Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions on it.
One of the puzzles to which I had no solution as a child was how my cousin could seal an envelope with his saliva. Each time he wrote a letter for my illiterate father, he merely ran his tongue over the inner edge of the flap of the envelope, folded it and then sealed it. Just like that! In my puzzlement, I tried the same trick repeatedly with two pieces of paper but my saliva failed to hold them together. I then theorized that my cousin’s saliva must be gummy. If that was so, why wasn’t mine? My studied search for a solution led to the very sound conclusion that my cousin’s saliva was gummy because he was the only educated man in the family. By extension. I reasoned that all educated people had sticky saliva.
But it didn’t take me long to wonder why my cousin’s lower jaw was not stuck to the upper jaw. Indeed. I wondered how morsels of food could roll down to his gullet without sticking to the tongue and the palate. Each time I was around when he ate, I watched him put one morsel after another into his mouth without experiencing any problem in getting it down.
After many days, indeed weeks, of pondering over this thorny issue. I decided that while all educated men had sticky saliva, they had developed a special mechanism for neutralizing the stickiness when eating.
My theory received a severe jolt one day when father had to get a letter written but my cousin was not around. Father sent to the next house for his niece. the nearest educated person around. After the lady had written the letter, father brought out an old envelope which had probably been lying forgotten for months on his cupboard. But, to my amazement, the flap would not stick well to the body of the envelope, no matter how many times she applied her saliva. In the end, father used some pap as gum. With this. my new puzzle was: “Why was the educated man’s saliva sticky while the educated woman’s saliva was not?” Before long, I decided that the woman’s saliva was not so sticky because she was not as learned as the man. So, I updated my theory: the more learned a person was, the more gummy his saliva would be. Fine theory.
The death knell sounded on my latest theory one day when father sent me to buy an envelope from a nearby shop. Having bought it, I studied its flap closely and discovered that its inner edge had some glossy material. It felt sticky to my touch. Curious, I ran my tongue over it and I sealed the envelope. That was it! It got stuck, refusing to be parted no matter how much I tried. When I delivered it that way. father rightly guessed that I had tampered with it Although I received a spanking. I was consoled that at last, I had unravelled the mystery.
(a) State the writer’s original theory.
(b) State the modification to the original theory.
(c) What incident gave rise to the modification of the theory?
(d) Why didn’t the flap stick to the envelope when the woman tried to seal it?
(e) What lesson did the writer finally learn?
(f) “The death knell sounded on my latest theory”
(i) What type of figurative expression is this? (ii) What does it mean?
(g) “… which had probably been lying forgotten for months on his cupboard.”
(i) What grammatical name is given to this expression? (ii) What is its function as it is used in the sentence?
(h) For each of the following words. find another word or phrase that means the same and can replace it as it is used in the passage:
(i) puzzlement (ii) thorny (iii) severe (iv) theory (v) unraveled
Explanation
(a) The writer's original theory was that his cousin's saliva must be sticky (gummy) or The writer's original theory was that educated persons had sticky saliva
(b) He theorized that the more learned a person was, the more sticky his saliva would be
(c) The woman's saliva did not seal the envelope
(d) The flap did not stick because the envelope was old or Its gum was not effective.
(e) The lesson was that the envelope had gum on its flap or The lesson was that it was not the saliva that was sticky
(f)(i) Metaphor (ii) My latest theory was disproved / failed.
(g) (i) Adjectival clause/relative clause (ii) Qualifying the noun 'envelope'
(h) (i) puzzlement - amazement, wonderment, bewilderment, surprise (ii) thorny - difficult, tricky, knotty (iii) severe - serious, real, damaging, devastating (iv) theory - assumption, hypothesis, conclusion, belief, supposition (v) unravelled - solved, resolved, cleared.