199710月托福考试阅读全真试题.docxVIP

1997 年 10 月托福考试阅读全真试题 Question 1-7 Hotels  were among the  earliest  facilities  that  bound the  United  States  together. They were both creatures and creators of communities  ， as well as symptoms of the frenetic quest for community. Even in the first part of the nineteenth century Americans were already forming the habit of gathering from all  corners  of  the  ， nation for both public and private ， business and pleasure purposes. Conventions were the new occasions tions possible.  ， and hotels were distinctively American facilities making conven-The first national convention of a major party to choose  a candidate for President  （that of the National Republican party  ， which met on December 12  ， 1831， and nominated Henry Clay for President ） was held in Baltimore that was then reputed to be the best in the country. The presence in Baltimore of  ， at a hotel Barnum s City Hotel ， a six-story building with two hundred  apartments  helps  explain why many other early national political conventions were held there. In possible  the longer run ， too. American but pleasant and convivial.  hotels made other The growing custom  national conventions not of regularly assembling  only from afar  the  representatives  of all  kinds  of  groups  - not  only  for  political  conventions  ， but also for commercial  ， professional  ， learned  ， and avocational ones - in turn supported  the  multiplying  hotels.  By mid-twentieth  century  ， conventions  accounted for over a third of the yearly room occupancy of all hotels in the nation  ，  about eighteen thousand different conventions were held annually with a total attendance of about ten million persons. Nineteenth-century American hotelkeepers  ，  who were no longer the genial  ， deferential  hosts  of the  eighteenth-century  European inn ，became leading  citizens. Holding a large stake in the community  ， they exercised power to make it prosper. As owne