Now, the true charm of pedestrianism does not lie in the walking, or in the scenery, but in the talking. The walking is good to time the movement of the tongue by, and to keep the blood and the brain stirred up and active; the scenery and the woodsy smells are good to bear in upon a man an unconscious and unobtrusive charm and solace6 to eye and soul and sense; but the supreme7 pleasure comes from the talk. It is no matter whether one talks wisdom or nonsense, the case is the same, the bulk of the enjoyment8 lies in the wagging of the gladsome jaw9 and the flapping of the sympathetic ear.
And what motley variety of subjects a couple of people will casually10 rake over in the course of a day’s tramp! There being no constraint11, a change of subject is always in order, and so a body is not likely to keep pegging12 at a single topic until it grows tiresome13. We discussed everything we knew, during the first fifteen or twenty minutes, that morning, and then branched out into the glad, free, boundless14 realm of the things we were not certain about.
Harris said that if the best writer in the world once got the slovenly15 habit of doubling up his “haves” he could never get rid of it while he lived. That is to say, if a man gets the habit of saying “I should have liked to have known more about it” instead of saying simply and sensibly, “I should have liked to know more about it,” that man’s disease is incurable16. Harris said that his sort of lapse17 is to be found in every copy of every newspaper that has ever been printed in English, and in almost all of our books. He said he had observed it in Kirkham’s grammar and in Macaulay. Harris believed that milk-teeth are commoner in men’s mouths than those “doubled-up haves.”
I do not know that there have not been moments in the course of the present session when I should have been very glad to have accepted the proposal of my noble friend, and to have exchanged parts in some of our evenings of work.—[From a Speech of the English Chancellor18 of the Exchequer19, August, 1879.]
That changed the subject to dentistry. I said I believed the average man dreaded21 tooth-pulling more than amputation22, and that he would yell quicker under the former operation than he would under the latter. The philosopher Harris said that the average man would not yell in either case if he had an audience. Then he continued:
“When our brigade first went into camp on the Potomac, we used to be brought up standing23, occasionally, by an ear-splitting howl of anguish24. That meant that a soldier was getting a tooth pulled in a tent. But the surgeons soon changed that; they instituted open-air dentistry. There never was a howl afterward—that is, from the man who was having the tooth pulled. At the daily dental hour there would always be about five hundred soldiers gathered together in the neighborhood of that dental chair waiting to see the performance—and help; and the moment the surgeon took a grip on the candidate’s tooth and began to lift, every one of those five hundred rascals25 would clap his hand to his jaw and begin to hop26 around on one leg and howl with all the lungs he had! It was enough to raise your hair to hear that variegated27 and enormous unanimous caterwaul burst out!
With so big and so derisive28 an audience as that, a sufferer wouldn’t emit a sound though you pulled his head off. The surgeons said that pretty often a patient was compelled to laugh, in the midst of his pangs29, but that they had never caught one crying out, after the open-air exhibition was instituted.”
Dental surgeons suggested doctors, doctors suggested death, death suggested skeletons—and so, by a logical process the conversation melted out of one of these subjects and into the next, until the topic of skeletons raised up Nicodemus Dodge30 out of the deep grave in my memory where he had lain buried and forgotten for twenty-five years. When I was a boy in a printing-office in Missouri, a loose-jointed, long-legged, tow-headed, jeans-clad countrified cub31 of about sixteen lounged in one day, and without removing his hands from the depths of his trousers pockets or taking off his faded ruin of a slouch hat, whose broken rim32 hung limp and ragged33 about his eyes and ears like a bug-eaten cabbage leaf, stared indifferently around, then leaned his hip34 against the editor’s table, crossed his mighty35 brogans, aimed at a distant fly from a crevice36 in his upper teeth, laid him low, and said with composure:
“Whar’s the boss?”
“I am the boss,” said the editor, following this curious bit of architecture wonderingly along up to its clock-face with his eye.
“Don’t want anybody fur to learn the business, ’tain’t likely?”
“Well, I don’t know. Would you like to learn it?"
“Pap’s so po’ he cain’t run me no mo’, so I want to git a show somers if I kin5, ’taint no diffunce what—I’m strong and hearty37, and I don’t turn my back on no kind of work, hard nur soft.”
“Do you think you would like to learn the printing business?”
