PRACTICE REGENTS' READING TEST
WITH INSTRUCTIONAL FEEDBACK

REGENTS' TESTING PROGRAM

This is a version of the example Reading Test which lets you know whether the responses you select are correct or not as soon as you select them. For each response, the reason the response is correct or incorrect is given. This version may be helpful to those who achieve scores that are near or below the passing score on the other versions of the Reading Test.
Once you have decided what you think the correct answer is, click on the number next to it. A statement indicating whether that selection is correct or incorrect will appear along with an explanation. After you have read the explanation, click on the Back button of your browser to return to the test.
There is a table after the last passage which indicates the correct responses. Also after the last passage there is a conversion table which you may use to find your scale score. Following are the instructions for the regular version of the Reading Test. They are given here only for information since things such as timing are not relevant in this instructional context.

INSTRUCTIONS This is a test of reading comprehension. It is designed to measure your understanding of the material that you read.
The test contains 9 passages. Following each passage is a set of questions about the passage. There are 54 questions on the test.
For each question following a passage, choose the best response on the basis of the content of the passage.
Do not spend too much time on any one question. If a question seems very difficult, make the most careful guess you can. Your score is the number of correct answers that you give; there is no added penalty for wrong answers.
You will have 60 minutes to complete the test.

PASSAGE ONE

A mass production line is essentially a

timing machine which moves goods from place

to place in a given time. In that given

time, a man has to be available to perform a

5 given task. He is, in fact, in many ways a

slave of the machine. It fixes his time and

fixes his movements, and he has to produce a

series of semi-intelligent mechanical motions

to keep the machine fed and moving. This is

10 what I mean by saying that mechanization is

his master. Automation, on the contrary, by

being a self-adapting and a changing piece of

mechanism, enables a man to work at whatever

pace he wants to work, because the machine

15 will react to him. He is the master of the

machine, except in the simpler processes.

The machine that forms part of an automated

system is not predetermined: this kind of

machine gives information and suggests a

20 course of action, but it does not necessarily

say "I won't wait."

PASSAGE TWO

The Norman victory at Hastings marked

the turning point of a blood-splashed October

day just 900 years ago -- a day which so

changed the course of events that it is

5 impossible to reckon our history without

those few furious hours. For when darkness

fell on Senlac Hill, near the seaside town of

Hastings on the southeast coast of England,

William, Duke of Normandy, had earned the

10 lasting sobriquet of "Conqueror." And a flow

of concepts began that would influence men's

lives for centuries to come.

William the Conqueror. Resolute and

resourceful, avaricious, rarely humorous,

15 always unsentimental, he found life a serious

business. He expressed practical ideas in a

grinding tone of voice. In the blood-and-

iron era of the 11th century, he lived his

greatest -- and his worst -- moments on the

20 battlefield.

His victory at the Battle of Hastings

made England once more a part of Europe, as

it had not been since the better days of the

Roman empire. After the Conquest, the

25 Scandinavian influence on England began to

give way to the political and cultural ideals

of the Latin world.

Besides feudalism and a new aristocracy,

the Normans implanted in England much of

30 their language, law, architecture, and social

customs. The island kingdom was thus brought

into the mainstream of medieval civilization.

Englishmen participated in the Crusades, the

reform of church and monastery, and other

35 movements of the time.

PASSAGE THREE

Your eyes are about three inches apart.

That's more than trivia -- it's the reason you

see the world in three dimensions. The

separation gives your eyes two slightly different

5 views of every scene you encounter. In the

brain's visual cortex, these views are

compared, and the overlap is translated into a

stereoptic picture. To estimate relative

distances, your brain takes a reading of the

10 tension in your eye muscles.

But you only see in 3-D up to about 200

feet. Beyond that, you might as well be

one-eyed -- your eyes aren't far enough apart

to give two very different views over long

15 distances. Instead, you rely on experience to

judge where things are; the brain looks for

clues and makes its best guess. For example,

it knows that near objects overlap far ones;

that bright objects are closer than dim ones;

20 and that large objects are nearer than small

ones.

These "monocular cues" are what painters

use to trick us into thinking a flat canvas is

three- dimensional and miles deep. That's why

25 paintings are much more convincing if you

close one eye: Your brain hunts down all the

clues the painter has dropped. But when both

of your eyes are open, the brain gets more

information and mixed signals. The paint may

30 say miles, but the muscles in your eyes say

inches.

