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CE第四册课文文本
本帖最后由 小山 于 2009-10-19 15:43 编辑
Unit 1
Two college-age boys, unaware that making money usually involves hard work, are tempted by an advertisement that promises them an easy way to earn a lot of money.
The boys soon learn that if something seems to good to be true, it probably is.
BIG BUCKS THE EASY WAY
"You ought to look into this," I suggested to our two college-age sons.
"It might be a way to avoid the indignity of having to ask for money all the time."
I handed them some magazines in a plastic bag someone had hung on our doorknob.
A message printed on the bag offered leisurely, lucrative work ("Big Bucks the Easy Way!") of delivering more such bags.
"I don't mind the indignity," the older one answered.
"I can live with it," his brother agreed.
"But it pains me," I said,"to find that you both have been panhandling so long that it no longer embarrasses you."
The boys said they would look into the magazine-delivery thing.
Pleased, I left town on a business trip.
By midnight I was comfortably settled in a hotel room far from home.
The phone rang. It was my wife.
She wanted to know how my day had gone.
"Great!" I enthused. "How was your day?" I inquired.
"Super!" She snapped.
"Just super!
And it's only getting started.
Another truck just pulled up out front."
"Another truck?"
"The third one this evening.
The first delivered four thousand Montgomery Wards.
The second brought four thousand Sears, Roebucks.
I don't know what this one has, but I'm sure it will be four thousand of something.
Since you are responsible, I thought you might like to know what's happening.
What I was being blamed for, it turned out, was a newspaper strike which made it necessary to hand-deliver the advertising inserts that normally are included with the Sunday paper.
The company had promised our boys $600 for delivering these inserts to 4,000 houses by Sunday morning.
"Piece of cake!"
our older college son had shouted.
"Six hundred bucks!"
His brother had echoed,
"And we can do the job in two hours!"
"Both the Sears and Ward ads are four newspaper-size pages," my wife informed me.
"There are thirty-two thousand pages of advertising on our porch.
Even as we speak, two big guys are carrying armloads of paper up the walk.
What do we do about all this?"
"Just tell the boys to get busy," I instructed. "They're college men.
They'll do what they have to do."
At noon the following day I returned to the hotel and found an urgent message to telephone my wife.
Her voice was unnaturally high and quavering.
There had been several more truckloads of ad inserts.
"They're for department stores, dime stores, drugstores, grocery stores, auto stores and so on. Some are whole magazine sections.
We have hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of pages of advertising here!
They are crammed wall-to-wall all through the house in stacks taller than your oldest son.
There's only enough room for people to walk in, take one each of the eleven inserts, roll them together, slip a rubber band around them and slide them into a plastic bag.
We have enough plastic bags to supply every takeout restaurant in America!"
Her voice kept rising, as if working its way out of the range of the human ear.
"All this must be delivered by seven o'clock Sunday morning."
"Well, you had better get those guys banding and sliding as fast as they can, and I'll talk to you later. Got a lunch date.
When I returned, there was another urgent call from my wife.
"Did you have a nice lunch?"
she asked sweetly.
I had had a marvelous steak, but knew better by now than to say so.
"Awful," I reported.
"Some sort of sour fish. Eel, I think."
"Good.
Your college sons have hired their younger brothers and sisters and a couple of neighborhood children to help for five dollars each.
Assembly lines have been set up. In the language of diplomacy, there is 'movement.'"
"That's encouraging."
"No, it's not," she corrected. "It's very discouraging.
They're been as it for hours.
Plastic bags have been filled and piled to the ceiling, but all this hasn't made a dent, not a dent, in the situation!
It's almost as if the inserts keep reproducing themselves!"
"Another thing," she continued.
"Your college sons must learn that one does not get the best out of employees by threatening them with bodily harm.
Obtaining an audience with son NO. 1, I snarled, "I'll kill you if threaten one of those kids again!
Idiot!
You should be offering a bonus of a dollar every hour to the worker who fills the most bags.
"But that would cut into our profit," he suggested.
"There won't be any profit unless those kids enable you to make all the deliveries on time.
If they don't, you two will have to remove all that paper by yourselves.
And there will be no eating or sleeping until it is removed."
There was a short, thoughtful silence.
Then he said, "Dad, you have just worked a profound change in my personality."
"Do it!"
"Yes, sir!"
By the following evening, there was much for my wife to report.
The bonus program had worked until someone demanded to see the color of cash.
Then some activist on the work force claimed that the workers had no business settling for $5 and a few competitive bonuses while the bossed collected hundreds of dollars each.
The organizer had declared that all the workers were entitled to $5 per hour!
They would not work another minute until the bosses agreed.
The strike lasted less than two hours.
In mediation, the parties agreed on $2 per hour.
Gradually, the huge stacks began to shrink.
As it turned out, the job was completed three hours before Sunday's 7 a.m. deadline.
By the time I arrived home, the boys had already settled their accounts: $150 in labor costs, $40 for gasoline, and a like amount for gifts—boxes of candy for saintly neighbors who had volunteered station wagons and help in delivery and a dozen roses for their mother.
This left them with $185 each — about two-thirds the minimum wage for the 91 hours they worked.
Still, it was "enough", as one of them put it, to enable them to "avoid indignity" for quite a while.
All went well for some weeks.
Then one Saturday morning my attention was drawn to the odd goings-on of our two youngest sons.
They kept carrying carton after carton from various corners of the house out the front door to curbside.
I assumed their mother had enlisted them to remove junk for a trash pickup.
Then I overheard them discussing finances.
"Geez, we're going to make a lot of money!"
"We're going to be rich!"
Investigation revealed that they were offering " for sale or rent" our entire library.
"No! No!" I cried. "You can't sell our books!"
"Geez, Dad, we thought you were done with them!"
"You're never 'done' with books," I tried to explain.
"Sure you are. You read them, and you're done with them. That's it.
Then you might as well make a little money from them.
We wanted to avoid the indignity of having to ask you for……"
Unit 2
Is there anything we can learn from deer?
During the "energy crisis" of 1973-1974 the writer of this essay was living in northern Minnesota and was able to observe how deer survive when winter arrives.
The lessons he learns about the way deer conserve energy turn out applicable to our everyday life.
DEER AND THE ENERGY CYCLE
Some persons say that love makes the world go round.
Others of a less romantic and more practical turn of mind say that it isn't love; it's money.
