After the Hurricane A month
after Hurricane Katrina, I returned home in New Orleans. There lay my house,
1 to waist-high rains, smelly and
dirty. Before the trip, I’d had my car fixed. When the office
2 of the garage was writing up the
bill, she noticed my Louisiana license plate. "You from New Orleans" she asked.
I said I was, "No charge." She said, and 3 shock her head when I reached for my wallet. The next day I went for a
haircut, and the same thing happened. As my wife was studying
in Florida, we decided to move there and tried to find a rental house that we
could afford while also 4 off a
mortgage(抵押贷款)on our ruined house. We looked at many places, but none was
5 . We’d began to accept that we’d have
to live in extremely reduced circumstances for a 6
, when I got a very curious e-mail from a James Kennedy in
California. He’d read some pieces I’d written about our
7 for Slate, the online magazine and wanted to give us("no
conditions attached")a new house across the lake from New Orleans. It 8 a good to be true, but I replied, thanking him
for his exceptional generosity, then we had no plan to go back. Then a poet at
the University of Florida offered to let his house to me, while he went to
England on his one-year paid leave. The rent was rather
9 . I mentioned the poet’s offer to James Kennedy, and the
next day he sent a check covering our entire rent for eight months. Throughout
this painful 10 , the kindness of
strangers has done much to bring back my faith in humanity. It’s almost worth
losing your wordy possessions to be reminded that people are really nice when
given half a chance. A. employee
B. sufferings C.
sounded D. reasonable E.
while F.
satisfactory G. reduced
H. purpose I.
firmly J. paying
K. experience L.
professional