新编英语教程6 课文原文

Unit OneTEXT ITwo Words to Avoid, Two to RememberArthur Gordon1Nothing in life is more exciting and rewarding than the sudden flash of insight that leaves you a changed person – not only changed, but changed for the better. Such moments are rare, certainly, but they come to all of us. Sometimes from a book, a sermon, a line of poetry. Sometimes from a friend….2 That wintry afternoon in Manhattan, waiting in the little French restaurant, I was feeling frustrated and depressed. Because of several miscalculations on my part, a project of considerable importance in my life had fallen through. Even the prospect of seeing a dear friend (the Old Man, as I privately and affectionately thought of him) failed to cheer me as it usually did. I sat there frowning at the checkered tablecloth, chewing the bitter cud of hindsight.3He came across the street, finally, muffled in his ancient overcoat, shapeless felt hat pulled down over his bald head, looking more like an energetic gnome than an eminent psychiatrist. His offices were nearby; I knew he had just left his last patient of the day. He was close to 80, but he still carried a full case load, still acted as director of a large foundation, still loved to escape to the golf course whenever he could.4By the time he came over and sat beside me, the waiter had brought his invariable bottle of ale. I had not seen him for several months, but he seemed as indestructible as ever. “Well, young man,” he said without preliminary, “what’s troubling you?”5I had long since ceased to be surprised at his perceptiveness. So I proceeded to tell him, at some length, just what was bothering me. With a kind of melancholy pride, I tried to be very honest. I blamed no one else for my disappointment, only myself. I analyzed the whole thing, all the bad judgments, the false moves. I went on for perhaps 15 minutes, while the Old Man sipped his ale in silence.6When I finished, he put down his glass. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go back to my office.”7“Your office? Did you forget something?”8“No,” he said mildly. “I want your reaction to something. That’s all.”9A chill rain was beginning to fall outside, but his office was warm and comfortable and familiar: book-lined walls, long leather couch, signed photograph of Sigmund Freud, tape recorder by the window. His secretary had gone home. We were alone.10The Old Man took a tape from a flat cardboard box and fitted it onto the machine. “On this tape,” he said, “are three short recordings made by three persons who came to me for help. They are no t identified, of course. I want you to listen to the recordings and see if you can pick out the two-word phrase that is the common denominator in all three cases.” He smiled. “Don’t look so puzzled. I have my reasons.”11What the owners of the voices on the tape had in common, it seemed to me, was unhappiness. The man who spoke first evidently had suffered some kind of business loss or failure; he berated himself for not having worked harder, for not having looked ahead. The woman who spoke next had never married because of a sense of obligation to her widowed mother; she recalled bitterly all the marital chances she had let go by. The third voice belonged to a mother whose teen-age son was in trouble with the police; she blamed herself endlessly.12The Old Man switched off the machine and leaned back in his chair. “Six times in those recordings a phrase is used that’s full of subtle poison. Did you spot it? No? Well, perhaps that’s because you used it three times yourself down in the restaurant a little whil e ago.” He picked up the box that had held the tape and tossed it over to me. “There they are, right on the label. The two saddest words in any language.”13I looked down. Printed neatly in red ink were the words: If only.14“You’d be amazed,” said the Old Man, “if you knew how many thousands of times I’ve sat in this chair and listened to woeful sentences beginning with those two words. ‘If only,’ they say to me, ‘I had done it differently –or not done it at all. If only I hadn’t lost my temper, said the cruel thing, made that dishonest move, told that foolish lie. If only I had been wiser, or more unselfish, or more self-controlled.’They go on and on until I stop them. Sometimes I make them listen to the recordings you just heard. ‘If only,’ I say to them, ‘you’d stop saying if only, we might begin to get somewhere!’”15The Old Man stretched out his legs. “The trouble with ‘if only,’” he said, “is that it doesn’t change anything. It keeps the person facing the wrong way – backward instead of forward. It wastes time. In the end, if you let it become a habit, it can become a real roadblock, an excuse for not trying any more.16“Now take your own case: your plans didn’t work out. Why? Because you made certain mistakes. Well, that’s all right: everyone makes m istakes. Mistakes are what we learn from. But when you were telling me about them, lamenting this, regretting