章节正文
will fly in the face of all men and if I am a creature
of carnal lusts I will live then for my lusts."
The distracted man trembled from head to foot,
partly from cold, partly from the struggle in which
he was engaged. Hours passed and a fever assailed
his body. His throat began to hurt and his teeth
chattered. His feet on the study floor felt like two
cakes of ice. Still he would not give up. "I will see
this woman and will think the thoughts I have never
dared to think," he told himself, gripping the edge
of the desk and waiting.
Curtis Hartman came near dying from the effects
of that night of waiting in the church, and also he
found in the thing that happened what he took to
be the way of life for him. On other evenings when
he had waited he had not been able to see, through
the little hole in the glass, any part of the school
teacher's room except that occupied by her bed. In
the darkness he had waited until the woman sud-
denly appeared sitting in the bed in her white night-
robe. When the light was turned up she propped
herself up among the' pillows and read a book.
Sometimes she smoked one of the cigarettes. Only
her bare shoulders and throat were visible.
On the January night, after he had come near
dying with cold and after his mind had two or three
times actually slipped away into an odd land of fan-
tasy so that he had by an exercise of will power
to force himself back into consciousness, Kate Swift
appeared. In the room next door a lamp was lighted
and the waiting man stared into an empty bed. Then
upon the bed before his eyes a naked woman threw
herself. Lying face downward she wept and beat
with her fists upon the pillow. With a final outburst
of weeping she half arose, and in the presence of
the man who had waited to look and not to think
thoughts the woman of sin began to pray. In the
lamplight her figure, slim and strong, looked like
the figure of the boy in the presence of the Christ
on the leaded window.
Curtis Hartman never remembered how he got
out of the church. With a cry he arose, dragging the
heavy desk along the floor. The Bible fell, making a
great clatter in the silence. When the light in the
house next door went out he stumbled down the
stairway and into the street. Along the street he
went and ran in at the door of the Winesburg Eagle.
To George Willard, who was tramping up and down
in the office undergoing a struggle of his own, he
began to talk half incoherently. "The ways of God
are beyond human understanding," he cried, run-
ning in quickly and closing the door. He began to
advance upon the young man, his eyes glowing and
his voice ringing with fervor. "I have found the
light," he cried. "After ten years in this town, God
has manifested himself to me in the body of a
woman." His voice dropped and he began to whis-
per. "I did not understand," he said. "What I took
to be a trial of my soul was only a preparation for
a new and more beautiful fervor of the spirit. God
has appeared to me in the person of Kate Swift, the
school teacher, kneeling naked on a bed. Do you
know Kate Swift? Although she may not be aware
of it, she is an instrument of God, bearing the mes-
sage of truth."
Reverend Curtis Hartman turned and ran out of
the office. At the door he stopped, and after looking
up and down the deserted street, turned again to
George Willard. "I am delivered. Have no fear." He
held up a bleeding fist for the young man to see. "I
smashed the glass of the window," he cried. "Now
it will have to be wholly replaced. The strength of
God was in me and I broke it with my fist."
THE TEACHER
SNOW LAY DEEP in the streets of Winesburg. It had
begun to snow about ten o'clock in the morning and
a wind sprang up and blew the snow in clouds
along Main Street. The frozen mud roads that led
into town were fairly smooth and in places ice cov-
ered the mud. "There will be good sleighing," said
Will Henderson, standing by the bar in Ed Griffith's
saloon. Out of the saloon he went and met Sylvester
West the druggist stumbling along in the kind of
heavy overshoes called arctics. "Snow will bring the
people into town on Saturday," said the druggist.
The two men stopped and discussed their affairs.
Will Henderson, who had on a light overcoat and
no overshoes, kicked the heel of his left foot with
the toe of the right. "Snow will be good for the
wheat," observed the druggist sagely.
Young George Willard, who had nothing to do,
was glad because he did not feel like working that
day. The weekly paper had been printed and taken
to the post office Wednesday evening and the snow
began to fall on Thursday. At eight o'clock, after the
morning train had passed, he put a pair of skates in
his pocket and went up to Waterworks Pond but did
not go skating. Past the pond and along a path that
followed Wine Creek he went until he came to a
grove of beech trees. There he built a fire against
the side of a log and sat down at the end of the log
to think. When the snow began to fall and the wind
to blow he hurried about getting fuel for the fire.
