Question

The first fall of snow is not only an event but it is magical event. You go to bed in one kind of world but wake up to find yourself in another quite different one, and if this is not enchantment (魅力), then where is it to be found? The quietness makes it more magical. If all the snow fell at once in one crash, awakening us in the middle of the night, the event would be robbed of its wonder. But it flutters (飄揚)down, soundless, hour after hour while we are asleep. Outside the closed curtains of the bedroom, a vast transform scene is taking place, just as if a great number of elves were at work. We turn and yawn and stretch and know nothing about it. And then, what an extraordinary change it is! It is as if the house you are in had dropped down in another continent. Even the inside, which has not been touched, seems different, every room appearing smaller and more comfortable, just as if some powers were trying to turn it into a woodcutter’s hut or a small log cabin. Outside, where the garden was yesterday, there is now a white and shining level, and the village beyond is no longer our own familiar cluster of roofs but a village in an old German fairy tale…

       Now it has changed again. The snow is falling heavily, in great soft flakes, so that you can hardly see across the shallow valley, and the roofs are thick and the trees all bending, and the weathercock of the village church, still to be seen through the gray loaded air, had become some creature out of Hans Anderson. From my study, I can see the children flatten their noses against the nursery window, and there is running through my head a rhyme I used to repeat when I was a child and flattened my nose against the cold window watching the falling snow:

       “Snow, snow faster: White alabaster! Killing geese in Scotland; sending feathers here!”

1. What adds to the wonder of the first snow?

       A. Its quietness.

       B. The white and shining flakes.

       C. The house which seems to be smaller and more comfortable.

       D. The shattering crash in the middle of the night.

2. What’s the author purpose of writing this passage?

       A. To inform.

       B. To complain about the cold weather.

       C. To express his emotions.

       D. To describe a rare snow.

3. What’s the author’s feeling towards the first snow?

       A. Surprised.                B. Hopeful.            C. Delighted.          D. Regretful.

Answer 1

ACC