章节正文
but they clung to old traditions and worked like
driven animals. They lived as practically all of the
farming people of the time lived. In the spring and
through most of the winter the highways leading
into the town of Winesburg were a sea of mud. The
four young men of the family worked hard all day
in the fields, they ate heavily of coarse, greasy food,
and at night slept like tired beasts on beds of straw.
Into their lives came little that was not coarse and
brutal and outwardly they were themselves coarse
and brutal. On Saturday afternoons they hitched a
team of horses to a three-seated wagon and went
off to town. In town they stood about the stoves in
the stores talking to other farmers or to the store
keepers. They were dressed in overalls and in the
winter wore heavy coats that were flecked with
mud. Their hands as they stretched them out to the
heat of the stoves were cracked and red. It was dif-
ficult for them to talk and so they for the most part
kept silent. When they had bought meat, flour,
sugar, and salt, they went into one of the Winesburg
saloons and drank beer. Under the influence of
drink the naturally strong lusts of their natures, kept
suppressed by the heroic labor of breaking up new
ground, were released. A kind of crude and animal-
like poetic fervor took possession of them. On the
road home they stood up on the wagon seats and
shouted at the stars. Sometimes they fought long
and bitterly and at other times they broke forth into
songs. Once Enoch Bentley, the older one of the
boys, struck his father, old Tom Bentley, with the
butt of a teamster's whip, and the old man seemed
likely to die. For days Enoch lay hid in the straw in
the loft of the stable ready to flee if the result of his
momentary passion turned out to be murder. He
was kept alive with food brought by his mother,
who also kept him informed of the injured man's
condition. When all turned out well he emerged
from his hiding place and went back to the work of
clearing land as though nothing had happened.
The Civil War brought a sharp turn to the fortunes
of the Bentleys and was responsible for the rise of
the youngest son, Jesse. Enoch, Edward, Harry, and
Will Bentley all enlisted and before the long war
ended they were all killed. For a time after they
went away to the South, old Tom tried to run the
place, but he was not successful. When the last of
the four had been killed he sent word to Jesse that
he would have to come home.
Then the mother, who had not been well for a
year, died suddenly, and the father became alto-
gether discouraged. He talked of selling the farm
and moving into town. All day he went about shak-
ing his head and muttering. The work in the fields
was neglected and weeds grew high in the corn. Old
Tim hired men but he did not use them intelligently.
When they had gone away to the fields in the morn-
ing he wandered into the woods and sat down on
a log. Sometimes he forgot to come home at night
and one of the daughters had to go in search of him.
When Jesse Bentley came home to the farm and
began to take charge of things he was a slight,
sensitive-looking man of twenty-two. At eighteen
he had left home to go to school to become a scholar
and eventually to become a minister of the Presbyte-
rian Church. All through his boyhood he had been
what in our country was called an "odd sheep" and
had not got on with his brothers. Of all the family
only his mother had understood him and she was
now dead. When he came home to take charge of
the farm, that had at that time grown to more than
six hundred acres, everyone on the farms about and
in the nearby town of Winesburg smiled at the idea
of his trying to handle the work that had been done
by his four strong brothers.
There was indeed good cause to smile. By the
standards of his day Jesse did not look like a man
at all. He was small and very slender and womanish
of body and, true to the traditions of young minis-
ters, wore a long black coat and a narrow black
string tie. The neighbors were amused when they
saw him, after the years away, and they were even
more amused when they saw the woman he had
married in the city.
As a matter of fact, Jesse's wife did soon go under.
That was perhaps Jesse's fault. A farm in Northern
Ohio in the hard years after the Civil War was no
place for a delicate woman, and Katherine Bentley
was delicate. Jesse was hard with her as he was with
everybody about him in those days. She tried to do
such work as all the neighbor women about her did
and he let her go on without interference. She
helped to do the milking and did part of the house-
work; she made the beds for the men and prepared
their food. For a year she worked every day from
sunrise until late at night and then after giving birth
to a child she died.
