章节正文
service of the strong?"
"Nothing can possibly be easier," returned the sick man; "the
proper service of the strong is to help the weak."
Again the fireman reflected, for there was nothing hasty about this
excellent creature. "I could forgive you being sick," he said at
last, as a portion of the wall fell out, "but I cannot bear your
being such a fool." And with that he heaved up his fireman's axe,
for he was eminently just, and clove the sick man to the bed.
V. - THE DEVIL AND THE INNKEEPER.
ONCE upon a time the devil stayed at an inn, where no one knew him,
for they were people whose education had been neglected. He was
bent on mischief, and for a time kept everybody by the ears. But
at last the innkeeper set a watch upon the devil and took him in
the fact.
The innkeeper got a rope's end.
"Now I am going to thrash you," said the innkeeper.
"You have no right to be angry with me," said the devil. "I am
only the devil, and it is my nature to do wrong."
"Is that so?" asked the innkeeper.
"Fact, I assure you," said the devil.
"You really cannot help doing ill?" asked the innkeeper.
"Not in the smallest," said the devil; "it would be useless cruelty
to thrash a thing like me."
"It would indeed," said the innkeeper.
And he made a noose and hanged the devil.
"There!" said the innkeeper.
VI. - THE PENITENT
A MAN met a lad weeping. "What do you weep for?" he asked.
"I am weeping for my sins," said the lad.
"You must have little to do," said the man.
The next day they met again. Once more the lad was weeping. "Why
do you weep now?" asked the man.
"I am weeping because I have nothing to eat," said the lad.
"I thought it would come to that," said the man.
VII. - THE YELLOW PAINT.
IN a certain city there lived a physician who sold yellow paint.
This was of so singular a virtue that whoso was bedaubed with it
from head to heel was set free from the dangers of life, and the
bondage of sin, and the fear of death for ever. So the physician
said in his prospectus; and so said all the citizens in the city;
and there was nothing more urgent in men's hearts than to be
properly painted themselves, and nothing they took more delight in
than to see others painted. There was in the same city a young man
of a very good family but of a somewhat reckless life, who had
reached the age of manhood, and would have nothing to say to the
paint: "To-morrow was soon enough," said he; and when the morrow
came he would still put it off. She might have continued to do
until his death; only, he had a friend of about his own age and
much of his own manners; and this youth, taking a walk in the
public street, with not one fleck of paint upon his body, was
suddenly run down by a water-cart and cut off in the heyday of his
nakedness. This shook the other to the soul; so that I never
beheld a man more earnest to be painted; and on the very same
evening, in the presence of all his family, to appropriate music,
and himself weeping aloud, he received three complete coats and a
touch of varnish on the top. The physician (who was himself
affected even to tears) protested he had never done a job so
thorough.
Some two months afterwards, the young man was carried on a
stretcher to the physician's house.
"What is the meaning of this?" he cried, as soon as the door was
opened. "I was to be set free from all the dangers of life; and
here have I been run down by that self-same water-cart, and my leg
is broken."
"Dear me!" said the physician. "This is very sad. But I perceive
I must explain to you the action of my paint. A broken bone is a
mighty small affair at the worst of it; and it belongs to a class
of accident to which my paint is quite inapplicable. Sin, my dear
young friend, sin is the sole calamity that a wise man should
apprehend; it is against sin that I have fitted you out; and when
you come to be tempted, you will give me news of my paint."
"Oh!" said the young man, "I did not understand that, and it seems
rather disappointing. But I have no doubt all is for the best; and
in the meanwhile, I shall be obliged to you if you will set my
leg."
"That is none of my business," said the physician; "but if your
bearers will carry you round the corner to the surgeon's, I feel
sure he will afford relief."
Some three years later, the young man came running to the
physician's house in a great perturbation. "What is the meaning of
this?" he cried. "Here was I to be set free from the bondage of
sin; and I have just committed forgery, arson and murder."
"Dear me," said the physician. "This is very serious. Off with
your clothes at once." And as soon as the young man had stripped,
he examined him from head to foot. "No," he cried with great
relief, "there is not a flake broken. Cheer up, my young friend,
your paint is as good as new."
