提供高級英語教程（連續課本式）

海外逸士

And there I beheld a tall, lady-like figure, clad in black. Her face was
towards me, and there was something in it which, once seen, invited me to
look again. Her hair was raven black, and disposed in long glossy ringlets,
a style of coiffure rather unusual in those days, but always graceful and
becoming; her complexion was clear and pale; her eyes I could not see, for,
being bent upon her prayer-book, they were concealed by their drooping lids
and long black lashes, but the brows above were expressive and well defined;
the forehead was lofty and intellectual, the nose, a perfect aquiline and
the features, in general, unexceptionable - only there was a slight hollowness
about the cheeks and eyes, and the lips, though finely formed, were a little
too thin, a little too firmly compressed, and had something about them that
betokened, I thought, no very soft or amiable temper; and I said in my heart
- 'I would rather admire you from this distance, fair lady, than be the
partner of your home.'
Just then she happened to raise her eyes, and they met mine; I did not choose
to withdraw my gaze, and she turned again to her book, but with a momentary,
indefinable expression of quiet scorn, that was inexpressibly provoking
to me.
'She thinks me an impudent puppy,' thought I. 'Humph! - she shall change
her mind before long, if I think it worth while.'
But then it flashed upon me that these were very improper thoughts for a
place of worship, and that my behaviour, on the present occasion, was anything
but what it ought to be. Previous, however, to directing my mind to the
service, I glanced round the church to see if any one had been observing
me; - but no, - all, who were not attending to their prayer-books, were attending
to the strange lady, - my good mother and sister among the rest, and Mrs.
Wilson and her daughter; and even Eliza Millward was slily glancing from
the corners of her eyes towards the object of general attraction. Then she
glanced at me, simpered a little, and blushed, modestly looked at her prayer-
book, and endeavoured to compose her features.
Here I was transgressing again; and this time I was made sensible of it
by a sudden dig in the ribs, from the elbow of my pert brother. For the
present, I could only resent the insult by pressing my foot upon his toes,
deferring further vengeance till we got out of church.
Now, Halford, before I close this letter, I'll tell you who Eliza Millward
was: she was the vicar's younger daughter, and a very engaging little creature,
for whom I felt no small degree of partiality; - and she knew it, though
I had never come to any direct explanation, and had no definite intention
of so doing, for my mother, who maintained there was no one good enough for
me within twenty miles round, could not bear the thoughts of my marrying
that insignificant little thing, who, in addition to her numerous other
disqualifications, had not twenty pounds to call her own. Eliza's figure
was at once slight and plump, her face small, and nearly as round as my
sister's, - complexion, something similar to hers, but more delicate and
less decidedly blooming, - nose, retrousse, - features, generally irregular;
and, altogether, she was rather charming than pretty. But her eyes - I must
not forget those remarkable features, for therein her chief attraction lay
- in outward aspect at least; - they were long and narrow in shape, the irids
black, or very dark brown, the expression various, and ever changing, but
always either preternaturally - I had almost said diabolically - wicked,
or irresistibly bewitching - often both. Her voice was gentle and childish,
her tread light and soft as that of a cat:- but her manners more frequently
resembled those of a pretty playful kitten, that is now pert and roguish,
now timid and demure, according to its own sweet will.
Her sister, Mary, was several years older, several inches taller, and of
a larger, coarser build - a plain, quiet, sensible girl, who had patiently
nursed their mother, through her last long, tedious illness, and been the
housekeeper, and family drudge, from thence to the present time. She was
trusted and valued by her father, loved and courted by all dogs, cats, children,
and poor people, and slighted and neglected by everybody else.
The Reverend Michael Millward himself was a tall, ponderous elderly gentleman,
who placed a shovel hat above his large, square, massive-featured face,
carried a stout walking-stick in his hand, and incased his still powerful
limbs in knee-breeches and gaiters, - or black silk stockings on state occasions.
He was a man of fixed principles, strong prejudices, and regular habits,
intolerant of dissent in any shape, acting under a firm conviction that his
opinions were always right, and whoever differed from them must be either
most deplorably ignorant, or wilfully blind.
In childhood, I had always been accustomed to regard him with a feeling
of reverential awe - but lately, even now, surmounted, for, though he had
a fatherly kindness for the well-behaved, he was a strict disciplinarian,
and had often sternly reproved our juvenile failings and peccadilloes; and
moreover, in those days, whenever he called upon our parents, we had to stand
up before him, and say our catechism, or repeat, 'How doth the little busy
bee,' or some other hymn, or - worse than all - be questioned about his
last text, and the heads of the discourse, which we never could remember.
Sometimes, the worthy gentleman would reprove my mother for being over-indulgent
to her sons, with a reference to old Eli, or David and Absalom, which was
particularly galling to her feelings; and, very highly as she respected him,
and all his sayings, I once heard her exclaim, 'I wish to goodness he had
a son himself! He wouldn't be so ready with his advice to other people then;
- he'd see what it is to have a couple of boys to keep in order.'
He had a laudable care for his own bodily health - kept very early hours,
regularly took a walk before breakfast, was vastly particular about warm
and dry clothing, had never been known to preach a sermon without previously
swallowing a raw egg - albeit he was gifted with good lungs and a powerful
voice, - and was, generally, extremely particular about what he ate and drank,
though by no means abstemious, and having a mode of dietary peculiar to
himself, - being a great despiser of tea and such slops, and a patron of
malt liquors, bacon and eggs, ham, hung beef, and other strong meats, which
agreed well enough with his digestive organs, and therefore were maintained
by him to be good and wholesome for everybody, and confidently recommended
to the most delicate convalescents or dyspeptics, who, if they failed to
derive the promised benefit from his prescriptions, were told it was because
they had not persevered, and if they complained of inconvenient results
therefrom, were assured it was all fancy.
I will just touch upon two other persons whom I have mentioned, and then
bring this long letter to a close. These are Mrs. Wilson and her daughter.
The former was the widow of a substantial farmer, a narrow-minded, tattling
old gossip, whose character is not worth describing. She had two sons, Robert,
a rough countrified farmer, and Richard, a retiring, studious young man,
who was studying the classics with the vicar's assistance, preparing for
college, with a view to enter the church.
Their sister Jane was a young lady of some talents, and more ambition. She
had, at her own desire, received a regular boarding-school education, superior
to what any member of the family had obtained before. She had taken the
polish well, acquired considerable elegance of manners, quite lost her provincial
accent, and could boast of more accomplishments than the vicar's daughters.
She was considered a beauty besides; but never for a moment could she number
me amongst her admirers. She was about six and twenty, rather tall and very
slender, her hair was neither chestnut nor auburn, but a most decided bright,
light red; her complexion was remarkably fair and brilliant, her head small,
neck long, chin well turned, but very short, lips thin and red, eyes clear
hazel, quick, and penetrating, but entirely destitute of poetry or feeling.
She had, or might have had, many suitors in her own rank of life, but scornfully
repulsed or rejected them all; for none but a gentleman could please her
refined taste, and none but a rich one could satisfy her soaring ambition.
One gentleman there was, from whom she had lately received some rather pointed
attentions, and upon whose heart, name, and fortune, it was whispered, she
had serious designs. This was Mr. Lawrence, the young squire, whose family
had formerly occupied Wildfell Hall, but had deserted it, some fifteen years
ago, for a more modern and commodious mansion in the neighbouring parish.

Now, Halford, I bid you adieu for the present. This is the first instalment
of my debt. If the coin suits you, tell me so, and I'll send you the rest
at my leisure: if you would rather remain my creditor than stuff your purse
with such ungainly, heavy pieces, - tell me still, and I'll pardon your
bad taste, and willingly keep the treasure to myself.
Yours immutably,
GILBERT MARKHAM.  

1) 自查生詞。
2) 作者介紹﹕Anne Bronte (17 January 1820 -- 28 May 1849) was a British
novelist and poet, the youngest member of the Bronte literary family. The
Tenant of Wildfell Hall is the second and final novel by Anne Bronte, published
in 1848 under the pseudonym Acton Bell. Probably the most shocking of the
Brontes' novels, this novel had an instant phenomenal success, but after
Anne's death, her sister Charlotte prevented re-publication of it.
The novel is framed as a letter from Gilbert Markham to his friend and brother-
in-law about the events leading to his meeting his wife.
3) Bronte sisters的作品可以作泛讀材料。偶有不懂的地方﹐可以置之不顧﹐讀下
去即可。泛讀一方面可以擴大知識面﹐另一方面可以逐步培養語感。語感是要不斷
與某種語言接觸而得到的。

海外逸士

高級英語教材第十課

先讀課文﹕
Ode to the West Wind 西風頌   
by Percy Bysshe Shelley  

                I
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,(1)
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead(2)
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,(1)

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,(2)
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,(3)
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed(2)

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,(3)
Each like a corpse within its grave,until(4)
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow(3)

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill(4)
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)(5)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:(4)

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;(5)
Destroyer and Preserver; hear, O hear!(5)
[下面押韻模式相同]

                II
Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,
Loose clouds like Earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Maenad [1], even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre
Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: O hear!

                III
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's [2] bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!

