Please submit your concern

Explanation:

Option 1: The passage mentions that society is slowly moving from a Spartan (rigorously self-disciplined or self-restrained) existence to that of a Sybarites’ (a person devoted to pleasure and luxury) one. As a result today’s society is more extravagant than the society of the 1930s.
Option 2: The passage depicts the procedure of eating two ice-cream cones with a ceremonial air. The passage states, “…advanced proudly with one cone in their right hand and one in their left; and expertly moving their head from side to side, they licked first one, then the other”.
Option 4: The author has plainly said in the passage that in present times things given are what they are worth even if they appear to be more. The passage states, “the consumer civilization pretends to give more, but actually gives, for four cents, what is worth four cents”.
Option 5: The last two paragraphs of the passage give various examples of how the consumer civilization attempts to spoil children and adults alike. Hence, option (e) is eliminated.
Option 3 cannot be inferred from the passage. Rather the italicised words in the passage suggest the opposite: “The pathetic, and obviously mendacious, justification was that a boy concerned with turning his eyes from one cone to the other was more inclined to stumble over stones, steps, or cracks in the pavement. I dimly sensed that there was another secret justification, cruelly pedagogical, but I was unable to grasp it”.
Hence, the correct answer is option 3.