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Once upon a time in a land far away, there was a wonderful old man who loved everything：animals, spiders, insects...
One day while walking through the woods the nice old man found a cocoon（繭）of a butterfly. He took it home. A few days later, a small opening appeared; he sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could and it could go no farther. Then the man decided to help the butterfly, so he took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon.
The butterfly then emerged（露出）easily.
But it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings. The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would contract（收縮） in time. Neither happened! In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings.
It never was able to fly.
What the man in his kindness and haste did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening were Nature's way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.
Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life. If we were allowed to go through our life without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as what we could have been.
And we could never fly.
【小題1】In the story, what happened to the cocoon of the butterfly after the man’s help?
| A．The cocoon was broken and the butterfly died. |
| B．The man helped the butterfly out of the cocoon more easily |
| C．The butterfly couldn’t fly for ever normally. |
| D．The butterfly should spend more time practicing flying. |
【小題2】What would have happened to the butterfly without the old man’s help?
| A．It would have died in the cocoon. |
| B．It would have become a true butterfly. |
C．It would have been strong enough to go fa rther. |
| D．It would have stopped struggling through the cocoon. |
【小題3】The underlined word “cripple” in Paragraph 7 probably means ______.
| A．disable | B．climb | C．enable | D．beat |
【小題4】What can we learn from this story?
| A．Man can never go against nature. |
| B．It’s necessary to live with some difficulties. |
| C．One cannot help others without thinking twice. |
| D．Mankind should take good care of insects. |
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