章节正文
For three of the six days she struggled, thinking of
her boy, trying to say some few words in regard to
his future, and in her eyes there was an appeal so
touching that all who saw it kept the memory of the
dying woman in their minds for years. Even Tom
Willard, who had always half resented his wife, for-
got his resentment and the tears ran out of his eyes
and lodged in his mustache. The mustache had
begun to turn grey and Tom colored it with dye.
There was oil in the preparation he used for the
purpose and the tears, catching in the mustache and
being brushed away by his hand, formed a fine mist-
like vapor. In his grief Tom Willard's face looked
like the face of a little dog that has been out a long
time in bitter weather.
George came home along Main Street at dark on
the day of his mother's death and, after going to his
own room to brush his hair and clothes, went along
the hallway and into the room where the body lay.
There was a candle on the dressing table by the door
and Doctor Reefy sat in a chair by the bed. The
doctor arose and started to go out. He put out his
hand as though to greet the younger man and then
awkwardly drew it back again. The air of the room
was heavy with the presence of the two self-
conscious human beings, and the man hurried
away.
The dead woman's son sat down in a chair and
looked at the floor. He again thought of his own
affairs and definitelydecided he would make a
change in his fife, that he would leave Winesburg.
"I will go to some city. Perhaps I can get a job on
some newspaper," he thought, and then his mind
turned to the girl with whom he was to have spent
this evening and again he was half angry at the turn
of events that had prevented his going to her.
In the dimly lighted room with the dead woman
the young man began to have thoughts. His mind
played with thoughts of life as his mother's mind
had played with the thought of death. He closed his
eyes and imagined that the red young lips of Helen
White touched his own lips. His body trembled and
his hands shook. And then something happened.
The boy sprang to his feet and stood stiffly. He
looked at the figure of the dead woman under the
sheets and shame for his thoughts swept over him
so that he began to weep. A new notion came into
his mind and he turned and looked guiltily about as
though afraid he would be observed.
George Willard became possessed of a madness to
lift the sheet from the body of his mother and look
at her face. The thought that had come into his mind
gripped him terribly. He became convinced that not
his mother but someone else lay in the bed before
him. The conviction was so real that it was almost
unbearable. The body under the sheets was long
and in death looked young and graceful. To the boy,
held by some strange fancy, it was unspeakably
lovely. The feeling that the body before him was
alive, that in another moment a lovely woman
would spring out of the bed and confront him, be-
came so overpowering that he could not bear the
suspense. Again and again he put out his hand.
Once he touched and half lifted the white sheet that
covered her, but his courage failed and he, like Doc-
tor Reefy, turned and went out of the room. In the
hallway outside the door he stopped and trembled
so that he had to put a hand against the wall to
support himself. "That's not my mother. That's not
my mother in there," he whispered to himself and
again his body shook with fright and uncertainty.
When Aunt Elizabeth Swift, who had come to watch
over the body, came out of an adjoining room he
put his hand into hers and began to sob, shaking
his head from side to side, half blind with grief. "My
mother is dead," he said, and then forgetting the
woman he turned and stared at the door through
which he had just come. "The dear, the dear, oh
the lovely dear," the boy, urged by some impulse
outside himself, muttered aloud.
As for the eight hundred dollars the dead woman
had kept hidden so long and that was to give
George Willard his start in the city, it lay in the tin
box behind the plaster by the foot of his mother's
bed. Elizabeth had put it there a week after her mar-
riage, breaking the plaster away with a stick. Then
she got one of the workmen her husband was at
that time employing about the hotel to mend the
wall. "I jammed the corner of the bed against it,"
she had explained to her husband, unable at the
moment to give up her dream of release, the release
that after all came to her but twice in her life, in the
moments when her lovers Death and Doctor Reefy
held her in their arms.
