高级英语1何兆熊 U5-Conservatives and Liberals.ppt

Section 6: Further Enhancement controlling their own diet and hour of retirement—was presented as endangering the nation’s physical health as well as its public spaces. The root of such impertinence was said to lie in the American’s universal suspicion of external controls or elaborate rules, Radical democracy could have unsettling effects on unprotected visitors. The Englishwoman Mary Duncan recorded her astonishment when a visitor rang her door to inquire “if the woman of the house be at home for I am the lady that have come to help her cook.” Under such circumstances it was not surprising that a scavenger testifying in court stated that “when he first observed the gentleman he was filling the dung-cart. It Text II Text Comprehension Section 6: Further Enhancement was not only the social pyramid that had been inverted but the very ordering of language itself. 11 On the other side of the ledger were those arguing that Americans maintained both civility and social safety without reliance on the characteristic oppressions used elsewhere. If America’s social structure had “no fluid Corinthian capital rising into the clear air above,” Alexander Mackay wrote in the 1840s, “neither has it a pedestal in the mire beneath.” Less picturesque than the inheritance of feudal chivalry, it was nonetheless compact and commodious. America was built less to “attract the eye” than to “accommodate the inmates,” Mackay concluded. Text II Text Comprehension Section 6: Further Enhancement 12 Friendly observers admitted that Americans were freer with strangers than European practices permitted, but acknowledged that such easy curiosity was different from insolence. Americans did chew and spit almost anywhere, but their respect for women was generally beyond reproach. Indeed American gallantry was claimed as miraculous intervention of voluntary restraint. Some visitors actually bridled at the deference American females received from uncomplaining men, who gladly gave up everything