Stop and frisk: right ir wrong? race

Why does the author introduce druse as lying in a “clump of laurel”? consider any symbolic or cultural meanings associated with this plant, and what significance it lends to this particular story. story "a horseman in the sky"

Which statement best summarizes this excerpt from leo tolstoy's the death of ivan ilyich? and in imagination he began to recall the best moments of his pleasant life. but strange to say none of those best moments of his pleasant life now seemed at all what they had then seemed—none of them except the first recollections of childhood. there, in childhood, there had been something really pleasant with which it would be possible to live if it could return. but the child who had experienced that happiness existed no longer, it was like a reminiscence of somebody else.

What is the central idea of paragraph 1 of the story?