全新版大学英语快速阅读第二册课文

Unit 1

How to Study

There is a lot of misunderstanding about studying. Most students have not been taught the principles behind really effective working. Imagine a graph showing the amount a person learns against the number of hours he works in a day. If he doesn't do any work, he learns nothing (point 0). If he does an hour 's work he learns a certain amount (point 1). If he does two hours' work he learns about twice as much (point 2). If he does more work he'll learn still more (point 3). However, if he tries to do twenty-three and a half hours' work in one day, he'll be so tired that he'll hardly remember anything: what he learns will be very little (point 4). If he did less work he 'd learn more (point 5).

Now whatever the exact shape of the graph 's curve, made by joining these points, it must have a high point. Point "X" is the very maximum anyone can learn in the day. And this represents the optimum, the best, amount of work to do. It is the best possible compromise between adequate time at the books and fatigue. Fatigue is an absolutely real thing; one can't escape it or ignore it. If you try to ignore it and press yourself to work past the optimum, you will only get on this downward slope and achieve less than the best—and then become very tired and lose your power of concentration.

The skill in being a student consists of getting one 's daily study as near the optimum point as possible. I cannot tell you what the optimum is. It differs with the type of work, it differs from person to person, and even in the same person it varies from week to week. You must try to find your own. Every day you study, bear this principle of the optimum in mind. When you feel yourself getting fatigued, if you find yourself reading the same paragraph over and over again and not taking it in, that's a pretty good sign you 've reached your highest point for the day and should stop. Most ordinary students find their optimum at about five hours a day. Yours may be a little more or a little less—but if you get in five hours' good work a day, you will be doing well.

Now, what are you doing with yourself when you aren't working? Before examinations some students do nothing at all except sit in a chair and worry. Here is another misunderstanding. People often think that the mind works like the body; it does not. If one wanted to save one 's physical energy in order to cut the maximum amount of firewood, one would lie flat on a bed and rest when one wasn't chopping. But the mind cannot rest. Even in sleep you dream, even if you forget your dreams. The mind is always turning. It gets its relaxation only by variety. That is what makes the mind rest.

When you 've finished your optimum number of hours you must stop. You must not then sit around in the chair thinking about the work—that only tires without any learning. You must get out and do something. It doesn't matter what—anything so long as you are actively doing something else but work.

Learning to Keep You Cool During Tests

Have you ever felt so anxious during an examination that you couldn't even put down the answers you knew? If so, you were suffering from what is known as test anxiety.

According to psychologist Ralph Trimble, test anxiety is a very real problem for many people. When you 're worried over your performance on an exam, your heart beats faster and your pulse speeds up. These reactions start others: You may sweat more than normal or suffer from a stomachache or headache. Your field of vision narrows and becomes tunnel-like. Before you know it, you 're having difficulty focusing.

"What I hear students say over and over again," says Dr. Trimble, who is working at the Psychological and Counseling Center at the University of Illinois, "is, 'My mind went blank.'"

For a number of years, Dr. Trimble helped many students learn how to perform better during exams and to bring up their grades. Some of these students were interested in sharing what they learned and, with Trimble 's help, began holding workshops on overcoming test anxiety. For many students, just being in a workshop with other sufferers made them feel better. They realized that they were not the only ones who had done poorly on tests because of tension.

The workshops were so successful that they are still given.

In the workshops, students are taught that anxiety is normal. You just have to prevent it from getting the best of you. The first step is to learn to relax. If before or during an examination you start to panic, stretch as hard as you can, tensing the muscles in your arms and legs; then suddenly relax all of them.

This will help relieve tension. But keep in mind that you don't want to be too relaxed. Being completely relaxed is no better than being too tense. "If you are so calm you don't care how you do on an examination, you won't do well," Trimble says. "There is an optimum level of concern when you perform at your best. Some stress helps. There are people who can't take even slight stress. They have to learn that in a challenging situation, being anxiously excited is good and will help them to do better. But if they call it anxiety and say, 'It's going to hit me again,' that will make them nervous and worried."

As a student you must also realize that if you leave too much studying until a day or two before the examination, you can't do the impossible and learn it all. Instead, concentrate on what you can do and try to think what questions are likely to be asked and what you can do in the time left for studying.

When you sit down to study, set a moderate pace and vary it by reading, writing notes, and going over any papers you have already written for the course, as well as the textbooks and notes you took in class. Review what you know. Take breaks and go to sleep early enough to get a good night 's rest before the exam. You should also eat a moderate breakfast or lunch, avoiding drinks like coffee and stay away from fellow students who get tense. Panic spreads easily.

Get to the exam room a few minutes early so that you will have a chance to familiarize yourself with the surroundings and get out your supplies. When the examination is handed out, read the directions twice and underline the significant instructions, making sure you understand

them. Ask the teacher to explain if you don't. First answer the easiest questions, then go back to the more difficult.

On essay questions, instead of starting right away, take a few minutes to organize your thoughts, make a brief outline, and then start off with a summary sentence. Keep working steadily, and even when time starts to run out, don't speed up.

