章节正文
the money for the passage, till she had bound herself by an
oath - on her knees, I think she said - not to employ it
otherwise.
This had tickled Abramina hugely, but I think it tickled me
fully more.
Mrs. Guele told of her home-sickness up here in the long
winters; of her honest, country-woman troubles and alarms
upon the journey; how in the bank at Frankfort she had feared
lest the banker, after having taken her cheque, should deny
all knowledge of it - a fear I have myself every time I go to
a bank; and how crossing the Luneburger Heath, an old lady,
witnessing her trouble and finding whither she was bound, had
given her "the blessing of a person eighty years old, which
would be sure to bring her safely to the States. And the
first thing I did," added Mrs. Guele, "was to fall
downstairs."
At length we got out of the house, and some of us into the
trap, when - judgment of Heaven! - here came Mr. Guele from
his vineyard. So another quarter of an hour went by; till at
length, at our earnest pleading, we set forth again in
earnest, Fanny and I white-faced and silent, but the Jews
still smiling. The heart fails me. There was yet another
stoppage! And we drove at last into Calistoga past two in
the afternoon, Fanny and I having breakfasted at six in the
morning, eight mortal hours before. We were a pallid couple;
but still the Jews were smiling.
So ended our excursion with the village usurers; and, now
that it was done, we had no more idea of the nature of the
business, nor of the part we had been playing in it, than the
child unborn. That all the people we had met were the slaves
of Kelmar, though in various degrees of servitude; that we
ourselves had been sent up the mountain in the interests of
none but Kelmar; that the money we laid out, dollar by
dollar, cent by cent, and through the hands of various
intermediaries, should all hop ultimately into Kelmar's till;
- these were facts that we only grew to recognize in the
course of time and by the accumulation of evidence. At
length all doubt was quieted, when one of the kettle-holders
confessed. Stopping his trap in the moonlight, a little way
out of Calistoga, he told me, in so many words, that he dare
not show face therewith an empty pocket. "You see, I don't
mind if it was only five dollars, Mr. Stevens," he said, "but
I must give Mr. Kelmar SOMETHING."
Even now, when the whole tyranny is plain to me, I cannot
find it in my heart to be as angry as perhaps I should be
with the Hebrew tyrant. The whole game of business is beggar
my neighbour; and though perhaps that game looks uglier when
played at such close quarters and on so small a scale, it is
none the more intrinsically inhumane for that. The village
usurer is not so sad a feature of humanity and human progress
as the millionairemanufacturer, fattening on the toil and
loss of thousands, and yet declaiming from the platform
against the greed and dishonesty of landlords. If it were
fair for Cobden to buy up land from owners whom he thought
unconscious of its proper value, it was fair enough for my
Russian Jew to give credit to his farmers. Kelmar, if he was
unconscious of the beam in his own eye, was at least silent
in the matter of his brother's mote.
THE ACT OF SQUATTING
THERE were four of us squatters - myself and my wife, the
King and Queen of Silverado; Sam, the Crown Prince; and
Chuchu, the Grand Duke. Chuchu, a setter crossed with
spaniel, was the most unsuited for a rough life. He had been
nurtured tenderly in the society of ladies; his heart was
large and soft; he regarded the sofa-cushion as a bed-rook
necessary of existence. Though about the size of a sheep, he
loved to sit in ladies' laps; he never said a bad word in all
his blameless days; and if he had seen a flute, I am sure he
could have played upon it by nature. It may seem hard to say
it of a dog, but Chuchu was a tame cat.
The king and queen, the grand duke, and a basket of cold
provender for immediate use, set forth from Calistoga in a
double buggy; the crown prince, on horseback, led the way
like an outrider. Bags and boxes and a second-hand stove
were to follow close upon our heels by Hanson's team.
It was a beautiful still day; the sky was one field of azure.
Not a leaf moved, not a speck appeared in heaven. Only from
the summit of the mountain one little snowy wisp of cloud
after another kept detaching itself, like smoke from a
volcano, and blowing southward in some high stream of air:
Mount Saint Helena still at her interminable task, making the
weather, like a Lapland witch.
