TOEFL Readings 51

The novelist Robert Herrick was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on April 26, 1868. His oldest American ancestor, a nephew of the author of Hesperides, had settled at Salem in 1638; he was related to the Hales, the Mannings, the Hawthornes, and the Peabodys; his immediate forebears were lawyers, teachers, and clergymen.

At Harvard, he was a contemporary of Santayana. William Vaughn Moody,Norman Hpgood, and Robert Morss Lovett; he nearly wrecked the Harvard Monthly when he sullied its chaste pages with the first English translation of lbsen's ludy from the Sea. His teaching began at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but William Rainey Harper lured him to the new University of Chicago, where he remained officially for exactly a generation and where his students in advanced composition found him terrifyingly frigid in the classroom but sympathetic and understanding in their personal conferences. During his later years the spot of earth dearest to his heart was York Viliage, Maine, but after his retirement from teaching he brought his career to a rather amazing close as government secretary of the Virgin islands, He died at St. Thomas on December 23, 1938.

1. To which of the following families was Herrick related?

(A)  The Santayanas

(B)  The Hawthornes

(C)  The Moodys

(D)  The Hapgoods

2. In lines 3-4, the phrase "immediate forebears" could best be replaced by which of the following?

(A)  closest ancestors

(B)  wealthiest relatives

(C)  cleverest kinsmen

(D)  earliest forefathers

3. Which of the following is NOT mentioned as a profession of Herrick's relatives?

(A)  Farmer

(B)  Teacher

(C)  Clergyman

(D)  Lawyer

4. Herrick moved to the University of Chicago at the request of

(A)  the Hales

(B)  the Mannings

(C)  Robert Morss Lovett

(D)  William Rainey Harper

5.   According to the passage, Herrick's students thought he was

(A)  gifted in English translation

(B)  unfair in his grading

(C)  easy to understand

(D)  kind during personal contact

6.   In which of the following activities was Herick involved during the last years of his life?

(A)  University teaching

(B)  Government work

(C)  Translating

(D)  Lecturing