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1、大学英语精读：第三册 UNIT 4In big cities like New York, you can find homeless women with shopping bags wandering on the streets. They choose to live in an isolated, mistrustful world of their own. They are called lady hermits or just shopping-bag ladies.Lady Hermits Who Are Down But Not OutEvery large city ha
2、s its shifting population of vagrants. But in most cases these are men, usually with an unhealthy appetite for alcohol. Only New York, it seems, attracts this peculiar populace of lone and homeless women who live in an isolated, mistrustful world of their own.Shopping-bag ladies do not drink. They d
3、o not huddle together for warmth and companionship like bums. They do not seem to like one another very much. Neither are they too keen on conventional people. Urban hermits, one sociologist has called them. They will send their days and nights in the same neighborhood for months on end, then disapp
4、ear as inexplicably as they came. They know the hours when restaurants put their leftovers in the garbage cans where they search for food. And local residents, seeing the same bag lady on the same corner every day, will slip her some change as they pass.Shopping-bag ladies do not overtly beg, but th
5、ey do not refuse what is offered. Once a shopping-bag lady becomes a figure of your neighborhood, it is as hard to pass her by without giving her some money as it is to ignore the collection box in church. And although you may not like it, if she chooses your doorway as her place to sleep in the nig
6、ht, it is as morally hard to turn her away as it is a lost dog.There are various categories of bag ladies: those who live on the streets, claiming they enjoy the freedom from constraints of society; those who became homeless because a relative died or because they couldnt keep up rent payments, and
7、they didnt know where to go or how to apply for relief; and quasi bag ladies who have an anchor point a sister or brother whom they can visit once in a while to take a bath.Most shopping-bag ladies seem to be between the ages of 40 and 65. They wear layers of clothes even in summer time, with newspa
8、pers stuffed between the layers as further protection against bad weather In general, the more bags the ladies carry the better organist bad weather. In general, the more bags the ladies carry the better organised they are to cope with life on the streets.You may think I have a lot of garbage in the
9、se bags, one shopping-bag lady volunteered over lunch in a church soup kitchen, but its everything I need. Extra clothes, newspapers for the cold. Shopping-bag ladies are not very communicative and take general conversation as an intrusion. But after a while, warmed by chicken soup, she began to spe
10、ak.The place is nice, she volunteered, people are friendly. Most New Yorkers are very cold. I have sisters in the city, but when you grow up, each goes his own way. Right?I go out a lot because of my teeth. You know how it is: you pick up something in a restaurant and your teeth turn rotten, no matt
11、er how careful you are. People arent considerate. The restaurants dont wash the glasses properly, and before you know where you are you have caught it. Thats what happened to me. I dont like meeting people until I have this dental work done. So I go out to forget my troubles. I sit a little while so
12、mewhere, have something to eat at one of these places, then go wherever I have to go. I take all my things with me because you cant trust people.The story of the dental work was a typical shopping-bag lady fantasy. Psychiatrists say that even after long interviews shopping-bag ladies are still at a
13、loss to separate truth from imagination.One quasi bag lady spends about eight hours every day at the foot of the main escalator in a railroad station, although she rents a room in a cheap hotel in the neighborhood. One of the priests from the nearby church found this lodging for her after he discove
14、red that she was entitled to a small disability pension which she had never claimed. But every day from about nine to five, she still takes a milk crate and sits by the station escalator, not doing anything or talking to anyone. Its like a job to her.No one knows how many shopping-bag ladies there a
15、re in New York. The figure is going up. Some priests, nuns and researchers spend a great deal of time shepherding or observing shopping-bag ladies and are doing what they can to better the life of the lady hermits who are down.NEW WRODShermitn. person who avoids other people and lives alone 隐士shiftv
16、i. move from one place, position, etc. to another 转移，移动vagrantn. person who lives a wandering life with no steady home or work 流浪者appetiten. desire or wish, esp. for food 食欲，胃口attractvt. draw towards oneself 吸引attraction n.attractive a.peculiara. unusual; strange 奇特的；奇怪的populacen. population; the common peoplelonea. without other people or things 孤独的isolatevt. separate from others 使隔离，使孤立mistrustfula. l
