As the winter deepens and darkens, the people who have time and money to waste, and who are always seeking opportunities for squandering1 both, find none so gracious and graceful2 as giving dinners to other people who have time and money to waste. The prime condition of such dinners is that neither host nor guest shall need them. The presence of a person who actually wanted meat and drink would imply certain insuperable disqualifications. The guest must have the habit of dining, with the accumulated indifference3 to dinners and the inveterate4 inability to deal peptically with them which result from the habit of them. Your true diner must be well on in middle life, for though the young may eat and drink together and apparently5 dine, it is of the gray head difficultly bowed over the successive courses, and the full form of third youth straining its silken calyx and bursting all too richly out above it, that the vision presents itself when one thinks of dinners and diners.
After all the exclusions7 are made, dinner is still a theme so large that one poor Easy Chair paper could not compass it, or do more than attach itself here and there to its expanse. In fact, it was only one kind of dinner we had in mind at the beginning, and that was the larger or smaller public dinner. There the process of exclusion6 is carried yet a step further, and the guests are all men, and for the most part elderly men. The exceptional public dinners where women are asked need not be counted; and at other public dinners they do not seem eager to throng8 the galleries, where they are handsomely privileged to sit, looking down, among the sculptured and frescoed9 arabesques10, on the sea of bald heads and shirt-fronts that surge about the tables below, and showing like dim, décolleté angels to the bleared vision raised to them from the floor. As they are not expected to appear till the smoking and speaking have begun, they grow fainter and fainter through the clouds of tobacco and oratory12, and it is never known to the diners whether they abuse the chary13 hospitality of coffee and ices offered them in their skyey height, where from time to time the sympathetic ear may hear them softly gasping14, gently coughing.
It is a pity that none of these witnesses of a large public dinner has recorded her bird's-eye impression of it at the interesting moment when their presence is suffered or desired. All those gray or bald heads, and all those bulging15 shirt-fronts, must look alike at the first glance, and it can be only to carefuler scrutiny16 that certain distinctions of projecting whiskers and mustaches pronounce themselves. The various figures, lax or stiff in their repletion17, must more or less repeat one another, and the pudgy hands, resting heavily on the tables' edges or planted on their owners' thighs18, must seem of a very characterless monotony. The poor old fellows ranked in serried19 sameness at the tables slanted20 or curved from the dais where the chairman and the speakers sit must have one effect of wishing themselves at home in bed.
What do they really think of it, those angels, leaning over and looking down on it? Does it strike them with envy, with admiration21? Does it seem one of the last effects of a high and noble civilization? To their "finer female sense," what is the appeal of that evanescing spectacle, as the noise of the cheering and the laughing and the clapping of hands rises to them at some more rocket-like explosion of oratory? Is the oratory mainly of the same quality to those supernal22 intelligences as the fading spectacle? None of them has said, and we may have still the hope that the whole affair may have seemed to them the splendid and graceful ceremonial which it appears in the illustrations of the next day's papers.
The speaking is perhaps not always so good as it seems to the mellowed23 tolerance24 of the listener, when it begins after all those courses of meat and drink, but not perhaps always so bad as he thinks it when, the morning following, he wakes "high sorrowful and cloyed," and has not yet read the reports of it. In confidence, however, it may be owned that it is apt rather to be bad than good. If what has led up to it has softened25 the critical edge of the listener, it has not sharpened the critical edge of the speaker, and they meet on the common ground where any platitude26 passes, where a farrago of funny stories serves the purpose of coherent humor, where any feeble flash of wit lights up the obscurity as with an electric radiance, where any slightest trickle27 or rinsing28 of sentiment refreshes "the burning forehead and the parching29 tongue" like a gush30 of genuine poetry. The mere31 reputation of the speaker goes a great way, almost the whole way; and, especially if he is a comic speaker, he might rise up and sit down without a word and yet leave his hearers the sense of having been richly amused. If he does more, if he really says something droll32, no matter how much below the average of the give and take of common talk, the listener's gratitude33 is frantic34. It is so eager, it so outruns utterance35, that it is not strange the after-dinner speech should be the favorite field of the fake-humorist, who reaps a full and ever-ripened harvest in it, and prospers36 on to a celebrity37 for brilliancy which there is little danger of his ever forfeiting38 so long as he keeps there.
