When the municipal archive of Ravenhill moved to its new premises in March, few residents noticed. The old building, a cramped Victorian annex behind the courthouse, had never attracted visitors, and its closure was announced in a single paragraph on the council’s website. Yet within a month the archive was the subject of unusual public interest, not because of its new glass façade but because of what the removal men had found: a ledger, wedged behind a radiator, recording every loan the town’s savings bank had granted between 1921 and 1934. Historians had assumed that such records were lost in the flood of 1947. The ledger shows that the bank lent far more cautiously during the Depression than local legend maintains; fewer than one application in five was approved, and nearly all the successful applicants owned property. Local newspapers, which have long celebrated the bank as a lifeline for ordinary families, have been slow to acknowledge the finding. The archivist, Mrs Idris, has declined to draw conclusions. “A single ledger tells us what was done,” she said, “not why it was done.” She has, however, asked the council to fund a project that would match the ledger’s names against census returns, a task she estimates will occupy two researchers for a year.
It can be inferred from the passage that the “local legend” about the savings bank
Дұрыс жауабы мен түсіндірмесі
Жауабы: portrayed it as generous to families of modest means
Газеттер банкті қарапайым отбасылар үшін “lifeline” деп мадақтаған; ал кітап оның сақ екенін көрсетеді. Яғни аңыз банктің жомарттығын даралаған.
«Мәтінмен жұмыс» тақырыбынан тағы
- The final sentence implies that the question remains open and that settling it requires
- The last paragraph contains a gentle irony because Ilyas
- The critics’ objection assumes that many elderly residents
- The critics’ main objection to the trial is that its sample
- The sentence “He never told her” most probably implies that Ilyas
- According to the last sentence of the text, the tidal range in a funnel-shaped bay
- The promise to review the arrangement after six months suggests that the museum
- The author’s attitude towards the local newspapers is best described as