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  3. Harry Houdini, who died in 1927, was the entertainment phenomenon of the ragtime era. He could escape from chains and padlocks,

Harry Houdini, who died in 1927, was the entertainment phenomenon of the ragtime era. He could escape from chains and padlocks,

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问题     Harry Houdini, who died in 1927, was the entertainment phenomenon of the ragtime era. He could escape from chains and padlocks, from ropes and canvas sacks. They put him in a strait-jacket and hung him upside down from a skyscraper and he somehow untied himself. They tied him up in a locked packing case and sank him in Liverpool docks. Minutes later he surfaced smiling. They locked him in zinc-lined Russian prison van and he emerged leaving the doors locked and the locks undamaged. They padlocked him in a milk churn full of water and he burst free. They put him in a coffin, screwed down the lid, and buffed him and well, no, he didn’t pop up like a mole, but when they dug him up more than half an hour later, he was still breathing.

    Houdini would usually allow his equipment to be examined by the audience. The chains, locks and packing eases all seemed perfectly genuine, so it was tempting to conclude that he possessed superhuman powers. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes was the very paragon of analytical thinking but Conan Doyle believed that Houdini achieved his tricks through spiritualism. Indeed, he wrote to the escapologist imploring him to use his psychic powers more profitably for the common good instead of just prostituting his talent every night at the Alhambra. However, Houdini repeatedly denounced spiritualism and disclaimed any psychic element to his act.
    The alternative explanation for his feats of escapism was that Houdini could do unnatural things with his body. It is widely held that he could dislocate his shoulders to escape from strait-jackets, and that he could somehow contract his wrists in order to escape from handcuffs. His ability to spend long periods in confined spaces is cited as evidence that he could put his body into suspended animation, as Indian fakirs are supposed to do.
    This is all nonsense. If you ever find yourself in a strait-jacket, it is difficult to imagine anything less helpful than a dislocated shoulder. Contracting your wrists is not only unhelpful but, frankly, impossible because the bones of your wrist are very tightly packed together and the whole structure is virtually incompressible. As for suspended animation, the trick of surviving burial and drowning relies on the fact that you can live for short periods on the air in a confined space. The air shifted by an average person in a day would occupy a cube just eight feet square. The build-up of carbon monoxide tends to pollute this supply, but, if you can relax, the air in a cuff should keep you going for half an hour or so.
    In other words, there was nothing physically remarkable about Houdini except for his bravery, dexterity and fitness. His nerve was so cool that he could remain in a coffin six feet underground until they came to dig him up. His gingers were so strong that he could undo a buckle or manipulate keys through the canvas of a strait-jacket or a mail hag. He made a comprehensive study of locks and was able to conceal lock-picks about his person in a way which fooled even the doctors who examined him. When they locked him in the prison van he still had a hacksaw blade with which to saw through the joins in the metal lining and get access to the planks of the floor. As an entertainer he combined all this strength and ingenuity with a lot of trickery. His stage escapes took place behind a curtain with an orchestra playing to disguise the banging and sawing. The milk churn in which he was locked had a double lining so that, while the lid was locked onto the rim, the rim was not actually attached to the churn. Houdini merely had to stand up to get out. The mail sack he cut open at the seam and sewed up with similar thread. The bank safe from which he emerged had been secretly worked on by his mechanics for 24 hours before the performance.
    All Houdini’s feats are eminently explicable, although to explain them, even now, is a kind of heresy. Houdini belongs to that band of mythical supermen who, we like to believe, were capable of miracles and would still be alive today were it not for some piece of low trickery. It’s said of Houdini that a punch in his belly when he wasn’t prepared for it caused his burst appendix.
    Automatically, it’s virtually impossible that a punch could puncture your gut, but the story endures. Somehow the myth of the superman has an even greater appeal than the edifice of twenty-first century logic.
According to the writer, how do people regard Houdini nowadays?
选项 A、They want to hear the scientific explanations for his feats.
B、They prefer to believe that he had extraordinary powers.
C、They refuse to believe the story of how he died.
D、They doubt the fact that he ever really existed.
答案B
解析 文章最后一段提到Houdini belongs to that band of mythical supermen who, we like to believe , were capable of miracles and would still be alive today were it not for some piece of low trickery.“人们更愿相信他是超人中的一员，仍然具有神奇的力量，并不是什么低级骗术。”因此B项为正确答案。
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本试题收录于： A类竞赛（研究生）题库大学生英语竞赛（NECCS）分类
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