Edward Sims was born in 1892. He was the fifth child and only son of Herbert and Dora Sims. Herbert was a blacksmith(铁匠), and had a thriving trade making horseshoes. He was determined that his first-born son would follow him into the blacksmith. For this reason, Edward had to leave school at the age of 12,and worked with his father.
However, Edward was not cut out to be a blacksmith. Although he has an athletic body, he didn't have strong arms like his father, and he felt dizzy in the heat of the smithy. When he tried to find alternative employment, he found it difficult because he had never learnt to read or write.
One day, he went for an interview at a solictior’s office. The job was a runner, taking documents from the office to other offices in the city. The solicitor was pleased to see that Edward was physically fit, but when he discovered that the young man couldn't read or write, he decided against employing him. "How can you deliver documents to other offices," he asked, "if you can't read the addresses on them?"
Bitterly disappointed, Edward left the building and went to wait for a tram to take him back to the suburb where his father’s smithy was. Next to the bus stop, a man was selling newspapers from a stand .
"Excuse me, son?" he said. "Would you look after my stand for a moment?"
For the next 20 minutes, Edward sold newspapers, lots of them. When the man came back, he was so delighted with his new assistant's honesty, that he offered him a job. Edward took it immediately.
In the next few months, the two men progressed from working on newspaper stands to selling newspapers, tobacco,confectionery（糖果点心）and other goods in a shop. Then they opened a second shop, and a third. Eventually, they had a chain of 25 shops in three cities.
Edward became very rich, so he employed a tutor to teach him to read and write. The tutor was amazed at what Edward had achieved. "Imagine what you could do if you’d been able to read and write when you were younger!" he said.
“Yes!” said Edward. “I could have run myself to exhaustion delivering documents for a solicitor!”
小题1:What would be the best title for the text?
A．Success of illiterate newsboy
B．Local blacksmith becomes famous
C．The thriving trade of the blacksmith
D．Reading and writing-the road to success小题2:What can you infer from the underlined expression “not cut out to be” in the second paragraph?
A．Edward Sims did not like being a blacksmith.
B．Edward Sims did not like working with his father.
C．Edward Sims was not strong enough and it made him feel ill.
D．Edward Sims was good at it but wanted to do another job.小题3:When Edward applied for the job as a runner for a solicitor, .
A．the solicitor turned him down because he wasn’t intelligent enough
B．the solicitor offered him the job because he was so fit
C．the solicitor gave him the job but told him he had to learn to read
D．the solicitor didn’t offer him the job because he couldn’t read小题4:Which of the following is NOT ture about Edward Sims?
A．He was such a good salesman that he went on to own 25 newsagent shops with another man.
B．The newspaperman liked him so much he gave him a job.
C．He ran himself into exhaustion delivering papers.
D．He learnt to read and write.
