Among the more colorful characters of Leadville’s golden agewere H.A.W.Tabor and his second wife,Elizabeth McCourt,betterknown a s “Baby Doe”.Their history is fast becoming one of thelegends of t he Old West.Horace Austin Warner Tabor was aschool teacher in V ermont.With his first wife and two children heleft Vermont by cove red wagon in 1855 to homes tead inKansas.Perhaps he did not fin d farming to his liking,or perhapshe was lured by rumors of fortun es to be made in Colorado mines.At any rate,a few years later hem oved west to the small Colorado mining camp known as California Gulch,which he later renamedLeadville when he became its leading citizen. “Great deposits of lead are sure to be found here.”hesaid. As it turned out,it was silver,not lead,that was to make Leadville’s f ortune and wealth. Tabor knewlittle about mining himself,so he op ened a general store,which sold everything from boots tosalt,flour, and tobacco.
『It was his custom to “grubstake” prospective miners,in other wo rds,tosupply them with food and supplies,or “grub”, while they loo ked for ore,in return for which hewould get a share in the mine if one was discovered.』①
He did this for a number of years,but noone that he aided ever fou nd anything of value.
Finally one day in the year 1878,so the story goes,two miners cam e in and asked for “grub”.Tabor had decided to quit supplying it be cause he had lost too much money that way.These werepersistent, however,and Tabor was too busy to argue with them.
“Oh help yourself.One more timewon’t make any difference,” He s aid and went on selling shoes and hats to other customers.thetwo miners took $17 worth of supplies,in return for which they gave Ta bor a one-third interest intheir findings.They picked a barren place on the mountainside and began to dig.After nine daysthey struck a rich vein of silver.Tabor bought the shares of the other two men, and so the minebelonged to him alone.This mine,known as the “P it tsburgh Mine,” made ?1 300
000 for Tabor inreturn for his $17 investment.
Later Tabor bought the Matchless Mine on another barren hillside j ust outside the town for $117
000.This turned out to be even morefabulous than the Pittsburgh,y ielding $35
000 worth of silverper day at one time.Leadville grew.Tabor becam e its first mayor,and later became lieutenantgovernor of the state.
1.Leadville got its name for the following reasons EXCEPT.
A.because Tabor became its leading citizen
B.because great deposits of lead is expected to be found there
C.because it could bring good fortune to Tabor
D.because it was renamed
2.The word “grubstake” in paragraph 2 means.
A.to supply miners with food and supplies
B.to open a general store
C.to do one’s contribution to the development of the mine
D.to supply miners with food and supplies and in return get
a share in the mine,if one wasdiscovered
3.Tabor made his first fortune.
A.by supplying two prospective miners and getting in return a one-third interest in the findings
B.because he was persuaded by the two miners to quit supply ing
C.by buying the shares of the other
D.as a land speculator
4. The underlying reason for Tabor’s life career is.
A. purely accidental
B. based on the analysis of miner’s being very poor and their possi bility of discovering profitablemining site
C. through the help from his second wife
D. he planned well and accomplished targets step by step
5.If this passage is the first part of an article,who might be introdu ced in the following part?
A.Tabor’s life.
B.Tabor’s second wife,Elizabeth McCourt.
C.Other colorful characters.
D.Tabor’s other careers.