"Good God!" cried the young man, "and what then can be the use of
it?"
"Why," said the physician, "I perceive I must explain to you the
nature of the action of my paint. It does not exactly prevent sin;
it extenuates instead the painful consequences. It is not so much
for this world, as for the next; it is not against life; in short,
it is against death that I have fitted you out. And when you come
to die, you will give me news of my paint."
"Oh!" cried the young man, "I had not understood that, and it seems
a little disappointing. But there is no doubt all is for the best:
and in the meanwhile, I shall be obliged if you will help me to
undo the evil I have brought on innocent persons."
"That is none of my business," said the physician; "but if you will
go round the corner to the police office, I feel sure it will
afford you relief to give yourself up."
Six weeks later, the physician was called to the town gaol.
"What is the meaning of this?" cried the young man. "Here am I
literally crusted with your paint; and I have broken my leg, and
committed all the crimes in the calendar, and must be hanged to-
morrow; and am in the meanwhile in a fear so extreme that I lack
words to picture it."
"Dear me," said the physician. "This is really amazing. Well,
well; perhaps, if you had not been painted, you would have been
more frightened still."
VIII. - THE HOUSE OF ELD.
So soon as the child began to speak, the gyve was riveted; and the
boys and girls limped about their play like convicts. Doubtless it
was more pitiable to see and more painful to bear in youth; but
even the grown folk, besides being very unhandy on their feet, were
often sick with ulcers.
About the time when Jack was ten years old, many strangers began to
journey through that country. These he beheld going lightly by on
the long roads, and the thing amazed him. "I wonder how it comes,"
he asked, "that all these strangers are so quick afoot, and we must
drag about our fetter?"
"My dear boy," said his uncle, the catechist, "do not complain
about your fetter, for it is the only thing that makes life worth
living. None are happy, none are good, none are respectable, that
are not gyved like us. And I must tell you, besides, it is very
dangerous talk. If you grumble of your iron, you will have no
luck; if ever you take it off, you will be instantlysmitten by a
thunderbolt."
"Are there no thunderbolts for these strangers?" asked Jack.
"Jupiter is longsuffering to the benighted," returned the
catechist.
"Upon my word, I could wish I had been less fortunate," said Jack.
"For if I had been born benighted, I might now be going free; and
it cannot be denied the iron is inconvenient, and the ulcer hurts."
"Ah!" cried his uncle, "do not envy the heathen! Theirs is a sad
lot! Ah, poor souls, if they but knew the joys of being fettered!
Poor souls, my heart yearns for them. But the truth is they are
vile, odious, insolent, ill-conditioned, stinking brutes, not truly
human - for what is a man without a fetter? - and you cannot be too
particular not to touch or speak with them."
After this talk, the child would never pass one of the unfettered
on the road but what he spat at him and called him names, which was
the practice of the children in that part.
It chanced one day, when he was fifteen, he went into the woods,
and the ulcer pained him. It was a fair day, with a blue sky; all
the birds were singing; but Jack nursed his foot. Presently,
another song began; it sounded like the singing of a person, only
far more gay; at the same time there was a beating on the earth.
Jack put aside the leaves; and there was a lad of his own village,
leaping, and dancing and singing to himself in a green dell; and on
the grass beside him lay the dancer's iron.
"Oh!" cried Jack, "you have your fetter off!"
"For God's sake, don't tell your uncle!" cried the lad.
"If you fear my uncle," returned Jack "why do you not fear the
thunderbolt"?
"That is only an old wives' tale," said the other. "It is only
told to children. Scores of us come here among the woods and dance
for nights together, and are none the worse."
