Online Access Free PSAT-Reading Exam Questions
| Exam Code: | PSAT-Reading |
| Exam Name: | Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test - Reading |
| Certification Provider: | PSAT |
| Free Question Number: | 258 |
| Posted: | Aug 29, 2026 |
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.
Why does the author end paragraph four with "But whatever. . .visible in every part of her face"?
George Washington served as president of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, and was then elected
President of the United States in 1789. This is from his first address to Congress. Such being the
impressions under which I have, in obedience to the public summons, repaired to the present station, it
would be peculiarly improper to omit, in this first official act, my fervent supplications to the Almighty Being,
who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can
supply every human defect, that his benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the
people of the United States a government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes, and may
enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to
his charge. In tendering this homage to the great Author of every public and private good, I assure myself
that it expresses your sentiments not less than my own; nor those of my fellow-citizens at large, less than
either. No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand, which conducts the affairs
of men, more than the people of the United States.
Every step, by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation, seems to have been
distinguished by some token of providential agency. And, in the important revolution just accomplished in
the system of their united government, the tranquil deliberations and voluntary consent of so many distinct
communities, from which the event has resulted, cannot be compared with the means by which most
governments have been established, without some return of pious gratitude along with a humble
anticipation of the future blessings which the past seems to presage. These reflections, arising out of the
present crisis, have forced themselves too strongly on my mind to be suppressed. You will join with me, I
trust, in thinking that there are none, under the influence of which the proceedings of a new and free
government can more auspiciously commence.
By the article establishing the executive department, it is made the duty of the President "to recommend
to your consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient." The circumstances,
under which I now meet you, will acquit me from entering into that subject farther than to refer you to the
great constitutional charter under which we are assembled; and which, in defining your powers,
designates the objects to which your attention is to be given. It will be more consistent with those
circumstances, and far more congenial with the feelings which actuate me, to substitute, in place of a
recommendation of particular measures, the tribute that is due to the talents, the rectitude, and the
patriotism, which adorn the characters selected to devise and adopt them. In these honorable
qualifications I behold the surest pledges, that as, on one side, no local prejudices or attachments, no
separate views or party animosities, will misdirect the comprehensive and equal eye, which ought to
watch over this great assemblage of communities and interests; so, on another, that the foundations of
our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality, and the
preeminence of a free government be exemplified by all the attributes, which can win the affections of its
citizens, and command the respect of the world.
When Washington says that "in obedience to the public summons" he has "repaired to the present
station," he means that he
Had Einstein not been such a ______ mathematician, many of our engineering Accomplishments may
have taken many years before even reaching the drawing board.
This passage discusses the work of Abe Kobo, a Japanese novelist of the twentieth century.
Abe Kobo is one of the great writers of postwar Japan. His literature is richer, less predictable, and
wider-ranging than that of his famed contemporaries, Mishima Yukio and Nobel laureate Oe Kenzaburo. It
is infused with the passion and strangeness of his experiences in Manchuria, which was a Japanese
colony on mainland China before World War II.
Abe spent his childhood and much of his youth in Manchuria, and, as a result, the orbit of his work would
be far less controlled by the oppressive gravitational pull of the themes of furusato (hometown) and the
emperor than his contemporaries'.
Abe, like most of the sons of Japanese families living in Manchuria, did return to Japan for schooling. He
entered medical school in Tokyo in 1944--just in time to forge himself a medical certificate claiming ill
health; this allowed him to avoid fighting in the war that Japan was already losing and return to Manchuria.
When Japan lost the war, however, it also lost its Manchurian colony. The Japanese living there were
attacked by the Soviet Army and various guerrilla bands. They suddenly found themselves refugees,
desperate for food. Many unfit men were abandoned in the Manchurian desert. At this apocalyptic time,
Abe lost his father to cholera.
He returned to mainland Japan once more, where the young were turning to Marxism as a rejection of the
militarism of the war. After a brief, unsuccessful stint at medical school, he became part of a Marxist group
of avant-garde artists. His work at this time was passionate and outspoken on political matters, adopting
black humor as its mode of critique.
During this time, Abe worked in the genres of theater, music, and photography. Eventually, he
mimeographed fifty copies of his first "published" literary work, entitled Anonymous Poems, in 1947. It
was a politically charged set of poems dedicated to the memory of his father and friends who had died in
Manchuria. Shortly thereafter, he published his first novel, For a Signpost at the End of a Road, which
imagined another life for his best friend who had died in the Manchurian desert. Abe was also active in the
Communist Party, organizing literary groups for workingmen.
Unfortunately, most of this radical early work is unknown outside Japan and underappreciated even in
Japan. In early 1962, Abe was dismissed from the Japanese Liberalist Party. Four months later, he
published the work that would blind us to his earlier oeuvre, Woman in the Dunes. It was director
Teshigahara Hiroshi's film adaptation of Woman in the Dunes that brought Abe's work to the international
stage. The movie's fame has wrongly led readers to view the novel as Abe's masterpiece. It would be
more accurate to say that the novel simply marked a turning point in his career, when Abe turned away
from the experimental and heavily political work of his earlier career. Fortunately, he did not then turn to
furusato and the emperor after all, but rather began a somewhat more realistic exploration of his
continuing obsession with homelessness and alienation. Not completely a stranger to his earlier
commitment to Marxism, Abe turned his attention, beginning in the sixties, to the effects on the individual
of Japan's rapidly urbanizing, growthdriven, increasingly corporate society.
The word "avant-garde" in this passage could best be replaced by
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 term best describes the overall tone toward waiters in this excerpt?