that, you weren’t really learning from them.”17“How do you know?” I said, a bit defensively.18“Because,” said the Old Man, “you never got out of the past tense. Not once did you mention the future. And in a way-be honest, now! –you were enjoying it. There’s a perverse streak in all of us that makes us like to hash over old mistakes. After all, when you relate the story of some disaster or disappoi ntment that has happened to you, you’re still the chief character, still in the center of the stage.”19I shook my head ruefully. “Well, what’s the remedy?”20“Shift the focus,” said the Old Man promptly. “Change the key words and substitute a phrase that supplies lift instead of creating drag.”21“Do you have such a phrase to recommend?”22“Certainly. Strike out the words ‘if only’; substitute the phrase ‘next time.’”23“Next time?”24“That’s right. I’ve seen it work minor miracles right here in this room. As long as a patient keeps saying ‘if only’ to me, he’s in trouble. But when he looks me in the eye and says ‘next time,’ I know he’s on his way to overcoming his problem. It means he has decided to apply the lessons he has learned from his experience, ho wever grim or painful it may have been. It means he’s going to push aside the roadblock of regret, move forward, take action, resume living. Try it yourself. You’ll see.”25My old friend stopped speaking. Outside, I could hear the rain whispering against the windowpane.I tried sliding one phrase out of my mind and replacing it with the other. It was fanciful, of course, but I could hear the new words lock into place with an audible click….26The Old Man stood up a bit stiffly. “Well, class dismissed. It ha s been good to see you, young man. Always is. Now, if you will help me find a taxi, I probably should be getting on home.”27We came out of the building into the rainy night. I spotted a cruising cab and ran toward it, but another pedestrian was quicker.28“My, my,” said the Old Man slyly. “If only we had come down ten seconds sooner, we’d have caught that cab, wouldn’t we?”29I laughed and picked up the cue. “Next time I’ll run faster.”30“That’s it,” cried the Old Man, pulling his absurd hat down around his ears. “That’s it exactly!”31Another taxi slowed. I opened the door for him. He smiled and waved as it moved away. I never saw him again. A month later, he died of sudden heart attack, in full stride, so to speak.32More than a year has passed since that rainy afternoon in Manhattan. But to this day, whenever I find myself thinking “if only”, I change it to “next time”. Then I wait for that almost-perceptible mental click. And when I hear it, I think of the Old Man.33A small fragment of immortality, to be sure. But it’s the kind he would have wanted.From: James I. Brown, pp. 146-148.Unit TwoTEXT IThe Fine Art of Putting Things OffMichael Demarest1“Never put off till tomorrow,” exhorted Lord Chesterfield in 1749, “what you can do today.” That the elegant earl never got around to marrying his son’s mother and had a bad habit of keeping worthieslike Dr. Johnson cooling their heels for hours in an anteroom attests to the fact that even the most well-intentioned men have been postponers ever. Quintus Fabius Maximus, one of the great Roman generals, was dubbed “Cunctator” (Delayer) for putting off battle until the last possible vinum break. Moses pleaded a speech defect to rationalize his reluctance to deliver Jehovah’s edict to Pharaoh. Hamlet, of course, raised procrastination to an art form.2The world is probably about evenly divided between delayers and do-it-nowers. There are those who prepare their income taxes in February, prepay mortgages and serve precisely planned dinners at an ungodly 6:30 . The other half dine happily on leftovers at 9 or 10, misplace bills and file for an extension of the income tax deadline. They seldom pay credit-card bills until the apocalyptic voice of Diners threatens doom from Denver. They postpone, as Faustian encounters, visits to barbershop, dentist or doctor.3Yet for all the trouble procrastination may incur, delay can often inspire and revive a creative soul. Jean Kerr, author of many successful novels and plays, says that she reads every soup-can and jam-jar label in her kitchen before settling down to her typewriter. Many a writer focuses on almost anything but his task-for example, on the Coast and Geodetic Survey of Maine’s Frenchman Bay and Bar Harbor, stimulating his imagination with names like Googins Ledge, Blunts Pond, Hio Hill and Burnt Porcupine, Long Porcupine, Sheep Porcupine and Bald Porcupine islands.4From Cunctator’s day until this century, the art of postponement had been virtually a monopoly of the military (“Hurry up and wait”), diplomacy and the law. In former times, a British proconsul faced with a native uprising could comfortably ruminate about the situation with Singapore Sling in hand. Blessedly, he had no nattering Telex to order in machine guns and fresh troops. general as late as World W ar II could agree