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This the final one of the wonderfully varied and entertaining quizzes provided by the Parkers so enjoy it while you can! And our thanks to them for all the enjoyment and head-scratching. One children's extract as usual. Answers now provided below.
1. The autumn was cruel. On Guy Fawkes' Day, Mary gazed at the gloomy yellow light over the hill and said, 'It looks like snow.' 'Too early for snow yet,' said Amos; but it was snow. The snow fell in the night, and melted, leaving long white smears on the screes. Then it fell again, a heavy fall this time; and though they dug a great many sheep from the drifts, the ravens had a feast when it thawed.
2. As he strode along through the snow the sense of such meanings glowed in his brain and mingled with the bodily flush produced by his sharp tramp. At the end of the village he paused before the darkened front of the church. He stood there a moment, breathing quickly, and looking up and down the street, in which not another figure moved. The pitch of the Corbury road, below lawyer Varnum's spruces, was the favourite coasting-ground of Starkfield, and on clear evenings the church corner rang till late with the shouts of the coasters; but to-night not a sled darkened the whiteness of the long declivity.
3. Then,'Midnight!' said the old store clock. Its pendulum swung gleaming in the shadows as it counted twelve thin chimes into the silence, folded its hands together, and stared out through the dark window at the thick snow sifting through the light of the street lamp. Far away and muffled by the snow the town hall clock struck midnight with its deeper note. 'Where are we?' the mouse child asked his father. His voice was tiny in the stillness of the night. 'I don't know,' the father answered.
4. Snow lay deep in the streets of Winesburg. It had begun to snow about ten o'clock in the morning and a wind sprang up and blew the snow in clouds along Main Street. The frozen mud roads that led into town were fairly smooth and in places ice covered the mud. 'There will be good sleighing,' said Will Henderson, standing by the bar in Ed Griffith's saloon.
5. The snow began to drive thickly. I seized the handle to essay another trial; when a young man, without coat, and shouldering a pitchfork, appeared in the yard behind. He hailed me to follow him, and, after marching through a wash-house, and a paved area containing a coal-shed, pump, and pigeon cote, we at length arrived in the large, warm, cheerful apartment where I was formerly received.
ANSWERS
1. Bruce Chatwin - On the Black Hill (1982); 2. Edith Wharton - Ethan Frome (1911); 3. Russell Hoban - The Mouse and His Child (1967); 4. Sherwood Anderson - Winesburg, Ohio (1919); 5. Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights (1847)
Find all the past quizzes here
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