高级英语第一册课文

The Middle Eastern Bazaar

The Middle Eastern bazaar takes you back hundreds --- even thousands --- of years. The one I am thinking of particularly is entered by a Gothic - arched gateway of aged brick and stone. You pass from the heat and glare of a big, open square into a cool, dark cavern which extends as far as the eye can see, losing itself in the shadowy distance. Little donkeys with harmoniously tinkling bells thread their way among the throngs of people entering and leaving the bazaar. The roadway is about twelve feet wide, but it is narrowed every few yards by little stalls where goods of every conceivable kind are sold. The din of the stall-holder; crying their wares, of donkey-boys and porters clearing a way for themselves by shouting vigorously, and of would-be purchasers arguing and bargaining is continuous and makes you dizzy.

Then as you penetrate deeper into the bazaar, the noise of the entrance fades away, and you come to the muted cloth-market. The earthen floor, beaten hard by countless feet, deadens the sound of footsteps, and the vaulted mud-brick walls and roof have hardly any sounds to echo. The shop-keepers speak in slow, measured tones, and the buyers, overwhelmed by the sepulchral atmosphere, follow suit .

One of the peculiarities of the Eastern bazaar is that shopkeepers dealing in the same kind of goods do not scatter themselves over the bazaar, in order to avoid competition, but collect in the same area, so that purchasers can know where to find them, and so that they can form a closely knit guild against injustice or persecution . In the cloth-market, for instance, all the sellers of material for clothes, curtains, chair covers and so on line the roadway on both sides, each open-fronted shop having a trestle trestle table for display and shelves for storage. Bargaining is the order of the cay, and veiled women move at a leisurely pace from shop to shop, selecting, pricing and doing a little preliminary bargaining before they narrow down their choice and begin the really serious business of beating the price down.

It is a point of honour with the customer not to let the shopkeeper guess what it is she really likes and wants until the last moment. If he does guess correctly, he will price the item high, and yield little in the bargaining. The seller, on the other hand, makes a point of protesting that the price he is charging is depriving him of all profit, and that he is sacrificing this because of his personal regard for the customer. Bargaining can go on the whole day, or even several days, with the customer coming and going at intervals .

One of the most picturesque and impressive parts of the bazaar is the copper-smiths' market. As you approach it, a tinkling and banging and clashing begins to impinge on your ear. It grows louder and more distinct, until you round a corner and see a fairyland of dancing flashes, as the burnished copper catches the light of innumerable lamps and braziers . In each shop sit the apprentices – boys and youths, some of them incredibly young – hammering away at copper vessels of all shapes and sizes, while the shop-owner instructs, and sometimes takes a hand with a hammer himself. In the background, a tiny apprentice blows a bi-, charcoal fir e with a huge leather bellows worked by a string attached to his big toe -- the red of the live coals glowing, bright and then dimming rhythmically to the strokes of the bellows.

Here you can find beautiful pots and bowls engrave with delicate and intricate traditional designs, or the simple, everyday kitchenware used in this country, pleasing in form, but undecorated and strictly functional. Elsewhere there is the carpet-market, with its profusion of rich colours, varied textures and regional designs -- some bold and simple, others unbelievably detailed and yet harmonious. Then there is the spice-market, with its pungent and exotic smells; and the food-market, where you can buy everything you need for the most sumptuous dinner, or sit in a tiny restaurant with porters and apprentices and eat your humble bread and cheese. The dye-market, the pottery-market and the carpenters' market lie elsewhere in the maze of vaulted streets which honeycomb this bazaar. Every here and there, a doorway gives a glimpse of a sunlit courtyard, perhaps before a mosque or a caravanserai , where camels lie disdainfully chewing their hay, while the great bales of merchandise they have carried hundreds of miles across the desert lie beside them.

Perhaps the most unforgettable thing in the bazaar, apart from its general atmosphere, is the place where they make linseed oil. It is a vast, sombre cavern of a room, some thirty feet high and sixty feet square, and so thick with the dust of centuries that the mudbrick walls and vaulted roof are only dimly visible. In this cavern are three massive stone wheels, each with a huge pole through its centre as an axle. The pole is attached at the one end to an upright post, around which it can revolve, and at the other to a blind-folded

camel, which walks constantly in a circle, providing the motive power to turn the stone wheel. This revolves in a circular stone channel, into which an attendant feeds linseed. The stone wheel crushes it to a pulp, which is then pressed to extract the oil .The camels are the largest and finest I have ever seen, and in superb condition –muscular, massive and stately.

The pressing of the linseed pulp to extract the oil is done by a vast ramshackle apparatus of beams and ropes and pulleys which towers to the vaulted ceiling and dwarfs the camels and their stone wheels. The machine is operated by one man, who shovels the linseed pulp into a stone vat, climbs up nimbly to a dizzy height to fasten ropes, and then throws his weight on to a great beam made out of a tree trunk to set the ropes and pulleys in motion. Ancient girders girders creak and groan , ropes tighten and then a trickle of oil oozes oozes down a stone runnel into a used petrol can. Quickly the trickle becomes a flood of glistening linseed oil as the beam sinks earthwards, taut and protesting, its creaks blending with the squeaking and rumbling of the grinding-wheels and the occasional grunts and sighs of the camels.

(from Advanced Comprehension and Appreciation pieces, 1962 )

NOTES

1) This piece is taken from Advanced Comprehension and Appreciation Pieces, compiled for overseas students by L. A. Hill and D.J. May, published by Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, 1962.

2) Middle East: generally referring to the area from Afghanistan to Egypt, including the Arabian Peninsula, Cyprus, and Asiatic Turkey.

3) Gothic: a style of architecture originated in N. France in 11th century, characterized by pointed arches, ribbed vaulting, steep, high roofs, etc.

4) veiled women: Some Moslems use the veil---more appropriately, the purdah --- to seclude or hide their women from the eyes of strangers.

5) caravanserai (caravansary): in the Middle East, a kind of inn with a large central court, where bands of merchants or pilgrims, together with their camels or horses, stay for shelter and refreshment

Hiroshima -- the "Liveliest‖City in Japan

Jacques Danvoir

―Hiroshima! Everybody off!‖ That must be what the man in the Japanese stationmaster's uniform shouted, as the fastest train in the world slipped to a stop in Hiroshima Station. I did not understand what he was saying. First of all, because he was shouting in Japanese. And secondly, because I had a lump in my throat and a lot of sad thoughts on my mind that had little to do with anything a Nippon railways official might say. The very act of stepping on this soil, in breathing this air of Hiroshima, was for me a far greater adventure than any trip or any reportorial assignment I'd previously taken. Was I not at the scene of the crime?

The Japanese crowd did not appear to have the same preoccupations that I had. From the sidewalk outside the station, things seemed much the same as in other Japanese cities. Little girls and elderly ladies in kimonos rubbed shoulders with teenagers and women in western dress. Serious looking men spoke to one another as if they were oblivious of the crowds about them, and bobbed up and down re-heatedly in little bows, as they exchanged the ritual formula of gratitude and respect: "Tomo aligato gozayimas." Others were using little red telephones that hung on the facades of grocery stores and tobacco shops.

"Hi! Hi!" said the cab driver, whose door popped open at the very sight of a traveler. "Hi", or something that sounds very much like it, means "yes". "Can you take me to City Hall?" He grinned at me in the

rear-view mirror and repeated "Hi!" "Hi! ‘ We set off at top speed through the narrow streets of Hiroshima. The tall buildings of the martyred city flashed by as we lurched from side to side in response to the driver's sharp twists of the wheel.

Just as I was beginning to find the ride long, the taxi screeched to a halt, and the driver got out and went over to a policeman to ask the way. As in Tokyo, taxi drivers in Hiroshima often know little of their city, but to avoid loss of face before foreigners, will not admit their ignorance, and will accept any destination without concern for how long it may take them to find it.

At last this intermezzo came to an end, and I found myself in front of the gigantic City Hall. The usher bowed deeply and heaved a long, almost musical sigh, when I showed him the invitation which the mayor had sent me in response to my request for an interview. "That is not here, sir," he said in English. "The mayor expects you tonight for dinner with other foreigners or, the restaurant boat. See? This is where it is.‖ He sketched a little map for me on the back of my invitation.

Thanks to his map, I was able to find a taxi driver who could take me straight to the canal embankment , where a sort of barge with a roof like one on a Japanese house was moored . The Japanese build their traditional houses on boats when land becomes too expensive. The rather arresting spectacle of little old Japan adrift adrift amid beige concrete skyscrapers is the very symbol of the incessant struggle between the kimono and the miniskirt.

At the door to the restaurant, a stunning, porcelain-faced woman in traditional costume asked me to remove my shoes. This done, I entered one of the low-ceilinged rooms of the little floating house, treading cautiously on the soft matting and experiencing a twinge of embarrassment at the prospect of meeting the mayor of Hiroshima in my socks.

He was a tall, thin man, sad-eyed and serious. Quite unexpectedly, the strange emotion which had overwhelmed me at the station returned, and I was again crushed by the thought that I now stood on the site of the first atomic bombardment, where thousands upon thousands of people had been slain in one second, where thousands upon thousands of others had lingered on to die in slow agony .

The introductions were made. Most of the guests were Japanese, and it was difficult for me to ask them just why we were gathered here. The few Americans and Germans seemed just as inhibited as I was. "Gentlemen," said the mayor, "I am happy to welcome you to Hiroshima."

Everyone bowed, including the Westerners. After three days in Japan, the spinal column becomes extraordinarily flexible.

"Gentlemen, it is a very great honor to have you her e in Hiroshima."

There were fresh bows, and the faces grew more and more serious each time the name Hiroshima was repeated.

"Hiroshima, as you know, is a city familiar to everyone,‖ continued the mayor.

"Yes, yes, of course,‖ murmured the company, more and more agitated.

"Seldom has a city gained such world renown, and I am proud and happy to welcome you to Hiroshima, a town known throughout the world for its--- oysters".

I was just about to make my little bow of assent, when the meaning of these last words sank in, jolting me out of my sad reverie .

"Hiroshima –oysters? What about the bomb and the misery and humanity's most heinous crime?"

While the mayor went on with his speech in praise of southern Japanese sea food, I cautiously backed away and headed toward the far side of the room, where a few men were talking among themselves and paying little attention to the mayor's speech. "You look puzzled," said a small Japanese man with very large

eye-glasses.

"Well, I must confess that I did not expect a speech about oysters here. I thought that Hiroshima still felt the impact of the atomic impact ."

"No one talks about it any more, and no one wants to, especially, the people who were born here or who lived through it. "Do you feel the same way, too?"

"I was here, but I was not in the center of town. I tell you this because I am almost an old man. There are two different schools of thought in this city of oysters, one that would like to preserve traces of the bomb, and the other that would like to get rid of everything, even the monument that was erected at the point of impact. They would also like to demolish the atomic museum."

"Why would they want to do that?"

"Because it hurts everybody, and because time marches on. That is why." The small Japanese man smiled, his eyes nearly closed behind their thick lenses. "If you write about this city, do not forget to say that it is the gayest city in Japan, even it many of the town's people still bear hidden wounds, and burns."

