Mathew ascended three flights of stairs--passed half-way down a long arched gallery--and knocked at
another old-fashioned oak door. This time the signal was answered. A low, clear, sweet voice, inside the
room, inquired who was waiting without? In a few hasty words Mathew told his errand. Before he had
done speaking the door was quietly and quickly opened, and Sarah Leeson confronted him on the
threshold, with her candle in her hand.
Not tall, not handsome, not in her first youth--shy and irresolute in manner--simple in dress to the utmost
limits of plainness--the lady's-maid, in spite of all these disadvantages, was a woman whom it was
impossible to look at without a feeling of curiosity, if not of interest. Few men, at first sight of her, could
have resisted the desire to find out who she was; few would have been satisfied with receiving for answer,
She is Mrs. Treverton's maid; few would have refrained from the attempt to extract some secret
information for themselves from her face and manner; and none, not even the most patient and practiced
of observers, could have succeeded in discovering more than that she must have passed through the
ordeal of some great suffering at some former period of her life. Much in her manner, and more in her face,
said plainly and sadly: I am the wreck of something that you might once have liked to see; a wreck that
can never be repaired--that must drift on through life unnoticed, unguided, unpitied--drift till the fatal shore
is touched, and the waves of Time have swallowed up these broken relics of me forever.
This was the story that was told in Sarah Leeson's face--this, and no more. No two men interpreting that
story for themselves, would probably have agreed on the nature of the suffering which this woman had
undergone. It was hard to say, at the outset, whether the past pain that had set its ineffaceable mark on
her had been pain of the body or pain of the mind. But whatever the nature of the affliction she had
suffered, the traces it had left were deeply and strikingly visible in every part of her face.
Her cheeks had lost their roundness and their natural color; her lips, singularly flexible in movement and
delicate in form, had faded to an unhealthy paleness; her eyes, large and black and overshadowed by
unusually thick lashes, had contracted an anxious startled look, which never left them and which piteously
expressed the painful acuteness of her sensibility, the inherent timidity of her disposition. So far, the
marks which sorrow or sickness had set on her were the marks common to most victims of mental or
physical suffering. The one extraordinary personal deterioration which she had undergone consisted in
the unnatural change that had passed over the color of her hair. It was as thick and soft, it grew as
gracefully, as the hair of a young girl; but it was as gray as the hair of an old woman. It seemed to
contradict, in the most startling manner, every personal assertion of youth that still existed in her face.
With all its haggardness and paleness, no one could have looked at it and supposed for a moment that it
was the face of an elderly woman. Wan as they might be, there was not a wrinkle in her cheeks. Her eyes,
viewed apart from their prevailing expression of uneasiness and timidity, still preserved that bright, clear
moisture which is never seen in the eyes of the old. The skin about her temples was as delicately smooth
as the skin of a child. These and other physical signs which never mislead, showed that she was still, as
to years, in the very prime of her life.
Sickly and sorrow-stricken as she was, she looked, from the eyes downward, a woman who had barely
reached thirty years of age. From the eyes upward, the effect of her abundant gray hair, seen in
connection with her face, was not simply incongruous--it was absolutely startling; so startling as to make it
no paradox to say that she would have looked most natural, most like herself if her hair had been dyed. In
her case, Art would have seemed to be the truth, because Nature looked like falsehood.
What shock had stricken her hair, in the very maturity of its luxuriance, with the hue of an unnatural old
age? Was it a serious illness, or a dreadful grief that had turned her gray in the prime of her womanhood?
That question had often been agitated among her fellow-servants, who were all struck by the peculiarities
of her personal appearance, and rendered a little suspicious of her, as well, by an inveterate habit that
she had of talking to herself. Inquire as they might, however, their curiosity was always baffled. Nothing
more could be discovered than that Sarah Leeson was, in the common phrase, touchy on the subject of
her gray hair and her habit of talking to herself, and that Sarah Leeson's mistress had long since forbidden
every one, from her husband downward, to ruffle her maid's tranquility by inquisitive questions.
What makes the term "unnatural" ironic as used in the passage?

