SAT SAT-Critical-Reading Exam Syllabus Topics:

SAT Section One : Critical Reading Sample Questions:

1. Pauline Johnson (18611913) was the daughter of Mohawk leader George Henry Martin; her mother was
English. Johnson was known in her time as a poet and performer. For years she toured throughout
Canada giving dramatic readings. Late in her life she turned to writing short stories. This excerpt is from
"A Red Girl's Reasoning," first published in 1893.
How interesting--do tell us some more of your old home, Mrs. McDonald; you so seldom speak of your life
at the post, and we fellows so often wish to hear of it all," said Logan eagerly.
"Why do you not ask me of it, then?" "Well--er, I'm sure I don't know; I'm fully interested in the Ind --in your
people--your mother's people, I mean, but it always seems so personal, I suppose; and --a --a--" "Perhaps
you are, like all other white people, afraid to mention my nationality to me."
The captain winced, and Mrs. Stuart laughed uneasily. Joe McDonald was not far off, and he was listening,
and chuckling, and saying to himself, "That's you, Christie, lay `em out; it won't hurt `em to know how they
appear once in a while." "Well, Captain Logan," she was saying, "what is it you would like to hear--of my
people, or my parents, or myself?" "All, all, my dear," cried Mrs. Stuart clamorously. "I'll speak for him--tell
us of yourself and your mother--your father is delightful, I am sure--but then he is only an ordinary
Englishman, not half so interesting as a foreigner, or--or perhaps I should say, a native."
Christie laughed. "Yes," she said, "my father often teases my mother now about how very native she was
when he married her; then, how could she have been otherwise? She did not know a word of English, and
there was not another English-speaking person besides my father and his two companions within sixty
miles." "Two companions, eh? One a Catholic priest and the other a wine merchant, I suppose, and with
your father in the Hudson Bay, they were good representatives of the pioneers in the New World,"
remarked Logan waggishly.
"Oh, no, they were all Hudson Bay men. There were no rumsellers and no missionaries in that part of the
country then." Mrs. Stuart looked puzzled. "No missionaries?" she repeated with an odd intonation.
Christie's insight was quick. There was a peculiar expression of interrogation in the eyes of her listeners,
and the girl's blood leapt angrily up into her temples as she said hurriedly, "I know what you mean; I know
what you are thinking. You are wondering how my parents were married --"
"Well--er, my dear, it seems peculiar if there was no priest, and no magistrate, why--a--" Mrs. Stuart
paused awkwardly.
"The marriage was performed by Indian rites," said Christie. "Oh, do tell about it; is the ceremony very
interesting and quaint--are your chieftains anything like Buddhist priests?" It was Logan who spoke.
"Why, no," said the girl in amazement at that gentleman's ignorance. "There is no ceremony at all, save a
feast. The two people just agree to live only with and for each other, and the man takes his wife to his
home, just as you do. There is no ritual to bind them; they need none; an Indian's word was his law in
those days, you know."
Mrs. Stuart stepped backwards. "Ah!" was all she said. Logan removed his eyeglass and stared blankly at
Christie. "And did McDonald marry you in this singular fashion?" he questioned. "Oh, no, we were married
by Father O'Leary. Why do you ask?"
"Because if he had, I'd have blown his brains out tomorrow." Mrs. Stuart's partner, who had heretofore
been silent, coughed and began to twirl his cuff stud nervously, but nobody took notice of him. Christie
had risen, slowly, ominously--risen, with the dignity and pride of an empress.
"Captain Logan," she said, "what do you dare to say to me? What do you dare to mean? Do you presume
to think it would not have been lawful for Joe to marry me according to my people's rites? Do you for one
instant dare to question that my parents were not as legally--" "Don't, dear, don't," interrupted Mrs. Stuart
hurriedly, "it is bad enough now, goodness knows; don't make--" Then she broke off blindly.
As the story continues, Joe McDonald is appalled and angry at Christie for "shocking" Logan and Mrs.
Stuart. Based on the story so far, how would you expect Christie to react to Joe's disapproval?

