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第一单元
The Dinner
Party
Mona Gardner
I first heard this tale in India, where
it is told as if true
—
though any
naturalist would know it
couldn’t be. Later someone told me that the
story appeared in a magazine shortly
before the First World War. That
magazine story, and the person who
wrote it, I have never been able to
track down.
The country is
India. A colonial official and his wife are giving
a large
dinner party. They are seated
with their guests
—
officers
and their wives,
and a visiting
American naturalist
—
in
their spacious dining room,
which has a
bare marble floor, open rafters and wide glass
doors opening
onto a veranda.
A spirited discussion springs up
between a young girl who says that
women have outgrown the jumping-on-a-
chair-at-the-sight-of-a-mouse
era and a
major who says that they haven’t.
“A woman’s reaction in any crisis,” the
major says, “is to scream. And
while a
man may feel like it, he has that ounce more of
control than a
woman has. And that last
ounc
e is what really counts.”
The American does not join
in the argument but watches the other
guests. As he looks, he sees a strange
expression come over the face of
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the hostess.
She is staring straight ahead, her muscles
contracting slightly.
She motions
to the native boy standing behind her chair and
whispers
something to him. The boy’s
eyes widen: he quickly leaves the room.
Of the guests, none except the American
notices this or sees the boy
place a
bowl of milk on the veranda just outside the open
doors.
The American comes to with a
start. In India, milk in a bowl means
only one thing
—
bait for a snake. He realizes there must be a
cobra in
the room. He looks up at the
rafters
—
the likeliest
place
—
but they are
bare. Three corners of the room are
empty, and in the fourth the servants
are waiting to serve the next course.
There is only one place left
—
under
the
table.
His first impulse is to jump
back and warn the others, but he knows the
commotion would frighten the cobra into
striking. He speaks quickly, the
tone
of his voice so commanding that it silences
everyone.
“I want to know just what
control everyone at this table has. I will
count three hundred
—
that’s five
minutes —
and not one of you is to
move a muscle. Those who move will
forfeit 50 r
upees. Ready!”
The 20 people sit like stone images
while he counts. He is saying “...
two
hundred and eighty…” when, out of the corner of
his eye, he sees the
cobra emerge and
make for the bowl of milk. Screams ring out as he
jumps to slam the veranda doors safely
shut.
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“You were
right, Major!” the host exclaims. “A man has just
shown us
an example of perfect
self-
control.”
“Just a minute,” the American says,
turning to his hostess. “Mrs.
Wynnes,
how did you know that cobra was in the
room?”
A faint smile
lights up the woman’s face as she
replies: “Because it
was crawling
across my foot.”
第二单元
Lessons from
Jefferson
Bruce Bliven
1 Thomas Jefferson, the
third President of the United States, may be less
famous than George Washington and
Abraham Lincoln, but most people
remember at least one fact about him:
he wrote the
Declaration of
Independence
.
2
Although Jefferson lived more than 200 years ago,
there is much that
we can learn from
him today. Many of his ideas are especially
interesting
to modern youth. Here are
some of the things he said and wrote:
3
Go and see.
Jefferson believed that a
free man obtains knowledge from
many
sources besides books and that personal
investigation is important.
When still
a young man, he was appointed to a committee to
find out
whether the South Branch of
the James River was deep enough to be used
by large boats. While the other members
of the committee sat in the state
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capitol and
studied papers on the subject, Jefferson got into
a canoe and
made on-the-spot
observations.
4 You can learn from
everyone
. By birth and by education
Jefferson
belonged to the highest
social class. Yet, in a day when few noble persons
ever spoke to those of humble origins
except to give an order, Jefferson
went
out of his way to talk with gardeners, servants,
and waiters.
Jefferson once said to the
French nobleman, Lafayette, “You must go into
the people’s homes as I have
do
ne, look into their cooking pots and
eat
their bread. If you will only do
this, you may find out why people are
dissatisfied and understand the
revolution that is threatening France.”
5 Judge for yourself
.
Jefferson refused to accept other people’s
opinio
ns
without careful
thought. “Neither believe nor reject anything,” he
wrote
to his nephew, “because any other
person has rejected or believed it.
Heaven has given you a mind for judging
truth and error. Use it.”
6
Jefferson felt that the people “may
safel
y be trusted to hear everything
true and false, and to form a correct
judgment. Were it left to me to
decide
whether we should have a government without
newspapers or
newspapers without a
government, I should not hesitate a moment to
prefer the latter.”
7 Do what you believe is
right
. In a free country there will
always be
conflicting ideas, and this
is a source of strength. It is conflict and not
unquestioning agreement that keeps
freedom alive. Though Jefferson was
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for many
years the object of strong criticism, he never
answered his
critics. He expressed
his philosophy in letters to a friend,
“There are two
sides to every question.