All of this fancy eyework is second

nature to us, but it is learned. "Other

cultures don't perceive pictures the same

35 way we do," says J. Anthony Movshon, Ph.D.,

associate professor of psychology at New York

University. "For example, primitive people

don't always think bigger means nearer. It's

our Western way of seeing things, and it's a

40 way of seeing that we've learned."

PASSAGE FOUR

After almost five years as an elected

Superior Court judge in Georgia, I am

convinced that all significant problems in the

administration of our judicial system can

5 be summed up in one word: politics.

Georgia judges are, purely and simply,

politicians. Some are able jurists, but they

all serve under a system that forces them to

be more political than a judge should be. I

10 learned early on that many citizens fail to

make a distinction between a judge/politician

and other breeds of politician. Trying to

explain to a constituent that you want his

support but that you can't do anything for

15 him is, at best, difficult.

Judges in Georgia have the worst of both

worlds -- they must run for election like a

county commissioner, but they are bound by

law to observe a strict set of rules: the

20 Canons of Judicial Conduct. The canons are

voluminous and complicated; suffice it to say

here that they make it impossible for an

honest person to run a campaign and be true

to them.

25 For example, a candidate for judicial

office cannot solicit funds or even ask

anyone to solicit votes for him. All of this is

done, in theory, by a committee of friends,

but in reality the canons are ignored by most

30 candidates.

It was a sight bordering on the

ridiculous this year to observe the candidates for

the Supreme Court of Georgia. Some of them

showed up at professional gatherings such as

35 State Bar meetings with political buttons on

their lapels, shaking hands feverishly with

everyone in reach. During the campaign, one

candidate was overheard remarking to a group

at a political function that he needed to

40 rush off to a "fund-raiser" in another town

-- a blatant and fundamental violation of

canons.

No one makes any serious effort to

enforce the rules of conduct that judges are

45 sworn to live by. Within the past few years

there have been flagrant violations of the

ban on political activity by judges, but

little, if anything, has been done about it.

PASSAGE FIVE

Heartened by the knowledge that Polly

was not altogether a cretin, I began a long,

patient review of all I had told her. Over

and over and over again I cited instances,

5 pointed out flaws, kept hammering away

without letup. It was like digging a tunnel. At

first everything was work, sweat, and

darkness. I had no idea when I would reach the

light, or even if I would. But I persisted.

10 I pounded and clawed and scraped, and finally

I was rewarded. I saw a chink of light. And

then the chink got bigger and the sun came

pouring in and all was bright.

Five grueling nights this took, but it

15 was worth it. I had made a logician out of

Polly; I had taught her to think. My job was

done. She was worthy of me at last. She was

a fit wife for me, a proper hostess for my

many mansions, a suitable mother for my well-

20 heeled children.

It must not be thought that I was

without love for this girl. Quite the contrary.

Just as Pygmalion loved the perfect woman he

had fashioned, so I loved mine. I decided to

25 acquaint her with my feelings at our very

next meeting. The time had come to change

our relationship from academic to romantic.

"Polly," I said when next we sat beneath

our oak, "tonight we will not discuss

30 fallacies."

"Aw, gee," she said, disappointed.

"My dear," I said, favoring her with a

smile, "we have now spent five evenings

together. We have gotten along splendidly.

35 It is clear that we are well matched."

"Hasty Generalization," said Polly

brightly.

"I beg your pardon," said I.

"Hasty Generalization," she repeated.

40 "How can you say that we are well matched on

the basis of only five dates?"

I chuckled with amusement. The dear

child had learned her lessons well. "My

dear," I said, patting her hand in a tolerant

45 manner, "five dates is plenty. After all, you

don't have to eat a whole cake to know that

it's good."

"False Analogy," said Polly promptly.

"I'm not a cake. I'm a girl."

50 I chuckled with somewhat less amusement.

PASSAGE SIX

In New Orleans, Moon Walk -- a pathway

along a stretch of the Mississippi -- now

provides the public access that had previously

been denied. It's a charming place, where

5 one night recently a band played on the walk

as tourists and residents of the adjacent

Vieux Carre (the Old Quarter or French

Quarter) strolled past. A few feet west, the

paddlewheeler Natchezsounded its whistle,

10 signaling its imminent departure.

