Questions 10-17
From their inception, most rural neighborhoods in colonial North America included
at least one carpenter, joiner, sawyer, and cooper in woodworking; a weaver and a tailor
for clothing production; a tanner, currier, and cordwainer (shoemaker) for fabricating leather
objects; and a blacksmith for metalwork, Where stone was the local building material, a
5) mason was sure to appear on the list of people who paid taxes. With only an apprentice as
an assistant, the rural artisan provided the neighborhood with common goods from furniture
to shoes to farm equipment in exchange for cash or for “goods in kind” from the customer’s
field, pasture, or dairy. Sometimes artisans transformed material provided by the customer
wove cloth of yam spun at the farm from the wool of the family sheep; made chairs or tables
10) from wood cut in the customer’s own woodlot; produced shoes or leather breeches from
cow, deer, or sheepskin tanned on the farm.
Like their farming neighbors, rural artisans were part of an economy seen, by one
historian, as “an orchestra conducted by nature.” Some tasks could not be done in the winter,
other had to be put off during harvest time, and still others waited on raw materials that were
15) only produced seasonally. As the days grew shorter, shop hours kept pace, since few artisans
could afford enough artificial light to continue work when the Sun went down. To the best
of their ability, colonial artisans tried to keep their shops as efficient as possible and to
regularize their schedules and methods of production for the best return on their investment
in time, tools, and materials, While it is pleasant to imagine a woodworker, for example,
20) carefully matching lumber, joining a chest together without resort to nails or glue, and
applying all thought and energy to carving beautiful designs on the finished piece, the time
required was not justified unless the customer was willing to pay extra for the quality—
and few in rural areas were, Artisans, therefore, often found it necessary to employ as
many shortcuts and economics as possible while still producing satisfactory products.
【題組】11. The word “inception” in line 1 is closest in
meaning to
(A) investigation
(B) location
(C) beginning
(D) records
寫作批改
VIP與詳解卡管理
私人筆記( 0 )
