The Men Who Built America

WHAT IS AN AMERICANLetter III, from Letters from an American FarmerBy J. Hector St. John CrevecoeurI WISH I could be acquainted with the feelings and thoughts which must agitate the heart and present themselves to the mind of an enlightened Englishman, when he first lands on this continent. He must greatly rejoice that he lived at a time to see this fair country discovered and settled; he must necessarily feel a share of national pride, when he views the chain of settlements which embellishes these extended shores. When he says to himself, this is the work of my countrymen, who, when convulsed by factions, afflicted by a variety of miseries and wants, restless and impatient, took refuge here. They brought along with them their national genius, to which they principally owe what liberty they enjoy, and what substance they possess. Here he sees the industry of his native country displayed in a new manner, and traces in their works the embryos of all the arts, sciences, and ingenuity which flourish in Europe. Here he beholds fair cities, substantial villages, extensive fields, an immense country filled with decent houses, good roads, orchards, meadows, and bridges, where an hundred years ago all was wild, woody and uncultivated! What a train of pleasing ideas this fair spectacle must suggest; it is a prospect which must inspire a good citizen with the most heartfelt pleasure. The difficulty consists in the manner of viewing so extensive a scene. He is arrived on a new continent; a modern society offers itself to his contemplation, different from what he had hitherto seen. It is not composed, as in Europe, of great lords who possess every thing and of a herd of people who have nothing. Here are no aristocratical families, no courts, no kings, no bishops, no ecclesiastical dominion, no invisible power giving to a few a very visible one; no great manufacturers employing thousands, no great refinements of luxury. The rich and the poor are not so far removed from each other as they are in Europe. Some few towns excepted, we are all tillers of the earth, from Nova Scotia to West Florida. We are a people of cultivators, scattered over an immense territory communicating with each other by means of good roads and navigable rivers, united by the silken bands of mild government, all respecting the laws, without dreading their power, because they are equitable. We are all animated with the spirit of an industry which is unfettered and unrestrained, because each person works for himself. If he travels through our rural districts he views not the hostile castle, and the haughty mansion, contrasted with the clay-built hut and miserable cabin, where cattle and men help to keep each other warm, and dwell in meanness, smoke, and indigence. A pleasing uniformity of decent competence appears throughout our habitations. The meanest of our log-houses is a dry and comfortable habitation. Lawyer or merchant are the fairest titles our towns afford; that of a farmer is the only appellation of the rural inhabitants of our country. It must take some time ere he can reconcile himself to our dictionary, which is but short in words of dignity, and names of honour. (There, on a Sunday, he sees a congregation of respectable farmers and their wives, all clad in neat homespun, well mounted, or riding in their own humble waggons. There is not among them an esquire, saving the unlettered magistrate. There he sees a parson as simple as his flock, a farmer who does not riot on the labour of others. We have no princes, for whom we toil, starve, and bleed: we are the most perfect society now existing in the world. Here man is free; as he ought to be; nor is this pleasing equality so transitory as many others are.Many ages will not see the shores of our great lakes replenished with inland nations, nor the unknown bounds of North America entirely peopled. Who can tell how far it extends? Who can tell the millions of men whom it will feed and contain? for no European foot has as yet travelled half the extent of this mighty continent!The next wish of this traveller will be to know whence came all these people? They are mixture of English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes. From this promiscuous breed, that race now called Americans have arisen. The eastern provinces must indeed be excepted, as being the unmixed descendants of Englishmen. I have heard many wish that they had been more intermixed also: for my part, I am no wisher, and think it much better as it has happened. They exhibit a most conspicuous figure in this great and variegated picture; they too enter for a great share in the pleasing perspective displayed in these thirteen provinces. I know it is fashionable to reflect on them, but I respect them for what they have done; for the accuracy and wisdom with which they have settled their territory; for the decency of their manners; for their early love of letters; their ancient college, the first in this hemisphere; for their industry; which to me who am but a farmer, is the criterion of everything. There never was a people, situated as they are, who with so ungrateful a soil have done more in so short a time. Do you think that the monarchical ingredients which are more prevalent in other governments, have purged them from all foul stains? Their histories assert the contrary.In this great American asylum, the poor of Europe have by some means met together, and in consequence of various causes; to what purpose should they ask one another what countrymen they are? Alas, two thirds of them had no country. Can a wretch who wanders about, who works and starves, whose life is a continual scene of sore affliction or pinching penury; can that man call England or any other kingdom his country? A country that had no bread for him, whose fields procured him no harvest, who met with nothing but the frowns of the rich, the severity of the laws, with jails and punishments; who owned not a single foot of the extensive surface of this planet? No! urged by a variety of motives, here they came. Every thing has tended to regenerate them; new laws, a new mode of living, a new social system; here they are become men: in Europe they were as so many useless plants, wanting vegetative mould, and refreshing showers; they withered, and were mowed down by want, hunger, and war; but now by the power of transplantation, like all other plants they have taken root and flourished! Formerly they were not numbered in any civil lists of their country, except in those of the poor; here they rank as citizens. By what invisible power has this surprising metamorphosis been performed? By that of the laws and that of their industry. The laws, the indulgent laws, protect them as they arrive, stamping on them the symbol of adoption; they receive ample rewards for their labours; these accumulated rewards procure them lands; those lands confer on them the title of freemen, and to that title every benefit is affixed which men can possibly require. This is the great operation daily performed by our laws. From whence proceed these laws? From our government. Whence the government? It is derived from the original genius and strong desire of the people ratified and confirmed by the crown. This is the great chain which links us all, this is the picture which every province exhibits, Nova Scotia excepted. There the crown has done all; either there were no people who had genius, or it was not much attended to: the consequence is, that the province is very thinly inhabited indeed; the power of the crown in conjunction with the musketeers hasprevented men from settling there. Yet some parts of it flourished once, and it contained a mild harmless set of people. But for the fault of a few leaders, the whole were banished. The greatest political error the crown ever committed in America, was to cut off men from a country which wanted nothing but men!What attachment can a poor European emigrant have for a country where he had nothing? The knowledge of the language, the love of a few kindred as poor as himself, were the only cords that tied him: his country is now that which gives him land, bread, protection, and consequence: Ubi panis ibi patria, is the motto of all emigrants. What then is the American, this new man? He is either an European, or the descendant of an European, hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country. I could point out to you a family whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and whose present four sons have now four wives of different nations. He is an American, who leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds.He becomes an American by being received in the broad lap of our great Alma Mater. Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world. Americans are the western pilgrims, who are carrying along with them that great mass of arts, sciences, vigour, and industry which began long since in the east; they will finish the great circle. The Americans were once scattered all over Europe; here they are incorporated into one of the finest systems of population which has ever appeared, and which will hereafter become distinct by the power of the different climates they inhabit. The American ought therefore to love this country much better than that wherein either he or his forefathers were born. Here the rewards of his industry follow with equal steps the progress of his labour; his labour is founded on the basis of nature, self-interest; can it want a stronger allurement? Wives and children, who before in vain demanded of him a morsel of bread, now, fat and frolicsome, gladly help their father to clear those fields whence exuberant crops are to arise to feed and to clothe them all; without any part being claimed, either by a despotic prince, a rich abbot, or a mighty lord. I lord religion demands but little of him; a small voluntary salary to the minister, and gratitude to God; can he refuse these? The American is a new man, who acts upon new principles; he must therefore entertain new ideas, and form new opinions. From involuntary idleness, servile dependence, penury, and useless labour, he has passed to toils of a very different nature, rewarded by ample subsistence. --This is an American.British America is divided into many provinces, forming a large association, scattered along a coast 1500 miles extent and about 200 wide. This society I would fain examine, at least such as it appears in the middle provinces; if it does not afford that variety of tinges and gradations which may be observed in Europe, we have colours peculiar to ourselves. For instance, it is natural to conceive that those who live near the sea, must be very different from those who live in the woods; the intermediate space will afford a separate and distinct class. . . .。