Now the city plans to extend public access

to the area adjoining Moon Walk in an

ambitious design that will, the city hopes,

be a part of its development for the next

15 world's fair. This more ambitious concept

for the waterfront will be likely to stir

considerable debate as competing projects

vie for the opportunities for profit. The

development will therefore require

20 substantial participation, cooperation and scrutiny

by citizens to make sure that while private

profitability is maintained, the public's

needs are satisfied,

The joint efforts of environmentalists,

25 business-people, civic leaders and politicians

have transformed abandoned, derelict port

landscapes in cities throughout America into

exciting commercial and recreational centers.

Examples are the Cannery in San Francisco,

30 the Riverfront Walk in San Antonio, Faneuil

Hall Market in Boston and Harborplace in

Baltimore.

It's easy to understand why the port

areas were neglected. While many cities were

35 growing up along rivers, lakes and natural

harbors, depending on water-borne commerce,

waterfronts thrived. After World War II,

however, technological changes in

transportation -- improved planes and airports, the

40 interstate highway system, larger tracks for

freight trains and containerized shipping --

rendered many old port facilities obsolete.

Waterfront areas became peripheral to the

life of the city. Piers were abandoned, and

45 the waterfronts lay idle in many older cities,

paralleling the more general urban decay.

With the 1970's came a period of

reflection on this condition and a resurgence

of urban pride. Urban renewal stopped being

50 a license for large-scale demolition;

politicians and planners took a hard look at

their available resources and began to

experiment with new development techniques.

Waterfronts became one focus of the large

55 urban revitalization effort.

PASSAGE SEVEN

A wool sock, a toilet seat, Oriental

silk -- out of a millennium of mud comes

proof that the globe-traveling Vikings

weren't the ravaging rovers historians made

5 them to be.

"The old English image of the Vikings as

simply blood-thirsty bands of pillagers

vanished with these finds," says Richard Hall,

an archaeologist.

10 "We dug down and found a cocoon of

water-logging, a time capsule of everyday

life," said Hall,who led a tour Wednesday

through a muddy concrete hall fashioned out

of the hole left from the excavation.

15 Hall was one of some 400 people who, for

five years, dug up the leftovers of the lives

of an estimated 30,000 Vikings. Workers

discovered the sophisticated settlement when a

central district of York was leveled for rebuilding.

20 Starting April 14, 1984, electric cars

will carry tourists through a tunnel of time

that goes back to 866 A.D., when the Vikings

came to York, 188 miles northwest of London.

Archaeologists are eager to display what

25 they found in a $3.9 million reconstruction

of Jorvik, the Anglo-Saxon name for the

settlement.

"We have skeletons, 15,000 objects,

a quarter-of-a-million pieces of pottery, some

30 of the best preserved Viking-age buildings

ever discovered and five tons of animal

bones," Hall said.

The digs revealed intimate details of

Viking life. There is a toilet seat, keys,

35 tools, games counters, the seeds in the

blackberries they picked and a knitted woolen

sock.

"They were a great trading nation with a

sophisticated monetary system," Hall said.

40 "We will show the range of products in

which they traded -- silk from the Far East,

amber from the Baltic, pottery from the

Rhineland, cowrie shells from the Indian

Ocean."

PASSAGE EIGHT

Review of "The Collected Prose." By

Elizabeth Bishop. Edited by Robert Giroux.

278 pages. Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

5
The late Elizabeth Bishop always

epitomized, in John Ashbery's phrase, "a

writer's writer's writer." By 1976, when she

became the first American -- and the first

woman -- ever to receive the Neustadt

10 International Prize, the world at large began to

realize what many of her fellow poets had

long suspected: that her poetic achievement

might in time overshadow that of her more

famous contemporaries. Bishop's admirers

15 will want to consult her "Collected Prose"

for the light it sheds on her poetry. They

will discover, however, that it is more than

just a handsome companion volume to last

year's "Complete Poems, 1927-1979." Bishop's

20 clean, limpid prose makes her stories and

memoirs a delight to read.

Robert Giroux, Bishop's editor, divides

her "Collected Prose" into "Memory: Persons

& Places" and "Stories." Fair enough, though

25 inevitably the distinctions between these two

categories blur. Stories like "Gwendolyn"

and the justly celebrated "In the Village" do

double duty as autobiographical statements.