By noon we had come in sight of the mill: a great brown
building, half-way up the hill, big as a factory, two stories
high, and with tanks and ladders along the roof; which, as a
pendicle of Silverado mine, we held to be an outlying
province of our own. Thither, then, we went, crossing the
valley by a grassy trail; and there lunched out of the
basket, sitting in a kind of portico, and wondering, while we
ate, at this great bulk of useless building. Through a chink
we could look far down into the interior, and see sunbeams
floating in the dust and striking on tier after tier of
silent, rusty machinery. It cost six thousand dollars,
twelve hundred English sovereigns; and now, here it stands
deserted, like the temple of a forgotten religion, the busy
millers toiling somewhere else. All the time we were there,
mill and mill town showed no sign of life; that part of the
mountain-side, which is very open and green, was tenanted by
no living creature but ourselves and the insects; and nothing
stirred but the cloud manufactory upon the mountain summit.
It was odd to compare this with the former days, when the
engine was in fall blast, the mill palpitating to its
strokes, and the carts came rattling down from Silverado,
charged with ore.
By two we had been landed at the mine, the buggy was gone
again, and we were left to our own reflections and the basket
of cold provender, until Hanson should arrive. Hot as it was
by the sun, there was something chill in such a home-coming,
in that world of wreck and rust, splinter and rolling gravel,
where for so many years no fire had smoked.
Silverado platform filled the whole width of the canyon.
Above, as I have said, this was a wild, red, stony gully in
the mountains; but below it was a wooded dingle. And through
this, I was told, there had gone a path between the mine and
the Toll House - our natural north-west passage to
civilization. I found and followed it, clearing my way as I
went through fallen branches and dead trees. It went
straight down that steep canyon, till it brought you out
abruptly over the roofs of the hotel. There was nowhere any
break in the descent. It almost seemed as if, were you to
drop a stone down the old iron chute at our platform, it
would never rest until it hopped upon the Toll House
shingles. Signs were not wanting of the ancient greatness of
Silverado. The footpath was well marked, and had been well
trodden in the old clays by thirsty miners. And far down,
buried in foliage, deep out of sight of Silverado, I came on
a last outpost of the mine - a mound of gravel, some wreck of
wooden aqueduct, and the mouth of a tunnel, like a treasure
grotto in a fairy story. A stream of water, fed by the
invisible leakage from our shaft, and dyed red with cinnabar
or iron, ran trippingly forth out of the bowels of the cave;
and, looking far under the arch, I could see something like
an iron lantern fastened on the rocky wall. It was a
promising spot for the imagination. No boy could have left
it unexplored.
The stream thenceforward stole along the bottom of the
dingle, and made, for that dry land, a pleasant warbling in
the leaves. Once, I suppose, it ran splashing down the whole
length of the canyon, but now its head waters had been tapped
by the shaft at Silverado, and for a great part of its course
it wandered sunless among the joints of the mountain. No
wonder that it should better its pace when it sees, far
before it, daylight whitening in the arch, or that it should
come trotting forth into the sunlight with a song.
The two stages had gone by when I got down, and the Toll
House stood, dozing in sun and dust and silence, like a place
enchanted. My mission was after hay for bedding, and that I
was readily promised. But when I mentioned that we were
waiting for Rufe, the people shook their heads. Rufe was not
a regular man any way, it seemed; and if he got playing poker
- Well, poker was too many for Rufe. I had not yet heard
them bracketted together; but it seemed a natural
conjunction, and commended itself swiftly to my fears; and as
soon as I returned to Silverado and had told my story, we
practically gave Hanson up, and set ourselves to do what we
could find do-able in our desert-island state.
The lower room had been the assayer's office. The floor was
thick with DEBRIS - part human, from the former occupants;
part natural, sifted in by mountain winds. In a sea of red
dust there swam or floated sticks, boards, hay, straw,
stones, and paper; ancient newspapers, above all - for the
newspaper, especially when torn, soon becomes an antiquity -
and bills of the Silverado boarding-house, some dated
Silverado, some Calistoga Mine. Here is one, verbatim; and
if any one can calculate the scale of charges, he has my
envious admiration.
Calistoga Mine, May 3rd, 1875.
John Stanley
To S. Chapman, Cr.
