4. Which of
the following is the best title?
A. Keep away from Sudan?1
B. No Sudan?1 dye links to the country
C. How Sudan?1 dye got its name?
D. Pay attention to the food safety
B
The
Man of Many Secrets - Harry Houdini - was one of the greatest American
entertainers in the theater this century. He was a man famous for his escapes -
from prison cells, from wooden boxes floating in rivers, from locked tanks full
of water. He appeared in theaters all over Europe and America. Crowds came to
see the great Houdini and his “magic” tricks.
Of
course, his secret was not magic, or supernatural powers. It was simply
strength. He had the ability to move his toes as well as he moved his fingers.
He could move his body into almost any position he wanted.
Houdini
started working in the entertainment world when he was 17, in 1891. He and his
brother Theo performed card tricks in club in New York. They called themselves
the Houdini Brothers. When Harry married in 1894, he and his wife Bess worked
together as magician and assistant. But for a long time they were not very
successful. Then Harry performed his first prison escape, in Chicago in 1898.
Harry persuaded a detective to let him try to escape from the prison, and he
invited the local newspapermen to watch.
It
was the publicity(宣传)
that came from this that started Harry Houdini’s success. Harry had
fingers trained to escape from handcuffs and toes trained to escape ankle
chins. But his biggest secret was how he unlocked the prison doors. Every time
he went into the prison cell, Bess gave him a kiss for good luck - and a small skeleton
key, which is a key that fits many locks, pass quickly from her mouth to his.
Harry
used these prison escapes to build his fame. He arranged to escape from the
local prison of every town he visited. In the afternoon, the people of the town
would read about it in their local newspapers, and in the evening every seat in
the local theater would be full. What was the result? World-wild fame, and a
name remembered today.