(英专)大学英语Unit 14

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• Westward Movement(18th-19th)
Conditions along the entire Atlantic seaboard stimulated migration to the newer regions. From New England and the backcountry settlements of the Carolinas and Virginia, people moved westward. By 1800 the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys were becoming a great frontier region. "Hi-o, away we go, floating down the river on the O-hi-o," became the song of thousands of migrants.
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She died soon afterward and in 1897 Porter was found guilty of banking charges and sentenced five years in an Ohio prison. While in prison, Porter started to write short stories to earn money to support his daughter. The stories of adventure in the U.S. Southwest and in Central America gained an immediate success among readers. After doing three years of the five years sentence, Porter emerged from the prison in 1901 and changed his name to O. Henry.
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Polk's confirmation reached deep into the soul of millions. His simple words were a powerful call to action. Farmers left their fields; merchants closed their shops; soldiers left their posts--and made plans for California. Newspapers fanned the fires. By early 1849, gold fever was an epidemic. Discussions of gold could be heard at nearly every kitchen table in the nation. They said their goodbyes and streamed west in unison--thousands of young adventurers with a collective dream--a year of pain in return for a lifetime of riches. They were called "fortyniners" because they left home in 1849. Although the gold in the California hills eventually ran out--the impact of the gold rush era lives on. California was shaped by the adventurers who stayed--to form the idea that is California today: a place that 11 accepts and nurtures risk takers.
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His only education was received at the school of his aunt, where he developed a lifelong love of books. At the age of fifteen he left school and worked in a drug store and then on a Texas ranch. He continued to Houston, where he had a number of jobs, including that of bank clerk. After moving in 1882 to Texas, he worked on a ranch in LaSalle County for two years. In 1887 he married Athol Estes Roach; they had one daughter and one son. In 1894 Porter started a humorous weekly The Rolling Stone. It was at this time that he began heavy drinking. When the weekly failed, he joined the Houston Post as a reporter and columnist. In 1894 he was accused of embezzling funds dating back to his employment at the bank where Porter had worked as a bank teller. When he was called back to Austin to stand trial, Porter fled to Honduras to avoid trial. But soon he returned due to his wife‟s deteriorating health.
O. Henry Museum
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O. Henry moved to New York City in 1902, where over the next ten years before his death in 1910, he published over 300 stories and gained worldwide acclaim as America‟s favorite short story writer. Henry„s first collection, CABBAGES AND KINGS, appeared in 1904. The second, THE FOUR MILLION(1906), was published two years later and included his well-known stories ’The Gift of the Magi„ and ’The Furnished Room„，'The Last Leaf'.
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The westward flow of population in the early 19th century led to the division of old territories and the drawing of new boundaries. As new states were admitted, the political map stabilized east of the Mississippi
River. From 1816 to 1821, six states were created -Indiana, Illinois and Maine, and Mississippi, Alabama and Missouri.
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Farms were easy to acquire. Government land after 1820 could be bought for $1.25 for about half a hectare, and after the 1862 Homestead Act (宅地法), could be claimed by merely occupying and improving it. In addition, tools for working the land were easily available. It was a time when, in a phrase written by John Soule and popularized by journalist Horace Greeley, young men could "go west and grow with the country." Overall, the growth of the nation was enormous: population grew from 7.25 million to more than 23 million from 1812 to 1852, and the land available for settlement increased by almost the size of Europe -from 4.4 million to 7.8 million square kilometers.
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• Gold Rush
In the early 1840s, California was a distant outpost that only a handful of Americans had seen. The sleepy port that would become San Francisco had just a few hundred residents. On January 24th, 1848, James Marshall, a worker building a sawmill by the river stumbled upon something glittering. "I reached my hand down and picked it up; it made my heart thump, for I was certain it was gold. The piece was about half the size and shape of a pea. Then I saw another." Stories about the greatest find in the history of the West soon spread into the surrounding countryside. The gold discovery needed validation, and President James Polk delivered just that in early December, 1848.