Vocabulary
1.barren adj. 贫瘠的
2.fabulous adj. 神话般的，难以置信的
3.lure vt.诱惑，引诱
4.deposit n.沉淀，储蓄
5.grubstake v.下注
长难句解析
①【解析】“It”是形式主语，真正的主语是“to”后面的句子，“while”引导时间状语从句。
【译文】他的通常做法是对来采矿的人“下注”，说得更明确一点就是泰勃供给这些人食品、用品等物品，作为回报，当他们采到矿后就会分给他一部分股份。
答案与详解
【短文大意】本文主要讲述霍塞斯·奥斯汀·沃纳·泰勃发家的故事。1. C细节题。因为Leadville可以为Tabor带来巨富。这一点不是Leadville得名的原因，因为在文章第二段中，讲到这一点时，提及三个原因：A.因为Tabor成为当地的居民代表人物，B.因为在Leadville 有丰富的铅的储藏量。D.因为Leadville是因为Tabor重要而起的名，唯独C没有，因为到后来发现是银矿才给他带来巨富。
2. D词汇题。第二段中grubstake的词义与D所述内容是相同的，即“供给探矿者资金，衣物，食品以及其他物品”。(可参阅英华大辞典修订第二版64页)但此处还补充地讲，作为回报，供给者可以获得矿
中资源一定份额。(见文章第二段第4行)
3. A细节题。Tabor第一次真正发财是他为两名矿工提供资助，为此他获得他们矿资源三分之一的股份。见文章第三段4-9行内容：两名开矿者从Tabor那儿借走价值17美元的物品，作为回报，Tabor获得他们矿资源三分之一股份。于是两位开矿者在一座山旁的不毛之地开始挖掘，九天之后，发现了银的富矿，于是Tabor又将两人的股份全买下，这样，银矿属于Tabor一个人所有，这个矿就是后来著名的“匹兹堡”矿。Tabor用17美元的投资换来了130万美元的收获。
4. B推断题。由原文可知泰勃的财产来源是有一定偶然性的，但是毕竟也是基于他开创的“grubstake”模式，因为A、D都不对，C更是没有根据，因为他还没有娶第二位夫人这一切就发生了。分析泰勃的做法，会得出B选项所示的结论。
5. B推断题。如果本文是一篇文章的第一部分，那么在文章的第二部分将介绍谁呢?key可以从文章第一句分析出来，在Leadville的黄金年代，其多彩的特点当中，Tabor及其第二任妻子ElizabethMcCourt 是值得大书特书的，接着，文章都在讲述有关H.A.W.Tabor发家致富的历史，如先买下匹兹堡矿，后又买下Matchless矿，最后成为市长，代理州长，等等，所以涉及到的全是男主人公，因此下边再讲的话，
应成为女主人公即Elizabeth McCourt的天地了，她是Tabor的第二任妻子。这是顺理成章的事。
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The fridge is considered necessary. It has been so since the 1960s when packaged food list appeared with the label: "Store in the refrigerator." In my fridgeless Fifties childhood, 1 was fed well and healthy. The milkman came every day, the grocer, the butcher (肉商), the baker, and the ice-cream man delivered two or three times each week. The Sunday meatwould last until Wednesday and surplus(剩余的) bread and milk became all kinds of cakes. Nothing was wasted, and we were never troubled by rotten food. Thirty years on food deliveries have ceased, fresh vegetables are almost unobtainable in the country. The invention of the fridge contributed comparatively little to the art of food preservation. Many well-tried techniques already existed -- natural cooling, drying, smoking, salting, sugaring, bottling... What refrigeration did promote was marketing --- marketing hardware and electricity, marketing soft drinks, marketing dead bodies of animals around the world in search of a good price. Consequently, most of the world’s fridges are to be found, not in the tropics where they might prove useful, but in the rich countries with mild temperatures where they are climatically almost unnecessary. Every winter, millions of fridges hum away continuously, and at vast expense, busily maintaining an artificially-cooled space inside an artificially-heated house -- while outside, nature provides the desired temperature free of charge. 1 / 4
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大学英语四级考试快速阅读技巧 一.测试目的 快速阅读，顾名思义，它的目的在于测试考生单位时间当中的阅 读量，其实四级对速度的考查是近几年一直延续的一种结果。同时， 在解答题目方面，快速阅读并不强调一定要像精读文章那样通篇认真 研究，相反，快速阅读题目更强调测试考生在实践语言环境中查询有 效信息的能力，这也反映出四六级考试试图提升考生实际应用能力的 改革方向。 二.测试形式 快速阅读要求考生在15 分钟内完成一篇1100字左右的文章和后面的 10 道题。前面 7 个题是判断正误（包括NG），后 3 个是填空题填根据阅读的理解，填三到四个单词( 答案基本都是原文中出现的原 词)。快速阅读的文章一般分为小标题+题目和无小标题+题目两种类型。该题型需要通过略读和寻读法，乃至文章逻辑关系、标点符号等方面的综合运用，实现对随后的题目有效的判断和填写。 三.基本要求 1. 快速阅读的文章基本都是专业题材的文章，很多考生可能会觉得 很陌生，但是对于 CET-4 的快速阅读开始来说，只要求考生
对题目所提到的信息在原文中能够找到即可，只是有时需要简 单的同义词替换。 2. 略读（ Skimming）和寻读（ Scanning ）的能力在大学英语四级考试中显得尤为重要。 3. 快速阅读要求考生的阅读速度是每分钟 110-140 词。 四.快速阅读方法 1.推测（prediction） 阅读正文前，就标题（如果有标题的话）来合理推测资料的 大概内容，也可在读了一段之后预测下段内容。这对快速理解和 整体把握文章内容以及推测出生词的词义范围有积极的意义。 2.读关键词句（key words and topic sentences） 在对文章的整体内容有了基本认识的基础上，我们学会抓主 要的词句，找出段落中的主题句，从而正确领会文章的主要内容。3.略读(skimming) 略读又称跳读 (reading and skipping)或浏览(glancing)，是一种专门的，非常实用的快速阅读技能。 所谓略读，是指以尽可能快的速度阅读，如同从飞机上鸟瞰(bird ’s eye view ) 地面上的明显标志一样，迅速获取文章大意或中心思想。换句话说，略读是要求读者有选择地进行阅读，可跳过某些细节，以求抓住文章的大概，从而加快阅读速度。据统计，训练有素的略读者(skimmer) 的阅读速度可以达到每分钟 3000 到 4000 个词。