“The Problem that Has No Name”Betty FriedanThe problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night—she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question—“Is this all?”For over fifteen years there was no word of this yearning in the millions of words written about women, for women, in all the columns, books and articles by experts telling women their role was to seek fulfillment as wives and mothers. Over and over women heard in voices of tradition and of Freudian sophistication that they could desire no greater destiny than to glory in their own femininity. Experts told them how to catch a man and keep him, how to breastfeed children and handle their toilet training, how to cope with sibling rivalry and adolescent rebellion; how to buy a dishwasher, bake bread, cook gourmet snails, and build a swimming pool with their own hands; how to dress, look, and act more feminine and make marriage more exciting; how to keep their husbands from dying young and their sons from growing into delinquents. They were taught to pity the neurotic, unfeminine, unhappy women who wanted to be poets or physicists or presidents. They learned that truly feminine women do not want careers, higher education, political rights—the independence and the opportunities that the old-fashioned feminists fought for. Some women, in their forties and fifties, still remembered painfully giving up those dreams, but most of the younger women no longer even thought about them. A thousand expert voices applauded their femininity, their adjustment, their new maturity. All they had to do was devote their lives from earliest girlhood to finding a husband and bearing children.By the end of the nineteen-fifties, the average marriage age of women in America dropped to 20, and was still dropping, into the teens. Fourteen million girls were engaged by 17. The proportion of women attending college in comparison with men dropped from 47 per cent in 1920 to 35 per cent in 1958. A century earlier, women had fought for higher education; now girls went to college to get a husband. By the mid-fifties, 60 per cent dropped out of college to marry, or because they were afraid too much education would be a marriage bar. Colleges built dormitories for “married students,”but the students were almost always the husbands. A new degree was instituted for the wives—“Ph.T.” (Putting Husband Through).Then American girls began getting married in high school. And the women’s magazines, deploring the unhappy statistics about these young marriages, urged that courses on marriage, and marriage counselors, be installed in the high schools. Girlsstarted going steady at twelve and thirteen, in junior high. Manufacturers put out brassieres with false bosoms of foam rubber for little girls of ten. And an advertisement for a child’s dress, sizes 3-6x, in the New York Times in the fall of 1960, said: “She Too Can Join the Man-Trap Set.”By the end of the fifties, the United States birthrate was overtaking India’s. The birth-control movement, renamed Planned Parenthood, was asked to find a method whereby women who had been advised that a third or fourth baby would be born dead or defective might have it anyhow. Statisticians were especially astounded at the fantastic increase in the number of babies among college women. Where once they had two children, now they had four, five, six. Women who had once wanted careers were now making careers out of having babies. So rejoiced Life magazine in a 1956 paean to the movement of American women back to the home.In a New York hospital, a woman had a nervous breakdown when she found she could not breastfeed her baby. In other hospitals, women dying of cancer refused a drug which research had proved might save their lives: its side effects were said to be unfeminine. “If I have only one life, let me live it as a blonde,”a larger-than-life- sized picture of a pretty, vacuous woman proclaimed from newspaper, magazine, and drugstore ads. And across America, three out of every ten women dyed their hair blonde. They ate a chalk called Metrecal, instead of food, to shrink to the size of the thin young models. Department-store buyers reported that American women, since 1939, had become three and four sizes smaller. “Women are out to fit the clothes, instead of vice-versa,” one buyer said.Interior decorators were designing kitchens with mosaic murals and original paintings, for kitchens were once again the c enter of women’s lives. Home sewing became a million-dollar industry. Many women no longer left their homes, except to shop, chauffeur their children, or attend a social engagement with their husbands. Girls were growing up in America without ever having jobs outside the home. In the late fifties, a sociological phenomenon was suddenly remarked: a third of American women now worked, but most were no longer young and very few were pursuing careers. They were married women who held part-time jobs, selling or secretarial, to put their husbands through school, their sons through college, or to help pay the mortgage. Or they were widows supporting families. Fewer and fewer women were entering professional work. The shortages in the nursing, social work, and teaching professions caused crises in almost every American city. Concerned over the Soviet Union’s lead in the space race, scientists noted that America’s greatest source of unused brain-power was women. But girls would not study physics: it was “unfeminine.” A girl refused a science fellowship at Johns Hopkins to take a job in a real-estate office. All she wanted, she said, was what every other American girl wanted—to get married, have four children and live in a nice house in a nice suburb.The suburban housewife—she was th e dream image of the young American women and the envy, it was said, of women all over the world. The American housewife—freed by science and labor-saving appliances from the drudgery, the dangers of childbirth and the illnesses of her grandmother. She was healthy, beautiful, educated, concerned only about her husband, her children, her home. She had foundtrue feminine fulfillment. As a housewife and mother, she was respected as a full and equal partner to man in his world. She was free to choose automobiles, clothes, appliances, supermarkets; she had everything that women ever dreamed of.In the fifteen years after World War II, this mystique of feminine fulfillment became the cherished and self-perpetuating core of contemporary American culture. Millions of women lived their lives in the image of those pretty pictures of the American suburban housewife, kissing their husbands goodbye in front of the picture window, depositing their stationwagonsful of children at school, and smiling as they ran the new electric waxer over the spotless kitchen floor. They baked their own bread, sew ed their own and their children’s clothes, kept their new washing machines and dryers running all day. They changed the sheets on the beds twice a week instead of once, took the rug-hooking class in adult education, and pitied their poor frustrated mothers, who had dreamed of having a career. Their only dream was to be perfect wives and mothers; their highest ambition to have five children and a beautiful house, their only fight to get and keep their husbands. They had no thought for the unfeminine problems of the world outside the home; they wanted the men to make the major decisions. They gloried in their role as women, and wrote proudly on the census blank: “Occupation: housewife.”For over fifteen years, the words written for women, and the words women used when they talked to each other, while their husbands sat on the other side of the room and talked shop or politics or septic tanks, were about problems with their children, or how to keep their husbands h appy, or improve their children’s school, or cook chicken or make slipcovers. Nobody argued whether women were inferior or superior to men; they wer e simply different. Words like “emancipation”and “career” sounded strange and embarrassing; no one had used them for years. When a Frenchwoman named Simone de Beauvoir wrote a book called The Second Sex, an American critic commented that she obviously “didn’t know what life was all about,” and besides, she was talking about French women. The “woman problem”in America no longer existed.If a woman had a problem in the 1950’s and 1960’s, she knew that something must be wrong with her marriage, or with herself. Other women were satisfied with their lives, she thought. What kind of a woman was she if she did not feel this mysterious fulfillment waxing the kitchen floor? She was so ashamed to admit her dissatisfaction that she never knew how many other women shared it. If she tried to tell her husband, he didn’t understand what she was talking about. She did not really understand it herself. For over fifteen years women in America found it harder to talk about this problem than about sex. Even the psychoanalysts had no name for it. When a woman went to a psychiatrist for help, as many women did, she would say, “I’m so ashamed,” or “I must be hopelessly neurotic.” “I don’t know what’s wrong with women today,”a suburb an psychiatrist said uneasily. “I only know something is wrong because most of my patients happen to be women. And their problem isn’t sexual.” Most women with this problem did not go to see a psychoanalyst, however. “Th ere’s nothing wrong really,”they kept telling themselves. “There isn’t any problem.”But on an April morning in 1959, I heard a mother of four, having coffee with four other mothers in a suburban development fifteen miles from New York, say in a tone of q uiet desperation, “the problem.”And the others knew, without words, that she was not talking about a problem with her husband, or her children, or her home. Suddenly they realized they all shared the same problem, the problem that has no