I remember the excitement engendered by the conversation in our home. All kinds of ideas were explored; all sorts of prejudices were challenged; penetrating minds were brought to bear on every problem of the day. I learned that each one of us has a right to his own beliefs, that prejudice perverts truth and that violence in the long run gains us nothing. From this understanding I moved into the belief that people everywhere, must learn how to work together for the common purpose of the betterment of mankind.
I believe one of the greatest ideas of all times, one that is a compelling moral force, is the concept of the dignity and worth of the human individual. From this idea there develops a sense of devotion to the common good.
I believe that if we pull these rather simple but fundamental4 things together and tie them up with honesty and truth, there are no visible limits to the heights to which mankind can rise.
我认为，对我一生影响最大的人是父亲。父亲是一位极具好奇心的发明家与科学家。他热爱那些从自然中发现的美与图案，并从中受到了极大的启迪。父亲信任别人，而他自己也是一个非常诚实的人。虽然他的幽默偶尔会有些尖刻，却充满了善意；他仿佛拥有无穷无尽的精力。一次，有人问父亲马克西姆消音器这个点子是怎么想到的。他回答：“通过观察水在排水管中的流动方式而想到的。”这个简单的道理开启了我的心智，让我坚信人类的智慧是无穷的。通过对我们智慧的运用，我们对人类以及周围宇宙的了解会更加地深入。这种知识将会使人类与生活环境之间的关系更为融洽。这样，我们就有机会将世界建设得更美好。
记得9月初的一个晚上，我和父亲一起坐在小船的甲板上。我们的小船泊在一个僻静的小湾里。微风轻拂，带来丝丝咸味，我们还可以听到一条狭小陆地那边传来的海浪声。繁星点点，不时会有一颗流星划过天际。父亲对天文学有着浓厚的兴趣，当我们探讨那晚的壮丽星空时，他引导着我进行思索。那思索令我终生难忘。我认为，正是从那刻起，我开始明白必定有法则与秩序存在于我们的宇宙之中。一切都已安排就绪。人类之所以能够观察、学习理解事物并运用其学到的知识，关键就在于知识的运用是为了大家共同的利益，而非一个人或少数人，是为所有人建造的而非毁灭的。
我的父母都拥有强烈的社会责任感。他们相信，好运将更多的机会赋予了自己，因此他们有责任为社会造福。毋庸置疑，这也正是我信仰的来源。我必须付出而非接受更多，你对他人是否有用就是衡量你的人生是否令人满意的标准。
我还记得在家中谈话带给我的兴奋与激动。我们探讨所有的思想，质疑所有的偏见，借深邃的思想解读当代的所有问题。我了解到，我们每个人都有信仰的权利，真理会因偏见而扭曲，而且从长远来看，暴力会让我们一无所获。在这样的认识中，我逐渐相信，世界各地的人们都必须学会团结起来，共同为人类更美好的明天而奋斗。
每个人的自尊与价值就是最具影响力的道德力量，我相信这是所有时代中最伟大的思想之一。而为共同利益所做出的奉献精神正是源于这种思想。
我相信，如果我们能将那些看似简单实则重要的思想凝聚在一起，并用诚实与真理串联起来，那么人类的登高将没有极限。
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The Last Hill
弗朗西斯·拉塞尔 / Francis Russell
On this waning autumn afternoon the northern Maine landscape1 is tart, compelling, shadowed here and there by puffs of fair-weather cumulus, remnants of summer. Here, a dozen miles west of Waldoboro, I once spent my summers from the age of 12 to 14 at one of those Indian-named boys' camps—more years ago than I like to think about.
I stand on the rise near what was once the baseball diamond. To my right is the black oak, several hundred years old, beside which we used to hold our Saturday night campfires. How many times on heat-heavy August days have I stood on this rise looking out over the wooded landscape toward the Camden hills? For me it was always a magical prospect, the austere2 countryside stretching away with the sharp definition of an 18th-century aquatint across hill and woodland to Mt. Battie outlined against the horizon. At our campfire evenings, when we gathered around the great oak just after sunset, Mount Battie without losing its definition would take on a blue luminosity.
Over the years a ragged second-growth of aspen and birch and speckled alder, at the far edge of the baseball diamond, has blotted out that view. Now there is nothing to see beneath the crystalline sky but the uneven tops of second-growth trees. Already the sky has begun to taken on the steelier tints of winter. Even Mt. Battie has disappeared.
On sultry afternoons, when the air quivered3 in the cool and fading light of early evening, I used to stand here by the old oak and look out across an interluden of scrub and swamp from which several miles away, a hill emerged. As a hill it was insignificant enough. Below its bare summit an abandoned pasture lay dotted with ground juniper and outcroppings of granite. Yet something about that hill drew me, beckoned to me, across the miles. I could not bear to take my eyes from it, I knew only that before summer ended I must go to it, (make my way over the pasture, up and up past shrub and granite until I stood on the very summit.) It was something I had to do. I could not explain why. I did not even ask myself.
Not that it was easy to get away from camp. Morning and afternoon, our activitics were recorded in a counselor' s notebook. We had to be swimming or rowing or playing tennis or baseball or practicing a track event or going off on nature walks or making some gadget in the carpentry shop—just so long as we did something. But to do nothing, to climb a hill for no reason, that was outside the rules, against the "camp spirit."
Saturday afternoons, with their influx of parents and visitors, brought a certain relaxation, less accountability. On one such blue and vivid afternoon I slipped away to get to my hill. From the great oak, I could see its summit ahead of me, unknown, inviting. Inconspicuously, I edged along the baseball field, then slipped into the underbrush.
It was hard going, hard to keep a sense of direction in such a tangle of vine and thicket. I stumbled over rotten logs, stepped into anthills. Marsh hillocks gave way under my feet, dead branches snagged me, prickly seeds worked into my wet sneakers. The air was stagnant. With mosquitoes4 droning and hover-flies circling and darting, I plodded on, losing myself and losing track of time.
I must have been struggling on for at least an hour. Suddenly I came to a clearing, an open grove of ash and maple, and as the sunlight filtered through the leaves. I saw in front of me a eluster of ornate diminutivc houses. Brightly painted in a variety of colors, trimmed with scrollwork and cusps and scalloped shingles, with narrow, high-pitched roofs, each was no more than an arm' s length from the next, and all were empty. There was no sign of any living being.
