自考英语综合二下册课文 lesson 12

　　[00:00.00]Lesson Twelve
[00:03.68]Text  Selling the Post
[00:08.83](II) Russell Baker¹
[00:13.58]We lived in Belleville New Jersey²,
[00:17.84]a commuter³ town at the northern fringe of Newark.
[00:22.70]It was 1932,the bleakest⁴ year of the Depression.
[00:29.65]My father had died two years before,
[00:34.12]leaving us with a few pieces of Sears,Roebuck furniture and not much more,
[00:41.87]and my mother had taken my sister, Doris,
[00:46.52]and me to live with one of her younger brothers.
[00:51.20]This was my Uncle Allen.
[00:55.04]Uncle Allen had made something of himself by 1932.
[01:01.10]As salesman for a soft-drink bottler,
[01:06.38]he had an income of $30 a week;
[01:10.92]wore pearl-gray spats,detachable collars,
[01:16.25]and a three-piece suit was happily married;
[01:21.11]and took in threadbare relatives.
[01:26.18]With my toad⁵ of magazines I headed toward Belleville Avenue.
[01:31.82]That's where the people were.
[01:35.97]There were two filling stations at the intersection⁶ with Union Avenue,
[01:42.82]as well as an A&P,a street fruit stall,a bakery,
[01:49.37]a barber shop,a drugstore,and a diner shaped like a railroad car.
[01:56.53]For several hours I made myself highly visible,
[02:02.10]shifting position now and then from corner to corner,
[02:07.27]from shop window to shop window,
[02:11.21]to make sure everyone could see the heavy black lettering on the bag
[02:17.38]that said the Saturday Evening Post.
[02:21.92]When the angle of the light indicated it was suppertime,
[02:27.07]I walked back to the house.
[02:30.60]"How many did you sell. Buddy⁷?" my mother asked.
[02:35.56]"None.""Where did you go?"
[02:40.10]"The corner of Belleville and Union Avenues. "
[02:45.15]"What did you do?"
[02:48.41]"Stood on the corner waiting for somebody to buy a Saturday Evening Post."
[02:56.07]"You just stood there?"
[02:59.91]"Didn't sell a single one. "
[03:04.66]"For God's sake,Russell!"Uncle Allen intervened.
[03:10.51]"I've been thinking about it for some time," he said,
[03:16.39]"and I've about decided⁸ to take the Post regularly.
[03:21.74]Put me down as a regular customer.
[03:25.79]"I handed him a magazine and he paid me a nickel.
[03:30.94]It was the first nickel I earned.
[03:35.01]Afterwards my mother instructed me in salesmanship.
[03:40.66]I would have to ring doorbells,address adults with charming self-confidence,
[03:47.92]and break down resistance with a sales talk pointing out that no one,
[03:54.40]no matter how poor,
[03:57.95]could afford to be without the Saturday Evening Post in the home.
[04:04.30]I told my mother I'd changed my mind
[04:08.66]about wanting to succeed in the magazine business.
[04:13.94]"If you think I'm going to raise a good-for-nothing," she replied,
[04:20.10]"you've got another think coming."
[04:24.18]She told me to hit the streets with the canvas bag and start ringing doorbells
[04:30.94]the instant school was out the next day.
[04:35.62]When I objected that I didn't feel any aptitude⁹ for salesman-ship,
[04:42.28]she asked how I'd like to lend her my leather belt
[04:47.84]so she could whack¹⁰ some sense into me.
[04:52.28]I bowed to superior will and entered journalism¹¹ with a heavy heart.
[04:58.84]My mother and I had fought this battle almost as long as I could remember.
[05:07.02]It probably started even before memory began,
[05:12.06]when I was a country child in northern Virginia
[05:17.41]and my mother,dissatisfied with my father's plain workman's life,
[05:24.08]determined that I would not grow up like him and his people,
[05:30.14]with calluses on their hands, overalls¹² on their backs,
[05:36.01]and fourth-grade educations in their heads.
[05:40.77]She had fancier ideas of life's possibilities.
[05:46.41]Introducing me to the Saturday Evening Post,
[05:51.16]she was trying to wean me as early as possible from my father's world
[05:57.83]where men left with their lunch pails at sunup,
[06:03.18]worked with their hands all their lives,
[06:07.44]and died with a few sticks of mail-order furniture as their legacy¹³.

