When I was fourteen, I earned money in the summer by cutting lawns（草坪）, and within a few weeks I had built up a body of customers. I got to know people by the flowers they planted that I had to remember not to cut down, by the things they lost in the grass or struck in the ground on purpose. I reached the point with most of them when I knew in advance what complaint was about to be spoken, which particular request was most important. And I learned something about the measure of my neighbors by their preferred method of payment: by the job, by the month--- or not at all.
Mr. Ballou fell into the last category, and he always had a reason why. On one day, he had no change for a fifty, on another he was flat out of checks, on another, he was simply out when I knocked on his door. Still, except for the money apart, he was a nice enough guy, always waving or tipping his hat when he’d see me from a distance. I figured him for a thin retirement check, maybe a work-relayed injury that kept him from doing his own yard work. Sure, I kept track of the total, but I didn’t worry about the amount too much. Grass was grass, and the little that Mr. Ballou’s property comprised didn’t take long to trim (修剪).
Then, one late afternoon in mid-July, the hottest time of the year, I was walking by his house and he opened the door, mentioned me to come inside. The hall was cool, shaded, and it took my eyes a minute to adjust to the dim light.
“ I owe you,” Mr Ballou, “ but…”
I thought I’d save him the trouble of thinking of a new excuse. “ No problem. Don’t worry about it.”
“ The bank made a mistake in my account,” he continued, ignoring my words. “ It will be cleared up in a day or two . But in the meantime I thought perhaps you could choose one or two volumes for a down payment.
He gestured toward the walls and I saw that books were stacked (堆放) everywhere. It was like a library, except with no order to the arrangement.
“ Take your time,” Mr. Ballou encouraged. “Read, borrow, keep. Find something you like. What do you read?”
“ I don’t know.” And I didn’t. I generally read what was in front of me, what I could get from the paperback stack at the drugstore, what I found at the library, magazines, the back of cereal boxes, comics. The idea of consciously seeking out a special title was new to me, but, I realized, not without appeal--- so I started to look through the piles of books.
“ You actually read all of these?”
“ This isn’t much,” Mr. Ballou said. “ This is nothing, just what I’ve kept, the ones worth looking at a second time.”
“ Pick for me, then.”
He raised his eyebrows, cocked his head, and regarded me as though measuring me for a suit. After a moment, he nodded, searched through a stack, and handed me a dark red hardbound book, fairly thick.
“ The Last of the Just,” I read. “ By Andre Schwarz-Bart. What’s it about?” “ You tell me,” he said. “ Next week.”
I started after supper, sitting outdoors on an uncomfortable kitchen chair. Within a few pages, the yard, the summer, disappeared, and I was plunged into the aching tragedy of the Holocaust, the extraordinary clash of good, represented by one decent man, and evil. Translated from French, the language was elegant, simple, impossible to resist. When the evening light finally failed I moved inside, read all through the night,
To this day, thirty years later, I vividly remember the experience. It was my first voluntary encounter with world literature, and I was stunned (震驚) by the concentrated power a novel could contain. I lacked the vocabulary, however, to translate my feelings into words, so the next week. When Mr. Ballou asked, “ Well?” I only replied, “ It was good?”
“ Keep it, then,” he said. “ Shall I suggest another?”
I nodded, and was presented with the paperback edition of Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa ( a very important book on the study of the social and cultural development of peoples--- anthropology (人類學(xué)) ).
To make two long stories short, Mr. Ballou never paid me a cent for cutting his grass that year or the next, but for fifteen years I taught anthropology at Dartmouth College. Summer reading was not the innocent entertainment I had assumed it to be, not a light-hearted, instantly forgettable escape in a hammock (吊床) ( though I have since enjoyed many of those, too). A book, if it arrives before you at the right moment, in the proper season, at an internal in the daily business of things, will change the course of all that follows.
小題1:.The author thought that Mr. Ballou was ______________.
| A．rich but mean | B．poor but polite |
| C．honest but forgettable | D．strong but lazy |
小題2:. Before his encounter with Mr. Ballou, the author used to read _____________.
| A．a(chǎn)nything and everything | B．only what was given to him |
| C．only serious novels | D．nothing in the summer |
小題3:. The author found the first book Mr. Ballou gave him _____________.
| A．light-heated and enjoyable | B．dull but well written |
| C．impossible to put down | D．difficult to understand |
小題4:. From what he said to the author we can gather that Mr. Ballou _______________.
| A．read all books twice | B．did not do much reading |
| C．read more books than he kept | D．preferred to read hardbound books |
小題5:. The following year the author _______________.