By the same token "Efforts of Affection" -- a

30 memoir of Marianne Moore as mentor and friend

-- achieves the emotional resonance of a

finely wrought short story. So does "The

U.S.A. School of Writing," Bishop's account

of her first job after graduation from Vassar

35 in the midst of the Great Depression. For

the grand sum of $15 a week, she impersonated

a "successful, money-making" author named

"Fred G. Margolies" for a shady

correspondence school in New York City.

PASSAGE NINE

Said a Melrose, Massachusetts, housing

engineer in 1980, "Every politician is the

same, regardless of whether he's in Boston

or Washington. That's why a lot of us may

5 choose not to vote this November." As a

result, people are focusing efforts on the

local level. There, one sees not apathy but

intense political activity.

There has been a gradual but pronounced

10 shift of power out of the hands of elected

officials to direct ballot voting through

local initiatives and referenda where people,

not officials, decide by a majority vote a

certain course of action.

15 Politicians matter less and less. So

there is a declining interest in national

political elections. It is a natural

consequence of the shift from a representative

to a participatory democracy.

20 Political commentators and the media, of

course, see this as anything but natural. We

are constantly upbraided for apathy and for

taking democracy for granted. And by now we

all feel even guilty about it.

25 We should not. Low voter turnout does

not automatically signal trouble in democracy.

In any event, exceptionally high turnout

is not necessarily the wonderful thing the

commentators would have us believe it is.

30 Worldwide, the highest turnouts occur in

totalitarian states. For example, only one

voter failed to turn out in Albania's 1978

general election; North Korea counts on a

full 100-percent turnout; and in Romania and

35 East Germany the vote hovers at around 99

percent.

Political analysis used to associate low

turnout with apathy or ignorance. But as the

electorate becomes better educated, more

40 informed, and more assertive, that

rationalization is becoming increasingly difficult to

substantiate. Analysts are finally beginning

to understand that voters are making a

conscious decision not to participate

45 We have pulled the essence of political

power out of the hands of our elected

representatives and reinvested it into two

main areas: (1) the direct ballot vote of

initiatives and referenda and (2) grassroots

50 political activity. In both cases citizens,

not politicians, decide on a course of action

and live with it.

Produced for the Regents' Testing Program by Dr. Belita Gordon,School of Professional Studies, University of Georgia, 1986

The correct answers are identified with asterisks on the following table. Click here to see the description of the statistics in this table. A conversion table is provided below for those who wish to compute scale scores.
Item Item % choosing each option P- Pb Bis Number Classification 1 2 3 4 Value Corr Corr 1 Literal 2 93* 3 2 93 .19 .35 2 Literal 0 2 3 94* 94 .33 .66 3 Inference 4 1 93* 2 93 .33 .62 4 Analysis 88* 6 5 1 88 .16 .27 5 Literal 2 78* 5 14 78 .42 .59 6 Inference 2 7 87* 4 87 .35 .55 7 Vocabulary 4 10 1 85* 85 .36 .56 8 Vocabulary 23 7 67* 3 67 .36 .47 9 Literal 86* 4 8 2 86 .24 .38 10 Inference 74* 17 2 6 74 .39 .53 11 Inference 80* 2 2 16 80 .23 .33 12 Vocabulary 6 75* 13 6 75 .32 .44 13 Inference 8 55* 2 35 55 .41 .52 14 Analysis 7 6 2 85* 85 .37 .57 15 Analysis 14 4 16 65* 65 .27 .35 16 Vocabulary 4 8 22 66* 66 .45 .58 17 Vocabulary 30 56* 4 10 56 .42 .53 18 Literal 75* 5 4 17 75 .39 .54 19 Inference 11 10 73* 5 73 .32 .44 20 Inference 3 76* 10 11 76 .43 .58 21 Analysis 6 5 77* 11 77 .37 .52 22 Analysis 4 6 2 88* 88 .31 .51 23 Inference 48* 13 30 9 48 .41 .51 24 Inference 82* 1 1 16 82 .37 .55 25 Literal 1 2 96* 1 96 .22 .49 26 Inference 8 4 6 82* 82 .39 .58 27 Analysis 79* 8 5 8 79 .41 .59 28 Vocabulary 4 74* 11 11 74 .43 .58 29 Inference 11 5 6 78* 78 .39 .54 30 Inference 4 3 88* 5 88 .36 .59 31 Inference 88* 4 4 3 88 .35 .57 32 Literal 3 3 81* 13 81 .49 .70 33 Analysis 30 44* 24 1 44 .42 .52 34 Vocabulary 2 88* 6 4 88 .45 .72 35 Literal 6 85* 3 5 85 .44 .67 36 Inference 76* 8 13 2 76 .30 .41 37 Vocabulary 91* 2 3 4 91 .36 .63 38 Literal 19 6 2 72* 72 .43 .58 39 Inference 2 91* 3 3 91 .31 .54 40 Literal 2 72* 16 9 72 .42 .55 41 Literal 1 1 0 98* 98 .24 .64 42 Analysis 8 2 81* 9 81 .39 .56 43 Inference 81* 12 5 2 81 .28 .40 44 Inference 1 5 81* 13 81 .39 .56 45 Literal 12 74* 1 13 74 .27 .37 46 Vocabulary 1 96* 1 2 96 .22 .48 47 Analysis 12 17 4 67* 67 .31 .40 48 Analysis 50* 8 29 12 50 .38 .48 49 Vocabulary 72* 20 4 3 72 .56 .74 50 Inference 6 75* 7 9 75 .51 .70 51 Vocabulary 82* 6 8 2 82 .45 .66 52 Analysis 76* 8 3 9 76 .56 .77 53 Inference 9 4 26 58* 58 .56 .71 54 Analysis 5 4 4 84* 84 .44 .66