name. They began, hesitantly, to talk about it. Later, after they had picked up their children at nursery school and taken them home to nap, two of the women cried, in sheer relief, just to know they were not alone.Gradually I came to realize that the problem that has no name was shared by countless women in America. As a magazine writer I often interviewed women about problems with their children, or their marriages, or their houses, or their communities. But after a while I began to recognize the telltale signs of this other problem. I saw the same signs in suburban ranch houses and split-levels on Long Island and in New Jersey and Westchester County; in colonial houses in a small Massachusetts town; on patios in Memphis; in suburban and city apartments; in living rooms in the Midwest. Sometimes I sensed the problem, not as a reporter, but as a suburban housewife, for during this time I was also bringing up my own three children in Rockland County, New York. I heard echoes of the problem in college dormitories and semiprivate maternity wards, at PTA meetings and luncheons of the League of Women V oters, at suburban cocktail parties, in station wagons waiting for trains, and in snatches of con versation overheard at Schrafft’s. The groping words I heard from other women, on quiet afternoons when children were at school or on quiet evenings when husbands worked late, I think I understood first as a woman long before I understood their larger social and psychological implications.Just what was this problem that has no name? What were the words women used when they tried to express it? Sometimes a woman would say “I feel empty somehow… incomplete.” Or she would say, “I feel as if I don’t exist.” Sometimes she blotted out the feeling with a tranquilizer. Sometimes she thought the problem was with her husband, or her children, or that what she really needed was to redecorate her house, or move to a better neighborhood, or have an affair, or another baby. Sometimes, she went to a doctor with sympt oms she could hardly describe: “A tired feeling…I get so angry with the children it scares me … I feel like crying without any reason.” (A Cleveland doctor called it “the housewife’s syndrome.”) A number of women told me about great bleeding blisters that break out on their hands and arms. “I call it the house wife’s blight,” said a family doctor in Pennsylvania. “I see it so often lately in these young women with four, five and six children who bury themselves in their dishpans. But it isn’t caused by detergent and it isn’t cured b y cortisone.”Sometimes a woman would tell me that the feeling gets so strong she runs out of the house and walks through the streets. Or she stays inside her house and cries. Or her children tell her a joke, and she doesn’t laugh because she doesn’t hear it. I talked to women who had spent years on the analyst’s couch, working out their “adjustment to the feminine role,” their blocks to “fulfillment as a wife a nd mother.”But the desperate tone in these women’s voices, and the look in their eyes, was the same as the tone and the look of other women, who were sure they had no problem, eventhough they did have a strange feeling of desperation.A mother of four who left college at nineteen to get married told me:I've tried everything women are supposed to do—hobbies, gardening, pickling, canning, being very social with my neighbors, joining committees, running PTA teas. I can do it all, and I like it, but it does n’t leave you anything to think about—any feeling of who you are. I never had any career ambitions. All I wanted was to get married and have four children. I love the kids and Bob and my home. There’s no problem yo u can even put a name to. But I’m desperate. I begin to feel I have no personality. I’m a server of food and putter-on of pants and a bed maker, somebody who can be called on when you want something. But who am I?A twenty-three-year-old mother in blue jeans said:I ask myself why I’m so dissatisfied. I’ve got my health, fine children, a lovely new home, enough money. My husband has a real future as an electronics engineer. He doesn’t have any of these feelings. He sa ys maybe I need a vacation, let’s go to New York for a weekend. But that isn’t it. I always had this idea we shoul d do everything together. I can’t sit down and read a book alone. If the children are napping and I have one hour to myself I just walk through the house waiting for them to wake up. I don’t make a move until I know where the rest of the crowd is going. It’s as if ever sinc e you were a little girl, there’s always been somebody or something that will take care of your life: your parents, or college, or falling in love, or having a child, or moving to a new house. Then yo u wake up one morning and there’s nothing to look forward to.A young wife in a Long Island development said:I seem to sleep so much. I don’t know why I should be so tired. This house isn’t nearly so hard to clean as the cold-water flat we had when I was working. The children are at school all day. It’s not the work. I just don’t feel alive.In 1960, the problem that has no name burst like a boil through the image of the happy American housewife. In the television commercials the pretty housewives still beamed over their foaming dishpans and Time’s cover story on “The Suburban Wife, an American Phenomenon” protested: “Having too good a time …to believe that they should be unhappy.”But the actual unhappiness of the American housewife was suddenly being reported—from the New York Times and Newsweek to Good Housekeepin g and CBS Television (“The Trap ped Housewife”), although almost everybody who talked about it found some superficial reason to dismiss it. It was attributed to incompetent appliance repairmen (New York Times), or the distances children must be chauffeured in the suburbs (Time), or too much PTA (Redbook). Some said it was the old problem—education: more and more women had education, which naturally made them unhappy in their role as housewive s. “The road from Freud to Frigidaire, from Sophocles to Spock, has turned out to be a bumpy one,”reported the New York Times(June 28, 1960). “Many young women—certainly not all—whose education plunged them into a world of ideas feel stifled in their homes.They find their routine lives out of joint with their training. Like shut-ins, they feel left out. In the last year, the problem of the educated housewife has provided the meat of dozens of speeches made by troubled presidents of women’s colleges who maintain, in the face of complaints, that sixteen year s of academic training is realistic preparation for wifehood and motherhood.”There was much sympathy for the educated housewife. (“Like a two-headed schizophrenic…once she wrote a paper on the Graveyard poets; now she writes notes to the milkman. Once she determined the boiling point of sulphuric acid; now she determines her boiling point with the overdue repairman….The housewife often is reduced to screams and tears….No one, it seems, is appreciative, least of all herself, of the kind of person she becomes in the process of turning from poetess into shr ew.”) Home economists suggested more realistic preparation for housewives, such as high-school workshops in home appliances. College educators suggested more discussion groups on home management and the family, to prepare women for the adjustment to domestic life. A spate of articles appeared in the mass magazines offering “Fifty-eight Ways to Ma ke Your Marriage More Exciting.” No month went by without a new book by a psychiatrist or sexologist offering technical advice on finding greater fulfillment through sex.A male humorist joked in Harper’s Bazaar (July, 1960) that the problem could be solved by taking away woman’s right to vote. (“In the pre-19th Amendment era, the American woman was placid, sheltered and sure of her role in American society. She left all the political decisions to her husband and he, in turn, left all the family decisions to her. Today a woman has to make both the family and the political decisions, and it’s too much for her.”)A number of educators suggested seriously that women no longer be admitted to the four-year colleges and universities: in the growing college crisis, the education which girls could not use as housewives was more urgently needed than ever by boys to do the work of the atomic age.The problem was also dismissed with drastic solutions no one could take seriously. (A woman writer proposed in Harper’s that women be drafted for compulsory service as nurses’ aides and baby-sitters.) And it was smoothed over with the age-old panaceas: “love is their answer,” “the o nly answer is inner help,” “the secret of completeness—children,” “a private means of intellectual fulfillment,” “to cure this toothache of the spirit—the simple formula of handling one’s self and one’s will over to God.”The problem was dismissed by t elling the housewife she doesn’t realize how lucky she is—her own boss, no time clock, no junior executive gunning for her job. What if she isn’t happy—does she think men are happy in this world? Does she really, secretly, still want to be a man? Doesn’t she know yet how lucky she is to be a woman?The problem was also, and finally, dismissed by shrugging that there are no solutions: this is what being a woman means, and what is wrong with American women that they can’t accept their role gracefully? As Newsweek put it (March 7, 1960):She is dissatisfied with a lot that women of other lands can only dream of. Her discontent is deep, pervasive, and impervious to the superficial remedies which are offered at every hand….An army of professional explorers have already charted the major sources of trouble.... From the beginning of time, the female cycle has defined and confined woman’s role. As Freud was credited with saying: “Anatomy is destiny.”Though no group of women has ever pushed these natural restrictions as far as the American wife, it seems that she still cannot accept them with good grace.... A young mother with a beautiful family, charm, talent and brains is apt to dismiss her role apologetically. “What do I do?” you hear her say. “Why nothing. I’m just a housewife.” A good education, it seems, has given this paragon among women an understanding of the value of everything except her own wort h…And so she must accept the fact