To board from April 1st, to April 30 $25 75
" " " May lst, to 3rd ... 2 00
27 75
Where is John Stanley mining now? Where is S. Chapman,
within whose hospitable walls we were to lodge? The date was
but five years old, but in that time the world had changed
for Silverado; like Palmyra in the desert, it had outlived
its people and its purpose; we camped, like Layard, amid
ruins, and these names spoke to us of prehistoric time. A
boot-jack, a pair of boots, a dog-hutch, and these bills of
Mr. Chapman's were the only speaking relics that we
disinterred from all that vast Silverado rubbish-heap; but
what would I not have given to unearth a letter, a pocket-
book, a diary, only a ledger, or a roll of names, to take me
back, in a more personal manner, to the past? It pleases me,
besides, to fancy that Stanley or Chapman, or one of their
companions, may light upon this chronicle, and be struck by
the name, and read some news of their anterior home, coming,
as it were, out of a subsequent epoch of history in that
quarter of the world.
As we were tumbling the mingled rubbish on the floor, kicking
it with our feet, and groping for these written evidences of
the past, Sam, with a somewhat whitened face, produced a
paper bag. "What's this?" said he. It contained a
granulated powder, something the colour of Gregory's Mixture,
but rosier; and as there were several of the bags, and each
more or less broken, the powder was spread widely on the
floor. Had any of us ever seen giant powder? No, nobody
had; and instantly there grew up in my mind a shadowy belief,
verging with every moment nearer to certitude, that I had
somewhere heard somebody describe it as just such a powder as
the one around us. I have learnt since that it is a
oath - on her knees, I think she said - not to employ it
otherwise.
This had tickled Abramina hugely, but I think it tickled me
fully more.
Mrs. Guele told of her home-sickness up here in the long
winters; of her honest, country-woman troubles and alarms
upon the journey; how in the bank at Frankfort she had feared
lest the banker, after having taken her cheque, should deny
all knowledge of it - a fear I have myself every time I go to
a bank; and how crossing the Luneburger Heath, an old lady,
witnessing her trouble and finding whither she was bound, had
given her "the blessing of a person eighty years old, which
would be sure to bring her safely to the States. And the
first thing I did," added Mrs. Guele, "was to fall
downstairs."
At length we got out of the house, and some of us into the
trap, when - judgment of Heaven! - here came Mr. Guele from
his vineyard. So another quarter of an hour went by; till at
length, at our earnest pleading, we set forth again in
earnest, Fanny and I white-faced and silent, but the Jews
still smiling. The heart fails me. There was yet another
stoppage! And we drove at last into Calistoga past two in
the afternoon, Fanny and I having breakfasted at six in the
morning, eight mortal hours before. We were a pallid couple;
but still the Jews were smiling.
So ended our excursion with the village usurers; and, now
that it was done, we had no more idea of the nature of the
business, nor of the part we had been playing in it, than the
child unborn. That all the people we had met were the slaves
of Kelmar, though in various degrees of servitude; that we
ourselves had been sent up the mountain in the interests of
none but Kelmar; that the money we laid out, dollar by
dollar, cent by cent, and through the hands of various
intermediaries, should all hop ultimately into Kelmar's till;
- these were facts that we only grew to recognize in the
course of time and by the accumulation of evidence. At
length all doubt was quieted, when one of the kettle-holders
confessed. Stopping his trap in the moonlight, a little way
out of Calistoga, he told me, in so many words, that he dare
not show face therewith an empty pocket. "You see, I don't
mind if it was only five dollars, Mr. Stevens," he said, "but
I must give Mr. Kelmar SOMETHING."
Even now, when the whole tyranny is plain to me, I cannot
find it in my heart to be as angry as perhaps I should be
with the Hebrew tyrant. The whole game of business is beggar
my neighbour; and though perhaps that game looks uglier when
played at such close quarters and on so small a scale, it is
none the more intrinsically inhumane for that. The village
usurer is not so sad a feature of humanity and human progress
as the millionairemanufacturer, fattening on the toil and
loss of thousands, and yet declaiming from the platform
against the greed and dishonesty of landlords. If it were
fair for Cobden to buy up land from owners whom he thought
unconscious of its proper value, it was fair enough for my
Russian Jew to give credit to his farmers. Kelmar, if he was
unconscious of the beam in his own eye, was at least silent
in the matter of his brother's mote.
