There are faults which age releases us from, and there are virtues which turn to vices with the lapse of years. The worst of these is thrift, which in early and middle life is wisdom and duty to practice for a provision against destitution. As time goes on this virtue is apt to turn into the ugliest, cruelest, shabbiest of the vices. Then the victim of it finds himself storing past all probable need of saying for himself or those next him, m the deprivation of the remoter kin of the race; In the earlier time when gain was symbolized by gold or silver, the miser had a sensual joy in the touch of his riches, in hearing the coins clink in their fall through his fingers, and in gloating upon their increase sensible m the hand and eye. Then the miser had his place among the great figures of misdoing; he was of a dramatic effect, like a murderer or a robber; and something of this bad distinction clung to him even when his coins had changed to paper currency, the clean, white notes of the only English bank, or the greenbacks of our innumerable banks of issue; but when the sense of riches had been transmuted to the balance in his favor at his banker’s, or the bonds in his drawer at the safety-deposit vault, all splendor had gone out of his vice. His bad eminence was gone, but he clung to the lust of gain which had ranked him with the picturesque wrong-doers, and which only ruin from without could save him from, unless he gave his remnant of strength to saving himself from it. Most aging men are sensible of all this, but few have the frankness of that aging man who once said that he who died rich died disgraced, and died the other day in the comparative poverty of fifty millions. According to the passage, one is thought vicious when he ______.
A. gathers up money at the sacrifice of all his family members
B. practices endless thrifty to guard his people from poverty
C. stores continuously for his own and his relatives’ needs
D. saves too much but wouldn’t spend it for the necessary
When Lewis Ziska wanted to see how a warmer wood with more carbon dioxide in the air would affect certain plants, he didn’t set up his experiment in a greenhouse or boot up a computer model. He headed for Baltimore. Cities are typically 7 degrees warmer than the countryside, as well as big sources of CO2. So Ziska, a plant physiologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, compa,ed ragweed growing in vacant lots in Baltimore with ragweed in rural fields—and discovered the dark side of sunny claims that global warming will produce a "greening of planet Earth". Urban ragweed grows three to five times bigger than rural ragweed, starts spewing allergenic pollen weeks earlier each spring and produces 10 times more pollen. In as few as 20 years the whole world will have CO2 levels at least as high as some cities do now. As climate changes due to the greenhouse effect, hayfever sufferers would do well to lay in copious supplies of Kleenex. From mosquitoes that carry tropical diseases such as malaria, to plants that produce allergenic pollen, scientists are finding that a warmer, CO2-rich world will be very, very. good for plants, insects and microbes that make us sick. Although the most obvious threat to human health is more frequent and more intense heat weaves, such as the one that killed thousands of people in Europe in 2003, that is only the beginning. In the case of plants, it’s not just that they grow faster and shed pollen earlier as the woad warms. The carbon-enriched air also alters their physiology. In a six-year study at a pine forest managed by Duke University, where pipes and fans adjust the CO2 concentration and the air, scientists found that elevated CO2 increases the growth rate of poison ivy. More surprising, by increasing the air’s ration of carbon to nitrogen, elevated CO2 also increases the toxicity of urushiol, the rash-causing oil. "Poison ivy will become not just more abundant in the future," says Ziska. "It will also be more toxic. " Plants interpret warmth and abundant CO2as: what a great climate for reproduction. Monitoring stations in Europe are recording higher pollen counts for allergenic grasses and trees, led by birch and hazel, notes a 2005 study by the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School. Those counts are rising earlier each year: the warming already underway is shifting the pollen season by almost one day per year. By 2017, you’ll be reaching for tissues nine days sooner than you do now. More good news: in a greenhouse world po]len will be not only more abundant but more allergenic, he and Ziska find. Since cities already have the high CO2 levels that the rest of the world can soon expect, "’there is no question these climate-related changes have already begun," says Arlington, Texas, Mayo," Dr. Robert Cluck. "Every summner we’re seeing West Nile virus earlier and earlier, and the higher levels of ozone that come with higher temperatures are increasing the rates of asthma and causing heart and lung damage comparable to living with a cigarette smoker. " In a greenhouse world, tropical diseases will expand their range and their prevalence. For instance, alternating floods and droughts—the pattern that comes with climate change—provide perfect conditions for mosquitoes that carry malaria, West Nile and dengue fever. Warming makes mosquitoes bit more. They’ll face fewer predators, too. The frequent droughts expected in a greenhouse world are murder on damselflies and dragonflies. As dengue fever, yellow fever and malaria extend their range to higher elevations and higher latitudes, those diseases could appear in the developed woad, too. The southern tier of western and eastern Europe, as well as the southern United States, are most at risk, says Harvard’s Epstein. Dengue fever has already popped up on the Mexican side of the U.S. border, a worrisome expansion of its current range. Say this for the climate contrarians who insist that a warmer world will he a better, more productive world: if they’re referring to allergens and pathogens, they’re dead right. Which of the following CANNOT be inferred from the passage
A. In a more productive world, hayfever sufferer will have an even more difficult time.
B. Cigarette smoker will stiffer more from heart and lung disease with the world becoming warner.
C. Tropical disease might spread to Europe and U.S.
D. CO2 level in the air has effect on the climate.