大学英语综合教程 第三册 5textA

[05:01.79]at the table about books read most recently and new words learned.My love of books never diminished
[05:10.57]and later led me toward writing books myself.So many times I have felt a sadness
[05:17.15]when exposed to modern children so immersed in the electronic media
[05:22.74]that they have little or no awareness of the marvelous world to be discovered in books.
[05:29.20]14 I reminded the Reverend Nelson how each morning he would open our little country town's grammar school
[05:35.99]with a prayer over his assembled students.I told him that whatever positive things
[05:43.14]I had done since had been influenced at least in part by his morning school prayers.
[05:50.48]15 In the letter to my grandmother,I reminded her of a dozen ways she used to teach me
[05:57.46]how to tell the truth,to share,and to be forgiving and considerate of others.
[06:04.30]I thanked her for the years of eating her good cooking,the equal of which I had not found since.
[06:11.59]Finally,I thanked her simply for having sprinkled my life with stardust.
[06:17.84]16 Before I slept,my three letters went into our ship's office mail sack.They got mailed
[06:24.94]when we reached Tulagi Island.
[06:28.60]17 We unloaded cargo,reloaded with something else,then again we put to sea in the routine familiar to us,
[06:36.96]and as the days became weeks,my little personal experience receded.Sometimes,when we were at sea,
[06:45.26]a mail ship would rendezvous and bring us mail from home,which,of course,we accorded topmost priority.
[06:53.39]18 Every time the ship's loudspeaker rasped,"Attention!Mail call!?"
[06:59.16]two hundred-odd shipmates came pounding up on deck and clustered about the two seamen,
[07:05.80]standing by those precious bulging gray sacks.They were alternately pulling out fistfuls of letters
[07:13.50]and barking successive names of sailors who were,in turn,shouting back "Here ! Here! "amid the pushing.
[07:21.36]19 One "mail call" brought me responsed from Grandma,Dad,and the Reverend Nelson—and my reading of their letters
[07:30.01]left me not only astonished but more humbled than before.
[07:35.39]20 Rather than saying they would forgive that I hadn't previously thanked them,instead,for Pete's sake,
[07:42.55]they were thanking me--for having remembered,for having considered they had done anything so exceptional.
[07:50.20]21 Always the college professor,my dad had carefully avoided anything he considered too sentimental,
[07:57.20]so I knew how moved he was to write me that,after having helped educate many young people,
[08:04.70]he now felt that his best results included his own son.
[08:10.03]22 The Reverend Nelson wrote that his decades as a "simple,old-fashioned principal"
[08:16.74]had ended with schools undergoing such swift changes that he had retired in self-doubt.
[08:23.20]“I heard more of what I had done wrong than what I did right,"he said,
[08:28.73]adding that my letter had brought him welcome reassurance that his career had been appreciated.
[08:35.34]23 A glance at Grandma's familiar handwriting brought back in a flash memories of standing
[08:43.44]alongside her white rocking chair,watching her"settin' down" some letter to relatives.
[08:50.94]Character by character,Grandma would slowly accomplish one word,then the next,
[08:57.78]so that a finished page would consume hours.I wept over the page representing my Grandma's recent hours
[09:06.09]invested in expressing her loving gratefulness to me--whom she used to diaper!
[09:12.91]24 Much later,retired from the Coast Guard and trying to make a living as a writer,
[09:19.23]I never forgot how those three"thank you"letters gave me an insight into how most human beings
[09:27.20]go about longing in secret for more of their fellows to express appreciation for their efforts.
[09:34.77]25 Now,approaching another Thanksgiving,I have asked myself what will I wish for all who are reading this,
[09:44.05]for our nation,indeed for our whole world?asince,quoting a good and wise friend of mine,
[09:51.54]“In the end we are mightly and merely people,each with similar needs." First,I wish for us,of course,
[10:01.44]the simple common sense to achieve world peace,that being paramount for the very survival of our kind.
[10:09.49]26 And there is something else I wish?aso strongly that I have had this line printed
[10:16.31]across the bottom of all my stationery: “Find the good—and praise it.”