CHAPTER THE NINTH

OSWALD TAKES CONTROL
§ 1

While Mr. Sycamore was regaling himself with the discomfiture¹ of Lady Charlotte, Oswald Sydenham was already walking about the West End of London.

He had come upon a fresh crisis in his life. He was doing his best to accept some thoroughly² disagreeable limitations. His London specialist had but confirmed his own conviction. It was no longer possible for him to continue in Africa. He had reached the maximum of blackwater fever permitted to normal men. The next bout—if there was a next bout—would kill him. In addition to this very valid⁴ reason for a return, certain small fragments of that Egyptian shell long dormant⁵ in his arm had awakened⁷ to mischief⁸, and had to be removed under the more favourable⁹ conditions to be found in England. He had come back therefore to a land where he had now no close friends and no special occupations, and once more he had to begin life afresh.

He had returned with extreme reluctance¹⁰. He could not see anything ahead of him in England that gripped his imagination at all. He was strongly tempted¹¹ to have his arm patched up, and return to Africa for a last spell of work and a last conclusive¹² dose of the fever germ. But in England he might be of use for a longer period, and a kind of godless conscience in him insisted that there must be no deliberate waste in his disposal of his life.

For some time he had been distressed¹³ by the general ignorance in England of the realities of things African, and by the general coarsening and deterioration¹⁵, as he held it to be, of the Imperial idea. There was much over here that 205needed looking into, he felt, and when it was looked into then the indications for further work might appear. Why not, so far as his powers permitted, do something in helping¹⁶ English people to realize all that Africa was and might be. That was work he might do, and live. In Africa there was little more for him to do but die.

That was all very well in theory. It did not alter his persuasion¹⁷ that he was going to be intolerably lonely if he stayed on in England. Out there were the Chief Commissioner¹⁸ and Muir and half a dozen other people for whom he had developed a strong affection; he was used to his native servants and he liked them; he had his round of intensely interesting activities, he was accustomed to the life. Out there, too, there was sunshine. Such sunshine as the temperate¹⁹ zone can never reproduce. This English world was a grey, draughty, cloudy, lonely world, and one could not always be working. That sunshine alone meant a vast deprivation²¹.

This sort of work he thought of doing and which seemed the only thing now that he could possibly do, wasn’t, he reflected uncomfortably, by any means the work that he could do best. He knew he was bad-tempered²². Ill-health intensified²³ a natural irritability²⁴. He knew his brain was now a very uncertain instrument, sometimes quite good, sometimes a weary fount of half-formed ideas and indecisions. As an advocate of the right way in Africa, he would do some good no doubt; but he would certainly get into some tiresome²⁵ squabbles, he would bark his knuckles²⁶ and bruise²⁷ his shins. Nevertheless—cheerless though the outlook was—it was, he felt, the work he ought to do.

“Pump up enthusiasm,” said Oswald. “Begin again. What else can I do?”

But what he was pumping up that afternoon in London was really far more like anger. Rage and swearing were the natural secretions²⁸ of Oswald’s mind at every season of perplexity; he became angry when other types would be despondent²⁹. Where melancholic³⁰ men abandon effort, men of the choleric³¹ type take to kicking and smashing. Where the former contract, the latter beat about and spread themselves. Oswald, beneath his superficial resignation, was working up for a quarrel with something. His instinct was to convert 206the distress¹⁴ of his developing physical insufficiencies into hostility³² to some external antagonist³³.

He knew of, and he was doing his best to control, this black urgency to violent thoughts and conclusions. He wanted to kick and he knew he must not yet waste energy in kicking. He was not justified³⁵ in kicking. He must not allow his sense of personal grievance³⁶ against fate to disturb his mind. He must behave with a studied calm and aloofness³⁷.

“Damn!” said Oswald, no doubt by way of endorsing³⁹ this decision.

Pursuant to these virtuous⁴⁰ resolutions this tall, lean, thwarted⁴¹ man, full of jealous solicitude⁴² for the empire he had helped enlarge, this disfigured man whose face was in two halves like those partially⁴³ treated portraits one sees outside the shops of picture-cleaners, was engaged in comporting⁴⁵ himself as much as possible like some pleasant, leisurely⁴⁶ man of the world with no obligation or concern but to make himself comfortable and find amusement in things about him. He was doing his best to feel that there was no hurry about anything, and no reason whatever for getting into a state of mind. Just a calm quiet onlooker⁴⁷ he had to be. He was, he told himself, taking a look round London as a preliminary to settling down there. Perhaps he was going to settle down in London. Or perhaps in the country somewhere. It did not matter which—whichever was the most pleasant. It was all very pleasant. Very pleasant indeed. A life now of wise lounging and judicious⁴⁸, temperate activities it had to be. He must not fuss.

He had arrived in England the day before, but as yet, except for a brief note to Mr. Sycamore, he had notified no one of his return. He had put up at the Climax⁴⁹ Club in Piccadilly, a proprietary⁵⁰ club that was half hotel, where one could get a sitting-room⁵¹ as well as a bedroom; and after a visit to his doctor—a visit that confirmed all his worst apprehensions⁵² of the need of abandoning Africa for ever—he had spent the evening in the club trying to be calm over the newspapers and magazines. But when one is ill and tired as Oswald was, all that one reads in the newspapers and magazines is wrong and exasperating⁵³.

It was 1903; the time when Mr. Joseph Chamberlain returned 207from South Africa to launch his Tariff⁵⁵ Reform agitation⁵⁶—and Oswald was temperamentally a Free Trader. The whole press, daily, weekly, monthly, was full of the noises of the controversy⁵⁷. It impressed him as a controversy almost intolerably mean. His Imperialism⁵⁸ was essentially⁵⁹ a romantic and generous imagination, a dream of service, of himself, serving the Empire and of the Empire serving mankind. The tacit assumption underlying⁶¹ this most sordid⁶² of political campaigns that the Empire was really nothing of the kind, that it was an adventure of exploitation, a national enterprise in the higher piracy⁶⁴, borrowing a faded picturesqueness⁶⁵ from the scoundrelism of the Elizabethan and Jacobean buccaneers, the men who started the British slave trade and the Ulster trouble and founded no Empire at all except the plantations⁶⁷ of Virginia and Barbados, distressed and perplexed⁶⁸ his mind almost unendurably. It was so maddeningly plausible⁶⁹. It was so manifestly the pathway of destruction.

After throwing The National Review into a distant armchair and then, when he met the startled eye of a fellow member, trying to look as though that was his usual way with a magazine, he sought distraction⁷⁰ in Southey’s “Doctor,” which happened to be in the club library. After dinner he went out for a stroll in the West End, and visited the Alhambra. He found that more soothing⁷¹ than the papers. The old excitement of the human moth⁷² at the candles of vice⁶⁰ he no longer felt. He wondered why these flitting allurements⁷³ had ever stirred him. But he liked the stir and the lights and the pleasant inconsecutive imbecility of the entertainment.

He slept fairly well. In the morning a clerk of Mr. Sycamore’s telephoned to say that that gentleman was out of town, he had been called down to see Lady Charlotte Sydenham, but that he would be back, and would probably try to “get” Oswald about eleven in the evening. He had something important to tell Oswald. The day began cloudy, and repented⁷⁴ and became fine. By midday it was, for London, a golden day. Yet to Oswald it seemed but a weak solution of sunshine. If you stood bareheaded in such sunshine you would catch a chill. But he made the best of it. 208“October mild and boon,” he quoted. He assured himself that it would be entertaining to stroll about the West End and look at the shops and mark the changes in things. He breakfasted late at one of the windows overlooking the Green Park, visited the club barber, walked along to his tailor, bought three new hats and a stout⁷⁵ gold-banded cane⁶⁶ with an agate⁷⁶ top in Bond Street, a pair of boots, gloves and other sundries. Then he went into his second club, the Plantain, in Pall⁷⁷ Mall, to read the papers—until he discovered that he was beginning to worry about Tariff Reform again. He saw no one he knew, and lunched alone. In the afternoon he strolled out into London once more.

He was, he found, no longer uncomfortable and self-conscious in the streets of London. His one-sided, blank-sided face did not make him self-conscious now as it used to do, he had reconciled himself to his disfigurement. If at first he had exaggerated its effect, he now inclined to forget it altogether. He wore hats nowadays with a good broad brim, and cocked them to overshadow the missing eye; his dark moustache had grown and was thick and symmetrical; he had acquired the habit of looking at himself in glasses so as to minimize his defaced half. It seemed to him a natural thing now that the casual passer-by should pull up for the fraction of a second at the sight of his tall figure, or look back at him as if to verify a first impression. Didn’t people do that to everybody?

He went along Pall Mall, whose high gentility was still in those days untroubled by the Royal Automobile⁷⁹ Club and scarcely ruffled⁸⁰ by a discreet⁸¹ shop or so; he turned up through St. James’s Street to Piccadilly with a reminiscent glance by the way down Jermyn Street, where he had had his first experiences of restaurants and suchlike dissipations in his early midshipman days. How far away those follies⁸² seemed now! The shops of Bond Street drew him northward⁸³; the Doré Gallery of his childhood, he noted⁸⁵, was still going on; he prowled along Oxford⁸⁷ Street as far as the Marble Arch—Gillows was still Gillows in those days, and Selfridge had yet to dawn on the London world—and beat back by way of Seymour Street to Regent Street. He nodded to Verrey’s, where long ago he had lunched in a short plaid frock and 209white socks under the auspices⁸⁸ of his godmother, old Lady Percival Pelham. It was all very much as he had left it in ’97. That fever of rebuilding and rearrangement which was already wrecking⁸⁹ the old Strand⁹⁰ and sweeping⁹¹ away Booksellers’ Row and the Drury Lane slums and a score of ancient landmarks⁹², had not yet reached the West End. There was the same abundance of smart hansom cabs crawling in the streets or neatly⁹³ ranked on the stands; the same populous⁹⁴ horse omnibuses, the same brightly dressed people, and, in Regent Street and Piccadilly, the same too-brightly-dressed women loiterers, only now most of them were visibly coarse and painted; there were the same mendicants and sandwich-men at the pavement edge. Perhaps there were more omnibuses crowding upon one another at Piccadilly and Oxford Circuses, and more people everywhere. Or perhaps that was only the effect of returning from a less crowded world.

Now and then he saw automobiles⁹⁵, queer, clumsy carriages without horses they seemed to be, or else low, heavy-looking vehicles with a flavour of battleship about them. Several emitted bluish smoke and trailed an evil smell. In Regent Street outside Liberty’s art shop one of these mechanical novelties was in trouble. Everybody seemed pleased. The passing cabmen were openly derisive⁹⁶. Oswald joined the little group of people at the pavement edge who were watching the heated and bothered driver engaged in some obscure struggle beneath his car.

An old gentleman in a white waistcoat stood beside Oswald, and presently turned to him.

“Silly things,” he said. “Noisy, dangerous, stinking⁹⁷ things. They ought to be forbidden.”

“Perhaps they will improve,” said Oswald.

“How could that thing improve?” asked the old gentleman. “Lotto dirty ironmongery.”

He turned away with the air of a man for whom a question had been settled. Oswald followed him thoughtfully....

He resumed his identifications. Piccadilly Circus! Here was the good old Café Monico; yonder the Criterion....

But everything seemed smaller.

That was the thing that struck him most forcibly; London revisited he discovered to be an intense little place.

210It was extraordinary that this should be the head of the Empire. It seemed, when one came back to it, so entirely⁹⁹ indifferent to the Empire, so entirely self-absorbed. When one was out beyond there, in Uganda, East Africa, Sudan, Egypt, in all those vast regions where the British were doing the best work they had ever done in pacification¹⁰⁰ and civilization, one thought of London as if it were a great head that watched one from afar, that could hear a cry for help, that could send support. Yet here were these people in these narrow, brightly served streets, very busy about their own affairs, almost as busy and self-absorbed as the white-robed crowd in the big market-place in Mengo, and conspicuously¹⁰¹, remarkably¹⁰² not thinking of Africa—or anything of the sort. He compared Bond Street and its crowded, inconvenient¹⁰³ side-walks with one of the great garden vistas¹⁰⁵ of the Uganda capital, much to the advantage of the latter. He descended¹⁰⁶ by the Duke of York’s steps, past the old milk stall with its cow, into the Mall. Buckingham Palace, far away, was much less impressive than the fort at Kampala on its commanding hill; the vegetation of St. James’s Park and its iron fencing were a poor substitute for the rich-patterned reed palisades and the wealth of fronds¹⁰⁷ that bordered the wide prospects¹⁰⁹ of the Uganda capital. All English trees looked stunted¹¹⁰ to Oswald’s eyes.

Towards the palace, tree-felling was in progress, the felling of trees that could never be replaced; and an ugly hoarding¹¹² veiled the erection of King Edward’s pious¹¹³ memorial to Queen Victoria, the memorial which later her grandson, the Kaiser, was to unveil.

He went on into Whitehall—there was no Admiralty Arch in those days, and one came out of the Mall by way of Spring Gardens round the corner of an obtrusive¹¹⁴ bank. Oswald paused for a minute to survey the squat¹¹⁵ buildings and high column of Trafalgar Square, pale amber⁵⁴ in the October sunshine, and then strolled down towards Westminster. He became more and more consciously the loitering home-comer. He smiled at the mounted soldiers in their boxes outside the Horse Guards, paused at and approved of the architectural intentions of the new War Office, and nodded to his old friends, the Admiralty and the Colonial Office. Here they 211brewed the destinies of the Old World outside Europe and kept the Seven Seas. He played his part with increased self-approval. He made his way to Westminster Bridge and spent some time surveying the down river prospect¹⁰⁸. It was, after all, a little ditch of a river. St. Paul’s was fairly visible, and the red, rusty¹¹⁷ shed of Charing¹¹⁸ Cross station and its brutal¹¹⁹ iron bridge, fit monument of the clumsy looting by “private enterprise” that characterized the Victorian age, had never looked uglier.

He crossed from one side of the bridge to the other, leant over the parapet and regarded the Houses of Parliament. The flag was flying, and a number of little groups of silk-hatted men and gaily¹²⁰ dressed ladies were having tea on the terrace.

“I wonder why we rule our Empire from a sham¹²¹ Gothic building,” thought Oswald. “If anything, it ought to be Roman....”

He turned his attention to the traffic and the passers-by. “They don’t realize,” he said. “Suppose suddenly they were to have a mirage¹²² here of some of the lands and cities this old Parliament House controls?”

A little stout man driving a pony-trap caught his attention. It was a smart new pony-trap, and there was a look of new clothes about its driver; he smoked a cigar that stuck upward from the corner of his mouth, and in his button-hole was a red chrysanthemum¹²³; his whole bearing suggested absolute contentment with himself and acquiescence¹²⁴ in the universe; he handled his reins¹²⁵ and drew his whip across the flanks of his shining cob as delicately as if he was fly-fishing. “What does he think he is up to?” asked Oswald. A thousand times he had seen that Sphinx of perfect self-contentment on passing negro faces.

“The Empire doesn’t worry him,” said Oswald.
§ 2

It was worrying Oswald a lot. Everything was worrying Oswald just then. It is a subtle question to answer of such cases whether the physical depression shapes the despondent 212thought, or whether the gnawing¹²⁶ doubt prepares the nervous illness. His confidence in his work and the system to which he belonged had vanished by imperceptible degrees.

For some years he had gone about his work with very few doubts. He had been too busy. But now ill-health had conspired¹²⁷ with external circumstances to expose him to questionings about things he had never questioned before. They were very fundamental doubts. They cut at the roots of his life. He was beginning to doubt whether the Empire was indeed as good a thing and as great a thing as he had assumed it to be.... The Empire to which his life had been given.

This did not make him any less an Imperialist than he had been, but it sharpened his imperialism with a sense of urgency that cut into his mind.

Altogether Oswald had now given nearly eighteen years to East and Central Africa. His illness had called a halt in a very busy life. For two years and more after his last visit to England, he had been occupied chiefly in operations in and beyond the Lango country against Kabarega and the remnant of the rebel Sudanese. He had assisted in the rounding-up of King Mwanga, the rebel king of Uganda, and in setting up the child king and the regency that replaced him. At the end of 1899 his former chief, Sir Harry¹²⁸ Johnston, had come up from British Central Africa as Special Commissioner to Uganda, and the work of land settlement, of provincial¹²⁹ organization, of railways and postal¹³⁰ development had gone on apace. Next year indeed war had come again, but it was the last war in this part of the world for some time. It was caused by the obstinate¹³¹ disposition¹³² of the Nandi people to steal the copper¹³³ wire from the telegraph poles that had been set up in their country. Hitherto their chief use for copper wire had been to make bracelets¹³⁴ and anklets for their married women. They were shocked by this endless stretching out of attenuated¹³⁵ feminine adornment¹³⁶. They did their best to restore it to what they considered was its proper use. It was a homely¹³⁷ misunderstanding rather than a war. Oswald had led that expedition to a successful explanation. Thereafter the leading fact in the history of Uganda until the sleeping sickness came had been 213the construction of the railway from the coast to Lake Victoria Nyanza.

In Uganda as in Nyasaland Oswald Sydenham had found himself part of a rapid and busy process of tidying up the world. For some years it had carried him along and determined¹³⁹ all his views.

The tidying-up of Africa during the closing years of the nineteenth century was indeed one of the most rapid and effective tidyings up in history. In the late ’eighties the whole of Africa from the frontiers of lower Egypt down to Rhodesia had been a world of chaotic¹⁴⁰ adventure and misery¹⁴¹; a black world of insecure barbarism invaded by the rifle, and the Arab and European adventurers who brought it. There had been no such thing as a school from Nubia to Rhodesia, and everywhere there had been constant aimless bloodshed. Long ages of conflict, arbitrary cruelty and instinctive¹⁴² fierceness seemed to have reached a culmination¹⁴³ of destructive disorder¹⁴⁴. The increasing light that fell on Africa did but illuminate¹⁴⁵ a scene of collapse¹⁴⁶. The new forces that were coming into the country appeared at first as hopelessly blind and cruel as the old; the only difference was that they were better armed. The Arab was frankly¹⁴⁷ a slaver, European enterprise was deeply interested in forced labour. The first-fruits of Christianity had been civil war, and one of Oswald’s earliest experiences of Uganda had been the attack of Mwanga and his Roman Catholic adherents¹⁴⁸ upon the Anglicans in Mengo, who held out in Lugard’s little fort and ultimately established the soundness of the Elizabethan compromise by means of a Maxim³ gun. It was never a confident outlook for many years anywhere between the Zambesi and the Nile cataracts¹⁴⁹. Probably no honest man ever worked in west and central Africa between 1880 and 1900 who escaped altogether from phases of absolute despair; who did not face with a sinking heart, lust¹⁵¹, hatred¹⁵², cunning and treachery, black intolerance and ruthless aggression¹⁵³. And behind all the perversities of man worked the wickedness of tropical Nature, uncertain in her moods, frightful¹⁵⁴ in her storms, fruitful of strange troubles through weed and parasite¹⁵⁵, insect and pestilence¹⁵⁶. Yet civilization had in the long run won an astonishing victory. In a score of years, so endless then, so 214brief in retrospect¹⁵⁷, roads that had been decaying tracks or non-existent were made safe and open everywhere, the railway and the post and telegraph came to stay, vast regions of Africa which since the beginning of things had known no rule but the whim¹⁵⁸ and arbitrary power of transitory chiefs and kings, awoke to the conception of impartial¹⁵⁹ law; war canoes vanished from the lakes and robber tribes learnt to tend their own cattle and cultivate their gardens. And now there were schools. There were hospitals. Perhaps a quarter of a million young people in Uganda alone could read and write; the percentage of literacy in Uganda was rapidly overtaking that in India and Russia.

On the face of it this was enough to set one thinking of the whole world as if it were sweeping forward to universal civilization and happiness. For some years that had been Oswald’s habit of mind. It had been his sustaining faith. He had gone from task to task until this last attack of blackwater fever had arrested his activities. And then these doubts displayed themselves.

From South Africa, that land of destiny for western civilization, had come the first germ of his doubting. Sir Harry Johnston, Oswald’s chief, a frank and bitter critic of the New Imperialism that had thrust up from the Cape¹⁵⁰ to Nyasaland under the leadership of Cecil Rhodes, helped to shape and point his scepticism. The older tradition of the Empire was one of administration regardless of profit, Johnston declared; the new seemed inspired by conceptions of violent and hasty gain. The Rhodes example had set all Africa dancing to the tune¹⁶⁰ of crude exploitation. It had fired the competitive greed of the King of the Belgians and unleashed¹⁶¹ blood and torture in the Congo Free State. The Congo State had begun as a noble experiment, a real attempt at international compromise; it had been given over to an unworthy trustee and wrecked¹⁶³ hideously¹⁶⁴ by his ruthless profit-hunting. All over the Empire, honest administrators¹⁶⁵ and colonial politicians, friendly explorers and the missionaries¹⁶⁶ of civilization, were becoming more and more acutely aware of a heavy acquisitive thrust behind the New Imperialism. Usually they felt it first in the treatment of the natives. The earlier ill-treatment of the native came from the local 215trader, the local planter, the white rough; now as that sort of thing was got in hand and men could begin to hope for a new and better order, came extensive schemes from Europe for the wholesale¹⁶⁷ detachment of the native from his land, for the wholesale working and sweating of the native population....

Had we defeated the little robbers only to clear the way for organized imperial robbery?

Such things were already troubling Oswald’s mind before the shock of the South African war. But before the war they amounted to criticisms of this administration or that, they were still untouched by any doubts of the general Imperial purpose or of the Empire as a whole. The South African war laid bare an amazing and terrifying amount of national incompetence¹⁶⁸. The Empire was not only hustled¹⁶⁹ into a war for which there was no occasion, but that war was planned with a lack of intelligent foresight¹⁷⁰ and conducted with a lack of soundness that dismayed every thoughtful Englishman. After a monstrous¹⁷¹ wasteful¹⁷² struggle the national resources dragged it at last to a not very decisive victory. The outstanding fact became evident that the British army tradition was far gone in decay, that the army was feebly organized and equipped, and that a large proportion of its officers were under-educated men, narrow and conventional, inferior in imagination and initiative to the farmers, lawyers, cattle-drovers, and suchlike leaders against whom their wits were pitted. Behind the rejoicings that hailed the belated peace was a real and unprecedented¹⁷³ national humiliation¹⁷⁴. For the first time the educated British were enquiring¹⁷⁵ whether all was well with the national system if so small a conquest seemed so great a task. Upon minds thus sensitized came the realization¹⁷⁶ of an ever more vigorous and ever more successful industrial and trade competition from Germany and the United States; Great Britain was losing her metallurgical ascendancy¹⁷⁷, dropping far behind in the chemical industries and no longer supreme¹⁷⁸ upon the seas. For the first time a threat was apparent in the methods of Germany. Germany was launching liner after liner to challenge the British mercantile ascendancy, and she was increasing her navy with a passionate¹⁷⁹ vigour¹⁸⁰. What 216did it mean? All over the world the British were discovering the German. And the German, it seemed, had got this New Imperialism that was in the British mind in a still harsher, still less scrupulous¹⁸¹ and still more vulgar form. “Wake up, England,” said the Prince of Wales returning from a visit to Canada, and Oswald heard the phrase reverberating¹⁸² in Uganda and talked about it and thought it over continually.

(And Lord Rosebery spoke¹⁸³ of “efficiency.”)

