He was indolently ruminating3 on the wealth of epithet4 with which the portrait of Cagliostro is painted, when his expected visitor arrived. He laughed aloud at some whimsical conceit5 that this association of people suggested, and tossed the book aside as he rose.
“I’ve been killing6 time,” he said, still smiling, “by reading about the prize impostor of the eighteenth century. You know it?—The Diamond Necklace. I like to read it. For good, downright swindling and effrontery7 there’s nothing anywhere like that fellow.”
Horace glanced at the book as he shook hands and took off his overcoat. He said nothing, but made a mental note that Reuben had come to know about Carlyle after everybody else had ceased reading him.
The two young men sat down together, and their talk for the first hour or so was of business matters. Reuben made clear what his practice was like, its dimensions, its profits, and its claims upon his time. The railroad business had come to him through the influence of his old friend Congressman8 Ansdell, of Tecumseh, and was very important. The farmers in the vicinity, too, had brought him the bulk of their patronage9 in the matter of drawing deeds and mortgages—most frequently the latter, he was sorry to say—because he was a farmer’s son. This conveyancing work had grown to such proportions, and entailed10 such an amount of consultation11, that he had been more and more crowded out from active court practice, which he was reluctant to abandon. This was his reason for thinking of a partner. Then the conversation drifted into discussion of Horace’s fitness for the place, and his proper share in the earnings12 of the firm. They went over for dinner to the Dearborn House, where Reuben lived, before this branch of the talk was concluded. Upon their return, over some cigars which Horace thought very bad, they made more headway, and arrived at an understanding satisfactory to both. Reuben printed the firm name of “Tracy & Boyce” on a blotter, to see how it would look, and Horace talked confidently of the new business which the long connection of his family with Thessaly would bring to them.
“You know, they’ve been here from the very beginning. My great-grandfather was county judge here as far back as 1796, almost the first one after the county was created. And his son, my great-uncle, was congressman one term, and assemblyman for years; and another brother was the president of the bank; and my grandfather was the rector of St. Matthew’s; and then my father being the best-known soldier Dearborn sent out during the war—what I mean is, all this ought to help a good deal. It’s something to have a name that is as much a part of the place as Thessaly itself. You see what I mean?”
Horace finished with an almost nervous query13, for it had dawned upon him that his companion might not share this high opinion of the value of an old name and pedigree. Come to think of it, the Tracys were nobody in particular, and he glanced apprehensively14 at Reuben’s large, placid15 face for signs of pique16. But there was none visible to the naked eye, and Horace lighted a fresh cigar, and put his feet up on the table beside those of his new partner.
“I daresay there’s something in that,” Reuben remarked after a time. “Of course there must be, and for that matter I guess a name goes for more in our profession than it does anywhere else. I suppose it’s natural for people to assume that jurisprudence runs in families, like snub-noses and drink.” As soon as he had uttered this last word, it occurred to him that possibly Horace might construe17 it with reference to his father, and he made haste to add:
“I never told you, I think, about my own career. I don’t talk about it often, for it makes a fellow sound like Mr. Bounderby in Hard Times—the chap who was always bragging18 about being a self-made man.”
“No; I’d like to hear about it,” said Horace. “The first I remember of you was at the seminary here.”
“Well, I was only fifteen years old then, and all the story I’ve got dates before that. I can just remember when we moved into this part of the world—coming from Orange County. My father had bought a small farm some fifteen miles from here, over near Tyre, and we moved onto it in the spring. I was about five. I had an older brother, Ezra, and two younger ones. There was a good deal of hard work to do, and father tried to do it all himself, and so by harvest time he was laid up; and the men who came and got in the crops on shares robbed us down to the ground. When winter came, father had to get up, whether he was well enough or not, and chop wood for the market, to make up for the loss on harvesting. One evening he didn’t come home, and the team was away all night, too, with mother never going to bed at all, and then before daybreak taking Ezra to carry a lantern, and starting through the drifts for our patch of woods. They found my father dead in the forest, crushed under a falling tree.
“I suppose it was a terrible winter. I only dimly remember it, or the summer that followed. When another winter was coming on, my mother grew frightened. Try the best she knew how, she was worse off every month than she had been the month before. To pay interest on the mortgage, she had to sell what produce we had managed to get in, keeping only a bare moiety19 for ourselves, and to give up the woodland altogether. Soon the roads would be blocked; there was not enough fodder20 for what stock we had, nor even food enough for us. We had no store of fuel, and no means of staving off starvation. Under stern compulsion, solely21 to secure a home for her boys, my mother married a well-to-do farmer in the neighborhood—a man much older than herself, and the owner of a hundred-acre farm and of the mortgages on our own little thirty acres.
