章节正文
Nor ever could.
And those of us who live herein
Are most as dead as seraphim
Though not as good.
My guardian angel is asleep
At least he doth no vigil keep
But far doth roam.
Then give me back my lonely farm
Where none alive did wish me harm,
Dear childhood home!
Dear Mother,--I am thrilling with unhappyness
this morning. I got that out of Cora The
Doctor's Wife whose husband's mother was very
cross and unfealing to her like Aunt M. to me. I
wish Hannah had come instead of me for it was
Hannah that was wanted and she is better than
I am and does not answer back so quick. Are
there any peaces of my buff calico. Aunt J. wants
enough to make a new waste button behind so I
wont look so outlandish. The stiles are quite pretty
in Riverboro and those at Meeting quite ellergant
more so than in Temperance.
This town is stilish, gay and fair,
And full of wellthy riches rare,
But I would pillow on my arm
The thought of my sweet Brookside Farm.
School is pretty good. The Teacher can answer
more questions than the Temperance one but not so
many as I can ask. I am smarter than all the girls
but one but not so smart as two boys. Emma Jane
can add and subtract in her head like a streek of
lightning and knows the speling book right through
but has no thoughts of any kind. She is in the
Third Reader but does not like stories in books. I
am in the Sixth Reader but just because I cannot
say the seven multiplication Table Miss Dearborn
threttens to put me in the baby primer class with
Elijah and Elisha Simpson little twins.
Sore is my heart and bent my stubborn pride,
With Lijah and with Lisha am I tied,
My soul recoyles like Cora Doctor's Wife,
Like her I feer I cannot bare this life.
I am going to try for the speling prize but fear
I cannot get it. I would not care but wrong speling
looks dreadful in poetry. Last Sunday when I
found seraphim in the dictionary I was ashamed I
had made it serrafim but seraphim is not a word you
can guess at like another long one outlandish in this
letter which spells itself. Miss Dearborn says use
the words you CAN spell and if you cant spell seraphim
make angel do but angels are not just the same
as seraphims. Seraphims are brighter whiter and
have bigger wings and I think are older and longer
dead than angels which are just freshly dead and
after a long time in heaven around the great white
throne grow to be seraphims.
I sew on brown gingham dresses every afternoon
when Emma Jane and the Simpsons are playing
house or running on the Logs when their mothers
do not know it. Their mothers are afraid they will
drown and Aunt M. is afraid I will wet my clothes
so will not let me either. I can play from half past
four to supper and after supper a little bit and Saturday
afternoons. I am glad our cow has a calf and it
is spotted. It is going to be a good year for apples
and hay so you and John will be glad and we can
pay a little more morgage. Miss Dearborn asked us
what is the object of edducation and I said the object
of mine was to help pay off the morgage. She told
Aunt M. and I had to sew extra for punishment because
she says a morgage is disgrace like stealing
or smallpox and it will be all over town that we have
one on our farm. Emma Jane is not morgaged nor
Richard Carter nor Dr. Winship but the Simpsons
are.
Rise my soul, strain every nerve,
Thy morgage to remove,
Gain thy mother's heartfelt thanks
Thy family's grateful love.
Pronounce family QUICK or it won't sound right
Your loving little friend
Rebecca
Dear John,--You remember when we tide the
new dog in the barn how he bit the rope and
howled I am just like him only the brick house is
the barn and I can not bite Aunt M. because I
must be grateful and edducation is going to be the
making of me and help you pay off the morgage
when we grow up. Your loving
Becky.
V
WISDOM'S WAYS
The day of Rebecca's arrival had been
Friday, and on the Monday following she
began her education at the school which
was in Riverboro Centre, about a mile distant.
Miss Sawyer borrowed a neighbor's horse and
wagon and drove her to the schoolhouse, interviewing
the teacher, Miss Dearborn, arranging for books,
and generally starting the child on the path that
was to lead to boundless knowledge. Miss Dearborn,
it may be said in passing, had had no special
preparation in the art of teaching. It came to her
naturally, so her family said, and perhaps for this
reason she, like Tom Tulliver's clergyman tutor,
"set about it with that uniformity of method and
independence of circumstances which distinguish the
actions of animals understood to be under the
immediate teaching of Nature." You remember the
beaver which a naturalist tells us "busied himself
as earnestly in constructing a dam in a room up
three pair of stairs in London as if he had been laying
his foundation in a lake in Upper Canada. It
was his function to build, the absence of water or of
possible progeny was an accident for which he was
not accountable." In the same manner did Miss
Dearborn lay what she fondly imagined to be
foundations in the infant mind.
