell had sold the school's thirty primers to a bookseller in York to pay a debt at an alehouse, and the new vicar of Little Harrow wrote that he had "never known an enormity of that kind in a parish so small." [6] The letter is usually quoted for its indignation, but it is better read for its arithmetic: thirty primers were not much, and the vicar knew it. [7] He was writing about the kind of man who would do it.

   [8] The county did not suspend its scheme. [9] It did something quieter, which was to begin sending an inspector twice a year, and it was not until the inspector arrived that the parish learned how many of its neighbors had been keeping the same small disappointments in their own drawers. [10] The schoolmaster himself left no letters, so we know him only through other people's sentences, and none of them agree. [11] What survives of him is the reference itself, framed and fading in a glass case at the back of the school, where visitors admire its confidence without ever being told what became of its subject.

2. 1.

   A student guesses that “enormity” in sentence 5 means great size. Pia revises the guess. Which revision fits the passage?

   • A monstrous wrong; thirty primers are few, so the vicar is shocked by the sale of books for drink.
   • A sale of books; the sentence is about the school’s primers sold to a bookseller in York.
   • An immense scale; the vicar is struck by how much was sold for so small a parish.
   • A minor lapse; the vicar calls it rare in a parish so small, so it counts for little.
3. 2.

   Ren reads sentence 2. What does “piloted” mean in “piloted the same scheme in two other parishes”?

   • refused to adopt it, keeping it out of the other parishes
   • tried it out on a small scale before wider use
   • extended it to thirty parishes at once
   • steered it through the other parishes, as a pilot steers a ship

4. What the Ledger Knew (invented history essay)

   [1] The account books of Eleazar Moss, a silk merchant of Wexcombe, run to nine volumes and cover the years from 1812 to 1841. [2] They are not exciting, and the town archive's catalog admits as much; but they are among the few surviving records of how a provincial trade was run by a man who had no reason to flatter himself. [3] Moss had a habit of adding a note beside any entry he thought unusual, and one from 1823 reads: "Bought nine bolts of Mr. Tolliver, whom I found a nice judge of silk, for he would not sell me the two I wanted until he had seen the light on them, and I paid his price without a word."

   [4] A few pages later the same volume records the founding of a guild of silk dyers, so inchoate in its first season that it had not yet settled on a name, though its dues, which Moss collected himself, were never a day late. [5] The guild's first dispute was whether dyers who worked in indigo could vote on matters that concerned only the dyers of madder, and Moss brokered the compromise, which gave each trade a vote on its own colors and a joint vote on prices. [6] His ledger records the settlement in a single line and the cost of the dinner that followed in four.

   [7] It is tempting to read such a man as a minor figure, and the archive does. [8] But the books show a person who weighed everything: the light on a bolt of cloth, the voting rights of a trade, the price of a dinner. [9] They also show, in the margin of the last volume, a note in a shakier hand, dated 1841, that says: "Sold the shop. Kept the books." [10] The archive did not catalog the note, and nobody who works there can say who has ever read it.

5. 3.

   Jun reads Moss’s note in sentence 3. What does “nice” mean in “a nice judge of silk,” and what proves it?

   • Fussy and hard to please; Tolliver would not sell two bolts until he had seen the light on them.
   • Exact and discerning; Tolliver waited to see the light on the cloth, and Moss paid without a word.
   • Pleasant and kind; Moss thanks Tolliver for selling nine bolts and calls him a judge of silk.
   • Exact and discerning; Moss calls Tolliver a judge, and judges are serious people.
6. 4.

   A student guesses that “inchoate” in sentence 4 means chaotic. Esme revises the guess. Which revision fits the passage?

   • Only just begun and not yet formed; the guild had no name yet, yet its dues were never late.
   • Chaotic and confused; the guild had not yet settled on a name, so it was in disorder.
   • Fully formed and complete; the dues were never late, which shows the guild was well established.
   • Concerned with silk dyers; sentence 4 introduces a guild of dyers in Wexcombe.
7. 5.

   Zee reads sentence 5. What does “brokered” mean in “brokered the compromise”?

   • collected dues from each dyer in the guild
   • arranged as a go-between who helped both sides agree
   • bought and sold shares for the two trades, as a stockbroker does
   • refused to settle the matter, leaving the two trades to fight

8. Below Decks, 1847 (invented history essay)

   [1] The journal of Dr. Alasdair Pryce, surgeon to the emigrant ship Calder, survives in the library of a Glasgow college, and it records a crossing of fifty-three days in the spring of 1847. [2] Pryce wrote at night, by a lamp that guttered, and his entries grow shorter as the voyage lengthens, which tells us something before we read a word. [3] On the thirty-first day the Calder, driven by a following wind, "prevented the tide at the bar by an hour, and so came to anchor before the ship that had left Liverpool a week before us." [4] Pryce was proud of the feat, and rightly: it is the only entry in the journal that records any pleasure.