This put Jack in a thousand new thoughts. He was a grave lad; he
had no mind to dance himself; he wore his fetter manfully, and
tended his ulcer without complaint. But he loved the less to be
deceived or to see others cheated. He began to lie in wait for
heathen travellers, at covert parts of the road, and in the dusk of
the day, so that he might speak with them unseen; and these were
greatly taken with their wayside questioner, and told him things of
weight. The wearing of gyves (they said) was no command of
Jupiter's. It was the contrivance of a white-faced thing, a
sorcerer, that dwelt in that country in the Wood of Eld. He was
one like Glaucus that could change his shape, yet he could be
always told; for when he was crossed, he gobbled like a turkey. He
had three lives; but the third smiting would make an end of him
indeed; and with that his house of sorcery would vanish, the gyves
fall, and the villagers take hands and dance like children.
"And in your country?" Jack would ask.
But at this the travellers, with one accord, would put him off;
until Jack began to suppose there was no land entirely happy. Or,
if there were, it must be one that kept its folk at home; which was
natural enough.
But the case of the gyves weighed upon him. The sight of the
children limping stuck in his eyes; the groans of such as dressed
their ulcers haunted him. And it came at last in his mind that he
was born to free them.
There was in that village a sword of heavenly forgery, beaten upon
Vulcan's anvil. It was never used but in the temple, and then the
flat of it only; and it hung on a nail by the catechist's chimney.
Early one night, Jack rose, and took the sword, and was gone out of
the house and the village in the darkness.
All night he walked at a venture; and when day came, he met
strangers going to the fields. Then he asked after the Wood of Eld
and the house of sorcery; and one said north, and one south; until
Jack saw that they deceived him. So then, when he asked his way of
any man, he showed the bright sword naked; and at that the gyve on
the man's ankle rang, and answered in his stead; and the word was
still STRAIGHT ON. But the man, when his gyve spoke, spat and
struck at Jack, and threw stones at him as he went away; so that
his head was broken.
So he came to that wood, and entered in, and he was aware of a
house in a low place, where funguses grew, and the trees met, and
the steaming of the marsh arose about it like a smoke. It was a
fine house, and a very rambling; some parts of it were ancient like
"Nothing can possibly be easier," returned the sick man; "the
proper service of the strong is to help the weak."
Again the fireman reflected, for there was nothing hasty about this
excellent creature. "I could forgive you being sick," he said at
last, as a portion of the wall fell out, "but I cannot bear your
being such a fool." And with that he heaved up his fireman's axe,
for he was eminently just, and clove the sick man to the bed.
V. - THE DEVIL AND THE INNKEEPER.
ONCE upon a time the devil stayed at an inn, where no one knew him,
for they were people whose education had been neglected. He was
bent on mischief, and for a time kept everybody by the ears. But
at last the innkeeper set a watch upon the devil and took him in
the fact.
The innkeeper got a rope's end.
"Now I am going to thrash you," said the innkeeper.
"You have no right to be angry with me," said the devil. "I am
only the devil, and it is my nature to do wrong."
"Is that so?" asked the innkeeper.
"Fact, I assure you," said the devil.
"You really cannot help doing ill?" asked the innkeeper.
"Not in the smallest," said the devil; "it would be useless cruelty
to thrash a thing like me."
"It would indeed," said the innkeeper.
And he made a noose and hanged the devil.
"There!" said the innkeeper.
VI. - THE PENITENT
A MAN met a lad weeping. "What do you weep for?" he asked.
"I am weeping for my sins," said the lad.
"You must have little to do," said the man.
The next day they met again. Once more the lad was weeping. "Why
do you weep now?" asked the man.
"I am weeping because I have nothing to eat," said the lad.
"I thought it would come to that," said the man.
VII. - THE YELLOW PAINT.
IN a certain city there lived a physician who sold yellow paint.
This was of so singular a virtue that whoso was bedaubed with it
from head to heel was set free from the dangers of life, and the
bondage of sin, and the fear of death for ever. So the physician
said in his prospectus; and so said all the citizens in the city;
and there was nothing more urgent in men's hearts than to be
properly painted themselves, and nothing they took more delight in
than to see others painted. There was in the same city a young man
of a very good family but of a somewhat reckless life, who had
reached the age of manhood, and would have nothing to say to the
paint: "To-morrow was soon enough," said he; and when the morrow
came he would still put it off. She might have continued to do
until his death; only, he had a friend of about his own age and
much of his own manners; and this youth, taking a walk in the
public street, with not one fleck of paint upon his body, was
suddenly run down by a water-cart and cut off in the heyday of his
nakedness. This shook the other to the soul; so that I never
beheld a man more earnest to be painted; and on the very same
evening, in the presence of all his family, to appropriate music,
and himself weeping aloud, he received three complete coats and a
touch of varnish on the top. The physician (who was himself
affected even to tears) protested he had never done a job so
thorough.
