Passage One
It might appear to any casual visitor who may have taken a few rides about town in a taxicab that all New Yorkers are filled with a loudmouthed iii will towards each other. The fact of the , matter is, though, that however cold and cruel things seem on the surface, there has never been a society of people in all history with so much compassion for its fellow man. It clothes, feeds, and houses 15 percent of its own because 1.26 million people in New York are unable to do it for themselves. You couldn’t call that cold or cruel.
Everyone must have seen pictures at least of the great number of poor people who live in New York. And it seems strange, in view of this, that so many people come here seeking their fortune. But if anything about the city’s population is more expressive than the great number of poor people, it’s the great number of rich people. There’s no need to search for buried treasure in New York. The great American dream is out in the open for everyone to see and to reach for. It must be because even those people who can never realistically believe they’ll get rich themselves can still dream about it. And they respond to the hope of getting what they see others having. Their hope alone seems to be enough to sustain them. The woman going into Tiffany’s to buy another diamond pin can pass within ten feet of a man without money enough for lunch. They are oblivious to (不在意) each other. He feels no envy; she no remorse.
There’s a disregard for the past in New York that dismays even a 1ot of New Yorkers. It’s true that no one pays much attention to antiquity. The immigrants who came here came for some thing new, and what New York used to be means nothing to them. Their heritage is somewhere else.
Old million-dollar buildings are constantly being torn down and replaced by new fifty million dollar ones. In London, Rome, Paris, much of the land has only been built on once in all their long history. In relatively new New York, some lots have already been built on four times.
Because strangers only see New Yorkers in move, they leave with the impression that the city is in one great mindless rush to nowhere. They complain that it’s moving too fast, but they don’t notice that it’s getting there first. For better and for worse, New York has been where the rest of the country is going. |
For immigrants, what New York used to be means nothing because_____
A．they don’t like New York at all
B．they don’t like the old things in New York
C．they don’t know much about New York’s past
D．they do not relate New York’s past to their own roots