Factual Passage - 6 | English Grammar Advanced - Class 10 PDF Download

Read the passage given below and answer the questions which follow
1. The man with the white face entered the carriage at Rugby. He moved slowly in spite of the urgency of his porter, and even while he was still on the platform I noted how ill he seemed. He dropped into the corner over against me with a sigh, made an incomplete attempt to arrange his travelling shawl, and became motionless, with his eyes staring vacantly. Presently he was moved by a sense of my observation, looked up at me, and put out a spiritless hand for his newspaper. Then he glanced again in my direction. I feigned to read. I feared I had unwittingly embarrassed him, and in a moment I was surprised to find him speaking.
2. “I beg your pardon?” said I. “That book,” he repeated, pointing a lean finger, “is about dreams.” “Obviously,” I answered, for it was Fortnum Roscoe’s Dream States, and the title was on the cover. He hung silent for a space as if he sought words.
“Yes,” he said at last, “but they tell you nothing.”
I did not catch his meaning for a second. 
“They don’t know,” he added. I looked a little more attentively at his face.
“There are dreams,” he said, “and dreams.”
That sort of proposition I never dispute.
“I suppose–” he hesitated. “Do you ever dream? I mean vividly.”
“I dream very little,” I answered. “I doubt if I have three vivid dreams in a year.”?
“Ah!” he said, and seemed for a moment to collect his thoughts.
“Your dreams don’t mix with your memories?” he asked abruptly.
“You don’t find yourself in doubt; did this happen or did it not?”
“Hardly ever. Except just for a momentary hesitation now and then. I suppose few people do.”
“Does he say–?” He indicated the book.
“Says it happens at times and gives the usual explanation about intensity of impression and the like to account for its not happening as a rule.
I suppose you know something of these  theories–“
“Very little–except that they are wrong.”
3. His emaciated hand played with the strap of the window for a time. I prepared to resume reading, and that seemed to precipitate his next remark. He leant forward almost as though he would touch me.
“Isn’t there something called consecutive dreaming–that goes on night after night?”
“I believe there is. There are cases given in most books on mental trouble.”
“Mental trouble! Yes. I daresay there are. It’s the right place for them.
But what I mean–” He looked at his bony knuckles. “Is that sort of thing always dreaming? Is it dreaming?
Or is it something else? Mightn’t it be something else?”
4. I should have snubbed his persistent conversation but for the drawn anxiety of his face. I remember now the look of his faded eyes and the lids red stained–perhaps you know that look.
“I’m not just arguing about a matter of opinion,” he said.
“The thing’s killing me.”
“Dreams?”
“If you call them dreams. Night after night. Vivid!—so vivid . . . this–” (he indicated the landscape that went streaming by the window) “seems unreal in comparison! I can scarcely remember who I am, what business I am on . . . .”He paused. “Even now–“
“The dream is always the same–do you mean?” I asked.
“It’s over.”
“You mean?”
“I died.”
“Died?”
5. “Smashed and killed, and now, so much of me as that dream was, is dead. Dead forever. I dreamt I was another man, you know, living in a different part of the world and in a different time.
I dreamt that night after night. Night after night I woke into that other life. Fresh scenes and fresh happenings–until I came upon the last–“
“When you died?”
“When I died.”
“And since then–“
“No,” he said. “Thank God! That was the end of the dream.. . “
6. It was clear I was in for this dream. And after all, I had an hour before me, the light was fading fast, and Fortnum Roscoe has a dreary way with him. “Living in a different time,” I said: “do you mean in some different age?”
“Yes.” 
“Past?”
“No, to come–to come.”
“The year three thousand, for example?”
“I don’t know what year it was. I did when I was asleep, when
I was dreaming, that is, but not now–not now that I am awake.
There’s a lot of things I have forgotten since I woke out of these dreams, though I knew them at the time when I was–I suppose it was dreaming. They called the year differently from our way of calling the year . . . What did they call it?” He put his hand to his forehead. “No,” said he, “I forget.”
He sat smiling weakly. For a moment I feared he did not mean to tell me his dream. As a rule I hate people who tell their dreams, but this struck me differently. I proffered assistance even.
“It began–” I suggested.
7. “It was vivid from the first. I seemed to wake up in it suddenly. And it’s curious that in these dreams I am speaking of I never remembered this life I am living now. It seemed as if the dream life was enough while it lasted. Perhaps–But I will tell you how I find myself when I do my best to recall it all. I don’t remember anything clearly until I found myself sitting in a sort of loggia looking out over the sea. I had been dozing, and suddenly I woke up–fresh and vivid–not a bit dreamlike–because the girl had stopped fanning me.”
On the basis of your reading of the above excerpt, choose the correct option to answer the following questions:
Q1. “I feigned to read” implies
(a) I continued to read.
(b) I pretended to read.
(c) I ignored reading.
(d) I feared reading.
Ans: (b)

