2024年2月6日发(作者：锺寄云)
unit 1 Mr. Doherty Builds His Dream Life
Mr. Doherty Builds His Dream Life
Jim Doherty
1 There are two things I have always wanted to do -- write and live on a farm. Today I'm doing
both. I am not in E. B. White's class as a writer or in my neighbors' league as a farmer, but I'm
getting by. And after years of frustration with city and suburban living, my wife Sandy and I have
finally found contentment here in the country.
多尔蒂先生创建自己的理想生活
吉姆·多尔蒂
有两件事是我一直想做的――写作与务农。如今我同时做着这两件事。作为作家，我和E·B·怀特不属同一等级，作为农场主，我和乡邻也不是同一类人，不过我应付得还行。在城市以及郊区历经多年的怅惘失望之后，我和妻子桑迪终于在这里的乡村寻觅到心灵的满足。
2 It's a self-reliant sort of life. We grow nearly all of our fruits and vegetables. Our hens keep us
in eggs, with several dozen left over to sell each week. Our bees provide us with honey, and we
cut enough wood to just about make it through the heating season.
这是一种自力更生的生活。我们食用的果蔬几乎都是自己种的。自家饲养的鸡提供鸡蛋，每星期还能剩余几十个出售。自家养殖的蜜蜂提供蜂蜜，我们还自己动手砍柴，足可供过冬取暖之用。
3 It's a satisfying life too. In the summer we canoe on the river, go picnicking in the woods and
take long bicycle rides. In the winter we ski and skate. We get excited about sunsets. We love the
smell of the earth warming and the sound of cattle lowing. We watch for hawks in the sky and
deer in the cornfields.
这也是一种令人满足的生活。夏日里我们在河上荡舟，在林子里野餐，骑着自行车长时间漫游。冬日里我们滑雪溜冰。我们为落日的余辉而激动。我们爱闻大地回暖的气息，爱听牛群哞叫。我们守着看鹰儿飞过上空，看玉米田间鹿群嬉跃。
4 But the good life can get pretty tough. Three months ago when it was 30 below, we spent two
miserable days hauling firewood up the river on a sled. Three months from now, it will be 95
above and we will be cultivating corn, weeding strawberries and killing chickens. Recently, Sandy
and I had to retile the back roof. Soon Jim, 16 and Emily, 13, the youngest of our four children,
will help me make some long-overdue improvements on the outdoor toilet that supplements our
indoor plumbing when we are working outside. Later this month, we'll spray the orchard, paint the
barn, plant the garden and clean the hen house before the new chicks arrive.
但如此美妙的生活有时会变得相当艰苦。就在三个月前，气温降到华氏零下30度，我们辛苦劳作了整整两天，用一个雪橇沿着河边拖运木柴。再过三个月，气温会升到95度，我们就要给玉米松土，在草莓地除草，还要宰杀家禽。前一阵子我和桑迪不得不翻修后屋顶。过些时候，四个孩子中的两个小的，16岁的吉米和13岁的埃米莉，会帮着我一起
把拖了很久没修的室外厕所修葺一下，那是专为室外干活修建的。这个月晚些时候，我们要给果树喷洒药水，要油漆谷仓，要给菜园播种，要赶在新的小鸡运到之前清扫鸡舍。
5 In between such chores, I manage to spend 50 to 60 hours a week at the typewriter or doing
reporting for the freelance articles I sell to magazines and newspapers. Sandy, meanwhile, pursues
her own demanding schedule. Besides the usual household routine, she oversees the garden and
beehives, bakes bread, cans and freezes, drives the kids to their music lessons, practices with
them, takes organ lessons on her own, does research and typing for me, writes an article herself
now and then, tends the flower beds, stacks a little wood and delivers the eggs. There is, as the
old saying goes, no rest for the wicked on a place like this -- and not much for the virtuous either.
在这些活计之间，我每周要抽空花五、六十个小时，不是打字撰文，就是为作为自由撰稿人投给报刊的文章进行采访。桑迪则有她自己繁忙的工作日程。除了日常的家务，她还照管菜园和蜂房，烘烤面包，将食品装罐、冷藏，开车送孩子学音乐，和他们一起练习，自己还要上风琴课，为我做些研究工作并打字，自己有时也写写文章，还要侍弄花圃，堆摞木柴、运送鸡蛋。正如老话说的那样，在这种情形之下，坏人不得闲――贤德之人也歇不了。
6 None of us will ever forget our first winter. We were buried under five feet of snow from
December through March. While one storm after another blasted huge drifts up against the house
and barn, we kept warm inside burning our own wood, eating our own apples and loving every
minute of it.
我们谁也不会忘记第一年的冬天。从12月一直到3月底，我们都被深达5英尺的积雪困着。暴风雪肆虐，一场接着一场，积雪厚厚地覆盖着屋子和谷仓，而室内，我们用自己砍伐的木柴烧火取暖，吃着自家种植的苹果，温馨快乐每一分钟。
7 When spring came, it brought two floods. First the river overflowed, covering much of our
land for weeks. Then the growing season began, swamping us under wave after wave of produce.
Our freezer filled up with cherries, raspberries, strawberries, asparagus, peas, beans and corn.
Then our canned-goods shelves and cupboards began to grow with preserves, tomato juice, grape
juice, plums, jams and jellies. Eventually, the basement floor disappeared under piles of potatoes,
squash and pumpkins, and the barn began to fill with apples and pears. It was amazing.
开春后，有过两次泛滥。一次是河水外溢，我们不少田地被淹了几个星期。接着一次是生长季节到了，一波又一波的农产品潮涌而来，弄得我们应接不暇。我们的冰箱里塞满了樱桃、蓝莓、草莓、芦笋、豌豆、青豆和玉米。接着我们存放食品罐的架子上、柜橱里也开始堆满一罐罐的腌渍食品，有番茄汁、葡萄汁、李子、果酱和果冻。最后，地窖里遍地是大堆大堆的土豆、西葫芦、南瓜，谷仓里也储满了苹果和梨。真是太美妙了。
8 The next year we grew even more food and managed to get through the winter on firewood
that was mostly from our own trees and only 100 gallons of heating oil. At that point I began
thinking seriously about quitting my job and starting to freelance. The timing was terrible. By
then, Shawn and Amy, our oldest girls were attending expensive Ivy League schools and we had
only a few thousand dollars in the bank. Yet we kept coming back to the same question: Will there
ever be a better time? The answer, decidedly, was no, and so -- with my employer's blessings and
half a year's pay in accumulated benefits in my pocket -- off I went.
第二年我们种了更多的作物，差不多就靠着从自家树林砍斫的木柴以及仅仅100加仑的燃油过了冬。其时，我开始认真考虑起辞了职去从事自由撰稿的事来。时机选得实在太差。当时，两个大的女儿肖恩和埃米正在费用很高的常春藤学校上学，而我们只有几千美金的银行存款。但我们一再回到一个老问题上来：真的会有更好的时机吗？答案无疑是否定的。于是，带着老板的祝福，口袋里揣着作为累积津贴的半年薪水，我走了。
9 There have been a few anxious moments since then, but on balance things have gone much
better than we had any right to expect. For various stories of mine, I've crawled into black-bear
dens for Sports Illustrated, hitched up dogsled racing teams for Smithsonian magazine, checked
out the Lake Champlain "monster" for Science Digest, and canoed through the Boundary Waters
wilderness area of Minnesota for Destinations.
那以后有过一些焦虑的时刻，但总的来说，情况比我们料想的要好得多。为了写那些内容各不相同的文章，我为《体育画报》爬进过黑熊窝；为《史密森期刊》替参赛的一组组狗套上过雪橇；为《科学文摘》调查过尚普兰湖水怪的真相；为《终点》杂志在明尼苏达划着小舟穿越美、加边界水域内的公共荒野保护区。
10 I'm not making anywhere near as much money as I did when I was employed full time, but
now we don't need as much either. I generate enough income to handle our $600-a-month
mortgage payments plus the usual expenses for a family like ours. That includes everything from
music lessons and dental bills to car repairs and college costs. When it comes to insurance, we
have a poor man's major-medical policy. We have to pay the first $500 of any medical fees for
each member of the family. It picks up 80% of the costs beyond that. Although we are stuck with
paying minor expenses, our premium is low -- only $560 a year -- and we are covered against
catastrophe. Aside from that and the policy on our two cars at $400 a year, we have no other
insurance. But we are setting aside $2,000 a year in an IRA.
我挣的钱远比不上担任全职工作时的收入，可如今我们需要的钱也没有过去多。我挣的钱足以应付每月600美金的房屋贷款按揭以及一家人的日常开销。那些开销包括了所有支出，如音乐课学费、牙医账单、汽车维修以及大学费用等等。至于保险，我们买了一份低收入者的主要医疗项目保险。我们需要为每一位家庭成员的任何一项医疗费用支付最初的500美金。医疗保险则支付超出部分的80％。虽然我们仍要支付小部分医疗费用，但我们的保险费也低--每年只要560美金--而我们给自己生大病保了险。除了这一保险项目，以及两辆汽车每年400美金的保险，我们就没有其他保险了。不过我们每年留出2000美元入个人退休金账户。
11 We've been able to make up the difference in income by cutting back without appreciably
lowering our standard of living. We continue to dine out once or twice a month, but now we
patronize local restaurants instead of more expensive places in the city. We still attend the opera
and ballet in Milwaukee but only a few times a year. We eat less meat, drink cheaper wine and see
fewer movies. Extravagant Christmases are a memory, and we combine vacations with story
assignments...
我们通过节约开支而又不明显降低生活水准的方式来弥补收入差额。我们每个月仍出去吃一两次饭，不过现在我们光顾的是当地餐馆，而不是城里的高级饭店。我们仍去密尔沃基听歌剧看芭蕾演出，不过一年才几次。我们肉吃得少了，酒喝得便宜了，电影看得少了。铺张的圣诞节成为一种回忆，我们把完成稿约作为度假的一部分„„
12 I suspect not everyone who loves the country would be happy living the way we do. It takes a
couple of special qualities. One is a tolerance for solitude. Because we are so busy and on such a
tight budget, we don't entertain much. During the growing season there is no time for socializing
anyway. Jim and Emily are involved in school activities, but they too spend most of their time at
home.
我想，不是所有热爱乡村的人都会乐意过我们这种生活的。这种生活需要一些特殊的素质。其一是耐得住寂寞。由于我们如此忙碌，手头又紧，我们很少请客。在作物生长季节，根本就没工夫参加社交活动。吉米和埃米莉虽然参加学校的各种活动，但他俩大多数时间也呆在家里。
13 The other requirement is energy -- a lot of it. The way to make self-sufficiency work on a
small scale is to resist the temptation to buy a tractor and other expensive laborsaving devices.
Instead, you do the work yourself. The only machinery we own (not counting the lawn mower) is
a little three-horsepower rotary cultivator and a 16-inch chain saw.
另一项要求是体力――相当大的体力。小范围里实现自给自足的途径是抵制诱惑，不去购置拖拉机和其他昂贵的节省劳力的机械。相反，你要自己动手。我们仅有的机器（不包括割草机）是一台3马力的小型旋转式耕耘机以及一架16英寸的链锯。
14 How much longer we'll have enough energy to stay on here is anybody's guess -- perhaps for
quite a while, perhaps not. When the time comes, we'll leave with a feeling of sorrow but also with
a sense of pride at what we've been able to accomplish. We should make a fair profit on the sale of
the place, too. We've invested about $35,000 of our own money in it, and we could just about
double that if we sold today. But this is not a good time to sell. Once economic conditions
improve, however, demand for farms like ours should be strong again.
没人知道我们还能有精力在这里再呆多久--也许呆很长一阵子，也许不是。到走的时候，我们会怆然离去，但也会为自己所做的一切深感自豪。我们把农场出售也会赚相当大一笔钱。我们自己在农场投入了约35，000美金的资金，要是现在售出的话价格差不多可以翻一倍。不过现在不是出售的好时机。但是一旦经济形势好转，对我们这种农场的需求又会增多。
15 We didn't move here primarily to earn money though. We came because we wanted to
improve the quality of our lives. When I watch Emily collecting eggs in the evening, fishing with
Jim on the river or enjoying an old-fashioned picnic in the orchard with the entire family, I know
we've found just what we were looking for.
但我们主要不是为了赚钱而移居至此的。我们来此居住是因为想提高生活质量。当我看着埃米莉傍晚去收鸡蛋，跟吉米一起在河上钓鱼，或和全家人一起在果园里享用老式的野餐，我知道，我们找到了自己一直在寻求的生活方式。
unit 2 The Freedom Givers
The Freedom Givers
Fergus M. Bordewich
1 A gentle breeze swept the Canadian plains as I stepped outside the small two-story house.
Alongside me was a slender woman in a black dress, my guide back to a time when the
surrounding settlement in Dresden, Ontario, was home to a hero in American history. As we
walked toward a plain gray church, Barbara Carter spoke proudly of her great-great-grandfather,
Josiah Henson. "He was confident that the Creator intended all men to be created equal. And he
never gave up struggling for that freedom."
给人以自由者
弗格斯·M·博得威奇
我步出这幢两层小屋，加拿大平原上轻风微拂。我身边是一位苗条的黑衣女子，把我带回到过去的向导。那时，安大略省得雷斯顿这一带住着美国历史上的一位英雄。我们前往一座普普通通的灰色教堂，芭芭拉·卡特自豪地谈论着其高祖乔赛亚·亨森。“他坚信上帝要所有人生来平等。他从来没有停止过争取这一自由权利的奋斗。”
2 Carter's devotion to her ancestor is about more than personal pride: it is about family honor.
For Josiah Henson has lived on through the character in American fiction that he helped inspire:
Uncle Tom, the long-suffering slave in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Ironically,
that character has come to symbolize everything Henson was not. A racial sellout unwilling to
stand up for himself? Carter gets angry at the thought. "Josiah Henson was a man of principle,"
she said firmly.
卡特对其先辈的忠诚不仅仅关乎一己之骄傲，而关乎家族荣誉。因为乔赛亚·亨森至今仍为人所知是由于他所激发的创作灵感使得一个美国小说人物问世：汤姆叔叔，哈丽特·比彻·斯陀的小说《汤姆叔叔的小屋》中那个逆来顺受的黑奴。具有讽刺意味的是，这一人物所象征的一切在亨森身上一点都找不到。一个不愿奋起力争、背叛种族的黑人？卡特对此颇为愤慨。“乔赛亚·亨森是个有原则的人，”她肯定地说。
3 I had traveled here to Henson's last home -- now a historic site that Carter formerly directed --
to learn more about a man who was, in many ways, an African-American Moses. After winning
his own freedom from slavery, Henson secretly helped hundreds of other slaves to escape north to
Canada -- and liberty. Many settled here in Dresden with him.
我远道前来亨森最后的居所――如今已成为卡特曾管理过的一处历史遗迹――是为了更多地了解此人，他在许多方面堪称黑人摩西。亨森自己摆脱了黑奴身份获得自由之后，便秘密帮助其他许多黑奴逃奔北方去加拿大――逃奔自由之地。许多人和他一起在得雷斯顿这一带定居了下来。
4 Yet this stop was only part of a much larger mission for me. Josiah Henson is but one name
on a long list of courageous men and women who together forged the Underground Railroad, a
secret web of escape routes and safe houses that they used to liberate slaves from the American
South. Between 1820 and 1860, as many as 100,000 slaves traveled the Railroad to freedom.
但此地只是我所承担的繁重使命的一处停留地。乔赛亚·亨森只是一长串无所畏惧的男女名单中的一个名字，这些人共同创建了这条“地下铁路”，一条由逃亡线路和可靠的人家组成的用以解放美国南方黑奴的秘密网络。在1820年至1860年期间，多达十万名黑奴经由此路走向自由。
5 In October 2000, President Clinton authorized $16 million for the National Underground
Railroad Freedom Center to honor this first great civil-rights struggle in the U. S. The center is
scheduled to open in 2004 in Cincinnati. And it's about time. For the heroes of the Underground
Railroad remain too little remembered, their exploits still largely unsung. I was intent on telling
their stories. 2000年10月，克林顿总统批准拨款1600万美元建造全国“地下铁路”自由中心，以此纪念美国历史上第一次伟大的民权斗争。中心计划于2004年在辛辛那提州建成。真是该建立这样一个中心的时候了。因为地下铁路的英雄们依然默默无闻，他们的业绩依然少人颂扬。我要讲述他们的故事。
6 John Parker tensed when he heard the soft knock. Peering out his door into the night, he
recognized the face of a trusted neighbor. "There's a party of escaped slaves hiding in the woods in
Kentucky, twenty miles from the river," the man whispered urgently. Parker didn't hesitate. "I'll
go," he said, pushing a pair of pistols into his pockets.
听到轻轻的敲门声，约翰·帕克神情紧张起来。他开门窥望，夜色中认出是一位可靠的邻居。“有一群逃亡奴隶躲在肯塔基州的树林里，就在离河20英里的地方，”那人用急迫的口气低语道。帕克没一点儿迟疑。“我就去，”他说着，把两支手枪揣进口袋。
7 Born a slave two decades before, in the 1820s, Parker had been taken from his mother at age
eight and forced to walk in chains from Virginia to Alabama, where he was sold on the slave
market. Determined to live free someday, he managed to get trained in iron molding. Eventually
he saved enough money working at this trade on the side to buy his freedom. Now, by day, Parker
worked in an iron foundry in the Ohio port of Ripley. By night he was a "conductor" on the
Underground Railroad, helping people slip by the slave hunters. In Kentucky, where he was now
headed, there was a $1000 reward for his capture, dead or alive. 20年前，即19世纪20年代，生来即为黑奴的帕克才8岁就被从母亲身边带走，被迫拖着镣铐从弗吉尼亚走到阿拉巴马，在那里的黑奴市场被买走。他打定主意有朝一日要过自由的生活，便设法学会了铸铁这门手艺。后来他终于靠这门手艺攒够钱赎回了自由。现在，帕克白天在俄亥俄州里普利港的一家铸铁厂干活。到了晚上，他就成了地下铁路的一位“乘务员”，帮助人们避开追捕逃亡黑奴的人。在他正前往的肯塔基州，当局悬赏1000美元抓他，活人死尸都要。
8 Crossing the Ohio River on that chilly night, Parker found ten fugitives frozen with fear. "Get
your bundles and follow me, " he told them, leading the eight men and two women toward the
river. They had almost reached shore when a watchman spotted them and raced off to spread the
news.
