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Which choice best states the main purpose of the text? The following text is adapted from Jane Austen's 1814 novel Mansfield Park. The speaker, Tom, is considering staging a play at home with a group of his friends and family. We mean nothing but a little amusement among ourselves, just to vary the scene, and exercise our powers in something new. We want no audience, no publicity. We may be trusted, I think, in choosing some play most perfectly unexceptionable; and I can conceive no greater harm or danger to any of us in conversing in the elegant written language of some respectable author than in chattering in words of our own.