that “American women’s unhappiness is merely the most recently won o f women’s rights,”and adjust and say with the happy housewife found by Newsweek: “We ought to salute the wonderful freedom we all have and be proud of our lives today. I have had college and I’ve worked, but being a housewife is the most rewarding and sat isfying role….My mother was never included in my fath er’s b usiness affairs. . . she couldn’t get out of the house and away from us children. But I am an equal to my husband; I can go along with him on business trips and to social business affairs.”The alternative offered was a choice that few women would contemplate. In the sympathetic words of the New York Times: “All admit to being deeply frustrated at times by the lack of privacy, the physical burden, the routine of family life, the confinement of it. However, none would give up her home and family if she had the choice to make again.”Redbook commented: “Few women would want to thumb their noses at husbands, children and community and go off on their own. Those who do may be talented individuals, but they rarely are successful women.”The year American wo men’s discontent boiled over, it was also reported (Look) that the more than 21,000,000 American women who are single, widowed, or divorced do not cease even after fifty their frenzied, desperate search for a man. And the search begins early—for seventy per cent of all American women now marry before they are twenty-four. A pretty twenty-five-year-old secretary took thirty-five different jobs in six months in the futile hope of finding a husband. Women were moving from one political club to another, taking evening courses in accounting or sailing, learning to play golf or ski, joining a number of churches in succession, going to bars alone, in their ceaseless search for a man.Of the growing thousands of women currently getting private psychiatric help in the United States, the married ones were reported dissatisfied with their marriages, the unmarried ones suffering from anxiety and, finally, depression. Strangely, a number of psychiatrists stated that, in their experience, unmarried women patients were happier than married ones. So the door of all those pretty suburban houses opened a crack to permit a glimpse of uncounted thousands of American housewives who suffered alone from a problem that suddenly everyone was talking about, and beginning to take for granted, as one of those unreal problems in American life that can never besolved—like the hydrogen bomb. By 1962 the plight of the trapped American housewife had become a national parlor game. Whole issues of magazines, newspaper columns, books learned and frivolous, educational conferences and television panels were devoted to the problem.Even so, most men, and some women, still did not know that this problem was real. But those who had faced it honestly knew that all the superficial remedies, the sympathetic advice, the scolding words and the cheering words were somehow drowning the problem in unreality. A bitter laugh was beginning to be heard from American women. They were admired, envied, pitied, theorized over until they were sick of it, offered drastic solutions or silly choices that no one could take seriously. They got all kinds of advice from the growing armies of marriage and child-guidance counselors, psychotherapists, and armchair psychologists, on how to adjust to their role as housewives. No other road to fulfillment was offered to American women in the middle of the twentieth century. Most adjusted to their role and suffered or ignored the problem that has no name. It can be less painful, for a woman, not to hear the strange, dissatisfied voice stirring within her.It is no longer possible to ignore that voice, to dismiss the desperation of so many American women. This is not what being a woman means, no matter what the experts say. For human suffering there is a reason; perhaps the reason has not been found because the right questions have not been asked, or pressed far enough. I do not accept the answer that there is no problem because American women have luxuries that women in other times and lands never dreamed of; part of the strange newness of the problem is that it cannot be understood in terms of the age-old material problems of man: poverty, sickness, hunger, cold. The women who suffer this problem have a hunger that food cannot fill. It persists in women whose husbands are struggling internes and law clerks, or prosperous doctors and lawyers; in wives of workers and executives who make $5,000 a year or $50,000. It is not caused by lack of material advantages; it may not even be felt by women preoccupied with desperate problems of hunger, poverty or illness. And women who think it will be solved by more money, a bigger house, a second car, moving to a better suburb, often discover it gets worse.It is no longer possible today to blame the problem on loss of femininity: to say that education and independence and equality with men have made American women unfeminine. I have heard so many women try to deny this dissatisfied voice within themselves because it does not fit the pretty picture of femininity the experts have given them. I think, in fact, that this is the first clue to the mystery: the problem cannot be understood in the generally accepted terms by which scientists have studied women, doctors have treated them, counselors have advised them, and writers have written about them. Women who suffer this problem, in whom this voice is stirring, have lived their whole lives in the pursuit of feminine fulfillment. They are not career women (although career women may have other problems); they are women whose greatest ambition has been marriage and children. For the oldest of these women, these daughters of the American middle class, no other dream was possible. The ones in their forties and fifties who once had other dreams gave them up and threw themselves joyously into life as housewives. For the youngest, the new wives andmothers, this was the only dream. They are the ones who quit high school and college to marry, or marked time in some job in which they had no real interest until they married. These women are very “feminine” in the usual sense, and yet they still suffer the problem.Are the women who finished college, the women who once had dreams beyond housewifery, the ones who suffer the most? According to the experts they are, but listen to these four women:My days are all busy, and dull, too. All I ever do is mess around. I get up at eight—I make breakfast, so I do the dishes, have lunch, do some more dishes and some laundry and cleaning in the afternoon. Then it’s supper dishes and I get to sit down a few minutes before the children have to be sent to bed….That’s all there is to my day. It’s just like any other wife’s day. Humdrum. The biggest time, I am chasing kids.Ye Gods, what do I do with my time? Well, I get up at six. I get my son dressed and then give him breakfast. After that I wash dishes and bathe and feed the baby. Then I get lunch and while the children nap, I sew or mend or iron an d do all the other things I can’t get done before noon. Then I cook supper for the family and my husband watches TV while I do the dishes. After I get the children to bed, I set my hair and then I go to bed.The probl em is always being the children’s mommy, or the minister’s wife and never being myself.A film made of any typical morning in my house would look like an old Marx Brothers’comedy. I wash the dishes, rush the older children off to school, dash out in the yard to cultivate the chrysanthemums, run back in to make a phone call about a committee meeting, help the youngest child build a blockhouse, spend fifteen minutes skimming the newspapers so I can be well-informed, then scamper down to the washing machines where my thrice-weekly laundry includes enough clothes to keep a primitive village going for an entire year. By noon I’m ready for a pad ded cell. Very little of what I’ve done has been really necessary or important. Outside pressures lash me through the day. Yet I look upon myself as one of the more relaxed housewives in the neighborhood. Many of my friends are even more frantic. In the past sixty years we have come full circle and the American housewife is once again trapped in a squirrel cage. If the cage is now a modern plate-glass -and-broadloom ranch house or a convenient modern apartment, the situation is no less painful than when her grandmother sat over an embroidery hoop in her gilt-and-plush parlor a nd muttered angrily about women’s rights.The first two women never went to college. They live in developments in Levittown, New Jersey, and Tacoma, Washington, and were interviewed by a team of s ociologists studying workingmen’s wives. The third, a minister’s wife, wrote on the fifteenth reunion questionnaire of her college that she never had any career ambitions, but wishes now she had. The fourth, who has a Ph.D. in anthropology, is today a Nebraska housewife with three children. Their words seem to indicate that housewives of all educational levels suffer the same feeling of desperation.。

2022-2023学年九上英语期末模拟试卷注意事项:1．答题前，考生先将自己的姓名、准考证号码填写清楚，将条形码准确粘贴在条形码区域内。

2．答题时请按要求用笔。

3．请按照题号顺序在答题卡各题目的答题区域内作答，超出答题区域书写的答案无效；在草稿纸、试卷上答题无效。

4．作图可先使用铅笔画出，确定后必须用黑色字迹的签字笔描黑。

5．保持卡面清洁，不要折暴、不要弄破、弄皱，不准使用涂改液、修正带、刮纸刀。