The fake-humorous speaker has an easier career than even the fake-eloquent speaker. Yet at any given dinner the orator11 who passes out mere elocution to his hearers has a success almost as instant and splendid as his clowning brother. It is amazing what things people will applaud when they have the courage of one another's ineptitude39. They will listen, after dinner, to anything but reason. They prefer also the old speakers to new ones; they like the familiar taps of humor, of eloquence40; if they have tasted the brew41 before, they know what they are going to get. The note of their mood is tolerance, but tolerance of the accustomed, the expected; not tolerance of the novel, the surprising. They wish to be at rest, and what taxes their minds molests42 their intellectual repose43. They do not wish to climb any great heights to reach the level of the orator. Perhaps, after all, they are difficult in their torpidity44.
The oratory seems to vary less throughout any given dinner than from dinner to dinner, and it seems better or worse according as the dinner is occasional or personal. The occasional dinner is in observance of some notable event, as the Landing of the Pilgrims, or the Surrender of Cornwallis, or the Invention of Gunpowder45, or the Discovery of America. Its nature invites the orator to a great range of talk; he may browse46 at large in all the fields of verbiage47 without seeming to break bounds. It rests with him, of course, to decide whether he will talk too long, for the danger that he may do so cannot be guarded from the outside. The only good after-dinner speaker is the man who likes to speak, and the man who likes to speak is always apt to speak too much. The hapless wretch48 whom the chairman drags to his feet in a cold perspiration49 of despair, and who blunders through half a dozen mismated sentences, leaving out whatever he meant to say, is not to be feared; he is to be pitied from the bottom of one's soul. But the man whose words come actively50 to the support of his thoughts, and whose last word suggests to him another thought, he is the speaker to be feared, and yet not feared the worst of all. There is another speaker more dreadful still, who thinks as little standing51 as sitting, and whose words come reluctantly, but who keeps on and on in the vain hope of being able to say something before he stops, and so cannot stop.
The speaking at the occasional dinner, however, is much more in the control of the chairman than the speaking at the personal dinner. The old fashion of toasts is pretty well past, but the chairman still appoints, more or less, the subject of the speaker he calls up. He may say, if the dinner is in honor of the Invention of Gunpowder, "We have with us to-night a distinguished52 soldier who has burned a good deal of gunpowder in his time; and I am sure we should all like to hear from General Jones something of his experience with the new smokeless explosives." Or if it is the Discovery of America they are commemorating53, he may call to his feet some representatively venerable citizen, with a well-earned compliment to his antiquity54, and the humorous suggestion that he was personally knowing to the landing of Columbus. Then General Jones, or the venerable citizen, will treat at his pleasure of any subject under heaven, after having made his manners to that given him by the chairman and professed55 his unfitness to handle it.
At the personal dinner, the speaker must in decency56 stick for a while at least to his text, which is always the high achievement of the honored guest, in law, letters, medicine, arms, drainage, dry-goods, poultry-farming, or whatever. He must not, at once, turn his back on the honored guest and talk of other things; and when sometimes he does so it seems rude.
The menu laid before the diner at this sort of dinner may report a variety of food for the others, but for the honored guest the sole course is taffy, with plenty of drawn57 butter in a lordly dish. The honored guest is put up beside the chairman, with his mouth propped58 open for the taffy, and before the end he is streaming drawn butter from every limb. The chairman has poured it over him with a generous ladle in his opening speech, and each speaker bathes him with it anew from the lordly dish. The several speakers try to surpass one another in the application, searching out some corner or crevice59 of his personality which has escaped the previous orators60, and filling it up to overflowing61. The listeners exult62 with them in their discoveries, and roar at each triumph of the sort: it is apparently a proof of brilliant intuition when a speaker seizes upon some forgotten point in the honored guest's character or career and drenches63 it with drawn butter.
