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通过阅读学词汇CET-66

时间:2022-02-06 17:55:35 大学英语 我要投稿

通过阅读学词汇CET-6(6)

Unit Six

通过阅读学词汇CET-6(6)

Manners Are Practically Non-Existent

  Manners nowadyas in metropolitan cities like London are practically non-existent. It is nothing for a big, strong schoolboy to elbow an elderly woman aside in the dash for the last remaining seat on the tube or bus, much less stand up and offer his seat to her, as he ought. In fact, it is saddening to note that if a man does offer his seat to an older woman, it is nearly always a Continental man or one from the older generation.

  This question of giving up seats in public transport is much argued about by young men, who say that, since women have claimed equality, they no longer deserve to be treated with courtesy and that those who go out to work should take their turn in the rat race like anyone else. Women have never claimed to be physically as strong as men. Even if it is not agreed, however, that young men should stand up for younger women, the fact remains that courtesy should be shown to the old, the sick and the burdened. Are we really so lost to all ideals of unselfishness that we can sit there indifferently reading the paper or a book, saying to ourselves "First come, first served," while a greyhaired woman, a mother with a young child or a cripple stands? Yet this is all too often seen.

  Conditions in travel are really very hard on everyone, we know, but hardship is surely no excuse. Sometimes one wonders what would have been the  behaviour of these stuot young men in a packed refugee train or a train on its way to a prison-camp during the War. Would they have considered it only right and their proper due to keep the best places for themselves then?

  Older people, tired and irritable from a day's work, are not angels, eit