“Well, I don’t re’ly k’yer a durn what I do learn, so’s I git a chance fur to make my way. I’d jist as soon learn print’n’s anything.”
“Can you read?”
“Yes—middlin’.”
“Write?”
“Well, I’ve seed people could lay over me thar.”
“Cipher?”
“Not good enough to keep store, I don’t reckon, but up as fur as twelve-times-twelve I ain’t no slouch. ’Tother side of that is what gits me.”
“Where is your home?”
“I’m f’m old Shelby.”
“What’s your father’s religious denomination38?”
“Him? Oh, he’s a blacksmith.”
“No, no—I don’t mean his trade. What’s his religious denomination?”
“Oh—I didn’t understand you befo’. He’s a Freemason.”
“No, no, you don’t get my meaning yet. What I mean is, does he belong to any church?”
“Now you’re talkin’! Couldn’t make out what you was a-tryin’ to git through yo’ head no way. B’long to a church! Why, boss, he’s ben the pizenest kind of Free-will Babtis’ for forty year. They ain’t no pizener ones ’n what he is. Mighty good man, pap is. Everybody says that. If they said any diffrunt they wouldn’t say it whar I wuz—not much they wouldn’t.”
“What is your own religion?”
“Well, boss, you’ve kind o’ got me, there—and yit you hain’t got me so mighty much, nuther. I think ’t if a feller he’ps another feller when he’s in trouble, and don’t cuss, and don’t do no mean things, nur noth’n’ he ain’ no business to do, and don’t spell the Saviour’s name with a little g, he ain’t runnin’ no resks—he’s about as saift as he b’longed to a church.”
“But suppose he did spell it with a little g—what then?”
“Well, if he done it a-purpose, I reckon he wouldn’t stand no chance—he oughtn’t to have no chance, anyway, I’m most rotten certain ’bout that.”
“What is your name?”
“Nicodemus Dodge.”
“I think maybe you’ll do, Nicodemus. We’ll give you a trial, anyway.”
“All right.”
“When would you like to begin?”
“Now.”
So, within ten minutes after we had first glimpsed this nondescript he was one of us, and with his coat off and hard at it.
Beyond that end of our establishment which was furthest from the street, was a deserted39 garden, pathless, and thickly grown with the bloomy and villainous “jimpson” weed and its common friend the stately sunflower. In the midst of this mournful spot was a decayed and aged40 little “frame” house with but one room, one window, and no ceiling—it had been a smoke-house a generation before. Nicodemus was given this lonely and ghostly den20 as a bedchamber.
The village smarties recognized a treasure in Nicodemus, right away—a butt41 to play jokes on. It was easy to see that he was inconceivably green and confiding42. George Jones had the glory of perpetrating the first joke on him; he gave him a cigar with a firecracker in it and winked43 to the crowd to come; the thing exploded presently and swept away the bulk of Nicodemus’s eyebrows44 and eyelashes. He simply said:
“I consider them kind of seeg’yars dangersome,”—and seemed to suspect nothing. The next evening Nicodemus waylaid45 George and poured a bucket of ice-water over him.
One day, while Nicodemus was in swimming, Tom McElroy “tied” his clothes. Nicodemus made a bonfire of Tom’s by way of retaliation46.
A third joke was played upon Nicodemus a day or two later—he walked up the middle aisle47 of the village church, Sunday night, with a staring handbill pinned between his shoulders. The joker spent the remainder of the night, after church, in the cellar of a deserted house, and Nicodemus sat on the cellar door till toward breakfast-time to make sure that the prisoner remembered that if any noise was made, some rough treatment would be the consequence. The cellar had two feet of stagnant48 water in it, and was bottomed with six inches of soft mud.
But I wander from the point. It was the subject of skeletons that brought this boy back to my recollection. Before a very long time had elapsed, the village smarties began to feel an uncomfortable consciousness of not having made a very shining success out of their attempts on the simpleton from “old Shelby.” Experimenters grew scarce and chary49. Now the young doctor came to the rescue. There was delight and applause when he proposed to scare Nicodemus to death, and explained how he was going to do it. He had a noble new skeleton—the skeleton of the late and only local celebrity50, Jimmy Finn, the village drunkard—a grisly piece of property which he had bought of Jimmy Finn himself, at auction51, for fifty dollars, under great competition, when Jimmy lay very sick in the tan-yard a fortnight before his death. The fifty dollars had gone promptly52 for whiskey and had considerably53 hurried up the change of ownership in the skeleton. The doctor would put Jimmy Finn’s skeleton in Nicodemus’s bed!
