TEXT E "My aunt will come down very soon, Mr. Nuttel," said a very calm young lady of fifteen years of age, "meanwhile you must try to bear my company." Framton Nuttel tried to say something which would please the niece now present, without annoying the aunt that was about to come. He was supposed to be going through a cure for his nerves; but he doubted whether these polite visits to a number of total strangers would help much. "I know how it will be," his sister had said when he was preparing to go away into the country; "you will lose yourself down there and not speak to a living soul, and your nerves will be worse than ever through loneliness. I shall just give you letters of introduction to all the people I know there. Some of them, as far as I can remember, are quite nice." Framton wondered whether Mrs. Sappleton, the lady to whom he was bringing one of the letters of introduction, was one of the nice ones. "Do you know many of the people around here" asked the niece, when she thought that they had sat long enough in silence. "Hardly one," said Framton. "My sister was staying here, you know, about four years ago, and she gave me letters of introduction to some of the people here." He made the last statement in a sad voice. "Then you know almost nothing about my aunt7" continued the calm young lady. "Only her name and address," Framton admitted. He was wondering whether Mrs. Sappleton was married; perhaps she had been married and her husband was dead. But there was something of a man in the room. "Her great sorrow came just three years ago," said the child. "That would be after your sister’s time." "Her sorrow" asked Framton. Somehow, in this restful country place, sorrows seemed far away. "You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an October afternoon," said the niece, pointing to a long window that opened like a door on to the grass outside. "It is quite warm for the time of the year," said Framton, "but has that window got anything to do with your aunt’s sorrow" "Out through that window, exactly three years ago, her husband and her two young brothers went off for their day’s shooting. They never came back. In crossing the country to the shooting-ground, they went all there swallowed in a bog. It had been that terrible wet summer, you know, and places that were safe in other years became suddenly dangerous. Their bodies were never found. That was the worst part of it." Here the child’s voice lost its calm sound and became almost human. Before his visit to Mrs. Sappleton, Framton showed his ______ the curing effect of the visit.
A. disbelief in
B. doubt about
C. suspicion of
D. optimism about
The first intimation, apparently, was when three-year-old Yves told his mother that her shoes did not go with her dress. They were at home in Oran, a dull commercial town in French-ruled Algeria, where Yves’s father sold insurance and ran a chain of cinemas, and Mrs. Mathieu-Saint-Laurent cut an elegant figure in colonial society. Oran had once enjoyed some small renown as the westernmost outpost of the Ottoman empire, and was to gain more later as the setting for Albert Camus’s "The Plague". But after 1936 it had a genius in the making. So, at any rate, the tribute-payers are saying. "Pure genius", "the world’s greatest fashion designer", "the most important designer of the. 20th century": such superlatives have been lavished on Yves Saint Laurent for years, and perhaps they are not meant to be taken at face value. The fashion business is, after all, a part of the entertainment industry, where sycophancy, exaggeration and gushing insincerity are not unknown. Mr. Saint Laurent fitted perfectly into it. He was, for a start, quite literally a showman, a shy and stage-frightened one, but what shows he could put on! Dazzling girls smarted down the catwalk, wearing startling creations of gauze, or velvet, or feathers, or not much at all. He was an artist, a delicate, attenuated figure who drew his inspiration from the pages of Marcel Proust, the paintings of Braque, Matisse, Picasso and Van Gogh, and the counsels of his assistant, Loulou de la Falaise. And he was troubled: by drink, by drugs and by physical frailty. He teetered perpetually on the brink of emotional collapse and sometimes fell over it. In 1961, when Mt. Saint Laurent set up shop in Paris under his own name, most couturiers were not quite like this. But the times were propitious for something new. He had by then done a stint at the House of Dior, whose reputation he had restored with some dramatic designs and, in 1958, after the famous founder had died, an iconoclastic collection of his own. The summous to do military service, a ghastly mental dégringolade and dismissal from Dior then intervened, and might have cut short a great career had he not gone into partnership with Mr. Berg6. As it was, a series of innovations followed, with Mr. Saint Lament responsible for the designs, Mr. Berg6 for the business, including the scents, scarves, unguents and over 100 other products marketed with a YSL label. The dress designs now started flying off Mr. Saint Laurent’s drawing board, though increasingly often with the aid of helpers. Many were short-lived, this being fashion and fashion being, by definition, ephemeral. But two departures were to last. One was that haute