Text 1

Personal Names

About the Puritan colonies:

   Puritan colonies were founded for religious rather than economic reasons. The purpose of the founders was to worship God, to escape religious persecutions and establish a Puritan utopia. Among the 13 earliest colonies Puritan ones included Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.

The story of Uncle Sam:

   During the War of 1812, the US government hired meat packers to provide meat to the army. One of these meat packers was a man named Samuel Wilson. Samuel was a friendly and fair man. Everyone liked him and called him Uncle Sam.

   Sam Wilson stamped the boxes of meat for the army with a large US for United Sates. Some government inspectors came to look over Sam's company. They asked the worker what the US on the boxes stood for. As a joke, the worker answered that these letters stood for the name of his boss, Uncle Sam.

   The joke spread, and soldiers began saying that their food came from Uncle Sam. Before long, people called all things that came from the government "Uncle Sam's", "Uncle Sam" became a nickname for the US government.

   Soon there were drawings and cartoons of Uncle Sam in newspapers. In these early pictures, Uncle Sam was a young man. He wore stars and strips, but his hair was dark and he had not a beard. The beard was added when Abraham Lincoln was President. President Lincoln had a beard.

Language notes:

1. In an anthropological account of any tribe, the manner of its giving of personal names is often thought of sufficient importance or inclusion, and so we may fittingly attempt an appraisal of such habits among the Americans.

(在任何民族的人类学研究中，取名的习俗往往非常重要，而且包含许多内容。因此，我们可以对美国人的取名习俗作一番研究。)

Appraisal: an act of assessing. 
    e.g. She made a thorough appraisal.

2. The old theory that he took the name of his master seems to have little foundation, as is evidenced by the failure of the names of the great slave-holding families to be very common among Negroes.

(过去的理论认为黑人用的是自己主人的姓，这似乎站不住脚。因为拥有大量奴隶的家族的姓并没有成为黑人中的常见姓。)

Note the use of “as” in the sentence.
    e.g. It's one of those things as people used to know much about.

3. Sometimes this has resulted from a desire to escape from a real or fancied stigma of association with a foreign background.

(有时是想摆脱外国背景的耻辱，这种耻辱或者是现实存在的，或者只存在于想象中。)

Stigma: here refers to a mark of disgrace.
    e.g. To be a non-reader carries a social stigma.

4. On the other hand, this leveling process has failed to eliminate very many names, and the number of names in Great Britain or any other country.

(同时，这种拉平的过程并没有使大量的姓消失，也没有减少英国或其它国家姓的数量。)

Leveling: here means removing the disparity.
    e.g. level the rich and the poor.

Text 2

Wine in American Life

About Temperance and Teetotal Movement:

   The early temperance movement argued against the use of spirits but did not object to the moderate consumption of beer or wine. A more hard-line stance was taken by the teetotal movement which campaigned against the use of all alcoholic drinks. The voices against the dangers of alcohol became loudest during the 1800s. Also, for the first time, there were safe, and affordable, alternatives to beer such as tea and pasturized milk. Clean water was often difficult to come by until decent water systems were built in the late 1880s.

About Thomas Jefferson:

   This powerful advocate of liberty was born in 1743 in Albermarle County, Virginia, inheriting from his father, a planter and surveyor, some 5,000 acres of land, and from his mother, a Randolph, high social standing. He studied at the College of William and Mary, then read law. In 1772 he married Martha Wayles Skelton, a widow, and took her to live in his partly constructed mountaintop home, Monticello.

   Freckled and sandy-haired, rather tall and awkward, Jefferson was eloquent as a correspondent, but he was no public speaker. In the Virginia House of Burgesses and the Continental Congress, he contributed his pen rather than his voice to the patriot cause. As the "silent member" of the Congress, Jefferson, at 33, drafted the Declaration of Independence. In years following he labored to make its words a reality in Virginia. Most notably, he wrote a bill establishing religious freedom, enacted in 1786.

   Jefferson succeeded Benjamin Franklin as minister to France in 1785. His sympathy for the French Revolution led him into conflict with Alexander Hamilton when Jefferson was Secretary of State in President Washington's Cabinet. He resigned in 1793.