The young reporter was thinking of Kate Swift,
who had once been his school teacher. On the eve-
ning before he had gone to her house to get a book
she wanted him to read and had been alone with
her for an hour. For the fourth or fifth time the
woman had talked to him with great earnestness
and he could not make out what she meant by her
talk. He began to believe she must be in love with
him and the thought was both pleasing and annoying.
Up from the log he sprang and began to pile sticks
on the fire. Looking about to be sure he was alone
he talked aloud pretending he was in the presence
of the woman, "Oh,, you're just letting on, you
know you are," he declared. "I am going to find out
about you. You wait and see."
The young man got up and went back along the
path toward town leaving the fire blazing in the
wood. As he went through the streets the skates
clanked in his pocket. In his own room in the New
Willard House he built a fire in the stove and lay
down on top of the bed. He began to have lustful
thoughts and pulling down the shade of the window
closed his eyes and turned his face to the wall. He
took a pillow into his arms and embraced it thinking
first of the school teacher, who by her words had
stirred something within him, and later of Helen
White, the slim daughter of the town banker, with
whom he had been for a long time half in love.
By nine o'clock of that evening snow lay deep in
the streets and the weather had become bitter cold.
It was difficult to walk about. The stores were dark
and the people had crawled away to their houses.
The evening train from Cleveland was very late but
nobody was interested in its arrival. By ten o'clock
all but four of the eighteen hundred citizens of the
town were in bed.
Hop Higgins, the night watchman, was partially
awake. He was lame and carried a heavy stick. On
dark nights he carried a lantern. Between nine and
ten o'clock he went his rounds. Up and down Main
Street he stumbled through the drifts trying the
doors of the stores. Then he went into alleyways
and tried the back doors. Finding all tight he hurried
around the corner to the New Willard House and
beat on the door. Through the rest of the night he
intended to stay by the stove. "You go to bed. I'll
keep the stove going," he said to the boy who slept
on a cot in the hotel office.
Hop Higgins sat down by the stove and took off
his shoes. When the boy had gone to sleep he began
to think of his own affairs. He intended to paint his
house in the spring and sat by the stove calculating
the cost of paint and labor. That led him into other
calculations. The night watchman was sixty years
old and wanted to retire. He had been a soldier in
the Civil War and drew a small pension. He hoped
to find some new method of making a living and
aspired to become a professional breeder of ferrets.
Already he had four of the strangely shaped savage
little creatures, that are used by sportsmen in the
pursuit of rabbits, in the cellar of his house. "Now
I have one male and three females," he mused. "If
I am lucky by spring I shall have twelve or fifteen.
In another year I shall be able to begin advertising
ferrets for sale in the sporting papers."
The nightwatchman settled into his chair and his
mind became a blank. He did not sleep. By years of
practice he had trained himself to sit for hours
through the long nights neither asleep nor awake.
In the morning he was almost as refreshed as
though he had slept.
With Hop Higgins safely stowed away in the chair
behind the stove only three people were awake in
Winesburg. George Willard was in the office of the
Eagle pretending to be at work on the writing of a
story but in reality continuing the mood of the
morning by the fire in the wood. In the bell tower
of the Presbyterian Church the Reverend Curtis
Hartman was sitting in the darkness preparing him-
self for a revelation from God, and Kate Swift, the
school teacher, was leaving her house for a walk in
the storm.
It was past ten o'clock when Kate Swift set out
and the walk was unpremeditated. It was as though
the man and the boy, by thinking of her, had driven
her forth into the wintry streets. Aunt Elizabeth
Swift had gone to the county seat concerning some
business in connection with mortgages in which she
had money invested and would not be back until
the next day. By a huge stove, called a base burner,
in the living room of the house sat the daughter
reading a book. Suddenly she sprang to her feet
and, snatching a cloak from a rack by the front door,
ran out of the house.