The following table may be used to compute scale scores for this practice test.
Raw Score to Scaled Score Conversion Table for Form 23 of the Regents' Reading Test __________________________________________________________ Raw Scaled Raw Scaled Score** Score Score Score __________________________________________________________ 1 6 31 53 2 13 32 54 3 18 33 55 4 21 34 56 5 24 35 57 6 26 36 58 7 28 37 59 8 30 38 60 9 31 39 *61 10 33 40 62 11 34 41 63 12 35 42 64 13 37 43 66 14 38 44 67 15 39 45 68 16 40 46 70 17 41 47 72 18 42 48 74 19 43 49 76 20 44 50 78 21 45 51 82 22 46 52 86 23 46 53 93 24 47 54 99 25 48 26 49 27 50 28 51 29 52 30 53 _____________________________________________________________ *minimum passing score **The raw score is the number of items answered correctly.

This practice Reading Test with instructional feedback is based on an operational form administered in 1984. It has been released to provide information about the test. While it continues to serve as an example of the content and difficulty level of the test, the gender-biased language evident here, especially in the first passage, is avoided on more recent forms. We have agreed to honor the request of instructors to reserve the more recent non-secure passages and questions for classroom use rather than public release.
© 1996, University System of Georgia - permission required for any reuse

Last updated: September 25, 2003

		A mass production line is essentially a
		timing machine which moves goods from place
		to place in a given time. In that given
		time, a man has to be available to perform a
5		given task. He is, in fact, in many ways a
		slave of the machine. It fixes his time and
		fixes his movements, and he has to produce a
		series of semi-intelligent mechanical motions
		to keep the machine fed and moving. This is
10		what I mean by saying that mechanization is
		his master. Automation, on the contrary, by
		being a self-adapting and a changing piece of
		mechanism, enables a man to work at whatever
		pace he wants to work, because the machine
15		will react to him. He is the master of the
		machine, except in the simpler processes.
		The machine that forms part of an automated
		system is not predetermined: this kind of
		machine gives information and suggests a
20		course of action, but it does not necessarily
		say "I won't wait."

		The Norman victory at Hastings marked
		the turning point of a blood-splashed October
		day just 900 years ago -- a day which so
		changed the course of events that it is
5		impossible to reckon our history without
		those few furious hours. For when darkness
		fell on Senlac Hill, near the seaside town of
		Hastings on the southeast coast of England,
		William, Duke of Normandy, had earned the
10		lasting sobriquet of "Conqueror." And a flow
		of concepts began that would influence men's
		lives for centuries to come.
		William the Conqueror. Resolute and
		resourceful, avaricious, rarely humorous,
15		always unsentimental, he found life a serious
		business. He expressed practical ideas in a
		grinding tone of voice. In the blood-and-
		iron era of the 11th century, he lived his
		greatest -- and his worst -- moments on the
20		battlefield.
		His victory at the Battle of Hastings
		made England once more a part of Europe, as
		it had not been since the better days of the
		Roman empire. After the Conquest, the
25		Scandinavian influence on England began to
		give way to the political and cultural ideals
		of the Latin world.
		Besides feudalism and a new aristocracy,
		the Normans implanted in England much of
30		their language, law, architecture, and social
		customs. The island kingdom was thus brought
		into the mainstream of medieval civilization.
		Englishmen participated in the Crusades, the
		reform of church and monastery, and other
35		movements of the time.

