B When I was a boy, my father told me that he could do anything he wanted to. Dad said that he wanted to be the first to develop color prints in our city. And so he did. When I was 16，Dad looked closely at the violin I played and announced that he want to make one. He read about violinmaking，and then became a violinmaker at the age of 43. He bought the tools and materials，opened a small store and set Mom up as the shopkeeper，while he worked at a local company. He retired from the company 17 years later and continued to make violins and other instruments. Dad often guessed why the Stradivarius violins sound so beautiful. Some experts claimed that it was the unique varnish(油漆)that gave those instruments their beautiful sound. Dad argued that chemists could analyze the varnish—if that were the answer. One of Dad’s friends asked him once which kind of wood was used to make violins. When Dad explained that the top was made of spruce(云杉)，his friend said that he had an old piece of spruce Dad might be interested in. He worked for the next 12 months making a violin from the wood that his friend had given him. It proved to be a superior violin and it would become Dad’s masterpiece. He was convinced that the secret of the Stradivarius sound was in the wood itself. Later，the instrument was stolen. Dad’s spirit was broken by the robbery, and he stopped making instruments. But he kept the music shop until he was 80 years old, selling guitars and violins. My father has been gone for 14 years now. The violin has been missing for more than 25 years. Somewhere a musician is playing a late-20th-century violin with an excellent tone. The owner today may never understand why this ordinary-looking violin sounds so much like Stradivarius. 45. The author mentions his father’s developing color prints____________. A. to show that his father’s real interest was not in making violins B. to prove that his father could do anything he wanted to C. to give an example proving that his father was an inventor D. to describe the real thing that made the author believe his father 46. What did the author's father think about Stradivarius violins? A. The varnish was different from the others. B. The way of making them was special. C. The wood of the violins was special. D. They could only be analyzed by chemists. 47. From the underlined sentence, we can learn that the author’s father________. A. 1iked the violin very much B. got crazy after this happened C. 1ost interest in instruments D. didn't want to become famous 48. We can infer from the last paragraph that the author __________ . A. really hates the thief B. misses his father a 1ot C. really wants to play the violin D. wonders who’s playing the violin now |