At the age of thirty Kate Swift was not known in
Winesburg as a pretty woman. Her complexion was
not good and her face was covered with blotches
that indicated ill health. Alone in the night in the
of carnal lusts I will live then for my lusts."
The distracted man trembled from head to foot,
partly from cold, partly from the struggle in which
he was engaged. Hours passed and a fever assailed
his body. His throat began to hurt and his teeth
chattered. His feet on the study floor felt like two
cakes of ice. Still he would not give up. "I will see
this woman and will think the thoughts I have never
dared to think," he told himself, gripping the edge
of the desk and waiting.
Curtis Hartman came near dying from the effects
of that night of waiting in the church, and also he
found in the thing that happened what he took to
be the way of life for him. On other evenings when
he had waited he had not been able to see, through
the little hole in the glass, any part of the school
teacher's room except that occupied by her bed. In
the darkness he had waited until the woman sud-
denly appeared sitting in the bed in her white night-
robe. When the light was turned up she propped
herself up among the' pillows and read a book.
Sometimes she smoked one of the cigarettes. Only
her bare shoulders and throat were visible.
On the January night, after he had come near
dying with cold and after his mind had two or three
times actually slipped away into an odd land of fan-
tasy so that he had by an exercise of will power
to force himself back into consciousness, Kate Swift
appeared. In the room next door a lamp was lighted
and the waiting man stared into an empty bed. Then
upon the bed before his eyes a naked woman threw
herself. Lying face downward she wept and beat
with her fists upon the pillow. With a final outburst
of weeping she half arose, and in the presence of
the man who had waited to look and not to think
thoughts the woman of sin began to pray. In the
lamplight her figure, slim and strong, looked like
the figure of the boy in the presence of the Christ
on the leaded window.
Curtis Hartman never remembered how he got
out of the church. With a cry he arose, dragging the
heavy desk along the floor. The Bible fell, making a
great clatter in the silence. When the light in the
house next door went out he stumbled down the
stairway and into the street. Along the street he
went and ran in at the door of the Winesburg Eagle.
To George Willard, who was tramping up and down
in the office undergoing a struggle of his own, he
began to talk half incoherently. "The ways of God
are beyond human understanding," he cried, run-
ning in quickly and closing the door. He began to
advance upon the young man, his eyes glowing and
his voice ringing with fervor. "I have found the
light," he cried. "After ten years in this town, God
has manifested himself to me in the body of a
woman." His voice dropped and he began to whis-
per. "I did not understand," he said. "What I took
to be a trial of my soul was only a preparation for
a new and more beautiful fervor of the spirit. God
has appeared to me in the person of Kate Swift, the
school teacher, kneeling naked on a bed. Do you
know Kate Swift? Although she may not be aware
of it, she is an instrument of God, bearing the mes-
sage of truth."
Reverend Curtis Hartman turned and ran out of
the office. At the door he stopped, and after looking
up and down the deserted street, turned again to
George Willard. "I am delivered. Have no fear." He
held up a bleeding fist for the young man to see. "I
smashed the glass of the window," he cried. "Now
it will have to be wholly replaced. The strength of
God was in me and I broke it with my fist."
THE TEACHER
SNOW LAY DEEP in the streets of Winesburg. It had
begun to snow about ten o'clock in the morning and
a wind sprang up and blew the snow in clouds
along Main Street. The frozen mud roads that led
into town were fairly smooth and in places ice cov-
ered the mud. "There will be good sleighing," said
Will Henderson, standing by the bar in Ed Griffith's
saloon. Out of the saloon he went and met Sylvester
West the druggist stumbling along in the kind of
heavy overshoes called arctics. "Snow will bring the
people into town on Saturday," said the druggist.
The two men stopped and discussed their affairs.
Will Henderson, who had on a light overcoat and
no overshoes, kicked the heel of his left foot with
the toe of the right. "Snow will be good for the
wheat," observed the druggist sagely.
