______ is a metal stand that keeps books from falling over on the shelf

John Harold Drake is a man of deep compassion, and has written a book that argues for the cause of children in need of love. "Children, Little Children" is an honest book, showing great concern and dissatisfaction with the care for children.

The difficult trick of living inside another person' s mind and being able to put your reader inside that same mind, is a capability held only by writers of exceptional skill and talent. Mr. Drake has approached the problem by making a 10- year-old boy his central character. The boy does not for a moment come across as a real child, irresponsible parents abandoned him, his grandfather disliked him, he took everything literally, and begged everyone for love. Bret is being used to make a point. His ideas are too poetic, his response too direct, and the contrasts of good and evil too simplistic for real life. He is being manipulated by someone behind the scenery trying to tell us something.

For fifteen years the authors has been dealing with people with psychological trouble at the V.I.T. Neuropsychiatric Institute. He has actively been involved in this field at other institutions for a quarter of a century. This book is a form. of acting out, through the character, Bret, the pain of a rejected child. If one understands the book in those terms, one may be willing to believe the imaginary story. If viewed in this light, the exaggerated movements and reactions of the characters became less unbelievable and therefore more meaningful. The excessively poetic passages of description and emotion, seen as stage flats made more colorful than nature in order to look re~ from afar, are acceptable in a drama whereas they are irritating in a novel~ The one-sided characterizations insane father, immature mother, mean old grandmother, selfish aunt, cruel neighbors, and totally misunderstood Bret are figures moving across a lit stage to dramatize a message. The true to life ending, without resolution or growth or development, might work on a stage, however, it is contrary to everything a novel should do.

Calling the book a novel is the publisher' s m/stake; the work is more nearly a drama. Perhaps it is one of Mr. Drake' s psychodramas in print and should so be judged.

The author of the passage feels that ______ .

A．Mr. Drake' s character, Bret, is too unrealistic

B．the central character should not be manipulated

C．the message conveyed by the characterization is important

D．Mr. Drake is not good at writing novels

He is a man who believes in strict()and he seldom deviates from his principles.

A、wisdom

B、brotherhood

C、worship

D、discipline

Theirs is a modern love drama. They met on the Internet and fell deeply in love with each other. They shared secrets, memories, feelings—even though they had never laid eyes on each other. And now, the very technology that had brought them together was tearing them apart. "Kevin" is a pleasing fellow—quick with a smile, trustworthy. A security guard for a hospital in northern Idaho, he keeps emergency room patients company and walks nurses to their cars at night. He remembers the first day he went to the Internet. It was August 1995, and the computer was in the hospital library. It wasn't long before he was spending most of his free time in front of the screen. It was purely by accident, Kevin says, that he discovered online pornography (色情内容). First he looked out of curiosity. "Each time I thought I had seen it all," he says, "some new sex practice popped up. Eventually, the online sex world came to take the place of any real-world contact with women. "I can be a little bit shy," he says, "and this was an alternative that kept me from feeling lonely." Then came a message from "Marie," a young mother of three looking for company on an Internet singles site. Kevin fired off an immediate response, and the two began a dialogue that would last two months before he made the 50-mile drive to meet her. A few months later, they were married. What Marie loved about Kevin was his kindness, his interest in her kids. What she didn't know was that every time she was reading one of Kevin's love emails, he was at the other end of the connection looking secretly at pornography sites. "I knew he was always online," Marie says. "But I thought that it was just because he was interested in meeting new people." Whenever Kevin was home, he was online, with the door closed. A few times, he called her in to look at an especially "wild" site. She was a little bothered by it but didn't worry until he turned away from her in bed. "Have you been looking again?" she would cry. By January, Kevin knew he had a serious problem. He promised that he would never use the computer at home. But there was still the machine at the hospital. Every night, he would use his master key to get into the closed library and favor his curiosity as never before. Sometimes, for his entire eight-hour work time, he would sit in front of the screen. When his bosses asked him to look in on the library, where some "unusual" computer activity had been noticed, he stopped using the computer for a month, and then headed straight back to the same place. This time, though, he walked into a trick. Earlier this summer, the hospital started using cameras and computer programs that recorded Kevin's every mouse(鼠标) click. On June 27, his bosses confronted him and took him to the police station nearby. He was kept in the station for three days. Now Kevin lives under the continual watch of his wife and his boss. 2. The phrase "popped up" in the middle of Paragraph 3 means ________.