Ⅰ. 单项选择1、I don′t care how you do the job. I onl y care it can be done. Just give me a date!A．where B．what C．why D．when2、________, the Internet was only used by the government. But now it’s widely used in every field.A．As usual B．At first C．After all D．So far3、There are fewer and fewer tigers in India. The situation will continue _______ humans stop hunting them for their fur and bones.A．if B．unless C．because D．since4、－It's difficult for village children to cross the river to school.－I think a bridge ____ over the river.A．should be built B．will build C．is built D．was built5、There are about 30 ______ who teach in our school.A．manB．menC．man’sD．men’s6、The basketball players all arrive as early as they can so that they can ______.A．wake up B．show around C．warm up D．fill out7、Lucy got plenty of pocket money during Spring Festival, so she can _____ /əˈfɔ:rd/ the bike.A．avoid B．attend C．afford D．around8、The nurse told the children the sun ______ in the east.A．rises B．rose C．will rise D．has risen9、Jack is very smart . He can deal with any problem .A．easily B．slowly C．differently10、In 2000, we ____ to the Great Wall and had a good time there.A．go B．went C．will go D．have goneⅡ. 完形填空11、Everyone knows Bill Gates. He is one of the world's richest men. 1 do you know Blanche Caffiere?Blanche Caffiere was Bill Gates’ 2 .Gates said she changed 3 life.Gates first 4 Mrs. Caffiere when he was nine years old. Then he was in his fourth grade. He was not a good student. He had terrible handwriting. He tried to get unnoticed(不被注意的). He didn’t 5 others to know that he liked reading because he thought the 6 was for girls but not for boys.Mrs. Caffiere pulled Gates out of his shell(使他胆子大起来)by 7 her love of books. She asked him,“What do you like to read?”Then, she found him a lot of books. After he read a book, Mrs. Caffiere would take time to 8it with him. She would ask,“Did you like it? Why? What did you learn?” She carefully listened to what he said. They became good friends.Gates showed his 9 to Mrs. Caffiere in a blog. He wrote, “I liked to10 time with her then. Now I want to thank her for helping me find my strengths(长处), for helping me become the man I am today. Thank you ,my teacher.”1．A．So B．But C．or2．A．friend B．classmate C．teacher3．A．his B．her C．its4．A．saved B．met C．left5．A．want B．ask C．need6．A．book B．lesson C．hobby7．A．returning B．sharing C．finding8．A．hear from B．talk about C．look for9．A．thanks B．sadness C．surprise10．A．save B．waste C．spendⅢ. 语法填空12、阅读下面的短文，用括号内所给词的适当形式填空，必要时可加助动词。

The Inca Empire was a vast kingdom in the Andes Mountains of South America. Inca emperors controlled a huge area and ruled millions of people. The empire covered parts of what are now Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina.They accomplished amazing feats of engineering and built a complex civilization.It was the largest civilization in South America before the arrival of Europeans.Inca society was strictly organized. The emperor and his royal family were at the top of Inca society. The Inca believed the emperor was descended from the Sun god, Inti.Below the emperor came the nobility. These Inca were related to the emperor. They held the most important positions in the government, the military, and in religious life. Peasants who farmed the land were at the bottom of Inca society.The Inca built stone walls in steep valleys to create level fields, called terraces. These terraces extend up the sides of mountains like giant staircases. In some areas, the Inca built canals to bring water to the terraces.The Inca had extensive knowledge of plants for food and medicine. They developed many of the plants we eat today. These include types of corn, potatoes, tomatoes, squash, beans, and peppers. To the Inca, pepper plants were sacred. In fact,peppers were so valuable they could be used as money.The Inca had no written language, but they still recorded many details about their life. They kept track of gold, land, crops, and other things by using knotted strings. The length and color of the strings, and the spacing of the knots, all had meaning. Specially trained people could “read” the strings.Inca civilization was most powerful in the late 1400s. In 1532, the Spanish explorer Francisco Pizarro and 180 Spanish soldiers landed on the coast of Peru.At first, the Inca believed Pizarro was their god, Viracocha. Pizarro and his men seized the Inca emperor. To save his own life, the emperor offered Pizarro enough gold to fill a room. But the Spaniards killed the emperor and took over the Inca Empire.The Spanish conquerors looted Inca treasures and made the Inca into slaves. Many Inca died from mistreatment and from European diseases. Other Inca fled.Today, about 8 million descendants of the Inca live in the lands of the former Inca Empire. They still follow many Inca beliefs and customs.。

SectionⅡLearning about Language,UsingLanguage,Summing Up&Learning Tip课后篇巩固探究一、用方框内所给单词或短语的适当形式填空1.The famous athlete didn’t the World Cup because of illness.答案:take part in2.To the mother’s joy,the childen stopped crying .答案:one after another3.The secretary always acts as if she were the company,which makes her colleagues very tired.答案:in charge of4.There is something wrong with the old machine,so it must be at once.答案:replaced5.He grows flowers vegetables.答案:as well as6.Our young Mr.Smith,who was finding it difficult to earn his daily bread,remembered that once upon a time he had learned the art of making tacks and had the sudden idea of the shoemakers.答案:bargaining with7.The hotel 50 yuan a room for one night.答案:charged;for8.In 1991,the house sale at $49,000.答案:was advertised for9.The man is not here just at the moment.答案:in charge10.The people in the flooded area fought bravely against the natural disaster.Their bravery to be praised.答案:deserved二、用所给单词的适当形式填空导学号728640191.It is the children’s (responsible) to support their old parents.答案:responsibility2.Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is a (glory) piece of music.答案:glorious3.A lot of houses were knocked down during the earthquake,which made a lot of people(hope).答案:hopelessrge amounts of money are spent on (advertisement) every year.答案:advertisements5.The President’s speeches are (regular) reproduced in the state-run newspapers.答案:regularly6.The player from America has rich experience in playing,so he is a strong (compete) for you.答案:competitor7.Children are fond of Harry Potter,a boy full of (magic) power.答案:magical8.They won the first place in the match.I think they deserve (congratulate).答案:to be congratulated/congratulating9.No oral test will be required for (admit) to that university.答案:admission10.It has helped me become stronger,both mentally and (physical).答案:physically11.Facts (replace) by political beliefs now.答案:are being replaced12.The girl has been doing well in her work,and she (deserve) to be promoted.答案:deserves13.You wouldn’t (fine) yesterday had you not broken the traffic rule.答案:have been fined14.We were (charge) for the items that we didn’t order.答案:charged15.It took a lot of courage (admit) that you were wrong.答案:to admit三、用适当的介词或副词填空1.The moment the bell rang,the students went out of the classroom one another.答案:after2.The middle-aged woman bargained the shopkeeper who was selling the plates and managed to get them for half the usual price.答案:with3.Apart these two books,he has written some plays and film scripts.答案:from4.If there is something wrong with the machine,it should be reported at once to the engineer—charge.答案:in5.Today,workers in factories are being replaced robots and software,which more broadly,are automating many jobs that people used to do.答案:by6.The reporter was interviewing a girl,who was a volunteer the Olympic Games.答案:for7.It never distinguishes between humans based age or race.答案:on8.Women are playing an important role building our country.答案:in9.You’re an adult now and you need to take responsibility your action.答案:for四、语篇填空(语言能力)The Olympic Games is the 1. (big) sports meeting in the world,2. includes two kinds,the Summer and the Winter Olympics.Both of them 3. (hold) every four years.All countries can take part 4. their athletes have reached the agreed standard for thegames.Women are not only allowed to join in but play a very important role.A special village is built for the 5.(competitor) to live in,a main reception building,several stadiums for competitions,a gymnasium as 6.(good) as seats for those who watch the games.It’s a great honor 7.(host) the Olympic Games.The olive wreath 8. (replace) by medals.But it’s still about 9. (be) able to run faster,jump higher and throw 10. (far).答案:1.biggest 2.which 3.are held 4.ifpetitors6.well7.to host8.has been replaced9.being10.further五、完形填空(思维品质语言能力)An unusual matchDarius and Johntel both love basketball and are captains of their high school basketball teams.But on one Saturday night,they were forever linked in the 1 of all who were present at a game between Darius’s small town team and Johntel’s big city team.Just 2 before the game,Johntel’s mother died of cancer.Her sudden 3 made Johntel very sad.So Johntel’s coach wanted to 4 the game.But Johntel 5 that the game should be played.So with 6 hearts,his teammates prepared to play—and hopefully win—without him.7,Johntel appeared in the gym midway through the first half.Seeing him,Johntel’s coach called a time out,and players and fans 8 the sad young man to offer love and 9.Johntel wanted to 10 but putting him in the game at that point would 11 a technical foul(犯规) and two free throws for the opposing team.The opposing team understood the 12 and told the referees to let Johntel play and to 13 the technical foul.The referees 14 that a rule is a rule,and the free throws would have to be taken before the game could 15.As the team captain,Darius 16 to take the shots.The free throw line is 15 feet from the basket.However,Darius’s first shot traveled about 4 feet.His second shot 17 traveled 2.Immediately,Johntel and his teammates 18 what Darius was doing.They stood and applauded the 19 of sportsmanship as Darius walked back to his bench.Johntel’s team won the game in the end.But as the two 20 met after the game for pizza and sodas,nobody on either side was too concerned with wins or losses.1.A.eyes B.headsC.earsD.mind答案:D解析:达利斯和约翰特尔是各自所在高中的篮球队队长。