Paying Your Way

There were red faces at one of Britain 's biggest banks recently. They had accepted a telephone order to buy? 100,000 worth of shares from a fifteen-year-old schoolboy (they thought he was twenty-one). The shares fell in value and the schoolboy was unable to pay up. The bank lost ￡ 20,000 on the deal which it cannot get back because, for one thing, this young speculator does not have the money and, for another, being under eighteen, he is not legally liable for his debts. If the shares had risen in value by the same amount that they fell, he would have pocketed ￡ 20,000 profit. Not bad for a fifteen-year-old. It certainly is better than delivering the morning newspaper. In another recent case, a boy of fourteen found, in his grandmother 's house, a suitcase full of foreign banknotes. The clean, crisp, banknotes looked very convincing but they were now not used in their country of origin or anywhere else. This young boy headed straight to the nearest bank with his pockets filled with notes. The cashiers did not realise that the country in question had reduced the value of its currency by 90 %. They exchanged the notes at their face value at the current exchange rate. In three days, before he was found out, he took ￡ 200,000 from nine different banks. Amazingly, he had already spent more than half of this on taxi-rides, restaurant meals, concert tickets and presents for his many new girlfriends (at least he was generous!) before the police caught up with him. Because he is also under eighteen the banks have kissed goodbye to a lot of money, and several cashiers have lost their jobs.

Should we admire these youngsters for being enterprising and showing initiative or condemn them for their dishonesty? Maybe they had managed for years with tiny amounts of pocket money that they got from tight-fisted parents. Maybe they had done Saturday jobs for peanuts. It is hardly surprising, given the expensive things that young people want to buy, such as fashionable running shoes and computer games, if they sometimes think up more imaginative ways of making money than delivering newspapers and baby-sitting. These lads saw the chance to make a lot of money and took it.

Another recent story which should give us food for thought is the case of the man who paid his six-year-old daughter ￡ 300 a week pocket money. He then charged her for the food she ate and for her share of the rent and household bills. After paying for all this, she was left with a few coins for her piggy bank. "She will soon learn the value of money," he said. "There's no such thing as a free lunch. Everything has to be paid for and the sooner she learns that the better." At the other extreme there are fond parents who provide free bed and board for their grown-up children. While even the most hard-hearted parents might hesitate to throw their children out on the streets, we all know of people in their late twenties who still shamelessly live

off their parents. Surely there comes a time when everyone has to leave the parental nest, look after themselves and pay their own way in life. But when is it?

The Day I Went to Open a Bank Account

I don't know why my father never liked banks. Every time we passed one he would frown and walk just a little faster to get past it just that little bit quicker. It seems to me there must have been a big collision between a bank and my father a long time ago before I knew anything about anything. That is, it may have been a big collision for my father but it was one that the bank almost certainly did not remember.

That's how I was brought up. Forever walking quickly past banks. Perhaps I took on my father 's opinions as I took on his other unusual behavior. I quickly learnt to frown and walk just a little bit faster every time I passed a bank. I also learnt to fear the shiny steel and chrome counters and the trim, slim and smartly dressed young women who sat behind them.

I never understood the necessity for banks until, at the end of my first month as a clerk in an office, I was handed a check for $ 1,500, I stared at it in great surprise. I had never seen such a thing before. I understood cash well enough but this long slip of paper was something I wasn't quite sure about.

"Everything all right?" asked Mrs. Smith, our accounts manager. "Yes ... yes!" I said and signed for it hurriedly. What on earth was I going to do? I knew too well what I had to do and my heart dropped at the thought. I had to open a bank account.

For some reason I thought you had to talk to the manager of a bank before they would let you open an account. I went up to an empty counter and caught the eye of a bank clerk.

"Yes? Can I help you?" he asked.

"Yes please," I said, "I 'd like a word with the manager. If that's possible;"

He looked surprised but asked me to wait and went off.

The manager was younger than I expected and was clearly very busy.

"Yes. Can I help you?" he asked.

"Yes. I 'd like to talk to you. If you don't mind," I said. I was just as surprised as he was at the confident manner in which I spoke. I didn't know what to say next so I said nothing. For a moment neither of us said anything.

He must have understood that I wished to see him alone, for he invited me into his office and offered me a large comfortable seat.

"Now, then, sir. What can I do for you?" he asked, clearly puzzled.

"I would like to open a bank account," I informed him.

"I see," he said, nodding his head slowly," And how much do you wish to deposit in this account?"

"I wish to deposit this," I said and handed him the check.

He examined the check carefully before handing it back to me.

"A savings account?" he asked.

I nodded.

"Please follow me."

He led me out of his office back to the banking hall. There he took me to a large desk manned by a young lady by the name of "Candice Lee"—as I saw from the name card on the desk.

"This lady will help you open a savings account in which you can deposit your check for $ 1500," he said in a voice that was, I felt, a bit louder than absolutely necessary. "Good day, sir," he said and walked back to safety behind the barrier.

I waited. Miss Lee filled out forms for me and I signed them. She stamped them. She made me sign a little strip of plastic and she fixed this inside a little red book. She put the check in and back came the book with the right amount printed in it. It was at that moment that I realised I needed to withdraw some money and I asked how this might be achieved.

"I 'm afraid you can't withdraw it for two days, sir. Not until the check has been cleared."

I stared at her in great surprise. I was trusting her bank with my money. It seemed only fair that they should trust my check.

"What?" I said in shock. "What!!?" I burst out angrily. Silence fell over the entire bank as everyone turned to see what was happening. I decided to leave with my self-respect safe and sound.

"If you do not trust my check, would you be so kind as to return it immediately. Your passbook," I said as confidently as I could. Miss Lee seemed really surprised. The bank manager must have been listening to every word. He came out once again from behind the barriers of steel and chrome. He held my check by a corner and presented it to me as if it were a wet fish. I handed him his little red pass book in a similar fashion, turned around and left. As the doors closed behind me, I clearly heard the sound of laughter.