• A. We know her to be only around 30 with all these marks.
• B. For a young girl in every other aspect, this pain caused graying hair.
• C. The gray hair was any more unnatural than any other markings was apparent.
• D. The markings would be visible in every part of her face.
• E. It was unusual that someone so young would have such markings.

The idea of "children's literature" ______ in the late eighteenth century, when educators first decided that
children needed special ______ of their own.

• A. changed . . reading
• B. grew . . treatment
• C. developed . . training
• D. receded . . teaching
• E. emerged . . books

He was a un-common small man, he really was. Certainly not so small as he was made out to be, but
where IS your Dwarf as is? He was a most uncommon small man, with a most uncommon large Ed; and
what he had inside that Ed, nobody ever knowed but himself: even suppose in himself to have ever took
stock of it, which it would have been a stiff job for even him to do.
The kindest little man as never growed! Spirited, but not proud. When he travelled with the Spotted Baby
though he knowed himself to be a nat'ral Dwarf, and knowed the Baby's spots to be put upon him artificial,
he nursed that Baby like a mother. You never heerd him give a ill-name to a Giant. He DID allow himself
to break out into strong language respectin the Fat Lady from Norfolk; but that was an affair of the 'art; and
when a man's 'art has been trifled with by a lady, and the preference giv to a Indian, he ain't master of his
actions.
He was always in love, of course; every human nat'ral phenomenon is. And he was always in love with a
large woman; I never knowed the Dwarf as could be got to love a small one. Which helps to keep 'em the
Curiosities they are.
One sing'ler idea he had in that Ed of his, which must have meant something, or it wouldn't have been
there. It was always his opinion that he was entitled to property. He never would put his name to anything.
He had been taught to write, by the young man without arms, who got his living with his toes (quite a
writing master HE was, and taught scores in the line), but Chops would have starved to death, afore he'd
have gained a bit of bread by putting his hand to a paper. This is the more curious to bear in mind,
because HE had no property, nor hope of property, except his house and a sarser. When I say his house,
I mean the box, painted and got up outside like a reg'lar six-roomer, that he used to creep into, with a
diamond ring (or quite as good to look at) on his forefinger, and ring a little bell out of what the Public
believed to be the Drawing-room winder. And when I say a sarser, I mean a Chaney sarser in which he
made a collection for himself at the end of every Entertainment. His cue for that, he took from me: "Ladies
and gentlemen, the little man will now walk three times round the Cairawan, and retire behind the curtain."
When he said anything important, in private life, he mostly wound it up with this form of words, and they
was generally the last thing he said to me at night afore he went to bed. He had what I consider a fine
mind--a poetic mind. His ideas respectin his property never come upon him so strong as when he sat
upon a barrel-organ and had the handle turned. Arter the wibration had run through him a little time, he
would screech out, "Toby, I feel my property coming--grind away! I'm counting my guineas by thousands,
Toby--grind away! Toby, I shall be a man of fortun! I feel the Mint a jingling in me, Toby, and I'm swelling
out into the Bank of England!" Such is the influence of music on a poetic mind. Not that he was partial to
any other music but a barrel-organ; on the contrary, hated it.
He had a kind of a everlasting grudge agin the Public: which is a thing you may notice in many
phenomenons that get their living out of it. What riled him most in the nater of his occupation was, that it
kep him out of Society. He was continiwally saying, "Toby, my ambition is, to go into Society. The curse of
my position towards the Public is, that it keeps me hout of Society. This don't signify to a low beast of a
Indian; he an't formed for Society. This don't signify to a Spotted Baby; HE an't formed for Society. I am."
The phrase "He had been taught to write, by the young man without arms" 4th paragraph" is an example
of

• A. exposition.
• B. rhetoric.
• C. allusion.
• D. euphemism.
• E. irony.

The paparazzi received many sizeable offers for the pictures of Ferggie in the ______ act of topless
bathing in Capri.