But now when Oswald sought in the newspapers for signs of this waking up that he desired, he found instead this tremendous reiteration¹⁸⁴ of the ideas of the New Imperialism, acquisitive, mercenary, and altogether selfish and national, which he already so profoundly disliked. The awakening¹⁸⁵ he desired was an awakening of the spirit, an awakening to broader ideas and nobler conceptions of the nation’s rôle in the world’s affairs. He had hoped to find men talking of great schemes of national education, of new schools of ethnology, of tropical botany and oriental languages that would put the Imperial adventure on a broad basis of understanding and competent direction. Instead, he found England full of wild talk about “taxing the foreigner.” A hasty search for national profit he refused to recognize as an awakening. For him indeed it had far more of the quality of a nightmare.
§ 3

It is remarkable¹⁸⁶ how much our deeper convictions are at the mercy of physiological¹⁸⁷ jolts¹⁸⁸.

Before the renewed attacks of fever had lowered his vitality¹⁸⁹, Oswald had felt doubtful of this and that, but he had never doubted of the ultimate human triumph; he had never even doubted that the great Empire he served would survive, achieve its mission triumphantly¹⁹⁰, and incorporate itself in some way with a unified¹⁹¹ mankind. He himself might blunder or fail, there might be all sorts of set-backs, but in the end what he called Anglo-Saxonism would prevail, the tradition of justice and free speech would be justified by victory, and the darkest phase of the Martyrdom of Man 217end. But now the fever had so wrought¹⁹³ on his nerves and tissues that he no longer enjoyed this ultimate confidence. He could think that anything might fail. He could even doubt the stability of the Victorian world.

One night during this last illness that had brought him home he fell thinking of Zimbabwe and the lost cities of Africa, and then presently of the dead cities of Yucatan, and then of all the lost and vanished civilizations of the world, of the long succession of human failures to secure any abiding¹⁹⁴ order and security. With this he mingled¹⁹⁵ the suggestion of a recent anthropological¹⁹⁶ essay he had read. Two races of men with big brains and subtle minds, the Neanderthal race and the Cro-Magnon race, it was argued very convincingly, had been entirely exterminated¹⁹⁷ before the beginnings of our present humanity. Our own race too might fail and perish and pass away. In the night with a mounting temperature these were very grisly and horrible thoughts indeed. And when at last he passed from such weary and dismal¹⁹⁸ speculations¹⁹⁹ to sleep, there came a dream to crown and perpetuate²⁰⁰ his mood, a dream that was to return again and again.

It was one of those dreams that will sometimes give a nightmare reality of form and shape to the merest implications of the waking life, one of those dreams that run before and anticipate and perhaps direct one’s daylight decisions. That black artist of delirium²⁰² who throws his dark creations upon our quivering mental screens, had seized and utilized²⁰³ all Oswald’s germinating²⁰⁴ misgivings²⁰⁵ and added queer suggestions of his own. Through a thousand irrelevant²⁰⁶ and transitory horrors one persistent²⁰⁷ idea ran through Oswald’s distresses²⁰⁸. It was the idea of a dark forest. And of an endless effort to escape from it. He was one of the captains of a vaguely²⁰⁹ conceived expedition that was lost in an interminable wilderness²¹⁰ of shadows; sometimes it was an expedition of limitless millions, and the black trees and creepers about him went up as high as the sky, and sometimes he alone seemed to be the entire expedition, and the darkness rested on his eyes, and the thorns wounded him, and the great ropes of the creepers slashed²¹¹ his face. He was always struggling to get through this forest to some unknown hope, 218to some place where there was light, where there was air and freedom, where one could look with brotherly security upon the stars; and this forest which was Life, held him back; it held him with its darkness, it snared²¹² him with slime and marshy²¹³ pitfalls²¹⁴, it entangled²¹⁵ him amidst pools and channels of black and blood-red stinking water, it tripped him and bound him with its creepers; evil beasts snared his followers²¹⁸, great serpents put them to flight, inexplicable²¹⁹ panics and madnesses threw the long straggling columns into internecine²²⁰ warfare²²¹, incredible imbecilities threatened the welfare of the entire expedition. He would find himself examining the loads of an endless string of porters, and this man had flung away bread and loaded his pack with poisonous fungi²²², and that one had replaced ammunition²²³ by rust¹¹⁶ and rubbish and filth²²⁴. He would find himself in frantic²²⁵ remonstrance²²⁶ with porters who had flung aside their loads, who were sullenly²²⁷ preparing to desert; or again, the whole multitude would be stricken with some strange disease with the most foul²²⁸ and horrible symptoms, and refuse the doubtful medicines he tendered in his despair; or the ground would suddenly breed an innumerable multitude of white thin voracious²²⁹ leeches²³⁰ that turned red-black as they fed....

Then far off through the straight bars of the tree stems a light shone, and a great hope sprang up in him. And then the light became red, a wavering red, a sudden hot breeze brought a sound of crackling wood and the soughing of falling trees, spires²³¹ and flags and agonized²³² phantoms²³³ of flame rushed up to the zenith; through the undergrowth a thousand black beasts stampeded, the air was thick with wild flights of moths²³⁵ and humming-birds, and he realized that the forest had caught fire....

That forest fire was always a climax. With it came a burning sensation in loins and back. It made him shout and struggle and fight amidst the black fugitives²³⁶ and the black thickets²³⁷. Until the twigs²³⁸ and leaves about him were bursting into flames like a Christmas tree that is being lit up. He would awaken⁶ in a sweating agony.

Then presently he would be back again in the midst of that vague innumerable expedition in the steamy deep grey aisles²⁴⁰ of the forest, under the same gathering²⁴¹ sense of urgent 219necessity, amidst the same inextricable thickening tangle²¹⁶ of confusions and cross-purposes.

In his waking moments Oswald, if he could, would have dismissed that dream altogether from his mind. He could argue that it was the creation of some purely²⁴² pathological despondency, that it had no resemblance, no parallelism, no sort of relation to reality. Yet something of its dark hues²⁴³ was reflected in his waking thoughts. Sometimes this reflection was so faint as to be scarcely perceptible, but always it was there.
§ 4

The Plantain, to which Oswald drifted back to dine, was a club gathered from the ends of the earth and very proud of the fact; it was made up of explorers, travellers, colonial officials, K.C.M.G.’s and C.M.G.’s. It was understood to be a great exchange of imperial ideas, and except for a group or so of members who lived in and about London, it had no conversation because, living for the most part at different ends of the earth, its members did not get to know each other very well. Occasionally there was sporting gossip. Shy, sunburnt men drifted in at intervals²⁴⁴ of three or four years, and dined and departed. Once a member with a sunstroke from India gave way to religious mania²⁴⁵, and tried to preach theosophy from the great staircase to three lonely gentlemen who were reading the telegrams in the hall. He was removed with difficulty. The great red-papered, white-painted silences of the club are copiously²⁴⁶ adorned²⁴⁷ with rather old yellow maps of remote regions, and in the hall big terrestrial and celestial²⁴⁸ globes are available for any members who wish to refresh their minds upon the broad facts of our position in space. But the great glory of the club is its wealth of ethnological and sporting trophies²⁴⁹. Scarcely is there a variety of spear, stabbing or disembowelling knife, blowing tube, bow, crossbow, or matchlock, that is not at the disposal of any member nimble enough to pluck it from the wall. In addition there is a vast collection of the heads of beasts; everywhere they project from walls and pillars; heads of bison, gazelles and wart-hogs cheer the souls of the members 220even in the humblest recesses²⁵⁰. In the dining-room, above each table, a hippopotamus²⁵¹ or a rhinoceros²⁵² or a tiger or a lion glares out with glassy eyes upon the world, showing every item in its dentition. Below these monsters sits an occasional empire-builder, in the careful evening dress of the occasional visitant to civilization, seeming by contrast a very pallid²⁵³, little, nicely behaved thing indeed.

To the Plantain came Oswald, proposing to dine alone, and in this dining-room he discovered Slingsby Darton, the fiscal²⁵⁵ expert, a little Cockney with scarcely any nose at all, sitting with the utmost impudence²⁵⁶ under the largest moose. Oswald was so pleased to discover any one he knew that he only remembered that he detested²⁵⁷ Slingsby Darton as he prepared to sit down with him. There was nothing for it then but to make the best of him.

Oswald chose his dinner and his wine with care. Red wines were forbidden him, but the wine waiter had good authority, authority from India and gastrically very sensitive, for the Moselle he recommended. And in answer to Slingsby Darton’s enquiries, Oswald spread out his theory that he was an amiable²⁵⁸, pleased sort of person obliged to come home from Uganda, sorry to leave Uganda, but glad to be back in the dear old country and “at the centre of things,” and ready to take up anything——

“Politics?” said Slingsby Darton. “We want a few voices that have got out of sight of the parish pump.”

Politics—well, it might be. But it was a little hard to join on to things at first. “Fearful lot of squabbling—not very much doing. Not nearly as much as one had hoped.”

That seemed a restrained, reasonable sort of thing to say. Nor was it extravagant²⁵⁹ to throw out, “I thought it was ’Wake up, England’; but she seems just to be talking in her sleep.”

Out flares²⁶⁰ the New Imperialism at once in Oswald’s face. “But have you read Chamberlain’s great speeches?” Slingsby Darton protests.

“I had those in mind,” said Oswald grimly.

Both gentlemen were in the early phase of encounter. It was not yet time to join issue. Slingsby Darton heard, but made no retort. Oswald was free to develop his discontents.

221Nothing seemed to be getting done, he complained. The army had been proved inefficient²⁶¹, incapable²⁶² even of a colonial war, but what were we doing?

“Exactly,” said Slingsby Darton. “You dare not even whisper ’conscription.’”

Oswald had not been thinking of that but of a technical reorganization, more science, more equipment. But all that he could see in the way of a change were “these beastly new caps.” (Those were the days of the hated ’Brodrick.’) Then economic reorganization hung fire. “Unemployed” processions grew bigger every winter. (“Tariff,” whispered Darton. “Intelligent organization,” said Oswald.) Then education——

“Education,” said Oswald, “is at the heart of the whole business.”

“I wouldn’t say that altogether,” said Slingsby Darton.

“At the heart of the whole business,” Oswald repeated as though Slingsby Darton had not spoken. “The people do not know. Our people do not understand.” The Boer war had shown how horribly backward our education was—our higher education, our scientific and technical education, the education of our officials and generals in particular. “We have an empire as big as the world and an imagination as small as a parish.” But it would be a troublesome job to change that. Much too troublesome. Oswald became bitter and accusatory. His living side sneered²⁶³. It would bother a lot of Balfour’s friends quite uncomfortably. The dear old Church couldn’t keep its grip on an education of that sort, and of course the dear old Church must have its grip on education. So after a few large-minded flourishes, the politicians had swamped the whole question of educational reform in this row about church schools and the Passive Resistance movement, both sides only too glad to get away from reality. Oswald was as bitter against the Passive Resister as he was against the Church.

“I don’t know whether I should give quite the primary place to education,” said Slingsby Darton, battling against this tirade²⁶⁴. “I don’t know whether I should quite say that. Mr. Chamberlain——”

The fat, as the vulgar say, was in the fire.

222October, 1903, was a feverish²⁶⁵ and impassioned time in English affairs. From Birmingham that month the storm had burst. With a great splash Mr. Joseph Chamberlain had flung the issue of Protection into the sea of political affairs; huge waves of disturbance²⁶⁶ were sweeping out to the uttermost boundaries of the empire. Instead of paying taxes we were to “tax the foreigner.” To that our fine imperial dream had come. Over dinner-tables, in trains and smoking-rooms, men were quarrelling with their oldest friends. To Oswald the conversion²⁶⁷ of Imperialism into a scheme for world exploitation in the interests of Birmingham seemed the most atrocious swamping of real issues by private interests that it was possible to conceive. The Sydenham strain was an uncommercial strain. Slingsby Darton was manifestly in the full swirl²⁶⁸ of the new movement, the man looked cunning and eager, he put his pert little face on one side and raised his voice to argue. A gathering quarrelsomeness took possession of Oswald. He began to speak very rapidly and pungently²⁶⁹. He assumed an exasperating and unjustifiable detachment in order to quarrel better. He came into these things from the outside, he declared, quite unbiased, oh! quite unbiased. And this “nail-trust organizer’s campaign” shocked him—shocked him unspeakably. Here was England confessedly in a phase of inefficiency²⁷⁰ and deterioration, needing a careful all-round effort, in education, in business organization, in military preparation. And suddenly drowning everything else in his noise came “this demagogue ironmonger with his panacea²⁷¹!”

Slingsby Darton was indignant. “My dear Sir! I cannot hear you speak of Mr. Chamberlain in such terms as that!”

“But consider the situation,” said Oswald. “Consider the situation! When of all things we want steady and harmonious²⁷² constructive²⁷³ work, comes all the uproar²⁷⁴, all the cheap, mean thinking and dishonest spouting²⁷⁵, the music-hall tricks and poster arguments, of a Campaign.”

Slingsby Darton argued. “But, my dear Sir, it is a constructive campaign! It is based on urgent economic needs.”

Oswald would have none of that. Tariff Reform was a quack²⁷⁶ remedy. “A Zollverein. Think of it! With an empire 223in great detached patches all over the world. Each patch with different characteristics and different needs. A child could see that a Zollverein is absurd. A child could see it. Yet to read the speeches of Chamberlain you’d think a tariff could work geographical²⁷⁷ miracles and turn the empire into a compact continent, locked fast against the foreigner. How can a scattered²⁷⁸ host become a band of robbers? The mere²⁰¹ attempt takes us straight towards disaster.”

“Straight away from it!” Slingsby Darton contradicted.

Oswald went on regardlessly. “An empire—scattered like ours—run on selfish and exclusive lines must bring us into conflict with every other people under the sun,” he asserted. “It must do. Apart from the utter and wanton unrighteousness, apart from the treason to humanity. Oh! I hate this New Imperialism. I hate it and dread²⁷⁹ it. It spoils my sleep at nights. It worries me and worries me....”

Slingsby Darton thought he would do better to worry about this free trade of ours which was bleeding us to death.

“I do not speak as one ignorant of the empire,” said Oswald. “I have been watching it——”

Slingsby Darton, disregarded, maintained that he, too, had been watching.

But Oswald was now at the “I tell you, Sir,” stage.

He declared that the New Imperialism came from Germany. It was invented by professors of Weltpolitik. Milner had grafted²⁸⁰ it upon us at Balliol. But German conditions were altogether different from ours, Germany was a geographical unity²⁸¹, all drawn²⁸² together, unified by natural necessity, like a fist. Germany was indeed a fist—by geographical necessity. The British empire was like an open hand. Must be like an open hand. We were an open people—or we were nothing. We were a liberalizing power or we were the most pretentious²⁸³ sham in history. But we seemed to be forgetting that liberal idea for which we stood. We swaggered now like owners, forgetting that we were only trustees. Trustees for mankind. We were becoming a boastful and a sprawling²⁸⁴ people. The idea of grabbing half the world—and then shutting other peoples out with tariffs²⁸⁵, was—Oswald was losing self-control—“a shoving tradesman’s dream.” And we were doing it—as one might expect 224“a trust-organizing nail-maker”—phrase rubbed in with needless emphasis—to do it. We were shoving about, treading on everybody’s toes—and failing to educate, failing to arm. Yes—shoving. It was a good word. He did not mind how many times he used it. “This dream of defying the world without an army, and dominating it without education!” The Germans were at least logical in their swagger. If they shoved about they also armed. And they educated. Anyhow they trained. But we trod on everybody’s toes and tried to keep friends all round....

So Oswald—under the moose—while Slingsby Darton did what he could by stabbing an objection at him now and again. It became clearer and clearer to Slingsby Darton that the only possibility before him of holding his own, short of throwing knives and glasses at Oswald, was to capture the offensive.

“You complain of a panacea,” he said, poking²⁸⁶ out two arresting fingers at Oswald. “That Tariff Reform is a panacea. But what of education? What of this education of yours? That also is a panacea.”

And just then apt to his aid came Walsall and the Bishop²⁸⁷ of Pinner from their table under the big, black, clerical-looking hippopotamus. Walsall was a naturalist²⁸⁸, and had met Oswald in the days of his biological enthusiasm; the Bishop of Pinner had formerly²⁸⁹ been the Bishop of Tanganyika and knew Oswald by repute. So they came over to greet him and were at once seized upon as auxiliaries²⁹⁰ by Slingsby Darton.

“We’re getting heated over politics,” said Slingsby Darton, indicating that at least Oswald was.

“Every one is getting heated over politics,” said the bishop. “It’s as bad as the Home Rule split.”

“Sydenham’s panacea is to save the world by education. He won’t hear of economic organization.”

The bishop opened eyes and mouth at Oswald until he looked like the full moon....

On that assertion of Slingsby Darton’s they drifted past the paying-desk to the small smoking-room, and there they had a great dispute about education beneath a gallery audience, 225so to speak, composed of antelope²⁹¹, Barbary sheep, gnu, yaks²⁹², and a sea lion. Oswald had never realized before how passionately²⁹³ he believed in education. It was a revelation. He discovered himself. He wanted to tell these men they were uneducated. He did succeed in saying that Mr. Chamberlain was “essentially an uneducated man.”

Walsall was a very trying opponent for a disputant of swift and passionate convictions. He had a judicial²⁹⁴ affectation, a Socratic pose. He was a grey, fluffy-headed man with large tortoiseshell spectacles and a general resemblance to a kind wise owl⁸⁶. He liked to waggle his head slowly from side to side and smile. He liked to begin sentences with “But have you thought——?” or “I think you have overlooked——” or “So far from believing that, I hold the exact converse²⁹⁵.” He said these things in a very suave²⁹⁶ voice as though each remark was carefully dressed in oil before serving.

He expressed grave doubts whether there was “any benefit in education—any benefit whatever.”

But the argument that formed that evening’s entertainment for the sea lion and those assorted²⁹⁷ ruminating²⁹⁸ artiodactyls was too prolonged and heated and discursive²⁹⁹ to interest any but the most sedulous³⁰⁰ reader. Every possible sort of heresy³⁰¹ about education seemed loose that night for the affliction of Oswald. Slingsby Darton said, “Make men prosperous and education will come of its own accord.” Walsall thought that the sort of people who benefited by education “would get on anyhow.” He thought knowledge was of value according to the difficulty one experienced in attaining³⁰² it. (Could any sane³⁰³ man really believe that?) “I would persecute³⁰⁴ science,” said Walsall, “and then it would be taken care of by enthusiasts³⁰⁵.”

“But do you know,” said Oswald, with an immense quiet in his manner, “that there is a—a British Empire? An empire with rather urgent needs?”

(Suppressed murmur³⁰⁶ from Slingsby Darton: “Then I don’t see what your position is at all!”)

Walsall disputed these “needs.” Weren’t we all too much disposed to make the empire a thing of plan and will? An 226empire was a growth. It was like a man, it grew without taking thought. Presently it aged⁴⁴ and decayed. We were not going to save the empire by taking thought.

(Slingsby Darton, disregarded, now disagreeing with Walsall.)

“Germany takes thought,” Oswald interjected.

“To its own undoing³⁰⁷, perhaps,” said Walsall....

The bishop’s method of annoyance³⁰⁸ was even blander³⁰⁹ than Walsall’s, and more exasperating to the fevered victim. He talked of the evils of an “educated proletariat.” For a stable community only a certain proportion of educated people was advisable. You could upset the social balance by over-educating the masses. “We destroy good, honest, simple-souled workers in order to make discontented clerks.” Oswald spluttered, “You must make a citizen in a modern population understand something of the State he belongs to!”

“Better, Faith,” said the bishop. “Far better, Faith. Teach them a simple Catechism.”

He had visited Russia. He had been to the coronation of the Tzar, a beautiful ceremony, only a little marred³¹¹ by a quite accidental massacre³¹² of some of the spectators. Those were the days before the Russo-Japanese war and the coming of the Duma. There was much to admire in Russia, the good bishop declared; much to learn. Russia was the land of Mary, great-souled and blessed; ours alas³¹³! was the land of bustling³¹⁴ Martha. Nothing more enviable than the political solidarity³¹⁵ of Russia—“after our warring voices.... Time after time I asked myself, ’Aren’t we Westerns on the wrong track? Here is something—Great. And growing greater. Something simple. Here is obedience³¹⁶ and a sort of primitive³¹⁷ contentment. Trust in the Little White Father, belief in God. Here Christianity lives indeed.’”

About eleven o’clock Walsall was propounding³¹⁸ a paradox³¹⁹. “All this talk of education,” he said, “reminds me of the man who tried to lift himself by his own ears. How, I ask myself, can a democracy such as ours take an intelligent interest in its destiny unless it is educated, and how can it educate itself unless it takes an intelligent interest in its destiny? How escape that dilemma³²⁰?”

227“A community,” said Oswald, grappling with this after a moment, “a community isn’t one mind, it’s a number of minds, some more intelligent, some less. It’s a perpetual flow of new minds——”

Then something gave way within him.

“We sit here,” he said in a voice so full of fury that the mouth of the bishop fell open, “and while we talk this half-witted, half-clever muck to excuse ourselves from getting the nation into order, the sands run out of the glass. The time draws near when the empire will be challenged——”

He stood up abruptly³²¹.

“Have you any idea,” he said, “what the empire might be? Have you thought of these hundreds of millions to whom we might give light—had we light? Are we to be a possessing and profit-hunting people because we have not the education to be a leaderly people? Are we to do no better than Rome and Carthage—and loot the provinces of the world? Loot or education, that is the choice of every imperial opportunity. All England, I find, is echoing with screams for loot. Have none of us vision? None?”

The bishop shook his head sadly. The man, he thought, was raving³²².

“What is this vision of yours?” sneered Walsall. “Ten thousand professors?”

“After all,” said Slingsby Darton with a weary insidiousness³²³, “we do not differ about our fundamental idea. You must have funds. You must endow your schools. Without Tariff Reform to give you revenue——”

But Oswald was not going to begin over again.

“I ought to be in bed,” he said, looking at his watch. “My doctor sends me to bed at ten....”

“My God!” he whispered as he put on his coat under the benevolent³²⁴ supervision³²⁵ of an exceptionally fine Indian buffalo³²⁶.

“What is to happen to the empire,” he cried, going out into the night and addressing himself to the moon, to the monument which commemorates³²⁷ the heroic incompetence of the Duke of York, and to an interested hansom cabby, “what is to happen to the empire—when these are its educated opinions?”
228
§ 5

But it is high time that Joan and Peter came back into this narrative³²⁸. For this is their story, it bears their names on its covers and on its back and on its title-page and at the head of each left-hand page. It has been necessary to show the state of mind, the mental condition, the outlook, of their sole guardian³²⁹ when their affairs came into his hands. This done they now return by telephone. Oswald had not been back in the comfortable sitting-room at the Climax Club for ten minutes before he was rung up by Mr. Sycamore and reminded of his duty to his young charges. A club page called Mr. Sydenham to the receiver in his bedroom.

In those days the telephone was still far from perfection. It had not been in general use for a decade.... Mr. Sycamore was audible as a still small voice.

“Mr. Sydenham? Sycamore speaking.”

“No need to be,” said Oswald. “You haven’t been speaking to me.”

“Who am I speaking to? I want Mr. Sydenham. Sycamore speaking.”

“I’m Mr. Sydenham. Who are you? No need to be sick of your speaking so far as I’m concerned. I’ve only just been called to the telephone——”

“Your solicitor³³⁰, Sycamore. S.Y.C.A.M.O.R.E.”

“Oh! Right O. How are you, Mr. Sycamore? I’m Sydenham. How are those children?”

“Hope you’re well, Mr. Sydenham?”

“Gaudy—in a way. How are you?”

“I’ve been with Lady Charlotte today. I don’t know if you’ve heard anything of——”

Whop! Whop. Bunnik. Silence.

After a little difficulty communication with Mr. Sycamore was partially restored. I say partially because his voice had now become very small and remote indeed. “I was saying, I don’t know if you understand anything of the present state of affairs.”

“Nothing,” said Oswald. “Fire ahead.”

“Can you hear me distinctly? I find you almost inaudible.”

229Remonstrances with the exchange led after a time to slightly improved communications.

