评论
打印
The words themselves fascinated me; but I took no conscious account of what I read. My mind must, however, have been very impressionable at that period, for it retained many words and whole sentences, to the meaning of which I had not the faintest clue; and afterward, when I began to talk and write, these words and sentences would flash out quite naturally, so that my friends wondered at the richness of my vocabulary. I must have read parts of many books (in those early days I think I never read any one book through) and a great deal of poetry in this uncomprehending way, until I discovered "Little Lord Fauntleroy," which was the first book of any consequence I read understandingly.
可以说，令我着迷的正是那些词语本身，而书的内容反倒不在我的考虑之列。即使这样，我对知识的感知能力却十分强大，因为我的很多词汇和句式都是在那时掌握的。虽然对那些词句的含义不甚明了，但是在后来，当我开始学习说话和写字的时候，这些词句竟然自然而然地脱口而出，以至于朋友们对我丰富的词汇量大为惊讶。正是以这种不知不觉的方式，我阅读了大量的书籍（当然，在早期的阅读中，我从来没有把一本书完整地读完）和诗歌，直到我发现《小爵爷方特勒罗伊》——这是我完全读懂的第一本书——我的阅读生涯才算正式开始。
One day my teacher found me in a corner of the library poring over the pages of "The Scarlet Letter." I was then about eight years old. I remember she asked me if I liked little Pearl, and explained some of the words that had puzzled me. Then she told me that she had a beautiful story about a little boy which she was sure I should like better than "The Scarlet Letter." The name of the story was "Little Lord Fauntleroy," and she promised to read it to me the following summer. But we did not begin the story until August; the first few weeks of my stay at the seashore were so full of discoveries and excitement that I forgot the very existence of books. Then my teacher went to visit some friends in Boston, leaving me for a short time.
有一天，在图书馆的一个角落里，我的老师发现我正面对着《红字》的书页若有所思。那时我大约八岁。我记得她问我是否喜欢小珀尔，而且还向我解释了一些晦涩难懂的词句。随后，她对我说她有一本讲述一个小男孩经历的故事书，她保证那本书比《红字》有趣得多，我也一定会喜欢的。那本书的名字叫《小爵爷方特勒罗伊》，她答应接下来的夏天就读给我听。可是一直到了8月份，我们还没有开始看这本书；因为在海边的最初几个星期里，我完全沉浸在猎奇的兴奋之中，以至于忘记了看书这回事。当时我的老师要去波士顿探望一些友人，所以暂时离开了我。
When she returned almost the first thing we did was to begin the story of "Little Lord Fauntleroy." I recall distinctly the time and place when we read the first chapters of the fascinating child's story.
当老师返回时，我们所做的第一件事就是开始阅读《小爵爷方特勒罗伊》。我清楚地记得我们读第一章时的时间和地点。