with his enemy counterpart to take a sporting day off, loot the villagers’ chickens and wine and go back to battle a day later. Lawyers are among the world’s most addicted postponers. According to Frank Nathan, a nonpostponing Beverly Hil ls insurance salesman, “The number of attorneys who die without a will is amazing.”5Even where there is no will, there is a way. There is a difference, of course, between chronic procrastination and purposeful postponement, particularly in the higher echelons of business. Corporate dynamics encourage the caution that breeds delay, says Richard Manderbach, Bank of America group vice president. He notes that speedy action can be embarrassing or extremely costly. The data explosion fortifies those seeking excuses for inaction – another report to be read, another authority to be consulted. “There is always,” says Manderbach, “a delicate edge between having enough information and too much.”6His point is well taken. Bureaucratization, which flourished amid the growing burdens of government and the great complexity of society, was designed to smother policymakers in blankets of legalism, compromise and reappraisal –and thereby prevent hasty decisions from being made. The centralization of government that led to Watergate has spread to economic institutions and beyond, making procrastination a worldwide way of life. Many languages are studded with phrases that refer to putting things off –from the Spanish manana to the Arabic bukrafil mishmish(literally “tomorrow in apricots,” more loosely “leave it for the soft spring weather when the apricots are blooming”).7Academe also takes high honors in procrastination. Bernard Sklar, a University of Southern California sociologist who churns out three to five pages of wri ting a day, admits that “many of my friends go through agonies when they face a blank page. There are all sorts of rationalizations: the pressure of teaching, responsibilities at home, checking out the latest book, looking up another footnote.”8Psychologists maintain that the most assiduous procrastinators are women, though many psychologists are (at $50 —plus an hour) pretty good delayers themselves. Dr. Ralph Greenson, a professor of clinical psychiatry (and Marilyn Monroe’s onetime shrink), takes a fa irly gentle view of procrastination. “To many people,” he says, “doing something, confronting, is the moment of truth. All frightened people will then avoid the moment of truth entirely, or evade or postpone it until the last possible moment.” To Georgia S tate Psychologist Joen Fagan, however, procrastination may be a kind of subliminal way of sorting the important from the trivial. “When I drag my feet, there’s usually somereason,” says Fagan. “I feel it, but I don’t yet know the real reason.”9In fact, there is a long and honorable history of procrastination to suggest that many ideas and decisions may well improve if postponed. It is something of a truism that to put off making a decision is itself a decision. The parliamentary process is essentially a system of delay and deliberation. So, for that matter, is the creation of a great painting, or an entrée, or a book, or a building like Blenheim Palace, which took the Duck of Marlborough’s architects and laborers 15years to construct. In the process, the design can mellow and marinate. Indeed, hurry can be the assassin of elegance. As T. H. White, author of Swords in the Stone, once wrote, time “is not meant to be devoured in an hour or a day, but to be consumed delicately and gradually and without haste.” In other words, pace Lord Chesterfield, what you don’t necessarily have to do today, by all means put off until tomorrow.From: G. Levin, 4th ed., pp. 429 - 434Unit ThreeTEXT IWalls and BarriersEugene Raskin1My father’s reaction to the bank buildi ng at 43rd Street and Fifth Avenue in New York City was immediate and definite: “You won’t catch me putting my money in there!” he declared. “Not in that glass box!”2Of course, my father is a gentleman of the old school, a member of the generation to whom a good deal of modern architecture is unnerving; but I suspect—I more than suspect, I am convinced—that his negative response was not so much to the architecture as to a violation of his concept of the nature of money.3In his generation money was thought of as a tangible commodity—bullion, bank notes, coins—that could be hefted, carried, or stolen. Consequently, to attract the custom of a sensible man, a bank had to have heavy walls, barred windows, and bronze doors, to affirm the fact, however untrue, that money would be safe inside. If a building’s design made it appear impregnable, the institution was necessarily sound, and the meaning of the heavy wall as an architectural symbol dwelt in the prevailing attitude toward money, rather than in any aesthetic theory.4But that attitude toward money has of course changed. Excepting pocket money, cash of any kind is now rarely used; money as a tangible commodity has largely been