Like any other, the hospital smelled of formaldehyde and ethere . Stretchers and wheelchairs lined the walls of endless corridors, and nurses walked by carrying Stretchers instruments, the very sight of which would send shivers down the spine of any healthy visitor. The so-called atomic section was located on the third floor. It consisted of 17 beds.

"I am a fisherman by trade. I have been here a very long time, more than twenty years, "said an old man in Japanese pajamas. ―What is wrong with you?‖

"Something inside. I was in Hiroshima when it happened. I saw the fire ball. But I had no burns on my face or body. I ran all over the city looking for missing friends and relatives. I thought somehow I had been spared. But later my hair began to fall out, and my belly turned to water. I felt sick, and ever since then they have been testing and treating me. " The doctor at my side explained and commented upon the old man's story, "We still hare a handful of patients here who are being kept alive by constant car e. The other s died as a result of their injuries, or else committed suicide . "

"Why did they commit suicide?"

"It is humiliating to survive in this city. If you bear any visible scars of atomic burns, your children will encounter prejudice on the par t of those who do not. No one will marry the daughter or the niece of an atomic bomb victim. People are afraid of genetic damage from the radiation." The old fisherman gazed at me politely and with interest.

Hanging over the patient was a big ball made of bits of brightly colored paper, folded into the shape of tiny birds. "What's that?" I asked.

"Those are my lucky birds. Each day that I escape death, each day of suffering that helps to free me from earthly cares, I make a new little paper bird, and add it to the others. This way I look at them and congratulate myself of the good fortune that my illness has brought me. Because, thanks to it, I have the opportunity to improve my character."

Once again, outside in the open air, I tore into little pieces a small notebook with questions that I'd prepared in advance for inter views with the patients of the atomic ward. Among them was the question: Do you really think that Hiroshima is the liveliest city in Japan? I never asked it. But I could read the answer in every eye.

(from an American radio program presented by Ed Kay)

NOTES

1) Hiroshima: a seaport, capital of Hiroshima prefecture in southwest Japan. Population (1970) 54,834. On Aug. 6, 1945, Hiroshima was the first city to be struck by an atomic bomb, dropped by the U. S, air force. Almost 130 000 people were killed, injured, or missing, and 90% of the city was leveled. Much of the city has been reconstructed, but a gutted section of the city has been set aside as a "Peace City" to illustrate the effect of an atomic bomb. Since 1955, an annual world conference against nuclear weapons has met in Hiroshima.

2) Nippon: (Japanese) Japan

3) Tomo aligato gozayimas: (Japanese) Thank you very much.

4) Hi: (Japanese) yes

5) kimono: (Japanese) a loose robe with wide sleeves and a broad sash traditionally worn as an outer garment by the Japanese

6) tatami: (Japanese) straw matting used as a floor covering in a Japanese home. It is a custom of the Japanese to remove their shoes once they go indoors, walking on the tatami matting in their socks.

Speech on Hitler's Invasion of the U.S.S.R.

Winston S .Churchill

When I awoke on the morning of Sunday, the 22nd, the news was brought to me of Hitler's invasion of Russia. This changed conviction into certainty. I had not the slightest doubt where our duty and our policy lay. Nor indeed what to say. There only remained the task of composing it. I asked that notice should immediately be given that I would broad-cast at 9 o' clock that night. Presently General Dill, who had hastened down from London, came into my bedroom with detailed news. The Germans had invaded Russia on an enormous front, had surprised a large portion of the Soviet Air Force grounded on the airfields, and seemed to be driving forward with great rapidity and violence. The Chief of the Imperial General Staff added, "I suppose they will be rounded up in hordes ."

I spent the day composing my statement. There was not time to consult the War Cabinet, nor was it necessary. I knew that we all felt the same on this issue. Mr. Eden, Lord Beaverbrook, and Sir Stafford Cripps – he had left Moscow on the 10th – were also with me during the day.

The following account of this Sunday at Chequers by my Private Secretary, Mr. Colville, who was on duty this weekend, may be of interest:

"On Saturday, June 21, I went down to Chequers just before dinner. Mr. and Mrs. Winant, Mr. and Mrs. Eden, and Edward Bridges were staying. During dinner Mr. Churchill said that a German attack on Russia was now certain, and he thought that Hitler was counting on enlisting capitalist and Right Wing sympathies in this country and the U. S. A. Hitler was, however, wrong and we should go all out to help Russia. Winant said the same would be true of the U. S. A.

After dinner, when I was walking on the croquet lawn with Mr. Churchill, he reverted to this theme, and I asked whether for him, the arch anti-Communist, this was not bowing down in the House of Rimmon. Mr. Churchill replied, "Not at all. I have only one purpose, the destruction of Hitler, and my life is much simplified thereby. It Hitler invaded Hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons. '

I was awoken at 4 a. m. the following morning by a telephone message from the F. O. to the effect that Germany had attacked Russia. The P. M. had always said that he was never to be woken up for anything but Invasion (of England). I therefore postponed telling him till 8 am. His only comment was, 'Tell the B.B.C. I will

broadcast at 9 to – night. 'He began to prepare the speech at 11a. m., and except for luncheon（= lunch）, at

which Sir Stafford Cripps, Lord Cranborne, and Lord Beaverbrook were present, he devoted the whole day to it… The speech was only ready at twenty minutes to nine."

In this broadcast I said:

"The Nazi regime is indistinguishable from the worst features of Communism. It is devoid of all theme and principle except appetite and racial domination. It excels all forms of human wickedness in the efficiency of its cruelty and ferocious aggression. No one has been a more consistent consistent opponent of Communism than I have for the last twenty - five years. I will unsay no word that I have spoken about it. But all this fades away before the spectacle which is now unfolding. The past, with its crimes, its follies, and its tragedies, flashes away. I see the Russian soldiers standing on the threshold of their native land, guarding the fields which their fathers have tilled from time immemorial . I see them guarding their homes where mothers and wives pray - ah, yes, for there are times when all pray – for the safety of their loved ones, the return of the bread-winner, of their champion, of their protector. I see the ten thousand villages of Russia where the means of existence is wrung so hardly from the soil, but where there are still primordial human joys, where maidens laugh and children play. I see advancing upon all this in hideous onslaught the Nazi war machine, with its clanking , heel-clicking, dandified Prussian officers, its crafty expert agents fresh from the cowing and tying down of a dozen countries. I see also the dull, drilled, docile , brutish masses of the Hun soldiery plodding on like a swarm of crawling locusts. I see the German bombers and fighters in the sky, still smarting from many a British whipping, delighted to find what they believe is an easier and a safer prey.

"Behind all this glare, behind all this storm, I see that small group of villainous men who plan, organise, and launch this cataract of horrors upon mankind...

"I have to declare the decision of His Majesty's Government - and I feel sure it is a decision in which the great Dominions will in due concur – for we must speak out now at once, without a day's delay. I have to

make the declaration, but can you doubt what our policy will be? We have but one aim and one single, irrevocable purpose. We are resolved to destroy Hitler and every vestige of the Nazi regime. From this nothing will turn us – nothing. We will never parley; we will never negotiate with Hitler or any of his gang. We shall fight him by land, we shall fight him by sea, we shall fight him in the air, until, with God's help, we have rid the earth of his shadow and liberated its peoples from his yoke. Any man or state who fights on against Nazidom will have our aid. Any man or state who marches with Hitler is our foe... That is our policy and that is our declaration. It follows therefore that we shall give whatever help we can to Russia and the Russian people. We shall appeal to all our friends and allies in every part of the world to take the same course and pursue it, as we shall faithfully and steadfastly to the end....

"This is no class war, but a war in which the whole British Empire and Commonwealth of Nations is engaged, without distinction of race, creed, or party. It is not for me to speak of the action of the United

States, but this I will say：if Hitler imagines that his attack on Soviet Russia will cause the slightest

divergence of aims or slackening of effort in the great democracies who are resolved upon his doom, he is woefully mistaken. On the contrary, we shall be fortified and encouraged in our efforts to rescue mankind from his tyranny. We shall be strengthened and not weakened in determination and in resources.

"This is no time to moralise on the follies of countries and Governments which have allowed themselves to be struck down one by one, when by united action they could have saved themselves and saved the world from this tyranny. But when I spoke a few minutes ago of Hitler's blood-lust and the hateful appetites which have impelled or lured him on his Russian adventure I said there was one deeper motive behind his outrage. He wishes to destroy the Russian power because he hopes that if he succeeds in this he will be able to bring back the main strength of his Army and Air Force from the East and hurl it upon this Island, which he knows he must conquer or suffer the penalty of his crimes. His invasion of Russia is no more than a penalty to an attempted invasion of the British Isles. He hopes, no doubt, that all this may be accomplished before the winter comes, and that he can overwhelm Great Britain before the Fleet and air-power of the United States may intervene. He hopes that he may once again repeat, upon a greater scale than ever before, that process of destroying his enemies one by one by which he has so long thrived and prospered, and that then the scene will be clear for the final act, without which all his conquests would be in vain – namely, the subjugation P of the Western Hemisphere to his will and to his system.

"The Russian danger is therefore our danger, and the danger of the United States, just as the cause of

any Russian fighting for his hearth ）and home is the cause of free men and free peoples in every quarter of

the globe. Let us learn the lessons already taught by such cruel experience. Let us redouble our exertions, and strike with united strength while life and power remain. "

(from an American radio program presented by Ed Kay)

NOTES

1) Sir Winston Spencer Churchill (1874 - 1965): Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury, and Minister of Defense (1940 – 45), led Britain from near defeat to victory in World War II; Leader of the Opposition (1945 –51); Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury (Oct. 1951 – April 1955); retired 1955; his best known book, The Second World War.

2) General Dill: Sir John Green Dill (1881- 1944), British field marshal, Chief of the Imperial General Staff (1940 - 41), a member of the joint Anglo-American board of strategy (1941 - 44)

3) Eden: Robert Anthony Eden, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (1935– 38, 1940 – 45), for Dominion Affairs (1939 – 40), and for War (1940). From 1942 to 1945 he was leader of the House of Commons. He was Prime Minister from 1955 to 1957.

4) Lord Beaverbrook: In World War II, he was Minister of Aircraft Production (1940 - 41), of State (1941), and

of Supply (1941 - 42), British representative (Feb. 1942) in America for the supervision of British supply agencies.

5) Sir Stafford Cripps: British Ambassador to Moscow (1940 - 42)

6) Chequers: a historic Tudor mansion in Buckinghamshire, 35 miles NW of London; presented to the government by Lord and Lady Lee of Fareham 1917; the official country seat of the prime minister of Great Britain

7) Colville: Churchill's private secretary

8) Winant: John Gilbert Winant (1889 - 1947), American government official and diplomat; U. S. ambassador to Great Britain (1941 - 46)

9) Edward Bridges: Secretary of the Cabinet (1938-– 46)

10) to bow down in the House of Rimmon: outward conformity with conventional religion or custom, practised with mental reservation for political purposes; Rimmon, deity worshipped by Syrians of Damascus (Bible, II Kings, v. 18)

11) F. O.: Foreign Office

12) P. M.: Prime Minister

13) Lord Cranborne: 5th Marquis of Salisbury, Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs

14) Hun: term of contempt applied to German soldiers especially in World War I

15) Dominion: a self-governing member of the British Commonwealth of Nations

16) British Empire: The United Kingdom plus her colonies and protectorates

17) Commonwealth of Nations: The United Kingdom plus her former colonies but now independent nations and a member of the British Commonwealth of Nations

Blackmail

Arthur Hailey

The chief house officer, Ogilvie, who had declared he would appear at the Croydons suite an hour after his cryptic telephone call actually took twice that time. As a result the nerves of both the Duke and Duchess were excessively frayed when the muted buzzer of the outer door eventually sounded.