Rebecca walked to school after the first morning.
She loved this part of the day's programme. When
the dew was not too heavy and the weather was fair
there was a short cut through the woods. She turned
off the main road, crept through uncle Josh Woodman's
bars, waved away Mrs. Carter's cows, trod the
short grass of the pasture, with its well-worn path
running through gardens of buttercups and white-
weed, and groves of ivory leaves and sweet fern.
She descended a little hill, jumped from stone to
stone across a woodland brook, startling the drowsy
frogs, who were always winking and blinking in the
morning sun. Then came the "woodsy bit," with
her feet pressing the slipperycarpet of brown pine
needles; the "woodsy bit" so full of dewy morning,
surprises,--fungous growths of brilliant orange and
crimson springing up around the stumps of dead
trees, beautiful things born in a single night; and
now and then the miracle of a little clump of waxen
Indian pipes, seen just quickly enough to be saved
from her careless tread. Then she climbed a stile,
went through a grassymeadow, slid under another
pair of bars, and came out into the road again. having
gained nearly half a mile.
How delicious it all was! Rebecca clasped her
Quackenbos's Grammar and Greenleaf's Arithmetic
with a joyful sense of knowing her lessons. Her
dinner pail swung from her right hand, and she
had a blissful consciousness of the two soda biscuits
spread with butter and syrup, the baked cup-custard,
the doughnut, and the square of hard gingerbread.
Sometimes she said whatever "piece" she was going
to speak on the next Friday afternoon.
"A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers,
There was lack of woman's nursing, there was dearth of
woman's tears."
How she loved the swing and the sentiment of it!
How her young voice quivered whenever she came to
the refrain:--
"But we'll meet no more at Bingen, dear Bingen on the Rhine."
It always sounded beautiful in her ears, as she
sent her tearful little treble into the clear morning
air. Another early favorite (for we must remember
that Rebecca's only knowledge of the great world
of poetry consisted of the selections in vogue in
school readers) was:--
"Woodman, spare that tree!
Touch not a single bough!
In youth it sheltered me,
And I'll protect it now."
When Emma Jane Perkins walked through the
"short cut" with her, the two children used to render
this with appropriatedramatic action. Emma
Jane always chose to be the woodman because she
had nothing to do but raise on high an imaginary
axe. On the one occasion when she essayed the
part of the tree's romanticprotector, she represented
herself as feeling "so awful foolish" that she
refused to undertake it again, much to the secret
delight of Rebecca, who found the woodman's role
much too tame for her vaulting ambition. She
reveled in the impassioned appeal of the poet, and
implored the ruthlesswoodman to be as brutal as
possible with the axe, so that she might properly
put greater spirit into her lines. One morning, feeling
more frisky than usual, she fell upon her knees
and wept in the woodman's petticoat. Curiously
enough, her sense of proportion rejected this as
soon as it was done.
"That wasn't right, it was silly, Emma Jane; but
I'll tell you where it might come in--in Give me
Three Grains of Corn. You be the mother, and
I'll be the famishing Irish child. For pity's sake
put the axe down; you are not the woodman any
longer!"
"What'll I do with my hands, then?" asked
Emma Jane.
"Whatever you like," Rebecca answered wearily;
"you're just a mother--that's all. What does
YOUR mother do with her hands? Now here goes!
"`Give me three grains of corn, mother,
Only three grains of corn,
'T will keep the little life I have
And those of us who live herein
Are most as dead as seraphim
Though not as good.
My guardian angel is asleep
At least he doth no vigil keep
But far doth roam.
Then give me back my lonely farm
Where none alive did wish me harm,
Dear childhood home!
Dear Mother,--I am thrilling with unhappyness
this morning. I got that out of Cora The
Doctor's Wife whose husband's mother was very
cross and unfealing to her like Aunt M. to me. I
wish Hannah had come instead of me for it was
Hannah that was wanted and she is better than
I am and does not answer back so quick. Are
there any peaces of my buff calico. Aunt J. wants
enough to make a new waste button behind so I
wont look so outlandish. The stiles are quite pretty
in Riverboro and those at Meeting quite ellergant
more so than in Temperance.
