university days - james thurber 中英对照完整版.pdf

University Days 大学生涯 James Thurber 詹姆斯 ·瑟伯 I passed all the other courses that I took at my University, but I could have never pass botany. This was because all botany students had to spend several hours a week in a laboratory looking through a microscope at plant cells, and I could never see through a microscope. I never once saw a cell through a microscope. This used to enrage my instructor. He would wander around the laboratory pleased with the progress all the students were making in drawing the involved and, so I am told, interesting structure of flower cells, until he came to me. I would just be standing there. I can‟t see anything, I would say. He would begin patiently enough, explaining how anybody can see through a microscope, but he would always end up in a fury; claiming that I could too see through a microscope but just pretended that I couldn ‟t. It takes away from the beauty of flowers anyway, I used to tell him. We are not concerned with beauty in this course, he would say. We are concerned solely with what I may call the mechanics of flars. Well, I‟d say. I can‟t see anything. Try it just once again, he‟d say, and I would put my eye to the microscope and see nothing at all, except now and again a nebulous milky substance.a phenomenon of maladjustment. You were supposed to see a vivid, restless clockwork of sharply defined plant cells. I see what looks like a lot of milk, I would tell him. This, he claimed, was the result of my not having adjusted the microscope properly, so he would readjust it for me, or rather, for himself. And I would look again and see milk. 我大学所修各门课程都通过了，但就是过不了植物学这一关，这是因为，凡是修植物 学课程的学生都必须每周在实验室里呆上若干小时，透过显微镜观看植物细 胞，而我却总 是看不透显微镜。我从未透过显微镜看见过一个细胞，这每每令我的老师勃然大怒。他总是 在实验室踱来踱去，为所有学生在绘画有关的花朵细胞的结构上所取得的进步而高兴，大家 告诉我那是很有意思的结构。最后他来到我面前，我则往往站在那儿，说道：“我什么也看 不见。”他开始说话时总是很耐心，说明谁都能看显微镜，但又总是以怒不可遏告终。他宣 称，我也能