couture, hitherto available only to the very rich or vicariously through magazines and newspapers, should be sold worldwide in ready-to-wear shops at a fraction of the posh price. The other was that women should be put into men’s clothes—safari outfits, smoking jackets, trench coats and, most enduringly, trouser suits. Women, for some reason, saw this as liberation. He was always imaginative, taking inspiration not just from artists like Mondrian but also from Africa and Russian ballet. He was also capable of creating the absurd, producing, for example, a dress with conical bosoms more likely to impale than to support. But his clothes, however outr6, were usually redeemed by wonderful colors and exquisite tailoring. Above all, they were stylish, and the best have certainly stood the test of time. That is no doubt because most were unusually wearable, even comfortable. At a reverential extravaganza in (and outside) the Pompidou Centre in Paris in 2002, soon after Mr. Saint Laurent had announced his retirement, many of the guests wore a lovingly preserved YSL garment. The "anarchist", as Mr. Berg6 recently called him; had by now become more conservative, seeing the merits of "timeless classics" and lamenting the banishment of "elegance and beauty" in fashion. He believed, he said, in "the silence of clothing". Yet perhaps he must take some of the blame for the new cacophony. The trouser suit prepared the way for the off-track track suit; and lesser designers, believing they share his flair and originality, now think they have a license to make clothes that are merely idiotic. Perhaps it would have happened without him. In an industry largely devoid of any sense of the ridiculous, he was usually an exception. He believed in beauty, recognized it in women and, amid the meretricious, created his share of it. By the time Mr. Saint Laurent set up shop in Paris under his own name, be had always worked as a(n)
A. showman.
B. artist.
C. painter.
D. designer.
What do National Semiconductor, Maxwell House Coffee, Deloitte Touche, and Hearst Magazines have in common All these organizations are headed by women. (46)Moreover, according to a recent study by Catalyst(卡特利思特), a national nonprofit organization assisting women in business, more than 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies have at least one woman on their boards of directors, up from 69 percent two years earlier. Despite all this, there is evidence that women are not commonly found at the executive level. No fortune 500 companies has a female CEO; women executives are extremely underrepresented in some industries, such as manufacturing, engineering, and financial services; and responses to the Catalyst survey show that six in ten women believe women suffer discrimination in obtaining executive business positions.(47) Although the climb up the corporate ladder seems to be going slowly for women, corporate America would benefit from having more women in senior management positions. Not only do women represent a large untapped pool of talent, they also bring an alternative perspective to management teams. In addition, women account for about 80 percent of U. S. consumer spending, making their input at the executive level invaluable.Industry experts have pinpointed several stumbling blocks to women’ s progress up the corporate ladder. Among these barriers are the stereotypes and preconceived notions of women that some men in managerial positions still bring to the recruiting process. (48)In addition, because women are often excluded from the informal network outside the office.’ For example, by not being given season tickets to sporting events and by not being invited to play golf, they miss out on the opportunity of build relationships. Other impediments include difficulties in balancing career and family (women are still the primary caregivers in our society) , lack of general management experience, reluctance to travel or to relocate, and’ inhospitable corporate cultures that drive women away before they are ready for executive position.Although a growing number of women choose to step off the traditional career by starting their own businesses, many are finding ways to keep climbing to the top. Catalyst’ s interviews with women in executive positions suggest ’three essential factors for their advancement. (49) Women must consistently exceed performance expectations, develop a style with which male management is comfortable, and seek out difficult high-visibility assignments. Valerie Salembeir, publisher of Esquire, advises women to look for companies that have the reputation of being good places for them to work. Linda Srere, executive vice president of the advertising agency Young & Rubicon, stresses the need to take risks.(50) Whatever methods they are using, one thing is clear: women are going after equality themselves instead of waiting for organizations to deliver it. They know that of all the reasons given for why women should run companies, the single best reason is simply that they can. (46)Moreover, according to a recent study by Catalyst(卡特利思特), a national nonprofit organization assisting women in business, more than 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies have at least one woman on their boards of directors, up from 69 percent two years earlier.