章节正文
in me another Jesse, like that one of old, to rule over
men and to be the father of sons who shall be rul-
ers!" Jesse grew excited as he talked aloud and
jumping to his feet walked up and down in the
room. In fancy he saw himself living in old times
and among old peoples. The land that lay stretched
out before him became of vast significance, a place
peopled by his fancy with a new race of men sprung
from himself. It seemed to him that in his day as in
those other and older days, kingdoms might be cre-
ated and new impulses given to the lives of men by
the power of God speaking through a chosen ser-
vant. He longed to be such a servant. "It is God's
work I have come to the land to do," he declared
in a loud voice and his short figure straightened and
he thought that something like a halo of Godly ap-
proval hung over him.
It will perhaps be somewhat difficult for the men
and women of a later day to understand Jesse Bent-
ley. In the last fifty years a vast change has taken
place in the lives of our people. A revolution has in
fact taken place. The coming of industrialism, at-
tended by all the roar and rattle of affairs, the shrill
cries of millions of new voices that have come
among us from overseas, the going and coming of
trains, the growth of cities, the building of the inter-
urban car lines that weave in and out of towns and
past farmhouses, and now in these later days the
coming of the automobiles has worked a tremen-
dous change in the lives and in the habits of thought
of our people of Mid-America. Books, badly imag-
ined and written though they may be in the hurry
of our times, are in every household, magazines cir-
culate by the millions of copies, newspapers are ev-
erywhere. In our day a farmer standing by the stove
in the store in his village has his mind filled to over-
flowing with the words of other men. The newspa-
pers and the magazines have pumped him full.
Much of the old brutalignorance that had in it also
a kind of beautiful childlike innocence is gone for-
ever. The farmer by the stove is brother to the men
of the cities, and if you listen you will find him
talking as glibly and as senselessly as the best city
man of us all.
In Jesse Bentley's time and in the country districts
of the whole Middle West in the years after the Civil
War it was not so. Men labored too hard and were
too tired to read. In them was no desire for words
printed upon paper. As they worked in the fields,
vague, half-formed thoughts took possession of
them. They believed in God and in God's power to
control their lives. In the little Protestant churches
they gathered on Sunday to hear of God and his
works. The churches were the center of the social
and intellectual life of the times. The figure of God
was big in the hearts of men.
And so, having been born an imaginative child
and having within him a great intellectual eagerness,
Jesse Bentley had turned wholeheartedly toward
God. When the war took his brothers away, he saw
the hand of God in that. When his father became ill
and could no longer attend to the running of the
farm, he took that also as a sign from God. In the
city, when the word came to him, he walked about
at night through the streets thinking of the matter
and when he had come home and had got the work
on the farm well under way, he went again at night
to walk through the forests and over the low hills
and to think of God.
As he walked the importance of his own figure in
some divine plan grew in his mind. He grew avari-
cious and was impatient that the farm contained
only six hundred acres. Kneeling in a fence corner
at the edge of some meadow, he sent his voice
abroad into the silence and looking up he saw the
stars shining down at him.
One evening, some months after his father's
death, and when his wife Katherine was expecting
at any moment to be laid abed of childbirth, Jesse
left his house and went for a long walk. The Bentley
farm was situated in a tiny valley watered by Wine
Creek, and Jesse walked along the banks of the
stream to the end of his own land and on through
the fields of his neighbors. As he walked the valley
broadened and then narrowed again. Great open
stretches of field and wood lay before him. The
moon came out from behind clouds, and, climbing
a low hill, he sat down to think.
Jesse thought that as the true servant of God the
entire stretch of country through which he had
walked should have come into his possession. He
thought of his dead brothers and blamed them that
they had not worked harder and achieved more. Be-
fore him in the moonlight the tiny stream ran down
over stones, and he began to think of the men of
old times who like himself had owned flocks and
lands.
