It makes me melancholy to see how like fools some very sensible people act in the matter of choosing wives. they perplex their judgments by a most undue attention to little niceties of personal appearance, habits, disposition, and other trifles which concern nobody but the lady herself. an unhappy gentleman, resolving to wed nothing short of perfection, keeps his heart and hand till both get so old and withered that no tolerable woman will accept them. now this is the very height of the true rule is to ascertain that the match is fundamentally a good one, and then to take it for granted that all minor objections, should there be such, will vanish, if you let them

which sentence best expresses the main idea of the story?

It makes me melancholy to see how like fools some very sensible people act in the matter of choosing wives.

Explanation:

the topic (or first sentence) usually states what the paragraph is about.

1. read the following excerpt from franklin d. roosevelt's "fireside chat 19":

on the other side of the picture, we must learn also to know that guerilla warfare against the germans in, let us say serbia or norway, us; that a successful russian offensive against the germans us; and that british successes on land or sea in any part of the world strengthen our hands.

remember always that germany and italy, regardless of any formal declaration of war, consider themselves at war with the united states at this moment just as much as they consider themselves at war with britain or russia. and germany puts all the other republics of the americas into the same category of enemies. the people of our sister republics of this hemisphere can be honored by that fact.  

the true goal we seek is far above and beyond the ugly field of battle. when we resort to force, as now we must, we are determined that this force shall be directed toward ultimate good as well as against immediate evil. we americans are not destroyers — we are builders.

analyze the effectiveness of this excerpt. how does it function within the speech as a whole? how does the structure of the excerpt to convey the speech's purpose and key points? support your argument with evidence from the speech. (10 points)