		Your eyes are about three inches apart.
		That's more than trivia -- it's the reason you
		see the world in three dimensions. The
		separation gives your eyes two slightly different
5		views of every scene you encounter. In the
		brain's visual cortex, these views are
		compared, and the overlap is translated into a
		stereoptic picture. To estimate relative
		distances, your brain takes a reading of the
10		tension in your eye muscles.
		But you only see in 3-D up to about 200
		feet. Beyond that, you might as well be
		one-eyed -- your eyes aren't far enough apart
		to give two very different views over long
15		distances. Instead, you rely on experience to
		judge where things are; the brain looks for
		clues and makes its best guess. For example,
		it knows that near objects overlap far ones;
		that bright objects are closer than dim ones;
20		and that large objects are nearer than small
		ones.
		These "monocular cues" are what painters
		use to trick us into thinking a flat canvas is
		three- dimensional and miles deep. That's why
25		paintings are much more convincing if you
		close one eye: Your brain hunts down all the
		clues the painter has dropped. But when both
		of your eyes are open, the brain gets more
		information and mixed signals. The paint may
30		say miles, but the muscles in your eyes say
		inches.
		All of this fancy eyework is second
		nature to us, but it is learned. "Other
		cultures don't perceive pictures the same
35		way we do," says J. Anthony Movshon, Ph.D.,
		associate professor of psychology at New York
		University. "For example, primitive people
		don't always think bigger means nearer. It's
		our Western way of seeing things, and it's a
40		way of seeing that we've learned."

		After almost five years as an elected
		Superior Court judge in Georgia, I am
		convinced that all significant problems in the
		administration of our judicial system can
5		be summed up in one word: politics.
		Georgia judges are, purely and simply,
		politicians. Some are able jurists, but they
		all serve under a system that forces them to
		be more political than a judge should be. I
10		learned early on that many citizens fail to
		make a distinction between a judge/politician
		and other breeds of politician. Trying to
		explain to a constituent that you want his
		support but that you can't do anything for
15		him is, at best, difficult.
		Judges in Georgia have the worst of both
		worlds -- they must run for election like a
		county commissioner, but they are bound by
		law to observe a strict set of rules: the
20		Canons of Judicial Conduct. The canons are
		voluminous and complicated; suffice it to say
		here that they make it impossible for an
		honest person to run a campaign and be true
		to them.
25		For example, a candidate for judicial
		office cannot solicit funds or even ask
		anyone to solicit votes for him. All of this is
		done, in theory, by a committee of friends,
		but in reality the canons are ignored by most
30		candidates.
		It was a sight bordering on the
		ridiculous this year to observe the candidates for
		the Supreme Court of Georgia. Some of them
		showed up at professional gatherings such as
35		State Bar meetings with political buttons on
		their lapels, shaking hands feverishly with
		everyone in reach. During the campaign, one
		candidate was overheard remarking to a group
		at a political function that he needed to
40		rush off to a "fund-raiser" in another town
		-- a blatant and fundamental violation of
		canons.
		No one makes any serious effort to
		enforce the rules of conduct that judges are
45		sworn to live by. Within the past few years
		there have been flagrant violations of the
		ban on political activity by judges, but
		little, if anything, has been done about it.

