章节正文
ter by offering to come twice a week for a month
and scrub the shop. The boy was ashamed, but he
was rather glad, too. "It is all right to be ashamed
and makes me understand new things," he said to
the grandmother, who didn't know what the boy
was talking about but loved him so much that it
didn't matter whether she understood or not.
For a year Tom Foster lived in the banker's stable
and then lost his place there. He didn't take very
good care of the horses and he was a constant
source of irritation to the banker's wife. She told him
to mow the lawn and he forgot. Then she sent him
to the store or to the post office and he did not come
back but joined a group of men and boys and spent
the whole afternoon with them, standing about, lis-
tening and occasionally, when addressed, saying a
few words. As in the city in the houses of prostitu-
tion and with the rowdy boys running through the
streets at night, so in Winesburg among its citizens
he had always the power to be a part of and yet
distinctly apart from the life about him.
After Tom lost his place at Banker White's he did
not live with his grandmother, although often in the
evening she came to visit him. He rented a room at
the rear of a little frame building belonging to old
Rufus Whiting. The building was on Duane Street,
just off Main Street, and had been used for years as
a law office by the old man, who had become too
feeble and forgetful for the practice of his profession
but did not realize his inefficiency. He liked Tom
and let him have the room for a dollar a month. In
the late afternoon when the lawyer had gone home
the boy had the place to himself and spent hours
lying on the floor by the stove and thinking of
things. In the evening the grandmother came and
sat in the lawyer's chair to smoke a pipe while Tom
remained silent, as he always, did in the presence of
everyone.
Often the old woman talked with great vigor.
Sometimes she was angry about some happening at
the banker's house and scolded away for hours. Out
of her own earnings she bought a mop and regularly
scrubbed the lawyer's office. Then when the place
was spotlessly clean and smelled clean she lighted
her clay pipe and she and Tom had a smoke to-
gether. "When you get ready to die then I will die
also," she said to the boy lying on the floor beside
her chair.
Tom Foster enjoyed life in Winesburg. He did odd
jobs, such as cutting wood for kitchen stoves and
mowing the grass before houses. In late May and
early June he picked strawberries in the fields. He
had time to loaf and he enjoyed loafing. Banker
White had given him a cast-off coat which was too
large for him, but his grandmother cut it down, and
he had also an overcoat, got at the same place, that
was lined with fur. The fur was worn away in spots,
but the coat was warm and in the winter Tom slept
in it. He thought his method of getting along good
enough and was happy and satisfied with the way
fife in Winesburg had turned out for him.
The most absurd little things made Tom Foster
happy. That, I suppose, was why people loved him.
In Hern's Grocery they would be roasting coffee on
Friday afternoon, preparatory to the Saturday rush
of trade, and the rich odor invaded lower Main
Street. Tom Foster appeared and sat on a box at the
rear of the store. For an hour he did not move but
sat perfectly still, filling his being with the spicy
odor that made him half drunk with happiness. "I
like it," he said gently. "It makes me think of things
far away, places and things like that."
One night Tom Foster got drunk. That came about
in a curious way. He never had been drunk before,
and indeed in all his fife had never taken a drink of
anything intoxicating, but he felt he needed to be
drunk that one time and so went and did it.
In Cincinnati, when he lived there, Tom had
found out many things, things about ugliness and
crime and lust. Indeed, he knew more of these
things than anyone else in Winesburg. The matter
of sex in particular had presented itself to him in a
quite horrible way and had made a deep impression
on his mind. He thought, after what he had seen of
the women standing before the squalid houses on
cold nights and the look he had seen in the eyes of
the men who stopped to talk to them, that he would
put sex altogether out of his own life. One of the
women of the neighborhood tempted him once and
he went into a room with her. He never forgot the
smell of the room nor the greedy look that came into
the eyes of the woman. It sickened him and in a
very terrible way left a scar on his soul. He had
always before thought of women as quite innocent
things, much like his grandmother, but after that
one experience in the room he dismissed women
from his mind. So gentle was his nature that he
could not hate anything and not being able to under-
stand he decided to forget.
