自考英语阅读一00595课文WORD档.doc

1. A Days WaitE. HemingwayTEXTHe came into the room to shut the windows while we were still in bed and I saw he looked ill. He was shivering, his face was white, and he walked slowly as though it ached to move. “Whats the matter, Schatz?”“Ive got a headache.”“You better go back to bed.”“No. Im all right.”“You go to bed. Ill see you when Im dressed.”But when I came downstairs he was dressed, sitting by the fire, looking a very sick and miserable boy of nine years. When I put my hand on his forehead I know he had a fever.“You go up to bed,” I said, “youre sick.”“Im all right,” he said. When the doctor came he took the boys temperature. “what is it?” I asked him.“One hundred and two.”Downstairs, the doctor left three different medicines in different coloured capsules with instructions for giving them. One was to bring down the fever, another a purgative, the third to overcome an acid condition. The germs of influenza can only exist in an acid condition, he explained. He seemed to know all about influenza and said there was nothing to worry about if the fever did not go above on hundred and four degrees. This was a light epidemic of flu and there was no danger if you avoided pneumonia.Back in the room I wrote the boys temperature down and made a note of the time to give the various capsules.“Do you want me to read to you?”“All right. If you want to,” said the boy. His face was very white and there were dark areas under his eyes. He lay still in the bed and seemed very detached from what was going on.I read aloud from Howard Pyles Book of Privates; but I could see he was not following what I was reading.“How do you feel, Schatz?” I asked him. “Just the same, so far,” he said.I sat at the foot of the bed and read to myself while I waited for it to be time to give another capsule. It would have been natural for him to go to sleep, but when I looked up he was looking at the foot of the bed, looking very strangely.“Why dont you try to sleep? Ill wake you up for the medicine.”“Id rather stay awake.”After a while he said to me, “You dont have to stay in here with me, Papa, if it bothers you.”“It doesnt bother me.”“No, I mean you dont have to stay if its going to bother you.”I thought perhaps he was a little lightheaded and after giving him the prescribed capsules at eleven oclock I went out for a while.It was a bright, cold day, the ground covered with a sleet that had frozen so that it seemed as if all the bare trees, the bushes, the cut brush and all the grass and the bare ground had been varnished with ice. I took the young Irish setter for a little walk up the road and along a frozen creek, but it was difficult to stand or walk on the glassy surface and the red dog slipped and slithered and I fell twice, hard, once dropping my gun and having it slide away over the ice.We flushed a covey of quail under a high clay bank with overhanging brush and I killed two as they went out of sight over the top of the bank. Some of the covey lit in trees, but most of them scattered into brush piles and it was necessary to jump on the ice-coated mounds of brush several times before they would flush. Coming out while you were poised unsteadily on the icy, springy brush they made difficult shooting and I killed two, missed five, and started back pleased to have found a covey close to the house and happy there were so many left to find on another day.At the house they said the boy had refused to let anyone come into the room.“You cant come in.” he said. “You mustnt get what I have.”I went up to him and found him in exactly the position I had left him, white-faced, but with the tops of his cheeks flushed by the fever, staring still, as he had stared, at the foot of the bed.I took his temperature.“Something like a hundred.” I said. It was one hundred and two and four-tenths.“It was a hundred and two,” he said.“Who said so?”“The doctor.”“Your temperature is all right,” I said. “Its nothing to worry about.”“I dont worry,” he said, “but I cant keep from thinking.”“Dont think,” I said, “Just take it easy.”“Im taking it easy,” he said and looked straight ahead. He was evidently holding tight onto himself about something.“Take this with water.”“Do you think it will do any good?”“Of course it will.”I sat down and opened the Pirate book and commenced to read, but I could see he was not following, so I stopped.“About what time will it be before I die?”“You arent going to die. Whats the matter with?”“Oh, yes, I am. I heard him say a hundred and two.”“People dont die with a fever of one hundred and two. Thats a silly way to talk.”“I know they do. At school in France the boys told me you cant live with forty-four degrees. Ive got a hundred and two.”“You poor Schatz,” I said. “Poor old Schatz. Its like miles and kilometers. You arent going to die. Thats a different thermometer. On that thermometer thirty-seven is normal. On this kind its ninety-eight.”