Click here to listen to the poem. What is the topic of the poem?
Love and marriage
Faith and morality
Wealth and prosperity

Select the correct text in the passage. which sentence in this excerpt from abraham lincoln's second inaugural address conveys that he wanted the us civil war to end as soon as possible? neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. both read the same bible and pray to the same god, and each invokes his aid against the other. it may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just inging their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. the prayers of both could not be answered. that of neither has been answered fully. the almighty has his own purposes. "woe unto the world because of offenses, for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh" if we shall suppose that american slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of god, must needs come, but which, having continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both north and south this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living god always ascribe to him? fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. yet, if god wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the lord are true and righteous altogether." reset next

Which of these sentences would best express the main idea of a speech arguing that people should participate in a charity softball tournament? a) softball is a great way to get some much-needed exercise. eliminate b) the money raised by the tournament will local animal shelters. c) the tournament is a fun way to spend time with friends while a worthy cause. d) even if you don't have any softball experience, you can form a team and participate.

[1] nothing that comes from the desert expresses its extremes better than the unhappy growth of the tree yuccas. tormented, thin forests of it stalk drearily in the high mesas, particularly in that triangular slip that fans out eastward from the meeting of the sierras and coastwise hills. the yucca bristles with bayonet-pointed leaves, dull green, growing shaggy with age like an old [5] man's tangled gray beard, tipped with panicles of foul, greenish blooms. after its death, which is slow, the ghostly hollow network of its woody skeleton, with hardly power to rot, makes even the moonlight fearful. but it isn't always this way. before the yucca has come to flower, while yet its bloom is a luxurious, creamy, cone-shaped bud of the size of a small cabbage, full of sugary sap. the indians twist it deftly out of its fence of daggers and roast the prize for their [10] own delectation why does the author use the words "bayonet-pointed" (line 4) and "fence of daggers" (line 9) to describe the leaves of the yucca tree? . to create an image of the sharp edges of the plant to emphasize how beautiful the plant's leaves are to explain when and where the plant grows to show how afraid the author is of the plant