But the truth is that it is energy that makes the world go round.
Energy is the currency of the ecological system and life becomes possible only when food is converted into energy,
which in turn is used to seek more food to grow, to reproduce and to survive.
On this cycle all life depends.
It is fairly well known that wild animals survive from year to year by eating as much as they can during times of plenty, the summer and fall,
storing the excess, usually in the form of fat, and then using these reserves of fat to survive during the hard times in winter when food is scarce.
But, it is probably less well known that even with their stored fat, wild animals spend less energy to live in winter than in summer.
A good case in point is the whiter-tailed deer.
Like most wildlife, deer reproduce, grow, and store fat in the summer and fall when there is plenty of nutritious food available.
A physically mature female deer in good condition who has conceived in November and given birth to two fawns during the end of May or first part of June,
must search for food for the necessary energy not only to meet her body's needs but also to produce milk for her fawns.
The best milk production occurs at the same time that new plant growth is available.
This is good timing, because milk production is an energy consuming process — it requires a lot of food.
The cost can not be met unless the region has ample food resources.
As the summer progresses and the fawns grow, they become less dependent on their mother's milk and more dependent on growing plants as food sources.
The adult males spend the summer growing antlers and getting fat.
Both males and females continue to eat high quality food in the fall in order to deposit body fat for the winter.
In the case of does and fawns, a great deal of energy is expended either in milk production or in growing, and fat is not accumulated as quickly as it is in full grown males.
Fat reserves are like bank accounts to be drawn on in the winter when food supplies are limited and sometimes difficult to reach because of deep snow.
As fall turns into winter, other changes take place.
Fawns lose their spotted coat.
Hair on all the deer becomes darker and thicker.
The change in the hair coats is usually complete by September and maximum hair depths are reached by November or December when the weather becomes cold.
But in addition, nature provides a further safeguard to help deer survive the winter—an internal physiological response which lowers their metabolism, or rate of bodily functioning, and hence slows down their expenditure of energy.
The deer become somewhat slow and drowsy.
The heart rate drops.
Animals that hibernate practice energy conservation to a greater extreme than deer do.
Although deer don't hibernate, they do the same thing with their seasonal rhythms in metabolism.
Deer spend more energy and store fat in the summer and fall when food is abundant, and spend less energy and use stored fat in the winter when food is less available.
When the "energy crisis" first came in 1973-1974, I was living with my family in a cabin on the edge of an area where deer spend the winter in northern Minnesota,
observing the deer as their behavior changed from more activity in summer and fall to less as winter progressed, followed by an increase again in the spring as the snow melted.
It was interesting and rather amusing to listen to the advice given on the radio: " Drive only when necessary," we were told.
"Put on more clothes to stay warm, and turn the thermostat on your furnace down."
Meanwhile we watched the deer reduce their activity, grow a winter coat of hair, and reduce their metabolism as they have for thousands of years.
It is biologically reasonable for deer to reduce their cost of living to increase their chance of surviving in winter.
Not every winter is critical for deer of course.
If the winter has light snow, survival and productivity next spring will be high.
But if deep snows come and the weather remains cold for several weeks, then the deer must spend more energy to move about,
food will be harder to find, and they must then depend more on their fat reserves to pull them through.
If such conditions go on for too long some will die, and only the largest and strongest are likely to survive.
That is a fundamental rule of life for wild, free wandering animals such as deer.
Yes, life—and death, too -- is a cycle that goes round and round, and when animals die their bodies become food for other life forms to use by converting them into energy.
And the cycle continues.
Unit 3
Can you prove that the earth is round?
Go ahead and try!
Will you rely on your senses or will you have to draw on the opinions of experts?
WHY DO WE BELIEVE THAT THE EARTH IS ROUND?
Somewhere or other — I think it is in the preface to saint Joan — Bernard Shaw remarks that we are more gullible and superstitious today than we were in the Middle Ages,
and as an example of modern credulity he cites the widespread belief that the earth is round.
The average man, says Shaw, can advance not a single reason for thinking that the earth is round.
He merely swallows this theory because there is something about it that appeals to the twentieth-century mentality.
Now, Shaw is exaggerating, but there is something in what he says, and the question is worth following up, for the sake of the light it throws on modern knowledge.
Just why do we believe that the earth is round?
I am not speaking of the few thousand astronomers, geographers and so forth who could give ocular proof, or have a theoretical knowledge of the proof, but of the ordinary newspaper-reading citizen, such as you or me.
As for the Flat Earth theory, I believe I could refute it.
If you stand by the seashore on a clear day, you can see the masts and funnels of invisible ships passing along the horizon.
This phenomenon can only be explained by assuming that the earth's surface is curved.
But it does not follow that the earth is spherical.
Imagine another theory called the Oval Earth theory, which claims that the earth is shaped like an egg.
What can I say against it?
Against the Oval Earth man, the first card I can play is the analogy of the sun and moon.
The Oval Earth man promptly answers that I don't know, by my own observation, that those bodies are spherical.
I only know that they are round, and they may perfectly well be flat discs.
I have no answer to that one.
Besides, he goes on, what reason have I for thinking that the earth must be the same shape as the sun and moon?
I can't answer that one either.
My second card is the earth's shadow: When cast on the moon during eclipses, it appears to be the shadow of a round object.
But how do I know, demands the Oval Earth man, that eclipses of the moon are caused by the shadow of the earth?
The answer is that I don't know, but have taken this piece of information blindly from newspaper articles and science booklets.
Defeated in the minor exchanges, I now play my queen of trumps: the opinion of the experts.
The Astronomer Royal, who ought to know, tells me that the earth is round.
The Oval Earth man covers the queen with his king.
Have I tested the Astronomer Royal's statement, and would I even know a way of testing it?
Here I bring out my ace.
Yes, I do know one test.
The astronomers can foretell eclipses, and this suggests that their opinions about the solar system are pretty sound.
I am, to my delight, justified in accepting their say-so about the shape of the earth.
If the Oval Earth man answers — what I believe is true — that the ancient Egyptians, who thought the sun goes round the earth, could also predict eclipses, then bang goes my ace.
I have only one card left: navigation.
People can sail ships round the world, and reach the places they aim at, by calculations which assume that the earth is spherical.
I believe that finishes the Oval Earth man, though even then he may possibly have some kind of counter.
It will be seen that my reasons for thinking that the earth is round are rather precarious ones.
Yet this is an exceptionally elementary piece of information.