As for Jesse Bentley--although he was a delicately
built man there was something within him that
could not easily be killed. He had brown curly hair
and grey eyes that were at times hard and direct, at
times wavering and uncertain. Not only was he slen-
der but he was also short of stature. His mouth was
like the mouth of a sensitive and very determined
child. Jesse Bentley was a fanatic. He was a man
born out of his time and place and for this he suf-
fered and made others suffer. Never did he succeed
in getting what he wanted out of fife and he did not
know what he wanted. Within a very short time
after he came home to the Bentley farm he made
everyone there a little afraid of him, and his wife,
who should have been close to him as his mother
had been, was afraid also. At the end of two weeks
after his coming, old Tom Bentley made over to him
the entire ownership of the place and retired into
the background. Everyone retired into the back-
ground. In spite of his youth and inexperience, Jesse
had the trick of mastering the souls of his people.
He was so in earnest in everything he did and said
that no one understood him. He made everyone on
the farm work as they had never worked before and
yet there was no joy in the work. If things went well
they went well for Jesse and never for the people
who were his dependents. Like a thousand other
strong men who have come into the world here in
America in these later times, Jesse was but half
strong. He could master others but he could not
master himself. The running of the farm as it had
never been run before was easy for him. When he
came home from Cleveland where he had been in
school, he shut himself off from all of his people
and began to make plans. He thought about the
farm night and day and that made him successful.
Other men on the farms about him worked too hard
and were too fired to think, but to think of the farm
and to be everlastingly making plans for its success
was a relief to Jesse. It partially satisfied something
in his passionate nature. Immediately after he came
home he had a wing built on to the old house and
in a large room facing the west he had windows that
looked into the barnyard and other windows that
looked off across the fields. By the window he sat
down to think. Hour after hour and day after day
he sat and looked over the land and thought out his
new place in life. The passionate burning thing in
his nature flamed up and his eyes became hard. He
wanted to make the farm produce as no farm in his
state had ever produced before and then he wanted
something else. It was the indefinable hunger within
that made his eyes waver and that kept him always
more and more silent before people. He would have
given much to achieve peace and in him was a fear
that peace was the thing he could not achieve.
All over his body Jesse Bentley was alive. In his
small frame was gathered the force of a long line of
strong men. He had always been extraordinarily
alive when he was a small boy on the farm and later
when he was a young man in school. In the school
he had studied and thought of God and the Bible
with his whole mind and heart. As time passed and
he grew to know people better, he began to think
of himself as an extraordinary man, one set apart
from his fellows. He wanted terribly to make his life
a thing of great importance, and as he looked about
at his fellow men and saw how like clods they lived
it seemed to him that he could not bear to become
also such a clod. Although in his absorption in him-
self and in his own destiny he was blind to the fact
that his young wife was doing a strong woman's
work even after she had become large with child
and that she was killing herself in his service, he
did not intend to be unkind to her. When his father,
who was old and twisted with toil, made over to
him the ownership of the farm and seemed content
to creep away to a corner and wait for death, he
shrugged his shoulders and dismissed the old man
from his mind.
In the room by the window overlooking the land
that had come down to him sat Jesse thinking of his
own affairs. In the stables he could hear the tramp-
ing of his horses and the restlessmovement of his
cattle. Away in the fields he could see other cattle
wandering over green hills. The voices of men, his
men who worked for him, came in to him through
the window. From the milkhouse there was the
steady thump, thump of a churn being manipulated
by the half-witted girl, Eliza Stoughton. Jesse's mind
went back to the men of Old Testament days who
had also owned lands and herds. He remembered
how God had come down out of the skies and talked
to these men and he wanted God to notice and to
talk to him also. A kind of feverishboyish eagerness
to in some way achieve in his own life the flavor
of significance that had hung over these men took
possession of him. Being a prayerful man he spoke
of the matter aloud to God and the sound of his
own words strengthened and fed his eagerness.
