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【摘文1】The World Through a Spy-Glass
YOU have never seen your own face.
This may surprise you and you may say it isn’t so—but it is so.
You may see the end of your nose.
You may even see your lips, if you pout out—so.
If you stick out your tongue, you may see the tip of it.
But you can’t go over there, outside of yourself, and look at your
own face.
Of course you know what your face looks like, because you have seen it in a mirror; but that’s not yourself—it’s only a picture of yourself.
And in the same way no one of us can see our own World—all of it—this World on which we live.
You can see a little bit of the World just around you—and if you go up into a high building you can see still more—and if you go up to the top of a high mountain you can see still, still more—and if you go up in an airplane you can see still, still, still more.
But to see the Whole World you would have to go much higher than that, higher than any one has ever been able to go or could go. You would have to go far, far above the clouds; way, way off in the sky where the stars are—and no one can do that, even in an airplane.
Now you cannot see the World in a mirror as you can see your face. So how do we know what the World looks like?
A fish in the sea might tell her little fish, “The World is all water—just a huge tub; I’ve been everywhere and I know.” Of course, she wouldn’t know anything different.
A camel in the desert might tell her little camels, “The World is all sand—just a huge sand pile; I’ve been everywhere and I know.”
A polar bear on an iceberg might tell her little polar bears, “The World is all snow and ice—just a huge refrigerator; I’ve been everywhere and I know.”
A lion in the jungle might tell her little lion cubs, “The World is all woods—just a huge forest; I’ve been everywhere and I know.”
In the same way, once upon a time, people used to tell their little children, “The World is just a big island like a huge mud pie with some water, some sand, some ice, and some trees on it, and with a glass cover we call the sky over us all; we’ve been everywhere and we know.”
When some inquisitive child asked, “What does the flat World like a mud pie rest on?” they really truly said, “It rests on the backs of four elephants.”
But when the inquisitive child asked, “And what do the elephants stand on?” they really truly said, “On a big turtle.”
Then when the inquisitive child asked, “What does the turtle stand on?” no one could say—for no one could even guess farther than that—so the turtle was left standing—on nothing.
That’s the old story that parents long ago used to tell their children as to what the World was like. But just suppose you could go way, way off above the clouds; way, way off in the sky, sit on a corner of nothing at all, dangle your feet over the edge and look down at the World far, far below. What do you suppose it would really look like? I know—and yet I have never been there.
The World from way off in the sky and through a spy-glass would look just like a full moom—round and white; not round like a plate, but round like a huge snowball. Not exactly white, either, but bright—for the sun shines on this big ball, the World, and makes it light just as the headlight on an automobile shines on the road at night and makes the road light. Of course, the sun can shine on only one side of this big ball at a time; the other side of the World is dark, but the World keeps turning round and round in the sunlight.
If you looked at the World through a telescope—you know what a telescope is: one of those long spy-glasses that make things seem closer and bigger—as men look at the moon, you would see on one side of the World two big patches that look like queerly shaped shadows and on the other side of the World twice as many big patches, four queerly shaped shadows. These patches which look like shadows are really land and are called by a long name: con-ti-nents. These continents have names, and if their names were printed across them in letters a thousand miles high—which they are not—so that the man with a spy-glass could read them, he would read on one side of the World
NORTH AMERICA
SOUTH AMERICA
and if he waited until the World turned round, until the other side showed in the sunlight, as I’ve seen the World do in “the movies,” he would read on this continent EUROPE and on that continent ASIA and on the other continent AFRICA, and the smallest one would have the longest name, AUSTRALIA.
We call one side of a piece of money “the head,” because there is usually the head of someone on that side, and the other side we call “the tail,” as that is opposite from the head. It would be easy to tell which side of the World was which if we could call one side heads and the other tails. But there are no heads or tails on the World—only these queer shadows—so we use two big words instead of “heads” and “tails” to tell which side of the World is which. We call one side the “Western Hemisphere” and the other side we call the “Eastern Hemisphere.” Whew! Why don’t they call it something easy?—well, let’s call it “Half-a-Ball,” for that is what Hemisphere means. The Western Half-Ball has two continents and the Eastern Half-Ball has four continents.
The tip top and the very bottom of the World are called the Poles, although there are no poles. Around the top and bottom Pole it would be all white—snow and ice—for the Poles are so cold there is snow and ice there all the time.
The part of the World that isn't patches of shadow or snow is water. The water all around the continents is the ocean, and though of course there are no walls nor fences dividing it into different parts, its different parts are called by different names.
Do you know your right hand from your left? Of course you do if you’re over six years old. But do you know the west side from the east side? If you are over nine years old you should. The east is where the sun rises, the west is where it sets. And if your right hand is east, your left hand is west, your face is north and your back is south.
