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閱讀理解
Silence is unnatural to map. He begins life with a cry and ends it in stillness. In between be does all he can to make a noise in the world, and be fears silence more than anything else. Even his conversation is an attempt to prevent a fearful silence. If be is introduced to another person, and is number of pauses occur in the conversation, he regards him self as a failure ,a worthless person, and is full of envy of the emptiest headed chatterbox（喋喋不休的人）.He knows that ninety nine percent fo human conversation means no more than the buzzing of a fly, but he is anxious to join in the buzz and to prove that he is a man and not a waxwork figure（蠟塑人像）.
The aim of conversation is not. For the most part, to communicate ideas ; it is to keep up the buzzing sound. There are, it must be admirted, different qualitics. of buzz;there is even a buzz that is as annoying as the continuous noise made bu a mosquito(蚊子).But at a dinner party one would rather be a mosquito than a quiet person. Most buzzing,forlunately,is pleasnnt to the ear,and some of it is pleasant even to the mind.He would be a foolish man if he waited until he had a wise thought to take pert in the buzzing with his neighbors.
Those who hate to pick up the weather as a conversational opening seem to me not to know the reason why human beings wish to talk. Very few human beings join in a conversation in the hope of learning anything new. Some of them are content it they are merely allowed to go on making a noise into other people's ears, though they have nothing to tell them except that they have seen two or three new plays or that they had food in a Swiss hotel. At the end of an evening during which they have said nothing meaningful for a long time. they just prove themselves to be successful conversationists.
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