Young George Willard, who had nothing to do,
was glad because he did not feel like working that
day. The weekly paper had been printed and taken
to the post office Wednesday evening and the snow
began to fall on Thursday. At eight o'clock, after the
morning train had passed, he put a pair of skates in
his pocket and went up to Waterworks Pond but did
not go skating. Past the pond and along a path that
followed Wine Creek he went until he came to a
grove of beech trees. There he built a fire against
the side of a log and sat down at the end of the log
to think. When the snow began to fall and the wind
to blow he hurried about getting fuel for the fire.
The young reporter was thinking of Kate Swift,
who had once been his school teacher. On the eve-
ning before he had gone to her house to get a book
she wanted him to read and had been alone with
her for an hour. For the fourth or fifth time the
woman had talked to him with great earnestness
and he could not make out what she meant by her
talk. He began to believe she must be in love with
him and the thought was both pleasing and annoying.
Up from the log he sprang and began to pile sticks
on the fire. Looking about to be sure he was alone
he talked aloud pretending he was in the presence
of the woman, "Oh,, you're just letting on, you
know you are," he declared. "I am going to find out
about you. You wait and see."
The young man got up and went back along the
path toward town leaving the fire blazing in the
wood. As he went through the streets the skates
clanked in his pocket. In his own room in the New
Willard House he built a fire in the stove and lay
down on top of the bed. He began to have lustful
thoughts and pulling down the shade of the window
closed his eyes and turned his face to the wall. He
took a pillow into his arms and embraced it thinking
first of the school teacher, who by her words had
stirred something within him, and later of Helen
White, the slim daughter of the town banker, with
whom he had been for a long time half in love.
By nine o'clock of that evening snow lay deep in
the streets and the weather had become bitter cold.
It was difficult to walk about. The stores were dark
and the people had crawled away to their houses.
The evening train from Cleveland was very late but
nobody was interested in its arrival. By ten o'clock
all but four of the eighteen hundred citizens of the
town were in bed.
Hop Higgins, the night watchman, was partially
awake. He was lame and carried a heavy stick. On
dark nights he carried a lantern. Between nine and
ten o'clock he went his rounds. Up and down Main
Street he stumbled through the drifts trying the
doors of the stores. Then he went into alleyways
and tried the back doors. Finding all tight he hurried
around the corner to the New Willard House and
beat on the door. Through the rest of the night he
intended to stay by the stove. "You go to bed. I'll
keep the stove going," he said to the boy who slept
on a cot in the hotel office.
Hop Higgins sat down by the stove and took off
his shoes. When the boy had gone to sleep he began
to think of his own affairs. He intended to paint his
house in the spring and sat by the stove calculating
the cost of paint and labor. That led him into other
calculations. The night watchman was sixty years
old and wanted to retire. He had been a soldier in
the Civil War and drew a small pension. He hoped
to find some new method of making a living and
aspired to become a professional breeder of ferrets.
Already he had four of the strangely shaped savage
little creatures, that are used by sportsmen in the
pursuit of rabbits, in the cellar of his house. "Now
I have one male and three females," he mused. "If
I am lucky by spring I shall have twelve or fifteen.
In another year I shall be able to begin advertising
ferrets for sale in the sporting papers."
The nightwatchman settled into his chair and his
mind became a blank. He did not sleep. By years of
practice he had trained himself to sit for hours
through the long nights neither asleep nor awake.
In the morning he was almost as refreshed as
though he had slept.
With Hop Higgins safely stowed away in the chair
behind the stove only three people were awake in
Winesburg. George Willard was in the office of the
Eagle pretending to be at work on the writing of a
story but in reality continuing the mood of the
morning by the fire in the wood. In the bell tower
of the Presbyterian Church the Reverend Curtis
Hartman was sitting in the darkness preparing him-
self for a revelation from God, and Kate Swift, the
school teacher, was leaving her house for a walk in
the storm.
It was past ten o'clock when Kate Swift set out
and the walk was unpremeditated. It was as though
the man and the boy, by thinking of her, had driven
her forth into the wintry streets. Aunt Elizabeth
Swift had gone to the county seat concerning some
business in connection with mortgages in which she
had money invested and would not be back until
the next day. By a huge stove, called a base burner,
in the living room of the house sat the daughter
reading a book. Suddenly she sprang to her feet
and, snatching a cloak from a rack by the front door,
ran out of the house.