A fantasticimpulse, half fear, half greediness,
took possession of Jesse Bentley. He remembered
how in the old Bible story the Lord had appeared
to that other Jesse and told him to send his son
David to where Saul and the men of Israel were
fighting the Philistines in the Valley of Elah. Into
Jesse's mind came the conviction that all of the Ohio
farmers who owned land in the valley of Wine Creek
were Philistines and enemies of God. "Suppose,"
he whispered to himself, "there should come from
among them one who, like Goliath the Philistine of
Gath, could defeat me and take from me my posses-
sions." In fancy he felt the sickening dread that he
thought must have lain heavy on the heart of Saul
before the coming of David. Jumping to his feet, he
began to run through the night. As he ran he called
to God. His voice carried far over the low hills.
"Jehovah of Hosts," he cried, "send to me this night
out of the womb of Katherine, a son. Let Thy grace
alight upon me. Send me a son to be called David
who shall help me to pluck at last all of these lands
out of the hands of the Philistines and turn them to
Thy service and to the building of Thy kingdom on
earth."
II
DAVID HARDY OF Winesburg, Ohio, was the grand-
son of Jesse Bentley, the owner of Bentley farms.
When he was twelve years old he went to the old
Bentley place to live. His mother, Louise Bentley,
the girl who came into the world on that night when
Jesse ran through the fields crying to God that he
be given a son, had grown to womanhood on the
farm and had married young John Hardy of Wines-
burg, who became a banker. Louise and her hus-
band did not live happily together and everyone
agreed that she was to blame. She was a small
woman with sharp grey eyes and black hair. From
childhood she had been inclined to fits of temper
and when not angry she was often morose and si-
lent. In Winesburg it was said that she drank. Her
husband, the banker, who was a careful, shrewd
man, tried hard to make her happy. When he began
to make money he bought for her a large brick house
on Elm Street in Winesburg and he was the first
man in that town to keep a manservant to drive his
wife's carriage.
But Louise could not be made happy. She flew
into half insane fits of temper during which she was
sometimes silent, sometimes noisy and quarrelsome.
She swore and cried out in her anger. She got a
knife from the kitchen and threatened her husband's
life. Once she deliberately set fire to the house, and
often she hid herself away for days in her own room
and would see no one. Her life, lived as a half re-
cluse, gave rise to all sorts of stories concerning her.
It was said that she took drugs and that she hid
herself away from people because she was often so
under the influence of drink that her condition could
not be concealed. Sometimes on summer afternoons
she came out of the house and got into her carriage.
Dismissing the driver she took the reins in her own
hands and drove off at top speed through the
streets. If a pedestrian got in her way she drove
straight ahead and the frightened citizen had to es-
cape as best he could. To the people of the town it
seemed as though she wanted to run them down.
When she had driven through several streets, tear-
ing around corners and beating the horses with the
whip, she drove off into the country. On the country
roads after she had gotten out of sight of the houses
she let the horses slow down to a walk and her wild,
reckless mood passed. She became thoughtful and
muttered words. Sometimes tears came into her
eyes. And then when she came back into town she
again drove furiously through the quiet streets. But
for the influence of her husband and the respect
he inspired in people's minds she would have been
arrested more than once by the town marshal.
Young David Hardy grew up in the house with
this woman and as can well be imagined there was
not much joy in his childhood. He was too young
then to have opinions of his own about people, but
at times it was difficult for him not to have very
definite opinions about the woman who was his
mother. David was always a quiet, orderly boy and
for a long time was thought by the people of Wines-
burg to be something of a dullard. His eyes were
brown and as a child he had a habit of looking at
things and people a long time without appearing to
see what he was looking at. When he heard his
mother spoken of harshly or when he overheard her
berating his father, he was frightened and ran away
to hide. Sometimes he could not find a hiding place
and that confused him. Turning his face toward a
tree or if he was indoors toward the wall, he closed
his eyes and tried not to think of anything. He had
a habit of talking aloud to himself, and early in life
a spirit of quiet sadness often took possession of
him.