　　[06:14.49]In my mother's vision of the better life
[06:19.48]there were desks and white collars,well-pressed suits,
[06:25.83]evenings of reading and lively talk,and perhaps
[06:31.18] — if a man were very,very lucky and hit the jackpot,
[06:37.35]really made something important of himself
[06:42.02]—perhaps there might be a fantastic salary of $5,000 a year
[06:49.39] to support a big house  and a Buick with a rumble¹⁴ seat
[06:55.87]and vacation in Atlantic City.
[07:00.02]And so I set forth¹⁵ with my sack of magazines.
[07:06.08]I was afraid of the dogs that snarled¹⁶ behind the doors of potential buyers,
[07:12.85]I was timid about ringing the doorbells of strangers,
[07:18.20]relieved when no one came to the door, and scared when someone did.
[07:24.87]Despite my mother's instructions,
[07:29.31]I could not deliver an engaging sales pitch.
[07:34.58]When a door opened I simply asked,"Want to buy a Saturday Evening Post?"
[07:42.03]In Belleville few persons did.
[07:46.39]It was a town of 30,000 people,
[07:50.65]and most weeks I rang a fair majority of its doorbells.
[07:56.21]But I rarely sold my thirty copies.
[08:01.25]Some weeks I canvassed¹⁷ the entire town for six days
[08:08.10]and still had four or five unsold magazines on Monday evening;
[08:14.16]then I dreaded¹⁸ the coming of Tuesday morning
[08:19.72]when a batch¹⁹ of thirty fresh Saturday Evening Post was due at the front door.
[08:26.70]One rainy night when car windows were sealed against me.
[08:32.86]I came back soaked and with not a single sale to report.
[08:39.03]My mother beckoned²⁰ to Doris.
[08:43.28]"Go back with Buddy and show him how to sell these magazines,"she said.
[08:49.66]Brimming with zest,Doris,then seven years old,returned with me to the corner.
[08:57.03]She took a magazine from the bag,
[09:01.10]and when the light turned red she strode to the nearest car
[09:06.74]and banged her small fist against the closed window.
[09:12.02]The driver, probably startled to see such a little girl assaulting his car,
[09:19.39]lowered the window to stare,
[09:23.15]and Doris thrust a Saturday Evening Post at him.
[09:28.50]"You need this magazine," she piped,
[09:33.05]"and it only costs a nickel."Her salesmanship was irresistible²¹.
[09:40.41]Before the light changed half a dozen times she disposed of the entire batch.
[09:47.68]I didn't feel humiliated²².
[09:52.54] I was so happy I decided to give her a treat.
[09:57.50]Leading her to the vegetable store on Belleville Avenue,
[10:02.46]I bought three apples,which cost a nickel,and gave her one.
[10:09.31]"You shouldn't waste money," she said.
[10:13.67]"Eat your apple." I bit into mine."
[10:18.92]You shouldn't eat before supper," she said.
[10:24.38]"It'll spoil your appetite."
[10:28.24]Back at the house that evening,
[10:32.79]she dutifully reported me for wasting a nickel.
[10:38.35]Instead of a scolding,I was rewarded with a pat on the back
[10:43.92]for having the good sense to buy fruit instead of candy.
[10:49.85]My mother reached into her bottomless supply of maxims²³ and told Doris,
[10:56.90]"An apple a day keeps the doctor away.
[11:03.67]"By the time I was ten I had learned all my mother's maxims by heart.
[11:10.04]Asking to stay up past normal bedtime,
[11:14.90]I knew that a refusal would be explained with
[11:19.86]"Early to bed and early to rise,makes a man healthy,wealthy,and wise."
[11:27.23]If I whimpered about having to get up early in the morning,
[11:32.58]I could depend on her to say, "The early bird gets the worm."
[11:39.14]The one I most despised was,
[11:44.00]"If at first you don't succeed,try,try,try again."
[11:51.08]This was the battle cry
[11:55.13]with which she constantly sent me back into the hopeless struggle
[12:01.37]whenever I moaned that I had rung every doorbell in town
[12:07.54]and knew there wasn't a single potential buyer left in Belleville that week.
[12:15.19]After listening to my explanation,
[12:19.74]she handed me the canvas bag and said,
[12:24.18]"If at first you don't succeed... "
[12:28.54]Three years in that job,
[12:33.58]which I would gladly have quit alter the first day except for her insistence²⁴,

