A Payment Greater Than Money
发布时间:2011-08-15 来源:文档文库
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UNIT 1 Text A
PRE-READING TASK
Exercise 1 The passage you are going to read is entitled "A Payment Greater Than Money." Try to answer the questions before reading the passage.
1. Which of the following do you think is more important? Make your choice and give your reason. A. Money B. Love C. Friendship D. Work 2. Guess what kind of payment might be greater than money according to the title of the passage.
Now read the passage and compare the writer's view with yours.
A Payment Greater Than Money
1. When I was 14, I earned money in the summer by mowing lawns, and I got to know people by the flowers I had to remember not to cut down, by the things stuck in the ground on purpose or by the things lost in the grass. I also learned something about my neighbors in Louisville, Ky., by their preferred method of payment: by the job, the month ——or not at all. 2. Mr Ballou fell into the last category, and he always had a reason. One day he had nothing smaller than a fifty. On another he was flat-out of checks; on another he was simply not home when I knocked on his door. Still, except for the money, he was a nice enough old guy, always waving or tipping his hat when he'd seen me from a distance. I figured him for a thin retirement check, maybe an injury that kept him from doing his own yardwork. I kept a running total, but didn't worry about the amount too much. Grass was grass, and the little that was Mr Ballou's didn't take long to trim. 3. Then one late afternoon in mid-July I was walking by his house, and he motioned me to come inside. The hall was cool, shaded, and it took my eyes a minute to adjust to the muted light. 4. "I owe you," Mr Ballou began, "but…"
5. I thought I'd save him the trouble of thinking up a new excuse. "No problem. Don't worry about it." 6. "The bank made a mistake in my account," he continued, ignoring my words. "It will be cleared up in a day or two. In the meantime I thought perhaps you could choose one or two volumes for a down payment."
7. He gestured toward the walls, and I saw books stacked everywhere. It was like a library, except with no order to the arrangement. 8. "Take your time," Mr Ballou encouraged. "Read, borrow, keep. Find something you like. What do you read?" 9. "I don't know." And I didn't. I generally read what I could get from the paperback rack at the drugstore or what I found at home —— magazines, the backs of cereal boxes, comics. The idea of consciously seeking out a special title was new to me, but not without appeal——so I browsed through the piles of books and asked, "You actually read all of these?" 10. Mr Ballou nodded. "This is just what I've kept, the ones worth looking at a second time." 11. "Pick for me then." 12. He raised his eyebrows, cocked his head, regarded me appraisingly as though measuring me for a suit. After a moment, he searched through a stack and handed me a dark-red book, fairly thick. 13. "The Last of the Just," I read. "By Andre Schwarz-Bart. What's it about?" 14. "You tell me," he said. "Next week." 15. I started after supper, sitting outdoors on an uncomfortable kitchen chair. Within a few pages, the yard, the summer, disappeared, and I was plunged into the aching tragedy of the Holocaust, the extraordinary clash of good, represented by one decent man, and evil. The language was elegant, simple, overwhelming. When the evening light finally failed, I moved inside and read all through the night. 16. To this day, 35 years later, I vividly remember the experience. I was astonished by the great power a novel could contain. I lacked the vocabulary to translate my feelings into words, so the next week, when Mr Ballou asked, "Well?" I replied, "It was good." 17. "Keep it then," he said. "Shall I suggest another?" 18. I nodded, and was presented with Margaret Mead's classic study in anthropology, coming of Age in Samoa. 19. To make two long stories short, Mr Ballou never paid me a dime for cutting his grass that year or the next, but, eventually, I would teach anthropology at Dartmouth College. And I learned that summer that reading was not the innocent pastime I had assumed it to be, not a breezy, instantly forgettable escape in a hammock (though I've enjoyed