Ⅰ品句填词1．The horse is not nature to America—it was introduced by the Spanish.2．The country has been ruled by the Spanish for years and Spanish has become its official language.3．Given a choice between Tahiti and Hawaii, I’d prefer the latter for my holiday.4．The Titanic sank in April 1912 on its first voyage from Southampton to New York.5．True friendship should be based on each other’s understanding.6．Reading is one of the best ways of improving your vocabulary(词汇)．7．The police are trying to discover the identity(身份) of the killer.8．I’m looking for a(n) apartment/flat(公寓) on the east side of the city.9．Our car ran out of petrol(汽油) and we had to walk to the nearest garage.10．If you want to buy skirts, please take the elevator/lift(电梯) to the third floor.Ⅱ单句改错1．A number of questions will be come up at the meeting tomorrow.去掉be2．Luckily, one of the native offered to be our guide.native→natives3．The number of students learning English are larger than ever before.are→is4．At the present, we are busy preparing for the coming exam.去掉第一个the5．A lot of people caught cold because the bad weather.because后加of6．More than one student were tired of his long and tiring speech.were→was7．In the past, women didn’t have same rights as men in this country.same前加the8．The children have been taught the English poem recently, and they can all read it quite fluent now.fluent→fluentlyⅢ课文语法填空At the end of the 16th century, about five to seven million people spoke English.In the 17th century, English 1.was spread(spread) to many other countries because the British conquered other parts of the world by 2.making(make) voyages.Today, more people speak English as 3.their(they) first, second or a foreign language than ever before.4．Actually(actual) all languages change and develop when cultures meet and communicate with each other.At first the English 5.spoken(speak) in England from about AD 450 to 800 was based more 6.on German.Then gradually, English became 7.less(little) like German from about AD 800 to 1150.By the 1600’s Shakespeare could make use of 8.a wider vocabulary than everbefore.Then English was taken to America and Australia.English was finally settled by the 19th century, 9.when two big changes in English spelling happened.Now English is also spoken as a foreign or second language in some Asian and African countries. China may have the largest number of English 10.learners(learn)．Ⅰ单句语法填空1．Gradually(gradual), the children began to understand French.2．British and American spellings(spell) are different in many ways.3．I’m afraid I can’t help you just at present; I’m too busy.4．The road to success is not always an easy one.5．Parents often find it difficult to communicate with their children.6．We must speak English frequently(frequent) in order to improve our spoken English. 7．(2019·浙江杭州二中高一上期中)Many students believe the choice of their courses and universities should be based(base) on their own interests.8．Young people are encouraged to take part in team sports such as football and basketball. 9．There are two elevators(elevator) in the building, which can be used at the same time. 10．We should make use of every minute to learn well.Ⅱ阅读理解A(2019·潍坊高一检测)As everyone knows, English is very importanttoday. It has been used everywhere in the world. It has become the mostcommon language on the Internet and for international trade. If we canspeak English well, we will have more chances to succeed. Because moreand more people have taken notice of it, the number of the people who go to learn English has increased at a high speed.But for myself, I learn English not only because of its importance and its usefulness, but also because of my love for it.When I learn English, I can feel a different way of thinking which gives me more room to touch the world. When I read English novels, I can feel the pleasure from the book which is different from reading the translation.When I speak English, I can feel the confidence from my words. When I write English, I can see the beauty which is not the same as our Chinese...I love English, because it gives me a colorful dream. I hope I can travel around the world one day. With my good English, I can make friends with many people from different countries and see many places of great interests. I dream that I can go to London, because it is the birthplace of English. I also want to use my good English to introduce our great places to the people who speak English. I hope that they can love our country like us. I know, Rome was not built in a day. Ibelieve that after continuous hard study, one day I can speak English very well.If you want to be loved, you should learn to love and be lovable. So I believe, as I love English, it will love me too.I am sure that I will realize my dream one day!【解题导语】作者介绍了英语对自己而言很重要，并说明了自己学习英语的原因。

Detailed Study of the Text1. Mirror of America: Metaphor. A mirror reflects or reveals the truth of something or somebody.2. Most Americans remember Mark Twain as the father...Father: metaphor. Endless: hyperbole.The whole sentence: parallelism.Mark Twain is famous to most Americans as the creator of Hack Finn and Tom Sawyer. Hack's sailing / voyage / journey / travel on the river was so pleasant, lighthearted, carefree, simple and peaceful that it made his boyhood seem to be infinite, while Tom's independent mind and his exciting and dangerous activities made the summer seem everlasting.3. idyllic: [i / ai] adj. of idyll, a simple happy period of life, often in the country, or a scene from such a time, a description of this, esp. a poem.idyl l […idil, / aidl] n. short piece of poetry or prose thatdescribes a happy and peaceful scene or event, esp of country lifean idyllic setting, holiday, marriage4. cruise: A cruise is a holiday during which you travel on a ship and visit lots of places. When it is used as a verb, it means to move at a constant speed that is comfortable and unhurried.He was on a world cruise.cruise missile: a missile which carries a nuclear warhead and which is guided by a computer as it flies. It can be launched from the land, sea or air.They spend the summer cruising in the Greek islands.The taxi cruised off down the Chang'an Avenue.cruiser: a large fast warship.cf:aircraft carrier, helicopter carrier, battleship, flagship, destroyer, speedboat, torpedo boat, etc.5. every bit as: infml, just as, quite asHe is every bit as clever as you are.I'm every bit as sorry about it as you.6. cynical: A cynical person believes that all men are selfish. He sees little or no good in anything and shows this by making unkind and unfair remarks about people and things.cynic: n a. person who believes that people do not do things for good, sincere or noble reasons, but only for their own advantageb. Cynic: member of a school of ancient Greek philosophy that despised ease and comforta cynical remark, attitude, smileThey've grown rather cynical about democracy, ie no longer believe that it is an honest system.7. deal, dealt: to give , to give out, to strike, to distributeWho deals the cards next?to deal sb. a blowPay attention to the sentence structure of this part: Saddened by the profound personal tragedies life dealthim, he grew cynical, bitter.8. obsess: fill the mind continuously, AmE, to worry continuously and unnecessarily. If sth obsesses you or if you are obsessed with it or by it, you keep thinking about it over a long period of time, and find it difficult to think about anything else.He became absolutely obsessed with a girl reporter on television.She is obsessed by the desire to become a great scientist.cf: preoccupy: to fill the thoughts or hold the interest of sb. almost completely, esp. so that not enough attention is given to other (present) matters.9. frailty: a weakness of character or behaviour.One of the frailties of human nature is laziness.That chair looks too frail to take a man's weight.There is only a frail chance that he will pass the examination.10. tramp: a person who has no home or permanent job and very little money. Tramps go from place to place getting food and money by taking occasional job or begging. A woman who is thought to have sex with a lot of men is cursed to be a tramp. When used as a verb, tramp means to walk heavily in a particular direction or along roads or streets.There's a tramp at the door begging for food.We tramped for hours through the snow.Don't tramp about so noisily, you'll wake everyone up.cf: 盲流，”blind flow”, unauthorized move, persons who move without government sanction11. pilot: a person who with special knowledge of a particular stretch of water, esp. the entrance of a harbour, and who is trained and specially employed to go on board and guide ships that use it.A pilot is also a person who is trained to fly an aircraft.12. Confederate States of America (1861-65), also Confederacy. the government established by the southern states of the US after their secession / official separation from the union. When president Lincoln was elected (Nov. 1860), seven states --- South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, and Texas, seceded /si'si:d/. A provisional government was set up at Montgomery, Ala, and a constitution was drafted. Later four more states--- Arkansas, North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee--- joined. Richmond, Va., became the capital, and Jefferson Davis and A.H. Stephens were elected president and vice president. The story of the Confederacy is the story of the loss of the Civil War. The Confederacy fell after Gen. Robert Edward Lee's surrender in Apr. 1865 to Gen. Grant at Appomattox (town in cent. Va) Courthouse.13. guerrilla (guerilla): a member of an unofficial fight group which attacks the enemy in small groups unexpectedly.Song of the Guerrillas14. prospector: a person who examines the land in order to find gold, oil, etc.15. starry: full of stars in the sky, indicating sparkling, glowing, and flashing. starry-eyed: full of unreasonable or silly hopes. If you are starry-eyed, you are so full of dreams or hopes or idealistic thoughts that you do not see how things really are.We were all starry-eyed about visiting London.16. acid-tongued: If sb. is acid-tongued, he makes unkind or critical remarks.Notice that the first four expressions refer to the job he did and the last two expressions imply the characteristic feature of his personality.17. range: to travel without any definite plan or destination, a fairly literary use.cf: wander, range, saunter, strollWander implies the absence of a fixed course or more or less indifference to a course that has been fixed or otherwise indicated. The term may imply the movement of a walker whether human or animal, but it may be used of anything capable of direction.His eyes wandered over the landscape.His mind wandered and he was unsure of himself.Range may be preferred when literal wandering is not implied or when the stress is on the sweep of territory covered rather than on the form of locomotion involved.He spent the summer ranging the world.Animals range through the forests.Saunter stresses a leisurely pace and in idle and carefree mind.Stroll differs from saunter chiefly in the implications of an objective, (as sight-seeing or exercise) pursued without haste and sometimes with wandering from one place to another.strolling (around) in the park18. digest:a. When you digest food, the food passes through your stomach and is broken down so that your body can use it.Don't give the baby meat to eat, because he cannot