在那个阴冷的夜晚，帕克渡过俄亥俄河，找到了十个丧魂落魄的逃亡者。“拿好包裹跟我走，”他一边吩咐他们，一边带着这八男二女朝河边走去。就要到岸时，一个巡夜人发现了他们，急忙跑开去报告。
9 Parker saw a small boat and, with a shout, pushed the escaping slaves into it. There was room
for all but two. As the boat slid across the river, Parker watched helplessly as the pursuers closed
in around the men he was forced to leave behind.
帕克看见一条小船，便大喝一声，把那些逃亡黑奴推上了船。大家都上了船，但有两个人容不下。小船徐徐驶向对岸，帕克眼睁睁地看着追捕者把他被迫留下的两个男人围住。
10 The others made it to the Ohio shore, where Parker hurriedly arranged for a wagon to take
them to the next "station" on the Underground Railroad -- the first leg of their journey to safety in
Canada. Over the course of his life, John Parker guided more than 400 slaves to safety.
其他的人都上了岸，帕克急忙安排了一辆车把他们带到地下铁路的下一“站”――他们走向安全的加拿大之旅的第一程。约翰·帕克在有生之年一共带领400多名黑奴走向安全之地。
11 While black conductors were often motivated by their own painful experiences, whites
were commonly driven by religious convictions. Levi Coffin, a Quaker raised in North Carolina,
explained, "The Bible, in bidding us to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, said nothing about
color."
黑人去当乘务员常常是由于本人痛苦的经历，而那些白人则往往是受了宗教信仰的感召。在北卡罗来纳州长大的贵格会教徒利瓦伊·科芬解释说：“《圣经》上只是要我们给饥者以食物，无衣者以衣衫，但没提到过肤色的事。”
12 In the 1820s Coffin moved west to Newport (now Fountain City), Indiana, where he opened a
store. Word spread that fleeing slaves could always find refuge at the Coffin home. At times he
sheltered as many as 17 fugitives at once, and he kept a team and wagon ready to convey them on
the next leg of their journey. Eventually three principal routes converged at the Coffin house,
which came to be the Grand Central Terminal of the Underground Railroad.
在19世纪20年代，科芬向西迁移前往印第安纳州的新港（即今天的喷泉市），在那里开了一家小店。人们传说，逃亡黑奴在科芬家总是能得到庇护。有时他一次庇护的逃亡者就多达17人，他还备有一组人员和车辆把他们送往下一段行程。到后来有三条主要路线在科芬家汇合，科芬家成了地下铁路的中央车站。
13 For his efforts, Coffin received frequent death threats and warnings that his store and home
would be burned. Nearly every conductor faced similar risks -- or worse. In the North, a
magistrate might have imposed a fine or a brief jail sentence for aiding those escaping. In the
Southern states, whites were sentenced to months or even years in jail. One courageous Methodist
minister, Calvin Fairbank, was imprisoned for more than 17 years in Kentucky, where he kept a
log of his beatings: 35,105 stripes with the whip.
科芬经常由于他做的工作受到被杀的威胁，收到焚毁他店铺和住宅的警告。几乎每一个乘务员都面临类似的危险――或者更为严重。在北方，治安官会对帮助逃亡的人课以罚金，或判以短期监禁。在南方各州，白人则被判处几个月甚至几年的监禁。一位勇敢的循道宗牧师卡尔文·费尔班克在肯塔基州被关押了17年多，他记录了自己遭受毒打的情况：总共被鞭笞了35,105下。
14 As for the slaves, escape meant a journey of hundreds of miles through unknown country,
where they were usually easy to recognize. With no road signs and few maps, they had to put their
trust in directions passed by word of mouth and in secret signs -- nails driven into trees, for
example -- that conductors used to mark the route north.
至于那些黑奴，逃亡意味着数百英里的长途跋涉，意味着穿越自己极易被人辨认的陌生地域。没有路标，也几乎没有线路图，他们赶路全凭着口口相告的路线以及秘密记号――比如树上钉着的钉子――是乘务员用来标示北上路线的记号。
15 Many slaves traveled under cover of night, their faces sometimes caked with white powder.
Quakers often dressed their "passengers," both male and female, in gray dresses, deep bonnets
and full veils. On one occasion, Levi Coffin was transporting so many runaway slaves that he
disguised them as a funeral procession.
许多黑奴在夜色掩护下赶路，有时脸上涂着厚厚的白粉。贵格会教徒经常让他们的“乘客”不分男女穿上灰衣服，戴上深沿帽，披着把头部完全遮盖住的面纱。有一次，利瓦伊·科芬运送的逃亡黑奴实在太多，他就把他们装扮成出殡队伍。
16 Canada was the primary destination for many fugitives. Slavery had been abolished there in
1833, and Canadian authorities encouraged the runaways to settle their vast virgin land. Among
them was Josiah Henson.
加拿大是许多逃亡者的首选终点站。那儿1833年就废除了奴隶制，加拿大当局鼓励逃亡奴隶在其广阔的未经开垦的土地上定居。其中就有乔赛亚·亨森。
17 As a boy in Maryland, Henson watched as his entire family was sold to different buyers, and
he saw his mother harshly beaten when she tried to keep him with her. Making the best of his lot,
Henson worked diligently and rose far in his owner's regard.
还是孩子的亨森在马里兰州目睹着全家人被卖给不同的主人，看到母亲为了想把自己留在她身边而遭受毒打。亨森非常认命，干活勤勉，深受主人器重。
18 Money problems eventually compelled his master to send Henson, his wife and children to a
brother in Kentucky. After laboring there for several years, Henson heard alarming news: the new
master was planning to sell him for plantation work far away in the Deep South. The slave would
be separated forever from his family.
经济困顿最终迫使亨森的主人将他及其妻儿送到主人在肯塔基州的一个兄弟处。在那儿干了几年苦工之后，亨森听说了一个可怕的消息：新主人准备把他卖到遥远的南方腹地去农庄干活。这名奴隶将与自己的家人永远分离。
19 There was only one answer: flight. "I knew the North Star," Henson wrote years later. "Like
the star of Bethlehem, it announced where my salvation lay. "
只有一条路可走：逃亡。“我会认北斗星，”许多年后亨森写道。“就像圣地伯利恒的救星一样，它告诉我在哪里可以获救。”
20 At huge risk, Henson and his wife set off with their four children. Two weeks later, starving
and exhausted, the family reached Cincinnati, where they made contact with members of the
Underground Railroad. "Carefully they provided for our welfare, and then they set us thirty miles
on our way by wagon." 亨森和妻子冒着极大的风险带着四个孩子上路了。两个星期之后，饥饿疲惫的一家人来到了辛辛那提州，在那儿，他们与地下铁路的成员取得了联系。“他们为我们提供了食宿，非常关心，接着又用车送了我们30英里。”
21 The Hensons continued north, arriving at last in Buffalo, N. Y. There a friendly captain
pointed across the Niagara River. "'Do you see those trees?' he said. 'They grow on free soil.'" He
gave Henson a dollar and arranged for a boat, which carried the slave and his family across the
river to Canada.
亨森一家继续往北走，最后来到纽约州的布法罗。在那儿，一位友善的船长指着尼亚加拉河对岸。“‘看见那些树没有？’他说，‘它们生长在自由的土地上。’”他给了亨森一美元钱，安排了一条小船，小船载着这位黑奴及其家人过河来到加拿大。
22 "I threw myself on the ground, rolled in the sand and danced around, till, in the eyes of
several who were present, I passed for a madman. 'He's some crazy fellow,' said a Colonel
Warren."
“我扑倒在地，在沙土里打滚，手舞足蹈，最后，在场的那几个人都认定我是疯子。‘他是个疯子，’有个沃伦上校说。”
23 "'Oh, no! Don't you know? I'm free!'"
“‘不，不是的！知道吗？我自由了！’”
unit 3 The Land of the Lock
The Land of the Lock
Bob Greene
1 In the house where I grew up, it was our custom to leave the front door on the latch at night. I
don't know if that was a local term or if it is universal; "on the latch" meant the door was closed
but not locked. None of us carried keys; the last one in for the evening would close up, and that
was it.
锁之国
鲍伯·格林
小时候在家里，我们的前门总是夜不落锁。我不知道这是当地的一种说法还是大家都这么说；"不落锁"的意思是掩上门，但不锁住。我们谁都不带钥匙；晚上最后一个回家的人把门关上，这就行了。
2 Those days are over. In rural areas as well as in cities, doors do not stay unlocked, even for
part of an evening.
那样的日子已经一去不复返了。在乡下，在城里，门不再关着不锁上，哪怕是傍晚一段时间也不例外。
3 Suburbs and country areas are, in many ways, even more vulnerable than well-patroled urban
streets. Statistics show the crime rate rising more dramatically in those allegedly tranquil areas
than in cities. At any rate, the era of leaving the front door on the latch is over.
在许多方面，郊区和农村甚至比巡查严密的城市街道更易受到攻击。统计显示，那些据称是安宁的地区的犯罪率上升得比城镇更为显著。不管怎么说，前门虚掩不落锁的时代是一去不复返了。
4 It has been replaced by dead-bolt locks, security chains, electronic alarm systems and trip
wires hooked up to a police station or private guard firm. Many suburban families have sliding
glass doors on their patios, with steel bars elegantly built in so no one can pry the doors open. 取而代之的是防盗锁、防护链、电子报警系统，以及连接警署或私人保安公司的报
警装置。郊区的许多人家在露台上安装了玻璃滑门，内侧有装得很讲究的钢条，这样就没人能把门撬开。
5 It is not uncommon, in the most pleasant of homes, to see pasted on the windows small
notices announcing that the premises are under surveillance by this security force or that guard
company. 在最温馨的居家，也常常看得到窗上贴着小小的告示，称本宅由某家安全机构或某个保安公司负责监管。
6 The lock is the new symbol of America. Indeed, a recent public-service advertisement by a
large insurance company featured not charts showing how much at risk we are, but a picture of a
child's bicycle with the now-usual padlock attached to it.
锁成了美国的新的象征。的确，一家大保险公司最近的一则公益广告没有用图表表明我们所处的危险有多大，而是用了一幅童车的图片，车身上悬着如今无所不在的挂锁。
7 The ad pointed out that, yes, it is the insurance companies that pay for stolen goods, but who is
going to pay for what the new atmosphere of distrust and fear is doing to our way of life? Who is
going to make the psychic payment for the transformation of America from the Land of the Free
to the Land of the Lock?
广告指出，没错，确是保险公司理赔失窃物品，但谁来赔偿互不信任、担心害怕这种新氛围对我们的生活方式所造成的影响呢？谁来对美国从自由之国到锁之国这一蜕变作出精神赔偿呢？
8 For that is what has happened. We have become so used to defending ourselves against the
new atmosphere of American life, so used to putting up barriers, that we have not had time to
think about what it may mean.
因为那就是现状。我们已经变得如此习惯于保护自己不受美国生活新氛围的影响，如此习惯于设置障碍，因而无暇考虑这一切意味着什么。
9 For some reason we are satisfied when we think we are well-protected; it does not occur to us
to ask ourselves: Why has this happened? Why are we having to barricade ourselves against our
neighbors and fellow citizens, and when, exactly, did this start to take over our lives?
出于某种原因，当我们觉得防范周密时就感到心满意足；我们没有问过自己：为什么会出现这种情况？为什么非得把自己与邻居和同住一城的居民相隔绝，这一切究竟是从什么时候开始主宰我们生活的？
10 And it has taken over. If you work for a medium- to large-size company, chances are that you
don't just wander in and out of work. You probably carry some kind of access card, electronic or
otherwise, that allows you in and out of your place of work. Maybe the security guard at the front
desk knows your face and will wave you in most days, but the fact remains that the business you
work for feels threatened enough to keep outsiders away via these "keys."
这一切确是主宰了我们的生活。如果你在一家大中型公司上班，你上下班很可能不好随意进出。你可能随身带着某种出入卡，电子的或别的什么的，因为这卡能让你进出工作场所。也许前台的保安认识你这张脸，平日一挥手让你进去，但事实明摆着，你所任职的公司深感面临威胁，因此要借助这些“钥匙”不让外人靠近。
11 It wasn't always like this. Even a decade ago, most private businesses had a policy of free
access. It simply didn't occur to managers that the proper thing to do was to distrust people.
这一现象并非向来有之。即使在十年前，大多数私营公司仍采取自由出入的做法。那时管理人员根本没想到过恰当的手段是不信任他人。
12 Look at the airports. Parents used to take children out to departure gates to watch planes land
and take off. That's all gone. Airports are no longer a place of education and fun; they are the most
sophisticated of security sites.
且看各地机场。过去家长常常带孩子去登机口看飞机起飞降落。这种事再也没有了。机场不再是一个有趣的学习场所；它们成了拥有最精密的安全检查系统的场所。
13 With electronic X-ray equipment, we seem finally to have figured out a way to hold the
terrorists, real and imagined, at bay; it was such a relief to solve this problem that we did not think
much about what such a state of affairs says about the quality of our lives. We now pass through
these electronic friskers without so much as a sideways glance; the machines, and what they stand
for, have won.
凭借着电子透视装置，我们似乎终于想出妙计让恐怖分子无法近身，无论是真的恐怖分子还是凭空臆想的。能解决这一问题真是如释重负，于是我们不去多想这种状况对我们的生活质量意味着什么。如今我们走过这些电子搜查器时已经看都不看一眼了，这些装置，还有它们所代表的一切已经获胜。
14 Our neighborhoods are bathed in high-intensity light; we do not want to afford ourselves
even so much a luxury as a shadow.
我们的居住区处在强光源的照射下；我们连哪怕像阴影这样小小的享受也不想给自己。
15 Businessmen, in increasing numbers, are purchasing new machines that hook up to the
telephone and analyze a caller's voice. The machines are supposed to tell the businessman, with a
small margin of error, whether his friend or client is telling lies.
越来越多的商人正购置连接在电话机上、能剖析来电者声音的新机器。据说那种机器能让商人知道他的朋友或客户是否在撒谎，其出错概率很小。
16 All this is being done in the name of "security"; that is what we tell ourselves. We are fearful,
and so we devise ways to lock the fear out, and that, we decide, is what security means.
所有这一切都是以“安全”的名义实施的：我们是这么跟自己说的。我们害怕，于是我们设法把害怕锁在外面，我们认定，那就是安全的意义。
17 But no; with all this "security," we are perhaps the most insecure nation in the history of
civilized man. What better word to describe the way in which we have been forced to live? What
sadder reflection on all that we have become in this new and puzzling time?
其实不然；我们虽然有了这一切安全措施，但我们或许是人类文明史上最不安全的国民。还有什么更好的字眼能用来描述我们被迫选择的生活方式呢？还有什么更为可悲地表明我们在这个令人困惑的新时代所感受到的惶恐之情呢？
18 We trust no one. Suburban housewives wear rape whistles on their station wagon key chains.
We have become so smart about self-protection that, in the end, we have all outsmarted ourselves.
We may have locked the evils out, but in so doing we have locked ourselves in.
我们不信任任何人。郊区的家庭主妇在客货两用车钥匙链上挂着防强暴口哨。我们在自我防卫方面变得如此聪明，最终聪明反被聪明误。我们或许是把邪恶锁在了门外，但在这么做的同时我们把自己锁在里边了。
19 That may be the legacy we remember best when we look back on this age: In dealing with the
unseen horrors among us, we became prisoners of ourselves. All of us prisoners, in this time of
our troubles.
那也许是我们将来回顾这一时代时记得最牢的精神遗产：在对付我们中间无形的恐惧之时，我们成了自己的囚徒。在我们这个问题重重的时代，所有的人都是囚徒。
unit 4
Was Einstein a Space Alien?
1 Albert Einstein was exhausted. For the third night in a row, his baby son Hans, crying, kept
the household awake until dawn. When Albert finally dozed off ... it was time to get up and go to
work. He couldn't skip a day. He needed the job to support his young family.
艾伯特爱因斯坦被搞得筋疲力尽.连续第三个晚上，他的宝贝儿子汉斯，哭泣，让家人清醒直到黎明。当艾伯特终于睡着了是时候起床去工作。他不能跳过一天。他需要工作来养活家人。
2 Walking briskly to the Patent Office, where he was a "Technical Expert, Third Class,"
Albert worried about his mother. She was getting older and frail, and she didn't approve of his
marriage to Mileva. Relations were strained. Albert glanced at a passing shop window. His hair
was a mess; he had forgotten to comb it again.
他轻快地走到专利局，在那里他是一个“技术专家，第三级，”艾伯特担心他的母亲。她越来越虚弱，她不赞成他与米列娃结婚，关系紧张。艾伯特看了一眼路过商店的橱窗。他的头发是一个烂摊子，他忘了梳一遍。
3 Work. Family. Making ends meet. Albert felt all the pressure and responsibility of any
young husband and father.
工作。家庭。使收支平衡。艾伯特感受到任何年轻的丈夫和父亲所有的压力和责任的
To relax, he revolutionized physics.
放松，他彻底改变了物理学。
4 In 1905, at the age of 26 and four years before he was able to get a job as a professor of
physics, Einstein published five of the most important papers in the history of science--all written
in his "spare time." He proved that atoms and molecules existed. Before 1905, scientists weren't
sure about that. He argued that light came in little bits (later called "photons") and thus laid the
foundation for quantum mechanics. He described his theory of special relativity: space and time
were threads in a common fabric, he proposed, which could be bent, stretched and twisted.
1905年，在年龄26时，四年前他找到了工作作为一个物理学教授，爱因斯坦出版了五个最重要的论文在科学史”——所有在他的空余时间写的。”他证明了原子和分子的存在。1905年之前，科学家们不清楚那些。他认为光是小块，后来被称为“光子”，从而奠定了量子力的学基础。他描述了他的狭义相对论理论，空间和时间是同一个织物的线，他提出那是可弯曲、拉伸和扭曲的。
5 Oh, and by the way, E=mc2.
哦,顺便说一句,E = mc2
6 Before Einstein, the last scientist who had such a creative outburst was Sir Isaac Newton. It
happened in 1666 when Newton secluded himself at his mother's farm to avoid an outbreak of
plague at Cambridge. With nothing better to do, he developed his Theory of Universal
Gravitation.