                IV
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O Uncontrollable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

                V
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened Earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

1) 生詞自查。
2) 詩人介紹﹕Percy Bysshe Shelley ( 4 August 1792 -- 8 July 1822) was one
of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among
the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his
association with John Keats and Lord Byron. The novelist Mary Shelley was
his second wife.
He became an idol of the next three or four generations of poets, including
important Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite poets. He was admired by Karl Marx,
Oscar Wilde, Thomas Hardy, George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell, William
Butler Yeats, Upton Sinclair and Isadora Duncan.[
3) 註解﹕[1] In Greek mythology, maenads were the female followers of Dionysus
(Bacchus in the Roman pantheon), the most significant members of the Thiasus,
the god's retinue. Their name literally translates as "raving ones". Often
the maenads were portrayed as inspired by him into a state of ecstatic frenzy,
through a combination of dancing and drunken intoxication. In this state,
they would lose all self-control, begin shouting excitedly, engage in uncontrolled
sexual behavior, and ritualistically hunt down and tear to pieces animals
-- and, in myth at least, sometimes men and children -- devouring the raw
flesh. During these rites, the maenads would dress in fawn skins and carry
a thyrsus, a long stick wrapped in ivy or vine leaves and tipped by a cluster
of leaves; they would weave ivy-wreaths around their heads, and often handle
or wear snakes.  [2] Baiae in the Campania region of Italy was a Roman seaside
resort on the Bay of Naples. It was said to have been named after Baius,
who was supposedly buried there. Michael Baius (1513 -- September 16, 1589)
was a Belgian theologian. In 1552 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, appointed
him professor of scriptural interpretation in the university.
4) 能背誦。這是首經典名詩。最後一句更為大家所熟知並引用。注意﹐有時一行詩
會延續到下一小節去﹐以構成一個完整句。閱讀時﹐注意句子結構。掌握了句子結
構安排﹐才能更好理解。

海外逸士

高級英語教材第11課

先讀課文﹕
Gong With the Wind 飄
by Margaret Mitchell

Chapter 1
Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught
by her charm as the Tarleton twins were. In her face were too sharply blended
the delicate features of her mother, a Coast aristocrat of French descent,
and the heavy ones of her florid Irish father. But it was an arresting face,
pointed of chin, square of jaw. Her eyes were pale green without a touch
of hazel, starred with bristly black lashes and slightly tilted at the ends.
Above them, her thick black brows slanted upward, cutting a startling oblique
line in her magnolia-white skin -- that skin so prized by Southern women
and so carefully guarded with bonnets, veils and mittens against hot Georgia
suns.
Seated with Stuart and Brent Tarleton in the cool shade of the porch of
Tara, her father's plantation, that bright April afternoon of 1861, she
made a pretty picture. Her new green flowered-muslin dress spread its twelve
yards of billowing material over her hoops and exactly matched the flat-heeled
green morocco slippers her father had recently brought her from Atlanta.
The dress set off to perfection the seventeen-inch waist, the smallest in
three counties, and the tightly fitting basque showed breasts well matured
for her sixteen years. But for all the modesty of her spreading skirts,
the demureness of hair netted smoothly into a chignon and the quietness
of small white hands folded in her lap, her true self was poorly concealed.
The green eyes in the carefully sweet face were turbulent, willful, lusty
with life, distinctly at variance with her decorous demeanor. Her manners
had been imposed upon her by her mother's gentle admonitions and the sterner
discipline of her mammy; her eyes were her own.
On either side of her, the twins lounged easily in their chairs, squinting
at the sunlight through tall mint-garnished glasses as they laughed and
talked, their long legs, booted to the knee and thick with saddle muscles,
crossed negligently. Nineteen years old, six feet two inches tall, long of
bone and hard of muscle, with sunburned faces and deep auburn hair, their
eyes merry and arrogant, their bodies clothed in identical blue coats and
mustard-colored breeches, they were as much alike as two bolls of cotton.
Outside, the late afternoon sun slanted down in the yard, throwing into
gleaming brightness the dogwood trees that were solid masses of white blossoms
against the background of new green. The twins' horses were hitched in the
driveway, big animals, red as their masters' hair; and around the horses'
legs quarreled the pack of lean, nervous possum hounds that accompanied
Stuart and Brent wherever they went. A little aloof, as became an aristocrat,
lay a black-spotted carriage dog, muzzle on paws, patiently waiting for
the boys to go home to supper.
Between the hounds and the horses and the twins there was a kinship deeper
than that of their constant companionship. They were all healthy, thoughtless
young animals, sleek, graceful, high-spirited, the boys as mettlesome as
the horses they rode, mettlesome and dangerous but, withal, sweet-tempered
to those who knew how to handle them.
Although born to the ease of plantation life, waited on hand and foot since
infancy, the faces of the three on the porch were neither slack nor soft.
They had the vigor and alertness of country people who have spent all their
lives in the open and troubled their heads very little with dull things
in books. Life in the north Georgia county of Clayton was still new and,
according to the standards of Augusta, Savannah and Charleston, a little
crude. The more sedate and older sections of the South looked down their
noses at the up-country Georgians, but here in north Georgia, a lack of
the niceties of classical education carried no shame, provided a man was
smart in the things that mattered. And raising good cotton, riding well,
shooting straight, dancing lightly, squiring the ladies with elegance and
carrying one's liquor like a gentleman were the things that mattered.
In these accomplishments the twins excelled, and they were equally outstanding
in their notorious inability to learn anything contained between the covers
of books. Their family had more money, more horses, more slaves than any
one else in the County, but the boys had less grammar than most of their
poor Cracker neighbors.
It was for this precise reason that Stuart and Brent were idling on the
porch of Tara this April afternoon. They had just been expelled from the
University of Georgia, the fourth university that had thrown them out in
two years; and their older brothers, Tom and Boyd, had come home with them,
because they refused to remain at an institution where the twins were not
welcome. Stuart and Brent considered their latest expulsion a fine joke,
and Scarlett, who had not willingly opened a book since leaving the Fayetteville
Female Academy the year before, thought it just as amusing as they did.
"I know you two don't care about being expelled, or Tom either," she said.
"But what about Boyd? He's kind of set on getting an education, and you
two have pulled him out of the University of Virginia and Alabama and South
Carolina and now Georgia. He'll never get finished at this rate."
"Oh, he can read law in Judge Parmalee's office over in Fayetteville," answered
Brent carelessly. "Besides, it don't matter much. We'd have had to come
home before the term was out anyway."
"Why?"
"The war, goose! The war's going to start any day, and you don't suppose
any of us would stay in college with a war going on, do you?"
"You know there isn't going to be any war," said Scarlett, bored. "It's
all just talk. Why, Ashley Wilkes and his father told Pa just last week
that our commissioners in Washington would come to -- to --an -- amicable
agreement with Mr. Lincoln about the Confederacy. And anyway, the Yankees
are too scared of us to fight. There won't be any war, and I'm tired of hearing
about it."
"Not going to be any war!" cried the twins indignantly, as though they had
been defrauded.
"Why, honey, of course there's going to be a war," said Stuart. "The Yankees
may be scared of us, but after the way General Beauregard shelled them out
of Fort Sumter day before yesterday, they'll have to fight or stand branded
as cowards before the whole world. Why, the Confederacy --"
Scarlett made a mouth of bored impatience.
"If you say 'war' just once more, I'll go in the house and shut the door.
I've never gotten so tired of any one word in my life as 'war', unless it's
'secession'. Pa talks war morning, noon and night, and all the gentlemen
who come to see him shout about Fort Sumter and States' Rights and Abe Lincoln
till I get so bored I could scream! And that's all the boys talk about, too,
that and their old Troop. There hasn't been any fun at any party this spring
because the boys can't talk about anything else. I'm mighty glad Georgia
waited till after Christmas before it seceded or it would have ruined the
Christmas parties, too. If you say 'war' again, I'll go in the house."
She meant what she said, for she could never long endure any conversation
of which she was not the chief subject. But she smiled when she spoke, consciously
deepening her dimple and fluttering her bristly black lashes as swiftly
as butterflies' wings. The boys were enchanted, as she had intended them
to be, and they hastened to apologize for boring her. They thought none
the less of her for her lack of interest. Indeed, they thought more. War
was men's business, not ladies', and they took her attitude as evidence
of her femininity.
Having maneuvered them away from the boring subject of war, she went back
with interest to their immediate situation.
"What did your mother say about you two being expelled again?"
The boys looked uncomfortable, recalling their mother's conduct three months
ago when they had come home, by request, from the University of Virginia.
"Well," said Stuart, "she hasn't had a chance to say anything yet. Tom and
us left home early this morning before she got up, and Tom's laying out
over at the Fontaines' while we came over here."
"Didn't she say anything when you got home last night?"
"We were in luck last night. Just before we got home that new stallion Ma
got in Kentucky last month was brought in, and the place was in a stew.
The big brute -- he's a grand horse, Scarlett; you must tell your pa to
come over and see him right away -- he'd already bitten a hunk out of his
groom on the way down here and he'd trampled two of Ma's darkies who met
the train at Jonesboro. And just before we got home, he'd about kicked the
stable down and half-killed Strawberry, Ma's old stallion. When we got home,
Ma was out in the stable with a sackful of sugar smoothing him down and
doing it mighty well, too. The darkies were hanging from the rafters, popeyed,
they were so scared, but Ma was talking to the horse like he was folks
and he was eating out of her hand. There ain't nobody 這是沒文化人用的錯誤
的雙重否定 like Ma with a horse. And when she saw us she said: 'In Heaven's
name, what are you four doing home again? You're worse than the plagues
of Egypt!' And then the horse began snorting and rearing and she said: 'Get
out of here! Can't you see he's nervous, the big darling? I'll tend to you
four in the morning!' So we went to bed, and this morning we got away before
she could catch us and left Boyd to handle her."
"Do you suppose she'll hit Boyd?" Scarlett, like the rest of the County,
could never get used to the way small Mrs. Tarleton bullied her grown sons
and laid her riding crop on their backs if the occasion seemed to warrant
it.
Beatrice Tarleton was a busy woman, having on her hands not only a large
cotton plantation, a hundred negroes and eight children, but the largest
horse-breeding farm in the state as well. She was hot-tempered and easily
plagued by the frequent scrapes of her four sons, and while no one was permitted
to whip a horse or a slave, she felt that a lick now and then didn't do the
boys any harm.
"Of course she won't hit Boyd. She never did beat Boyd much because he's
the oldest and besides he's the runt of the litter," said Stuart, proud
of his six feet two. "That's why we left him at home to explain things to
her. God'lmighty, Ma ought to stop licking us! We're nineteen and Tom's
twenty-one, and she acts like we're six years old."
"Will your mother ride the new horse to the Wilkes barbecue tomorrow?"
"She wants to, but Pa says he's too dangerous. And, anyway, the girls won't
let her. They said they were going to have her go to one party at least
like a lady, riding in the carriage."
"I hope it doesn't rain tomorrow," said Scarlett. "It's rained nearly every
day for a week. There's nothing worse than a barbecue turned into an indoor
picnic."
"Oh, it'll be clear tomorrow and hot as June," said Stuart. "Look at that
sunset. I never saw one redder. You can always tell weather by sunsets."
They looked out across the endless acres of Gerald O'Hara's newly plowed
cotton fields toward the red horizon. Now that the sun was setting in a
welter of crimson behind the hills across the Flint River, the warmth of
the April day was ebbing into a faint but balmy chill.
Spring had come early that year, with warm quick rains and sudden frothing
of pink peach blossoms and dogwood dappling with white stars the dark river
swamp and far-off hills. Already the plowing was nearly finished, and the
bloody glory of the sunset colored the fresh-cut furrows of red Georgia
clay to even redder hues. The moist hungry earth, waiting upturned for the
cotton seeds, showed pinkish on the sandy tops of furrows, vermilion and
scarlet and maroon where shadows lay along the sides of the trenches. The
whitewashed brick plantation house seemed an island set in a wild red sea,
a sea of spiraling, curving, crescent billows petrified suddenly at the
moment when the pink-tipped waves were breaking into surf. For here were
no long, straight furrows, such as could be seen in the yellow clay fields
of the flat middle Georgia country or in the lush black earth of the coastal
plantations. The rolling foothill country of north Georgia was plowed in
a million curves to keep the rich earth from washing down into the river
bottoms.
It was a savagely red land, blood-colored after rains, brick dust in droughts,
the best cotton land in the world. It was a pleasant land of white houses,
peaceful plowed fields and sluggish yellow rivers, but a land of contrasts,
of brightest sun glare and densest shade. The plantation clearings and miles
of cotton fields smiled up to a warm sun, placid, complacent. At their edges
rose the virgin forests, dark and cool even in the hottest noons, mysterious,
a little sinister, the soughing pines seeming to wait with an age-old patience,
to threaten with soft sighs: "Be careful! Be careful! We had you once.
We can take you back again."
To the ears of the three on the porch came the sounds of hooves, the jingling
of harness chains and the shrill careless laughter of negro voices, as the
field hands and mules came in from the fields. From within the house floated
the soft voice of Scarlett's mother, Ellen O'Hara, as she called to the
little black girl who carried her basket of keys. The high-pitched, childish
voice answered "Yas'm," and there were sounds of footsteps going out the
back way toward the smokehouse where Ellen would ration out the food to
the home-coming hands. There was the click of china and the rattle of silver
as Pork, the valet-butler of Tara, laid the table for supper.
At these last sounds, the twins realized it was time they were starting
home. But they were loath to face their mother and they lingered on the
porch of Tara, momentarily expecting Scarlett to give them an invitation
to supper.