Some two months afterwards, the young man was carried on a
stretcher to the physician's house.
"What is the meaning of this?" he cried, as soon as the door was
opened. "I was to be set free from all the dangers of life; and
here have I been run down by that self-same water-cart, and my leg
is broken."
"Dear me!" said the physician. "This is very sad. But I perceive
I must explain to you the action of my paint. A broken bone is a
mighty small affair at the worst of it; and it belongs to a class
of accident to which my paint is quite inapplicable. Sin, my dear
young friend, sin is the sole calamity that a wise man should
apprehend; it is against sin that I have fitted you out; and when
you come to be tempted, you will give me news of my paint."
"Oh!" said the young man, "I did not understand that, and it seems
rather disappointing. But I have no doubt all is for the best; and
in the meanwhile, I shall be obliged to you if you will set my
leg."
"That is none of my business," said the physician; "but if your
bearers will carry you round the corner to the surgeon's, I feel
sure he will afford relief."
Some three years later, the young man came running to the
physician's house in a great perturbation. "What is the meaning of
this?" he cried. "Here was I to be set free from the bondage of
sin; and I have just committed forgery, arson and murder."
"Dear me," said the physician. "This is very serious. Off with
your clothes at once." And as soon as the young man had stripped,
he examined him from head to foot. "No," he cried with great
relief, "there is not a flake broken. Cheer up, my young friend,
your paint is as good as new."
"Good God!" cried the young man, "and what then can be the use of
it?"
"Why," said the physician, "I perceive I must explain to you the
nature of the action of my paint. It does not exactly prevent sin;
it extenuates instead the painful consequences. It is not so much
for this world, as for the next; it is not against life; in short,
it is against death that I have fitted you out. And when you come
to die, you will give me news of my paint."
"Oh!" cried the young man, "I had not understood that, and it seems
a little disappointing. But there is no doubt all is for the best:
and in the meanwhile, I shall be obliged if you will help me to
undo the evil I have brought on innocent persons."
"That is none of my business," said the physician; "but if you will
go round the corner to the police office, I feel sure it will
afford you relief to give yourself up."
Six weeks later, the physician was called to the town gaol.
"What is the meaning of this?" cried the young man. "Here am I
literally crusted with your paint; and I have broken my leg, and
committed all the crimes in the calendar, and must be hanged to-
morrow; and am in the meanwhile in a fear so extreme that I lack
words to picture it."
"Dear me," said the physician. "This is really amazing. Well,
well; perhaps, if you had not been painted, you would have been
more frightened still."
VIII. - THE HOUSE OF ELD.
So soon as the child began to speak, the gyve was riveted; and the
boys and girls limped about their play like convicts. Doubtless it
was more pitiable to see and more painful to bear in youth; but
even the grown folk, besides being very unhandy on their feet, were
often sick with ulcers.
About the time when Jack was ten years old, many strangers began to
journey through that country. These he beheld going lightly by on
the long roads, and the thing amazed him. "I wonder how it comes,"
he asked, "that all these strangers are so quick afoot, and we must
drag about our fetter?"
"My dear boy," said his uncle, the catechist, "do not complain
about your fetter, for it is the only thing that makes life worth
living. None are happy, none are good, none are respectable, that
are not gyved like us. And I must tell you, besides, it is very
dangerous talk. If you grumble of your iron, you will have no
luck; if ever you take it off, you will be instantlysmitten by a
thunderbolt."
"Are there no thunderbolts for these strangers?" asked Jack.
"Jupiter is longsuffering to the benighted," returned the
catechist.
"Upon my word, I could wish I had been less fortunate," said Jack.