On most other questions I should have to fall back on the expert much earlier, and would be less able to test his pronouncements.
And much the greater part of our knowledge is at this level.
It does not rest on reasoning or on experiment, but on authority.
And how can it be otherwise, when the range of knowledge is so vast that the expert himself is an ignoramus as soon as he strays away from his own specialty?
Most people, if asked to prove that the earth is round, would not even bother to produce the rather weak arguments I have outlined above.
They would start off by saying that "everyone knows" the earth to be round, and if pressed further, would become angry.
In a way Shaw is right.
This is a credulous age, and the burden of knowledge which we now have to carry is partly responsible.
Unit 4
Jim Thorpe, an American Indian, is generally accepted as the greatest all-round athlete of the first half of the 20th century.
Yet the man, who brought glory to his nation, had a heartbreaking life.
What caused his sadness and poverty?
JIM THORPE Steve Gelman
The railroad station was jammed.
Students from Lafayette College were crowding onto the train platform eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Carlisle Indian school's track and field squad.
No one would have believed it a few months earlier.
A school that nobody had heard of was suddenly beating big, famous colleges in track meets.
Surely these Carlisle athletes would come charging off the train, one after another, like a Marine battalion.
The train finally arrived and two young men — one big and broad, the other small and slight — stepped onto the platform.
"Where's the track team?" a Lafayette student asked.
"This is the team," replied the big fellow.
"Just the two of you?"
"Nope, just me," said the big fellow.
"This little guy is the manager."
The Lafayette students shook their heads in wonder.
Somebody must be playing a joke on them.
If this big fellow was the whole Carlisle track team, he would be competing against an entire Lafayette squad.
He did.
He ran sprints, he ran hurdles, he ran distance races.
He high-jumped, he broad-jumped.
He threw the javelin and the shot.
Finishing first in eight events, the big fellow beat the whole Lafayette team.
The big fellow was Jim Thorpe, the greatest American athlete of modern times.
He was born on May 28,1888, in a two-room farmhouse near Prague, Oklahoma.
His parents were members of the Sac and Fox Indian tribe and he was a direct descendant of the famous warrior chief, Black Hawk.
As a Sac and Fox, Jim had the colorful Indian name Wa-Tho-Huck, which, translated, means Bright Path.
But being born an Indian, his path was not so bright.
Although he had the opportunity to hunt and fish with great Indian outdoorsmen, he was denied opportunity in other ways.
The United States government controlled the lives of American Indians and, unlike other people, Indians did not automatically become citizens.
It was almost impossible for an Indian to gain even a fair education and extremely difficult, as a result, for an Indian to rise high in life.
Young Bright Path seemed destined to spend his life in the Oklahoma farmland.
But when he was in his teens, the government gave him the chance to attend the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania.
Soon Carlisle was racing along its own bright path to athletic prominence.
In whatever sport Jim Thorpe played, he excelled.
He was a star in baseball, track and field, wrestling, lacrosse, basketball and football.
He was so good in football, in fact, that most other small schools refused to play Carlisle.
The Indian school's football schedule soon listed such major powers of the early twentieth century as Pittsburgh, Harvard, Pennsylvania, Penn State and Army.
Thorpe was a halfback.
He was six feet one inch tall, weighed 185 pounds and had incredible speed and power.
He built upon these natural gifts daily.
He would watch a coach or player demonstrate a difficult maneuver, then he would try it himself.
Inevitably, he would master the maneuver within minutes.
During every game, opponents piled on Thorpe, trampled him, kicked him and punched him, trying to put him out of action.
They were never successful.
Years later someone asked him if he had ever been hurt on the field.
"Hurt?" Thorpe said.
"How could anyone get hurt playing football?"
But Jim never played his best when he felt he would have no fun playing.
"What's the fun of playing in the rain?" he once said.
And his Carlisle coach, Pop Warner, once said, "There's no doubt that Jim had more talent than anybody who ever played football, but you could never tell when he felt like giving his best."
Football, though, did not provide Thorpe with his finest hour.
He was selected for the United States Olympic track team in 1912, and went to Sweden with the team for the Games.
On the ship, while the other athletes limbered up, Thorpe slept in his bunk.
In Sweden, while other athletes trained, Thorpe relaxed in a hammock.
He never strained when he didn't feel it necessary.
Thorpe came out of his hammock when the Games began, to take part in the two most demanding Olympic events.
He entered the pentathlon competition, a test of skill in five events: 200-meter run, 1500-meter run, broad jump, discus and javelin;
and the decathlon competition, a series of ten events: 100-meter run, 400-meter run, 1500-meter run, high hurdles, broad jump, high jump, pole vault, discus, javelin and shot put.
Though most athletes were utterly exhausted by the decathlon alone, Thorpe breezed through both events, his dark hair flopping, his smile flashing, his muscled body gliding along the track.
He finished first in both the pentathlon and decathlon, one of the great feats in Olympic history.
"You sir," King Gustav V of Sweden told Thorpe as he presented him with two gold medals, "are the greatest athlete in the world."
And William Howard Taft, the President of the United States, said, "Jim Thorpe is the highest type of citizen."
King Gustav V was correct, but President Taft was not.
Though Jim Thorpe had brought great glory to his nation, though thousands of people cheered him upon his return to the United States and attended banquets and a New York parade in his honor, he was not a citizen.
He did not become one until 1916.
Even then, it took a special government ruling because he was an Indian.
Jim Thorpe was a hero after the Olympics and a sad, bewildered man not too much later.
Someone discovered that two years before the Olympics he had been paid a few dollars to play semiprofessional baseball.
Though many amateur athletes had played for pay under false names, Thorpe had used his own name.
As a result, he was not technically an amateur when he competed at Stockholm as all Olympic athletes must be.
His Olympic medals and trophies were taken away from him and given to the runners-up.
After this heartbreaking experience, Thorpe turned to professional sports.
He played major league baseball for six years and did fairly well.
Then he played professional football for six years with spectacular success.
His last professional football season was in 1926.
After that, his youthful indifference to studies and his unwillingness to think of a nonsports career caught up with him.
He had trouble finding a job, and his friends deserted him.
He periodically asked for, but never was given back, his Olympic prizes.
From 1926 until his death in 1953, he lived a poor, lonely, unhappy life.
But in 1950 the Associated Press held a poll to determine the outstanding athlete of the half-century.