海外逸士

"Look, Scarlett. About tomorrow," said Brent. "Just because we've been away
and didn't know about the barbecue and the ball, that's no reason why we
shouldn't get plenty of dances tomorrow night. You haven't promised them
all, have you?"
"Well, I have! How did I know you all would be home? I couldn't risk being
a wallflower just waiting on you two."
"You a wallflower!" The boys laughed uproariously.
"Look, honey. You've got to give me the first waltz and Stu the last one
and you've got to eat supper with us. We'll sit on the stair landing like
we did at the last ball and get Mammy Jincy to come tell our fortunes again."

"I don't like Mammy Jincy's fortunes. You know she said I was going to marry
a gentleman with jet-black hair and a long black mustache, and I don't like
black-haired gentlemen."
"You like 'em (them) red-headed, don't you, honey?" grinned Brent. "Now,
come on, promise us all the waltzes and the supper."
"If you'll promise, we'll tell you a secret," said Stuart.
"What?" cried Scarlett, alert as a child at the word.
"Is it what we heard yesterday in Atlanta, Stu? If it is, you know we promised
not to tell."
"Well, Miss Pitty told us."
"Miss Who?"
"You know, Ashley Wilkes' cousin who lives in Atlanta, Miss Pittypat Hamilton
-- Charles and Melanie Hamilton's aunt."
"I do, and a sillier old lady I never met in all my life."
"Well, when we were in Atlanta yesterday, waiting for the home train, her
carriage went by the depot and she stopped and talked to us, and she told
us there was going to be an engagement announced tomorrow night at the Wilkes
ball."
"Oh. I know about that," said Scarlett in disappointment. "That silly nephew
of hers, Charlie Hamilton, and Honey Wilkes. Everybody's known for years
that they'd get married some time, even if he did seem kind of lukewarm
about it."
"Do you think he's silly?" questioned Brent. "Last Christmas you sure let
him buzz round you plenty."
"I couldn't help him buzzing," Scarlett shrugged negligently. "I think he's
an awful sissy."
"Besides, it isn't his engagement that's going to be announced," said Stuart
triumphantly. "It's Ashley's to Charlie's sister, Miss Melanie!"
Scarlett's face did not change but her lips went white -- like a person
who has received a stunning blow without warning and who, in the first moments
of shock, does not realize what has happened. So still was her face as she
stared at Stuart that he, never analytic, took it for granted that she was
merely surprised and very interested.
"Miss Pitty told us they hadn't intended announcing it till next year, because
Miss Melly hasn't been very well; but with all the war talk going around,
everybody in both families thought it would be better to get married soon.
So it's to be announced tomorrow night at the supper intermission. Now,
Scarlett, we've told you the secret, so you've got to promise to eat supper
with us."
"Of course I will," Scarlett said automatically.
"And all the waltzes?"
"All."
"You're sweet! I'll bet the other boys will be hopping mad."
"Let 'em be mad," said Brent. "We two can handle 'em. Look, Scarlett. Sit
with us at the barbecue in the morning."
"What?"
Stuart repeated his request.
"Of course."
The twins looked at each other jubilantly but with some surprise. Although
they considered themselves Scarlett's favored suitors, they had never before
gained tokens of this favor so easily. Usually she made them beg and plead,
while she put them off, refusing to give a Yes or No answer, laughing if
they sulked, growing cool if they became angry. And here she had practically
promised them the whole of tomorrow -- seats by her at the barbecue, all
the waltzes (and they'd see to it that the dances were all waltzes!) and
the supper intermission. This was worth getting expelled from the university.

