and should as soon think of counterfeiting another's look or step or voice, or of modulating my own by a pitch pipe
一提到演说，就会想到伪造其他人的表情，步伐或声音，抑或通过为笛子定调的方法来调整我自己的音调
(as the ancient orators did, with whom oratory was acting elocution, a branch of the dramatic art),
（就像古代演说家那样，在他们看来演说术就是表演朗诵，属于戏剧的一个分支），
as of adopting or imitating the gestures and tones of the most celebrated rhetorician I ever saw.
采用或模仿我曾见过的最著名的演说家的姿势和声音。
The result was rather encouraging.
结果相当令人鼓舞。
My mother and sister were both satisfied.
我妈妈和姐姐都很满意。
At any rate, they said nothing to the contrary.
不管怎样，她们没有说让我气馁的话。
Being only in my nineteenth year, what might I not be able to accomplish after a little more experience!
鉴于当时只有十九岁，我不可能做得更好了。
How little did I think, while rehearsing before my mother and sister,
在我妈妈和姐姐面前朗诵时，我的顾虑很少，
that anything serious would ever come of it, or that I was laying the foundations of character for life,
任何一点点麻烦都会克服，或者说我以生活中的人物性格为基础，
or that I was beginning what I should not be able to finish within the next forty or fifty years following.
抑或我开始做的事情在接下来四十年或五十年之内都无法完成。
Yet so it was. I had broken the ice without knowing it.
然而，事实就是如此。我不用先了解就打破了这层坚冰。
These things were but the foreshadowing of what happened long afterward.
这些事情只不过预言了长久以后将要发生的一切而已。
