The ritual of English tea time is believed to have originated in the late 1700’s when Anna, Duchess of Bedford, ordered that a plate of cakes be sent up to her with her afternoon cup of tea.The Duchess chronically experienced a “sinking feeling” (what we would term “low blood sugar”) in the late afternoon. To tide her over the long hours between meals she turned to carbohydrates.Other royals immediately copied the Duchess, and afternoon tea parties became quite fashionable. Low tables were set up in front of sofas and chairs, and the ladies found a new opportunity to show off pretty clothes, fine china, embroidered linen tablecloths and napkins, and silver tableware.Tea time was also the time to exchange juicy gossip and serve refreshments. Soon darling little sandwiches and sweet pastries as well as scones were being arranged on decorative stands and plates for the ladies’ pleasure.The tea party mania quickly spread across the Atlantic where tea was already enjoyed as a beverage. This fondness for tea was later suppressed by the patriotic Americans during the era immediately preceding the American Revolution because of the unreasonable British tax on tea.However, by April 27, 1776, Congress announced in the Philadelphia Packet that “the drinking of tea can now be indulged.” The custom of afternoon tea parties was not really revived in this country, though, until the mid-1800's, when Victorian ways were in vogue here. Leisure-class American ladies began having “kettledrums” at 4 p.m. “Kettledrums” was called th
The main difference between /f/ and /v/ lies in （ ）.
Having been made speechless, he felt （ ）a fool than he had expected.
If a teacher wants to check how much students have learned at the end of a term, he/she would give them a(n) （ ）.
Einstein is a mental Hercules, according to those who know his work. He has performed prodigious labors. By all the theories of physiognomy, he should be a granite-visaged Norse god of the Hindenburg type, instead of looking like a poet or musician. On theoretical grounds, he should have an iron will, instead of being pliant, docile, compromising. The explanation seems to be that Einstein, unlike most men of achievement, has never had to coerce or harden himself. His work was an exalted revel and his whole scientific life was a perpetual carnival, to judge from a speech of his at a dinner in Berlin in honor of the physicist, Max Planck. A preceding speaker had talked of the “agonizing toil” and “superhuman will” required of a great scientist. Einstein demurred. “This daily striving,” he said, “is dictated by no principle or program, but arises from immediate personal need. The emotional condition which renders possible such achievements is like that of the religious devotee or the lover.” On another occasion, Einstein described the impulse to grapple with his problems as “a demoniac possession”，needing no stimulation from conscious effort of the will. Einstein’s own theory about himself must be correct; nothing else could account for his irresistible energy in his own regions of thought and his lamblike helplessness in ordinary contacts. To catalogue a few of his lost wars of everyday life:For a time he refused to play the violin for charity because of his modest estimate of his own ability, and because he thought it unfair to professionals; under pressure, however, he gave many recitals. He declined a deluxe cabin on a trip to America because of his scruples against luxury, butaccepted when informed that he was hurting the feelings of the steamship line. On his trip to India,he refused to travel in a rickshaw because he thought it degrading to use a human being as a draughtanimal; he reconsidered, however, on the ground that rickshaw boys must live, and patronized themextensively. Hating fuss and feathers, he has been induced to make triumphal progresses on fourcontinents. He has compared mass newspaper interviews to being bitten by wolves and to beinghanged, but nevertheless he is frequently gang- interviewed. This easy yielding to pressure would lead another man to cheapen himself, but Einstein issaved by his aesthetic sense and his unworldliness. He could not do anything sordid. He doesntwant anything; there is nothing about the man for temptation to work on. When he received theNobel Prize in 1921, he gave it to charity. When a magazine offered him an amazing sum for anarticle, he rejected it contemptuously. What? he exclaimed. Do they think I am a prizefighter? "But he finally wrote the article after arguing the magazine into cutting the price in half. It is saidthat he declined his present post at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton on the ground thatthe salary was preposterously munificent, and was persuaded to accept only by the promise of anenormous pay cut. He objected to gifts, but his 1930 trip to this country netted him five violins andother valuable booty. His backbone stiffened, however, when an admirer sought to press on him aGuarnerius valued at $33, 000; this he firmly refused, saying that he was not enough of a musicianto do justice to the instrument. Probably no man has been more plagued than Einstein by offers ofmoney for tes timonials for toothpaste, pimpleeradicators, corn plasters, and cigarettes. He brushedall this aside as corruption”and would have no compromise. Einstein regards money as somethingto give away; in 1927, he was aiding one hundred and fifty poor families in Berlin.What has led t
（ ）we are successful, we can be sure that we did our best.