On the occasions when David went to visit his
grandfather on the Bentley farm, he was altogether
contented and happy. Often he wished that he
would never have to go back to town and once
when he had come home from the farm after a long
men and to be the father of sons who shall be rul-
ers!" Jesse grew excited as he talked aloud and
jumping to his feet walked up and down in the
room. In fancy he saw himself living in old times
and among old peoples. The land that lay stretched
out before him became of vast significance, a place
peopled by his fancy with a new race of men sprung
from himself. It seemed to him that in his day as in
those other and older days, kingdoms might be cre-
ated and new impulses given to the lives of men by
the power of God speaking through a chosen ser-
vant. He longed to be such a servant. "It is God's
work I have come to the land to do," he declared
in a loud voice and his short figure straightened and
he thought that something like a halo of Godly ap-
proval hung over him.
It will perhaps be somewhat difficult for the men
and women of a later day to understand Jesse Bent-
ley. In the last fifty years a vast change has taken
place in the lives of our people. A revolution has in
fact taken place. The coming of industrialism, at-
tended by all the roar and rattle of affairs, the shrill
cries of millions of new voices that have come
among us from overseas, the going and coming of
trains, the growth of cities, the building of the inter-
urban car lines that weave in and out of towns and
past farmhouses, and now in these later days the
coming of the automobiles has worked a tremen-
dous change in the lives and in the habits of thought
of our people of Mid-America. Books, badly imag-
ined and written though they may be in the hurry
of our times, are in every household, magazines cir-
culate by the millions of copies, newspapers are ev-
erywhere. In our day a farmer standing by the stove
in the store in his village has his mind filled to over-
flowing with the words of other men. The newspa-
pers and the magazines have pumped him full.
Much of the old brutalignorance that had in it also
a kind of beautiful childlike innocence is gone for-
ever. The farmer by the stove is brother to the men
of the cities, and if you listen you will find him
talking as glibly and as senselessly as the best city
man of us all.
In Jesse Bentley's time and in the country districts
of the whole Middle West in the years after the Civil
War it was not so. Men labored too hard and were
too tired to read. In them was no desire for words
printed upon paper. As they worked in the fields,
vague, half-formed thoughts took possession of
them. They believed in God and in God's power to
control their lives. In the little Protestant churches
they gathered on Sunday to hear of God and his
works. The churches were the center of the social
and intellectual life of the times. The figure of God
was big in the hearts of men.
And so, having been born an imaginative child
and having within him a great intellectual eagerness,
Jesse Bentley had turned wholeheartedly toward
God. When the war took his brothers away, he saw
the hand of God in that. When his father became ill
and could no longer attend to the running of the
farm, he took that also as a sign from God. In the
city, when the word came to him, he walked about
at night through the streets thinking of the matter
and when he had come home and had got the work
on the farm well under way, he went again at night
to walk through the forests and over the low hills
and to think of God.
As he walked the importance of his own figure in
some divine plan grew in his mind. He grew avari-
cious and was impatient that the farm contained
only six hundred acres. Kneeling in a fence corner
at the edge of some meadow, he sent his voice
abroad into the silence and looking up he saw the
stars shining down at him.
One evening, some months after his father's
death, and when his wife Katherine was expecting
at any moment to be laid abed of childbirth, Jesse
left his house and went for a long walk. The Bentley
farm was situated in a tiny valley watered by Wine
Creek, and Jesse walked along the banks of the
stream to the end of his own land and on through
the fields of his neighbors. As he walked the valley
broadened and then narrowed again. Great open
stretches of field and wood lay before him. The
moon came out from behind clouds, and, climbing
a low hill, he sat down to think.
Jesse thought that as the true servant of God the
entire stretch of country through which he had
walked should have come into his possession. He
thought of his dead brothers and blamed them that
they had not worked harder and achieved more. Be-
fore him in the moonlight the tiny stream ran down
over stones, and he began to think of the men of
old times who like himself had owned flocks and
lands.
