2. 外语
  3. (1) At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider every spot as the possible site of a house. I have thus survey

(1) At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider every spot as the possible site of a house. I have thus survey

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问题    (1) At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider every spot as the possible site of a house. I have thus surveyed the country on every side within a dozen miles of where I live. In imagination I have bought all the farms in succession, for all were to be bought, and I knew their price. I walked over each farmer’s premises, tasted his wild apples, discoursed on husbandry with him, took his farm at his price, at any price, mortgaging it to him in my mind: even put a higher price on it—took everything but a deed of it— took his word for his deed, for I dearly love to talk—cultivated it, and him too to some extent, I trust, and withdrew when I had enjoyed it long enough, leaving him to carry it on. This experience entitled me to be regarded as a sort of real-estate broker by my friends. Wherever I sat, there I might live, and the landscape radiated from me accordingly. What is a house but a sedes, a seat? —better if a country seat. I discovered many a site for a house not likely to be soon improved, which some might have thought too far from the village, but to my eyes the village was too far from it. Well, there I might live, I said: and there I did live, for an hour, a summer and a winter life: saw how I could let the years run off, buffet the winter through, and see the spring come in. The future inhabitants of this region, wherever they may place their houses, may be sure that they have been anticipated. An afternoon sufficed to lay out the land into orchard, wood-lot, and pasture, and to decide what fine oaks or pines should be left to stand before the door, and whence each blasted tree could be seen to the best advantage: and then I let it lie, fallow, perchance, for a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.
   (2) My imagination carried me so far that I even had the refusal of several farms—the refusal was all I wanted—but I never got my fingers burned by actual possession. The nearest that I came to actual possession was when I bought the Hollowell place, and had begun to sort my seeds, and collected materials with which to make a wheelbarrow to carry it on or off with: but before the owner gave me a deed of it, his wife—every man has such a wife—changed her mind and wished to keep it, and he offered me ten dollars to release him. Now, to speak the truth, I had but ten cents in the world, and it surpassed my arithmetic to tell, if I was that man who had ten cents, or who had a farm, or ten dollars, or all together. However, I let him keep the ten dollars and the farm too, for I had carried it far enough: or rather, to be generous, I sold him the farm for just what I gave for it, and, as he was not a rich man, made him a present of ten dollars, and still had my ten cents, and seeds, and materials for a wheelbarrow left. I found thus that / had been a rich man without any damage to my poverty. But I retained the landscape, and I have since annually carried off what it yielded without a wheelbarrow. With respect to landscapes, " I am monarch of all I survey. My right there is none to dispute. "
   (3)I have frequently seen a poet withdraw, having enjoyed the most valuable part of a farm, while the crusty farmer supposed that he had got a few wild apples only. Why, the owner does not know it for many years when a poet has put his farm in rhyme, the most admirable kind of invisible fence, has fairly impounded it, milked it, skimmed it, and got all the cream, and left the farmer only the skimmed milk.
   (4) The real attractions of the Hollowell farm, to me, were: its complete retirement, being, about two miles from the village, half a mile from the nearest neighbor, and separated from the highway by a broad field: its bounding on the river, which the owner said protected it by its fogs from frosts in the spring, though that was nothing to me: the gray color and ruinous state of the house and barn, and the dilapidated fences, which put such an interval between me and the last occupant: the hollow and lichen-covered apple trees, gnawed by rabbits, showing what kind of neighbors I should have: but above all, the recollection I had of it from my earliest voyages up the river, when the house was concealed behind a dense grove of red maples, through which I heard the house-dog bark. I was in haste to buy it, before the proprietor finished getting out some rocks, cutting down the hollow apple trees, and grubbing up some young birches which had sprung up in the pasture, or, in short, had made any more of his improvements. To enjoy these advantages I was ready to carry it on: like Atlas, to take the world on my shoulders—I never heard what compensation he received for that—and do all those things which had no other motive or excuse but that I might pay for it and be unmolested in my possession of it: for I knew all the while that it would yield the most abundant crop of the kind I wanted, if I could only afford to let it alone. But it turned out as I have said.
   (5) All that I could say, then, with respect to farming on a large scale—I have always cultivated a garden—was, that I had had my seeds ready. Many think that seeds improve with age. I have no doubt that time discriminates between the good and the bad: and when at last I shall plant, I shall be less likely to be disappointed. But I would say to my fellows, once for all, as long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail.
   (6) Old Cato, whose "De Re Rustica" is my "Cultivator" , says—and the only translation I have seen makes sheer nonsense of the passage—"When you think of getting a farm turn it thus in your mind, not to buy greedily: nor spare your pains to look at it, and do not think it enough to go round it once. The oftener you go there the more it will please you, if it is good. " I think I shall not buy greedily, but go round and round it as long as I live, and be buried in it first, that it may please me the more at last.
Which of the following statements does the author NOT advocate in the passage?
选项 A、The harmony between man and nature.
B、The charm of country life.
C、The importance of buying property.
D、The indifference to material wealth.
答案C
解析 主旨大意题。此题需结合全文来作答。C“购置房产的重要性”恰恰是被作者所批评的，并不为作者所提倡，故为答案。纵观全文，作者讲述自己勘察了许多农场，以及购买农场的风波等，他在想象中买下了许多农场，但实际上并未发生金钱交换，增加的只是精神财富。虽然他没有买下农场，但保留了景色。他喜欢破旧的房屋，因为这使他更接近自然。在作者的阐述中可以看出，他推崇的是与大自然和谐共处的生活，故排除A和B；在第五段和第六段，作者明确指出，要过自由、无拘无束的生活，不能因为贪婪而受到农场的束缚，应当在自然中获得最大的精神财富，故排除D。
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