solve it 2

Read the passage and answer the questions

It was in the spring of my 64th year that I first heard of the seraphic melody. A generous grant from the Yale Institute of Sacred Music allowed me to spend two years in Vienna, Austria, in the dust of the basement libraries that riddle the old city.  

I had an apartment in the Margareten district. Though the subway provided convenient transport, I often found myself wandering. I've always had a strange feeling that the forgotten makers of history watch us, hidden in some crinkle of time—never was this feeling as strong as in Vienna. Munching on kasekrainer, or sausage, that I bought from street vendors, I wandered the stone and glass, alone with my thoughts. I even dreamed about aimless wanderings.  

But that was my free time. In truth, I spent most of my waking hours seated, bent over a book, or else with my nose to library stacks. I frequented the major institutions, of course. But my research at that time—the rather scholarly branch of pre‐Baroque xenharmonics (alternate music tuning systems)—led me further and further off the beaten path, to museums and specialized libraries on the city's suburbs, and from there to the personal libraries and collections of Vienna's elusive musical devotees.  

It was in the personal library of an architect by the name of Heimito Wolf that I first laid eyes on Schuppen des Drachens. (In English, Scales of the Dragon, a musical pun and a reference to the book's subject: music categorized as “supernatural” or “occult.”) As befits its shadowy subject, Schuppen des Drachens' origin is mysterious. Scholars agree it's the work of a secret society related to the Church and to the Viennese musical world—when the book was written, sometime in the 16th century, the two could hardly be separated. In any case, it's an encyclopedia of musical styles, specifically those musical styles beyond the old Church's realm.

That is to say, beyond the realm of the acceptable in that time period.  

The one entry of a musical style within the massive book that most enchanted me took up only half a page. The account there was so fantastical, so literally incredible that at first glance I took it for nothing more than myth—no more true than the dragon of the book's title. It had nothing at all to do with my research, and yet two aspects clung to me, and I couldn't shake them.  

First, the melody itself. In English it translates to seraphic or angelic melody: a melody so bewitching that when played twice, the second playing is more pleasing than the first, and the third more than the second, the fourth more than the third, and on and on forever.  

Supposedly, according to Schuppen des Drachens' long‐forgotten author, the musician who dares to play the melody enters a sort of trance, unable or unwilling to put down his instrument. He plays on until he drops of exhaustion. When he wakes, his fingers can no longer play the piece, but the memory of the melody haunts him.  

Second: the author continues, in a rather over‐the‐top style, to tell the tale of one such musician. (Lute, I believe, was his instrument, though the seraphic melody seems equally playable on any instrument.) The musician wanders from one Austrian court to another like a phantom, unable to forget his brief touch with the divine and equally unable to evoke once more that touch. As I recall the story, a duke takes pity on the musician and takes him into his care. The musician, who lives until his eighties, never leaves the duke's estate. He spends his days in the garden standing with his arms at his sides and his closed eyes directed up at the heavens, humming to himself.

Before I left, I mentioned Schuppen des Drachens to Herr Wolf. My reference was discrete, made only in passing. From deep within his oversized, overstuffed, burgundy armchair, Wolf broke into a fit of coughing. When he had recovered, he asked why I was interested. Thinking little of it, I mentioned the seraphic melody. His face clouded over. In thickly‐accented English, he warned me to forget the story. Naturally this only piqued my interest, and when I insisted, he wrote an address on a piece of paper. He said that if I visited the address, I was to deny ever having met him, ever having heard of him, and, in no uncertain terms, to never contact him again.  

I spent the next week in a cloud. It was impossible to concentrate on my work. My readings, dense enough to begin with, came to me as though written in a foreign language; even the prospect of writing, normally a pleasure, was hopeless. The idea of visiting the address, however, terrified me. I had known Herr Wolf for two decades. He was neither a coward nor a liar. He was not a gullible man.

In the end, the anxiety of not knowing won out. Following Wolf's address, I found myself at a typical‐looking street in the Alsergrund district, a locale neither busy nor sparse, and entered what appeared to be an apartment complex. Wolf's address, however, named no apartment number. I almost walked out. But though I can boast of no great heroism, and in fact devoted my life to study and quietude, nevertheless to resign myself to fate was unsatisfactory, distasteful. resolved to investigate further. The doors to the eight apartments, two on each floor,

were equally ordinary. The door to the roof was locked. Neither did I find any possibilities on the ground floor, though I searched the broom closets and even the basement, where I found nothing except the water heater, gas meters, and cleaning supplies.  

I stepped out of the building and surveyed the area. Right away I noticed the entranceway descending into the ground, just to the side of the steps on which I stood. Following the stairs as they turned out of sight of the street, I came to a locked door. A swift elbow to the glass and I was able to reach in and open it from the inside. The space was smaller than an elevator and roofless, open to the sky—a shaftway, maybe. By the light that came down to those depths I saw a symbol on the wall: a pale man with a flute, not playing the flute, but holding it at his side as he looks skyward, up to the sun that streams down on him. I assume he was painted on the stone, but so old and faded was the symbol that it was difficult to tell for sure.  