在爱因斯坦之前，最后一个有这样突出创意的科学家，是艾萨克牛顿先生。它发生在666时，1牛顿隔离自己母亲的农场去避免爆发在剑桥的瘟疫。没有什么更好的事，他提出了他的万有引力
7 For centuries historians called 1666 Newton's annus mirabilis, or "miracle year." Now those
words have a different meaning: Einstein and 1905. The United Nations has declared 2005 "The
World Year of Physics" to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Einstein's annus mirabilis.
几个世纪以来历史学家称为1666,牛顿的“奇迹年。现在这些话有不同的意义:爱因斯坦和1905。联合国已经宣布2005年“世界物理年“庆祝爱因斯坦“奇迹年的100周年
8 Modern pop culture paints Einstein as a bushy-haired superthinker. His ideas, we're told,
were improbably far ahead of other scientists. He must have come from some other planet--maybe
the same one Newton grew up on.
现代流行文化吧爱因斯坦画一个bushy-haired superthinker。我们被告之他的想法，是不可能远远领先于其他科学家。他一定是从其他星球来的——也许是牛顿长大的同一个星球。
9 "Einstein was no space alien," laughs Harvard University physicist and science historian
Peter Galison. "He was a man of his time." All of his 1905 papers unraveled problems being
worked on, with mixed success, by other scientists. "If Einstein hadn't been born, [those papers]
would have been written in some form, eventually, by others," Galison believes.
“爱因斯坦不是外星人。”哈佛大学物理学家和科学史家彼得笑到。“他是他那个时代的人。”他所有的1905年的文件揭开问题正在被其他科学家研究，成败参半。“如果爱因斯坦没有出生的 [文件]将最终由他人以某种形式写出来”Galison说
10 What's remarkable about 1905 is that a single person authored all five papers, plus the
original, irreverent way Einstein came to his conclusions.
1905年值得注意的是，一个人撰写的五个文件的全部，加上原有的，爱因斯坦以不敬
的方式得到自己的结论。
11 For example: the photoelectric effect. This was a puzzle in the early 1900s. When light hits
a metal, like zinc, electrons fly off. This can happen only if light comes in little packets
concentrated enough to knock an electron loose. A spread-out wave wouldn't do the photoelectric
trick.
例如，光电效应。这在20世纪初是一个难题。当光照射到金属，如锌，电子会飞。只来一点点光集中集中撞击自由电子这才会发生。传播的波不具有光电效果。
12 The solution seems simple--light is particulate. Indeed, this is the solution Einstein proposed
in 1905 and won the Nobel Prize for in 1921. Other physicists like Max Planck (working on a
related problem: blackbody radiation), more senior and experienced than Einstein, were closing in
on the answer, but Einstein got there first. Why?
解决办法似乎很简单——光的微粒。事实上，这是，爱因斯坦在1905年提出的解决方案并在1921获得了诺贝尔奖。其他物理学家如普朗克，工作相关的问题上，黑体辐射比爱因斯坦更先一步更有经验，步步逼近答案，但爱因斯坦先到那里。为什么呢
It's a question of authority.
这是一个问题的权威。
13 "In Einstein's day, if you tried to say that light was made of particles, you found yourself
disagreeing with physicist James Clerk Maxwell. Nobody wanted to do that," says Galison.
Maxwell's equations were enormously successful, unifying the physics of electricity, magnetism
and optics. Maxwell had proved beyond any doubt that light was an electromagnetic wave.
Maxwell was an Authority Figure.
“在爱因斯坦的时代，如果你想说，光是由粒子构成的，你发现自己不同意的物理学家杰姆斯麦斯威尔的理论。“没有人想做这样的事。”Galison说。麦斯威尔方程取得了巨大的成功，统一的物理电磁和光学。麦斯威尔毫无疑问证明光是一种电磁波。麦斯威尔是一个权威人物。
14 Einstein didn't give a fig for authority. He didn't resist being told what to do, not so much,
but he hated being told what was true. Even as a child he was constantly doubting and
questioning. "Your mere presence here undermines the class's respect for me," spat his 7th grade
teacher, Dr. Joseph Degenhart. (Degenhart also predicted that Einstein "would never get anywhere
in life.") This character flaw was to be a key ingredient in Einstein's discoveries.
爱因斯坦不在乎权威。他没有反抗被告知要做什么，但他讨厌被告诉什么是真理。即使作为一个孩子，他不断的怀疑和质疑。“你的存在在这里破坏了班级对我尊敬。”他第七年级的老师约瑟夫博士狄根哈特说。“狄根哈特还预测，爱因斯坦将一事无成”，这一性格缺陷是爱因斯坦发现的一个关键因素。
15 "In 1905," notes Galison, "Einstein had just received his Ph.D. He wasn't beholden to a
thesis advisor or any other authority figure." His mind was free to roam accordingly. “在1905年，”Galison记录，“爱因斯坦刚刚获得博士学位。他不感激于一个导师或任何其他权威人物。”他的思想在自由漫游因此
16 In retrospect, Maxwell was right. Light is a wave. But Einstein was right, too. Light is a
particle. This bizarre duality baffles Physics 101 students today just as it baffledEinstein in 1905.
How can light be both? Einstein had no idea.
回想起来，麦斯威尔是正确的。光是一种波动。但爱因斯坦也是对的。光是粒子。这个奇特的二元性物质物理困惑physic101的学生一样在1905年困惑爱因斯坦。怎么光是二元性？爱因斯坦不知道。
17 That didn't slow him down. Disdaining caution, Einstein adopted the intuitive leap as a
basic tool. "I believe in intuition and inspiration," he wrote in 1931. "At times I feel certain I am
right while not knowing the reason."
不过这不能使他慢下来。蔑视谨慎爱因斯坦采用了直观的飞跃，作为一个基本工具。“我相信直觉和灵感，”他写道，在1931年。“有时我觉得我是对的但不知道原因。”
18 Although Einstein's five papers were published in a single year, he had been thinking about
physics, deeply, since childhood. "Science was dinner-table conversation inthe Einstein
household," explains Galison. Albert's father Hermann and uncle Jakob ran a German company
making such things as dynamos, arc lamps, light bulbs and telephones. This was high-tech at the
turn of the century, "like a Silicon Valley company would be today," notes Galison. "Albert's
interest in science and technology came naturally."
尽管爱因斯坦的五篇论文发表在一年的时间里，但他一直自童年开始在深深地思考物理学。“在爱因斯坦家中，科学是餐桌上的谈话”Galison解释到。艾伯特的父亲赫尔曼和叔叔雅各布一家制造发电机、电弧灯、灯泡、电话的德国公司。这是世纪之交的高科技，“像现在一个在硅谷公司。”Galison记录。“艾伯特对科技自然感兴趣。”
19 Einstein's parents sometimes took Albert to parties. No babysitter was required: Albert sat
on the couch, totally absorbed, quietly doing math problems while others danced around him.
Pencil and paper were Albert's GameBoy!
爱因斯坦的父母有时会带艾伯特参加聚会。保姆是不必要的，当其他人在他周围跳舞时艾伯特坐在沙发上，全神贯注，静静地做数学题而。笔和纸是艾伯特的玩具！
20 He had impressive powers of concentration. Einstein's sister, Maja, recalled "...even when
there was a lot of noise, he could lie down on the sofa, pick up a pen and paper, precariously
balance an inkwell on the backrest and engross himself in a problem so much that the background
noise stimulated rather than disturbed him."
他有令人印象深刻的专注力。爱因斯坦的妹妹，玛雅，回忆说，“„„即使有很大的噪音，他会躺在沙发上，拿起纸和笔，悠悠地平衡一个放在靠背墨水瓶使他自己全神贯注的沉浸在问题中就如同背景噪声促进而不是打扰他。”
21 Einstein was clearly intelligent, but not outlandishly more so than his peers. "I have no
special talents," he claimed, "I am only passionately curious." And again: "The contrast between
the popular assessment of my powers ... and the reality is simply grotesque." Einstein credited his
discoveries to imagination and pesky questioning more so than orthodox intelligence.
爱因斯坦很聪明,但没有比他的同行更特殊的地方。“我没有特殊的才能.”他说:“我只是有强烈的好奇心。”又说:“关于我力量的流行评估„和现实的对比真是荒唐。”爱因斯坦将他的发现归功于想象力和无止境的提问而不是传统的智慧。
22 Later in life, it should be remembered, he struggled mightily to produce a unified field
theory, combining gravity with other forces of nature. He failed. Einstein's brainpower wasnot
limitless.
在后来的生活中,我们应该记住他努力产生一个统一场理论结合重力和其他自然的力量。他失败了。爱因斯坦的智慧不是无限的
23 Neither was Einstein's brain. It was removed without permission by Dr. Thomas Harvey in
1955 when Einstein died. He probably expected to find something extraordinary. But Einstein's
brain looked much like any other, gray, crinkly, and, if anything, a trifle smaller than average.
爱因斯坦的大脑也是如此。它被托马斯博士哈维在1955年爱因斯坦死的时候移除。他可能期待会发现一些惊人的事,但爱因斯坦的大脑看起来像任何其他一样,灰色,起皱,并且,如果非要说什么不同,比一般人的小一点
unit 5 Writing Three Thank-You Letters
Writing Three Thank-You Letters
Alex Haley
1 It was 1943, during World War II, and I was a young U. S. coastguardsman. My ship, the
USS Murzim, had been under way for several days. Most of her holds contained thousands of
cartons of canned or dried foods. The other holds were loaded with five-hundred-pound bombs
packed delicately in padded racks. Our destination was a big base on the island of Tulagi in the
South Pacific.
写三封感谢信
亚利克斯·黑利
那是在二战期间的1943年，我是个年轻的美国海岸警卫队队员。我们的船，美国军舰军市一号已出海多日。多数船舱装着成千上万箱罐装或风干的食品。其余的船舱装着不少五百磅重的炸弹，都小心翼翼地放在垫过的架子上。我们的目的地是南太平洋图拉吉岛上一个规模很大的基地。
2 I was one of the Murzim's several cooks and, quite the same as for folk ashore, this
Thanksgiving morning had seen us busily preparing a traditional dinner featuring roast turkey.
我是军市一号上的一个厨师，跟岸上的人一样，那个感恩节的上午，我们忙着在准备一道以烤火鸡为主的传统菜肴。
3 Well, as any cook knows, it's a lot of hard work to cook and serve a big meal, and clean up and
put everything away. But finally, around sundown, we finished at last.
当厨师的都知道，要烹制一顿大餐，摆上桌，再刷洗、收拾干净，是件辛苦的事。
不过，等到太阳快下山时，我们总算全都收拾停当了。
4 I decided first to go out on the Murzim's afterdeck for a breath of open air. I made my way out
there, breathing in great, deep draughts while walking slowly about, still wearing my white cook's
hat.
我想先去后甲板透透气。我信步走去，一边深深呼吸着空气，一边慢慢地踱着步，头上仍戴着那顶白色的厨师帽。
5 I got to thinking about Thanksgiving, of the Pilgrims, Indians, wild turkeys, pumpkins,
corn on the cob, and the rest. 我开始思索起感恩节这个节日来，想着清教徒前辈移民、印第安人、野火鸡、南瓜、玉米棒等等。
6 Yet my mind seemed to be in quest of something else -- some way that I could personally
apply to the close of Thanksgiving. It must have taken me a half hour to sense that maybe some
key to an answer could result from reversing the word "Thanksgiving" -- at least that suggested a
verbal direction, "Giving thanks."
可我脑子里似乎还在搜索着别的事什么――某种我能够赋予这一节日以个人意义的方式。大概过了半个小时左右我才意识到，问题的关键也许在于把Thanksgiving这个字前后颠倒一下――那样一来至少文字好懂了：Giving thanks。
7 Giving thanks -- as in praying, thanking God, I thought. Yes, of course. Certainly.
表达谢意――就如在祈祷时感谢上帝那样，我暗想。对啊，是这样，当然是这样。
8 Yet my mind continued turning the idea over.
可我脑子里仍一直盘桓着这事。
9 After a while, like a dawn's brightening, a further answer did come -- that there were people to
thank, people who had done so much for me that I could never possibly repay them. The
embarrassing truth was I'd always just accepted what they'd done, taken all of it for granted. Not
one time had I ever bothered to express to any of them so much as a simple, sincere "Thank you."
过了片刻，如同晨曦初现，一个更清晰的念头终于涌现脑际――要感谢他人，那些赐我以诸多恩惠，我根本无以回报的人们。令我深感不安的实际情形是，我向来对他们所做的一切受之泰然，认为是理所应当。我一次也没想过要对他们中的任何一位真心诚意地说一句简单的谢谢。
10 At least seven people had been particularly and lastingly helpful to me. I realized, swallowing
hard, that about half of them had since died -- so they were forever beyond any possible
expression of gratitude from me. The more I thought about it, the more ashamed I became. Then I
pictured the three who were still alive and, within minutes, I was down in my cabin. 至少有七个人对我有过不同寻常、影响深远的帮助。令人难过的是，我意识到，他们中有一半已经过世了――因此他们永远也无法接受我的谢意了。我越想越感到羞愧。最后我想到了仍健在的三位，几分钟后，我就回到了自己的舱房。
11 Sitting at a table with writing paper and memories of things each had done, I tried composing
genuine statements of heartfelt appreciation and gratitude to my dad, Simon A. Haley, a professor
at the old Agricultural Mechanical Normal College in Pine Bluff, Arkansas; to my grandma,
Cynthia Palmer, back in our little hometown of Henning, Tennessee; and to the Rev. Lonual
Nelson, my grammar school principal, retired and living in Ripley, six miles north of Henning.
我坐在摊着信纸的桌旁，回想着他们各自对我所做的一切，试图用真挚的文字表达我对他们的由衷的感激之情：父亲西蒙·A·黑利，阿肯色州派因布拉夫那所古老的农业机械师范学院的教授；住在田纳西州小镇亨宁老家的外祖母辛西娅·帕尔默；以及我的文法学校校长，退休后住在亨宁以北6英里处的里普利的洛纽尔·纳尔逊牧师。
12 The texts of my letters began something like, "Here, this Thanksgiving at sea, I find my
thoughts upon how much you have done for me, but I have never stopped and said to you how
much I feel the need to thank you -- " And briefly I recalled for each of them specific acts
performed on my behalf.
我的信是这样开头的：“出海在外度过的这个感恩节，令我回想起您为我做了那么多事，但我从来没有对您说过自己是多么想感谢您――”我简短回忆了各位为我所做的具体事例。
13 For instance, something uppermost about my father was how he had impressed upon me from boyhood to love books and reading. In fact, this graduated into a family habit of after-dinner
quizzes at the table about books read most recently and new words learned. My love of books
never diminished and later led me toward writing books myself. So many times I have felt a
sadness when exposed to modern children so immersed in the electronic media that they have little
or no awareness of the marvelous world to be discovered in books.
例如，我父亲的最不同寻常之处在于，从我童年时代起，他就让我深深意识到要热爱书籍、热爱阅读。事实上，这一爱好渐渐变成一种家庭习惯，晚饭后大家围在餐桌旁互相考查近日所读的书以及新学的单词。我对书籍的热爱从未减弱，日后还引导我自己撰文著书。多少次，当我看到如今的孩子们如此沉迷于电子媒体时，我不由深感悲哀，他们很少，或者根本不了解书中所能发现的神奇世界。
14 I reminded the Reverend Nelson how each morning he would open our little country town's
grammar school with a prayer over his assembled students. I told him that whatever positive
things I had done since had been influenced at least in part by his morning school prayers.
我跟纳尔逊牧师提及他如何每天清晨和集合在一起的学生做祷告，以此开始乡村小学的一天。我告诉他，我后来所做的任何有意义的事，都至少部分地是受了他那些学校晨祷的影响。
15 In the letter to my grandmother, I reminded her of a dozen ways she used to teach me how to
tell the truth, to share, and to be forgiving and considerate of others. I thanked her for the years of
eating her good cooking, the equal of which I had not found since. Finally, I thanked her simply
for having sprinkled my life with stardust.
在给外祖母的信中，我谈到了她用了种种方式教我讲真话，教我与人分享，教我宽恕、体谅他人。我感谢她多年来让我吃到她烧的美味菜肴，离开她后我从来没吃过那么可口的菜肴。最后，我感谢她，因为她在我的生命中撒下美妙的遐想。
16 Before I slept, my three letters went into our ship's office mail sack. They got mailed when
we reached Tulagi Island.
睡觉前，我的这三封信都送进了船上的邮袋。我们抵达图拉吉岛后都寄了出去。
17 We unloaded cargo, reloaded with something else, then again we put to sea in the routine
familiar to us, and as the days became weeks, my little personal experience receded. Sometimes,
when we were at sea, a mail ship would rendezvous and bring us mail from home, which, of
course, we accorded topmost priority.
我们卸了货，又装了其它物品，随后我们按熟悉的常规，再次出海。 一天又一天，一星期又一星期，我个人的经历渐渐淡忘。我们在海上航行时，有时会与邮船会合，邮船会带给我们家信，当然这是我们视为最紧要的事情。
18 Every time the ship's loudspeaker rasped, "Attention! Mail call!" two hundred-odd shipmates
came pounding up on deck and clustered about the two seamen, standing by those precious
bulging gray sacks. They were alternately pulling out fistfuls of letters and barking successive
names of sailors who were, in turn, shouting back "Here! Here!" amid the pushing.
每当船上的喇叭响起：“大伙听好！邮件点名！”200名左右的水兵就会冲上甲板，围聚在那两个站在宝贵的鼓鼓囊囊的灰色邮袋旁的水手周围。两人轮流取出一把信，大声念收信水手的名字，叫到的人从人群当中挤出，一边应道：“来了，来了！”
19 One "mail call" brought me responses from Grandma, Dad, and the Reverend Nelson -- and
my reading of their letters left me not only astonished but more humbled than before.