The Atlantic Ocean is on the east side of North and South America. The Pacific Ocean is on the west. The ocean entirely in the Eastern Hemisphere is called “Indian.” No, it is not named for our Indians. At the top of the World is the Arctic and at the bottom the Ant-arctic Ocean. The Arctic and Antarctic Oceans are mostly ice, for it is so cold there the water freezes and stays frozen. If we wanted to put names on the oceans so that a man off in the sky could read them, we would have to stick huge signs in the water, as we can't paint letters on the ocean.
There is no reason why I should show you the World turned this way with America on top. I might just as well show it upside down or sideways, for there is no upside nor downside on the World. I suppose the reason the north side is always shown on top is because the people who made maps and geographies all lived in the north part of the World and they wanted their part of the World on top.
So this is our World. You may wonder, “Are there any other Worlds besides ours?” Some have guessed that there may be—that some of those sparks in the sky that look like stars at night may be other Worlds like ours with people living on them. But no one knows, for the strongest telescope is not strong enough for us to see what is on those far off sparks, so we can only guess about them.
【摘文2】The Endless Parade
DID you ever see a parade—a very long one? I once saw a parade of soldiers that took all day to pass by. Tramp, tramp—tramp, tramp—tramp, tramp, hour after hour, all day long. I never had seen so many men in my whole life. There must have been a hundred thousand of them. It didn’t seem possible that there were so many people in the World. But if all the people there are in the World should pass by in one long parade, it would take not one day but a lifetime for them to pass by, for there are nearly two billion people in the World.
A hundred new people—babies—are born every minute of the day and of the night; many are born while you are reading this, and with every tick of the clock someone has died. But more people are born than die each day, so that the World is getting fuller and fuller of people all the time.
The people on the World are all about the same size and shape. Only in fairy-tales are people as big as your thumb or as tall as a church-steeple. None have wings instead of arms or wheels instead of legs. They all have one head, one nose, one mouth; they all have two ears, two eyes, two arms, and two legs. And yet in all these two billion people there are no two alike, there is not a single person exactly like any other one. Even twins are not exactly alike.
The chief difference in people is their color. Most of the two billion are white, but a great many are black and the larger number are halfway between white and black—they are sort of yellow-brown. These three colors of people we call “races.”
Each race used to live by itself in its own part of the World, but many have wandered away to other parts. Most of the people in our part of the World are white, but there are also many black and a few yellow-brown.
Suppose you had been born black.
Suppose you’d been born yellow or red.
Suppose you had been born in
Africa or
Asia or
Australia.
Suppose you had been born with another father and mother.
Suppose you had been born in another world instead of this World.
Suppose you hadn’t been born at all—where would you be now?
There are only six continents, but on each continent there are several countries. A country doesn’t mean the country. A country means cities, towns, villages and country under one ruler. There are two hundred countries on the World. Some countries are small with only a few thousand people in the whole country, and some countries are large with many millions of people. Our country, the United States, has over three hundred million people, but there are several countries larger. China, which is on the other side of the World, is the largest country in the World. It has four times as many people as the United States; and India, another country on the other side of the World, has the next largest number of people. Both these countries are in Asia—the largest continent with the shortest name and the most people.
Each country has a ruler, just as every family has a father or every football team has a captain. Some countries have a king for a ruler and some have a president, and most countries have other people to rule with the king and the president.
A king is a king because his father was a king, and his son will be king for the same reason. A president is president because he was chosen by the people in the country, just as the captain of a football team is chosen by his team. Choosing we call “voting.” A king is king for his whole life, but a president is president for only a few years.
The country of a king is called a kingdom. If one man rules over several countries, he is called an emperor and the countries an empire. A. Country with a president is called a republic. Our country is a republic. The king or the president and the others who rule with him are called the government. The government makes the rules, but it also does two things that no one else is allowed to do. The government makes the money of the country and the postage-stamps. The money of one country is not good in another country and neither are the postage-stamps. And neither is the language of our country good in another—usually.
The people on the World speak many different languages. Even in the same country many different languages are spoken. There are over 6,000 different languages in all—6,000, just think of that! You probably speak only one of these, and couldn’t talk to anyone nor understand anyone who spoke any other language than your own. In the United States, almost everyone speaks English, which, strange to say, is the language of another country—England. More people in the World speak English than any other language. But on a continent like Europe you could hardly go a day’s journey without hearing a different language on the street, in the shops, at the hotel.