There's something more about him that I find difficult to put into words. Maybe in my excited state my imagination got the best of me. He seemed not to be moving, but somehow implying movement—about to drop to a knee, or maybe leap in the air. Something. I couldn't be sure. Equally, he seemed to imply where he had just been. Again, perhaps sitting, walking, talking, nothing definite—he was one image that for me represented many images, like where he came from and where he might be going, two paths darkening as they receded from the present.  

He meant little to me at first, but I think of him constantly now. Each day he occupies me more and more. The hallways of time are so long, and you never get a bird's eye view. I'm beginning to think they are not hallways at all, but a maze.

1. Where does the narrator first learn of the seraphic melody?

A from an architect named Heimito Wolf

B at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music

C in the book Schuppen des Drachens

D at a major academic institution in Vienna

2. At the end of the story, the narrator goes to an address given to him by Herr Wolf.

What motivates the narrator’s actions?

A. He wants to learn more about the seraphic melody.

B. He does not believe in the myth of the seraphic melody.

C. He wants an excuse not to visit Herr Wolf ever again.

D. He wants to show Herr Wolf that he is not gullible.

3. The narrator is a successful, recognized music scholar. What evidence from the passage best supports this conclusion?

A The narrator researches pre-Baroque alternate music tuning systems.

B The narrator receives a grant from the Yale Institute of Sacred Music.

C The narrator spends most of his time in libraries and academic institutions.

D The narrator becomes interested in a book in the library of Herr Wolf.

4. When the narrator mentions the seraphic melody to Herr Wolf, his face clouds over and he warns the narrator to forget the story. Based on this information, what can you conclude about Herr Wolf?

A Herr Wolf has no interest in the seraphic melody.

B Herr Wolf thinks the seraphic melody is a myth.

C Herr Wolf has never heard of the seraphic melody.

D Herr Wolf has experience with the seraphic melody.

5. What is this story mostly about?

A the study of pre-Baroque xenharmonics (alternate music tuning systems)

B the book Schuppen des Drachens and its ties to Viennese secret societies

C a mysterious melody that a scholar learns about while studying in Austria

D how the Church dictated acceptable musical styles in Europe in the 16th century

6. What does the phrase “piqued my interest” mean?

A made me curious

B made me forget

C made me uninterested

D made me afraid

solve it 1

Read the passage and answer the questions

As I reflect in my old age on my accomplishments and disappointments, my triumphs and regrets, I wonder if I distort the truth to ascribe a certain, shall we say, significance to events. Is it wrong to interpret events symbolically? Perhaps I have read too many books. Perhaps I long to assign order and meaning to what is mere randomness, mere chance.   

And yet (call me old‐fashioned if you’d like) a life without meaning strikes me as unacceptable, even impossible, because to me it seems the more things change, the more they stay the same. I consider chaos, chance, and randomness nothing more than the newest attempts to explain this inexplicable life.  

Of course I am thinking of my career, my meteoric rise to editor‐in‐chief and my ruination, which at the time seemed wholly without cause or explanation. Even then, it is true, I considered Grady Maxwell my story's villain. But I did not hate the man. I almost rather pitied him. No longer. He has grown in my mind over the years, and so too has his importance to my story. Maxwell's very brilliance blinded me to the traps he laid, and I fell into them, helpless.

But I do not like to dwell on evil. I occupy my days with my hobbies. I have a wonderful collection of butterflies, the joy of my life, including the astonishingly rare Greta oto, the glass winged butterfly, which I captured in the marshlands of southern Mexico. I never married, and so I have been spared the grotesque decay of love. I sit on my back porch as evening arrives, the mockingbirds calling from within the hawthorns I planted with my own hands, the deep blue of the Northern California sky bruising into purple, and when finally it blackens, I finish the last of my lemonade and rise and head upstairs to bed. No husband to nag me. No children to ignore me, condescend to me, and send me to a home. Had I married I would probably still be in Albany, New York, that horrid city, buried under three feet of snow.  

In all fairness, I liked it well enough when I ran the newspaper. Albany is no New York City, and not exactly Chicago or Boston or Los Angeles or—well, I could go on. But it is the capital of the most powerful state of the most powerful country in the world, famed for its outsized ambitions and its cloak and dagger politics. And who guards against the corruption and the back‐door dealings? The press, of course. The newspaper. And who watches over the paper? The editor‐in‐chief. That was me.  

I was lavished upon. Expensive dinners, invitations to the best parties, high society, under‐the‐table gifts of all sorts—there seemed no end to the citizenry's gratitude. And though I accepted—it would have been rude to do otherwise—never once did I allow this tribute to affect my judgment, nor the clarity of my vision, nor the tenacity with which I pursued the corrupt. I gave thanks, and then I returned to the boardroom with justice in my heart and the glint of the righteous in my eye.