Despite his loss of the Olympic gold medals and a sad decline in fortune during his later years, Thorpe was almost unanimously chosen the greatest athlete of modern times.
Unit 5
Is it ever proper for a medical doctor to lie to his patient?
Should he tell a patient he is dying?
These questions seem simple enough, but it is not so simple to give a satisfactory answer to them.
Now a new light is shed on them.
TO LIE OR NOT TOLIE—THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA
Should doctors ever lie to benefit their patients -- to speed recovery or to conceal the approach of death?
In medicine as in law, government, and other lines of work, the requirements of honesty often seem dwarfed by greater needs:
the need to shelter from brutal news or to uphold a promise of secrecy; to expose corruption or to promote the public interest.
What should doctors say, for example, to a 46-year-old man coming in for a routine physical checkup just before going on vacation with his family who,
though he feels in perfect health, is found to have a form of cancer that will cause him to die within six months?
Is it best to tell him the truth?
If he asks, should the doctors deny that he is ill, or minimize the gravity of the illness?
Should they at least conceal the truth until after the family vacation?
Doctors confront such choices often and urgently.
At times, they see important reasons to lie for the patient's own sake; in their eyes, such lies differ sharply from self-serving ones.
Studies show that most doctors sincerely believe that the seriously ill do not want to know the truth about their condition,
and that informing them risks destroying their hope, so that they may recover more slowly, or deteriorate faster, perhaps even commit suicide.
As one physician wrote: "Ours is a profession which traditionally has been guided by a precept that transcends the virtue of uttering the truth for truth's sake, and that is 'as far as possible do no harm.'"
Armed with such a precept, a number of doctors may slip into deceptive practices that they assume will "do no harm" and may well help their patients.
They may prescribe innumerable placebos, sound more encouraging than the facts warrant, and distort grave news, especially to the incurably ill and the dying.
But the illusory nature of the benefits such deception is meant to produce is now coming to be documented.
Studies show that, contrary to the belief of many physicians, an overwhelming majority of patients do want to be told the truth, even about grave illness, and feel betrayed when they learn that they have been misled.
We are also learning that truthful information, humanely conveyed, helps patients cope with illness: helps them tolerate pain better, need less medicine, and even recover faster after surgery.
Not only do lies not provide the "help" hoped for by advocates of benevolent deception;
they invade the autonomy of patients and render them unable to make informed choices concerning their own health, including the choice of whether to be a patient in the first place.
We are becoming increasingly aware of all that can befall patients in the course of their illness when information is denied or distorted.
Dying patients especially -- who are easiest to mislead and most often kept in the dark -- can then not make decisions about the end of life:
about whether or not they should enter a hospital, or have surgery;
about where and with whom they should spend their remaining time; about how they should bring their affairs to a close and take leave.
Lies also do harm to those who tell them: harm to their integrity and, in the long run, to their credibility.
Lies hurt their colleagues as well.
The suspicion of deceit undercuts the work of the many doctors who are scrupulously honest with their patients;
it contributes to the spiral of lawsuits and of "defensive medicine," and thus it injures, in turn, the entire medical profession.
Sharp conflicts are now arising.
Patients are learning to press for answers.
Patients' bills of rights require that they be informed about their condition and about alternatives for treatment.
Many doctors go to great lengths to provide such information.
Yet even in hospitals with the most eloquent bill of rights, believers in benevolent deception continue their age-old practices.
Colleagues may disapprove but refrain from objecting.
Nurses may bitterly resent having to take part, day after day, in deceiving patients, but feel powerless to take a stand.
There is urgent need to debate this issue openly.
Not only in medicine, but in other professions as well, practitioners may find themselves repeatedly in difficulty where serious consequences seem avoidable only through deception.
Yet the public has every reason to be wary of professional deception, for such practices are peculiarly likely to become deeply rooted, to spread, and to erode trust.
Neither in medicine, nor in law, government, or the social sciences can there be comfort in the old saying, "What you don't know can't hurt you."
Unit 6
"Don't ever mark in a book!" Thousands of teachers, librarians and parents have so advised.
But Mortimer Adler disagrees.
He thinks so long as you own the book and needn't preserve its physical appearance, marking it properly will grant you the ownership of the book in the true sense of the word and make it a part of yourself.
HOW TO MARK A BOOK
You know you have to read(磁带音有误) "between the lines" to get the most out of anything.
I want to persuade you to do something equally important in the course of your reading.
I want to persuade you to "write between the lines."
Unless you do, you are not likely to do the most efficient kind of reading.
You shouldn't mark up a book which isn't yours.
Librarians (or your friends) who lend you books expect you to keep them clean, and you should.
If you decide that I am right about the usefulness of marking books, you will have to buy them.
There are two ways in which one can own a book.
The first is the property right you establish by paying for it, just as you pay for clothes and furniture.
But this act of purchase is only the prelude to possession.
Full ownership comes only when you have made it a part of yourself, and the best way to make yourself a part of it is by writing in it.
An illustration may make the point clear.
You buy a beefsteak and transfer it from the butcher's icebox to your own.
But you do not own the beefsteak in the most important sense until you consume it and get it into your bloodstream.
I am arguing that books, too, must be absorbed in your bloodstream to do you any good.
There are three kinds of book owners.
The first has all the standard sets and best-sellers -- unread, untouched.
(This individual owns wood-pulp and ink, not books.)
The second has a great many books -- a few of them read through, most of them dipped into, but all of them as clean and shiny as the day they were bought.
(This person would probably like to make books his own, but is restrained by a false respect for their physical appearance.)
The third has a few books or many -- every one of them dogeared and dilapidated, shaken and loosened by continual use, marked and scribbled in from front to back. (This man owns books.)
Is it false respect, you may ask, to preserve intact a beautifully printed book, an elegantly bound edition?
Of course not.
I'd no more scribble all over a first edition of "Paradise Lost" than I'd give my baby a set of crayons and an original Rembrandt!
I wouldn't mark up a painting or a statue.
Its soul, so to speak, is inseparable from its body.
And the beauty of a rare edition or of a richly manufactured volume is like that of a painting or a statue.
If your respect for magnificent binding or printing gets in the way, buy yourself a cheap edition and pay your respects to the author.
Why is marking up a book indispensable to reading?
First, it keeps you awake.
(And I don't mean merely conscious; I mean wide awake.)
In the second place, reading, if it is active, is thinking, and thinking tends to express itself in words, spoken or written.