The accounts department and I have managed to come to an arrangement about the way in which my salary is paid to me at the end of each month. I now keep my savings in a sock, as did my father before me, which I hide, as did my father before me, under my bed at home.

Unit 2

Remembering My Grandparents

When memory began for me, my grandfather was past sixty—a great tall man with thick hair becoming gray. He had black eyes and a straight nose which ended in a slightly

flattened tip. Once he explained seriously to me that he got that flattened tip as a small child when he fell down and stepped on his nose.

The little marks of laughter at the corners of his eyes were the product of a kindly and humorous nature. The years of work which had bent his shoulders had never dulled his humor nor his love of a joke. Everywhere he went, "Gramp" made friends easily. At the end of half an hour you felt you had known him all your life. I soon learned that he hated to give orders, but that when he had to, he tried to make his orders sound like suggestions.

One July morning, as he was leaving to go to the cornfield, he said, "Edwin, you can pick up the potatoes in the field today if you want to do that." Then he drove away with his horses.

The day passed, and I did not have any desire to pick up potatoes. Evening came and the potatoes were still in the field. Gramp, dusty and tired, led the horses to get their drink.

"How many bags of potatoes were there?" Gramp inquired.

"I don't know."

"How many potatoes did you pick up?"

"I didn't pick any."

"Not any! Why not?"

"You said I could pick them up if I wanted to. You didn't say I had to."

In the next few minutes I learned a lesson I would not forget: when Gramp said I could if I wanted to, he meant that I should want to.

My grandmother (" Gram") worked hard all day, washing clothes, cleaning the house, making butter, and even working in the field when help was scarce. In the evening, though, she was not too tired to read books from the community library. For more than forty years Gram read aloud to Gramp almost every evening. In this way she and Gramp learned about all the great battles of history and became familiar with the works of great authors and the lives of famous men.

Gram hated cruelty and injustice. The injustices of history, even those of a thousand years before, angered her as much as the injustices of her own day.

She also had a deep love of beauty. When she was almost seventy-five, and had gone to live with one of her daughters, she spent a delightful morning washing dishes because, as she said, the beautiful patterns on the dishes gave her pleasure. The birds, the flowers, the clouds—all that was beautiful around her—pleased her. She was like the father of the French painter, Millet, who used to gather grass and show it to his son, saying, "See how beautiful this is!"

In a pioneer society it is the harder qualities of mind and character that are of value. The softer virtues are considered unnecessary. Men and women struggling daily to earn a living are unable, even for a moment, to forget the business of preserving their lives. Only unusual people, like my grandparents, manage to keep the softer qualities in a world of daily struggle.

Such were the two people with whom I spent the months from June to September in the wonderful days of summer and youth.

Leaf and Loaf

Leaf

At last we went out and stood on the lawn and watched the sun go down, and my father said, "If it weren't for art, we 'd have vanished from the face of the earth long ago."

What art really is, though, and what a human being really is, and what the world really is. I just don't know, that's all.

Standing there, watching the sun go down into the sea, my father said, "In every house there ought to be an art table on which, one by one, things are placed, so that everybody in that house might look at the things very carefully, and see them."

"What would you put on a table like that?"

"A leaf. A coin. A button. A stone. A small piece of torn newspaper. An apple. An egg.

A pebble. A flower. A dead insect. A shoe."

"Everybody's seen those things."

"Of course. But nobody looks at them, and that's what art is. To look at familiar things as if they had never before been seen. A plain sheet of paper with typing on it. A necktie. A pocketknife. A key. A fork. A cup. A bottle. A bowl. A walnut."

"What about a baseball? A baseball's a beautiful thing."

"It certainly is. You would place something on the table and look at it. The next morning you would take it away, and put something else there—anything, for there is nothing made by nature or by man that doesn't deserve to be looked at particularly."

Now, the sun was gone all the way into the sea. There was a lot of orange light on the water, and in the sky above the water. Legion of Honor Hill grew dark, and my father brought out a cigarette and lighted it and inhaled and then let the smoke out of his nose and mouth, and he said, "Well, boy, there's another day of the wonderful world gone forever."

"New day tomorrow, though."

"What do you say we drive to the seaside and look at the ships from all over the world?"

Loaf

We loafed through the whole town, because that was what we had planned to do. It was nothing more than just another little town with another bunch of people living in it. We saw some of the people. All of a sudden I noticed their eyes.

This made me laugh.

"Tell me about it," my father said.

"Eyes," I said. "We sure have got eyes, haven't we?"

"Very good," my father said.

He began to sing, "I saw your eyes, your wonderful eyes."

Pretty soon he stopped singing and began to breathe deeply.

"Somebody 's baking bread somewhere. Would you like some fresh bread?"

"I sure would."

We walked to the corner, then around the corner, but we didn't find a bakery there, so we went back to where we had been, and near there we found the place, but the door was locked.

My father knocked, and then we saw a man in a baker 's white coat with flour on his hands and face come to the door and open it.

"We open at seven," the man said. "It's not six yet."

"What are you baking back there?"

"Bread and rolls."

"How about letting me buy some? I don't often get a chance to eat freshly baked bread."

"You want to come in, then?" the baker said, so my father and I went in. We followed the man to where he and his wife were baking bread. It was clean and warm back there. The metal racks had new loaves on them and new rolls.

"Help yourself," the baker said.