“You were saying something about a fire?” said Mr. Sycamore.

“I said nothing about a fire. You were saying something about the children?”

“Well, well. Things are in a very confused state, Mr. Sydenham. I hope you mean to take hold of their education. These children are not being educated, they are being fought over.”

“Who’s thinking over them?”

“No one. But the Misses Stubland and Lady Charlotte are fighting over them.... F.I.G.H.T.I.N.G. I want you to think over them.... You—yes.... Think, yes. Both clever children. Great waste if they are not properly educated.... Matters are really urgent. I have been with Lady Charlotte today. You know she kidnapped them?”

“Kidnapped?”

A bright girlish voice, an essentially happy voice, cut into the conversation at this point. “Three minutes up,” it said.

Empire-building language fell from Oswald. In some obscure way this feminine intervention³³¹ was swept aside, and talk was resumed with Mr. Sycamore.

It continued to be a fragmentary talk, and for a time the burthen of some unknown lady complaining to an unknown friend about the behaviour of a third unknown named George, stated to lack “gumption,” interwove with the main theme. But Mr. Sycamore did succeed in conveying to Oswald a sense of urgency about the welfare of his two charges. Immediate³³² attention was demanded. They were being neglected. The girl was ill. “I would like to talk it over with you as soon as possible,” said Mr. Sycamore.

“Can you come and breakfast here at eight?” said the man from the tropics.

“Half past nine,” said the Londoner, and the talk closed.

The talk ended, but for a time the bell of Oswald’s telephone remained in an agitated³³³ state, giving little nervous rings at intervals. When he answered these the exchange said “Number please,” and when he said, “You rang me,” the exchange said, “Oh, no! we didn’t....”

230“An empire,” whispered Oswald, sitting on the edge of his bed, “which cannot even run a telephone service efficiently³³⁴....”

“Education....”

He tried to recall his last speech at the club. Had he ranted³³⁵? What had they thought of it? What precisely³³⁶ had he said? While they sat and talked muck—his memory was unpleasantly insistent³³⁷ upon that “muck”—the sands ran out of the hour-glass, a new generation grew up.

Had he said that? That was the point of it all—about the new generation. A new generation was growing up and we were doing nothing to make it wiser, more efficient, to give it a broader outlook than the generation that had blundered into and blundered through the Boer war. Had he said that? That was what he ought to have said.
§ 6

For a long time he sat on his bed, blank-minded and too tired to finish undressing. He got to bed at last. But not to sleep. He found that the talk in the club had disturbed his mind almost unendurably. It had pointed³³⁸ and endorsed³³⁹ everything that he had been trying not to think about the old country. Now, too weary and too excited to sleep, he turned over and over again, unprofitably and unprogressively, the tangled²¹⁷ impressions of his return to England.

How many millions of such hours of restless questioning must have been spent by wakeful Englishmen in the dozen years between the Boer war and the Great war; how many nocturnally scheming brains must have explored the complicated maze³⁴⁰ of national dangers, national ambitions, and national ineptitude³⁴¹! If “Wake up, England,” sowed no great harvest of change in the daylight, it did at any rate produce large phantom²³⁴ crops at night. He argued with Walsall over and over again, sometimes wide awake and close to the point, sometimes drowsily³⁴² with the discussion becoming vague and strangely misshapen and incoherent. Was Walsall right? Was it impossible to change the nature and quality of a people? Must we English always be laggards³⁴³ in peace and blunderers in war? Were our achievements accidents, and 231our failures essential? Was slackness in our blood? Surely a great effort might accomplish much, a great effort to reorganize political life, to improve national education, to make the press a better instrument of public thought and criticism. To which Walsall answered again with, “How can a democratic community take an intelligent interest in its destinies unless it is educated, and how can it educate itself unless it takes an intelligent interest in its destinies?”

Oswald groaned³⁴⁴ and turned over in bed.

Thought passed by insensible degrees into dreaming and dreaming shallowed again to wakefulness. Always he seemed to be arguing with Walsall and the bishop for education and effort; nevertheless, now vaguely apprehended³⁴⁵ as an atmospheric³⁴⁶ background, now real and close, the black forest of his African nightmare was about him. Always he was struggling on and always he was hoping to see down some vista¹⁰⁴ the warm gleam of daylight, the promise of the open. And Walsall, a vast forest owl with enormous spectacles, kept getting in the way, flapping hands that were really great wings at him and assuring him that there was no way out. None. “This forest is life. This forest will always be life. There is no other life. After all it isn’t such a very bad forest.” Other figures, too, came and went; a gigantic bishop sitting back in an easy chair blocked one hopeful vista, declaring that book-learning only made the lower classes discontented and mischievous³⁴⁷, and then a stupidly contented³¹⁰ fat man smoking a fat cigar drove in a gig athwart the line of march. He said nothing; he just drove his gig. Then somehow an automobile came in, a most hopeful means of escape, except that it had broken down; and Oswald was trying to repair it in spite of the jeering³⁴⁸ of an elderly gentleman in a white waistcoat. Suddenly the whole forest swarmed³⁴⁹ with children. There were countless³⁵⁰ children; there were just two children. Instead of a multitudinous expedition Oswald found himself alone in the black jungle with just two children, two white and stunted children who were dying for the air and light. No one had cared for them. One was ill, seriously ill. Unless the way out was found they could not live. They were Dolly’s children, his wards¹¹¹. But what was he to do for them?...

232Then far ahead he saw that light of the great conflagration³⁵¹, that light that promised to be daylight and became a fire....

“Black coffee,” said Oswald during one of the wide-awake intervals. “Cigars. Talk. Over-excited.... I ought to be more careful.... I forget how flimsy I am still....

“I must get my mind off these things. I’ll talk to old Sycamore tomorrow and see about this little master Peter Stubland and his foster-sister. I’ll go into the matter thoroughly. I haven’t thought of them before.

“I wonder if the boy still takes after Dolly....

“After all,” he said, rolling over, “it’s true. Education is the big neglected duty of the time. It’s fundamental. And what am I doing? It’s just England—England all over—to let that boy be dragged up. I ought to see about him—now. I’ll go down there....

“I’ll go and stay with Aunt Charlotte for a day or so. I’ll send her a wire tomorrow.”
§ 7

The quiet but observant life of old Cashel at Chastlands was greatly enlivened by the advent⁶³ of Oswald.

Signs of a grave and increasing agitation in the mind of Cashel’s mistress became evident immediately after the departure of Mr. Sycamore. Manifestly whatever that gentleman had said or done—old Cashel had been able to catch very little—had been of a highly stimulating³⁵² nature. So soon as he was out of the house, Lady Charlotte abandoned her sofa and table, upsetting her tonic³⁵³ as she did so, and still wearing her dressing-gown and cap, proceeded to direct a hasty packing for Italy. Unwin became much agitated, and a housemaid being addressed as a “perfect fool” became a sniffing³⁵⁴ fount of tears. There was a running to and fro with trunks and tea-baskets, a ringing of bells, and minor³⁵⁵ orders were issued and countermanded³⁵⁷; the carriage was summoned twice for an afternoon drive and twice dismissed. When at last the lace peignoir was changed for a more suitable costume in which to take tea, Lady Charlotte came so near to actual physical violence that Unwin abruptly abandoned her quest 233of a perfect pose for wig²³⁹ and cap, and her ladyship surprised and delighted Cashel with a blond curl cocked waggishly³⁵⁸ over one eye. She did not have tea until half-past five.

She talked to herself with her hard blue eyes fixed³⁵⁹ on vacancy³⁶⁰. “I will not stay here to be insulted,” she said.

“Rampageous,” whispered Cashel on the landing. “Rumbustious. What’s it all about?”

“Cashel!” she said sharply as he was taking away the tea-things.

“M’lady.”

“Telephone to Mr. Grimes and ask him to take tickets as usual for myself and Unwin to Pallanza—for tomorrow.”

It was terrible but pleasing to have to tell her that Mr. Grimes would now certainly have gone home from his office.

“See that it is done tomorrow. Tomorrow I must catch the eleven forty-seven for Charing Cross. I shall take lunch with me in the train. A wing of chicken. A drop of claret. Perhaps a sandwich. Gentleman’s Relish³⁶¹ or shrimp³⁶² paste. And a grape or so. A mere mouthful. I shall expect you to be in attendance to help with the luggage as far as Charing Cross....”

So she was going after all.

“Like a flight,” mused³⁶³ Cashel. “What’s after the Old Girl?”...

He grasped the situation a little more firmly next day.

The preparations for assembling Lady Charlotte in the hall before departure were well forward at eleven o’clock, although there was no need to start for the station until the half hour. A brief telegram from Oswald received about half-past ten had greatly stimulated³⁶⁴ these activities....

Unwin, very white in the face—she always had a bilious³⁶⁵ headache when travelling was forward—and dressed in the peculiar³⁶⁶ speckled black dress and black hat that she considered most deterrent³⁶⁷ to foreign depravity, was already sitting stiffly in the hall with Lady Charlotte’s purple-coloured dressing-bag beside her, and Cashel having seen to the roll of rugs was now just glancing through the tea-basket to make sure that it was in order, when suddenly there was the flapping, rustling³⁶⁸ sound of a large woman in rapid movement upon the landing above, and Lady Charlotte appeared at the 234head of the stairs, all hatted, veiled and wrapped for travelling. Her face was bright white with excitement. “Unwin, I want you,” she cried. “Cashel, say I’m in bed. Say I’m ill and must not be disturbed. Say I’ve been taken ill.”

She vanished with the agility³⁶⁹ of a girl of twenty—except that the landing was of a different opinion.

The two servants heard her scuttle³⁷⁰ into her room and slam the door. There was a great moment of silence.

“Oh, Lor’!” Unwin rose with the sigh of a martyr¹⁹², and taking the dressing-bag with her—the fittings alone were worth forty pounds—and pressing her handkerchief to her aching brow, marched upstairs.

Cashel, agape, was roused by the ringing of the front door bell. He opened to discover Mr. Oswald Sydenham with one arm in a sling²⁵⁴ and a rug upon the other.

“Hullo, Cashel,” he said. “I suppose my room isn’t occupied? My telegram here? How’s Lady Charlotte?”

“Very poorly, sir,” said Cashel. “She’s had to take in her bed, sir.”

“Pity. Anything serious?”

“A sudden attact, sir.”

“H’m. Well, tell her I’m going to inflict³⁷¹ myself upon her for a day or so. Just take my traps in and I’ll go on with this fly to Limpsfield. Say I’ll be back to dinner.”

“Certainly, sir.”

The old man bustled³⁷² out to get in the valise and Gladstone bag that constituted Oswald’s luggage. When he came into the hall again he found the visitor scrutinizing³⁷³ the tea-basket and the roll of rugs with his one penetrating³⁷⁴ eye in a manner that made him dread a question. But Oswald never questioned servants; on this occasion only he winked³⁷⁵ at one.

“Nothing wrong with the arm, sir?” asked old Cashel.

“Nothing,” said Oswald, still looking markedly at the symptoms of imminent³⁷⁶ travel. “H’m.”

He went out to the fly, stood ready to enter it, and then swivelled round very quickly and looked up at his aunt’s bedroom window in time to catch an instant impression of a large, anxious face regarding him.

235“Ah!” said Oswald, and returned smiling grimly into the hall.

“Cashel,” he called.

“Sir?”

“Her ladyship is up. Tell her I have a few words to say to her before she goes.”

“Beg pardon, sir——”

“Look here, Cashel, you do what I tell you.”

“I’ll tell Miss Unwin, sir.”

He went upstairs, leaving Oswald still thinking over the rugs. Yes, she was off! She had got everything; pointed Alpine³⁷⁷ sticks, tea-basket, travelling campstool. It must be Switzerland or Italy for the winter at least. A great yearning³⁷⁸ to see his aunt with his own eye came upon Oswald. He followed Cashel upstairs quietly but swiftly, and found him in a hasty whispered consultation³⁷⁹ with Unwin on the second landing. “Oh my ’ed’ll burst bang,” Unwin was saying.

“’Er ladyship, sir,” she began at the sight of Oswald.

“Ssh!” he said to her, and held her and Cashel silent with an uplifted forefinger³⁸⁰ while he listened to the sounds of a large powerful woman going to bed swiftly and violently in her clothes.

“I must go in to her, sir,” said Unwin breaking the silence. “Poor dear! It’s a very sudden attact.”

The door opened and closed upon Unwin.

“Lock the door on him, you—you Idiot!” they heard Lady Charlotte shout—too late.

The hated and dreaded³⁸¹ visage of Oswald appeared looking round the corner of the door into the great lady’s bedroom. Her hat had been flung aside, she was tying on an unconvincing night cap over her great blond travelling wig; her hastily assumed nightgown betrayed the agate brooch at her neck.

“How dare you, sir!” she cried at the sight of him.

“You’re not ill. You’re going to cut off to Italy this afternoon. What have you done to my Wards?”

“A lady’s sick room! Sacred, Sir! Have you no sense of decency³⁸²?”

“Is it measles³⁸³, Auntie?”

236“Go away!”

“I daren’t. If I leave you alone in this country for a year or two you’re bound to get into trouble. What am I to do with you?”

“Unbecoming intrusion!”

“You ought to be stopped by the Foreign Office. You’ll lead to a war with Italy.”

“Go for a doctor, Cashel,” she cried aloud in her great voice. “Go for the doctor.”

“M’lady,” very faintly from the landing.

“And countermand³⁵⁶ the station cab, Cashel,” said Oswald.

“If you do anything of the sort, Cashel!” she cried, and sitting up in bed clutched the sheets with such violence that a large spring-sided boot became visible at the foot of the bed. The great lady had gone to bed in her boots. Aunt and nephew both glared at this revelation in an astonished silence.

“How can you, Auntie,” said Oswald.

“If I choose,” said Lady Charlotte. “If I choose——Oh! Go away!”

“Back to dinner,” said Oswald sweetly, and withdrew.

He was still pensive³⁸⁴ upon the landing when Unwin appeared to make sure that the station cab was not countermanded....

Under the circumstances he was not surprised to find on his return from The Ingle-Nook that he was now the only occupant of Chastlands. Aunt Charlotte had fled, leaving behind a note that had evidently been written before his arrival.

My dear Nephew,—I am sorry that my arrangements for going abroad this winter, already made, prevent my welcoming you home for this uninvited and totally unexpected visit. I am sure Cashel and the other servants will take good care of you. You seem to know the way to their good graces. There are many things I should have liked to talk over with you if you had given me due and proper notice of your return as you ought to have done, instead of leaving it to a solicitor to break the glad tidings to me, followed by a sixpenny telegram. As it is, I shall just miss you. I have to go, and I 237cannot wait. All my arrangements are made. I suppose it is idle to expect civility from you ever or the slightest attention to the convenances. The Sydenhams have never shone in manners. Well, I hope you will take those two poor children quite out of the hands of those smoking, blaspheming, nightgown-wearing Limpsfield women. They are utterly³⁸⁵ unfit for such a responsibility. Utterly. I would not trust a pauper³⁸⁶ brat³⁸⁷ in their hands. The children require firm treatment, the girl especially, or they will be utterly spoilt. She is deceitful and dishonest, as one might expect; she gave Mrs. Pybus a very trying time indeed, catching³⁸⁸ measles deliberately³⁸⁹ and so converting the poor woman’s house into a regular hospital. I fear for her later. I have done my best for them both. No doubt you will find it all spun³⁹⁰ into a fine tale, but I trust your penetration³⁹¹ to see through a tissue of lies, however plausible it may seem at the first blush. I am glad to think you are now to relieve me of a serious responsibility, though how a single man not related to her in the slightest degree can possibly bring up a young girl, even though illegitimate, without grave scandal, passes my poor comprehension. No doubt I am an old fashioned old fool nowadays! Thank God! I beg to be excused!
Your affectionate Aunt
Charlotte.

Towards the end of this note her ladyship’s highly angular handwriting betrayed by an enhanced size and considerable irregularity, a deflection from her customary calm.
§ 8

Oswald knocked for some time at the open green door of The Ingle-Nook before attracting any one’s attention. Then a small but apparently³⁹² only servant appeared, a little round-faced creature who looked up hard into Oswald’s living eye—as though she didn’t quite like the other. She explained that “Miss Phyllis” was not at home, and that “Miss Phœbe mustn’t be disturved.” Miss Phœbe was working. Miss Phyllis had gone away with Mary——

“Who’s Mary?” said Oswald.

238“Well, Sir, it’s Mary who always ’as been ’ere, Sir,”—to Windsor to be with Miss Joan. “And it’s orders no one’s allowed to upset Miss Phœbe when she’s writing. Not even Lady Charlotte Sydenham, Sir. I dursn’t give your name, Sir, even. I dursn’t.”

“Except,” she added reverentially, “it’s Death or a Fire.”

“You aren’t the Piano, per’aps?” she asked.

Oswald had to confess he wasn’t.

The little servant looked sorry for him.

And that was in truth the inexorable law now of The Ingle-Nook. Aunt Phœbe was taking herself very seriously—as became a Thinker whose Stitchwoman papers, deep, high, and occasionally broad in thought, were running into a sale of tens of thousands. So she sat hard and close at her writing-table from half-past nine to twelve every morning, secluded³⁹³ and defended from all the world, correcting, musing³⁹⁴ deeply over, and occasionally reading aloud the proofs of the third series of Stitchwoman papers. (Old Groombridge, the occasional gardener, used to listen outside in awe³⁹⁵ and admiration³⁹⁶. “My word, but she do give it ’em!” old Groombridge used to say.) Oswald perceived that there was nothing to do but wait. “I’ll wait,” he said, “downstairs.”

“I suppose I ought to let you in,” said the little servant, evidently seeking advice.

“Oh, decidedly,” said Oswald, and entered the room in which he had parted from Dolly six years ago.

The door closed behind the little servant, and Oswald found himself in a house far more heavily charged with memories than he could have expected. The furniture had been but little altered; it was the morning time again, the shadow masses fell in the same places, it had just the same atmosphere of quiet expectation it had had on that memorable³⁹⁸ day before the door beyond had opened and Dolly had appeared, subdued³⁹⁹ and ashamed, to tell him of the act that severed⁴⁰⁰ them for ever. How living she seemed here by virtue⁴⁰¹ of those inanimate things! Had that door opened now he would have expected to see her standing¹³⁸ there again. And he was alive still, strong and active, altered just a little by a touch of fever and six short years of experience, but the 239same thing of impulse and desire and anger, and she had gone beyond time and space, beyond hunger or desire. He had walked between this window and this fireplace on these same bricks on which he was pacing now, spitting abuse at her, a man mad with shame and thwarted desire. Never had he forgiven her, or stayed his mind to think what life had been for her, until she was dead. That outbreak, with gesticulating hands and an angry, grimacing⁴⁰² face, had been her last memory of him. What a broken image he had made of himself in her mind! And now he could never set things right with her, never tell her of his belated understanding and pity. “I was a weak thing, confused and torn between my motives⁴⁰³. Why did you—you who were my lover—why did you not help me after I had stumbled?” So the still phantom in that room reproached him, a phantom of his own creation, for Dolly had never reproached him; to the end she had had no reproaches in her heart for any one but herself because of their disaster.

“Hold tight to love, little people,” he whispered. “Hold tight to love.... But we don’t, we don’t....”

Never before had Oswald so felt the tremendous pitifulness of life. He felt that if he stayed longer in this room he must cry out. He walked to the garden door and stood looking at the empty flagstone path between the dahlias and sunflowers.

It was all as if he had but left it yesterday, except for the heartache that now mingled with the sunshine.

“Pat—whack—pat—whack”; he scarcely heeded⁴⁰⁴ that rhythmic⁴⁰⁵ noise.

Peter had gone out of his head altogether. He walked slowly along the pathway towards the little arbour that overhung the Weald. Then, turning, he discovered Peter with a bat in his hand, regarding him....

Directly Oswald saw Peter he marvelled⁴⁰⁶ that he had not been eager to see him before. The boy was absurdly like Dolly; he had exactly the same smile; and directly he saw the gaunt figure of his one-eyed guardian he cried out, “It’s Nobby!” with a voice that might have been hers. There was a squeak⁴⁰⁸ of genuine delight in his voice. He wasn’t at all 240the sturdy little thing in a pinafore that Oswald remembered. He seemed indeed at the first glance just a thin, flat-chested little Dolly in grey flannel⁴⁰⁹ trousers.

He had obviously been bored before this happy arrival of Oswald. He had been banging a rubber ball against the scullery with a cricket-bat and counting hits and misses. It is a poor entertainment. Oswald did not realize how green his memory had been kept by the Bungo-Peter saga⁴¹⁰, and Peter’s prompt recognition after six years flattered him.

The two approached one another slowly, taking each other in.

“You remember me?” said Oswald superfluously⁴¹¹.

“Don’t I just! You promised me a lion’s skin.”

“So I did.”

He could not bear to begin this new relationship as a defaulter. “It’s on its way to you,” he equivocated⁴¹², making secret plans.

Peter, tucking his bat under his arm and burying his hands in his trouser pockets, drew still nearer. At a distance of four feet or thereabouts he stopped short and Oswald stopped short. Peter regarded this still incredible home-comer with his head a little on one side.

“It was you, used to tell me stories.”

“You don’t remember my telling you stories?”

“I do. About the Ba-ganda who live in U-ganda. Don’t you remember how you used to put out my Zulus and my elephants and lions on the floor and say it was Africa. You taught us roaring like lions—Joan and me. Don’t you remember?”

Oswald remembered. He remembered himself on all fours with the children on the floor of the sunny playroom upstairs, and some one sometimes standing, sometimes sitting above the game, some one who listened as keenly as the children, some one at whom he talked about that world of lakes as large as seas, and of trackless, sunless forests and of park-like glades⁴¹³ and wildernesses⁴¹⁴ of flowers, and about strings⁴¹⁵ of loaded porters and of encounters with marvelling⁴¹⁶ people who had never before set eyes on a European....
241
§ 9

The idea that the guardianship⁴¹⁷ of Peter was just a little duty to be seen to, vanished at the sight of him in favour of the realization of a living relationship. There are moments when small boys of ten in perfect health and condition can look the smallest, flimsiest, and most pathetic of created things—and at the same time preternaturally valiant⁴¹⁹ and intelligent. They take on a likeness⁴²⁰ to sacred flames that may at any moment flicker⁴²¹ out. More particularly does this unconscious camouflage⁴²² of delicacy⁴²³ occur in the presence of parents and guardians⁴¹⁸ already in a state of self-reproach and emotional disorder. Mr. Grimes with an eye to growth had procured⁴²⁴ a grey flannel suit a little too large for Peter, but it never occurred to Oswald that the misfit could be due to anything but a swift and ominous⁴²⁵ shrinkage of the boy. He wanted to carry him off forthwith to beer and cream and sea-bathing.

But these were feelings he knew he must not betray.

“I must tell you some more stories,” he said. “I’ve come back to England to live.”

“Here?”—brightly.

“Well, near here. But I shall see a lot of you now, Peter.”

“I’ll like that,” said Peter. “I’ve often thought of you....”

A pause.

“You broken your arm?” said Peter.

“Not so bad as that. I’ve got to have some bits of shell taken out.”

“That Egyptian shell? When you got the V.C.?”

“I never told you of the Egyptian shell?” asked Oswald.

“Mummy did. Once. Long ago.”

Another pause.

“This garden’s not so greatly altered, Peter,” said Oswald.

“There’s a Friendship’s Garden up that end,” said Peter, indicating the end by a movement of his head. “But it isn’t much. Aunt Phœbe started it and forgot it. Every one who came was to plant something. And me and Joan have gardens, but they’ve got all weedy now.”

242“Let’s have a look at it all,” said Oswald, and guardian and ward⁸⁴ strolled towards the steep.