		Heartened by the knowledge that Polly
		was not altogether a cretin, I began a long,
		patient review of all I had told her. Over
		and over and over again I cited instances,
5		pointed out flaws, kept hammering away
		without letup. It was like digging a tunnel. At
		first everything was work, sweat, and
		darkness. I had no idea when I would reach the
		light, or even if I would. But I persisted.
10		I pounded and clawed and scraped, and finally
		I was rewarded. I saw a chink of light. And
		then the chink got bigger and the sun came
		pouring in and all was bright.
		Five grueling nights this took, but it
15		was worth it. I had made a logician out of
		Polly; I had taught her to think. My job was
		done. She was worthy of me at last. She was
		a fit wife for me, a proper hostess for my
		many mansions, a suitable mother for my well-
20		heeled children.
		It must not be thought that I was
		without love for this girl. Quite the contrary.
		Just as Pygmalion loved the perfect woman he
		had fashioned, so I loved mine. I decided to
25		acquaint her with my feelings at our very
		next meeting. The time had come to change
		our relationship from academic to romantic.
		"Polly," I said when next we sat beneath
		our oak, "tonight we will not discuss
30		fallacies."
		"Aw, gee," she said, disappointed.
		"My dear," I said, favoring her with a
		smile, "we have now spent five evenings
		together. We have gotten along splendidly.
35		It is clear that we are well matched."
		"Hasty Generalization," said Polly
		brightly.
		"I beg your pardon," said I.
		"Hasty Generalization," she repeated.
40		"How can you say that we are well matched on
		the basis of only five dates?"
		I chuckled with amusement. The dear
		child had learned her lessons well. "My
		dear," I said, patting her hand in a tolerant
45		manner, "five dates is plenty. After all, you
		don't have to eat a whole cake to know that
		it's good."
		"False Analogy," said Polly promptly.
		"I'm not a cake. I'm a girl."
50		I chuckled with somewhat less amusement.

		In New Orleans, Moon Walk -- a pathway
		along a stretch of the Mississippi -- now
		provides the public access that had previously
		been denied. It's a charming place, where
5		one night recently a band played on the walk
		as tourists and residents of the adjacent
		Vieux Carre (the Old Quarter or French
		Quarter) strolled past. A few feet west, the
		paddlewheeler Natchezsounded its whistle,
10		signaling its imminent departure.
		Now the city plans to extend public access
		to the area adjoining Moon Walk in an
		ambitious design that will, the city hopes,
		be a part of its development for the next
15		world's fair. This more ambitious concept
		for the waterfront will be likely to stir
		considerable debate as competing projects
		vie for the opportunities for profit. The
		development will therefore require
20		substantial participation, cooperation and scrutiny
		by citizens to make sure that while private
		profitability is maintained, the public's
		needs are satisfied,
		The joint efforts of environmentalists,
25		business-people, civic leaders and politicians
		have transformed abandoned, derelict port
		landscapes in cities throughout America into
		exciting commercial and recreational centers.
		Examples are the Cannery in San Francisco,
30		the Riverfront Walk in San Antonio, Faneuil
		Hall Market in Boston and Harborplace in
		Baltimore.
		It's easy to understand why the port
		areas were neglected. While many cities were
35		growing up along rivers, lakes and natural
		harbors, depending on water-borne commerce,
		waterfronts thrived. After World War II,
		however, technological changes in
		transportation -- improved planes and airports, the
40		interstate highway system, larger tracks for
		freight trains and containerized shipping --
		rendered many old port facilities obsolete.
		Waterfront areas became peripheral to the
		life of the city. Piers were abandoned, and
45		the waterfronts lay idle in many older cities,
		paralleling the more general urban decay.
		With the 1970's came a period of
		reflection on this condition and a resurgence
		of urban pride. Urban renewal stopped being
50		a license for large-scale demolition;
		politicians and planners took a hard look at
		their available resources and began to
		experiment with new development techniques.
		Waterfronts became one focus of the large
55		urban revitalization effort.

