英语经典美文两篇
For Love of Children 给孩子的爱
This slender volume opens with the story of Beniah, an infant rescued by sanitation workers from the stack of garbage in which he had been left to die. Without ever losing sight of Beniah and the too many other deserted children, the author, Sharon Emecz, tells the story of the two homes for abandoned children, Happy Life Kasarani and Happy Life Juja Farm, organized in the area of Nairobi, Kenya. Developed more than a decade ago by two indomitable couples, Sharon and Jim Powell from Delaware in the USA, and Faith and Peter Kamau from Nairobi, the two settings provide the physical and emotional comforts that would otherwise have been denied the 102 abandoned children now living there, as well as having nurtured the many more who have found adoptive homes. More than that even, the two homes have literally saved the lives of all those children. The book provides detail of the structure and functioning of The Happy Life homes allowing for an appreciation of their organization (as well as a pattern for their replication), and provides as well brief portraits of some of the children saved, of those adults who have opted to share a part of their lives with them whether through work or volunteering, and the adoptive parents who have pledged to share their homes and their love with the children who have become their own. Ms. Emecz gives the reader a real sense of the spiritual journey she has undergone in traveling from London to Nairobi, a journey she and her husband, Steve, now make at least annually.
Three Days to See( 节选) 假如给我三天光明
All of us have read thrilling stories in which the hero had only a limited and specified time to live. Sometimes it was as long as a year, sometimes as short as 24 hours. But always we were interested in discovering just how the doomed hero chose to spend his last days or his last hours. I speak, of course, of free men who have a choice, not condemned criminals whose sphere of activities is strictly delimited.
Such stories set us thinking, wondering what we should do under similar circumstances. What events, what experiences, what associations should we crowd into those last hours as mortal beings, what regrets?
Sometimes I have thought it would be an excellent rule to live each day as if we should die tomorrow. Such an attitude would emphasize sharply the values of life. We should live each day with gentleness, vigor and a keenness of appreciation which are often lost when time stretches before us in the constant panorama of more days and months and years to come. There are those, of course, who would adopt the Epicurean motto of “Eat, drink, and be merry”. But most people would be chastened by the certainty of impending death.
In stories the doomed hero is usually saved at the last minute by some stroke of fortune, but almost always his sense of values is changed. He becomes more appreciative of the meaning of life and its permanent spiritual values. It has often been noted that those who live, or have lived, in the shadow of death bring a mellow sweetness to everything they do.
Most of us, however, take life for granted. We know that one day we must die, but usually we picture that day as far in the future. When we are in buoyant health, death is all but unimaginable. We seldom think of it. The days stretch out in an endless vista. So we go about our petty tasks, hardly aware of our listless attitude toward life.
The same lethargy, I am afraid, characterizes the use of all our faculties and senses. Only the deaf appreciate hearing, only the blind realize the manifold blessings that lie in sight. Particularly does this observation apply to those who have lost sight and hearing in adult life. But those who have never suffered impairment of sight or hearing seldom make the fullest use of these blessed faculties. Their eyes and ears take in all sights and sounds hazily, without concentration and with little appreciation. It is the same old story of not being grateful for what we have until we lose it, of not being conscious of health until we are ill.
I have often thought it would be a blessing if each human being were stricken blind and deaf for a few days at some time during his early adult life. Darkness would make him more appreciative of sight; silence would teach him the joys of sound.