A. 从下列单词中选择适当的词填空，每个词只能用一次。

on       felt        starving         worse with   rumors    little         few good   seat        too             which

The year was 1879; the country, Ireland.

It was a lime of great poverty and unrest. Crops had been bad for several years; the people were hungry; indeed, many children were  51  to death.

Britain ruled the land then, and London, the  52 of government, was a long way off. The lawmakers in Parliament heard  53 and complaints, but dismissed them impatiently. The Irish, they  54 , were unruly, troublesome, and complaining a lot. So Parliament did  55 to help, and a great deal to make matters  56 .

For example, Parliament had passed Land Laws to protect the big landowners,  57 required the tenant farmers to pay rents promptly or be thrown off the land.

This was cruelly hard  58 the Irish farmers. Most of them rented land. They were  59 poor to buy their own. If the crops were  60 the farmers could pay and have a little left over for themselves. If the crops were bad, they faced

starvation. Now, under the Land Laws, they couldn't even hope for a better crop next year.

（51）