英语智慧背囊07-一件大衣

[00:00.00]An overcoat 一件大衣
[00:04.53]My l4-year-old son, John,
[00:07.60]and I spotted the coat simultaneously.
[00:10.22]It was hanging on a rack
[00:12.53]at a secondhand clothing store in Northampton Mass,
[00:14.92]crammed in with shoddy trench coats
[00:17.78]and an assortment of sad, woolen overcoats—
[00:20.72]a rose among thorns.
[00:22.48]While the other coats drooped,
[00:24.65]this one looked as if it were holding itself up.
[00:27.51]The coat had a beautiful tailoring,
[00:30.01]and an unbelievable price of $28.
[00:33.58]We looked at each other,
[00:35.01]saying nothing,
[00:36.10]but John’s eyes gleamed.
[00:37.51]Dark, woolen topcoats were popular just then with teenage boys,
[00:41.88]but could cost several hundred dollars new.
[00:44.63]This coat was even better,
[00:46.39]bearing that touch of classic elegance from a bygone era.
[00:50.54]John tried it on.
[00:52.27]The fit was perfect.
[00:53.58]John wore the coat to school the next day
[00:56.22]and came home wearing a big grin.
[00:58.40]“Ho, did the kids like your coat?”
[01:00.93]I asked.
[01:01.70]“They loved it,”
[01:02.66]he said, carefully folding it over the back of a chair
[01:05.52]and smoothing it flat.
[01:06.62]Over the next few weeks, a change came over John.
[01:10.22]Agreement replaced contrariness, quiet,
[01:13.93]reasoned discussion replaced argument.
[01:16.02]He became more judicious, more mannerly,
[01:18.74]more thoughtful, eager to please.
[01:20.39]“Good dinner, Mom,” he would say every evening.
[01:23.12]He would generously loan his younger brother his tapes
[01:26.96]and lecture him on good behavior.
[01:28.69]One day when I suggested
[01:30.56]that he might start on homework before dinner,
[01:32.84]John—a veteran procrastinator—said,
[01:35.92]“You’re right. I guess I will.”
[01:37.68]When I mentioned this incident to one of his teachers
[01:41.40]and remarked that I didn’t know what caused the changes,
[01:44.22]she said laughing.
[01:45.43]“It must be his coat!”
[01:46.97]Another teacher told him she was giving him a good mark
[01:50.02]not only because he had earned it
[01:51.90]but because she liked his coat.
[01:53.41]At the library, we ran into a friend
[01:56.48]who had not seen our children for a long time,
[01:58.87]“Could this be John?”
[02:00.85]he asked, looking up to John’s new height,
[02:03.39]assessing the cut of his coat and extending his hand,
[02:06.33]one gentleman to another.
[02:08.09]John and I both know we should never mistake a person’s clothes
[02:11.69]for the real person within them.
[02:13.33]But there is something to be said
[02:15.29]for wearing a standard of excellence for the world to see,
[02:18.26]for practising standards of excellence
[02:20.54]in thought, speech, and behaviour,
[02:22.63]and for matching what is on the inside to what is on the outside.