The following edited passage is an
excerpt from Vanity Fair by William
Makepeace Thackeray on Joe Sedley’s
attempt to court Rebecca.

Poor Joe’s panic lasted for two or three
days; during which he did not visit the
house, nor during that period did Miss
Rebecca ever mention his name. She
5 was all respectful gratitude to Mrs.
Sedley; delighted beyond measure at the
Bazaars; and in a whirl of wonder at the
theatre, whither the good-natured lady
took her. One day, Amelia had a
10 headache, and could not go upon some
social gathering to which the two young
people were invited: nothing could
induce her friend to go without her.
“What! You who have shown the poor
15 orphan what happiness and love are for
the first time in her life—quit YOU?
Never!” and the green eyes looked up to
Heaven and filled with tears; and Mrs.
Sedley could not but own that her
20 daughter’s friend had a charming kind
heart of her own.

As for Mr. Sedley’s jokes, Rebecca
laughed at them with a cordiality and
perseverance which not a little pleased
25 and softened that good-natured
gentleman. Nor was it with the chiefs of
the family alone that Miss Sharp found
favour. She interested Mrs. Blenkinsop
by evincing the deepest sympathy in the
30 raspberry-jam preserving, which
operation was then going on in the
Housekeeper’s room; she persisted in
calling Sambo “Sir,” and “Mr. Sambo,”
to the delight of that attendant; and she
35 apologised to the lady’s maid for giving
her trouble in venturing to ring the bell,
with such sweetness and humility, that
the Servants’ Hall was almost as
charmed with her as the Drawing Room.

40 Once, in looking over some drawings
which Amelia had sent from school,
Rebecca suddenly came upon one which
caused her to burst into tears and leave

the room. It was on the day when Joe
45 Sedley made his second appearance.

Amelia hastened after her friend to
know the cause of this display of
feeling, and the good-natured girl came
back without her companion, rather
50 affected too. “You know, her father was
our drawing-master, Mamma, at
Chiswick, and used to do all the best
parts of our drawings.”

“My love! I’m sure I always heard Miss
55 Pinkerton say that he did not touch
them—he only mounted them.” “It was
called mounting, Mamma. Rebecca
remembers the drawing, and her father
working at it, and the thought of it came
60 upon her rather suddenly—and so, you
know, she—”

“The poor child is all heart,” said Mrs.
Sedley.

“I wish she could stay with us another
65 week,” said Amelia.

“She’s devilish like Miss Cutler that I
used to meet at Dumdum, only fairer.
She’s married now to Lance, the
Artillery Surgeon. Do you know,
70 Ma’am, that once Quintin, of the 14th,
bet me—”

“O Joseph, we know that story,” said
Amelia, laughing. “Never mind about
telling that; but persuade Mamma to
75 write to Sir Something Crawley for
leave of absence for poor dear Rebecca:
here she comes, her eyes red with
weeping.”

I’m better, now,” said the girl, with the
80 sweetest smile possible, taking good-
natured Mrs. Sedley’s extended hand
and kissing it respectfully. “How kind
you all are to me! All,” she added, with
a laugh, “except you, Mr. Joseph.”

85 “Me!” said Joseph, meditating an instant
departure. “Gracious Heavens! Good
Gad! Miss Sharp!”

“Yes; how could you be so cruel as to
make me eat that horrid pepper-dish at
90 dinner, the first day I ever saw you?
You are not so good to me as dear
Amelia.”

“He doesn’t know you so well,” cried
Amelia.

95 “I defy anybody not to be good to you,
my dear,” said her mother.

“The curry was capital; indeed it was,”
said Joe, quite gravely. “Perhaps there
was NOT enough citron juice in it—no,
100 there was NOT.”

“And the chilis?”

“By Jove, how they made you cry out!”
said Joe, caught by the ridicule of the
circumstance, and exploding in a fit of
105 laughter which ended quite suddenly, as
usual.