一．阅读理解短文（10-13篇） Passage 10 In science the meaning of the word "explain" suffers with civilization's every step in search of reality. Science cannot really explain electricity, magnetism, and gravitation; their effects can be measured and predicted, but of their nature no more is known to the modern scientist than to Thales who first speculated (设想) on the electrification of amber (琥珀). Most contemporary physicists reject the notion that man can ever discover what these mysterious forces "really" are. "Electricity", Bertrand Russell says, “is not a thing, like St. Paul's Cathedral; it is a way in which things behave. When we have told how things behave when they are electrified, and under what circumstances they are electrified, we have told all there is to tell.” Until recently scientists would have disapproved of such an idea. Aristotle, for example, whose natural science dominated Western thought for two thousand years, believed that man could arrive at an understanding of reality by reasoning from self-evident principles. He felt, for example, that it is a self-evident principle that everything in the universe has its proper place, hence one can deduce that objects fall to the ground because that's where they belong, and smoke goes up because that's where it belongs. The goal of Aristotelian science was to explain why things happen. Modern science was born when Galileo began trying to explain how things happen and thus originated the method of controlled experiment which now forms the basis of scientific investigation. 1.The purpose of the controlled experiment is . A) to explain why things happen B) to explain how things happen C) to forms the basis of scientific investigation D) to prove accepted theories 2. For two thousand years, scientific thought was most influenced by . A) self-evident principles. B) Thales' speculations. C) Aristotle's natural science. D) Russell's theory on electricity 3. Which of the following is true of Bertrand Russell's notion about electricity? A)It is disapproved of by most modern scientists B) It is in agreement witb Aristotle's theory of self-evident principles C) It is disagreed by Galileo' theory D) It is supported by scientific investigations directed toward "how" things happen 4. According to the passage that until recently scientists disagreed with the idea that _________ . A) man can't discover what forces "really" are B) there are mysterious forces in the universe C) there are self-evident principles? D) we can discover why things behave as they do 5. Aristotle believed the fact that objects fall to the ground . A) is a result of reasoning B) could be explained from self-evident principles C) is an instance of self-evident principle D) could be tested by experience Passage 11
2019大学英语四级阅读理解练习题及解析(15) There are people in Italy who can’t stand soccer. Not all Canadians love hockey. A similar situation exists in America, where there are those individuals you may be one of them who yawn or even frown when somebody mentions baseball. 『Baseball to them means boring hours watching grown men in funny tight outfits standing around in a field staring away while very little of anything happens.』① They tell you it’s a game better suited to the 19th century, slow, quiet, gentlemanly. These are the same people you may be one of them who love football because there’s the sport that glorifies “the hit”. By contrast, baseball seems abstract, cool, silent, still. On TV the game is fractured into a dozen perspectives, replays, close瞮ps. The geometry of the game, however, is essential to understanding it. You will contemplate the game from one point as a painter does his subject; you may, of course, project yourself into the game. It is in this projection that the game affords so much space and time for involvement. T he TV won’t do it for you. Take, for example, the third baseman. You sit behind the third base dugout and you watch him watching home plate. His legs are apart, knees flexed. His arms hang loose. He does a lot of this. The skeptic still cannot think of any other sports so still, so passive. 『But watch what happens every time the pitcher throws： the third baseman goes up on his toes, flexes his arms or bring the glove to a point in front
大学英语四级阅读理解试题及答案.
