A Study of Reading Comprehension

Mr. Harding was not a happy man as he walked down
the palace pathway, and stepped out into the close. His
position and pleasant house were a second time
gone from him; but that he could endure. He had been
5 schooled and insulted by a man young enough to be
his son; but that he could put up with. He could even
draw from the very injuries which had been inflicted
on him some of that consolation which, we may
believe, martyrs always receive from the injustice of
10 their own sufferings. He had admitted to his daughter
that he wanted the comfort of his old home, and yet he
could have returned to his lodgings in the High Street,
if not with exultation, at least with satisfaction, had
that been all. But the venom of the chaplain's
15 harangue had worked into his blood, and sapped the
life of his sweet contentment.
'New men are carrying out new measures, and
are carting away the useless rubbish of past centuries!'
What cruel words these had been- and how often are
20 they now used with all the heartless cruelty of a
Slope! A man is sufficiently condemned if it can only
be shown that either in politics or religion he does not
belong to some new school established within the last
score of years. He may then regard himself as rubbish
25 and expect to be carted away. A man is nothing now
unless he has within him a full appreciation of the
new era; an era in which it would seem that neither
honesty nor truth is very desirable, but in which
success is the only touchstone of merit. We must
30 laugh at everything that is established. Let the joke be
ever so bad, ever so untrue to the real principles of
joking; nevertheless we must laugh - or else beware
the cart. We must talk, think, and live up to the spirit
of the times, or else we are nought. New men and new
35 measures, long credit and few scruples, great success
or wonderful ruin, such are now the tastes of
Englishmen who know how to live! Alas, alas! Under
such circumstances Mr. Harding could not but feel
that he was an Englishman who did not know how to
40 live. This new doctrine of Mr. Slope and the rubbish
cart sadly disturbed his equanimity.
'The same thing is going on throughout the
whole country!' 'Work is now required from every
man who receives wages!' And had he been living all
45 his life receiving wages, and doing no work? Had he
in truth so lived as to be now in his old age justly
reckoned as rubbish fit only to be hidden away in
some huge dust-hole? The school of men to whom he
professes to belong, the Grantlys, the Gwynnes, are
50 afflicted with no such self-accusations as these which
troubled Mr. Harding. They, as a rule, are as satisfied
with the wisdom and propriety of their own conduct
as can be any Mr. Slope, or any Bishop with his own.
But, unfortunately for himself, Mr. Harding had little
55 of this self-reliance. When he heard himself
designated as rubbish by the Slopes of the world, he
had no other resource than to make inquiry within his
own bosom as to the truth of the designation. Alas,
alas! the evidence seemed generally to go against him.