Q2. Choose the synonym of thin (para 3)
(a) resume
(b) knuckles
(c) precipitate
(d) emaciated
Ans: (d)

Q3. What was the name of the book which the narrator was reading?
(a) Fortnum Roscoe's Dream States
(b) State of the Dream
(c) Dream States
(d) Dreams of the States
Ans: (c)

Q4. Choose the antonym of dull (para 7)
(a) assistance
(b) vivid
(c) loggia
(d) Proffered
Ans: (b)

Q5. Why couldn’t the narrator snub the man’s conversation?
(a) The man with the white face looked anxious.
(b) The book which he was reading was lost.
(c) The narrator liked listening to conversations.
(d) The man begged him to listen.
Ans: (a)

Q6. ‘Proffered’ means
(a) hold out or put forward
(b) to obtain something
(c) to project something
(d) to establish the validity
Ans: (a)

Q7. The word which is a synonym of ‘boring’ in para 6 is ________
(a) fading
(b) weakly
(c) dreary
(d) fast
Ans: (c)

Q8. The man in his dream lived in the _______
(a) Jacobean era
(b)  Future
(c) Past
(d) Present Age
Ans: (b)

Q9. Choose the right answer which explains the underlined phrase: He hung silent for a space as if he sought words.
(a) he was left hanging because of his indecisiveness
(b)  he was indecisive
(c) he stayed silent for sometime as if he searched for words.
(d) he was at a loss of words.
Ans: (c)

Q10. How did the man with the white face behave as he entered the carriage?
(a) Scared
(b)  showed no enthusiasm
(c) Excited and nervous
(d) Excited and enthusiastic
Ans: (b)

Q11. What was the man’s opinion about the theory of dreams given in the narrator’s book?
(a) He felt that the book was confusing
(b) He felt that it was all correct
(c) He felt that the book explained nothing.
(d) He felt the book painted a wrong picture.
Ans: (c)

Q12. What is NOT the reason for narrator being interested in listening to the man’s description of his last dream?
(a) The narrator had still an hour’s journey left.
(b) It was getting dark
(c) The man’s dream was about an alien.
(d) His book was getting boring.
Ans: (c)

Q13. What did the man NOT say about the last dream which he had?
(a) His last dream was very clear
(b) It was a dream which wasn’t clear
(c) He would wake up in these dreams suddenly.
(d) He was sitting in the loggia
Ans: (b)

Q14. Choose the correct option: Which of the following is NOT true for the Man with the white face?
(a) He moved around slowly
(b) He didn’t want to talk about his dream.
(c) He looked sickly
(d) He didn’t believe in theories of Fortnum Roscoe's Dream States
Ans: (b)

Q15. I dream very little, I answered. "I doubt if I have three vivid dreams in a year. This line highlights that the narrator did not –
(a) Good sleep pattern.
(b) like talking to the man with the white face
(c) Give much importance to the science behind dreams.
(d) Have normal dreams
Ans: (c)