“I suppose he meant to be a just man, but he was as hard as a steel bloom. He was a prodigious22 worker, and he made us all work, without rest or reward. When I was nine years old, narrow-chested and physically23 delicate, I had to get up before sunrise for the milking, and then work all day in the hay-field, making and cocking, and obliged to keep ahead of the wagon24 under pain of a flogging. Three years of this I had, and I recall them as you might a frightful25 nightmare. I had some stray schooling—my mother insisted upon that—but it wasn’t much; and I remember that the weekly paper was stopped after that because Ezra and I wasted too much time in reading it.
“Finally my health gave out. My mother feared that I would die, and at last gained the point of my being allowed to go to Tyre to school, if I could earn my board and clothes there. I went through the long village street there, stopping at every house to ask if they wanted a little boy to do chores for his board and go to school. I said nothing about clothes after the first few inquiries26. It took me almost all day to find a place. It was nearly the last house in the village. The people happened to want a boy, and agreed to take me. I had only to take care of two horses, milk four cows, saw wood for three stoves, and run errands. When I lay awake in my new bed that night, it was with joy that I had found such a kind family and such an easy place!
“I went to school for a year, and learned something—not much, I daresay, but something. Then I went back to the farm, alternating between that and other places in Tyre, some better, some worse, until finally I had saved eight dollars. Then I told my mother that I was going to Thessaly seminary. She laughed at me—they all laughed—but in the end I had my way. They fitted me out with some clothes—a vest of Ezra’s, an old hat, trousers cut perfectly27 straight and much too short, and clumsy boots two sizes too big for me, which had been bought by my stepfather in wrath28 at our continual trouble in the winter to get on our stiffened29 and shrunken boots.
“I walked the first ten miles with a light heart. Then I began to grow frightened. I had never been to Thessaly, and though I knew pretty well from others that I should be well received, and even helped to find work to maintain myself, the prospect30 of the new life, now so close at hand, unnerved me. I remember once sitting down by the roadside, wavering whether to go on or not. At last I stood on the brow of the hill, and saw Thessaly lying in the valley before me. If I were to live a thousand years, I couldn’t forget that sight—the great elms, the white buildings of the seminary, the air of peace and learning and plenty which it all wore. I tell you, tears came to my eyes as I looked, and more than once they’ve come again, when I’ve recalled the picture. I remember, too, that later on in the day old Dr. Burdick turned me loose in the library, as it were There were four thousand books there, and the sight of them took my breath away. I looked at them for a long time, I know, with my mouth wide open. It was clear to me that I should never be able to read them all—nobody, I thought, could do that—but at last I picked out a set of the encyclopaedia31 at the end of the shelf nearest the door, and decided32 to begin there, and at least read as far through the room as I could.”
Reuben stopped here, and relighted his cigar. “That’s my story,” he said after a pause, as if he had brought the recital33 up to date.
“I should call that only the preface—or rather, the prologue,” said Horace.
“No; the rest is nothing out of the ordinary. I managed to live through the four years here—peddling a little, then travelling for a photographer in Tecumseh who made enlarged copies of old pictures collected from the farm-houses, then teaching school. I studied law first by myself, then with Ansdell at Tecumseh, and then one year in New York at the Columbia Law School. I was admitted down there, and had a fair prospect of remaining there, but I couldn’t make myself like New York. It is too big; a fellow has no chance to be himself there. And so I came back here; and I haven’t done so badly, all things considered.”
“No, indeed; I should think not!” was Horace’s hearty34 comment.
“But I see the way now, I think,” continued Reuben, meditatively35, “to doing much better still. I see a good many ways in which you can help me greatly.”
“I should hope so,” smiled young Mr. Boyce. “That’s what I’m coming in for.”
“I’m not thinking so much of the business,” answered Reuben; “there need be no borrowing-of trouble about that. But there are things outside that I want to do. I spoke36 a little about this the other day, I think.”
“You said something about going into politics,” replied Horace, not so heartily37. The notion had already risen in his mind that the junior member of the new partnership38 might be best calculated to shine in the arena39 of the public service, if the firm was to go in for that sort of thing.
