自考英语综合一下册课文 lesson 15

　　[00:00.00]TEXT  he Letter"A"(I)

[00:05.49]I was born in the Rotunda 1 Hospital,on June 5th,1932.

[00:11.76]Mine was a difficult birth,I am told.Both mother and son almost died.

[00:18.31]A whole army of relations queued up outside the hospital until

[00:23.56]until the small hours of the morning,

[00:27.82]waiting for news and praying anxiously that it would be good.

[00:32.89]It was Mother who first saw that there was something wrong with me.

[00:38.03]I was about four months old at the time.

[00:42.00]She noticed that my head fell backwards 2 whenever she tried to feed me.

[00:47.05]She attempted to correct this by placing her hand on the back of my neck to keep it steady

[00:53.21]But when she took it away,back it would drop again.

[00:57.89]That was the first warning sign.

[01:01.34]Then she became aware of other defects as I got older.

[01:06.17]She saw that my hands were clenched 3 nearly all of the time;

[01:11.21]my jaws 4 would either lock together tightly,

[01:15.36]or they would suddenly become limp and fall loose.

[01:19.91]At six months I could not sit up without having a mountain of pillows around me

[01:26.39]At twelve months it was the same.

[01:30.33]Very worried by this,Mother told my father her fears,

[01:35.79]and they decided 5 to seek medical advice without any further delay.

[01:41.67]I was a little over a year old when they began to take me to hospitals and clinics

[01:48.04]convinced that there was something definitely wrong with me.

[01:53.08]Almost every doctor who saw and examined me

[01:57.84]said that I was a very interesting but also a hopeless case.

[02:03.19]Many told Mother very gently

[02:07.84]that I was mentally defective 6 and would remain so.

[02:12.81]That was a hard blow to a young mother

[02:16.86]who had already reared five healthy children.

[02:21.43]The doctors were sure of themselves

[02:25.08]and assured her that nothing could be done for me.

[02:29.63]She refused to accept this truth,

[02:33.60]the inevitable 7 truth as it then seemed that I was beyond cure,

[02:40.05]beyond saving,even beyond hope.

[02:44.41]She had nothing in the world to go by,

[02:48.54]not a scrap 8 of evidence to support her conviction that,

[02:53.71]though my body was crippled,my mind was not.

[02:58.26]Finding that the doctors could not help in any way

[03:03.12]besides telling her to foget I was a human creature

[03:08.11]and to regard me as just something to be fed

[03:12.65]and washed and then put away again,

[03:17.33]Mother decided there and then to take matters into her own hands.

[03:23.99]I was her child,and therefore part of the family.

[03:28.95]No matter how dull and incapable 9 I might grow up to be,

[03:34.41]she was determined 10 to treat me the same as the others.

[03:39.38]That was a big decision as far as my future life was concerned.

[03:44.73]But it wasn't easy for

[03:48.08]her because now the relatives and friends told her that I should be taken kindly 11

[03:54.71]sympathetically,but not seriously.

[03:59.26]"For your own sake,"they told her,"

[04:03.02]don't look to this boy as you would to the others;

[04:07.46]it would only break your heart in the end."

[04:11.59]Luckily for me,Mother and Father held out against the lot of them.

[04:17.65]But Mother wasn't content just to say that I was not an idiot

[04:23.81]she set out to prove it,not because of any rigid 12 sense of duty,but out of love

[04:31.54]That is why she was so successful.

[04:35.51]Four years rolled by and I was now five,

[04:39.95]and still as helpless as a newly born baby.

[04:44.53]While my father was out at bricklaying,

[04:48.37]earning the bread and butter for us,Mother was slowly,

[04:53.93]patiently pulling down the wall,

[04:57.90]brick by brick,that seemed to stand between me and the other children,

[05:03.86]slowly,patiently penetrating 13 beyond the thick curtain that hung over my mind

[05:10.80]separating it from theirs.

[05:14.17]It was hard,heartbreaking work,

[05:18.22]for often all she got from me in return was a vaguc smile

[05:23.79]and perhaps a faint gurgle.

[05:27.55]I could not speak or even mumble 14,

　　[05:31.49]nor could I sit up on my own without support,let alone walk.

[05:37.27]But I wasn't inert 15 or motionless.

[05:41.11]I seemed to be all movement,wild,stiff,

[05:46.15]snakelike movement that never left me,except in sleep.

[05:51.82]My fingers twisted and twitched 16 continually,

[05:56.26]my arms moved backwards and would often shoot out suddenly this way and that

[06:02.14]and my head fell sideways.

[06:05.48]I was a queer crooked 17 little fellow.

[06:09.24]Mother tells me how one day she had been sitting with me for hours,

[06:14.60]showing me pictures and telling me the names of

[06:19.35]the different animals and flowers that were in them,

[06:23.92]trying without success to get me to repeat them.

[06:28.57]This had gone on for hours while she talked and laughed with me.

[06:33.85]Then at the end of it she leaned over me and said gently into my ear:

[06:40.69]"Did you like it,Chris?

[06:43.64]Did you like the bears and the monkeys and all the lovely flowers?

[06:49.60]Nod your head for yes,like a good boy."

[06:53.68]But I could make no sign that I had understood her.

[06:58.12]Her face was bent 18 over mine hopefully.

[07:02.06]Suddenly,my queer hand

[07:06.00]reached up and grasped one of the dark curls that fell about her neck.

[07:11.46]Gently she loosened the clenched fingers,

[07:15.54]though some dark hairs were still clutched between them.

[07:20.08]Then she turned away from my curious stare and left the room,crying.

[07:25.26]The door closed behind her.

[07:28.50]It all seemed hopeless.

[07:31.55]It looked as though my relatives were right that I was an idiot and beyond help

[07:37.30]They now spoke 19 of putting me in a home for idiots.

[07:41.66]"Never!"said my mother almost fiercely,when this was suggested to her.

[07:47.23]"I know my boy isnot an idiot;it is his body that is crippled,not his mind.

[07:53.78]I'm sure of that."