Read the passage carefully and answer the question that follows :
In our boyhood we saw the death of that intimate sociability which was characteristic of the last generation. Neighbourly feelings used to be so strong that informal gatherings were a necessity, and those who could contribute to its organisation were in great request. People nowadays call on each other for business, or as a matter of social duty, but not to gather informally. They have neither the time, nor the same intimate relations! What goings and comings we used to see, how merry were the rooms and verandahs with the hum of conversation and the snatches of laughter! The faculty our predecessors had of becoming the centre of groups and gatherings, of starting and keeping up animated and amusing gossip, has vanished. Men still come and go, but those same verandahs and rooms seem empty and deserted.
In those days everything from furniture to festivity was designed to be enjoyed by the many, so that whatever pomp there might have been did not smell of pride. These things have since increased in quantity but they have become unfeeling, and know not the art of making high and low alike feel at home. The bare-bodied, the poorly clad, no longer have the right to use and occupy them, without a permit, on the strength of their smiling faces alone. Those whom we nowadays seek to imitate in our house building and furnishing, they have their own society, with its wide hospitality. The problem with us is that we have lost what we had, and as a result our home-life has become joyless. We still meet for business or political purposes, but never for the pleasure of simply meeting one another. We have ceased to contrive opportunities to bring people together simply because we love them. I can imagine nothing more ugly than this social miserliness; and, when I look back on those whose ringing laughter, coming straight from their hearts, used to lighten the burden of household cares for us, they seem to have been visitors from some other world.
Which of the following is "social miserliness" according to the author?
A. We do not have enough furniture to seat our guests
B. Blind imitation of the European standard
C. Bare-bodied and half-starved masses
D. Diminishing intimate sociability
Choose the correct answer from the options given below:
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → D only
A. We do not have enough furniture to seat our guests — Incorrect.
- Contradicted: furniture and such things "have since increased in quantity".
- The lack is of warmth, not of furniture.
B. Blind imitation of the European standard — Incorrect.
- Wrong link: imitation in house building and furnishing is mentioned, but it is not what the author calls social miserliness.
C. Bare-bodied and half-starved masses — Incorrect.
- Wrong link: the bare-bodied and poorly clad are mentioned only as people who no longer feel welcome.
- They are not the miserliness itself.
D. Diminishing intimate sociability — Correct.
- Miserliness is unwillingness to give or spend.
- The author says we no longer contrive opportunities to bring people together for the pleasure of meeting, and calls this "social miserliness": the intimate sociability of the last generation, whose death the passage opens with, is dying out.