And Tom did forget until he came to Winesburg.
After he had lived there for two years something
began to stir in him. On all sides he saw youth mak-
ing love and he was himself a youth. Before he
knew what had happened he was in love also. He
fell in love with Helen White, daughter of the man
for whom he had worked, and found himself think-
ing of her at night.
That was a problem for Tom and he settled it in
his own way. He let himself think of Helen White
whenever her figure came into his mind and only
concerned himself with the manner of his thoughts.
He had a fight, a quiet determined little fight of his
own, to keep his desires in the channel where he
thought they belonged, but on the whole he was
victorious.
And then came the spring night when he got
drunk. Tom was wild on that night. He was like an
innocent young buck of the forest that has eaten
of some maddening weed. The thing began, ran its
course, and was ended in one night, and you may
be sure that no one in Winesburg was any the worse
for Tom's outbreak.
In the first place, the night was one to make a
sensitive nature drunk. The trees along the resi-
dence streets of the town were all newly clothed in
soft green leaves, in the gardens behind the houses
men were puttering about in vegetable gardens, and
in the air there was a hush, a waiting kind of silence
very stirring to the blood.
Tom left his room on Duane Street just as the
young night began to make itself felt. First he
walked through the streets, going softly and quietly
along, thinking thoughts that he tried to put into
words. He said that Helen White was a flame danc-
ing in the air and that he was a little tree without
leaves standing out sharply against the sky. Then
he said that she was a wind, a strong terrible wind,
coming out of the darkness of a stormy sea and that
he was a boat left on the shore of the sea by a
fisherman.
That idea pleased the boy and he sauntered along
playing with it. He went into Main Street and sat
on the curbing before Wacker's tobacco store. For an
hour he lingered about listening to the talk of men,
but it did not interest him much and he slipped
away. Then he decided to get drunk and went into
Willy's saloon and bought a bottle of whiskey. Put-
ting the bottle into his pocket, he walked out of
town, wanting to be alone to think more thoughts
and to drink the whiskey.
Tom got drunk sitting on a bank of new grass
beside the road about a mile north of town. Before
him was a white road and at his back an apple or-
chard in full bloom. He took a drink out of the bottle
and then lay down on the grass. He thought of
mornings in Winesburg and of how the stones in
the graveled driveway by Banker White's house
were wet with dew and glistened in the morning
light. He thought of the nights in the barn when it
rained and he lay awake hearing the drumming of
the raindrops and smelling the warm smell of horses
and of hay. Then he thought of a storm that had
gone roaring through Winesburg several days before
and, his mind going back, he relived the night he
had spent on the train with his grandmother when
the two were coming from Cincinnati. Sharply he
remembered how strange it had seemed to sit qui-
etly in the coach and to feel the power of the engine
hurling the train along through the night.
Tom got drunk in a very short time. He kept tak-
ing drinks from the bottle as the thoughts visited
him and when his head began to reel got up and
walked along the road going away from Winesburg.
There was a bridge on the road that ran out of
Winesburg north to Lake Erie and the drunken boy
made his way along the road to the bridge. There
he sat down. He tried to drink again, but when he
had taken the cork out of the bottle he became ill
and put it quickly back. His head was rocking back
and forth and so he sat on the stone approach to
the bridge and sighed. His head seemed to be flying
about like a pinwheel and then projecting itself off
into space and his arms and legs flopped helplessly
about.
At eleven o'clock Tom got back into town. George
Willard found him wandering about and took him
into the Eagle printshop. Then he became afraid that
the drunken boy would make a mess on the floor
and helped him into the alleyway.
