阅读理解 One thing almost everyone is agreed on, including Americans, is that they place a very high valuation upon success. Success does not necessarily mean material rewards, but recognition of some sort preferably measurable. If the boy turns out to be a preacher(传教)instead of a businessman, that's all right. But the bigger his church and congregation, the more successful he is judged to be.
A good many things contributed to this accent on success. There was the Puritan(清教)belief in the virtue of work, both for its own sake and because the rewards it brought were regarded as signs of God's love. There was the richness of opportunity in a land waiting to be settled. There was the lack of a settled society with fixed ranks and classes, so that a man was certain to rise through achievement.
There was the determination of the immigrant to gain in the new world what had been denied to him in the old. And on the part of his children an urge to throw off the immigrant Onus(负担)by still more success and still more rise in a fluid, classless society. Brothers did not compete within the family for the favor of the parents as in Europe, but strove for success is the outer world, along paths of their own choosing.