Filled with new enthusiasm by their success, they lingered on, talking about
the barbecue and the ball and Ashley Wilkes and Melanie Hamilton, interrupting
each other, making jokes and laughing at them, hinting broadly for invitations
to supper. Some time had passed before they realized that Scarlett was having
very little to say. The atmosphere had somehow changed. Just how, the twins
did not know, but the fine glow had gone out of the afternoon. Scarlett seemed
to be paying little attention to what they said, although she made the correct
answers. Sensing something they could not understand, baffled and annoyed
by it, the twins struggled along for a while, and then rose reluctantly,
looking at their watches.
The sun was low across the new-plowed fields and the tall woods across the
river were looming blackly in silhouette. Chimney swallows were darting
swiftly across the yard, and chickens, ducks and turkeys were waddling and
strutting and straggling in from the fields.
Stuart bellowed: "Jeems!" And after an interval a tall black boy of their
own age ran breathlessly around the house and out toward the tethered horses.
Jeems was their body servant and, like the dogs, accompanied them everywhere.
He had been their childhood playmate and had been given to the twins for
their own on their tenth birthday. At the sight of him, the Tarleton hounds
rose up out of the red dust and stood waiting expectantly for their masters.
The boys bowed, shook hands and told Scarlett they'd be over at the Wilkeses'
early in the morning, waiting for her. Then they were off down the walk
at a rush, mounted their horses and, followed by Jeems, went down the avenue
of cedars at a gallop, waving their hats and yelling back to her.
When they had rounded the curve of the dusty road that hid them from Tara,
Brent drew his horse to a stop under a clump of dogwood. Stuart halted,
too, and the darky boy pulled up a few paces behind them. The horses, feeling
slack reins, stretched down their necks to crop the tender spring grass,
and the patient hounds lay down again in the soft red dust and looked up
longingly at the chimney swallows circling in the gathering dusk. Brent's
wide ingenuous face was puzzled and mildly indignant.
"Look," he said. "Don't it look to you like she would of (have) asked us
to stay for supper?"
"I thought she would," said Stuart. "I kept waiting for her to do it, but
she didn't. What do you make of it?"
"I don't make anything of it. But it just looks to me like she might of.
After all, it's our first day home and she hasn't seen us in quite a spell.
And we had lots more things to tell her."
"It looked to me like she was mighty glad to see us when we came."
"I thought so, too."
"And then, about a half-hour ago, she got kind of quiet, like she had a
headache."
"I noticed that but I didn't pay it any mind then. What do you suppose ailed
her?"
"I dunno (don't know). Do you suppose we said something that made her mad?"
They both thought for a minute.
"I can't think of anything. Besides, when Scarlett gets mad, everybody knows
it. She don't hold herself in like some girls do."
"Yes, that's what I like about her. She don't go around being cold and hateful
when she's mad -- she tells you about it. But it was something we did or
said that made her shut up talking and look sort of sick. I could swear
she was glad to see us when we came and was aiming to ask us to supper."
"You don't suppose it's because we got expelled?"
"Hell, no! Don't be a fool. She laughed like everything when we told her
about it. And besides Scarlett don't set any more store by book learning
than we do."
Brent turned in the saddle and called to the negro groom.
"Jeems!"
"Suh (Sir)?" 表示沒文化人的發音不準。凡括弧註的﹐下同。
"You heard what we were talking to Miss Scarlett about?"
"Nawsuh (No, Sir), Mist' (Mister) Brent! Huccome you think Ah be spyin'
(spying) on w'ite (white) folks?"
"Spying, my God! You darkies know everything that goes on. Why, you liar,
I saw you with my own eyes sidle round the corner of the porch and squat
in the cape jessamine bush by the wall. Now, did you hear us say anything
that might have made Miss Scarlett mad -- or hurt her feelings?"
Thus appealed to, Jeems gave up further pretense of not having overheard
the conversation and furrowed his black brow.
"Nawsuh, Ah din' (didn't) notice y'all (ye all) say anything ter (to) mek
(make) her mad. Look ter me lak (like) she sho (so) glad ter see you an'
(and) sho had missed you, an' she cheep along happy as a bird, tell 'bout
(about) de (the) time y'all got ter talkin' 'bout Mist' Ashley an' Miss Melly
Hamilton gittin' (getting) mah'ied (married). Den (Then) she quiet down lak
a bird w'en (when) de hawk fly ober (over)."
The twins looked at each other and nodded, but without comprehension.
"Jeems is right. But I don't see why," said Stuart. "My Lord! Ashley don't
mean anything to her, 'cept (except) a friend. She's not crazy about him.
It's us she's crazy about."
Brent nodded an agreement.
"But do you suppose," he said, "that maybe Ashley hadn't told her he was
going to announce it tomorrow night and she was mad at him for not telling
her, an old friend, before he told everybody else? Girls set a big store
on knowing such things first."
"Well, maybe. But what if he hadn't told her it was tomorrow? It was supposed
to be a secret and a surprise, and a man's got a right to keep his own engagement
quiet, hasn't he? We wouldn't have known it if Miss Melly's aunt hadn't
let it out. But Scarlett must have known he was going to marry Miss Melly
sometime. Why, we've known it for years. The Wilkes and Hamiltons always
marry their own cousins. Everybody knew he'd probably marry her some day,
just like Honey Wilkes is going to marry Miss Melly's brother, Charles."
"Well, I give it up. But I'm sorry she didn't ask us to supper. I swear
I don't want to go home and listen to Ma take on about us being expelled.
It isn't as if this was the first time."
"Maybe Boyd will have smoothed her down by now. You know what a slick talker
that little varmint is. You know he always can smooth her down."
"Yes, he can do it, but it takes Boyd time. He has to talk around in circles
till Ma gets so confused that she gives up and tells him to save his voice
for his law practice. But he ain,t had time to get good started yet. Why,
I'll bet you Ma is still so excited about the new horse that she'll never
even realize we're home again till she sits down to supper tonight and sees
Boyd. And before supper is over she'll be going strong and breathing fire.
And it'll be ten o'clock before Boyd gets a chance to tell her that it wouldn'
t have been honorable for any of us to stay in college after the way the
Chancellor talked to you and me. And it'll be midnight before he gets her
turned around to where she's so mad at the Chancellor she'll be asking Boyd
why he didn't shoot him. No, we can't go home till after midnight."
The twins looked at each other glumly. They were completely fearless of
wild horses, shooting affrays and the indignation of their neighbors, but
they had a wholesome fear of their red-haired mother's outspoken remarks
and the riding crop that she did not scruple to lay across their breeches.
"Well, look," said Brent. "Let's go over to the Wilkes. Ashley and the girls'
ll be glad to have us for supper."
Stuart looked a little discomforted.
"No, don't let's go there. They'll be in a stew getting ready for the barbecue
tomorrow and besides -- "
"Oh, I forgot about that," said Brent hastily. "No, don't let's go there."
They clucked to their horses and rode along in silence for a while, a flush
of embarrassment on Stuart's brown cheeks. Until the previous summer, Stuart
had courted India Wilkes with the approbation of both families and the entire
County. The County felt that perhaps the cool and contained India Wilkes
would have a quieting effect on him. They fervently hoped so, at any rate.
And Stuart might have made the match, but Brent had not been satisfied. Brent
liked India but he thought her mighty plain and tame, and he simply could
not fall in love with her himself to keep Stuart company. That was the first
time the twins' interest had ever diverged, and Brent was resentful of his
brother's attentions to a girl who seemed to him not at all remarkable.
Then, last summer at a political speaking in a grove of oak trees at Jonesboro,
they both suddenly became aware of Scarlett O'Hara. They had known her
for years, and, since their childhood, she had been a favorite playmate,
for she could ride horses and climb trees almost as well as they. But now
to their amazement she had become a grown-up young lady and quite the most
charming one in all the world.
They noticed for the first time how her green eyes danced, how deep her
dimples were when she laughed, how tiny her hands and feet and what a small
waist she had. Their clever remarks sent her into merry peals of laughter
and, inspired by the thought that she considered them a remarkable pair,
they fairly outdid themselves.
It was a memorable day in the life of the twins. Thereafter, when they talked
it over, they always wondered just why they had failed to notice Scarlett's
charms before. They never arrived at the correct answer, which was that
Scarlett on that day had decided to make them notice. She was constitutionally
unable to endure any man being in love with any woman not herself, and the
sight of India Wilkes and Stuart at the speaking had been too much for her
predatory nature. Not content with Stuart alone, she had set her cap for
Brent as well, and with a thoroughness that overwhelmed the two of them.
Now they were both in love with her, and India Wilkes and Letty Munroe,
from Lovejoy, whom Brent had been half-heartedly courting, were far in the
back of their minds. Just what the loser would do, should Scarlett accept
either one of them, the twins did not ask. They would cross that bridge
when they came to it. For the present they were quite satisfied to be in
accord again about one girl, for they had no jealousies between them. It
was a situation which interested the neighbors and annoyed their mother,
who had no liking for Scarlett.
"It will serve you right if that sly piece does accept one of you," she
said. "Or maybe she'll accept both of you, and then you'll have to move
to Utah, if the Mormons'll have you -- which I doubt. . .   All that bothers
me is that some one of these days you're both going to get lickered up and
jealous of each other about that two-faced, little, green-eyed baggage, and
you'll shoot each other. But that might not be a bad idea either."
Since the day of the speaking, Stuart had been uncomfortable in India's
presence. Not that India ever reproached him or even indicated by look or
gesture that she was aware of his abruptly changed allegiance. She was too
much of a lady. But Stuart felt guilty and ill at ease with her. He knew
he had made India love him and he knew that she still loved him and, deep
in his heart, he had the feeling that he had not played the gentleman. He
still liked her tremendously and respected her for her cool good breeding,
her book learning and all the sterling qualities she possessed. But, damn
it, she was just so pallid and uninteresting and always the same, beside
Scarlett's bright and changeable charm. You always knew where you stood
with India and you never had the slightest notion with Scarlett. That was
enough to drive a man to distraction, but it had its charm.
"Well, let's go over to Cade Calvert's and have supper. Scarlett said Cathleen
was home from Charleston. Maybe she'll have some news about Fort Sumter
that we haven't heard."
"Not Cathleen. I'll lay you two to one she didn't even know the fort was
out there in the harbor, much less that it was full of Yankees until we
shelled them out. All she'll know about is the balls she went to and the
beaux she collected."
"Well, it's fun to hear her gabble. And it'll be somewhere to hide out till
Ma has gone to bed."

海外逸士

"Well, hell! I like Cathleen and she is fun and I'd like to hear about Caro
Rhett and the rest of the Charleston folks; but I'm damned if I can stand
sitting through another meal with that Yankee stepmother of hers."
"Don't be too hard on her, Stuart. She means well."
"I'm not being hard on her. I feel sorry for her, but I don't like people
I've got to feel sorry for. And she fusses around so much, trying to do
the right thing and make you feel at home, that she always manages to say
and do just exactly the wrong thing. She gives me the fidgets! And she thinks
Southerners are wild barbarians. She even told Ma so. She's afraid of Southerners.
Whenever we're there she always looks scared to death. She reminds me of
a skinny hen perched on a chair, her eyes kind of bright and blank and scared,
all ready to flap and squawk at the slightest move anybody makes."
"Well, you can't blame her. You did shoot Cade in the leg."
"Well, I was lickered up or I wouldn't have done it," said Stuart. "And
Cade never had any hard feelings. Neither did Cathleen or Raiford or Mr.
Calvert. It was just that Yankee stepmother who squalled and said I was
a wild barbarian and decent people weren't safe around uncivilized Southerners.
"
"Well, you can't blame her. She's a Yankee and ain't got very good manners;
and, after all, you did shoot him and he is her stepson."
"Well, hell! That's no excuse for insulting me! You are Ma's own blood son,
but did she take on that time Tony Fontaine shot you in the leg? No, she
just sent for old Doc Fontaine to dress it and asked the doctor what ailed
Tony's aim. Said she guessed licker was spoiling his marksmanship. Remember
how mad that made Tony?"
Both boys yelled with laughter.
"Ma's a card!" said Brent with loving approval. "You can always count on
her to do the right thing and not embarrass you in front of folks."
"Yes, but she's mighty liable to talk embarrassing in front of Father and
the girls when we get home tonight," said Stuart gloomily. "Look, Brent.
I guess this means we don't go to Europe. You know Mother said if we got
expelled from another college we couldn't have our Grand Tour."
"Well, hell! We don't care, do we? What is there to see in Europe? I'll
bet those foreigners can't show us a thing we haven't got right here in
Georgia. I'll bet their horses aren't as fast or their girls as pretty,
and I know damn well they haven't got any rye whisky that can touch Father's."

"Ashley Wilkes said they had an awful lot of scenery and music. Ashley liked
Europe. He's always talking about it."
"Well -- you know how the Wilkes are. They are kind of queer about music
and books and scenery. Mother says it's because their grandfather came from
Virginia. She says Virginians set quite a store by such things."
"They can have 'em. Give me a good horse to ride and some good licker to
drink and a good girl to court and a bad girl to have fun with and anybody
can have their Europe. . .  What do we care about missing the Tour? Suppose
we were in Europe now, with the war coming on? We couldn't get home soon
enough. I'd heap rather go to a war than go to Europe."
"So would I, any day. . .  Look, Brent! I know where we can go for supper.
Let's ride across the swamp to Abel Wynder's place and tell him we're all
four home again and ready for drill."
"That's an idea!" cried Brent with enthusiasm. "And we can hear all the
news of the Troop and find out what color they finally decided on for the
uniforms."
"If it's Zouave, I'm damned if I'll go in the troop. I'd feel like a sissy
in those baggy red pants. They look like ladies' red flannel drawers to
me."
"Is y'all aimin' ter go ter Mist' Wynder's? 'Cause ef (if) you is, you ain'
gwine git (get) much supper," said Jeems. "Dey (They=their) cook done died,
an' dey ain' (ain't) bought a new one. Dey got a fe'el (female) han' (hand)
cookin', an' de niggers tells me she is de wustest (worstest=worst) cook
in de state."
"Good God! Why don't they buy another cook?"
"Huccome (how come) po' (poor) w'ite trash buy any niggers? Dey ain' never
owned mo'n (none) fo' (for) at de mostes'."
There was frank contempt in Jeems' voice. His own social status was assured
because the Tarletons owned a hundred negroes and, like all slaves of large
planters, he looked down on small farmers whose slaves were few.
"I'm going to beat your hide off for that," cried Stuart fiercely. Don't
you call Abel Wynder 'po' white.' Sure he's poor, but he ain't trash; and
I'm damned if I'll have any man, darky or white, throwing off on him. There
ain't a better man in this County, or why else did the Troop elect him lieutenant?"