一次“邮件点名”带给我外祖母，爸爸，以及纳尔逊牧师的回信――我读了信，既震惊又深感卑微。
20 Rather than saying they would forgive that I hadn't previously thanked them, instead, for
Pete's sake, they were thanking me -- for having remembered, for having considered they had
done anything so exceptional.
他们没有说他们原谅我以前不曾感谢他们，相反，他们向我致谢，天哪，就因为我记得，就因为我认为他们做了不同寻常的事。
21 Always the college professor, my dad had carefully avoided anything he considered too
sentimental, so I knew how moved he was to write me that, after having helped educate many
young people, he now felt that his best results included his own son.
身为大学教授的爸爸向来特别留意不使用任何过于感情化的文字，因此， 当他对我写道，在教了许许多多的年轻人之后，他认为自己最优秀的学生当中也包括自己的儿子时，我知道他是多么地感动。
22 The Reverend Nelson wrote that his decades as a "simple, old-fashioned principal" had ended
with schools undergoing such swift changes that he had retired in self-doubt. "I heard more of
what I had done wrong than what I did right," he said, adding that my letter had brought him
welcome reassurance that his career had been appreciated.
纳尔逊牧师写道，他那平凡的传统校长的岁月随着学校里发生的如此迅猛的变化而结束，他怀着自我怀疑的心态退了休。“说我做得不对的远远多于说我做得对的，” 他写
道，接着说我的信给他带来了振奋人心的信心：自己的校长生涯还是有其价值的。
23 A glance at Grandma's familiar handwriting brought back in a flash memories of standing
alongside her white rocking chair, watching her "settin' down" some letter to relatives. Character
by character, Grandma would slowly accomplish one word, then the next, so that a finished page
would consume hours. I wept over the page representing my Grandma's recent hours invested in
expressing her loving gratefulness to me -- whom she used to diaper!
一看到外祖母那熟悉的笔迹，我顿时回想起往日站在她的白色摇椅旁看她给亲戚写信的情景。外祖母一个字母一个字母地慢慢拼出一个词，接着是下一个词，因此写满一页要花上几个小时。捧着外祖母最近花费不少工夫对我表达了充满慈爱的谢意，我禁不住流泪――从前是她给我换尿布的呀。
24 Much later, retired from the Coast Guard and trying to make a living as a writer, I never
forgot how those three "thank you" letters gave me an insight into how most human beings go
about longing in secret for more of their fellows to express appreciation for their efforts.
许多年后，我从海岸警卫队退役，试着靠写作为生，我一直不曾忘记那三封“感谢”信是如何使我认识到，大凡人都暗自期望着有更多的人对自己的努力表达谢意。
25 Now, approaching another Thanksgiving, I have asked myself what will I wish for all who
are reading this, for our nation, indeed for our whole world -- since, quoting a good and wise
friend of mine, "In the end we are mightily and merely people, each with similar needs." First, I
wish for us, of course, the simple common sense to achieve world peace, that being paramount for
the very survival of our kind.
现在，感恩节又将来临，我自问，对此文的读者，对我们的祖国，事实上对全世界，我有什么祝愿，因为，用一位善良而且又有智慧的朋友的话来说，“我们究其实都是十分相像的凡人，有着相似的需求。”当然，我首先祝愿大家记住这一简单的常识：实现世界和平，这对我们自身的存亡至关重要。
26 And there is something else I wish -- so strongly that I have had this line printed across the
bottom of all my stationery: "Find the good -- and praise it."
此外我还有别的祝愿――这一祝愿是如此强烈，我将这句话印在我所有的信笺底部：“发现并褒扬各种美好的事物。”
unit 6 The Last Leaf
The Last Leaf
O. Henry
1 At the top of a three-story brick building, Sue and Johnsy had their studio. "Johnsy" was
familiar for Joanna. One was from Maine; the other from California. They had met at a cafe on
Eighth Street and found their tastes in art, chicory salad and bishop sleeves so much in tune that
the joint studio resulted.
最后一片叶子
欧·亨利
在一幢三层砖楼的顶层，苏和约翰西辟了个画室“约翰西”。是乔安娜的昵称。她们一
位来自缅因州，一位来自加利福尼亚。两人相遇在第八大街的一个咖啡馆，发现各自在艺术品味、菊苣色拉，以及灯笼袖等方面趣味相投，于是就有了这个两人画室。
2 That was in May. In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors called Pneumonia,
stalked about the district, touching one here and there with his icy fingers. Johnsy was among his
victims. She lay, scarcely moving on her bed, looking through the small window at the blank side
of the next brick house.
那是5月里的事。到了11月，一个医生称之为肺炎的阴森的隐形客闯入了这一地区，用它冰冷的手指东碰西触。约翰西也为其所害。她病倒了，躺在床上几乎一动不动，只能隔着小窗望着隔壁砖房那单调沉闷的侧墙。
3 One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a bushy, gray eyebrow.
一天上午，忙碌的医生扬了扬灰白的浓眉，示意苏来到过道。
4 "She has one chance in ten," he said. "And that chance is for her to want to live. Your little
lady has made up her mind that she's not going to get well. Has she anything on her mind?
“她只有一成希望，”他说。“那还得看她自己是不是想活下去。你这位女朋友已经下决心不想好了。她有什么心事吗？”
5 "She -- she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day," said Sue. “她――她想有一天能去画那不勒斯湾，”苏说。
6 "Paint? -- bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking about twice -- a man, for
instance?"
“画画？――得了。她有没有别的事值得她留恋的――比如说，一个男人？”
7 "A man?" said Sue. "Is a man worth -- but, no, doctor; there is nothing of the kind."
“男人？”苏说。“难道一个男人就值得――可是，她没有啊，大夫，没有这码子事。”
8 "Well," said the doctor. "I will do all that science can accomplish. But whenever my patient
begins to count the carriages in her funeral procession I subtract 50 per cent from the curative
power of medicines." After the doctor had gone Sue went into the workroom and cried. Then she
marched into Johnsy's room with her drawing board, whistling a merry tune.
“好吧，”大夫说。“我会尽一切努力，只要是科学能做到的。可是，但凡病人开始计算她出殡的行列里有几辆马车的时候，我就要把医药的疗效减去一半。”大夫走后，苏去工作室哭了一场。随后她携着画板大步走进约翰西的房间，口里吹着轻快的口哨。
9 Johnsy lay, scarcely making a movement under the bedclothes, with her face toward the
window. She was looking out and counting -- counting backward.
约翰西躺在被子下几乎一动不动，脸朝着窗。她望着窗外，数着数――倒数着数！
10 "Twelve," she said, and a little later "eleven"; and then "ten," and "nine"; and then "eight"
and "seven," almost together.
“12，”她数道，过了一会儿“11”，接着数“10”和“9”；再数“8”和“7”，几乎一口同时数下来。
11 Sue looked out of the window. What was there to count? There was only a bare, dreary yard
to be seen, and the blank side of the brick house twenty feet away. An old, old ivy vine climbed
half way up the brick wall. The cold breath of autumn had blown away its leaves, leaving it almost
bare.
苏朝窗外望去。外面有什么好数的呢？外面只看到一个空荡荡的沉闷的院子，还有20英尺开外那砖房的侧墙，上面什么也没有。一棵古老的常青藤爬到半墙高。萧瑟秋风吹落了枝叶，藤上几乎光秃秃的。
12 "Six," said Johnsy, in almost a whisper. "They're falling faster now. Three days ago there
were almost a hundred. It made my head ache to count them. But now it's easy. There goes
another one. There are only five left now."
“6”，约翰西数着，声音几乎听不出来。“现在叶子掉落得快多了。三天前差不多还有100片。数得我头都疼。可现在容易了。又掉了一片。这下子只剩5片了。”
13 "Five what, dear? "
“5片什么，亲爱的？”
14 "Leaves. On the ivy vine. When the last one falls I must go, too. I've known that for three
days. Didn't the doctor tell you?" “叶子。常青藤上的叶子。等最后一片叶子掉了，我也就得走了。三天前我就知道会这样。大夫没跟你说吗？”
15 "Oh, I never heard of such nonsense. What have old ivy leaves to do with your getting well?
Don't be so silly. Why, the doctor told me this morning that your chances for getting well real
soon were ten to one! Try to take some soup now, and let Sudie go and buy port wine for her sick
child."
“噢，我从没听说过这种胡说八道。常青藤叶子跟你病好不好有什么关系？别这么傻。对了，大夫上午跟我说，你的病十有八九就快好了。快喝些汤，让苏迪给她生病的孩子去买些波尔图葡萄酒来。”
16 "You needn't get any more wine," said Johnsy, keeping her eyes fixed out the window.
"There goes another. No, I don't want any soup. That leaves just four. I want to see the last one fall
before it gets dark. Then I'll go, too. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of thinking. I want to turn loose
my hold on everything, and go sailing down, down, just like one of those poor, tired leaves."
“你不用再去买酒了，”约翰西说道，两眼一直盯着窗外。“又掉了一片。不，我不想喝汤。这一下只剩下4片了。我要在天黑前看到最后一片叶子掉落。那时我也就跟着走了。我都等腻了。也想腻了。我只想撇开一切, 飘然而去，就像那边一片可怜的疲倦的叶子。”
17 "Try to sleep," said Sue. "I must call Behrman up to be my model for the old miner. I'll not be
gone a minute."
“快睡吧，”苏说。“我得叫贝尔曼上楼来给我当老矿工模特儿。我去去就来。”
18 Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath them. He was past sixty
and had a long white beard curling down over his chest. Despite looking the part, Behrman was a
failure in art. For forty years he had been always about to paint a masterpiece, but had never yet
begun it. He earned a little by serving as a model to those young artists who could not pay the
price of a professional. He drank gin to excess, and still talked of his coming masterpiece. For the
rest he was a fierce little old man, who mocked terribly at softness in any one, and who regarded
himself as guard dog to the two young artists in the studio above.
老贝尔曼是住在两人楼下底层的一个画家。他已年过六旬，银白色蜷曲的长髯披挂胸前。贝尔曼看上去挺像艺术家，但在艺术上却没有什么成就。40年来他一直想创作一幅传世之作，却始终没能动手。他给那些请不起职业模特的青年画家当模特挣点小钱。他没节制地喝酒，谈论着他那即将问世的不朽之作。要说其他方面，他是个好斗的小老头，要是谁表现出一点软弱，他便大肆嘲笑，并把自己看成是楼上画室里两位年轻艺术家的看护人。
19 Sue found Behrman smelling strongly of gin in his dimly lighted studio below. In one corner
was a blank canvas on an easel that had been waiting there for twenty-five years to receive the
first line of the masterpiece. She told him of Johnsy's fancy, and how she feared she would,
indeed, light and fragile as a leaf herself, float away, when her slight hold upon the world grew
weaker. Old Behrman, with his red eyes plainly streaming, shouted his contempt for such foolish
imaginings.
苏在楼下光线暗淡的画室里找到了贝尔曼，他满身酒味刺鼻。屋子一角的画架上支着一张从未落过笔的画布，在那儿搁了25年，等着一幅杰作的起笔。苏把约翰西的怪念头跟他说了，并说约翰西本身就像一片叶子又瘦又弱，她害怕要是她那本已脆弱的生存意志再软下去的话，真的会凋零飘落。老贝尔曼双眼通红，显然是泪涟涟的，他大声叫嚷着说他蔑视这种傻念头。
20 "What!" he cried. "Are there people in the world foolish enough to die because leafs drop off
from a vine? I have never heard of such a thing. Why do you allow such silly ideas to come into
that head of hers? God! This is not a place in which one so good as Miss Johnsy should lie sick.
Some day I will paint a masterpiece, and we shall all go away. Yes."
“什么！”他嚷道。“世界上竟然有这么愚蠢的人，因为树叶从藤上掉落就要去死？我听都没听说过这等事。你怎么让这种傻念头钻到她那个怪脑袋里？天哪！这不是一个像约翰西小姐这样的好姑娘躺倒生病的地方。有朝一日我要画一幅巨作，那时候我们就离开这里。真的。”
21 Johnsy was sleeping when they went upstairs. Sue pulled the shade down, and motioned
Behrman into the other room. In there they peered out the window fearfully at the ivy vine. Then
they looked at each other for a moment without speaking. A persistent, cold rain was falling,
mingled with snow. Behrman, in his old blue shirt, took his seat as the miner on an upturned kettle
for a rock.
两人上了楼，约翰西已经睡着了。苏放下窗帘，示意贝尔曼去另一个房间。在那儿两人惶惶不安地凝视着窗外的常青藤。接着两人面面相觑，哑然无语。外面冷雨夹雪，淅淅沥沥。贝尔曼穿着破旧的蓝色衬衣, 坐在充当矿石的倒置的水壶上，摆出矿工的架势。
22 When Sue awoke from an hour's sleep the next morning she found Johnsy with dull,
wide-open eyes staring at the drawn green shade.
第二天早上，只睡了一个小时的苏醒来看到约翰西睁大着无神的双眼，凝望着拉下的绿色窗帘。
23 "Pull it up; I want to see," she ordered, in a whisper.
“把窗帘拉起来；我要看，”她低声命令道。
24 Wearily Sue obeyed.
苏带着疲倦，遵命拉起窗帘。
25 But, Lo! after the beating rain and fierce wind that had endured through the night, there yet
stood out against the brick wall one ivy leaf. It was the last on the vine. Still dark green near its
stem, but with its edges colored yellow, it hung bravely from a branch some twenty feet above the
ground.
可是，瞧！经过一整夜的急风骤雨，竟然还存留一片常青藤叶，背靠砖墙，格外显目。这是常青藤上的最后一片叶子。近梗部位仍呈暗绿色，但边缘已经泛黄了，它无所畏惧地挂在离地20多英尺高的枝干上。
26 "It is the last one," said Johnsy. "I thought it would surely fall during the night. I heard the
wind. It will fall today, and I shall die at the same time."
“这是最后一片叶子，”约翰西说。“我以为夜里它肯定会掉落的。我晚上听到大风呼啸。今天它会掉落的，叶子掉的时候，也是我死的时候。”
27 The day wore away, and even through the twilight they could see the lone ivy leaf clinging to
its stem against the wall. And then, with the coming of the night the north wind was again loosed.
白天慢慢过去了，即便在暮色黄昏之中，他们仍能看到那片孤零零的常青藤叶子，背靠砖墙，紧紧抱住梗茎。尔后，随着夜幕的降临，又是北风大作。
28 When it was light enough Johnsy, the merciless, commanded that the shade be raised.
等天色亮起，冷酷无情的约翰西命令将窗帘拉起。
29 The ivy leaf was still there.
常青藤叶依然挺在。
30 Johnsy lay for a long time looking at it. And then she called to Sue, who was stirring her
chicken soup over the gas stove. 约翰西躺在那儿，望着它许久许久。接着她大声呼唤正在煤气灶上搅鸡汤的苏。
31 "I've been a bad girl, Sudie," said Johnsy. "Something has made that last leaf stay there to
show me how wicked I was. It is a sin to want to die. You may bring me a little soup now, and
some milk with a little port in it and -- no; bring me a hand-mirror first, and then pack some
pillows about me, and I will sit up and watch you cook."
“我一直像个不乖的孩子，苏迪，”约翰西说。“有一种力量让那最后一片叶子不掉，好让我看到自己有多坏。想死是一种罪过。你给我喝点汤吧，再来点牛奶，稍放一点波尔图葡萄酒――不，先给我拿面小镜子来，弄几个枕头垫在我身边，我要坐起来看你做菜。”
32 An hour later she said:
一个小时之后，她说：
33 "Sudie, some day I hope to paint the Bay of Naples."
“苏迪，我真想有一天去画那不勒斯海湾。”
34 The doctor came in the afternoon, and Sue had an excuse to go into the hallway as he left.
下午大夫来了，他走时苏找了个借口跟进了过道。
35 "Even chances," said the doctor, taking Sue's thin, shaking hand in his.
“现在是势均力敌，”大夫说着，握了握苏纤细颤抖的手。
36 "With good nursing you'll win. And now I must see another case I have downstairs.
Behrman, his name is -- some kind of an artist, I believe. Pneumonia, too. He is an old, weak man,
and the attack is acute. There is no hope for him; but he goes to the hospital today to be made
more comfortable."
“只要精心照料，你就赢了。现在我得去楼下看另外一个病人了。贝尔曼，是他的名字――记得是个什么画家。也是肺炎。他年老体弱，病来势又猛。他是没救了。不过今天他去了医院，照料得会好一点。”
37 The next day the doctor said to Sue: "She's out of danger. You've won. The right food and
care now -- that's all."
第二天，大夫对苏说：“她脱离危险了。你赢了。注意饮食，好好照顾，就行了。”
38 And that afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay and put one arm around her.
当日下午，苏来到约翰西的床头，用一只手臂搂住她。
39 "I have something to tell you, white mouse," she said. "Mr. Behrman died of pneumonia
today in the hospital. He was ill only two days. He was found on the morning of the first day in his
room downstairs helpless with pain. His shoes and clothing were wet through and icy cold. They
couldn't imagine where he had been on such a terrible night. And then they found a lantern, still
lighted, and a ladder that had been dragged from its place, and some scattered brushes, and a
palette with green and yellow colors mixed on it, and -- look out the window, dear, at the last ivy
leaf on the wall. Didn't you wonder why it never fluttered or moved when the wind blew? Ah,
darling, it's Behrman's masterpiece -- he painted it there the night that the last leaf fell."
“我跟你说件事，小白鼠，”她说。“贝尔曼先生今天在医院里得肺炎去世了。他得病才两天。发病那天上午人家在楼下他的房间里发现他疼得利害。他的鞋子衣服都湿透了，冰冷冰冷的。他们想不出那么糟糕的天气他夜里会去哪儿。后来他们发现了一个灯笼，还亮着，还有一个梯子被拖了出来，另外还有些散落的画笔，一个调色板，和着黄绿两种颜色，――看看窗外，宝贝儿，看看墙上那最后一片常青藤叶子。它在刮风的时候一动也不动，你没有觉得奇怪吗？啊，亲爱的，那是贝尔曼的杰作――最后一片叶子掉落的那天夜里他画上了这片叶子。”
2024年2月6日发(作者：锺寄云)
unit 1 Mr. Doherty Builds His Dream Life
Mr. Doherty Builds His Dream Life
Jim Doherty
1 There are two things I have always wanted to do -- write and live on a farm. Today I'm doing
both. I am not in E. B. White's class as a writer or in my neighbors' league as a farmer, but I'm
getting by. And after years of frustration with city and suburban living, my wife Sandy and I have
finally found contentment here in the country.
