Note: This test was carefully reviewed and corrected by Duong Quoc Doan
___(1)___ leaving New York, I put the question to MrC.S. Forester. He said the custom was ___(2)___ good sense and dated back to the period when many Londoners travelled to and ___(3)___ horseback. A horse, said Mr Forester, is always ___(4)___ from the left side. It was a matter of convenience, then, that a man coming out of a shop or house or ___(5)___ would have his horse aimed toward the left, otherwise he had to walk into the mud and slop of the street to mount, and from this practice came the custom of bearing to the left in traffic. Sensible. Mr Forester added that my ___(6)___, the founders of the American nation, reversed the custom after the Revolution out of sheer perversity. On arriving in London I found another explanation in a guidebook. The author of this book said that the Pope and Napoleon were responsible. Some years before the reign of Bonaparte, ___(7)___ came to visit Paris. Up to then there had been no rule about the movement of traffic. The authorities, however, ___(8)___ that the Parisians should ride and drive on the right-hand side of the street, leaving the left-hand side clear for the movement of the ___(9)___ carriage. Thus a custom was born and, when Bonaparte came along, he made it the law of the land. Moreover, as he conquered country after country, the right-hand rule was put in force in those lands until it became the general thing ___(10)___ continental Europe. The British, however, hating Napoleon, reversed the custom out of sheer perversity.