The marked book is usually the thought-through book.
Finally, writing helps you remember the thoughts you had, or the thoughts the author expressed.
Let me develop these three points.
If reading is to accomplish anything more than passing time, it must be active.
You can't let your eyes glide across the lines of a book and come up with an understanding of what you have read.
Now an ordinary piece of light fiction, like, say, "Gone with the Wind," doesn't require the most active kind of reading.
The books you read for pleasure can be read in a state of relaxation, and nothing is lost.
But a great book, rich in ideas and beauty, a book that raises and tries to answer great fundamental questions, demands the most active reading of which you are capable.
You don't absorb the ideas of John Dewey the way you absorb the crooning of Mr. Vallee.
You have to reach for them.
That you cannot do while you're asleep.
If, when you've finished reading a book, the pages are filled with your notes, you know that you read actively.
The most famous active reader of great books I know is President Hutchins, of the University of Chicago.
He also has the hardest schedule of business activities of any man I know.
He invariably reads with a pencil, and sometimes, when he picks up a book and pencil in the evening,
he finds himself, instead of making intelligent notes, drawing what he calls " caviar factories" on the margins.
When that happens, he puts the book down.
He knows he's too tired to read, and he's just wasting time.
But, you may ask, why is writing necessary?
Well, the physical act of writing, with your own hand, brings words and sentences more sharply before your mind and preserves them better in your memory.
To set down your reaction to important words and sentences you have read, and the questions they have raised in your mind, is to preserve those reactions and sharpen those questions.
You can pick up the book the following week or year, and there are all your points of agreement, disagreement, doubt and inquiry.
It's like resuming an interrupted conversation with the advantage of being able to pick up where you left off.
And that is exactly what reading a book should be: a conversation between you and the author.
Presumably he knows more about the subject than you do; naturally you'll have the proper humility as you approach him.
But don't let anybody tell you that a reader is supposed to be solely on the receiving end.
Understanding is a two-way operation; learning doesn't consist in being an empty receptacle.
The learner has to question himself and question the teacher.
He even has to argue with the teacher, once he understands what the teacher is saying.
And marking a book is literally an expression of your differences, or agreements of opinion, with the author.
There are all kinds of devices for marking a book intelligently and fruitfully.
Here's the way I do it:
1.Underlining: of major points, of important or forceful statements.
2.Vertical lines at the margin: to emphasize a statement already underlined.
3.Star, asterisk, or other doo-dad at the margin: to be used sparingly, to emphasize the ten or twenty most important statements in the book.
4.Numbers in the margin: to indicate the sequence of points the author makes in developing a single argument.
5.Numbers of other pages in the margin: to indicate where else in the book the author made points relevant to the point marked;
to tie up the ideas in a book, which, though they may be separated by many pages, belong together.
6.Circling of key words or phrases.
7. Writing in the margin, or at the top or bottom of the page, for the sake of: recording questions (and perhaps answers) which a passage raise in your mind;
reducing a complicated discussion to a simple statement; recording the sequence of major points right through the book.
I use the end-papers at the back of the book to make a personal index of the author's points in the order of their appearance.
The front end-papers are, to me, the most important.
Some people reserve them for a fancy bookplate, I reserve them for fancy thinking.
After I have finished reading the book and making my personal index on the back end-papers, I turn to the front and try to outline the book,
not page by page, or point by point (I've already done that at the back), but as an integrated structure, with a basic unity and an order of parts.
This outline is, to me, the measure of my understanding of the work.
Unit 7
A young man finds it very difficult to say no to a woman as a result he gets into trouble.
The restaurant to which he has agreed to take his luncheon date is far too expensive for his small pocketbook.
How, then, will he be able to avoid the embarrassing situation?
THE LUNCHEON
I caught sight of her at the play, and in answer to her beckoning I went over during the interval and sat down beside her.
It was long since I had last seen her, and if someone had not mentioned her name I hardly think I would have recognised her.
She addressed me brightly.
"Well, it's many years since we first met.
How time does fly!
We're none of us getting any younger.
Do you remember the first time I saw you?
You asked me to luncheon."
Did I remember?
It was twenty years ago and I was living in Paris.
I had a tiny apartment in the Latin Quarter overlooking a cemetery, and I was earning barely enough money to keep body and soul together.
She had read a book of mine and had written to me about it.
I answered, thanking her, and presently I received from her another letter saying that she was passing through Paris and would like to have a chat with me;
but her time was limited, and the only free moment she had was on the following Thursday;
she was spending the morning at the Luxembourg and would I give her a little luncheon at Foyot's afterwards?
Foyot's is a restaurant at which the French senators eat, and it was so far beyond my means that I had never even thought of going there.
But I was flattered, and I was too young to have learned to say no to a woman.
(Few men, I may add, learn this until they are too old to make it of any consequence to a woman what they say.)
I had eight francs (gold francs) to last me the rest of the month, and a modest luncheon should not cost more than fifteen.
If I cut out coffee for the next two weeks I could manage well enough.
I answered that I would meet my friend -- by correspondence -- at Foyot's on Thursday at half past twelve.
She was not so young as I expected and in appearance imposing rather than attractive.
she was, in fact, a woman of forty (a charming age, but not one that excites a sudden and devastating passion at first sight),
and she gave me the impression of having more teeth, white and large and even, than were necessary for any practical purpose.
She was talkative, but since she seemed inclined to talk about me I was prepared to be an attentive listener.
I was startled when the bill of fare was brought, for the prices were a great deal higher than I had anticipated.
But she reassured me.
"I never eat anything for luncheon," She said.
"Oh, don't say that!" I answered generously.
"I never eat more than one thing.
I think people eat far too much nowadays.
A little fish, perhaps.
I wonder if they have any salmon.
Well, it was early in the year for salmon and it was not on the bill of fare, but I asked the waiter if there was any.
Yes, a beautiful salmon had just come in, it was the first they had had.
I ordered it for my guest.
The waiter asked her if she would have something while it was being cooked.
"No," she answered, "I never eat more than one thing.
Unless you have a little caviare(caviar也对).I never mind caviare."
My heart sank a little.
I knew I could not afford caviare, but I could not very well tell her that.
I told the waiter by all means to bring caviare.
For myself I chose the cheapest dish on the menu and that was a mutton chop.
" I think you are unwise to eat meat," she said.
