A woman came out of her house and saw three old men sitting in her front yard. She said, "I don’t think I know you, but you must be hungry. Please come in and have something to eat." 
"Is the man of the house home?” they asked. "No", she replied, "He’s out." "Then we cannot come in", they replied.
In the evening when her husband came home, she told him what had happened. "Go to tell them I am home and invite them in!" The woman went out and invited the men in. "We do not go into a house together," they replied. "Why is that?" she asked. 
One of the old men explained that their names were Wealth(财富), Success and Love. Then he added, "Now go in and discuss with your husband which one of us you want in your home." 
The woman went in and told her husband what was said. Her husband was overjoyed and he suggested inviting Wealth to fill their home with wealth. And his wife wanted to invite Success; but their daughter-in-law suggested they should invite Love so that their home would be filled with love. At last the husband said to his wife. "Go out and invite Love to be our guest."
The woman went out and asked the three old men, "Which one of you is Love? Please come in and be our guest." 
Love got up and started walking toward the house. 
The other two also got up and followed him. Surprised, the lady asked Wealth and Success: "I only invited Love, Why are you coming in?" 
The old men replied together: "If you had invited Wealth or Success, the other two of us would have stayed out, but since you invited Love, wherever He goes, we go with him. Wherever there is Love, there is also Wealth and Success!" 
【小题1】The best title for this passage would be __________.

A woman came out of her house and saw three old men sitting in her front yard. She said, "I don’t think I know you, but you must be hungry. Please come in and have something to eat." 
"Is the man of the house home?” they asked. "No", she replied, "He’s out." "Then we cannot come in", they replied.
In the evening when her husband came home, she told him what had happened. "Go to tell them I am home and invite them in!" The woman went out and invited the men in. "We do not go into a house together," they replied. "Why is that?" she asked. 
One of the old men explained that their names were Wealth(财富), Success and Love. Then he added, "Now go in and discuss with your husband which one of us you want in your home." 
The woman went in and told her husband what was said. Her husband was overjoyed and he suggested inviting Wealth to fill their home with wealth. And his wife wanted to invite Success; but their daughter-in-law suggested they should invite Love so that their home would be filled with love. At last the husband said to his wife. "Go out and invite Love to be our guest."
The woman went out and asked the three old men, "Which one of you is Love? Please come in and be our guest." 
Love got up and started walking toward the house. 
The other two also got up and followed him. Surprised, the lady asked Wealth and Success: "I only invited Love, Why are you coming in?" 
The old men replied together: "If you had invited Wealth or Success, the other two of us would have stayed out, but since you invited Love, wherever He goes, we go with him. Wherever there is Love, there is also Wealth and Success!" 

1. 1.

   The best title for this passage would be __________.

   1. A.
      A Woman and Three Men
   2. B.
      Wealth, Success and Love
   3. C.
      A Strange Thing Happened to a Woman
   4. D.
      A Husband and his Wife
2. 2.

   The woman asked the three men to come in and have something to eat because _________.

   1. A.
      she was a warm-hearted woman
   2. B.
      they were her neighbors
   3. C.
      they asked her to do
   4. D.
      they were her friends
3. 3.

   Who does the underlined word “the man” in the second paragraph refer to?

   1. A.
      The woman’s son.
   2. B.
      The woman’s father.
   3. C.
      The woman’s son-in-law（女婿）
   4. D.
      The woman’s husband.
4. 4.

   It can be inferred（推断）from the passage that __________.

   1. A.
      The three old men are brothers and they can’t be separated.
   2. B.
      The husband will refuse them in.
   3. C.
      The wife will be scolded by the husband.
   4. D.
      If a person has love, he will own everything.

Sarah came running in. She shouted happily, "Look what I ____36_____." She put a snake skin on the newspaper I was reading and it came so suddenly that it caused me to ____37_____. "Mom, look! Isn't it ____38_____?" said my seven-year-old daughter. I ____39_____ the snake skin and thought that it really wasn't pretty. Everything children see ____40_____is full of beauty in their eyes; they see only ____41_____ and excellence in the world until educated.

"____42_____ did the snake do this?" Sarah asked. I tried to seize the ____43_____ to teach my children that there was almost always something beyond the obvious. I wanted to tell them that there was something else going on ____44_____ what they saw in front of them. "Snakes shed (蜕) their skin because they need to renew themselves," I ____45_____.

"Why do they have to renew themselves?" Sarah asked.

My son Robert laughed and said, "Because they don't ____46_____ what they are and they want to be someone else." I politely ignored him and said that by shedding skins, we could ____47_____ the hidden reality.

"We often need to shed our skin, those coatings that we ____48_____ ourselves with," I said to my children, who listened very ____49_____, with their eyes wide open. "This snake ____50_____ needs this skin. It is probably too hard for him, or he probably doesn't think he looks as ____51_____in it as he once did. It's like buying a new ____52_____."

I'm sure this explanation will not ____53_____ the naturalists. But Sarah was getting to understand that renewal is part of ____54_____. She should learn from it what we need to keep and what we need to ____55_____.

1.                A．made          B．seized          C．caught   D．found

2.                A．think           B．jump           C．run  D．struggle

3.                A．interesting      B．smooth         C．beautiful  D．colorful

4.                A．stared at        B．took off         C．referred to    D．brought back

5.                                  A．by accident B．over and over again

C．in the future                      D．for the first time

6.                A．honesty        B．difference       C．value D．fear

7.                A．Where         B．Why           C．How D．When

8.                A．information     B．possibility       C．opportunity   D．question

9.                A．besides         B．for            C．without   D．around

10.               A．talked          B．explained       C．whispered D．shouted

11.               A．keep          B．want           C．need D．like

12.               A．see            B．guess          C．ignore D．remember

13.               A．keep          B．store          C．cover D．improve

14.               A．properly        B．attentively      C．sadly D．angrily

15.               A．once more      B．at times        C．right now  D．no longer

16.               A．nice           B．healthy         C．strong D．big

17.               A．hat            B．watch          C．suit   D．home

18.               A．move          B．satisfy          C．correct    D．defeat

19.               A．experience     B．achievement    C．progress   D．competition

20.               A．throw out       B．hope for        C．find out   D．throw away

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 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 seen me from a distance. I figured him for a thin retirement check, maybe a work-related 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 said, “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, or 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 with world literature, and I was amazed 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.

1.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

2.The author found the first book Mr. Ballou gave him _____________.

A．light-hearted and enjoyable               B．dull but well written

C．impossible to put down                   D．difficult to understand

3.From what he said to the author we can guess 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

4.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

5.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．books are human beings’ best friends