16.
COMPREHENSION
Directions (Qn. 16-25): In this section, you have two short passages. After each passage, you will find some items based on the passage. First, read a passage and answer the items based on it and mark your response on the Answer Sheet accordingly. You are required to select your answers based on the contents of the passage and opinion of the author only.
PASSAGE—I (Qn. 16-20)
“Now, ladies and gentlemen,” said the conjuror, “having shown you that the cloth is absolutely empty, I will proceed to take from it a bowl of goldfish. Presto!”
All around the hall people were saying, “Oh, how wonderful! How does he do it?”
But the Quick Man on the front seat said in a big whisper to the people near him, “He-had-it-up-his-sleeve.”
Then the people nodded brightly at the Quick Man and said, “Oh, of course”; and everybody whispered round the hall, “He-had-it-up-his-sleeve.”
“My next trick,” said the conjuror, “is the famous Hindostanee rings. You will notice that the rings are apparently separate; at a blow they all join (clang, clang, clang)—Presto!”
There was a general buzz of stupefaction till the Quick Man was heard to whisper, “He-must-have-had-another-lot-up-his-sleeve.”
Again everybody nodded and whispered, “The-rings-were-up-his-sleeve.” The brow of the conjuror was clouded with a gathering frown.
“I will now,” he continued, “show you a most amusing trick by which I am enabled to take any number of eggs from a hat. Will some gentleman kindly lend me his hat? Ah, thank you—Presto!”
He extracted seventeen eggs, and for thirty-five seconds the audience began to think that he was wonderful. Then the Quick Man whispered along the front bench, “He-has-a-hen-up-his-sleeve,” and all the people whispered it on. “He-has-a-lot-of-hens-up-his-sleeve.”
The egg trick was ruined.
It went on like that all through. It transpired from the whispers of the Quick Man that the conjuror must have concealed up his sleeve, in addition to the rings, hens, and fish, several packs of cards, a loaf of bread, a doll’s cradle, a live guinea pig, a fifty-cent piece, and a rocking chair.
‘The brow of the conjuror was clouded with a gathering frown.’ The sentence means that the conjuror
