A. state-owned houses B. houses in very good condition ……
How should one invest a sum of money in these days
of inflation (通货膨胀) Left in a bank it will hardly keep its value, however high
the interest rate is. Only a brave man, or a very rich one, dares to buy and
sell on the Stock Market. Today it seems that one of the best ways to protect
your savings, and even increase your wealth is to buy beautiful objects from the
past. Here I am going to offer some advice on collecting antique clocks, which I
personally consider are among the most interesting of antiques.
I sometimes wonder what a being from another planet might report back about our
way of life. "The planet Earth is ruled by a mysterious creature that sits or
stands in a room and makes a strange ticking sound. It has a face with twelve
black marks and two hands. Men can do nothing without its permission, and it
fastens its young round people’s wrists so that everywhere men go they are still
under its control. This creature is the real master of Earth and men are its
slaves. "
Whether or not we are slaves of time today depends on
our culture and personality, but it is believed that many years ago kings kept
special slaves to tell the time. Certain men were very clever at measuring the
time of day according to the beating of their own hearts. They were made to
stand in a fixed place and every hour or so would shout the time. So it seems
that the first clocks were human beings.
However, men quickly
found more convenient and reliable ways of telling the time. They learned to use
the shadows cast by the sun. They marked the hours on candles, used sand in
hour-glasses, and invented water-clocks. Indeed, any serious student of antiques
should spend as much time as possible visiting palaces, stately homes and
museums to see some of the finest examples of clocks from the past.
Antique clocks could be very expensive, but one of the joys of collecting
clocks is that it is still possible to find quite cheap ones for your own home.
After all, if you are going to be ruled by the time, why not invest in air
antique clock and perhaps make a future profitThe underlined phrase "stately homes" in Paragraph 4 means ______.
A. state-owned houses
B. houses in very good condition
C. grand houses open to the public
D. houses where statesmen meet regularly
