新发展研究生英语综合教程2第一单元课文内容及翻译

Growing Up

1 Fifty years ago parents still asked boys if they wanted to grow up to be president, and asked it not jokingly but seriously. Many parents who were hardly more than paupers still believed their sons could do it. Abraham Lincoln had done it. We were only sixty-five years from Lincoln. Many of grandfather who walked among us could remeber Lincoln. Men of grandfatherly age were the worst for asking if you wanted to grow up to be president. A surprising number of little boys said yes and meant it.五十年前父母大都会问男孩子们长大后想不想当总统，问这话时一本正经，并非开玩笑。许多穷得跟乞丐似的父母也仍然相信他们的孩子能当上总统。亚伯拉罕?林肯就做到了。我们与林肯那个时代仅仅差65年。依然健在的许多爷爷辈的人还能记得林肯时代。就是他们最喜欢问你长大后想不想当总统。回答说想当的小男孩数量多得惊人，而且他们是当真的。

2 I was asked many times myself. No, I didn?t want to grow up to be president. My mother was present during one of these interrogations. An elderly uncle, having posed the usual question and exposed my lack of interest in the presidency, asked, “Well, what do you want to be when you grow up.我就曾经被问过多次。我会回答说不，我长大后不想当总统。有一个年纪大的叔叔，当着母亲的面向我提出这个问烂了的问题，发现了我对当总统不感兴趣，他就接着又问：“那你长大了想干什么呢？” 3 I loved to pick through trash piles and collect empty bottles, tin cans

with pretty labels, and discarded magazines. The most desirable job on earth sprang instantly to mind. “I want to be a garbage man,” I said.我那时喜欢到垃圾堆上去拣东西，收集空瓶子、有漂亮标签的罐子和废弃的杂志。世界上最吸引我的工作立刻浮现在我的脑子里。“我想当一个垃圾工。”我说道。

4 My uncle smiled, but my mother had seen the first distressing evidence of a bump budding on a log. “Have a little gumption, Russell,” she said. Her calling me Russell was a signal of unhappiness. When she approved of me I was always “Buddy”.叔叔听后笑了，而母亲却觉察到了我那呆头呆脑的苗头，不免伤心。“有点上进心吧，拉塞尔。”她说道。她叫我“拉塞尔”表明她不高兴，因为她夸我的时候总是叫我“小家伙”。

5 When I turned eight years old she decided that the job of starting me on the road toward making something of myself could no longer be safely delayed, “Buddy ,” she said one day, “ I want you to come home right after school this afternoon. Somebody?s coming and I want you to meet him.”转眼间我长到了八岁， 她觉得我得找个工作，开始踏上那条让我自己成就点什么的道路，而不能再四平八稳地坐失良机了。“巴迪”，有一天她跟我说，“今天放学后马上回家。有人要来，我要你见见他。” 6 When I burst in that afternoon she was in conference in the parlor with an executive of the Curtis Publishing Company. She introduced me. He bent low from the waist and shook my hand. Was it true as my mother

had told him, he asked, that I longer for the opportunity to conquer the world of business?那天下午我冲进家门的时候，她正在客厅里跟柯蒂斯出版公司的一个负责人谈话。他把我介绍给他。他弯下腰和我握了握手，问我是不是像母亲说的那样渴望获得进入商界的机会。 7 My mother replied that I was blessed with a rare determination to make to succeed in business.” 母亲在一旁忙说我决意要使自己成为一个有所成就的人。

8 “That?s right,” I said.“是的。”我低声说。

9 “But have you got the grit, the character, the never-say-quit spirit it takes to succeed in business.”“那么，你是否具备在商业上获得成功所需要的刚强、勇气和绝不放弃的精神呢？”

10 My mother said I certainly did.母亲回答说我当然具备。 11 “That?s right,” I said.“是的。”我说。

12 He eyed me silently for a long pause, as though weighing whether I could be trusted to keep his confidence, then spoke man-to-man. Before taking a crucial step, he said, he wanted to advise me that working for the Curtis Publishing Company placed enormous responsibility on a young man. It was one of the great companies of America. Perhaps the greatest publishing house in the world. I had heard, no doubt, of the Saturday Post?他盯着我好一会儿，默不作声，似乎在掂量着我是否值得他的信任，然后和我坦率地谈了起来。他说，在走出关键性的一步之前，他得提醒我，年轻人为柯蒂斯出版公司工作要承担巨大的责任。它是美国最

了不起的公司之一，也许是世界上最了不起的出版公司。毫无疑问，我肯定听说过《星期六晚邮报》吧？

13 Heard of it? My mother said everyone in our house had heard of the Saturday Post and that, I, in fact, read it with religious devotion.岂止听说过母亲说全家人可是都知道《星期六邮报》的，而且说我实际上是它的忠实读者。

14 He said he had been so impressed by what he had seen of me that he was going to make me a representative of the Curtis Publishing Company. On the following Tuesday, he said, thirty freshly printed copies of the Saturday Evening Post would be delivered at our door. I would place these magazines still damp with the ink of the presses, in a handsome canvas bag, sling it over my shoulder, and set forth through the streets to bring the best in journalism, fiction, and cartoons to the American public.最后，他说他对我的印象非常深刻，打算吸纳我为柯蒂斯出版公司的一员。他说，下周二会有三十份刚印刷出来的《星期六晚邮报》送到我家门口。我要把这些还带着印刷油墨潮气的期刊放到一个漂亮的帆布包里，吊挂在我的肩上，然后走上大街小巷，把新闻、小说和卡通的精华带给美国大众。

15 He had brought the canvas bag with him. He presented it with reverence fit for a chasuble. He should me how to drape the sling over my left shoulder and across the chest so that the pouch lay easily accessible to my right hand, allowing the best in journalism, fiction, and cartoons to

be swiftly extracted and sold to a citizenry whose happiness and security depended upon us soldiers of the free press.他随身带着那个帆布包。他把它打开时那毕恭毕敬的神情简直像是神父在打开一件十字褡。他向我演示如何把吊带搭在我的左肩上，从胸前穿过，这样我的右手就能方便地伸到邮袋里，以便迅速地取出那些新闻、小说和卡通的精华卖给市民，他们的幸福和安全可全指望着我们这些自由报业的战士呢。 16 The following Tuesday I raced home from school, put the canvas bag over my shoulder, dumped the magazines in, and, tilting to the left to balance their weight on my right hip, embarked on the highway of journalism.星期二放学后我跑回家，把帆布包挎在肩上，装上杂志，左右移了移，让它的重量平衡，然后迈开步伐踏上了新闻业的征途。 17 We lived in Belleville, New Jersey, a commuter town at the northern fringe of Newark. It was 1932, the bleakest year of the Depression. My father had died two years before, leaving us with a few pieces of Sears Roebuck furniture and not much else, and my mother had taken Doris and me to live with one of her younger brothers. This was my Uncle Allen had made something of himself by 1932. As a salesman for a soft-drink bottler in Newark, he had an income of $30 a week, wore pearl-gray spats, detachable collars, and a three-piece suit; was happily married; and took in threadbare relatives.我们住在新泽西州贝勒镇，它位于纽瓦克北部边缘，处于一个市郊间上下班的枢纽上。那是1932年，大萧条最严峻的年代。父亲两年前就去世了，只留给我们几件从

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