Flashcards: Humanities

Adapted from "The Loon" by Henry David Thoreau in A Book of Natural History (1902, ed. David Starr Jordan)

As I was paddling along the north shore one very calm October afternoon, for such days especially they settle on to the lakes, like the milkweed down, having looked in vain over the pond for a loon, suddenly one, sailing out from the shore toward the middle a few rods in front of me, set up his wild laugh and betrayed himself. I pursued with a paddle and he dived, but when he came up I was nearer than before. He dived again but I miscalculated the direction he would take, and we were fifty rods apart when he came to the surface this time, for I had helped to widen the interval; and again he laughed long and loud, and with more reason than before.

He maneuvered so cunningly that I could not get within half a dozen rods of him. Each time when he came to the surface, turning his head this way and that, he coolly surveyed the water and the land, and apparently chose his course so that he might come up where there was the widest expanse of water and at the greatest distance from the boat. It was surprising how quickly he made up his mind and put his resolve into execution. He led me at once to the wildest part of the pond, and could not be driven from it. While he was thinking one thing in his brain, I was endeavoring to divine his thought in mine. It was a pretty game, played on the smooth surface of the pond, a man against a loon.

He was indeed a silly loon, I thought. I could commonly hear the plash of the water when he came up, and so also detected him. But after an hour he seemed as fresh as ever, dived as willingly and swam yet farther than at first. It was surprising to see how serenely he sailed off with unruffled breast when he came to the surface, doing all the work with his webbed feet beneath. His usual note was this demoniac laughter, yet somewhat like that of a waterfowl, but occasionally when he had balked me most successfully and come up a long way off, he uttered a long-drawn unearthly howl, probably more like that of a wolf than any bird, as when a beast puts his muzzle to the ground and deliberately howls. This was his looning—perhaps the wildest sound that is ever heard here, making the woods ring far and wide. I concluded that he laughed in derision of my efforts, confident of his own resources.

In this passage, the loon is primarily characterized as __________.

aggressive

orderly

crafty

chaotic

sneaky

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The SSAT Upper Level Reading review flashcards were created in the same format as the official test, and they each contain a literary passage and a multiple-choice question based on that passage. If you do decide to use the flashcards maker to create additional flashcards for your child to study, they will be most helpful for test preparation if they are also created in this format. When using the flashcards builder, you can also enter the same literary passage on several blank flashcards templates, because each passage on the SSAT will be followed with several questions based on it.

The SSAT Upper Level Reading flashcards have several types of literary passages on them, including humanities, argumentative humanities, narrative humanities, literary fiction, poetry, science, narrative science, social science, and narrative social science passages. The passages on the SSAT will be based on similar topics. Follow-up questions on the flashcards quiz your child on their understanding of authorial attitude, authorial tone, main ideas, and details of the passages. Groups of flashcards also help your child practice determining the meaning of a word based on the context.

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