大学英语第四册
Unit 1
Text
Two college-age boys, unaware that making money usually involves hard work, are tempted by an advertiment that promis them an easy way to earn a lot of money. The boys soon learn that if something ems too good to be true, it probably is.
BIG BUCKS THE EASY WAY
John G. Hubbell
裙房"You ought to look into this," I suggested to our two college-age sons. "It might be a way to avoid the indignity of having to ask for money all the time." I handed them some magazines in a plastic bag someone had hung on our doorknob. A message printed on the bag offered leisurely, lucrative work ("Big Bucks the Easy Way!") of delivering more such bags.
"I don't mind the indignity," the older one answered.
开不了口吉他谱"I can live with it," his brother agreed.
"But it pains me," I said，"to find that you both have been panhandling so long that it no longer embarrass you."
The boys said they would look into the magazine-delivery thing. Plead, I left town on a business trip. By midnight I was comfortably ttled in a hotel room far from home. The phone rang. It was my wife. She wanted to know how my day had gone.
"Great!" I enthud. "How was your day?" I inquired.
"Super!" She snapped. "Just super! And it's only getting started. Another truck just pulled up out front."
"Another truck?"
"The third one this evening. The first delivered four thousand Montgomery Wards. The cond brought four thousand Sears, Roebucks. I don't know what this one has, but I'm sure it will be four thousand of something. Since you are responsible, I thought you might like to know what's happening.
What I was being blamed for, it turned out, was a newspaper strike which made it necessary to hand-deliver the advertising inrts that normally are included with the Sunday paper. The company had promid our boys $600 for delivering the inrts to 4,000 hous by Sunday morning.
"Piece of cake!" our older college son had shouted.
" Six hundred bucks!" His brother had echoed, "And we can do the job in two hours!"
"Both the Sears and Ward ads are four newspaper-size pages," my wife informed me. "There are thirty-two thousand pages of advertising on our porch. Even as we speak, two big guys are
carrying armloads of paper up the walk. What do we do about all this?"
"Just tell the boys to get busy," I instructed. "They're college men. They'll do what they have to do."
At noon the following day I returned to the hotel and found an urgent message to telephone my wife. Her voice was unnaturally high and quavering. There had been veral more truckloads of ad inrts. "They're for department stores, dime stores, drugstores, grocery stores, auto stores and so on. Some are whole magazine ctions. We have hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of pages of advertising here! They are crammed wall-to-wall all through the hou in stacks taller than your ol
dest son. There's only enough room for people to walk in, take one each of the eleven inrts, roll them together, slip a rubber band around them and slide them into a plastic bag. We have enough plastic bags to supply every takeout restaurant in America!" Her voice kept rising, as if working its way out of the range of the human ear. "All this must be delivered by ven o'clock Sunday morning."
"Well, you had better get tho guys banding and sliding as fast as they can, and I'll talk to you later. Got a lunch date.
When I returned, there was another urgent call from my wife.
"Did you have a nice lunch?" she asked sweetly. I had had a marvelous steak, but knew better by now than to say so.
"Awful," I reported. "Some sort of sour fish. Eel, I think."
"Good. Your college sons have hired their younger brothers and sisters and a couple of neighborhood children to help for five dollars each. Asmbly lines have been t up. In the language of diplomacy, there is 'movement.'"
"That's encouraging."
"No, it's not," she corrected. "It's very discouraging. They're been as it for hours. Plastic bags have been filled and piled to the ceiling, but all this hasn't made a dent, not a dent, in the situation! It's almost as if the inrts keep reproducing themlves!"
"Another thing," she continued. "Your college sons must learn that one does not get the best out of employees by threatening them with bodily harm.
Obtaining an audience with son NO. 1, I snarled, "I'll kill you if threaten one of tho kids again! Idiot! You should be offering a bonus of a dollar every hour to the worker who fills the most bags.
"But that would cut into our profit," he suggested.