The Duchess went to the door herself. Earlier she had dispatched her maid on an invented errand and, cruelly, instructed the moon-faced male secretary – who was terrified of dogs – to exercise the Bedlington terriersn. . Her own tension was not lessened by the knowledge that both might return at any moment.

A wave of cigar smoke accompanied Ogilvie in. When he had followed her to the living room, the Duchess looked pointedly at the half-burned cigar in the fat man‘s mouth. ―My husband and I find strong smoke offensive. Would you kindly put that out."

The house detective's piggy eyes surveyed her sardonically from his gross jowled face. His gaze moved on to sweep the spacious, well-appointed room, encompassing the Duke who faced them uncertainly, his back to a window.

"Pretty neat set-up you folks got.‖ Ta king his time, Ogilvie removed the offending cigar, knocked off the ash and flipped the butt toward an ornamental fireplace on his right. He missed, and the butt fell upon the carpet where he ignored it.

The Duchess's lips tightened. She said sharply, imagine you did not come here to discuss décor ". The obese body shook in an appreciative chuckle . "No, ma'am, can't say I did. I like nice things, though." He lowered the level of his incongruous falsetto voice." Like that car of yours. The one you keep here in the hotel. Jaguar, ain't it?"

"Aah!" It was not a spoken word, but an emission of breath from the Duke of Croydon. His wife shot him a swift, warning glance.

"In what conceivable way does our car concern you?‖

As if the question from the Duchess had been a signal, the house detective's manner changed. He inquired abruptly, "Who else is in this place?"

It was the Duke who answered, "No one. We sent them out."

"There's things it pays to check." Moving with surprising speed, the fat man walked around the suite, opening doors and inspecting the space behind them. Obviously he knew the room arrangement well. After reopening and closing the outer door, he returned, apparently satisfied, to the living room.

The Duchess had seated herself in a straight-backed Ogilvie remained standing.

"Now then," he said. "You two was in the hit-'n-run ."

She met his eyes directly." What are you talking about?"

"Don't play games, lady. This is for real." He took out a fresh cigar and bit off the end, "You saw the papers. There's been plenty on radio, too."

Two high points of color appeared in the paleness of the Duchess of Croydon's cheeks. "What you are suggesting is the most disgusting, ridiculous..."

"I told you –Cut it out!‖ The words spat forth with sudden savagery , all pretense of blandness gone.

Ignoring the Duke, Ogilvie waved the unlighted cigar under his adversary 's adversary 's nose. "You listen to me, your high-an'-mightiness. This city's burnin' mad – cops, mayor, everybody else. When they find who done that last night, who killed that kid an' its mother, then high-tailed it, they'll throw the book, and never mind who it hits, or whether they got fancy titles neither. Now I know what I know, and if I do what by rights I should, there'll be a squad of cops in here so fast you'll hardly see 'em. But I come to you first, in fairness, so's you could tell your side of it to me." The piggy eyes blinked, then hardened. " 'f you want it the other way, just say so."

The Duchess of Croydon –three centuries and a half of inbred arrogance behind her – did not yield

easily. Springing to her feet, her face wrathful, gray-green eyes blazing, she faced the grossness of the house detective squarely. Her tone would have withered anyone who knew her well. ―You unspeakable blackguard ! How dare you!‖

Even the self-assurance of Ogilvie flickered for an instant. But it was the Duke of Croydon who interjected, "It's no go, old girl. I'm afraid. It was a good try." Facing Ogilvie, he said, "What you accuse us of is true. I am to blame. I was driving the car and killed the little girl."

"That's more like it," Ogilvie said. He lit the fresh cigar. "Now we're getting somewhere."

Wearily, in a gesture of surrender, the Duchess of Croydon sank back into her chair. Clasping her hands to conceal their trembling, she asked. "What is it you know?"

"Well now, I'll spell it out." The house detective took his time, leisurely putting a cloud of blue cigar smoke, his eyes sardonically on the Duchess as if challenging her objection. But beyond wrinkling her nose in distaste, she made no comment. Ogilvie pointed to the Duke. "Last night, early on, you went to Lindy's Place in Irish Bayou. You drove there in your fancy Jaguar, and you took a lady friend. Leastways, I guess you'd call her that if you're not too fussy."

As Ogilvie glanced, grinning, at the Duchess, the Duke said sharply, "Get on with it!"

"Well" –the smug fat face swung back – "the way I hear it, you won a hundred at the tables, then lost it

at the bar. You were into a second hundred – with a real swinging party – when your wife here got there in a taxi. "

"How do you know all this?"

"I'll tell you, Duke –I've been in this town and this hotel a long time. I got friends all over. I oblige them;

they do the same for me, like letting me know what giv es, an‘ where. There ain't much, out of the way, which people who stay in this hotel do, I don't get to hear about. Most of ‘em never know I know, or know me. They think they got their little secret tucked away , and so they have – except like now."

The Duke said coldly, "I see."

"One thing I'd like to know. I got a curious nature, ma‘ am. How'd you figure where he was?"

The Duchess said, "You know so much... I suppose it doesn't matter. My husband has a habit of making notes while he is telephoning. Afterward he often forgets to destroy them. ‖

The house detective clucked his tongue reprovingly . "A little careless habit like that, Duke – look at the mess it gets you in. Well, here's what I figure about the rest. You an' your wife took off home, you drivin', though the way things turned out it might have been better if she'd have drove."

"My wife doesn't drive."

Ogilvie nodded understandingly. "Explains that one. Anyway, I reckon you were lickered ( = liquored ) up, but good..."

The Duchess interrupted. "Then you don't know! You don't know anything for sure! You can't possibly prove..."

"Lady, I can prove all I need to."

The Duke cautioned, "Better let him finish, old girl."

"That's right," Ogilvie said. "Just sit an' listen. Last night I seen you come in – through the basement, so's not to use the lobby. Looked right shaken, too, the pair of you.

Just come in myself, an' I got to wondering why. Like I said, I got a curious nature."

The Duchess breathed, "Go on."

"Late last night the word was out about the hit-'n-run. On a hunch I went over the garage and took a quiet look-see at your car. You maybe don't know – it's away in a corner, behind a pillar where the jockeys don't see it when they're comin' by."

The Duke licked his lips. "I suppose that doesn't matter now."

"You might have something there," Ogilvie conceded . "Anyway, what I found made me do some scouting -- across at police headquarters where they know me too." He paused to puff again at the cigar as his listeners waited silently. When the cigar tip was glowing he inspected it, then continued. "Over there they got three things to go on. They got a headlight trim ring which musta come off when the kid an‘ the woman was hit. They got some headlight glass, and lookin‘ at the ki d's clothin', they reckon there'll be a brush trace. "

"A what?"

"You rub clothes against something hard, Duchess, specially if it's shiny like a car fender, say, an' it leaves a mark the same way as finger prints. The police lab kin pick it up like they do prints –dust it, an‘ it shows."

"That's interesting," the Duke said, as if speaking of something unconnected with himself. "I didn't know that."

"Not many do. In this case, though, I reckon it don't make a lot o' difference. On your car you got a busted headlight, and the trim ring's gone. Ain't any doubt they'd match up, even without the brush trace an‘ the blood. 0h yeah, I should a told you. There's plenty of blood, though it don't show too much on the black paint."

"Oh, my God!" A hand to her face, the Duchess turned away.

Her husband asked, "What do you propose to do?"

The fat man rubbed his hands together, looking down at his thick, fleshy fingers. "Like I said, I come to hear you, side of it."

The Duke said despairingly , "what can I possibly say? You know what happened." He made an attempt to square his shoulders which did not succeed. "You'd better call the police and get it over."

"Well now, there's no call for being hasty ." The incongruous falsetto voice took on a musing note. "What's done's been done. Rushing any place ain't gonna bring back the kid nor its mother neither. Besides, what they'd do to you across at the headquarters, Duke, you wouldn't like. No sir, you wouldn't like it at all. " The other two slowly raised their eyes.

"I was hoping," Ogilvie said, "that you folks could suggest something."

The Duke said uncertainly, "I don't understand." "I understand," the Duchess of Croydon said. "You want money, don't you? You came here to blackmail us."

If she expected her words to shock, they did not succeed. The house detective shrugged. "Whatever names you call things, ma'am, don't matter to me. All I come for was to help you people out of trouble. But I got to live too.‖

"You'd accept money to keep silent about what you know?"

"I reckon I might."

"But from what you say," the Duchess pointed out, her poise for the moment recovered, "it would do no good. The car would be discovered in any case."

"I guess you'd have to take that chance. But there's some reasons it might not be. Something I ain't told you yet." "Tell us now, please."

Ogilvie said, "I ain't figured this out myself completely. But when you hit that kid you was going away from town, not to it."

"We'd made a mistake in the route," the Duchess said. "Somehow we'd become turned around. It's easily done in New Orleans, with the street winding as they do. Afterward, using side streets, we went back. ‖

"I thought it might be that," Ogilvie nodded understandingly. "But the police ain't figured it that way. They‘re looking for somebody who was headed out. That's why, right now, they're workin' on the suburbs and the outside towns. They may get around to searchin' downtown, but it won't be yet. "

"How long before they do?"

"Maybe three, four days. They got a lot of other places to look first."

"How could that help us --- the delay??"

"It might," Ogilvie said. "Providin' nobody twigs the car – an' seein' where it is, you might be lucky there. An' if you can get it away."

"You mean out of the state?"”

"I mean out o’the South."

"That wouldn't be easy?"

"No, ma'am. Every state around –Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, all the rest'll be watching for

a car damaged the way yours is."

The Duchess considered. "Is there any possibility of having repairs made first? If the work were done discreetly we could pay well. "

The house detective shook his head emphatically. "You try that, you might as well walk over to headquarters right now an' give up. Every repair shop in Louisiana's been told to holler 'cops' the minute a car needing fixin' like yours comes in. They'd do it, too. You people are hot."

The Duchess of Croydon kept firm, tight rein on her racing mind. It was essential, she knew, that her thinking remain calm and reasoned. In the last few minutes the conversation had become as seemingly casual as if the discussion were of some minor domestic matter and not survival itself. She intended to keep it that way. Once more, she was aware, the role of leadership had fallen to her, her husband now a tense but passive spectator of the exchange between the evil tat man and herself. No matter. What was inevitable must be accepted. The important thing was to consider all eventualities. A thought occurred to her.

"The piece from our car which you say the police have. What is it called?"

"A trim ring."

"Is it traceable?"

Ogilvie nodded affirmatively. "They can figure what kind o' car it's from --- make, model, an' maybe the year, or close to it. Same thing with the glass. But with your car being foreign, it'll likely take a few days."