多尔蒂先生创建自己的理想生活
吉姆·多尔蒂
有两件事是我一直想做的――写作与务农。如今我同时做着这两件事。作为作家，我和E·B·怀特不属同一等级，作为农场主，我和乡邻也不是同一类人，不过我应付得还行。在城市以及郊区历经多年的怅惘失望之后，我和妻子桑迪终于在这里的乡村寻觅到心灵的满足。
2 It's a self-reliant sort of life. We grow nearly all of our fruits and vegetables. Our hens keep us
in eggs, with several dozen left over to sell each week. Our bees provide us with honey, and we
cut enough wood to just about make it through the heating season.
这是一种自力更生的生活。我们食用的果蔬几乎都是自己种的。自家饲养的鸡提供鸡蛋，每星期还能剩余几十个出售。自家养殖的蜜蜂提供蜂蜜，我们还自己动手砍柴，足可供过冬取暖之用。
3 It's a satisfying life too. In the summer we canoe on the river, go picnicking in the woods and
take long bicycle rides. In the winter we ski and skate. We get excited about sunsets. We love the
smell of the earth warming and the sound of cattle lowing. We watch for hawks in the sky and
deer in the cornfields.
这也是一种令人满足的生活。夏日里我们在河上荡舟，在林子里野餐，骑着自行车长时间漫游。冬日里我们滑雪溜冰。我们为落日的余辉而激动。我们爱闻大地回暖的气息，爱听牛群哞叫。我们守着看鹰儿飞过上空，看玉米田间鹿群嬉跃。
4 But the good life can get pretty tough. Three months ago when it was 30 below, we spent two
miserable days hauling firewood up the river on a sled. Three months from now, it will be 95
above and we will be cultivating corn, weeding strawberries and killing chickens. Recently, Sandy
and I had to retile the back roof. Soon Jim, 16 and Emily, 13, the youngest of our four children,
will help me make some long-overdue improvements on the outdoor toilet that supplements our
indoor plumbing when we are working outside. Later this month, we'll spray the orchard, paint the
barn, plant the garden and clean the hen house before the new chicks arrive.
但如此美妙的生活有时会变得相当艰苦。就在三个月前，气温降到华氏零下30度，我们辛苦劳作了整整两天，用一个雪橇沿着河边拖运木柴。再过三个月，气温会升到95度，我们就要给玉米松土，在草莓地除草，还要宰杀家禽。前一阵子我和桑迪不得不翻修后屋顶。过些时候，四个孩子中的两个小的，16岁的吉米和13岁的埃米莉，会帮着我一起
把拖了很久没修的室外厕所修葺一下，那是专为室外干活修建的。这个月晚些时候，我们要给果树喷洒药水，要油漆谷仓，要给菜园播种，要赶在新的小鸡运到之前清扫鸡舍。
5 In between such chores, I manage to spend 50 to 60 hours a week at the typewriter or doing
reporting for the freelance articles I sell to magazines and newspapers. Sandy, meanwhile, pursues
her own demanding schedule. Besides the usual household routine, she oversees the garden and
beehives, bakes bread, cans and freezes, drives the kids to their music lessons, practices with
them, takes organ lessons on her own, does research and typing for me, writes an article herself
now and then, tends the flower beds, stacks a little wood and delivers the eggs. There is, as the
old saying goes, no rest for the wicked on a place like this -- and not much for the virtuous either.
在这些活计之间，我每周要抽空花五、六十个小时，不是打字撰文，就是为作为自由撰稿人投给报刊的文章进行采访。桑迪则有她自己繁忙的工作日程。除了日常的家务，她还照管菜园和蜂房，烘烤面包，将食品装罐、冷藏，开车送孩子学音乐，和他们一起练习，自己还要上风琴课，为我做些研究工作并打字，自己有时也写写文章，还要侍弄花圃，堆摞木柴、运送鸡蛋。正如老话说的那样，在这种情形之下，坏人不得闲――贤德之人也歇不了。
6 None of us will ever forget our first winter. We were buried under five feet of snow from
December through March. While one storm after another blasted huge drifts up against the house
and barn, we kept warm inside burning our own wood, eating our own apples and loving every
minute of it.
我们谁也不会忘记第一年的冬天。从12月一直到3月底，我们都被深达5英尺的积雪困着。暴风雪肆虐，一场接着一场，积雪厚厚地覆盖着屋子和谷仓，而室内，我们用自己砍伐的木柴烧火取暖，吃着自家种植的苹果，温馨快乐每一分钟。
7 When spring came, it brought two floods. First the river overflowed, covering much of our
land for weeks. Then the growing season began, swamping us under wave after wave of produce.
Our freezer filled up with cherries, raspberries, strawberries, asparagus, peas, beans and corn.
Then our canned-goods shelves and cupboards began to grow with preserves, tomato juice, grape
juice, plums, jams and jellies. Eventually, the basement floor disappeared under piles of potatoes,
squash and pumpkins, and the barn began to fill with apples and pears. It was amazing.
开春后，有过两次泛滥。一次是河水外溢，我们不少田地被淹了几个星期。接着一次是生长季节到了，一波又一波的农产品潮涌而来，弄得我们应接不暇。我们的冰箱里塞满了樱桃、蓝莓、草莓、芦笋、豌豆、青豆和玉米。接着我们存放食品罐的架子上、柜橱里也开始堆满一罐罐的腌渍食品，有番茄汁、葡萄汁、李子、果酱和果冻。最后，地窖里遍地是大堆大堆的土豆、西葫芦、南瓜，谷仓里也储满了苹果和梨。真是太美妙了。
8 The next year we grew even more food and managed to get through the winter on firewood
that was mostly from our own trees and only 100 gallons of heating oil. At that point I began
thinking seriously about quitting my job and starting to freelance. The timing was terrible. By
then, Shawn and Amy, our oldest girls were attending expensive Ivy League schools and we had
only a few thousand dollars in the bank. Yet we kept coming back to the same question: Will there
ever be a better time? The answer, decidedly, was no, and so -- with my employer's blessings and
half a year's pay in accumulated benefits in my pocket -- off I went.
第二年我们种了更多的作物，差不多就靠着从自家树林砍斫的木柴以及仅仅100加仑的燃油过了冬。其时，我开始认真考虑起辞了职去从事自由撰稿的事来。时机选得实在太差。当时，两个大的女儿肖恩和埃米正在费用很高的常春藤学校上学，而我们只有几千美金的银行存款。但我们一再回到一个老问题上来：真的会有更好的时机吗？答案无疑是否定的。于是，带着老板的祝福，口袋里揣着作为累积津贴的半年薪水，我走了。
9 There have been a few anxious moments since then, but on balance things have gone much
better than we had any right to expect. For various stories of mine, I've crawled into black-bear
dens for Sports Illustrated, hitched up dogsled racing teams for Smithsonian magazine, checked
out the Lake Champlain "monster" for Science Digest, and canoed through the Boundary Waters
wilderness area of Minnesota for Destinations.
那以后有过一些焦虑的时刻，但总的来说，情况比我们料想的要好得多。为了写那些内容各不相同的文章，我为《体育画报》爬进过黑熊窝；为《史密森期刊》替参赛的一组组狗套上过雪橇；为《科学文摘》调查过尚普兰湖水怪的真相；为《终点》杂志在明尼苏达划着小舟穿越美、加边界水域内的公共荒野保护区。
10 I'm not making anywhere near as much money as I did when I was employed full time, but
now we don't need as much either. I generate enough income to handle our $600-a-month
mortgage payments plus the usual expenses for a family like ours. That includes everything from
music lessons and dental bills to car repairs and college costs. When it comes to insurance, we
have a poor man's major-medical policy. We have to pay the first $500 of any medical fees for
each member of the family. It picks up 80% of the costs beyond that. Although we are stuck with
paying minor expenses, our premium is low -- only $560 a year -- and we are covered against
catastrophe. Aside from that and the policy on our two cars at $400 a year, we have no other
insurance. But we are setting aside $2,000 a year in an IRA.
我挣的钱远比不上担任全职工作时的收入，可如今我们需要的钱也没有过去多。我挣的钱足以应付每月600美金的房屋贷款按揭以及一家人的日常开销。那些开销包括了所有支出，如音乐课学费、牙医账单、汽车维修以及大学费用等等。至于保险，我们买了一份低收入者的主要医疗项目保险。我们需要为每一位家庭成员的任何一项医疗费用支付最初的500美金。医疗保险则支付超出部分的80％。虽然我们仍要支付小部分医疗费用，但我们的保险费也低--每年只要560美金--而我们给自己生大病保了险。除了这一保险项目，以及两辆汽车每年400美金的保险，我们就没有其他保险了。不过我们每年留出2000美元入个人退休金账户。
11 We've been able to make up the difference in income by cutting back without appreciably
lowering our standard of living. We continue to dine out once or twice a month, but now we
patronize local restaurants instead of more expensive places in the city. We still attend the opera
and ballet in Milwaukee but only a few times a year. We eat less meat, drink cheaper wine and see
fewer movies. Extravagant Christmases are a memory, and we combine vacations with story
assignments...
我们通过节约开支而又不明显降低生活水准的方式来弥补收入差额。我们每个月仍出去吃一两次饭，不过现在我们光顾的是当地餐馆，而不是城里的高级饭店。我们仍去密尔沃基听歌剧看芭蕾演出，不过一年才几次。我们肉吃得少了，酒喝得便宜了，电影看得少了。铺张的圣诞节成为一种回忆，我们把完成稿约作为度假的一部分„„
12 I suspect not everyone who loves the country would be happy living the way we do. It takes a
couple of special qualities. One is a tolerance for solitude. Because we are so busy and on such a
tight budget, we don't entertain much. During the growing season there is no time for socializing
anyway. Jim and Emily are involved in school activities, but they too spend most of their time at
home.
我想，不是所有热爱乡村的人都会乐意过我们这种生活的。这种生活需要一些特殊的素质。其一是耐得住寂寞。由于我们如此忙碌，手头又紧，我们很少请客。在作物生长季节，根本就没工夫参加社交活动。吉米和埃米莉虽然参加学校的各种活动，但他俩大多数时间也呆在家里。
13 The other requirement is energy -- a lot of it. The way to make self-sufficiency work on a
small scale is to resist the temptation to buy a tractor and other expensive laborsaving devices.
Instead, you do the work yourself. The only machinery we own (not counting the lawn mower) is
a little three-horsepower rotary cultivator and a 16-inch chain saw.
另一项要求是体力――相当大的体力。小范围里实现自给自足的途径是抵制诱惑，不去购置拖拉机和其他昂贵的节省劳力的机械。相反，你要自己动手。我们仅有的机器（不包括割草机）是一台3马力的小型旋转式耕耘机以及一架16英寸的链锯。
14 How much longer we'll have enough energy to stay on here is anybody's guess -- perhaps for
quite a while, perhaps not. When the time comes, we'll leave with a feeling of sorrow but also with
a sense of pride at what we've been able to accomplish. We should make a fair profit on the sale of
the place, too. We've invested about $35,000 of our own money in it, and we could just about
double that if we sold today. But this is not a good time to sell. Once economic conditions
improve, however, demand for farms like ours should be strong again.
没人知道我们还能有精力在这里再呆多久--也许呆很长一阵子，也许不是。到走的时候，我们会怆然离去，但也会为自己所做的一切深感自豪。我们把农场出售也会赚相当大一笔钱。我们自己在农场投入了约35，000美金的资金，要是现在售出的话价格差不多可以翻一倍。不过现在不是出售的好时机。但是一旦经济形势好转，对我们这种农场的需求又会增多。
15 We didn't move here primarily to earn money though. We came because we wanted to
improve the quality of our lives. When I watch Emily collecting eggs in the evening, fishing with
Jim on the river or enjoying an old-fashioned picnic in the orchard with the entire family, I know
we've found just what we were looking for.
但我们主要不是为了赚钱而移居至此的。我们来此居住是因为想提高生活质量。当我看着埃米莉傍晚去收鸡蛋，跟吉米一起在河上钓鱼，或和全家人一起在果园里享用老式的野餐，我知道，我们找到了自己一直在寻求的生活方式。
unit 2 The Freedom Givers
The Freedom Givers
Fergus M. Bordewich
1 A gentle breeze swept the Canadian plains as I stepped outside the small two-story house.
Alongside me was a slender woman in a black dress, my guide back to a time when the
surrounding settlement in Dresden, Ontario, was home to a hero in American history. As we
walked toward a plain gray church, Barbara Carter spoke proudly of her great-great-grandfather,
Josiah Henson. "He was confident that the Creator intended all men to be created equal. And he
never gave up struggling for that freedom."
给人以自由者
弗格斯·M·博得威奇
我步出这幢两层小屋，加拿大平原上轻风微拂。我身边是一位苗条的黑衣女子，把我带回到过去的向导。那时，安大略省得雷斯顿这一带住着美国历史上的一位英雄。我们前往一座普普通通的灰色教堂，芭芭拉·卡特自豪地谈论着其高祖乔赛亚·亨森。“他坚信上帝要所有人生来平等。他从来没有停止过争取这一自由权利的奋斗。”
2 Carter's devotion to her ancestor is about more than personal pride: it is about family honor.
For Josiah Henson has lived on through the character in American fiction that he helped inspire:
Uncle Tom, the long-suffering slave in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Ironically,
that character has come to symbolize everything Henson was not. A racial sellout unwilling to
stand up for himself? Carter gets angry at the thought. "Josiah Henson was a man of principle,"
she said firmly.
卡特对其先辈的忠诚不仅仅关乎一己之骄傲，而关乎家族荣誉。因为乔赛亚·亨森至今仍为人所知是由于他所激发的创作灵感使得一个美国小说人物问世：汤姆叔叔，哈丽特·比彻·斯陀的小说《汤姆叔叔的小屋》中那个逆来顺受的黑奴。具有讽刺意味的是，这一人物所象征的一切在亨森身上一点都找不到。一个不愿奋起力争、背叛种族的黑人？卡特对此颇为愤慨。“乔赛亚·亨森是个有原则的人，”她肯定地说。
3 I had traveled here to Henson's last home -- now a historic site that Carter formerly directed --
to learn more about a man who was, in many ways, an African-American Moses. After winning
his own freedom from slavery, Henson secretly helped hundreds of other slaves to escape north to
Canada -- and liberty. Many settled here in Dresden with him.
我远道前来亨森最后的居所――如今已成为卡特曾管理过的一处历史遗迹――是为了更多地了解此人，他在许多方面堪称黑人摩西。亨森自己摆脱了黑奴身份获得自由之后，便秘密帮助其他许多黑奴逃奔北方去加拿大――逃奔自由之地。许多人和他一起在得雷斯顿这一带定居了下来。
4 Yet this stop was only part of a much larger mission for me. Josiah Henson is but one name
on a long list of courageous men and women who together forged the Underground Railroad, a
secret web of escape routes and safe houses that they used to liberate slaves from the American
South. Between 1820 and 1860, as many as 100,000 slaves traveled the Railroad to freedom.
但此地只是我所承担的繁重使命的一处停留地。乔赛亚·亨森只是一长串无所畏惧的男女名单中的一个名字，这些人共同创建了这条“地下铁路”，一条由逃亡线路和可靠的人家组成的用以解放美国南方黑奴的秘密网络。在1820年至1860年期间，多达十万名黑奴经由此路走向自由。
5 In October 2000, President Clinton authorized $16 million for the National Underground
Railroad Freedom Center to honor this first great civil-rights struggle in the U. S. The center is
scheduled to open in 2004 in Cincinnati. And it's about time. For the heroes of the Underground
Railroad remain too little remembered, their exploits still largely unsung. I was intent on telling
their stories. 2000年10月，克林顿总统批准拨款1600万美元建造全国“地下铁路”自由中心，以此纪念美国历史上第一次伟大的民权斗争。中心计划于2004年在辛辛那提州建成。真是该建立这样一个中心的时候了。因为地下铁路的英雄们依然默默无闻，他们的业绩依然少人颂扬。我要讲述他们的故事。
6 John Parker tensed when he heard the soft knock. Peering out his door into the night, he
recognized the face of a trusted neighbor. "There's a party of escaped slaves hiding in the woods in
Kentucky, twenty miles from the river," the man whispered urgently. Parker didn't hesitate. "I'll
go," he said, pushing a pair of pistols into his pockets.
听到轻轻的敲门声，约翰·帕克神情紧张起来。他开门窥望，夜色中认出是一位可靠的邻居。“有一群逃亡奴隶躲在肯塔基州的树林里，就在离河20英里的地方，”那人用急迫的口气低语道。帕克没一点儿迟疑。“我就去，”他说着，把两支手枪揣进口袋。
7 Born a slave two decades before, in the 1820s, Parker had been taken from his mother at age
eight and forced to walk in chains from Virginia to Alabama, where he was sold on the slave
market. Determined to live free someday, he managed to get trained in iron molding. Eventually
he saved enough money working at this trade on the side to buy his freedom. Now, by day, Parker
worked in an iron foundry in the Ohio port of Ripley. By night he was a "conductor" on the
Underground Railroad, helping people slip by the slave hunters. In Kentucky, where he was now
headed, there was a $1000 reward for his capture, dead or alive. 20年前，即19世纪20年代，生来即为黑奴的帕克才8岁就被从母亲身边带走，被迫拖着镣铐从弗吉尼亚走到阿拉巴马，在那里的黑奴市场被买走。他打定主意有朝一日要过自由的生活，便设法学会了铸铁这门手艺。后来他终于靠这门手艺攒够钱赎回了自由。现在，帕克白天在俄亥俄州里普利港的一家铸铁厂干活。到了晚上，他就成了地下铁路的一位“乘务员”，帮助人们避开追捕逃亡黑奴的人。在他正前往的肯塔基州，当局悬赏1000美元抓他，活人死尸都要。
8 Crossing the Ohio River on that chilly night, Parker found ten fugitives frozen with fear. "Get
your bundles and follow me, " he told them, leading the eight men and two women toward the
river. They had almost reached shore when a watchman spotted them and raced off to spread the
news.
