英语 reciting and small talk
Hello, everyone. My reciting passage is Did you deal with fortune fairly.
Did You Deal With Fortune Fairly
Most people complain of fortune, few of nature; and the kinder they think the latter has been to them, the more they murmur at what they call the injustice of the former.
Why have not I the riches, the rank, the power, of such and such, is the common expostulation(诘问 斥责) with fortune; but why have not I the merit, the talents, the wit, or the beauty, of such and such others, is a reproach（责怪） rarely or never made to nature.
The truth is, that nature, seldom profuse, and seldom niggardly（吝啬地）, has distributed her gifts more equally than she is generally supposed to have done. Education and situation make the great difference. Culture improves, and occasions elicit, natural talents. I make no doubt but that there are potentially, if I may use that pedantic（文绉绉的） word, many Bacons, Locks, Newtons, Caesars, Cromwells, and Marlboroughs at the ploughtail, behind counters, and, perhaps, even among the nobility; but the soil must be cultivated, and the season favourable, for the fruit to have all its spirit and flavour.
If sometimes our common parent has been a little partial, and not kept the scales quite even; if one preponderate（天平一端下沉） too much, we throw into the lighter a due counterpoise（平衡力） of vanity（虚荣）, which never fails to set all right. Hence it happens, that hardly any one man would, without reverse, and in every particular, change with any other.
Though all are thus satisfied with the dispensations（豁免） of nature, how few listen to her voice! How few follow her as a guide! In vain she points out to us the plain and direct way to truth, vanity, fancy, affectation（做作）, and fashion assume her shape, and wind us through fairy-ground to folly（愚蠢） and error.
Excerpt（摘录） from Upon Affectation by Lord Chesterfield
For me, the most impressive sentence in this passage is "Education and situation make the great difference". My parents are both teachers in the countryside. Although they are only teaching in primary or junior high school, most of their students can only get a few scores in their tests. Only few can get ninety or higher scores. So some of these students will go to work after or even before they finish their junior high school education. And that school sometimes even can not get enough teacher, which means some courses like English and PE is unavailable for these students during almost a half semester. The gap between countryside education with city education is really unimaginable for us. And the educational resources gap between big city and small city is quite large, too. My cousin, who are now studying in the best class of one of the best public schools of Leiyang, even complained to me that their teachers just repeated what the text books said instead of teaching them. There is at most one student one year who can enter the PKU or THU in Leiyang, while in my high school, the first middle high school of Changsha, there were thirteen students last year who entered the PKU successfully. As the passage says, only cultivated soil and favourable season can create better results.
This big gap remind me that the current society is certainly unfairly. Your potentially best achievement might have be limited before you are born. The child born in Henan is obviously harder to get into a good university than those born in Beijing. The child born in rich families can without doubt live a easier life than those born in the poor families. The key is that if we can accept our family background or our fortune with a peaceful mind. The reality might be cruel, but we need to learn to accept it. We can not change our family background, but we can change our attitude towards it and fight for a better life, or as the title of this passage, try to deal with fortune fairly.