   Sharp political conflicts developed, and two separate parties, the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans, began to form. Jefferson gradually assumed leadership of the Republicans, who sympathized with the revolutionary cause in France. Attacking Federalist policies, he opposed a strong centralized Government and championed the rights of states.
   As a reluctant candidate for President in 1796, Jefferson came within three votes of election. Through a flaw in the Constitution, he became Vice President, although an opponent of President Adams. In 1800 the defect caused a more serious problem. Republican electors, attempting to name both a President and a Vice President from their own party, cast a tie vote between Jefferson and Aaron Burr. The House of Representatives settled the tie. Hamilton, disliking both Jefferson and Burr, nevertheless urged Jefferson's election.

   When Jefferson assumed the Presidency, the crisis in France had passed. He slashed Army and Navy expenditures, cut the budget, eliminated the tax on whiskey so unpopular in the West, yet reduced the national debt by a third. He also sent a naval squadron to fight the Barbary pirates, who were harassing American commerce in the Mediterranean. Further, although the Constitution made no provision for the acquisition of new land, Jefferson suppressed his qualms over constitutionality when he had the opportunity to acquire the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon in 1803.

   During Jefferson's second term, he was increasingly preoccupied with keeping the Nation from involvement in the Napoleonic wars, though both England and France interfered with the neutral rights of American merchantmen. Jefferson's attempted solution, an embargo upon American shipping, worked badly and was unpopular.

   Jefferson retired to Monticello to ponder such projects as his grand designs for the University of Virginia. A French nobleman observed that he had placed his house and his mind "on an elevated situation, from which he might contemplate the universe."
    He died on July 4, 1826.

Language notes:

1. New York City was worse, for Manhattan's shallow, brackish wells made it certain that the drinker of water would not only quench his thirst but also be given "physic".

(纽约市更糟。曼哈顿的浅水井水带着盐味，使饮用者在解渴的同时，又服了一剂“泻药”。)

Brackish: slightly salty, usually refers to water.
Quench: to satisfy (one's thirst) by drinking; satisfy (a desire)
    e.g. He only pursued her to quench an aching need.

Physic: a medicine or drug, especially a cathartic.

2. Two years later, on the 4th of July, toototaling Mayor James Harper shrewdly countered traditional holiday dram-drinking by setting up in the city hall park a large basin of iced Croton water.

(两年后的7月4日，主张绝对禁酒的市长詹姆斯·哈泼在市政厅的公园内建了一个水池，装有冰冷的克劳顿河水。他聪明地想藉此抵制在节日少量饮酒的传统。)

Teetotal： practice complete abstinence from alcoholic beverages.
Dram: a unit of weight, here it means a small amount; a bit.
    e.g. a dram of Brandy.

3. boll：博耳(英格兰和英格兰北部的容量单位; 苏格兰的重量单位) .

4. Julep: a sweet drink, variously prepared and sometimes medicated.

5. English immigrant Joseph Pickering, for example, so feared the effect of drinking water on scorching days that he resolved the drink only a concoction of water and rye whiskey, a beverage he believed to be less dangerous.

(比如，英国移民约瑟夫·皮克灵非常害怕在暑天喝水，总是把水和黑麦威士忌酒调配着喝。他认为这样可以降低其危险。)

Here, "Resolved the drink only a concoction of water and rye whiskey" means "found the solution to the drinking problem by only drinking the concoction of water and rye whiskey".

Resolve: settle or find a solution to a problem.

6. It was an unpleasant surprise when chemist William Brande succeeded in measuring the amount of alcohol in fermented drinks and not only proved that wine contained a higher percentage of alcohol than hard cider or beer, but also showed that the favorite American wine, Madeira, was more than 20 percent alcohol.

(然而，化学家威廉姆·布兰德在发酵的饮品中也发现了一定含量的酒精，并证明葡萄酒所含的酒精比例要高于发酵汁和啤酒，而美国人喜爱的玛德拉酒含有20% 多的酒精。这是个不愉快的消息，让人大吃一惊。)
Ferment: 酿(酒).

7. All the better; for our jurisdiction extends over so large a territory that the doctrine of chances makes it certain that it must be raining somewhere.

（那就更好；我们的管辖范围这么大，根据概率，总有地方在下雨。)

 This sentence shows that Marshall was so addicted to wine as to create any excuse for drinking.

Jurisdiction： the territory or sphere of activity over which the legal authority of a court or other institution extends.
    e.g. The claim will be within the jurisdiction of the industrial tribunal.

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