Adapted from an article in Chatterbox Periodical edited by J. Erskine Clark (1906)

Steven Daniels, a magistrate from London, once showed great wisdom and ingenuity in detecting a thief. A man was brought before him charged with stealing a small, but very valuable, jeweled table. The prisoner denied the charge. He said that he was weak and feeble with long illness. For that reason it was impossible for him to have carried off a piece of furniture.

The judge listened very gravely to his story. After hearing of the poor man's misfortunes, he professed great sorrow and sympathy for the sufferer.

“Go home and get cured,” said he kindly; “and as you are poor, take with you that bag of cash”—heavy British Pounds—“as a gift from this court.”

The prisoner bowed, quickly threw the heavy bag over his shoulder, and departed, while everyone wondered. But he had hardly got outside the door of the court, when he was arrested. The judge remarked that if he could easily carry off a heavy sack of money, he would have no difficulty in stealing a light table.

The underlined word “feeble” most nearly means __________.

Adapted from an article in Chatterbox Periodical edited by J. Erskine Clark (1906)

Steven Daniels, a magistrate from London, once showed great wisdom and ingenuity in detecting a thief. A man was brought before him charged with stealing a small, but very valuable, jeweled table. The prisoner denied the charge. He said that he was weak and feeble with long illness. For that reason it was impossible for him to have carried off a piece of furniture.

The judge listened very gravely to his story. After hearing of the poor man's misfortunes, he professed great sorrow and sympathy for the sufferer.

“Go home and get cured,” said he kindly; “and as you are poor, take with you that bag of cash”—heavy British Pounds—“as a gift from this court.”

The prisoner bowed, quickly threw the heavy bag over his shoulder, and departed, while everyone wondered. But he had hardly got outside the door of the court, when he was arrested. The judge remarked that if he could easily carry off a heavy sack of money, he would have no difficulty in stealing a light table.

The underlined word “gravely” most nearly means __________.

Adapted from an article in Chatterbox Periodical edited by J. Erskine Clark (1906)

Steven Daniels, a magistrate from London, once showed great wisdom and ingenuity in detecting a thief. A man was brought before him charged with stealing a small, but very valuable, jeweled table. The prisoner denied the charge. He said that he was weak and feeble with long illness. For that reason it was impossible for him to have carried off a piece of furniture.

The judge listened very gravely to his story. After hearing of the poor man's misfortunes, he professed great sorrow and sympathy for the sufferer.

“Go home and get cured,” said he kindly; “and as you are poor, take with you that bag of cash”—heavy British Pounds—“as a gift from this court.”

The prisoner bowed, quickly threw the heavy bag over his shoulder, and departed, while everyone wondered. But he had hardly got outside the door of the court, when he was arrested. The judge remarked that if he could easily carry off a heavy sack of money, he would have no difficulty in stealing a light table.

The underlined word “detecting” most nearly means __________.

Adapted from an article in Chatterbox Periodical edited by J. Erskine Clark (1906)

Steven Daniels, a magistrate from London, once showed great wisdom and ingenuity in detecting a thief. A man was brought before him charged with stealing a small, but very valuable, jeweled table. The prisoner denied the charge. He said that he was weak and feeble with long illness. For that reason it was impossible for him to have carried off a piece of furniture.

The judge listened very gravely to his story. After hearing of the poor man's misfortunes, he professed great sorrow and sympathy for the sufferer.

“Go home and get cured,” said he kindly; “and as you are poor, take with you that bag of cash”—heavy British Pounds—“as a gift from this court.”

The prisoner bowed, quickly threw the heavy bag over his shoulder, and departed, while everyone wondered. But he had hardly got outside the door of the court, when he was arrested. The judge remarked that if he could easily carry off a heavy sack of money, he would have no difficulty in stealing a light table.

The underlined word “wondered” most nearly means __________.

Adapted from The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde (1888)

Every afternoon, as they were coming from school, the children used to go and play in the Giant's garden.

It was a large, lovely garden, with soft green grass. Here and there over the grass stood beautiful flowers like stars, and there were twelve peach-trees that in the springtime broke out into delicate blossoms of pink and pearl, and in the autumn bore rich fruit. The birds sat on the trees and sang so sweetly that the children used to stop their games in order to listen to them. "How happy we are here!" they cried to each other.

One day the Giant came back. He had been to visit his friend the Ogre and had stayed with him for seven years. After the seven years were over he had said all that he had to say, for his conversation was limited, and he determined to return to his own castle. When he arrived, he saw the children playing in the garden.

"What are you doing here?" he cried in a very gruff voice, and the children ran away.

"My own garden is my own garden," said the Giant. "Any one can understand that, and I will allow nobody to play in it but myself." So he built a high wall all round it, and put up a notice-board.

TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED

He was a very selfish Giant.

The poor children had now nowhere to play. They tried to play on the road, but the road was very dusty and full of hard stones, and they did not like it. They used to wander round the high wall when their lessons were over, and talk about the beautiful garden inside. "How happy we were there," they said to each other.

Which of the following words is a synonym of the underlined word "trespassers"?