My father took a loaf of French bread from among half a dozen that the baker 's wife brought out of the oven on a long wooden spade and held out to him, and then she brought him a lot of rolls on the spade. My father took half a dozen rolls, too. He gave me one, and he took a bite out of another. The big loaf he put in his coat pocket just the way it was.

"Sit down," the baker said. "There's some cheese over there on that little table. Help yourself."

My father and I went to the little table where the baker and his wife sat and ate bread and cheese, and we sat there.

"Do you know the baker?"

"Never saw him before in my life."

The baker came over and broke open a roll and put some cheese in it. I thought he was going to bite into it himself, but he handed the roll to me and said, "Always remember bread and cheese. When everything else looks bad, remember bread and cheese, and you'll be all right."

"Yes, sir."

"That's why I 'm a baker," he said. "I tried a lot of other things, but this is the work for me."

The True Story of a Young Man

When Reginald Lindsay received a scholarship to Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, what he wanted most was a good job with a good salary. But soon he became interested

in the civil rights movement. At present he has a plan which he hopes will take him to Congress as a southern representative.

Now in his first year at Harvard Law School, Reg is making careful plans. After earning his degree, he expects to return to the South to practice law among the poor. "I want to help them understand what their rights are and to help them achieve them," he says. Then he hopes to run for political office at the local and state level until he is ready to try for Congress.

Reg grew up in a low-income Negro section of Birmingham, Alabama. Brought up by his grandparents after his parents were divorced while he was very young,. Reg has been living through a period of far-reaching progress in race relations. In the summer of 1968 Reg himself became a good example of this progress when he became the first Negro student appointed to a special new program. The program introduces bright young students to the workings of the Georgia State government and encourages them to seek employment there after finishing their education. "I 've been lucky," he says. "I seem to have been in the right place at the right time."

But luck is only part of Reg 's story, for he has made the most of opportunities that came his way. He learned to read in kindergarten and began visiting the public library regularly to borrow books. His grandparents encouraged him, though neither of them had much education, and they bought him a set of encyclopedias. "I loved those books," he remembers. "I used to come downstairs before breakfast and read short articles. I enjoyed reading about famous men, and then I would pretend to be one of them. I guess it was partly a childish game and partly an escape. It wasn't too much fun to be a Negro when I was a kid."

While studying for his bachelor 's degree at Morehouse College, Reg worked on several political campaigns helping candidates get elected to government offices. At the same time he maintained a "B" average while majoring in political science. He worked as a student advisor to earn extra money for his college expenses, and he was granted a scholarship for a year of study at the University of Valencia in Spain.

With just two more years to complete at Harvard Law School, which also gave him a scholarship, Reg has made a good start on his professional career. He says, "The good life for me is the kind of life where I can find satisfaction in public service."

A Game of Light and Shade

It was a sunny winter day. I had gone up and down the tower, and felt pleased with myself for having taken this initiative, when, outside the little door at the foot, a blind man came toward me. He was a pale, thin man, with black hair and dark glasses that gave him a mysterious look. He kept close to the inner wall of the courtyard, touching it lightly with his arm. On reaching the door, he touched it and sharply turned inside. In a moment, he disappeared up the staircase. I stood still, looking at the empty space left by the open door, and at the little sign that said "To the Tower" nailed to the wall. I felt compelled to follow.

I didn't follow closely. I caught up with him in the ticket office. There I was surprised to see the attendant selling him a ticket as though he were any other visitor. The man reached out

for it clumsily, sweeping a little space of desk with his hand until he had it, but the attendant didn't seem to take any notice. Then, with the ticket in one hand and touching the wall with the fingers of the other, he reached the staircase leading to the hallway.

I stood by the desk, watching him until he was out of hearing. "That man is blind," I said to the attendant, and expected him to show some concern, but he just looked at me with his sleepy eyes. He was a heavy man who seemed all one piece with his chair and desk. "He's blind," I repeated.

He looked at me vacantly.

"What would a blind man want to climb up the tower for?" I asked.

He didn't answer.

"Not the view certainly," I said. "Perhaps he wants to jump."

His mouth opened a little. Should he do something? But his chair was too comfortable. He didn't stir. "Well, let 's hope not," he said, and looked down at a crossword puzzle he had begun.

The blind man was now out of sight. I turned toward the staircase.

"The ticket," the attendant said, rising from his chair. It seemed the only thing that could move him.

I handed him a fifty-lira piece, and he tore a ticket from his ticket book. Then I hurried up the staircase.

The man hadn't gone as far as I imagined. Much less time had passed than I thought. A third of the way up the tower, I heard his step. I slowed down and followed him at a little distance. He went up slowly, and stopped from time to time. When he got to the balcony, I was a dozen steps behind. But as I reached it, he wasn't to be seen. I dashed to the first corner of the bell tower, around the next, and saw him.

At last, after ten minutes, I approached him. "Excuse me," I said as politely as I could, "but I am very curious to know why you came up."

"You 'd never guess," he said.

"Not the view, I take it, or the fresh air on this winter day."

"No," he said as he looked at me with an amused expression on his face.

"Tell me," I said.

He smiled. "Perhaps, coming up the stairs, you will have noticed—and yet, not being blind, perhaps you won't—how not just light but sun pours into the tower through the narrow windows here and there, so that one can feel the change—the cool staircase suddenly becomes quite warm, even in winter—and how up here behind the wall there is shade, but as soon as one goes opposite a narrow window one finds the sun. In all of Sienna there is no place so good as this for feeling the contrast between light and shade. It isn't the first time that I 've come up."