I happened to be born in the United States, and as I heard everybody around me speaking English, I learned to speak English too. But I might have been born in Asia, a yellow boy, and learned to speak Chinese, or I might have been born in Africa, a black boy, and learned to speak a language I don’t even know the name of. I know a man who speaks a dozen different languages, and I know of a man who speaks 100! You can understand how wonderful this is when it usually takes years to learn to speak one other language besides your own. Letters of most of these languages are like ours, like the letters on this page—they are called Roman, because a people called Romans first used them long ago. But
letters of Chinese and Japanese and some other faraway languages are different—they look like this:
【摘文1】The World Through a Spy-Glass
YOU have never seen your own face.
This may surprise you and you may say it isn’t so—but it is so.
You may see the end of your nose.
You may even see your lips, if you pout out—so.
If you stick out your tongue, you may see the tip of it.
But you can’t go over there, outside of yourself, and look at your
own face.
Of course you know what your face looks like, because you have seen it in a mirror; but that’s not yourself—it’s only a picture of ...
作者序
【前言】INTRODUCTION
(If you are under fifteen years, eight months and three days old DON’T READ THIS)
This book is for the child who:
thinks heaven is in the sky and
hell is under the ground;
has never heard of London or Paris and
thinks a Dane is a kind of dog.
It is to give a traveler’s view of the World—but not a commercial traveler’s view.
It is to show the child what is beyond the horizon, from “Kalamazoo to Timbuktu.”
It is to show him not only “the Seven Wonders of the World” but the seventy times Seven Wonders of the World.
When-I-was-a-boy in New England we had for Thanksgiving six kinds of pie: apple, peach, cranberry, custard, mince, and pumpkin, but I was allowed to have only two kinds and I never could make a satisfactory choice. I have had the same difficulty in selecting geographical places and subjects to tell about. There are too many “most important” places in the World to be included in this first survey, and there will inevitably be those readers who will wonder why certain countries and certain places have been omitted, especially the place where the reader may live.
To me, as a child, geography was a bugbear of repellent names—Climate and Commerce, Manufactures and Industries, and PRODUCTS, PRODUCTS, PRODUCTS. It seemed that the chief products of every place in the World were corn, wheat, barley, rye; or rye, barley, wheat, corn; or barley, corn, rye, wheat. In my geography modern Greece had but a paragraph—because, I suppose, it did not produce wheat, corn, barley, rye. Geography was a “stomach” geography; the “head” and “heart” were left out.
I loved the geography pictures and maps but hated the text. Except for an occasional descriptive or narrative paragraph the text was wholly unreadable—a confused jumble of headings and sub-headings and sub-sub-headings: HOME WORK, NOTES, MAP STUDIES, Suggestions to Teachers, HELPS, Directions, Questions, REVIEWS, PROBLEMS, Exercises, Recitations, LESSONS, PICTURE STUDIES, etc., etc., etc.
The World was an orange when I went to school, and there were only three things I can remember that I ever learned “for sure”—that the Dutch children wore wooden shoes, the Eskimos lived in snow houses, and the Chinese ate with chopsticks.
We had a question and answer catechism which we learned as we did the multiplication tables. The teacher read from her book:
Q. “What is the condition of the people of the United States?” and a thirteen-year-old boy in the next seat answered glibly: A. “They are poor and ignorant and live in miserable huts.” At which astounding statement the teacher unemotionally remarked, “No, that’s the answer to the next question, ‘What is the condition of the Eskimos?’ ”
When my turn came to teach geography to beginners nine years of age, I found the available textbooks either too commercial and industrial, on the one hand, or too puerile and inconsequential, on the other. Statistics and abstractions were entirely beyond the ken of the child of nine, and random stories of children in other countries had little value as geography.
As I had been a traveler for many years, had visited most of the countries of the Globe, and in actual mileage had been five times the distance around the World, I thought I would write a geography myself. Vain conceit! A class would listen with considerable attention to my extemporaneous travel talks, so I had a stenographer take down these talks verbatim. But when I read these notes of the same talk to another class, then it was that I discovered a book may be good—until it is written. So I’ve had to try, try again and again, for children’s reactions can never be forecast. Neither can one tell without trial what children will or will not understand. Preconceived notions of what words they should or should not know are worthless: “Stupendous and appalling” presented no difficulties whatever but much simpler words were misunderstood.
