When Mrs. Ahlman heard Walters’ story she persuaded five people to buy advertising from her.

There are three people in the story.

A．真

B．False

Keep Up with the Joneses

In the United States, when one becomes rich, he wants people to know it. And even if he does not become very rich, he wants people to think that he is. That is what keeping up with the Joneses is about. It is the story of someone who tries to look as rich as his neighbors.

The expression was first used in 1913 by a young American called Arthur Momand. He told this story about himself: He began earning $125 a week at the age of 23. That was a lot of money in those days. He got married and moved with his wife to a very wealthy neighborhood outside New York City. When he saw that rich people rode horses, Momand went horseback riding every day. When he saw that rich people had servants, Momand and his wife also hired a servant and gave big parties for their new neighbors.

It was like a race, but one could never finish this race because one was always trying to keep up. The race ended for Momand and his wife when they could no longer pay for their new way of life. They moved back to an apartment in New York City.

Momand looked around him and noticed that many people do things just to keep up with rich life-style. of their neighbors. He saw the funny side of it and started to write a series of short stories. He called it "Keeping up with the Joneses", because "Jones" is a very common name in the United States. "Keeping up with the Joneses" came to mean keeping up with rich life-style. of the people around you. Momand's series appeared in different newspapers across the county for over 28 years.

People never seem to get tired of keeping up with the Joneses. And there are "Joneses" in every city of the world. But one must get tired of trying to keep up with the Joneses because no matter what one does, Mr. Jones always seems to be ahead.

Some people want to keep up with the Joneses because they ______.

A．want to be as rich as their neighbors

B．want others to know or to think that they are rich

C．don't want others to know they are rich

D．want to be happy

As my train wasn't due to leave for another hour, I had plenty of time to spare. After buying some newspapers to read on the journey, I made my way to the luggage office to collect the heavy suitcase I had left there three days before. There were only a few people waiting, and I took out my wallet to find the receipt for my case. The receipt didn't seem to be where I had left it. I emptied the contents of the wallet, and railway-tickets, money, scraps of paper, and photographs fell out of it; but no matter how hard I searched, the receipt was nowhere to be found.

When my turn came, I explained the situation sorrowfully to the assistant. The man looked at me suspiciously as if to say that he had heard this type of story many times and asked me to describe the case. I told him that it was an old, brown-looking object, no different from the many cases I could see on the shelves. The assistant then gave me a form. and told me to make a list of the chief contents of the case. If they were correct, he said, I could take the case away. I tried to remember all the articles I had hurriedly packed and wrote them down as they came to me.

After I had done this, I went to look among the shelves. There were hundreds of cases there and for one dreadful moment, it occurred to me that if someone had picked the receipt up, he could have easily claimed the case already. This hadn't happened fortunately, for after a time I found the case lying on its side high up in a comer. After examining the articles inside, the assistant was soon satisfied that it was mine and told me I could take the case away. Again I took out my wallet: this time to pay. I pulled out ten-shilling note and the "lost" receipt slipped out with it. I couldn't help blushing and looked up at the assistant. He was nodding his head knowingly, as if to say that he had often seen this happen before too!

The writer had plenty of time to spare as his train ______. ( )

A．was leaving later than scheduled

B．was not leaving for another hour

C．was not scheduled to leave

D．was delayed for some reason

When we heard the story, we burst into ______ (laugh) .