"Ah (I) ain' never figgered (figured) dat (that) out, mahseff (myself),"
replied Jeems, undisturbed by his master's scowl. "Look ter me lak dey'd
'lect (elect) all de awficers (officers) frum (from) rich gempmum (gentlemen)
, 'stead (instead) of swamp trash."
"He ain't trash! Do you mean to compare him with real white trash like the
Slatterys? Able just ain't rich. He's a small farmer, not a big planter,
and if the boys thought enough of him to elect him lieutenant, then it's
not for any darky to talk impudent about him. The Troop knows what it's
doing."
The troop of cavalry had been organized three months before, the very day
that Georgia seceded from the Union, and since then the recruits had been
whistling for war. The outfit was as yet unnamed, though not for want of
suggestions. Everyone had his own idea on that subject and was loath to
relinquish it, just as everyone had ideas about the color and cut of the
uniforms. "Clayton Wild Cats," "Fire Eaters," "North Georgia Hussars," "Zouaves,
" "The Inland Rifles" (although the Troop was to be armed with pistols,
sabers and bowie knives, and not with rifles), "The Clayton Grays," "The
Blood and Thunderers," "The Rough and Readys," all had their adherents.
Until matters were settled, everyone referred to the organization as the
Troop and, despite the high-sounding name finally adopted, they were known
to the end of their usefulness simply as "The Troop."
The officers were elected by the members, for no one in the County had had
any military experience except a few veterans of the Mexican and Seminole
wars and, besides, the Troop would have scorned a veteran as a leader if
they had not personally liked him and trusted him. Everyone liked the four
Tarleton boys and the three Fontaines, but regretfully refused to elect them,
because the Tarletons got lickered up too quickly and liked to skylark,
and the Fontaines had such quick, murderous tempers. Ashley Wilkes was elected
captain, because he was the best rider in the County and because his cool
head was counted on to keep some semblance of order. Raiford Calvert was
made first lieutenant, because everybody liked Raif, and Able Wynder, son
of a swamp trapper, himself a small farmer, was elected second lieutenant.
Abel was a shrewd, grave giant, illiterate, kind of heart, older than the
other boys and with as good or better manners in the presence of ladies.
There was little snobbery in the Troop. Too many of their fathers and grandfathers
had come up to wealth from the small farmer class for that. Moreover, Able
was the best shot in the Troop, a real sharpshooter who could pick out the
eye of a squirrel at seventy-five yards, and, too, he knew all about living
outdoors, building fires in the rain, tracking animals and finding water.
The Troop bowed to real worth and moreover, because they liked him, they
made him an officer. He bore the honor gravely and with no untoward conceit,
as though it were only his due. But the planters' ladies and the planters'
slaves could not overlook the fact that he was not born a gentleman, even
if their men folks could.
In the beginning, the Troop had been recruited exclusively from the sons
of planters, a gentleman's outfit, each man supplying his own horse, arms,
equipment, uniform and body servant. But rich planters were few in the young
county of Clayton, and, in order to muster a full-strength troop, it had
been necessary to raise more recruits among the sons of small farmers, hunters
in the backwoods, swamp trappers, Crackers and, in a very few cases, even
poor whites, if they were above the average of their class.
These latter young men were as anxious to fight the Yankees, should war
come, as were their richer neighbors; but the delicate question of money
arose. Few small farmers owned horses. They carried on their farm operations
with mules and they had no surplus of these, seldom more than four. The
mules could not be spared to go off to war, even if they had been acceptable
for the Troop, which they emphatically were not. As for the poor whites,
they considered themselves well off if they owned one mule. The backwoods
folks and the swamp dwellers owned neither horses nor mules. They lived
entirely off the produce of their lands and the game in the swamp, conducting
their business generally by the barter system and seldom seeing five dollars
in cash a year, and horses and uniforms were out of their reach. But they
were as fiercely proud in their poverty as the planters were in their wealth,
and they would accept nothing that smacked of charity from their rich neighbors.
So, to save the feelings of all and to bring the Troop up to full strength,
Scarlett's father, John Wilkes, Buck Munroe, Jim Tarleton, Hugh Calvert,
in fact every large planter in the County with the one exception of Angus
MacIntosh, had contributed money to completely outfit the Troop, horse and
man. The upshot of the matter was that every planter agreed to pay for equipping
his own sons and a certain number of the others, but the manner of handling
the arrangements was such that the less wealthy members of the outfit could
accept horses and uniforms without offense to their honor.
The Troop met twice a week in Jonesboro to drill and to pray for the war
to begin. Arrangements had not yet been completed for obtaining the full
quota of horses, but those who had horses performed what they imagined to
be cavalry maneuvers in the field behind the courthouse, kicked up a great
deal of dust, yelled themselves hoarse and waved the Revolutionary-war swords
that had been taken down from parlor walls. Those who, as yet, had no horses
sat on the curb in front of Bullard's store and watched their mounted comrades,
chewed tobacco and told yarns. Or else engaged in shooting matches. There
was no need to teach any of the men to shoot. Most Southerners were born
with guns in their hands, and lives spent in hunting had made marksmen of
them all.
From planters' homes and swamp cabins, a varied array of firearms came to
each muster. There were long squirrel guns that had been new when first
the Alleghenies were crossed, old muzzle-loaders that had claimed many an
Indian when Georgia was new, horse pistols that had seen service in 1812,
in the Seminole wars and in Mexico, silver-mounted dueling pistols, pocket
derringers, double-barreled hunting pieces and handsome new rifles of English
make with shining stocks of fine wood.
Drill always ended in the saloons of Jonesboro, and by nightfall so many
fights had broken out that the officers were hard put to ward off casualties
until the Yankees could inflict them. It was during one of these brawls
that Stuart Tarleton had shot Cade Calvert and Tony Fontaine had shot Brent.
The twins had been at home, freshly expelled from the University of Virginia,
at the time the Troop was organized and they had joined enthusiastically;
but after the shooting episode, two months ago, their mother had packed
them off to the state university, with orders to stay there. They had sorely
missed the excitement of the drills while away, and they counted education
well lost if only they could ride and yell and shoot off rifles in the company
of their friends.
"Well, let's cut across country to Abel's," suggested Brent. "We can go
through Mr. O'Hara's river bottom and the Fontaine's pasture and get there
in no time."
"We ain' gwine git nothin' ter eat 'cept possum an' greens," argued Jeems.
"You ain't going to get anything," grinned Stuart. "Because you are going
home and tell Ma that we won't be home for supper."
"No, Ah ain'!" cried Jeems in alarm. "No, Ah ain!" Ah doan (don't) git no
mo'(more) fun outer havin' Miss Beetriss lay me out dan (than) y'all does.
Fust (First) place she'll ast (ask) me huccome Ah let y'all git expelled
agin (again). An' nex' thing, huccome Ah din' bring y'all home ternight
(tonight) so she could lay you out. An' den she'll light on me lak a duck
on a June bug, an' fust thing Ah know Ah'll be ter blame fer (for) it all.
Ef (If) y'all doan tek (take) me ter Mist' Wynder's, Ah'll lay out in de
woods all night an' maybe de patterollers (patrollers) git me, 'cause Ah
heap (hope) ruther (rather) de patterollers git me dan Miss Beetriss when
she in a state."
The twins looked at the determined black boy in perplexity and indignation.
"He'd be just fool enough to let the patterollers get him and that would
give Ma something else to talk about for weeks. I swear, darkies are more
trouble. Sometimes I think the Abolitionists have got the right idea."
"Well, it wouldn't be right to make Jeems face what we don't want to face.
We'll have to take him. But, look, you impudent black fool, if you put on
any airs in front of the Wynder darkies and hint that we all the time have
fried chicken and ham, while they don't have nothing but rabbit and possum,
I'll -- I'll tell Ma. And we won't let you go to the war with us, either."
"Airs? Me put on airs fo' dem cheap niggers? Nawsuh, Ah got better manners.
Ain' Miss Beetriss taught me manners same as she taught y'all?"
"She didn't do a very good job on any of the three of us," said Stuart.
"Come on, let's get going."
He backed his big red horse and then, putting spurs to his side, lifted
him easily over the split rail fence into the soft field of Gerald O'Hara's
plantation. Brent's horse followed and then Jeems', with Jeems clinging
to pommel and mane. Jeems did not like to jump fences, but he had jumped
higher ones than this in order to keep up with his masters.
As they picked their way across the red furrows and down the hill to the
river bottom in the deepening dusk, Brent yelled to his brother:
"Look, Stu! Don't it seem like to you that Scarlett WOULD have asked us
to supper?"
"I kept thinking she would," yelled Stuart. "Why do you suppose . . .?"

1) 自查生詞。
2) 作者介紹﹕Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell (November 8, 1900 -- August 16,
1949) was an American author and journalist. She won the Pulitzer Prize
for Fiction in 1937 for her epic American Civil War era novel, Gone with
the Wind, the only novel by Mitchell published during her lifetime.  It
is a romance novel, set in Clayton County, Georgia and Atlanta during the
American Civil War and Reconstruction. The novel depicts the experiences
of Scarlett O'Hara, the spoiled daughter of a well-to-do plantation owner,
who must use every means at her disposal to come out of the poverty that
she finds herself in after Sherman's March to the Sea. The book is the source
of the 1939 film of the same name.
3) 英文小說裡經常有把發音不正確的詞按不正確的發音拼寫出來。也經常用’來表
示省去了一個字母。
4) “飄”也是一部世界名著﹐反映了美國南北戰爭期間的場景。可作泛讀材料。此
小說已改變成電影。讀者可以在網上找到全書閱讀。

海外逸士

高級英語教材第12課

先讀課文﹕
A Christmas Carol聖誕頌歌
by Charles Dickens

Chapter 1 - Marley's Ghost
Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The
register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker,
and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon
'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead
as a door-nail.
Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is
particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself,
to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade.
But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands
shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit
me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge
and he were partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge was his sole
executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee,
his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully
cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on
the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.