		A wool sock, a toilet seat, Oriental
		silk -- out of a millennium of mud comes
		proof that the globe-traveling Vikings
		weren't the ravaging rovers historians made
5		them to be.
		"The old English image of the Vikings as
		simply blood-thirsty bands of pillagers
		vanished with these finds," says Richard Hall,
		an archaeologist.
10		"We dug down and found a cocoon of
		water-logging, a time capsule of everyday
		life," said Hall,who led a tour Wednesday
		through a muddy concrete hall fashioned out
		of the hole left from the excavation.
15		Hall was one of some 400 people who, for
		five years, dug up the leftovers of the lives
		of an estimated 30,000 Vikings. Workers
		discovered the sophisticated settlement when a
		central district of York was leveled for rebuilding.
20		Starting April 14, 1984, electric cars
		will carry tourists through a tunnel of time
		that goes back to 866 A.D., when the Vikings
		came to York, 188 miles northwest of London.
		Archaeologists are eager to display what
25		they found in a $3.9 million reconstruction
		of Jorvik, the Anglo-Saxon name for the
		settlement.
		"We have skeletons, 15,000 objects,
		a quarter-of-a-million pieces of pottery, some
30		of the best preserved Viking-age buildings
		ever discovered and five tons of animal
		bones," Hall said.
		The digs revealed intimate details of
		Viking life. There is a toilet seat, keys,
35		tools, games counters, the seeds in the
		blackberries they picked and a knitted woolen
		sock.
		"They were a great trading nation with a
		sophisticated monetary system," Hall said.
40		"We will show the range of products in
		which they traded -- silk from the Far East,
		amber from the Baltic, pottery from the
		Rhineland, cowrie shells from the Indian
		Ocean."

		Review of "The Collected Prose." By
		Elizabeth Bishop. Edited by Robert Giroux.
		278 pages. Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

5		The late Elizabeth Bishop always
		epitomized, in John Ashbery's phrase, "a
		writer's writer's writer." By 1976, when she
		became the first American -- and the first
		woman -- ever to receive the Neustadt
10		International Prize, the world at large began to
		realize what many of her fellow poets had
		long suspected: that her poetic achievement
		might in time overshadow that of her more
		famous contemporaries. Bishop's admirers
15		will want to consult her "Collected Prose"
		for the light it sheds on her poetry. They
		will discover, however, that it is more than
		just a handsome companion volume to last
		year's "Complete Poems, 1927-1979." Bishop's
20		clean, limpid prose makes her stories and
		memoirs a delight to read.
		Robert Giroux, Bishop's editor, divides
		her "Collected Prose" into "Memory: Persons
		& Places" and "Stories." Fair enough, though
25		inevitably the distinctions between these two
		categories blur. Stories like "Gwendolyn"
		and the justly celebrated "In the Village" do
		double duty as autobiographical statements.
		By the same token "Efforts of Affection" -- a
30		memoir of Marianne Moore as mentor and friend
		-- achieves the emotional resonance of a
		finely wrought short story. So does "The
		U.S.A. School of Writing," Bishop's account
		of her first job after graduation from Vassar
35		in the midst of the Great Depression. For
		the grand sum of $15 a week, she impersonated
		a "successful, money-making" author named
		"Fred G. Margolies" for a shady
		correspondence school in New York City.

		Said a Melrose, Massachusetts, housing
		engineer in 1980, "Every politician is the
		same, regardless of whether he's in Boston
		or Washington. That's why a lot of us may
5		choose not to vote this November." As a
		result, people are focusing efforts on the
		local level. There, one sees not apathy but
		intense political activity.
		There has been a gradual but pronounced
10		shift of power out of the hands of elected
		officials to direct ballot voting through
		local initiatives and referenda where people,
		not officials, decide by a majority vote a
		certain course of action.
15		Politicians matter less and less. So
		there is a declining interest in national
		political elections. It is a natural
		consequence of the shift from a representative
		to a participatory democracy.
20		Political commentators and the media, of
		course, see this as anything but natural. We
		are constantly upbraided for apathy and for
		taking democracy for granted. And by now we
		all feel even guilty about it.
25		We should not. Low voter turnout does
		not automatically signal trouble in democracy.
		In any event, exceptionally high turnout
		is not necessarily the wonderful thing the
		commentators would have us believe it is.
30		Worldwide, the highest turnouts occur in
		totalitarian states. For example, only one
		voter failed to turn out in Albania's 1978
		general election; North Korea counts on a
		full 100-percent turnout; and in Romania and
35		East Germany the vote hovers at around 99
		percent.
		Political analysis used to associate low
		turnout with apathy or ignorance. But as the
		electorate becomes better educated, more
40		informed, and more assertive, that
		rationalization is becoming increasingly difficult to
		substantiate. Analysts are finally beginning
		to understand that voters are making a
		conscious decision not to participate
45		We have pulled the essence of political
		power out of the hands of our elected
		representatives and reinvested it into two
		main areas: (1) the direct ballot vote of
		initiatives and referenda and (2) grassroots
50		political activity. In both cases citizens,
		not politicians, decide on a course of action
		and live with it.