But the examinations are the chief bugbears of my college life. Although I have faced them many times and cast them down and made them bite the dust, yet they rise again and menace me with pale looks, until like Bob Acres I feel my courage oozing out at my finger ends. The days before these ordeals take place are spent in cramming your mind with mystic formulae and indigestible dates—unpalatable diets, until you wish that books and science and you were buried in the depths of the sea.
不妨说，各种各样的考试正是我大学生涯面临的首要难题。虽然我曾经面对过许多次考试，而且每次都把它们打得大败而回，但是它们总是再次反扑，并且用挑衅的表情大肆要挟。直到像鲍勃·阿克莱斯这样的人物出现以后，我才感觉到信心又渐渐回到了指端。就在这些考验降临前夕，你的脑子里面塞的全都是神秘的公式和令人难以消化的椰枣——面对味道不佳的食品，你真想把自己连同书本和科学一起葬入大海深处。
At last the dreaded hour arrives, and you are a favoured being indeed if you feel prepared, and are able at the right time to call to your standard thoughts that will aid you in that supreme effort. It happens too often that your trumpet call is unheeded. It is most perplexing and exasperating that just at the moment when you need your memory and a nice sense of discrimination, these faculties take to themselves wings and fly away. The facts you have garnered with such infinite trouble invariably fail you at a pinch.
终于，恐惧时刻降临，如果你觉得自己准备就绪，那么你实在是抢到了一个有利位置，这就是说，你能够在恰当的时间召唤到你思想的潜能，从而有助于你向更高的层次迈进。有一种情况是经常发生的——任凭你百般召唤也无人理睬。而最令人感到困惑和懊恼的是，正当你需要调动记忆和缜密的鉴别力的当口，你所有的这些能力竟然振翅高飞，离你而去了。也就是说，你已经在不知不觉间储存了如此多的问题，而这些问题总会在紧要关头将你拉下马。
"Give a brief account of Huss and his work." Huss? Who was he and what did he do? The name looks strangely familiar. You ransack your budget of historic facts much as you would hunt for a bit of silk in a rag-bag. You are sure it is somewhere in your mind near the top—you saw it there the other day when you were looking up the beginnings of the Reformation. But where is it now? You fish out all manner of odds and ends of knowledge—revolutions, schisms, massacres, systems of government; but Huss—where is he? You are amazed at all the things you know which are not on the examination paper. In desperation you seize the budget and dump everything out, and there in a corner is your man, serenely brooding on his own private thought, unconscious of the catastrophe which he has brought upon you.
“请对哈斯和他的功绩做简要说明。”哈斯是谁？他都做了些什么？这个名字看起来似曾相识。于是，在你储备的历史事件中，你上下求索，其过程好似在一个塞满碎布头的口袋中寻找一小块丝绸。你确信这个信息就在距你思维阶梯顶端不远的地方——你曾在查找“宗教改革运动”初期历史时见到过它。但是现在它究竟藏在哪里？于是，你翻出所有零零碎碎的知识储备——宗教革命，教会分裂，集体屠杀，政权体制——可是“哈斯”这个人在哪里呢？你会惊奇地发现，你所了解的那些事件并没有在试卷上表现出来。失望之余，你只得攫取知识储备，还要把你所学过的每一样东西悉数查验，终于，你要找的人就躲藏在一个角落里——他静静地沉浸在自己的思绪之中，全然没有意识到加负在他人身上的精神磨难。
Just then the proctor informs you that the time is up. With a feeling of intense disgust you kick the mass of rubbish into a corner and go home, your head full of revolutionary schemes to abolish the divine right of professors to ask questions without the consent of the questioned.
就在这时，监考官却通知你考试结束时间已到。于是，怀着满腔愤懑，你一脚把思维的残片踢到角落里；你的头脑里塞满了革命性的计划——你想废除教授们的神圣特权，为什么他们能随意提问而无须经过被提问者的同意？
It comes over me that in the last two or three pages of this chapter I have used figures which will turn the laugh against me. Ah, here they are—the mixed metaphors mocking and strutting about before me, pointing to the bull in the china shop assailed by hailstones and the bugbears with pale looks, an unanalyzed species! Let them mock on. The words describe so exactly the atmosphere of jostling, tumbling ideas I live in that I will wink at them for once, and put on a deliberate air to say that my ideas of college have changed.
在这一章的最后两三页里，我已经隐约提到了几个人物——他们一定会转过身来嘲笑我。哈，这正是他们的风格——在我面前趾高气扬，用混合了种种隐喻的言辞冷嘲热讽；他们用手指着那头因遭受冰雹袭击而闯进瓷器店的公牛，以及各种面色惨白的怪物，说这是一些未经鉴别的物种！让他们嘲笑去吧。如果用十分准确的语言来描述我的生存环境，那么，面对磕磕绊绊、四处冲撞的思想意识，我会这样说：我已经对它们视而不见，而且，我还要故作深沉地说，我已经完全转变了对大学的看法。
While my days at Radcliffe were still in the future, they were encircled with a halo of romance, which they have lost; but in the transition from romantic to actual I have learned many things I should never have known had I not tried the experiment. One of them is the precious science of patience, which teaches us that we should take our education as we would take a walk in the country, leisurely, our minds hospitably open to impressions of every sort. Such knowledge floods the soul unseen with a soundless tidal wave of deepening thought. "Knowledge is power." Rather, knowledge is happiness, because to have knowledge—broad, deep knowledge—is to know true ends from false, and lofty things from low. To know the thoughts and deeds that have marked man's progress is to feel the great heart-throbs of humanity through the centuries; and if one does not feel in these pulsations a heavenward striving, one must indeed be deaf to the harmonies of life.
我在拉德克利夫学院的学习生涯仍处在来日方长的（起步）阶段，但是浪漫的光环已然褪去。从浪漫到现实的转变过程中，我所获颇丰，可以说，如果没有实践经验，你永远也不会了解到事物的真谛。在诸多经验之中，最宝贵的就是关于“忍耐的学问”。“忍耐”教给我们这样一种求学心态——我们应该把接受教育的过程视做一次乡间散步，从容不迫之间，我们的思想就会敞开胸怀，尽情地接纳天地万物。这样求得的知识犹如一波无声的思想潮汐，将我们的灵魂悄然浸润。“知识就是力量”固然正确，但是，知识更应该是愉快的，因为要拥有知识——特别是广博、深奥的知识——就需要我们具备去芜存真、点石成金的本事。了解人类进步过程中的思想和行为，你就会触摸到几个世纪以来最伟大的人性脉搏；如果你感觉不到脉搏的律动和爬向天国的脚步，那么你一定是个对生命的和弦充耳不闻之辈。