What is the purpose of this passage? In one part of Russia, though, the nobles who owned the land were interested in trying out new tools, new equipment, and new ideas about how to improve the soil. This area was in the northern Ukraine just crossing into the Russian regions of Voronigh and Hurst. When word of the breakthrough in making sugar reached the landowners in that one more advanced part of Russia, they knew just what to do: plant beets.

Cane sugar had brought millions of Africans into slavery, then helped foster the movement to abolish the slave trade. In Cuba large-scale sugar planting began in the 1800s, brought by new owners interested in using modern technology. Some of these planters led the way in freeing Cuban slaves. Now beet sugar set an example of modern farming that helped convince Russian nobles that it was time to free their millions of serfs. And that is precisely where Marc's family story begins—with Nina's grandfather, the serf who bought his freedom from figuring out how to color beet sugar.

In this excerpt from "quality" by john galsworthy, which two parts clearly indicate the literary point of view of the essay? that tenement had a certain quiet distinction; there was no sign upon its face that he made for any of the royal family—merely his own german name of gessler brothers; and in the window a few pairs of boots. i remember that it always troubled me to account for those unvarying boots in the window, for he made only what was ordered, reaching nothing down, and it seemed so inconceivable that what he made could ever have failed to fit. had he bought them to put there? that, too, seemed inconceivable. he would never have tolerated in his house leather on which he had not worked himself. besides, they were too beautiful—the pair of pumps, so inexpressibly slim, the patent leathers with cloth tops, making water come into one's mouth, the tall brown riding boots with marvellous sooty glow, as if, though new, they had been worn a hundred years. those pairs could only have been made by one who saw before him the soul of boot—so truly were they prototypes incarnating the very spirit of all foot-gear. these thoughts, of course, came to me later, though even when i was promoted to him, at the age of perhaps fourteen, some inkling haunted me of the dignity of himself and brother. for to make boots—such boots as he made—seemed to me then, and still seems to me, mysterious and wonderful.