What better occasion than Valentine’s Day to ask for your sweetheart’s hand? In America,the answer is almost any other. Most love-stuck American men are unaware of the perils of proposal. Many will surprise girlfriends with a diamond engagement ring. Suitors (求偶者)would do well to consider what might happen to that expensive rock if the engagement is broken off before the wedding day. Etiquette and common sense dictate that the ring should be returned to the man. In many states, that is what the law requires too. But not all. Brian Bix, a law professor at Quinnipiac College in Connecticut, points out that in some parts of America it matters who is responsible for the break-up. In his state, if the man is to blame, legal precedent suggests that the woman keeps the ring. Things are not so clear in neighbouring New York. When the ring is given might matter too, for some states could let the finance keep the ring if she can convince a court that it was an “unconditional“ gift, rather than one given for possible marriage. Legal scholars say this is a very tricky point. But one thing is clear. A woman could strengthen the argument that the ring was given unconditionally if she had received it on a traditional gift-giving occasion, such as Valentine’s Day. Luckily for romance, De Beers brought to the market an undisputedly eternal option: the Millennium diamond, which comes with a serial number and an appropriately epochal logo etched (蚀刻) into the stone by lasers. Officials at the diamond cartel are confident that the limited edition of 20,000 gems will go fast. No doubt many men will rush to buy these diamonds, which De Beers vows not to issue again until 3,000. How could any fellow fail to win his girl’s heart with such a “once-in-a-millennium“ token (信物)? Just to be safe, though, better not give it on her birthday?

We observe today not a victory of party, but a celebration of freedom symbolizing an end, as well as a beginning signifying renewal , as well as change. For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forebears prescribed nearly a century and three quarters ago. The world is very different now. 【C1】______. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe—the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God. We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans-born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage—【C2】______. Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, 【C3】______. This much we pledge and more. To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share, we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends. 【C4】______. Divided, there is little we can do for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder. To those new States whom we welcome to the ranks of the free, we pledge our word that one form of colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far greater iron tyranny. We shall not always expect to find them supporting our view. But we shall always hope to find them strongly supporting their own freedom and to remember that, 【C5】______ To our sister republics south of our border,we offer a special pledge to convert our good words into good deeds, in a new alliance for progress, to assist free men and free governments in casting off the chains of poverty. But this peaceful revolution of hope cannot become the prey of hostile powers. 【C6】______. And let every other power know that this hemisphere intends to remain the master of its own house. To that world assembly of sovereign states, the United Nations, our last best hope in an age where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace,we renew our pledge of support to prevent it from becoming merely a forum for invective to strengthen its shield of the new and the weak and to enlarge the area in which its writ may run. Finally, to those nations who would make themselves our adversary,we offer not a pledge but a request; 【C7】______ We dare not tempt them with weakness. 【C8】______ But neither can two great and powerful groups of nations take comfort from our present course both sides overburdened by the cost of modern weapons, both rightly alarmed by the steady spread of the deadly atom, 【C9】______ So let us begin anew, remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. 【C10】______. (From Inaugural Address) A. and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of these human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world B. Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us C. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate D. yet both racing to alter that uncertain balance of terror that stays the hand of mankind’s final war E. In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than in mine, will rest the final success or failure of our course F. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life G. in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty H. in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside I. that both sides begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction J. Let all our neighbors know that we shall join with them to oppose aggression or subversion anywhere in the Americas K. United,there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures L. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed

(credulous) I might have been______ had I not been accustomed to such responses, for long ago I became convinced that the seeing see little.

(mortal) My mind remains______ and unsubdued.

Gopher Prairie, in which the action of Sinclair Lewis’ Main Street (1920) takes place, is a town of 3,000 inhabitants, smug, dull people whose one idea is to get on materially. They have no use for anyone who wishes something better for them; they oppose civic reform, cultural and educational projects. The most honored citizens are bankers. Carol, who has been to college and held a position as a librarian, comes to Gopher Prairie to live with her doctor husband. Appalled by the stagnant life of the town,and failing to become adjusted to it,she tries a number of cultural ideas. Her efforts to establish a little theater meet with no encouragement. Indeed, the people merely think she is putting on airs. Her affection for her husband wanes, and she takes up with Erik Valborg, in whom she sees a spirit akin to her own. She leaves the little town for Washington D. C. , where she works as a government clerk. Later she returns to Gopher Prairie, better equipped than before to understand the forces which shape Main Street. At the time of its first appearance,Main Street provoked a storm of protest on the ground that the novelist libeled good Americans. Today, no one thinks of repeating this charge. Indeed, as Lewis Gannett points out, Main Street has in no way changed except externally: it is the same Main Street; yet doubtless it reads Sinclair Lewis, novels as eagerly as the rest of the nation. At the time when Main Street was published Lewis was accused of hating dull people. The novelist retorted that he did not hate them. He loved them. The truth is, the world of 1920 could not stand criticism. The Pulitzer Prize Committee refused to award Main Street a prize. The novelist was to have his revenge six years later, when he rejected the same award for Arrowsmith.

