I have said enough to you about the fact that no two native speakers of English speak it alike, but perhaps you are clever enough to ask me whether I myself speak it in the same way.

I must   21    at once that I do not. Nobody does. I am at present speaking to an audience of many thousands of gramophonists(学话者), many of   22    are trying hard to follow my words, syllable by syllable. If I were to speak to you as carelessly as I speak to my wife at home, this record would be   23   ; and if I were to speak to my wife at home as carefully as I am speaking to you, she would think that I was going mad.

As a public speaker I have to take care that every word I say is heard clearly at the far   24   of large halls containing thousands of people. “But at home, when I have to consider only my wife sitting   25   six feet of me at breakfast, I take so little pains with my speech that very often,   26    giving me the expected answer, she says, “Don’t mumble, and don’t turn your head away when you speak. I can’t hear a word you are saying.” And she also is a little careless. Sometimes I have to say “what” two or three times during our meal. And she   27    me of growing deafer and deafer, though she does not say so, because, as I am now over seventy, it might be true.

We all have company manners. If you were to   28    a strange family and to listen through the keyhole before going in---not that I would suggest for a moment that you are capable of doing such a very unladylike or ungentlemanlike thing; but still, if, in your enthusiasm for studying languages you could bring yourself to do it just for a few seconds to hear how a family speak to one another when there is   29    listening to them, and then walk into the room and hear how very   30    they speak in your presence, the change would surprise you. Even when our home manners are as good as our company manners---and of course they ought to be better---they are always different; and the difference is greater in speech than in anything else.

21.  A. admit            B. accept        C. refuse        D. deny

22.  A. them         B. who          C. whom        D. us

23   A. useful        B. important      C. useless        D. helpful

24.  A. side          B. end          C. distance       D. length

25.   A. within        B. at               C. from         D. by

26.   A. other than     B. except for      C. apart form     D. instead of

27.   A. excuses       B. suspects       C. thinks        D. accuses

28.  A. call at        B. drop by       C. drop in        D. call on

29.   A. nobody else    B. nobody       C. someone else   D. someone

30.   A. strangely      B. politely       C. differently         D. calmly

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