The reporter was confused by Tom Foster. The
drunken boy talked of Helen White and said he had
been with her on the shore of a sea and had made
love to her. George had seen Helen White walking
in the street with her father during the evening and
decided that Tom was out of his head. A sentiment
concerning Helen White that lurked in his own heart
flamed up and he became angry. "Now you quit
that," he said. "I won't let Helen White's name be
dragged into this. I won't let that happen." He
began shaking Tom's shoulder, trying to make him
understand. "You quit it," he said again.
and scrub the shop. The boy was ashamed, but he
was rather glad, too. "It is all right to be ashamed
and makes me understand new things," he said to
the grandmother, who didn't know what the boy
was talking about but loved him so much that it
didn't matter whether she understood or not.
For a year Tom Foster lived in the banker's stable
and then lost his place there. He didn't take very
good care of the horses and he was a constant
source of irritation to the banker's wife. She told him
to mow the lawn and he forgot. Then she sent him
to the store or to the post office and he did not come
back but joined a group of men and boys and spent
the whole afternoon with them, standing about, lis-
tening and occasionally, when addressed, saying a
few words. As in the city in the houses of prostitu-
tion and with the rowdy boys running through the
streets at night, so in Winesburg among its citizens
he had always the power to be a part of and yet
distinctly apart from the life about him.
After Tom lost his place at Banker White's he did
not live with his grandmother, although often in the
evening she came to visit him. He rented a room at
the rear of a little frame building belonging to old
Rufus Whiting. The building was on Duane Street,
just off Main Street, and had been used for years as
a law office by the old man, who had become too
feeble and forgetful for the practice of his profession
but did not realize his inefficiency. He liked Tom
and let him have the room for a dollar a month. In
the late afternoon when the lawyer had gone home
the boy had the place to himself and spent hours
lying on the floor by the stove and thinking of
things. In the evening the grandmother came and
sat in the lawyer's chair to smoke a pipe while Tom
remained silent, as he always, did in the presence of
everyone.
Often the old woman talked with great vigor.
Sometimes she was angry about some happening at
the banker's house and scolded away for hours. Out
of her own earnings she bought a mop and regularly
scrubbed the lawyer's office. Then when the place
was spotlessly clean and smelled clean she lighted
her clay pipe and she and Tom had a smoke to-
gether. "When you get ready to die then I will die
also," she said to the boy lying on the floor beside
her chair.
Tom Foster enjoyed life in Winesburg. He did odd
jobs, such as cutting wood for kitchen stoves and
mowing the grass before houses. In late May and
early June he picked strawberries in the fields. He
had time to loaf and he enjoyed loafing. Banker
White had given him a cast-off coat which was too
large for him, but his grandmother cut it down, and
he had also an overcoat, got at the same place, that
was lined with fur. The fur was worn away in spots,
but the coat was warm and in the winter Tom slept
in it. He thought his method of getting along good
enough and was happy and satisfied with the way
fife in Winesburg had turned out for him.
The most absurd little things made Tom Foster
happy. That, I suppose, was why people loved him.
In Hern's Grocery they would be roasting coffee on
Friday afternoon, preparatory to the Saturday rush
of trade, and the rich odor invaded lower Main
Street. Tom Foster appeared and sat on a box at the
rear of the store. For an hour he did not move but
sat perfectly still, filling his being with the spicy
odor that made him half drunk with happiness. "I
like it," he said gently. "It makes me think of things
far away, places and things like that."
One night Tom Foster got drunk. That came about
in a curious way. He never had been drunk before,
and indeed in all his fife had never taken a drink of
anything intoxicating, but he felt he needed to be
drunk that one time and so went and did it.
In Cincinnati, when he lived there, Tom had
found out many things, things about ugliness and
crime and lust. Indeed, he knew more of these
things than anyone else in Winesburg. The matter
of sex in particular had presented itself to him in a
quite horrible way and had made a deep impression
on his mind. He thought, after what he had seen of
the women standing before the squalid houses on
cold nights and the look he had seen in the eyes of
the men who stopped to talk to them, that he would
put sex altogether out of his own life. One of the
women of the neighborhood tempted him once and
he went into a room with her. He never forgot the
smell of the room nor the greedy look that came into
the eyes of the woman. It sickened him and in a
very terrible way left a scar on his soul. He had
always before thought of women as quite innocent
things, much like his grandmother, but after that
one experience in the room he dismissed women
from his mind. So gentle was his nature that he
could not hate anything and not being able to under-
stand he decided to forget.