(custom) He slowly accepts its rhythm and ______ himself to conforming to its demands.

(magnificence) I was deeply impressed by this______ palace.

(wear) In the evening when she had worked herself______ , there was no bed for her.

(exasperate) Wheeler would make up a story and bore me to death with some terribly long, ______, useless tale.

(yielding) For century after century Zeus might hurl fresh pain upon him but would never conquer his______ spirit.

Immense keep out of share with for in time by so long as against account on interfere In the late nineteenth century Britain 【G1】______ foreign politics as much as possible. Europe was divided into two camps: France and Russia in one, Germany, Austria and Italy in the other. Britain favoured the second group 【G2】______ France threatened her interests in Africa and the Russians threatened her Indian border. But Germany was growing too strong. The various German states had been united under the King of Prussia after his conquest of France in 1870. He was now Emperor of all Germany. He was Queen Victoria’s son-in-law, but his ambitions took no 【G3】______ of such a tie. Britain watched him with growing mistrust. The Germans already had the best army in Europe. 【G4】______ 1901, when Victoria died, they had begun to build a very large navy, which was not needed to protect their trade. It could only have one purpose, to fight its British rival. Edward Yd had never【G5】______ his mother’s faith in the Emperor’s goodwill, and Britain now openly made friends with France. She would not make a defence treaty, but she showed that her sympathy would be 【G6】______ the French if the Germans attacked them. Plans were made for an army of 150 000 men which would be ready to cross the Channel at a moment’s notice. When war came in 1914, this force managed to arrive just 【G7】______ to save Paris. Britain had no quarrel with Germany, and public opinion was divided on the question of supporting France. If the Germans had made a direct attack, they might have taken Paris before anyone 【G8】______ . But they attacked through Belgium. Their Emperor did not believe that Britain would go to war for “a hit of paper“, which was his scornful description of Palmerston’s treaty. However, when he attacked Belgium, all Britain united 【G9】______ him, and half the nations of the world were soon fighting in the muddy ditches of France. Every part of the Empire immediately joined the British side, and three years later the United States followed their example. When the war was won, both sides had suffered 【G10】______ losses. The Empire’s forces had lost a million men, and Britain had spent all her wealth. (From The World at War)

According to the passage, what is the definition of public relation? What is the function of public relations in modern world?

In industry, whom do public relation personnel keep in touch with? How do they work?

(63)And speaking of freedom is not the author free,as few men are free? Is he not secure, as few men are secure? The tools of his industry are so common and so cheap that they have almost ceased to have commercial value. He needs no balky pile of raw material, no elaborate apparatus, no service of men or animals. (64) He is dependent for his occupation upon no one but himself, and nothing outside him that matters. He is the sovereign of an empire, self-supporting, self-contained. No one can sequestrate his estates. (65) No one can deprive him of his stock in trade ; no one can force him to exercise his faculty against his will ; no one can prevent him exercising it as he chooses. The pen is the great liberator of men and nations. No chains can bind, no poverty can choke,no tariff can restrict the free play of his mind, and even the Times Book Club can only exert a moderately depressing influence upon his rewards. (66)Whether his work is good or bad, so long as he does his best, he is happy. I often fortify myself amid the uncertainties and vexations of political life by believing that I possess a line of retreat into a peaceful and fertile country where no rascal can pursue and where one need never be dull or idle or ever wholly without power. (67) It is then, indeed , that I feel devoutly thankful to have been born fond of writing. It is then, indeed, that I feel grateful to all the brave and generous spirits who,in every age and in every land, have fought to establish the now unquestioned freedom of the pen. (From The Joys of Writing)

Albert Einstein once attributed the creativity of a famous scientist to the fact that he never went to school, and therefore preserved the rare gift of thinking freely. There is undoubtedly a truth in Einstein’s observation;many artists and geniuses seem to view their schooling as a disadvantage. But such a truth is not a criticism of schools. It is the function of schools to civilize, not to train explorers. The explorer is always a lonely individual whether his or her pioneering be in art, music, science or technology. The creative explorer of unmapped lands shares with the genius what William James described as the “faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way. “ In so far as schools teach perceptual patterns they tend to destroy creativity and genius. But if school could somewhat exist solely to cultivate genius, then society would break down. For the social order demands unity and widespread agreement, both traits that are destructive to creativity. There will always be conflict between the demands of society and the impulses of creativity and genius.

