PSAT PSAT-Reading Actual PDF : Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test - Reading

They __ their offer of aid when they became disillusioned with the project

• A. bolstered
• B. redoubled
• C. constrained
• D. rescinded
• E. expanded

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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 supposin 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."
Which selection best interprets "Chops would have starved to death, afore he'd have gained a bit of bread
by putting his hand to a paper" 4th paragraph

• A. He would starve before signing a performance contract as a phenomenon.
• B. He would starve before wrapping paper around food showing distrust in the preparation of same.
• C. He would starve before he would accept charity from anyone.
• D. He would starve before borrowing money to buy bread.
• E. He would starve before he would agree to anything.

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The storyteller's __________ anecdotes earned her the __________ attention of the crowd.

• A. meandering. .distracted
• B. poignant. .abrasive
• C. moribund. .lucid
• D. pointed. .spellbound
• E. compelling. .rapt

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He was born a slave, but T. Thomas Fortune (18561928) went on to become a journalist, editor, and civil
rights activist, founding several early black newspapers and a civil rights organization that predated W. E.
B. DuBois' Niagara Movement (later the NAACP). Like many black leaders of his time, Fortune was torn
between the radical leanings of DuBois and the more conservative ideology of Booker T. Washington.
This 1884 essay, "The Negro and the Nation," dates from his more militant period.
The war of the Rebellion settled only one question: It forever settled the question of chattel slavery in this
country. It forever choked the life out of the infamy of the Constitutional right of one man to rob another, by
purchase of his person, or of his honest share of the produce of his own labor. But this was the only
question permanently and irrevocably settled. Nor was this the all-absorbing question involved. The right
of a state to secede from the socalled Union remains where it was when the treasonable shot upon Fort
Sumter aroused the people to all the horrors of internecine war. And the measure of protection which the
national government owes the individual members of states, a right imposed upon it by the adoption of the
Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, remains still to be affirmed.
It was not sufficient that the federal government should expend its blood and treasure to unfetter the limbs
of four millions of people. There can be a slavery more odious, more galling, than mere chattel slavery. It
has been declared to be an act of charity to enforce ignorance upon the slave, since to inform his
intelligence would simply be to make his unnatural lot all the more unbearable. Instance the miserable
existence of .sop, the great black moralist. But this is just what the manumission of the black people of
this country try has accomplished. They are more absolutely under the control of the Southern whites;
they are more systematically robbed of their labor; they are more poorly housed, clothed and fed, than
under the slave regime; and they enjoy, practically, less of the protection of the laws of the state or of the
federal government. When they appeal to the federal government they are told by the Supreme Court to
go to the state authorities --as if they would have appealed to the one had the other given them that
protection to which their sovereign citizenship entitles them! Practically, there is no law in the United
States which extends its protecting arm over the black man and his rights. He is, like the Irishman in
Ireland, an alien in his native land. There is no central or auxiliary authority to which he can appeal for
protection. Wherever he turns he finds the strong arm of constituted authority powerless to protect him.
The farmer and the merchant rob him with absolute immunity, and irresponsible ruffians murder him
without fear of punishment, undeterred by the law, or by public opinion--which connives at, if it does not
inspire, the deeds of lawless violence. Legislatures of states have framed a code of laws which is more
cruel and unjust than any enforced by a former slave state.
The right of franchise has been practically annulled in every one of the former slave states, in not one of
which, today, can a man vote, think, or act as he pleases. He must conform his views to the views of the
men who have usurped every function of government--who, at the point of the dagger, and with shotgun,
have made themselves masters in defiance of every law or precedent in our history as a government.
They have usurped government with the weapons of the cowards and assassins, and they maintain
themselves in power by the most approved practices of the most odious of tyrants. These men have shed
as much innocent blood as the bloody triumvirate of Rome. Today, red handed murderers and assassins
sit in the high places of power, and bask in the smiles of innocence and beauty.
Fortune uses the example of the Irishman to show that

• A. one can be born to slavery but rise above it
• B. some people have a native land; others have none
• C. people may be treated more fairly in a monarchy than in a democracy
• D. famine is not alien to people in the United States
• E. one can be treated as a foreigner in the land of one's birth

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(1) On my nineteenth birthday, I began my trip to Mali, West Africa.
(2) Some 24 hours later I arrived in Bamako, the capital of Mali.
(3) The sun had set and the night was starless.
(4) One of the officials from the literacy program I was working was there to meet me.
(5) After the melee in the baggage claim, we proceeded to his car.
(6) Actually, it was a truck.
(7) I was soon to learn that most people in Mali that had automobiles actually had trucks or SUVs.
(8) Apparently, there not just a convenience but a necessity when you live on the edge of the Sahara.
(9) I threw my bags into the bed of the truck, and hopped in to the back of the cab.
(10) Riding to my welcome dinner, I stared out the windows of the truck and took in the city.
(11) It was truly a foreign land to me, and I knew that I was an alien there.
(12) "What am I doing here?" I thought.
(13) It is hard to believe but seven months later I returned to the same airport along the same road that I
had traveled on that first night in Bamako, and my perspective on the things that I saw had completely
changed.
(14) The landscape that had once seemed so desolate and lifeless now was the homeland of people that I
had come to love.
(15) When I looked back at the capital, Bamako, fast receding on the horizon, I did not see a city
foreboding and wild in its foreignness.
(16) I saw the city which held so many dear friends.
(17) I saw teadrinking sessions going late into the night.
(18) I saw the hospitality and open-heartedness of the people of Mali.
(19) The second time, everything looked completely different, and I knew that it was I who had changed
and not it.
Which of the following is the best way to revise sentence 7 (reproduced below)? I was soon to learn that
most people in Mali that had automobiles actually had trucks or SUVs.

• A. Add commas after "Mali" and "automobiles"
• B. Change "that had automobiles" to "who had automobiles"
• C. Replace "or" with "and"
• D. Change "I was soon to learn" to "I was soon learning"
• E. Add an apostrophe to make "SUVs" read "SUV's

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