The following passages and questions are reprinted from earlier editions of the text and the test booklets. This exercise is not graded, but working through each question carefully will give you excellent practice to prepare for either a midterm or a final examination, depending on your instructor's course schedule. You can print-out your answers if you like.

Good luck!

(1) The young soldier was one of many on the train. (2) With their tasseled caps set at snappy angles, they hung about in the corridors smoking sweet black cigarettes and laughing confidentially. (3) They seemed to be enjoying themselves, which apparently was wrong of them, for whenever an officer appeared the soldiers would stare fixedly out of the windows, as though enraptured by the landslides of red rock, the olive fields and stern stone mountains. (4) Their officers were dressed for a parade, many ribbons, much brass; and some wore gleaming, improbable swords strapped to their sides. (5) They did not mix with the soldiers, but sat together in a first-class compartment, looking bored and rather like unemployed actors. . . .

(6) The compartment directly ahead was taken over by one family: a delicate, attenuated, exceptionally elegant man with a mourning ribbon sewn around his sleeve, and traveling with him, six thin, summery girls, presumably his daughters. (7) They were beautiful, the father and his children, all of them, and in the same way: hair that had a dark shine, lips the color of pimientos, eyes like sherry. (8) The soldiers would glance into their compartment, then look away. (9) It was as if they had seen straight into the sun.

1			What does the simile in the last sentence mean?