And Tom did forget until he came to Winesburg.
After he had lived there for two years something
began to stir in him. On all sides he saw youth mak-
ing love and he was himself a youth. Before he
knew what had happened he was in love also. He
fell in love with Helen White, daughter of the man
for whom he had worked, and found himself think-
ing of her at night.
That was a problem for Tom and he settled it in
his own way. He let himself think of Helen White
whenever her figure came into his mind and only
concerned himself with the manner of his thoughts.
He had a fight, a quiet determined little fight of his
own, to keep his desires in the channel where he
thought they belonged, but on the whole he was
victorious.
And then came the spring night when he got
drunk. Tom was wild on that night. He was like an
innocent young buck of the forest that has eaten
of some maddening weed. The thing began, ran its
course, and was ended in one night, and you may
be sure that no one in Winesburg was any the worse
for Tom's outbreak.
In the first place, the night was one to make a
sensitive nature drunk. The trees along the resi-
dence streets of the town were all newly clothed in
soft green leaves, in the gardens behind the houses
men were puttering about in vegetable gardens, and
in the air there was a hush, a waiting kind of silence
very stirring to the blood.
Tom left his room on Duane Street just as the
young night began to make itself felt. First he
walked through the streets, going softly and quietly
along, thinking thoughts that he tried to put into
words. He said that Helen White was a flame danc-
ing in the air and that he was a little tree without
leaves standing out sharply against the sky. Then
he said that she was a wind, a strong terrible wind,
coming out of the darkness of a stormy sea and that
he was a boat left on the shore of the sea by a
fisherman.
That idea pleased the boy and he sauntered along
playing with it. He went into Main Street and sat
on the curbing before Wacker's tobacco store. For an
hour he lingered about listening to the talk of men,
but it did not interest him much and he slipped
away. Then he decided to get drunk and went into
Willy's saloon and bought a bottle of whiskey. Put-
ting the bottle into his pocket, he walked out of
town, wanting to be alone to think more thoughts
and to drink the whiskey.
Tom got drunk sitting on a bank of new grass
beside the road about a mile north of town. Before
him was a white road and at his back an apple or-
chard in full bloom. He took a drink out of the bottle
and then lay down on the grass. He thought of
mornings in Winesburg and of how the stones in
the graveled driveway by Banker White's house
were wet with dew and glistened in the morning
light. He thought of the nights in the barn when it
rained and he lay awake hearing the drumming of
the raindrops and smelling the warm smell of horses
and of hay. Then he thought of a storm that had
gone roaring through Winesburg several days before
and, his mind going back, he relived the night he
had spent on the train with his grandmother when
the two were coming from Cincinnati. Sharply he
remembered how strange it had seemed to sit qui-
etly in the coach and to feel the power of the engine
hurling the train along through the night.
Tom got drunk in a very short time. He kept tak-
ing drinks from the bottle as the thoughts visited
him and when his head began to reel got up and
walked along the road going away from Winesburg.
There was a bridge on the road that ran out of
Winesburg north to Lake Erie and the drunken boy
made his way along the road to the bridge. There
he sat down. He tried to drink again, but when he
had taken the cork out of the bottle he became ill
and put it quickly back. His head was rocking back
and forth and so he sat on the stone approach to
the bridge and sighed. His head seemed to be flying
about like a pinwheel and then projecting itself off
into space and his arms and legs flopped helplessly
about.
At eleven o'clock Tom got back into town. George
Willard found him wandering about and took him
into the Eagle printshop. Then he became afraid that
the drunken boy would make a mess on the floor
and helped him into the alleyway.