你的名字图片高清壁纸"There won't be any profit unless tho kids enable you to make all the deliveries on time. If they don't, you two will have to remove all that paper by yourlves. And there will be no eating or sleeping until it is removed."
There was a short, thoughtful silence. Then he said, "Dad, you have just worked a profound change in my personality."
"Do it!"
"Yes, sir!"
水下写真By the following evening, there was much for my wife to report. The bonus program had worked until someone demanded to e the color of cash. Then some activist on the work force claimed that the workers had no business ttling for $5 and a few competitive bonus while the bosd collected hundreds of dollars each. The organizer had declared that all the workers were entitled to $5 per hour! They would not work another minute until the boss agreed.
The strike lasted less than two hours. In mediation, the parties agreed on $2 per hour. Gradually, the huge stacks began to shrink.
As it turned out, the job was completed three hours before Sunday's deadline. By the time I arrived home, the boys had already ttled their accounts: $150 in labor costs, $40 for gasoline, and a like amount
for gifts—boxes of candy for saintly neighbors who had volunteered station wagons and help in delivery and dozen ros for their mother. This left them with $185 each — about two-thirds the mini
mum wage for the 91 hours they worked. Still, it was "enough", as one of them put it, to enable them to "avoid indignity" for quite a while.
All went well for some weeks. Then one Saturday morning my attention was drawn to the odd goings-on of our two youngest sons. They kept carrying carton after carton from various corners of the hou out the front door to curbside. I assumed their mother had enlisted them to remove junk for a trash pickup. Then I overheard them discussing finances.
"Geez, we're going to make a lot of money!"
"We're going to be rich!"
Investigation revealed that they were offering " for sale or rent" our entire library.
"No! No!" I cried. "You can't ll our books!"
"Geez, Dad, we thought you were done with them!"
"You're never 'done' with books," I tried to explain.
"Sure you are. You read them, and you're done with them. That's it. Then you might as well make a little money from them. We wanted to avoid the indignity of having to ask you for……"
New Words
buck
n. (sl.) U.S. dollar
plastic
a. 塑料的
n. (pl) 塑料
doorknob
n. 门把手
高二物理leisurely
美术教学方法a. unhurried 从容的，慢慢的
leisure
n. free time 空闲时间，闲暇
lucrative
a. profitable 有利的；赚钱的
pain
vt. cau pain to
panhandle
vi. (AmE) beg. esp. on the streets
delivery
n. delivering (of letters, goods, etc.)投递；送交
enthu
vi. show enthusiasm
inquire
vt. ask
super
a. (colloq.) wonderful, splendid; excellent
snap
vt. say(sth.) sharply 厉声说
inrt
n. 插页
normally
ad. in the usual conditions; ordinarily 通常
company
n. 公司
echo
vt. say or do what another person says or does; repeat 附和；重复
ad
n. (short for) advertiment
inform
vt. tell; give information 告知
porch
n. (AmE) veranda 门廊
armload
n. as much as one arm or both arms can hold; armful
walk
n. a path specially arranged or paved for walking 人行道
unnaturally
ad. in an unnatural way 不自然地
quaver
vi. (of the voice or sound) shake; tremble 颤抖
truckload
n. as much or as many as a truck can carry
department store
n. store lling many different kinds of goods in parate departments 百货公司
dime
n. coin of U.S. and Canada worth ten cents
dime store百侯薄饼
n. (AmE) a store lling a large variety of low-priced articles; variety store 廉价商品店；小商口店
drugstore
n. (AmE) a store that lls not only medicine, but also beauty products, film, magazines, and food 药店，杂货店
grocery
n. a store that lls food and houhold supplies 食品杂货店
ction
n. part of subdivision of a piece of writing, book, newspaper, etc.; portion （文章等的）段落；节；部分
勤俭节约作文cram
vt. fill too full; force or press into a small space 把……塞满；把……塞进
stack
n. an orderly; heap or group of things 一叠（堆、垛等）
band
n. flat, thin piece of material 带；带状物
vt. tie up with a band 捆扎
