Use the dictionary, the acronym finder, and the word origins dictionary (links above) as needed. A new quiz is available each Monday through Thursday. This is the quiz for September 29.
Hunting for a straw hat blown off by the wind and lost - from A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain (died 1910)
We hunted during a couple of hours, not because the old straw hat was valuable but out of curiosity to find out how such a thing could manage to conceal itself in open ground where there was nothing left for it to hide behind. When one is reading in bed and lays his paper-knife down, he cannot find it again if it is smaller than a saber. That hat was as stubborn as any paper-knife could have been, and we finally had to give it up, but we found a fragment that had once belonged to an opera-glass, and by digging around and turning over the rocks we gradually collected all the lenses and the cylinders and the various odds and ends that go to making up a complete opera-glass. We afterward had the thing reconstructed, and the owner can have his adventurous lost property by submitting proofs and paying costs of rehabilitation.
1. Why would someone have a paper-knife in bed?
2. Why would someone have an opera-glass in the mountains?
3. Is Twain serious about returning the opera-glass to its owner? How do we know?
4. Why is "rehabilitation" a funny word in this context?
The entire book can be downloaded as an HTML zip file from the Internet: A Tramp Abroad.
Write down your answers and then see Answer Key below.
Answer Key:
1-to cut the uncut pages of books.
2-An opera-glass is a type of binoculars.
3-Not serious. No one would be able to submit proofs.
4-"Rehabilitation" usually refers to living beings or their affairs.
Corrections? Questions? Comments? E-mail Robert Jackson at robert15115@gmail.com.
Use the dictionary, the acronym finder, and the word origins dictionary (links above) as needed. A new quiz is available each Monday through Thursday. This is the quiz for September 29.