He stepped into the shade. "I am in the shade," he said. "There is a wall there." He moved into the sunlight. "Now I am opposite a window," he said. We went down the bell tower. "An arch is there," he said.

"You never miss. And the sun isn't even very strong," I said.

"Strong enough," he said, and added, "Now I 'm behind a bell."

Coming back down onto the balcony, he went around it. "Light, shade, light, shade," he said, and seemed as pleased as a child who, in a game of hopscotch, jumps from square to square.

We went down the tower together. "A window there," he said, up near the top. "Another window," he said, when we were half-way down.

I left him, gladdened as one can only be by the sunlight.

Unit 3

A Game of Light and Shade

It was a sunny winter day. I had gone up and down the tower, and felt pleased with myself for having taken this initiative, when, outside the little door at the foot, a blind man came toward me. He was a pale, thin man, with black hair and dark glasses that gave him a mysterious look. He kept close to the inner wall of the courtyard, touching it lightly with his arm. On reaching the door, he touched it and sharply turned inside. In a moment, he disappeared up the staircase. I stood still, looking at the empty space left by the open door, and at the little sign that said "To the Tower" nailed to the wall. I felt compelled to follow.

I didn't follow closely. I caught up with him in the ticket office. There I was surprised to see the attendant selling him a ticket as though he were any other visitor. The man reached out for it clumsily, sweeping a little space of desk with his hand until he had it, but the attendant didn't seem to take any notice. Then, with the ticket in one hand and touching the wall with the fingers of the other, he reached the staircase leading to the hallway.

I stood by the desk, watching him until he was out of hearing. "That man is blind," I said to the attendant, and expected him to show some concern, but he just looked at me with his sleepy eyes. He was a heavy man who seemed all one piece with his chair and desk. "He's blind," I repeated.

He looked at me vacantly.

"What would a blind man want to climb up the tower for?" I asked.

He didn't answer.

"Not the view certainly," I said. "Perhaps he wants to jump."

His mouth opened a little. Should he do something? But his chair was too comfortable. He didn't stir. "Well, let 's hope not," he said, and looked down at a crossword puzzle he had begun.

The blind man was now out of sight. I turned toward the staircase.

"The ticket," the attendant said, rising from his chair. It seemed the only thing that could move him.

I handed him a fifty-lira piece, and he tore a ticket from his ticket book. Then I hurried up the staircase.

The man hadn't gone as far as I imagined. Much less time had passed than I thought. A third of the way up the tower, I heard his step. I slowed down and followed him at a little distance. He went up slowly, and stopped from time to time. When he got to the balcony, I was a dozen steps behind. But as I reached it, he wasn't to be seen. I dashed to the first corner of the bell tower, around the next, and saw him.

At last, after ten minutes, I approached him. "Excuse me," I said as politely as I could, "but I am very curious to know why you came up."

"You 'd never guess," he said.

"Not the view, I take it, or the fresh air on this winter day."

"No," he said as he looked at me with an amused expression on his face.

"Tell me," I said.

He smiled. "Perhaps, coming up the stairs, you will have noticed—and yet, not being blind, perhaps you won't—how not just light but sun pours into the tower through the narrow windows here and there, so that one can feel the change—the cool staircase suddenly becomes quite warm, even in winter—and how up here behind the wall there is shade, but as soon as one goes opposite a narrow window one finds the sun. In all of Sienna there is no place so good as this for feeling the contrast between light and shade. It isn't the first time that I 've come up."

He stepped into the shade. "I am in the shade," he said. "There is a wall there." He moved into the sunlight. "Now I am opposite a window," he said. We went down the bell tower. "An arch is there," he said.

"You never miss. And the sun isn't even very strong," I said.

"Strong enough," he said, and added, "Now I 'm behind a bell."

Coming back down onto the balcony, he went around it. "Light, shade, light, shade," he said, and seemed as pleased as a child who, in a game of hopscotch, jumps from square to square.

We went down the tower together. "A window there," he said, up near the top. "Another window," he said, when we were half-way down.

I left him, gladdened as one can only be by the sunlight.

Two Kinds

My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America. You could open a restaurant. You could work for the government and get good retirement benefits. You

could buy a house with almost no money down. You could become rich. You could become instantly famous.

"Of course you can be a talented child or what they call a wonder girl, too," my mother told me when I was nine. "You can be best at anything. What does Auntie Lindo know? Her daughter, at best she is only tricky."

America was where all my mother 's hopes lay. She had come here in 1975 after losing everything in Vietnam? her mother and father, her family home, her first husband, and two daughters, twin baby girls. But she never looked back with regret. There were so many ways for things to get better.

Every night after dinner, my mother and I would sit at the kitchen table. She would present new tests, taking her examples from stories of amazing children she had read in Ripley 's Believe It or Not, or Good Housekeeping, Reader 's Digest, and a dozen other magazines she kept in a pile in our bathroom. My mother got these magazines from people whose houses she cleaned. And since she cleaned many houses each week, we had a great collection. She would look through them all, searching for stories about remarkable children.

The first night she brought out a story about a three-year-old boy who knew the capitals of all the states and even most of the European countries. A teacher was quoted as saying the little boy could also, pronounce the names of the foreign cities correctly.

"What's the capital of Finland?" my mother asked me, looking at the magazine story.

All I knew was the capital of California, because Sacramento was the name of the street we lived on in Chinatown. "Nairobi!" I guessed, saying the most foreign word I could think of. She checked to see if that was possibly one way to pronounce "Helsinki" before showing me the answer.