If you know exactly what you want,the best route to a job is to get specialized training. A recent survey shows that companies like the graduates in such fields as business and health care who can go to work immediately with very little on-the-job training. That’s especially true of booming fields that are challenging for workers. At Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration, for example, bachelor’ s degree graduates get an average of four or five job offers with salaries ranging from the high teens to the low 20s and plenty of chances for rapid advancement. Large companies, especially, like a background of formal education coupled with work experience. But in the long run, too much specialization doesn’t pay off. Business, which has been flooded with MBAs, no longer considers the degree an automatic stamp of approval. The MBA may open I doors and command a higher salary initially, but the impact of a degree washes out after five years. As further evidence of the erosion of corporate faith in specialized degrees, Michigan State’s Scheetz cites a pattern in corporate hiring practices. Although companies tend to take on specialists as new hires, they often seek out generalists for middle and upper-level management. “ They want someone who isn’t constrained by nuts and bolts to look at the big picture,“ says Scheetz. This sounds suspiciously like a formal statement that you approve of the liberal-arts graduate. Time and again labor-market analysts mention a need for talents that liberal-arts majors are assumed to have: writing and communication skills, organizational skills, open-mindedness and adaptability, and the ability to analyze and solve problems. David Birch claims he does not hire anybody with an MBA or an engineering degree. I hire only liberal-arts people because they have a less-than-canned way of doing things, says Birch. Liberal-arts means an academically thorough and strict program that includes literature,history, mathematics, economics, science, human behavior plus a computer course or two. With that under your belt, you can feel free to specialize. “A liberal-arts degree coupled with an MBA or some other technical training is a very good combination in the market place,“says Scheetz.

In the eighteenth-century, one of the first modern economists, Adam Smith, thought that the“whole annual produce of the land and labour of every country“provided revenue to“three different orders of people: those who live by rent, those who live by wages, and those who live by profit“. Each successive stage of the industrial revolution, however, made the social structure more complicated. Many intermediate groups grew up during the nineteenth century between the upper middle class and the working class. There were small-scale industrialists as well as large ones, small shopkeepers and tradesmen, official and salaried employees, skilled and unskilled workers, and professional men such as doctors and teachers. Farmers and peasants continued in all countries as independent groups. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the possession of wealth inevitably affected a person’s social position. Intelligent industrialists with initiative made fortunes by their wits which lifted them into an economic group far higher than that of their working class parents. But they lacked the social training of the upper class, who despised them as the“ new rich“. They often sent their sons and daughters to special schools to acquire social training. Here their children, mixed with the children of the upper classes, were accepted by them, and very often found marriage partners from among them. In the same way, a thrifty, hardworking labourer, though not clever himself, might save for his son enough to pay for an extended secondary school education in the hope that he would move in a “white-collar“occupation, carrying with it a higher salary and a move up in the social scale. In the twentieth century the increased taxation of higher incomes, the growth of the social services, and the wider development of educational opportunity have considerably altered the social outlook. The upper classes no longer are the sole, or even the main possessors of wealth, power and education, though inherited social position still carries considerable prestige.

International airlines have rediscovered the business travelers, the man or woman who regularly jets from country to country as part of the job. This does not necessarily mean that airlines ever abandoned their business travelers. Indeed, companies like Lufthansa and Swissair would rightly argue that they have always catered best for the executive class passengers. But many lines could be accused of concentrating too heavily in the recent past on attracting passengers by volume, often at the expense of regular travelers. Too, often, they have seemed geared for quantity rather than quality. Operating a major airline in the 1980s is essentially a matter of finding the right mix of passengers. The airlines need to fill up the back end of their wide-bodied jets with low fare passengers, without forgetting that the front end should be filled with people who pay substantially more for their tickets. It is no coincidence that the two major airline bankruptcies in 1982 were among the companies specializing in cheap flights. But low fares require consistently full aircraft to make flights economically viable, and in the recent recession the volume of traffic has not grown. Equally the large number of airlines jostling for the available passengers has created a huge excess of capacity. The net result of excess capacity and cut-throat competition in driving down fares has been to push some airlines into collapse and leave many others hovering on the brink. Against this grim background, it is no surprise that airlines are turning increasingly towards the business travelers to improve their rates of return. They have invested much time and effort to establish exactly what the executive demands for working conditions apart from the tourists. High on the list of priorities is punctuality; an executive’s time is money. In-flight service is another area where the airlines are jostling for the executive’s attention. The free drinks and headsets and better food are all part of the lure.

(style) It’s very______ at this time of the year.

(evolution) It is firmly grounded in______development.

According to the passage, when do most American men propose? ( )

The phrase “the perils of proposal“ (Para. 1)refers to which of the following? ( )

According to the author, men should propose______ . ( )

The word “millennium“ (Para. 5) means______ . ( )

The information contained in the passage is most useful to ______. ( )