Leonard Reed

摘要

The American Dream, it is often said, is losing its allure. Not so long ago millions of Americans lived their lives in the belief that with optimism, hard work and virtue, anyone, no matter how lowly his origins, could make good in the land of the free. Nowadays down-in-the-mouths point out that even Horatio Alger, the great 19th-century marketer of this belief, was hardly an exemplar of it; that most of the super-rich in the annual Forbes list started out with a tidy inheritance; and that you surely need that tidy inheritance plus two incomes to have a half-decent middle-class life, even in Peoria. How refreshing, then, to reflect on Leonard Reed, who rose from circumstances of extreme hardship to excel in one profession after another. And how inspiring, if you happen to harbour the fantasy of one day becoming a champion tap dancer, to know that that particular dream can become real even for a self-taught amateur.