This town is stilish, gay and fair,
And full of wellthy riches rare,
But I would pillow on my arm
The thought of my sweet Brookside Farm.
School is pretty good. The Teacher can answer
more questions than the Temperance one but not so
many as I can ask. I am smarter than all the girls
but one but not so smart as two boys. Emma Jane
can add and subtract in her head like a streek of
lightning and knows the speling book right through
but has no thoughts of any kind. She is in the
Third Reader but does not like stories in books. I
am in the Sixth Reader but just because I cannot
say the seven multiplication Table Miss Dearborn
threttens to put me in the baby primer class with
Elijah and Elisha Simpson little twins.
Sore is my heart and bent my stubborn pride,
With Lijah and with Lisha am I tied,
My soul recoyles like Cora Doctor's Wife,
Like her I feer I cannot bare this life.
I am going to try for the speling prize but fear
I cannot get it. I would not care but wrong speling
looks dreadful in poetry. Last Sunday when I
found seraphim in the dictionary I was ashamed I
had made it serrafim but seraphim is not a word you
can guess at like another long one outlandish in this
letter which spells itself. Miss Dearborn says use
the words you CAN spell and if you cant spell seraphim
make angel do but angels are not just the same
as seraphims. Seraphims are brighter whiter and
have bigger wings and I think are older and longer
dead than angels which are just freshly dead and
after a long time in heaven around the great white
throne grow to be seraphims.
I sew on brown gingham dresses every afternoon
when Emma Jane and the Simpsons are playing
house or running on the Logs when their mothers
do not know it. Their mothers are afraid they will
drown and Aunt M. is afraid I will wet my clothes
so will not let me either. I can play from half past
four to supper and after supper a little bit and Saturday
afternoons. I am glad our cow has a calf and it
is spotted. It is going to be a good year for apples
and hay so you and John will be glad and we can
pay a little more morgage. Miss Dearborn asked us
what is the object of edducation and I said the object
of mine was to help pay off the morgage. She told
Aunt M. and I had to sew extra for punishment because
she says a morgage is disgrace like stealing
or smallpox and it will be all over town that we have
one on our farm. Emma Jane is not morgaged nor
Richard Carter nor Dr. Winship but the Simpsons
are.
Rise my soul, strain every nerve,
Thy morgage to remove,
Gain thy mother's heartfelt thanks
Thy family's grateful love.
Pronounce family QUICK or it won't sound right
Your loving little friend
Rebecca
Dear John,--You remember when we tide the
new dog in the barn how he bit the rope and
howled I am just like him only the brick house is
the barn and I can not bite Aunt M. because I
must be grateful and edducation is going to be the
making of me and help you pay off the morgage
when we grow up. Your loving
Becky.
V
WISDOM'S WAYS
The day of Rebecca's arrival had been
Friday, and on the Monday following she
began her education at the school which
was in Riverboro Centre, about a mile distant.
Miss Sawyer borrowed a neighbor's horse and
wagon and drove her to the schoolhouse, interviewing
the teacher, Miss Dearborn, arranging for books,
and generally starting the child on the path that
was to lead to boundless knowledge. Miss Dearborn,
it may be said in passing, had had no special
preparation in the art of teaching. It came to her
naturally, so her family said, and perhaps for this
reason she, like Tom Tulliver's clergyman tutor,
"set about it with that uniformity of method and
independence of circumstances which distinguish the
actions of animals understood to be under the
immediate teaching of Nature." You remember the
beaver which a naturalist tells us "busied himself
as earnestly in constructing a dam in a room up
three pair of stairs in London as if he had been laying
his foundation in a lake in Upper Canada. It
was his function to build, the absence of water or of
possible progeny was an accident for which he was
not accountable." In the same manner did Miss
Dearborn lay what she fondly imagined to be
foundations in the infant mind.
Rebecca walked to school after the first morning.
She loved this part of the day's programme. When
the dew was not too heavy and the weather was fair
there was a short cut through the woods. She turned
off the main road, crept through uncle Josh Woodman's
bars, waved away Mrs. Carter's cows, trod the
short grass of the pasture, with its well-worn path
running through gardens of buttercups and white-
weed, and groves of ivory leaves and sweet fern.
