双语美文：给年轻人的忠告(Advice To Youth)

获悉人们希望我在这里讲几句时,我就问他们我该讲些什么。他们希望我讲些适合年轻人的东西――一些教诲性,有教育意义的东西。或是一些好的建议。这太好了!我倒是一直想给年轻人提点建议呢,因为人在年轻时期;好的建议极易在心底扎根。并能终生受用,那么,首先,年轻朋友们――我要真诚地告诫你们―― 

一定要听父母的话。长远来讲,这是最聪明的做法,如果你不听话,他们就会逼着你听话。大多数父母认为他们知道的比你们多,在这种情况下,与其基于自己的判断行事,还不如迎合他们的想法。这样你会收获更多。 

如果你有上级的话，请尊重他们，对陌生人和他人也是如此。如果某个人得罪了你,而你也不知道他是否是故意的。那就,不要采用极端做法,而要等待时机,给他当头一棒,这就够了;如果发现他并非有意伤害你,那么,你就应该站出来,坦白承认教训他的事;要像一个男子汉一样承认错误并说明自己并非有意。还有就是,切勿使用暴力。在这个和平友好的年代,暴力已经过时。让我们谴责这些低俗的举止,粉碎暴力吧! 

早睡早起――这是十分明智的。有些人主动起床,也有些人被迫起床。当然,在百灵鸟的歌声中起床是最惬意不过了。当人人都知道你与百灵鸟同迎清晨。你便会备受称赞;如果你得到一只中意的百灵鸟,并按自己的意愿训练它,让他九点半。甚至是任何时候起床就不是件难事――当然。这并不是说要耍诡计。 

现在。我们来谈谈说谎吧。要说谎,就得小心谨慎,否则很容易穿帮。一旦被揭穿,别人就不再认为你是善良和纯洁的,他们眼中的你就不是从前的你了。很多年轻人就因为一个笨拙或并不圆满的谎言永远地伤害了自己,原因在于他们不够谨慎且缺乏训练。有些人认为,年轻人不能撒谎。当然,这有些偏激。我不会这么偏激,而是始终相信自己是有道理的,我认为,年轻人应适当运用这门伟大的艺术,通过训练和实践,他们将变得自信、优雅和精确,而这些恰恰可以使他们完美出色地完成任务。耐心、勤奋和对细节的认真揣摩――都是年轻人必须具备的条件。

随着时间的流逝,这些要素将会使你们臻于完美,而你们也只有仰仗这些要素才能成就日后的辉煌。想想那位无可匹敌的大师吧,多年沉闷乏味的学习、思考、实践和练习才使他得以在世人面前说出这样的经典语句――“真理有着巨大的力量,并将战胜一切”――这是最伟大的悖论,是凡人所能达到的最高境界。历史和个人的经历都深刻地表明:真理易被推翻,但绝妙的谎言却永远颠扑不破。波士顿立有一座纪念麻醉术发明者的纪念碑。但后来,很多人发现,这个人根本不是麻醉术的发明者,他不过是窃取了他人的成果。真理的力量真的很强大吗?它能战胜一切吗?哦,不,朋友们,那座纪念碑是用很坚固的材料做成,但它所昭示的谎言将比纪念碑本身还要久一百万年。笨拙、无说服力和漏洞百出的谎言是你应当通过不断学习去避免的,这样的谎言还不及一般真理长久。为什么呢?你还是说出真相吧,现在就说。一个没有说服力、可笑、荒谬的谎言不会存在两年――除非它是对某人的诽谤。当然,这样的谎言牢不可破,但这对你的名誉没有什么好处。一句话:尽早练习这门高尚而美丽的艺术吧――现在就开始。要是我当年入门早,现在就已经学会了。 

切不要随便玩弄枪械。年轻人因为无知和不小心摆弄枪械而造成痛苦和伤害的例子太多了!就在四天前,我避暑的农舍隔壁住着一位满头银发、和蔼可亲的老奶奶,她是世界上最可亲的老人家之一了。当时,她正坐在那儿干活。她的小孙子蹑手蹑脚溜了进来,还拿着一管旧的、变了形的、锈迹斑斑的枪,这支枪好多年没用了,大家都以为里边没装子弹。孙子用枪指着她,笑着威胁她。她个分惊恐,惊叫着跑开,并在门的另一侧求饶。但当她从他身边走过时,他用枪几乎顶着她的胸膛,并且扣动了板机!他以为枪膛里没子弹。的确是――枪里确实没子弹,所以并没有造成什么伤害。这是我听过的唯一一桩例外。因此,同样地,不要去碰没有装子弹的枪。它们是人类制造出的最精确的夺命工具。不要在枪支上浪费精力,不要给枪装支架,不要装瞄准器,甚至不要去瞄准。不,你只要拿起一样类似的东西并且“砰砰”两下,保证你会击中目标。一个在四十五分钟之内无法用加特林击中三十码远的教堂的年轻人,可能会用一支破旧的没装子弹的枪在一百码处次次击中他的奶奶。想想看,如果滑铁卢战役中的一方是拿着没装子弹的枪的孩子们,另一方是他们的女性亲戚,结果会如何呢?只要想想,就会让人不寒而栗。 

书有各种各样的,但好书才适合年轻人阅读。请记住,好书能让你不断完善自身,这种作用力强大、不可估量且难以名状。因此,年轻的朋友们,请谨慎选择你们的读物,要十分谨慎。你们应该专门读罗伯逊的《道德启示录》、巴克斯特的《圣徒的安息》和《傻瓜出国记》诸如此类的作品。 