“I shall take care how I let YOU choose
for me another time,” said Rebecca, as
they went down again to dinner. “I
110 didn’t think men were fond of putting
poor harmless girls to pain.”

“By Gad, Miss Rebecca, I wouldn’t hurt
you for the world.”

“No,” said she, “I KNOW you
115 wouldn’t”; and then she gave him ever
so gentle a pressure with her little hand,
and drew it back quite frightened, and
looked first for one instant in his face,
and then down at the carpet-rods; and I
120 am not prepared to say that Joe’s heart
did not thump at this little involuntary,
timid, gentle motion of regard on the
part of the simple girl.

The following passage is taken from
The American Railway by Thomas Clarke et
al. on the movement of locomotives in
1888.

We come next to the superintendent of
machinery, whose duty it is to provide
and maintain locomotives and cars of all
kinds to handle the company’s traffic. His
5 department is subdivided between a
master mechanic, in charge of
locomotives and machine-shops, and a
master car-builder, in charge of car-
shops.

10 The master mechanic selects and
immediately controls all engine-runners
and firemen, and keeps performance
sheets of all locomotives, showing miles
run, cars hauled, wages paid, coal and oil
15 consumed, and other details giving results
accomplished by different runners and
firemen, and by different types of engine,
or on different divisions or roads.
Runners and firemen accomplishing the
20 best results are often remunerated with
premiums.

10 The master mechanic selects and
immediately controls all engine-runners
and firemen, and keeps performance
sheets of all locomotives, showing miles
run, cars hauled, wages paid, coal and oil
15 consumed, and other details giving results
accomplished by different runners and
firemen, and by different types of engine,
or on different divisions or roads.
Runners and firemen accomplishing the
20 best results are often remunerated with
premiums.

The master car-builder has charge of the
shops where cars are built and repaired,
and of the car-inspectors who are
25 stationed at central and junction points to
prevent defective cars being put into the
trains.

Formerly each railroad used its own cars
exclusively, and through freights were
30 transferred at every junction point. This
involved such delay and expense that
railroads now generally permit all loaded
cars to go through to destination without
transfer, and allow each other a certain
35 sum for the use of cars. Usually this is
about three-quarters of a cent for each
mile which the car travels on a foreign
road. This involves a great scattering of
cars, and an extensive organization to
40 keep record of their whereabouts and of
the accounts between the companies for
mileage. This organization will be
referred to more fully in connection with

the department of transportation. But the
45 joint use of each other’s cars makes it
necessary that there should be at least
enough similarity in their construction
and their coupling appliances to permit
their indiscriminate use upon all roads.
50 And conventions of master car-builders
have recommended certain forms and
dimensions as standards, which are now
in general use.

There is much convenience in this, but
55 one disadvantage. It requires almost
unanimous action to introduce any
change of form or of construction,
however advantageous it may be. And to
secure unanimous action in such matters
60 is almost as hard as it would be to secure
unanimity in a change in the spelling of
English words. Still there is progress,
though slow, toward several desirable
reforms, the most important of which is
65 the adoption of a standard automatic
coupler.

Having shown how the property of all
kinds is kept in efficient condition, we
next come to its operation. This is called
70 “conducting transportation,” and the
officer in charge is usually called the
superintendent of transportation. All
train-despatchers, conductors, train-men,
and telegraph operators are under his
75 immediate control. He makes all
schedules and provides all extra and
irregular service that the traffic
department makes requisition for, himself
calling upon the superintendent of
80 machinery for the necessary locomotives,
switching engines, and cars. It is his
especial province to handle all trains as
swiftly as possible, and to see that there
are no collisions. It is impossible to detail
85 fully the safeguards and precautions used
to this end, but the general principles observed
are as follows.

First, a general time-table or schedule is
carefully made out for all regular trains
90 upon each division, showing on one sheet
the time of each train at each station.