SOPHISTICATION
IT WAS EARLY evening of a day in, the late fall and
the Winesburg County Fair had brought crowds of
country people into town. The day had been clear
and the night came on warm and pleasant. On the
Trunion Pike, where the road after it left town
stretched away between berry fields now covered
with dry brown leaves, the dust from passing wag-
ons arose in clouds. Children, curled into little balls,
slept on the straw scattered on wagon beds. Their
hair was full of dust and their fingers black and
sticky. The dust rolled away over the fields and the
departing sun set it ablaze with colors.
In the main street of Winesburg crowds filled the
stores and the sidewalks. Night came on, horses
whinnied, the clerks in the stores ran madly about,
children became lost and cried lustily, an American
town worked terribly at the task of amusing itself.
Pushing his way through the crowds in Main
Street, young George Willard concealed himself in
the stairway leading to Doctor Reefy's office and
looked at the people. With feverish eyes he watched
the faces drifting past under the store lights.
Thoughts kept coming into his head and he did not
want to think. He stamped impatiently on the
wooden steps and looked sharply about. "Well, is
she going to stay with him all day? Have I done all
this waiting for nothing?" he muttered.
George Willard, the Ohio village boy, was fast
growing into manhood and new thoughts had been
coming into his mind. All that day, amid the jam of
people at the Fair, he had gone about feeling lonely.
He was about to leave Winesburg to go away to
some city where he hoped to get work on a city
newspaper and he felt grown up. The mood that
had taken possession of him was a thing known to
men and unknown to boys. He felt old and a little
tired. Memories awoke in him. To his mind his new
sense of maturity set him apart, made of him a half-
tragic figure. He wanted someone to understand the
feeling that had taken possession of him after his
mother's death.
There is a time in the life of every boy when he
for the first time takes the backward view of life.
Perhaps that is the moment when he crosses the line
into manhood. The boy is walking through the street
of his town. He is thinking of the future and of the
figure he will cut in the world. Ambitions and re-
grets awake within him. Suddenly something hap-
pens; he stops under a tree and waits as for a voice
calling his name. Ghosts of old things creep into his
consciousness; the voices outside of himself whisper
a message concerning the limitations of life. From
being quite sure of himself and his future he be-
comes not at all sure. If he be an imaginative boy a
door is tom open and for the first time he looks out
upon the world, seeing, as though they marched in
procession before him, the countless figures of men
who before his time have come out of nothingness
into the world, lived their lives and again disap-
peared into nothingness. The sadness of sophistica-
tion has come to the boy. With a little gasp he sees
himself as merely a leaf blown by the wind through
the streets of his village. He knows that in spite of
all the stout talk of his fellows he must live and die
in uncertainty, a thing blown by the winds, a thing
destined like corn to wilt in the sun. He shivers and
looks eagerly about. The eighteen years he has lived
seem but a moment, a breathing space in the long
march of humanity. Already he hears death calling.
With all his heart he wants to come close to some
other human, touch someone with his hands, be
touched by the hand of another. If he prefers that
the other be a woman, that is because he believes
that a woman will be gentle, that she will under-
stand. He wants, most of all, understanding.
When the moment of sophistication came to George
Willard his mind turned to Helen White, the Wines-
burg banker's daughter. Always he had been con-
scious of the girl growing into womanhood as he
grew into manhood. Once on a summer night when
he was eighteen, he had walked with her on a coun-
try road and in her presence had given way to an
impulse to boast, to make himself appear big and
significant in her eyes. Now he wanted to see her
for another purpose. He wanted to tell her of the
new impulses that had come to him. He had tried
to make her think of him as a man when he knew
nothing of manhood and now he wanted to be with
her and to try to make her feel the change he be-
lieved had taken place in his nature.