“The Dahlias are splendid this year,” Oswald remarked, “and these Japanese roses are covered with berries. Splendid, aren’t they? One can make a jelly of them. Quite a good jelly. And let me see, wasn’t there a little summerhouse at the end of this path where one looked over the Weald? Ah! here it is. Hardly changed at all.”

He sat down. Here he had talked with Dolly and taken her hand....

He bestirred himself to talk.

“And exactly how old are you now, Peter?”

“Ten years and two months,” said Peter.

“We’ll have to find a school for you.”

“Have you been in Africa since I saw you?” Peter asked, avoiding the topic.

“Since you saw me going off,” said Oswald, and the man glanced at the boy and the boy glanced at the man, and each was wondering what the other remembered. “I’ve been in Uganda all the time. There’s been fighting and working. Some day you must go to Uganda and see all that has been done. We’ve made a good railway and good roads and telegraphs. We’ve put down robbers and cruelty.”

“And shot a lot of lions?”

“Plenty. The lions were pretty awful for a bit. About Nairobi and along the line.”

“Shot ’em when they were coming at you?”

“One was coming straight at me.”

“That’s my skin,” said Peter.

Oswald made no answer.

“I’d like to go to Africa,” said Peter.

“You shall.”

He decided³⁹⁷ to begin at once upon his neglected task of making an Imperial citizen according to the ideas that prevailed before the advent of the New Imperialism. “That sort of thing,” he said, “is what we Englishmen are for, you know, Peter. What our sort of Englishman is for anyhow. We have to go about the world and make roads and keep the peace and see fair play. We’ve got to kill big beasts and climb hard mountains. That’s the job of the 243Englishman. He’s a sort of policeman. A sort of working guardian. Not a nosy⁴²⁷ slave-driver trying to get rich. He chases off slave-drivers. All the world’s his beat. India, Africa, China, and the East, all the seas of the world. This little fat green country, all trim and tidy and set with houses and gardens, isn’t much of a land for a man, you know—unless he’s an invalid⁴²⁸. It’s a good land to grow up in and come back to die in. Or rest in. But in between, no!”

“No,” said Peter.

“No.”

“But you haven’t come back to die, Uncle Nobby?”

“No fear. But I’ve had to come back. I’m resting. This old arm, you know, and all that sort of thing. Just for a time.... And besides I want to see a lot of you.”

“Yes.”

“You have to grow up here and learn all you can, science and all sorts of things, so that you can be a useful man—wherever you have to go.”

“Africa,” said Peter.

“Africa, perhaps. And that’s why one has to go to school and college—and learn all about it.”

“They haven’t taught me much about it yet,” said Peter.

“Well, you haven’t been to much in the way of schools,” said Oswald.

“Are there better schools?”

“No end. We’re going to find one,” said Oswald.

“I wish school was over,” said Peter.

“Why? You’ve got no end to learn yet.”

“I want to begin,” said Peter, looking out across the tumbled gentleness of the Weald.

“Begin school?”

“No, begin—Africa, India—doing things.”

“School first,” said Oswald.

“Are there schools where you learn about guns and animals and mountains and foreign people?” said Peter.

“There must be,” said Oswald. “We’ll find something.”

“Where you don’t do Latin and parsing⁴²⁹ and ’straction of the square root.”

“Oh! those things have their place.”

“Did you have to do them, Uncle Nobby?”

244“Rather.”

“Were they useful to you?”

“At times—in a way. Of course those things are good as training, you know—awfully good. Harden up the mental muscles, Peter.”

Peter made no reply to that.

Presently Peter said, “Shall I learn about machines?”

“When you’ve done some mathematics, Peter.”

“I’d like to fly,” said Peter.

“That’s far away yet.”

“There was a boy at that school, his father was an engineer; and he said that flying machines were coming quite soon.”

This was beyond Oswald’s range.

“The French have got a balloon that steers⁴³⁰ about,” he said. “That’s as near as we are likely to come to flying for a long time yet.”

“This boy said that he meant a real flying machine, not a balloon. It was to be heavier than air. It would fly like a kite or a bird.”

“I doubt if we’ll see that in my lifetime,” said Oswald; “or yours,” blind to the fate that had marked Peter for its own.

“H’m,” said Peter, with a shadow falling upon one of his brightest dreams. (Nobby ought to know these things. His word ought surely to be final. Still, after all, this chap’s father was an engineer.) “I’d love to fly,” said Peter.
§ 10

Something with the decorative⁴³¹ effect of a broad processional banner in a very High Church indeed, appeared upon the flagstone path. It was Aunt Phœbe.

She had come out into the garden half an hour before her usual time. But indeed from the moment when she had heard Oswald and Peter talking in the garden below she had been unable to write more. After some futile⁴³² attempts to pick up the lost thread of her discourse⁴³³, she had gone to her bedroom and revised her toilet, which was often careless in the morning, so as to be more expressive⁴³⁴ of her personality. 245She was wearing a long djibbah-like garment with a richly embroidered⁴³⁵ yoke⁴³⁶, she had sandals over her brown stockings, and rather by way of symbol of authorship than for any immediate use she bore a big leather portfolio⁴³⁷. There was moreover now a gold-mounted fountain pen amidst the other ingredients of the cheerful chatelaine that had once delighted Peter’s babyhood.

She seemed a fuller, more confident person than Oswald remembered. She came eloquent⁴³⁸ with apologies. “I have to make an inexorable rule,” she said, “against disturbances⁴³⁹. As if I were a man writer instead of a mere woman. Between nine and one I am a woman enclosed—cloistered—refused. Sacred hours of self-completeness. Unspeakably precious to me. Visitors are not even announced. It is a law—inflexible.”

“We must all respect our work,” said Oswald.

“It’s over now,” said Aunt Phœbe, smiling like the sun after clouds. “It’s over now for the day. I am just human—until tomorrow again.”

“You are writing a book?” Oswald asked rather ineptly⁴⁴⁰.

“The Stitchwoman; Series Three. Much is expected; much must be given. I am the slave now of a Following.”

Aunt Phœbe went to the wall and stood with her fine profile raised up over the view. She was a little breathless and twitching⁴⁴¹ slightly, but very magnificent. Most of her hair was tidy. “Our old Weald, does it look the same?” she asked.

“Quite the same,” said Oswald, standing up beside her.

“But not to me,” she said. “Indeed not to me. To me every day it is different. Always wide, always wonderful, but different, always different. I know it so well.”

Oswald felt she had worked a “catch” on him. He was faintly nettled⁴⁴².

“Still,” he said, “fundamentally one must recognize that it’s the same Weald.”

“I wonder,” said Aunt Phœbe suddenly, looking at him very intently, and then, as if she tasted the word, “Fundamentally?”

“I don’t know,” she added.

Oswald was too much annoyed to reply.

246“And what do you think of your new charge?” she asked. “I don’t know whether Peter quite understands that yet. The young squire⁴⁴³ goes to the men. He casts aside childish things, and rides out in his little Caparison to join the ranks. Do you know that, Peter? Mr. Sydenham is now your sole guardian.”

Peter looked at Oswald and smiled shyly, and his cheeks flushed.

“I think we shall get on together,” said Oswald.

“Would that it ended there! You take the girl too?”

“It is not my doing,” said Oswald.

Aunt Phœbe addressed the Weald.

“Poor Dolly! So it is that the mother soul cheats itself. Through the ages—always self-abnegation for the woman.” She turned to Oswald. “If she had had time to think I am certain she would not have excluded women from this trust. Certain. What have men to do with education? With the education of a woman more particularly. The Greater from the Less. But the thing is done. It has been a great experiment, a wonderful experiment; teaching, I learnt—but I doubt if you will understand that.”

There was a slight pause. “What exactly was the nature of the experiment?” asked Oswald modestly.

“Feminine influence. Dominant⁴⁴⁴.”

Oswald considered. “I don’t know if you include Lady Charlotte,” he threw out.

“Oh!” said Aunt Phœbe.

“But she has played her part, I gather.”

“Feminine! No! She is completely a Man-made Woman. Quintessentially the Pampered⁴⁴⁵ Squaw. Holding her position by her former charms. A Sex Residuum. Relict. This last outrage⁴⁴⁶. An incident—merely. Her course of action was dictated⁴⁴⁷ for her. A Man. A mere solicitor. One Grimes. The flimsiest creature! An aspen leaf—but Male. Male.”

Stern thoughts kept Aunt Phœbe silent for a time. Then she remarked very quietly, “I shook him. I shook him well.”

“I hope still to have the benefit of your advice,” said Oswald gravely.

“Nay,” she said. But she was pleased. “A shy comment, 247perhaps. But the difference will be essential. Don’t expect me to guide you as you would wish to be guided. That phase is over between men and women. We hand the children over—since the law will have it so. Take them!”

And then addressing the Weald, Aunt Phœbe, in vibrating accents, uttered a word that was to be the keynote of a decade of feminine activities.

“The Vote,” said Aunt Phœbe, getting a wonderful emotional buzz into her voice. “The Vo-o-o-o-o-te.”
§ 11

So it was that Oswald found himself fully⁹⁸ invested with his responsibilities.

There was a terrifying suggestion in Aunt Phœbe’s manner that he would presently have to clap Peter’s hat on, make up a small bundle of Peter’s possessions, and fare forth⁴²⁶ with him into the wide world, picking up the convalescent at Windsor on the way, but that was a misapprehension of Aunt Phœbe’s intentions. And, after all, it was Peter’s house and garden if it came to that. For a time at least things could go on as they were. But the task of direction was now fully his. Whether these two young people were properly educated or not, whether they too became slackers and inadequate⁴⁴⁸ or worthy¹⁶² citizens of this great empire, rested now entirely in his hands.

“They must have the best,” he said....

The best was not immediately apparent.

From Chastlands and his two rooms at the Climax Club Oswald conducted his opening researches for the educational best, and whenever he was at Chastlands he came over nearly every day to The Ingle-Nook on his bicycle. It was a well-remembered road. Scarcely was there a turn in it that did not recall some thought of the former time when he had ridden over daily for a sight of Dolly; he would leave his bicycle in a clump⁴⁴⁹ of gorse by the high road that was surely an outgrown⁴⁵⁰ fragment of the old bush in which he had been wont⁴⁵¹ to leave it six years before; he would walk down the same rusty path, and his heart would quicken as it used to quicken at the thought of seeing Dolly. But presently Peter 248began to oust⁷⁸ Dolly from his thoughts. Sometimes Peter would be standing waiting for him by the high road. Sometimes Peter, mounted on a little outgrown bicycle, would meet him on the purple common half way.

A man and a boy of ten are perhaps better company than a man and a boy of fifteen. There’s so much less egotism between them. At any rate Peter and Oswald talked of education and travel and politics and philosophy with unembarrassed freedom. Oswald, like most childless people, had had no suspicion of what the grey matter of a bright little boy’s brain can hold. He was amazed at Peter’s views and curiosities. It was Oswald’s instinct never to talk “down” to man, woman or child. He had never thought about it, but if you had questioned him he would have told you that that was the sort of thing one didn’t do. And this instinct gave him a wide range of available companionship. Peter had never conceived such good company as Oswald. You could listen to Oswald for hours. They discoursed⁴⁵² upon every topic out of dreamland. And sometimes they came very close even to that dreamland where Bungo Peter adventured immortally⁴⁵³. Oswald would feel a transfiguring presence, a touch of fantasy and half suspect their glorious companion.

Much of their talk was a kind of story-telling.

“How should we go to the Congo Forest?” Peter would ask. “Would one go by Nairobi?”

“No, that’s the other way. We’d have to go——”

And forthwith Nobby and Peter were getting their stuff together and counting how many porters they would need....

“One day perhaps we’d come upon a place ’fested with crocodiles,” Peter would say.

“We would. You would be pushing rather ahead of the party with your guns, looking for anything there might be—pushing through tall reeds far above your head,” Oswald would oblige.

“You’d be with me,” insisted Peter....

It was really story-telling....

It was Peter’s habit in those days when he was alone to meditate⁴⁵⁴ on paper. He would cover sheet after sheet with rapidly drawn scenes of adventure. One day Oswald found 249himself figuring in one of these dream pictures. He and Peter were leading an army in battle. “Capture of Ten War Elephants” was the legend thereon. But he realized how clearly the small boy saw him. Nothing was spared of the darkened, browless side of his face with its asymmetrical⁴⁵⁵ glass eye, the figure of him was very long and lean and bent⁴⁵⁶, with its arm still in its old sling; and it was drawn manifestly with the utmost confidence and admiration and love....

Peter’s hostility to schools was removed very slowly. The lessons at High Cross had scarred him badly, and about Miss Mills clung associations of the utmost dreariness⁴⁵⁷. Still it was Oswald’s instinct to consult the young man on his destiny.

“There’s a lot you don’t know yet,” said Oswald.

“Can’t I read it out of books?” asked Peter.

“You can’t read everything out of books,” said Oswald. “There’s things you ought to see and handle. And things you can only learn by doing.”

Oswald wanted Peter to plan his own school.

Peter considered. “I’d like lessons about the insides of animals, and about the people in foreign countries—and how engines work—and all that sort of thing.”

“Then we must find a school for you where they teach all that sort of thing,” said Oswald, as though it was merely a question of ordering goods from the Civil Service Stores....

He had much to learn yet about education.
§ 12

But Oswald was still only face to face with the half of his responsibility.

One morning he found Peter at the schoolroom table very busy cutting big letters out of white paper. Beside him was a long strip of Turkey twill from the dressing-up box that The Ingle-Nook had plagiarized⁴⁵⁸ from the Sheldricks. “I’m getting ready for Joan,” said Peter. “I’m going to put ’Welcome’ on this for over the garden gate. And there’s to be a triumphal arch.”

Hitherto Peter had scarcely betrayed any interest in Joan 250at all, now he seemed able to think of no one else, and Oswald found himself reduced abruptly from the position of centre of Peter’s universe to a mere helper in the decorations. But he was beginning to understand the small boy by this time, and he took the withdrawal⁴⁵⁹ of the limelight philosophically⁴⁶⁰.

When Aunt Phyllis and Joan arrived they found the flagged path from the “Welcome” gate festooned with chains of coloured paper (bought with Peter’s own pocket-money and made by him and Oswald, with some slight assistance and much moral support from Aunt Phœbe in the evening) to the door. The triumphal arch had been achieved rather in the Gothic style by putting the movable Badminton net posts into a sort of trousering of assorted oriental cloths from the dressing-up chest, and crossing two heads of giant Heracleum between them. Peter stood at the door in the white satin suit his innocent vanity loved—among other rôles it had served for Bassanio, Prince Hal, and Antony (over the body of Cæsar)—with a face of extraordinary solemnity. Behind him stood Uncle Nobby.

Joan wasn’t quite the Joan that Peter expected. She was still wan³⁴ from her illness and she had grown several inches. She was as tall as he. And she was white-faced, so that her hair seemed blacker than ever, and her eyes were big and lustrous⁴⁶¹. She came walking slowly down the path with her eyes wide open. There was a difference, he felt, in her movement as she came forward, though he could not have said what it was; there was more grace in Joan now and less vigour. But it was the same Joan’s voice that cried, “Oh, Petah! It’s lovely!” She stood before him for a moment and then threw her arms about him. She hugged him and kissed him, and Uncle Nobby knew that it was the smear⁴⁶² of High Cross School that made him wriggle⁴⁶³ out of her embrace and not return her kisses.

But immediately he took her by the hand.

“It’s better in the playroom, Joan,” he said.

“All right, Joan, go on with him,” said Oswald, and came forward to meet Aunt Phyllis. Aunt Phœbe was on the staircase a little aloof³⁸ from these things, as became a woman of intellect, and behind Aunt Phyllis came Mary, and behind Mary came the Limpsfield cabman with Aunt Phyllis’s trunk 251upon his shoulder, and demolished⁴⁶⁴ the triumphal arch. But Peter did not learn of that disaster until later, and then he did not mind; it had served its purpose.

The playroom (it was the old nursery rechristened) was indeed better. It was all glorious with paper chains of green and white festooned from corner to corner. On the floor to the right under the window was every toy soldier that Peter possessed⁴⁶⁵ drawn up in review array—a gorgeous new Scots Grey band in the front that Oswald had given him. But that was nothing. The big armchair had been drawn out into the middle of the room, and on it was Peter’s own lion-skin. And a piece of red stair-carpet had been put for Joan to go up to the throne upon. And beside the throne was a little table, and on the table was a tinsel robe from Clarkson’s and a wonderful gilt⁴⁶⁶ crown and a sceptre. Oswald had brought them along that morning.

“The crown is for you, Joan!” said Peter. “The sceptre was bought for you.”

Little white-faced Joan stood stockishly with the crown in one hand and the sceptre in the other. “Put the crown on, Joan,” said Peter. “It’s yours. It’s a rest’ration ceremony.”

But she didn’t put it on.

“It’s lovely—and it’s lovely,” whispered Joan in a sort of rapture⁴⁶⁷, and stared about her incredulously with her big dark eyes. It was home again—home, and Mrs. Pybus had passed like an evil dream in the night. She had never really believed it possible before that Mrs. Pybus could pass away. Even while Aunt Phyllis and Mary had been nursing her, Mrs. Pybus had hovered⁴⁶⁸ in the background like something more enduring, waiting for them to pass away as inexplicably⁴⁶⁹ as they had come. Joan had heard the whining⁴⁷⁰ voice upon the stairs every day and always while she was ill, and once Mrs. Pybus had come and stood by her bedside and remarked like one who maintains an argument, “She’ll be ’appy enough ’ere when she’s better again.”

No more Mrs. Pybus! No more whining scoldings. No more unexpected slaps and having to go to bed supperless. No more measles and uneasy misery in a bed with grey sheets. No more dark dreadful sayings that lurked⁴⁷¹ in 252the mind like jungle beasts. She was home, home with Peter, out of that darkness....

And yet—outside was the darkness still....

“Joan,” said Peter, trying to rouse her. “There’s a cake like a birthday for tea....”

When Oswald came in she was still holding the gilt crown in her hand.

She let Peter take it from her and put it on her head, still staring incredulously about her. She took the sceptre limply. Peter was almost gentle with this strange, staring Joan.
§ 13

For some days Oswald regarded Joan as a grave and thoughtful child. She seemed to be what country people call “old-fashioned.” She might have been a changeling. He did not hear her laugh once. And she followed Peter about as if she was his shadow.

Then one day as he cycled over from Chastlands he heard a strange tumult⁴⁷² proceeding⁴⁷³ from a little field on Master’s farm, a marvellous mixture of familiar and unfamiliar⁴⁷⁴ sounds, an uproar, wonderful as though a tinker’s van had met a school treat and the twain had got drunk together. The source of this row was hidden from him by a little coppice, and he dismounted and went through the wood to investigate. Joan and Peter had discovered a disused cowshed with a sloping roof of corrugated⁴⁷⁵ iron, and they had also happened upon an abandoned kettle and two or three tin cans. They were now engaged in hurling⁴⁷⁶ these latter objects on to the resonant⁴⁷⁷ roof, down which they rolled thunderously only to be immediately returned. Joan was no longer a slip of pensive dignity, Peter was no longer a marvel⁴⁰⁷ of intellectual curiosities. They were both shrieking⁴⁷⁸ their maximum. Oswald had never before suspected Joan of an exceptionally full voice, nor Peter of so vast a wealth of gurgling laughter. “Keep the Pot-A-boilin’” yelled Joan. “Keep the Pot-A-boilin’.”

“Hoo!” cried Peter. “Hoo! Go it, Joan. Wow!”

And then, to crown the glory, the kettle burst. It came 253into two pieces. That was too perfect! The two children staggered back. Each seized a half of the kettle and kicked it deliberately. Then they rolled away and fell on their stomachs amidst the grass, kicking their legs in the air.

But the spirit of rowdyism grows with what it feeds upon.

“Oh, let’s do something reely awful!” cried Joan. “Let’s do something reely awful, Petah!”

Peter’s legs became still and stiff with interrogation.

“Oh, Petah!” said Joan. “If I could only smash a window. Frow a brick frough a real window, a Big Glass Window. Just one Glass Window.”

“Where’s a window?” said Peter, evidently in a highly receptive condition.

From which pitch of depravity Oswald roused him by a prod²⁰ in the back....
§ 14

But after that Joan changed rapidly. Colour crept back into her skin, and a faintly rollicking quality into her bearing. She became shorter again and visibly sturdier, and her hair frizzed more and stuck out more. Her laugh and her comments upon the world became an increasingly frequent embroidery⁴⁷⁹ upon the quiet of The Ingle-Nook. She seemed to have a delusion⁴⁸⁰ that Peter was just within earshot, but only just.

Oswald wondered how far her recent experiences had vanished from her mind. He thought they might have done so altogether until one day Joan took him into her confidence quite startlingly. He was smoking in the little arbour, and she came and stood beside him so noiselessly that he did not know she was there until she spoke. She was holding her hands behind her, and she was regarding the South Downs with a pensive frown. She was paying him the most beautiful compliment. She had come to consult him.

“Mrs. Pybus said,” she remarked, “that every one who doesn’t believe there’s a God goes straight to Hell....

“I don’t believe there’s a God,” said Joan, “and Peter knows there isn’t.”

For a moment Oswald was a little taken aback by this 254simple theology. Then he said, “D’you think Peter’s looked everywhere, Joan?”

Then he saw the real point at issue. “One thing you may be sure about, Joan,” he said, “and that is that there isn’t a Hell. Which is rather a pity in its way, because it would be nice to think of this Mrs. Pybus of yours going there. But there’s no Hell at all. There’s nothing more dreadful than the dreadful things in life. There’s no need to worry about Hell.”

That he thought was fairly conclusive. But Joan remained pensive, with her eyes still on the distant hills. Then she asked one of those unanswerable children’s questions that are all implication, imputation⁴⁸¹, assumption, misunderstanding, and elision.

“But if there isn’t a Hell,” said Joan, “what does God do?”
§ 15

It was after Joan had drifted away again from these theological investigations⁴⁸² that Oswald, after sitting some time in silence, said aloud and with intense conviction, “I love these children.”

He was no longer a stranger in England; he had a living anchorage. He looked out over the autumnal glories of the Weald, dreaming intentions. These children must be educated. They must be educated splendidly. Oswald wanted to see Peter serving the empire. The boy would have pluck—he had already the loveliest brain—and a sense of fun. And Joan? Oswald was, perhaps, not quite so keen in those days upon educating Joan. That was to come later....

After all, the empire, indeed the whole world of mankind, is made up of Joans and Peters. What the empire is, what mankind becomes, is nothing but the sum of what we have made of the Joans and Peters.

