It was a sunny day. A city man was driving along a country road with a new wagon（马车）and a beautiful pair of horses. He didn’t pay a lot of  11  to where he was going. Pretty soon  12_ that he was lost, but he continued to drive, expecting to refind his way or to 13  someone who could tell him how to get back to the  14  .
It was a long 15 road. For many __16__ he kept on driving. When it was almost dark ，he saw in a field a tall  17  ploughing（犁地） the land. He stopped his   18 team of horses near the fence and called out，“Hello，farmer.”
“Hello，yourself，”the farmer___19____，still ploughing .
“Where does the horse go？”he asked without knowing his language mistakes.
“I haven’t seen it go anywhere. It   20  stays right where it is，”said the farmer，withoutstopping his work.
“How far is it to the next town？” said the city man，speaking a little more   21  .
“Don’t know. I never  22 it,” replied the farmer. By this time the city man was getting 23 .“What do you know？You’re the biggest fool I ever saw.”
Finally stopping, the farmer turned and looked for a long time  24  at the city man. Then he said，“Maybe I don’t know much.   25  I am a fool. But at least I’m not lost！” 

The most frightening words in the English language are, “Our computer is down.” You hear it more and more when you are on business. The other day I was at the airport waiting for a ticket to Washington and the girl in the ticket office said, “I’m sorry, I can’t sell you a ticket. Our computer is down.”

“If your computer is down, just write me out a ticket.”

“I can’t write you out a ticket. The computer is the only one allowed to do so.”

I looked down on the computer and every passenger was just standing there drinking coffee and staring at the black screen. Then I asked her, “What do all you people do?”

“We give the computer the information about your trip, and then it tells us whether you can fly with us or not.”

“So when it goes down, you go down with it.”

“That’s good, sir.”

“How long will the computer be down?” I wanted to know.

“I have no idea. Sometimes it’s down for 10 minutes, sometimes for two hours. There’s no way we can find out without asking the computer, and since it’s down it won’t answer us.”

After the girl told me they had no backup(备用) computer, I said. “Let’s forget the computer. What about your planes? They’re still flying, aren’t they?”

“I couldn’t tell without asking the computer.”

“Maybe I could just go to the gate and ask the pilot if he’s flying to Washington, ” I suggested.

“I wouldn’t know what gate to send you to. Even if the pilot was going to Washington, he couldn’t take you if you didn’t have a ticket.”

“Is there any other airline flying to Washington within the next few hours?”

“I wouldn’t know, ” she said, pointing at the dark screen. “Only ‘IT’ knows. ‘It’ can’t tell me.”

By this time there were quite a few people standing in lines. The word soon spread to other travelers that the computer was down. Some people went white, some people started to cry and still others kicked their luggage.

The best title for the article is _______.

A. When the Computer Is Down   B. The Most Frightening Words

C. The Computer of the Airport    D. Asking the Computer

What could the girl in the ticket office do for the passengers without asking the computer?

A. She could sell a ticket.

B. She could write out a ticket.

C. She could answer the passengers’ questions.

D. She could do nothing.

Why do you think they had not a backup computer?

A. Because it was easy down

B. Because it was very expensive.

C. Because it was not advanced enough.

D. Because it was not as big as the main computer.

The last paragraph suggests that _______.

A. a modern computer won’t be down.

B. computers can take the place of humans

C. sometimes a computer may bring suffering to people

D. there will be great changes in computers

---What do you think of the world-famous football player Messi from Argentina?
---I've never seen ______ one before. He was born to play football.

Lucy complained to her father about her hard life. She wanted to  36 because she didn’t know how to______37___ her problems. She felt tired of fighting and fighting. Once one    ___38____  had been solved, another came.
Her father, a cook, took her into the ___39____. He poured water into three pans. After the water ___40____, in the first pan he put some carrots, the second some eggs, and in the __41____ some coffee. He waited without any   42  .
The girl closed her mouth and waited,   43 by what her father was doing. After about twenty minutes, her father   44 the stove and took out the carrots and the eggs. Then the coffee was ____45___ into a cup.
Turning back to his daughter, he asked, “what do you  46  ?”
“Carrots, eggs, and coffee,” she answered.
Her father suggested she   47   the carrots. She did, and felt the carrots were   48 . Then he asked her to take the eggs and   49 them. After peeling（剥）them, she felt that the eggs were hard.  Lastly, he asked her to smell the __50____. She asked impatiently  , “What’s the meaning of this, father?” He explained that  51  had felt the same misfortune to be put into the __52___ water， but had reacted  53 . The strong and hard carrots became soft and weak after a while in the boiling water. The easily ___54___eggs became hard after being cooked. Coffee was very unique --- it could change water.
“  55 are you?  ”asked  her father. “When the difficulty knocks your door, what is your reaction? Are you carrots, eggs, or coffee?”

【小题1】

A．give up B．wear out C．catch up D．run out

【小题9】

A．turned off B．turned up C．turned down D．turned away

【小题20】

A．How B．Who C．When D．Where