2000年全国英语专业四级考试试题(13)

专四

Coketown was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the sm oke and the

ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood it was a town of unnatura l red and black like the painted

face of a savage. It was a town of machinery an d tall chimneys, out of which smoke trailed

themselves for ever and ever. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling

dye, and vas t piles of buildings full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day

long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up an d down like the head

of an elephant in a state of madness. The town contained se veral large streets all very like one

another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one

another.

A sunny midsummer day. There was such a thing sometimes, even in Coketown. Seen from a

distance in such weather, Coketown lay covered in a haze of its own. You only knew the town was

there, because you knew there could have been no such blo tch upon the view without a town.

The streets were hot and dusty on the summer day, and the sun was so bright that it even

shone through the haze over Coketown, and could not be looked at steadi ly. Workers emerged

from low underground doorways into factory yards, and sat on posts and steps, wiping their faces

and contemplating coals. The whole town see med to be frying in oil. There was a stifling smell of

hot oil everywhere. The a tmosphere of those places was like the breath of hell, and their

inhabitants was ting with heat, toiled languidly in the desert. But no temperature made the mad

elephants more mad or more sane. Their wearisome heads went up and down at the s ame rate, in

hot weather and in cold, wet weather and dry fair weather and foul. The measured motion of

their shadows on the walls, was the substitute Coketown had to show for the shadows of rustling

woods; while for the summer hum of insec ts, it could offer all the year round, from the dawn of

Monday to the night of S aturday, the whirr of shafts and wheels.

77. Which of the following adjectives is NOT appropriate to describe Co ketown?

A. dull B. dirty C. noisy D. savage



78. From the passage we know that Coketown was mainly a(n) ___town .

A. industrial B. agricultural C. residential D. commercial 

79. Only ___ were not affected by weather.

A. the workmen B. the inhabitants C. the steam-engines

D. the rustling woods 

80. Which is the author’s opinion of Coketown?

A. Coketown should be replaced by woods.

B. The town was seriously polluted.

C. The town had too much oil in it.

D. The town’s atmosphere was traditional.

B