英美文化欣赏

　　【导读】　《我的人生故事》是海伦·凯勒的自传性作品，被世界称为文学史上无与伦比的杰作。阅读下面的节选，请仔细思考对我们的未来人生有什么样的启示。

　　The Story of My Life

　　Helen Keller

　　Chapter 1

It is with a kind of fear that I begin to write the history of my life. I have, as it were, a superstitious hesitation in lifting the veil that clings about my childhood like a golden mist. The task of writing an autobiography is a difficult one. When I try to classify my earliest impressions, I find that fact and fancy look alike across the years that link the past with the present. Thewoman paints the child's experiences in her own fantasy. A few impressions stand out vividly from the first years of my life; but "the shadows of the prison­house are on the rest". Besides, many of the joys and sorrows of childhood have lost their poignancy; and many incidents of vital importance in my early education have been forgotten in the excitement of great discoveries. In order, therefore, not to be tedious I shall try to present in a series of sketches，only the episodes that seem to me to be the most interesting and important.

　　I was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, a little town of northern Alabama.

　　I lived, up to the time of the illness that deprived me of my sight and hearing, in a tiny house consisting of a large square room and a small one, in which the servants slept. It is a custom in the South to build a small house near the homestead as an annex to be used on occasion. Such a house my father built after the Civil War, and when he married my mother they went to live in it. It was completely covered with vines, climbing roses and honeysuckles. From the garden it looked like an arbour. The little porch was hidden from view by a screen of yellow roses and Southern smilax.It was the favourite haunt of humming­birds and bees.

　　The Keller homestead, where the family lived, was a few steps from our little rose­bower. It was called "Ivy Green" because the house and the surrounding trees and fences were covered with beautiful English ivy. Its old­fashioned garden was the paradise of my childhood.

Even in the days before my teacher came, I used to feel along the square stiff