He didn't say any more but we've always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I'm inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought--frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon--for the intimate revelations of young men or at least the terms in which they express them are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth. For 10 points answer at least three of the following questions using claim, evidence and reasoning in your response. Should you answer all of the questions, you will receive a boost in your overall score.

1. What does it mean to “reserve all judgments”?

2. What are the “many curious natures” that the narrator’s habit of reserving judgments has attracted to him?

3. What is a “veteran bore”? Can you give some examples?

4. Why does the narrator believe that his classmates thought he was a “politician”

rather than just a nice, non-judgmental person?

5. What are “confidences”? What does that word mean?

6. What does “feign” mean?

7. What kind of thoughts and experiences might a young man want to share with the narrator that causes him to feign sleep?

8.What does the narrator mean when he says that the stories that the veteran bores share with him are plagiaristic? Is he talking about actual plagiarism, or is he using hyperbole?

9.Does the narrator reserve judgment in fact? What does this paragraph, the narrator’s own statements, say about his success or failure to refrain from criticizing others?