2013年高考英语日日练专题一.docVIP

2013年高考英语日日练专题一 重庆市万州二中高三上期中期考试 三、阅读理解（共20小题；每小题2分，满分40分） 请阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项（A、B、C和D）中，选出最佳选项，并在答题卡上将该选项的标号涂黑。 A O. Henry was an American short-story writer, a master of surprising endings, who wrote about the life of ordinary people in New York City. A twist of plot, which turns on an ironic or coincidental circumstance, is typical of O. Henry’s stories. William Sydney Porter (O. Henry) was born in North Carolina. His father was a physician. When William was three, his mother died, and he was raised by his grandmother and aunt. At the age of fifteen he left school, and then worked in a drug store. He moved to Houston, where he had a number of jobs, including that of a bank clerk. After moving to Austin, Texas, in 1882, he married. In 1884 he started a humorous weekly The Rolling Stone. When the weekly failed, he joined the Houston Post as a reporter and columnist. In 1897 he was convicted of embezzling money, although there has been much debate over his actual guilt. While in prison O. Henry started to write short stories to earn money to support his daughter Margaret. His first work, Whistling Dick’s Christmas Stocking (1899), appeared in McClure’s Magazine. After doing three years of the five-year sentence, Porter emerged from the prison in 1901 and changed his name to O. Henry. O. Henry moved to New York City in 1902 and from December 1903 to January 1906 he wrote a story a week for the New York World, also was published in other magazines. Henry’s first collection, Cabbages and Kings appeared in 1904. The second, The Four Million, was published two years later and included his well-known stories The Gift of the Magi and The Furnished Room. O. Henry published 10 collections and over 600 short stories during his lifetime. O. Henry’s last years were shadowed by ill health and financial problems. He married Sara Lindsay Coleman in 1907, but the marriage was not happy, and they separated one year later. O. Henry died on June 5, 1910, in New York. 56. The following s