题目内容：

段落语法填空

I can’t remember the last time someone asked me to write back. We don’t write letters anymore. The strong feeling of 1. (excited) is gone; there’s never anything good in the mail. We know 2. is in the mail – advertisements and circulars (印刷信函).

When I was young, my family only moved 200 miles, but it seemed like we had been separated from friends and all things familiar by two continents and an ocean. Long distance phone calls were rare and expensive then, most often kept for emergencies 3. bad news. But people wrote. Both of my grandmothers, and two of my great-aunts wrote to 4. (I).

It was special that someone took an interest 5. a homesick kid. That someone would take the time to share their lives and inquire about mine really 6. (mean) a lot. My mother was a great letter writer. I looked forward to her letters when I left home, went to college and then traveled across the country 7. (work) newspaper jobs. When I married, had children and moved again, still far from home, she wrote 8. (faith). Letters were a way of closing the distance.

Back then, letter writers were storytellers because they were 9. (observe) of the world around them. As phone calls became 10. (afford), then cheap, the flow of letters slowed down and eventually stopped.