A fantasticimpulse, half fear, half greediness,
took possession of Jesse Bentley. He remembered
how in the old Bible story the Lord had appeared
to that other Jesse and told him to send his son
David to where Saul and the men of Israel were
fighting the Philistines in the Valley of Elah. Into
Jesse's mind came the conviction that all of the Ohio
farmers who owned land in the valley of Wine Creek
were Philistines and enemies of God. "Suppose,"
he whispered to himself, "there should come from
among them one who, like Goliath the Philistine of
Gath, could defeat me and take from me my posses-
sions." In fancy he felt the sickening dread that he
thought must have lain heavy on the heart of Saul
before the coming of David. Jumping to his feet, he
began to run through the night. As he ran he called
to God. His voice carried far over the low hills.
"Jehovah of Hosts," he cried, "send to me this night
out of the womb of Katherine, a son. Let Thy grace
alight upon me. Send me a son to be called David
who shall help me to pluck at last all of these lands
out of the hands of the Philistines and turn them to
Thy service and to the building of Thy kingdom on
earth."
II
DAVID HARDY OF Winesburg, Ohio, was the grand-
son of Jesse Bentley, the owner of Bentley farms.
When he was twelve years old he went to the old
Bentley place to live. His mother, Louise Bentley,
the girl who came into the world on that night when
Jesse ran through the fields crying to God that he
be given a son, had grown to womanhood on the
farm and had married young John Hardy of Wines-
burg, who became a banker. Louise and her hus-
band did not live happily together and everyone
agreed that she was to blame. She was a small
woman with sharp grey eyes and black hair. From
childhood she had been inclined to fits of temper
and when not angry she was often morose and si-
lent. In Winesburg it was said that she drank. Her
husband, the banker, who was a careful, shrewd
man, tried hard to make her happy. When he began
to make money he bought for her a large brick house
on Elm Street in Winesburg and he was the first
man in that town to keep a manservant to drive his
wife's carriage.
But Louise could not be made happy. She flew
into half insane fits of temper during which she was
sometimes silent, sometimes noisy and quarrelsome.
She swore and cried out in her anger. She got a
knife from the kitchen and threatened her husband's
life. Once she deliberately set fire to the house, and
often she hid herself away for days in her own room
and would see no one. Her life, lived as a half re-
cluse, gave rise to all sorts of stories concerning her.
It was said that she took drugs and that she hid
herself away from people because she was often so
under the influence of drink that her condition could
not be concealed. Sometimes on summer afternoons
she came out of the house and got into her carriage.
Dismissing the driver she took the reins in her own
hands and drove off at top speed through the
streets. If a pedestrian got in her way she drove
straight ahead and the frightened citizen had to es-
cape as best he could. To the people of the town it
seemed as though she wanted to run them down.
When she had driven through several streets, tear-
ing around corners and beating the horses with the
whip, she drove off into the country. On the country
roads after she had gotten out of sight of the houses
she let the horses slow down to a walk and her wild,
reckless mood passed. She became thoughtful and
muttered words. Sometimes tears came into her
eyes. And then when she came back into town she
again drove furiously through the quiet streets. But
for the influence of her husband and the respect
he inspired in people's minds she would have been
arrested more than once by the town marshal.
Young David Hardy grew up in the house with
this woman and as can well be imagined there was
not much joy in his childhood. He was too young
then to have opinions of his own about people, but
at times it was difficult for him not to have very
definite opinions about the woman who was his
mother. David was always a quiet, orderly boy and
for a long time was thought by the people of Wines-
burg to be something of a dullard. His eyes were
brown and as a child he had a habit of looking at
things and people a long time without appearing to
see what he was looking at. When he heard his
mother spoken of harshly or when he overheard her
berating his father, he was frightened and ran away
to hide. Sometimes he could not find a hiding place
and that confused him. Turning his face toward a
tree or if he was indoors toward the wall, he closed
his eyes and tried not to think of anything. He had
a habit of talking aloud to himself, and early in life
a spirit of quiet sadness often took possession of
him.