　　[12:41.02]produced at least one valuable result.
[12:46.07]My mother finally concluded
[12:50.32]that I would never make something of myself by pursuing a life in business
[12:57.27]and started considering careers that demanded less competitive zeal²⁵.
[13:03.65]One evening when I was eleven I brought home a short "composition"
[13:09.99]on my summer vacation which the teacher had graded with an A.
[13:16.47]Reading it with her own schoolteacher's eye,my mother agreed
[13:22.53]that it was top-drawer seventh grade prose and complimented me.
[13:29.38]Nothing more was said about it immediately,
[13:33.74]but a new idea had taken life in her mind.
[13:39.38]Halfway through supper she suddenly interrupted the conversation.
[13:45.02]"Buddy," she said,
[13:48.39]"maybe you could be a writer."I clasped the idea to my heart.
[13:55.24]I had never met a writer,and shown no previous urge to write,
[14:02.32]and hadn't a notion how to become a writer,
[14:07.18]but I loved stories and thought that making up stories must surely be almost as much fun as reading them.
[14:15.33]Best of all,though,and what really gladdened my heart,
[14:20.97]was the ease of the writer's life.
[14:24.91]Writers did not have to trudge²⁶ through the town peddling²⁷ from canvas bags,
[14:31.78]defending themselves against angry dogs,being rejected by surly strangers.
[14:39.83]Writers did not have to ring doorbells.
[14:44.27]So far as I could make out,
[14:48.03]what writers did couldn't even be classified as work.
[14:53.88]I was enchanted²⁸.
[14:57.44]Writers didn't have to have any gumption²⁹ at all.
[15:02.19]I did not dare tell anybody for fear of being laughed at in the schoolyard,
[15:09.27]but secretly I decided that what I'd like to be when I grew up was a writer.

1 baker   

n.面包师

参考例句：

• The baker bakes his bread in the bakery.面包师在面包房内烤面包。
• The baker frosted the cake with a mixture of sugar and whites of eggs.面包师在蛋糕上撒了一层白糖和蛋清的混合料。

2 jersey   

n.运动衫

参考例句：

• He wears a cotton jersey when he plays football.他穿运动衫踢足球。
• They were dressed alike in blue jersey and knickers.他们穿着一致，都是蓝色的运动衫和灯笼短裤。

3 commuter   

n.(尤指市郊之间)乘公交车辆上下班者

参考例句：

• Police cordoned off the road and diverted commuter traffic. 警察封锁了道路并分流交通。
• She accidentally stepped on his foot on a crowded commuter train. 她在拥挤的通勤列车上不小心踩到了他的脚。

4 bleakest   

阴冷的( bleak的最高级 )； （状况）无望的； 没有希望的； 光秃的

参考例句：

• This is the bleakest novel I've ever read. 这是我读过的小说中最乏味的一本。
• Relax! When things appear at their bleakest. 放松！当情况显得凄凉的时候。

5 toad   

n.蟾蜍，癞蛤蟆

参考例句：

• Both the toad and frog are amphibian.蟾蜍和青蛙都是两栖动物。
• Many kinds of toad hibernate in winter.许多种蟾蜍在冬天都会冬眠。

6 intersection   

n.交集，十字路口，交叉点；[计算机] 交集

参考例句：

• There is a stop sign at an intersection.在交叉路口处有停车标志。
• Bridges are used to avoid the intersection of a railway and a highway.桥用来避免铁路和公路直接交叉。

7 buddy   

n.（美口）密友，伙伴

参考例句：

• Calm down,buddy.What's the trouble?压压气，老兄。有什么麻烦吗？
• Get out of my way,buddy!别挡道了，你这家伙！

8 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

9 aptitude   

n.(学习方面的)才能，资质，天资

参考例句：

• That student has an aptitude for mathematics.那个学生有数学方面的天赋。
• As a child,he showed an aptitude for the piano.在孩提时代，他显露出对于钢琴的天赋。

10 whack   

v.敲击，重打，瓜分；n.重击，重打，尝试，一份

参考例句：

• After years of dieting,Carol's metabolism was completely out of whack.经过数年的节食，卡罗尔的新陈代谢完全紊乱了。
• He gave me a whack on the back to wake me up.他为把我弄醒，在我背上猛拍一下。

11 journalism   

n.新闻工作，报业

参考例句：

• He's a teacher but he does some journalism on the side.他是教师，可还兼职做一些新闻工作。
• He had an aptitude for journalism.他有从事新闻工作的才能。

12 overalls   

n.（复）工装裤；长罩衣

参考例句：

• He is in overalls today.他今天穿的是工作裤。
• He changed his overalls for a suit.他脱下工装裤，换上了一套西服。

