时间:2018-12-07 作者:英语课 分类:希拉里有声自传


英语课
Like so many who grew up in the Depression, his fear of poverty colored his life. He could not stand personal waste. If one of my brothers or I forgot to screw the cap back on the toothpaste tube, my father threw it out the bathroom window. We would have to go outside, even in the snow, to search for it in the evergreen 1 bushes in front of the house. That was his way of reminding us not to waste anything. To this day, I put uneaten olives back in the jar, wrap up the tiniest pieces of cheese and feel guilty when I throw anything away.

But in our family’s spirited, sometimes heated, discussions around the kitchen table, usually about politics or sports, I learned that more than one opinion could live under the same roof.

Sometimes I had talked about how the spread of communism was threatening our way of life. But the Cold War was an abstraction to me, and my immediate 2 world seemed safe and stable.

I grew up in a cautious, conformist era in American history. I had enough adolescent vanity that I sometimes refused to wear the thick glasses I had needed since I was nine to correct my terrible eyesight. My friend starting in sixth grade, Betsy Johnson, led me around town like a Seeing Eye dog.

I was considered a tomboy all through elementary school. My fifth-grade class had the school’s most incorrigible 3 boys, and when Mrs. Krause left the room, she would ask me or one of the other girls to “be in charge.” As soon as the door closed behind her, the boys would start acting 4 up and causing trouble, mostly because they wanted to aggravate 5 the girls. I got a reputation for being able to stand up to them.

My sixth-grade teacher, Elisabeth King, drilled us in grammar, but she also encouraged us to think and write creatively, and challenged us to try new forms of expression. It was an assignment from Mrs. King that led me to write my first autobiography 6. I rediscovered it in a box of old papers after I left the White House, and reading it pulled me back to those tentative years on the brink 7 of adolescence 8. I was still very much a child at that age, and mostly concerned with family, school and sports. But grade school was ending, and it was time to enter a more complicated world than the one I had known.

1 evergreen
n.常青树;adj.四季常青的
  • Some trees are evergreen;they are called evergreen.有的树是常青的,被叫做常青树。
  • There is a small evergreen shrub on the hillside.山腰上有一小块常绿灌木丛。
2 immediate
adj.立即的;直接的,最接近的;紧靠的
  • His immediate neighbours felt it their duty to call.他的近邻认为他们有责任去拜访。
  • We declared ourselves for the immediate convocation of the meeting.我们主张立即召开这个会议。
3 incorrigible
adj.难以纠正的,屡教不改的
  • Because he was an incorrigible criminal,he was sentenced to life imprisonment.他是一个死不悔改的罪犯,因此被判终生监禁。
  • Gamblers are incorrigible optimists.嗜赌的人是死不悔改的乐天派。
4 acting
n.演戏,行为,假装;adj.代理的,临时的,演出用的
  • Ignore her,she's just acting.别理她,她只是假装的。
  • During the seventies,her acting career was in eclipse.在七十年代,她的表演生涯黯然失色。
5 aggravate
vt.加重(剧),使恶化;激怒,使恼火
  • Threats will only aggravate her.恐吓只能激怒她。
  • He would only aggravate the injury by rubbing it.他揉擦伤口只会使伤势加重。
6 autobiography
n.自传
  • He published his autobiography last autumn.他去年秋天出版了自己的自传。
  • His life story is recounted in two fascinating volumes of autobiography.这两卷引人入胜的自传小说详述了他的生平。
7 brink
n.(悬崖、河流等的)边缘,边沿
  • The tree grew on the brink of the cliff.那棵树生长在峭壁的边缘。
  • The two countries were poised on the brink of war.这两个国家处于交战的边缘。
8 adolescence
n.青春期,青少年
  • Adolescence is the process of going from childhood to maturity.青春期是从少年到成年的过渡期。
  • The film is about the trials and tribulations of adolescence.这部电影讲述了青春期的麻烦和苦恼。
学英语单词
65
a glorious yet difficult task
active nationality
air cushion bearing
alkali phenoxide
allensbach
amphibious warships
amplitude fluctuation
amyl butyrates
Arc-en-Barrois
arkosh
asteria
Atwater-Benedict calorimeter
baudi
beeds
candy
cenobal
cocalus
Code of Conduct for Liner Conferences
cold-core anticyclone
collectar
color images
comicsverses
common exciter
cranel
credendum
cubited
deep stacked
detonating powder
deuteriochloroform
dock and towndues
dry twisting
dugo selo
electric crucible
electron-beam heater
engysseismology
eoorogenic phase
false-twist textured yarn
final magmatism
Galiwinku
granddaddies
ground-state isotope
halcyonian
Halsted herniorrhaphy
het up
hydroxyberberine
in fun
inghileri
jahoda
lactoylglutathione lyase
laraine
magnetic potential difference
maimendong decoction
management faith and belief
Marangoni effect
micrometer caliper gage
mismatch floating rate note
mixed bed column
MTU
mud - rock flow
National governments
Newton's rings
overrunning line
perianthial
Podsosnovo
polie
preeming
premix(ed) burner
Queimada
religofascists
return attribution
rubber peg
salary standardization
sand-cast tube
sanguineous temperament
secret de Polichinelle
sling mud at
snarted
solar-topographic theory
sort output file control block
South Yorkshire
statutory limits
stongs
streptolinase
study for
submarine geomorphological map
suboptimal filtering
subpermafrost
sympathetic lytic
thermoelectric psychrometer
triumph of the will
tube wall temperature
turn the position of an army
uroleucon formosanum (takahashi)
vector-triangle
voice-coil motor
volcanogenic deposit
walks around
watermelon sound
weightlessness walking training
zero-sum game model
zinc aluminite