To what good end do men so flatter and befool one of their harmless fellows? What is there in the nature of literary or agricultural achievement which justifies64 the outrage65 of his modest sense of inadequacy66? It is a preposterous67 performance, but it does not reach the climax68 of its absurdity69 till the honored guest rises, with his mouth filled with taffy, and, dripping drawn butter all over the place, proceeds to ladle out from the lordly dish, restored to its place before the chairman, a portion for each of the preceding speakers. He may not feel quite like doing it. In their fierce rivalry70 of adulation, some of them, in order to give fresh flavor to the taffy, may have mingled71 a little vinegar with it. One may have said that the bantams of the honored guest were not perhaps as small as some other bantams, but that the colossal72 size of his shanghais was beyond parallel. Another may have hinted, for the purpose of superiorly praising his masterly treatment of the pip, that the diet of his hens was not such as to impart to their eggs the last exquisite73 flavor demanded by the pampered74 palate of the epicure75. Another yet may have admitted that the honored guest had not successfully grappled with the great question of how to make hens lay every working-day of the year, and he may have done this in order to heighten his grand climax that the man who teaches a hen to lay an egg with two yolks where she laid eggs of but one yolk76 before is a greater benefactor77 to the human race than all the inventors of all the missiles of modern warfare78. Such a poultry-farmer, he may have declared, preparatory to taking his seat amid thunders of applause, is to other poultry-farmers what the poet who makes the songs of a people is to the boss who makes their laws. This sentiment may have been met with a furore of acceptance, all the other guests leaning forward to look at the honored guest and concentrate their applause upon him, as they clapped and cheered, and one fine fellow springing to his feet and shouting, "Here's to the man who made two-yolk eggs grow where one-yolk eggs grew before."
Yet these artfully studied qualifications of the cloying79 sweet may have been all of the taste of wormwood to the honored guest, who cared nothing for his easy triumph with shanghais and the pip and these two-yolk eggs, but prided himself on his bantams and his hen-food, and was clinging to the hope that his discoveries in the higher education would teach hens to observe the legal holidays if they could not be taught to lay on every working-day, and was trusting to keep his measure of failure a secret from the world. It would not do, however, to betray anything of his vexation. That would be ungracious and ungrateful, and so he must render back taffy for taffy, drawn butter for drawn butter, till the whole place sticks and reeks80 with it.
Of course, the reader—especially if he has never been asked to a personal dinner of this sort—will be saying that the fault is not with the solemnity or its nature, but with the taste of those who conduct the ceremony. He will no doubt be thinking that if he were ever made the object of such a solemnity, or the chairman, or the least of the speakers, he would manage differently. Very likely he will allege81 the example of the Greeks, as we have it recorded in the accounts of the banquet offered to Themistocles after the battle of Salamis, and the supper given to ?schylus on the hundredth performance of the ?dipus of Sophocles.
The supper has always been considered rather a refinement82 upon the banquet, in taste, as it was offered to the venerable poet not upon the occasion of any achievement of his own, but in recognition of the prolonged triumph of his brother dramatist, in which it was assumed that he would feel a generous interest. The banquet to Themistocles was more in the nature of a public rejoicing, for it celebrated83 a victory due as much to the valor84 of all the Greeks as to the genius of the admiral; and it could, therefore, be made more directly a compliment to him. Even under these circumstances, however, the guest of the evening occupied an inconspicuous place at the reporters' table, while he was represented on the chairman's right by the bust85 of Poseidon, hastily modelled for the occasion by Praxiteles, and dedicated86 to Themistocles, who was a plain man, but whose portrait, even if he had been handsome, it was thought would not have looked well in such a position at a time when portrait-statuary was unknown. The only direct allusion87 to him was in the opening toast, "The Dewey of Our Day," which was drunk sitting, the guests rising from their recumbent postures88 in honor of it. The chairman's opening address was almost wholly a plea for the enlargement of the Athenian navy: the implication that the republic had been saved, in spite of its inefficient89 armament, was accepted as the finest possible compliment to the guest of the evening. The note of all the other speeches was their exquisite impersonality90. They got further and further from the occasion of the evening, until the effort of Demosthenes closed the speaking with a scathing91 denunciation of the machine politicians who had involved the Athenians in a war with Persia to further the interests of Sparta. It was held that this was the noblest tribute which could be paid to the genius of the man who had brought them safely out of it. As the company broke up, Diogenes with his lantern approached Themistocles, who was giving the reporters copies of the speech he had not been asked to deliver, and, after examining his countenance92 with a sigh of disappointment, accompanied him home as far as his own tub; Athens at that time being imperfectly lighted, and the reform government having not yet replaced the street names wantonly obliterated94 under the régime of the Thirty Tyrants95.