"But after that," she persisted, "the police will know they're looking for a Jaguar?"

"I reckon that 's so. "

Today was Tuesday. From all that this man said, they had until Friday or Saturday at best. With calculated coolness the Duchess reasoned: the situation came down to one essential. Assuming the hotel man was bought off, their only chance -- a slim one -- lay in removing the car quickly, If it could be got north, to one of the big cities where the New Orleans tragedy and search would be unknown, repairs could be made quietly, the incriminating evidence removed. Then, even if suspicion settled on the Croydons later, nothing

could be proved. But how to get the car away?

Undoubtedly what this oafish detective said was true: As well as Louisiana, the other states through which the car would have to pass would be alert and watchful. Every highway patrol would be on the lookout for a damaged head-light with a missing trim ring. There would probably be road-blocks. It would be hard not to fall victim to some sharpeyed policeman.

But it might be done. If the car could be driven at night and concealed by day. There were plenty of places to pull off the highway and be unobserved. It would be hazardous, but no more than waiting here for certain detection. There would be back roads. They could choose an unlikely route to avoid attention.

But there would be other complications ... and now was the time to consider them. Traveling by secondary roads would be difficult unless knowing the terrain. The Croydons did not. Nor was either of them adept at using maps. And when they stopped for petrol, as they would have to, their speech and manner would betray them, making them conspicuous . And yet ... these were risks which had to be taken.

Or had they?

The Duchess faced Ogilvie. "How much do you want?"

The abruptness took him by surprise. "Well ... I figure you people are pretty well fixed."

She said coldly, "I asked how much."

The piggy eyes blinked. Ten thousand dollars."

Though it was twice what she had expected, her expression did not change. "Assuming we paid this grotesque amount, what would we receive in return?"

The fat man seemed puzzled. "Like I said, I keep quiet about what I know."

"And the alternative ?"

He shrugged. "I go down the lobby. I pick up a phone. "

"No," The statement was unequivocal . "We will not pay, you."

As the Duke of Croydon shifted uneasily, the house detective's bulbous countenance reddened, "Now listen, lady Peremptorily she cut him oft. "I will not listen. Instead, you will listen to me." Her eyes were riveted on his face, her handsome, high cheek boned features set in their most imperious mold. "We would achieve nothing by paying you, except possibly a few days' respite . You have made that abundantly clear." "That's a chance you gotta..."

"Silence!" Her voice was a whiplash. Eyes bored into him. Swallowing, sullenly , he complied .

What came next, the Duchess of Croydon knew, could be the most significant thing she had ever done. There must be no mistake, no vacillation or dallying because of her own smallness of mind. When you were playing for the highest stakes, you made the highest bid. She intended to gamble on the fat man's greed. She must do so in such a way as to place the outcome beyond any doubt.

She declared decisively, "We will not pay you ten thousand dollars. But we will pay you twenty-five thousand dollars. " The house detective's eyes bulged.

"In return for that," she continued evenly, "You will drive our car north.‖

Ogilvie continued to stare.

"Twenty-five thousand dollars," she repeated. “Ten thousand now. Fifteen thousand more when you

meet us in Chicago. " Still without speaking, the fat man licked his lips. His beady eyes, as if unbelieving, were focused upon her own. The silence hung.

Then, as she watched intently, he gave the slightest of nods.

The silence remained. At length Ogilvie spoke. "This cigar bother in' you, Duchess?"

As she nodded, he put it out.

(from Hotel, 1965) NOTES

1) Arthur Hailey: Born in Luton, England, in 1920, Arthur Hailey was educated in English schools until fourteen. In 1947 Mr. Hailey emigrated to Canada and became a Canadian citizen. Hailey's best sellers include: Hotel, Airport, Wheels, The Final Diagnosis and The Moneychangers.

2) chief house officer: chief detective (employed by the hotel) in charge of hotel security

3) Bedlington terrier: a blue or liver-colored, woolly-coated terrier resembling a small lamb

4) Ogilvie: The author depicts him as a coarse, vulgar and uneducated person. Hence his language is ungrammatical and slangy, e. g.

'There's things it pays to check' for ' there' re things ...'

'You two was... ' for ‘ 'You two were... '

'They find who done ...' for 'When they find who did... ' etc.

His pronunciation is also non-standard, e. g. 'set' for 'sit'

'musta' for 'must have'

'kin' for 'can'

'shoulda' for 'should have'

'outa' for 'out of'

'gotta' for 'got to', etc.

5) Jaguar: trademark of a British motorcar

6) tables: gambling tables

7) what gives: U. S. colloquialism meaning 'what happens'

The Age of Miracle Chips

New microtechnology will transform society

It is tiny, only about a quarter of an inch square, and quite flat. Under a microscope, it resembles a stylized Navaho rug or the aerial view of a railroad switching yard. Like the grains of sand on a beach, it is made mostly of silicon , next to oxygen the most abundant element on the surface of the earth.

Yet this inert fleck – still unfamiliar to the vast majority of Americans – has astonishing powers that are already transforming society. For the so-called miracle chip has a calculating capability equal to that of a room-size computer of only 25 year s ago. Unlike the hulking Calibans of vacuum tubes and tangled wires from which it evolved , it is cheap, easy to mass produce, fast, infinitely versatile and convenient.

The miracle chip represents a development in the technology of mankind that over the past few years has acquired the force and significance associated with the development of hand tools or the discovery of the steam engine. Just as the Industrial Revolution took over an immense range of tasks from men's muscles and enormously expanded productivity, so the microcomputer is rapidly assuming huge burdens of drudgery from the human brain and thereby expanding the mind‘ s capacities in ways that man has only begun to grasp. With the chip, amazing feats of memory and execution become possible in everything from automobile engines to universities and hospitals, from farms to banks and corporate offices, from outer space to a baby's nursery.

Living: Pushbutton Power

It is 7: 30 a. m. As the alarm clock burrs , the bedroom curtains swing silently apart, the Venetian blinds snap up and the thermostat boosts the heat to a cozy 70°. The percolator in the kitchen starts burbling; the back door opens to let out the dog. The TV set blinks on with the day's first newscast: a selective rundown (ordered up the night before) of all the latest worldwide events affecting the economy – legislative, political, monetary. After the news on TV comes the morning mail, from correspondents who have dictated their messages into the computer network. The latter-day Aladdin, still snugly abed, then presses a button on a bedside box and issues a string of business and personal memos, which appear instantly on the genie screen. After his shower, which has turned itself on at exactly the right temperature at the right minute, Mr. A. is alerted by a buzzer and a blue light on the screen. His boss, the company president, is on his way to the

office. A. dresses and saunters out to the car. The engine, of course, is running...

After her husband has kissed her goodbye, Alice A. concentrates on the screen for a read-out of comparative prices at the local merchants' and markets. Following eyeball-to-eyeball consultations with the butcher and the baker and the grocer on the tube, she hits a button to commandeer supplies for tonight's dinner party. Pressing a couple of keys on the kitchen terminal, she order s from the memory bank her favorite recipes , tells the machine to compute the ingredients for six servings, and directs the ovens to reach the correct temperature for each dish according to the recipe, starting at 7: 15 p. m. Alice then joins a televised discussion of Byzantine art (which she has studied by computer). Later she wanders into the computer room where Al ("Laddy") Jr. has just learned from his headset that his drill in Latin verb conjugation was " groovy ".

Wellsian fantasy? Maybe. But while this matutinal scenario may still be years away, the basic technology is in xistence. Such painless, productive awakenings will in time be a familiar thing. And, barring headaches, tummy aches and heartaches, the American day should proceed as smoothly as it begins. All thanks to the miracle of the microcomputer, the super cheap chip that can electronically shoulder a vast array of boring, time-consuming tasks.

The microelectronic revolution promises to ease, enhance and simplify life in ways undreamed of even by the utopians. At home or office, routine chores will be performed with astonishing efficiency and speed. Leisure time, greatly increased, will be greatly enriched. Public education, so often a dreary and

capricious process in the U. S., may be invested with the inspiriting quality of an Oxford tutorial – from preschool on. Medical care will be delivered with greater precision.

Letters will not so easily go astray . It will be safer to walk the streets because people will not need to carry large amounts of cash; virtually all financial transactions will be conducted by computer. In the microelectronic village, the home will again be the center of society, as it was before the Industrial Revolution.

Mass production of the miracle chip has already made possible home computer systems that sell for less than $800 – and prices will continue to fall. Many domestic de-vices that use electric power will be computerized. Eventually, the household computer will be as much a part of the home as the kitchen sink; it will program washing machines, burglar and fire alarms, sewing machines, a robot vacuum cleaner and a machine that will rinse and stack dirty dishes. When something goes wrong with an appliance a question to the computer will elicit repair instructions – in future generations, repairs will be made automatically. Energy costs will be cut by a computerized device that will direct heat to living areas where it is needed, and turn it down where it is not; the device's ubiquitous eye, sensing where people are at all times, will similarly turn the lights on and off as need-ed.

Paper clutter will disappear as home information management systems take over from memo pads, notebooks, files, bills and the kitchen bulletin board.

While it may be a number of year s before the average housewife can do her shopping by computer TV, the basic instrumentation is already in place in an ever-growing number of supermarkets.

The computer might appear to be a dehumanizing factor, but the opposite is in fact true. It is already leading the consumer society away from the mass-produced homogeneity of the assembly line. The chip will make it possible some day to have shoes and clothes made to order – the production commanded and directed by computer – within minutes. The custom-made object, now restricted to the rich, will be within everyone's reach. In no area of American life is personal service so precious as in medical care. Here, too, the computer has be-come a humanizing factor; the patient tends to give a more candid account of his symptoms, and medical history to a machine programmed to ask the proper preliminary questions than to a

harassed（v. 使筋疲力尽）regimen and possibly intimidating doctor.

At a few hospitals, computers are programmed not only to remind the pharmacy department to prepare prescriptions but also to alert nurses to give the proper dosage at the right time.

Next to health, heart and home, happiness for mobile Americans depends upon the automobile. Computer technology may make the car, as we know it, a Smithsonian antique. In addition to the

microprocessors under the hood that will help the auto operate more efficiently, tiny computers will ease tensions and make life simpler for the drive and passengers too. Ford Motor Co. now offers buyers of its Continental Mark Vs an option called "miles to empty". At the push of a button, the driver can get a read-out on the amount of fuel in the tank, and the number of miles he can expect to go (at current speed) before a refill is necessary. Driver s of General Motors 1978 Cadillac Seville will also be able to punch a button and find out the miles yet to go to a preset destination and the estimated arrival time. The ultimate auto will accommodate a pencil-sized portable phone capable of reaching any number in the world in seconds, automatic braking that will take over from a panicked driver, and a miniradar to avert collisions.

The widest benefits of the electronic revolution (unlike those of most revolutions) will accrue to the young. Seymour Papert, professor of mathematics and education at M. I. T., estimates that there will be 5 million private computers in people's homes and available to students within two years; by 1982, he predicts, 80% upper middle class families will have computers "capable of playing important roles in the intellectual development of their children.‖ Says California Author Robert Albrecht, a pioneer o f electronic education: "In schools, computers will be more common than slide projectors, movie film projectors and tape recorders. They'll be used from the moment school opens, through recess, through lunch period, and on as far into the day as the principal will keep the school open." Across the country, "these magical beasts", as they have been called, are assisting hassled, often incompetent teachers. They are revivifying soporific students, dangling and delivering intellectual challenges beyond the ken of most educators.

