PSAT Reading Practice Question 623

Question: 623

The following passage is taken from the 1852 novel, The Blithedale Romance. Mr. Coverdale, an idealistic young man, who has recently moved onto a utopian communal farm, is recovering from a fever. He is attended first by Hollingsworth, a -philanthropist, and second by Zenobia, a beautiful wealthy resident of the farm.
Happy the man that has such a man
beside him when he comes to die! And unless
a friend like Hollingsworth be at hand—as
most probably there will not—he had better
05make up his mind to die alone. How many
men, I wonder, does one meet with, in a life-
time, whom he would choose for his death-
bed companion? At the crisis of my fever, I
besought Hollingsworth to let nobody else
10enter the room, but continually to make me
sensible of his own presence, by a grasp of
the hand, a word, a prayer, if he thought good
to utter it; and that then he should be the wit-
ness to how courageously I would encounter
15the worst. It still impresses me as almost a
matter of regret, that I did not die then, when
I had tolerably made up my mind to do it;
for Hollingsworth would have gone with me
to the hither verge of life, and have sent his
20friendly and hopeful accents far over on the
other side, while I should be treading the
unknown path. Now, were I to send for him,
he would hardly come to my besdside, nor
should I depart the easier for his presence.
25"You are not going to die, this time," said
he, gravely smiling. "You know nothing about
sickness, and think your case a great deal
more desperate than it is."
"Death should take me while I am in the
30mood," replied I, with a little of my custom-
ary levity.
"Have you nothing to do in life," asked
Hollingsworth, "that you fancy yourself so
ready to leave it?"
35"Nothing," answer I; "nothing, that I know
of, unless to make pretty verses, and play a
part, with Zenobia and the rest of the ama-
teurs, in our pastoral. It seems but an unsub-
stantial sort of business, as viewed through a
40mist of fever. But, dear Hollingsworth, your
own vocation is evidently to be a priest, and
to spend your days and nights in helping
your fellow-creatures to draw peaceful dying
breaths."
45"And by which of my qualities," inquired
he, "can you suppose me fitted for this awful
ministry?"
"By your tenderness," I said. "It seems to
me the reflection of God's own love."
50"And you call me tender!" repeated
Hollingsworth, thoughtfully. "I should rather
say that the most marked trait in my charac-
ter is an inflexible severity of purpose. Mortal
man has no right to be so inflexible as it is my
55nature and necessity to be."
"I do not believe it," I replied.
But, in due time, I remembered what he
said.
Probably, as Hollingsworth suggested,
60my disorder was never so serious as, in my
ignorance of such matters, I was inclined to
consider it. After so much tragical prepara-
tion, it was positively rather mortifying to
find myself on the mending hand.
65All other members of the Community
showed me kindness according to the full
measure of their capacity. Zenobia brought
me my gruel, every day, made by her own
hands; and whenever I seemed inclined to
70converse, would sit by my bed-side, and
talk with so much vivacity as to add several
gratuitous throbs to my pulse. Her poor little
stories and tracts never half did justice to her
intellect. It was only the lack of a fitter ave-
75nue that drove her to seek development in
literature. She was made (among a thousand
other things that she might have been) for a
stump-oratress. I recognized no severe cul-
ture in Zenobia; her mind was full of weeds.
80It startled me, sometimes, in my state of
moral as well as bodily faint-heartedness, to
observe the hardihood of her philosophy. She
made no scruple of oversetting all human
institutions, and scattering them as with a
85breeze from her fan. A female reformer, in
her attacks upon society, has an instinctive
sense of where the life lies, and is inclined to
aim directly at that spot. Especially the rela-
tion between the sexes is naturally among
90the earliest to attract her notice. Zenobia was
truly a magnificent woman.

As used in line 78, "severe" most nearly means

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