General Clinton, concerned about what General Howe was planning and doing, made use of a mask to write a secret message in a letter to General Burgoyne. Before writing the letter, Clinton had placed an hourglass-shaped mask on a piece of paper and then had formed the secret message within that shape.

The unmasked letter had enough false information in it to fool any American who happened to see it. But when Burgoyne viewed the letter with the mask, he read Clinton's view of the real situation: Howe has made a bad move; I don't have enough men to do anything about it.

The author’s main purpose in this excerpt is to

describe a form of code writing using an example.
explain the mistakes of General Howe during the war.
entertain the reader with a humorous story of miscommunication.
argue that using a mask is the best method for sending secret messages.

What happens once in a minute twice in a moment and never in a thousand years?

Respond for free points because i don't have a question anymore.

Read this paragraph from chapter 5 of the prince. there are, for example, the spartans and the romans. the spartans held athens and thebes, establishing there an oligarchy: nevertheless they lost them. the romans, in order to hold capua, carthage, and numantia, dismantled them, and did not lose them. they wished to hold greece as the spartans held it, making it free and permitting its laws, and did not succeed. so to hold it they were compelled to dismantle many cities in the country, for in truth there is no safe way to retain them otherwise than by ruining them. and he who becomes master of a city accustomed to freedom and does not destroy it, may expect to be destroyed by it, for in rebellion it has always the watchword of liberty and its ancient privileges as a rallying point, which neither time nor benefits will ever cause it to forget. and whatever you may do or provide against, they never forget that name or their privileges unless they are disunited or dispersed, but at every chance they immediately rally to them, as pisa after the hundred years she had been held in bondage by the florentines. what idea is stressed in the passage? the desire for liberty the establishment of an oligarchy the dismantling of an acquired state the tendency toward rebellion