Question

Select the correct text in the passage.

Which phrase in this excerpt from James Joyce's "Araby" is a participial phrase?
North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers' School set the boys free. An uninhabited
house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbours in a square ground. The other houses of the street, conscious of
decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown Imperturbable faces.
The former tenant of our house, a priest, had died in the back drawing-room. Alr, musty from having been long enclosed, hung in all the rooms,
and the waste room behind the kitchen was littered with old useless papers. Among these I found a few paper-covered books, the pages of
which were curled and damp: The Abbot, by Walter Scott, The Devout Communicant and The Memoirs of Vidocq. I liked the last best because its
leaves were yellow. The wild garden behind the house contained a central apple tree and a few straggling bushes under one of which I found
the late tenant's rusty bicycle-pump. He had been a very charitable priest; in his will he had left all his money to Institutions and the furniture of
his house to his sister.

Answer 1

being blind

Step-by-step explanation:

Participle phrase is a set of words that functions as an adjective (modifies a noun) and its main part is a participle, past or present. The phrase usually begins with this participle.

Although they look like verbs, these participles act as adjectives and can be recognized by ending in -ing (present participles). Past participles, on the other hand, can have many different endings, depending in the regularity of the verb.

The most prominent example of a participle phrase here is "being blind". It consists of present participle of the verb to be and it modifies the noun street, thus having the function of an adjective.

P.S. If this is the multiple choice question, then the phrase "having been enclosed" could also be taken to consideration, since, in a broader sense it consists of a participle (passive perfect participle) and it modifies the noun air, so it is an adjective.