cascade down_高级英语上讲义Lesson8

boggled at the sth. 对…犹豫不决

imagination 想象力

boggled one's mind 大吃一惊

abuse 滥用，虐待，辱骂

The odors in the house surprised me. Somehow I had never connected Mrs. Flowers with food or eating or any other common experience of common people. There must have been an outhouse, too, but my mind never recorded it.

common experience 普通经历

recorded it 记得

The sweet scent of vanilla had met us as she opened the door.

vanilla 香草

“I made tea cookies this morning. You s ee, I had planned to invite you for cookies and lemonade so we could have this little chat. The lemonade is in the icebox.”

It followed that Mrs. Flowers would have ice on an ordinary day, when most families in our town bought ice late on Saturdays only a few times during the summer to be used in the wooden icecream freezers.

freezers 冰箱

“Have a seat, Marguerite. Over there by the table.” She carried a platter covered with a tea towel.

Although she warned that she hadn't tried her hand at baking sweets for some time, I was certain that like everything else about her the cookies would be perfect.

As I ate she began the first of what we later called “my lesson in living.” She said that I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and even more intelligent than college professors. She encouraged me to listen carefully to what country people called mother wit. That in those homely sayings was couched the collective wisdom of generations.

be intolerant of 不能容忍

ignorance 无知

illiteracy 文盲

mother wit 天生的智慧， that in those homely sayings was couched the collective wisdom of generations.

When I finished the cookies she brushed off the table and brought a thick, small book from the bookcase. I had read A Tale of Two Cities and found it up to my standards as a romantic novel. She opened the first page and I heard poetry for the first time in my life.

brushed off : clean

two cities 双城记

up to 达到

“It was the best of times and the worst of time…” Her voice slid in and curved down through and over the words. She was nearly singing. I wanted to look at the pages. Were they the same that I had read? Or were there notes, music, lined on the pages, as in a human book? Her sounds began cascading gently. I knew from listening to a thousand preachers that she was nearing the end of her reading, and I hadn't really heard, heard to understand, a single word.