“Are you sure?”“Absolutely,” I said. “Its like miles and kilometers. You know, like how many kilometers we make when we do seventy miles in the car.”“Oh,” he said.But his gaze at the foot of the bed relaxed slowly. The hold over himself relaxed too, finally, and the next day it was very slack and he cried very easily at little things that were of no importance. 2. The Open WindowAfter SakiTEXT “My aunt will come down very soon, Mr. Nuttel,” said a very calm young lady of fifteen years of age; “meanwhile you must try to bear my company.”Framton Nuttel tried to say something which would please the niece now present, without annoying the aunt that was about to come. He was supposed to be going through a cure for his nerves, but he doubted whether these polite visits to a number of total strangers would help much.“I know how it will be,” his sister had said when he was preparing to go away in to country; “you will lose yourself down there and not speak to a living soul, and your nerves will be worse than ever through loneliness. I shall just give you letters of introduction to all the people I know there. Some of them, as far as I can remember, were quite nice.”Framton wondered whether Mrs. Sappleton, the lady to whom he was bring one of the letters of introduction, one of the nice ones. “Do you know many of the people round here?” asked the niece, when she thought that they had sat long enough in silence.“Hardly one,” said Framton. “My sister was staying here, you know, about four years ago, and she give me letters of introduction to some of the people here.”He made the last statement in a sad voice.“Then you know almost nothing about my aunt?” continued the calm young lady.“Only her name and address;” Framton admitted. He was wondering whether Mrs. Sappleton was married; perhaps she had been married and her husband was dead. But there was something of a man in the room.“Her great sorrow came just three years ago,” said the child. “That would be after your sisters time.”“Her sorrow?” asked Framton. Somehow, in this restful country place, sorrows seemed far away.“You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an October afternoon,” said the niece, pointing to a long window that opened like a door on to the grass outside. “It is quite warm for the time of the year,” said Framton; “but has that window got anything to do with your aunts sorrow?”“Out through that window, exactly three years ago, her husband and her two young brothers went off for their days shooting. They never came back. In crossing the country to the shooting-ground they were all three swallowed in a bog. It had been that terrible wet summer, you know, and places that were safe in other years became suddenly dangerous. Their bodies were never found. That was the worst part of it.” Here the cilds voice lost its calm sound and became almost human. “Poor aunt always thinks that they will come back someday, they and the little brown dog that was lost with them, and walk in at that window just as they used to do. That is why the window is kept open every evening till it is quite dark. Poor dear aunt, she has often told me how they went out, her husband with his white coat over his arm, and Ronnie, her youngest brother, singing a song, as he always did to annoy her, because she said it affected her nerves. Do you know, sometimes on quiet evenings like this, I almost get a strange feeling that they will all walk in through the window-“She stopped and trembled. It was a relief to Framton when the aunt came busily into the room and apologized for being late. “I hope vera has been amusing you?” she said.“She has been very interesting,” said Framton.“I hope you dont mind the open window,” said Mrs. Sappleton brightly; “my husband and brothers will be home soon from shooting, and they always come in this way. Theyve been shooting birds today near the bog, so theyll make my poor carpets dirty. All you men do that sort of thing, dont you?”She talked on cheerfully about the shooting and the scarcity of birds, and the hopes of shooting in the winter. To Framton it was all quite terrible. He made a great effort, which was only partly successful, to turn the talk on to a more cheerful subject. He was conscious that his hostess was giving him only a part of her attention, and her eyes were frequently looking past him to the open window and the grass beyond. It was certainly unfortunate that he should have paid his visit on this sorrowful day.“The doctors agree in ordering me complete rest, no excitement and no bodily exercise,” said Framton, who had the common idea that total strangers want to know the least detail of ones illnesses, their cause and cure.“No?” said Mrs. Sappleton in a tired voice. Then she suddenly brightened into attention-but not to what Framton was saying.