The mention of Marley's funeral brings me back to the point I started from.
There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood,
or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were
not perfectly convinced that Hamlet's Father died before the play began,
there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in
an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other
middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot --
say Saint Paul's Churchyard for instance -- literally to astonish his son's
weak mind.
Scrooge never painted out Old Marley's name. There it stood, years afterwards,
above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge
and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge,
and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names. It was all the same
to him.
Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing,
wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and
sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret,
and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze
his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened
his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly
in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows,
and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with
him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at
Christmas.
External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could
warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he,
no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open
to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to have him. The heaviest rain,
and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only
one respect. They often came down handsomely, and Scrooge never did.
Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, "My dear
Scrooge, how are you. When will you come to see me.'' No beggars implored
him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o'clock, no man
or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place,
of Scrooge. Even the blindmen's dogs appeared to know him; and when they
saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and
then would wag their tails as though they said, "No eye at all is better
than an evil eye, dark master! ''
But what did Scrooge care! It was the very thing he liked. To edge his way
along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its
distance, was what the knowing ones call nuts to Scrooge.
Once upon a time -- of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve --
old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather:
foggy withal: and he could hear the people in the court outside, go wheezing
up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their
feet upon the pavement stones to warm them. The city clocks had only just
gone three, but it was quite dark already: it had not been light all day:
and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighbouring offices, like
ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The fog came pouring in at every
chink and keyhole, and was so dense without (=outside), that although the
court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms. To see
the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything, one might have
thought that Nature lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.
The door of Scrooge's counting-house was open that he might keep his eye
upon his clerk, who in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank, was
copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk's fire was
so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he couldn't replenish
it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room; and so surely as the clerk
came in with the shovel, the master predicted that it would be necessary
for them to part. Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried
to warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being a man of a strong
imagination, he failed.
"A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!'' cried a cheerful voice. It was
the voice of Scrooge's nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was
the first intimation he had of his approach.
"Bah!'' said Scrooge, "Humbug!''
He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this nephew
of Scrooge's, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome;
his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.
"Christmas a humbug, uncle!'' said Scrooge's nephew. "You don't mean that,
I am sure.''
"I do,'' said Scrooge. "Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry?
what reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough.''
"Come, then,'' returned the nephew gaily. "What right have you to be dismal?
what reason have you to be morose? You're rich enough.''
Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said, "Bah!'
' again; and followed it up with "Humbug.''
"Don't be cross, uncle,'' said the nephew.
"What else can I be,'' returned the uncle, "when I live in such a world
of fools as this Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas. What's Christmas
time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding
yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your
books and having every item in 'em [them] through a round dozen of months
presented dead against you? If I could work my will,'' said Scrooge indignantly,
"every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips, should
be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through
his heart. He should!''
"Uncle!'' pleaded the nephew.
"Nephew!'' returned the uncle, sternly, "keep Christmas in your own way,
and let me keep it in mine.''
"Keep it!'' repeated Scrooge's nephew. “But you don't keep it.''
"Let me leave it alone, then,'' said Scrooge." Much good may it do you!
Much good it has ever done you!''
"There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I
have not profited, I dare say,'' returned the nephew: "Christmas among the
rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has
come round -- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin,
if anything belonging to it can be apart from that -- as a good time: a kind,
forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long
calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their
shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really
were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound
on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap
of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will
do me good; and I say, God bless it!''
The clerk in the tank involuntarily applauded. Becoming immediately sensible
of the impropriety, he poked the fire, and extinguished the last frail spark
for ever.
"Let me hear another sound from you,'' said Scrooge, "and you'll keep your
Christmas by losing your situation. You're quite a powerful speaker, sir,''
he added, turning to his nephew. "I wonder you don't go into Parliament.''

"Don't be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us tomorrow.''
Scrooge said that he would see him -- yes, indeed he did. He went the whole
length of the expression, and said that he would see him in that extremity
first.
"But why?'' cried Scrooge's nephew. "Why?''
"Why did you get married?'' said Scrooge.
"Because I fell in love.''
"Because you fell in love!'' growled Scrooge, as if that were the only one
thing in the world more ridiculous than a merry Christmas. "Good afternoon!''

"Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened. Why give
it as a reason for not coming now?''
"Good afternoon, [=goodbye here]'' said Scrooge.
"I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be friends?''

"Good afternoon,'' said Scrooge.
"I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. We have never had
any quarrel, to which I have been a party. But I have made the trial in
homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my Christmas humour to the last. So A
Merry Christmas, uncle!''
"Good afternoon!'' said Scrooge.
"And A Happy New Year!''
"Good afternoon!'' said Scrooge.
His nephew left the room without an angry word, notwithstanding. He stopped
at the outer door to bestow the greeting of the season on the clerk, who,
cold as he was, was warmer than Scrooge; for he returned them cordially.

"There's another fellow,'' muttered Scrooge; who overheard him: "my clerk,
with fifteen shillings a week, and a wife and family, talking about a merry
Christmas. I'll retire to Bedlam.''
This lunatic, in letting Scrooge's nephew out, had let two other people
in. They were portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now stood, with
their hats off, in Scrooge's office. They had books and papers in their
hands, and bowed to him.
"Scrooge and Marley's, I believe,'' said one of the gentlemen, referring
to his list. ``Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr Scrooge, or Mr Marley?''

"Mr Marley has been dead these seven years,'' Scrooge replied. "He died
seven years ago, this very night.''
"We have no doubt his liberality is well represented by his surviving partner,
'' said the gentleman, presenting his credentials.
It certainly was; for they had been two kindred spirits. At the ominous
word ``liberality'', Scrooge frowned, and shook his head, and handed the
credentials back.
"At this festive season of the year, Mr Scrooge,'' said the gentleman, taking
up a pen, "it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight
provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present
time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands
are in want of common comforts, sir.''
"Are there no prisons?'' asked Scrooge.
"Plenty of prisons,'' said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
"And the Union workhouses?'' demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?'
'
"They are. Still,'' returned the gentleman, `"I wish I could say they were
not.''
"The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?'' said Scrooge.

"Both very busy, sir.''
"Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred
to stop them in their useful course,'' said Scrooge. "I'm very glad to hear
it.''
"Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind
or body to the multitude,'' returned the gentleman, "a few of us are endeavouring
to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth.
We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly
felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?''
"Nothing!'' Scrooge replied.
"You wish to be anonymous?''
"I wish to be left alone,'' said Scrooge. ``Since you ask me what I wish,
gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at Christmas and
I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments
I have mentioned: they cost enough: and those who are badly off must go
there.''
"Many can't go there; and many would rather die.''
"If they would rather die,'' said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease
the surplus population. Besides -- excuse me -- I don't know that.''
"But you might know it,'' observed the gentleman.
"It's not my business,'' Scrooge returned. "It's enough for a man to understand
his own business, and not to interfere with other people's. Mine occupies
me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!''
Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their point, the gentlemen
withdrew. Scrooge resumed his labours with an improved opinion of himself,
and in a more facetious temper than was usual with him.
Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that people ran about with
flaring links, proffering their services to go before horses in carriages,
and conduct them on their way. The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff
old bell was always peeping slily down at Scrooge out of a gothic window
in the wall, became invisible, and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds,
with tremulous vibrations afterwards as if its teeth were chattering in
its frozen head up there. The cold became intense. In the main street, at
the corner of the court, some labourers were repairing the gas-pipes, and
had lighted a great fire in a brazier, round which a party of ragged men
and boys were gathered: warming their hands and winking their eyes before
the blaze in rapture. The water-plug being left in solitude, its overflowings
sullenly congealed, and turned to misanthropic ice. The brightness of the
shops where holly sprigs and berries crackled in the lamp-heat of the windows,
made pale faces ruddy as they passed. Poulterers' and grocers' trades became
a splendid joke: a glorious pageant, with which it was next to impossible
to believe that such dull principles as bargain and sale had anything to
do. The Lord Mayor, in the stronghold of the might Mansion House, gave orders
to his fifty cooks and butlers to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor's household
should; and even the little tailor, whom he had fined five shillings on
the previous Monday for being drunk and bloodthirsty in the streets, stirred
up tomorrow's pudding in his garret, while his lean wife and the baby sallied
out to buy the beef.
Foggier yet, and colder! Piercing, searching, biting cold. If the good Saint
Dunstan had but nipped the Evil Spirit's nose with a touch of such weather
as that, instead of using his familiar weapons, then indeed he would have
roared to lusty purpose. The owner of one scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled
by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed by dogs, stooped down at Scrooge's
keyhole to regale him with a Christmas carol: but at the first sound of God
bless you, merry gentleman! May nothing you dismay! Scrooge seized the ruler
with such energy of action that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole
to the fog and even more congenial frost.
At length the hour of shutting up the counting-house arrived. With an ill-will
Scrooge dismounted from his stool, and tacitly admitted the fact to the
expectant clerk in the Tank, who instantly snuffed his candle out, and put
on his hat.