replaced by credit, a bookkeeping-banking matter. A deficit economy, accompanied by huge expansion, has led us to think of money as a product of the creative imagination. The banker no longer offers us a safe, he offers us a service—a service in which the most valuable elements are dash and a creative flair for the invention of large numbers. It is in no way surprising, in view of this change in attitude, that we are witnessing the disappearance of the heavy-walled bank. The Manufactures Trust, which my father distrusted so heartily, is a great cubical cage of glass whose brilliantly lighted interior challenges even the brightness of a sunny day, while the door to the vault, far from being secluded and guarded, is set out as a window display.5Just as the older bank asserted its invulnerability, this bank by its architecture boasts of its imaginative powers. From this point of view it is hard to day where architecture ends and human assertion begins. In fact, there is no such division; the two are one and the same.6It is in the understanding of architecture as a medium for the expression of human attitudes, prejudices, taboos, and ideals that the new architectural criticism departs from classical aesthetics. The latter relied upon pure proportion, composition, etc., as bases for artistic judgment. In the age of sociology and psychology, wal ls are not simply walls but physical symbols of the barriers in men’s minds.7In a primitive society, for example, men pictured the world as large, fearsome, hostile, and beyond human control. Therefore they built heavy walls of huge boulders, behind which they could feelthemselves to be in a delimited space that was controllable and safe; these heavy walls expressed man’s fear of the outer world and his need to find protection, however illusory. It might be argued that the undeveloped technology of the period precluded the construction of more delicate walls. This is of course true. Still, it was not technology, but a fearful attitude toward the world, which made people want to build walls in the first place. The greater the fear, the heavier the wall, until in the tombs of ancient kings we find structures that are practically all wall, the fear of dissolution being the ultimate fear.8And then there is the question of privacy – for it has become questionable. In some Mediterranean cultures it was not so much the world of nature that was feared, but the world of men. Men were dirty, prying, vile, and dangerous. One went about, if one could afford it, in guarded litters, women went about heavily veiled, if they went about at all. One’s house was surrounded by a wall, and the rooms faced not out, but in, toward a patio, expressing the prevalent conviction that the beauties and values of life were to be found by looking inward, and by engaging in the intimate activities of a personal as against a public life. The rich intricacies of the decorative arts of the period, as well as its contemplative philosophies, are as illustrative of this attitude as the walls themselves.9We feel different today. For one thing, we place greater reliance upon the control of human hostility, not so much by physical barriers, as by the conventions of law and social practice —as well as the availability of motorized police. We do not cherish privacy as much as did our ancestors. We are proud to have our women seen and admired, and the same goes for our homes. We do not seek solitude; in fact, if we find ourselves alone for once, we flick a switch and invite the whole world in through the television screen. Small wonder, then, that the heavy surrounding wall is obsolete, and we build, instead, membranes of thin sheet metal or glass.10The principal function of today’s wall is to separate possibly undesirable outside air from the controlled conditions of temperature and humidity which we have created inside, Glass may accomplish this function, though there are apparently a good many people who still have qualms about eating, sleeping, and dressing under conditions of high visibility; they demand walls that will at least give them a sense of adequate screening. But these shy ones are a vanishing breed. The Philip Johnson house in Connecticut, which is much admired and widely imitated, has glass walls all the way around, and the only real privacy is to be found in the bathroom, the toilette taboo being still unbroken, at least in Connecticut.11To repeat, it is not our advanced technology, but our changing conceptions of ourselves in relation to the world that determine how we shall build our walls. The glass wall expresses man’s conviction that he can and does master nature and society. The “open plan” and the unobstructed view are consistent with his faith in the eventual solution of all problems through the expanding efforts of science. This is perhaps why it is the most “advanced” and “forward-looking” among us who live and work in glass ho uses. Even the fear of the cast stone has been analyzed