5 Steps to a 5 AP English Language 2019

Practice Exam 2 ❮ 229

was deposited on London from smoky atmosphere. At the same time central London

received 18 per cent less sunshine than the inner suburbs. In 1934 there was fog from

10 November to 1 December, and deaths from respiratory diseases tripled. The fog

of 1952 was estimated to have caused 4000 deaths. The Clean Air Act was passed in

1956, and the last great London fog was in 1962.

(Tim Goodwin, 1997)

Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; 1

fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among tiers of shipping and waterside pollu-

tions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the heights, fog creeping

into the cabooses of [coal barges]. Fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging

of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes

and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards;

fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close

cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ’prentice boy on

deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky

of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the

misty clouds.

(Charles Dickens, Bleak House, 1852 –53)

Question 3

In one section of Walden, Henry David Thoreau ponders the advice offered by elders in a
society. Carefully read the following passage from this American classic. Then, in a well-
constructed essay argue how your position on advice from elders relates to that of Thoreau.
Use appropriate evidence from your own experiences, readings, and observations to explain
and support your argument.

What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true today may turn out to be false-

hood tomorrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would

sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields. What old people say you cannot do, you try

and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new. Old people

did not know enough once, perchance, to fetch fresh fuel to keep the fire a-going; new

people put a little dry wood under a pot, and are whirled around the globe with the

speed of birds, in a way to kill old people, as the phrase is. Age is no better, hardly

so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has

lost. One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolute value

by living. Practically, the old have no very important advice to give the young, their

own experience has been so partial, and their lives have been such miserable failures,

for private reasons, as they must believe; and it may be that they have some faith left

which belies that experience, and they are only less young than they were. I have lived

some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or

even earnest advice from my seniors. They have told me nothing, and probably cannot

tell me anything to the purpose. Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by

me; but it does not avail me that they have tried it. If I have any experience which I

think valuable, I am sure to reflect that this my Mentors said nothing about...

END OF SECTION II