As for Helen White, she also had come to a period
of change. What George felt, she in her young wom-
an's way felt also. She was no longer a girl and
hungered to reach into the grace and beauty of
womanhood. She had come home from Cleveland,
where she was attending college, to spend a day at
the Fair. She also had begun to have memories. Dur-
ing the day she sat in the grand-stand with a young
man, one of the instructors from the college, who
was a guest of her mother's. The young man was
of a pedantic turn of mind and she felt at once he
would not do for her purpose. At the Fair she was
glad to be seen in his company as he was well
dressed and a stranger. She knew that the fact of
his presence would create an impression. During the
day she was happy, but when night came on she
her boy, trying to say some few words in regard to
his future, and in her eyes there was an appeal so
touching that all who saw it kept the memory of the
dying woman in their minds for years. Even Tom
Willard, who had always half resented his wife, for-
got his resentment and the tears ran out of his eyes
and lodged in his mustache. The mustache had
begun to turn grey and Tom colored it with dye.
There was oil in the preparation he used for the
purpose and the tears, catching in the mustache and
being brushed away by his hand, formed a fine mist-
like vapor. In his grief Tom Willard's face looked
like the face of a little dog that has been out a long
time in bitter weather.
George came home along Main Street at dark on
the day of his mother's death and, after going to his
own room to brush his hair and clothes, went along
the hallway and into the room where the body lay.
There was a candle on the dressing table by the door
and Doctor Reefy sat in a chair by the bed. The
doctor arose and started to go out. He put out his
hand as though to greet the younger man and then
awkwardly drew it back again. The air of the room
was heavy with the presence of the two self-
conscious human beings, and the man hurried
away.
The dead woman's son sat down in a chair and
looked at the floor. He again thought of his own
affairs and definitelydecided he would make a
change in his fife, that he would leave Winesburg.
"I will go to some city. Perhaps I can get a job on
some newspaper," he thought, and then his mind
turned to the girl with whom he was to have spent
this evening and again he was half angry at the turn
of events that had prevented his going to her.
In the dimly lighted room with the dead woman
the young man began to have thoughts. His mind
played with thoughts of life as his mother's mind
had played with the thought of death. He closed his
eyes and imagined that the red young lips of Helen
White touched his own lips. His body trembled and
his hands shook. And then something happened.
The boy sprang to his feet and stood stiffly. He
looked at the figure of the dead woman under the
sheets and shame for his thoughts swept over him
so that he began to weep. A new notion came into
his mind and he turned and looked guiltily about as
though afraid he would be observed.
George Willard became possessed of a madness to
lift the sheet from the body of his mother and look
at her face. The thought that had come into his mind
gripped him terribly. He became convinced that not
his mother but someone else lay in the bed before
him. The conviction was so real that it was almost
unbearable. The body under the sheets was long
and in death looked young and graceful. To the boy,
held by some strange fancy, it was unspeakably
lovely. The feeling that the body before him was
alive, that in another moment a lovely woman
would spring out of the bed and confront him, be-
came so overpowering that he could not bear the
suspense. Again and again he put out his hand.
Once he touched and half lifted the white sheet that
covered her, but his courage failed and he, like Doc-
tor Reefy, turned and went out of the room. In the
hallway outside the door he stopped and trembled
so that he had to put a hand against the wall to
support himself. "That's not my mother. That's not
my mother in there," he whispered to himself and
again his body shook with fright and uncertainty.
When Aunt Elizabeth Swift, who had come to watch
over the body, came out of an adjoining room he
put his hand into hers and began to sob, shaking
his head from side to side, half blind with grief. "My
mother is dead," he said, and then forgetting the
woman he turned and stared at the door through
which he had just come. "The dear, the dear, oh
the lovely dear," the boy, urged by some impulse
outside himself, muttered aloud.
As for the eight hundred dollars the dead woman
had kept hidden so long and that was to give
George Willard his start in the city, it lay in the tin
box behind the plaster by the foot of his mother's
bed. Elizabeth had put it there a week after her mar-
riage, breaking the plaster away with a stick. Then
she got one of the workmen her husband was at
that time employing about the hotel to mend the
wall. "I jammed the corner of the bed against it,"
she had explained to her husband, unable at the
moment to give up her dream of release, the release
that after all came to her but twice in her life, in the
moments when her lovers Death and Doctor Reefy
held her in their arms.
