DOC《One Writer's Beginnings》

4 Besides the bookcase in the living room, which was always called the library , there were the encyclopedia tables and dictionary stand under windows in our dining room. Here to help us grow up arguing around the dining room table were the Unabridged Webster, the Columbia Encyclopedia, Compton'

s Pictured Encyclopedia, the Lincoln Library of Information, and later the Book of Knowledge. In the library , inside the bookcase were books I could soon begin on ― and I did, reading them all alike and as they came, straight down their rows, top shelf to bottom. My mother read secondarily for information;

she sank as a hedonist into novels. She read Dickens in the spirit in which she would have eloped with him. The novels of her girlhood that had stayed on in her imagination, besides those of Dickens and Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson, were Jane Eyre, Trilby, The Woman in White, Green Mansions, King Solomon'

s Mines. 除了客厅里有一向被称作 图书室 的书橱,餐厅的窗子下还有几张摆放百科全书的桌子和一个字典架.这里有伴随我们在餐桌旁争论着长大的《韦氏大词典》、《哥伦比亚百科全书》、《康普顿插图百科全书》、《林肯资料文库》,以及后来的《知识库》. 图书馆 书橱里的书没过多久我就能读了―― 我的确读了,全都读了,按着顺序,一排接着一排读,从最上面的书架一直读到最下面的书架.母亲读书最重要的不在获取信息.她是为了享受快乐而埋头读小说.她读狄更斯时的神情简直就像要跟他私奔似的.她少女时代读的小说印在了她心头的,除了狄更斯、司各特和罗伯特?路易斯?斯蒂文森等人的作品之外,还有《简?爱》、《切尔比》、《白衣女士》、《绿厦》和《所罗门王的矿藏》.

5 To both my parents I owe my early acquaintance with a beloved Mark Twain. There was a full set of Mark Twain and a short set of Ring Lardner in our bookcase, and those were the volumes that in time united us all, parents and children. 多亏了我的父母,我很早就接触了受人喜爱的马克?吐温.书橱里有一整套马克?吐温文集和一套不全的林?拉德纳作品集,这些书最终将父母和孩子联结在一起.

6 Reading everything that stood before me was how I came upon a worn old book that had belonged to my father as a child. It was called Sanford and Merton. Is there anyone left who recognizes it, I wonder? It is the famous moral tale written by Thomas Day in the 1780s, but of him no mention is made on the title page of this book;

here it is Sanford and Merton in Words of One Syllable by Mary Godolphin. Here are the rich boy and the poor boy and Mr. Barlow, their teacher and interlocutor, in long discourses alternating with dramatic scenes ― anger and rescue allotted to the rich and the poor respectively. It ends with not one but two morals, both engraved on rings: Do what you ought, come what may, and If we would be great, we must first learn to be good. 我一本接一本阅读摆在我面前的书,读着读着便发现一本又破又旧的书,是我父亲小时候的.书名是《桑福与默顿》.我不相信如今还有谁会记得这本书.那是托玛斯?戴在18世纪80年代撰写的一本著名的进行道德教育的故事书,可该书的扉页上并没有提及他;

上面写的是《桑福与默顿简易本》,玛丽?戈多尔芬著.书中讲的是一个富孩子和一个穷孩子与他们老师巴洛先生之间的冗长的谈话,其间穿插着戏剧性场面―― 分别写了富孩子和穷孩子如何发火、如何获救.书末讲的道德寓意不是一条,而是两条,都印在环形图案里: 不管发生什么,该做的就去做 ,还有 想做伟人,必须先学会做个好人 .