One day in 1965, when I was a librarian at View Ridge School in Seattle, a fourth-grade teacher approached me. She had a student who finished his work before all the others and needed a challenge. “Could he help in the library?” she asked. I said, “Send him along.”
Soon a slight, sandy-haired boy in jeans and a T-shirt appeared.
I told him about the Dewey Decimal System for shelving books. He picked up the idea immediately. Then I showed him a stack of cards for long-overdue books that I was beginning to think had actually been returned but were miss-shelved with the wrong cards in them. He said, “Is it kind of a detective job?” I answered “yes”. And he became an unrelenting sleuth .
He had found three books with wrong cards by the time his teacher opened the door and announced, “Time for recess!” He argued for finishing the job; she made the case for fresh air. She won.
The next morning, he arrived early. “I wanted to finish finding those books,” he said. At the end of the day, when he asked to be a librarian on a regular basis, it was easy to say yes. He worked untiringly.
After a few weeks I found a note on my desk, inviting me to dinner at the boy's home. At the end of a pleasant evening, his mother announced that the family would be moving to the adjoining school district. Her son's first concern, she said, was leaving the View Ridge library. “Who will find the lost books?” he said.
When the time came, I said a reluctant good-bye. Though initially he had seemed an ordinary kid, his zeal had set him apart.
I missed him, but not for long. A few days later he popped in the door and joyfully announced, “The librarian over there doesn't let boys work in the library. My mother got me transferred back to View Ridge. My dad will drop me off on his way to work. And if he can't I'll walk.”
I should have had an inkling that such focused determination would take that young man wherever he wanted to go. What I could not have guessed, however, was that he would become a wizard of the information Age: Bill Gates, tycoon of Microsoft and America's richest man.
1965年的一天，我当时还是西雅图维尤里奇小学的一名图书管理员，一位四年级老师找到了我。她有个学生总是能够比别的同学率先完成作业，所以想要找些挑战自己的事情来做。“能让他来图书馆帮忙吗？”她问我。我说：“让他来吧。”
很快，来了一个瘦小的、沙色头发的男孩，身上穿着牛仔裤和T恤衫。
我给他讲了讲书籍分类上架的“杜威十进分类法”，他很快就掌握了。然后我给他看了一堆卡片，上面显示着超出借阅期限很久但尚未归还的图书。我开始觉得这些书或许已经被还回来了，只是搁错了书架，书里夹错了卡片。他问我：“这是不是有点儿像侦探干的活儿？”我说“是的”。他乐此不疲地当起了小侦探。
等他找到三本夹错卡片的书的时候，老师推开门宣布“现在是休息时间！”。他嚷嚷着要找完再休息。老师搬出了呼吸新鲜空气的理由，并成功说服了他。
第二天早上，他早早就来了。“我想把没找到的书找完。”他说。下班的时候，他提出想要长期来这里做图书管理员，这请求任谁也不会拒绝吧。他工作起来不知疲倦。
几个星期以后，我在办公桌上发现一张字条，上面邀请我去小男孩家里吃晚饭。我们整晚都很愉快，饭后他妈妈告诉我说，他们家很快要搬到隔壁学区去了，可是小男孩最放不下的就是维尤里奇图书馆。“谁来找那些不见了的书呢？”他说。
离开的时候，我不舍地道了别。尽管一开始他看起来就是个普通小孩，可是他的一腔热忱让他与众不同。
我很想念他，但没过几天，他突然出现在我门口，兴高采烈地宣布：“那边的图书管理员不让小男孩在图书馆工作。妈妈又把我转回维尤里奇来了。爸爸上班顺路可以送我。不能送的话，我自己走着来。”
我早该想到，有这样的坚定意志，那位年轻人肯定想干什么都能干成。可我没料到的是，他居然会成为信息时代的奇迹：他就是微软大亨、美国首富比尔·盖茨。
-sleuth [sluːθ] n. 侦探
-adjoining [əˈdʒɔɪnɪŋ] adj. 毗连的
-zeal [ziːl] n. 热心
-inkling [ˈɪŋklɪŋ] n. 迹象
-tycoon [taɪˈkuːn] n. 企业巨头
当一个人同时具备明晰的兴趣、奇高的效率、常人难及的细心和耐心时，他迈向杰出的脚步挡都挡不住。