If you take one side with decision and act on it
with effect, those who take the other
side will of course resent your
action
s.”
8
Trust the future; trust
the young
. Jefferson felt that the
present
should never be chained to
customs which have lost their usefulness. “No
society,” he said, “can make a
perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual
law. The earth belongs to the
livi
ng generation.” He did not fear new
ideas, nor did he fear the future.” How
much
pain,” he remarked,
“has
been caused by evils which have
never happened! I expect the best, not
the worst. I steer my ship with hope,
leaving fear behind.”
9
Jefferson’s cour
age and
idealism were based on knowledge. He
probably knew more than any other man
of his age. He was an expert in
agriculture, archeology, and medicine.
He practiced crop rotation and soil
conservation a century before these
became standard practice, and he
invented a plow superior to any other
in existence. He influenced
architecture throughout America, and he
was constantly producing
devices for
making the tasks of ordinary life easier to
perform.
10
Of all
Jefferson’s many talents, one is central.
He
was above all a
good and
tireless writer. His complete works, now being
published for the
first time, will fill
more than fifty volumes. His talent as an author
was
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soon
discovered, and when the time came to write the
Declaration of
Independence
at Philadelphia
in 1776, the task of writing it was his.
Millions have thrilled to his words:
“We hold these truths to be
self
-
evident, that all men
are created equal ...”
11
When Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, the 50th
anniversary of
American independence,
he left his countrymen a rich legacy of ideas and
examples. American education owes a
great debt to Thomas Jefferson,
who
believed that only a nation of educated people
could remain free.
第三单元
My First Job
Robert Best
While I was waiting to enter university, I saw
advertised in a local
newspaper a
teaching post at a school in a suburb of London
about ten
miles from where I lived.
Being very short of money and wanting to do
something useful, I applied, fearing as
I did so, that without a degree and
with no experience in teaching my
chances of getting the job were slim.
However, three days later a letter arrived, asking
me to go to Croydon
for an interview.
It proved an awkward journey: a train to Croydon
station; a ten-minute bus ride and then
a walk of at least a quarter of a
mile.
As a result I arrived on a hot June morning too
depressed to feel
nervous.
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The school
was a red brick house with big windows. The front
garden
was a gravel square; four
evergreen shrubs stood at each corner, where
they struggled to survive the dust and
fumes from a busy main road.
It was
clearly the headmaster himself that opened the
door. He was short
and fat. He had a
sandy-coloured moustache, a wrinkled forehead and
hardly any hair.
He
looked at me with an air of surprised disapproval,
as a colonel might
look at a private
whose bootlaces were undone. ‘Ah yes,’ he grunted.
‘You’d better come inside.’ The narrow,
sunless hall smelled
unpleasantly of
stale cabbage; the walls were dirty with ink
marks; it was
all silent. His study,
judging by the crumbs on the carpet, was also his
dining-
room. ‘You’d better
sit down,’ he said, and proceeded to ask me a
number of questions: what subjects I
had taken in my General School
Certificate; how old I was; what games
I played; then fixing me suddenly
with
his bloodshot eyes, he asked me whether I thought
games were a
vital part of a boy’s
education. I mumbled something about not attaching
too much importance to them. He
grunted. I had said the wrong thing.
The headmaster and I obviously had very
little in common.
The school, he
said, consisted of one class of twenty-four boys,
ranging
in age from seven to thirteen.
I should have to teach all subjects except art,
which he taught himself. Football and
cricket were played in the Park, a
mile
away on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons.
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The
teaching set-up filled me with fear. I should have
to divide the class
into three groups
and teach them in turn at three different levels;
and I
was dismayed at the thought of
teaching algebra and geometry
—
two
subjects at
which I had been completely incompetent at school.
Worse
perhaps was the idea of Saturday
afternoon cricket; most of my friends
would be enjoying leisure at that time.
I said shyly, ‘What would
my salary be?’ ‘Twelve pounds a week
plu
s
lunch.’ Before I could
protest, he got to his feet. ‘Now’, he said,
‘you’d
better meet my wife. She’s the
one who really runs this school.’
This was the last straw. I was very
young: the prospect of working under
a
woman constituted the ultimate indignity.
第四单元
The
Professor and the Yo-Yo
Thomas Lee Bucky with Joseph
My father was a close
friend of Albert Einstein. As a shy young visitor
to Einstein’s home, I was made to feel
at ease when Einstein said, “I have
something to show you.” He went to his
desk and returned with a Yo
-Yo.
He tried to show me how it worked but
he couldn’t make it roll back up
the
string. When my turn came, I displayed my few
tricks and pointed out
to him that the
incorrectly looped string had thrown the toy off
balance.
Einstein nodded, properly
impressed by my skill and knowledge. Later, I
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