PSAT Reading Practice Question 596

Question: 596

passage 1 is the beginning of Benjamin Franklin's 1771 autobiography. passage 2 includes the opening of another autobiography published much later, in 1901, that of Booker T. Washington.
passage 1
Dear son: I have ever had pleasure
in obtaining any little anecdotes of my
ancestors. You may remember the inquiries
I made among the remains of my relations
05when you were with me in England, and
the journey I undertook for that purpose.
Imagining it may be equally agreeable to
you to know the circumstances of my life,
many of which you are yet unacquainted
10with, and expecting the enjoyment of a
week's uninterrupted leisure in my present
country retirement, I sit down to write them
for you. To which I have besides some other
inducements. Having emerged from the
15poverty and obscurity in which I was born
and bred, to a state of affluence and some
degree of reputation in the world, and having
gone so far through life with a considerable
share of felicity, the conducing means I made
20use of, which with the blessing of God so well
succeeded, my posterity may like to know,
as they may find some of them suitable to
their own situations, and therefore fit to be
imitated.
25That felicity, when I reflected on it, has
induced me sometimes to say, that were
it offered to my choice, I should have no
objection to a repetition of the same life from
its beginning, only asking the advantages
30authors have in a second edition to correct
some faults of the first. So I might, besides
correcting the faults, change some sinister
accidents and events of it for others more
favourable. But though this were denied,
35I should still accept the offer. Since such a
repetition is not to be expected, the next
thing most like living one's life over again
seems to be a recollection of that life, and to
make that recollection as durable as possible
40by putting it down in writing.
passage 2
I was born a slave on a plantation in
Franklin County, Virginia. I am not quite
sure of the exact place or exact date of my
birth, but at any rate I suspect I must have
45been born somewhere and at some time.
As nearly as I have been able to learn, I was
born near a cross-roads post-office called
Hale's Ford, and the year was 1858 or 1859.
I do not know the month or the day. The
50earliest impressions I can now recall are of
the plantation and the slave quarters—the
latter being the part of the plantation 
where the slaves had their cabins.
My life had its beginning in the midst
55of the most miserable, desolate, and
discouraging surroundings. This was so,
however, not because my owners were
especially cruel, for they were not, as
compared with many others. I was born in a
60typical log cabin, about fourteen by sixteen
feet square. In this cabin I lived with my
mother and a brother and sister till after the
Civil War, when we were all declared free.
Of my ancestry I know almost nothing.
65In the slave quarters, and even later, I
heard whispered conversations among the
coloured people of the tortures which the
slaves, including, no doubt, my ancestors
on my mother's side, suffered in the middle
70passage of the slave ship while being
conveyed from Africa to America. I have been
unsuccessful in securing any information
that would throw any accurate light upon the
history of my family beyond my mother. She,
75I remember, had a half-brother and a half-
sister. In the days of slavery not very much
attention was given to family history and
family records—that is, black family records.
My mother, I suppose, attracted the attention
80of a purchaser who was afterward my owner
and hers. Her addition to the slave family
attracted about as much attention as the
purchase of a new horse or cow. Of my father
I know even less than of my mother. I do not
85even know his name. I have heard reports to
the effect that he was a white man who lived
on one of the near-by plantations. Whoever
he was, I never heard of his taking the least
interest in me or providing in any way for my
90rearing. But I do not find especial fault with
him. He was simply another unfortunate
victim of the institution which the Nation
unhappily had engrafted upon it at that time.

The tone of Passage 1 is best described as

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