1 the best recruiting agents

The passage seeks to show.

1. 
   how brave engineers are when faced with dangerous situations
   
2. 
   how many liters of water are required to extinguish the average hotel fire
   
3. 
   that mathematicians are not as practical as other professionals
   
4. 
   that mathematicians, engineers, and physicists react in the same way in emergencies
   
5. 
   that mathematics is of no use in practical situations
   

2. 
   We can conclude from the passage that
   

1. 
   engineers move from the practical to the theoretical
   
2. 
   this incident happened before the invention of fire extinguishers
   
3. 
   mathematicians are more intelligent than engineers or physicists
   
4. 
   physics forms the basis of some other disciplines
   
5. 
   engineering is the most practical of the disciplines mentioned
   

3. 
   The author of the passage illustrates that the mathematician
   

1. 
   died in the fire which the story refers to
   
2. 
   was contented just to know that the fire could be extinguished
   
3. 
   was much cleverer than the engineer or the physicist
   
4. 
   wasn't woken up by the fire in the hotel he was staying in
   
5. 
   measured the amount of water required more accurately than the physicist
   

54 SHORT STORIES
Ours is the great generation of the short story. The growth of the newspaper, the development of the magazine, the universality of popular education with its increase in human curiosity - most of all, the increasing pace of modern life, its speed of living and competitive pressure - gave this literary type its greatest encouragement. Here is the people's literature, and the most democratic of all forms of writing because it offers a means for the use of every conceivable sort of plot, character or background. It's just the right length in a world of tumult and hurry; it is a form that presents things concisely and graphically, and it is the type of writing most easily understood by every kind of reader.

1.