在那个阴冷的夜晚，帕克渡过俄亥俄河，找到了十个丧魂落魄的逃亡者。“拿好包裹跟我走，”他一边吩咐他们，一边带着这八男二女朝河边走去。就要到岸时，一个巡夜人发现了他们，急忙跑开去报告。
9 Parker saw a small boat and, with a shout, pushed the escaping slaves into it. There was room
for all but two. As the boat slid across the river, Parker watched helplessly as the pursuers closed
in around the men he was forced to leave behind.
帕克看见一条小船，便大喝一声，把那些逃亡黑奴推上了船。大家都上了船，但有两个人容不下。小船徐徐驶向对岸，帕克眼睁睁地看着追捕者把他被迫留下的两个男人围住。
10 The others made it to the Ohio shore, where Parker hurriedly arranged for a wagon to take
them to the next "station" on the Underground Railroad -- the first leg of their journey to safety in
Canada. Over the course of his life, John Parker guided more than 400 slaves to safety.
其他的人都上了岸，帕克急忙安排了一辆车把他们带到地下铁路的下一“站”――他们走向安全的加拿大之旅的第一程。约翰·帕克在有生之年一共带领400多名黑奴走向安全之地。
11 While black conductors were often motivated by their own painful experiences, whites
were commonly driven by religious convictions. Levi Coffin, a Quaker raised in North Carolina,
explained, "The Bible, in bidding us to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, said nothing about
color."
黑人去当乘务员常常是由于本人痛苦的经历，而那些白人则往往是受了宗教信仰的感召。在北卡罗来纳州长大的贵格会教徒利瓦伊·科芬解释说：“《圣经》上只是要我们给饥者以食物，无衣者以衣衫，但没提到过肤色的事。”
12 In the 1820s Coffin moved west to Newport (now Fountain City), Indiana, where he opened a
store. Word spread that fleeing slaves could always find refuge at the Coffin home. At times he
sheltered as many as 17 fugitives at once, and he kept a team and wagon ready to convey them on
the next leg of their journey. Eventually three principal routes converged at the Coffin house,
which came to be the Grand Central Terminal of the Underground Railroad.
在19世纪20年代，科芬向西迁移前往印第安纳州的新港（即今天的喷泉市），在那里开了一家小店。人们传说，逃亡黑奴在科芬家总是能得到庇护。有时他一次庇护的逃亡者就多达17人，他还备有一组人员和车辆把他们送往下一段行程。到后来有三条主要路线在科芬家汇合，科芬家成了地下铁路的中央车站。
13 For his efforts, Coffin received frequent death threats and warnings that his store and home
would be burned. Nearly every conductor faced similar risks -- or worse. In the North, a
magistrate might have imposed a fine or a brief jail sentence for aiding those escaping. In the
Southern states, whites were sentenced to months or even years in jail. One courageous Methodist
minister, Calvin Fairbank, was imprisoned for more than 17 years in Kentucky, where he kept a
log of his beatings: 35,105 stripes with the whip.
科芬经常由于他做的工作受到被杀的威胁，收到焚毁他店铺和住宅的警告。几乎每一个乘务员都面临类似的危险――或者更为严重。在北方，治安官会对帮助逃亡的人课以罚金，或判以短期监禁。在南方各州，白人则被判处几个月甚至几年的监禁。一位勇敢的循道宗牧师卡尔文·费尔班克在肯塔基州被关押了17年多，他记录了自己遭受毒打的情况：总共被鞭笞了35,105下。
14 As for the slaves, escape meant a journey of hundreds of miles through unknown country,
where they were usually easy to recognize. With no road signs and few maps, they had to put their
trust in directions passed by word of mouth and in secret signs -- nails driven into trees, for
example -- that conductors used to mark the route north.
至于那些黑奴，逃亡意味着数百英里的长途跋涉，意味着穿越自己极易被人辨认的陌生地域。没有路标，也几乎没有线路图，他们赶路全凭着口口相告的路线以及秘密记号――比如树上钉着的钉子――是乘务员用来标示北上路线的记号。
15 Many slaves traveled under cover of night, their faces sometimes caked with white powder.
Quakers often dressed their "passengers," both male and female, in gray dresses, deep bonnets
and full veils. On one occasion, Levi Coffin was transporting so many runaway slaves that he
disguised them as a funeral procession.
许多黑奴在夜色掩护下赶路，有时脸上涂着厚厚的白粉。贵格会教徒经常让他们的“乘客”不分男女穿上灰衣服，戴上深沿帽，披着把头部完全遮盖住的面纱。有一次，利瓦伊·科芬运送的逃亡黑奴实在太多，他就把他们装扮成出殡队伍。
16 Canada was the primary destination for many fugitives. Slavery had been abolished there in
1833, and Canadian authorities encouraged the runaways to settle their vast virgin land. Among
them was Josiah Henson.
加拿大是许多逃亡者的首选终点站。那儿1833年就废除了奴隶制，加拿大当局鼓励逃亡奴隶在其广阔的未经开垦的土地上定居。其中就有乔赛亚·亨森。
17 As a boy in Maryland, Henson watched as his entire family was sold to different buyers, and
he saw his mother harshly beaten when she tried to keep him with her. Making the best of his lot,
Henson worked diligently and rose far in his owner's regard.
还是孩子的亨森在马里兰州目睹着全家人被卖给不同的主人，看到母亲为了想把自己留在她身边而遭受毒打。亨森非常认命，干活勤勉，深受主人器重。
18 Money problems eventually compelled his master to send Henson, his wife and children to a
brother in Kentucky. After laboring there for several years, Henson heard alarming news: the new
master was planning to sell him for plantation work far away in the Deep South. The slave would
be separated forever from his family.
经济困顿最终迫使亨森的主人将他及其妻儿送到主人在肯塔基州的一个兄弟处。在那儿干了几年苦工之后，亨森听说了一个可怕的消息：新主人准备把他卖到遥远的南方腹地去农庄干活。这名奴隶将与自己的家人永远分离。
19 There was only one answer: flight. "I knew the North Star," Henson wrote years later. "Like
the star of Bethlehem, it announced where my salvation lay. "
只有一条路可走：逃亡。“我会认北斗星，”许多年后亨森写道。“就像圣地伯利恒的救星一样，它告诉我在哪里可以获救。”
20 At huge risk, Henson and his wife set off with their four children. Two weeks later, starving
and exhausted, the family reached Cincinnati, where they made contact with members of the
Underground Railroad. "Carefully they provided for our welfare, and then they set us thirty miles
on our way by wagon." 亨森和妻子冒着极大的风险带着四个孩子上路了。两个星期之后，饥饿疲惫的一家人来到了辛辛那提州，在那儿，他们与地下铁路的成员取得了联系。“他们为我们提供了食宿，非常关心，接着又用车送了我们30英里。”
21 The Hensons continued north, arriving at last in Buffalo, N. Y. There a friendly captain
pointed across the Niagara River. "'Do you see those trees?' he said. 'They grow on free soil.'" He
gave Henson a dollar and arranged for a boat, which carried the slave and his family across the
river to Canada.
亨森一家继续往北走，最后来到纽约州的布法罗。在那儿，一位友善的船长指着尼亚加拉河对岸。“‘看见那些树没有？’他说，‘它们生长在自由的土地上。’”他给了亨森一美元钱，安排了一条小船，小船载着这位黑奴及其家人过河来到加拿大。
22 "I threw myself on the ground, rolled in the sand and danced around, till, in the eyes of
several who were present, I passed for a madman. 'He's some crazy fellow,' said a Colonel
Warren."
“我扑倒在地，在沙土里打滚，手舞足蹈，最后，在场的那几个人都认定我是疯子。‘他是个疯子，’有个沃伦上校说。”
23 "'Oh, no! Don't you know? I'm free!'"
“‘不，不是的！知道吗？我自由了！’”
unit 3 The Land of the Lock
The Land of the Lock
Bob Greene
1 In the house where I grew up, it was our custom to leave the front door on the latch at night. I
don't know if that was a local term or if it is universal; "on the latch" meant the door was closed
but not locked. None of us carried keys; the last one in for the evening would close up, and that
was it.
锁之国
鲍伯·格林
小时候在家里，我们的前门总是夜不落锁。我不知道这是当地的一种说法还是大家都这么说；"不落锁"的意思是掩上门，但不锁住。我们谁都不带钥匙；晚上最后一个回家的人把门关上，这就行了。
2 Those days are over. In rural areas as well as in cities, doors do not stay unlocked, even for
part of an evening.
那样的日子已经一去不复返了。在乡下，在城里，门不再关着不锁上，哪怕是傍晚一段时间也不例外。
3 Suburbs and country areas are, in many ways, even more vulnerable than well-patroled urban
streets. Statistics show the crime rate rising more dramatically in those allegedly tranquil areas
than in cities. At any rate, the era of leaving the front door on the latch is over.
在许多方面，郊区和农村甚至比巡查严密的城市街道更易受到攻击。统计显示，那些据称是安宁的地区的犯罪率上升得比城镇更为显著。不管怎么说，前门虚掩不落锁的时代是一去不复返了。
4 It has been replaced by dead-bolt locks, security chains, electronic alarm systems and trip
wires hooked up to a police station or private guard firm. Many suburban families have sliding
glass doors on their patios, with steel bars elegantly built in so no one can pry the doors open. 取而代之的是防盗锁、防护链、电子报警系统，以及连接警署或私人保安公司的报
警装置。郊区的许多人家在露台上安装了玻璃滑门，内侧有装得很讲究的钢条，这样就没人能把门撬开。
5 It is not uncommon, in the most pleasant of homes, to see pasted on the windows small
notices announcing that the premises are under surveillance by this security force or that guard
company. 在最温馨的居家，也常常看得到窗上贴着小小的告示，称本宅由某家安全机构或某个保安公司负责监管。
6 The lock is the new symbol of America. Indeed, a recent public-service advertisement by a
large insurance company featured not charts showing how much at risk we are, but a picture of a
child's bicycle with the now-usual padlock attached to it.
锁成了美国的新的象征。的确，一家大保险公司最近的一则公益广告没有用图表表明我们所处的危险有多大，而是用了一幅童车的图片，车身上悬着如今无所不在的挂锁。
7 The ad pointed out that, yes, it is the insurance companies that pay for stolen goods, but who is
going to pay for what the new atmosphere of distrust and fear is doing to our way of life? Who is
going to make the psychic payment for the transformation of America from the Land of the Free
to the Land of the Lock?
广告指出，没错，确是保险公司理赔失窃物品，但谁来赔偿互不信任、担心害怕这种新氛围对我们的生活方式所造成的影响呢？谁来对美国从自由之国到锁之国这一蜕变作出精神赔偿呢？
8 For that is what has happened. We have become so used to defending ourselves against the
new atmosphere of American life, so used to putting up barriers, that we have not had time to
think about what it may mean.
因为那就是现状。我们已经变得如此习惯于保护自己不受美国生活新氛围的影响，如此习惯于设置障碍，因而无暇考虑这一切意味着什么。
9 For some reason we are satisfied when we think we are well-protected; it does not occur to us
to ask ourselves: Why has this happened? Why are we having to barricade ourselves against our
neighbors and fellow citizens, and when, exactly, did this start to take over our lives?
出于某种原因，当我们觉得防范周密时就感到心满意足；我们没有问过自己：为什么会出现这种情况？为什么非得把自己与邻居和同住一城的居民相隔绝，这一切究竟是从什么时候开始主宰我们生活的？
10 And it has taken over. If you work for a medium- to large-size company, chances are that you
don't just wander in and out of work. You probably carry some kind of access card, electronic or
otherwise, that allows you in and out of your place of work. Maybe the security guard at the front
desk knows your face and will wave you in most days, but the fact remains that the business you
work for feels threatened enough to keep outsiders away via these "keys."
这一切确是主宰了我们的生活。如果你在一家大中型公司上班，你上下班很可能不好随意进出。你可能随身带着某种出入卡，电子的或别的什么的，因为这卡能让你进出工作场所。也许前台的保安认识你这张脸，平日一挥手让你进去，但事实明摆着，你所任职的公司深感面临威胁，因此要借助这些“钥匙”不让外人靠近。
11 It wasn't always like this. Even a decade ago, most private businesses had a policy of free
access. It simply didn't occur to managers that the proper thing to do was to distrust people.
这一现象并非向来有之。即使在十年前，大多数私营公司仍采取自由出入的做法。那时管理人员根本没想到过恰当的手段是不信任他人。
12 Look at the airports. Parents used to take children out to departure gates to watch planes land
and take off. That's all gone. Airports are no longer a place of education and fun; they are the most
sophisticated of security sites.
且看各地机场。过去家长常常带孩子去登机口看飞机起飞降落。这种事再也没有了。机场不再是一个有趣的学习场所；它们成了拥有最精密的安全检查系统的场所。
13 With electronic X-ray equipment, we seem finally to have figured out a way to hold the
terrorists, real and imagined, at bay; it was such a relief to solve this problem that we did not think
much about what such a state of affairs says about the quality of our lives. We now pass through
these electronic friskers without so much as a sideways glance; the machines, and what they stand
for, have won.
凭借着电子透视装置，我们似乎终于想出妙计让恐怖分子无法近身，无论是真的恐怖分子还是凭空臆想的。能解决这一问题真是如释重负，于是我们不去多想这种状况对我们的生活质量意味着什么。如今我们走过这些电子搜查器时已经看都不看一眼了，这些装置，还有它们所代表的一切已经获胜。
14 Our neighborhoods are bathed in high-intensity light; we do not want to afford ourselves
even so much a luxury as a shadow.
我们的居住区处在强光源的照射下；我们连哪怕像阴影这样小小的享受也不想给自己。
15 Businessmen, in increasing numbers, are purchasing new machines that hook up to the
telephone and analyze a caller's voice. The machines are supposed to tell the businessman, with a
small margin of error, whether his friend or client is telling lies.
越来越多的商人正购置连接在电话机上、能剖析来电者声音的新机器。据说那种机器能让商人知道他的朋友或客户是否在撒谎，其出错概率很小。
16 All this is being done in the name of "security"; that is what we tell ourselves. We are fearful,
and so we devise ways to lock the fear out, and that, we decide, is what security means.
所有这一切都是以“安全”的名义实施的：我们是这么跟自己说的。我们害怕，于是我们设法把害怕锁在外面，我们认定，那就是安全的意义。
17 But no; with all this "security," we are perhaps the most insecure nation in the history of
civilized man. What better word to describe the way in which we have been forced to live? What
sadder reflection on all that we have become in this new and puzzling time?
其实不然；我们虽然有了这一切安全措施，但我们或许是人类文明史上最不安全的国民。还有什么更好的字眼能用来描述我们被迫选择的生活方式呢？还有什么更为可悲地表明我们在这个令人困惑的新时代所感受到的惶恐之情呢？
18 We trust no one. Suburban housewives wear rape whistles on their station wagon key chains.
We have become so smart about self-protection that, in the end, we have all outsmarted ourselves.
We may have locked the evils out, but in so doing we have locked ourselves in.
我们不信任任何人。郊区的家庭主妇在客货两用车钥匙链上挂着防强暴口哨。我们在自我防卫方面变得如此聪明，最终聪明反被聪明误。我们或许是把邪恶锁在了门外，但在这么做的同时我们把自己锁在里边了。
19 That may be the legacy we remember best when we look back on this age: In dealing with the
unseen horrors among us, we became prisoners of ourselves. All of us prisoners, in this time of
our troubles.
那也许是我们将来回顾这一时代时记得最牢的精神遗产：在对付我们中间无形的恐惧之时，我们成了自己的囚徒。在我们这个问题重重的时代，所有的人都是囚徒。
unit 4
Was Einstein a Space Alien?
1 Albert Einstein was exhausted. For the third night in a row, his baby son Hans, crying, kept
the household awake until dawn. When Albert finally dozed off ... it was time to get up and go to
work. He couldn't skip a day. He needed the job to support his young family.
艾伯特爱因斯坦被搞得筋疲力尽.连续第三个晚上，他的宝贝儿子汉斯，哭泣，让家人清醒直到黎明。当艾伯特终于睡着了是时候起床去工作。他不能跳过一天。他需要工作来养活家人。
2 Walking briskly to the Patent Office, where he was a "Technical Expert, Third Class,"
Albert worried about his mother. She was getting older and frail, and she didn't approve of his
marriage to Mileva. Relations were strained. Albert glanced at a passing shop window. His hair
was a mess; he had forgotten to comb it again.
他轻快地走到专利局，在那里他是一个“技术专家，第三级，”艾伯特担心他的母亲。她越来越虚弱，她不赞成他与米列娃结婚，关系紧张。艾伯特看了一眼路过商店的橱窗。他的头发是一个烂摊子，他忘了梳一遍。
3 Work. Family. Making ends meet. Albert felt all the pressure and responsibility of any
young husband and father.
工作。家庭。使收支平衡。艾伯特感受到任何年轻的丈夫和父亲所有的压力和责任的
To relax, he revolutionized physics.
放松，他彻底改变了物理学。
4 In 1905, at the age of 26 and four years before he was able to get a job as a professor of
physics, Einstein published five of the most important papers in the history of science--all written
in his "spare time." He proved that atoms and molecules existed. Before 1905, scientists weren't
sure about that. He argued that light came in little bits (later called "photons") and thus laid the
foundation for quantum mechanics. He described his theory of special relativity: space and time
were threads in a common fabric, he proposed, which could be bent, stretched and twisted.
1905年，在年龄26时，四年前他找到了工作作为一个物理学教授，爱因斯坦出版了五个最重要的论文在科学史”——所有在他的空余时间写的。”他证明了原子和分子的存在。1905年之前，科学家们不清楚那些。他认为光是小块，后来被称为“光子”，从而奠定了量子力的学基础。他描述了他的狭义相对论理论，空间和时间是同一个织物的线，他提出那是可弯曲、拉伸和扭曲的。
5 Oh, and by the way, E=mc2.
哦,顺便说一句,E = mc2
6 Before Einstein, the last scientist who had such a creative outburst was Sir Isaac Newton. It
happened in 1666 when Newton secluded himself at his mother's farm to avoid an outbreak of
plague at Cambridge. With nothing better to do, he developed his Theory of Universal
Gravitation.