This was done—about half past ten in the evening. About Nicodemus’s usual bedtime—midnight—the village jokers came creeping stealthily through the jimpson weeds and sunflowers toward the lonely frame den. They reached the window and peeped in. There sat the long-legged pauper54, on his bed, in a very short shirt, and nothing more; he was dangling55 his legs contentedly56 back and forth57, and wheezing58 the music of “Camptown Races” out of a paper-overlaid comb which he was pressing against his mouth; by him lay a new jewsharp, a new top, and solid india-rubber ball, a handful of painted marbles, five pounds of “store” candy, and a well-gnawed slab59 of gingerbread as big and as thick as a volume of sheet-music. He had sold the skeleton to a traveling quack60 for three dollars and was enjoying the result!
Just as we had finished talking about skeletons and were drifting into the subject of fossils, Harris and I heard a shout, and glanced up the steep hillside. We saw men and women standing away up there looking frightened, and there was a bulky object tumbling and floundering down the steep slope toward us. We got out of the way, and when the object landed in the road it proved to be a boy. He had tripped and fallen, and there was nothing for him to do but trust to luck and take what might come.
When one starts to roll down a place like that, there is no stopping till the bottom is reached. Think of people farming on a slant61 which is so steep that the best you can say of it—if you want to be fastidiously accurate—is, that it is a little steeper than a ladder and not quite so steep as a mansard roof. But that is what they do. Some of the little farms on the hillside opposite Heidelberg were stood up “edgeways.” The boy was wonderfully jolted62 up, and his head was bleeding, from cuts which it had got from small stones on the way.
Harris and I gathered him up and set him on a stone, and by that time the men and women had scampered63 down and brought his cap.
Men, women, and children flocked out from neighboring cottages and joined the crowd; the pale boy was petted, and stared at, and commiserated64, and water was brought for him to drink and bathe his bruises65 in. And such another clatter66 of tongues! All who had seen the catastrophe67 were describing it at once, and each trying to talk louder than his neighbor; and one youth of a superior genius ran a little way up the hill, called attention, tripped, fell, rolled down among us, and thus triumphantly68 showed exactly how the thing had been done.
Harris and I were included in all the descriptions; how we were coming along; how Hans Gross shouted; how we looked up startled; how we saw Peter coming like a cannon-shot; how judiciously69 we got out of the way, and let him come; and with what presence of mind we picked him up and brushed him off and set him on a rock when the performance was over. We were as much heroes as anybody else, except Peter, and were so recognized; we were taken with Peter and the populace to Peter’s mother’s cottage, and there we ate bread and cheese, and drank milk and beer with everybody, and had a most sociable70 good time; and when we left we had a handshake all around, and were receiving and shouting back leb’ wohl’s until a turn in the road separated us from our cordial and kindly71 new friends forever.
We accomplished72 our undertaking73. At half past eight in the evening we stepped into Oppenau, just eleven hours and a half out of Allerheiligen—one hundred and forty-six miles. This is the distance by pedometer; the guide-book and the Imperial Ordinance74 maps make it only ten and a quarter—a surprising blunder, for these two authorities are usually singularly accurate in the matter of distances.