THE ACT OF SQUATTING
THERE were four of us squatters - myself and my wife, the
King and Queen of Silverado; Sam, the Crown Prince; and
Chuchu, the Grand Duke. Chuchu, a setter crossed with
spaniel, was the most unsuited for a rough life. He had been
nurtured tenderly in the society of ladies; his heart was
large and soft; he regarded the sofa-cushion as a bed-rook
necessary of existence. Though about the size of a sheep, he
loved to sit in ladies' laps; he never said a bad word in all
his blameless days; and if he had seen a flute, I am sure he
could have played upon it by nature. It may seem hard to say
it of a dog, but Chuchu was a tame cat.
The king and queen, the grand duke, and a basket of cold
provender for immediate use, set forth from Calistoga in a
double buggy; the crown prince, on horseback, led the way
like an outrider. Bags and boxes and a second-hand stove
were to follow close upon our heels by Hanson's team.
It was a beautiful still day; the sky was one field of azure.
Not a leaf moved, not a speck appeared in heaven. Only from
the summit of the mountain one little snowy wisp of cloud
after another kept detaching itself, like smoke from a
volcano, and blowing southward in some high stream of air:
Mount Saint Helena still at her interminable task, making the
weather, like a Lapland witch.
By noon we had come in sight of the mill: a great brown
building, half-way up the hill, big as a factory, two stories
high, and with tanks and ladders along the roof; which, as a
pendicle of Silverado mine, we held to be an outlying
province of our own. Thither, then, we went, crossing the
valley by a grassy trail; and there lunched out of the
basket, sitting in a kind of portico, and wondering, while we
ate, at this great bulk of useless building. Through a chink
we could look far down into the interior, and see sunbeams
floating in the dust and striking on tier after tier of
silent, rusty machinery. It cost six thousand dollars,
twelve hundred English sovereigns; and now, here it stands
deserted, like the temple of a forgotten religion, the busy
millers toiling somewhere else. All the time we were there,
mill and mill town showed no sign of life; that part of the
mountain-side, which is very open and green, was tenanted by
no living creature but ourselves and the insects; and nothing
stirred but the cloud manufactory upon the mountain summit.
It was odd to compare this with the former days, when the
engine was in fall blast, the mill palpitating to its
strokes, and the carts came rattling down from Silverado,
charged with ore.
By two we had been landed at the mine, the buggy was gone
again, and we were left to our own reflections and the basket
of cold provender, until Hanson should arrive. Hot as it was
by the sun, there was something chill in such a home-coming,
in that world of wreck and rust, splinter and rolling gravel,
where for so many years no fire had smoked.
Silverado platform filled the whole width of the canyon.
Above, as I have said, this was a wild, red, stony gully in
the mountains; but below it was a wooded dingle. And through
this, I was told, there had gone a path between the mine and
the Toll House - our natural north-west passage to
civilization. I found and followed it, clearing my way as I
went through fallen branches and dead trees. It went
straight down that steep canyon, till it brought you out
abruptly over the roofs of the hotel. There was nowhere any
break in the descent. It almost seemed as if, were you to
drop a stone down the old iron chute at our platform, it
would never rest until it hopped upon the Toll House
shingles. Signs were not wanting of the ancient greatness of
Silverado. The footpath was well marked, and had been well
trodden in the old clays by thirsty miners. And far down,
buried in foliage, deep out of sight of Silverado, I came on
a last outpost of the mine - a mound of gravel, some wreck of
wooden aqueduct, and the mouth of a tunnel, like a treasure
grotto in a fairy story. A stream of water, fed by the
invisible leakage from our shaft, and dyed red with cinnabar
or iron, ran trippingly forth out of the bowels of the cave;
and, looking far under the arch, I could see something like
an iron lantern fastened on the rocky wall. It was a
promising spot for the imagination. No boy could have left
it unexplored.
The stream thenceforward stole along the bottom of the
dingle, and made, for that dry land, a pleasant warbling in
the leaves. Once, I suppose, it ran splashing down the whole
length of the canyon, but now its head waters had been tapped
by the shaft at Silverado, and for a great part of its course
it wandered sunless among the joints of the mountain. No
wonder that it should better its pace when it sees, far
before it, daylight whitening in the arch, or that it should
come trotting forth into the sunlight with a song.
