Read the passage.
the wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
the moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
the road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
and the highwayman came riding-
riding-riding-
the highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.
what elements contribute to the rhythm?
a. the imagery of the highwayman riding
b. alliteration
c. the length of the lines
d. the setting

Which sentence accurately describes elements of historical fiction?

Identify the sentence in which the underlined word or words are punctuated incorrectly. a) pam was (well prepared) for the debate. b) she had (read three quarters) of the material more than once. c) she has always been (self assured). d) the winner needs a (two-thirds) majority of the votes.

[1] nothing that comes from the desert expresses its extremes better than the unhappy growth of the tree yuccas. tormented, thin forests of it stalk drearily in the high mesas, particularly in that triangular slip that fans out eastward from the meeting of the sierras and coastwise hills. the yucca bristles with bayonet-pointed leaves, dull green, growing shaggy with age like an old [5] man's tangled gray beard, tipped with panicles of foul, greenish blooms. after its death, which is slow, the ghostly hollow network of its woody skeleton, with hardly power to rot, makes even the moonlight fearful. but it isn't always this way. before the yucca has come to flower, while yet its bloom is a luxurious, creamy, cone-shaped bud of the size of a small cabbage, full of sugary sap. the indians twist it deftly out of its fence of daggers and roast the prize for their [10] own delectation why does the author use the words "bayonet-pointed" (line 4) and "fence of daggers" (line 9) to describe the leaves of the yucca tree? . to create an image of the sharp edges of the plant to emphasize how beautiful the plant's leaves are to explain when and where the plant grows to show how afraid the author is of the plant