digest it.b. If you digest information, you think about it, understand it, and remember it.The report contains too much to digest at one reading.He reads rapidly but does not digest very much.c. A digest is a collection of things that have been written, which are put together and published again in a more concise form.The leading magazines in the U.S. include Golf Digest, Reader's Digest, and Soap Opera Digest.19. adopt: to take and use as one's ownThe US government decided to adopt a hard line towards terrorists.Congress has adopted the new measures.I adopted their method of making the machine.adopt a name, a custom, an idea, a style of dressHaving no children of their own they decided to adopt an orphan / dog.Paul's mother had him adopted because she couldn't look after him herself.her adopted country, ie not her native country but the one in which she has chosen to liveadept: ~ (in sth); ~ (at/in doing sth)She's adept at growing roses.He's an adept in carpentry.adapt ~ sth (for sth) make sth suitable for a new use, situation, etc; modify sthThis machine has been specially adapted for use underwater. This novel has been adapted for TV from the Russian original. Our eyes slowly adapted to the dark.20. navigable: deep and wide enough to allow ships to travel.21. popularity: the quality of being well liked, favoured, or admired22. attest: to show to be true, to give proof of, to declare solemnlyHistoric documents and ancient tombstones all attest to this.23. main artery of transportation in the young nation's heartartery and heart: metaphorsartery: blood vessel (a tube in your body) that carries blood from the heart to the rest of the body. vein: 静脉any of the tubes carrying blood from all parts of the body to the heartRoyal blood ran in his veins.blood vesselGeographically, the great valley of the Mississippi River was the centre of the country which had a very short history. And most of the transportation was conducted on the river.24. keel: a long bar along the bottom of a boat or ship from which the whole frame of the boat or ship is built up.25. raft: floating platform made from large pieces of wood, oil-drums, etc, that are tied together. Also rubber raft.26. commerce: the buying and selling of goods, trade. Here commodities. This is a synecdoche since it involves thesubstitution of the genus for kind or whole for part.Keelboat, flatboats and large rafts conducted the transportation of commodities in the early years of the country.27. lumber: tree trunks, logs or planks (a long, usu. heavy piece of board, esp. one that is 2 to 6 inches thick and at least 8 inches wide) of wood that have been cut for use, but only roughly, AmE. In BrE, it is the same as timber.28. delta country: Delta is the 4th letter of the Greek alphabet, (with 1st: alpha, 2nd: beta, 3rd: gamma, 16th: pi , last or 24th: omega ) which is shaped like a triangle. Therefore anything in the shape of a delta, esp. a deposit of sand and soil formed at the mouth of some rivers is called a delta.29. molasses (uncount) a thick dark to light brown syrup that is separated from raw sugar in sugar manufacture.cf: syrup: a thick sticky solution of sugar and water, often flavoured30. westward expansion:The massacre of the native Indians: The 1803 Louisiana Purchase (which extended from the Mississippi R. tothe Rocky Mts. and from the Gulf of Mexico to British North America, doubled the area of the US) from Napoleon's France.The 1845 Texas Annexation (which provoked the Mexican War and resulted in the acquiring of California and most of the present Southwest).The push into Oregon in 1846 after a peaceful settlement with Britain.Also the California Gold Rush in 1848. The discovery of gold brought more than 40,000 prospectors and adventurers there within two years. (Other gold rushes took place in Australia, 1851-53; South Africa, 1884; and the Klondike Canada 1897-98).31. basin: A basin of a large river is the area of land around it. From the basin water and streams run down into the river. the Yellow River Basin.The basin made up 3/4 of the populated area of the US of that time.32. drain: to flow off gradually or completely, to cause to become gradually dry or empty. Here, metaphor, to concentrate.33. cub: the young of various types of meat-eating wild animals, such as lion, bear34. cast of characters: the cast of a play or a film consists of all the people who act in it35. cosmos: the whole universe considered as an ordered system.36. feud: long-lasting and bitter quarrel or dispute between two people or groupsthe feud between Romeo's family and Juliet's37. piracy: robbery of ships on the high seas, robbery carried out by pirates, persons who sail the seas stopping and robbing ships.copy right piracypirate: a robber on the high seasTo pirate video compact disk, video tapes, cassettes or books is to copy, publish and sell them without the right to do so.38. lynch: (esp. of a crowd of people) to attack and put to death, esp. by hanging, (a person thought to be guilty of a crime), without a lawful trial.39. slum: an area of a city where living conditions are very bad and where all the houses are overcrowded and need to be repaired.40. ...with the language that he soaked up with ...soak up: to draw in by or as if by suction or absorption. If sth soaks up a liquid, it absorbs it.The soil soaked up a huge volume of water very rapidly.He absorbed and digested the colourful language with an astonishing good memory which seemed to be able to record things like a phonographic (gramophone).41. Steamboat decks teemed with the main current of ...(teem with...the main current, not very suitable)teem with: If a place is teeming with animals or people, it is very crowded and the animals or people are moving around a lot.The water teems with fish / thousands of organisms.His mind teems with plans.main current of pioneering humanity: metaphor, people with pioneering spirit who forms the majority, the main part of them were people with devotion/ dedication to open up new areas and prepare ways for others.42. humanity: human beings in general43. flotsam: metaphor. rubbish, wreckage such as bits of wood, plastic, and other waste materials that is floating on the sea, parts of a wrecked ship or its cargo found floating in the sea44. hustler: a person who tries to earn money or gain an advantage from any situation they are in, often by using dishonest or illegal method. infml AmE. (US sl) prostitutehustle: push (sb) roughly and hurriedly; jostle; shoveThe police hustled the thief out of the house and into their van.I was hustled into (making) a hasty decision.(US sl) work as a prostitute45. thug: a person who is very violent and rough, esp. a criminal violent criminal or hooligan, villain46. keen:a. sharpHe handed me a spear with a keen point.b. (with the 5 senses, the mind, the feelings) good, strong, quick at understandingMy hearing is not as keen as it used to be.He has a keen brain.He is a keen observer.c. (AmE) wanting to do sth. very much or wanting sth. to happen very much; having a great deal of enthusiasm for sth.He takes a keen interest in his work.They are keen on art.I am not very much keen on detective stories.47. perception: natural understandingextra sensory perceptionperceive: realize, notice, see or hear sth. esp. when it is not obvious to other peopleHe now perceived his error.Only an artist can perceive the fine shades of colour in the painting.Just as a good artist must have good perception of colour, a good musician must have good perception of sound.48. trade: job, esp. one needing special skill with the hands.What is your trade?Several different trades are taught in this school.They work in the cotton / tourist / shoemaking / jewellery trade.trade union49. acknowledge: recognize the fact, agree to the truth. If you acknowledge a fact or situation, you accept or admit that it is true or that it exists.He acknowledge his fault.This is a fact even our enemies abroad have to acknowledge.Lu Xun is acknowledge as China's best writer.He is an acknowledged expert on antique-examination.The president stood up to acknowledge the cheers of the crowd.Acknowledge implies making known sth. which has been concealed or kept backacknowledge a secret marriage / one's complete ignorance of mathsAdmit stresses reluctance in agreeing to the fact but not necessarily the view pointConfess implies that one feels sth. to be wrongconfess a crime / one's sin50. acquaint: know, cause to know personally, make familiar with,be acquainted with the mayorYou must acquainted yourself with your new duties.I have heard about your friend but I am not acquainted with him.I have few acquaintances there.make acquaintance of sb. / make sb's acquaintanceWhere did you make his acquaintance?Very pleased to have made your acquaintance.nodding acquaintance / bowing acquaintancecf: to make friends with51. motley: of many different types of people or things, having or composed of many different or clashing elements, varied. suggesting odd and capricious arrangementmotley coat, eg one worn by a jokerwearing a motley collection of old clothesa motley crowd / crew, ie a group of many different types of peoplea motley coat, eg one worn by a jester (formerly man whose job was to make jokes to amuse a court or noble household, the court/king's/queen's jester in former times)52. band: a group of people joined together for a common purpose (derog.)52. succumb: (fml) stop resisting (temptation, illness, attack, etc); yielda. yield. If you succumb to sth. such as persuasion or desire, you are unable to stop yourself being influenced by it.He finally succumbed to the temptation to have another drink.The city succumbed after only a short offense.Several children have measles（麻疹）, and the others are bound to succumb to it.b. to die (because of)He succumbed to the disease / illness.53. epidemic: the occurrence of a disease which affects a very large number of people living in an area and which spreads quickly to other people.an influenza epidemicFootball hooliganism is now reaching epidemic proportions.54. flirt: make love without serious intention.a. If you flirt with someone, you behave as if you are sexually attracted to them, in a not very serious way. Don't take her seriously, she is only flirting with you.She flirts with every man in the office.b. If you flirt with the idea of doing or having