SOPHISTICATION
IT WAS EARLY evening of a day in, the late fall and
the Winesburg County Fair had brought crowds of
country people into town. The day had been clear
and the night came on warm and pleasant. On the
Trunion Pike, where the road after it left town
stretched away between berry fields now covered
with dry brown leaves, the dust from passing wag-
ons arose in clouds. Children, curled into little balls,
slept on the straw scattered on wagon beds. Their
hair was full of dust and their fingers black and
sticky. The dust rolled away over the fields and the
departing sun set it ablaze with colors.
In the main street of Winesburg crowds filled the
stores and the sidewalks. Night came on, horses
whinnied, the clerks in the stores ran madly about,
children became lost and cried lustily, an American
town worked terribly at the task of amusing itself.
Pushing his way through the crowds in Main
Street, young George Willard concealed himself in
the stairway leading to Doctor Reefy's office and
looked at the people. With feverish eyes he watched
the faces drifting past under the store lights.
Thoughts kept coming into his head and he did not
want to think. He stamped impatiently on the
wooden steps and looked sharply about. "Well, is
she going to stay with him all day? Have I done all
this waiting for nothing?" he muttered.
George Willard, the Ohio village boy, was fast
growing into manhood and new thoughts had been
coming into his mind. All that day, amid the jam of
people at the Fair, he had gone about feeling lonely.
He was about to leave Winesburg to go away to
some city where he hoped to get work on a city
newspaper and he felt grown up. The mood that
had taken possession of him was a thing known to
men and unknown to boys. He felt old and a little
tired. Memories awoke in him. To his mind his new
sense of maturity set him apart, made of him a half-
tragic figure. He wanted someone to understand the
feeling that had taken possession of him after his
mother's death.
There is a time in the life of every boy when he
for the first time takes the backward view of life.
Perhaps that is the moment when he crosses the line
into manhood. The boy is walking through the street
of his town. He is thinking of the future and of the
figure he will cut in the world. Ambitions and re-
grets awake within him. Suddenly something hap-
pens; he stops under a tree and waits as for a voice
calling his name. Ghosts of old things creep into his
consciousness; the voices outside of himself whisper
a message concerning the limitations of life. From
being quite sure of himself and his future he be-
comes not at all sure. If he be an imaginative boy a
door is tom open and for the first time he looks out
upon the world, seeing, as though they marched in
procession before him, the countless figures of men
who before his time have come out of nothingness
into the world, lived their lives and again disap-
peared into nothingness. The sadness of sophistica-
tion has come to the boy. With a little gasp he sees
himself as merely a leaf blown by the wind through
the streets of his village. He knows that in spite of
all the stout talk of his fellows he must live and die
in uncertainty, a thing blown by the winds, a thing
destined like corn to wilt in the sun. He shivers and
looks eagerly about. The eighteen years he has lived
seem but a moment, a breathing space in the long
march of humanity. Already he hears death calling.
With all his heart he wants to come close to some
other human, touch someone with his hands, be
touched by the hand of another. If he prefers that
the other be a woman, that is because he believes
that a woman will be gentle, that she will under-
stand. He wants, most of all, understanding.
When the moment of sophistication came to George
Willard his mind turned to Helen White, the Wines-
burg banker's daughter. Always he had been con-
scious of the girl growing into womanhood as he
grew into manhood. Once on a summer night when
he was eighteen, he had walked with her on a coun-
try road and in her presence had given way to an
impulse to boast, to make himself appear big and
significant in her eyes. Now he wanted to see her
for another purpose. He wanted to tell her of the
new impulses that had come to him. He had tried
to make her think of him as a man when he knew
nothing of manhood and now he wanted to be with
her and to try to make her feel the change he be-
lieved had taken place in his nature.