1 discomfiture   

n.崩溃；大败；挫败；困惑

参考例句：

• I laughed my head off when I heard of his discomfiture. 听到别人说起他的狼狈相，我放声大笑。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Without experiencing discomfiture and setbacks,one can never find truth. 不经过失败和挫折，便找不到真理。 来自《简明英汉词典》

2 thoroughly   

adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地

参考例句：

• The soil must be thoroughly turned over before planting.一定要先把土地深翻一遍再下种。
• The soldiers have been thoroughly instructed in the care of their weapons.士兵们都系统地接受过保护武器的训练。

3 maxim   

n.格言，箴言

参考例句：

• Please lay the maxim to your heart.请把此格言记在心里。
• "Waste not,want not" is her favourite maxim.“不浪费则不匮乏”是她喜爱的格言。

4 valid   

adj.有确实根据的；有效的；正当的，合法的

参考例句：

• His claim to own the house is valid.他主张对此屋的所有权有效。
• Do you have valid reasons for your absence?你的缺席有正当理由吗？

5 dormant   

adj.暂停活动的；休眠的；潜伏的

参考例句：

• Many animals are in a dormant state during winter.在冬天许多动物都处于睡眠状态。
• This dormant volcano suddenly fired up.这座休眠火山突然爆发了。

6 awaken   

vi.醒，觉醒；vt.唤醒，使觉醒，唤起，激起

参考例句：

• Old people awaken early in the morning.老年人早晨醒得早。
• Please awaken me at six.请于六点叫醒我。

7 awakened   

v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到

参考例句：

• She awakened to the sound of birds singing. 她醒来听到鸟的叫声。
• The public has been awakened to the full horror of the situation. 公众完全意识到了这一状况的可怕程度。 来自《简明英汉词典》

8 mischief   

n.损害，伤害，危害；恶作剧，捣蛋，胡闹

参考例句：

• Nobody took notice of the mischief of the matter. 没有人注意到这件事情所带来的危害。
• He seems to intend mischief.看来他想捣蛋。

9 favourable   

adj.赞成的，称赞的，有利的，良好的，顺利的

参考例句：

• The company will lend you money on very favourable terms.这家公司将以非常优惠的条件借钱给你。
• We found that most people are favourable to the idea.我们发现大多数人同意这个意见。

10 reluctance   

n.厌恶，讨厌，勉强，不情愿

参考例句：

• The police released Andrew with reluctance.警方勉强把安德鲁放走了。
• He showed the greatest reluctance to make a reply.他表示很不愿意答复。

11 tempted   

v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词）

参考例句：

• I was sorely tempted to complain, but I didn't. 我极想发牢骚，但还是没开口。
• I was tempted by the dessert menu. 甜食菜单馋得我垂涎欲滴。

12 conclusive   

adj.最后的，结论的；确凿的，消除怀疑的

参考例句：

• They produced some fairly conclusive evidence.他们提供了一些相当确凿的证据。
• Franklin did not believe that the French tests were conclusive.富兰克林不相信这个法国人的实验是结论性的。

13 distressed   

痛苦的

参考例句：

• He was too distressed and confused to answer their questions. 他非常苦恼而困惑，无法回答他们的问题。
• The news of his death distressed us greatly. 他逝世的消息使我们极为悲痛。

14 distress   

n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛

参考例句：

• Nothing could alleviate his distress.什么都不能减轻他的痛苦。
• Please don't distress yourself.请你不要忧愁了。

15 deterioration   

n.退化；恶化；变坏

参考例句：

• Mental and physical deterioration both occur naturally with age. 随着年龄的增长，心智和体力自然衰退。
• The car's bodywork was already showing signs of deterioration. 这辆车的车身已经显示出了劣化迹象。

16 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

17 persuasion   

n.劝说；说服；持有某种信仰的宗派

参考例句：

• He decided to leave only after much persuasion.经过多方劝说，他才决定离开。
• After a lot of persuasion,she agreed to go.经过多次劝说后，她同意去了。

18 commissioner   

n.（政府厅、局、处等部门）专员，长官，委员

参考例句：

• The commissioner has issued a warrant for her arrest.专员发出了对她的逮捕令。
• He was tapped for police commissioner.他被任命为警务处长。

19 temperate   

adj.温和的，温带的，自我克制的，不过分的

参考例句：

• Asia extends across the frigid,temperate and tropical zones.亚洲地跨寒、温、热三带。
• Great Britain has a temperate climate.英国气候温和。

20 prod   

vt.戳，刺；刺激，激励

参考例句：

• The crisis will prod them to act.那个危机将刺激他们行动。
• I shall have to prod him to pay me what he owes.我将不得不催促他把欠我的钱还给我。

21 deprivation   

n.匮乏；丧失；夺去，贫困

参考例句：

• Many studies make it clear that sleep deprivation is dangerous.多实验都证实了睡眠被剥夺是危险的。
• Missing the holiday was a great deprivation.错过假日是极大的损失。

22 bad-tempered   

adj.脾气坏的

参考例句：

• He grew more and more bad-tempered as the afternoon wore on.随着下午一点点地过去，他的脾气也越来越坏。
• I know he's often bad-tempered but really,you know,he's got a heart of gold.我知道他经常发脾气，但是，要知道，其实他心肠很好。

23 intensified   

v.（使）增强， （使）加剧( intensify的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Violence intensified during the night. 在夜间暴力活动加剧了。
• The drought has intensified. 旱情加剧了。 来自《简明英汉词典》

24 irritability   

n.易怒

参考例句：

• It was the almost furtive restlessness and irritability that had possessed him. 那是一种一直纠缠着他的隐秘的不安和烦恼。
• All organisms have irritability while alive. 所有生物体活着时都有应激性。

25 tiresome   

adj.令人疲劳的，令人厌倦的

参考例句：

• His doubts and hesitations were tiresome.他的疑惑和犹豫令人厌烦。
• He was tiresome in contending for the value of his own labors.他老为他自己劳动的价值而争强斗胜，令人生厌。

26 knuckles   

n.（指人）指关节( knuckle的名词复数 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝v.（指人）指关节( knuckle的第三人称单数 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝

参考例句：

• He gripped the wheel until his knuckles whitened. 他紧紧握住方向盘，握得指关节都变白了。
• Her thin hands were twisted by swollen knuckles. 她那双纤手因肿大的指关节而变了形。 来自《简明英汉词典》

27 bruise   

n.青肿，挫伤；伤痕；vt.打青；挫伤

参考例句：

• The bruise was caused by a kick.这伤痕是脚踢的。
• Jack fell down yesterday and got a big bruise on his face.杰克昨天摔了一跤，脸上摔出老大一块淤斑。

28 secretions   

n.分泌（物）( secretion的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Lysozyme is an enzyme found in egg white, tears, and other secretions. 溶菌酶是存在于卵白、泪和其他分泌物中的一种酶。 来自辞典例句
• Chest percussion and vibration are used with postural drainage to help dislodge secretions. 在做体位引流时要敲击和振动胸部帮助分泌物松动排出。 来自辞典例句

29 despondent   

adj.失望的，沮丧的，泄气的

参考例句：

• He was up for a time and then，without warning,despondent again.他一度兴高采烈，但忽然又情绪低落下来。
• I feel despondent when my work is rejected.作品被拒后我感到很沮丧。

30 melancholic   

忧郁症患者

参考例句：

• A absurd tragedy accompany a melancholic song by the Tiger Lillies. 一出荒诞的悲剧，在泰戈莱利斯犹豫的歌声中缓缓上演。
• I have never heard her sing a melancholic song. 我从来没有听她唱过忧伤的曲子。

31 choleric   

adj.易怒的，性情暴躁的

参考例句：

• His pride and choleric temper were to ruin him.他生性高傲自恃而又易于发怒，这会毁了他的。
• He was affable at one moment,choleric the next.他一会儿还和蔼可亲，可一转眼就火冒三丈。

32 hostility   

n.敌对，敌意；抵制［pl.］交战，战争

参考例句：

• There is open hostility between the two leaders.两位领导人表现出公开的敌意。
• His hostility to your plan is well known.他对你的计划所持的敌意是众所周知的。

33 antagonist   

n.敌人，对抗者，对手

参考例句：

• His antagonist in the debate was quicker than he.在辩论中他的对手比他反应快。
• The thing is to know the nature of your antagonist.要紧的是要了解你的对手的特性。

34 wan   

(wide area network)广域网

参考例句：

• The shared connection can be an Ethernet,wireless LAN,or wireless WAN connection.提供共享的网络连接可以是以太网、无线局域网或无线广域网。

35 justified   

a.正当的，有理的

参考例句：

• She felt fully justified in asking for her money back. 她认为有充分的理由要求退款。
• The prisoner has certainly justified his claims by his actions. 那个囚犯确实已用自己的行动表明他的要求是正当的。

36 grievance   

n.怨愤，气恼，委屈

参考例句：

• He will not easily forget his grievance.他不会轻易忘掉他的委屈。
• He had been nursing a grievance against his boss for months.几个月来他对老板一直心怀不满。

37 aloofness   

超然态度

参考例句：

• Why should I have treated him with such sharp aloofness? 但我为什么要给人一些严厉，一些端庄呢？ 来自汉英文学 - 中国现代小说
• He had an air of haughty aloofness. 他有一种高傲的神情。 来自辞典例句

38 aloof   

adj.远离的；冷淡的，漠不关心的

参考例句：

• Never stand aloof from the masses.千万不可脱离群众。
• On the evening the girl kept herself timidly aloof from the crowd.这小女孩在晚会上一直胆怯地远离人群。

39 endorsing   

v.赞同( endorse的现在分词 )；在（尤指支票的）背面签字；在（文件的）背面写评论；在广告上说本人使用并赞同某产品

参考例句：

• Yet Communist leaders are also publicly endorsing religion in an unprecedented way. 不过，共产党领导层对宗教信仰的公开认可也是以前不曾有过的。 来自互联网
• Connecticut Independent Senator Joseph Lieberman is endorsing Republican Senator John McCain. 康涅狄格州独立派参议员约瑟夫。列波曼将会票选共和议员约翰。麦凯恩。 来自互联网

40 virtuous   

adj.有品德的，善良的，贞洁的，有效力的

参考例句：

• She was such a virtuous woman that everybody respected her.她是个有道德的女性，人人都尊敬她。
• My uncle is always proud of having a virtuous wife.叔叔一直为娶到一位贤德的妻子而骄傲。

41 thwarted   

阻挠( thwart的过去式和过去分词 )； 使受挫折； 挫败； 横过

参考例句：

• The guards thwarted his attempt to escape from prison. 警卫阻扰了他越狱的企图。
• Our plans for a picnic were thwarted by the rain. 我们的野餐计划因雨受挫。

42 solicitude   

n.焦虑

参考例句：

• Your solicitude was a great consolation to me.你对我的关怀给了我莫大的安慰。
• He is full of tender solicitude towards my sister.他对我妹妹满心牵挂。

43 partially   

adv.部分地，从某些方面讲

参考例句：

• The door was partially concealed by the drapes.门有一部分被门帘遮住了。
• The police managed to restore calm and the curfew was partially lifted.警方设法恢复了平静，宵禁部分解除。

44 aged   

adj.年老的，陈年的

参考例句：

• He had put on weight and aged a little.他胖了，也老点了。
• He is aged,but his memory is still good.他已年老，然而记忆力还好。

45 comporting   

v.表现( comport的现在分词 )

参考例句：

46 leisurely   

adj.悠闲的；从容的，慢慢的

参考例句：

• We walked in a leisurely manner,looking in all the windows.我们慢悠悠地走着，看遍所有的橱窗。
• He had a leisurely breakfast and drove cheerfully to work.他从容的吃了早餐，高兴的开车去工作。

47 onlooker   

n.旁观者，观众

参考例句：

• A handful of onlookers stand in the field watching.少数几个旁观者站在现场观看。
• One onlooker had to be restrained by police.一个旁观者遭到了警察的制止。

48 judicious   

adj.明智的，明断的，能作出明智决定的

参考例句：

• We should listen to the judicious opinion of that old man.我们应该听取那位老人明智的意见。
• A judicious parent encourages his children to make their own decisions.贤明的父亲鼓励儿女自作抉择。

49 climax   

n.顶点；高潮；v.(使)达到顶点

参考例句：

• The fifth scene was the climax of the play.第五场是全剧的高潮。
• His quarrel with his father brought matters to a climax.他与他父亲的争吵使得事态发展到了顶点。

50 proprietary   

n.所有权，所有的；独占的；业主

参考例句：

• We had to take action to protect the proprietary technology.我们必须采取措施保护专利技术。
• Proprietary right is the foundation of jus rerem.所有权是物权法之根基。

51 sitting-room   

n.（BrE）客厅，起居室

参考例句：

• The sitting-room is clean.起居室很清洁。
• Each villa has a separate sitting-room.每栋别墅都有一间独立的起居室。

52 apprehensions   

疑惧

参考例句：

• He stood in a mixture of desire and apprehensions. 他怀着渴望和恐惧交加的心情伫立着。
• But subsequent cases have removed many of these apprehensions. 然而，随后的案例又消除了许多类似的忧虑。

53 exasperating   

adj. 激怒的 动词exasperate的现在分词形式

参考例句：

• Our team's failure is very exasperating. 我们队失败了，真是气死人。
• It is really exasperating that he has not turned up when the train is about to leave. 火车快开了， 他还不来，实在急人。

54 amber   

n.琥珀；琥珀色；adj.琥珀制的

参考例句：

• Would you like an amber necklace for your birthday?你过生日想要一条琥珀项链吗？
• This is a piece of little amber stones.这是一块小小的琥珀化石。

55 tariff   

n.关税，税率；(旅馆、饭店等)价目表，收费表

参考例句：

• There is a very high tariff on jewelry.宝石类的关税率很高。
• The government is going to lower the tariff on importing cars.政府打算降低进口汽车的关税。

56 agitation   

n.搅动；搅拌；鼓动，煽动

参考例句：

• Small shopkeepers carried on a long agitation against the big department stores.小店主们长期以来一直在煽动人们反对大型百货商店。
• These materials require constant agitation to keep them in suspension.这些药剂要经常搅动以保持悬浮状态。

57 controversy   

n.争论，辩论，争吵

参考例句：

• That is a fact beyond controversy.那是一个无可争论的事实。
• We ran the risk of becoming the butt of every controversy.我们要冒使自己在所有的纷争中都成为众矢之的的风险。

58 imperialism   

n.帝国主义，帝国主义政策

参考例句：

• They held the imperialism in contempt.他们鄙视帝国主义。
• Imperialism has not been able to subjugate China.帝国主义不能征服中国。

59 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

60 vice   

n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的

参考例句：

• He guarded himself against vice.他避免染上坏习惯。
• They are sunk in the depth of vice.他们堕入了罪恶的深渊。

61 underlying   

adj.在下面的，含蓄的，潜在的

参考例句：

• The underlying theme of the novel is very serious.小说隐含的主题是十分严肃的。
• This word has its underlying meaning.这个单词有它潜在的含义。

62 sordid   

adj.肮脏的，不干净的，卑鄙的，暗淡的

参考例句：

• He depicts the sordid and vulgar sides of life exclusively.他只描写人生肮脏和庸俗的一面。
• They lived in a sordid apartment.他们住在肮脏的公寓房子里。

63 advent   

n.(重要事件等的)到来，来临

参考例句：

• Swallows come by groups at the advent of spring. 春天来临时燕子成群飞来。
• The advent of the Euro will redefine Europe.欧元的出现将重新定义欧洲。

64 piracy   

n.海盗行为，剽窃，著作权侵害

参考例句：

• The government has already adopted effective measures against piracy.政府已采取有效措施惩治盗版行为。
• They made the place a notorious centre of piracy.他们把这地方变成了臭名昭著的海盗中心。

65 picturesqueness   

参考例句：

• The picturesqueness of the engineer's life was always attractive to Presley. 这司机的丰富多彩的生活，始终叫普瑞斯莱醉心。
• Philip liked the daring picturesqueness of the Americans'costume. 菲利浦喜欢美国人装束的那种粗犷的美。

66 cane   

n.手杖，细长的茎，藤条；v.以杖击，以藤编制的

参考例句：

• This sugar cane is quite a sweet and juicy.这甘蔗既甜又多汁。
• English schoolmasters used to cane the boys as a punishment.英国小学老师过去常用教鞭打男学生作为惩罚。

67 plantations   

n.种植园，大农场( plantation的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Soon great plantations, supported by slave labor, made some families very wealthy. 不久之后出现了依靠奴隶劳动的大庄园，使一些家庭成了富豪。 来自英汉非文学 - 政府文件
• Winterborne's contract was completed, and the plantations were deserted. 维恩特波恩的合同完成后，那片林地变得荒废了。 来自辞典例句

68 perplexed   

adj.不知所措的

参考例句：

• The farmer felt the cow,went away,returned,sorely perplexed,always afraid of being cheated.那农民摸摸那头牛，走了又回来，犹豫不决，总怕上当受骗。
• The child was perplexed by the intricate plot of the story.这孩子被那头绪纷繁的故事弄得迷惑不解。

69 plausible   

adj.似真实的，似乎有理的，似乎可信的

参考例句：

• His story sounded plausible.他说的那番话似乎是真实的。
• Her story sounded perfectly plausible.她的说辞听起来言之有理。

70 distraction   

n.精神涣散，精神不集中，消遣，娱乐

参考例句：

• Total concentration is required with no distractions.要全神贯注，不能有丝毫分神。
• Their national distraction is going to the disco.他们的全民消遣就是去蹦迪。

71 soothing   

adj.慰藉的；使人宽心的；镇静的

参考例句：

• Put on some nice soothing music.播放一些柔和舒缓的音乐。
• His casual, relaxed manner was very soothing.他随意而放松的举动让人很快便平静下来。

72 moth   

n.蛾，蛀虫

参考例句：

• A moth was fluttering round the lamp.有一只蛾子扑打着翅膀绕着灯飞。
• The sweater is moth-eaten.毛衣让蛀虫咬坏了。

73 allurements   

n.诱惑( allurement的名词复数 )；吸引；诱惑物；有诱惑力的事物

参考例句：

• The big cities are full of allurements on which to spend money. 大城市充满形形色色诱人花钱的事物。 来自《简明英汉词典》

74 repented   

对（自己的所为）感到懊悔或忏悔( repent的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He repented his thoughtlessness. 他后悔自己的轻率。
• Darren repented having shot the bird. 达伦后悔射杀了那只鸟。

76 agate   

n.玛瑙

参考例句：

• He saw before him a flight of agate steps.他看到前面有一段玛瑙做的台阶。
• It is round,like the size of a small yellow agate.它是圆的，大小很像一个小的黄色的玛瑙。

77 pall   

v.覆盖，使平淡无味；n.柩衣，棺罩；棺材；帷幕

参考例句：

• Already the allure of meals in restaurants had begun to pall.饭店里的饭菜已经不像以前那样诱人。
• I find his books begin to pall on me after a while.我发觉他的书读过一阵子就开始对我失去吸引力。

78 oust   

vt.剥夺，取代，驱逐

参考例句：

• The committee wanted to oust him from the union.委员会想把他从工会中驱逐出去。
• The leaders have been ousted from power by nationalists.这些领导人被民族主义者赶下了台。

79 automobile   

n.汽车，机动车

参考例句：

• He is repairing the brake lever of an automobile.他正在修理汽车的刹车杆。
• The automobile slowed down to go around the curves in the road.汽车在路上转弯时放慢了速度。

80 ruffled   

adj. 有褶饰边的, 起皱的 动词ruffle的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• She ruffled his hair affectionately. 她情意绵绵地拨弄着他的头发。
• All this talk of a strike has clearly ruffled the management's feathers. 所有这些关于罢工的闲言碎语显然让管理层很不高兴。

81 discreet   

adj.(言行)谨慎的；慎重的；有判断力的

参考例句：

• He is very discreet in giving his opinions.发表意见他十分慎重。
• It wasn't discreet of you to ring me up at the office.你打电话到我办公室真是太鲁莽了。

82 follies   

罪恶，时事讽刺剧； 愚蠢，蠢笨，愚蠢的行为、思想或做法( folly的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• He has given up youthful follies. 他不再做年轻人的荒唐事了。
• The writings of Swift mocked the follies of his age. 斯威夫特的作品嘲弄了他那个时代的愚人。

83 northward   

adv.向北；n.北方的地区

参考例句：

• He pointed his boat northward.他将船驶向北方。
• I would have a chance to head northward quickly.我就很快有机会去北方了。

84 ward   

n.守卫，监护，病房，行政区，由监护人或法院保护的人（尤指儿童）；vt.守护，躲开

参考例句：

• The hospital has a medical ward and a surgical ward.这家医院有内科病房和外科病房。
• During the evening picnic,I'll carry a torch to ward off the bugs.傍晚野餐时，我要点根火把，抵挡蚊虫。

85 noted   

adj.著名的，知名的

参考例句：

• The local hotel is noted for its good table.当地的那家酒店以餐食精美而著称。
• Jim is noted for arriving late for work.吉姆上班迟到出了名。

86 owl   

n.猫头鹰，枭

参考例句：

• Her new glasses make her look like an owl.她的新眼镜让她看上去像只猫头鹰。
• I'm a night owl and seldom go to bed until after midnight.我睡得很晚，经常半夜后才睡觉。

87 Oxford   

n.牛津（英国城市）

参考例句：

• At present he has become a Professor of Chemistry at Oxford.他现在已是牛津大学的化学教授了。
• This is where the road to Oxford joins the road to London.这是去牛津的路与去伦敦的路的汇合处。

88 auspices   

n.资助，赞助

参考例句：

• The association is under the auspices of Word Bank.这个组织是在世界银行的赞助下办的。
• The examination was held under the auspices of the government.这次考试是由政府主办的。

89 wrecking   

破坏

参考例句：

• He teed off on his son for wrecking the car. 他严厉训斥他儿子毁坏了汽车。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Instead of wrecking the valley, the waters are put to use making electricity. 现在河水不但不在流域内肆疟，反而被人们用来生产电力。 来自辞典例句

90 strand   

vt.使（船）搁浅，使（某人）困于（某地）

参考例句：

• She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ears.她把一缕散发夹到了耳后。
• The climbers had been stranded by a storm.登山者被暴风雨困住了。

91 sweeping   

adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的

参考例句：

• The citizens voted for sweeping reforms.公民投票支持全面的改革。
• Can you hear the wind sweeping through the branches?你能听到风掠过树枝的声音吗？

92 landmarks   

n.陆标( landmark的名词复数 )；目标；（标志重要阶段的）里程碑 ~ (in sth)；有历史意义的建筑物（或遗址）

参考例句：

• The book stands out as one of the notable landmarks in the progress of modern science. 这部著作是现代科学发展史上著名的里程碑之一。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• The baby was one of the big landmarks in our relationship. 孩子的出世是我们俩关系中的一个重要转折点。 来自辞典例句

93 neatly   

adv.整洁地，干净地，灵巧地，熟练地

参考例句：

• Sailors know how to wind up a long rope neatly.水手们知道怎样把一条大绳利落地缠好。
• The child's dress is neatly gathered at the neck.那孩子的衣服在领口处打着整齐的皱褶。

94 populous   

adj.人口稠密的，人口众多的

参考例句：

• London is the most populous area of Britain.伦敦是英国人口最稠密的地区。
• China is the most populous developing country in the world.中国是世界上人口最多的发展中国家。

95 automobiles   

n.汽车( automobile的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• When automobiles become popular,the use of the horse and buggy passed away. 汽车普及后，就不再使用马和马车了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Automobiles speed in an endless stream along the boulevard. 宽阔的林荫道上，汽车川流不息。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

96 derisive   

adj.嘲弄的

参考例句：

• A storm of derisive applause broke out.一阵暴风雨般的哄笑声轰然响起。
• They flushed,however,when she burst into a shout of derisive laughter.然而，当地大声嘲笑起来的时候，她们的脸不禁涨红了。

97 stinking   

adj.臭的，烂醉的，讨厌的v.散发出恶臭( stink的现在分词 )；发臭味；名声臭；糟透

参考例句：

• I was pushed into a filthy, stinking room. 我被推进一间又脏又臭的屋子里。
• Those lousy, stinking ships. It was them that destroyed us. 是的！就是那些该死的蠢猪似的臭飞船！是它们毁了我们。 来自英汉非文学 - 科幻

98 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

99 entirely   

ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The fire was entirely caused by their neglect of duty. 那场火灾完全是由于他们失职而引起的。
• His life was entirely given up to the educational work. 他的一生统统献给了教育工作。

100 pacification   

n. 讲和，绥靖，平定

参考例句：

• Real pacification is hard to get in the Vietnamese countryside. 在越南的乡下真正的安宁是很难实现的。
• Real pacification is hard to get in the Vietnamese countryside(McGeorge Bundy) 在越南的乡下真正的安宁是很难实现的（麦乔治·邦迪）

101 conspicuously   

ad.明显地，惹人注目地

参考例句：

• France remained a conspicuously uneasy country. 法国依然是个明显不太平的国家。
• She figured conspicuously in the public debate on the issue. 她在该问题的公开辩论中很引人注目。

