What is the tone of the following excerpt from edgar allan poe’s "the masque of the red death"?

there was a sharp cry—and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which, instantly afterwards, fell prostrate in death the prince prospero. then, summoning the wild courage of despair, a throng of the revellers at once threw themselves into the black apartment, and, seizing the mummer, whose tall figure stood erect and motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in unutterable horror at finding the grave cerements and corpse-like mask, which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form.

and now was acknowledged the presence of the red death. he had come like a thief in the night. and one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. and the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. and the flames of the tripods expired. and darkness and decay and the red death held illimitable dominion over all.

eager and enthusiastic
mournful and timid
macabre and suspenseful
hopeful and reassuring

What is one way that the author makes a distinction between the first transcontinental railroad and the first transcontinental passenger flights in 1936

Read the excerpts from the land. [willie] turned to my daddy. "it's my boy mitchell done this, mister edward, and i know there ain't no way t' make it up t' ya if this here horse don't heal right, but i jus' 'bout t' put a strap t' mitchell my own self 'bout what he done. i'm gonna put a strap t' him right now, matter of fact! " with that said, he positioned his whip and turned toward mitchell. *** my daddy stopped and looked at me. "no," he said. "i'm not going to whip you, paul. no, your punishment is that you'll never get to ride ghost wind again. i figure you'll remember that a whole lot longer than a whipping. you won't ride any of the other horses either, including the appaloosa, until i say so." which statement about willie’s and mister edward’s reactions is true? both men believe that their sons should be held accountable for their behavior. both men believe that their sons need to learn to handle horses properly. both men believe that their sons will likely harm the horses if they ride them. both men believe that their sons have permanently injured ghost wind

[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