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: | Sep 02, 2025 |
Big earthquakes are naturally occurring events well outside the powers of humans to create or stop. An
earthquake is caused by a sudden slip on a fault. Stresses in the earth's outer layer push the side of the
fault together. The friction across the surface of the fault holds the rocks together so they do not slip
immediately when pushed sideways. Eventually enough stress builds up and the rocks slip suddenly,
releasing energy in waves that travel through the rock to cause the shaking that we feel during an
earthquake. Earthquakes typically originate several tens of miles below the surface of the earth. It takes
many years--decades to centuries--to build up enough stress to make a large earthquake, and the fault
may be tens to hundreds of miles long. The scale and force necessary to produce earthquakes are well
beyond our daily lives. Likewise, people cannot prevent earthquakes from happening or stop them once
they've started--giant nuclear explosions at shallow depths, like those in some movies, won't actually stop
an earthquake.
The two most important variables affecting earthquake damage are the intensity of ground shaking cased
by the quake and the quality of the engineering of structures in the region. The level of shaking, in turn, is
controlled by the proximity of the earthquake source to the affected region and the types of rocks that
seismic waves pass through en route (particularly those at or near the ground surface). Generally, the
bigger and closer the earthquake, the stronger the shaking. But there have been large earthquakes with
very little damage either because they caused little shaking or because the buildings were built to
withstand that shaking. In other cases, moderate earthquakes have caused significant damage either
because the shaking was locally amplified or more likely because the structures were poorly engineered.
The word fault means?
Sir Giles's irritating reserve, not even excused by a word of apology, reached the limits of his endurance.
He respectfully protested. "I regret to find, sir," he said, "that I have lost my place in my employer's
estimation. The man to whom you confide the superintendence of your clerks and the transaction of your
business has, I venture to think, some claim (under the present circumstances) to be trusted." The banker
was now offended on his side.
"I readily admit your claim," he answered, "when you are sitting at your desk in my office. But, even in
these days of strikes, co-operations, and bank holidays, an employer has one privilege left--he has not
ceased to be a Man, and he has not forfeited a man's right to keep his own secrets. I fail to see anything in
my conduct which has given you just reason to complain." Dennis, rebuked, made his bow in silence, and
withdrew.
Did these acts of humility mean that he submitted? They meant exactly the contrary. He had made up his
mind that Sir Giles Mountjoy's motives should, sooner or later, cease to be mysteries to Sir Giles
Mountjoy's clerk.
Which selection best describes the overall feeling expressed by Sir Giles in 2nd paragraph?
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.
In context, the word "wan" in the passage most nearly means
The main purpose of this story is to appeal to the reader's interest in a subject which has been the theme
of some of the greatest writers, living and dead--but which has never been, and can never be, exhausted,
because it is a subject eternally interesting to all mankind. Here is one more book that depicts the struggle
of a human creature, under those opposing influences of Good and Evil, which we have all felt, which we
have all known. It has been my aim to make the character of "Magdalen," which personifies this struggle,
a pathetic character even in its perversity and its error; and I have tried hard to attain this result by the
least obtrusive and the least artificial of all means--by a resolute adherence throughout to the truth as it is
in Nature. This design was no easy one to accomplish; and it has been a great encouragement to me
(during the publication of my story in its periodical form) to know, on the authority of many readers, that
the object which I had proposed to myself, I might, in some degree, consider as an object achieved.
Round the central figure in the narrative other characters will be found grouped, in sharp
contrast--contrast, for the most part, in which I have endeavored to make the element of humor mainly
predominant. I have sought to impart this relief to the more serious passages in the book, not only
because I believe myself to be justified in doing so by the laws of Art--but because experience has taught
me (what the experience of my readers will doubtless confirm) that there is no such moral phenomenon
as unmixed tragedy to be found in the world around us. Look where we may, the dark threads and the
light cross each other perpetually in the texture of human life.
Which selection best identifies the device used in the phrase "the dark threads and the light cross each
other perpetually in the texture of human life" at the end of 3rd paragraph