The tests got harder—multiplying numbers in my head, finding the queen of hearts in a deck of cards, trying to stand on my head without using my hands, predicting the daily temperatures in Los Angeles, New York, and London.

One night I had to look at a page from the Bible for three minutes and then report everything I could remember. "Now Jehoshaphat had riches and honor in abundance and, that's all I remember, Ma," I said.

And after seeing my mother 's disappointed face once again, something inside of me began to die. I hated the tests, the raised hopes and failed expectations. Before going to bed that night, I looked in the mirror above the bathroom sink and when I saw only my face staring back—and that it would always be this ordinary face—I began to cry. Such a sad, ugly girl! I made noises like an angry animal, trying to scratch out the face in the mirror.

And then I saw what seemed to be the talented side of me—because I had never seen that face before. I looked at my reflection, blinking so I could see more clearly. The girl staring back at me was angry, powerful. This girl and I were the same. I had new thoughts, thoughts filled with lots of won'ts. I won't let her change me, I promised myself. I won't be what I 'm not.

Rites of Passage

Suddenly there come times when everything is different—you 're somehow another person

Several years ago my parents, my wife, my son,, and I ate at one of those restaurants where the menu is written on a blackboard. After a wonderful dinner, the waiter set the bill in the middle of the table. That's when it happened: my father did not reach for the bill.

Conversation continued. Finally it dawned on me. I was supposed to pick up the bill! After hundreds of restaurant meals with my parents, after a lifetime of thinking of my father as the one who had the money, it had all changed. I reached for the check, and my view of myself was suddenly altered. I was an adult.

Some people mark off their lives in years? I measure mine in small events—in rites of passage. I did not become a young man at a particular age, like 13, but rather when a kid walked into the store where I worked and called me "mister". He repeated it several times, looking straight at me. The realization hit like a punch: Me! I was suddenly a mister.

There have been other milestones. The cops of my youth always seemed big, even huge, and of course they were older than I was. Then one day they were suddenly neither. In fact, some were kids—short kids at that. The day came when I suddenly realized that all the football players in the game I was watching were younger than I was. They were just big kids. With that milestone went the dream that someday, maybe, I too could be a football player. Without ever having reached the hill, I was over it.

I never thought that I would fall asleep in front of the television set as my father did. Now it's what I do best. I never thought that I would go to the beach and not swim. Yet I spent all of August at the seaside and never once went into the ocean, I never thought that I would like opera, but now the sadness and combination of voice and orchestra appeal to me. I never thought that I would prefer to stay home evenings, but now I find myself passing up parties. I used to think that people who watched birds were strange, but this summer I found myself watching them, and maybe I'll get a book on the subject. I long for a religious conviction that I never thought I 'd want, and in arguments with my son, I repeat what my father used to say to me. I still lose.

One day I bought a house. One day—what a day!— I became a father, and not too long after that I picked up the bill for my own father. I thought then it was a rite of passage for me. But one day, when I was a little older, I realized it was one for him too. Another milestone.

The Last Adventure

"I 'm ashamed to talk about it, even to you," his sister Naomi said. "But I 'm so worried about what I 'm going to do with him. I had to phone you to come."

When he 'd received her urgent message, he imagined it concerned their father, who was seventy-four and had lived alone for six years since the death of his mother. He lived alone in an apartment a few miles from where Naomi lived with her husband and children. Several earlier conversations with his sister had suggested indirectly that his father was involved with a girl. He had avoided talking to Naomi about it in the past but now he asked' her if that was the problem.

"Not just a girl!" Naomi exclaimed. "A child! Keith, she's barely twenty years old! He met her ... ," she lowered her voice so the children playing in another room would not hear," ... in a cheap restaurant!"

"Maybe he just wanted to be served quickly," Keith said.

"Oh for God 's sake, Keith, spare me your jokes! This is the most terrible crisis we have ever had with him!"

"After all, he 's been living alone all these years," Keith said. "Maybe he's just feeling lonely."

"I don't know about his being lonely," she said. "He does play cards with friends sometimes! It really is terrible! I 'm sure he's giving her money and she hasn't any shame about cheating an old man."

"Are you sure he's giving her money?"

"He admitted it! A few times when I tried to talk to him about the danger of what he was doing, he grew impatient and upset with me and told me openly', he was paying her rent, gas and light!"

"That means she's not living with him."

"Oh God, don't even mention that possibility! If he did anything as stupid and shocking as that I wouldn't let the children visit him again!"

"All right, Naomi," Keith tried to speak patiently. "He's seventy-four years old and he's involved with a twenty-year-old girl he met in a restaurant. The whole business is a bit unpleasant, I admit, but it seems to have been going on for some time. You mentioned it to me when I was here at Christmas. What makes it a crisis now?"

She rose from her chair and went to peer nervously into the dining room. The children had gone outside and she returned and sat down, leaning closer to speak to Keith in a shaken whisper.

"He's even thinking of marrying her."

"Don't be ridiculous." Keith said.

Keith couldn't become as upset as Naomi but he understood her concern. His father lived on a pension from the Colony Bank and his Somal Security and didn't have to touch the money he 'd received from the sale of their house when his mother died. Some of that money had gone to Naomi when she and Bruce bought their house and his father had given Keith ten thousand dollars while he studied for his doctoral degree. But there had to be seventy to eighty thousand dollars still in the bank. The money belonged to his father to do with as he wished, but they had a responsibility to make sure the girl didn't cheat him out of it.

"What do you think we should do?" Keith asked.

