英语阅读短文9篇
艾薇儿图片-
1. O. Henry was a
pen name used by an American writer of short
stories. His real name was William
Sydney Porter. He was born in
North
Carolina in 1862. As a young boy he lived an
exciting life. He
did not go to school
for very long, but he managed to teach himself
everything he needed to know. When he
was about 20 years old, O.
Henry went
to Texas, where he tried different jobs. He first
worked
on a newspaper, and then had a
job in a bank, when some money
went
missing from the bank O. Henry was believed to
have stolen it.
Because of that, he was
sent to prison. During the three years in
prison, he learned to write short
stories. After he got out of prison,
he
went to New York and continued writing. He wrote
mostly about
New
York
and
the
life
of
the
poor
there.
People
liked
his
stories,
because simple as
the tales were, they would finish with a sudden
change at the end, to the reader’s
surprise.
2.
One
day
a
few
years
ago
a
very
funny
thing
happened
to
a
neighbour of mine. He is a teacher at
one of London’s big medical
schools, He
had finished his teaching for the summer term and
was
at the airport on his way to Russia
to give a lecture.
He
had put a few clothes and his lecture notes in his
shoulder
bag, but he had put Rupert,
the skeleton (
人体骨骼
) to be
used in
his lecture, in a large brown
suitcase (
箱子
). At the
airport desk, he
suddenly thought that
he had forgotten to buy a newspaper. He left
his suitcase near the desk and went
over to the shop.
When
he
got
back
he
discovered that someone
had
taken
his
suitcase by mistake. He often wonders
what they said when they
got home and
found Rupert.
3. On the
evening of June 21, 1992, a tall man with brown
hair and
blue eyes entered the
beautiful hall of the Bell Tower Hotel in Xi’an
with
his
bicycle.
The
hotel
workers
received
him
and
telephoned
the
manager,
for
they
had
never
seen
a
bicycle
in
the
hotel
ball
before though they lived in “the
kingdom of bicycles.”
Robert Friedlander, an American,
arrived in Xi’an on his bicycle
trip
across Asia which started last December in New
Delhi, India.
When he
was 11, he read the book Marco Polo and made up
his
mind to visit the Silk Road. Now,
after 44 years , he was on the Silk
Road in Xi’an and his early dreams were
coming true.
Robert Friedlander’s next destinations
(
目的地
) were Lanzhou,
Dunhuang, Urumqi, etc. He will complete
his trip in Pakistan.
4. Mr. Grey was the manager of a small
office in London. He lived in
the
country, and came up to work by train. He liked
walking from the
station to his office
unless it was raining, because it gave him some
exercise.
One
morning he was walking along the street when a
stranger
stopped him and said
t
o him, “You may not remember me, sir,
but
seven years ago I came to London
without a penny in my pockets, I
stopped you in this street and asked
you to lend me some money,
and you lent
me £
5, because you said you were
willing to take a
chance so as to
giv
e a man a start on the way to
success.”
Mr
Grey
thought
for
a
few
minutes
and
then
said,
“Yes,
I
remember
you.
Go
on
with
your
story!”
“Well,”
answered
the
stranger, “are you still
willing to take a chance?”
5.
Even if you are a good high-jumper, you
can jump only about
seven feet off the
ground. You cannot jump any higher because the
earth pulls you hard. The pull of the
earth is called gravity.
You can easily find out the pull of the
earth. If you weigh yourself,
you will
know how much gravity is pulling you.
Since there is gravity, water runs down
hill. When you throw a