102 remarkably   

ad.不同寻常地，相当地

参考例句：

• I thought she was remarkably restrained in the circumstances. 我认为她在那种情况下非常克制。
• He made a remarkably swift recovery. 他康复得相当快。

103 inconvenient   

adj.不方便的，令人感到麻烦的

参考例句：

• You have come at a very inconvenient time.你来得最不适时。
• Will it be inconvenient for him to attend that meeting?他参加那次会议会不方便吗？

104 vista   

n.远景，深景，展望，回想

参考例句：

• From my bedroom window I looked out on a crowded vista of hills and rooftops.我从卧室窗口望去，远处尽是连绵的山峦和屋顶。
• These uprisings come from desperation and a vista of a future without hope.发生这些暴动是因为人们被逼上了绝路，未来看不到一点儿希望。

105 vistas   

长条形景色( vista的名词复数 )； 回顾； 展望； （未来可能发生的）一系列情景

参考例句：

• This new job could open up whole new vistas for her. 这项新工作可能给她开辟全新的前景。
• The picture is small but It'shows broad vistas. 画幅虽然不大，所表现的天地却十分广阔。

106 descended   

a.为...后裔的，出身于...的

参考例句：

• A mood of melancholy descended on us. 一种悲伤的情绪袭上我们的心头。
• The path descended the hill in a series of zigzags. 小路呈连续的之字形顺着山坡蜿蜒而下。

107 fronds   

n.蕨类或棕榈类植物的叶子( frond的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• You can pleat palm fronds to make huts, umbrellas and baskets. 人们可以把棕榈叶折叠起来盖棚屋，制伞，编篮子。 来自百科语句
• When these breezes reached the platform the palm-fronds would whisper. 微风吹到平台时，棕榈叶片发出簌簌的低吟。 来自辞典例句

108 prospect   

n.前景，前途；景色，视野

参考例句：

• This state of things holds out a cheerful prospect.事态呈现出可喜的前景。
• The prospect became more evident.前景变得更加明朗了。

109 prospects   

n.希望，前途(恒为复数)

参考例句：

• There is a mood of pessimism in the company about future job prospects. 公司中有一种对工作前景悲观的情绪。
• They are less sanguine about the company's long-term prospects. 他们对公司的远景不那么乐观。

110 stunted   

adj.矮小的；发育迟缓的

参考例句：

• the stunted lives of children deprived of education 未受教育的孩子所过的局限生活
• But the landed oligarchy had stunted the country's democratic development for generations. 但是好几代以来土地寡头的统治阻碍了这个国家民主的发展。

111 wards   

区( ward的名词复数 )； 病房； 受监护的未成年者； 被人照顾或控制的状态

参考例句：

• This hospital has 20 medical [surgical] wards. 这所医院有 20 个内科[外科]病房。
• It was a big constituency divided into three wards. 这是一个大选区，下设三个分区。

112 hoarding   

n.贮藏；积蓄；临时围墙；囤积v.积蓄并储藏（某物）( hoard的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• After the war, they were shot for hoarding. 战后他们因囤积而被枪决。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Actually he had two unused ones which he was hoarding up. 其实他还藏了两片没有用呢。 来自英汉文学

113 pious   

adj.虔诚的；道貌岸然的

参考例句：

• Alexander is a pious follower of the faith.亚历山大是个虔诚的信徒。
• Her mother was a pious Christian.她母亲是一个虔诚的基督教徒。

114 obtrusive   

adj.显眼的；冒失的

参考例句：

• These heaters are less obtrusive and are easy to store away in the summer.这些加热器没那么碍眼，夏天收起来也很方便。
• The factory is an obtrusive eyesore.这工厂很刺眼。

115 squat   

v.蹲坐，蹲下；n.蹲下；adj.矮胖的，粗矮的

参考例句：

• For this exercise you need to get into a squat.在这次练习中你需要蹲下来。
• He is a squat man.他是一个矮胖的男人。

116 rust   

n.锈；v.生锈；(脑子)衰退

参考例句：

• She scraped the rust off the kitchen knife.她擦掉了菜刀上的锈。
• The rain will rust the iron roof.雨水会使铁皮屋顶生锈。

117 rusty   

adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的

参考例句：

• The lock on the door is rusty and won't open.门上的锁锈住了。
• I haven't practiced my French for months and it's getting rusty.几个月不用，我的法语又荒疏了。

118 charing   

n.炭化v.把…烧成炭，把…烧焦( char的现在分词 )；烧成炭，烧焦；做杂役女佣

参考例句：

• We married in the chapel of Charing Cross Hospital in London. 我们是在伦敦查令十字医院的小教堂里结的婚。 来自辞典例句
• No additional charge for children under12 charing room with parents. ☆十二岁以下小童与父母同房不另收费。 来自互联网

119 brutal   

adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的

参考例句：

• She has to face the brutal reality.她不得不去面对冷酷的现实。
• They're brutal people behind their civilised veneer.他们表面上温文有礼，骨子里却是野蛮残忍。

120 gaily   

adv.欢乐地，高兴地

参考例句：

• The children sing gaily.孩子们欢唱着。
• She waved goodbye very gaily.她欢快地挥手告别。

121 sham   

n./adj.假冒(的)，虚伪(的)

参考例句：

• They cunningly played the game of sham peace.他们狡滑地玩弄假和平的把戏。
• His love was a mere sham.他的爱情是虚假的。

122 mirage   

n.海市蜃楼，幻景

参考例句：

• Perhaps we are all just chasing a mirage.也许我们都只是在追逐一个幻想。
• Western liberalism was always a mirage.西方自由主义永远是一座海市蜃楼。

123 chrysanthemum   

n.菊，菊花

参考例句：

• Each mourner wore a black armband and a white paper chrysanthemum.每个吊唁的人都佩带着黑纱和一朵白纸菊花。
• There are many species of chrysanthemum.菊花品种很多。

124 acquiescence   

n.默许；顺从

参考例句：

• The chief inclined his head in sign of acquiescence.首领点点头表示允许。
• This is due to his acquiescence.这是因为他的默许。

125 reins   

感情，激情； 缰( rein的名词复数 )； 控制手段； 掌管； （成人带着幼儿走路以防其走失时用的）保护带

参考例句：

• She pulled gently on the reins. 她轻轻地拉着缰绳。
• The government has imposed strict reins on the import of luxury goods. 政府对奢侈品的进口有严格的控制手段。

126 gnawing   

a.痛苦的，折磨人的

参考例句：

• The dog was gnawing a bone. 那狗在啃骨头。
• These doubts had been gnawing at him for some time. 这些疑虑已经折磨他一段时间了。

127 conspired   

密谋( conspire的过去式和过去分词 )； 搞阴谋； （事件等）巧合； 共同导致

参考例句：

• They conspired to bring about the meeting of the two people. 他们共同促成了两人的会面。
• Bad weather and car trouble conspired to ruin our vacation. 恶劣的气候连同汽车故障断送了我们的假日。

128 harry   

vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼

参考例句：

• Today,people feel more hurried and harried.今天，人们感到更加忙碌和苦恼。
• Obama harried business by Healthcare Reform plan.奥巴马用医改掠夺了商界。

129 provincial   

adj.省的，地方的；n．外省人，乡下人

参考例句：

• City dwellers think country folk have provincial attitudes.城里人以为乡下人思想迂腐。
• Two leading cadres came down from the provincial capital yesterday.昨天从省里下来了两位领导干部。

130 postal   

adj.邮政的，邮局的

参考例句：

• A postal network now covers the whole country.邮路遍及全国。
• Remember to use postal code.勿忘使用邮政编码。

131 obstinate   

adj.顽固的，倔强的，不易屈服的，较难治愈的

参考例句：

• She's too obstinate to let anyone help her.她太倔强了，不会让任何人帮她的。
• The trader was obstinate in the negotiation.这个商人在谈判中拗强固执。

132 disposition   

n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署

参考例句：

• He has made a good disposition of his property.他已对财产作了妥善处理。
• He has a cheerful disposition.他性情开朗。

133 copper   

n.铜；铜币；铜器；adj.铜(制)的；(紫)铜色的

参考例句：

• The students are asked to prove the purity of copper.要求学生们检验铜的纯度。
• Copper is a good medium for the conduction of heat and electricity.铜是热和电的良导体。

134 bracelets   

n.手镯，臂镯( bracelet的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The lamplight struck a gleam from her bracelets. 她的手镯在灯光的照射下闪闪发亮。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• On display are earrings, necklaces and bracelets made from jade, amber and amethyst. 展出的有用玉石、琥珀和紫水晶做的耳环、项链和手镯。 来自《简明英汉词典》

135 attenuated   

v.（使）变细( attenuate的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）变薄；（使）变小；减弱

参考例句：

• an attenuated form of the virus 毒性已衰减的病毒
• You're a seraphic suggestion of attenuated thought . 你的思想是轻灵得如同天使一般的。 来自辞典例句

136 adornment   

n.装饰；装饰品

参考例句：

• Lucie was busy with the adornment of her room.露西正忙着布置她的房间。
• Cosmetics are used for adornment.化妆品是用来打扮的。

137 homely   

adj.家常的，简朴的；不漂亮的

参考例句：

• We had a homely meal of bread and cheese.我们吃了一顿面包加乳酪的家常便餐。
• Come and have a homely meal with us,will you?来和我们一起吃顿家常便饭，好吗？

138 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

139 determined   

adj.坚定的；有决心的

参考例句：

• I have determined on going to Tibet after graduation.我已决定毕业后去西藏。
• He determined to view the rooms behind the office.他决定查看一下办公室后面的房间。

140 chaotic   

adj.混沌的，一片混乱的，一团糟的

参考例句：

• Things have been getting chaotic in the office recently.最近办公室的情况越来越乱了。
• The traffic in the city was chaotic.这城市的交通糟透了。

141 misery   

n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦

参考例句：

• Business depression usually causes misery among the working class.商业不景气常使工薪阶层受苦。
• He has rescued me from the mire of misery.他把我从苦海里救了出来。

142 instinctive   

adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的

参考例句：

• He tried to conceal his instinctive revulsion at the idea.他试图饰盖自己对这一想法本能的厌恶。
• Animals have an instinctive fear of fire.动物本能地怕火。

143 culmination   

n.顶点；最高潮

参考例句：

• The space race reached its culmination in the first moon walk.太空竞争以第一次在月球行走而达到顶峰。
• It may truly be regarded as the culmination of classical Greek geometry.这确实可以看成是古典希腊几何的登峰造级之作。

144 disorder   

n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调

参考例句：

• When returning back,he discovered the room to be in disorder.回家后，他发现屋子里乱七八糟。
• It contained a vast number of letters in great disorder.里面七零八落地装着许多信件。

145 illuminate   

vt.照亮，照明；用灯光装饰；说明，阐释

参考例句：

• Dreams kindle a flame to illuminate our dark roads.梦想点燃火炬照亮我们黑暗的道路。
• They use games and drawings to illuminate their subject.他们用游戏和图画来阐明他们的主题。

146 collapse   

vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷

参考例句：

• The country's economy is on the verge of collapse.国家的经济已到了崩溃的边缘。
• The engineer made a complete diagnosis of the bridge's collapse.工程师对桥的倒塌做了一次彻底的调查分析。

147 frankly   

adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说

参考例句：

• To speak frankly, I don't like the idea at all.老实说，我一点也不赞成这个主意。
• Frankly speaking, I'm not opposed to reform.坦率地说，我不反对改革。

148 adherents   

n.支持者，拥护者( adherent的名词复数 )；党羽；徒子徒孙

参考例句：

• He is a leader with many adherents. 他是个有众多追随者的领袖。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The proposal is gaining more and more adherents. 该建议得到越来越多的支持者。 来自《简明英汉词典》

149 cataracts   

n.大瀑布( cataract的名词复数 )；白内障

参考例句：

• The rotor cataracts water over the top of the machines. 回转轮将水从机器顶上注入。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• Cataracts of rain flooded the streets. 倾盆大雨弄得街道淹水。 来自辞典例句

150 cape   

n.海角，岬；披肩，短披风

参考例句：

• I long for a trip to the Cape of Good Hope.我渴望到好望角去旅行。
• She was wearing a cape over her dress.她在外套上披着一件披肩。

151 lust   

n.性(淫)欲；渴(欲)望；vi.对…有强烈的欲望

参考例句：

• He was filled with lust for power.他内心充满了对权力的渴望。
• Sensing the explorer's lust for gold, the chief wisely presented gold ornaments as gifts.酋长觉察出探险者们垂涎黄金的欲念，就聪明地把金饰品作为礼物赠送给他们。

152 hatred   

n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨

参考例句：

• He looked at me with hatred in his eyes.他以憎恨的眼光望着我。
• The old man was seized with burning hatred for the fascists.老人对法西斯主义者充满了仇恨。

153 aggression   

n.进攻，侵略，侵犯，侵害

参考例句：

• So long as we are firmly united, we need fear no aggression.只要我们紧密地团结，就不必惧怕外来侵略。
• Her view is that aggression is part of human nature.她认为攻击性是人类本性的一部份。

154 frightful   

adj.可怕的；讨厌的

参考例句：

• How frightful to have a husband who snores!有一个发鼾声的丈夫多讨厌啊！
• We're having frightful weather these days.这几天天气坏极了。

155 parasite   

n.寄生虫；寄生菌；食客

参考例句：

• The lazy man was a parasite on his family.那懒汉是家里的寄生虫。
• I don't want to be a parasite.I must earn my own way in life.我不想做寄生虫，我要自己养活自己。

156 pestilence   

n.瘟疫

参考例句：

• They were crazed by the famine and pestilence of that bitter winter.他们因那年严冬的饥饿与瘟疫而折磨得发狂。
• A pestilence was raging in that area. 瘟疫正在那一地区流行。

157 retrospect   

n.回顾，追溯；v.回顾，回想，追溯

参考例句：

• One's school life seems happier in retrospect than in reality.学校生活回忆起来显得比实际上要快乐。
• In retrospect,it's easy to see why we were wrong.回顾过去就很容易明白我们的错处了。

158 whim   

n.一时的兴致，突然的念头；奇想，幻想

参考例句：

• I bought the encyclopedia on a whim.我凭一时的兴致买了这本百科全书。
• He had a sudden whim to go sailing today.今天他突然想要去航海。

159 impartial   

adj.(in,to)公正的，无偏见的

参考例句：

• He gave an impartial view of the state of affairs in Ireland.他对爱尔兰的事态发表了公正的看法。
• Careers officers offer impartial advice to all pupils.就业指导员向所有学生提供公正无私的建议。

160 tune   

n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整

参考例句：

• He'd written a tune,and played it to us on the piano.他写了一段曲子，并在钢琴上弹给我们听。
• The boy beat out a tune on a tin can.那男孩在易拉罐上敲出一首曲子。

161 unleashed   

v.把（感情、力量等）释放出来，发泄( unleash的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The government's proposals unleashed a storm of protest in the press. 政府的提案引发了新闻界的抗议浪潮。
• The full force of his rage was unleashed against me. 他把所有的怒气都发泄在我身上。 来自《简明英汉词典》

162 worthy   

adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的

参考例句：

• I did not esteem him to be worthy of trust.我认为他不值得信赖。
• There occurred nothing that was worthy to be mentioned.没有值得一提的事发生。

163 wrecked   

adj.失事的，遇难的

参考例句：

• the hulk of a wrecked ship 遇难轮船的残骸
• the salvage of the wrecked tanker 对失事油轮的打捞

164 hideously   

adv.可怕地，非常讨厌地

参考例句：

• The witch was hideously ugly. 那个女巫丑得吓人。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Pitt's smile returned, and it was hideously diabolic. 皮特的脸上重新浮现出笑容，但却狰狞可怕。 来自辞典例句

165 administrators   

n.管理者( administrator的名词复数 )；有管理（或行政）才能的人；（由遗嘱检验法庭指定的）遗产管理人；奉派暂管主教教区的牧师

参考例句：

• He had administrators under him but took the crucial decisions himself. 他手下有管理人员，但重要的决策仍由他自己来做。 来自辞典例句
• Administrators have their own methods of social intercourse. 办行政的人有他们的社交方式。 来自汉英文学 - 围城

166 missionaries   

n.传教士( missionary的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Some missionaries came from England in the Qing Dynasty. 清朝时，从英国来了一些传教士。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The missionaries rebuked the natives for worshipping images. 传教士指责当地人崇拜偶像。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

167 wholesale   

n.批发；adv.以批发方式；vt.批发，成批出售

参考例句：

• The retail dealer buys at wholesale and sells at retail.零售商批发购进货物，以零售价卖出。
• Such shoes usually wholesale for much less.这种鞋批发出售通常要便宜得多。

168 incompetence   

n.不胜任，不称职

参考例句：

• He was dismissed for incompetence. 他因不称职而被解雇。
• She felt she had been made a scapegoat for her boss's incompetence. 她觉得，本是老板无能，但她却成了替罪羊。

169 hustled   

催促（hustle的过去式与过去分词形式）

参考例句：

• He grabbed her arm and hustled her out of the room. 他抓住她的胳膊把她推出房间。
• The secret service agents hustled the speaker out of the amphitheater. 特务机关的代理人把演讲者驱逐出竞技场。

170 foresight   

n.先见之明，深谋远虑

参考例句：

• The failure is the result of our lack of foresight.这次失败是由于我们缺乏远虑而造成的。
• It required a statesman's foresight and sagacity to make the decision.作出这个决定需要政治家的远见卓识。

171 monstrous   

adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的

参考例句：

• The smoke began to whirl and grew into a monstrous column.浓烟开始盘旋上升，形成了一个巨大的烟柱。
• Your behaviour in class is monstrous!你在课堂上的行为真是丢人！

172 wasteful   

adj.（造成）浪费的，挥霍的

参考例句：

• It is a shame to be so wasteful.这样浪费太可惜了。
• Duties have been reassigned to avoid wasteful duplication of work.为避免重复劳动浪费资源，任务已经重新分派。

173 unprecedented   

adj.无前例的，新奇的

参考例句：

• The air crash caused an unprecedented number of deaths.这次空难的死亡人数是空前的。
• A flood of this sort is really unprecedented.这样大的洪水真是十年九不遇。

174 humiliation   

n.羞辱

参考例句：

• He suffered the humiliation of being forced to ask for his cards.他蒙受了被迫要求辞职的羞辱。
• He will wish to revenge his humiliation in last Season's Final.他会为在上个季度的决赛中所受的耻辱而报复的。

175 enquiring   

a.爱打听的，显得好奇的

参考例句：

• a child with an enquiring mind 有好奇心的孩子
• Paul darted at her sharp enquiring glances. 她的目光敏锐好奇，保罗飞快地朝她瞥了一眼。

176 realization   

n.实现；认识到，深刻了解

参考例句：

• We shall gladly lend every effort in our power toward its realization.我们将乐意为它的实现而竭尽全力。
• He came to the realization that he would never make a good teacher.他逐渐认识到自己永远不会成为好老师。

177 ascendancy   

n.统治权，支配力量

参考例句：

• We have had ascendancy over the enemy in the battle.在战斗中我们已占有优势。
• The extremists are gaining ascendancy.极端分子正逐渐占据上风。

178 supreme   

adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的

参考例句：

• It was the supreme moment in his life.那是他一生中最重要的时刻。
• He handed up the indictment to the supreme court.他把起诉书送交最高法院。

179 passionate   

adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的

参考例句：

• He is said to be the most passionate man.据说他是最有激情的人。
• He is very passionate about the project.他对那个项目非常热心。

180 vigour   

（=vigor）n.智力，体力，精力

参考例句：

• She is full of vigour and enthusiasm.她有热情，有朝气。
• At 40,he was in his prime and full of vigour.他40岁时正年富力强。

181 scrupulous   

adj.审慎的，小心翼翼的，完全的，纯粹的

参考例句：

• She is scrupulous to a degree.她非常谨慎。
• Poets are not so scrupulous as you are.诗人并不像你那样顾虑多。

182 reverberating   

回响，回荡( reverberate的现在分词 )； 使反响，使回荡，使反射

参考例句：

• The words are still ringing [reverberating] in one's ears. 言犹在耳。
• I heard a voice reverberating: "Crawl out! I give you liberty!" 我听到一个声音在回荡：“爬出来吧，我给你自由！”

183 spoke   

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

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

184 reiteration   

n. 重覆, 反覆, 重说

参考例句：

• The reiteration of this figure, more than anything else, wrecked the conservative chance of coming back. 重申这数字，比其它任何事情更能打消保守党重新上台的机会。
• The final statement is just a reiteration of U.S. policy on Taiwan. 艾瑞里？最后一个声明只是重复宣读美国对台政策。

185 awakening   

n.觉醒，醒悟 adj.觉醒中的；唤醒的

参考例句：

• the awakening of interest in the environment 对环境产生的兴趣
• People are gradually awakening to their rights. 人们正逐渐意识到自己的权利。

186 remarkable   

adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的

参考例句：

• She has made remarkable headway in her writing skills.她在写作技巧方面有了长足进步。
• These cars are remarkable for the quietness of their engines.这些汽车因发动机没有噪音而不同凡响。

187 physiological   

adj.生理学的，生理学上的

参考例句：

• He bought a physiological book.他买了一本生理学方面的书。
• Every individual has a physiological requirement for each nutrient.每个人对每种营养成分都有一种生理上的需要。

188 jolts   

（使）摇动， （使）震惊( jolt的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• He found that out when he got a few terrific jolts, but he wouldn't give up. 被狠狠地撞回来几次后，他发觉了这一点，但他决不因此罢休。
• Some power bars are loaded with carbohydrates or caffeine for quick jolts. 有些能量条中包含大量的碳水化合物和咖啡因，以达到快速提神的效果。

189 vitality   

n.活力，生命力，效力

参考例句：

• He came back from his holiday bursting with vitality and good health.他度假归来之后，身强体壮，充满活力。
• He is an ambitious young man full of enthusiasm and vitality.他是个充满热情与活力的有远大抱负的青年。

190 triumphantly   

ad.得意洋洋地；得胜地；成功地

参考例句：

• The lion was roaring triumphantly. 狮子正在发出胜利的吼叫。
• Robert was looking at me triumphantly. 罗伯特正得意扬扬地看着我。

191 unified   

(unify 的过去式和过去分词)； 统一的； 统一标准的； 一元化的

参考例句：

• The teacher unified the answer of her pupil with hers. 老师核对了学生的答案。
• The First Emperor of Qin unified China in 221 B.C. 秦始皇于公元前221年统一中国。

192 martyr   

n.烈士，殉难者；vt.杀害，折磨，牺牲

参考例句：

• The martyr laid down his life for the cause of national independence.这位烈士是为了民族独立的事业而献身的。
• The newspaper carried the martyr's photo framed in black.报上登载了框有黑边的烈士遗像。

193 wrought   

v.引起；以…原料制作；运转；adj.制造的

参考例句：

• Events in Paris wrought a change in British opinion towards France and Germany.巴黎发生的事件改变了英国对法国和德国的看法。
• It's a walking stick with a gold head wrought in the form of a flower.那是一个金质花形包头的拐杖。

194 abiding   

adj.永久的，持久的，不变的

参考例句：

• He had an abiding love of the English countryside.他永远热爱英国的乡村。
• He has a genuine and abiding love of the craft.他对这门手艺有着真挚持久的热爱。

195 mingled   

混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系]

参考例句：

• The sounds of laughter and singing mingled in the evening air. 笑声和歌声交织在夜空中。
• The man and the woman mingled as everyone started to relax. 当大家开始放松的时候，这一男一女就开始交往了。

196 anthropological   

adj.人类学的

参考例句：

• These facts of responsibility are an anthropological datums- varied and multiform. 这些道德事实是一种人类学资料——性质不同，形式各异。 来自哲学部分
• It is the most difficult of all anthropological data on which to "draw" the old Negro. 在所有的人类学资料中，最困难的事莫过于“刻划”古代的黑人。 来自辞典例句

