I was putting on my boots just now in what the novelists call “a brown study.” There was no urgent reason for putting on my boots. I was not going out, and my slippers were much more comfortable. But something had to be done. I wanted a subject for an article. Now if you are accustomed to writing articles for a living, you will know that sometimes the difficulty is not writing the article, but choosing a subject. It is not poverty you suffer from, but an embarrassment of riches.
But what has this to do with putting on my boots? It is a reasonable question and I will tell you. For an hour I had paced my room in my slippers in search of a subject. I had looked out of the window over the sunlit valley, and watched the smoke of a distant train disappearing towards the west. I had sharpened every pencil I had on me with great care. But the more I sharpened my pencils, the more anxious I grew about the theme for an article.
It was at this moment that I remembered my boots. The act of bending my body changed the current of the blood. You saw things in a new light. So I fetched my boots and sat down to put them on.
The thing worked like a charm. For in my preoccupied condition I picked up my right boot first. Then mechanically I put it down and seized the left boot. And then the fact flashed on me that all my life I had been putting on my left boot first. If you had asked me five minutes before which boot I put on first, I should have said that there was no first about it; yet now I found I was in a habit so fixed that the attempt to put on my right boot first affected me. The thing couldn’t be done. And then came into my mind that fascinating book of Samuel Butler’s on Life and Habit. Yes, certainly, here was a subject that would “go.” I took out a pencil, seized some writing paper, and sat down to write on “The Force of Habit.”
【小题1】By “It is not poverty you suffer from, but an embarrassment of riches.” in paragraph 1, the author means _____.| A．some subjects are too complicated or embarrassing to write on |
| B．poverty is no longer a problem nowadays, but embarrassment is |
| C．poor people don’t encounter as many embarrassments as the rich |
| D．there’re so many subjects that it’s hard to decide which to choose |
| A．To help himself promote thinking. | B．To draw what he saw out of the window. |
| C．To write his article more smoothly. | D．To relieve himself of anxiety about writing. |
| A．get rid of his fixed habit | B．lower his blood pressure |
| C．see things from a new angle | D．free his preoccupied mind |
| A．personal attitude towards habits | B．daily routines as a professional writer |
| C．writing process of a special article | D．decision making on the theme for an article |