" I don't know how you can expect to work after eating heavy things like chops.
I don't believe in overloading my stomach."
Then came the question of drink.
"I never drink anything for luncheon," she said.
"Neither do I," I answered promptly.
"Except whiter wine," she proceeded as though I had not spoken.
"These French white wines are so light.
They're wonderful for the digestion."
"What would you like?" I asked, hospitable still, but not exactly effusive.
She gave me a bright and amicable flash of her white teeth.
"My doctor won't let me drink anything but champagne."
I fancy I turned a trifle pale.
I ordered half a bottle.
I mentioned casually that my doctor had absolutely forbidden me to drink champagne.
"What are you going to drink, then?" "Water."
She ate the caviare and she ate the salmon.
She talked gaily of art and literature and music.
But I wondered what the bill would come to.
When my mutton chop arrived she took me quite seriously to task.
"I see that you're in the habit of eating a heavy luncheon.
I'm sure it's a mistake.
Why don't you follow my example and just eat one thing?
I'm sure you'd feel ever so much better for it."
"I am only going to eat one thing."
I said, as the waiter came again with the bill of fare.
She waved him aside with an airy gesture.
"No, no, I never eat anything for luncheon.
Just a bite, I never want more than that, and I eat that more as an excuse for conversation than anything else.
I couldn't possibly eat anything more unless they had some of those giant asparagus.
I should be sorry to leave Paris without having some of them."
My heart sank.
I had seen them in the shops, and I knew that they were horribly expensive.
My mouth had often watered at the sight of them.
"Madame wants to know if you have any of those giant asparagus," I asked the waiter.
I tried with all my might to will him to say no.
A happy smile spread over his broad, pries-like face, and he assured me that they had some so large, so splendid, so tender, that it was a marvel.
"I'm not in the least hungry," my guest sighed, "but if you insist I don't mind having some asparagus."
I ordered them.
"Aren't you going to have any?"
"No, I never eat asparagus."
"I know there are people who don't like them.
The fact is, you ruin your taste by all the meat you eat."
We waited for the asparagus to be cooked.
Panic seized me.
It was not a question now how much money I should have left over for the rest of the month, but whether I had enough to pay the bill.
It would be embarrassing to find myself ten francs short and be obliged to borrow from my guest.
I could not bring myself to do that.
I knew exactly how much I had, and if the bill came to more I made up my mind that I would put my hand in my pocket and with a dramatic cry start up and say it had been picked.
Of course, it would be awkward if she had not money enough either to pay the bill.
Then the only thing would be to leave my watch and say I would come back and pay later.
The asparagus appeared.
They were enormous, juicy, and appetising.
I watched the wicked woman thrust them down her throat in large mouthfuls, and in my polite way I spoke about the condition of the drama in the Balkans.
At last she finished.
"Coffee?" I said.
"Yes, just an ice-cream and coffee," she answered.
I was past caring now, so I ordered coffee for myself and an ice-cream and coffee for her.
"You know, there's one thing I thoroughly believe in," she said, as she ate the ice-cream.
"One should always get up from a meal feeling one could eat a little more."
"Are you still hungry?" I asked faintly.
"Oh, no, I'm not hungry; you see, I don't eat luncheon.
I have a cup of coffee in the morning and then dinner, but I never eat more than one thing for luncheon.
I was speaking for you."
"Oh, I see!"
Then a terrible thing happened.
While we were waiting for the coffee the head waiter, with an ingratiating smile on his false face, came up to us bearing a large basket full of huge peaches.
They had the blush of an innocent girl; they had the rich tone of an Italian landscape.
But surely peaches were not in season then?
Lord knew what they cost.
I knew too -- a little later, for my guest, going on with her conversation, absentmindedly took one.
"You see, you've filled your stomach with a lot of meat" -- my one miserable little chop -- "and you can't eat any more.
But I've just had a snack and I shall enjoy a peach."
The bill came, and when I paid it I found that I had only enough for a quite inadequate tip.
Her eyes rested for an instant on the three francs I left for the waiter, and I knew that she thought me mean.
But when I walked out of the restaurant I had the whole month before me and not a penny in my pocket.
"Follow my example," she said as we shook hands, "and never eat more than one thing for luncheon."
"I'll do better than that," I retorted.
"I'll eat nothing for dinner tonight."
"Humorist!" she cried gaily, jumping into a cab.
"You're quite a humorist!"
But I have had my revenge at last.
I do not believe that I am a vindictive man, but when the immortal gods take a hand in matter it is pardonable to observe the result with complacency.
Today she weighs twenty-one stone.
Unit 8
Would you choose to live underground if you could gain many advantages from doing so?
Weather would no longer trouble you.
Temperature would remain the same all the year round.
Artificial lighting could make the rhythm of our life uniform everywhere.
And the ecology of the natural world above ground would be greatly improved.
Still, the prospect of moving underground may not be appealing to many people.
THE NEW CAVES
During the ice ages, human beings exposed to the colder temperatures of the time would often make their homes in caves.
There they found greater comfort and security than they would have in the open.
We still live in caves called houses, again for comfort and security.
Virtually no one would willingly sleep on the ground under the stars.
Is it possible that someday we may seek to add further to our comfort and security by building our houses underground -- in new, manmade caves?
It may not seem a palatable suggestion, at first though.
We have so many evil associations with the underground.
In our myths and legends, the underground is the realm of evil spirits and of the dead, and is often the location of an afterlife of torment.
(This may be because dead bodies are buried underground, and because volcanic eruptions make the underground appear to be a hellish place of fire and noxious gases.)
Yet there are advantages to underground life, too, and something to be said for imagining whole cities, even mankind generally,
moving downward; of having the outermost mile of the Earth's crust honeycombed with passages and structures, like a gigantic ant hill.
First, weather would no longer be important, since, it is primarily a phenomenon of the atmosphere.
Rain, snow, sleet, fog would not trouble the underground world.
Even temperature variations are limited to the open surface and would not exist underground.
Whether day or night, summer or winter, temperatures in the underground world remain equable and nearly constant.
The vast amounts of energy now expended in warming our surface surroundings when they are too cold, and cooling them when they are too warm, could be saved.
The damage done to manmade structures and to human beings by weather would be gone.
Transportation over local distances would be simplified.
(Earthquakes would remain a danger, of course.)
Second, local time would no longer be important.
On the surface, the tyranny of day and night cannot be avoided, and when it is morning in one place, it is noon in another, evening in still another and midnight in yet another.