out of us.From: T. Cooley, pp. 194 - 199Unit FourTEXT IThe Lady, or the Tiger? Part IFrank R. Stockton1In the very olden time there lived a semi-barbaric king, whose ideas, though somewhat polished and sharpened by the progressiveness of distant Latin neighbors, were still large, florid, and untrammeled, as become the half of him which was barbaric. He was a man of exuberant fancy, and, withal, of an authority so irresistible that, at his will, he turned his varied fancies into facts. He was greatly given to self-communing; and, when he and himself agreed upon anything, the thing was done. When every member of his domestic and political systems moved smoothly in its appointed course, his nature was bland and genial; but whenever there was a little hitch, and some of his orbs got out of their orbits, he was blander and more genial still, for nothing pleased him so much as to make the crooked straight, and crush down uneven places.2Among the borrowed notions by which his barbarism had become semified was that of the public arena, in which, by exhibition of manly and beastly valor, the minds of his subjects were refined and cultured.3But even here the exuberant and barbaric fancy asserted itself. The arena of the king was built, not to give the people an opportunity of hearing the rhapsodies of dying gladiators, nor to enable them to view the inevitable conclusion of a conflict between religious opinions and hungry jaws, but for purposes far better adapted to widen and develop the mental energies of the people. The vast amphitheater, with its encircling galleries, its mysterious vaults, and its unseen passages, was an agent of poetic justice, in which crime was punished, or virtue rewarded, by the decrees of an impartial and incorruptible chance.4When a subject was accused of a crime of sufficient importance to interest the king, public notice was given that on an appointed day the fate of the accused person would be decided in the king’s arena —a structure which well deserved its name; for, although its form and plan were borrowed from afar, its purpose emanated solely from the brain of this man, who, every barleycorn a king, knew no tradition to which he owed more allegiance than pleased his fancy, and who ingrafted on every adopted form of human thought and action the rich growth of his barbaric idealism.5When all the people had assembled in the galleries, and the king, surrounded by his court, sat high up on his throne of royal state on one side of the arena, he gave a signal, a door beneath him opened, and the accused subject stepped out into the amphitheater. Directly opposite him, on the other side of the enclosed space, were two doors, exactly alike and side by side. It was the duty and the privilege of the person on trial to walk directly to these doors and open one of them. He could open either door he pleased: he was subject to no guidance or influence but that of the aforementioned impartial and incorruptible chance. If he opened the one, there came out of it a hungry tiger, the fiercest and most cruel that could be procured, which immediately sprang upon him, and tore him to pieces, as a punishment for his guilt. The moment that the case of the criminal was thus decided, doleful iron bells were clanged, great wails went up from the hired mourners posted on the outer rim of the arena, and the vast audience, with bowed heads and downcast hearts, wended slowly their homeward way, mourning greatly that one so young and fair, or so old and respected, should have merited so dire a fate.6But, if the accused person opened the other door, there came from it a lady, the most suitable to his years and station that his majesty could select among his fair subjects; and to this lady he was immediately married, as a reward of his innocence. It mattered not that he might already possess a wife and family, or that his affections might be engaged upon an object of his own selection; the king allowed no such subordinate arrangements to interfere with his great scheme of retribution and reward. The exercises, as in the other instance, took place immediately, and in the arena. Another door opened beneath the king, and a priest, followed by a band of choristers, and dancing maidens blowing joyous airs on golden horns and treading an epithalamic measure, advanced to where the pair stood, side by side; and the wedding was promptly and cheerily solemnized. Then the gay brass bells rang forth their merry peals, the people shouted glad hurrahs, and the innocent man, preceded by children strewing flowers on his path, led his bride to his home.7This was the king’s semi-barbaric method of administering justice. Its perfect fairness is obvious. The criminal could not know out of which door would come the lady: he opened either he pleased, without having the slightest idea whether, in the next instant, he was to be devoured or married. On some occasions the tiger came out of one door, and on some out of the other. The decisions