海外逸士

"You'll want all day tomorrow, I suppose?'' said Scrooge.
"If quite convenient, Sir.''
"It's not convenient,'' said Scrooge, "and it's not fair. If I was to stop
half-a-crown for it, you'd think yourself ill-used, I'll be bound?''
The clerk smiled faintly.
"And yet,'' said Scrooge, "you don't think me ill-used, when I pay a day's
wages for no work.''
The clerk observed that it was only once a year.
"A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December!''
said Scrooge, buttoning his great-coat to the chin. "But I suppose you must
have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning!''
The clerk promised that he would; and Scrooge walked out with a growl. The
office was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends of his
white comforter dangling below his waist (for he boasted no great-coat),
went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times,
in honour of its being Christmas Eve, and then ran home to Camden Town as
hard as he could pelt, to play at blindman's buff.
Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern; and having
read all the newspapers, and beguiled the rest of the evening with his banker'
s-book, went home to bed. He lived in chambers which had once belonged to
his deceased partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile
of building up a yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could
scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house,
playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and have forgotten the way out
again. It was old enough now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it
but Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out as offices. The yard was
so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its every stone, was fain to grope with
his hands. The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house,
that it seemed as if the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful meditation
on the threshold.
Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker
on the door, except that it was very large. It is also a fact, that Scrooge
had seen it, night and morning, during his whole residence in that place;
also that Scrooge had as little of what is called fancy about him as any
man in the City of London, even including -- which is a bold word -- the
corporation, aldermen, and livery. Let it also be borne in mind that Scrooge
had not bestowed one thought on Marley, since his last mention of his seven-year'
s dead partner that afternoon. And then let any man explain to me, if he
can, how it happened that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door,
saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change:
not a knocker, but Marley's face.
Marley's face. It was not in impenetrable shadow as the other objects in
the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a
dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley
used to look: with ghostly spectacles turned up upon its ghostly forehead.
The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot-air; and, though the
eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That, and its livid
colour, made it horrible; but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face
and beyond its control, rather than a part of its own expression.
As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again.
To say that he was not startled, or that his blood was not conscious of
a terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger from infancy, would
be untrue. But he put his hand upon the key he had relinquished, turned
it sturdily, walked in, and lighted his candle.
He did pause, with a moment's irresolution, before he shut the door; and
he did look cautiously behind it first, as if he half expected to be terrified
with the sight of Marley's pigtail sticking out into the hall. But there
was nothing on the back of the door, except the screws and nuts that held
the knocker on, so he said ``Pooh, pooh!'' and closed it with a bang.
The sound resounded through the house like thunder. Every room above, and
every cask in the wine-merchant's cellars below, appeared to have a separate
peal of echoes of its own. Scrooge was not a man to be frightened by echoes.
He fastened the door, and walked across the hall, and up the stairs, slowly
too: trimming his candle as he went.
You may talk vaguely about driving a coach-and-six up a good old flight
of stairs, or through a bad young Act of Parliament; but I mean to say you
might have got a hearse up that staircase, and taken it broadwise, with
the splinter-bar towards the wall and the door towards the balustrades:
and done it easy. There was plenty of width for that, and room to spare;
which is perhaps the reason why Scrooge thought he saw a locomotive hearse
going on before him in the gloom. Half-a-dozen gas-lamps out of the street
wouldn't have lighted the entry too well, so you may suppose that it was
pretty dark with Scrooge's dip.
Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for that: darkness is cheap, and Scrooge
liked it. But before he shut his heavy door, he walked through his rooms
to see that all was right. He had just enough recollection of the face to
desire to do that.
Sitting-room, bed-room, lumber-room. All as they should be. Nobody under
the table, nobody under the sofa; a small fire in the grate; spoon and basin
ready; and the little saucepan of gruel (Scrooge has a cold in his head)
upon the hob. Nobody under the bed; nobody in the closet; nobody in his
dressing-gown, which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the
wall. Lumber-room as usual. Old fire-guard, old shoes, two fish-baskets,
washing-stand on three legs, and a poker.
Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked himself in; double-locked
himself in, which was not his custom. Thus secured against surprise, he
took off his cravat; put on his dressing-gown and slippers, and his night-cap;
and sat down before the fire to take his gruel.
It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a bitter night. He was obliged
to sit close to it, and brood over it, before he could extract the least
sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel. The fireplace was an old
one, built by some Dutch merchant long ago, and paved all round with quaint
Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the Scriptures. There were Cains and
Abels, Pharaoh's daughters, Queens of Sheba, Angelic messengers descending
through the air on clouds like feather-beds, Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apostles
putting off to sea in butter-boats, hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts;
and yet that face of Marley, seven years dead, came like the ancient Prophet'
s rod, and swallowed up the whole. If each smooth tile had been a blank
at first, with power to shape some picture on its surface from the disjointed
fragments of his thoughts, there would have been a copy of old Marley's head
on every one.
``Humbug!'' said Scrooge; and walked across the room.
After several turns, he sat down again. As he threw his head back in the
chair, his glance happened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, that hung
in the room, and communicated for some purpose now forgotten with a chamber
in the highest story of the building. It was with great astonishment, and
with a strange, inexplicable dread, that as he looked, he saw this bell begin
to swing. It swung so softly in the outset that it scarcely made a sound;
but soon it rang out loudly, and so did every bell in the house.
This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed an hour.
The bells ceased as they had begun, together. They were succeeded by a clanking
noise, deep down below; as if some person were dragging a heavy chain over
the casks in the wine-merchant's cellar. Scrooge then remembered to have
heard that ghosts in haunted houses were described as dragging chains. 
The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard the noise
much louder, on the floors below; then coming up the stairs; then coming
straight towards his door.
"It's humbug still!'' said Scrooge. "I won't believe it.''
His colour changed though, when, without a pause, it came on through the
heavy door, and passed into the room before his eyes. Upon its coming in,
the dying flame leaped up, as though it cried, "I know him! Marley's Ghost!''
and fell again.
The same face: the very same. Marley in his pigtail, usual waistcoat, tights,
and boots; the tassels on the latter bristling, like his pigtail, and his
coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head. The chain he drew was clasped about
his middle. It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made
(for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers,
deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel. His body was transparent; so that
Scrooge, observing him, and looking through his waistcoat, could see the
two buttons on his coat behind.
Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he had never
believed it until now.
No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he looked the phantom through
and through, and saw it standing before him; though he felt the chilling
influence of its death-cold eyes; and marked the very texture of the folded
kerchief bound about its head and chin, which wrapper he had not observed
before; he was still incredulous, and fought against his senses.
"How now!'' said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. "What do you want with
me?''
"Much!'' -- Marley's voice, no doubt about it.
"Who are you?''
"Ask me who I was.''
"Who were you then.'' said Scrooge, raising his voice. "You're particular,
for a shade.'' He was going to say "to a shade,'' but substituted this,
as more appropriate.
"In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.''
"Can you -- can you sit down?'' asked Scrooge, looking doubtfully at him.

"I can.''
"Do it, then.''
Scrooge asked the question, because he didn't know whether a ghost so transparent
might find himself in a condition to take a chair; and felt that in the
event of its being impossible, it might involve the necessity of an embarrassing
explanation. But the ghost sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace,
as if he were quite used to it.
"You don't believe in me,'' observed the Ghost.
"I don't,'' said Scrooge.
"What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses?''

"I don't know,'' said Scrooge.
"Why do you doubt your senses?''
"Because,'' said Scrooge, "a little thing affects them. A slight disorder
of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef,
a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato.
There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!''
Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel, in
his heart, by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be
smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and keeping down his
terror; for the spectre's voice disturbed the very marrow in his bones.

To sit, staring at those fixed, glazed eyes, in silence for a moment, would
play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him. There was something very awful,
too, in the spectre's being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its
own. Scrooge could not feel it himself, but this was clearly the case; for
though the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair, and skirts, and tassels,
were still agitated as by the hot vapour from an oven.
"You see this toothpick?'' said Scrooge, returning quickly to the charge,
for the reason just assigned; and wishing, though it were only for a second,
to divert the vision's stony gaze from himself.
"I do,'' replied the Ghost.
"You are not looking at it,'' said Scrooge.
"But I see it,'' said the Ghost, "notwithstanding.''
"Well!'' returned Scrooge, "I have but to swallow this, and be for the rest
of my days persecuted by a legion of goblins, all of my own creation. Humbug,
I tell you; humbug!''
At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain with such
a dismal and appalling noise, that Scrooge held on tight to his chair, to
save himself from falling in a swoon. But how much greater was his horror,
when the phantom taking off the bandage round its head, as if it were too
warm to wear in-doors, its lower jaw dropped down upon its breast!
Scrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands before his face.
"Mercy!'' he said. "Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?''
"Man of the worldly mind!'' replied the Ghost, "do you believe in me or
not?''
"I do,'' said Scrooge. "I must. But why do spirits walk the earth, and why
do they come to me?''