“Oh, no! not ‘politics’ in the sense you mean,” explained Reuben. “My ambition doesn’t extend beyond this village that we’re in. I’m not satisfied with it; there are a thousand things that we ought to be doing better than we are, and I’ve got a great longing40 to help improve them. That was what I referred to. That is what has been in my mind ever since my return. You spoke about politics just now. Strictly41 speaking, ‘politics’ ought to embrace in its meaning all the ways by which the general good is served, and nothing else. But, as a matter of fact, it has come to mean first of all the individual good, and quite often the sacrifice of everything else. This is natural enough, I suppose. Unless a man watches himself very closely, it is easy for him to grow to attach importance to the honor and the profit of the place he holds, and to forget its responsibilities. In that way you come to have a whole community regarding an office as a prize, as a place to be fought for, and not as a place to do more work in than the rest perform. This notion once established, why, politics comes naturally enough to mean—well, what it does mean. The politicians are not so much to blame. They merely reflect the ideas of the public. If they didn’t, they couldn’t stand up a minute by their own strength. You catch my idea?”
“Perfectly,” said Horace, politely dissembling a slight yawn.
“Well, then, the thing to do is to get at the public mind—to get the people into the right, way of regarding these things. It is no good effecting temporary reforms in certain limited directions by outbursts of popular feeling; for just as soon as the public indignation cools down, back come the abuses. And so they will do inevitably42 until the people get up to a calm, high level of intelligence about the management of such affairs as they have in common.”
“Quite so,” remarked Horace.
“Of course all this is trite43 commonplace,” continued Reuben. “You can read it in any newspaper any day. My point is in the application of it. It’s all well enough to say these things in a general way. Everybody knows they are true; nobody disputes them any more than the multiplication-table. But the exhortation44 does no good for that very reason. Each reader says: ‘Yes, it’s too bad that my neighbors don’t comprehend these things better;’ and there’s an end to the matter. Nothing is effected, because no particular person is addressed. Now, my notion is that the way to do is to take a single small community, and go at it systematically—a house-to-house canvass45, so to speak—and labor46 to improve its intelligence, its good taste, its general public attitude toward its own public affairs. One can fairly count on at least some results, going at it in that way.”
“No doubt,” said the junior partner, smiling faintly.
“Well, then, I’ve got a scheme for a sort of society here—perhaps in the nature of a club—made up of men who have an interest in the town and who want to do good. I’ve spoken to two or three about it. Perhaps it is your coming—I daresay it is—but all at once I feel that it is time to start it. My notion is it ought to establish as a fundamental principle that it has nothing to do with anything outside Thessaly and the district roundabout. That is what we need in this country as much as anything else—the habit of minding our own immediate47 business. The newspapers have taught us to attend every day to what is going on in New York and Chicago and London and Paris, and every other place under the sun except our own. That is an evil. We have become like a gossiping woman who spends all her time in learning what her neighbors are doing, and lets the fire go out at home. Now, I like to think this can be altered a good deal, if we only set to work at it. You have been abroad; you have seen how other people do things, and have wider notions than the rest of us, no doubt, as to what should be done. What do you say? Does the idea attract you?”
Horace’s manner confessed to some surprise. “It’s a pretty large order,” he said at last, smilingly. “I’ve never regarded myself as specially48 cut out for a reformer. Still, there’s a good deal in what you say. I suppose it is practicable enough, when you come really to examine it.”
“At all events, we can try,” answered Reuben, with the glow of earnestness shining on his face. “John Fairchild is almost as fond of the notion as I am, and his paper will be of all sorts of use. Then, there’s Father Chance, the Catholic priest, a splendid fellow, and Dr. Lester, and the Rev49. Mr. Turner, and a number of others more or less friendly to the scheme. I’m sure they will all feel the importance of having you in it. Your having lived in Europe makes such a difference. You can see things with a new eye.”
Horace gave a little laugh. “What my new eye has seen principally so far,” he said, with an amused smile running through his words, “is the prevalence of tobacco juice. But of course there are hundreds of things our provincial50 people could learn with profit from Europe. There, for example, is the hideous51 cooking done at all the small places. In England, for instance, it is a delight to travel in the country, simply because the food is so good in the little rural inns; our country hotel here is a horror. Then the roads are so bad here, when they might be made so good. The farmer works out his road tax by going out and ploughing up the highway, and you break your carriage-wheels in the task of smoothing it down again. Porters to carry one’s luggage at railway stations—that’s something we need, too. And the drinking of light beers and thin, wholesome52 wines instead of whiskey—that would do a great deal. Then men shouldn’t be allowed to build those ugly flat-topped wooden houses, with tin eaves-troughs. No people can grow up to be civilized53 who have these abominations thrust upon their sight daily. And—oh, I had forgotten!—there ought to be a penal54 law against those beastly sulphur matches with black heads. I lit one by accident the other night, and I haven’t got the smell of it out of my nostrils55 yet.”
