酷兔英语
    当前位置:
  1. 首页
  2. 文章
  3. 娱乐英语
  4. 原版小说
  5. 正文

A Cathedral Courtship-Part3_Kate Douglas Wiggin(1856-1923)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

0 收藏 0 分享 0 赞

章节正文
文章总共2页


without feeling that the forest overpowered the mind of the builder,

and that his chisel, his saw and plane, still reproduced its ferns,



its spikes of flowers, its locust, elm, pine, and spruce."

Memoranda: Lincoln choir is an example of Early English or First



Pointed, which can generally be told from something else by bold

projecting buttresses and dog-tooth moulding round the abacusses.



(The plural is my own, and it does not look right.) Lincoln Castle

was the scene of many prolonged sieges, and was once taken by Oliver



Cromwell.

HE



YORK, June 24

The Black Swan.



Kitty Schuyler is the concentrated essence of feminine witchery.

Intuition strong, logic weak, and the two qualities so balanced as



to produce an indefinable charm; will-power large, but docility

equal, if a man is clever enough to know how to manage her;



knowledge of facts absolutely nil, but she is exquisitely

intelligent in spite of it. She has a way of evading, escaping,



eluding, and then gives you an intoxicating hint of sudden and

complete surrender. She is divinely innocent, but roguishness saves



her from insipidity. Her looks? She looks as you would imagine a

person might look who possessed these graces; and she is worth



looking at, though every time I do it I have a rush of love to the

head. When you find a girl who combines all the qualities you have



imagined in the ideal, and who has added a dozen or two on her own

account, merely to distract you past all hope, why stand up and try



to resist her charm? Down on your knees like a man, say I!

* * *



I'm getting to adore aunt Celia. I didn't care for her at first,

but she is so deliciously blind! Anything more exquisitely



unserviceable as a chaperon I can't imagine. Absorbed in antiquity,

she ignores the babble of contemporaneous lovers. That any man



could look at Kitty when he could look at a cathedral passes her

comprehension. I do not presume too greatly on her absent-



mindedness, however, lest she should turn unexpectedly and rend me.

I always remember that inscription on the backs of the little



mechanical French toys,--"Quoiqu'elle soit tres solidement montee,

il faut ne pas brutaliser la machine."



And so my courtship progresses under aunt Celia's very nose. I say

"progresses," but it is impossible to speak with any certainty of



courting, for the essence of that gentle craft is hope, rooted in

labor and trained by love.



I set out to propose to her during service this afternoon by writing

my feelings on the fly-leaf of the hymn-book, or something like



that; but I knew that aunt Celia would never forgive such blasphemy,

and I thought that Kitty herself might consider it wicked. Besides,



if she should chance to accept me, there was nothing I could do, in

a cathedral, to relieve my feelings. No; if she ever accepts me, I



wish it to be in a large, vacant spot of the universe, peopled by

two only, and those two so indistinguishably blended, as it were,



that they would appear as one to the casualobserver. So I

practiced repression, though the wall of my reserve is worn to the



thinness of thread-paper, and I tried to keep my mind on the droning

minor canon, and not to look at her, "for that way madness lies."



SHE

YORK, June 26



High Petersgate Street.

My taste is so bad! I just begin to realize it, and I am feeling my



"growing pains," like Gwendolen in "Daniel Deronda." I admired the

stained glass in the Lincoln Cathedral, especially the Nuremberg



window. I thought Mr. Copley looked pained, but he said nothing.

When I went to my room, I looked in a book and found that all the



glass in that cathedral is very modern and very bad, and the

Nuremberg window is the worst of all. Aunt Celia says she hopes



that it will be a warning to me to read before I speak; but Mr.

Copley says no, that the world would lose more in one way than it



would gain in the other. I tried my quotations this morning, and

stuck fast in the middle of the first.



Mr. Copley says that aunt Celia has been feeing the vergers

altogether too much, and I wrote a song about it called "The Ballad



of the Vergers and the Foolish Virgin," which I sang to my guitar.

Mr. Copley says it is cleverer than anything he ever did with his



pencil, but of course he says that only to be agreeable.

We all went to an evening service last night. Coming home, aunt






文章总共2页
文章标签:名著  

章节正文
Copyright © 2023 Qeto All rights reserved.
商务合作 | 联系我们 | 关于我们 | 版权声明 | 隐私条款 | 如果智培

京ICP备05059198号-1 京公网安备 11011202003401号