"I am a new kind of man come into possession of
these fields," he declared. "Look upon me, O God,
and look Thou also upon my neighbors and all the
men who have gone before me here! O God, create
driven animals. They lived as practically all of the
farming people of the time lived. In the spring and
through most of the winter the highways leading
into the town of Winesburg were a sea of mud. The
four young men of the family worked hard all day
in the fields, they ate heavily of coarse, greasy food,
and at night slept like tired beasts on beds of straw.
Into their lives came little that was not coarse and
brutal and outwardly they were themselves coarse
and brutal. On Saturday afternoons they hitched a
team of horses to a three-seated wagon and went
off to town. In town they stood about the stoves in
the stores talking to other farmers or to the store
keepers. They were dressed in overalls and in the
winter wore heavy coats that were flecked with
mud. Their hands as they stretched them out to the
heat of the stoves were cracked and red. It was dif-
ficult for them to talk and so they for the most part
kept silent. When they had bought meat, flour,
sugar, and salt, they went into one of the Winesburg
saloons and drank beer. Under the influence of
drink the naturally strong lusts of their natures, kept
suppressed by the heroic labor of breaking up new
ground, were released. A kind of crude and animal-
like poetic fervor took possession of them. On the
road home they stood up on the wagon seats and
shouted at the stars. Sometimes they fought long
and bitterly and at other times they broke forth into
songs. Once Enoch Bentley, the older one of the
boys, struck his father, old Tom Bentley, with the
butt of a teamster's whip, and the old man seemed
likely to die. For days Enoch lay hid in the straw in
the loft of the stable ready to flee if the result of his
momentary passion turned out to be murder. He
was kept alive with food brought by his mother,
who also kept him informed of the injured man's
condition. When all turned out well he emerged
from his hiding place and went back to the work of
clearing land as though nothing had happened.
The Civil War brought a sharp turn to the fortunes
of the Bentleys and was responsible for the rise of
the youngest son, Jesse. Enoch, Edward, Harry, and
Will Bentley all enlisted and before the long war
ended they were all killed. For a time after they
went away to the South, old Tom tried to run the
place, but he was not successful. When the last of
the four had been killed he sent word to Jesse that
he would have to come home.
Then the mother, who had not been well for a
year, died suddenly, and the father became alto-
gether discouraged. He talked of selling the farm
and moving into town. All day he went about shak-
ing his head and muttering. The work in the fields
was neglected and weeds grew high in the corn. Old
Tim hired men but he did not use them intelligently.
When they had gone away to the fields in the morn-
ing he wandered into the woods and sat down on
a log. Sometimes he forgot to come home at night
and one of the daughters had to go in search of him.
When Jesse Bentley came home to the farm and
began to take charge of things he was a slight,
sensitive-looking man of twenty-two. At eighteen
he had left home to go to school to become a scholar
and eventually to become a minister of the Presbyte-
rian Church. All through his boyhood he had been
what in our country was called an "odd sheep" and
had not got on with his brothers. Of all the family
only his mother had understood him and she was
now dead. When he came home to take charge of
the farm, that had at that time grown to more than
six hundred acres, everyone on the farms about and
in the nearby town of Winesburg smiled at the idea
of his trying to handle the work that had been done
by his four strong brothers.
There was indeed good cause to smile. By the
standards of his day Jesse did not look like a man
at all. He was small and very slender and womanish
of body and, true to the traditions of young minis-
ters, wore a long black coat and a narrow black
string tie. The neighbors were amused when they
saw him, after the years away, and they were even
more amused when they saw the woman he had
married in the city.
As a matter of fact, Jesse's wife did soon go under.
That was perhaps Jesse's fault. A farm in Northern
Ohio in the hard years after the Civil War was no
place for a delicate woman, and Katherine Bentley
was delicate. Jesse was hard with her as he was with
everybody about him in those days. She tried to do
such work as all the neighbor women about her did
and he let her go on without interference. She
helped to do the milking and did part of the house-
work; she made the beds for the men and prepared
their food. For a year she worked every day from
sunrise until late at night and then after giving birth
to a child she died.
