第3章英语专业八级标准阅读篇
Passage 31
题材：人物记述类字数：711 建议用时：7分钟
公务员监狱面试太黑了Not long ago, Ted Gup opened a battered old suitcase from his mother's attic and discovered a family secret. Inside was a thick sheaf of letters addressed to "B. Virdot," all dated December 1933, all asking for help. Also inside: 150 canceled checks signed by the mysterious Virdot.
Gup, a journalism professor at Boston's Emerson College, quickly got to the bottom of the story: His grandfather Samuel Stone had used the pseudonym to slip money to impoverished people. "At the time, he caused quite a stir," says Gup, who chronicles the story in A Secret Gift: How One Man's Kindness--And A Trove of Letters--Revealed the Hidden History of the Great Depression.
Stone wasn't a mogul, but as the owner of a chain of clothing stores, he was fairly well off. Just before Christmas, 1933, he placed an ad in his local Canton, Ohio, newspaper, offering money to 75 people who wrote to "B. Virdot" explaining their need. The letters poured in and were so heartrending (心碎的) that he ended up giving 150 people $5--close to $84 in today's money. "I read all the letters multiple times," says Gup, who was astonished by the raw anguish of the Depression. Then he tracked down the recipients" descendants. "Most people I contacted wept when
they learned about the letters," Gup says. "When they read the letters, they sobbed, and I had to give them room to collect themselves. It brought home what their parents and grandparents had endured" no money for food, shoes, rent, let alone anything to give their kids for Christmas. "There were instances in which the calamity of the Depression was so great that $5 barely made a dent," Gup says. "But there were others for whom it really did make a difference. It provided Christmas dinner, a few presents under the tree and at least as important, it signaled that somebody cared. In 1933. the New Deal was a glint in FDR's (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) eye; it was just beginning. There was no net to catch people when they were free-falling."
Some whom Gup contacted finally understood why their parents had been able to serve a fancy meal for just that one holiday; others learned harsh truths. "The children of several letter writers were unaware that their parents had gone to jail," driven by desperation to steal to put food on the table. "That did not diminish their respect or love for their parents," he says, "but it enhanced their understanding."
Gup found out that his grandfather had his own dark past. He'd been born in Romania, not--as he'd claimed--Pittsburgh; his birth certificate was phony, and he'd invented his biography. Gup speculates that, having escaped a childhood of poverty, hunger, and religious persecution ( he was Jewish), his grandfather lied to escape bias against immigrants.
That Stone wasn't a saint, that he'd done whatever it took to escape adversity,
四川考生之家helped explain his motives: He understood despair, Gup says, and that "nothing was more precious than a second chance."
On November 5, the descendants of the people Stone helped are scheduled to gather at the Canton Palace Theatre in Canton to share stories and read the original letters. As for Gup, he views the legacy of the Depression as "a real appreciation of family, of collaboration and sacrifice, of respect"--what we tend to think of as American virtues. The hard times were brutal, but they did create an awareness that saw us through the Second World War and helped usher in a period of prosperity, an awareness I fear was being lost in materialism and self absorption prior to the recent great reeession. "No one in his right mind would welcome such times,"
Gup says. "My family and neighbors have felt the sting of this recession. But our identity as individuals and as a nation is the product not just of good times but also of bad times. They give us our spine, our strength, our gumption, our grit (磨砺), all those things we take such pride in." "I think B. Virdot's gift is a reminder that we should all be emboldened to make an effort, no matter how modest, to extend ourselves. That's what makes the difference in all our lives. "