• A. embarrassing
• B. hypocritical
• C. hedonistic
• D. ignoble
• E. degenerative

But the Dust-Bin was going down then, and your father took but little, excepting from a liquid point of view.
Your mother's object in those visits was of a house-keeping character, and you was set on to whistle your
father out. Sometimes he came out, but generally not. Come or not come, however, all that part of his
existence which was unconnected with open Waitering was kept a close secret, and was acknowledged
by your mother to be a close secret, and you and your mother flitted about the court, close secrets both of
you, and would scarcely have confessed under torture that you know your father, or that your father had
any name than Dick (which wasn't his name, though he was never known by any other), or that he had
kith or kin or chick or child. Perhaps the attraction of this mystery, combined with your father's having a
damp compartment, to himself, behind a leaky cistern, at the Dust Bin, a sort of a cellar compartment, with
a sink in it, and a smell, and a plate-rack, and a bottle-rack, and three windows that didn't match each
other or anything else, and no daylight, caused your young mind to feel convinced that you must grow up
to be a Waiter too; but you did feel convinced of it, and so did all your brothers, down to your sister. Every
one of you felt convinced that you was born to the Waitering.
At this stage of your career, what was your feelings one day when your father came home to your mother
in open broad daylight, of itself an act of Madness on the part of a Waiter, and took to his bed (leastwise,
your mother and family's bed), with the statement that his eyes were devilled kidneys. Physicians being in
vain, your father expired, after repeating at intervals for a day and a night, when gleams of reason and old
business fitfully illuminated his being, "Two and two is five. And three is sixpence." Interred in the
parochial department of the neighbouring churchyard, and accompanied to the grave by as many Waiters
of long standing as could spare the morning time from their soiled glasses (namely, one), your bereaved
form was attired in a white neckankecher [sic], and you was took on from motives of benevolence at The
George and Gridiron, theatrical and supper. Here, supporting nature on what you found in the
plates(which was as it happened, and but too often thoughtlessly, immersed in mustard), and on what you
found in the glasses (which rarely went beyond driblets and lemon), by night you dropped asleep standing,
till you was cuffed awake, and by day was set to polishing every individual article in the coffee-room. Your
couch being sawdust; your counterpane being ashes of cigars. Here, frequently hiding a heavy heart
under the smart tie of your white neck ankecher (or correctly speaking lower down and more to the left),
you picked up the rudiments of knowledge from an extra, by the name of Bishops, and by calling
plate-washer, and gradually elevating your mind with chalk on the back of the corner-box partition, until
such time as you used the inkstand when it was out of hand, attained to manhood, and to be the Waiter
that you find yourself.
I could wish here to offer a few respectful words on behalf of the calling so long the calling of myself and
family, and the public interest in which is but too often very limited. We are not generally understood. No,
we are not. Allowance enough is not made for us. For, say that we ever show a little drooping listlessness
of spirits, or what might be termed indifference or apathy. Put it to yourself what would your own state of
mind be, if you was one of an enormous family every member of which except you was always greedy,
and in a hurry. Put it to yourself that you was regularly replete with animal food at the slack hours of one in
the day and again at nine p.m., and that the repleter [sic] you was, the more voracious all your
fellow-creatures came in. Put it to yourself that it was your business, when your digestion was well on, to
take a personal interest and sympathy in a hundred gentlemen fresh and fresh (say, for the sake of
argument, only a hundred), whose imaginations was given up to grease and fat and gravy and melted
butter, and abandoned to questioning you about cuts of this, and dishes of that, each of 'em going on as if
him and you and the bill of fare was alone in the world.
What purpose was served by the detailed description of the compartment (2nd paragraph)?

• A. provides a rationale for the wife to come over and perform house-keeping
• B. provides a window into the lifestyle the father is able to provide his family
• C. allows the reader to understand more fully the mystery surrounding the desire to become a waiter
• D. explains why father would not want his real identity known to others
• E. informs the reader of a level of economic expectation for a waiter at this time