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That summer an army of crickets started a war with my father. They picked a fight the minute they invaded our cellar. Dad didn’t care for bugs much more than Mamma, but he could tolerate a few spiders and assorted creepy crawlers living in the basement. Every farm house had them. A part of rustic living, and something you needed to put up with if you wanted the simple life. He told Mamma: Now that were living out here, you can’t be jerking your head and swallowing your gum over what’s plain natural, Ellen. But she was a city girl through and through and had no ears when it came to defending vermin. She said a cricket was just a noisy cockroach, just a dumb horny bug that wouldn’t shut up. She said in the city there were blocks of buildings overrun with cockroaches with no way for people to get rid of them. No sir, no way could she sleep with all that chirping going on; then to prove her point she wouldn’t go to bed. She drank coffee and smoked my father’s cigarettes and she paced between the couch and the TV. Next morning she threatened to pack up and leave, so Dad drove to the hardware store and hurried back. He squirted poison from a jug with a spray nozzle. He sprayed the basement and all around the foundation of the house. When he was finished he told us that was the end of it. But what he should have said was: This is the beginning, the beginning of our war, the beginning of our destruction. I often think back to that summer and try to imagine him delivering a speech with words like that, because for the next fourteen days mamma kept finding dead crickets in the clean laundry. Shed shake out a towel or a sheet and a dead black cricket would roll across the linoleum. Sometimes the cat would corner one, and swat it around like he was playing hockey, then carry it away in his mouth. Dad said swallowing a few dead crickets wouldn’t hurt as long as the cat didn’t eat too many. Each time Mamma complained he told her it was only natural that we’d be finding a couple of dead ones for a while. Soon live crickets started showing up in the kitchen and bathroom. Mamma freaked because she thought they were the dead crickets come back to haunt, but Dad said these was definitely a new batch, probably coming up on the pipes. He fetched his jug of poison and sprayed beneath the sink and behind the toilet and all along the baseboard until the whole house smelled of poison, and then he sprayed the cellar again, and then he went outside and sprayed all around the foundation leaving a foot-wide moat of poison. For a couple of weeks we went back to finding dead crickets in the laundry. Dad told us to keep a sharp look out, He suggested that we’d all be better off to hide as many as we could from mamma. I fed a few dozen to the cat who I didn’t like because he scratched and bit for no reason. I hoped the poison might kill him so we could get a puppy. A couple of weeks later, when both live and dead crickets kept turning up, he emptied the cellar of junk. Then he burned a lot of bundled newspapers and magazines which he said the crickets had turned ’into nests. He stood over that fire with a rake in one hand and a garden hose in the other. He wouldn’t leave it even when Mamma sent me out to fetch him for supper. He wouldn’t leave the fire, and she wouldn’t put supper on the table. Both my brothers were crying. Finally she went out and got him herself. And while we ate, the wind lifted some embers onto the wood pile. The only gasoline was in the lawn mowers fuel tank but that was enough to create an explosion big enough to reach the house. Once the roof caught, there wasn’t much anyone could do. Dad sprayed poison in all of the following places EXCEPT

A. [A] kitchen.
B. basement.
C. bathroom.
D. sitting-room.

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The truth is, when we say of a gentleman that he lives elegantly on nothing a year, we use the word "nothing" to signify something unknown; meaning simply, that we don’t know how the gentleman in question defrays the expenses of his establishment. Now, our friend the colonel had a great aptitude for all games of chance; and exercising himself, as he continually did. with the cards, the dice-box, or the cue, it is natural to suppose that he attained a much greater skill in the use of these articles than men can possess who only occasionally handle them. To use a cue at billiards well is like using a pencil, or a German flute, or a small-sword-you can not master any one of these implements at first, and it is only by repeated study and perseverance, joined to a natural taste, that a man can excel in the handling of either. Now, Crawley, from being only a brilliant amatcaur had grown to a consummate master of billiards. Like a great general, his genius used to rise with the danger, and when the luck had been unfavourable to him for a whole game, and the bets were consequently against him, he would, with consummate skill and boldness, make some prodigious hits which would restore the battle, and come a victor at the end, to the astonishment of everybody-of everybody, that is, who was a stranger to his play. Those who were accustomed to see it were cautious how they staked their money against a man of such sadder, resources, and brilliant and overpowering skill. It is suggested in the passage that [A] Colonel Crawley did not play games of chances often. [B] although Colonel Crawley always won the games, he could not do well at the beginning. [C] Mrs. Crawley persuaded her husband to return the money to some pitiful young fellows. [D] fewer and fewer officers would play with Colonel Crawley.