The two stages had gone by when I got down, and the Toll
House stood, dozing in sun and dust and silence, like a place
enchanted. My mission was after hay for bedding, and that I
was readily promised. But when I mentioned that we were
waiting for Rufe, the people shook their heads. Rufe was not
a regular man any way, it seemed; and if he got playing poker
- Well, poker was too many for Rufe. I had not yet heard
them bracketted together; but it seemed a natural
conjunction, and commended itself swiftly to my fears; and as
soon as I returned to Silverado and had told my story, we
practically gave Hanson up, and set ourselves to do what we
could find do-able in our desert-island state.
The lower room had been the assayer's office. The floor was
thick with DEBRIS - part human, from the former occupants;
part natural, sifted in by mountain winds. In a sea of red
dust there swam or floated sticks, boards, hay, straw,
stones, and paper; ancient newspapers, above all - for the
newspaper, especially when torn, soon becomes an antiquity -
and bills of the Silverado boarding-house, some dated
Silverado, some Calistoga Mine. Here is one, verbatim; and
if any one can calculate the scale of charges, he has my
envious admiration.
Calistoga Mine, May 3rd, 1875.
John Stanley
To S. Chapman, Cr.
To board from April 1st, to April 30 $25 75
" " " May lst, to 3rd ... 2 00
27 75
Where is John Stanley mining now? Where is S. Chapman,
within whose hospitable walls we were to lodge? The date was
but five years old, but in that time the world had changed
for Silverado; like Palmyra in the desert, it had outlived
its people and its purpose; we camped, like Layard, amid
ruins, and these names spoke to us of prehistoric time. A
boot-jack, a pair of boots, a dog-hutch, and these bills of
Mr. Chapman's were the only speaking relics that we
disinterred from all that vast Silverado rubbish-heap; but
what would I not have given to unearth a letter, a pocket-
book, a diary, only a ledger, or a roll of names, to take me
back, in a more personal manner, to the past? It pleases me,
besides, to fancy that Stanley or Chapman, or one of their
companions, may light upon this chronicle, and be struck by
the name, and read some news of their anterior home, coming,
as it were, out of a subsequent epoch of history in that
quarter of the world.
As we were tumbling the mingled rubbish on the floor, kicking
it with our feet, and groping for these written evidences of
the past, Sam, with a somewhat whitened face, produced a
paper bag. "What's this?" said he. It contained a
granulated powder, something the colour of Gregory's Mixture,
but rosier; and as there were several of the bags, and each
more or less broken, the powder was spread widely on the
floor. Had any of us ever seen giant powder? No, nobody
had; and instantly there grew up in my mind a shadowy belief,
verging with every moment nearer to certitude, that I had