She descended a little hill, jumped from stone to
stone across a woodland brook, startling the drowsy
frogs, who were always winking and blinking in the
morning sun. Then came the "woodsy bit," with
her feet pressing the slipperycarpet of brown pine
needles; the "woodsy bit" so full of dewy morning,
surprises,--fungous growths of brilliant orange and
crimson springing up around the stumps of dead
trees, beautiful things born in a single night; and
now and then the miracle of a little clump of waxen
Indian pipes, seen just quickly enough to be saved
from her careless tread. Then she climbed a stile,
went through a grassymeadow, slid under another
pair of bars, and came out into the road again. having
gained nearly half a mile.
How delicious it all was! Rebecca clasped her
Quackenbos's Grammar and Greenleaf's Arithmetic
with a joyful sense of knowing her lessons. Her
dinner pail swung from her right hand, and she
had a blissful consciousness of the two soda biscuits
spread with butter and syrup, the baked cup-custard,
the doughnut, and the square of hard gingerbread.
Sometimes she said whatever "piece" she was going
to speak on the next Friday afternoon.
"A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers,
There was lack of woman's nursing, there was dearth of
woman's tears."
How she loved the swing and the sentiment of it!
How her young voice quivered whenever she came to
the refrain:--
"But we'll meet no more at Bingen, dear Bingen on the Rhine."
It always sounded beautiful in her ears, as she
sent her tearful little treble into the clear morning
air. Another early favorite (for we must remember
that Rebecca's only knowledge of the great world
of poetry consisted of the selections in vogue in
school readers) was:--
"Woodman, spare that tree!
Touch not a single bough!
In youth it sheltered me,
And I'll protect it now."
When Emma Jane Perkins walked through the
"short cut" with her, the two children used to render
this with appropriatedramatic action. Emma
Jane always chose to be the woodman because she
had nothing to do but raise on high an imaginary
axe. On the one occasion when she essayed the
part of the tree's romanticprotector, she represented
herself as feeling "so awful foolish" that she
refused to undertake it again, much to the secret
delight of Rebecca, who found the woodman's role
much too tame for her vaulting ambition. She
reveled in the impassioned appeal of the poet, and
implored the ruthlesswoodman to be as brutal as
possible with the axe, so that she might properly
put greater spirit into her lines. One morning, feeling
more frisky than usual, she fell upon her knees
and wept in the woodman's petticoat. Curiously
enough, her sense of proportion rejected this as
soon as it was done.
"That wasn't right, it was silly, Emma Jane; but
I'll tell you where it might come in--in Give me
Three Grains of Corn. You be the mother, and
I'll be the famishing Irish child. For pity's sake
put the axe down; you are not the woodman any
longer!"
"What'll I do with my hands, then?" asked
Emma Jane.
"Whatever you like," Rebecca answered wearily;
"you're just a mother--that's all. What does