   [5] The rest records the steerage, and in particular the lower deck, whose air he calls "noisome beyond the power of vinegar to correct," and in which, by the fortieth day, forty-one passengers were sick. [6] He asked the captain for permission to open the after hatch; the captain refused, on the ground that the ship's insurers would not like it. [7] When Pryce wrote to the owners at Glasgow on arrival, they stonewalled him, answering his letter with a request that he identify the passengers by name, which he could not do, and which they knew he could not do.

   [8] A parliamentary inquiry the following winter called twenty-two witnesses and read the surgeon's journal into its record. [9] It recommended better ventilation, a second surgeon on ships above three hundred passengers, and a rule that a captain's refusal of a surgeon's request be written down. [10] That last rule, small as it seems, would have changed the afternoon of the thirty-sixth day. [11] Pryce lived until 1861; the journal is cataloged under the name of the college's benefactor, who never saw it, and a student found it in 1974 while looking for something else.

9. 6.

   Bo reads the journal line in sentence 3. What does “prevented” mean there, and what proves it?

   • Stopped from happening; the Calder blocked the tide at the bar, and so anchored before the other ship.
   • Hindered the other ship; the Calder kept it from the bar and so came to anchor first.
   • Came before; the Calder reached the bar an hour ahead of the tide and anchored before the other ship.
   • Came before; Pryce was proud of the feat, and pride shows that the ship had won a race.
10. 7.

    A student guesses that “noisome” in sentence 5 means loud. Kira revises the guess. Which revision fits the passage?

    • Fresh and healthy; Pryce wanted the hatch left shut to keep the air as it was.
    • Loud and disturbing; the lower deck was crowded, and so many passengers made a great deal of noise.
    • Foul-smelling and harmful; the air needed vinegar, and Pryce wanted the hatch opened.
    • Belonging to the lower deck; the sentence is about where steerage passengers slept.
11. 8.

    Ari reads sentence 7. What does “stonewalled” mean in “they stonewalled him”?

    • built a wall of stone around the owners’ offices
    • blocked him by refusing a straight answer
    • answered him fully and quickly with the names he needed
    • asked passengers to identify themselves by name

12. The Committee Room (invented history essay)

    [1] Lady Marchmont's letters to her sister, written between 1788 and 1802 and published in 1911, are usually read for their gossip, which is excellent, but I read them for the quieter business of how a county ran itself. [2] In 1793 she describes the founding of a hospital fund in terms that no modern minute-taker would dare: "There is a great emulation among our neighbors in the matter of subscriptions, so that Mr. Aldous gave twenty guineas on Monday and Lord Fenn thirty on Tuesday, and the curate gave a bad Latin motto and was thanked for it." [3] The tone is amused, and the arithmetic is exact.

    [4] The fund prospered, and by the second year it could name a physician. [5] The choice, which might have divided the county, was settled by a fortuitous meeting at an inn, where the two leading candidates, traveling in opposite directions, were stranded by the same flood and discovered that each had trained under the same master. [6] Neither had planned the meeting, and neither thought it a favor of fortune until Lady Marchmont's sister pointed out, a month later, that it had cost each of them a week and a horse. [7] It made the rest easy.

    [8] The committee that appointed the physician had been railroaded, in the view of the minority, by Lord Fenn, who moved the question, seconded it and called the vote in the space of a single speech. [9] The minority wrote letters. [10] The letters were polite and went unanswered; Lord Fenn did not believe in answering letters from people he had already outvoted. [11] Lady Marchmont, who was not on the committee, wrote to her sister that the whole business "went off very handsomely," and I find that I cannot tell, from the phrase, whether she was pleased or being dry. [12] She was, I think, writing for her sister's amusement, but the letters leave a record that the county's minute books, kept by the committee's own secretary, do not.

13. 9.

    Milo reads Lady Marchmont’s sentence 2. What does “emulation” mean there, and what proves it?

    • Jealous ill will; Lady Marchmont says the neighbors resented one another’s gifts.
    • Rivalry; Lord Fenn gave thirty guineas the day after Mr. Aldous gave twenty.
    • Imitating a model one admires; the neighbors copied the first donor out of respect.
    • Rivalry; the letters were published in 1911, so their words must be old.
14. 10.

    Luz reads sentence 7. What does “railroaded” mean in “had been railroaded … by Lord Fenn”?

    • slowed with long debate so that each member spoke
    • answered the minority’s letters politely
    • carried along a track on wheels, as a train carries cargo
    • pushed through quickly without letting others debate