在爱因斯坦之前，最后一个有这样突出创意的科学家，是艾萨克牛顿先生。它发生在666时，1牛顿隔离自己母亲的农场去避免爆发在剑桥的瘟疫。没有什么更好的事，他提出了他的万有引力
7 For centuries historians called 1666 Newton's annus mirabilis, or "miracle year." Now those
words have a different meaning: Einstein and 1905. The United Nations has declared 2005 "The
World Year of Physics" to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Einstein's annus mirabilis.
几个世纪以来历史学家称为1666,牛顿的“奇迹年。现在这些话有不同的意义:爱因斯坦和1905。联合国已经宣布2005年“世界物理年“庆祝爱因斯坦“奇迹年的100周年
8 Modern pop culture paints Einstein as a bushy-haired superthinker. His ideas, we're told,
were improbably far ahead of other scientists. He must have come from some other planet--maybe
the same one Newton grew up on.
现代流行文化吧爱因斯坦画一个bushy-haired superthinker。我们被告之他的想法，是不可能远远领先于其他科学家。他一定是从其他星球来的——也许是牛顿长大的同一个星球。
9 "Einstein was no space alien," laughs Harvard University physicist and science historian
Peter Galison. "He was a man of his time." All of his 1905 papers unraveled problems being
worked on, with mixed success, by other scientists. "If Einstein hadn't been born, [those papers]
would have been written in some form, eventually, by others," Galison believes.
“爱因斯坦不是外星人。”哈佛大学物理学家和科学史家彼得笑到。“他是他那个时代的人。”他所有的1905年的文件揭开问题正在被其他科学家研究，成败参半。“如果爱因斯坦没有出生的 [文件]将最终由他人以某种形式写出来”Galison说
10 What's remarkable about 1905 is that a single person authored all five papers, plus the
original, irreverent way Einstein came to his conclusions.
1905年值得注意的是，一个人撰写的五个文件的全部，加上原有的，爱因斯坦以不敬
的方式得到自己的结论。
11 For example: the photoelectric effect. This was a puzzle in the early 1900s. When light hits
a metal, like zinc, electrons fly off. This can happen only if light comes in little packets
concentrated enough to knock an electron loose. A spread-out wave wouldn't do the photoelectric
trick.
例如，光电效应。这在20世纪初是一个难题。当光照射到金属，如锌，电子会飞。只来一点点光集中集中撞击自由电子这才会发生。传播的波不具有光电效果。
12 The solution seems simple--light is particulate. Indeed, this is the solution Einstein proposed
in 1905 and won the Nobel Prize for in 1921. Other physicists like Max Planck (working on a
related problem: blackbody radiation), more senior and experienced than Einstein, were closing in
on the answer, but Einstein got there first. Why?
解决办法似乎很简单——光的微粒。事实上，这是，爱因斯坦在1905年提出的解决方案并在1921获得了诺贝尔奖。其他物理学家如普朗克，工作相关的问题上，黑体辐射比爱因斯坦更先一步更有经验，步步逼近答案，但爱因斯坦先到那里。为什么呢
It's a question of authority.
这是一个问题的权威。
13 "In Einstein's day, if you tried to say that light was made of particles, you found yourself
disagreeing with physicist James Clerk Maxwell. Nobody wanted to do that," says Galison.
Maxwell's equations were enormously successful, unifying the physics of electricity, magnetism
and optics. Maxwell had proved beyond any doubt that light was an electromagnetic wave.
Maxwell was an Authority Figure.
“在爱因斯坦的时代，如果你想说，光是由粒子构成的，你发现自己不同意的物理学家杰姆斯麦斯威尔的理论。“没有人想做这样的事。”Galison说。麦斯威尔方程取得了巨大的成功，统一的物理电磁和光学。麦斯威尔毫无疑问证明光是一种电磁波。麦斯威尔是一个权威人物。
14 Einstein didn't give a fig for authority. He didn't resist being told what to do, not so much,
but he hated being told what was true. Even as a child he was constantly doubting and
questioning. "Your mere presence here undermines the class's respect for me," spat his 7th grade
teacher, Dr. Joseph Degenhart. (Degenhart also predicted that Einstein "would never get anywhere
in life.") This character flaw was to be a key ingredient in Einstein's discoveries.
爱因斯坦不在乎权威。他没有反抗被告知要做什么，但他讨厌被告诉什么是真理。即使作为一个孩子，他不断的怀疑和质疑。“你的存在在这里破坏了班级对我尊敬。”他第七年级的老师约瑟夫博士狄根哈特说。“狄根哈特还预测，爱因斯坦将一事无成”，这一性格缺陷是爱因斯坦发现的一个关键因素。
15 "In 1905," notes Galison, "Einstein had just received his Ph.D. He wasn't beholden to a
thesis advisor or any other authority figure." His mind was free to roam accordingly. “在1905年，”Galison记录，“爱因斯坦刚刚获得博士学位。他不感激于一个导师或任何其他权威人物。”他的思想在自由漫游因此
16 In retrospect, Maxwell was right. Light is a wave. But Einstein was right, too. Light is a
particle. This bizarre duality baffles Physics 101 students today just as it baffledEinstein in 1905.
How can light be both? Einstein had no idea.
回想起来，麦斯威尔是正确的。光是一种波动。但爱因斯坦也是对的。光是粒子。这个奇特的二元性物质物理困惑physic101的学生一样在1905年困惑爱因斯坦。怎么光是二元性？爱因斯坦不知道。
17 That didn't slow him down. Disdaining caution, Einstein adopted the intuitive leap as a
basic tool. "I believe in intuition and inspiration," he wrote in 1931. "At times I feel certain I am
right while not knowing the reason."
不过这不能使他慢下来。蔑视谨慎爱因斯坦采用了直观的飞跃，作为一个基本工具。“我相信直觉和灵感，”他写道，在1931年。“有时我觉得我是对的但不知道原因。”
18 Although Einstein's five papers were published in a single year, he had been thinking about
physics, deeply, since childhood. "Science was dinner-table conversation inthe Einstein
household," explains Galison. Albert's father Hermann and uncle Jakob ran a German company
making such things as dynamos, arc lamps, light bulbs and telephones. This was high-tech at the
turn of the century, "like a Silicon Valley company would be today," notes Galison. "Albert's
interest in science and technology came naturally."
尽管爱因斯坦的五篇论文发表在一年的时间里，但他一直自童年开始在深深地思考物理学。“在爱因斯坦家中，科学是餐桌上的谈话”Galison解释到。艾伯特的父亲赫尔曼和叔叔雅各布一家制造发电机、电弧灯、灯泡、电话的德国公司。这是世纪之交的高科技，“像现在一个在硅谷公司。”Galison记录。“艾伯特对科技自然感兴趣。”
19 Einstein's parents sometimes took Albert to parties. No babysitter was required: Albert sat
on the couch, totally absorbed, quietly doing math problems while others danced around him.
Pencil and paper were Albert's GameBoy!
爱因斯坦的父母有时会带艾伯特参加聚会。保姆是不必要的，当其他人在他周围跳舞时艾伯特坐在沙发上，全神贯注，静静地做数学题而。笔和纸是艾伯特的玩具！
20 He had impressive powers of concentration. Einstein's sister, Maja, recalled "...even when
there was a lot of noise, he could lie down on the sofa, pick up a pen and paper, precariously
balance an inkwell on the backrest and engross himself in a problem so much that the background
noise stimulated rather than disturbed him."
他有令人印象深刻的专注力。爱因斯坦的妹妹，玛雅，回忆说，“„„即使有很大的噪音，他会躺在沙发上，拿起纸和笔，悠悠地平衡一个放在靠背墨水瓶使他自己全神贯注的沉浸在问题中就如同背景噪声促进而不是打扰他。”
21 Einstein was clearly intelligent, but not outlandishly more so than his peers. "I have no
special talents," he claimed, "I am only passionately curious." And again: "The contrast between
the popular assessment of my powers ... and the reality is simply grotesque." Einstein credited his
discoveries to imagination and pesky questioning more so than orthodox intelligence.
爱因斯坦很聪明,但没有比他的同行更特殊的地方。“我没有特殊的才能.”他说:“我只是有强烈的好奇心。”又说:“关于我力量的流行评估„和现实的对比真是荒唐。”爱因斯坦将他的发现归功于想象力和无止境的提问而不是传统的智慧。
22 Later in life, it should be remembered, he struggled mightily to produce a unified field
theory, combining gravity with other forces of nature. He failed. Einstein's brainpower wasnot
limitless.
在后来的生活中,我们应该记住他努力产生一个统一场理论结合重力和其他自然的力量。他失败了。爱因斯坦的智慧不是无限的
23 Neither was Einstein's brain. It was removed without permission by Dr. Thomas Harvey in
1955 when Einstein died. He probably expected to find something extraordinary. But Einstein's
brain looked much like any other, gray, crinkly, and, if anything, a trifle smaller than average.
爱因斯坦的大脑也是如此。它被托马斯博士哈维在1955年爱因斯坦死的时候移除。他可能期待会发现一些惊人的事,但爱因斯坦的大脑看起来像任何其他一样,灰色,起皱,并且,如果非要说什么不同,比一般人的小一点
unit 5 Writing Three Thank-You Letters
Writing Three Thank-You Letters
Alex Haley
1 It was 1943, during World War II, and I was a young U. S. coastguardsman. My ship, the
USS Murzim, had been under way for several days. Most of her holds contained thousands of
cartons of canned or dried foods. The other holds were loaded with five-hundred-pound bombs
packed delicately in padded racks. Our destination was a big base on the island of Tulagi in the
South Pacific.
写三封感谢信
亚利克斯·黑利
那是在二战期间的1943年，我是个年轻的美国海岸警卫队队员。我们的船，美国军舰军市一号已出海多日。多数船舱装着成千上万箱罐装或风干的食品。其余的船舱装着不少五百磅重的炸弹，都小心翼翼地放在垫过的架子上。我们的目的地是南太平洋图拉吉岛上一个规模很大的基地。
2 I was one of the Murzim's several cooks and, quite the same as for folk ashore, this
Thanksgiving morning had seen us busily preparing a traditional dinner featuring roast turkey.
我是军市一号上的一个厨师，跟岸上的人一样，那个感恩节的上午，我们忙着在准备一道以烤火鸡为主的传统菜肴。
3 Well, as any cook knows, it's a lot of hard work to cook and serve a big meal, and clean up and
put everything away. But finally, around sundown, we finished at last.
当厨师的都知道，要烹制一顿大餐，摆上桌，再刷洗、收拾干净，是件辛苦的事。
不过，等到太阳快下山时，我们总算全都收拾停当了。
4 I decided first to go out on the Murzim's afterdeck for a breath of open air. I made my way out
there, breathing in great, deep draughts while walking slowly about, still wearing my white cook's
hat.
我想先去后甲板透透气。我信步走去，一边深深呼吸着空气，一边慢慢地踱着步，头上仍戴着那顶白色的厨师帽。
5 I got to thinking about Thanksgiving, of the Pilgrims, Indians, wild turkeys, pumpkins,
corn on the cob, and the rest. 我开始思索起感恩节这个节日来，想着清教徒前辈移民、印第安人、野火鸡、南瓜、玉米棒等等。
6 Yet my mind seemed to be in quest of something else -- some way that I could personally
apply to the close of Thanksgiving. It must have taken me a half hour to sense that maybe some
key to an answer could result from reversing the word "Thanksgiving" -- at least that suggested a
verbal direction, "Giving thanks."
可我脑子里似乎还在搜索着别的事什么――某种我能够赋予这一节日以个人意义的方式。大概过了半个小时左右我才意识到，问题的关键也许在于把Thanksgiving这个字前后颠倒一下――那样一来至少文字好懂了：Giving thanks。
7 Giving thanks -- as in praying, thanking God, I thought. Yes, of course. Certainly.
表达谢意――就如在祈祷时感谢上帝那样，我暗想。对啊，是这样，当然是这样。
8 Yet my mind continued turning the idea over.
可我脑子里仍一直盘桓着这事。
9 After a while, like a dawn's brightening, a further answer did come -- that there were people to
thank, people who had done so much for me that I could never possibly repay them. The
embarrassing truth was I'd always just accepted what they'd done, taken all of it for granted. Not
one time had I ever bothered to express to any of them so much as a simple, sincere "Thank you."
过了片刻，如同晨曦初现，一个更清晰的念头终于涌现脑际――要感谢他人，那些赐我以诸多恩惠，我根本无以回报的人们。令我深感不安的实际情形是，我向来对他们所做的一切受之泰然，认为是理所应当。我一次也没想过要对他们中的任何一位真心诚意地说一句简单的谢谢。
10 At least seven people had been particularly and lastingly helpful to me. I realized, swallowing
hard, that about half of them had since died -- so they were forever beyond any possible
expression of gratitude from me. The more I thought about it, the more ashamed I became. Then I
pictured the three who were still alive and, within minutes, I was down in my cabin. 至少有七个人对我有过不同寻常、影响深远的帮助。令人难过的是，我意识到，他们中有一半已经过世了――因此他们永远也无法接受我的谢意了。我越想越感到羞愧。最后我想到了仍健在的三位，几分钟后，我就回到了自己的舱房。
11 Sitting at a table with writing paper and memories of things each had done, I tried composing
genuine statements of heartfelt appreciation and gratitude to my dad, Simon A. Haley, a professor
at the old Agricultural Mechanical Normal College in Pine Bluff, Arkansas; to my grandma,
Cynthia Palmer, back in our little hometown of Henning, Tennessee; and to the Rev. Lonual
Nelson, my grammar school principal, retired and living in Ripley, six miles north of Henning.
我坐在摊着信纸的桌旁，回想着他们各自对我所做的一切，试图用真挚的文字表达我对他们的由衷的感激之情：父亲西蒙·A·黑利，阿肯色州派因布拉夫那所古老的农业机械师范学院的教授；住在田纳西州小镇亨宁老家的外祖母辛西娅·帕尔默；以及我的文法学校校长，退休后住在亨宁以北6英里处的里普利的洛纽尔·纳尔逊牧师。
12 The texts of my letters began something like, "Here, this Thanksgiving at sea, I find my
thoughts upon how much you have done for me, but I have never stopped and said to you how
much I feel the need to thank you -- " And briefly I recalled for each of them specific acts
performed on my behalf.
我的信是这样开头的：“出海在外度过的这个感恩节，令我回想起您为我做了那么多事，但我从来没有对您说过自己是多么想感谢您――”我简短回忆了各位为我所做的具体事例。
13 For instance, something uppermost about my father was how he had impressed upon me from boyhood to love books and reading. In fact, this graduated into a family habit of after-dinner
quizzes at the table about books read most recently and new words learned. My love of books
never diminished and later led me toward writing books myself. So many times I have felt a
sadness when exposed to modern children so immersed in the electronic media that they have little
or no awareness of the marvelous world to be discovered in books.
例如，我父亲的最不同寻常之处在于，从我童年时代起，他就让我深深意识到要热爱书籍、热爱阅读。事实上，这一爱好渐渐变成一种家庭习惯，晚饭后大家围在餐桌旁互相考查近日所读的书以及新学的单词。我对书籍的热爱从未减弱，日后还引导我自己撰文著书。多少次，当我看到如今的孩子们如此沉迷于电子媒体时，我不由深感悲哀，他们很少，或者根本不了解书中所能发现的神奇世界。
14 I reminded the Reverend Nelson how each morning he would open our little country town's
grammar school with a prayer over his assembled students. I told him that whatever positive
things I had done since had been influenced at least in part by his morning school prayers.
我跟纳尔逊牧师提及他如何每天清晨和集合在一起的学生做祷告，以此开始乡村小学的一天。我告诉他，我后来所做的任何有意义的事，都至少部分地是受了他那些学校晨祷的影响。
15 In the letter to my grandmother, I reminded her of a dozen ways she used to teach me how to
tell the truth, to share, and to be forgiving and considerate of others. I thanked her for the years of
eating her good cooking, the equal of which I had not found since. Finally, I thanked her simply
for having sprinkled my life with stardust.
在给外祖母的信中，我谈到了她用了种种方式教我讲真话，教我与人分享，教我宽恕、体谅他人。我感谢她多年来让我吃到她烧的美味菜肴，离开她后我从来没吃过那么可口的菜肴。最后，我感谢她，因为她在我的生命中撒下美妙的遐想。
16 Before I slept, my three letters went into our ship's office mail sack. They got mailed when
we reached Tulagi Island.
睡觉前，我的这三封信都送进了船上的邮袋。我们抵达图拉吉岛后都寄了出去。
17 We unloaded cargo, reloaded with something else, then again we put to sea in the routine
familiar to us, and as the days became weeks, my little personal experience receded. Sometimes,
when we were at sea, a mail ship would rendezvous and bring us mail from home, which, of
course, we accorded topmost priority.
我们卸了货，又装了其它物品，随后我们按熟悉的常规，再次出海。 一天又一天，一星期又一星期，我个人的经历渐渐淡忘。我们在海上航行时，有时会与邮船会合，邮船会带给我们家信，当然这是我们视为最紧要的事情。
18 Every time the ship's loudspeaker rasped, "Attention! Mail call!" two hundred-odd shipmates
came pounding up on deck and clustered about the two seamen, standing by those precious
bulging gray sacks. They were alternately pulling out fistfuls of letters and barking successive
names of sailors who were, in turn, shouting back "Here! Here!" amid the pushing.
每当船上的喇叭响起：“大伙听好！邮件点名！”200名左右的水兵就会冲上甲板，围聚在那两个站在宝贵的鼓鼓囊囊的灰色邮袋旁的水手周围。两人轮流取出一把信，大声念收信水手的名字，叫到的人从人群当中挤出，一边应道：“来了，来了！”
19 One "mail call" brought me responses from Grandma, Dad, and the Reverend Nelson -- and
my reading of their letters left me not only astonished but more humbled than before.
