"goodwives," said a hard-featured dame of fifty, "i’ll tell ye a piece of my mind. it would be greatly for the public behoof, if we women, being of mature age and church-members in good repute, should have the handling of such malefactresses as this hester prynne. what think ye, gossips? if the hussy stood up for judgment before us five, that are now here in a knot together, would she come off with such a sentence as the worshipful magistrates have awarded? " what is the meaning of this excerpt?
a. the speaker believes that she and her peers ought to be in charge of assigning sentences in cases like hester’s. b. the speaker believes she and her peers ought to be acknowledged for their good standing in the community.
c. the speaker believes that the older women of the church ought to be allowed to serve as magistrates.
d. the speaker believes that the magistrates have been too strict in their handling of hester’s case.

Read the passage from sugar changed the world. sugar is a taste we all want, a taste we all crave. people throughout the planet everywhere have been willing to do anything, anything at all, to get that touch of sweetness. we even know exactly how thrilling it was to taste sugar for the first time. when the lewis and clark expedition met up with the shoshone, who had little previous contact with old world products, sacagawea gave a tiny piece of sugar to a chief. he loved it, saying it was "the best thing he had ever tasted." sugar created a hunger, a need, which swept from one corner of the world to another, bringing the most terrible misery and destruction, but then, too, the most inspiring ideas of liberty. sugar changed the world. we begin that story with a man who could never know enough. how does the conclusion of the prologue support the authors’ purpose? select two options. it introduces the topic that will be addressed next. it provides information about the authors. it states why the topic is relevant to readers. it cites sources the authors used in the text. it explains how the authors came to study the subject.