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Lesson 6 Text ( Page 3) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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One of the best-informed
men I ever knew was a cowboy who rarely read a newspaper and never a book,
but who had ridden many thousands of miles through one of the western states.He
knew his state as thoroughly as a surgeon knows the human body.(16)
He loved it, and understood it. Not a mountain, not
a canyon which had not much to tell him,not a change in the weather that
he could not interpret.(17)And
so among the pleasures of learning, we should include travel, travel
with an open mind, an alert eye (18)and
a wish to understand other peoples,other places, rather
than looking in them for a mirror image of oneself. (19)If
I were a young man today, I should resolve(20)
to see –no, to learn – all the 50 states before I was 35. Learning also means learning to practice,or at least to appreciate (21), an art. Every new art you learn appears like a new window on the universe; it is like acquiring a new sense. (22) Because I was born and brought up in Glasgow, Scotland, a hideous 19th century industrial city, I did not understand the slightest thing about architecture until I was in my 20s. Since then, I have learned a little about the art, and it has been a constant delight. Crafts, too, are well worth exploring. A friend of mine took up book-binding because his doctor ordered him to do something that would give him relaxation and activity without tension. It was a difficult challenge at first, but he gradually learned to square off the paper and the boards,(23) sew the pages, fasten on the backstrip, and maintain precision and neatness throughout. Within a few years, this initially rather dull hobby had led him into fresh fields of enjoyment. He began to collect fine books from the past five centuries, he developed an |
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