| A．started studying anthropology at college | B．continued to cut Mr. Ballou’s lawn |
| C．spent most of his time lazing away in a hammock |
| D．had forgotten what he had read the summer before |
小題6:. The author’s main point is that _____________.
| A．summer jobs are really good for young people |
| B．you should insist on being paid before you do a job |
| C．a(chǎn) good book can change the direction of your life |
| D．a(chǎn) book is like a garden carried in the pocket. |
believing that being thin equals being loved, being special, and being cherished. We fantasize（夢(mèng)想）about what it will be like when we reach the long – awaited goal. We work very hard to realize this dream. Then, at last, we find ourselves there.
udes 
ed about the author?
y life has been spent pretty equally between the two countries, and I flatter myself I speak both languages without any foreign accent. 
d up to the profession, and was credited with a certain amount of “talent”; and I was considered—and, with all modesty, I think I deserved the opinion—steady and reliable, so that I had already attained a fair position in the house, and was looked upon as a “rising man”. But I was still young, and not quite so wise as I thought myself. I came close once to making a great mess of a certain affair. It is this story which I am going to tell. 
ill greater caution and larger experience of Herr Gerhardt, the second partner in the firm. 
atents and the laws which regulate them are strange things to have to do with. No one who has not had personal experience of the complications that arise could believe how far these spread and how involved they become. Great acuteness as well as caution is called for if you would guide your patent bark safely to port—and perhaps more than anything, a power of holding your tongue. I was no chatterbox, nor, when on a mission of importance, did I go about looking as if I were bursting with secrets, which is, in my opinion, almost as dangerous as revealing them. No one, to meet me on the journeys which it often fell to my lot to undertake, would have guessed that I had anything on my mind but an easy-going young fellow's natural interest i
n his surroundings, though many a time I have stayed awake through a whole night of railway travel if at all doubtful about my fellow-passengers, or not dared to go to sleep in a hotel without a ready-loaded gun by my pillow. For now and then - though not through me - our secrets did ooze out. And if, as has happened, they were secrets connected with Government orders or contracts, there was, or but for the exertion of the greatest energy and tact on the part of my superiors, there would have been, to put it plainly, the devil to pay.
ple sometimes let out the secrets of his company
y and bought them what I had promised. The 14 thing wasn’t the toy. The problem was I’d made a promise too 15 and didn’t keep it as their father.
home for the holiday. Only on the afternoon of December 23 was the list of men who would have the three-day holiday posted. I was one of the lucky soldiers. It was Christmas Eve when I arrived home, and a little snow had fallen. Mothe
r opened the front door. I could see beyond her, into the corner of the living room where the tree had always stood. There were lights, colors, and ornaments (飾品) shining against the green of a pine. 
he pine reached to the proper height, almost to the ceiling, and the Tree Top Crystal（水晶）Star was in its place. A few green branches reached out a little awkwardly（難看）at the side, I thought, and there was a bit of bare trunk showing in the middle. But the tree filled the room with warm light and the whole house with the pleasant smell of Christmas. 
n Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico. My first job was to drive the oxen（牛） that ploughed the cane fields. I would walk behind an ox, guiding him with a broomstick. For $ 1 a day, I worked eight hours straight, with no food breaks.
owners were always watching us, I had to be on time every day and work as hard as I could. I’ve never been late for any job since. I also learned about being respectful and faithful to the people you work for. More important, I earned my pay; it never entered my mind to say I was sick just because I didn’t want to work.
b. Our family needed every dollar we could make because my father never earned more than $ 18 a week. Our home was a three-room wood shack with a dirty floor and no toilet. Nothin
tick.
e all the pianos in this town and I hate that rubbish they play on the radio. They cannot even understand rhythm (韻律)."
Whether they’re positive (積極的) or negative (消極的), they’re all rubbing off on you. If you’re around people who are always complaining or blaming (責(zé)備) others, it is possible that you will start doing the same as well. If you spend lots of time with people who don’t support (支持) your dreams, it is time to take a look at the people you call "friends". 
ined part "they’re all rubbing off on you" in Paragraph 6 means ______.
tore when they heard the crash. "What do you suppose that was?" asked Sean.
en you ride with a friend, do not ride next to each other. Ride in single field, one behind the other.
these safety rules when riding a bicycle at night.
eflectors on your bicycle: yellow or white in front, and red ones on the pedals and back.
. The businessman smiled at me and said,"Why would I let someone else _47_what I say and what I feel?"