On many tests, like the SAT, ACT and GRE, the reading comprehension section is the toughest part, so practice is key. Try your hand here on this Reading Comprehension Worksheet 3. For more practice, check out my reading comprehension worksheets 1 and 2 (also with pdfs) here.
Directions: The passage below is followed by questions based on its content; answer the questions on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.
Printable PDFs: From "The Substitute" Reading Comprehension Questions | From "The Substitute" Reading Comprehension Answer Key
Copyright: Matthews, Brander, ed. The Short-Story: Specimens Illustrating Its Development. New York: American Book Company, 1907
He was scarcely ten years old when he was arrested for the first time for vagabondage. This is what he said to the judges:—
“My name is Jean François Leturc, and for the last six months I’ve been with the man who sings between two lanterns on the Place de la Bastille, scraping on a bit of catgut. I say the chorus with him, and then I cry out, ‘Ask for the new song book, ten centimes, two sous!’ He was always drunk, and he beat me. That’s how the police found me the other night, in these ruined houses. Before that, I used to be with the man who sells brushes. My mother was a washerwoman; her name is Adèle. A gentleman had set her up on a ground floor, at Montmartre, long ago. She was a good worker and very fond of me. She made money because she had the custom of the café waiters, and they need lots of linen. Sundays, she put me to bed early to go to the ball; but week days, she sent me to the Brothers’ school, where I learned to read. Well, at last the policeman whose beat was up our street used to stop before her window to talk to her,—a big man, with the Crimean medal. They got married, and all went wrong. He took a dislike to me, and set mamma against me. Everybody had a slap for me; and it was then that to get away I spent my days on the Place Clichy, where I got acquainted with the mountebanks. My stepfather lost his job, mamma lost her customers, so she went to the washhouse to support her husband. It was there she got consumption, from the dampness. She died at Lariboisière. She was a good woman. Since then I’ve lived with the brush seller and the catgut scraper. Am I going to be put in prison?”
He talked this way openly, cynically, like a man. He was a ragged little rascal, as tall as a top-boot, with his forehead hidden under a strange yellow mop of hair.
Nobody claiming him, they sent him to the reform school.
Not intelligent, lazy, especially clumsy with his hands, he could learn there only a poor trade,—to reseat straw chairs. Yet he was obedient, naturally quiet and taciturn; and he did not seem to be too profoundly corrupted by that school of vice. But when he was seventeen, and set free in the streets of Paris, he found there, for his misfortune, his prison comrades, wretched creatures, plying the lowest callings. Some were trainers of dogs for rat-catching in the sewers; some shined shoes in the Passage de l’Opéra, on the nights when there were balls; some were amateur wrestlers, letting themselves be thrown by the Hercules of the side shows; some used to fish from rafts out in the river. He tried one of these things and another; and a few months after he had left the house of correction, he was arrested again for a petty theft,—a pair of old shoes picked from out an open show window. Result: a year of imprisonment at Sainte-Pélagie, where he served as valet to the political prisoners.
He lived, astonished, among this group of prisoners, all very young and carelessly dressed, who talked loudly and carried themselves in such a solemn way. They used to meet in the cell of the eldest of them, a fellow of thirty locked up for a long time already and as though settled at Sainte-Pélagie,—a big cell, papered with colored caricatures, out of whose windows could be seen the whole of Paris, its roofs, its steeples, its domes, and far off, the distant line of the hills, blue and vague against the sky. On the walls there were a few shelves filled with books and all the old apparatus of a fencing school,—broken masks, rusty foils, leather jackets and gloves with the stuffing half out. It was there that the political prisoners had dinner together, adding to the inevitable soup and beef, fruit, cheese, and quarts of wine that Jean François was sent to buy at the canteen,—tumultuous repasts, interrupted by violent disputes, and with songs sung in chorus at the dessert, the “Carmagnole” and “Ça ira.” But they took on an air of dignity the days when they made room for a newcomer, who was at first solemnly greeted as “citizen,” but who was the next day called by his nickname. They made use of big words, Corporation, Solidarity, and phrases quite unintelligible to Jean François, such as this for example, that he once heard uttered imperiously by a hideous little hunchback who spent his nights scribbling:—
“Then it’s settled. The cabinet is to be composed of Raymond in the Department of Education, Marshall in the Interior, and I in Foreign Affairs.”
Reading Comprehension Worksheet Questions
1. Sainte- Pélagie, Jean Francois' place of imprisonment, used to be a
(A) reform school
(B) library
(C) fencing school
(D) cathedral
(E) warehouse
2. In line 1 of the passage, the word "vagabondage" most nearly means
(A) homelessness
(B) disruption
(C) theft
(D) unlawfulness
(E) trickery
3. The sentence on line 20: "He talked this way openly, cynically, like a man." primarily serves to
(A) present new information about the protagonist so his actions are better understood.
(B) clarify the reasoning behind his argument to get out of reform school.
(C) illuminate the protagonist's cunning willingness to break the law.
(D) demonstrate the effect the protagonist's misfortune has had on his young life.
(E) give some back-story about the young man's poor upbringing.
4. You could infer that the group Jean Francois joins after his second arrest would most desire to
(A) welcome him into the group as their comrade
(B) continue singing, dining, and carousing in peace
(C) maintain their dignity with normalcy
(D) plot their revenge against their captors
(E) overthrow the government
5. The following are all incidents prior to Jean Francois' initial arrest EXCEPT
(A) Jean Francois' mother married a police officer
(B) Jean Francois commits petty theft
(C) Jean Francois sells song books
(D) Jean Francois lives with a brush seller
(E) Jean Francois became acquainted with the mountebacks
