C
One night recently, I was driving down a two-lane highway at about 60 miles an hour. A car approached from the opposite direction at about the same speed. As we passed each other, I caught the other driver’s eye for only a second. I wondered whether he might be thinking as I was. How dependent we were on each other at that moment. I was relying on him not to fall asleep, not to be put off by a phone conversation, not to cross over into my lane and bring my life to a sudden end. Though we had never spoken a word to each other, he relied on me in just the same way.
Multiplied a million times over, I believe that is the way the world works. At some level, we all depend upon one another. Sometimes that dependence requires us simply not to do something like crossing over the double yellow line. And sometimes it requires us to act cooperatively, with friends or even with strangers.
As technology shrinks our world, the need increases for cooperative action among nations. In 2003, doctors in five nations were quickly organized to identify the SARS virus, which saved thousands of lives. The threat of international terrorism has shown itself to be a similar problem, one requiring team action by police and intelligence forces across the world. We must recognize that our fates are not ours alone to control.
In my own life, I’ve put great stock in personal responsibility. But, as time has passed, I’ve also come to believe that there are moments when one must rely upon the good faith and judgment of others. so, while each of us faces the case of driving alone down a dark road, what we must learn is that the approaching light may not be a threat, but a shared moment of trust.
10. The author considers it very important ______.
A. to drive with a company B. to have personal independence
C. to gain certain responsibility D. to share trust and cooperation
11. The author said that they depended on each other in the same way because ______.
A. the approaching car was very dangerous
B. they both drove their car at a terrific speed
C. he might be killed out of the other’s careless driving
D. it was dark and the road was not wide enough
12. From the second paragraph, we know the author drew the important lesson from ______.
A. only one experience B. many similar experiences
C. a driver on a dark road D. many friends and strangers
13. The need for cooperation increases because ______.
A. peoples’ fates can’t be controlled by themselves
B. certain viruses can spread in a quick way
C. terrorism can happen everywhere and every day
D. the world has become much more dangerous
14. We can infer from the last paragraph that the author has ______.
A. believed in one’s own personal responsibility
B. counted upon himself alone in everything
C. had no trust in others’ good faith and judgment
D. had accomplished a change on his viewpoint of life
D
When I was fourteen, I earned money in the summer by cutting lawns(草坪), and within a few weeks I had built up a body of customers. I got to know people by the flowers they planted that I had to remember not to cut down, by the things they lost in the grass or struck in the ground on purpose. I reached the point with most of them when I knew in advance what complaint was about to be spoken, which particular request was most important. And I learned something about the measure of my neighbors by their preferred method of payment: by the job, by the month--- or not at all.
Mr. Ballou fell into the last category, and he always had a reason why. On one day, he had no change for a fifty, on another he was flat out of checks, on another, he was simply out when I knocked on his door. Still, except for the money apart, he was a nice enough guy, always waving or tipping his hat when he’d see me from a distance. I figured him for a thin retirement check, maybe a work-relayed injury that kept him from doing his own yard work. Sure, I kept track of the total, but I didn’t worry about the amount too much. Grass was grass, and the little that Mr. Ballou’s property comprised didn’t take long to trim (修剪).
Then, one late afternoon in mid-July, the hottest time of the year, I was walking by his house and he opened the door, mentioned me to come inside. The hall was cool, shaded, and it took my eyes a minute to adjust to the dim light.
“I owe you,” Mr. Ballou, “but…”
I thought I’d save him the trouble of thinking of a new excuse. “No problem. Don’t worry about it.”
“The bank made a mistake in my account,” he continued, ignoring my words. “It will be cleared up in a day or two. But in the meantime I thought perhaps you could choose one or two volumes for a down payment.
He gestured toward the walls and I saw that books were stacked (堆放) everywhere. It was like a library, except with no order to the arrangement.
“Take your time,” Mr. Ballou encouraged. “Read, borrow, keep. Find something you like. What do you read?”
“I don’t know.” And I didn’t. I generally read what was in front of me, what I could get from the paperback stack at the drugstore, what I found at the library, magazines, the back of cereal boxes, comics. The idea of consciously seeking out a special title was new to me, but, I realized, not without appeal-- so I started to look through the piles of books.
“You actually read all of these?”
“This isn’t much,” Mr. Ballou said. “This is nothing, just what I’ve kept, the ones worth looking at a second time.”
“Pick for me, then.”
He raised his eyebrows, cocked his head, and regarded me as though measuring me for a suit. After a moment, he nodded, searched through a stack, and handed me a dark red hardbound book, fairly thick.
“The Last of the Just,” I read. “ By Andre Schwarz-Bart. What’s it about?”
“You tell me,” he said. “Next week.”
I started after supper, sitting outdoors on an uncomfortable kitchen chair. Within a few pages, the yard, the summer, disappeared, and I was plunged into the aching tragedy of the Holocaust, the extraordinary clash of good, represented by one decent man, and evil. Translated from French, the language was elegant, simple, impossible to resist. When the evening light finally failed I moved inside, read all through the night,
To this day, thirty years later, I vividly remember the experience. It was my first voluntary encounter(接触、遇到)with world literature, and I was stunned (震惊) by the concentrated power a novel could contain. I lacked the vocabulary, however, to translate my feelings into words. So the next week when Mr. Ballou asked, “Well?” I only replied, “It was good?”
“Keep it, then,” he said. “Shall I suggest another?”
I nodded, and was presented with the paperback edition of Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa ( a very important book on the study of the social and cultural development of peoples--- anthropology (人类学) ).
To make two long stories short, Mr. Ballou never paid me a cent for cutting his grass that year or the next, but for fifteen years I taught anthropology at Dartmouth College. Summer reading was not the innocent entertainment I had assumed it to be, not a light-hearted, instantly forgettable escape in a hammock (吊床) ( though I have since enjoyed many of those, too). A book, if it arrives before you at the right moment, in the proper season, at an internal in the daily business of things, will change the course of all that follows.
15.The author thought that Mr. Ballou was ______________.
A. rich but mean B. poor but polite C. honest but forgettable D. strong but lazy
16. Before his encounter with Mr. Ballou, the author used to read _____________.
A. anything and everything B. only what was given to him
C. only serious novels D. nothing in the summer
17. The author found the first book Mr. Ballou gave him _____________.
A. light-heated and enjoyable B. dull but well written
C. impossible to put down D. difficult to understand
18. From what he said to the author, we can gather that Mr. Ballou _______________.
A. read all books twice B. did not do much reading
C. read more books than he kept D. preferred to read hardbound books
19. The following year the author _______________.
A. started studying anthropology at college B. continued to cut Mr. Ballou’s lawn
C. spent most of his time lazing away in a hammock
D. had forgotten what he had read the summer before
20. The author’s main point is that _____________.
A. summer jobs are really good for young people
B. you should insist on being paid before you do a job
C. a good book can change the direction of your life
D. a book is like a garden carried in the pocket.
参考答案：
1--4 BBCA 5--9 DDAAB 10--14 DCBAD 15--20 BACCBC
