阅读理解

　　Silence is unnatural to map. He begins life with a cry and ends it in stillness. In between be does all he can to make a noise in the world, and be fears silence more than anything else. Even his conversation is an attempt to prevent a fearful silence. If be is introduced to another person, and is number of pauses occur in the conversation, he regards him self as a failure ,a worthless person, and is full of envy of the emptiest headed chatterbox（喋喋不休的人）.He knows that ninety nine percent fo human conversation means no more than the buzzing of a fly, but he is anxious to join in the buzz and to prove that he is a man and not a waxwork figure（蜡塑人像）.

　　The aim of conversation is not. For the most part, to communicate ideas ; it is to keep up the buzzing sound. There are, it must be admirted, different qualitics. of buzz;there is even a buzz that is as annoying as the continuous noise made bu a mosquito(蚊子).But at a dinner party one would rather be a mosquito than a quiet person. Most buzzing,forlunately,is pleasnnt to the ear,and some of it is pleasant even to the mind.He would be a foolish man if he waited until he had a wise thought to take pert in the buzzing with his neighbors.

　　Those who hate to pick up the weather as a conversational opening seem to me not to know the reason why human beings wish to talk. Very few human beings join in a conversation in the hope of learning anything new. Some of them are content it they are merely allowed to go on making a noise into other people's ears, though they have nothing to tell them except that they have seen two or three new plays or that they had food in a Swiss hotel. At the end of an evening during which they have said nothing meaningful for a long time. they just prove themselves to be successful conversationists.

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

(6)

(7)

(8)

(9)

(10)

(11)

(12)

(13)

(14)

(15)

(16)

(17)

(18)

(19)

(20)