Read this excerpt from Thomas Paine's famous essay "The Crisis Number One":
I have as little superstition in me as any man living, but my secret opinion has ever been, and still is, that God Almighty will not give up a
people to military destruction, or leave them unsupportedly to perish, who have so earnestly and so repeatedly sought to avoid the
calamities of war, by every decent method which wisdom could invent. Neither have I so much of the infidel in me, as to suppose that He
has relinquished the government of the world, and given us up to the care of devils, and as I do not, I cannot see on what grounds the king
of Britain can look up to heaven for help against us: a common murderer, a highwayman, or a house-breaker, has as good a pretence as he.
Which sentence best describes Paine's claim in the excerpt?
A. God would not take sides between the British and the American colonists.
B.
It was necessary to save Americans because God did not support military destruction.
C.
It was necessary for America to fight the British to defend their religious values.
D. God would defend the American colonists' fight because their cause was upright.
E.
it was necessary for Americans to save themselves and not wait for God to help them.

Final test. which theme is conveyed in this excerpt from "the tell-tale heart" by edgar allan poe? true! —nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous i had been and am; but why will you say that i am mad? the disease had sharpened my senses—not destroyed—not dulled them. above all was the sense of hearing acute. i heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. i heard many things in hell. how, then, am i mad? hearken! and observe how healthily—how calmly i can tell you the whole story. it is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. object there was none. passion there was none. i loved the old man. he had never wronged me. he had never given me insult. for his gold i had no desire. i think it was his eye! yes, it was this! he had the eye of a vulture—a pale blue eye, with a film over it. whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees—very gradually—i made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever. a. the insane have no sense of time. b. the insane are obsessed with mortality. c. the insane are incapable of using deception. d. the insane lack imagination. e. the insane live in a reality of their own.