PSAT Reading Practice Test 34: Fiction Passage 

Questions 1-9 refer to the following information.

The following passage is an excerpt from the 1877 novel The American. Christopher Newman, a civil war hero and self-made millionaire, is visiting Europe for the first time. In Paris, he meets and dines with the wife of an old friend, Mrs. Lizzie Tristram.

She had an especial wish to know whether he had ever been in love—seriously, passionately—
and, failing to gather any satisfaction from his allusions, at last closely pressed him. He
hesitated a while, but finally said, "Hang it then, no!" She declared that she was delighted to
hear it, as it confirmed her private conviction that he was a man of no real feeling.
05"Is that so?" he asked, very gravely. "But how do you recognize a man of real feeling?"
"I can't make out," said Mrs. Tristram, "whether you're very simple or very deep."
"I'm very deep. That's a fact."
"I believe that if I were to tell you with a certain air that you're as cold as a fish, you would
implicitly believe me."
10"A certain air?" said Newman. "Well try your air and see."
"You would believe me, but you would not care," said Mrs. Tristram.
"You've got it all wrong. I should care immensely, but I shouldn't believe you. The fact is I
have never had time to 'feel' things. I have had to do them, had to make myself felt."
"Oh, I can imagine indeed that you may have sometimes done that tremendously."
15"Yes, there's no mistake about that."
"When you're in one of your furies it can't be pleasant."
"I am never in a fury."
"I don't, nevertheless, see you always as you are now. You've something or other behind,
beneath. You get harder or you get softer. You're more pleased—or you're more displeased."
20"Well, a man of any sense doesn't lay his plans to be angry," said Newman, "and it's in fact
so long since I have been displeased that I've quite forgotten it."
"I don't believe," she returned, "that you're never angry. A man ought to be angry sometimes,
and you are neither good enough nor bad enough always to keep your temper."
"I lose it perhaps every five years."
25"The time is coming round, then," said his hostess. "Before I've known you six months I
shall see you in a magnificent rage."
"Do you mean to put me into one?"
"I should not be sorry. You take things too coolly. It quite exasperates me. And then you're
too happy. You have what must be the most agreeable thing in the world: the consciousness
30of having bought your pleasure beforehand, having paid for it in advance. You have not a day
of reckoning staring you in the face. Your reckonings are over."
"Well, I suppose I am happy," said Newman, almost pensively.
"You've been odiously successful."
"Successful in copper," said Newman, "but very mixed in other ventures. And I've had to
35take quite a back seat on oil."
"It's very disagreeable to know how Americans have come by their money," his companion
sighed. "Now, at all events, you've the world before you. You've only to enjoy."
"Oh, I suppose I'm all right," said Newman. "Only I'm tired of having it thrown up at me.
Besides, there are several drawbacks. I don't come up to my own standard of culture."
40"One doesn't expect it of you," Mrs. Tristram answered. Then in a moment: "Besides, you
do come up. You are up!"
"Well, I mean to have a good time, wherever I am," said Newman. "I am not cultivated, I
am not even educated; I know nothing about history, or art, or foreign tongues, or any other
learned matters. But I am not a fool, either, and I shall undertake to know something about
45Europe by the time I have done with it. I feel something under my ribs here," he added in a
moment, "that I can't explain—a sort of a mighty hankering, a desire to stretch out and haul in."
"Bravo!" Mrs. Tristram cried; "that's what I want to hear you say. You're the great Western
Barbarian, stepping forth in his innocence and might, to gaze a while at this poor corrupt old
world before swooping down on it."
50"Oh come," Newman protested; "I'm not an honest barbarian either, by a good deal. I've
seen honest barbarians; I know what they are."
"There are different shades."
"I have instincts—have them deeply—if I haven't the forms of a high old civilization,"
Newman went on. "I stick to that. If you don't believe me, I should like to prove it to you."
55Mrs. Tristram was silent a while. "I should like to make you prove it," she said at last. "I
should like to put you in a difficult place."
"Well, put me!" said Newman.
"Vous ne doutez de rien!" his companion rejoined.
"Oh," he insisted, "I've a very good opinion of myself."
60"I wish I could put it to the test. Give me time and I will."