1. I was born on 30th of November, 1835, in the almost invisible village of Florida, Monroe County, Missouri. I suppose Florida had less than three hundred inhabitants. It had two streets, each a couple of hundred yards long; the rest of the avenues mere lanes, with rail fences and cornfields on either side. Both the streets and the lanes were paved with the same material—tough black mud in wet times, deep dust in dry.
2. Most of the houses were of logs—all of them, indeed, except three or four; these latter were frame ones. There were none of brick, and none of stone. There was a log church, with a puncheon floor and slab benches. A puncheon floor is made of logs whose upper surfaces have been chipped flat with the adz. The cracks between the logs were not filled; there was no carpet; consequently, if you dropped anything smaller than a peach, it was likely to go through. The church was perched upon short sections of logs, which elevated it two or three feet from the ground. Hogs slept under there, and whenever the dogs got after them during services, the minister had to wait till the disturbance was over. In winter there was always a refreshing breeze up through the puncheon floor; in summer there were fleas enough for all.
3. A slab bench is made of the outside cut of a saw-log, with the bark side down; it is supported on four sticks driven into auger holes at the ends; it has no back and no cushions. The church was twilighted with yellow tallow candles in tin sconces hung against the walls. Week days, the church was a schoolhouse.
4. There were two stores in the village. My uncle, John A. Quarles, was proprietor of one of them. It was a very small establishment, with a few rolls of “bit” calicoes on half a dozen shelves; a few barrels of salt mackerel, coffee, and New Orleans sugar behind the counter; stacks of brooms, shovels, axes, hoes, rakes, and such things here and there; a lot of cheap hats, bonnets, and tinware strung on strings and suspended from the walls; and at the other end of the room was another counter with bags of shot on it, a cheese or two, and a keg of powder; in front of it a row of nail kegs and a few pigs of lead, and behind it a barrel or two of New Orleans molasses and native corn whisky on top. If a boy bought five or ten cents’ worth of anything, he was entitled to half a handful of sugar from the barrel; if a woman bought a few yards of calico she was entitled to a spool of thread in addition to the usual gratis “trimmin’s”; if a man bought a trifle, he was at liberty to draw and swallow as big a drink of whisky as he wanted.
5. Everything was cheap: apples, peaches, sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes, and corn, ten cents a bushel; chickens, ten cents a piece; butter, six cents a pound; eggs, three cents a dozen; coffee and sugar, five cents a pound; whisky, ten cents a gallon. I do not know how prices are out there in interior Missouri now, but I know what they are here in Hartford, Connecticut. To wit: apples, three dollars a bushel; peaches, five dollars; Irish potatoes (choice Bermudas), five dollars; chickens, a dollar to a dollar and a half apiece, according to weight; butter, forty-five to sixty cents a pound. [An Excerpt from Mark Twain’s Autobiography]
Based on your understanding of the passage, answer the questions given below.
(a) Complete the sentence by choosing the appropriate ending.
Both the streets and lanes of Florida in 1835 were paved with ____________.
(i)tough black tar in wet times and dry black tar in dry times
(ii)tough coats of tar in wetter places and dry pack mud in drier places
(iii)tough black mud in wet times and dry dust in dry times
(iv)toughening of black mud for wet days and dry dust sprayed for dry days
(b) With which statement given below would the writer not agree?
(i)Hogs would sometimes enter the church when the service was ongoing and the minister would stop to let them out.
(ii)Dogs would get after the hogs during the service and the minister would have to stop till the ruckus subsided.
(iii)The hogs resided with the dogs below the church level.
(iv)The minister’s dogs would get after the hog owners during the service and make the minister stop his service.
(c) List two unique aspects of the church building.
(d) Complete the sentence appropriately.
When the narrator was born, the population of Florida was _________.
(e) Select the word that is similar in meaning to ‘elevated’.
(i)exalted
(ii)deflated
(iii)demeaned
(iv)demented
(f) Based on your understanding, why do you think there was no separate schoolhouse and lessons were held in church during weekdays? Explain in about 40 words.
(g) What were the bonus items for purchases made by (i) Women buying calico, (ii) Boy spending five to ten cents, (iii) Men who bought a trifle?
(h) Answer the following with reference to this line.
‘Prices were cheap I do not know how prices are out there in interior Missouri now.’
(i) Read the five titles (1)-(5) given below.
1.Historical Price Index by Mark Twain
2.Life in Nineteenth Century America
3.Mark Twain’s Autobiography
4.Mark Twain’s Florida Days
5.Mark Twain’s Marital Life
Identify the option that displays the titles that Does/Do correspond with the passage.
(i)1 and 2(ii)3 and 5(iii)only 4(iv)2 and 5