默写：按照背书的内容填空，每空可填不止一个单词。

Lesson 36 NCE Book 3

    We are ____ than we used to be. In the nineteenth century, a novelist would bring his story to a conclusion by presenting his readers with ____ —most of them wildly improbable. Readers happily ____ that an obscure maidservant was really the hero's mother . A long-lost brother, who ____ , was really alive all the time and wickedly plotting to bring about the hero's downfall. And so on. Modern readers would find ____ totally unacceptable. …