197 exterminated   

v.消灭，根绝( exterminate的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• It was exterminated root and branch. 它被彻底剪除了。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• The insects can be exterminated by spraying DDT. 可以用喷撒滴滴涕的方法大量杀死这种昆虫。 来自《用法词典》

198 dismal   

adj.阴沉的，凄凉的，令人忧郁的，差劲的

参考例句：

• That is a rather dismal melody.那是一支相当忧郁的歌曲。
• My prospects of returning to a suitable job are dismal.我重新找到一个合适的工作岗位的希望很渺茫。

199 speculations   

n.投机买卖( speculation的名词复数 )；思考；投机活动；推断

参考例句：

• Your speculations were all quite close to the truth. 你的揣测都很接近于事实。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• This possibility gives rise to interesting speculations. 这种可能性引起了有趣的推测。 来自《用法词典》

200 perpetuate   

v.使永存，使永记不忘

参考例句：

• This monument was built to perpetuate the memory of the national hero.这个纪念碑建造的意义在于纪念民族英雄永垂不朽。
• We must perpetuate the system.我们必须将此制度永久保持。

201 mere   

adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过

参考例句：

• That is a mere repetition of what you said before.那不过是重复了你以前讲的话。
• It's a mere waste of time waiting any longer.再等下去纯粹是浪费时间。

202 delirium   

n. 神智昏迷,说胡话;极度兴奋

参考例句：

• In her delirium, she had fallen to the floor several times. 她在神志不清的状态下几次摔倒在地上。
• For the next nine months, Job was in constant delirium.接下来的九个月，约伯处于持续精神错乱的状态。

203 utilized   

v.利用，使用( utilize的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• In the19th century waterpower was widely utilized to generate electricity. 在19世纪人们大规模使用水力来发电。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The empty building can be utilized for city storage. 可以利用那栋空建筑物作城市的仓库。 来自《简明英汉词典》

204 germinating   

n.& adj.发芽（的）v.（使）发芽( germinate的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Glyoxysomes are particularly well known in germinating fatly seeds. 人们已经知道，萌发的含油种子中有乙醛酸循环体。 来自辞典例句
• Modern, industrial society, slowly germinating in the shadow of medievalism, burst the bonds of feudalism. 现代工业社会缓慢地在中世纪精神的阴影下孕育成长着，终于挣脱了封建制度的枷锁。 来自辞典例句

205 misgivings   

n.疑虑，担忧，害怕；疑虑，担心，恐惧( misgiving的名词复数 )；疑惧

参考例句：

• I had grave misgivings about making the trip. 对于这次旅行我有过极大的顾虑。
• Don't be overtaken by misgivings and fear. Just go full stream ahead! 不要瞻前顾后， 畏首畏尾。甩开膀子干吧！ 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

206 irrelevant   

adj.不恰当的，无关系的，不相干的

参考例句：

• That is completely irrelevant to the subject under discussion.这跟讨论的主题完全不相关。
• A question about arithmetic is irrelevant in a music lesson.在音乐课上，一个数学的问题是风马牛不相及的。

207 persistent   

adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的

参考例句：

• Albert had a persistent headache that lasted for three days.艾伯特连续头痛了三天。
• She felt embarrassed by his persistent attentions.他不时地向她大献殷勤，使她很难为情。

208 distresses   

n.悲痛( distress的名词复数 )；痛苦；贫困；危险

参考例句：

• It was from these distresses that the peasant wars of the fourteenth century sprang. 正是由于这些灾难才爆发了十四世纪的农民战争。 来自辞典例句
• In all dangers and distresses, I will remember that. 在一切危险和苦难中，我要记住这一件事。 来自互联网

209 vaguely   

adv.含糊地，暖昧地

参考例句：

• He had talked vaguely of going to work abroad.他含糊其词地说了到国外工作的事。
• He looked vaguely before him with unseeing eyes.他迷迷糊糊的望着前面，对一切都视而不见。

210 wilderness   

n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠

参考例句：

• She drove the herd of cattle through the wilderness.她赶着牛群穿过荒野。
• Education in the wilderness is not a matter of monetary means.荒凉地区的教育不是钱财问题。

211 slashed   

v.挥砍( slash的过去式和过去分词 )；鞭打；割破；削减

参考例句：

• Someone had slashed the tyres on my car. 有人把我的汽车轮胎割破了。
• He slashed the bark off the tree with his knife. 他用刀把树皮从树上砍下。 来自《简明英汉词典》

212 snared   

v.用罗网捕捉，诱陷，陷害( snare的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He snared a job with IBM. 他以巧妙的手段在 IBM 公司谋得一职。 来自辞典例句
• The hunter snared a skunk. 猎人捕得一只臭鼬。 来自辞典例句

213 marshy   

adj.沼泽的

参考例句：

• In August 1935,we began our march across the marshy grassland. 1935年8月，我们开始过草地。
• The surrounding land is low and marshy. 周围的地低洼而多沼泽。

214 pitfalls   

（捕猎野兽用的）陷阱( pitfall的名词复数 )； 意想不到的困难，易犯的错误

参考例句：

• the potential pitfalls of buying a house 购买房屋可能遇到的圈套
• Several pitfalls remain in the way of an agreement. 在达成协议的进程中还有几个隐藏的困难。

215 entangled   

adj.卷入的；陷入的；被缠住的；缠在一起的v.使某人（某物/自己）缠绕，纠缠于（某物中），使某人（自己）陷入（困难或复杂的环境中）( entangle的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The bird had become entangled in the wire netting. 那只小鸟被铁丝网缠住了。
• Some military observers fear the US could get entangled in another war. 一些军事观察家担心美国会卷入另一场战争。 来自《简明英汉词典》

216 tangle   

n.纠缠；缠结；混乱；v.(使)缠绕；变乱

参考例句：

• I shouldn't tangle with Peter.He is bigger than me.我不应该与彼特吵架。他的块头比我大。
• If I were you, I wouldn't tangle with them.我要是你，我就不跟他们争吵。

217 tangled   

adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• Your hair's so tangled that I can't comb it. 你的头发太乱了，我梳不动。
• A movement caught his eye in the tangled undergrowth. 乱灌木丛里的晃动引起了他的注意。

218 followers   

追随者( follower的名词复数 )； 用户； 契据的附面； 从动件

参考例句：

• the followers of Mahatma Gandhi 圣雄甘地的拥护者
• The reformer soon gathered a band of followers round him. 改革者很快就获得一群追随者支持他。

219 inexplicable   

adj.无法解释的，难理解的

参考例句：

• It is now inexplicable how that development was misinterpreted.当时对这一事态发展的错误理解究竟是怎么产生的，现在已经无法说清楚了。
• There are many things which are inexplicable by science.有很多事科学还无法解释。

220 internecine   

adj.两败俱伤的

参考例句：

• Strife was internecine during the next fortnight.在以后两个星期的冲突中我们两败俱伤。
• Take the concern that metaphysical one-sided point of view observes and treats both,can cause internecine.采取形而上学的片面观点观察和处理二者的关系，就会造成两败俱伤。

221 warfare   

n.战争(状态)；斗争；冲突

参考例句：

• He addressed the audience on the subject of atomic warfare.他向听众演讲有关原子战争的问题。
• Their struggle consists mainly in peasant guerrilla warfare.他们的斗争主要是农民游击战。

222 fungi   

n.真菌，霉菌

参考例句：

• Students practice to apply the study of genetics to multicellular plants and fungi.学生们练习把基因学应用到多细胞植物和真菌中。
• The lawn was covered with fungi.草地上到处都是蘑菇。

223 ammunition   

n.军火，弹药

参考例句：

• A few of the jeeps had run out of ammunition.几辆吉普车上的弹药已经用光了。
• They have expended all their ammunition.他们把弹药用光。

224 filth   

n.肮脏，污物，污秽；淫猥

参考例句：

• I don't know how you can read such filth.我不明白你怎么会去读这种淫秽下流的东西。
• The dialogue was all filth and innuendo.这段对话全是下流的言辞和影射。

225 frantic   

adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的

参考例句：

• I've had a frantic rush to get my work done.我急急忙忙地赶完工作。
• He made frantic dash for the departing train.他发疯似地冲向正开出的火车。

226 remonstrance   

n抗议，抱怨

参考例句：

• She had abandoned all attempts at remonstrance with Thomas.她已经放弃了一切劝戒托马斯的尝试。
• Mrs. Peniston was at the moment inaccessible to remonstrance.目前彭尼斯顿太太没功夫听她告状。

227 sullenly   

不高兴地，绷着脸，忧郁地

参考例句：

• 'so what?" Tom said sullenly. “那又怎么样呢？”汤姆绷着脸说。
• Emptiness after the paper, I sIt'sullenly in front of the stove. 报看完，想不出能找点什么事做，只好一人坐在火炉旁生气。

228 foul   

adj.污秽的；邪恶的；v.弄脏；妨害；犯规；n.犯规

参考例句：

• Take off those foul clothes and let me wash them.脱下那些脏衣服让我洗一洗。
• What a foul day it is!多么恶劣的天气！

229 voracious   

adj.狼吞虎咽的，贪婪的

参考例句：

• She's a voracious reader of all kinds of love stories.什么样的爱情故事她都百看不厌。
• Joseph Smith was a voracious book collector.约瑟夫·史密斯是个如饥似渴的藏书家。

230 leeches   

n.水蛭( leech的名词复数 )；蚂蟥；榨取他人脂膏者；医生

参考例句：

• The usurers are leeches;they have drained us dry. 高利贷者是吸血鬼，他们吸干了我们的血汗。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Does it run in the genes to live as leeches? 你们家是不是遗传的，都以欺压别人为生？ 来自电影对白

231 spires   

n.（教堂的） 塔尖，尖顶( spire的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Her masts leveled with the spires of churches. 船的桅杆和教堂的塔尖一样高。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• White church spires lift above green valleys. 教堂的白色尖顶耸立在绿色山谷中。 来自《简明英汉词典》

232 agonized   

v.使（极度）痛苦，折磨( agonize的过去式和过去分词 )；苦斗；苦苦思索；感到极度痛苦

参考例句：

• All the time they agonized and prayed. 他们一直在忍受痛苦并且祈祷。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• She agonized herself with the thought of her loss. 她念念不忘自己的损失，深深陷入痛苦之中。 来自辞典例句

233 phantoms   

n.鬼怪，幽灵( phantom的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• They vanished down the stairs like two phantoms. 他们像两个幽灵似的消失在了楼下。 来自辞典例句
• The horrible night that he had passed had left phantoms behind it. 他刚才度过的恐布之夜留下了种种错觉。 来自辞典例句

234 phantom   

n.幻影，虚位，幽灵；adj.错觉的，幻影的，幽灵的

参考例句：

• I found myself staring at her as if she were a phantom.我发现自己瞪大眼睛看着她，好像她是一个幽灵。
• He is only a phantom of a king.他只是有名无实的国王。

235 moths   

n.蛾( moth的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The moths have eaten holes in my wool coat. 蛀虫将我的羊毛衫蛀蚀了几个小洞。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The moths tapped and blurred at the window screen. 飞蛾在窗帘上跳来跳去，弄上了许多污点。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

236 fugitives   

n.亡命者，逃命者( fugitive的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Three fugitives from the prison are still at large. 三名逃犯仍然未被抓获。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Members of the provisional government were prisoners or fugitives. 临时政府的成员或被捕或逃亡。 来自演讲部分

237 thickets   

n.灌木丛( thicket的名词复数 )；丛状物

参考例句：

• Small trees became thinly scattered among less dense thickets. 小树稀稀朗朗地立在树林里。 来自辞典例句
• The entire surface is covered with dense thickets. 所有的地面盖满了密密层层的灌木丛。 来自辞典例句

238 twigs   

细枝，嫩枝( twig的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Some birds build nests of twigs. 一些鸟用树枝筑巢。
• Willow twigs are pliable. 柳条很软。

239 wig   

n.假发

参考例句：

• The actress wore a black wig over her blond hair.那个女演员戴一顶黑色假发罩住自己的金黄色头发。
• He disguised himself with a wig and false beard.他用假发和假胡须来乔装。

240 aisles   

n. (席位间的)通道, 侧廊

参考例句：

• Aisles were added to the original Saxon building in the Norman period. 在诺曼时期，原来的萨克森风格的建筑物都增添了走廊。
• They walked about the Abbey aisles, and presently sat down. 他们走到大教堂的走廊附近，并且很快就坐了下来。

241 gathering   

n.集会，聚会，聚集

参考例句：

• He called on Mr. White to speak at the gathering.他请怀特先生在集会上讲话。
• He is on the wing gathering material for his novels.他正忙于为他的小说收集资料。

242 purely   

adv.纯粹地，完全地

参考例句：

• I helped him purely and simply out of friendship.我帮他纯粹是出于友情。
• This disproves the theory that children are purely imitative.这证明认为儿童只会单纯地模仿的理论是站不住脚的。

243 hues   

色彩( hue的名词复数 )； 色调； 信仰； 观点

参考例句：

• When the sun rose a hundred prismatic hues were reflected from it. 太阳一出，更把它映得千变万化、异彩缤纷。
• Where maple trees grow, the leaves are often several brilliant hues of red. 在枫树生长的地方，枫叶常常呈现出数种光彩夺目的红色。

244 intervals   

n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息

参考例句：

• The forecast said there would be sunny intervals and showers. 预报间晴，有阵雨。
• Meetings take place at fortnightly intervals. 每两周开一次会。

245 mania   

n.疯狂；躁狂症，狂热，癖好

参考例句：

• Football mania is sweeping the country.足球热正风靡全国。
• Collecting small items can easily become a mania.收藏零星物品往往容易变成一种癖好。

246 copiously   

adv.丰富地，充裕地

参考例句：

• She leant forward and vomited copiously on the floor. 她向前一俯，哇的一声吐了一地。 来自英汉文学
• This well-organized, unified course copiously illustrated, amply cross-referenced, and fully indexed. 这条组织完善，统一的课程丰富地被说明，丰富地被相互参照和充分地被标注。 来自互联网

247 adorned   

[计]被修饰的

参考例句：

• The walls were adorned with paintings. 墙上装饰了绘画。
• And his coat was adorned with a flamboyant bunch of flowers. 他的外套上面装饰着一束艳丽刺目的鲜花。

248 celestial   

adj.天体的；天上的

参考例句：

• The rosy light yet beamed like a celestial dawn.玫瑰色的红光依然象天上的朝霞一样绚丽。
• Gravity governs the motions of celestial bodies.万有引力控制着天体的运动。

249 trophies   

n.（为竞赛获胜者颁发的）奖品( trophy的名词复数 )；奖杯；（尤指狩猎或战争中获得的）纪念品；（用于比赛或赛跑名称）奖

参考例句：

• His football trophies were prominently displayed in the kitchen. 他的足球奖杯陈列在厨房里显眼的位置。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The hunter kept the lion's skin and head as trophies. 这猎人保存狮子的皮和头作为纪念品。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

250 recesses   

n.壁凹( recess的名词复数 )；（工作或业务活动的）中止或暂停期间；学校的课间休息；某物内部的凹形空间v.把某物放在墙壁的凹处( recess的第三人称单数 )；将（墙）做成凹形，在（墙）上做壁龛；休息，休会，休庭

参考例句：

• I could see the inmost recesses. 我能看见最深处。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• I had continually pushed my doubts to the darker recesses of my mind. 我一直把怀疑深深地隐藏在心中。 来自《简明英汉词典》

251 hippopotamus   

n.河马

参考例句：

• The children enjoyed watching the hippopotamus wallowing in the mud.孩子们真喜观看河马在泥中打滚。
• A hippopotamus surfs the waves off the coast of Gabon.一头河马在加蓬的海岸附近冲浪。

252 rhinoceros   

n.犀牛

参考例句：

• The rhinoceros has one horn on its nose.犀牛鼻子上有一个角。
• The body of the rhinoceros likes a cattle and the head likes a triangle.犀牛的形体像牛，头呈三角形。

253 pallid   

adj.苍白的，呆板的

参考例句：

• The moon drifted from behind the clouds and exposed the pallid face.月亮从云朵后面钻出来，照着尸体那张苍白的脸。
• His dry pallid face often looked gaunt.他那张干瘪苍白的脸常常显得憔悴。

254 sling   

vt.扔；悬挂；n.挂带；吊索，吊兜；弹弓

参考例句：

• The boy discharged a stone from a sling.这个男孩用弹弓射石头。
• By using a hoist the movers were able to sling the piano to the third floor.搬运工人用吊车才把钢琴吊到3楼。

255 fiscal   

adj.财政的，会计的，国库的，国库岁入的

参考例句：

• The increase of taxation is an important fiscal policy.增税是一项重要的财政政策。
• The government has two basic strategies of fiscal policy available.政府有两个可行的财政政策基本战略。

256 impudence   

n.厚颜无耻；冒失；无礼

参考例句：

• His impudence provoked her into slapping his face.他的粗暴让她气愤地给了他一耳光。
• What knocks me is his impudence.他的厚颜无耻使我感到吃惊。

257 detested   

v.憎恶，嫌恶，痛恨( detest的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• They detested each other on sight. 他们互相看着就不顺眼。
• The freethinker hated the formalist; the lover of liberty detested the disciplinarian. 自由思想者总是不喜欢拘泥形式者，爱好自由者总是憎恶清规戒律者。 来自辞典例句

258 amiable   

adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的

参考例句：

• She was a very kind and amiable old woman.她是个善良和气的老太太。
• We have a very amiable companionship.我们之间存在一种友好的关系。

259 extravagant   

adj.奢侈的；过分的；(言行等)放肆的

参考例句：

• They tried to please him with fulsome compliments and extravagant gifts.他们想用溢美之词和奢华的礼品来取悦他。
• He is extravagant in behaviour.他行为放肆。

260 flares   

n.喇叭裤v.（使）闪耀( flare的第三人称单数 )；（使）（船舷）外倾；（使）鼻孔张大；（使）（衣裙、酒杯等）呈喇叭形展开

参考例句：

• The side of a ship flares from the keel to the deck. 船舷从龙骨向甲板外倾。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He's got a fiery temper and flares up at the slightest provocation. 他是火爆性子，一点就着。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

261 inefficient   

adj.效率低的，无效的

参考例句：

• The inefficient operation cost the firm a lot of money.低效率的运作使该公司损失了许多钱。
• Their communication systems are inefficient in the extreme.他们的通讯系统效率非常差。

262 incapable   

adj.无能力的，不能做某事的

参考例句：

• He would be incapable of committing such a cruel deed.他不会做出这么残忍的事。
• Computers are incapable of creative thought.计算机不会创造性地思维。

263 sneered   

讥笑，冷笑( sneer的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He sneered at people who liked pop music. 他嘲笑喜欢流行音乐的人。
• It's very discouraging to be sneered at all the time. 成天受嘲讽是很令人泄气的。

264 tirade   

n.冗长的攻击性演说

参考例句：

• Her tirade provoked a counterblast from her husband.她的长篇大论激起了她丈夫的强烈反对。
• He delivered a long tirade against the government.他发表了反政府的长篇演说。

265 feverish   

adj.发烧的，狂热的，兴奋的

参考例句：

• He is too feverish to rest.他兴奋得安静不下来。
• They worked with feverish haste to finish the job.为了完成此事他们以狂热的速度工作着。

266 disturbance   

n.动乱，骚动；打扰，干扰；(身心)失调

参考例句：

• He is suffering an emotional disturbance.他的情绪受到了困扰。
• You can work in here without any disturbance.在这儿你可不受任何干扰地工作。

267 conversion   

n.转化，转换，转变

参考例句：

• He underwent quite a conversion.他彻底变了。
• Waste conversion is a part of the production process.废物处理是生产过程的一个组成部分。

268 swirl   

v.(使)打漩，(使)涡卷；n.漩涡，螺旋形

参考例句：

• The car raced roughly along in a swirl of pink dust.汽车在一股粉红色尘土的漩涡中颠簸着快速前进。
• You could lie up there,watching the flakes swirl past.你可以躺在那儿，看着雪花飘飘。

269 pungently   

adv.苦痛地，尖锐地

参考例句：

• The soup was pungently flavored. 汤的味道很刺鼻。 来自互联网
• He wrote pungently about his contemporaries. 他通过写文章尖锐地批判了他同时代的人。 来自互联网

270 inefficiency   

n.无效率，无能；无效率事例

参考例句：

• Conflict between management and workers makes for inefficiency in the workplace. 资方与工人之间的冲突使得工厂生产效率很低。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• This type of inefficiency arises because workers and management are ill-equipped. 出现此种低效率是因为工人与管理层都能力不足。 来自《简明英汉词典》

271 panacea   

n.万灵药；治百病的灵药

参考例句：

• Western aid may help but will not be a panacea. 西方援助可能会有所帮助，但并非灵丹妙药。
• There's no single panacea for the country's economic ills. 国家经济弊病百出,并无万灵药可以医治。

272 harmonious   

adj.和睦的，调和的，和谐的，协调的

参考例句：

• Their harmonious relationship resulted in part from their similar goals.他们关系融洽的部分原因是他们有着相似的目标。
• The room was painted in harmonious colors.房间油漆得色彩调和。

273 constructive   

adj.建设的，建设性的

参考例句：

• We welcome constructive criticism.我们乐意接受有建设性的批评。
• He is beginning to deal with his anger in a constructive way.他开始用建设性的方法处理自己的怒气。

274 uproar   

n.骚动，喧嚣，鼎沸

参考例句：

• She could hear the uproar in the room.她能听见房间里的吵闹声。
• His remarks threw the audience into an uproar.他的讲话使听众沸腾起来。

275 spouting   

n.水落管系统v.（指液体）喷出( spout的现在分词 )；滔滔不绝地讲；喋喋不休地说；喷水

参考例句：

• He's always spouting off about the behaviour of young people today. 他总是没完没了地数落如今年轻人的行为。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Blood was spouting from the deep cut in his arm. 血从他胳膊上深深的伤口里涌出来。 来自《简明英汉词典》

276 quack   

n.庸医；江湖医生；冒充内行的人；骗子

参考例句：

• He describes himself as a doctor,but I feel he is a quack.他自称是医生，可是我感觉他是个江湖骗子。
• The quack was stormed with questions.江湖骗子受到了猛烈的质问。

277 geographical   

adj.地理的；地区(性)的

参考例句：

• The current survey will have a wider geographical spread.当前的调查将在更广泛的地域范围內进行。
• These birds have a wide geographical distribution.这些鸟的地理分布很广。

278 scattered   

adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的

参考例句：

• Gathering up his scattered papers,he pushed them into his case.他把散乱的文件收拾起来，塞进文件夹里。

279 dread   

vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧

参考例句：

• We all dread to think what will happen if the company closes.我们都不敢去想一旦公司关门我们该怎么办。
• Her heart was relieved of its blankest dread.她极度恐惧的心理消除了。

280 grafted   

移植( graft的过去式和过去分词 )； 嫁接； 使（思想、制度等）成为（…的一部份）； 植根

参考例句：

• No art can be grafted with success on another art. 没有哪种艺术能成功地嫁接到另一种艺术上。
• Apples are easily grafted. 苹果树很容易嫁接。

281 unity   

n.团结，联合，统一；和睦，协调

参考例句：

• When we speak of unity,we do not mean unprincipled peace.所谓团结，并非一团和气。
• We must strengthen our unity in the face of powerful enemies.大敌当前，我们必须加强团结。

282 drawn   

v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的

参考例句：

• All the characters in the story are drawn from life.故事中的所有人物都取材于生活。
• Her gaze was drawn irresistibly to the scene outside.她的目光禁不住被外面的风景所吸引。

