单选题 Until 1847 the federal postal system had operated without stamps. To claim a letter, the recipient, rather than the sender, paid its postage. Stamps promised to flip this tradition on its head by shifting responsibility for paying postage from the recipient to the letter writer. Early reluctance to use stamps actually relied on something more mysterious but no less important. A stamped or prepaid letter was sometimes seen as a way to insult the recipient because prepaying a letter suggested that he was too poor to pay for it himself.
Given the cost involved, this was not as odd as it now seems. Says Michael Laurence, editor of Linn"s Stamp News, "Paying for a letter was like receiving a collect call from China." In 1845 a congressman calculated that a letter sent from the East or South to the Northwest cost the value of a bushel of wheat—or a days"s labor. Meg Austrian, the historian of the U.S. Postal Service, says that in the 1830s one angered individual harassed an enemy by sending him letters stuffed with blank pages.
Excessive costs probably kept some Americans from communicating through the mails. Many people who did receive mail simply refused to pay, rejecting the letter outright, which meant big headaches for the Post Office in mountains of dead letters. These had to be returned to the sender at government expense; the Post Office wound up paying for two deliveries with nothing in return.
Some historians credit one Rowland Hill, a British reformer and educator, with the idea of sticking a stamp on a letter before sending it. It seems to have struck him one day as he watched a housemaid receive a letter. She carefully scanned the envelope, tried to understand a coded message from her lover, then refused to accept the mail. Postage was too expensive, Hill realized, and paid for by the wrong person. Prepaid stamps were the answer to both problems.

单选题 What does the phrase "to flip this tradition on its head" most probably mean?

A、 The introduction of stamps would change the situation.
B、 Stamps would be used without the top parts.
C、 The use of stamps was the essence of the tradition.
D、 The tradition would abandon the responsibility.

【正确答案】 A

【答案解析】[解析] 第一段第三句“Stamps promised...”。
词义猜测题。本文第一段的第三句中的“...by shifting...”内容可知A正确。change与shift为同义词。

单选题 According to the author, taking prepaid letters as an insult ______.

A、 was what people then would like to do
B、 is what people nowadays think of as acceptable
C、 was not as strange then as people think nowadays
D、 is too easy for people nowadays to understand

【正确答案】 A

【答案解析】[解析] 第一段最后一句“A stamped...”。
细节判断题。根据本文第一段的最后一句及句子时态，可推断出选项A为最佳答案。

单选题 Receiving a letter was so costly that ______.

A、 a congressman calculated it as worth a bushel of wheat
B、 Meg Austrian became a historian of the U.S. Postal Service
C、 mailing could become a means of venting anger
D、 people tended to write as little as possible

【正确答案】 C

【答案解析】[解析] 第二段最后一句“Meg Austrian...”。
细节判断题。从第二段所举的例子可以看出有人会通过寄空白信件来骚扰他们的敌人，故C正确。

单选题 What happened when the recipient rejected the letter?

A、 People chose to communicate more through mails.
B、 The Post Office would take the recipient to court.
C、 So many dead letters buried the Post Office.
D、 The Post Office would pay for the whole cost.

【正确答案】 D

【答案解析】[解析] 第三段最后一句“These had...”。
细节判断题。根据第三段可知邮政部门递送了信件却收不回邮资，最终还不得不把它们送还给寄信人而付双倍邮资，故D正确。

单选题 What does the case of the housemaid reading the envelope implies?

A、 She was seen to read a letter by Rowland Hill.
B、 She refused the mail because she did not understand the message.
C、 She and her lover communicated in a secret code.
D、 She was too poor to pay for the mail.

【正确答案】 C

【答案解析】[解析] 最后一段。
逻辑推论题。根据本文最后一段，女佣通过理解信封上的“coded message”后拒收，可推出信封上的不同标记可以传达某种只有他俩明白的特定含义，还无须支付昂贵的邮资。故选C。