事业单位有哪些岗位1. According to the passage, T ed Gup _____
A. is a journalist working for a college
B. read a story entitled A Secret Gift
C. found out some of the letter writers
D. is a descendant of Jewish
2. Reading the letters, the help-receivers' descendants cried out of_____?
A. the memory of miserable days
B. the gratitude for Mr. Virdot
C. the secret they didn't know
D. missing their parents
3. Which statement is INCORRECT about Samuel Stone?
A. He helped poor people in the name of
B. Virdot.
B. He concealed his true identity as a Jewish by making up his past.
C. He was born in a rich family of the upper class.
D. He earned a lot of money by selling clothes.
4. The author's main purpose of writing this article is to claim that
A. everybody has his dark side
B. being helpful is a valuable virtue
C. economical crisis is terrible辽宁人事人才公共服务网
D. adversity teaches people a lot
5. What is the figure of speech of "They give us " in the last paragraph?
【答案及解析】
1.D 文章第五段末句提到“…his grandfather lied to escape bias against
immigrants.”，由此可知Gup是犹太人的后裔，故D正确。
2.A 由题干可定位至第三段，其中后半部分提到“…no money was so great
that $5 barely made a dent…”，故这是对过去困窘环境的辛酸回忆，因此A正确。
3.C 由文章第五段对Samuel Stone童年的描述，可知其家境贫寒，还不得不承受作为外
来移民要承受的偏见，由此可判断不是生活在富裕的上层社会家庭，故选C。
4.D 文章末段是文章主旨：艰苦的岁月能磨砺人的意志、克服困难的勇气以及坚持不懈的
精神，我们要为此感到自豪，故答案选D。
5. Metaphor “spine”联系上下文可知并不是“脊梁”本意，而是比喻人的骨气与战胜
困难和压力的信心，属于象征，隐喻，因此答案为Metaphor。
Passage 32
题材：人物记述类字数：800 建议用时：6.5分钟
A week of heavy reading had passed since the evening he first met Ruth Morse, and still he dared not call. Time and again he nerved himself up to call, but under the doubts that assailed him his determination died away. He did not know the proper time to call, nor was there any one to tell him, and he was afraid of committing himself to an irretrievable blunder. Having shaken himself free from his old companions and old ways of life, and having no new companions, nothing remained for him but to read, and the long hours he devoted to it would have mined a dozen pairs of ordinary eyes. But his eyes were strong, and they were backed by a body superbly strong. Furthermore, his mind was fallow. It had lain fallow (体耕的) all his life so far as the abstract (深奥的) thought of the books was concerned, and it was ripe for the sowing. It had never been jaded by study, and it bit hold of the knowledge in the books with sharp teeth that would not let go.
It seemed to him, by the end of the week, that he had lived centuries, so far behind were the old life and outlook. But he was baffled by lack of preparation. He
武汉掌上人才网招聘考试attempted to read books that required years of preliminary specialization. One day he would read a book of antiquated philosophy, and the next day one that was ultra-modem, so that his head would be whirling with the conflict and contradiction of ideas. It was the same with the economists. On the one shelf at the library he found Karl Marx, Ricardo, Adam Smith, and Mill, and the abstruse (深奥的) formulas of the one gave no clew that the ideas of another were obsolete. He was bewildered, and yet he wanted to know. He had become interested, in a day, in economies, industry, and politics. Passing through the City Hall Park, he had noticed a group of men, in the centre of which were half a dozen, with flushed faces and raised voices, earnestly carrying on a discussion. He joined the listeners, and heard a new, alien tongue in the months of the philosophers of the people. One was a tramp, another was a labor agitator, a third was a law-school student, and the remainder was composed of wordy workingmen. For the first time he heard of socialism, anarchism, and single tax, and learned that there were warring social philosophies. He heard hundreds of technical words that were new to him, belonging to fields of thought that his meagre reading had never touched upon. Because of this he could not follow the arguments closely, and he could only guess at and surmise (推测) the ideas wrapped up in such strange expressions. Then there was a black-eyed restaurant waiter who was a theosophist, a union baker who was an agnostic, an old man who baffled all of them with the strange philosophy that what is right, and another old man who discoursed (讲述) interminably about the cosmos and the father-atom and the mother-atom.
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