A) She would ask Joe to intercede for her with Logan and Mrs. Stuart.
B) She would humbly beg Mrs. Stuart's pardon.
C) She would tell Logan and Mrs. Stuart that she made up the whole story.
D) She would probably acquiesce and apologize to Joe.
E) She would deny that she had done anything wrong.

2. The following two passages deal with the political movements working for the woman's vote in America.
The first organized assertion of woman's rights in the United States was made at the Seneca Falls
convention in 1848. The convention, though, had little immediate impact because of the national issues
that would soon embroil the country. The contentious debates involving slavery and state's rights that
preceded the Civil War soon took center stage in national debates.
Thus woman's rights issues would have to wait until the war and its antecedent problems had been
addressed before they would be addressed. In 1869, two organizations were formed that would play
important roles in securing the woman's right to vote. The first was the American Woman's Suffrage
Association (AWSA). Leaving federal and constitutional issues aside, the AWSA focused their attention
on state-level politics. They also restricted their ambitions to securing the woman's vote and downplayed
discussion of women's full equality. Taking a different track, the National Woman's Suffrage Association
(NWSA), led by Elizabeth Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, believed that the only way to assure the long-
term security of the woman's vote was to ground it in the constitution. The NWSA challenged the
exclusion of woman from the Fifteenth Amendment, the amendment that extended the vote to
African-American men. Furthermore, the NWSA linked the fight for suffrage with other inequalities faced
by woman, such as marriage laws, which greatly disadvantaged women.
By the late 1880s the differences that separated the two organizations had receded in importance as the
women's movement had become a substantial and broad-based political force in the country. In 1890, the
two organizations joined forces under the title of the National American Woman's Suffrage Association
(NAWSA). The NAWSA would go on to play a vital role in the further fight to achieve the woman's vote.
In 1920, when Tennessee became the thirty-eighth state to approve the constitutional amendment
securing the woman's right to vote, woman's suffrage became enshrined in the constitution. But woman's
suffrage did not happen in one fell swoop. The success of the woman's suffrage movement was the story
of a number of partial victories that led to the explicit endorsement of the woman's right to vote in the
constitution.
As early as the 1870s and 1880s, women had begun to win the right to vote in local affairs such as
municipal elections, school board elections, or prohibition measures. These "partial suffrages"
demonstrated that women could in fact responsibly and reasonably participate in a representative
democracy (at least as voters). Once such successes were achieved and maintained over a period of
time, restricting the full voting rights of woman became more and more suspect. If women were helping
decide who was on the local school board, why should they not also have a voice in deciding who was
president of the country? Such questions became more difficult for non-suffragists to answer, and thus the
logic of restricting the woman's vote began to crumble
The author of the second passage would most likely see the work of the

A) Seneca Falls convention as the most important single event in the women's suffrage movement.
B) NWSA as unimportant for the passage of the woman's voting rights amendment.
C) the NAWSA as important for the unity of the woman's suffrage movement.
D) NWSA as indispensable for "partial suffrages."
E) AWSA as crucial for the ultimate success of the suffrage movement.

3. 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 the context, the word "ineffaceable" in 3rd paragraph most nearly means

A) inerasable.
B) devastating.
C) inescapable.
D) horrible.
E) ugly.

4. As the grass roots movement gained momentum, outside forces attempted to infiltrate and change the
direction of the original purpose so the sponsor recommended we adopt a ______, making it clear to the
public our motives and purpose.

A) invocation
B) declaration
C) manifesto
D) mandate
E) statement

5. 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."
For what purpose does the narrator most likely describe the Dwarf's character in 2nd and 3rd paragraph?

A) establishes the character has a temper when it comes to love
B) establishes the character as being quite normal save for size
C) establishes the character as rather proud that his phenomenon is authentic
D) establishes the character has ability to fall in love
E) establishes the character as a kind individual

Solutions: