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 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 seen me from a distance. I figured him for a thin
retirement check, maybe a work-related 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 said, “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, or 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 amazed 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.
1.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
2.The author found the first book Mr. Ballou gave him
_____________.
A.light-hearted
and enjoyable B.dull but well
written
C.impossible to
put down D.difficult to
understand
3.From what he said to the author we can guess 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
4.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
5.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.books are
human beings’ best friends