一次“邮件点名”带给我外祖母，爸爸，以及纳尔逊牧师的回信――我读了信，既震惊又深感卑微。
20 Rather than saying they would forgive that I hadn't previously thanked them, instead, for
Pete's sake, they were thanking me -- for having remembered, for having considered they had
done anything so exceptional.
他们没有说他们原谅我以前不曾感谢他们，相反，他们向我致谢，天哪，就因为我记得，就因为我认为他们做了不同寻常的事。
21 Always the college professor, my dad had carefully avoided anything he considered too
sentimental, so I knew how moved he was to write me that, after having helped educate many
young people, he now felt that his best results included his own son.
身为大学教授的爸爸向来特别留意不使用任何过于感情化的文字，因此， 当他对我写道，在教了许许多多的年轻人之后，他认为自己最优秀的学生当中也包括自己的儿子时，我知道他是多么地感动。
22 The Reverend Nelson wrote that his decades as a "simple, old-fashioned principal" had ended
with schools undergoing such swift changes that he had retired in self-doubt. "I heard more of
what I had done wrong than what I did right," he said, adding that my letter had brought him
welcome reassurance that his career had been appreciated.
纳尔逊牧师写道，他那平凡的传统校长的岁月随着学校里发生的如此迅猛的变化而结束，他怀着自我怀疑的心态退了休。“说我做得不对的远远多于说我做得对的，” 他写
道，接着说我的信给他带来了振奋人心的信心：自己的校长生涯还是有其价值的。
23 A glance at Grandma's familiar handwriting brought back in a flash memories of standing
alongside her white rocking chair, watching her "settin' down" some letter to relatives. Character
by character, Grandma would slowly accomplish one word, then the next, so that a finished page
would consume hours. I wept over the page representing my Grandma's recent hours invested in
expressing her loving gratefulness to me -- whom she used to diaper!
一看到外祖母那熟悉的笔迹，我顿时回想起往日站在她的白色摇椅旁看她给亲戚写信的情景。外祖母一个字母一个字母地慢慢拼出一个词，接着是下一个词，因此写满一页要花上几个小时。捧着外祖母最近花费不少工夫对我表达了充满慈爱的谢意，我禁不住流泪――从前是她给我换尿布的呀。
24 Much later, retired from the Coast Guard and trying to make a living as a writer, I never
forgot how those three "thank you" letters gave me an insight into how most human beings go
about longing in secret for more of their fellows to express appreciation for their efforts.
许多年后，我从海岸警卫队退役，试着靠写作为生，我一直不曾忘记那三封“感谢”信是如何使我认识到，大凡人都暗自期望着有更多的人对自己的努力表达谢意。
25 Now, approaching another Thanksgiving, I have asked myself what will I wish for all who
are reading this, for our nation, indeed for our whole world -- since, quoting a good and wise
friend of mine, "In the end we are mightily and merely people, each with similar needs." First, I
wish for us, of course, the simple common sense to achieve world peace, that being paramount for
the very survival of our kind.
现在，感恩节又将来临，我自问，对此文的读者，对我们的祖国，事实上对全世界，我有什么祝愿，因为，用一位善良而且又有智慧的朋友的话来说，“我们究其实都是十分相像的凡人，有着相似的需求。”当然，我首先祝愿大家记住这一简单的常识：实现世界和平，这对我们自身的存亡至关重要。
26 And there is something else I wish -- so strongly that I have had this line printed across the
bottom of all my stationery: "Find the good -- and praise it."
此外我还有别的祝愿――这一祝愿是如此强烈，我将这句话印在我所有的信笺底部：“发现并褒扬各种美好的事物。”
unit 6 The Last Leaf
The Last Leaf
O. Henry
1 At the top of a three-story brick building, Sue and Johnsy had their studio. "Johnsy" was
familiar for Joanna. One was from Maine; the other from California. They had met at a cafe on
Eighth Street and found their tastes in art, chicory salad and bishop sleeves so much in tune that
the joint studio resulted.
最后一片叶子
欧·亨利
在一幢三层砖楼的顶层，苏和约翰西辟了个画室“约翰西”。是乔安娜的昵称。她们一
位来自缅因州，一位来自加利福尼亚。两人相遇在第八大街的一个咖啡馆，发现各自在艺术品味、菊苣色拉，以及灯笼袖等方面趣味相投，于是就有了这个两人画室。
2 That was in May. In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors called Pneumonia,
stalked about the district, touching one here and there with his icy fingers. Johnsy was among his
victims. She lay, scarcely moving on her bed, looking through the small window at the blank side
of the next brick house.
那是5月里的事。到了11月，一个医生称之为肺炎的阴森的隐形客闯入了这一地区，用它冰冷的手指东碰西触。约翰西也为其所害。她病倒了，躺在床上几乎一动不动，只能隔着小窗望着隔壁砖房那单调沉闷的侧墙。
3 One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a bushy, gray eyebrow.
一天上午，忙碌的医生扬了扬灰白的浓眉，示意苏来到过道。
4 "She has one chance in ten," he said. "And that chance is for her to want to live. Your little
lady has made up her mind that she's not going to get well. Has she anything on her mind?
“她只有一成希望，”他说。“那还得看她自己是不是想活下去。你这位女朋友已经下决心不想好了。她有什么心事吗？”
5 "She -- she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day," said Sue. “她――她想有一天能去画那不勒斯湾，”苏说。
6 "Paint? -- bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking about twice -- a man, for
instance?"
“画画？――得了。她有没有别的事值得她留恋的――比如说，一个男人？”
7 "A man?" said Sue. "Is a man worth -- but, no, doctor; there is nothing of the kind."
“男人？”苏说。“难道一个男人就值得――可是，她没有啊，大夫，没有这码子事。”
8 "Well," said the doctor. "I will do all that science can accomplish. But whenever my patient
begins to count the carriages in her funeral procession I subtract 50 per cent from the curative
power of medicines." After the doctor had gone Sue went into the workroom and cried. Then she
marched into Johnsy's room with her drawing board, whistling a merry tune.
“好吧，”大夫说。“我会尽一切努力，只要是科学能做到的。可是，但凡病人开始计算她出殡的行列里有几辆马车的时候，我就要把医药的疗效减去一半。”大夫走后，苏去工作室哭了一场。随后她携着画板大步走进约翰西的房间，口里吹着轻快的口哨。
9 Johnsy lay, scarcely making a movement under the bedclothes, with her face toward the
window. She was looking out and counting -- counting backward.
约翰西躺在被子下几乎一动不动，脸朝着窗。她望着窗外，数着数――倒数着数！
10 "Twelve," she said, and a little later "eleven"; and then "ten," and "nine"; and then "eight"
and "seven," almost together.
“12，”她数道，过了一会儿“11”，接着数“10”和“9”；再数“8”和“7”，几乎一口同时数下来。
11 Sue looked out of the window. What was there to count? There was only a bare, dreary yard
to be seen, and the blank side of the brick house twenty feet away. An old, old ivy vine climbed
half way up the brick wall. The cold breath of autumn had blown away its leaves, leaving it almost
bare.
苏朝窗外望去。外面有什么好数的呢？外面只看到一个空荡荡的沉闷的院子，还有20英尺开外那砖房的侧墙，上面什么也没有。一棵古老的常青藤爬到半墙高。萧瑟秋风吹落了枝叶，藤上几乎光秃秃的。
12 "Six," said Johnsy, in almost a whisper. "They're falling faster now. Three days ago there
were almost a hundred. It made my head ache to count them. But now it's easy. There goes
another one. There are only five left now."
“6”，约翰西数着，声音几乎听不出来。“现在叶子掉落得快多了。三天前差不多还有100片。数得我头都疼。可现在容易了。又掉了一片。这下子只剩5片了。”
13 "Five what, dear? "
“5片什么，亲爱的？”
14 "Leaves. On the ivy vine. When the last one falls I must go, too. I've known that for three
days. Didn't the doctor tell you?" “叶子。常青藤上的叶子。等最后一片叶子掉了，我也就得走了。三天前我就知道会这样。大夫没跟你说吗？”
15 "Oh, I never heard of such nonsense. What have old ivy leaves to do with your getting well?
Don't be so silly. Why, the doctor told me this morning that your chances for getting well real
soon were ten to one! Try to take some soup now, and let Sudie go and buy port wine for her sick
child."
“噢，我从没听说过这种胡说八道。常青藤叶子跟你病好不好有什么关系？别这么傻。对了，大夫上午跟我说，你的病十有八九就快好了。快喝些汤，让苏迪给她生病的孩子去买些波尔图葡萄酒来。”
16 "You needn't get any more wine," said Johnsy, keeping her eyes fixed out the window.
"There goes another. No, I don't want any soup. That leaves just four. I want to see the last one fall
before it gets dark. Then I'll go, too. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of thinking. I want to turn loose
my hold on everything, and go sailing down, down, just like one of those poor, tired leaves."
“你不用再去买酒了，”约翰西说道，两眼一直盯着窗外。“又掉了一片。不，我不想喝汤。这一下只剩下4片了。我要在天黑前看到最后一片叶子掉落。那时我也就跟着走了。我都等腻了。也想腻了。我只想撇开一切, 飘然而去，就像那边一片可怜的疲倦的叶子。”
17 "Try to sleep," said Sue. "I must call Behrman up to be my model for the old miner. I'll not be
gone a minute."
“快睡吧，”苏说。“我得叫贝尔曼上楼来给我当老矿工模特儿。我去去就来。”
18 Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath them. He was past sixty
and had a long white beard curling down over his chest. Despite looking the part, Behrman was a
failure in art. For forty years he had been always about to paint a masterpiece, but had never yet
begun it. He earned a little by serving as a model to those young artists who could not pay the
price of a professional. He drank gin to excess, and still talked of his coming masterpiece. For the
rest he was a fierce little old man, who mocked terribly at softness in any one, and who regarded
himself as guard dog to the two young artists in the studio above.
老贝尔曼是住在两人楼下底层的一个画家。他已年过六旬，银白色蜷曲的长髯披挂胸前。贝尔曼看上去挺像艺术家，但在艺术上却没有什么成就。40年来他一直想创作一幅传世之作，却始终没能动手。他给那些请不起职业模特的青年画家当模特挣点小钱。他没节制地喝酒，谈论着他那即将问世的不朽之作。要说其他方面，他是个好斗的小老头，要是谁表现出一点软弱，他便大肆嘲笑，并把自己看成是楼上画室里两位年轻艺术家的看护人。
19 Sue found Behrman smelling strongly of gin in his dimly lighted studio below. In one corner
was a blank canvas on an easel that had been waiting there for twenty-five years to receive the
first line of the masterpiece. She told him of Johnsy's fancy, and how she feared she would,
indeed, light and fragile as a leaf herself, float away, when her slight hold upon the world grew
weaker. Old Behrman, with his red eyes plainly streaming, shouted his contempt for such foolish
imaginings.
苏在楼下光线暗淡的画室里找到了贝尔曼，他满身酒味刺鼻。屋子一角的画架上支着一张从未落过笔的画布，在那儿搁了25年，等着一幅杰作的起笔。苏把约翰西的怪念头跟他说了，并说约翰西本身就像一片叶子又瘦又弱，她害怕要是她那本已脆弱的生存意志再软下去的话，真的会凋零飘落。老贝尔曼双眼通红，显然是泪涟涟的，他大声叫嚷着说他蔑视这种傻念头。
20 "What!" he cried. "Are there people in the world foolish enough to die because leafs drop off
from a vine? I have never heard of such a thing. Why do you allow such silly ideas to come into
that head of hers? God! This is not a place in which one so good as Miss Johnsy should lie sick.
Some day I will paint a masterpiece, and we shall all go away. Yes."
“什么！”他嚷道。“世界上竟然有这么愚蠢的人，因为树叶从藤上掉落就要去死？我听都没听说过这等事。你怎么让这种傻念头钻到她那个怪脑袋里？天哪！这不是一个像约翰西小姐这样的好姑娘躺倒生病的地方。有朝一日我要画一幅巨作，那时候我们就离开这里。真的。”
21 Johnsy was sleeping when they went upstairs. Sue pulled the shade down, and motioned
Behrman into the other room. In there they peered out the window fearfully at the ivy vine. Then
they looked at each other for a moment without speaking. A persistent, cold rain was falling,
mingled with snow. Behrman, in his old blue shirt, took his seat as the miner on an upturned kettle
for a rock.
两人上了楼，约翰西已经睡着了。苏放下窗帘，示意贝尔曼去另一个房间。在那儿两人惶惶不安地凝视着窗外的常青藤。接着两人面面相觑，哑然无语。外面冷雨夹雪，淅淅沥沥。贝尔曼穿着破旧的蓝色衬衣, 坐在充当矿石的倒置的水壶上，摆出矿工的架势。
22 When Sue awoke from an hour's sleep the next morning she found Johnsy with dull,
wide-open eyes staring at the drawn green shade.
第二天早上，只睡了一个小时的苏醒来看到约翰西睁大着无神的双眼，凝望着拉下的绿色窗帘。
23 "Pull it up; I want to see," she ordered, in a whisper.
“把窗帘拉起来；我要看，”她低声命令道。
24 Wearily Sue obeyed.
苏带着疲倦，遵命拉起窗帘。
25 But, Lo! after the beating rain and fierce wind that had endured through the night, there yet
stood out against the brick wall one ivy leaf. It was the last on the vine. Still dark green near its
stem, but with its edges colored yellow, it hung bravely from a branch some twenty feet above the
ground.
可是，瞧！经过一整夜的急风骤雨，竟然还存留一片常青藤叶，背靠砖墙，格外显目。这是常青藤上的最后一片叶子。近梗部位仍呈暗绿色，但边缘已经泛黄了，它无所畏惧地挂在离地20多英尺高的枝干上。
26 "It is the last one," said Johnsy. "I thought it would surely fall during the night. I heard the
wind. It will fall today, and I shall die at the same time."
“这是最后一片叶子，”约翰西说。“我以为夜里它肯定会掉落的。我晚上听到大风呼啸。今天它会掉落的，叶子掉的时候，也是我死的时候。”
27 The day wore away, and even through the twilight they could see the lone ivy leaf clinging to
its stem against the wall. And then, with the coming of the night the north wind was again loosed.
白天慢慢过去了，即便在暮色黄昏之中，他们仍能看到那片孤零零的常青藤叶子，背靠砖墙，紧紧抱住梗茎。尔后，随着夜幕的降临，又是北风大作。
28 When it was light enough Johnsy, the merciless, commanded that the shade be raised.
等天色亮起，冷酷无情的约翰西命令将窗帘拉起。
29 The ivy leaf was still there.
常青藤叶依然挺在。
30 Johnsy lay for a long time looking at it. And then she called to Sue, who was stirring her
chicken soup over the gas stove. 约翰西躺在那儿，望着它许久许久。接着她大声呼唤正在煤气灶上搅鸡汤的苏。
31 "I've been a bad girl, Sudie," said Johnsy. "Something has made that last leaf stay there to
show me how wicked I was. It is a sin to want to die. You may bring me a little soup now, and
some milk with a little port in it and -- no; bring me a hand-mirror first, and then pack some
pillows about me, and I will sit up and watch you cook."
“我一直像个不乖的孩子，苏迪，”约翰西说。“有一种力量让那最后一片叶子不掉，好让我看到自己有多坏。想死是一种罪过。你给我喝点汤吧，再来点牛奶，稍放一点波尔图葡萄酒――不，先给我拿面小镜子来，弄几个枕头垫在我身边，我要坐起来看你做菜。”
32 An hour later she said:
一个小时之后，她说：
33 "Sudie, some day I hope to paint the Bay of Naples."
“苏迪，我真想有一天去画那不勒斯海湾。”
34 The doctor came in the afternoon, and Sue had an excuse to go into the hallway as he left.
下午大夫来了，他走时苏找了个借口跟进了过道。
35 "Even chances," said the doctor, taking Sue's thin, shaking hand in his.
“现在是势均力敌，”大夫说着，握了握苏纤细颤抖的手。
36 "With good nursing you'll win. And now I must see another case I have downstairs.
Behrman, his name is -- some kind of an artist, I believe. Pneumonia, too. He is an old, weak man,
and the attack is acute. There is no hope for him; but he goes to the hospital today to be made
more comfortable."
“只要精心照料，你就赢了。现在我得去楼下看另外一个病人了。贝尔曼，是他的名字――记得是个什么画家。也是肺炎。他年老体弱，病来势又猛。他是没救了。不过今天他去了医院，照料得会好一点。”
37 The next day the doctor said to Sue: "She's out of danger. You've won. The right food and
care now -- that's all."
第二天，大夫对苏说：“她脱离危险了。你赢了。注意饮食，好好照顾，就行了。”
38 And that afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay and put one arm around her.
当日下午，苏来到约翰西的床头，用一只手臂搂住她。
39 "I have something to tell you, white mouse," she said. "Mr. Behrman died of pneumonia
today in the hospital. He was ill only two days. He was found on the morning of the first day in his
room downstairs helpless with pain. His shoes and clothing were wet through and icy cold. They
couldn't imagine where he had been on such a terrible night. And then they found a lantern, still
lighted, and a ladder that had been dragged from its place, and some scattered brushes, and a
palette with green and yellow colors mixed on it, and -- look out the window, dear, at the last ivy
leaf on the wall. Didn't you wonder why it never fluttered or moved when the wind blew? Ah,
darling, it's Behrman's masterpiece -- he painted it there the night that the last leaf fell."
“我跟你说件事，小白鼠，”她说。“贝尔曼先生今天在医院里得肺炎去世了。他得病才两天。发病那天上午人家在楼下他的房间里发现他疼得利害。他的鞋子衣服都湿透了，冰冷冰冷的。他们想不出那么糟糕的天气他夜里会去哪儿。后来他们发现了一个灯笼，还亮着，还有一个梯子被拖了出来，另外还有些散落的画笔，一个调色板，和着黄绿两种颜色，――看看窗外，宝贝儿，看看墙上那最后一片常青藤叶子。它在刮风的时候一动也不动，你没有觉得奇怪吗？啊，亲爱的，那是贝尔曼的杰作――最后一片叶子掉落的那天夜里他画上了这片叶子。”