"You should go and talk to him," Naomi said seriously. "You are his son and maybe you can follow his line of thinking. Try to make him understand that what he is doing is unwise, especially for a man his age."

He phoned his father, who seemed delighted that Keith was in town and agreed to see him at once. He left Naomi 's house after promising her he would return that evening to report to her exactly what his father had said.

"You know, son," his father said quietly, "I don't want to make excuses but the whole thing came about because of loneliness. I am not blaming your sister or you. You live four hundred miles away and she has her life with Bruce and her children. But when a man is alone as he grows older, you have to understand that his days and nights are different. He doesn't have the expectations he had when he was young, or the dreams, or planning for the things he hopes to do. He wakes up in the silence of the dark room and can't help thinking that it's just another night moving him closer to death. Oh, I know, there is the center for senior citizens nearby and movies and television. But I find that gathering of old people dull and television is full of silly comedies and the movies show films that have nothing to do with the life I lived. I am grateful when you and Naomi and the children come and I enjoy holidays and birthdays. But those celebrations pass quickly and then there are empty, lonely weeks again." His father shrugged. "I said I didn't want to make excuses but I guess I just did."

Unit 4

The Fun and Excitement of "Reality"

It's odd to watch a friend climb on a platform, put on a helmet and then suddenly start twisting crazily and punching the air in all directions. But video game fans are used to it. They come across scenes like this every day in video arcades.

Virtual reality is the newest, and hottest, type of computer game available. Players love it because it's the first game that lets them feel as though they are actually inside the game, taking part in the action around them.

Through the magic of virtual reality, you can become a boxer or turn into a robot by simply putting on a helmet and stepping up to the controls. The key to the "reality" you feel is the helmet. It covers your eyes and ears, blocking off your normal vision and hearing. Turn on a switch and you 're surrounded by the sights and sounds of the game world.

In the boxing game, you hear cheering crowds and the booming voice of an announcer calling out instructions. Then you find yourself standing in a boxing ring, face to face with a big, nasty-looking opponent. The bell rings for the first round and you go in punching. You can even choose a two-player option, so that the face you 're hitting belongs to a friend!

Ever since the first electronic games came out more than 15 years ago, game developers have been working on programs that could increase the feeling of reality in their games. Their

newest products, called interactive games, involve the most advanced game technology ever developed. Virtual reality games are the most complex of these.

It is important to understand the difference between interactive and passive entertainment when talking about video games. Watching television is passive: you sit in a chair in front of a TV set and take in whatever is shown on the screen. You don't have to do anything except keep your eyes open.

Listening to the radio can't be called interactive because you aren't actively involved in what is said or what you hear over the airwaves. But it is a less passive activity than watching TV because you use your imagination to fill in images to go with the sounds you hear.

Computer games are interactive because what you do influences how the game turns out: if you don't find the right secret tunnels, you can't escape the evil castle, and unless you avoid the traps along the way, you die and the game is over.

In virtual reality, you reach a new level of interaction. With images and sound all around you, thanks to the helmet and some very expensive computer technology, you move from simply watching or playing a game, to experiencing it.

You can hang from a helicopter and watch the ground speed by far below your feet. Or turn around 180 ° and see the bad guy coming up behind you.

The creators of virtual reality are far from finished. They dream of one day coming up with a game world that players won't be able to tell apart from the real thing. It would allow people to feel, and even taste and smell, the environment they have stepped into. According to the game developers, it's only a matter of time.

Future Talk

A Conversation with Bill Gates; Chairman, Microsoft Corporation;—interviewed by Larry King of CNN

LARRY KING: I 'm having this conversation with you on a computer, and I 'm wondering if e-mail is going to replace the post office in the future.

BILL GATES: E-mail won't replace the post office, but it will replace a lot of paper the post office and overnight services carry around today.

KING: Do you worry your child won't learn penmanship because there's always a keyboard and a printer nearby?

GATES: When I was in school, I always felt it was unfair that kids who happened to have bad handwriting were given a lower grade as punishment. Obviously, everybody needs to learn basic writing skills. We want our kids to have a full complement of basic communications skills. I 'm a lot more concerned that kids who only use calculators and never learn to do multiplication and division by hand may fail to grasp the basics of mathematics.

KING: Will there be any use for pencils and paper?

GATES: People will use pencils and paper for a long time but they won't use them as much as they do now.

KING: Tell me how a computer will be used in the average home thirty years from now.

GATES: You'll have lots of thin flat screens covering the walls of your house and you'll carry a hand-held device around with you. The screens will feed whatever visual information you want—live video from a place in the world you like, an art reproduction, or maybe a stock ticker.

KING: What happens when the power goes out?

GATES: We 're very dependent today on electricity and we still will be in fifty years. If there's a power failure, you won't get much work done, although battery technology will improve enough (so) that short power failures won't necessarily shut down all of your computers.

KING: Are we going to get television and news and entertainment from the Internet rather than from a TV set hooked to cable in the house?

GATES: News and entertainment will be delivered from the Internet to cable television and telephone connections in our homes. We'll access this information using a variety of devices, some of which will resemble today 's televisions.

KING: Will a person be able to work in the future without having any computer skills?

GATES: There will still be jobs for people without computer skills, but a smaller percentage than exist today. The proportion of the workforce that lacks computer skills will decrease as people not having those skills get retrained or retire. Most young people have computer skills or at least an enthusiasm to get them.

KING: Describe an office in the future. Telephone? Fax machine? Conference room? Will there be an office building?

