and the allusions to the Bible are skilfully used to
give solemnity to the idea of death, to show how inevitable it is, and
how for long ages it has been met with the same serene faith and deep
religious feeling that made Ailie beautiful in the face of death. Yes,
there is more in the paragraph than the statement that Ailie was going
to die and that she was not afraid.

To illustrate a different style of close reading and a method of
securing it by questioning, we will quote part of a paragraph from
_Braddock's Defeat_ (Volume V, page 379) by Benjamin Franklin: "Our
Assembly apprehending, from some information, that he [Braddock] had
conceived violent prejudices against them, as averse to the service,
wished me to wait upon him, not as from them, but as postmaster-general,
under the guise of proposing to settle with him the mode of conducting
with most celerity and certainty the despatches between him and the
governors of the several provinces with whom he must necessarily have
continual correspondence, and of which they proposed to bear the
expense."

The questions designed to bring out the meaning of the above paragraph,
to which the answers are usually quite obvious, might be as follows:

Is "our Assembly" the Albany convention mentioned in the note at the
head of the selection, or is it the Assembly of Franklin's own colony?
What is the meaning of _apprehending_? Do you like it better than
_thinking_? What do you suppose was the nature of the "information" the
Assembly had received? Do you think that someone had told them that
Braddock was prejudiced, or did they infer it from actions of Braddock
which had been described to them? Who was averse to it? What is the
meaning of "wait upon him"? Do we use that phrase frequently now? What
might we say now? What do you understand by "not as from them"? Can you
put into that phrase one word that will make its meaning clear? Was
Franklin then postmaster-general of his colony? Was he ever
postmaster-general of the United States? What is the meaning of _guise_?
What is meant by "under the guise"? Does _celerity_ mean more than
_quickness_? Is there any shade of difference in the meanings of the two
words? Do you think Franklin used the best word he could find when he
wrote _celerity_? What are "despatches"? What kind of despatches would
pass between Braddock and the governors of the different provinces? How
many different provinces were there for Braddock to help defend? Wh