—Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar.
Melbourne spreads around over an immense area of ground. It is a stately city architecturally as well as in magnitude. It has an elaborate system of cable-car service; it has museums, and colleges, and schools, and public gardens, and electricity, and gas, and libraries, and theaters, and mining centers, and wool centers, and centers of the arts and sciences, and boards of trade, and ships, and railroads, and a harbor, and social clubs, and journalistic clubs, and racing3 clubs, and a squatter4 club sumptuously5 housed and appointed, and as many churches and banks as can make a living. In a word, it is equipped with everything that goes to make the modern great city. It is the largest city of Australasia, and fills the post with honor and credit. It has one specialty6; this must not be jumbled7 in with those other things. It is the mitred Metropolitan8 of the Horse-Racing Cult9. Its race-ground is the Mecca of Australasia. On the great annual day of sacrifice—the 5th of November, Guy Fawkes’s Day—business is suspended over a stretch of land and sea as wide as from New York to San Francisco, and deeper than from the northern lakes to the Gulf10 of Mexico; and every man and woman, of high degree or low, who can afford the expense, put away their other duties and come. They begin to swarm11 in by ship and rail a fortnight before the day, and they swarm thicker and thicker day after day, until all the vehicles of transportation are taxed to their uttermost to meet the demands of the occasion, and all hotels and lodgings12 are bulging13 outward because of the pressure from within. They come a hundred thousand strong, as all the best authorities say, and they pack the spacious14 grounds and grandstands and make a spectacle such as is never to be seen in Australasia elsewhere.
It is the “Melbourne Cup” that brings this multitude together. Their clothes have been ordered long ago, at unlimited15 cost, and without bounds as to beauty and magnificence, and have been kept in concealment16 until now, for unto this day are they consecrate17. I am speaking of the ladies’ clothes; but one might know that.
And so the grand-stands make a brilliant and wonderful spectacle, a delirium18 of color, a vision of beauty. The champagne19 flows, everybody is vivacious20, excited, happy; everybody bets, and gloves and fortunes change hands right along, all the time. Day after day the races go on, and the fun and the excitement are kept at white heat; and when each day is done, the people dance all night so as to be fresh for the race in the morning. And at the end of the great week the swarms21 secure lodgings and transportation for next year, then flock away to their remote homes and count their gains and losses, and order next year’s Cup-clothes, and then lie down and sleep two weeks, and get up sorry to reflect that a whole year must be put in somehow or other before they can be wholly happy again.
The Melbourne Cup is the Australasian National Day. It would be difficult to overstate its importance. It overshadows all other holidays and specialized22 days of whatever sort in that congeries of colonies. Overshadows them? I might almost say it blots23 them out. Each of them gets attention, but not everybody’s; each of them evokes24 interest, but not everybody’s; each of them rouses enthusiasm, but not everybody’s; in each case a part of the attention, interest, and enthusiasm is a matter of habit and custom, and another part of it is official and perfunctory. Cup Day, and Cup Day only, commands an attention, an interest, and an enthusiasm which are universal—and spontaneous, not perfunctory. Cup Day is supreme25—it has no rival. I can call to mind no specialized annual day, in any country, which can be named by that large name—Supreme. I can call to mind no specialized annual day, in any country, whose approach fires the whole land with a conflagration26 of conversation and preparation and anticipation27 and jubilation28. No day save this one; but this one does it.
In America we have no annual supreme day; no day whose approach makes the whole nation glad. We have the Fourth of July, and Christmas, and Thanksgiving. Neither of them can claim the primacy; neither of them can arouse an enthusiasm which comes near to being universal. Eight grown Americans out of ten dread29 the coming of the Fourth, with its pandemonium30 and its perils31, and they rejoice when it is gone—if still alive. The approach of Christmas brings harassment32 and dread to many excellent people. They have to buy a cart-load of presents, and they never know what to buy to hit the various tastes; they put in three weeks of hard and anxious work, and when Christmas morning comes they are so dissatisfied with the result, and so disappointed that they want to sit down and cry. Then they give thanks that Christmas comes but once a year. The observance of Thanksgiving Day—as a function—has become general of late years. The Thankfulness is not so general. This is natural. Two-thirds of the nation have always had hard luck and a hard time during the year, and this has a calming effect upon their enthusiasm.