GATES: The key element of the office of the future is that it will have lots of flat screens, just like your house will. And these screens are going to be everywhere once they get thin enough, cheap enough, and high enough in quality. You'll carry around a lightweight screen the way you carry a wallet or cell phone or newspaper today.

The notion of a fax will disappear because documents will be transferred electronically without having to pass through the intermediate stage of being printed on paper. If the recipient wants to read it on paper, she'll print it. "Telephone" refers to an audio-only electronic communications link, and we'll continue to have this kind of connection. But I think audio-only communication will be the exception rather than the rule. Communications will usually involve videoconferencing, collaborative work on a document, or some other kind of data interchange beyond audio alone. We'll have conference rooms, but some of the participants in a conference may be in other places and connected electronically. Some will participate from home when being face-to-face isn't important. Office buildings and even cities may lose some of their importance because the Internet and corporate intranet, or internet-type networks linking employees within a company, will enable workers to communicate, share information, store data, and work together regardless of where they are.

KING; What worries you about the future?

GATES: The world's rapidly growing population concerns me. We need to encourage people to start thinking about the consequences of having too many people on the planet—food and water shortages, pollution, too many people crammed into drug-infested and violence-filled urban centers.

Electronic Mail Brings Business Closer Together

International electronic mail systems are no longer the plaything of hackers and bug-eyed computer enthusiasts. They are emerging as credible business tools that enable individuals and companies to communicate cheaply and efficiently around the globe.

Like the in-house electronic mail networks that have become a fact of business life in many companies, these systems provide a means of sending and receiving messages via personal computers or computer terminals. With global electronic mail services, however, messages can be sent across the world or across town.

For evidence of the rising popularity of electronic mail, a look at the business cards collected from clients or contacts lately should be enough. The chances are that some of them include electronic mail "addresses" along with telephone and fax numbers.

The advantages of electronic mail are numerous. It can eliminate hours of frustrating "telephone tag" and enable people to communicate across time-zones with ease. It also substitutes for busy fax machines that print out piles of paper which are often misplaced or misdirected. With electronic mail, the message appears upon the computer screen of the individual being contacted.

The biggest roadblock to the success of electronic mail in the past has been the lack of sufficient users. Although dozens of personal computer electronic mail services are available, until recently they were not linked. This meant that to reach somebody it was necessary to subscribe to the same electronic messaging system.

Over the past couple of years, however, many electronic mail systems have started "talking" to one another. The mechanism for this is "Internet"—a low-cost and efficient link between electronic mail services worldwide.

Internet links an estimated 1.5 million computers over 10,000 networks in 50 countries, serving about six million users. Internet resembles a computer network cooperative. There is no central authority that oversees it, and rules are largely informal.

Over the past 20 years it has mushroomed to include regional, corporate and public networks, including commercial electronic mail systems. "People conduct their love life over Internet, their hobbies and their interests. They argue politics and engage in all kinds of business," says Mr. Mitch Kapor, co-founder of Electronic Frontier Fountain of Cambridge, Massachusetts, which promotes awareness of the on-line world.

"Internet is doubling annually in users, networks, computers and traffic," says Mr. Vinton Cert, president of the Internet Society, a volunteer secretariat that helps administer the

network. "It is growing faster than any other telecommunications systems ever built, including the telephone network." Commercial users now outnumber academic and government Internet users, and Mr. Cert predicts, the system will soon serve over 100 million users.

Despite the anarchic nature of its structure, the basics of using Internet communications are simple. All that is needed is a computer, a modem, a communications software package and a subscription to an on-line information service linked to Internet.

Subscription costs range from about US $ 9 to US $ 20 per month, depending upon the service and varying according to the information services offered.

Once a subscription to one of these services is obtained, the charge for sending an electronic message is generally only a few cents. In most places a local telephone call will connect you to the system.

Talk to Me

Can the rumor be true? Can the people who run the place where I work really be considering limiting the use of electronic mail? Or, can they actually be thinking of putting a stop to it? If so, I am willing to be the first one to stop using e-mail.

Am I wrong, or is e-mail an overrated phenomenon? The claims about sending correspondence from computer to computer are impressive. You would think that e-mail—which is seldom used for conveying an idea more complex than "Let 's have lunch "—is the greatest thing since Gutenberg invented the printing press. That's Johann Gutenberg, by the way. Notguten @ https://www.sodocs.net/doc/cf8206970.html,.

Imagine for a moment that it was e-mail and not the telephone that was invented in 1876. Now imagine that it was the telephone and not e-mail that was developed a century later. Wouldn't we all be throwing away our key-boards while praising the phone as the hot new communications medium of the moment? No more typing, boss! We can actually hear each other!

But no. Many of us are excited to let our fingers do the talking. The foolishness of this is most evident in offices where private e-mail systems allow people who sit a few meters from one another to communicate via computer. Which they gladly do. (Or in the office where I work, "Message me.") What ever happened to "Talk to me"?

People who are crazy about e-mail—and there is no shortage of them—love to say that it is convenient. They point out that the recipient doesn't even have to be at the receiving end, that the message can simply be left for him or her. Well, I leave handwritten notes for my wife on the kitchen table all the time, and nobody seems to think it's a communications revolution. E-mail fans also like to point out that their favorite medium is fast-fast-fast. But since when is typing faster than speaking? Only when you can type faster than 200 or so words per minute, that's when.

OK! Let 's admit that e-mail is useful if you want to drop a line to, say, 342 people at one time. And let 's admit that it's a relatively cheap way for someone in Boston to leave a