1、初中英语浅易读物（经典）11 My fathers tearsThere are seven children in my family, and we all loved to hear stories when we were young. My mother and father would take turns telling us stories. My fathers favorite story is one which he told us many times. My father was a mining engineer who worked in many differ
2、ent countries. Every year, it seemed, he went to a different place to work. About forty years ago, when my older brother and I were babies, my father was working in Texas. The company for which he worked had just opened a new mine deep in the Texas hills. They had sent my father there to direct the
3、work. The mine was sixty miles from the nearest city, Lamesa. Life at the mining camp was primitive（原始的） and difficult, so my mother, my brother, and I stayed at home in Chicago. The company promised my father that he wouldnt have to stay more than a few months.My father had been at the mine for abo
4、ut six weeks. The work was going along well. My father was waiting for the day when he could return home to his family. He and my mother wrote to each other, but it was difficult for letters to reach the camp. Sometimes they sent a man from the mine of Zenith, a town about twenty miles away, to pick
5、 up the mail. Zenith was a town of about twenty people, and at that time, there was no railroad there. There were few roads, and communication was poor. The telephone lines didnt then reach such out-of-the-way places. The mail arrived in Zenith only once a week and sometimes not even that often.One
6、night it was raining a little, and the wind had begun to blow very hard. My father was getting ready for bed, but he decided to go out and looked around the mine. He wanted to be sure the horses were all right.The wind was blowing harder and harder, and something struck my father in the eye. It felt
7、 very sharp. The pain was very strong. My father put his hand to his eye and rubbed it lightly, but the pain continued. Tears filled his eye as he hurried to finish his work. It was dark and with his one eye covered, he could see little. He tended to each horse despite the pain he felt. After making
8、 sure that all was well, he went back to the house. On his way back, my father began to worry. The pain in his eye was worse. It was a sharper pain than anything he had ever felt, but that wasnt all. He felt a pain somewhere else that night, but it wasnt a pain he could talk about. He didnt know whe
9、re it was; he just felt it. Something was wrong and he didnt know what it was. He didnt even know how to look for it. In the meantime, he had to take care of his eye.When he got back to the house, some of the men were playing cards. They were mainly Mexicans who worked for my father at the mine. He
10、called to one of them, asking him to look into his eye. The man brought a lamp close to my fathers eye, but he couldnt see anything.“There must be something there,“ said my father. “It really hurts a lot. The pain is right in the center of the eye.“ The men sent for the engineer who lived next door.
11、 The engineer came immediately and brought his magnifying glass with him. This time, they noticed a small black mark directly in the center of my fathers eyeball. It looked like a small piece of coal. As hard as they tried, it was impossible to remove it, for the wind had driven it deep into the eye
12、ball. My father was in great pain. His eye began to look very red. He was exhausted, so he went into his room and lay down on his cot（简易床）, trying to sleep.At about eleven oclock, there was a knock at the door.One of the workers, Manuel, answered. “Senor, it is a boy from the town. He has brought a
13、telegram for you.“ In those days, people often believed that a telegram meant trouble. Manuel stayed with my father as he read the telegram, and the boy from Zenith stayed with my father in the other room.My father opened the telegram quickly. It was from his brother back in Chicago. It said: “Come
14、at once. Doctor says you are needed. Grace has pneumonia and needs you at her bedside. West End Hospital.“My father read the telegram several times. The boy told him that it had arrived about eight oclock that night. My fathers job was to think about the mine, but there was little he could do. He ha
15、d to go home at once.初中英语浅易读物（经典）2“Manuel, get two horses ready,“ he said. “We must ride to Lamesa. You will have to go with me and bring the horses back.“My father packed immediately. His eye was causing him great pain. He worked with one hand, holding a handkerchief to his eye with the other. He h
16、ad to stop and sit down several times to control the pain. Soon the horses were ready.My father and Manuel rode off into the night silently. Manuel kept his head down, and soon he fell asleep. My father watched to see that Manuel didnt fall his horse, but his thoughts were mostly far away in Chicago
17、 with my mother. He asked himself a thousand questions. He had been a fool to leave her alone with two small children! His eye hurt all the time now, but he didnt seem to mind. My mother was his only thought. If he lost her He didnt want to think about it.They reached Zenith at about three oclock in
18、 the morning and went immediately to the home of the telegraph operator. My father woke him up. “Have there been any more message for me?“Only that one,“ said the operator sleepily. “I know that your wife is very sick and that youre hoping for some good news. Im sorry. There was only the one message
19、, and I sent that right out to you.“Thanks.“Whats the matter with your eye?“the operator asked . “ You keep holding it.“ Ive got something in it,“my father answered. “ A piece of coal or metal or something. I dont know what it is. It hurts.“ Let me help you. Perhaps I can get it out for you.“ “ No,
20、thank you anyway. They tried at the mine, but they couldnt get it out. Thanks for the offer, but I dont have much time. I want to catch the morning train out of Lamesa.“ Youll never make it,“the operator said. “ Thats a hard ride even if you feel well, but your eye, you wont be able to arrive on tim
21、e.“ Well try,“my father said. “ We have to try.“My father and Manuel rode on toward Lamesa, which was forty miles away. There was a railroad in Lamesa with a train that left for the north every morning at nine oclock. The telegraph operator was right. It would be a difficult ride for someone who fel
22、t well. For a person like my father, with his painful eye, it might be impossible. They would have to ride without stopping.Near the end of the ride, both my father and Manuel began to feel very tired. Their bodies burned and their heads ached. My fathers eye hurt more than ever, and both of the men