As for Jesse Bentley--although he was a delicately
built man there was something within him that
could not easily be killed. He had brown curly hair
and grey eyes that were at times hard and direct, at
times wavering and uncertain. Not only was he slen-
der but he was also short of stature. His mouth was
like the mouth of a sensitive and very determined
child. Jesse Bentley was a fanatic. He was a man
born out of his time and place and for this he suf-
fered and made others suffer. Never did he succeed
in getting what he wanted out of fife and he did not
know what he wanted. Within a very short time
after he came home to the Bentley farm he made
everyone there a little afraid of him, and his wife,
who should have been close to him as his mother
had been, was afraid also. At the end of two weeks
after his coming, old Tom Bentley made over to him
the entire ownership of the place and retired into
the background. Everyone retired into the back-
ground. In spite of his youth and inexperience, Jesse
had the trick of mastering the souls of his people.
He was so in earnest in everything he did and said
that no one understood him. He made everyone on
the farm work as they had never worked before and
yet there was no joy in the work. If things went well
they went well for Jesse and never for the people
who were his dependents. Like a thousand other
strong men who have come into the world here in
America in these later times, Jesse was but half
strong. He could master others but he could not
master himself. The running of the farm as it had
never been run before was easy for him. When he
came home from Cleveland where he had been in
school, he shut himself off from all of his people
and began to make plans. He thought about the
farm night and day and that made him successful.
Other men on the farms about him worked too hard
and were too fired to think, but to think of the farm
and to be everlastingly making plans for its success
was a relief to Jesse. It partially satisfied something
in his passionate nature. Immediately after he came
home he had a wing built on to the old house and
in a large room facing the west he had windows that
looked into the barnyard and other windows that
looked off across the fields. By the window he sat
down to think. Hour after hour and day after day
he sat and looked over the land and thought out his
new place in life. The passionate burning thing in
his nature flamed up and his eyes became hard. He
wanted to make the farm produce as no farm in his
state had ever produced before and then he wanted
something else. It was the indefinable hunger within
that made his eyes waver and that kept him always
more and more silent before people. He would have
given much to achieve peace and in him was a fear
that peace was the thing he could not achieve.
All over his body Jesse Bentley was alive. In his
small frame was gathered the force of a long line of
strong men. He had always been extraordinarily
alive when he was a small boy on the farm and later
when he was a young man in school. In the school
he had studied and thought of God and the Bible
with his whole mind and heart. As time passed and
he grew to know people better, he began to think
of himself as an extraordinary man, one set apart
from his fellows. He wanted terribly to make his life
a thing of great importance, and as he looked about
at his fellow men and saw how like clods they lived
it seemed to him that he could not bear to become
also such a clod. Although in his absorption in him-
self and in his own destiny he was blind to the fact
that his young wife was doing a strong woman's
work even after she had become large with child
and that she was killing herself in his service, he
did not intend to be unkind to her. When his father,
who was old and twisted with toil, made over to
him the ownership of the farm and seemed content
to creep away to a corner and wait for death, he
shrugged his shoulders and dismissed the old man
from his mind.
In the room by the window overlooking the land
that had come down to him sat Jesse thinking of his
own affairs. In the stables he could hear the tramp-
ing of his horses and the restlessmovement of his
cattle. Away in the fields he could see other cattle
wandering over green hills. The voices of men, his
men who worked for him, came in to him through
the window. From the milkhouse there was the
steady thump, thump of a churn being manipulated
by the half-witted girl, Eliza Stoughton. Jesse's mind
went back to the men of Old Testament days who
had also owned lands and herds. He remembered
how God had come down out of the skies and talked
to these men and he wanted God to notice and to
talk to him also. A kind of feverishboyish eagerness
to in some way achieve in his own life the flavor
of significance that had hung over these men took
possession of him. Being a prayerful man he spoke
of the matter aloud to God and the sound of his
own words strengthened and fed his eagerness.