We have a supreme day—a sweeping33 and tremendous and tumultuous day, a day which commands an absolute universality of interest and excitement; but it is not annual. It comes but once in four years; therefore it cannot count as a rival of the Melbourne Cup.
In Great Britain and Ireland they have two great days—Christmas and the Queen’s birthday. But they are equally popular; there is no supremacy34.
I think it must be conceded that the position of the Australasian Day is unique, solitary35, unfellowed; and likely to hold that high place a long time.
The next things which interest us when we travel are, first, the people; next, the novelties; and finally the history of the places and countries visited. Novelties are rare in cities which represent the most advanced civilization of the modern day. When one is familiar with such cities in the other parts of the world he is in effect familiar with the cities of Australasia. The outside aspects will furnish little that is new. There will be new names, but the things which they represent will sometimes be found to be less new than their names. There may be shades of difference, but these can easily be too fine for detection by the incompetent36 eye of the passing stranger. In the larrikin he will not be able to discover a new species, but only an old one met elsewhere, and variously called loafer, rough, tough, bummer, or blatherskite, according to his geographical37 distribution. The larrikin differs by a shade from those others, in that he is more sociable38 toward the stranger than they, more kindly39 disposed, more hospitable40, more hearty41, more friendly. At least it seemed so to me, and I had opportunity to observe. In Sydney, at least. In Melbourne I had to drive to and from the lecture-theater, but in Sydney I was able to walk both ways, and did it. Every night, on my way home at ten, or a quarter past, I found the larrikin grouped in considerable force at several of the street corners, and he always gave me this pleasant salutation:
“Hello, Mark!”
“Here’s to you, old chap!
“Say—Mark!—is he dead?”—a reference to a passage in some book of mine, though I did not detect, at that time, that that was its source. And I didn’t detect it afterward42 in Melbourne, when I came on the stage for the first time, and the same question was dropped down upon me from the dizzy height of the gallery. It is always difficult to answer a sudden inquiry43 like that, when you have come unprepared and don’t know what it means. I will remark here—if it is not an indecorum—that the welcome which an American lecturer gets from a British colonial audience is a thing which will move him to his deepest deeps, and veil his sight and break his voice. And from Winnipeg to Africa, experience will teach him nothing; he will never learn to expect it, it will catch him as a surprise each time. The war-cloud hanging black over England and America made no trouble for me. I was a prospective44 prisoner of war, but at dinners, suppers, on the platform, and elsewhere, there was never anything to remind me of it. This was hospitality of the right metal, and would have been prominently lacking in some countries, in the circumstances.
And speaking of the war-flurry, it seemed to me to bring to light the unexpected, in a detail or two. It seemed to relegate46 the war-talk to the politicians on both sides of the water; whereas whenever a prospective war between two nations had been in the air theretofore, the public had done most of the talking and the bitterest. The attitude of the newspapers was new also. I speak of those of Australasia and India, for I had access to those only. They treated the subject argumentatively and with dignity, not with spite and anger. That was a new spirit, too, and not learned of the French and German press, either before Sedan or since. I heard many public speeches, and they reflected the moderation of the journals. The outlook is that the English-speaking race will dominate the earth a hundred years from now, if its sections do not get to fighting each other. It would be a pity to spoil that prospect45 by baffling and retarding47 wars when arbitration48 would settle their differences so much better and also so much more definitely.
No, as I have suggested, novelties are rare in the great capitals of modern times. Even the wool exchange in Melbourne could not be told from the familiar stock exchange of other countries. Wool brokers49 are just like stockbrokers50; they all bounce from their seats and put up their hands and yell in unison—no stranger can tell what—and the president calmly says “Sold to Smith & Co., threpence farthing—next!”—when probably nothing of the kind happened; for how should he know?
In the museums you will find acres of the most strange and fascinating things; but all museums are fascinating, and they do so tire your eyes, and break your back, and burn out your vitalities with their consuming interest. You always say you will never go again, but you do go. The palaces of the rich, in Melbourne, are much like the palaces of the rich in America, and the life in them is the same; but there the resemblance ends. The grounds surrounding the American palace are not often large, and not often beautiful, but in the Melbourne case the grounds are often ducally spacious, and the climate and the gardeners together make them as beautiful as a dream. It is said that some of the country seats have grounds—domains—about them which rival in charm and magnitude those which surround the country mansion51 of an English lord; but I was not out in the country; I had my hands full in town.