23、 felt sick. But somehow they made it.My father sent Manuel to the train station to see about tickets while he went to the only hotel in town. There was a telephone there, and he wanted to call Chicago to see if there had been any change. He sat down and waited while the operator put through his call
24、. He sat with his head in his hands. His eye felt like a piece of hot metal and he began to shake.The phone rang. Soon my father was talking to a stranger in a hospital in Chicago. “ Yes, sir. Your wife is here, and I have good news for you. Shes much better. In fact, shes now out of danger. I know
25、that your brother told you to come right away, but now that wont be necessary. Shes going to be fine.“My father sat down and put his head in his hands once again. She was going to be all right! Everything was going to be all right. He felt like someone had taken a huge weight from his shoulders. He
26、began to cry and couldnt stop. It was a nervous reaction. Big tears rolled down his checks, but he didnt care who saw him.After a while, he sat up and stopped crying. He was feeling better. In fact, he felt no pain. Where was the pain in his eye? He touched his eye with his finger and felt something
27、 in the corner of it. Out of his eye came a small piece of coal or black metal. He no longer cared what it was. It was out! His eye was better. It was going to be all right!Whatever it was my fathers tears had washed the object out of his eye.初中英语浅易读物（经典）32 Do Dreams Save Lives?Are dreams of any use
28、 to the dreamer or to anyone else? We may remember the traveller who left the ship Waratah at Durban because of his terrible dreams. The Waratah later disappeared entirely, with everyone on board. The travellers dreams helped him and saved him from death; but they didnt help the other people. Why wa
29、s this man treated differently from everyone else?A man once had a dream about the Black Forest in Germany. In his dream he was walking in the forest when two men ran out and tried to throw him to the ground. He ran off as fast as he could, but they followed. He reached a place where he saw two sepa
30、rate roads in front of him, one to the right and one to the left. Which road ought he to take?He heard the two men behind him, getting nearer, and at the same time he heard a voice in his ear. It told him to go to the right, and he did so. He ran on and soon came to a small hotel. He was received th
31、ere kindly and given a room; and so he was saved from the two men. That was the dream.Twenty years later he was really in the Black Forest and, as happened in the dream long before, two men ran out and tried to throw him down. He remembered the dream and took the road to the right. He soon reached a
32、 small hotel, was taken in, and so was safe. His dream of twenty years before had saved his life.But dreams do sometimes save the lives of friends and other people. A girl, Merna, who lived in Czernak, Poland, was in love with a Polish soldier, Stanislaus Omensky, who marched away to fight in World
33、War . Later on, she began to dream about him.The first dream came in October 1918, about a month before the end of the war. In the dream she saw him in a dark place among some rocks or stones. He was trying to move some of them, but he could not do so. So he stopped trying and sat down on the ground
34、 alone in the dark.She had this dream several times, but then in the following summer it changed. In the new dream she saw a castle on a hill. Part of the castle had fallen down and there were a lot of stones on the ground below the broken part. She went towards these in her dream, and then she hear
35、d the voice of her boyfriend, Stanislaus. The voice came from under the stones, and so she tried to lift some of them. But she was too weak to do this, and she had to go sadly away.This dream took the place of the old one, and she saw the same stones several times in her sleep on other nights. She t
36、old her mother about it , and a lot of other people in Czernak heard about the dream. But they did not care very much. A girls dreams are not important to other people.Merna decided that she ought to find that castle. She was quite sure that it was a real one, but there are a lot of old castles in t
37、hat part of Poland. There was little hope of finding a special one among so many. But the dreams continued , and one day Merna could not bear it any longer. She had to find that castle. So she began a long journey on foot.Day after day she went onwards, looking for the castle. She slept on the groun
38、d beside the road , and sometimes farmers gave her something to eat. For them it was only another sad story of the war, but they had kind hearts.One day in April 1902, she came to the little village of Zlota. There on the top of a hill stood her castle, as she had seen it so often in her dreams! She
39、 ran into the village and fell down on the ground.Of course, a crowd of people arrived and look down at her. A policeman arrived too, and Merna told everyone about her dreams.“Theres the castle!” she cried wildly, pointing to it. “Thats the castle that Ive seen in my dreams!” But the people saw the
40、castle every day and did not care much.She got up and went towards the fallen stones at the bottom of the castle wall, and some of the villagers went with her. She asked the men to lift up the stones, and they laughingly did so. They did not believe that 初中英语浅易读物（经典）4her story had any meaning, but i
41、t was not difficult to lift a few stones. They found nothing on the first day, but after working for two days they heard a mans voice calling from below.Merna knew that voice. It was the voice of Stanislaus Omensky, her boyfriend. The men quickly made the hole bigger and soon brought him out. He had
42、 been in the darkness for two years, and at first the strong light of day hurt his eyes. But soon he was looking round with surprise at the people who were standing there.He had lived on the food that he had found in the castle. He had entered the castle during the war; then part of it was hit and d
43、estroyed, and his way out was closed by falling stones. So he could not get out and he had to remain there until Merna brought him help.What caused her to dream like that? How did her mind know anything about a castle which she had never seen? How did she know that Stanislaus was down there among the broken stones?