I had been reading to a class from an excellent travel book for children. The author said, “We arrived, tired and hungry, and found quarters in the nearest hotel.” The children understood “found quarters” to mean that the travelers had picked up 25-cent pieces in the hotel! Then again I had been describing the “Bridge of Sighs,” in Venice, and picturing the condemned prisoners who crossed it. Casually I asked if any one could tell me why it was called the Bridge of Sighs. One boy said, “Because it is of big size.” A little girl, scorning his ignorance, said, “Because it has sides.” A boy from the country, with a farfetched imagination, suggested it might be because they used “Scythes”; and a fourth child said, “Because it belonged to a man named ‘Cy.’ ”
The study of maps is interesting to almost all children. A map is like a puzzle picture—but new names are hard. And yet geography without either name or place is not geography at all. It is only fairyland. The study of maps and names is therefore absolutely essential and large wall maps most desirable.
Geography lends itself admirably to research on the part of the child. A large scrap-book arranged by countries may easily be filled with current pictorial news, clippings from magazines and Sunday newspapers, and from the circulars of travel bureaus. There is a wealth of such scrap-book material almost constantly being published—pictures of temples in India, pagodas in China, wild animal hunts in Africa, parks in Paris—from which the child can compile his own Geographic Magazine. Furthermore, the collection of stamps offers a most attractive field, particularly for the boy just reaching the age when such collections are as absorbing as an adult hobby.
Of course, the best way to learn geography is by travel but not like that of the business man who landed in Rome with one hour to see the city. Jumping into a taxi and referring to a slip of paper, he said: “There are only two things I want to see here—St. Peter’s and theColosseum. Drive to them as fast as you can and back to the station.” He was accordingly driven to St. Peter’s. Sticking his head out of the window he said to the driver, “Well, which is this?”
In the little town where I was born, there lived an old, old man whose chief claim to distinction was the fact that he had never in his whole life been ten miles away from home. Nowadays travel is so easy that every child may look forward to traveling some day. This book is to give him some inkling of what there is to see, so that his travel may not be as meaningless as that of the simple sailor who goes round the world and returns with nothing but a parrot and a string of glass beads.
【前言】INTRODUCTION
(If you are under fifteen years, eight months and three days old DON’T READ THIS)
This book is for the child who:
thinks heaven is in the sky and
hell is under the ground;
has never heard of London or Paris and
thinks a Dane is a kind of dog.
It is to give a traveler’s view of the World—but not a commercial traveler’s view.
It is to show the child what is beyond the horizon, from “Kalamazoo to Timbuktu.”
It is to show him not only “the Seven Wonders of the W...
目錄
1. The World Through a Spy-Glass
2. The World is Round, for I've Been Round It
3. The Inside of the World
4. The Endless Parade
5. The 13 Club
6. Next-door Neighbors
7. The War-God’s Country
8. So Near and Yet so Far
9. Pirate Seas
10. North South America
11. Rubber and Coffee Land
12. Silver Land and Sliver Land
13. The Bridge Across the Ocean
14. The Land of the Angles
15. The Land of the Angles (continued)
16. The Land of the Angles (continued)
17. Parlez-vous Français?
18. Parlez-vous Français? (continued)
19. The Land Below the Sea
20. Castles in Spain
21. Castles in Spain (continued)
22. The Boot Top
23. The Gates of Paradise and the Dome of Heaven
24. The Dead and Alive City
25. A Pile of Ashes a Mile High
26. The Land of the Gods
27. The Land in the Sky
28. “Made in Germany”
29. The Great Danes
30. Fish, Fiords, Falls, and Forests
31. Fish, Fiords, Falls, and Forests (continued)
32. Where the Sun Shines all Night
33. The Bear
34. The Bread-Basket
35. The “IA” Countries
36. The Land of the New Moon
37. The Ship of the Desert
38. A “Once-was” Country
39. A Land Flowing with Milk and Honey
40. The “Exact Spots”
41. The Garden of Eden
42. The Land of Bedtime Stories
43. The Lion and the Sun
44. Opposite-Feet
45. Opposite-Feet (continued)
46. The White Elephant
47. Where the Thermometer Freezes Up
48. A Giant Sea-Serpent
49. Picture Post-Cards
50. Dragon Land
51. Dragon Land (continued)
52. Man-Made Mountains
53. Robber Lands and Desert Sands
54. Afraid of the Dark
55. Zoo Land
56. The End of the Rainbow
57. Fortune Island
58. Cannibal Islands
59. Journey's End
1. The World Through a Spy-Glass
2. The World is Round, for I've Been Round It
3. The Inside of the World
4. The Endless Parade
5. The 13 Club
6. Next-door Neighbors
7. The War-God’s Country
8. So Near and Yet so Far
9. Pirate Seas
10. North South America
11. Rubber and Coffee Land
12. Silver Land and Sliver Land
13. The Bridge Across the Ocean
14. The Land of the Angles
15. The Land of the Angles (continued)
16. The Land of the Angles (continued)
17. Parlez-vous Français?
18. ...
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