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Moon-Face and Other Stories-Part2_JACK LONDON(1876-1916)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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contempt for wandering players and musical fellows. But see the beauty of it!



the burn and the brand! The night-scavenger, the pariah, the miserable, the

despised, the man without caste! And in its next incarnation, consistently and



logically, it attaches itself to the American outcast, namely, the tramp.

Then, as others have mutilated its sense, the tramp mutilates its form, and



ho-boy becomes exultantly hobo. Wherefore, the large stone and brick cells,

lined with double and triple-tiered bunks, in which the Law is wont to



incarcerate him, he calls the Hobo. Interesting, isn't it?"

And I sat back and marvelled secretly at this encyclopaedic-minded man, this



Leith Clay-Randolph, this common tramp who made himself at home in my den,

charmed such friends as gathered at my small table, outshone me with his



brilliance and his manners, spent my spending money, smoked my best cigars,

and selected from my ties and studs with a cultivated and discriminating eye.



He absently walked over to the shelves and looked into Loria's "Economic

Foundation of Society."



"I like to talk with you," he remarked. "You are not indifferently schooled.

You've read the books, and your economic interpretation of history, as you



choose to call it" (this with a sneer), "eminently fits you for an

intellectualoutlook on life. But your sociologic judgments are vitiated by



your lack of practical knowledge. Now I, who know the books, pardon me,

somewhat better than you, know life, too. I have lived it, naked, taken it up



in both my hands and looked at it, and tasted it, the flesh and the blood of

it, and, being purely an intellectual, I have been biased by neither passion



nor prejudice. All of which is necessary for clear concepts, and all of which

you lack. Ah! a really clever passage. Listen!"



And he read aloud to me in his remarkable style, paralleling the text with a

running criticism and commentary, lucidly wording involved and lumbering



periods, casting side and cross lights upon the subject, introducing points

the author had blundered past and objections he had ignored, catching up lost



ends, flinging a contrast into a paradox and reducing it to a coherent and

succinctly stated truth--in short, flashing his luminousgenius in a blaze of



fire over pages erstwhile dull and heavy and lifeless.

It is long since that Leith Clay-Randolph (note the hyphenated surname)



knocked at the back door of Idlewild and melted the heart of Gunda. Now Gunda

was cold as her Norway hills, though in her least frigid moods she was capable



of permitting especially nice-looking tramps to sit on the back stoop and

devour lone crusts and forlorn and forsaken chops. But that a tatterdemalion



out of the night should invade the sanctity of her kitchen-kingdom and delay

dinner while she set a place for him in the warmest corner, was a matter of



such moment that the Sunflower went to see. Ah, the Sunflower, of the soft

heart and swift sympathy! Leith Clay-Randolph threw his glamour over her for



fifteen long minutes, whilst I brooded with my cigar, and then she fluttered

back with vague words and the suggestion of a cast-off suit I would never



miss.

"Surely I shall never miss it," I said, and I had in mind the dark gray suit



with the pockets draggled from the freightage of many books--books that had

spoiled more than one day's fishing sport.



"I should advise you, however," I added, "to mend the pockets first."

But the Sunflower's face clouded. "N--o," she said, "the black one."



"The black one!" This explosively, incredulously. "I wear it quite often. I--I

intended wearing it to-night."



"You have two better ones, and you know I never liked it, dear," the Sunflower

hurried on. "Besides, it's shiny--"



"Shiny!"

"It--it soon will be, which is just the same, and the man is really estimable.



He is nice and refined, and I am sure he--"

"Has seen better days."



"Yes, and the weather is raw and beastly, and his clothes are threadbare. And

you have many suits--"



"Five," I corrected, "counting in the dark gray fishingoutfit with the

draggled pockets."



"And he has none, no home, nothing--"

"Not even a Sunflower,"--putting my arm around her,--"wherefore he is



deserving of all things. Give him the black suit, dear--nay, the best one, the

very best one. Under high heaven for such lack there must be compensation!"



"You ARE a dear!" And the Sunflower moved to the door and looked back

alluringly. "You are a PERFECT dear."



And this after seven years, I marvelled, till she was back again, timid and

apologetic.



"I--I gave him one of your white shirts. He wore a cheap horrid cotton thing,




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