For the mighty army of consumers, the ultimate applications of the computer revolution are still around the bend of a silicon circuit. It is estimated that there are at least 25, 000 applications of the computer awaiting discovery. Notes The Economist: "To ask what the applications are is like asking what are the applications of electricity." Certainly the miracle chip will affect American life in ways both benign and productive. The computer revolution is stimulating intellects, liberating limbs and propelling vmankind to a higher order of existence.

(from time, February 20,1978)

NOTES

1) chip: an integrated circuit on a very small thin piece of silicon

2) microtechnology: technology handling exceptionally small things

3) Navaho rug: rugs of intricate geometric designs woven by the Navaho (Indian) tribe in the U.S.

4) Caliban: a huge, uncouth, deformed creature, the slave of Prospero, in Shakespeare’ s The Tempest. The old computers were big, ugly things like Caliban.

5) memory: the capacity of a computer to store information

6) execution: the ability of a computer to carry out programmed instructions

7) pushbutton power: the things that can be done by just pushing a button

8) Aladdin: a boy in The Arabian Nights, son of a poor widow, who found a magic lamp and a magic ring. With the help of the genie of the lamp and ring he became very rich and married the daughter of the Caliph.

9) genie screen: a screen that seems to have magic powers like the genic (or jinni) in Moslem legends

10) eyeball-to-eyeball: face to face; seeing and talking directly to someone

An Interactive Life

It will put the world at your fingertips, changing the ways you shop, play and learn. But when will the future arrive?

Barbara Kantrowitz with Joshua Cooper Ramo

To get an idea of what the future might bring, step into the past. At the Edison National Historical Site in West Orange, N. J., there's a room full of a dozen old phonograph machines. Some were built by Thomas

Edison, who invented recorded sound in 1877, and others were produced by competitors. In the decades represented by the display, the concept and purpose of sound recording changed dramatically. Edison conceived of his phonograph as a business machine that would help people in distant places communicate. He intended to record voices – nothing more. His competitors envisioned the greater potential for entertainment and art. Where he saw internal memos, someone else saw Beethoven.

Someday, there may well be a similar memorial to the unfulfilled prophecies of the creators of the latest breakthrough -- interactivity. Will it really change the world? With so much big money and so many big dreams pinned to an idea that is still largely on the drawing boards, there's no limit to the hype . Simply put, the ultimate promise is this: a huge amount of information available to anyone at the touch of a button, everything from airline schedules to esoteric scientific journals to video versions at oft-oft-off Broadway. Watching a movie won't be a passive experience. At various points, you'll click on alternative story lines and create your individualized version of "Terminator X II." Consumers will send as well as receive all kinds of data. Say you shoot a video that you think is particularly artsy. Beam it out and make a small fortune by charging an untold number of viewers a tee for watching. Peter Jennings would be obsolete . Video-camera owners could record news they see and put it on the universal network. On the receiving end, the era of the no-brainer will have finally arrived. An electronic device called an "intelligent agent" would be programmed to know each viewer's preferences and make selections from the endless stream of data. Viewers could select whatever they wanted just by pushing a button.

Sounds great in theory, but even the truest believers have a hard time when it comes to nailing down specifics about how it will actually work. Will we control the data via the telephone, the TV, the personal computer or a combination of all of the above? When will it be available? Will it be cheap enough for everyone? How will we negotiate such a mass of images, facts and figures and still find time to sleep? Will government regulate messages sent out on this vast data highway? And, frankly, what do we need all this stuff for anyway?

The quick answer is: no one knows. "We're a long way from "Wild Palms'," says Diana Hawkins, who runs an interactive-TV consulting firm in Portola Valley, Calif. But even if the techno-chaos of that futuristic fantasy mini-series is far off, some consumers may indeed notice that their personal relationships with their TVs, telephones and computers will be entering a new and deeper phase within a year or two. Instead of playing rented tapes on their VCRs , they may be able to call up a movie from a library of thousands through a menu displayed on the TV. Game fanatics may be able to do the same from another electronic library filled with realistic video versions of arcade shoot-'em-ups. In-stead of flipping through the pages of J. Crew of Victoria's Secret, at-home shoppers may watch video catalogs with models demonstrating front and rear views of the latest gear. Some cable companies are also testing other interactive models that allow viewers to choose their own news or select camera angles for sporting events.

While these developments are clever, fun and even convenient, they're not quite revolutionary. Denise Caruso, editor of Digital Media, a San Francisco-based industry newsletter, calls this " fake interactive," just one step past passive viewing, pure couch-potato mode. In the most common version of this scheme, consumers will communicate with the TV through the combination of a control box and their remote control, or, perhaps, the telephone. To some degree, viewers already have accepted a certain amount of fake interactivity by channel surfing with their remotes, ordering pay-for-view movies and running up their

credit-card bills on the Home Shopping Network.

Moving beyond phase one, into what Caruso calls "true interactive," will require major changes in the technological and regulatory infrastructure . Today's television cables will likely be replaced by fiber-optic cables, which are capable of transmitting much more data at higher speeds. Either a government agency or the communications industry itself will have to set a performance standard so that different networks can connect with each other. At home, viewers may have to learn to use a TV monitor that functions more like a computer screen fronting for a gigantic hard disc full of all kinds of data, everything from games and movies to specially created programs.

The shows of the future may be the technological great grandchildren of current CD-ROM titles. These are compact discs that store data instead of music and can play on either television or computer screens. To

play CD-ROMs today, you need a special machine. There are at least four models on the market, and titles produced for one format won't play on another. CD-ROMs do provide e glimpse of what the future might hold, however. A number of companies, including Newsweek, are developing multimedia products that combine text, video, sound and still photographs. The result is what may someday be a powerful new medium With no set story line as in a book or magazine. Users pick and choose information that interests them. Philips Interactive, for example, has dozens of titles, among them a tour of the Smithsonian, in which the viewer selects which corridor to enter by clicking on the screen. Other titles: "Jazz Glants," a musical history, and "Escape from CyberCity," an animated adventure game.

Many investors are betting on entertainment as the most lucrative interactive market. But some industry observers predict the development of two parallel home markets, one catering to leisure activities and the other to businesses. Hawkins says the work-at-home market could be computer based and provide an outlet for teleconferencing and portable computing devices, like the Newton touted by Apple chairman John Soulley that can be carried in a pocket and runs on handwritten commands scribbled on a small screen. The entertainment market, primarily games and movies, would be centered on some kind of monitor.

If all this comes to pass -- still a very big if -- the next step could be what Digital Media's Caruso calls "complete viewer control." She says consumers would be a little like information "cowboys," rounding up data from computer-based archives and information services. There will be thousands of "channels" delivered, Caruso thinks, through some combination of cable, telephone, satellite and cellular networks . To prevent getting trampled by a stampede of data, viewer s will rely on programmed electronic selectors that could go out into the info corral and rope in the subjects the viewer wants.

Caruso's "final frontier" is what she calls video telephony a complete two-way link of video, audio and data. A user might stand in front of a monitor receiver and just talk and listen, communicating with whatever or whomever is Out There. Images and voices would be beamed back and forth. (At the very least, it would probably mean the end of anonymous obscene phone calls. ) "There is no exact analogy to any technology we've seen before," says Red Burns, chair of the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University. "Inter active means we are all involved. There is no viewer. Interactive is like a conversation."

"Interactivity" may be the biggest buzzword of the moment, but " convergence " is a close second. It means different things to different people. To the moneymen, it means that everything will come together and they'll clean up. To scientists, it means that the technology has reached a critical point where fantasy could now become reality. Nicholas Negroponte, director of MIT's Media Lab, a leading think tank in this new world, remembers that back in the 1970s, a government agency gave him a grant on the condition that he remove the word multimedia from his proposal. "They were afraid we would get one of [Senator] Proxmire's Golden Fleece awards," he says. Now, politicians, from President Clinton on down, are falling over themselves to proclaim support for the new medium.

These dreams are possible because researchers have made vast leaps in both the quality and quantity of data transmittal. In the past decade, the amount of data that could be put on a silicon chip has doubled every year while the price has been cut in half. In 1960, a high-quality transistor cost several dollars. Today a chip with the capacity of 4 million transistors costs about a tenth of a cent per transistor.

Transmission -- putting that information into the hands of everyone who wants it -- is also much more efficient. Until now, data have been sent as a series of electrical signals along wires or cables or through the air as radio waves. But as the amount of data and the demand for them have increased, these electronic highways have become clogged. The solution: fiber optics.

Both of these developments are possible because of digitalization , a mathematical scheme that translates data into the simplest form. Called binary formatting, the sys-tem expresses numbers and letters in a code using only 1 and 0. The letter "A," for example, could be 00000. "Z" would be 11001. Originally, this code was stored as on-or-off electrical charges along the standard wires and cables; now it can be transmitted as pulses of light on the fiber-op-tic cables. Bringing high-speed computers into the loop means that much more complicated information can be digitized: combinations of sound, still images, video and text. "Multimedia" is the wrong word, says MIT's Negroponte. "Everything has now become digitized," he says. "We have created a unimedia, really. Bits are bits."

At the Media Lab, Negroponte and other scientists are experimenting with the future. Pattie Maes, an expert in artificial intelligence, is trying to build some working "intelligent agents." (At a recent Media Lab conference, an ac-tor dressed as a butler tool. the stage, playing the part of an agent. That's interactive humor. ) In one program, Maes has created four "icons" on the computer screen representing agents with specific marching orders. For example, one dressed in a business suit seeks out business news. Al-though the agents are initially programmed, they actually learn by watching their master's preferences. She thinks that one day, agents may even communicate with agents from other users: "Let's say both you and I like the same movie reviews. Our agents could get together and deter-mine that we also had other interests in common. ‖ (Imagine the conversation: "Have I got a compatible user for you!")

Maes and others concede that there's a dark side to all these bright dreams. Who will protect the privacy of consumers whose shopping, viewing and recreational habits are all fed into one cable-phone company data bank? And where there are agents, can counteragents be far behind: spies who might like to keep tabs on the activities of your electronic butlers? "Advertising companies see my presentations and get very excited," says Maes. Indeed, intelligent agents could be a gold mine of information. Advertisers aren't the only ones who could abuse the network if they were able to tap into it. The government could electronically spy on individuals; bosses could track employees.

If the tolls for using the information highway are too high, interactivity may widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots, the rich and wired vs. the poor and un-plugged. Some plans call for charging hundreds of dollars for the "black box" in the first phase of interactivity. Other plans are cheaper, but would still levy a fee for services used. One suggestion is to make much of the data free to all users, similar to the way public libraries lend out books. IF that happens, some experts think that the new technology may eventually have a democratizing effect. Access to a universal information library could equalize opportunity. It's a shift from elitism to populism," says Bernard Luskin, president of Philips Interactive Media of America.

