Question

According to the selection from Life on the Mississippi, how does the town change when the steamboats stop there? A. It goes from fairly busy to very busy for ten minutes. B. It goes from sleepy to frantically busy for a short time. C. It goes from sleepy to calmly efficient for a couple of hours. D. It goes from bustling to dead because everyone is at the wharf.

Answer 1

B. It goes from sleepy to frantically busy for a short time.

Explanation:

In Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain details the narrator’s coming of age through the process of learning to be a steamboat pilot, which fulfilled his boyhood dream.

Twain describes Hannibal, Missouri, sometimes as a village and sometimes as a town. It is a very rural, sleepy, quaint place.

He says, 'And the fragrant town drunkard asleep in the shadow of them',  'but nobody to listen to the peaceful lapping of the wavelets against them,' 'a white town drowsing in the sunshine of summer's morning, the streets empty.'