EPILOGUE

 That is the East which called me with all its old familiar voices, with all the glamour¹ and color of its pulsating² life. And now, having relived that life for an hour, I have come back again to the old house which stands so quiet among the frost-bitten New England woods and fields where sober-living men are providing cannily³ against the coming winter, in full faith that their precautions will avail, that a Great God rules who permits no Little Gods to turn His world topsyturvy. I am not sorry to be back. The East for the tasting of life, the West for living it.

 

I feel, regretfully, as you must have felt accusingly or uninterestedly, that these stories are far from pleasant. That is because they are true. Each of them was taken raw from Life. The people of the mimic⁴ dramas you have watched are no puppets of my imagination; there is no bit of tragedy or of comedy written here, however dingy⁵, that some man or woman has not lived. Whether you accept that old heathen man's hypothesis of Little Gods or not, you have looked on at Games which were played by Some One, or by blind Fate. The East you have seen is the real East, stripped of its glamour and its color, a land where nothing is sacred, where there are indeed no Ten Commandments—no Commander, it seems sometimes—a land of uncertainty⁶ and empty Fatalism.

 

Better, it seems to me, a little less of zest⁷ and color, and a little more of ballasting Hope.

 

THE END.

1 glamour   

n.魔力，魅力；vt.迷住

参考例句：

• Foreign travel has lost its glamour for her.到国外旅行对她已失去吸引力了。
• The moonlight cast a glamour over the scene.月光给景色增添了魅力。

2 pulsating   

adj.搏动的，脉冲的v.有节奏地舒张及收缩( pulsate的现在分词 )；跳动；脉动；受（激情）震动

参考例句：

• Lights were pulsating in the sky. 天空有闪烁的光。
• Spindles and fingers moved so quickly that the workshop seemed to be one great nervously-pulsating machine. 工作很紧张，全车间是一个飞快的转轮。 来自子夜部分

3 cannily   

精明地

参考例句：

• Cannily, the government is turning patron. 精明的是，政府正在转变为赞助人。
• All these plentiful and substantial achievement is based on the cannily build and bran-new deploitation. 这一切丰硕成就，基于上海外服23年来的用心营造、全新开拓。

4 mimic   

v.模仿，戏弄；n.模仿他人言行的人

参考例句：

• A parrot can mimic a person's voice.鹦鹉能学人的声音。
• He used to mimic speech peculiarities of another.他过去总是模仿别人讲话的特点。

5 dingy   

adj.昏暗的，肮脏的

参考例句：

• It was a street of dingy houses huddled together. 这是一条挤满了破旧房子的街巷。
• The dingy cottage was converted into a neat tasteful residence.那间脏黑的小屋已变成一个整洁雅致的住宅。

6 uncertainty   

n.易变，靠不住，不确知，不确定的事物

参考例句：

• Her comments will add to the uncertainty of the situation.她的批评将会使局势更加不稳定。
• After six weeks of uncertainty,the strain was beginning to take its toll.6个星期的忐忑不安后，压力开始产生影响了。

7 zest   

n.乐趣；滋味，风味；兴趣

参考例句：

• He dived into his new job with great zest.他充满热情地投入了新的工作。
• He wrote his novel about his trip to Asia with zest.他兴趣浓厚的写了一本关于他亚洲之行的小说。