When I was about six years old, my mother came home one day and found that I had collected half a dozen babies of the neighbourhood — all of them too young to walk — and had them sitting before me on the floor while I was teaching them to wave their arms. When she asked the explanation of this, I informed her that it was my school of dance. She was amused, and placing herself at the piano, she began to play for me. This school continued and became very popular. Later on, little girls of the neighbourhood came and their parents paid me a small sum to teach them. This was the beginning of what afterwards proved a very lucrative occupation.
My mother took me to a famous ballet teacher, but his lessons did not please me. When the teacher told me to stand on my toes I asked him why, and when he replied “Because it is beautiful,” I said that it was ugly and against nature and after the third lesson I left his class, never to return. This stiff and commonplace gymnastics which he called dancing only disturbed my dream. I dreamed of a different dance. I did not know just what it would be, but I was feeling out towards an invisible world into which I guessed I might enter if I found the key.
My art was already in me when I was a little girl, and it was owing to the heroic and adventurous spirit of my mother that it was not stifled. I believe that whatever the child is going to do in life should be begun when it is very young. I wonder how many parents realize that by the so-called education they are giving their children, they are only driving them into the commonplace, and depriving them of any chance of doing anything beautiful or original.
1. When her mother came home one day, the narrator of the story _________.
A) was teaching half a dozen babies to dance
B) was teaching half a dozen babies to walk
C) was collecting babies of the neighbourhood
D) was making babies of the neighbourhood sit before her on the floor
2. The attitude of the narrator’s mother toward her school of dance was one of _________.
A) despise B) contempt C) support D) indifference
3. The narrator thought that ballet was _________.
A) the most graceful dance
B) stiff, ugly and unnatural
C) a dance that she had dreamed of
D) an invisible world into which she guessed she might enter
4. According to the narrator, she owed her success in art to ______________.
A) the good education her parents gave her
B) the support of her understanding and adventurous mother
C) her inborn talent
D) her ballet teacher
5. The central idea of the passage is that _____________.
A) parents should try to discover the natural gift in their children and help to develop it while they are young
B) the so-called good education parents give their children only drives them into the commonplace and deprives them of any chance of doing anything orginal
C) mother should be heroic and adventurous
D) ballet is no good as a form of dance
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