Read the excerpt below from an opinion piece written by Henry H. Curran in 1926. It’s called “The Wet Side of Prohibition” and first appeared in the New York Herald Tribune:

“Excessive drinking among young people is a natural consequence of our Prohibition Laws. This is not evidence of depravity on their part, but a youthful reaction against the challenge of restraint. It is smart to drink. It is smart to carry a flask. Before prohibition the lad who took liquor on the hip to a party was almost unknown. Today he is a common figure.”

Which of the following accurately describes the author’s opinion of the Prohibition Laws?

Read the excerpt below from “A Defense of Slang” by Gelett Burgess. Then, answer the questions that follow:

“Could Shakespeare came to Chicago and listen curiously to "the man in the street," he would find himself more at home than in London. In the mouths of messenger boys and clerks he would find the English language used with all the freedom of unexpected metaphor and the plastic suggestive diction that was the privilege of the Elizabethan dramatists; he would say, no doubt, that he had found a nation of poets. There was hardly any such thing as slang in his day….

Slang has been called ‘poetry in the rough,’ and it is not all coarse or vulgar. There is a prosaic as well as a poetic license. The man in the street calls a charming girl, for instance, a ‘daisy’…. Surely this is not inelegant, and such a reference will be understood a century hence without a foot-note.”

Which word best represents the author’s feelings about people who use slang?

Which of the following describes the author’s attitude towards slang?

Read the excerpt below from Zora Neale Hurston’s “How it Feels to be Colored Me”. Then, answer the questions that follow:

“I am colored but I offer nothing in the way of extenuating circumstances except the fact that I am the only Negro in the United States whose grandfather on the mother's side was not an Indian chief. […]

But I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all but about it. Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or less. No, I do not weep at the world. I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.

Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I am the granddaughter of slaves. It fails to register depression with me. Slavery is sixty years in the past. The operation was successful and the patient is doing well, thank you. The terrible struggle that made me an American out of a potential slave said ‘On the line!’ The Reconstruction said ‘Get set!’ and the generation before said ‘Go!’ I am off to a flying start and I must not halt in the stretch to look behind and weep. Slavery is the price I paid for civilization, and the choice was not with me. It is a bully adventure and worth all that I have paid through my ancestors for it. No one on earth ever had a greater chance for glory. The world to be won and nothing to be lost. It is thrilling to think, to know that for any act of mine, I shall get twice as much praise or twice as much blame. It is quite exciting to hold the center of the national stage, with the spectators not knowing whether to laugh or to weep.

The position of my white neighbor is much more difficult. No brown specter pulls up a chair beside me when I sit down to eat. No dark ghost thrusts its leg against mine in bed. The game of keeping what one has is never so exciting as the game of getting.”

Which statement best describes the author’s attitude in the essay above?

Based on her essay, what would the author most likely say about those who complain about their history of slavery?