"For if I had been born benighted, I might now be going free; and
it cannot be denied the iron is inconvenient, and the ulcer hurts."
"Ah!" cried his uncle, "do not envy the heathen! Theirs is a sad
lot! Ah, poor souls, if they but knew the joys of being fettered!
Poor souls, my heart yearns for them. But the truth is they are
vile, odious, insolent, ill-conditioned, stinking brutes, not truly
human - for what is a man without a fetter? - and you cannot be too
particular not to touch or speak with them."
After this talk, the child would never pass one of the unfettered
on the road but what he spat at him and called him names, which was
the practice of the children in that part.
It chanced one day, when he was fifteen, he went into the woods,
and the ulcer pained him. It was a fair day, with a blue sky; all
the birds were singing; but Jack nursed his foot. Presently,
another song began; it sounded like the singing of a person, only
far more gay; at the same time there was a beating on the earth.
Jack put aside the leaves; and there was a lad of his own village,
leaping, and dancing and singing to himself in a green dell; and on
the grass beside him lay the dancer's iron.
"Oh!" cried Jack, "you have your fetter off!"
"For God's sake, don't tell your uncle!" cried the lad.
"If you fear my uncle," returned Jack "why do you not fear the
thunderbolt"?
"That is only an old wives' tale," said the other. "It is only
told to children. Scores of us come here among the woods and dance
for nights together, and are none the worse."
This put Jack in a thousand new thoughts. He was a grave lad; he
had no mind to dance himself; he wore his fetter manfully, and
tended his ulcer without complaint. But he loved the less to be
deceived or to see others cheated. He began to lie in wait for
heathen travellers, at covert parts of the road, and in the dusk of
the day, so that he might speak with them unseen; and these were
greatly taken with their wayside questioner, and told him things of
weight. The wearing of gyves (they said) was no command of
Jupiter's. It was the contrivance of a white-faced thing, a
sorcerer, that dwelt in that country in the Wood of Eld. He was
one like Glaucus that could change his shape, yet he could be
always told; for when he was crossed, he gobbled like a turkey. He
had three lives; but the third smiting would make an end of him
indeed; and with that his house of sorcery would vanish, the gyves
fall, and the villagers take hands and dance like children.
"And in your country?" Jack would ask.
But at this the travellers, with one accord, would put him off;
until Jack began to suppose there was no land entirely happy. Or,
if there were, it must be one that kept its folk at home; which was
natural enough.
But the case of the gyves weighed upon him. The sight of the
children limping stuck in his eyes; the groans of such as dressed
their ulcers haunted him. And it came at last in his mind that he
was born to free them.
There was in that village a sword of heavenly forgery, beaten upon
Vulcan's anvil. It was never used but in the temple, and then the
flat of it only; and it hung on a nail by the catechist's chimney.
Early one night, Jack rose, and took the sword, and was gone out of
the house and the village in the darkness.
All night he walked at a venture; and when day came, he met
strangers going to the fields. Then he asked after the Wood of Eld
and the house of sorcery; and one said north, and one south; until
Jack saw that they deceived him. So then, when he asked his way of
any man, he showed the bright sword naked; and at that the gyve on
the man's ankle rang, and answered in his stead; and the word was
still STRAIGHT ON. But the man, when his gyve spoke, spat and
struck at Jack, and threw stones at him as he went away; so that
his head was broken.