This schedule is all that is needed so long
as all trains are able to keep on time, and
there are no extras. Trouble begins when
95 regular trains cannot keep on schedule, or
when extra trains have to be sent out, not
provided for on the schedule. A diagram,
or graphic representation of this schedule,
upon a board or large sheet of paper, is an
100 important feature of the office regulating
train-movements. Twenty-four vertical
lines divide the board into equal spaces
representing the twenty-four hours of the
day, numbered from midnight to
105 midnight. Horizontal lines at
proportionate distances from the top
represent the stations in their order
between the termini, represented by the
top and bottom lines of the diagram. The
110 course of every train can now be plotted
on this diagram in an oblique line joining
the points on each station line
corresponding to the time the train arrives
at and leaves that station.

The first edited passage is from Animals
of the Past by Frederic Lucas on the
reason animals become extinct. The
second edited passage is taken from Our
Vanishing Wildlife by William T.
Hornaday on the abuse of nature.

Passage 1

It is often asked “why do animals become
extinct?” but the question is one to which
it is impossible to give a comprehensive
and satisfactory reply; this chapter does
5 not pretend to do so, but merely presents
a few aspects of this complicated, many-
sided problem.

In very many cases it may be said that
actual extermination has not taken place,
10 but that in the course of development one
species has passed into another; species
may have been lost, but the race, just as
in the growth of a tree, the twigs and
branches of the sapling disappear, while
15 the tree, as a whole, grows onward and
upward. This is what we see in the horse,
which is the living representative of an
unbroken line reaching back to the little
Eocene Hyracothere. So in a general way
20 it may be said that much of what at first
glance we might term extinction is really
the replacement of one set of animals by
another better adapted to surrounding
conditions.

25 Again, there are many cases of animals,
and particularly of large animals, so
peculiar in their make up, so very
obviously adapted to their own special
surroundings that it requires little
30 imagination to see that it would have
been a difficult matter for them to have
responded to even a slight change in the
world about them. Such great and
necessarily sluggish brutes as
35 Brontosaurus and Diplodocus, with their
tons of flesh, small heads, and feeble
teeth, were obviously reared in easy
circumstances, and unfitted to succeed in
any strenuous struggle for existence.
40 Stegosaurus, with his bizarre array of

plates and spines, and huge-headed
Triceratops, had evidently carried
specialization to an extreme, while in turn
the carnivorous forms must have required
45 an abundant supply of slow and easily
captured prey.

Coming down to a more recent epoch,
when the big Titanotheres flourished, it is
easy to see from a glance at their large,
50 simple teeth that these beasts needed an
ample provision of coarse vegetation, and
as they seem never to have spread far
beyond their birthplace, climatic change,
modifying even a comparatively limited
55 area, would suffice to sweep them out of
existence. To use the epitaph proposed by
Professor Marsh for the tombstone of one
of the Dinosaurs, many a beast might say,
“I, and my race perished of over
60 specialization.” To revert to the horse it
will be remembered that this very fate is
believed to have overtaken those almost
horses the European Hippotheres; they
reached a point where no further progress
65 was possible, and fell by the wayside.

Passage 2  

For educated, civilized Man to
exterminate a valuable wild species of
living things is a crime. It is a crime
against his own children, and posterity.

70 No man has a right, either moral or legal,
to destroy or squander an inheritance of
his children that he holds for them in
trust. And man, the wasteful and greedy
spendthrift that he is, has not created even
75 the humblest of the species of birds,
mammals and fishes that adorn and
enrich this earth. With all his wisdom,
man has not evolved and placed here so
much as a ground-squirrel, a sparrow or a
80 clam. It is true that he has juggled with
the wild horse, sheep, and the goats and
produced some hardy breeds that can
withstand his abuse without going down
before it; but as for species, he has not yet
85 created and placed here even so much as
a protozoan.

The wild things of this earth are not ours,
to do with as we please. They have been
given to us in trust, and we must account
90 for them to the generations which will
come after us and audit our accounts.

But man, the shameless destroyer of
Nature’s gifts, blithely and persistently
exterminates one species after another.
95 From ten per cent (or more) of the human
race, the high moral instinct which is
honest without compulsion is absent. The
things that seemingly decent citizens,—
men posing as gentlemen,—will do to
100 wild game when they secure great
chances to slaughter, are appalling. I
could fill a book of this size with cases in
point.

