How should one invest a sum of money in these clays of inflation (通货膨胀)? Left in a bank it will hardly keep its value, however high the interest rate. Only a brave man, or a very rich one, dares to buy and sell on the Stock Market. Today it seems that one of the best ways to protect your savings, and even increase your wealth is to buy beautiful objects from the past. Here I am going to offer some advice on collecting antique clocks, which I personally consider are among the most interesting of antiques.
I sometimes wonder what a being from another planet might report back about our way of life. "The planet Earth is ruled by a mysterious creature that sits or stands in a room and makes a strange ticking sound. It has a face with twelve black marks and two hands. Men can do nothing without its permission, and it fastens its young round people's wrists so that everywhere men go they are still under its control. This creature is the real master of Earth and men are its slaves（奴隶）."
Whether or not we are slaves of time today depends on our culture and personality, but it is believed that many years ago kings kept special slaves to tell the time. Certain men were very clever at measuring（量） the time of clay according to the beating of their own hearts. They were made to stand in a fixed place and every hour or so would shout tire time. So it seems that the first clocks were human beings.
However, men quickly found more convenient and reliable（可靠的） ways of telling the time. They learned to use the shadows cast by the sun. They marked the hours on candles, used sand in hour- glasses, and invented water-clocks. Indeed, any serious student of antique should spend as much time as possible visiting palaces, stately homes and museums to see some of the finest examples of clocks from the past.
Antique clocks could be very expensive, but one of the joys of collecting clocks is that it is still possible to find quite cheap ones for your own home. After all, if you are going to be ruled by time, why not invest in air antique clock and perhaps make a future profit（收益）?
【小题1】According to the passage, collecting antique clocks____.

　　No one knows how man learned to make words. Perhaps he began by making sounds like those made by animals. Perhaps he grunted (发出呼噜声) like a pig when he lifted something heavy. Perhaps he made sounds like those he heard all round him－water splashing (飞溅), bees humming (嗡嗡作响声), a stone falling to the ground. Somehow he learned to make words. As the centuries went by, he made more and more new words. This is what we mean by language.

　　People living in different countries made different kinds of words. Today there are about fifteen hundred different languages in the world. Each contains many thousands of words. A very large English dictionary, for example, contains four or five hundred thousand words. But we do not need all these. Only a few thousand words are used in everyday life.

　　The words you know are called your vocabulary. You should try to make your vocabulary bigger. Read as many books as you can. There are plenty of books written in easy English for you to read. You will enjoy them. When you meet a new word, find it in your dictionary. Your dictionary is your most useful book.

1．What do we mean by language?

[　　]

A．Sounds made by man.

B．All the words made by man.

C．Different kinds of sounds.

D．The way man learns.

2．From the passage we know that long long ago ________.

[　　]

A．no one learned how to make sounds or words

B．animals taught man to learn the language

C．man learned the language by lifting heavy things, falling to the ground, and so on

D．man followed a lot of things in nature to make sounds and words

3．What is the number of languages spoken in the world today?

[　　]

4．In which sentence can the word“contain(s)”be put so that it is a right one?

[　　]

A．I ________ several dictionaries.

B．Sea water ________ salt.

C．A dog ________ four legs.

D．Mr. Smith ________ glasses on his nose.

5．Which of the following is the best if we want to make our vocabulary larger?

[　　]

A．To use the words in everyday life.

B．To read more books.

C．To read easy books.

D．To look up new words in the dictionary.