I had plenty of enemies. But I knew who my enemies were, and according to the old saying, I kept them closer than my own friends. I always sat with my back to the wall, so to speak. That is why the Maxwell business haunts me still, because all my precautions came to naught. Though I was conspired against, it was I myself who blundered headfirst to ruin.

In one of fate's strange coincidences, Maxwell joined the staff the same week I was promoted to editor‐in‐chief. (His hiring process had already been handled; I had nothing to do with it.) I worked those first few months at a feverish pitch and hardly noticed Maxwell. He was after all only one of many reporters working the local political beat.

How vividly I can even now recall the day he marched into my office in his ratty tweed jacket and without a word threw onto my desk that plain, unlabeled manila folder and looked at me with just the slightest hint of a smile—how devious that smile!—that played about his mouth and especially his eyes (never trust a smile in the eyes) as he planted himself before my desk, arms crossed, waiting for me to speak first.  

“Maxwell, is it?” I asked without shifting in my chair. He huffed. “Take a look,” he replied in that gravelly baritone of his, and he nodded at the folder on my desk. I picked it up, opened it, and inspected the contents in their entirety. It took all my restraint to mask my surprise. I've always prided myself on maintaining the composure proper to the editor of a major paper. But what I saw was frankly shocking. In the folder were six photos that appeared to show Waylon Thatch, Albany's then‐mayor and a close friend of mine, in what we in the business call a compromising position.

The photos seemed to all have been taken around the same time, and judging by the mayor's appearance, it couldn't have been long ago. In them, Waylon was with one of the suspected crime leaders in our area, exchanging a mysterious package. It was suspicious, to say the least. I asked Maxwell where he had gotten the photos. He said it came from a contact of a contact, who claimed to be part of a local cult. He claimed the secret society was composed of the city's elite.

Perhaps his contact had an axe to grind with the mayor, who knew?   What a fool I was. I chased that scandal doggedly, with everything I had. I was young and brash. I envisioned a career‐defining story, an editorship with the New York Times, a nightly show on CNN. I was blinded to the obvious. The photos, of course, were fakes, brilliantly edited fakes. And though I've never been able to prove it, I am ironclad in my conviction that Grady

Maxwell was not just another overeager reporter swept up in the ruse. He was in on it. He may even have been its principal architect.  

Who but Maxwell emerged from the scandal unscathed? When the dust had settled, when the guillotine's echoes had faded and the rolling heads, mine chief among them, had ceased to roll, who still had a job? Maxwell.  

Albany politics were a very shady affair. Someone had an axe to grind with me, that much now is clear. I had no idea how deep the corruption ran, and I still don't. I never will.  

I am content merely to pass the rest of my days in quietude, sheltered from people and ignorant of politics. Let the country sink in its own mire, see if I care. Let the Grady Maxwells of the world scrabble tooth and claw for a seat at the feet of the mighty. See if I care.

1. What was the narrator’s former job in Albany?

A politician

B TV reporter

C newspaper editor-in-chief

D photojournalist

2. What situation has the narrator struggled through?

A losing her job in a political scandal

B doing a job that she hates

C divorcing her husband

D being unable to have kids

3. The narrator believed that an article about the scandalous photos of the mayor would improve her career. What evidence from the story best supports this conclusion?

A “I was blinded to the obvious. The photos, of course, were fakes, brilliantly edited fakes.”

B “I envisioned a career-defining story, an editorship with the New York Times, a nightly show on CNN.”

C “What a fool I was. I chased that scandal doggedly, with everything I had. I was young and brash.”

D “Albany politics were a very shady affair. Someone had an axe to grind with me, that much now is clear.”

4. Read the following sentences: “Let the country sink in its own mire, see if I care. Let the Grady Maxwells of the world scrabble tooth and claw for a seat at the feet of the mighty. See if I care.” Based on the repeated phrase, “see if I care,” what conclusion can you make about the narrator?

A The narrator no longer cares about power and politics.

B The narrator does not have strong feelings about Grady Maxwell.

C The narrator is not upset that Grady Maxwell stole her job.

D The narrator is trying to hide the fact that she actually cares.

5. What is this story mostly about?

A the cloak-and-dagger politics of Albany and its corrupt politicians

B how the press guards against political corruption and bribery

C the editor-in-chief of a newspaper who lost her job in a scandal

D the career of Grady Maxwell and how he became editor-in-chief

6. What does the phrase “lavished upon” most nearly mean?

A. Someone spends lots of money on you and praises you.

B You allow someone to give you money or gifts in exchange for a favor.

C You spend a lot of money to buy yourself nice things.

D You become greedy and corrupt after receiving many gifts.