hard · Act reading
The marsh, the surveyors agreed, was a nuisance: it bred mosquitoes, swallowed survey stakes, and resisted every attempt to assign it a clean acreage. So when the drainage company arrived with its pumps and its promise of reclaimed farmland, the town council approved the plan in a single evening. Only old Mrs. Calloway, who had fished those waters for sixty years, rose to speak. She did not argue about acreage or mosquitoes. “You will dry it,” she said quietly, “and then you will spend the next hundred years wondering where the herons went, and the floods came from, and why the wells taste of nothing.” The council thanked her and adjourned. The passage most strongly suggests that Mrs. Calloway's objection differs from the surveyors' concerns primarily because she:
- evaluates the marsh by the long-term consequences of its loss rather than by its present inconveniences.
- believes the drainage company has deliberately misled the council about its true intentions.
- considers the marsh useful only for the fishing it has provided her over many years.
- wants the council to delay its decision until a more complete survey can be finished.
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