At the supper to ?schylus the tablets of the menu were inscribed96 with verses from the elder poet ingeniously chosen for their imaginable reference to the masterpiece of the younger, whose modesty97 was delicately spared at every point. It was a question whether the committee managing the affair had not perhaps gone too far in giving the supper while Sophocles was away from Athens staging the piece at Corinth; but there was no division of opinion as to the taste with which some of the details had been studied. It was considered a stroke of inspiration to have on the speaker's left, where Sophocles would have sat if he had been present at a supper given to ?schylus, the sitting figure of Melpomene, crowned with rosemary for remembrance. No allusion was made to ?schylus during the evening, after his health had been proposed by the chairman and drunk in silence, but a great and exquisite surprise was reserved for him in the matter of the speeches that followed. By prior agreement among the speakers they were all ostensibly devoted98 to the examination of the ?dipus and the other dramas of Sophocles, which in his absence were very frankly99 dealt with. But the unsparing criticism of their defects was made implicitly100 to take the character of appreciation101 of the ?schylus tragedies, whose good points were all turned to the light without open mention of them. This afforded the aged102 poet an opportunity of magnanimously defending his younger confrère, and he rose to the occasion, beaming, as some one said, from head to foot and oozing103 self-satisfaction at every pore. He could not put from him the compliments not ostensibly directed at him, but he could and did take up the criticisms of the Sophoclean drama, point by point, and refute them in the interest of literature, with a masterly elimination104 of himself and his own part in it. A Roman gentleman present remarked that he had seen nothing like it, for sincere deprecation, since C?sar had refused the thrice-offered crown on the Lupercal; and the effect was that intended throughout—the supreme105 honor of ?schylus in the guise106 of a tribute to Sophocles. The note of the whole affair was struck by the comic poet Aristophanes, whom the chairman called upon to make the closing speech of the evening, and who merely sat up long enough to quote the old Attic107 proverb, "Gentlemen, there are many ways to kill a dog besides choking him to death with butter," and then lay down again amid shrieks108 of merriment from the whole company.
There is, perhaps, a middle course between the American and Athenian ways of recognizing achievement in the arts or interests, or of commemorating great public events. This would probably derive109 from each certain advantages, or at least the ancient might temper the modern world to a little more restraint than it now practises in the celebration of private worth, especially. The public events may be more safely allowed to take care of themselves, though it is to be questioned whether it is well for any people to make overmuch of themselves. They cannot do it without making themselves ridiculous, and perhaps making themselves sick of what little real glory there is in any given affair; they will have got that so inextricably mixed up with the vainglory that they will have to reject the one to free themselves from the humiliating memory of the other.
There is nothing that so certainly turns to shame in the retrospect110 as vainglory, and this is what the personal dinner is chiefly supposed to inspire in the victim of it. If he is at all honest with himself, and he probably is before he can have done anything worthy111 of notice, he knows perfectly93 well that he has not merited all if any of the fond flatteries with which he is heaped, as he sits helpless with meat and drink, and suffers under them with the fatuous112 smile which we all have seen and which some of us have worn. But as the flatterers keep coming on and on, each with his garland of tuberoses or sunflowers, he begins to think that there must be some fire where there is so much smoke, and to feel the glow of the flame which he is not able exactly to locate. He burns in sympathy with his ardent113 votaries114, he becomes inevitably115 a partner in his own apotheosis116. It is the office of the sad, cold morrow, and the sadder and colder after-morrows, to undo117 this illusion, to compress his head to the measure of his hat, to remove the drawn butter from his soul.
They may never wholly succeed, but this is not probable, and it is not against a permanent folie des grandeurs that we need seek to guard the victim of a personal dinner. We have, indeed, so much faith in the ultimate discretion118 of the race that we should be quite willing to intrust the remarkable119 man himself with the office of giving himself a public dinner when he felt that his work merited signal recognition. In this way the whole affair could be kept within bounds. He could strike the note, he could set the pace, in his opening address; and, having appointed the speakers, with a full knowledge of their honesty and subordination, he could trust the speeches to be sane120 and temperate121. In calling the speakers successively up, he could protest against anything that seemed excessive eulogy122 in the words already spoken, and could invite a more modest estimate of his qualities and achievements in the speeches to follow.