A、appeared suddenly

B、left quickly

C、returned quickly

D、moved quickly

Historians may well look back on the 1980s in the United States as a time of rising affluence side by side with rising poverty. The growth in affluence is attributable to an increase in professional and technical jobs, along with more two career couples whose combined incomes provide a" comfortable living". Yet simultaneously, the nation's poverty rate rose between 1973 and 1983 from 11.1 percent of the population to 15.2, or by well over a third. Although the poverty rate declined somewhat after 1983, it was still held at 13.5 percent in 1987, comprising a population of 32.5 million Americans.

The definition of poverty is a matter of debate. In 1795, a group of English magistrates decided that a minimum in come should be "the cost of a gallon loaf of bread, multiplied by three, plus an allowance for each dependent". Today the Census Bureau defines the threshold of poverty in the United States as the minimum amount of money that families need to purchase a nutritionally adequate diet, assuming they use one third of their income for food. Using this definition, roughly half the American population was poor in the aftermath of the Great Depression of the 1930s. By 1950, the proportion of the poor had fallen to 30 percent and by 1964, to 20 percent. With the adoption of the Johnson administration's antipoverty programs, the poverty rate dropped to 12 percent in 1969. But since then, it has stopped falling. Liberals contend that the poverty line is too low because it fails to take into account changes in the standard of living.

Conservatives say that it is too high because the poor receive other forms of public assistance, including food stamps, public housing subsidies, and health care.

In which of the following years did the poor people constitute the largest proportion of the American population?

A．1973.

B．1987.

C．1969.

D．1983.

Historians may well look back on the 1980s in the United States as a time of rising affluence side by side with rising poverty. The growth in affluence is attributable to an increase in professional and technical jobs, along with more two career couples whose combined incomes provide a "comfortable living". Yet simultaneously, the nation's poverty rate rose between 1973 and 1983 from 11.1 percent of the population to 15.2, or by well over a third. Although the poverty rate declined somewhat after 1983, it was still held at 13.5 percent in 1987, comprising a population of 32.5 million Americans.

The definition of poverty is a matter of debate. In 1795, a group of English magistrates decided that a minimum in-come should be "the cost of a gallon loaf of bread, multiplied by three, plus an allowance for each dependent". Today the Census Bureau defines the threshold of poverty in the United States as the minimum amount of money that families need to purchase a nutritionally adequate diet, assuming they use one third of their income for food. Using this definition, roughly half the American population was poor in the aftermath of the Great Depression of the 1930s. By 1950, the proportion of the poor had fallen to 30 percent and by 1964, to 20 percent. With the adoption of the Johnson administration's antipoverty pro-grams, the poverty rate dropped to 12 percent in 1969. But since then, it has stopped falling. Liberals contend that the poverty line is too low because it fails to take into account changes in the standard of living. Conservatives say that it is too high because the poor receive other forms of public assistance, including food stamps, public housing subsidies, and health care.

In which of the following years did the poor people constitute the largest proportion of the American population?

A．1973.

B．1987.

C．1969.

D．1983.

That s my Duchess painted on the wall, looking as if she were alive. I call That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf s hands Worked busily a day, and there she stands. Will t please you sit and look at her? [......] - E en then would be some stooping; and I choose Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt, When er I passed her; but who passed without Much the same smile ? This grew; I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands As if alive. Willt please you rise? Well meet The Company below., then. I repeat. The count your master s known munificence Is ample warrant that no just pretense Of mine for dowry will be disallowed; Though his fair daughter s self, as I avowed At starting, is my object. Nay, we 11 go Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though, Taming a sea horse, though a rarity, Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me! Questions:

Identify the author of the work from which the passage is selected.