Read the excerpt below and answer the question. But it would have been worth any statesman’s money to have heard the profound discussions that sometimes took place, when by chance an old newspaper fell into their hands from some passing traveler.

What is ironic about Irving’s description of Rip Van Winkle and his friends in the passage?

The men aren’t really politically knowledgeable.
There were no newspapers during this period.
The men never talked to one another.
The men never talked to travelers.

Read the excerpt from act 1, scene 3, of julius caesar. cassius. am i not stayed for? tell me. cinna. yes, you are. o cassius, if you could but win the noble brutus to our party— cassius. be you content. good cinna, take this paper and look you lay it in the praetor’s chair, where brutus may but find it. and throw this in at his window. set this up with wax upon old brutus’ statue. all this done, repair to pompey’s porch, where you shall find us. is decius brutus and trebonius there? cinna. all but metellus cimber, and he’s gone to seek you at your house. well, i will hie, and so bestow these papers as you bade me. cassius. that done, repair to pompey’s theatre. what is cassius’s motivation for sending brutus the letter? cassius wants to make sure that cinna is on his side. cassius wants to reassure cinna that brutus will follow them. cassius wants to sway brutus to kill caesar. cassius wants to alert brutus about the conspiracy against him.

Match the author with the description a. ernest hemingway b. john steinbeck c. robert frost d. langston hughes (1) summers spent in pacific grove, california influenced the symbolism in his literature (2) his poetry includes simple, direct language. many are dramatic monologues written in free verse are about life on new england farms (3) the mood and tone of his literature is largely shaped by his experience as a soldier in world war 1 (4) his poetry and short stories include dialect and colloquialisms which gives his primarily african american characters distinctive voices

Read the passage, then answer the question that follows. no one could have seen it at the time, but the invention of beet sugar was not just a challenge to cane. it was a hint—just a glimpse, like a twist that comes about two thirds of the way through a movie—that the end of the age of sugar was in sight. for beet sugar showed that in order to create that perfect sweetness you did not need slaves, you did not need plantations, in fact you did not even need cane. beet sugar was a foreshadowing of what we have today: the age of science, in which sweetness is a product of chemistry, not whips. in 1854 only 11 percent of world sugar production came from beets. by 1899 the percentage had risen to about 65 percent. and beet sugar was just the first challenge to cane. by 1879 chemists discovered saccharine—a laboratory-created substance that is several hundred times sweeter than natural sugar. today the sweeteners used in the foods you eat may come from corn (high-fructose corn syrup), from fruit (fructose), or directly from the lab (for example, aspartame, invented in 1965, or sucralose—splenda—created in 1976). brazil is the land that imported more africans than any other to work on sugar plantations, and in brazil the soil is still perfect for sugar. cane grows in brazil today, but not always for sugar. instead, cane is often used to create ethanol, much as corn farmers in america now convert their harvest into fuel. –sugar changed the world, marc aronson and marina budhos how does this passage support the claim that sugar was tied to the struggle for freedom? it shows that the invention of beet sugar created competition for cane sugar. it shows that technology had a role in changing how we sweeten our foods. it shows that the beet sugar trade provided jobs for formerly enslaved workers. it shows that sweeteners did not need to be the product of sugar plantations and slavery.