On the occasions when David went to visit his
grandfather on the Bentley farm, he was altogether
contented and happy. Often he wished that he
would never have to go back to town and once
when he had come home from the farm after a long
- rattle [´rætl]
n.嘎吱声 (初中英语单词) - standing [´stændiŋ] n.持续 a.直立的 (初中英语单词)
- ignorance [´ignərəns] n.无知，愚昧 (初中英语单词)
- running [´rʌniŋ] a.奔跑的；流动的 (初中英语单词)
- divine [di´vain] a.神圣的 v.预言 (初中英语单词)
- meadow [´medəu] n.草地；牧场 (初中英语单词)
- situated [´sitʃueitid] a.位于；处于....境地 (初中英语单词)
- valley [´væli] n.谷；河谷；流域 (初中英语单词)
- moonlight [´mu:nlait] n.&a.月光(的) (初中英语单词)
- stream [stri:m] n.河 vi.流出；飘扬 (初中英语单词)
- impulse [´impʌls] n.推动(力)；冲动；刺激 (初中英语单词)
- conviction [kən´vikʃən] n.定罪；确信，信服 (初中英语单词)
- banker [´bæŋkə] n.银行家 (初中英语单词)
- temper [´tempə] n.韧度 v.锻炼；调和 (初中英语单词)
- driven [´driv(ə)n] drive 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- childhood [´tʃaildhud] n.幼年(时代)；早期 (初中英语单词)
- orderly [´ɔ:dəli] a.整洁的 n.勤务兵 (初中英语单词)
- spoken [´spəukən] speak的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- significance [sig´nifikəns] n.意义；重要性 (高中英语单词)
- innocence [´inəsəns] n.无罪；天真 (高中英语单词)
- protestant [´prɔtistənt] a.新教的 n.新教徒 (高中英语单词)
- intellectual [,inti´lektʃuəl] n.知识分子 (高中英语单词)
- impatient [im´peiʃənt] a.不耐烦的，急躁的 (高中英语单词)
- fantastic [fæn´tæstik] a.奇异的；荒谬的 (高中英语单词)
- israel [´izreiəl] n.以色列 (高中英语单词)
- insane [in´sein] a.患神经病的；疯狂的 (高中英语单词)
- deliberately [di´libərətli] ad.故意地；慎重地 (高中英语单词)
- concerning [kən´sə:niŋ] prep.关于 (高中英语单词)
- thoughtful [´θɔ:tfəl] a.深思的；体贴的 (高中英语单词)
- furiously [´fjuəriəsli] ad.狂怒地；有力地 (高中英语单词)
- indoors [,in´dɔ:z] ad.在屋里 (高中英语单词)
- sadness [´sædnis] n.悲哀；悲痛；凄惨 (高中英语单词)
- brutal [´bru:tl] a.兽性的；残暴的 (英语四级单词)
- sickening [´sikəniŋ, ´sikniŋ] a.引起疾病的 (英语四级单词)
- gotten [´gɔtn] get的过去分词 (英语四级单词)
- speaking [´spi:kiŋ] n.说话 a.发言的 (英语六级单词)
- overseas [,əuvə´si:z] ad.(向)海外 a.海外的 (英语六级单词)
- imaginative [i´mædʒənətiv] a.富于想象(力)的 (英语六级单词)
- philistine [´filistain] n.腓力斯人 a.市侩的 (英语六级单词)
- pedestrian [pi´destriən] a.步行的 n.行人 (英语六级单词)
- beating [´bi:tiŋ] n.敲；搅打；失败 (英语六级单词)
- harshly [´hɑ:ʃli] ad.粗糙地，冷酷地 (英语六级单词)
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章节正文
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