somewhere heard somebody describe it as just such a powder as
the one around us. I have learnt since that it is a
- banker [´bæŋkə]
n.银行家 (初中英语单词) - blessing [´blesiŋ] n.祝福 (初中英语单词)
- safely [´seifli] ad.安全地；平安地 (初中英语单词)
- earnest [´ə:nist] a.认真的 n.认真；诚恳 (初中英语单词)
- moonlight [´mu:nlait] n.&a.月光(的) (初中英语单词)
- therewith [ðɛə´wið] ad.于是，随即 (初中英语单词)
- humanity [hju:´mæniti] n.人类；人性；仁慈 (初中英语单词)
- manufacturer [,mænju´fæktʃərə] n.制造人；工厂主 (初中英语单词)
- prince [´prins] n.王子；亲王；君主 (初中英语单词)
- existence [ig´zistəns] n.存在；生存；生活 (初中英语单词)
- second-hand [,sekənd´hænd] a.用过的；间接的 (初中英语单词)
- stream [stri:m] n.河 vi.流出；飘扬 (初中英语单词)
- thither [´ðiðə] ad.到那里 a.那边的 (初中英语单词)
- useless [´ju:sləs] a.无用的，无价值的 (初中英语单词)
- interior [in´tiəriə] n.&a.内部地(的) (初中英语单词)
- striking [´straikiŋ] a.显著的，明显的 (初中英语单词)
- temple [´tempəl] n.庙宇；寺院；太阳穴 (初中英语单词)
- platform [´plætfɔ:m] n.(平)台；讲台；站台 (初中英语单词)
- tunnel [´tʌnl] n.隧道 v.挖隧道 (初中英语单词)
- imagination [i,mædʒi´neiʃən] n.想象(力) (初中英语单词)
- daylight [´deilait] n.日光；黎明 (初中英语单词)
- sunlight [´sʌnlait] n.日光 (初中英语单词)
- mission [´miʃən] n.代表团；使馆vt.派遣 (初中英语单词)
- readily [´redili] ad.乐意地；容易地 (初中英语单词)
- swiftly [´swiftli] ad.迅速地，敏捷地 (初中英语单词)
- instantly [´instəntli] ad.立即，立刻 (初中英语单词)
- learnt [lə:nt] learn 的过去式(分词) (初中英语单词)
- finding [´faindiŋ] n.发现物；判断；结果 (高中英语单词)
- mortal [´mɔ:tl] a.致命的 n.凡人 (高中英语单词)
- tyranny [´tirəni] n.暴政；专制政治 (高中英语单词)
- tyrant [´taiərənt] n.暴君；霸主；专制君主 (高中英语单词)
- millionaire [,miljə´neə] n.百万富翁 (高中英语单词)
- tenderly [´tendəli] ad.娇嫩地；柔和地 (高中英语单词)
- horseback [´hɔ:sbæk] n.马背 (高中英语单词)
- summit [´sʌmit] n.顶(点)；绝顶 (高中英语单词)
- southward [´sauθwəd] a.&n.向南方向(的) (高中英语单词)
- half-way [´hɑ:fwei] ad.半途；几乎 (高中英语单词)
- nowhere [´nəuweə] n.无处；不知道 (高中英语单词)
- descent [di´sent] n.出身，家世 (高中英语单词)
- greatness [´greitnis] n.巨大；高尚；卓越 (高中英语单词)
- foliage [´fəuli-idʒ] n.叶子，簇叶 (高中英语单词)
- gravel [´grævəl] n.砾石 vt.铺砾石 (高中英语单词)
- lantern [´læntən] n.灯笼；提灯 (高中英语单词)
- mining [´mainiŋ] n.采矿；矿业 (高中英语单词)
- chronicle [´krɔnikl] n.历史 vt.记述 (高中英语单词)
- subsequent [´sʌbsikwənt] a.其次的；其后的 (高中英语单词)
- shadowy [´ʃædəui] a.有阴影的；模糊的 (高中英语单词)
- vineyard [´vinjəd] n.葡萄园 (英语四级单词)
- excursion [ik´skə:ʃən] n.短途旅行，游览；离题 (英语四级单词)
- ultimately [´ʌltimitli] ad.最后，最终 (英语四级单词)
- grassy [´grɑ:si] a.多草的；青草味的 (英语四级单词)
- splinter [´splintə] n.碎片 v.成碎片；分裂 (英语四级单词)
- wooded [´wudid] a.多树林的 (英语四级单词)
- clearing [´kliəriŋ] n.(森林中的)空旷地 (英语四级单词)
- canyon [´kænjən] n.峡谷 (英语四级单词)
- antiquity [æn´tikwiti] n.太古；古代；古迹 (英语四级单词)
- hospitable [´hɔspitəbəl] a.好客的；招待周到的 (英语四级单词)
- rubbish [´rʌbiʃ] n.垃圾；碎屑；废话 (英语四级单词)
- unborn [,ʌn´bɔ:n] a.未生的；将来的 (英语六级单词)
- servitude [´sə:vitju:d] n.奴隶状态；苦役 (英语六级单词)
- blameless [´bleimlis] a.无可责难的 (英语六级单词)
- interminable [in´tə:minəbəl] a.无终止的；冗长的 (英语六级单词)
- wanting [´wɔntiŋ, wɑ:n-] a.短缺的；不足的 (英语六级单词)
- bedding [´bediŋ] n.寝具；垫草；基础 (英语六级单词)
- prehistoric [,pri:hi´stɔrik] a.史前的 (英语六级单词)
- speaking [´spi:kiŋ] n.说话 a.发言的 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
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