[00:00.00] on purpose in advance comprise motion
[00:02.65]故意的\预先\包含\以动作示意
[00:05.30]adjust think up in the meantime generally
[00:07.82]适应\想出\在此期间\通常
[00:10.34]appeal clash represent decent
[00:12.56]吸引力\冲突\代表\正派
[00:14.79]evil voluntary assume
[00:17.95]As a summer job the author used to cut Mr.Ballou's lawn.
[00:23.07]The only problem was that Mr.Ballou never seemed to have any money to pay for it
[00:29.23]But what he did have to give was something that turned out to be for more valuable.
[00:35.08]When I was fourteen,I earned money in the summer by cutting lawns,
[00:40.20]and within a few weeks I had built up a body of customers.
[00:44.75]I got to know people by the flowers they planted
[00:49.21]that I had to remember not to cut down,
[00:52.45]by the things they lost in the grass or stuck in the ground on purpose.
[00:57.70]I reached the point with most of them
[01:00.76]when I knew in advance what complaint was about to be spoken,
[01:05.46]which particular request was most important.
[01:09.51](1) And I learned something about the measure of my nieghbors
[01:13.72]by their preferred mehtod of payment:by the job,by the month-or not at all
[01:19.39]Mr.Ballou fell into the last category,and he always had a reason why.
[01:25.21]On one day he had no change for a fifty,
[01:29.29]on another he was flat out of checks,
[01:32.60]on another,he was simply out when I knocked on his door.
[01:37.33]Still,except for the money part,he was a nice enough old guy,
[01:42.27]always waving or tipping his hat when he'd see me from a distance.
[01:48.30]I figured him for a thin retirement check,maybe a work-related injury that
[01:54.34]kept him from doing his own yard work.
[01:57.50]Sure,I kept track of the total,but I didn't worry about the amount too much.
[02:03.95](2)Grass was grass,and the little that Mr.Ballou's property comprised didn't take long to trim.
[02:10.82]Then,one late affernoon in mid-July,the hottest time of the year,
[02:16.46]I was walking by his house and he opened the door,montioned me to come inside
[02:22.52]The hall was cool,shaded,and it took my eyes a minute to adjust to the dim light
[02:29.19]"I owe you,"Mr.Ballou began, "but…"
[02:33.00]I thought I'd save him the trouble of thinking up a new excuse.
[02:37.02]"No problem.Don't worry about it."
[02:40.18]"The bank made a mistake in my account,"he continued,ignoring my words.
[02:46.40]"It will be cleared up in a day or two
[02:49.33]But in the meantime
[02:51.36]I thought perhaps you could choose one or two volumes for a volumes for a down payment."
[02:57.01]He gestured toward the walls and I saw that books were stacked everywhere.
[03:02.94]It was like a library,except with no order to the arrangement.
[03:08.87]"Take your time,"Mr.Ballou encouraged.
[03:12.10]"Read,borrow,keep.Find something you like.What do you read?"
[03:17.56]"I don't know."And I didn't.I generally read what was in front of me,
[03:22.27]what I could get from the paperback stack at the drugstore,
[03:25.79]what I found at the library,magazines,the back of cereal boxes,comics.
[03:33.16]The idea of consciously seeking out a special title was new to me,
[03:39.04]but,I realized,not without appeal-so I started to look through the piles of books
[03:46.17]"You actually read all of these?"
[03:49.33]"This isn't much,"Mr,Ballou said.
[03:52.65]"This is nothing,just what I've kept,the ones worth looking at a second time
[03:59.62]"Pick for me,then."
[04:01.48]He raised his eyebrows,cocked his head,
[04:05.00]and regarded me as though measuring me for a srit.
[04:08.76]After a moment,he nodded,searched through a stack,
[04:13.39]and handed me a dark red hardbound book,fairly thick.
[04:18.64]"The Last of the Just,"I read. "By Andre Schwarz-Bart.What's it about?"
[04:26.76]"You tell me,"he said, "Next week."
[04:30.60]I started after supper,sitting outdoors on an uncomfortable kitchen chair.
[04:36.38](3)Within a few pages,the yard,the summer,disappeared,
[04:42.23]and I was plunged into the aching tragedy of the Holocaust,
[04:46.59]the extraordinary clash of good,represented by one decent man,and evil.
[04:53.51]Translated from French,the language was elegant,simple,impossible to resist.
[05:00.56]When the evening light finally failed I moved inside,read all through the night
[05:07.28]To this day,thirty years later,I vividly remember the experience.
[05:14.51]It was my first voluntary encounter with world literature,
[05:19.16]and I was stunned by the concentrated power a novel could contain.
[05:24.13]I lacked the vocabulary,however,
[05:26.92]to translate my feelings into words,so the nest week,
[05:31.39]when Mr.Balloul asked, "Well?"I only replied, "It was good."
[05:37.53]"Keep it,then,"he said."Shall I suggest another?"
[05:41.42]I nodded,and was presented with the paperback edition of Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa
[05:49.13]To make two long stories short,
[05:52.55]Mr.Ballou never paid me a cent for cutting his grass that year or the next,
[05:59.03]but for fifteen years I taught anthropology at Dartmouth College.
[06:04.46]Summer reading was not the innocent entertainment I had assumed it to be,not a light-hearted
[06:11.77]instantly forgettable escape in a hammock
[06:15.12](though I have since enjoyed many of those,too)
[06:18.59]A book,if it arrives before you at the right moment,in the proper season,
[06:24.44]at an interval in the daily business of things,
[06:28.55]will change the course of all that follows.
