Page 11 - SpringBoard_ELA_Assessment_Grade8_FlipBook

Name: ______________________ ID: A
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Perhaps it ought not to have been so, but when I knew for a certainty that we had reached the goal, there was not a thing in the world I wanted but sleep. But after I had a few hours of it, there succeeded a condition of mental exaltation which made further rest impossible. For more than a score1 of years that point on the earth's surface had been the object of my every effort. To its attainment my whole being, physical, mental, and moral, had been dedicated. Many times my own life and the lives of those with me had been risked. My own material and forces and those of my friends had been devoted to this object. This journey was my eighth into the arctic wilderness. In that wilderness I had spent nearly twelve years out of the twenty-three between my thirtieth and my fifty-third year, and the intervening time spent in civilized communities during that period had been mainly occupied with preparations for returning to the wilderness. The determination to reach the Pole had become so much a part of my being that, strange as it may seem, I long ago ceased to think of myself save as an instrument for the attainment of that end. To the layman this may seem strange, but an inventor can understand it, or an artist, or anyone who has devoted himself for years upon years to the service of an idea.
__________________ 1twenty
Read this excerpt from the passage.
The Pole at last. The prize of three centuries.
What does the author mean by "the prize of three centuries"?
a. He means that people had been trying to reach the North Pole for over thirty years.
b. He means that people had been trying to reach the North Pole for 300 years.
c. He means that people had been trying to get to the North Pole at least once a
century for the last 300 years.
d. He means that many people had reached the North Pole over the span of 300
years and had claimed it as a "prize."
Which of the following is the BEST synonym for exaltation as it is used in the following passage from paragraph 5?
"... there was not a thing in the world I wanted but sleep. But after I had a few hours of it, there succeeded a condition of mental exaltation which made further rest impossible."
a. excitement b. exhaustion c. power
d. blessing
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