At the age of thirty Kate Swift was not known in
Winesburg as a pretty woman. Her complexion was
not good and her face was covered with blotches
that indicated ill health. Alone in the night in the
- partly [´pɑ:tli]
ad.部分地；不完全地 (初中英语单词) - throat [θrəut] n.咽喉；嗓子；出入口 (初中英语单词)
- waiting [´weitiŋ] n.等候；伺候 (初中英语单词)
- actually [´æktʃuəli] ad.事实上；实际上 (初中英语单词)
- preparation [,prepə´reiʃən] n.准备；预习(时间) (初中英语单词)
- instrument [´instrumənt] n.仪器；手段；乐器 (初中英语单词)
- wholly [´həul-li] ad.完全，十足；统统 (初中英语单词)
- sprang [spræŋ] spring 的过去式 (初中英语单词)
- frozen [´frəuzn] freeze 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- standing [´stændiŋ] n.持续 a.直立的 (初中英语单词)
- working [´wə:kiŋ] a.工人的；劳动的 (初中英语单词)
- weekly [´wi:kli] a.&ad.每周一次(的) (初中英语单词)
- wednesday [´wenzdi] n.星期三 (初中英语单词)
- banker [´bæŋkə] n.银行家 (初中英语单词)
- arrival [ə´raivəl] n.到达；到达的人(物) (初中英语单词)
- retire [ri´taiə] v.撤退；退职；退休 (初中英语单词)
- professional [prə´feʃənəl] a.职业的 n.自由职业 (初中英语单词)
- strangely [´streindʒli] ad.奇怪地；陌生地 (初中英语单词)
- cellar [´selə] n.地窑，地下室 (初中英语单词)
- safely [´seifli] ad.安全地；平安地 (初中英语单词)
- writing [´raitiŋ] n.书写；写作；书法 (初中英语单词)
- reality [ri´æliti] n.现实(性)；真实；逼真 (初中英语单词)
- connection [kə´nekʃən] n.联系；关系；联运 (初中英语单词)
- consciousness [´kɔnʃəsnis] n.意识；觉悟；知觉 (高中英语单词)
- downward [´daunwəd] a.下降的，向下的 (高中英语单词)
- clatter [´klætə] n.&v.喧嚷；骚动 (高中英语单词)
- bearing [´beəriŋ] n.举止；忍耐；关系 (高中英语单词)
- saloon [sə´lu:n] n.大厅；餐车 (高中英语单词)
- overcoat [´əuvəkəut] n.大衣 (高中英语单词)
- hurried [´hʌrid] a.仓促的，慌忙的 (高中英语单词)
- reporter [ri´pɔ:tə] n.报告人；记者；广播员 (高中英语单词)
- pleasing [´pli:ziŋ] a.使人愉快的；合意的 (高中英语单词)
- lantern [´læntən] n.灯笼；提灯 (高中英语单词)
- finding [´faindiŋ] n.发现物；判断；结果 (高中英语单词)
- pension [´penʃən] n.津贴 vt.给予...抚恤 (高中英语单词)
- reverend [´revərənd] a.可尊敬的 (高中英语单词)
- revelation [,revə´leiʃən] n.展现；揭露(的事物) (高中英语单词)
- concerning [kən´sə:niŋ] prep.关于 (高中英语单词)
- complexion [kəm´plekʃən] n.肤色；情况；局面 (高中英语单词)
- watchman [´wɔtʃmən] n.(夜间)看守人 (英语四级单词)
- trying [´traiiŋ] a.难堪的；费劲的 (英语四级单词)
- presbyterian [,prezbi´tiəriən] a.长老会(制)的 (英语四级单词)
- weeping [´wi:piŋ] a.&n.哭泣(的) (英语六级单词)
- druggist [´drʌgist] n.药商；药剂师 (英语六级单词)
- wintry [´wintri] a.冬天的；荒凉的 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
章节正文
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