As for Helen White, she also had come to a period
of change. What George felt, she in her young wom-
an's way felt also. She was no longer a girl and
hungered to reach into the grace and beauty of
womanhood. She had come home from Cleveland,
where she was attending college, to spend a day at
the Fair. She also had begun to have memories. Dur-
ing the day she sat in the grand-stand with a young
man, one of the instructors from the college, who
was a guest of her mother's. The young man was
of a pedantic turn of mind and she felt at once he
would not do for her purpose. At the Fair she was
glad to be seen in his company as he was well
dressed and a stranger. She knew that the fact of
his presence would create an impression. During the
day she was happy, but when night came on she
- preparation [,prepə´reiʃən]
n.准备；预习(时间) (初中英语单词) - definitely [´definitli] ad.明确地；绝对 (初中英语单词)
- sprang [spræŋ] spring 的过去式 (初中英语单词)
- terribly [´terəbli] ad.可怕地 (初中英语单词)
- conviction [kən´vikʃən] n.定罪；确信，信服 (初中英语单词)
- graceful [´greisfəl] a.优美的，流畅的 (初中英语单词)
- fright [frait] n.惊吓；恐怖；怪人 (初中英语单词)
- hidden [´hid(ə)n] hide 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- unable [ʌn´eibəl] a.不能的；无能为力的 (初中英语单词)
- release [ri´li:s] vt&n.释放；放松；赦免 (初中英语单词)
- sharply [´ʃɑ:pli] ad.锋利地；剧烈地 (初中英语单词)
- waiting [´weitiŋ] n.等候；伺候 (初中英语单词)
- backward [´bækwəd] ad.向后 a.向后的 (初中英语单词)
- eagerly [´i:gəli] ad.渴望地，急切地 (初中英语单词)
- humanity [hju:´mæniti] n.人类；人性；仁慈 (初中英语单词)
- impression [im´preʃən] n.印刷；印象；效果 (初中英语单词)
- appeal [ə´pi:l] vi.&n.请求；呼吁；上诉 (高中英语单词)
- resentment [ri´zentmənt] n.不满；怨恨；忿恨 (高中英语单词)
- decided [di´saidid] a.明显的；决定的 (高中英语单词)
- stiffly [´stifli] ad.硬；顽固地 (高中英语单词)
- madness [´mædnis] n.疯狂；狂热 (高中英语单词)
- confront [kən´frʌnt] vt.(使)面对；正视 (高中英语单词)
- plaster [´plɑ:stə] n.灰泥 vt.厚厚地涂抹 (高中英语单词)
- amusing [ə´mju:ziŋ] a.有趣的 (高中英语单词)
- manhood [´mænhud] n.人格；男子气概 (高中英语单词)
- concerning [kən´sə:niŋ] prep.关于 (高中英语单词)
- seeing [si:iŋ] see的现在分词 n.视觉 (高中英语单词)
- countless [´kauntlis] a.无数的 (高中英语单词)
- sadness [´sædnis] n.悲哀；悲痛；凄惨 (高中英语单词)
- trying [´traiiŋ] a.难堪的；费劲的 (英语四级单词)
- mustache [mə´stɑ:ʃ] n.髭，小胡子 (英语四级单词)
- workmen [´wə:kmen] n.workman的复数 (英语四级单词)
- stairway [´steəwei] n.楼梯 (英语四级单词)
- feverish [´fi:vəriʃ] a.发烧的；狂热的 (英语四级单词)
- impatiently [im´peiʃəntli] ad.不耐烦地，急躁地 (英语四级单词)
- maturity [mə´tjuəriti] n.成熟；完备 (英语四级单词)
- uncertainty [ʌn´sə:tənti] n.不可靠；不确定的事 (英语四级单词)
- hallway [´hɔ:lwei] n.(美)门厅，过道 (英语六级单词)
- imaginative [i´mædʒənətiv] a.富于想象(力)的 (英语六级单词)
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章节正文
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