And what was the origin of this majestic52 city and its efflorescence of palatial53 town houses and country seats? Its first brick was laid and its first house built by a passing convict. Australian history is almost always picturesque54; indeed, it is so curious and strange, that it is itself the chiefest novelty the country has to offer, and so it pushes the other novelties into second and third place. It does not read like history, but like the most beautiful lies. And all of a fresh new sort, no mouldy old stale ones. It is full of surprises, and adventures, and incongruities55, and contradictions, and incredibilities; but they are all true, they all happened.
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1
immoral
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| adj.不道德的，淫荡的，荒淫的，有伤风化的 | |
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immorality
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| n. 不道德, 无道义 | |
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racing
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| n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的 | |
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squatter
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| n.擅自占地者 | |
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sumptuously
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| 奢侈地，豪华地 | |
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specialty
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| n.(speciality)特性，特质；专业，专长 | |
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jumbled
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| adj.混乱的；杂乱的 | |
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metropolitan
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| adj.大城市的，大都会的 | |
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cult
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| n.异教，邪教；时尚，狂热的崇拜 | |
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gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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swarm
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| n.(昆虫)等一大群；vi.成群飞舞；蜂拥而入 | |
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lodgings
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| n. 出租的房舍, 寄宿舍 | |
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bulging
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| 膨胀； 凸出（部）； 打气； 折皱 | |
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spacious
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| adj.广阔的，宽敞的 | |
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unlimited
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| adj.无限的，不受控制的，无条件的 | |
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concealment
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| n.隐藏, 掩盖，隐瞒 | |
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consecrate
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| v.使圣化，奉…为神圣；尊崇；奉献 | |
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18
delirium
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| n. 神智昏迷,说胡话;极度兴奋 | |
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champagne
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| n.香槟酒；微黄色 | |
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vivacious
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| adj.活泼的，快活的 | |
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swarms
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| 蜂群，一大群( swarm的名词复数 ) | |
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specialized
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| adj.专门的，专业化的 | |
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blots
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| 污渍( blot的名词复数 )； 墨水渍； 错事； 污点 | |
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24
evokes
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| 产生，引起，唤起( evoke的第三人称单数 ) | |
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supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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conflagration
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| n.建筑物或森林大火 | |
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anticipation
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| n.预期，预料，期望 | |
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jubilation
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| n.欢庆，喜悦 | |
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29
dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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30
pandemonium
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| n.喧嚣，大混乱 | |
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31
perils
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| 极大危险( peril的名词复数 )； 危险的事（或环境） | |
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32
harassment
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| n.骚扰，扰乱，烦恼，烦乱 | |
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sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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supremacy
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| n.至上；至高权力 | |
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solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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incompetent
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| adj.无能力的，不能胜任的 | |
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geographical
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| adj.地理的；地区(性)的 | |
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sociable
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| adj.好交际的，友好的，合群的 | |
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kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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40
hospitable
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| adj.好客的；宽容的；有利的，适宜的 | |
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41
hearty
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| adj.热情友好的；衷心的；尽情的，纵情的 | |
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42
afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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prospective
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| adj.预期的，未来的，前瞻性的 | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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46
relegate
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| v.使降级，流放，移交，委任 | |
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47
retarding
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| 使减速( retard的现在分词 )； 妨碍； 阻止； 推迟 | |
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48
arbitration
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| n.调停，仲裁 | |
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49
brokers
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| n.（股票、外币等）经纪人( broker的名词复数 )；中间人；代理商；（订合同的）中人v.做掮客（或中人等）( broker的第三人称单数 )；作为权力经纪人进行谈判；以中间人等身份安排… | |
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50
stockbrokers
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| n.股票经纪人( stockbroker的名词复数 ) | |
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51
mansion
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| n.大厦，大楼；宅第 | |
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52
majestic
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| adj.雄伟的，壮丽的，庄严的，威严的，崇高的 | |
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53
palatial
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| adj.宫殿般的，宏伟的 | |
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54
picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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55
incongruities
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| n.不协调( incongruity的名词复数 )；不一致；不适合；不协调的东西 | |
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