The rhythm of human life therefore varies from place to place.
Underground, where there is no externally produced day, but only perpetual darkness, it would be artificial lighting that produces the day and this could be adjusted to suit man's convenience.
The whole world could be on eight-hour shifts, starting and ending on the stroke everywhere, at least as far as business and community endeavors were concerned.
This could be important in a freely mobile world.
Air transportation over long distances would no longer have entail "jet lag."
Individuals landing on another coast or another continent would find the society they reached geared to the same time of day as at home.
Third, the ecological structure could be stabilized.
To a certain extent, mankind encumbers the Earth.
It is not only his enormous numbers that take up room; more so, it is all the structures he builds to house himself and his machines,
to make possible his transportation and communication, to offer him rest and recreation.
All these things distort the wild, depriving many species of plants and animals of their natural habitat -- and sometimes, involuntarily, favoring a few, such as rats and roaches.
If the works of man were removed below ground -- and, mind you, below the level of the natural world of the burrowing animals --
man would still occupy the surface with his farms, his forestry, his observation towers, his air terminals and so on, but the extent of that occupation would be enormously decreased.
Indeed, as one imagines the underground world to become increasingly elaborate, one can visualize much of the food supply eventually deriving from hydroponic growth in artificially illuminated areas underground.
The Earth's surface might be increasingly turned over to park and to wilderness, maintained at ecological stability.
Fourth, nature would be closer.
It might seem that to withdraw underground is to withdraw from the natural world, but would that be so?
Would the withdrawal be more complete than it is now, when so many people work in city buildings that are often windowless and artificially conditioned?
Even where there are windows, what is the prospect one views (if one bothers to) but sun, sky, and buildings to the horizon -- plus some limited greenery?
And to get away from the city now? To reach the real countryside?
One must travel horizontally for miles, first across city pavements and then across suburban sprawls.
In an underworld culture, the countryside would be right there, a few hundred yards above the upper level of the cities -- wherever you are.
The surface would have to be protected from too frequent, or too intense, or too careless visiting,
but however carefully restricted the upward trips might be, the chances are that the dwellers of the new caves would see more greenery, under ecologically healthier conditions, than dwellers of surface cities to today.
However odd and repulsive underground living may seem at first thought, there are things to be said for it -- and I haven't even said them all.
Unit 9
In 1976, during America's bicentennial celebration, a family decided to travel to the American West instead of joining the majority of people that were celebrating on the East Coast.
They wanted to follow the trails that the pioneers had made when they began to settle the West.
The family was looking forward to making their own discoveries.
JOURNEY WEST
We began our trip out West on June 19, 1976, a time when millions of other American families were preparing to crowd into the Bicentennial shrines of the East.
We sized up America's 200th birthday celebration a bit differently.
Although the Republic may have been born in the East, it had spent most of its time and energies since then moving west.
So we resolved to head in the same direction in 1976, following the old pioneer trails and the famous rivers.
Concentrating primarily on Wyoming and Montana, we would explore such legendary mountain ranges as the Big Horns, the Bitterroots and the Swan.
There was one problem though, I was sure our four kids -- educated about the West through the movies -- would be disappointed.
As an environmental editor, I knew that strip mining was tearing up many scenic areas and that clear-cutting was causing widespread damage in the mountains.
I was well aware that draining and damming were making a mess of many rivers and wetlands.
The grasslands were overgrazed and coal-burning power plants were befouling the air.
Wildlife was on the run everywhere and tourists were turning the national parks into slums.
I was prepared for the worst.
But how to prepare the kids?
The answer, we decided, was to undertake our journey not just as tourists on a holiday, but as reporters on the trail of "the real West."
So all of us, from my kids to my wife, pledged to do our homework before we left and to record on the way everything we did, saw, heard, felt or thought.
Predictably, we did not uncover any new truths about the West in three short weeks.
But there were plenty of surprises on that 5,200-mile journey and the biggest one was this: I had been wrong.
Some of the troubles we saw were every bit as bad as I had dreaded.
But by and large, the country was as glorious, as vast and as overwhelmingly spectacular as those know-nothing kids had expected!
Half the fun of going west is discovering, along the way, how much the past is still with us.
Old wives' tales.
Little old farm towns shaded from the summer heat by enormous maple trees on streets.
White-haired folks reading the paper on their farmhouse porches at sunset.
Worn-out windmills standing alone in pasture…
All in all, we did not see much evidence that small-town America is vanishing as we traveled through rural Wisconsin, Minnesota and South Dakota.
It's true that many new homes are rising in many old cornfields.
But for the most part, life in vast areas of the American heartland remains pretty much the same as it was 30 and 40 years ago.
In the hilly farmlands of southern Wisconsin and Minnesota, we found the fields and forests green and the creeks still flowing.
The farms, with their "eggs for sale" signs and enormous "grandma's gardens" in the front yards, looked prosperous and secure.
Not much further north, though, a drought was threatening the land.
In South Dakota, the situation was far worse.
"Haven't seen anything like this since the dirty thirties," one farmer told us.
Even in normal times, most of South Dakota is dry.
Now it was being burned to a crisp.
The water holes were dried up and we saw dead cattle lying here and there on the treeless, rolling range.
Some farmers were hauling water out to their thirsty stock daily; others were trying to drill deep wells.
We saw two distinctly different Wyomings.
We crossed the first Wyoming between the Black Hills and the Big Horns.
Wide-open grassland, fenced and colorless, with red rocks and sweet-smelling shrubs scattered about, it was typical of a hard-used land.
Cattle grazed on it.
Oil rigs pumped on it and power lines zigzagged all over it.
Freight trains labored across it, hauling coal from strip mine to power plant, hauling uranium and other minerals to refineries.
This Wyoming, clearly, was booming.
The other Wyoming started some miles east of Buffalo, an unexpectedly graceful community in the foothills of the Big Horns.
On one side of town, antelope abounded by fours and fives in the hills, and yellow wild flowers lined the roads.
On the other side rose the Big Horns and nearly 10,000 feet up, Powder River Pass cut through them.
The Big Horn canons were incredible, with four and five distinct layers of pine trees somehow clinging to the steep, rocky walls.
Far, far below, Ten Sleep Creek was a thin, white torrent on the rampage.
In some of the less wild terrain, we saw deer on the high green hillsides and, as we climbed up toward our picnic spot, we flushed two does and two fawns.