To-day the women of England, Europe
105 and elsewhere are directly promoting the
extermination of scores of beautiful
species of wild birds by the devilish
persistence with which they buy and wear
feather ornaments made of their plumage.
110 They are just as mean and cruel as the
truck-driver who drives a horse with a
sore shoulder and beats him on the street.
But they do it! And appeals to them to do
otherwise they laugh to scorn, saying, “I
115 will wear what is fashionable, when I
please and where I please!”

To-day, the thing that stares me in the
face every waking hour, like a grisly
spectre with bloody fang and claw, is the
120 extermination of species. To me, that is a
horrible thing. It is wholesale murder, no
less. It is capital crime, and a black
disgrace to the races of civilized
mankind. I say “civilized mankind,”
125 because savages don’t do it!

The following edited passage is taken
from The Federalist Papers by Alexander
Hamilton on the general power of
taxation.

It has been already observed that the
federal government ought to possess the
power of providing for the support of the
national forces; in which proposition was
5 intended to be included the expense of
raising troops, of building and equipping
fleets, and all other expenses in any way
connected with military arrangements and
operations. But these are not the only
10 objects to which the jurisdiction of the
Union, in respect to revenue, must
necessarily be empowered to extend. It
must embrace a provision for the support
of the national civil list; for the payment
15 of the national debts contracted, or that
may be contracted; and, in general, for all
those matters which will call for
disbursements out of the national
treasury. The conclusion is, that there
20 must be interwoven, in the frame of the
government, a general power of taxation,
in one shape or another.

Money is, with propriety, considered as
the vital principle of the body politic; as
25 that which sustains its life and motion,
and enables it to perform its most
essential functions. A complete power,
therefore, to procure a regular and
adequate supply of it, as far as the
30 resources of the community will permit,
may be regarded as an indispensable
ingredient in every constitution. From a
deficiency in this particular, one of two
evils must ensue; either the people must
35 be subjected to continual plunder, as a
substitute for a more eligible mode of
supplying the public wants, or the
government must sink into a fatal
atrophy, and, in a short course of time,
40 perish.

In the Ottoman or Turkish Empire, the
sovereign, though in other respects
absolute master of the lives and fortunes
of his subjects, has no right to impose a

45 new tax. The consequence is that he
permits the bashaws or governors of
provinces to pillage the people without
mercy; and, in turn, squeezes out of them
the sums of which he stands in need, to
50 satisfy his own exigencies and those of
the state. In America, from a similar
cause, the government of the Union has
gradually dwindled into a state of decay,
nearly approaching annihilation. Who can
55 doubt, that the happiness of the people in
both countries would be promoted by
competent authorities in the proper hands,
to provide the revenues which the
necessities of the public might require?

60 The present Confederation, feeble as it is
intended to repose in the United States,
an unlimited power of providing for the
pecuniary wants of the Union. But
proceeding upon an erroneous principle,
65 it has been done in such a manner as to
have entirely frustrated the intention.
Congress, by the articles which compose
that compact (as has already been stated),
are authorized to ascertain and call for
70 any sums of money necessary, in their
judgment, to the service of the United
States; and their requisitions, if
conformable to the rule of apportionment,
are in every constitutional sense
75 obligatory upon the States. These have no
right to question the propriety of the
demand; no discretion beyond that of
devising the ways and means of
furnishing the sums demanded. But
80 though this be strictly and truly the case;
though the assumption of such a right
would be an infringement of the articles
of Union; though it may seldom or never
have been avowedly claimed, yet in
85 practice it has been constantly exercised,
and would continue to be so, as long as
the revenues of the Confederacy should
remain dependent on the intermediate
agency of its members. What the
90 consequences of this system have been, is
within the knowledge of every man the
least conversant in our public affairs, and
has been amply unfolded in different
parts of these inquiries. It is this which

95 has chiefly contributed to reducing us to a
situation, which affords ample cause both
of mortification to ourselves, and of
triumph to our enemies.