"I am a new kind of man come into possession of
these fields," he declared. "Look upon me, O God,
and look Thou also upon my neighbors and all the
men who have gone before me here! O God, create
- coarse [kɔ:s]
a.粗(糙)的；粗鲁的 (初中英语单词) - bitterly [´bitəli] ad.悲痛地；憎恨地 (初中英语单词)
- stable [´steibəl] n.马棚 a.稳固的 (初中英语单词)
- passion [´pæʃən] n.激情；激怒；恋爱 (初中英语单词)
- responsible [ri´spɔnsəbəl] a.尽责的；责任重大的 (初中英语单词)
- charge [tʃɑ:dʒ] v.收费；冲锋 n.费用 (初中英语单词)
- minister [´ministə] n.部长；大臣 v.伺候 (初中英语单词)
- everyone [´evriwʌn] pron.=everybody 每人 (初中英语单词)
- slender [´slendə] a.细长的；微薄的 (初中英语单词)
- delicate [´delikət] a.精美的；微妙的 (初中英语单词)
- uncertain [ʌn´sə:tn] a.不定的；不可靠的 (初中英语单词)
- background [´bækgraund] n.背景；经历；幕后 (初中英语单词)
- earnest [´ə:nist] a.认真的 n.认真；诚恳 (初中英语单词)
- running [´rʌniŋ] a.奔跑的；流动的 (初中英语单词)
- relief [ri´li:f] n.救济；援救；减轻 (初中英语单词)
- hunger [´hʌŋgə] n.饥饿；渴望 (初中英语单词)
- achieve [ə´tʃi:v] vt.完成；达到；获得 (初中英语单词)
- extraordinary [ik´strɔ:dinəri] a.非常的；额外的 (初中英语单词)
- terribly [´terəbli] ad.可怕地 (初中英语单词)
- restless [´restləs] a.没有休息的 (初中英语单词)
- movement [´mu:vmənt] n.活动；运动；动作 (初中英语单词)
- heroic [hi´rəuik] a.英雄的，英勇的 (高中英语单词)
- boyhood [´bɔihud] n.少年时代(期) (高中英语单词)
- interference [,intə´fiərəns] n.干涉，干扰，妨碍 (高中英语单词)
- sensitive [´sensitiv] a.敏感的；感光的 (高中英语单词)
- passionate [´pæʃənit] a.易动情的；易怒的 (高中英语单词)
- studied [´stʌdid] a.故意的；有计划的 (高中英语单词)
- destiny [´destini] n.命运 (高中英语单词)
- significance [sig´nifikəns] n.意义；重要性 (高中英语单词)
- brutal [´bru:tl] a.兽性的；残暴的 (英语四级单词)
- overalls [´əuvərɔ:lz] n.工装裤；工作裤 (英语四级单词)
- eventually [i´ventʃuəli] ad.最后，终于 (英语四级单词)
- trying [´traiiŋ] a.难堪的；费劲的 (英语四级单词)
- stature [´stætʃə] n.身高；身材 (英语四级单词)
- ownership [´əunəʃip] n.所有权；所有制 (英语四级单词)
- partially [´pɑ:ʃəli] ad.部分地；局部地 (英语四级单词)
- absorption [əb´sɔ:pʃən] n.吸收；吸收作用 (英语四级单词)
- unkind [,ʌn´kaind] a.不客气的；不和善的 (英语四级单词)
- testament [´testəment] n.契约，誓约；遗嘱 (英语四级单词)
- feverish [´fi:vəriʃ] a.发烧的；狂热的 (英语四级单词)
- boyish [´bɔiiʃ] a.少年的；幼稚的 (英语四级单词)
- greasy [´gri:si] a.油腻的；润滑的 (英语六级单词)
- cracked [krækt] a.有裂缝的；碎的；粗哑 (英语六级单词)
- poetic [pəu´etik] a.理想化了的 (英语六级单词)
- fanatic [fə´nætik] a.狂热的 n.狂热者 (英语六级单词)
- retired [ri´taiəd] a.退休的；通职的 (英语六级单词)
- barnyard [´bɑ:njɑ:d] n.仓前空前 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
章节正文
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