That night, we fell asleep with the roar of Ten Sleep in our ears.
We had picked by chance for our stopping place an area rich in western lore.
At one time, Ten Sleep -- a small village at the western base of the Big Horns -- lay midway between two great Indian camps.
In those days, the Indians measured distances by the number of sleeps and the halfway mark between those two camps was exactly ten sleeps.
We crossed the Continental Divide for the first time on a cool morning, cutting through the Rockies in northwestern Wyoming at a place called Togwatee Pass (at a height of 9,656 feet).
Our van had just leveled off and we were rounding a downhill bend when, all at once, there they were, stretched out before us in a spectacular procession of massive white peaks: the Tetons.
My wife gasped and, behind us, the kids began to yell.
In truth, it was a startling sight—— a sight none of us will ever forget.
We had seen mountains before, but we had never experienced anything even remotely like that initial impact of the Tetons.
It was exactly what we had in mind when we decided to take our first trip "out West."
Unit 10
Do you view work as a burden or an opportunity?
Are you the kind of person who looks for ways to save your energy or the kind that finds spending your energy satisfying?
Why do people like to complain about work?
Find the answers to questions like these in the following essay.
WHY PEOPLE WORK.
Jobs and work do much more than most of us realize to provide happiness and contentment.
We're all used to thinking that work provides the material things of life -- the goods and services that make possible our modern civilization.
But we are much less conscious of the extent to which work provides the more intangible, but more crucial, psychological well-being that can make the difference between a full and an empty life.
Historically, work has been associated with slavery and sin and punishment.
And in our own day we are used to hearing the traditional complaints:
"I can't wait for my vacation,"
"I wish I could stay home today,"
"My boss treats me poorly,"
"I've got too much work to do and not enough time to do it."
Against this background, it may well come as a surprise to learn that not only psychologists but other behavioral scientists have come to accept the positive contribution of work to the individual's happiness and sense of personal achievement.
Work is more than a necessity for most human beings; it is the focus of their lives, the source of their identity and creativity.
Rather than a punishment or a burden, work is the opportunity to realize one's potential.
Many psychiatrists heading mental health clinics have observed its healing effect.
A good many patients who feel depressed in clinics gain renewed self-confidence when gainfully employed and lose some, if not all, of their most acute symptoms.
Increasingly, institutions dealing with mental health problems are establishing workshops wherein those too sick to get a job in "outside" industry can work, while every effort is exerted to arrange "real" jobs for those well enough to work outside.
And the reverse is true, too.
For large numbers of people, the absence of work is harmful to their health.
Retirement often brings many problems surrounding the "What do I do with myself?" question, even though there may be no financial cares.
Large numbers of people regularly get headaches and other illnesses on weekends when they don't have their jobs to go to, and must fend for themselves.
It has been observed that unemployment, quite aside from exerting financial pressures, brings enormous psychological troubles and that many individuals deteriorate rapidly when jobless.
But why?
Why should work be such a significant source of human satisfaction?
A good share of the answer rests in the kind of pride that is stimulated by the job, by the activity of accomplishing.
Pride in Accomplishment
The human being longs for a sense of being accomplished, of being able to do things, with his hand, with his mind, with his will.
Each of us wants to feel he or she has the ability to do something that is meaningful and that serves as a tribute to our inherent abilities.
It is easiest to see this in the craftsman who lovingly shapes some cheap material into an object that may be either useful or beautiful or both.
You can see the carpenter or bricklayer stand aside and admire the product of his personal skill.
But even where there is no obvious end product that is solely attributable to one person's skill, researchers have found that employees find pride in accomplishment.
Our own research in hospitals suggests that even the housekeeping and laundry staffs take pride in the fact that in their own ways they are helping to cure sick people -- and thus accomplishing a good deal.
We're often misled by the complaints surrounding difficult work;
deep down most people regard their won capacity to conquer the tough job as the mark of their own unique personality.
Complaining is just part of working .
After all, how else do you know who you are, except as you can demonstrate the ability of your mind to control you limbs ad hands and words?
You are, in significant measure, what you can do.
Some are deceived into thinking that people like to store up energy, to rest and save themselves as much as possible.
Just the opposite.
It is energy expenditure that is satisfying.
Just watch an employee who must deal with countless other people because his or her job is at some central point in a communications network:
a salesman at a busy counter, a stock broker on the phone, a customer representative.
They will tell you how much skill and experience it takes to answer countless questions and handle various kinds of personalities every hour of the day.
Not everyone can interact with such persistence and over long hours, but those who do, pride themselves on a distinctive ability that contributes mightily to the running of the organization.
But work is more than accomplishment and pride in being able to command the job, because except for a few craftsmen and artists most work takes place "out in the world," with and through other people.
Esprit de corps
Perhaps an example will make the point:
I remember viewing a half dozen men in a chair factory whose job it was to bend several pieces of steel and attach them so that a folding chair would result.
While there were ten or twelve of these "teams" that worked together, one in particular was known for its perfect coordination and lightning-like efforts.
The men knew they were good.
They would work spurts for twenty or thirty minutes before taking a break -- to show themselves, bystanders and other groups what it was to be superbly skilled and self-controlled, to be the best in the factory.
When I talked with them, each expressed enormous pride in being a part of the fastest, best team.
And this sense of belonging to an accomplished work group is one of the distinctive satisfactions of the world of work.
One further word about work group satisfactions.
Unlike may other aspects of life, relationships among people at work tend to be simpler, less complicated, somewhat less emotional.
This is not to say there aren't arguments and jealousies, but, on the whole, behavioral research discloses that human relations at work are just easier,
perhaps because they are more regular and predictable and thus simpler to adjust to than the sporadic, the more intense and less regular relationships in the community.
And the work group also gently pressures its members to learn how to adjust to one another so that the "rough edges" are worked off because people know they must do certain things with and through one another each day.
Beyond the team and the work group, there is the organization, whether it be company or hospital or university.
The same pride in being part of a well-coordinated, successful unit is derived from being part of a larger collectivity.
Working for a company that is though of as being one of the best in the community can provide employees with both status and self-confidence.
They assume, usually with good reason, that others regard them more highly, even envy them, and that they are more competent than the average because of this association with a "winner," a prestigious institution.
We in truth bask in the reflected glory of the institution, and we seek ways of asserting our membership so that others will know and can recognize our good fortune. |
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