13 legacy   

n.遗产，遗赠；先人(或过去)留下的东西

参考例句：

• They are the most precious cultural legacy our forefathers left.它们是我们祖先留下来的最宝贵的文化遗产。
• He thinks the legacy is a gift from the Gods.他认为这笔遗产是天赐之物。

14 rumble   

n.隆隆声；吵嚷；v.隆隆响；低沉地说

参考例句：

• I hear the rumble of thunder in the distance.我听到远处雷声隆隆。
• We could tell from the rumble of the thunder that rain was coming.我们根据雷的轰隆声可断定，天要下雨了。

15 forth   

adv.向前；向外，往外

参考例句：

• The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
• He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。

16 snarled   

v.（指狗）吠，嗥叫， （人）咆哮( snarl的过去式和过去分词 )；咆哮着说，厉声地说

参考例句：

• The dog snarled at us. 狗朝我们低声吼叫。
• As I advanced towards the dog, It'snarled and struck at me. 我朝那条狗走去时，它狂吠着向我扑来。 来自《简明英汉词典》

17 canvassed   

v.（在政治方面）游说( canvass的过去式和过去分词 )；调查（如选举前选民的）意见；为讨论而提出（意见等）；详细检查

参考例句：

• He canvassed the papers, hunting for notices of jobs. 他仔细查阅报纸，寻找招工广告。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• The stirring event was well canvassed. 那桩惊人的事情已经是满城风雨。 来自英汉文学 - 汤姆历险

18 dreaded   

adj.令人畏惧的；害怕的v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的过去式和过去分词)

参考例句：

• The dreaded moment had finally arrived. 可怕的时刻终于来到了。
• He dreaded having to spend Christmas in hospital. 他害怕非得在医院过圣诞节不可。 来自《用法词典》

19 batch   

n.一批(组，群)；一批生产量

参考例句：

• The first batch of cakes was burnt.第一炉蛋糕烤焦了。
• I have a batch of letters to answer.我有一批信要回复。

20 beckoned   

v.（用头或手的动作）示意，召唤( beckon的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He beckoned to the waiter to bring the bill. 他招手示意服务生把账单送过来。
• The seated figure in the corner beckoned me over. 那个坐在角落里的人向我招手让我过去。 来自《简明英汉词典》

21 irresistible   

adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的

参考例句：

• The wheel of history rolls forward with an irresistible force.历史车轮滚滚向前，势不可挡。
• She saw an irresistible skirt in the store window.她看见商店的橱窗里有一条叫人着迷的裙子。

22 humiliated   

感到羞愧的

参考例句：

• Parents are humiliated if their children behave badly when guests are present. 子女在客人面前举止失当，父母也失体面。
• He was ashamed and bitterly humiliated. 他感到羞耻，丢尽了面子。

23 maxims   

n.格言，座右铭( maxim的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Courts also draw freely on traditional maxims of construction. 法院也自由吸收传统的解释准则。 来自英汉非文学 - 行政法
• There are variant formulations of some of the maxims. 有些准则有多种表达方式。 来自辞典例句

24 insistence   

n.坚持；强调；坚决主张

参考例句：

• They were united in their insistence that she should go to college.他们一致坚持她应上大学。
• His insistence upon strict obedience is correct.他坚持绝对服从是对的。

25 zeal   

n.热心，热情，热忱

参考例句：

• Revolutionary zeal caught them up,and they joined the army.革命热情激励他们，于是他们从军了。
• They worked with great zeal to finish the project.他们热情高涨地工作，以期完成这个项目。

26 trudge   

v.步履艰难地走；n.跋涉，费力艰难的步行

参考例句：

• It was a hard trudge up the hill.这趟上山是一次艰难的跋涉。
• The trudge through the forest will be tiresome.长途跋涉穿越森林会令人疲惫不堪。

27 peddling   

忙于琐事的，无关紧要的

参考例句：

• He worked as a door-to-door salesman peddling cloths and brushes. 他的工作是上门推销抹布和刷子。
• "If he doesn't like peddling, why doesn't he practice law? "要是他不高兴卖柴火，干吗不当律师呢？

28 enchanted   

adj. 被施魔法的，陶醉的，入迷的 动词enchant的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• She was enchanted by the flowers you sent her. 她非常喜欢你送给她的花。
• He was enchanted by the idea. 他为这个主意而欣喜若狂。

29 gumption   

n.才干

参考例句：

• With his gumption he will make a success of himself.凭他的才干，他将大有作为。
• Surely anyone with marketing gumption should be able to sell good books at any time of year.无疑，有经营头脑的人在一年的任何时节都应该能够卖掉好书。