sth. , you consider doing or having it, without making any definite plans. We flirted with the idea of going abroad but decided against it.55. rebuff: If you rebuff sb. or sb's suggestion, you refuse to listen to them or take any notice of what they are trying to say to you, even though they are trying to be helpful.cf: refuseThe friendly dog was rebuffed by a kickHe refused / rebuffed the suggestion.He can't refuse (vi.) / *rebuff (vt.) if you ask politely.56. broke: adj. sl. complete without money, penniless. bankrupt.57. to literature's enduring gratitude: If you say that sth. happens to one's surprise, relief,. horror, etc. you mean that feelings of surprise, relief, horror, etc are caused by what happens.endure: continue to exist without any loss in quality or importance.Certain relationships endure longer than others.His fame will endure for ever.Mining Strike: sudden discovery of mineStrike: sudden discovery58. hone: n. a stone used to sharpen knives and tools.v. to sharpen, to hone one's wit59. scathing: (of speech or writing) bitterly cruel in judgement, harsh, sharp and hurtful; cutting, scornful. She could be...scathing in her criticism.His scathing rejection of violence.60. column:a. tall pillar, usu. round and made of stone, either supporting part of the roof of a building or standing alone asa monumentb. one of two or more vertical sections of printed material on a pageEach page of this dictionary has two columns of text.c. an article by a particular writer, that regularly appears in a newspaper or magazinethe fashion / motoring / financial, etc columncolumnist: journalist who regularly writes an article commenting on politics, current events, etc for a newspaper or magazine a political columnist61. ring familiarly in modern world accustomed to trend setting on the West Coast: produced a familiarimpression on people in modern world. People in the modern world (people in the settled United States, people on the East coast and along the Mississippi River) are now used to following the ways of doing things of the West Coast.be accustomed to: be in the habit of, be used to, be familiar withHe is accustomed to working hard.You will soon get accustomed to that kind of thing.He was not accustomed to LEAVE home during the winter.cf:be (get, become, grow) accustomed to = be used to + n., pron.,Buta. be accustomed to + v:He was not accustomed to leave home during the winter.He is not accustomed to work under such noisy condition.b. accustomed can be used as an attribute:He sat in his accustomed chair.her accustomed smile, his accustomed attitude of optimismc. accustom oneselfHe has to accustom himself to the cold weather.62. trend: a general direction or course of development movement attitudes fashion etc. tendency.Today's trend is toward less formal clothing.Young women are always interested in the trends of fashion.If someone sets a trend, they do something that becomes accepted or fashionable, and that is copied by a lot of other people.trendy: very fashionable and modernHe was into jazz long before it became trendy.63. It was that population that gave to California a name for getting up...get up: arrange, or perform. If you get something up, you organize something such as a public event, esp. with very little preparation. a rather old-fashioned expression.Who is going to get up the concert?The students got up a countrywide campaign in support of the nuclear disarmament.64. astound: to shock with surprise65. enterprise: a plan, business, task, something daring and difficult, undertaking66. rush through: to complete (a job) hastily.We will try to rush the contract / your order through before Saturday.67. dash: a combination of bravery and style, a mixture of stylishness, enthusiasm and courage, vigorous and spirited She conducted the orchestra with a great deal of fire and dash.Other meanings:100-meter dashThe dash is longer than the hyphen.68. recklessnessreck: (negative or interrogative only) care or mindThey recked little of the danger.reckless: Someone who is reckless shows a complete lack of care about danger or about the results of their actions. A reckless person is one who does things without thinking about what the results might be.Some of the young motorcyclists are very reckless.69. consequence: result, outcomeCONSEQUENCE suggests a direct but looser or more remote connection with a cause than RESULT, sometimes implying an adverse or calamitous effect and often suggesting a chain of intermediate causes or a complexity of effect.The consequence was that he caught a bad cold.The rise in lung cancers is a consequence of cigarette smoking.CONSEQUENCE may mean 后果：The consequence of the flood is still under estimation. Some films may have / produce bad consequences. Do you know what consequence of your decision will be?Someone or sth. that is of consequence is important or valuable.cf:RESULT implies a direct relationship with an antecedent action or condition, usu. suggests an effect that terminates the operation of a cause, and applies to concrete objects.His limp was the result of an automobile accident.The results of the research are to be published soon.The fire was the result of carelessness.The result of the match was 1 - 0.OUTCOME, though often interchangeable with result, may put less stress on the notion of finality than result. These were a direct outcome of the strike.The outcome of the war was doubtful.This book was the outcome of a tremendous amount of scientific work.What was the outcome of your interview?Five minutes from the end, the outcome of the match was still in doubt.When meaning something that happens or exists because of sth. else that has happened, result is equal to consequence.The result / consequence was …Twice he followed his own advice, with disastrous results / consequences.When meaning the final situation that exists after a public event, result is equal to outcome. Compare:The consequence of the war is doubtful.（后果）The outcome of the war is doubtful. （结局）Consequence: (fml) importanceHe may be a man of consequence in his own country, but he‟s nobody here.70. all over: in every respect, thoroughly, what one would expect of the person specifiedShe is her mother all over.That sounds like my sister all over.It was these pioneers that brought California a reputation. California was made famous for organizing / starting / establishing surprising businesses / undertakings and developing / completing them with magnificent / great bravery and courage, without caring cost or outcome / effect / result. And California keeps this fame until now. When she makes plans for a new surprise, the dull, solemn, dignified people in other parts of the States smile as usual and say: "Well, That's typical of California, That's just like California."71. notations: a brief note jotted down, as to remind one of somethingThe Duchess found the notation left by the Duke.In this text notation and entry, are used synonymously.72. genius: (pl. geniuses) exceptionally great mental or creative abilitya man of geniusEinstein was a mathematical genius.He is hard-working and able, but no genius.73. celebrated: well-known, famous, stresses reception of public notice or attention and frequent mentiona celebrated actress, writer, pianist, etcBurgundy is celebrated for its fine wines.celebrate:a. mark (a happy or important day, event, etc) with festivities and rejoicingcelebrate Christmas, sb's birthday, a wedding anniversary, a victory, success, etcb. enjoy oneself in some way on such an occasionIt's my birthday, let's celebrate! eg with alcoholic drink.c. (fml) to praise (sb/sth); honourOdysseus's heroic exploits are celebrated in `The Odyssey'.celebrity: famous personcelebrities of stage and screen74. slope: surface that is at an angle of less than 90 to the earth's surface or a flat surface, an area of rising or falling groundmountain slopesthe slope of a roofa slight / steep slopeski slopesThe field slopes (away) to the east.Does your handwriting slope forwards or backwards?75. distinct: easily heard, seen, felt or understood; definiteThe footprints are quite distinct; they must be fresh.~ (from sth) different in kind; separateAlthough they look similar, these plants are actually quite distinct.Mozart's style is quite distinct from Haydn's.76. sort: group or class of people or things (which are alike in some way); typeHe's the sort of person I really dislike.What sort of paint are you using?We can't approve of this sort of thing / these sorts of things/things of this sort.of a sort / of sorts: (infml. derog.) of a poor or inferior typeThey served coffee of a sort.It was a meal of sorts, but nobody enjoyed it.a sort of sth: (infml) vague, unexplained or unusual type of sthI had a sort of feeling he wouldn't come.sort of (infml) to some extent; in some way or otherI sort of thought this might happen.You sort of twist the ends together.77. -logue: (also) -log.a. Forming no uns with the senses “talk, kind of discourse” as dialogue, monologue, etc., and (occas.) compilation? as catalogue etc.b. = -LOGIST, as ideologue (ideologist) 思想家, Sinologue Sinologist,汉学家etc.78. sore: (of a part of the body) hurting when touched or used; tender and painful; aching, hurting, irritated, serious, severea sore knee, throat, etcMy leg is still very sore.She feels sore about not being invited to the party.Your financial help is sorely needed.She was sorely missed at the reunion.79. unimpressed: If you are unimpressed by sb. or sth, you do not think they are very good, or worth your attention.impress: ~ sb (with sth) have a favourable effect on sb; make sb feel admiration and respectThe sights of the city never fail to impress fore ign tourists. The girl impressed her fiancé‟s family with her liveliness and sense of humour.We were most impressed with / by your efficiency.80. debunk: (infml) to point out the truth about (over-praised people, things, ideas, etc). You debunk an idea or belief, you show that it is false or not important.debunk fashionable opinionsbunk: sl. nonsenseDon't talk bunk!de: to remove fromdebunk: to remove the nonsensebunk: narrow bed built into a wall like a shelf, eg on a ship; also bunk bed, one of a pair of single beds, fixed one above the other, esp for children81. revered: (fml) to give great respect and admiration toHe was a revered figure with a great national reputation.They revered him.。