CBSE Guess > Papers > Question Papers > Class X > 2009 > English > English Language and Literature

SECTION D—Literature 45

Q. 12. Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow. Write the answers in your answer sheet in one or two lines only. Remember to number the answers correctly. 5
One of the employees, who was a postman and also helped at the post offi ce, went to his boss laughing heartily and showed him the letter to God. Never in his career as a postman had he known that address. The postmaster—a fat, amiable fellow—also broke out laughing, but almost immediately he turned serious and, tapping the letter on his desk, commented, “What faith! I wish I had the faith of the man who wrote this letter. Starting up a correspondence with God!”
(a) Why did the postman laugh heartily? 1
(b) Which address had the postman never known? 1
(c) What type of man was the postmaster? 1
(d) Why did the postmaster become serious all of a sudden? 1
(e) Which word in the passage means the same as ‘letter-writing’? 1

Ans. (a) The postman laughed heartily on seeing a letter addressed to ‘God’.
(b) The postman had never known God’s address.
(c) The postmaster was a fat and amiable fellow.
(d) On refl ecting upon the writer’s immense faith in God the postmaster, all of a sudden became serious.
(e) The word ‘correspondence’ in the passage means the same as ‘letter-writing’.

Q.13. Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow. Write the answers in your answer sheet in one or two lines only. Remember to number the answers correctly. 5
At last the cow moved off the road. And soon the bus came to a railroad crossing. A speck of a train could be seen in the distance, growing bigger and bigger as it drew near. Then it rushed past the crossing gate with a tremendous roar and rattle, shaking the bus. Then the bus went on and passed the train station. From there it traversed a busy, well-laidout shopping street and, turning, entered a wider thoroughfare. Such big, bright-looking shops! What glittering displays of clothes and other merchandise! Such big crowds! Struck dumb with wonder, Valli gaped at everything. Then the bus stopped and everyone got off except Valli.
(a) Where was the cow and what did it do? 2
(b) What did the train look like in the distance? 1
(c) Why did Valli not get off the bus? 1
(d) Which word in the passage means the same as ‘show’/‘exhibition’? 1

Ans. (a) The cow was right in the middle of the road and right in the front of the bus. Frightened of the bus’s horn, it galloped faster always remaining right in front of the bus.
(b) The train looked like a speck in the distance.
(c) Valli did not get off the bus because she was going back home on that same bus.
(d) The word ‘displays’ means the same as ‘show’/‘exhibition’.

Q. 14. Answer the following question in about 80 words: 6
Describe Wanda’s letter to Miss Mason. What was the reaction of Peggy and Maddie to the special gifts from Wanda for them?

Or

Describe what the Portuguese have left behind which the elders in Goa so fondly remember even today

Ans. In her letter to Miss Mason, Wanda requested her teacher to tell the girls that they could keep the hundred dresses because in her new house she had a hundred new ones in her closet. She gifted Peggy the drawing of the green dress and for Maddie the blue one. She ended her letter by wishing everyone a Merry Christmas. After receiving their gifts Peggy and Maddie realized that Wanda really liked them. They now knew she had got their letter and this was her way of saying that everything was all right.

Or

The elders of Goa fondly remember the Portuguese and their famous loaves of bread. The Portuguese have gone but the loaf-makers are still there. The Goans still have among them the mixers, the moulders and those who bake the loaves. The fi re in the furnaces has not yet been extinguished. The thud and jingle of the traditional baker’s bamboo, heralding his arrival can still be heard in some places in the morning. The father is not alive but the son still carries on the family profession.