What attitudes did your family have toward reading when you were a child? Did books surround you? Which books did your parents or other relatives read to you or suggest that you read? How did you feel about books as a child growing up? Read on to see if your experiences in any way match those of the author.

One Writer's Beginnings1

Eudora Welty

1    I learned from the age of two or three that any room in our house, at any time of day, was there to read in, or to be read to. My mother read to me. She'd read to me in the big bedroom in the mornings, when we were in her rocker(摇椅) together, which ticked(发出滴答声) in rhythm(有节奏地) as we rocked, as though we had a cricket(蟋蟀) accompanying the story. She'd read to me in the dining room on winter afternoons in front of the coal fire, with our cuckoo clock2 ending the story with "Cuckoo," and at night when I'd got in my own bed. I must have given her no peace(让某人不得安宁). Sometimes she read to me in the kitchen while she sat churning(搅拌（乳脂）), and the churning sobbed(呜咽，啜泣，抽噎；发呜咽声) along with any story. It was my ambition(抱负，雄心，野心；目标，夙愿) to have her read to me while I churned; once she granted my wish, but she read off my story before I brought her butter. She was an expressive(富有表情的；富有意味的)reader. When she was reading "Puss(（叫唤猫时用语）猫咪) in Boots(靴；（BrE) （汽车后部的）行李箱)," for instance, it was impossible not to know that she distrusted all cats.

2    It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass. Yet regardless of where they came from, I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them-with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself. Still illiterate(目不识丁的；未受教育的), I was ready for them, committed to all the reading I could give them.

3    Neither of my parents had come from homes that could afford to buy many books, but though it must have been something of a strain on his salary(薪金，薪水), as the youngest officer in a young insurance company, my father was all the while(一直) carefully selecting and ordering away for what he and Mother thought we children should grow up with. They bought first for the future .

4    Besides the bookcase in the living room, which was always called "the library," there were the encyclopedia(百科全书) tables and dictionary stand under windows in our dining room. Here to help us grow up arguing around the dining room table were the Unabridged(未经删节的；完整的) Webster, the Columbia Encyclopedia(百科全书), Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia, the Lincoln Library of Information, and later the Book of Knowledge. In "the library," inside the bookcase were books I could soon begin on-and I did, reading them all alike and as they came, straight down their rows, top shelf to bottom . My mother read secondarily(次要地，从属地) for information ; she sank as a hedonist(享乐主义者) into(沉溺于sink into) novels. She read Dickens in the spirit in which she would have eloped(私奔) with him. The novels of her girlhood that had stayed on(久留不去，逗留) in her imagination, besides those of Dickens and Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson, were Jane Eyre, Trilby, The Woman in White, Green Mansions, King Solomon's Mines.

5    To both my parents I owe my early acquaintance with a beloved(所钟爱的，受爱戴的) Mark Twain. There was a full set of Mark Twain and a short set of Ring Lardner in our bookcase, and those were the volumes that in time united us all, parents and children.

6    Reading everything that stood before me was how I came upon a worn old book that had belonged to my father as a child. It was called Sanford and Merton. Is there anyone left who recognizes it, I wonder? It is the famous moral(道德（上）的；有道德的) tale written by Thomas Day in the 1780s, but of him no mention is made on the title page of this book; here it is Sanford and Merton in Words of One Syllable by Mary Godolphin. Here are the rich boy and the poor boy and Mr. Barlow, their teacher and interlocutor(参与讨论者), in long discourses(谈话) alternating with dramatic scenes-anger and rescue allotted(分配) to the rich and the poor respectively(各自地，各个地，分别地). It ends with not one but two morals(道德), both engraved(雕刻；使铭记) on rings: "Do what you ought, come what may," and "If we would be great, we must first learn to be good."

7    This book was lacking its front cover, the back held on by strips of pasted paper, now turned golden, in several layers, and the pages stained(玷污), flecked(饰以斑点), and tattered(破烂的) around the edges; its garish(炫耀的) illustrations(插图，图解；例证说明) had come unattached(分开的) but were preserved, laid in(贮存). I had the feeling even in my heedless(粗心大意的) childhood that this was the only book my father as a little boy had had of his own. He had held onto it, and might have gone to sleep on its coverless(无封面的) face: he had lost his mother when he was seven. My father had never made any mention to his own children of the book, but he had brought it along with him from Ohio to our house and shelved(将…置于架上) it in our bookcase.

8    My mother had brought from West Virginia that set of Dickens: those books looked sad, too-they had been through fire and water before I was born, she told me, and there they were, lined up-as I later realized, waiting for me.

9    I was presented, from as early as I can remember, with books of my own, which appeared on my birthday and Christmas morning. Indeed, my parents could not give me books enough. They must have sacrificed to give me on my sixth or seventh birthday-it was after I became a reader for myself-the ten-volume set of Our Wonder World. These were beautifully made, heavy books I would lie down with on the floor in front of the dining room hearth(炉床，壁炉边), and more often than the rest volume 5, Every Child's Story Book, was under my eyes. There were the fairy tales-Grimm, Andersen, the English, the French, "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves"; and there was Aesop and Reynard the Fox; there were the myths and legends(传说), Robin Hood, King Arthur, and St. George and the Dragon, even the history of Joan of Arc; a whack(部分) of Pilgrim's Progress and a long piece of Gulliver. They all carried their classic illustrations. I located myself in these pages  and could go straight to the stories and pictures I loved; very often "The Yellow Dwarf" was first choice, with Walter Crane's Yellow Dwarf in full color making his terrifying appearance flanked(将…置于的一侧) by turkeys. Now that volume is as worn(用旧的) and backless(无封底的) and hanging(悬挂) apart as my father's poor Sanford and Merton. One measure of my love for Our Wonder World was that for a long time I wondered if I would go through fire and water(赴汤蹈火) for it as my mother had done for Charles Dickens; and the only comfort was to think I could ask my mother to do it for me.

10  I believe I'm the only child I know of who grew up with this treasure(财富) in the house. I used to ask others, "Did you have Our Wonder World?" I'd have to tell them The Book of Knowledge could not hold a candle to(比不上) it.

11  I live in gratitude to(对…心存感激) my parents for initiating(使初步了解) me-as early as I begged for it, without keeping me waiting-into knowledge of the word, into reading and spelling, by way of(通过) the alphabet(字母表). They taught it to me at home in time for me to begin to read before starting to school.

12  Ever since I was first read to, then started reading to myself, there has never been a line read that I didn't hear. As my eyes followed the sentence, a voice was saying it silently to me. It isn't my mother's voice, or the voice of any person I can identify, certainly not my own. It is human, but inward(内心的；里面的，内部的), and it is inwardly(内心里，精神方面) that I listen to it. It is to me the voice of the story or the poem itself. The cadence(韵律；节奏；抑扬顿挫), whatever it is that asks you to believe, the feeling that resides(居住) in the printed word, reaches me through the reader-voice: I have supposed, but never found out, that this is the case with all readers- to read as listeners- and with all writers, to write as listeners. It may be part of the desire to write. The sound of what falls on the page begins the process of testing it for truth , for me. Whether I am right to trust so far I don't know. By now I don't know whether I could do either one, reading or writing, without the other.

13  My own words, when I am at work on a story, I hear too as they go, in the same voice that I hear when I read in books. When I write and the sound of it comes back to my ears, then I act to make my changes. I have always trusted this voice.

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