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The Setting for an Act in a Play

Your teacher will give the word when you are to begin. She will keep track of the time and will ask you to stop reading in thirty seconds. Then she will ask you, without looking back at the paragraph, to write answers to the questions at the end.

It is a blockhouse in a Kentucky clearing, at one of the outposts of civilization to be found all along the frontier of the United States at the close of the eighteenth century. The sun is about to rise and objects are only dimly seen through the early morning haze. The building itself is at the left. It is made of rough hewn logs. A closed door of heavy planks is shown in the front wall. The windows are narrow loop-holes through which can be seen from time to time the blue barrels of flint-lock rifles. The second story of the blockhouse projects over the first, so that anyone approaching the wall would be subjected to rifle fire from the floor above. A cleared space in front contains the stumps of several large trees, behind one of which may be seen a crouching Indian, invisible to the blockhouse but easily seen by the audience. Well back and at the right is a small stream. Beyond both right and back the forest extends indefinitely. Shadowy figures are moving among the trees.

Write answers to the following questions. Remember, that if you are really a good sport and play the game fairly, you will not look back at the paragraph you have just read.

1. Does the scene show a time of danger or of peace?

2. Are people within the blockhouse?

3. What means of defense has the blockhouse?

4. What time of day is it?

5. On which side of the stage is the blockhouse? the stream?