阅读理解
A city child's summer is spent in the street
in front of his home, and all through the long summer vacations I sat on the
edge of the street and watched enviously(嫉妒地) the other boys on the block play baseball. I was never asked to
take part even when one team had a member missing—not
out of special cruelty, but because they took it for granted I would be no good
at it. They were right, of course.
I would never forget the wonderful evening
when something changed. The baseball ended about eight or eight thirty when it
grew dark. Then it was the custom of the boys to retire(撤退) to a little stoop(门廊) that stuck out from the candy store on the corner and that somehow
had become theirs. No grownup ever sat there or attempted to. There the boys
would sit, mostly talking about the games played during the day and of the game
to be played tomorrow. Then long silences would fall and the boys would wander
off one by one. It was just after one of those long silences that my life as an
outsider changed. I can no longer remember which boy it was that summer evening
who broke the silence with a question: but whoever he was, I nod to him
gratefully now. "What's in those books you're always reading?" he
asked casually. "Stories," I answered. "What kind?" asked
somebody else without much interest.
Nor do I know what drove me to behave as I
did, for usually I just sat there in silence, glad enough to be allowed to
remain among them; but instead of answering his question, I told them for two
hours the story I was reading at the moment. The book was Sister Carrie. They
listened bug-eyed(瞪大眼睛的)
and breathless. I must have told it well, but I think there was another and
deeper reason that made them to keep an audience. Listening to a tale being
told in the dark is one of the most ancient of man's entertainments, but I was
offering them as well, without being aware of doing it, a new and exciting
experience.
The books they themselves read were the
Rover Boys or Tom Swift or G.A.Henty. I had read them too, but at
thirteen I had long since left them behind. Since I was much alone I had become
an enthusiastic (狂热的)reader
and I had gone through the books-for-boys series. In those days there was no
reading material between children's and grownups 'books or I could find none. I
had gone right from Tom Swift and His Flying Machine to Theodore Dreiser
and Sister Carrie. Dreiser had hit my young mind, and they listened to
me tell the story with some of the wonder that I had had in reading it.
The next night and many nights thereafter, a
kind of unspoken ritual (仪式) took
place. As it grew dark, I would take my place in the center of the stoop and
begin the evening's tale. Some nights, in order to taste my victory more
completely, I cheated. I would stop at the most exciting part of a story by
Jack London or Bret Harte, and without warning tell them that that was as far
as I had gone in the book and it would have to be continued the following
evening. It was not true, of course; but I had to make certain of my new-found
power and position. I enjoyed the long summer evenings until school began in
the fall. Other words of mine have been listened to by larger and more
fashionable audiences, but for that tough and athletic one that sat close on
the stoop outside the candy store, I have an unreasoning love that will last
forever.