So he came to that wood, and entered in, and he was aware of a
house in a low place, where funguses grew, and the trees met, and
the steaming of the marsh arose about it like a smoke. It was a
fine house, and a very rambling; some parts of it were ancient like
- forgive [fə´giv]
vt.原谅，谅解，宽恕 (初中英语单词) - portion [´pɔ:ʃən] n.嫁妆；命运 vt.分配 (初中英语单词)
- mischief [´mistʃif] n.伤害；故障；调皮 (初中英语单词)
- useless [´ju:sləs] a.无用的，无价值的 (初中英语单词)
- physician [fi´ziʃən] n.(内科)医生 (初中英语单词)
- virtue [´və:tʃu:] n.美德；贞操；长处 (初中英语单词)
- earnest [´ə:nist] a.认真的 n.认真；诚恳 (初中英语单词)
- meanwhile [´mi:n´wail] n.&ad.其间；同时 (初中英语单词)
- running [´rʌniŋ] a.奔跑的；流动的 (初中英语单词)
- perceive [pə´si:v] vt.察觉；看出；领悟 (初中英语单词)
- innocent [´inəsənt] a.无罪的；单纯的 (初中英语单词)
- relief [ri´li:f] n.救济；援救；减轻 (初中英语单词)
- extreme [ik´stri:m] a.尽头的 n.极端 (初中英语单词)
- amazing [ə´meiziŋ] a.惊人的；惊奇的 (初中英语单词)
- doubtless [´dautlis] ad.无疑地；大概，多半 (初中英语单词)
- beheld [bi´held] behold的过去式(分词) (初中英语单词)
- lightly [´laitli] ad.轻微地，稍微 (初中英语单词)
- instantly [´instəntli] ad.立即，立刻 (初中英语单词)
- complaint [kəm´pleint] n.抱怨；叫屈 (初中英语单词)
- turkey [´tə:ki] n.火鸡 (初中英语单词)
- vanish [´væniʃ] vi.消失；消散；消灭 (初中英语单词)
- accord [ə´kɔ:d] n.&vi.符合 vt.给与 (初中英语单词)
- haunted [´hɔ:tid] a.常出现鬼的，闹鬼的 (初中英语单词)
- beaten [´bi:tn] beat 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- temple [´tempəl] n.庙宇；寺院；太阳穴 (初中英语单词)
- venture [´ventʃə] n.投机 v.冒险；敢于 (初中英语单词)
- thrash [θræʃ] v.打(谷)；(用棍)痛打 (高中英语单词)
- singular [´siŋgjulə] a.单一的；非凡的 (高中英语单词)
- reckless [´rekləs] a.不注意的；鲁莽的 (高中英语单词)
- manhood [´mænhud] n.人格；男子气概 (高中英语单词)
- appropriate [ə´prəupri-it, ə´prəuprieit] a.适宜的 vt.私占；拨给 (高中英语单词)
- painful [´peinfəl] a.痛(苦)的；费力的 (高中英语单词)
- calendar [´kælində] n.日历；月历；历法 (高中英语单词)
- respectable [ri´spektəbəl] a.可敬的；有身价的 (高中英语单词)
- grumble [´grʌmbəl] v.&n.抱怨；发牢骚 (高中英语单词)
- theirs [ðeəz] pron.他们的 (高中英语单词)
- unseen [,ʌn´si:n] a.未看见的 (高中英语单词)
- heavenly [´hevənli] a.天的，天空的 (高中英语单词)
- fireman [´faiəmən] n.消防队员；司炉工 (英语四级单词)
- urgent [´ə:dʒənt] a.急迫的，紧急的 (英语四级单词)
- calamity [kə´læmiti] n.灾害，大灾难 (英语四级单词)
- bondage [´bɔndidʒ] n.奴役；束缚 (英语四级单词)
- fetter [´fetə] n.脚镣；束缚 (英语四级单词)
- odious [´əudiəs] a.可憎的；丑恶的 (英语四级单词)
- contrivance [kən´traivəns] n.发明，设计(的才能) (英语四级单词)
- weeping [´wi:piŋ] a.&n.哭泣(的) (英语六级单词)
- taking [´teikiŋ] a.迷人的 n.捕获物 (英语六级单词)
- varnish [´vɑ:niʃ] n.清漆 vt.上清漆；粉饰 (英语六级单词)
- smitten [´smitn] smite的过去分词 (英语六级单词)
- inconvenient [,inkən´vi:niənt] a.不方便的 (英语六级单词)
- insolent [´insələnt] a.傲慢的；无礼的 (英语六级单词)
- beating [´bi:tiŋ] n.敲；搅打；失败 (英语六级单词)
- covert [kʌvət] a.隐藏的 n.隐藏处 (英语六级单词)
- wayside [´weisaid] n.&a.路边(的) (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
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