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1
squandering
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| v.（指钱，财产等）浪费，乱花( squander的现在分词 ) | |
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2
graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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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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inveterate
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| adj.积习已深的，根深蒂固的 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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6
exclusion
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| n.拒绝，排除，排斥，远足，远途旅行 | |
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exclusions
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| n.不包括的项目：如接受服务项目是由投保以前已患有的疾病或伤害引致的，保险公司有权拒绝支付。；拒绝( exclusion的名词复数 )；排除；被排斥在外的人（或事物）；排外主义 | |
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throng
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| n.人群，群众；v.拥挤，群集 | |
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frescoed
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| 壁画( fresco的名词复数 )； 温壁画技法，湿壁画 | |
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arabesques
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| n.阿拉伯式花饰( arabesque的名词复数 )；错综图饰；阿拉伯图案；阿拉贝斯克芭蕾舞姿（独脚站立，手前伸，另一脚一手向后伸） | |
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orator
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| n.演说者，演讲者，雄辩家 | |
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oratory
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| n.演讲术；词藻华丽的言辞 | |
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chary
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| adj.谨慎的，细心的 | |
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gasping
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| adj. 气喘的, 痉挛的 动词gasp的现在分词 | |
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bulging
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| 膨胀； 凸出（部）； 打气； 折皱 | |
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scrutiny
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| n.详细检查，仔细观察 | |
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repletion
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| n.充满，吃饱 | |
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thighs
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| n.股，大腿( thigh的名词复数 )；食用的鸡（等的）腿 | |
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serried
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| adj.拥挤的；密集的 | |
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slanted
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| 有偏见的； 倾斜的 | |
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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supernal
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| adj.天堂的，天上的；崇高的 | |
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mellowed
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| （使）成熟( mellow的过去式和过去分词 )； 使色彩更加柔和，使酒更加醇香 | |
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tolerance
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| n.宽容；容忍，忍受；耐药力；公差 | |
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softened
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| （使）变软( soften的过去式和过去分词 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰 | |
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platitude
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| n.老生常谈，陈词滥调 | |
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trickle
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| vi.淌，滴，流出，慢慢移动，逐渐消散 | |
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rinsing
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| n.清水，残渣v.漂洗( rinse的现在分词 )；冲洗；用清水漂洗掉（肥皂泡等）；（用清水）冲掉 | |
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29
parching
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| adj.烘烤似的，焦干似的v.（使）焦干， （使）干透( parch的现在分词 )；使（某人）极口渴 | |
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gush
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| v.喷，涌；滔滔不绝(说话)；n.喷，涌流；迸发 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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droll
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| adj.古怪的，好笑的 | |
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gratitude
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| adj.感激，感谢 | |
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frantic
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| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
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utterance
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| n.用言语表达，话语，言语 | |
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prospers
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| v.成功，兴旺( prosper的第三人称单数 ) | |
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celebrity
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| n.名人，名流；著名，名声，名望 | |
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38
forfeiting
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| （因违反协议、犯规、受罚等）丧失，失去( forfeit的现在分词 ) | |
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ineptitude
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| n.不适当；愚笨，愚昧的言行 | |
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eloquence
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| n.雄辩；口才，修辞 | |
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41
brew
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| v.酿造，调制 | |
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42
molests
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| n.骚扰( molest的名词复数 )；干扰；调戏；猥亵v.骚扰( molest的第三人称单数 )；干扰；调戏；猥亵 | |
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43
repose
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| v.(使)休息；n.安息 | |
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torpidity
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| n.麻痹 | |
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45
gunpowder
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| n.火药 | |
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browse
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| vi.随意翻阅，浏览；(牛、羊等)吃草 | |
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verbiage
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| n.冗词；冗长 | |
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48
wretch
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| n.可怜的人，不幸的人；卑鄙的人 | |
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49
perspiration
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| n.汗水；出汗 | |
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50
actively
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| adv.积极地，勤奋地 | |
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51
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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52
distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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53
commemorating
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| v.纪念，庆祝( commemorate的现在分词 ) | |
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54
antiquity
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| n.古老；高龄；古物，古迹 | |
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55
professed
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| 公开声称的，伪称的，已立誓信教的 | |
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56
decency
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| n.体面，得体，合宜，正派，庄重 | |
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57
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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58
propped
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| 支撑，支持，维持( prop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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59
crevice
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| n.(岩石、墙等)裂缝；缺口 | |
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60
orators
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| n.演说者，演讲家( orator的名词复数 ) | |
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61
overflowing
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| n. 溢出物,溢流 adj. 充沛的，充满的 动词overflow的现在分词形式 | |