In the next few years there's likely to be considerable debate over the realistic presentation of violence in the new generation of video games, which will include viewer -directed movies. It's one thing to zap a cartoon mutant in an arcade , quite another when clicking on the screen means shooting bullets and spilling blood from a human. Would you want your child -- or any child -- to play that game?

At this point, so much is still speculation. While the big player s and major thinker s spin predictions, it's quite possible that some entrepreneur in a garage is coming up with a really new idea that will for ever alter the best-laid plans. "What we are looking at now is just the first generation," says Stephen Benton of MIT's Media Lab. In that case, the best advice is: hang on for the ride.

(From Newsweek)

NOTES

1) Newsweek: An American news weekly established in Dayton, Ohio in 1933. In it domestic and international news is summarized, analyzed and categorized according to topics each week. It also has special sections devoted to arts, science, medicine, sports, etc. It is one of the three largest news weeklies of America and has a wide domestic and international circulation.

2) Barbara Kantrowitz and Joshua Cooper Ramo: regular contributors to Newsweek

3) N. J.: abbreviation for New Jersey, Eastern State of the U. S. on the Atlantic

4) Edison: Thomas Alva Edison (1847 -- 1931): U. S. inventor especially of electrical and communication devices, including the incandescent lamp,phonograph, and microphone

5) Beethoven: Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), German composer. He is universally recognized as one of the greatest composers who ever lived.

6) off-off-off Broadway: an avant-garde theatrical movement in New York that stresses untraditional and radical experimentation

7) Terminator Ⅻ: an American science fiction movie series, starring the popular actor, Arnold

Schwarzengger. The number XII implies a future installment of the series.

8) Peter Jennings: anchorman for ABC's (American Broadcasting Company) World News Tonight program. In a recent ( 1993 ) nationwide poll for the best news anchorman conducted by Travel and Leisure weekly, Jennings came in second, losing to Dan Rather of CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) by one percentage point, but came in first as the most intelligent anchorman, beating Rather by 2 percentage points.

9) no-brainer: perhaps meaning no longer necessary to rack one's brains to select a TV program one would like to see

10) Calif.: abbreviation for California, State of the SW. U. S., on the Pacific Coast

11) VCR: Video Cassette Recorder

12) J. Crew: a catalogue published by J. Crew, a company selling casual wear for the rich

13) Victoria's Secret: a catalogue published by Victoria's Secret, a company selling women undegarments

14) couch-potato: a person who spends most of his time on a couch watching TV

15) channel surfing: skimming quickly through various TV channels to find a suitable program

16) remotes: remote control devices

17) Home Shopping Network: a TV network that displays all kinds of goods which people at home can pick and buy

18) Philips Interactive: an interactive machine manufactured by Philips Interactive Media of America

19) Smithsonian: Smithsonian Institution, research and education center, at Washington D. C.: founded 1846. Today it is a vast complex, housing many museums, art galleries, research institutes, etc.

20) Cybercity: a city controlled by computers, etc.

21) Apple: an American computer company

22) MIT: acronym for Massachusets Institute of Technology

23) Proxmire: William Proxmire, U. S. Senator (1957). Proxmire opposed wasteful government spending, especially by the military.

24) Golden Fleece award: a prize awarded to a government project considered to be the most silly, wasteful and corrupt

25) cartoon mutant: human beings and animals reduced to cartoon forms

Mark Twain ---

Mirror of America

Noel Grove

Most Americans remember Mark Twain as the father of Huck Finn's idyllic cruise through eternal boyhood and Tom Sawyer's endless summer of freedom and adventure. In-deed, this nation's best-loved author was every bit as ad-venturous, patriotic, romantic, and humorous as anyone has ever imagined. I found another Twain as well – one who grew cynical, bitter, saddened by the profound personal tragedies life dealt him, a man who became obsessed with the frailties of the human race, who saw clearly ahead a black wall of night.

Tramp printer, river pilot , Confederate guerrilla, prospector, starry-eyed optimist, acid-tongued cynic: The man who became Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens and he ranged across the nation for more than a third of his life, digesting the new American experience before sharing it with the world as writer and lecturer. He adopted his pen name from the cry heard in his steamboat days, signaling two fathoms (12 feet) of water -- a navigable depth. His popularity is attested by the fact that more than a score of his books remain in print, and translations are still read around the world.

The geographic core, in Twain's early years, was the great valley of the Mississippi River, main artery of

transportation in the young nation's heart. Keelboats ，flatboats , and large rafts carried the first major

commerce. Lumber, corn, tobacco, wheat, and furs moved downstream to the delta country; sugar, molasses , cotton, and whiskey traveled north. In the 1850's, before the climax of westward expansion, the vast basin drained three-quarters of the settled United States.

Young Mark Twain entered that world in 1857 as a cub pilot on a steamboat. The cast of characters set before him in his new profession was rich and varied a cosmos . He participated abundantly in this life,

listening to pilothouse talk of feuds , piracies, lynchings ,medicine shows, and savage waterside slums. All would resurface in his books, together with the colorful language that he soaked up with a memory that seemed phonographic

Steamboat decks teemed not only with the main current of pioneering humanity, but its flotsam of hustlers, gamblers, and thugs as well. From them all Mark Twain gained a keen perception of the human race, of the difference between what people claim to be and what they really are. His four and a half year s in the steamboat trade marked the real beginning of his education, and the most lasting part of it. In later life Twain acknowledged that the river had acquainted him with every possible type of human nature. Those acquaintanceships strengthened all his writing, but he never wrote better than when he wrote of the people a-long the great stream.

When railroads began drying up the demand for steam-boat pilots and the Civil War halted commerce, Mark Twain left the river country. He tried soldiering for two weeks with a motley band of Confederate guerrillas who diligently avoided contact with the enemy. Twain quit after deciding, "... I knew more about retreating than the man that invented retreating. "

He went west by stagecoach and succumbed to the epidemic of gold and silver fever in Nevada's Washoe region. For eight months he flirted with the colossal wealth available to the lucky and the persistent, and was rebuffed . Broke and discouraged, he accepted a job as reporter with the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, to literature's enduring gratitude.

From the discouragement of his mining failures, Mark Twain began digging his way to regional fame as a newspaper reporter and humorist. The instant riches of a mining strike would not be his in the reporting trade, but for making money, his pen would prove mightier than his pickax. In the spring of 1864, less than two years after joining the Territorial Enterprise, he boarded the stagecoach for San Francisco, then and now a hotbed of hopeful young writers.

Mark Twain honed and experimented with his new writing muscles, but he had to leave the city for a while because of some scathing columns he wrote. Attacks on the city government, concerning such issues as mistreatment of Chinese, so angered officials that he fled to the goldfields in the Sacramento Valley. His descriptions of the rough-country settlers there ring familiarly in modern world accustomed to trend setting on the West Coast. "It was a splendid population – for all the slow, sleepy, sluggish-brained sloths stayed at home... It was that population that gave to California a name for getting up astounding enterprises and rushing them through with a magnificent dash and daring and a recklessness of cost or consequences, which she bears unto this day – and when she projects a new surprise, the grave world smiles as usual, and says 'Well, that is California all over. '"

In the dreary winter of 1864-65 in Angels Camp, he kept a notebook. Scattered among notations about the weather and the tedious mining-camp meals lies an entry noting a story he had heard that day – an entry that would determine his course forever: "Coleman with his jumping frog – bet stranger $50 – stranger had no frog, and C. got him one – in the meantime stranger filled C. 's frog full of shot and he couldn't jump. The stranger's frog won." Retold with his descriptive genius, the story was printed in newspapers across the United States and became known as "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." Mark Twain's national reputation was now well established as "the wild humorist of the Pacific slope."

Two year s later the opportunity came for him to take a distinctly American look at the Old World. In New York City the steamship Quaker City prepared to sail on a pleasure cruise to Europe and the Holy Land. For the first time, a sizable group of United States citizens planned to journey as tourists -- a milestone , of sorts,

in a country's development. Twain was assigned to accompany them, as correspondent 工for a California

newspaper. If readers expected the usual glowing travelogue , they were sorely surprised.

Unimpressed by the Sultan of Turkey, for example, he reported, ―... one could set a trap anywhere and catch a dozen abler men in a night.‖ Casually he debunked revered artists and art treasures, and took unholy verbal shots at the Holy Land. Back home, more newspapers began printing his articles. America laughed with him. Upon his return to the States the book version of his travels, The Innocents Abroad, became an instant best-seller.

At the age of 36 Twain settled in Hartford, Connecticut. His best books were published while he lived there.

As early as 1870 Twain had experimented with a story about the boyhood adventures of a lad he named Billy Rogers. Two years later, he changed the name to Tom, and began shaping his adventures into a stage play. Not until 1874 did the story begin developing in ear nest. After publication in 1876, Tom Sawyer quickly became a classic tale of American boyhood. Tom's mischievous daring, ingenuity , and the sweet innocence of his affection for Becky Thatcher are almost as sure to be studied in American schools to-day as is the Declaration of Independence.

Mark Twain's own declaration of independence came from another character. Six chapters into Tom Sawyer, he drags in "the juvenile pariah of the village, Huckleberry Finn, son of the town drunkard." Fleeing a respectable life with the puritanical Widow Douglas, Huck protests to his friend, Tom Sawyer: "I've tried it, and it don't work; it don't work, Tom. It ain't for me ... The widder eats by a bell; she goes to bed by a bell; she gits up by a bell – everything's so awful reg'lar a body can't stand it."

Nine years after Tom Sawyer swept the nation, Huck was given a life of his own, in a book often consider ed the best ever written about Americans. His raft flight down the Mississippi with a runaway slave presents a moving panorama for exploration of American society.

On the river, and especially with Huck Finn, Twain found the ultimate expression of escape from the pace he lived by and often deplored, from life's regularities and the energy-sapping clamor for success.

Mark Twain suggested that an ingredient was missing in the American ambition when he said: "What a robust people, what a nation of thinkers we might be, if we would only lay ourselves on the shelf occasionally and renew our edges."

Personal tragedy haunted his entire life, in the deaths of loved ones: his father, dying of pneumonia when Sam was 12; his brother Henry, killed by a steamboat explosion; the death of his son, Langdon, at 19 months. His eldest daughter, Susy, died of spinal meningitis , Mrs. Clemens succumbed to a heart attack in Florence, and youngest daughter., Jean, an epileptic, drowned in an upstairs bathtub .

Bitterness fed on the man who had made the world laugh. The moralizing of his earlier writing had been well padded with humor. Now the gloves came off with biting satire. He pretended to praise the U. S. military for the massacre of 600 Philippine Moros in the bowl of a volcanic, crater . In The Mysterious Stranger, he insisted that man drop his religious illusions and depend upon himself, not Providence, to make a better world.

