题目内容
Back from abroad, the couple s__________ down in Beijing.
settled
To take the apple as a forbidden fruit is the most unlikely story the Christians (基督教徒) ever cooked up. For them, the forbidden fruit from Eden is evil. So when Colu brought the tomato back from South America, a land mistakenly considered to be Eden, everyone jumped to the obvious conclusion. Wrongly taken as the apple of Eden, the tomato was shut out of the door of Europeans.
What made it particularly terrifying was its similarity to the mandrake, a plant that was thought to have come from Hell. What earned the plant its awful reputation was its roots which looked like a dried-up human body occupied by evil spirits. Though the tomato and the man were quite different except that both had bright red or yellow fruit, the general population considered them one and the same, too terrible to touch.
Cautious Europeans long ignored the tomato, and until the early 1700s most of the Western people continued to drag their feet. In the 1880s, the daughter of a well-known plant expert wrote that the most interesting part of an afternoon tea at her father's house had been the "introduction of this wonderful new fruit -- or is it a vegetable?" As late as the twentieth century some writers still classed tomatoes with mandrakes as an "evil fruit".
But in the end tomatoes carried the day. The hero of the tomato was an American named Robert Johnson, and when he was publicly going to eat the tomato in 1820, people journeyed for hundreds of miles to watch him drop dead. "What are you afraid of?" he shouted. "I'll show you fools these things are good to eat!" Then he bit into the tomato. Some people fainted. But he survived and, according to a local story, set up a tomato-canning factory.
【小题1】The tomato was shut out of the door of early Europeans mainly because _______.
| A.it made Christians evil | B.it was the apple of Eden |
| C.it came from a forbidden land | D.it was religiously unacceptable |
| A.The process of ignoring the tomato slowed down. |
| B.There was little progress in the study of the tomato. |
| C.The tomato was still refused in most western countries. |
| D.Most western people continued to get rid of the tomato. |
| A.To make himself a hero. |
| B.To remove people's fear of the tomato. |
| C.To speed up the popularity of the tomato. |
| D.To persuade people to buy products from his factory. |
| A.To challenge people's fixed concept of the tomato. |
| B.To give an explanation to people's dislike of the tomato. |
| C.To present the change of people's attitudes to the tomato. |
| D.To introduce the establishment of the first tomato-canning factory. |
Joanne was stuck in a traffic jam in central Birmingham at 5: 30 and at 6: 30 she was expected to be chairing a meeting of the tennis club. At last, the traffic was moving. She swung quickly racing to her house. As she opened the door, she nearly tripped(绊) over Sheba.
“Hey, Sheba,” she said, “I’ve got no time for you now, but I’ll take you out as soon as I get back from tennis club.” Then she noticed Sheba seemed to be coughing or choking. Obviously, she could hardly breathe. Immediately, Joanne realized she would have to take her to the vet(兽医).
When she got there, the vet was just about to close for the day. Seeing the state of Sheba, Dr. Sterne brought her quickly into his office.
“Listen, doctor, I’m really in a rush to get to a meeting. Can I leave her with you, and go and get changed? I’ll be back in ten minutes to pick her up, and then I’ll take her on to the meeting with me. Is that OK?”
“Sure.” said the doctor.
Joanne made the quick trip back to her house in a couple of minutes. As she was once more entering the hallway, the phone by the door began to ring.
“This is Dr. Sterne,” said an anxious voice. “I want you to get out of that house immediately,” said the doctor’s voice. “I’m coming round right away, and the police will be there any time now. Wait outside!”
At that moment, a police car screeched to a stop outside the house. Two policemen got out and ran into the house. Joanne was by now completely confused and very frightened. Then the doctor arrived.
“Where’s Sheba? Is she OK?” shouted Joanne.
“She’s fine, Joanne. I took out the thing which was choking her, and she’s OK now.”
Just then, the two policemen reappeared from the house, half-carrying a white-faced man, who could hardly walk. There was blood all over him.
“My God,” said Joanne, “how did he get in there? And how did you know he was there?”
“I think he must be a burglar.” said the doctor. “I knew he was there because when I finally removed what was stuck in Sheba’s throat: it turned out to be three human fingers.”
【小题1】Joanne wanted to get back to her home again _____.
| A.to dress up for the meeting | B.to phone the police station |
| C.to catch the badly hurt burglar | D.to wait for her dog to be cured |
| A.Sheba fought against the burglar |
| B.the police found the burglar had broken in |
| C.Joanne had planned to take her dog to the meeting |
| D.the doctor performed a difficult operation on the dog |
| A.clever | B.friendly | C.frightening | D.devoted |