E

There’s talk today about how as a society we’ve become separated by colors, income, city vs suburb, red state vs blue. But we also divide ourselves with unseen dotted lines. I’m talking about the property lines that isolate us from the people we are physically closest to: our neighbors.

It was a disaster on my street, in a middle-class suburb of Rochester Town, several years ago that got me thinking about this. One night, a neighbor shot and killed his wife and then himself; their two middle-school children ran screaming into the night. Though the couple had lived on our street for seven years, my wife and I hardly knew them. We’d see them jogging together. Sometimes our children would share cars to school with theirs.

Some of the neighbors attended the funeral(葬礼)and called on relatives. Someone laid a single bunch of yellow flowers at the family’s front door, but nothing else was done to mark the loss. Within weeks, the children had moved with their grandparents to another part of the town. The only indication that anything had changed was the “For Sale” sign in front of their house.

A family had disappeared, yet the impact on our neighborhood was slight. How could that be? Did I live in a community or just in a house on a street surrounded by people whose lives were entirely separate? Few of my neighbors, I later learned, knew others on the street more than casually; many didn’t know even the names of those a few doors down.

Why is it that in an age of low long-distance expenses, discount airlines and the Internet, when we can create community anywhere, we often don’t know the people who live next door? Maybe my neighbors didn’t mind living this way, but I did. I wanted to get to know the people whose houses I passed each day – not just what they do for a living and how many children they have, but the depth of their experience and what kind of people they are.

What would it take, I wondered, to break through the barriers between us? I thought about childhood sleepovers(在外过夜), and the familiar feeling and deep understanding I used to get from waking up inside a friend’s home. Would my neighbors let me sleep over and write about their lives from inside their own houses?

72. The underlined word “this” in the second paragraph probably refers to the talk about ____.

       A. how a society is divided by dotted lines 

B. the property lines separating us from our neighbors

       C. the couple’s death                  

D. understanding each other between neighbors

73. Which of the following is NOT TRUE according to the author’s description?

       A. The husband killed himself.

       B. The couple had the habit of jogging together.

       C. Their children moved to live with grandparents after the couple’s death.

       D. The author never knew the couple until they died seven years later.

74. From the last paragraph, we can infer that the author _____ in his childhood.

       A. had once slept in the open air outside

       B. had slept in his friend’s home more than once

       C. had slept at home but woke up to find himself inside his friend’s home

       D. used to live in his friend’s home

75. Following the last paragraph, the author will perhaps _____.

       A. leave his home and began his writing career

       B. sleep in the open air and write about his experiences

       C. sleep in his neighbors’ homes and write about their family lives

       D. interview his neighbors and write about their houses

Two thieves came to a house to steal something. They dug a hole in the wall of the house.

There lived many mice in the house. The woman in the moonlight saw a mouse crawl(爬行) into the house. “Look! In comes one,” she said to the man in the house. He was so frightened that he hurriedly crawled out of the house and said to the one waiting outside, “She found me when I was just in.” But the thief outside didn’t believe him, so he said; “Let us two try to crawl into the house together.” At that time two mice happened to crawl into the house, too. The woman saw the mice and shouted, “In come two, catch them!” The two thieves were terribly frightened. The man in the house said, “You saw them come in but where are they? I will catch them tonight.” The two thieves started running away at once.

The two thieves wanted to make it clear whether they had been found or not the night before. The next day they acted as men selling sweet potatoes and came before the house. The man and the woman were ploughing in their fields. The rein(缰绳)broke and the woman came home for a rope. She saw two men selling sweet potatoes and wanted to buy some. She picked out two which looked like mice. At the time the man couldn’t wait for her any longer in the fields and he ran back from the fields to hurry her up. The woman showed the sweet potatoes to the man and said, “How they look like the two of last night.” The man said, “I asked you to fetch a rope, why don’t you hurry for it?” The two thieves ran away very quickly without their sweet potatoes.

65. The two thieves failed to steal anything from the house because_______.

A. they were found out                              B. they were frightened by what they had heard in the house

C. they didn’t work together well with each other                     D. mice stopped them from doing so

66. From the last paragraph, we know that_______.

A. the two thieves were famous selling sweet potatoes

B. the woman recognized the two thieves

C. the woman pretended to know nothing about the two thieves and made fun of them

D. the two thieves didn’t know that they were not found at all

67. The woman said, “How they look like the two of last night.” Here “the two” refers to_______.

A. the two thieves               B. nothing                   C. the mice                  D. the ropes

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