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1
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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fragrant
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| adj.芬香的，馥郁的，愉快的 | |
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refreshing
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| adj.使精神振作的，使人清爽的，使人喜欢的 | |
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draughts
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| n. <英>国际跳棋 | |
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kin
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| n.家族，亲属，血缘关系；adj.亲属关系的，同类的 | |
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solace
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| n.安慰；v.使快乐；vt.安慰(物)，缓和 | |
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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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enjoyment
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| n.乐趣；享有；享用 | |
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jaw
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| n.颚，颌，说教，流言蜚语；v.喋喋不休，教训 | |
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casually
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| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
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constraint
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| n.(on)约束，限制；限制(或约束)性的事物 | |
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pegging
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| n.外汇钉住，固定证券价格v.用夹子或钉子固定( peg的现在分词 )；使固定在某水平 | |
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13
tiresome
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| adj.令人疲劳的，令人厌倦的 | |
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boundless
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| adj.无限的；无边无际的；巨大的 | |
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slovenly
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| adj.懒散的，不整齐的，邋遢的 | |
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incurable
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| adj.不能医治的，不能矫正的，无救的；n.不治的病人，无救的人 | |
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17
lapse
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| n.过失，流逝，失效，抛弃信仰，间隔；vi.堕落，停止，失效，流逝；vt.使失效 | |
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chancellor
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| n.(英)大臣；法官；(德、奥)总理；大学校长 | |
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exchequer
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| n.财政部；国库 | |
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den
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| n.兽穴；秘密地方；安静的小房间，私室 | |
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21
dreaded
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| adj.令人畏惧的；害怕的v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的过去式和过去分词) | |
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22
amputation
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| n.截肢 | |
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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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anguish
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| n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼 | |
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rascals
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| 流氓( rascal的名词复数 )； 无赖； （开玩笑说法）淘气的人（尤指小孩）； 恶作剧的人 | |
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26
hop
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| n.单脚跳，跳跃；vi.单脚跳，跳跃；着手做某事；vt.跳跃，跃过 | |
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27
variegated
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| adj.斑驳的，杂色的 | |
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derisive
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| adj.嘲弄的 | |
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pangs
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| 突然的剧痛( pang的名词复数 )； 悲痛 | |
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30
dodge
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| v.闪开，躲开，避开；n.妙计，诡计 | |
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cub
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| n.幼兽，年轻无经验的人 | |
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32
rim
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| n.(圆物的)边，轮缘；边界 | |
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ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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hip
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| n.臀部，髋；屋脊 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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crevice
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| n.(岩石、墙等)裂缝；缺口 | |
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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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denomination
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| n.命名，取名，(度量衡、货币等的)单位 | |
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deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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butt
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| n.笑柄；烟蒂；枪托；臀部；v.用头撞或顶 | |
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42
confiding
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| adj.相信人的，易于相信的v.吐露（秘密，心事等）( confide的现在分词 )；（向某人）吐露（隐私、秘密等） | |
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43
winked
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| v.使眼色( wink的过去式和过去分词 )；递眼色（表示友好或高兴等）；（指光）闪烁；闪亮 | |
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44
eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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45
waylaid
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| v.拦截，拦路( waylay的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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46
retaliation
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| n.报复，反击 | |
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47
aisle
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| n.（教堂、教室、戏院等里的）过道，通道 | |
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48
stagnant
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| adj.不流动的，停滞的，不景气的 | |
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49
chary
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| adj.谨慎的，细心的 | |
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50
celebrity
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| n.名人，名流；著名，名声，名望 | |
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51
auction
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| n.拍卖；拍卖会；vt.拍卖 | |
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52
promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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53
considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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54
pauper
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| n.贫民，被救济者，穷人 | |
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55
dangling
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| 悬吊着( dangle的现在分词 )； 摆动不定； 用某事物诱惑…； 吊胃口 | |
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56
contentedly
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| adv.心满意足地 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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58
wheezing
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| v.喘息，发出呼哧呼哧的喘息声( wheeze的现在分词 )；哮鸣 | |
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59
slab
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| n.平板，厚的切片；v.切成厚板，以平板盖上 | |
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60
quack
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| n.庸医；江湖医生；冒充内行的人；骗子 | |
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slant
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| v.倾斜，倾向性地编写或报道；n.斜面，倾向 | |
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62
jolted
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| （使）摇动， （使）震惊( jolt的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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63
scampered
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| v.蹦蹦跳跳地跑，惊惶奔跑( scamper的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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64
commiserated
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| v.怜悯，同情( commiserate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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bruises
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| n.瘀伤，伤痕，擦伤( bruise的名词复数 ) | |
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66
clatter
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| v./n.(使)发出连续而清脆的撞击声 | |
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67
catastrophe
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| n.大灾难，大祸 | |
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68
triumphantly
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| ad.得意洋洋地；得胜地；成功地 | |
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69
judiciously
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| adv.明断地，明智而审慎地 | |
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70
sociable
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| adj.好交际的，友好的，合群的 | |
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71
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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72
accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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73
undertaking
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| n.保证，许诺，事业 | |
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74
ordinance
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| n.法令；条令；条例 | |
参考例句： |
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