YOUR mother do with her hands? Now here goes!
"`Give me three grains of corn, mother,
Only three grains of corn,
'T will keep the little life I have
- lonely [´ləunli]
a.孤独的；无人烟的 (初中英语单词) - childhood [´tʃaildhud] n.幼年(时代)；早期 (初中英语单词)
- button [´bʌtn] n.钮扣 vt.扣上(扣子) (初中英语单词)
- riches [´ritʃiz] n.房地产；丰富 (初中英语单词)
- dreadful [´dredful] a.可怕的；讨厌的 (初中英语单词)
- poetry [´pəuitri] n.诗；诗意 (初中英语单词)
- ashamed [ə´ʃeimd] a.惭愧；不好意思 (初中英语单词)
- running [´rʌniŋ] a.奔跑的；流动的 (初中英语单词)
- punishment [´pʌniʃmənt] n.罚，刑罚 (初中英语单词)
- disgrace [dis´greis] n.耻辱 vt.玷辱；贬黜 (初中英语单词)
- grateful [´greitful] a.感谢的；令人愉快的 (初中英语单词)
- arrival [ə´raivəl] n.到达；到达的人(物) (初中英语单词)
- schoolhouse [´sku:lhaus] n.校舍 (初中英语单词)
- distinguish [di´stiŋgwiʃ] v.区分；识别；立功 (初中英语单词)
- foundation [faun´deiʃən] n.建立；基金；地基 (初中英语单词)
- function [´fʌŋkʃən] n.机能；职责 vi.活动 (初中英语单词)
- absence [´æbsəns] n.不在，缺席；缺乏 (初中英语单词)
- infant [´infənt] n.&a.婴(幼)儿 (初中英语单词)
- pasture [´pɑ:stʃə] n.牧场；放牧 v.吃(草) (初中英语单词)
- carpet [´kɑ:pit] n.地毯 vt.铺地毯 (初中英语单词)
- brilliant [´briliənt] a.灿烂的；杰出的 (初中英语单词)
- miracle [´mirəkl] n.奇迹；令人惊奇的 (初中英语单词)
- careless [´keəlis] a.粗心的；草率的 (初中英语单词)
- meadow [´medəu] n.草地；牧场 (初中英语单词)
- delicious [di´liʃəs] a.美味的，可口的 (初中英语单词)
- knowing [´nəuiŋ] a.会意的，心照不宣的 (初中英语单词)
- whatever [wɔt´evə] pron.&a.无论什么 (初中英语单词)
- sentiment [´sentimənt] n.情绪；多愁善感 (初中英语单词)
- whenever [wen´evə] conj.&ad.无论何时 (初中英语单词)
- dramatic [drə´mætik] a.戏剧的；戏剧般的 (初中英语单词)
- romantic [rəu´mæntik] a.传奇(式)的；浪漫的 (初中英语单词)
- undertake [,ʌndə´teik] vt.从事；承担；担保 (初中英语单词)
- ambition [æm´biʃən] n.雄心，野心；企图 (初中英语单词)
- proportion [prə´pɔ:ʃən] n.比率 vt.使成比例 (初中英语单词)
- guardian [´gɑ:diən] n.监护人；保护人 (高中英语单词)
- stubborn [´stʌbən] a.顽固的；坚持的 (高中英语单词)
- strain [strein] vt.拉紧 vi.拖 n.张力 (高中英语单词)
- loving [´lʌviŋ] a.爱的，有爱情的 (高中英语单词)
- clergyman [´klə:dʒimən] n.牧师；教士 (高中英语单词)
- earnestly [´ə:nistli] ad.认真地；急切地 (高中英语单词)
- woodland [´wudlənd] n.树林，林地 (高中英语单词)
- startling [´stɑ:tliŋ] a.惊人的 (高中英语单词)
- slippery [´slipəri] a.滑的；不稳固的 (高中英语单词)
- joyful [´dʒɔifəl] a.高兴的，充满快乐的 (高中英语单词)
- consciousness [´kɔnʃəsnis] n.意识；觉悟；知觉 (高中英语单词)
- legion [´li:dʒən] n.军团；大批 (高中英语单词)
- appropriate [ə´prəupri-it, ə´prəuprieit] a.适宜的 vt.私占；拨给 (高中英语单词)
- appeal [ə´pi:l] vi.&n.请求；呼吁；上诉 (高中英语单词)
- calico [´kælikəu] n.白棉布；印花布 (英语四级单词)
- temperance [´tempərəns] n.节制；节欲；戒酒 (英语四级单词)
- freshly [´freʃli] ad.新近，刚才 (英语四级单词)
- boundless [´baundlis] a.无边无际的 (英语四级单词)
- naturalist [´nætʃərəlist] n.自然主义者 (英语四级单词)
- fondly [´fɔndli] ad.喜爱地；愚蠢地 (英语四级单词)
- grassy [´grɑ:si] a.多草的；青草味的 (英语四级单词)
- protector [prə´tektə] n.保护者；防御者 (英语四级单词)
- brutal [´bru:tl] a.兽性的；残暴的 (英语四级单词)
- petticoat [´petikəut] n.裙子 a.女性的 (英语四级单词)
- subtract [səb´trækt] vt.减去，扣除 (英语六级单词)
- multiplication [,mʌltipli´keiʃən] n.增多；倍增；繁殖 (英语六级单词)
- gingham [´giŋəm] n.方格花布，条格平布 (英语六级单词)
- smallpox [´smɔ:lpɔks, -pɑks] n.天花 (英语六级单词)
- uniformity [,ju:ni´fɔ:miti] n.同样；一致(性) (英语六级单词)
- doughnut [´dəunʌt] n.炸面圈 (英语六级单词)
- dearth [də:θ] n.缺少，缺乏；饥荒 (英语六级单词)
- treble [´trebəl] a.&n.三倍(重)的 (英语六级单词)
- woodman [´wudmən] n.伐木工 (英语六级单词)
- ruthless [´ru:θləs] a.无情的；残忍的 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
章节正文
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