At games of cards he was equally skillful; for though he would constantly lose money at the commencement of an evening, playing so carelessly and making such blunders, that newcomers were often inclined to think meanly of his talent; yet when roused to action, and awakened to caution by repeated small losses, it was remarked that Crawley’s play became quite different, and that he was pretty sure of beating his enemy thoroughly before the night was over. Indeed, very few men could say that they ever had the better of him.
B. His successes were so repeated that no wonder the envious and the vanquished spoken sometimes with bitterness regarding them. And as the French say of the Duke of Wellington. who never suffered a defeat, that only an astonishing series of lucky accidents enabled him to be an invariable winner; yet even they allow that he cheated at Waterloo, and was enabled to win the last great trick: so it was hinted at headquarters in England. that some foul play must have taken place in order to account for the continuous success of Colonel Crawley.
C. Though Frascati and the Salon were open at that time in Paris. the mania for play was so widely spread, that the public gambling-rooms did not suffice for the general ardour, and gambling went on in private houses as much as if there had been no public means for gratifying the passion. At Crawley’s charming little reunions of an evening this fatal amusement commonly was practiced-much to good natured little Mrs. Crawley’s annoyance. She spoke about her husband’s passion for dice with the deepest grief; she bewailed it to everybody who came to her house. She besought the young fellows never, never to touch a box; and when young Green, of the Rifles, lost a very considerable sum of money, Rebecca passed a whole night in tears, as the servant told the unfortunate young man, and actually went on her knees to her husband to beseech him to remit the debt, and burn the acknowledgment. How could he He had lost just as much as himself to Blackstone of the Hussars, and Count Punter of the Hanoverian Cavalry. Green might have any decent time; but pay -of course he must pay-to talk of burning IOU’s was child’s play.
D. Other officers, chiefly young-for the young fellows gathered round Mrs. Crawley-came from her parties with tong faces, having dropped more or less money at her fatal card tables. Her house began to have an unfortunate reputation. The old hands warned the less experienced of their danger. Colonel O’Dowd, of the regiment, one of those occupying in Paris, warned Lieutenant Spooney of that corps. A loud and violent fracas took place between the infantry-colonel and his lady, who were dining a the Caré de Paris. and Colonel and Mrs. Crawley, who were also taking their meal there. The ladies engaged on both sides. Mrs. O’Dowd snapped her fingers in Mr. Crawley’s face, and called her husband "no better than a blackleg", Colonel Crawley challenged Colonel O’Dowd, C. B. The commander-in-chief hearing of the dispute sent for Colonel Crawley, who was getting ready the same pistols, "which he shot Captain Marker, " and had such a conversation with him that no duel took place. If Rebecca had not gone on her knees to General Tufto, Crawley would have been sent back to England; and he did not play, except with civilians, for some weeks after.

The truth is, when we say of a gentleman that he lives elegantly on nothing a year, we use the word "nothing" to signify something unknown; meaning simply, that we don’t know how the gentleman in question defrays the expenses of his establishment. Now, our friend the colonel had a great aptitude for all games of chance; and exercising himself, as he continually did. with the cards, the dice-box, or the cue, it is natural to suppose that he attained a much greater skill in the use of these articles than men can possess who only occasionally handle them. To use a cue at billiards well is like using a pencil, or a German flute, or a small-sword-you can not master any one of these implements at first, and it is only by repeated study and perseverance, joined to a natural taste, that a man can excel in the handling of either. Now, Crawley, from being only a brilliant amatcaur had grown to a consummate master of billiards. Like a great general, his genius used to rise with the danger, and when the luck had been unfavourable to him for a whole game, and the bets were consequently against him, he would, with consummate skill and boldness, make some prodigious hits which would restore the battle, and come a victor at the end, to the astonishment of everybody-of everybody, that is, who was a stranger to his play. Those who were accustomed to see it were cautious how they staked their money against a man of such sadder, resources, and brilliant and overpowering skill. Colonel Crawley was compared to the Duke of Wellington mainly because [A] they were both lucky. [B] they were both English. [C] they were both extraordinary in winning wars. [D] they might both win with hidden tricks.

