Antonyms

“Land of promise” in passage 1, line 34 signifies

Answer this question based on the following passages.
Passage 1

We have had many opportunities of hearing
public speakers in America cast doubts upon
the very existence of God and of Providence,
question the historic nature or veracity of the
(5) whole fabric of Christianity; but never has it
been our fortune to catch the slightest
whisper of doubt, the slightest want of faith,
in the chief God of America—unlimited belief
in the future of America. The faith of
(10) Americans in their own country is religious,
if not in its intensity, at any rate in its almost
absolute and universal authority. It pervades
the air we breathe. As children we hear it
asserted or implied in the conversation of
(15) our elders.
The Land of Democracy has always
appealed to its more enthusiastic children
chiefly as a land of wonderful and more than
national possibilities. "Neither race nor
(20) tradition," says Professor Hugo Münsterberg,
"nor the actual past, binds the American to
his countrymen, but rather the future which
together they are building." This vision of a
better future is not, perhaps, as unclouded
(25)  for the present generation of Americans as
it was for certain former generations.
American life cannot with impunity be
wrenched violently from its moorings any
more than the life of a European country can;
(30) but our American past, compared to that of
any European country, has a character all
its own.
When, however, Americans talk of their
country as the Land of Promise, a question
(35) may well be raised as to precisely what they
mean. They mean, of course, in general, that
the future will have something better in store
for them individually and collectively than has
the past or the present; but a very superficial
(40) analysis of this meaning discloses certain
ambiguities. How is this Promise to be
 fulfilled? Will it fulfill itself, or does it imply
certain responsibilities? If so, what
responsibilities?

Passage 2
In whatever way the present civil war in
America shall result, it is certain that the
future condition of the colored race in this
country will be the question over-mastering
(5) all others for many years to come. Had
 there been no slavery, there would have been
no war. A desire for a separate confederacy
was the final cause, yet had slavery not
stood in this country there would not have
(10) come into being that peculiar state of
society which now lives in the Southern
States, and which demands for its very
existence that it should rule alone. Slavery
has created an aristocracy, not of numbers,
(15) but of wealth and power, which bears with
all the social forces. While the slave-holder
are but a very small minority of the whole
people, yet by the force of their wealth and
the fact of their being slave owners, they
(20) hold all the political power, and indeed,
sweep out of existence any opposition.
There are, with very rare exceptions
throughout the whole South, but two classes
--free and slave, or we may say, slave-holders
(25) and slaves, for the non slave-holders are
completely lost; they work in with it, and are
indeed a part of it. Anything which strikes at
slavery strikes at the root of this power; to
destroy slavery would be to blot it out of
(30) existence.
We were content to let it live if it did not
ubjugate other lands, but the events have
crowded us far beyond that. Those of us who
have for a life time been doing what we could
(35) to hasten forward this day, who have spoken
and written and suffered for it, in the new
atmosphere which we breathe are like men
that dream. We know that it would come; we
hoped to live long enough to see the day. We
(40) see it and are glad, we did not think to see it
soon, it has come so suddenly, it shines so
broadly and with so rich a promise for the
nation as a whole that we recognize it as
God's day; we see His wonder-working power
(45) moving marvelously; we behold how God has
taken the work into His own hand; how He has
made slavery destroy itself.
The colored race is here, here for a long time it
will remain; it will not--it will not remain in slavery;
(50) it will and must by-and-by be free. We, as an
American people, must, in God's fear and with
many a cry for His help, bravely deal with it. We
need not now go back and stand sighing over
the past, and mourning that we did not a century
(55) ago meet it and escape the mighty work and
sorrow of today; we cannot put it away any longer.

Which word in the passage means the opposite of 'ease'?

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question that follows:

The year 842 BC may be considered the first accurate date in Chinese history, and in this year the Emperor had to flee from his capital on account of popular dissatisfaction with his tyrannical ways: he betook himself northward to an outlying settlement on the Tartar frontier, and the charge of imperial affairs was taken over by a regency or duumvirate.

At this time, the confederation of cultured princes called China — or, to use their own term, the Central Kingdom — was a very different region from the huge mass of territory familiar to us under those names at the present day. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that civilised China, even at that comparatively advanced period, consisted of little more than the modern province of Ho Nan. All outside this flat and comparatively riverless region inhabited by the "orthodox" was more or less barbaric, and such civilisation as it possessed was entirely the work of Chinese colonists, adventurers, or grantees of fiefs in partibus infidelium (so to speak). Into matters of still earlier ancient history, we may enter more deeply in another chapter, but for the present, we simply take China as it was when definite chronology begins.