Horace ended, as he had begun, with a cheerful chuckle56; but his companion, who sat looking abstractedly at the snow line of the roofs opposite, did not smile.
“Those are the minor57 things—the graces of life,” he said, speaking slowly. “No doubt they have their place, their importance. But I am sick at heart over bigger matters—over the greed for money, the drunkenness, the indifference58 to real education, the neglect of health, the immodesty and commonness of our young folks’ thought and intercourse59, the narrowness and mental squalor of the life people live all about me—”
“It is so everywhere, my dear fellow,” broke in Horace. “You are making us worse by comparison than we are.”
“But we ought to be so infinitely60 better by comparison! And we have it really in us to be better. Only nobody is concerned about the others; there is no one to check the drift, to organize public feeling for its own improvement. And that”—Reuben suddenly checked himself, and looked at his new partner with a smile of wonderful sweetness—“that is what I dream of trying to do. And you are going to help me!”
He rose as he spoke, and Horace, feeling his good impulses fired in a vague way by his companion’s earnestness and confidence, rose also, and stretched out his hand.
“Be sure I shall do all I can,” he said, warmly, as the two shook hands.
And when young Mr. Boyce went down the narrow stairway by himself, a few minutes later, having arranged that the partnership was to begin on the approaching 1st of December, he really fancied himself as a public-spirited reformer, whose life was to be consecrated61 to noble deeds. He was conscious of an added expansion of breast as he buttoned his fur coat across it, and he walked down the village street in a maze62 of proud and pleasant reflections upon his own admirable qualities.
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1
softening
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| 变软，软化 | |
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paradox
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| n.似乎矛盾却正确的说法；自相矛盾的人(物) | |
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ruminating
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| v.沉思( ruminate的现在分词 )；反复考虑；反刍；倒嚼 | |
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epithet
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| n.（用于褒贬人物等的）表述形容词，修饰语 | |
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conceit
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| n.自负，自高自大 | |
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killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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effrontery
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| n.厚颜无耻 | |
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Congressman
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| n.（美）国会议员 | |
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patronage
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| n.赞助，支援，援助；光顾，捧场 | |
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entailed
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| 使…成为必要( entail的过去式和过去分词 )； 需要； 限定继承； 使必需 | |
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consultation
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| n.咨询；商量；商议；会议 | |
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earnings
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| n.工资收人；利润，利益，所得 | |
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query
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| n.疑问，问号，质问；vt.询问，表示怀疑 | |
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apprehensively
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| adv.担心地 | |
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placid
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| adj.安静的，平和的 | |
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pique
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| v.伤害…的自尊心，使生气 n.不满，生气 | |
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construe
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| v.翻译，解释 | |
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bragging
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| v.自夸，吹嘘( brag的现在分词 )；大话 | |
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moiety
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| n.一半；部分 | |
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fodder
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| n.草料；炮灰 | |
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solely
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| adv.仅仅，唯一地 | |
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prodigious
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| adj.惊人的，奇妙的；异常的；巨大的；庞大的 | |
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physically
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| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
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wagon
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| n.四轮马车，手推车，面包车；无盖运货列车 | |
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frightful
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| adj.可怕的；讨厌的 | |
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inquiries
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| n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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wrath
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| n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒 | |
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stiffened
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| 加强的 | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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encyclopaedia
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| n.百科全书 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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recital
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| n.朗诵，独奏会，独唱会 | |
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hearty
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| adj.热情友好的；衷心的；尽情的，纵情的 | |
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meditatively
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| adv.冥想地 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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heartily
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| adv.衷心地，诚恳地，十分，很 | |
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partnership
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| n.合作关系，伙伴关系 | |
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arena
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| n.竞技场，运动场所；竞争场所，舞台 | |
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longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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trite
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| adj.陈腐的 | |
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exhortation
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| n.劝告，规劝 | |
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canvass
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| v.招徕顾客，兜售；游说；详细检查，讨论 | |
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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rev
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| v.发动机旋转，加快速度 | |
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provincial
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| adj.省的，地方的；n．外省人，乡下人 | |
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hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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wholesome
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| adj.适合；卫生的；有益健康的；显示身心健康的 | |
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civilized
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| a.有教养的，文雅的 | |
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penal
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| adj.刑罚的；刑法上的 | |
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nostrils
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| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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56
chuckle
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| vi.／n.轻声笑，咯咯笑 | |
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minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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60
infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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61
consecrated
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| adj.神圣的，被视为神圣的v.把…奉为神圣，给…祝圣( consecrate的过去式和过去分词 )；奉献 | |
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62
maze
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| n.迷宫，八阵图，混乱，迷惑 | |
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