The reporter was confused by Tom Foster. The
drunken boy talked of Helen White and said he had
been with her on the shore of a sea and had made
love to her. George had seen Helen White walking
in the street with her father during the evening and
decided that Tom was out of his head. A sentiment
concerning Helen White that lurked in his own heart
flamed up and he became angry. "Now you quit
that," he said. "I won't let Helen White's name be
dragged into this. I won't let that happen." He
began shaking Tom's shoulder, trying to make him
understand. "You quit it," he said again.
- ashamed [ə´ʃeimd]
a.惭愧；不好意思 (初中英语单词) - grandmother [´græn,mʌðə] n.(外)祖母 (初中英语单词)
- standing [´stændiŋ] n.持续 a.直立的 (初中英语单词)
- occasionally [ə´keiʒənəli] ad.偶然地；非经常地 (初中英语单词)
- running [´rʌniŋ] a.奔跑的；流动的 (初中英语单词)
- banker [´bæŋkə] n.银行家 (初中英语单词)
- lawyer [´lɔ:jə] n.律师；法学家 (初中英语单词)
- absurd [əb´sə:d] a.荒谬的，可笑的 (初中英语单词)
- gently [´dʒentli] ad.温和地；静静地 (初中英语单词)
- horrible [´hɔrəbəl] a.可怕的；恐怖的 (初中英语单词)
- altogether [,ɔ:ltə´geðə] ad.完全；总而言之 (初中英语单词)
- neighborhood [´neibəhud] n.邻居；邻近；附近 (初中英语单词)
- greedy [´gri:di] a.贪婪的；馋的 (初中英语单词)
- channel [´tʃænəl] n.海峡；航道；途径 (初中英语单词)
- vegetable [´vedʒtəbəl] a.&n.蔬菜(的)；植物 (初中英语单词)
- waiting [´weitiŋ] n.等候；伺候 (初中英语单词)
- softly [´sɔftli] ad.软化地；柔和地 (初中英语单词)
- sharply [´ʃɑ:pli] ad.锋利地；剧烈地 (初中英语单词)
- tobacco [tə´bækəu] n.烟草(叶)；卷烟 (初中英语单词)
- drunken [´drʌŋkən] a.喝醉的；常醉的 (初中英语单词)
- offering [´ɔfəriŋ] n.提供；礼物；捐献 (高中英语单词)
- foster [´fɔstə] vt.促进；推动；鼓励 (高中英语单词)
- saying [´seiŋ, ´sei-iŋ] n.言语；言论；格言 (高中英语单词)
- overcoat [´əuvəkəut] n.大衣 (高中英语单词)
- grocery [´grəusəri] n.食品杂货店 (高中英语单词)
- perfectly [´pə:fiktli] ad.理想地；完美地 (高中英语单词)
- cincinnati [,sisin´næti] n.辛辛那提 (高中英语单词)
- decided [di´saidid] a.明显的；决定的 (高中英语单词)
- saloon [sə´lu:n] n.大厅；餐车 (高中英语单词)
- hearing [´hiəriŋ] n.听力；听证会；审讯 (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)
- happening [´hæpəniŋ] n.事件，偶然发生的事 (英语四级单词)
- stirring [´stə:riŋ] a.活跃的；热闹的 (英语四级单词)
- whiskey [´wiski] n.威士忌酒 =whisky (英语四级单词)
- bridge [bridʒ] n.桥(梁)；鼻梁；桥牌 (英语四级单词)
- trying [´traiiŋ] a.难堪的；费劲的 (英语四级单词)
- irritation [,iri´teiʃən] n.(被)激怒；疼痛处 (英语六级单词)
- earnings [´ə:niŋz] n.收益；报酬；获得 (英语六级单词)
- preparatory [pri´pærətəri] a.预备的 n.预备学校 (英语六级单词)
- wanting [´wɔntiŋ, wɑ:n-] a.短缺的；不足的 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
章节正文
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