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(A) can be sculpted into human features
(B) is more durable than other materials
(C) can be inscribed with words
(D) has little intrinsic value
(E) is not an instrument of war
(5)
(10)

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Literature Subject Test
57
ARCO
■ SAT II Subject Tests
www.petersons.com/arco
Questions 9–14
So far, good. If any man has a right to feel proud
of himself, surely it is I. For I have written about
the Coliseum, martyrs, and the lions, and have
never once used the phrase “butchered to make a
Roman holiday.” Butchered to make a Roman holi-
day sounds well for the first seventeen or eighteen
hundred thousand times one sees it in print, but
after that it begins to grow tiresome.
In this place I may as well jot down a chap-
ter concerning those necessary nuisances, Euro-
pean guides. Many a man has wished he could do
without his guide, but knowing he could not, has
wished he could get some amusement out of him
as a remuneration for the affliction of his society.
Guides know their story by heart—the history
of every statue, painting, cathedral, or other wonder
they show you—and tell it as a parrot would. If you
interrupt and throw them off their track, they have to
go back and begin over again. All their lives long they
are employed in showing strange things to foreigners
and listening to their bursts of admiration. It is human
nature to take delight in exciting admiration. Think,
then what a passion it becomes with guides whose
privilege it is to throw strangers into perfect ecstasies
of admiration. He gets so that he could not possibly
live in a soberer atmosphere. After we discovered this,
we never went into ecstasies any more—we never
admired anything—we never showed any but impas-
sible faces and stupid indifference in the presence of
the sublimest wonders a guide had to display. We have
found their weak point! After they have exhausted their
enthusiasm praising the beauties of some broken-
legged statue, we look at it stupidly and in silence and
then ask: “Is—is he dead?”