Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions that follow:
A stout old lady was walking with her basket down the middle of a street in Petrograd to the great confusion of the traffic and with no small peril to herself. It was pointed out to her that the pavement was the place for foot passengers, but she replied: 'I‘m going to walk where I like. We‘ve got liberty now.‘ It did not occur to the dear old lady that if liberty entitled the foot-passenger to walk down the middle of the road it also entitled the cab-driver to drive on the pavement, and that the end of such liberty would be universal chaos. Everybody would be getting in everybody else‘s way and nobody would get anywhere. Individual liberty would have become social anarchy. There is a danger of the world getting liberty-drunk in these days like the old lady with the basket, so it is just as well to remind ourselves of what the rule of the road means. It means that in order that the liberties of all may be preserved, the liberties of everybody must be curtailed. When the policeman, say, at Piccadilly Circus steps into the middle of the road and puts out his hand, he is the symbol not of tyranny, but of liberty. You may not think so, you may, and being in a hurry and seeing your motor-car stopped by this insolence of office, feel that your liberty has been violated. How dare this fellow interfere with your free use of the public highway? Then, if you are a reasonable person, you will reflect that if he did not interfere with you he would interfere with no one, and the result would be that you would never cross Piccadilly Circus at all. You have submitted to a curtailment of private liberty in order that you may enjoy a social order which makes your liberty a reality. Liberty is not a personal affair only, but a social contract. It is an adjustment of interests. In matters which do not touch anybody else‘s liberty of course, I may be as free as I like. If I have a fancy for dyeing my hair, or waxing my moustache, or wearing a tall hat or going to bed late or getting up early, I shall follow my fancy and ask no man‘s permission. In all these and a thousand other details you and I please ourselves and asks no one‘s leave. We have whole kingdoms, in which we rule alone, can do what we choose, be wise or ridiculous, harsh or easy, conventional or odd. But directly we step out of that kingdom, our personal liberty of action is restricted by other people‘s liberty. I might like to practise on the trombone from midnight till three in the morning. If I went to the top of a hill to do it,
I could please myself but if I do it out in the streets the neighbours will remind me that my liberty to blow the trombone must not interfere with their liberty to sleep in quiet. There are a lot of people in the world, and I have to accommodate my liberty to their liberties.
1. Answer the following questions.
(a) Why does the writer think that the old lady with the basket was wrong in her interpretation of liberty?
(b) The policeman at Piccadilly Circus is a symbol of liberty and not tyranny. Explain.
(c) What does the writer mean by the phrase ‗liberty drunk?‘ How is liberty a social contract?
(d) When does individual liberty become anarchy? Give two examples.
2. Choose the correct option that is similar in meaning to the words given below.
(a)Peril
i)danger ii)threat iii)curse iv)pride
(b) anarchy
i) complete neglect of law and rule ii)complete neglect of order
iii) complete ignorance iv)complete subordination
(c)insolence
i)goodbehaviour ii) insulting or offensive behaviour
iii) plausiblebehaviour iv)rude behaviour
(d) curtailed
i)enhanced ii) reduced iii) decreased iv) obscured