The last of his own illusions seemed to have crumbled near the end. Dictating his autobiography late in life, he commented with a crushing sense of despair on men's final release from earthly struggles: "... they vanish from a world where they were of no consequence; where they achieved nothing; where they were a mistake and a failure and a foolishness; where they have left no sign that they had existed – a world which will lament them a day and for-get them forever.‖

(from National Geographic, Sept., 1975)

NOTES 1) Mark Twain:This was the pseudonym of the American humorist and writer, Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910). The phrase, meaning "two fathoms deep”, was employed in making soundings on the Mississippi river boats. Among his well-known works are Innocent. Abroad (1869), Tom Sawyer (1876), and Huckleberry Finn (1884-5.” )

2) tramp printer: a person who goes around doing odd jobs of printing

3) Confederate guerrilla: a guerrilla fighter who supported the southern Confederacy (See note below on "Civil War" )

4) cub pilot: a young inexperienced pilot; a person just learning to become a pilot

5) the Civil War: This refers to the American Civil War (1861-65), also called the War of Secession. This war was fought between the northern states (Federal States or the Union) and the southern states (the

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Lesson 1 词汇(Vocabulary) Bazaar (n.) : (in Oriental countries)a market or street of shops and stalls(东方国家的)市场，集市 ----------------------------------------------------------------- cavern (n．) : a cave，esp．a large cave洞穴，山洞(尤指大洞穴，大山洞) ----------------------------------------------------------------- shadowy (adj.) : dim；indistinct模糊的；朦胧的 ----------------------------------------------------------------- FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: cornflowerblue" color=white>harmonious (adj．) : having musical tones combined to give a pleasing effect；consonant(音调)和谐的，悦耳的／harmoniously adv． ----------------------------------------------------------------- throng (n.) :a great number of people gathered together；crowd人群；群集 ----------------------------------------------------------------- conceivable (adj.) : that can be conceived，imagined 可想象的，想得到的 ----------------------------------------------------------------- din (n.) : a loud，continuous noise喧闹声，嘈杂声 ----------------------------------------------------------------- would-be ( adj．) : intended to be预期成为……的；将要成为……的 ----------------------------------------------------------------- muted (adj.) : (of a sound)made softer than is usual(声音)减弱的 ----------------------------------------------------------------- vaulted ( adj．) : having the form of a vault；arched 穹窿形的；拱形的 ----------------------------------------------------------------- sepulchral(n．) : a cave，esp．a large cave洞穴，山洞(尤指大洞穴，大山洞) ----------------------------------------------------------------- shadowy (adj.) : suggestive of the grave or burial；dismal；gloomy坟墓般的；阴森森的 ----------------------------------------------------------------- guild ( n．) : any association for mutual aid and the promotion of common interests互助会；协会 ----------------------------------------------------------------- trestle (n.) :a frame consising of a horizontal beam fastened to two pairs of spreading legs，used to support planks to form a table，platform，etc．支架；脚手台架；搁凳----------------------------------------------------------------- impinge (v．) : strike，hit，or dash；have an effect 撞击，冲击，冲撞；对……具有影响 ----------------------------------------------------------------- fairyland (n.) : the imaginary land where the fairies live；a lovely enchanting place仙境；奇境 ----------------------------------------------------------------- burnish ( v．) : make or become shiny by rubbing；polish擦亮；磨光；抛光 ----------------------------------------------------------------- brazier ( n.) : a metal pan，bowl，etc．，to hold burning coals or charcoal，as for warming a room or grilling food火盆；火钵 ----------------------------------------------------------------- dim ( v．) :make or grow unclear(使)变暗淡；(使)变模糊 ----------------------------------------------------------------- rhythmic /rhythmical ( adj．) :having rhythm有韵律的；有节奏的／rhythmically adv ----------------------------------------------------------------- bellows ( n.) :(sing．&p1.)a device that produces a stream of air through a narrow tube when its sides are pressed together(used for blowing fires，etc．)(单复同)风箱 ----------------------------------------------------------------- intricate ( adj．) :complex；hard to follow or understand because full of puzzling parts，details，or relationships；full of elaborate detail错综复杂的；精心制作的 ----------------------------------------------------------------- exotic ( adj．) :strange or different in a way that is striking or fascinating奇异的；异常迷人的 ----------------------------------------------------------------- sumptuous ( adj．) :involving great expense；costly lavish豪华的；奢侈的；昂贵的 ----------------------------------------------------------------- maze ( n.) : ----------------------------------------------------------------- ( n.) :a confusing，intricate network of winding pathways 迷津；迷宫；曲径 ----------------------------------------------------------------- honeycomb ( v．) :fill with holes like a honeycomb使成蜂窝状 ----------------------------------------------------------------- mosque ( n.) :a Moslem temple or place of worship清真寺；伊斯兰教堂

(完整版)高级英语第二册课文翻译

高级英语第二册课文翻译 Unit1 Pub Talk and the King's English 酒吧闲聊与标准英语 亨利?费尔利 人类的一切活动中，只有闲谈最宜于增进友谊，而且是人类特有的一种活动。动物之间的信息交流，不论其方式何等复杂，也是称不上交谈的。 闲谈的引人人胜之处就在于它没有一个事先定好的话题。它时而迂回流淌，时而奔腾起伏，时而火花四射，时而热情洋溢，话题最终会扯到什么地方去谁也拿不准。要是有人觉得“有些话要说”，那定会大煞风景，使闲聊无趣。闲聊不是为了进行争论。闲聊中常常会有争论，不过其目的并不是为了说服对方。闲聊之中是不存在什么输赢胜负的。事实上，真正善于闲聊的人往往是随时准备让步的。也许他们偶然间会觉得该把自己最得意的奇闻轶事选出一件插进来讲一讲，但一转眼大家已谈到别处去了，插话的机会随之而失，他们也就听之任之。 或许是由于我从小混迹于英国小酒馆的缘故吧，我觉得酒瞎里的闲聊别有韵味。酒馆里的朋友对别人的生活毫无了解，他们只是临时凑到一起来的，彼此并无深交。他们之中也许有人面临婚因破裂，或恋爱失败，或碰到别的什么不顺心的事儿，但别人根本不管这些。他们就像大仲马笔下的三个火枪手一样，虽然日夕相处，却从不过问彼此的私事，也不去揣摸别人内心的秘密。 有一天晚上的情形正是这样。人们正漫无边际地东扯西拉，从最普通的凡人俗事谈到有关木星的科学趣闻。谈了半天也没有一个中心话题，事实上也不需要有一个中心话题。可突然间大伙儿的话题都集中到了一处，中心话题奇迹般地出现了。我记不起她那句话是在什么情况下说出来的——她显然不是预先想好把那句话带到酒馆里来说的，那也不是什么非说不可的要紧话——我只知道她那句话是随着大伙儿的话题十分自然地脱口而出的。 “几天前，我听到一个人说‘标准英语’这个词语是带贬义的批评用语，指的是人们应该尽量避免使用的英语。” 此语一出，谈话立即热烈起来。有人赞成，也有人怒斥，还有人则不以为然。最后，当然少不了要像处理所有这种场合下的意见分歧一样，由大家说定次日一早去查证一下。于是，问题便解决了。不过，酒馆闲聊并不需要解决什么问题，大伙儿仍旧可以糊里糊涂地继续闲扯下去。 告诉她“标准英语”应作那种解释的原来是个澳大利亚人。得悉此情，有些人便说起刻薄话来了，说什么囚犯的子孙这样说倒也不足为怪。这样，在五分钟内，大家便像到澳大利亚游览了一趟。在那样的社会里，“标准英语”自然是不受欢迎的。每当上流社会想给“规范英语”制订一些条条框框时，总会遭到下层人民的抵制 看看撒克逊农民与征服他们的诺曼底统治者之间的语言隔阂吧。于是话题又从19世纪的澳大利亚囚犯转到12世纪的英国农民。谁对谁错，并没有关系。闲聊依旧热火朝天。 有人举出了一个人所共知，但仍值得提出来发人深思的例子。我们谈到饭桌上的肉食时用法语词，而谈到提供这些肉食的牲畜时则用盎格鲁一撒克逊词。猪圈里的活猪叫pig，饭桌上吃的猪肉便成了pork(来自法语pore)；地里放牧着的牛叫cattle，席上吃的牛肉则叫beef(来自法语boeuf)；Chicken用作肉食时变成poultry(来自法语poulet)；calf加工成肉则变成veal(来自法语vcau)。即便我们的菜单没有为了装洋耍派头而写成法语，我们所用的英语仍然是诺曼底式的英语。这一切向我们昭示了诺曼底人征服之后英国文化上所存在的深刻的阶级裂痕。 撒克逊农民种地养畜，自己出产的肉自己却吃不起，全都送上了诺曼底人的餐桌。农民们只能吃到在地里乱窜的兔子。兔子肉因为便宜，诺曼底贵族自然不屑去吃它。因此，活兔子和吃的兔子肉共用rabbit

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座曾惨遭劫难的城市的高楼大厦则一座座地从我们身边飞掠而过。 正当我开始觉得路程太长时，汽车嘎地一声停了下来，司机下车去向警察问路。就像东京的情形一样，广岛的出租车司机对他们所在的城市往往不太熟悉，但因为怕在外国人面前丢脸，却又从不肯承认这一点。无论乘客指定的目的地在哪里，他们都毫不犹豫地应承下来，根本不考虑自己要花多长时间才能找到目的地。 这段小插曲后来终于结束了，我也就不知不觉地突然来到了宏伟的市政厅大楼前。当我出示了市长应我的采访要求而发送的请柬后，市政厅接待人员向我深深地鞠了一躬，然后声调悠扬地长叹了一口气。 “不是这儿，先生，”他用英语说道。“市长邀请您今天晚上同其他外宾一起在水上餐厅赴宴。您看，就是这儿。”他边说边为我在请柬背面勾划出了一张简略的示意图。 幸亏有了他画的图，我才找到一辆出租车把我直接送到了运河堤岸，那儿停泊着一艘顶篷颇像一般日本房屋屋顶的大游艇。由于地价过于昂贵，日本人便把传统日本式房屋建到了船上。漂浮在水面上的旧式日本小屋夹在一座座灰黄色摩天大楼之间，这一引人注目的景观正象征着和服与超短裙之间持续不断的斗争。 在水上餐厅的门口，一位身着和服、面色如玉、风姿绰约的迎宾女郎告诉我要脱鞋进屋。于是我便脱下鞋子，走进这座水上小屋里的一个低矮的房间，蹑手蹑脚地踏在柔软的榻榻米地席上，因想到要这样穿着袜子去见广岛市长而感到十分困窘不安。