海外逸士

"It is required of every man,'' the Ghost returned, "that the spirit within
him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and
if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death.
It is doomed to wander through the world -- oh, woe is me! -- and witness
what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!
''
Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain, and wrung its shadowy
hands.
"You are fettered,'' said Scrooge, trembling. "Tell me why?''
"I wear the chain I forged in life,'' replied the Ghost. "I made it link
by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my
own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?''
Scrooge trembled more and more.
"Or would you know,'' pursued the Ghost, "the weight and length of the strong
coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven
Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!'
'
Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the expectation of finding himself
surrounded by some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cable: but he could see
nothing.
"Jacob,'' he said, imploringly. "Old Jacob Marley, tell me more. Speak comfort
to me, Jacob.''
"I have none to give,'' the Ghost replied. "It comes from other regions,
Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed by other ministers, to other kinds of
men. Nor can I tell you what I would. A very little more, is all permitted
to me. I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. My spirit
never walked beyond our counting-house -- mark me! -- in life my spirit never
roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole; and weary journeys
lie before me!''
It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became thoughtful, to put his hands
in his breeches pockets. Pondering on what the Ghost had said, he did so
now, but without lifting up his eyes, or getting off his knees.
"You must have been very slow about it, Jacob,'' Scrooge observed, in a
business-like manner, though with humility and deference.
"Slow!'' the Ghost repeated.
"Seven years dead,'' mused Scrooge. "And travelling all the time?''
"The whole time,'' said the Ghost. ``No rest, no peace. Incessant torture
of remorse.''
"You travel fast?'' said Scrooge.
"On the wings of the wind,'' replied the Ghost.
"You might have got over a great quantity of ground in seven years,'' said
Scrooge.
The Ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry, and clanked its chain so
hideously in the dead silence of the night, that the Ward would have been
justified in indicting it for a nuisance.
"Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,'' cried the phantom, "not to know,
that ages of incessant labour by immortal creatures, for this earth must
pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed.
Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere,
whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means
of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one
life's opportunities misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!''
"But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,'' faultered Scrooge,
who now began to apply this to himself.
"Business!'' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my
business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance,
and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but
a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!''
It held up its chain at arm's length, as if that were the cause of all its
unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again.
"At this time of the rolling year,'' the spectre said, "I suffer most. Why
did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and
never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode
[denoting the story of the birth of Christ]? Were there no poor homes to
which its light would have conducted me!''
Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the spectre going on at this rate,
and began to quake exceedingly.
"Hear me!'' cried the Ghost. "My time is nearly gone.''
"I will,'' said Scrooge. "But don't be hard upon me! Don't be flowery, Jacob!
Pray!''
"How it is that I appear before you in a shape that you can see, I may not
tell. I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day.''
It was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered, and wiped the perspiration
from his brow.
"That is no light part of my penance,'' pursued the Ghost. "I am here tonight
to warn you, that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A
chance and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer.''
"You were always a good friend to me,'' said Scrooge. "Thank'ee!''
"You will be haunted,'' resumed the Ghost, "by Three Spirits.''
Scrooge's countenance fell almost as low as the Ghost's had done.
"Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob?'' he demanded, in a faltering
voice.
"It is.''
"I -- I think I'd rather not,'' said Scrooge.
"Without their visits,'' said the Ghost, "you cannot hope to shun the path
I tread. Expect the first tomorrow, when the bell tolls One.''
"Couldn't I take 'em all at once, and have it over, Jacob?'' hinted Scrooge.

"Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the
next night when the last stroke of Twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to
see me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you remember what has
passed between us.''
When it had said these words, the spectre took its wrapper from the table,
and bound it round its head, as before. Scrooge knew this, by the smart
sound its teeth made, when the jaws were brought together by the bandage.
He ventured to raise his eyes again, and found his supernatural visitor
confronting him in an erect attitude, with its chain wound over and about
its arm.
The apparition walked backward from him; and at every step it took, the
window raised itself a little, so that when the spectre reached it, it was
wide open.
It beckoned Scrooge to approach, which he did. When they were within two
paces of each other, Marley's Ghost held up its hand, warning him to come
no nearer. Scrooge stopped.
Not so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear: for on the raising of
the hand, he became sensible of confused noises in the air; incoherent sounds
of lamentation and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory.
The spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge;
and floated out upon the bleak, dark night.
Scrooge followed to the window: desperate in his curiosity. He looked out.

The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless
haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley's
Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together;
none were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives.
He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with
a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being
unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon
a door-step. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to
interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.

Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist enshrouded them, he could
not tell. But they and their spirit voices faded together; and the night
became as it had been when he walked home.
Scrooge closed the window, and examined the door by which the Ghost had
entered. It was double-locked, as he had locked it with his own hands, and
the bolts were undisturbed. He tried to say ``Humbug!'' but stopped at the
first syllable. And being, from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues
of the day, or his glimpse of the Invisible World, or the dull conversation
of the Ghost, or the lateness of the hour, much in need of repose; went straight
to bed, without undressing, and fell asleep upon the instant.

1) 自查字典。
2) 作者介紹﹕Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally
considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider
popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and
he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's
most iconic novels and characters. Many of his writings were originally published
serially, in monthly instalments or parts, a format of publication which
Dickens himself helped popularise at that time. Unlike other authors who
completed entire novels before serialisation, Dickens often created the
episodes as they were being serialised. The practice lent his stories a
particular rhythm, punctuated by cliffhangers to keep the public looking
forward to the next instalment. The continuing popularity of his novels and
short stories is such that they have never gone out of print.
A Christmas Carol is a novella first published by Chapman & Hall on 17 December
1843. The story tells of sour and stingy Ebenezer Scrooge's ideological,
ethical, and emotional transformation after the supernatural visits of Jacob
Marley and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come. The novella
met with instant success and critical acclaim.
3) 聖誕頌歌也是有名的小說。每逢聖誕﹐紐約會演出該劇。有些教會活動中會演出
這章裡提到的耶穌誕生的小段子。從這一章﹐可以先看一下DICKENS的寫作風格。

海外逸士

高級英語教材第13課

先讀課文 SHORT STORY﹕
The Little Match Girl 賣火柴的小女孩
by Hans Christian Andersen 安徒生

Most terribly cold it was; it snowed, and was nearly quite dark, and evening-
-the last evening of the year. In this cold and darkness there went along
the street a poor little girl, bareheaded, and with naked feet. When she
left home she had slippers on, it is true; but what was the good of that?
They were very large slippers, which her mother had hitherto worn; so large
were they; and the poor little thing lost them as she scuffled away across
the street, because of two carriages that rolled by dreadfully fast.
One slipper was nowhere to be found; the other had been laid hold of by
an urchin, and off he ran with it; he thought it would do capitally for
a cradle when he some day or other should have children himself. So the
little maiden walked on with her tiny naked feet, that were quite red and
blue from cold. She carried a quantity of matches in an old apron, and she
held a bundle of them in her hand. Nobody had bought anything of her the
whole livelong day; no one had given her a single farthing.
She crept along trembling with cold and hunger--a very picture of sorrow,
the poor little thing!
The flakes of snow covered her long fair hair, which fell in beautiful curls
around her neck; but of that, of course, she never once now thought. From
all the windows the candles were gleaming, and it smelt so deliciously of
roast goose, for you know it was New Year's Eve; yes, of that she thought.
In a corner formed by two houses, of which one advanced more than the other,
she seated herself down and cowered together. Her little feet she had drawn
close up to her, but she grew colder and colder, and to go home she did
not venture, for she had not sold any matches and could not bring a farthing
of money: from her father she would certainly get blows, and at home it
was cold too, for above her she had only the roof, through which the wind
whistled, even though the largest cracks were stopped up with straw and
rags.
Her little hands were almost numbed with cold. Oh! a match might afford
her a world of comfort, if she only dared take a single one out of the bundle,
draw it against the wall, and warm her fingers by it. She drew one out.
"Rischt!" how it blazed, how it burnt! It was a warm, bright flame, like
a candle, as she held her hands over it: it was a wonderful light. It seemed
really to the little maiden as though she were sitting before a large iron
stove, with burnished brass feet and a brass ornament at top. The fire burned
with such blessed influence; it warmed so delightfully. The little girl
had already stretched out her feet to warm them too; but--the small flame
went out, the stove vanished: she had only the remains of the burnt-out match
in her hand.
She rubbed another against the wall: it burned brightly, and where the light
fell on the wall, there the wall became transparent like a veil, so that
she could see into the room. On the table was spread a snow-white tablecloth;
upon it was a splendid porcelain service, and the roast goose was steaming
famously with its stuffing of apple and dried plums. And what was still more
capital to behold was, the goose hopped down from the dish, reeled about
on the floor with knife and fork in its breast, till it came up to the poor
little girl; when--the match went out and nothing but the thick, cold, damp
wall was left behind. She lighted another match. Now there she was sitting
under the most magnificent Christmas tree: it was still larger, and more
decorated than the one which she had seen through the glass door in the
rich merchant's house. Thousands of lights were burning on the green branches,
and gaily-colored pictures, such as she had seen in the shop-windows, looked
down upon her. The little maiden stretched out her hands towards them when--the
match went out. The lights of the Christmas tree rose higher and higher,
she saw them now as stars in heaven; one fell down and formed a long trail
of fire.
"Someone is just dead!" said the little girl; for her old grandmother, the
only person who had loved her, and who was now no more, had told her, that
when a star falls, a soul ascends to God.
She drew another match against the wall: it was again light, and in the
lustre there stood the old grandmother, so bright and radiant, so mild,
and with such an expression of love.
"Grandmother!" cried the little one. "Oh, take me with you! You go away
when the match burns out; you vanish like the warm stove, like the delicious
roast goose, and like the magnificent Christmas tree!" And she rubbed the
whole bundle of matches quickly against the wall, for she wanted to be quite
sure of keeping her grandmother near her. And the matches gave such a brilliant
light that it was brighter than at noon-day: never formerly had the grandmother
been so beautiful and so tall. She took the little maiden, on her arm, and
both flew in brightness and in joy so high, so very high, and then above
was neither cold, nor hunger, nor anxiety--they were with God.
But in the corner, at the cold hour of dawn, sat the poor girl, with rosy
cheeks and with a smiling mouth, leaning against the wall--frozen to death
on the last evening of the old year. Stiff and stark sat the child there
with her matches, of which one bundle had been burnt. "She wanted to warm
herself," people said. No one had the slightest suspicion of what beautiful
things she had seen; no one even dreamed of the splendor in which, with
her grandmother she had entered on the joys of a new year

1) 生詞自查。
2) 作者介紹﹕Hans Christian Andersen (April 2, 1805 -- August 4, 1875) was
a Danish author, fairy tale writer and poet noted for his children's stories.
These include "The Steadfast Tin Soldier," "The Snow Queen," "The Little
Mermaid," "Thumbelina," "The Little Match Girl," and "The Ugly Duckling."
During his lifetime he was acclaimed for having delighted children worldwide,
and was feted by royalty. His poetry and stories have been translated into
more than 150 languages. They have inspired motion pictures, plays, ballets,
and animated films.
The Little Match Girl (Danish: Den Lille Pige med Svovlstikkerne, meaning
"The little girl with the matchsticks") is a short story by Danish poet
and author Hans Christian Andersen. The story is about a dying child's dreams
and hope, and was first published in 1845. It has been adapted to various
media including animated film, and a television musical.
3) 讀完這個故事﹐你應該同情這可憐的孩子。請想起世界上還有許多同樣可憐的孩
子。4) 這是一個有名的安徒生童話故事。按理說﹐每個人在小時候都會讀過或聽到
過。童話故事的寫作就有點對小孩講話的語氣。