我说得已经够多了。我希望你们能珍惜这些建议,让它们成为你的向导,点燃你们思想的火花。按照这些建议去努力培养自己的性格吧。慢慢地,一旦你塑造好了自己的性格,你将惊喜而欣慰地发现,自己和他人是如此相似。 

感悟：好书能让你不断完善自身，因此，年轻的朋友们，请谨慎选择你们的读物，要十分谨慎。

Advice To Youth

Being told I would be expected to talk here, I inquired what sort of I talk I ought to make. They said it should be something suitable to youth-- something didactic, instructive, or something in the nature of good advice. Very well. I have a few things in my mind which I have often longed to say for the instruction of the young; for it is in one's tender early years that such things will best take root and be most enduring and most valuable. First, then. I will say to you my young friends ―― and I say it beseechingly, urgingly ―― 

　　Always obey your parents, when they are present. This is the best policy in the long run, because if you don't, they will make you. Most parents think they know better than you do, and you can generally make more by humoring that superstition than you can by acting on your own better judgment. 

　　Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any, also to strangers, and sometimes to others. If a person offend you, and you are in doubt as to whether it was intentional or not, do not resort to extreme measures; simply watch your chance and hit him with a brick. That will be sufficient, if you shall find that he had not intended any offense, come out frankly and confess yourself in the wrong when you struck him; acknowledge it like a man and say you didn't mean to. Yes, always avoid violence; in this age of charity and kindliness, the time has gone by for such things, Leave dynamite to the low and unrefined. 

　　Go to bed early, get up early-- this is wise. Some authorities say get up with the sun; some say get up with one thing, others with another. But a lark is really the best thing to get up with. It gives you a splendid reputation with everybody to know that you get up with the lark; and if you get the right kind of lark, and work at him right, you can easily train him to get up at half past nine, every time--it's no trick at all. 

　　Now as to the matter of lying. You want to be very careful about lying; otherwise you are nearly sure to get caught. Once caught, you can never again be, in the eyes of the good and the pure, what you were before. Many a young person has injured himself permanently through a single clumsy and ill finished lie, the result of carelessness born of incomplete training. Some authorities hold that the young out not to lie at all. That of course, is putting it rather stronger than necessary; still, while I cannot go quite so far as that, I do maintain, and I believe I am right, that the young ought to be temperate in the use of this great art until practice and experience shall give them that confidence, elegance, and precision which alone can make the accomplishment graceful and profitable. Patience, diligence, painstaking attention to detail ―― these are requirements; these in time, will make the student perfect; upon these only, may he rely as the sure foundation for future eminence. Think what tedious years of study, thought, practice, experience, went to the equipment of that peerless old master who was able to impose upon the whole world the lofty and sounding maxim that "Truth is mighty and will prevail”―― the most majestic compound fracture of fact which any of woman born has yet achieved. For the history of our race, and each individual's experience, are sewn thick with evidences that a truth is not hard to kill, and that a lie well told is immortal. There is in Boston a monument of the man who discovered anesthesia; many people are aware, in these latter days, that that man didn't discover it at all, but stole the discovery from another man. Is this truth mighty, and will it prevail? Ah no, my hearers, the monument is made of hardy material, but the lie it tells will outlast it a million years. An awkward, feeble, leaky lie is a thing which you ought to make it your unceasing study to avoid; such a lie as that has no more real permanence than an average truth. Why, you might as well tell the truth at once and be done with it. A feeble, stupid, preposterous lie will not live two years--except it be a slander upon somebody. It is indestructible, then, of course, but that is no merit of yours. A final word: begin your practice of this gracious and beautiful art early--begin now. If I had begun earlier, I could have learned how. 

　　Never handle firearms carelessly. The sorrow and suffering that have been caused through the innocent but heedless handling of firearms by the young! Only four days ago, right in the next farm house to the one where I am spending the summer, a grandmother, old and gray and sweet, one of the loveliest spirits in the land, was sitting at her work, when her young grandson crept in and got down an old, battered, rusty gun which had not been touched for many years and was supposed not to be loaded, and pointed it at her, laughing and threatening to shoot. In her fright she ran screaming and pleading toward the door on the other side of the room; but as she passed him he placed the gun almost against her very breast and pulled the trigger! He had supposed it was not loaded. And he was right ―― it wasn't. So there wasn't any harm done. It is the only case of that kind I ever heard of. Therefore, just the same, don't you meddle with old unloaded firearms; they are the most deadly and unerring things that have ever been created by man. You don't have to take any pains at all with them; you don't have to have a rest, you don't have to have any sights on the gun, you don't have to take aim, even. No, you just pick out a relative and bang away, and you are sure to get him. A youth who can't hit a cathedral at thirty yards with a Gatling gun in three quarters of an hour, can take up an old empty musket and bag his grandmother every time, at a hundred. Think what Waterloo would have been if one of the armies had been boys armed with old muskets supposed not to be loaded, and the other army had been composed of their female relations. The very thought of it makes one shudder. 

　　There are many sorts of books; but good ones are the sort for the young to read. Remember that. They are a great, an inestimable, and unspeakable means of improvement. Therefore be careful in your selection, my young friends; be very careful; confine yourselves exclusively to Robertson's Sermons, Baxter's Saint's Rest, The Innocents Abroad, and works of that kind. 

　　But I have said enough. I hope you will treasure up the instructions which I have given you, and make them a guide to your feet and a light to your understanding. Build your character thoughtfully and painstakingly upon these precepts, and by and by, when you have got it built, you will be surprised and gratified to see how nicely and sharply it resembles everybody else's.