高级英语 第一册 课文翻译_unit1

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高级英语lesson1课文翻译

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Unit 1 Pub Talk and the King’s English 人类的一切活动中，只有闲谈最宜于增进友谊，而且是人类特有的一种活动。动物之间的信息交流，不论其方式何等复杂，也是称不上交谈的。 闲谈的引人人胜之处就在于它没有一个事先定好的话题。它时而迂回流淌，时而奔腾起伏，时而火花四射，时而热情洋溢，话题最终会扯到什么地方去谁也拿不准。要是有人觉得“有些话要说”，那定会大煞风景，使闲聊无趣。闲聊不是为了进行争论。闲聊中常常会有争论，不过其目的并不是为了说服对方。闲聊之中是不存在什么输赢胜负的。事实上，真正善于闲聊的人往往是随时准备让步的。也许他们偶然间会觉得该把自己最得意的奇闻轶事选出一件插进来讲一讲，但一转眼大家已谈到别处去了，插话的机会随之而失，他们也就听之任之。 或许是由于我从小混迹于英国小酒馆的缘故吧，我觉得酒瞎里的闲聊别有韵味。酒馆里的朋友对别人的生活毫无了解，他们只是临时凑到一起来的，彼此并无深交。他们之中也许有人面临婚因破裂，或恋爱失败，或碰到别的什么不顺心的事儿，但别人根本不管这些。他们就像大仲马笔下的三个火枪手一样，虽然日夕相处，却从不过问彼此的私事，也不去揣摸别人内心的秘密。 有一天晚上的情形正是这样。人们正漫无边际地东扯西拉，从最普通的凡人俗事谈到有关木星的科学趣闻。谈了半天也没有一个中心话题，事实上也不需要有一个中心话题。可突然间大伙儿的话题都集中到了一处，中心话题奇迹般地出现了。我记不起她那句话是在什么情况下说出来的——她显然不是预先想好把那句话带到酒馆里来说的，那也不是什么非说不可的要紧话——我只知道她那句话是随着大伙儿的话题十分自然地脱口而出的。 “几天前，我听到一个人说‘标准英语’这个词语是带贬义的批评用语，指的是人们应该尽量避免使用的英语。” 此语一出，谈话立即热烈起来。有人赞成，也有人怒斥，还有人则不以为然。最后，当然少不了要像处理所有这种场合下的意见分歧一样，由大家说定次日一早去查证一下。于是，问题便解决了。不过，酒馆闲聊并不需要解决什么问题，大伙儿仍旧可以糊里糊涂地继续闲扯下去。 告诉她“标准英语”应作那种解释的原来是个澳大利亚人。得悉此情，有些人便说起刻薄话来了，说什么囚犯的子孙这样说倒也不足为怪。这样，在五分钟内，大家便像到澳大利亚游览了一趟。在那样的社会里，“标准英语”自然是不受欢迎的。每当上流社会想给“规范英语”制订一些条条框框时，总会遭到下层人民的抵制。 看看撒克逊农民与征服他们的诺曼底统治者之间的语言隔阂吧。于是话题又从19世纪的澳大利亚囚犯转到12世纪的英国农民。谁对谁错，并没有关系。闲聊依旧热火朝天。 有人举出了一个人所共知，但仍值得提出来发人深思的例子。我们谈到饭桌上的肉食时用法语词，而谈到提供这些肉食的牲畜时则用盎格鲁一撒克逊词。猪圈里的活猪叫pig，饭桌上吃的猪肉便成了pork(来自法语pore)；地里放牧着的牛叫cattle，席上吃的牛肉则叫beef(来自法语boeuf)；Chicken用作肉食时变成poultry(来自法语poulet)；calf加工成肉则变成veal(来自法语vcau)。即便我们的菜单没有为了装洋耍派头而写成法语，我们所用的英语仍然是诺曼底式的英语。这一切向我们昭示了诺曼底人征服之后英国文化上所存在的深刻的阶级裂痕。 撒克逊农民种地养畜，自己出产的肉自己却吃不起，全都送上了诺曼底人的餐桌。农民们只能吃到在地里乱窜的兔子。兔子肉因为便宜，诺曼底贵族自然不屑去吃它。因此，活兔子和吃的兔子肉共用rabbit 这个词表示，而没有换成由法语lapin转化而来的某个词。 当我们今天听着有关双语教育问题的争论时，我们应该设身处地替当时的撒克逊农民想一想，新的统治阶级把法语用来对抗撒克逊农民自己的语言，从而在农民周围筑起一道文化障碍。当英国人在像觉醒者赫里沃德这样的撒克逊领袖领导下起来造反时，他们一定深深地感受到了文化上的屈辱。“标准英语”——如果那时候有这个名词的话——已经变成法语。而九百年后我们在美国这儿仍然继承了这种影响。 那晚闲聊过后，第二天一早便有人去查阅了资料。这个名词在16世纪已有人使用过。纳什作于1593年的《截获信函奇闻》中就有过“标准英语”(Queen’s English)的提法。1602年德克写到某人时有句话说：

高级英语1 Unit4 Oxford翻译

Unit4 牛津 There are certain things in the world that are so praiseworthy that it seems a needless, indeed an almost laughable thing to praise them; such things are love and friendship, food and sleep, spring and summer; such things, too, are the wisest books, the greatest pictures, the noblest cities. But for all that I mean to try and make a little hymn in prose in honour of Oxford, a city I have seen but seldom, and which yet appears to me one of the most beautiful things in the world. 此世间确有诸多凡物，它们本身便是值得人们去品味和赞誉的，譬如说爱情和友谊、美食和睡梦、春色和夏日，还有如那些注满了智慧的书卷、注满了心血的画作和注满了圣意的城邦。也许对于这些凡物而言，再多的赞誉已无非是陈词滥调，荒唐可笑的，但我之所以还是想要对上述这些事物品味、赞誉一番，都是为了向牛津城表示我的敬意。牛津城对我来说，就是这世间极其罕见，又最为美丽的地方之一。 I do not wish to single out particular buildings, but to praise the whole effect of the place, such as it seemed to me on a day of bright sun and cool air, when I wandered hour after hour among the streets, bewildered and almost intoxicated with beauty, feeling as a poor man might who has pinched all his life, and made the most of single coins, and who is brought into the presence of a heap of piled-up gold, and told that it is all his own. 我并不想单独从牛津城里遴选出一些建筑来赞誉；我想要赞誉的是这块土地上所映射出的一种整体效果。这种效果在我看来，就好比是在一个阳光明媚、天气清爽的日子里，一连花上几个小时，徜徉在牛津城的街道上，痴迷、甚至是沉醉于这番美景之中。这感觉就犹如是把一位穷得一辈子衣衫褴褛、靠一角一分过日子的人带到一堆金矿旁，然后告诉他，这些财富都已归他所有。 I have seen it said in foolish books that it is a misfortune to Oxford that so many of the buildings have been built out of so perishable a vein of stone. It is indeed a misfortune in one respect, that it tempts men of dull and precise minds to restore and replace buildings of incomparable grace, because their outline is so exquisitely blurred by time and decay. I remember myself, as a child, visiting Oxford, and thinking that some of the buildings were almost shamefully ruinous of aspect; now that I am wiser I know that we have in these battered and fretted palace-fronts a kind of beauty that fills the mind with almost despairing sense of loveliness, till the heart aches with gratitude, and thrills with the desire to proclaim the glory of the sight aloud. 我曾在一些荒谬、无理的书里读到说，牛津城里如此之多的建筑都用易被腐蚀、布满裂纹的砖石砌成，这简直就是一场灾难。从某种角度来说，这倒确实是一场灾难，因为随着时间的流逝，用这种砖石砌成的建筑会渐渐破败，建筑的轮廓会很明显地变得七零八落，这便会惹得那些脑袋不灵活的笨家伙们想着整修或重建这些与牛津城魅力格格不入的“破玩意儿”。记得在我儿时游访牛津城时，我也曾这么想——这些建筑如此破旧不堪，几乎都是见不得人了；可现在，随着我年数和阅历的增益，我才知道在那些破旧不堪、磨坏受损的殿堂式房子里，蕴藏着一种别样的魅力。这种魅力乍看上去真是令人几近绝望，直到人们对这壮观之景开始心生感激时，才会猛地萌发出一种要高声赞誉这股魅力的念头。 These black-fronted blistered facades, so threatening, so sombre, yet screening so bright and clear a current of life; with the tender green of budding spring trees, chestnuts full of silvery spires, glossy-leaved creepers clinging, with tiny hands, to cornice and parapet, give surely the sharpest and most delicate sense that it is possible to conceive of the contrast on which the essence of so much beauty depends. To pass through one of these dark and smoke-stained courts,

高级英语第一册马克吐温课文翻译以及词汇

在大多数美国人的心目中，马克?吐温是位伟大作家，他描写了哈克?费恩永恒的童年时代中充满诗情画意的旅程和汤姆?索亚在漫长的夏日里自由自在历险探奇的故事。的确，这位美国最受人喜爱的作家的探索精神、爱国热情、浪漫气质及幽默笔调都达到了登峰造极的程度。但我发现还有另一个不同的马克?吐温——一个由于深受人生悲剧的打击而变得愤世嫉俗、尖酸刻薄的马克?吐温，一个为人类品质上的弱点而忧心忡忡、明显地看到前途是一片黑暗的人。 印刷工、领航员、邦联游击队员、淘金者、耽于幻想的乐天派、语言尖刻的讽刺家：马克?吐温原名塞缪尔?朗赫恩?克莱门斯，他一生之中有超过三分之一的时间浪迹美国各地，体验着美国的新生活，尔后便以作家和演说家的身分将他所感受到的这一切介绍给全世界。他的笔名取自他在蒸汽船上做工时听到的报告水深为两口寻(12英尺)——意即可以通航的信号语。他的作品中有二十几部至今仍在印行，其外文译本仍在世界各地拥有读者，由此可见他的享誉程度。 在马克?吐温青年时代，美国的地理中心是密西西比河流域，而密西西比河是这个年轻国家中部的交通大动脉。龙骨船、平底船和大木筏载运着最重要的商品。木材、玉米、烟草、小麦和皮货通过这些运载工具顺流而下，运送到河口三角洲地区，而砂糖、糖浆、棉花和威士忌酒等货物则被运送到北方。在19世纪50年代，西部领土开发高潮到来之前，辽阔的密西西比河流域占美国已开发领土的四分之三。 1857年，少年马克?吐温作为蒸汽船上的一名小领航员踏人了这片天地。在这个新的工作岗位上，他接触到的是各式各样的人物，看到的是一个多姿多彩的大干世界。他完全地投身到这种生活之中，经常在操舵室里听着人们谈论民间争斗、海盗抢劫、私刑案件、游医卖药以及河边的一些化外民居的故事。所有这一切，连同他那像留声机般准确可靠的记忆所吸收的丰富多彩的语言，后来都有机会在他的作品中得以再现。 蒸汽船的甲板上不仅挤满了富有开拓精神的人们，而且也载着一些娼妓、赌棍和歹徒等社会渣滓。从所有这些形形色色的人身上，马克?吐温敏锐地认识了人类，认识了人们的言与行之间的差距。他在蒸汽船上工作的四年半时间是他真正接受教育的开端，而且也是最具有深远意义的教育。到了晚年，马克?吐温还声言是密西西比河使他了解了各种各样的人的本性。这种生活体验对他的全部创作都起了促进作用，然而他描写得最为成功的还是那些密西西比河上的人物。 随着铁路运输的发展，社会上对汽船领航员的需求日渐减少，而内战的爆发又阻碍了商业贸易的发展。这时，马克?吐温便离开了密西西比河流域。他在南方邦联游击队的一支杂牌队伍里当了两个星期的兵。那支队伍想方设法避免与敌军交战。在确信“我比发明撤退的人更精通撤退”之后，马克?吐温离开了那支队伍。 他乘驿站马车来到西部，在内华达州的华苏地区受到当时正流行的淘金热的诱惑。同那只有既幸运而又锲而不舍的追求者才能取得的巨大财富三心二意地打了八个月交道之后，他遭到了失败。在破产和灰心之余，他接受了为弗吉尼亚市