Adapted from "The Shepherd’s Boy" by Aesop (trans. Jacobs 1909)

There was once a young Shepherd Boy who tended his sheep at the foot of a mountain near a dark forest. It was rather lonely for him all day, so he came up with a plan by which he could get a little company and some excitement. He rushed down towards the village calling out "Wolf, Wolf," and the villagers came out to meet him, and some of them stopped with him for a considerable time. This pleased the boy so much that a few days afterwards he tried the same trick, and again the villagers came to his help. But shortly after this a Wolf actually did come out from the forest, and began to worry the sheep, and the boy of course cried out "Wolf, Wolf," still louder than before. But this time the villagers, who had been fooled twice before, thought the boy was again deceiving them, and nobody stirred to come to his help. So the Wolf made a good meal off the boy's flock, and when the boy complained, the wise man of the village said: "A liar will not be believed, even when he speaks the truth."

The underlined word “considerable” most likely means __________.

Adapted from The Luckiest Girl in the School by Angela Brazil (1916)

December and January were scarcely good months for taking pictures, but Winona attempted some time exposures, with varying results. It was difficult to make the children realize the necessity of keeping absolutely still, and they ruined several of her pictures by grinning or moving. She secured quite a nice photo of the house, however, and several of the village, and promised herself better luck with family portraits when the summer came round again. She turned a large cupboard in the attic into her dark-room, and spent many hours experimenting with chemicals. She had urgent offers of help, but rejected them steadfastly, greatly to the disappointment of her would-be assistants. In the summer she meant to try all kinds of experiments. She had visions of rigging up a shelter made of leaves and branches, and taking a series of magnificent snap-shots of wild birds and animals, and she certainly intended to secure records of the sports at school. In the meantime she must content herself with landscape and still life.

The underlined phrase “rigging up” most likely means __________.

Adapted from "The Princess and the Pea" by Hans Christian Andersen (trans. Sommer 1897)

Once upon a time there was a prince who wanted to marry a princess; but she would have to be a real princess. He travelled all over the world to find one, but nowhere could he get what he wanted. There were princesses enough, but it was difficult to find out whether they were real ones. There was always something about them that was not as it should be. So he came home again and was sad, for he would have liked very much to have a real princess.

One evening a terrible storm came on; there was thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down. Suddenly a knocking was heard at the city gate, and the old king went to open it.

It was a princess standing out there in front of the gate. The water ran down from her hair and clothes; it ran down into the toes of her shoes and out again at the heels. She looked so destitute in the wind and the rain. And yet she said that she was a real princess.

“Well, we’ll soon find that out,” thought the old queen. But she said nothing, went into the bed-room, took all the bedding off the bedstead, and laid a pea on the bottom; then she took twenty mattresses and laid them on top of the pea.

On this the princess had to lie all night. In the morning she was asked how she had slept.

“Oh, very badly!” said she. “I have scarcely closed my eyes all night. Heaven only knows what was in the bed, but I was lying on something hard, so that I am black and blue all over my body. It’s horrible!”

Now they knew that she was a real princess because she had felt the pea right through the twenty mattresses and the twenty eider-down beds.

Nobody but a real princess could be as sensitive as that.

So the prince took her for his wife, for now he knew that he had a real princess; and the pea was put in the museum, where it may still be seen, if no one has stolen it.

There, that is a true story.

What does the princess mean when she says she is “black and blue” (underlined) all over her body? 

Adapted from Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll (1871)

One thing was certain, that the white kitten had had nothing to do with it—it was the black kitten's fault entirely. For the white kitten had been having its face washed by the old cat for the last quarter of an hour (and bearing it pretty well, considering); so you see that it COULDN'T have had any hand in the mischief.

The way Dinah washed her children's faces was this: first she held the poor thing down by its ear with one paw, and then with the other paw she rubbed its face all over, the wrong way, beginning at the nose: and just now, as I said, she was hard at work on the white kitten, which was lying quite still and trying to purr—no doubt feeling that it was all meant for its good.

But the black kitten had been finished with earlier in the afternoon, and so, while Alice was sitting curled up in a corner of the great arm-chair, half talking to herself and half asleep, the kitten had been having a grand game of romps with the ball of worsted Alice had been trying to wind up, and had been rolling it up and down till it had all come undone again; and there it was, spread over the hearth-rug, all knots and tangles, with the kitten running after its own tail in the middle.

'Oh, you wicked little thing!' cried Alice, catching up the kitten, and giving it a little kiss to make it understand that it was in disgrace. 'Really, Dinah ought to have taught you better manners! You OUGHT, Dinah, you know you ought!' she added, looking reproachfully at the old cat, and speaking in as cross a voice as she could manage—and then she scrambled back into the arm-chair, taking the kitten and the worsted with her, and began winding up the ball again. But she didn't get on very fast, as she was talking all the time, sometimes to the kitten, and sometimes to herself. Kitty sat very demurely on her knee, pretending to watch the progress of the winding, and now and then putting out one paw and gently touching the ball, as if it would be glad to help, if it might.

In the first paragraph, what does the underlined phrase “the mischief” refer to?

Baseball is a great game. It’s one of my favorite pastimes. It’s a great way to spend a lazy summer afternoon. I love going to watch the nine inning game played on a beautifully mowed lawn, listening to the Umpire yell “STRIKE,” singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the seventh-inning stretch, and I especially love the sound of the bat going "crack!!" when it hits the ball. Baseball is definitely my favorite sport. 

What is the main idea of this passage?