At games of cards he was equally skillful; for though he would constantly lose money at the commencement of an evening, playing so carelessly and making such blunders, that newcomers were often inclined to think meanly of his talent; yet when roused to action, and awakened to caution by repeated small losses, it was remarked that Crawley’s play became quite different, and that he was pretty sure of beating his enemy thoroughly before the night was over. Indeed, very few men could say that they ever had the better of him.
B. His successes were so repeated that no wonder the envious and the vanquished spoken sometimes with bitterness regarding them. And as the French say of the Duke of Wellington. who never suffered a defeat, that only an astonishing series of lucky accidents enabled him to be an invariable winner; yet even they allow that he cheated at Waterloo, and was enabled to win the last great trick: so it was hinted at headquarters in England. that some foul play must have taken place in order to account for the continuous success of Colonel Crawley.
C. Though Frascati and the Salon were open at that time in Paris. the mania for play was so widely spread, that the public gambling-rooms did not suffice for the general ardour, and gambling went on in private houses as much as if there had been no public means for gratifying the passion. At Crawley’s charming little reunions of an evening this fatal amusement commonly was practiced-much to good natured little Mrs. Crawley’s annoyance. She spoke about her husband’s passion for dice with the deepest grief; she bewailed it to everybody who came to her house. She besought the young fellows never, never to touch a box; and when young Green, of the Rifles, lost a very considerable sum of money, Rebecca passed a whole night in tears, as the servant told the unfortunate young man, and actually went on her knees to her husband to beseech him to remit the debt, and burn the acknowledgment. How could he He had lost just as much as himself to Blackstone of the Hussars, and Count Punter of the Hanoverian Cavalry. Green might have any decent time; but pay -of course he must pay-to talk of burning IOU’s was child’s play.
D. Other officers, chiefly young-for the young fellows gathered round Mrs. Crawley-came from her parties with tong faces, having dropped more or less money at her fatal card tables. Her house began to have an unfortunate reputation. The old hands warned the less experienced of their danger. Colonel O’Dowd, of the regiment, one of those occupying in Paris, warned Lieutenant Spooney of that corps. A loud and violent fracas took place between the infantry-colonel and his lady, who were dining a the Caré de Paris. and Colonel and Mrs. Crawley, who were also taking their meal there. The ladies engaged on both sides. Mrs. O’Dowd snapped her fingers in Mr. Crawley’s face, and called her husband "no better than a blackleg", Colonel Crawley challenged Colonel O’Dowd, C. B. The commander-in-chief hearing of the dispute sent for Colonel Crawley, who was getting ready the same pistols, "which he shot Captain Marker, " and had such a conversation with him that no duel took place. If Rebecca had not gone on her knees to General Tufto, Crawley would have been sent back to England; and he did not play, except with civilians, for some weeks after.

Which of the following places didn’t Mr. Chen stay

A greater part of Burma.
B. Xiannin, Beijing and Shanghai.
C. South Korea and many other countries of Europe.
D. Middle East and Southeast Africa.

I cry easily. I once burst into tears when the curtain came down on the Kirov Ballet’s "Swan Lake". I still choke up every time I see a film of Roger Bannister breaking the "impossible" four-minute mark for the mile. I figure I am moved by witnessing men and women at their best. But they need not be great men and women, doing great things. Take the night, some years ago, when my wife and I were going to dinner at a friend’s house in New York city. It was sleeting. As we hurried toward the house, with its welcoming light, I noticed a car pulling out from the curb. Just ahead, another car was waiting to back into the parking space -- a rare commodity in crowded Manhattan. But before he could do so another car came up from behind, and sneaked into the spot. "That’s dirty pool." I thought. While my wife went ahead into our friend’s house. I stepped into the street to give the guilty driver a piece of my mind. A man in work clothes rolled down the window. "Hey," I said, "this parking space belongs to that guy," I gestured toward the man ahead, who was looking back angrily. I thought I was being a good Samaritan, I guess -- and I remember that the moment I was feeling pretty manly in my new trench coat. "Mind your own business!" the driver told me. "No," I said. "You don’t understand. That fellow was waiting to back into this space." Things quickly heated up, until finally he leaped out of the car. My God, he was colossal. He grabbed me and bent me back over the hood of his car as if I was a rag doll. The sleet stung my face. I glanced at the other driver, looking for help, but he gunned his engine and hightailed it out of there. The huge man shook his rock of a fist of me, brushing my lip and cutting the inside of my mouth against my teeth. I tasted blood. I was terrified. He snarled and threatened, and then told me to beat it. On what occasion is the author likely to be moved A. A young person cheated of the best firings in life. B. A genius athlete breaks a world record. C. A little girl suffers from an incurable disease. D. When the curtain comes down on a touching play.

Almost in a panic, I scrambled to my friend’s front door. As a former Marine, as a man, I felt utterly humiliated. Seeing that I was shaken, my wife and friends asked me what had happened. All I could bring myself to say was that I had had an argument about a parking space. They had the sensitivity to let it go at that.
B. I sat stunned. Perhaps half an hour later, the doorbell rang. My blood ran cold. For some reason I was sure that the bruiser had returned for me. My hostess got up to answer it, but I stopped her. I felt morally bound to answer it myself.
C. I walked down the hallway with dread. Yet I knew I had to face up to my fear. I opened the door. There he stood, towering. Behind him, the sleet came down harder than ever.
D. "I came back to apologize," he said in a low voice. "When I got home, I said to myself," what right I have to do that" I’m ashamed of myself. All I can tell you is that the Brooklyn Navy Yard is closing. I’ve worked there for years. And today I got laid off. I’m not myself. I hope you’ll accept my apology."
E. I often remember that big man. I think of the effort and courage it took for him to come back to apologize. He was man at last.And I remember that after I closed the door, my eyes blurred, as I stood in the hallway for a few moments alone.

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