Read the story.

hearts and hands

by o. henry

at denver there was an influx of passengers into the coaches on the eastbound b. & m. express. in one coach there sat a very pretty young woman dressed in elegant taste and surrounded by all the luxurious comforts of an experienced traveler. among the newcomers were two young men, one of handsome presence with a bold, frank countenance and manner; the other a ruffled, glum-faced person, heavily built and roughly dressed. the two were handcuffed together.

how does the language in paragraph 1 evoke a sense of time and place?

a. it includes an outdated reference to handcuffs, and, therefore, is set in a past time.

b. it describes a time when women were noted for elegant taste in clothes.

c. it describes a world in which railroads were the main mode of long-distance travel for americans.

d. it uses words such as ruffled, glum-faced, and luxurious, which would not be used to describe people today.

Read the excerpt from elie wiesel’s all rivers run to the sea. why were those trains allowed to roll unhindered into poland? why were the tracks leading to birkenau never bombed? i have put these questions to american presidents and generals and to high-ranking soviet officers. since moscow and washington knew what the killers were doing in the death camps, why was nothing done at least to slow down their “production”? that not a single allied military aircraft ever tried to destroy the rail lines converging on auschwitz remains an outrageous enigma to me. birkenau was “processing” ten thousand jews a day. stopping a single convoy for a single night—or even for just a few hours—would have prolonged so many lives. based on the paragraph, the author would most likely agree that it is best to avoid confrontation at all costs. people need to be proactive when they witness an injustice. countries should remain neutral to keep alliances strong. moscow and washington are to be blamed for the holocaust.