What remedy can there be for this
100 situation, but a change of the system
which has produced in it a change of the
fallacious and delusive system of quotas
and requisitions? What substitute can
there be imagined for this ignis fatuus in
105 finance, but that of permitting the
national government to raise its own
revenues by the ordinary methods of
taxation authorized in every well-ordered
constitution of civil government?

The following edited passage is taken
from Our Common Insects By A.S.
Packard on the early stages of the
humble bee. 

Another puzzle for the adaptation
specialists to solve is how to account for
the change from the caterpillar with its
powerful jaws, to the butterfly with its
5 sucking or haustellate mouth-parts. We
shall best approach the solution of this
difficult problem by a study of a wide
range of facts, but a few of which can be
noticed here. The older entomologists
10 divided insects into haustellate or
suctorial, and mandibulate or biting
insects, the butterfly being an example
of one, and the beetle serving to
illustrate the other category. But we
15 shall find in studying the different
groups that these are relative and not
absolute terms.

We find mandibulate insects with
enormous jaws, like the Dytiscus, or
20 Chrysopa larva or ant lion, perforated,
as in the former, or enclosing, as in the
latter two insects, the maxillæ (b),
which slide backward and forward
within the hollowed mandibles (a, Fig.
25 209, jaws of the ant lion), along which
the blood of their victims flows. They suck the blood, and do not tear the flesh
of their prey.

The enormous mandibles of the adult
30 Corydalus are too large for use and, as
Walsh observed, are converted in the
male into simple clasping organs. And
to omit a number of instances, in the
suctorial Hemiptera or bugs we have
35 different grades of structure in the
mouth-parts. In the biting lice
(Mallophaga) the mouth is mandibulate;
in the Thrips it is mandibulate, the jaws
being free, and the maxillæ bearing
40 palpi, while the Pediculi are suctorial,
and the true bugs are eminently so. But
in the bed bug it is easy to see that the
beak is made up of the two pairs of

jaws, which are simply elongated and
45 adapted for piercing and sucking.
Among the so-called haustellate insects
the mouth-parts vary so much in
different groups, and such different
organs separately or combined perform
50 the function of sucking, that the term
haustellate loses its significance and
even misleads the student. For example,
in the house fly the tongue (Fig. 210 l,
the mandibles, m, and maxillæ, mp, are
55 useless), a fleshy prolongation of the
labium or second maxillæ, is the sucker,
while the mandibles and maxillæ are
used as lancets by the horse fly (Fig.
211, m, mandibles, mx, maxillæ). The
60 maxillæ in the butterfly are united to
form the sucking tube, while in the bee
the end of the labium (Fig. 212) is
specially adapted for lapping, not
sucking, the nectar of flowers. But even
65 in the butterfly, or more specifically the
moth, there is a good deal of
misapprehension about the structure of
the so-called “tongue.” The mouth-parts
of the caterpillar exist in the moth.

70 The mandibles of the caterpillar occur in
the head of the moth as two small
tubercles. They are aborted in the adult.
While the maxillæ are as a rule greatly
developed in the moth, in the caterpillar
75 they are minute and almost useless. The
labium or second maxillæ, so large in
the moth, serves simply as a spinneret in
the caterpillar. But we find a great
amount of variation in the tongue or
80 sucker of moths, and in the silk moths
the maxillæ are rudimentary, and there
is no tongue, these organs being but
little more developed than in the
caterpillar.

85 Figure 213, B, shows the minute blade-
like maxilla of the magnificent Luna
moth, an approximation to the originally
blade-like form in beetles and
Neuroptera. The maxillæ in this insect
90 are minute, rudimentary, and of no
service to the creature, which does not
take food. In other moths of the same

family we have found the maxillæ
longer, and touching at their tips, though
95 too widely separate at base to form a
sucking tube, while in others the
maxillæ are curved, and meet to form a
true tube.