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3 大学英语四级阅读理解试题及答案（四） 十六 Trees should only be pruned when there is a good and clear reason for doing so and , fortunately,the number of such reasons is small. Pruning involves the cutting away of obergrown and unwanted branches, and the inexperienced gardener can be encouraged by the thought that more damage results from doing it unnecessarily than from leaving the tree to grow in its own way. First, pruning may be done to make sure that trees have a desired shape or size. The object may be to get a tree of the right height, and at the same time to help the growth of small side branches which will thicken its appearance or give it a special shape. Secondly, pruning may be done to make the tree healthier. You may cut diseaed or dead wood, or branches that are rubbing against each other and thus cause wounds. The health of a tree may be encouraged by removing branches that are blocking up the centre and so preventing the free movement of air. One result of pruning is that an open wound is left on the tree and this provides an easy entry for disease, but itis a wound that will heal. Often there is a race between the healing and the desease as to whether the tree will live or die, so that there is a period when the tree is at risk. It should be the aim of every gardener to reduce which has been pruned smooth and clean, for healing will be slowed down by roughness. You should allow the cut surface to dry for a few hurs and then paint it with one of the substances available from garden shops produced especially for this purpose. Pruning is usually without interference from the leaves and also it is very unlikely that the cuts yu make will bleed. If this does happen,it is, of course,impossible to paint them properly. 1.Pruning should be done to ______. a.make the tree grow taller
Directions:In this part,you will have15minutes to go over the passage quickly and answer the questions on Answer Sheet1.For questions1-7,choose the best answer from the four choices marked[A],[B],[C]and[D].For questions8-10,complete the sentences with the information given in the passage. How to Visualize Your Success Have you ever heard of visualization(可视化)?Of course you have.Everybody’s heard of visualization and everybody partakes in it whether they realize it or not.How it works though is an altogether different matter.I want to take a closer look today at the mechanics of why visualizing works without necessarily delving into concepts and theories that cannot be proven. The brain has great difficulty in distinguishing between what’s true and what’s imagined.There is an off-cited(经常被引用的)example of an experiment conducted by Austrahan Psychologist,Alan Richardson.He took some basketball players and split them into3 equal groups.One group was told to practice their free throw technique twenty minutes per day. The next group was told to spend twenty minutes per day visualizing,but not attempting free throws,and the final group wasn’t allowed to either practice or visualize.At the end of the test period the group that had done nothing remained as they were,but both the other groups showed similar degrees of improvement,The people who only visualized playing basketball were able to perform almost as well as the ones who had actually practiced. "How can that be so?" Firstly,the people practicing would miss some shots.Each time they missed they had in effect,practiced how to miss. The people that were visualizing would be hitting every basket so they were building up the feelings and memory of how to be successful. Forging a Path through a Meadow Imagine walking home from a new job.You suddenly realize that there is a meadow of long grass that will cut20minutes off your walk.If you live in New York you’re going to need a great imagination for this one. The first few times you can barely see which way you had walked the previous day. However,after10or20times you can clearly see a pathway starting to form,and after100times all the grass is worn away and there’s a farmer with a shotgun and large dog waiting for you at the end.Let’s presume our gun-toting friend is a big softie and he allows you to use that route as long as you want.What are the odds that next time you try a slightly different direction?Slim to none would be my guess. After all,you know this way works and you have a lovely easy path. On the other hand,if Farmer Giles starts taking pot shotsat you and sportingly lets the dog try and shoot you too,before releasing it to sink its gnashers into your rear end,then you’ll probably find a new way home once you’re released from hospital. The next time you’re walking home you opt against reacquainting yourself with Fido and spot another meadow further along the road.The same process then begins to take place only this time the original path you made has started to grow back. How We Create a Path in Our Mind That is what happens when we form thoughts in our mind.The first time we have a new thought it is a weakling(虚弱者)of a thought that has sand kicked in its face by stronger thoughts and beliefs.Each time you re-think it though it grows in