“Here they are at last!” she cried. “Just in time for tea, and dont they look as if they were muddy up to the eyes!”Framton trembled slightly and turned towards the niece with a look intended to show sympathetic understanding. The child was looking out through the open window with fear in her eyes. With a shock Framton turned round in his seat and looked in the same direction.In the increasing darkness three figures were walking across the grass towards the window; they all carried guns under their arms, and one of them had also a white coat hung over his shoulders. A tired brown dog kept close at their heels. Noiselessly they drew near to the house, and then a young voice started to sing in the darkness.Framton wildly seized his hat and stick; he ran out through the front door and through the gate. He nearly ran into a man on a bicycle. “Here we are, my dear,” said the bearer of the white coat, coming in through the window; “fairly muddy, but most of its dry. Who was that who ran out as we came up?”“A most extraordinary man, a Mr. Nuttel,” said Mrs. Sappleton, “he could only talk about his illnesses, and ran off without a word of good-bye or apology when you arrived. One would think he had seen a ghost.”“I expect it was a dog,” said the niece calmly, “he told me he had a terrible fear of dogs, he was once hunted into a graveyard somewhere in India by a lot of wild dogs, and had to spend the night in a newly-dug grave with the creature just above him. Enough to make anyone lose their nerve.”She was very clever at making up stories quickly.3. Bringing Up ChildrenGerald Mosback Vivienne MosbackTEXTIt is generally accepted that the experiences of the child in his first years largely determine his character and later personality. Every experience teaches the child something and the effects are cumulative. “Upbringing” is normally used to refer to the treatment and training of the child within the home. This is closely related to the treatment and training of the child in school, which is usually distinguished by the term “education”. In a society such as ours, both parents and teachers are responsible for the opportunities provided for the development of the child, so that upbringing and education are interdependent.The ideals and practices of child rearing vary from culture to culture. In general, the more rural the community, the more uniform are the customs of child upbringing. In more technologically developed societies, the period childhood and adolescence tends to be extended over a long time, resulting in more opportunity for education and greater variety in character development.Early upbringing in the home is naturally affected both by the cultural pattern of the community and by the parents capabilities and their aims and depends not only on upbringing and education but also on the innate abilities of the child. Wild differences of innate intelligence and temperament exist even in children of the same family.Parents can ascertain what is normal in physical, mental and social development, by referring to some of the many books based on scientific knowledge in these areas, or less reliably, since the sample is smaller, by comparing notes with friends and relatives who have children.Intelligent parents, however, realize that the particular setting of each family is unique, and there can be no rigid general rules. They use general information only as a guide in making decisions and solving problems. For example, they will need specific suggestions for problems such as speech defects or backwardness in learning to walk or control of bodily functions. In the more general sense, though, problems of upbringing are recognized to be problems of relationships within the individual family, the first necessity being a secure emotional background with parents who are united in their attitude to their children.All parents have to solve the problems of freedom and discipline. The younger the child, the more readily the mother give in to his demands to avoid disappointing him. She knows that if his energies are not given an outlet, her childs continuing development may be warped. An example of this is the young childs need to play with the mud and sand and water. A child must be allowed to enjoy this “messy” but tactile stage of discovery before he is ready to go on to the less physical pleasures of toys and books. Similarly, throughout life, each stage depends on the satisfactory completion of the one before.Where one stage of child development has been left out, or not sufficiently experienced, the child may have to go back and capture the experience of it. A good home makes this possible-for example by providing the opportunity for the child to play with a clockwork car or toy railway train up to any age if he still needs to do so. This principle, in fact, underlies all psychological treatment of children in difficulties with their development, and is the basis of work in child clinics. The beginnings of discipline are in the nursery.