我的生活海伦凯勒摘抄 海伦·凯勒自传《我的生活》第37期

海伦·凯勒自传《我的生活》第37期  

At a little distance from this ship there was a model of the Santa Maria
which I also examined. The captain showed me Columbus's cabin and the desk with an hour-glass on it. This small instrument impressed me most because it made me think how weary the heroic navigator must have felt as he saw the sand dropping grain by grain while desperate men were plotting against his life.
Mr. Higinbotham
President of the World's Fair
kindly gave me permission to touch the exhibits
and with an eagerness as insatiable as that with which Pizarro seized the treasures of Peru
I took in the glories of the Fair with my fingers. It was a sort of tangible kaleidoscope
this white city of the West. Everything fascinated me
especially the French bronzes. They were so lifelike
I thought they were angel visions which the artist had caught and bound in earthly forms.
At the Cape of Good Hope exhibit
I learned much about the processes of mining diamonds. Whenever it was possible
I touched the machinery while it was in motion
so as to get a clearer idea how the stones were weighed
cut
and polished. I searched in the washings for a diamond and found it myself—the only true diamond
they said
that was ever found in the United States.
在“好望角”展区，我了解了许多有关钻石开采过程的知识。只要有可能，我都会摸一摸正在运转的机器，这样我就能更清晰地感受到矿石有多重，它们又是如何被切割被抛光的。我还亲自摸索到了一块正在清洗之中的钻石——人们告诉我说，这是在美国发现的唯一一颗真正的钻石。
Dr. Bell went everywhere with us and in his own delightful way described to me the objects of greatest interest. In the electrical building we examined the telephones
autophones
phonographs
and other inventions
and he made me understand how it is possible to send a message on wires that mock space and outrun time
and
like Prometheus
to draw fire from the sky. We also visited the anthropological department
and I was much interested in the relics of ancient Mexico
in the rude stone implements that are so often the only record of an age—the simple monuments of nature's unlettered children (so I thought as I fingered them) that seem bound to last while the memorials of kings and sages crumble in dust away—and in the Egyptian mummies
which I shrank from touching. From these relics I learned more about the progress of man than I have heard or read since.
All these experiences added a great many new terms to my vocabulary
and in the three weeks I spent at the Fair I took a long leap from the little child's interest in fairy tales and toys to the appreciation of the real and the earnest in the workaday world.