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62
exult
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| v.狂喜，欢腾；欢欣鼓舞 | |
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63
drenches
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| v.使湿透( drench的第三人称单数 )；在某人（某物）上大量使用（某液体） | |
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justifies
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| 证明…有理( justify的第三人称单数 )； 为…辩护； 对…作出解释； 为…辩解（或辩护） | |
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65
outrage
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| n.暴行，侮辱，愤怒；vt.凌辱，激怒 | |
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66
inadequacy
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| n.无法胜任，信心不足 | |
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67
preposterous
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| adj.荒谬的，可笑的 | |
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68
climax
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| n.顶点；高潮；v.(使)达到顶点 | |
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69
absurdity
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| n.荒谬，愚蠢；谬论 | |
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rivalry
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| n.竞争，竞赛，对抗 | |
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71
mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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colossal
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| adj.异常的，庞大的 | |
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exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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74
pampered
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| adj.饮食过量的，饮食奢侈的v.纵容，宠，娇养( pamper的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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epicure
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| n.行家，美食家 | |
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76
yolk
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| n.蛋黄，卵黄 | |
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benefactor
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| n. 恩人，行善的人，捐助人 | |
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warfare
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| n.战争(状态)；斗争；冲突 | |
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cloying
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| adj.甜得发腻的 | |
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80
reeks
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| n.恶臭( reek的名词复数 )v.发出浓烈的臭气( reek的第三人称单数 )；散发臭气；发出难闻的气味 (of sth)；明显带有（令人不快或生疑的跡象） | |
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allege
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| vt.宣称，申述，主张，断言 | |
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refinement
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| n.文雅；高尚；精美；精制；精炼 | |
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celebrated
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| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
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valor
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| n.勇气，英勇 | |
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bust
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| vt.打破；vi.爆裂；n.半身像；胸部 | |
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dedicated
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| adj.一心一意的；献身的；热诚的 | |
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allusion
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| n.暗示，间接提示 | |
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postures
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| 姿势( posture的名词复数 )； 看法； 态度； 立场 | |
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inefficient
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| adj.效率低的，无效的 | |
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impersonality
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| n.无人情味 | |
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scathing
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| adj.（言词、文章）严厉的，尖刻的；不留情的adv.严厉地，尖刻地v.伤害，损害（尤指使之枯萎）( scathe的现在分词) | |
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countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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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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obliterated
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| v.除去( obliterate的过去式和过去分词 )；涂去；擦掉；彻底破坏或毁灭 | |
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tyrants
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| 专制统治者( tyrant的名词复数 )； 暴君似的人； （古希腊的）僭主； 严酷的事物 | |
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inscribed
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| v.写，刻( inscribe的过去式和过去分词 )；内接 | |
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modesty
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| n.谦逊，虚心，端庄，稳重，羞怯，朴素 | |
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devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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implicitly
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| adv. 含蓄地, 暗中地, 毫不保留地 | |
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101
appreciation
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| n.评价；欣赏；感谢；领会，理解；价格上涨 | |
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102
aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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103
oozing
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| v.（浓液等）慢慢地冒出，渗出( ooze的现在分词 )；使（液体）缓缓流出；（浓液）渗出，慢慢流出 | |
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104
elimination
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| n.排除，消除，消灭 | |
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105
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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106
guise
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| n.外表，伪装的姿态 | |
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107
attic
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| n.顶楼，屋顶室 | |
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108
shrieks
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| n.尖叫声( shriek的名词复数 )v.尖叫( shriek的第三人称单数 ) | |
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109
derive
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| v.取得；导出；引申；来自；源自；出自 | |
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110
retrospect
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| n.回顾，追溯；v.回顾，回想，追溯 | |
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111
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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112
fatuous
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| adj.愚昧的；昏庸的 | |
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113
ardent
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，强烈的，烈性的 | |
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114
votaries
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| n.信徒( votary的名词复数 )；追随者；（天主教）修士；修女 | |
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115
inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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116
apotheosis
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| n.神圣之理想；美化；颂扬 | |
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117
undo
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| vt.解开，松开；取消，撤销 | |
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118
discretion
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| n.谨慎；随意处理 | |
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119
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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120
sane
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| adj.心智健全的，神志清醒的，明智的，稳健的 | |
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121
temperate
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| adj.温和的，温带的，自我克制的，不过分的 | |
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122
eulogy
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| n.颂词；颂扬 | |
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