of this tribunal were not only fair, they were positively determinate: the accused person was instantly punished if he found himself guilty; and, if innocent, he was rewarded on the spot, whether he liked it or not. There was no escape from the judgments of the king’s arena.8The institution was a very popular one. When the people gathered together on one of the great trial days they never knew whether they were to witness a bloody slaughter or a hilarious wedding. This element of uncertainty lent an interest to the occasion which it could not otherwise have attained. Thus the masses were entertained and pleased, and the thinking part of the community could bring no charge of unfairness against this plan; for did not the accused person have the whole matter in his own hands?From: B. Litzinger, pp. 323-324 Unit FiveTEXT IThe Lady, or the Tiger? Part IIFrank R. Stockton1This semi-barbaric king had a daughter as blooming as his most florid fancies, and with a soul as fervent and imperious as his own. As is usual in such cases, she was the apple of his eye, and was loved by him above all humanity. Among his courtiers was a young man of that fineness of blood and lowness of station common to the conventional heroes of romance who love royal maidens. This royal maiden was well satisfied with her lover, for he was handsome and brave to a degree unsurpassed in all this kingdom; and she loved him with an ardor that had enough of barbarism in it to make it exceedingly warm and strong. This love affair moved on happily for many months, until one day the king happened to discover its existence. He did not hesitate nor waver in regard to his duty in the premises. The youth was immediately cast into prison, and a day was appointed for his trial in the king’s arena. This, of course, was an especially important occasion; and his majesty, as well as all the people, was greatly interested in the workings and development of his trial. Never before had such a case occurred; never before had a subject dared to love the daughter of a king. In after-years such things became commonplace enough; but then they were, in no slight degree, novel and startling.2The tiger-cases of the kingdom were searched for the most savage and relentless beasts, from which the fiercest monster might be selected for the arena; and the ranks of maiden youth and beauty throughout the land were carefully surveyed by competent judges, in order that the young man might have a fitting bride in case fate did not determine for him a different destiny. Of course, everybody knew that the deed with which the accused was changed had been done. He had loved the princess, and neither he, she, nor any one else thought of denying the fact; but the king would not think of allowing any fact of this kind to interfere with the workings of the tribunal, in which he took such great delight and satisfaction. No matter how the affair turned out, the youth would be disposed of; and the king would take an aesthetic pleasure in watching the course of events, which would determine whether or not the young man had done wrong in allowing himself to love the princess.3The appointed day arrived. From far and near the people gathered, and thronged the great galleries of the arena; and crowds, unable to gain admittance, massed themselves against its outside walls. The king and his court were in their places, opposite the twin doors —those fateful portals, so terrible in their similarity.4All was ready. The signal was given. A door beneath the royal party opened, and the lover of the princess walked into the arena. Tall, beautiful, fair, his appearance was greeted with a low hum of admiration and anxiety. Half the audience had not known so grand a youth had lived among them. No wonder the princess loved him! What a terrible thing for him to be there!5As the youth advanced into the arena, he turned, as the custom was, to bow to the king: but he did not think at all of that royal personage; his eyes were fixed upon the princess, who sat to the right of her father. Had it not been for the moiety of barbarism in her nature, it is probable that lady would not have been there; but her intense and fervid soul would not allow her to be absent on an occasion in which she was so terribly interested. From the moment that the decree had gone forth, that her lover should decide his fate in the king’s arena, she had thought of nothing, night or day, but this great event and the various subjects connected with it. Possessed of more power, influence, and force of character than any one who had ever before been interested in such a case, she had done what no other person had done –— she had possessed herself of the secret of the doors. She knew in which of the two rooms, that lay behind those doors, stood the cage of the tiger, with its open front, and in which waited the lady. Through these thick doors, heavily curtained with skins on the inside, it was impossible that any noise or suggestion should。