283 pretentious   

adj.自命不凡的，自负的，炫耀的

参考例句：

• He is a talented but pretentious writer.他是一个有才华但自命不凡的作家。
• Speaking well of yourself would only make you appear conceited and pretentious.自夸只会使你显得自负和虚伪。

284 sprawling   

adj.蔓生的，不规则地伸展的v.伸开四肢坐[躺]( sprawl的现在分词 )；蔓延；杂乱无序地拓展；四肢伸展坐着（或躺着）

参考例句：

• He was sprawling in an armchair in front of the TV. 他伸开手脚坐在电视机前的一张扶手椅上。
• a modern sprawling town 一座杂乱无序拓展的现代城镇

285 tariffs   

关税制度； 关税( tariff的名词复数 )； 关税表； （旅馆或饭店等的）收费表； 量刑标准

参考例句：

• British industry was sheltered from foreign competition by protective tariffs. 保护性关税使英国工业免受国际竞争影响。
• The new tariffs have put a stranglehold on trade. 新的关税制对开展贸易极为不利。

286 poking   

n. 刺，戳，袋 vt. 拨开，刺，戳 vi. 戳，刺，捅，搜索，伸出，行动散慢

参考例句：

• He was poking at the rubbish with his stick. 他正用手杖拨动垃圾。
• He spent his weekends poking around dusty old bookshops. 他周末都泡在布满尘埃的旧书店里。

287 bishop   

n.主教，（国际象棋）象

参考例句：

• He was a bishop who was held in reverence by all.他是一位被大家都尊敬的主教。
• Two years after his death the bishop was canonised.主教逝世两年后被正式封为圣者。

288 naturalist   

n.博物学家(尤指直接观察动植物者)

参考例句：

• He was a printer by trade and naturalist by avocation.他从事印刷业，同时是个博物学爱好者。
• The naturalist told us many stories about birds.博物学家给我们讲述了许多有关鸟儿的故事。

289 formerly   

adv.从前，以前

参考例句：

• We now enjoy these comforts of which formerly we had only heard.我们现在享受到了过去只是听说过的那些舒适条件。
• This boat was formerly used on the rivers of China.这船从前航行在中国内河里。

290 auxiliaries   

n.助动词 ( auxiliary的名词复数 )；辅助工，辅助人员

参考例句：

• These auxiliaries have made our work much easier. 有了这些辅助人员，我们的工作才顺利多了。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• In English the future tense is often rendered by means of auxiliaries. 在英语中，将来时常用助动词来表现。 来自辞典例句

291 antelope   

n.羚羊；羚羊皮

参考例句：

• Choosing the antelope shows that China wants a Green Olympics.选择藏羚羊表示中国需要绿色奥运。
• The tiger was dragging the antelope across the field.老虎拖着羚羊穿过原野。

292 yaks   

牦牛( yak的名词复数 )； 笑话

参考例句：

• The jokes get yaks. 那笑话引人发笑。
• Social species including birds, fish and yaks must have companionship. 习惯群居的生物，包括鸟类、鱼类和（牛毛）牛必须有伙伴。

293 passionately   

ad.热烈地，激烈地

参考例句：

• She could hate as passionately as she could love. 她能恨得咬牙切齿，也能爱得一往情深。
• He was passionately addicted to pop music. 他酷爱流行音乐。

294 judicial   

adj.司法的，法庭的，审判的，明断的，公正的

参考例句：

• He is a man with a judicial mind.他是个公正的人。
• Tom takes judicial proceedings against his father.汤姆对他的父亲正式提出诉讼。

295 converse   

vi.谈话，谈天，闲聊；adv.相反的，相反

参考例句：

• He can converse in three languages.他可以用3种语言谈话。
• I wanted to appear friendly and approachable but I think I gave the converse impression.我想显得友好、平易近人些,却发觉给人的印象恰恰相反。

296 suave   

adj.温和的；柔和的；文雅的

参考例句：

• He is a suave,cool and cultured man.他是个世故、冷静、有教养的人。
• I had difficulty answering his suave questions.我难以回答他的一些彬彬有礼的提问。

297 assorted   

adj.各种各样的，各色俱备的

参考例句：

• There's a bag of assorted sweets on the table.桌子上有一袋什锦糖果。
• He has always assorted with men of his age.他总是与和他年令相仿的人交往。

298 ruminating   

v.沉思( ruminate的现在分词 )；反复考虑；反刍；倒嚼

参考例句：

• He sat there ruminating and picking at the tablecloth. 他坐在那儿沉思，轻轻地抚弄着桌布。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He is ruminating on what had happened the day before. 他在沉思前一天发生的事情。 来自《简明英汉词典》

299 discursive   

adj.离题的，无层次的

参考例句：

• His own toast was discursive and overlong,though rather touching.他自己的祝酒词虽然也颇为动人，但是比较松散而冗长。
• They complained that my writing was becoming too discursive.他们抱怨我的文章变得太散漫。

300 sedulous   

adj.勤勉的，努力的

参考例句：

• She is as gifted as sedulous.她不但有天赋，而且勤奋。
• The young woman was so sedulous that she received a commendation for her hard work.年轻女性是如此孜孜不倦,她收到了表扬她的辛勤工作。

301 heresy   

n.异端邪说；异教

参考例句：

• We should denounce a heresy.我们应该公开指责异端邪说。
• It might be considered heresy to suggest such a notion.提出这样一个观点可能会被视为异端邪说。

302 attaining   

（通常经过努力）实现( attain的现在分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况）

参考例句：

• Jim is halfway to attaining his pilot's licence. 吉姆就快要拿到飞行员执照了。
• By that time she was attaining to fifty. 那时她已快到五十岁了。

303 sane   

adj.心智健全的，神志清醒的，明智的，稳健的

参考例句：

• He was sane at the time of the murder.在凶杀案发生时他的神志是清醒的。
• He is a very sane person.他是一个很有头脑的人。

304 persecute   

vt.迫害，虐待；纠缠，骚扰

参考例句：

• They persecute those who do not conform to their ideas.他们迫害那些不信奉他们思想的人。
• Hitler's undisguised effort to persecute the Jews met with worldwide condemnation.希特勒对犹太人的露骨迫害行为遭到世界人民的谴责。

305 enthusiasts   

n.热心人，热衷者( enthusiast的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• A group of enthusiasts have undertaken the reconstruction of a steam locomotive. 一群火车迷已担负起重造蒸汽机车的任务。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Now a group of enthusiasts are going to have the plane restored. 一群热心人计划修复这架飞机。 来自新概念英语第二册

306 murmur   

n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言

参考例句：

• They paid the extra taxes without a murmur.他们毫无怨言地交了附加税。
• There was a low murmur of conversation in the hall.大厅里有窃窃私语声。

307 undoing   

n.毁灭的原因，祸根；破坏，毁灭

参考例句：

• That one mistake was his undoing. 他一失足即成千古恨。
• This hard attitude may have led to his undoing. 可能就是这种强硬的态度导致了他的垮台。

308 annoyance   

n.恼怒，生气，烦恼

参考例句：

• Why do you always take your annoyance out on me?为什么你不高兴时总是对我出气？
• I felt annoyance at being teased.我恼恨别人取笑我。

309 blander   

adj.（食物）淡而无味的( bland的比较级 )；平和的；温和的；无动于衷的

参考例句：

• Generally speaking, I prefer Blander food. 一般说来，我更喜欢吃清淡的食物。 来自互联网
• First turn on the blander, and then pour 2 teaspoons of yogurt into the blander. 首先把搅拌器打开，然后把两勺酸奶倒进搅拌器。 来自互联网

310 contented   

adj.满意的，安心的，知足的

参考例句：

• He won't be contented until he's upset everyone in the office.不把办公室里的每个人弄得心烦意乱他就不会满足。
• The people are making a good living and are contented,each in his station.人民安居乐业。

311 marred   

adj. 被损毁, 污损的

参考例句：

• The game was marred by the behaviour of drunken fans. 喝醉了的球迷行为不轨，把比赛给搅了。
• Bad diction marred the effectiveness of his speech. 措词不当影响了他演说的效果。

312 massacre   

n.残杀，大屠杀；v.残杀，集体屠杀

参考例句：

• There was a terrible massacre of villagers here during the war.在战争中，这里的村民惨遭屠杀。
• If we forget the massacre,the massacre will happen again!忘记了大屠杀，大屠杀就有可能再次发生！

313 alas   

int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等)

参考例句：

• Alas!The window is broken!哎呀！窗子破了！
• Alas,the truth is less romantic.然而，真理很少带有浪漫色彩。

314 bustling   

adj.喧闹的

参考例句：

• The market was bustling with life. 市场上生机勃勃。
• This district is getting more and more prosperous and bustling. 这一带越来越繁华了。

315 solidarity   

n.团结；休戚相关

参考例句：

• They must preserve their solidarity.他们必须维护他们的团结。
• The solidarity among China's various nationalities is as firm as a rock.中国各族人民之间的团结坚如磐石。

316 obedience   

n.服从，顺从

参考例句：

• Society has a right to expect obedience of the law.社会有权要求人人遵守法律。
• Soldiers act in obedience to the orders of their superior officers.士兵们遵照上级军官的命令行动。

317 primitive   

adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物

参考例句：

• It is a primitive instinct to flee a place of danger.逃离危险的地方是一种原始本能。
• His book describes the march of the civilization of a primitive society.他的著作描述了一个原始社会的开化过程。

318 propounding   

v.提出（问题、计划等）供考虑[讨论]，提议( propound的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• He won the prize by propounding the theory. 他因提出该学说而获奖。 来自互联网

319 paradox   

n.似乎矛盾却正确的说法；自相矛盾的人(物)

参考例句：

• The story contains many levels of paradox.这个故事存在多重悖论。
• The paradox is that Japan does need serious education reform.矛盾的地方是日本确实需要教育改革。

320 dilemma   

n.困境，进退两难的局面

参考例句：

• I am on the horns of a dilemma about the matter.这件事使我进退两难。
• He was thrown into a dilemma.他陷入困境。

321 abruptly   

adv.突然地，出其不意地

参考例句：

• He gestured abruptly for Virginia to get in the car.他粗鲁地示意弗吉尼亚上车。
• I was abruptly notified that a half-hour speech was expected of me.我突然被通知要讲半个小时的话。

322 raving   

adj.说胡话的；疯狂的，怒吼的；非常漂亮的；令人醉心[痴心]的v.胡言乱语(rave的现在分词)n.胡话；疯话adv.胡言乱语地；疯狂地

参考例句：

• The man's a raving lunatic. 那个男子是个语无伦次的疯子。
• When I told her I'd crashed her car, she went stark raving bonkers. 我告诉她我把她的车撞坏了时，她暴跳如雷。

323 insidiousness   

潜伏，阴险； 隐袭性

参考例句：

324 benevolent   

adj.仁慈的，乐善好施的

参考例句：

• His benevolent nature prevented him from refusing any beggar who accosted him.他乐善好施的本性使他不会拒绝走上前向他行乞的任何一个乞丐。
• He was a benevolent old man and he wouldn't hurt a fly.他是一个仁慈的老人，连只苍蝇都不愿伤害。

325 supervision   

n.监督，管理

参考例句：

• The work was done under my supervision.这项工作是在我的监督之下完成的。
• The old man's will was executed under the personal supervision of the lawyer.老人的遗嘱是在律师的亲自监督下执行的。

326 buffalo   

n.(北美)野牛；(亚洲)水牛

参考例句：

• Asian buffalo isn't as wild as that of America's. 亚洲水牛比美洲水牛温顺些。
• The boots are made of buffalo hide. 这双靴子是由水牛皮制成的。

327 commemorates   

n.纪念，庆祝( commemorate的名词复数 )v.纪念，庆祝( commemorate的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• A tombstone is erected in memory of whoever it commemorates. 墓碑是为纪念它所纪念的人而建的。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• A tablet commemorates his patriotic activities. 碑文铭记他的爱国行动。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

328 narrative   

n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的

参考例句：

• He was a writer of great narrative power.他是一位颇有记述能力的作家。
• Neither author was very strong on narrative.两个作者都不是很善于讲故事。

329 guardian   

n.监护人；守卫者，保护者

参考例句：

• The form must be signed by the child's parents or guardian. 这张表格须由孩子的家长或监护人签字。
• The press is a guardian of the public weal. 报刊是公共福利的卫护者。

330 solicitor   

n.初级律师，事务律师

参考例句：

• The solicitor's advice gave me food for thought.律师的指点值得我深思。
• The solicitor moved for an adjournment of the case.律师请求将这个案件的诉讼延期。

331 intervention   

n.介入，干涉，干预

参考例句：

• The government's intervention in this dispute will not help.政府对这场争论的干预不会起作用。
• Many people felt he would be hostile to the idea of foreign intervention.许多人觉得他会反对外来干预。

332 immediate   

adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的

参考例句：

• His immediate neighbours felt it their duty to call.他的近邻认为他们有责任去拜访。
• We declared ourselves for the immediate convocation of the meeting.我们主张立即召开这个会议。

333 agitated   

adj.被鼓动的，不安的

参考例句：

• His answers were all mixed up,so agitated was he.他是那样心神不定，回答全乱了。
• She was agitated because her train was an hour late.她乘坐的火车晚点一个小时，她十分焦虑。

334 efficiently   

adv.高效率地，有能力地

参考例句：

• The worker oils the machine to operate it more efficiently.工人给机器上油以使机器运转更有效。
• Local authorities have to learn to allocate resources efficiently.地方政府必须学会有效地分配资源。

335 ranted   

v.夸夸其谈( rant的过去式和过去分词 )；大叫大嚷地以…说教；气愤地)大叫大嚷；不停地大声抱怨

参考例句：

• Drink in hand,he ranted about his adventures in Africa. 他端着酒杯，激动地叙述他在非洲的经历。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Lu Xun ranted and raved against the enemy, but he felt warmth towards the people. 鲁迅对敌人冷嘲热讽，而对人民却是满腔热忱。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

336 precisely   

adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地

参考例句：

• It's precisely that sort of slick sales-talk that I mistrust.我不相信的正是那种油腔滑调的推销宣传。
• The man adjusted very precisely.那个人调得很准。

337 insistent   

adj.迫切的，坚持的

参考例句：

• There was an insistent knock on my door.我听到一阵急促的敲门声。
• He is most insistent on this point.他在这点上很坚持。

338 pointed   

adj.尖的，直截了当的

参考例句：

• He gave me a very sharp pointed pencil.他给我一支削得非常尖的铅笔。
• She wished to show Mrs.John Dashwood by this pointed invitation to her brother.她想通过对达茨伍德夫人提出直截了当的邀请向她的哥哥表示出来。

339 endorsed   

vt.& vi.endorse的过去式或过去分词形式v.赞同( endorse的过去式和过去分词 )；在（尤指支票的）背面签字；在（文件的）背面写评论；在广告上说本人使用并赞同某产品

参考例句：

• The committee endorsed an initiative by the chairman to enter discussion about a possible merger. 委员会通过了主席提出的新方案，开始就可能进行的并购进行讨论。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The government has broadly endorsed a research paper proposing new educational targets for 14-year-olds. 政府基本上支持建议对14 岁少年实行新教育目标的研究报告。 来自《简明英汉词典》

340 maze   

n.迷宫，八阵图，混乱，迷惑

参考例句：

• He found his way through the complex maze of corridors.他穿过了迷宮一样的走廊。
• She was lost in the maze for several hours.一连几小时，她的头脑处于一片糊涂状态。

341 ineptitude   

n.不适当；愚笨，愚昧的言行

参考例句：

• History testifies to the ineptitude of coalitions in waging war.历史昭示我们，多数国家联合作战，其进行甚为困难。
• They joked about his ineptitude.他们取笑他的笨拙。

342 drowsily   

adv.睡地，懒洋洋地，昏昏欲睡地

参考例句：

• She turned drowsily on her side, a slow creeping blackness enveloping her mind. 她半睡半醒地翻了个身，一片缓缓蠕动的黑暗渐渐将她的心包围起来。 来自飘（部分）
• I felt asleep drowsily before I knew it. 不知过了多久，我曚扙地睡着了。 来自互联网

343 laggards   

n.落后者( laggard的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• I would say the best students at Chengdu are no laggards. 依我看成都最优秀的学生绝不逊色。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The laggards include utilities and telecommunications, up about % and 12% respectively, to MSCI. 据摩根士丹利资本国际的数据，涨幅居后的包括公用事业和电信类股，分别涨了约%和12%。 来自互联网

344 groaned   

v.呻吟( groan的过去式和过去分词 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦

参考例句：

• He groaned in anguish. 他痛苦地呻吟。
• The cart groaned under the weight of the piano. 大车在钢琴的重压下嘎吱作响。 来自《简明英汉词典》

345 apprehended   

逮捕，拘押( apprehend的过去式和过去分词 )； 理解

参考例句：

• She apprehended the complicated law very quickly. 她很快理解了复杂的法律。
• The police apprehended the criminal. 警察逮捕了罪犯。

346 atmospheric   

adj.大气的，空气的；大气层的；大气所引起的

参考例句：

• Sea surface temperatures and atmospheric circulation are strongly coupled.海洋表面温度与大气环流是密切相关的。
• Clouds return radiant energy to the surface primarily via the atmospheric window.云主要通过大气窗区向地表辐射能量。

347 mischievous   

adj.调皮的，恶作剧的，有害的，伤人的

参考例句：

• He is a mischievous but lovable boy.他是一个淘气但可爱的小孩。
• A mischievous cur must be tied short.恶狗必须拴得短。

348 jeering   

adj.嘲弄的，揶揄的v.嘲笑( jeer的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Hecklers interrupted her speech with jeering. 捣乱分子以嘲笑打断了她的讲话。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He interrupted my speech with jeering. 他以嘲笑打断了我的讲话。 来自《简明英汉词典》

349 swarmed   

密集( swarm的过去式和过去分词 )； 云集； 成群地移动； 蜜蜂或其他飞行昆虫成群地飞来飞去

参考例句：

• When the bell rang, the children swarmed out of the school. 铃声一响，孩子们蜂拥而出离开了学校。
• When the rain started the crowd swarmed back into the hotel. 雨一开始下，人群就蜂拥回了旅社。

350 countless   

adj.无数的，多得不计其数的

参考例句：

• In the war countless innocent people lost their lives.在这场战争中无数无辜的人丧失了性命。
• I've told you countless times.我已经告诉你无数遍了。

351 conflagration   

n.建筑物或森林大火

参考例句：

• A conflagration in 1947 reduced 90 percent of the houses to ashes.1947年的一场大火，使90%的房屋化为灰烬。
• The light of that conflagration will fade away.这熊熊烈火会渐渐熄灭。

352 stimulating   

adj.有启发性的，能激发人思考的

参考例句：

• shower gel containing plant extracts that have a stimulating effect on the skin 含有对皮肤有益的植物精华的沐浴凝胶
• This is a drug for stimulating nerves. 这是一种兴奋剂。

353 tonic   

n./adj.滋补品，补药，强身的，健体的

参考例句：

• It will be marketed as a tonic for the elderly.这将作为老年人滋补品在市场上销售。
• Sea air is Nature's best tonic for mind and body.海上的空气是大自然赋予的对人们身心的最佳补品。

354 sniffing   

n.探查法v.以鼻吸气，嗅，闻( sniff的现在分词 )；抽鼻子（尤指哭泣、患感冒等时出声地用鼻子吸气）；抱怨，不以为然地说

参考例句：

• We all had colds and couldn't stop sniffing and sneezing. 我们都感冒了，一个劲地抽鼻子，打喷嚏。
• They all had colds and were sniffing and sneezing. 他们都伤风了，呼呼喘气而且打喷嚏。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

355 minor   

adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修

参考例句：

• The young actor was given a minor part in the new play.年轻的男演员在这出新戏里被分派担任一个小角色。
• I gave him a minor share of my wealth.我把小部分财产给了他。

356 countermand   

v.撤回(命令)，取消(订货)

参考例句：

• I have now to countermand that order,in consequence of the receipting of the letter this morning.由于今日上午才收到来函，现在只好取消那份订单。
• The general countermand the orders issued in his absence.将军撤销了他不在时所发布的命令。

357 countermanded   

v.取消（命令），撤回( countermand的过去分词 )

参考例句：

358 waggishly   

adv.waggish（滑稽的，诙谐的）的变形

参考例句：

359 fixed   

adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的

参考例句：

• Have you two fixed on a date for the wedding yet?你们俩选定婚期了吗？
• Once the aim is fixed,we should not change it arbitrarily.目标一旦确定，我们就不应该随意改变。

360 vacancy   

n.（旅馆的）空位，空房，（职务的）空缺

参考例句：

• Her going on maternity leave will create a temporary vacancy.她休产假时将会有一个临时空缺。
• The vacancy of her expression made me doubt if she was listening.她茫然的神情让我怀疑她是否在听。

361 relish   

n.滋味，享受，爱好，调味品；vt.加调味料，享受，品味；vi.有滋味

参考例句：

• I have no relish for pop music.我对流行音乐不感兴趣。
• I relish the challenge of doing jobs that others turn down.我喜欢挑战别人拒绝做的工作。

362 shrimp   

n.虾，小虾；矮小的人

参考例句：

• When the shrimp farm is built it will block the stream.一旦养虾场建起来，将会截断这条河流。
• When it comes to seafood,I like shrimp the best.说到海鲜，我最喜欢虾。

363 mused   

v.沉思，冥想( muse的过去式和过去分词 )；沉思自语说（某事）

参考例句：

• \"I wonder if I shall ever see them again, \"he mused. “我不知道是否还可以再见到他们，”他沉思自问。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• \"Where are we going from here?\" mused one of Rutherford's guests. 卢瑟福的一位客人忍不住说道：‘我们这是在干什么？” 来自英汉非文学 - 科学史

364 stimulated   

a.刺激的

参考例句：

• The exhibition has stimulated interest in her work. 展览增进了人们对她作品的兴趣。
• The award has stimulated her into working still harder. 奖金促使她更加努力地工作。

365 bilious   

adj.胆汁过多的；易怒的

参考例句：

• The quality or condition of being bilious.多脂肪食物使有些人患胆汁病。
• He was a bilious old gentleman.他是一位脾气乖戾的老先生。

366 peculiar   

adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的

参考例句：

• He walks in a peculiar fashion.他走路的样子很奇特。
• He looked at me with a very peculiar expression.他用一种很奇怪的表情看着我。

367 deterrent   

n.阻碍物，制止物；adj.威慑的，遏制的

参考例句：

• Large fines act as a deterrent to motorists.高额罚款是对开车的人的制约。
• I put a net over my strawberries as a deterrent to the birds.我在草莓上罩了网，免得鸟歇上去。

368 rustling   

n. 瑟瑟声，沙沙声 adj. 发沙沙声的

参考例句：

• the sound of the trees rustling in the breeze 树木在微风中发出的沙沙声
• the soft rustling of leaves 树叶柔和的沙沙声

369 agility   

n.敏捷，活泼

参考例句：

• The boy came upstairs with agility.那男孩敏捷地走上楼来。
• His intellect and mental agility have never been in doubt.他的才智和机敏从未受到怀疑。

370 scuttle   

v.急赶，疾走，逃避；n.天窗；舷窗

参考例句：

• There was a general scuttle for shelter when the rain began to fall heavily.下大雨了，人们都飞跑着寻找躲雨的地方。
• The scuttle was open,and the good daylight shone in.明朗的亮光从敞开的小窗中照了进来。

371 inflict   

vt.(on)把…强加给，使遭受，使承担

参考例句：

• Don't inflict your ideas on me.不要把你的想法强加于我。
• Don't inflict damage on any person.不要伤害任何人。

372 bustled   

闹哄哄地忙乱，奔忙( bustle的过去式和过去分词 )； 催促

参考例句：

• She bustled around in the kitchen. 她在厨房里忙得团团转。
• The hostress bustled about with an assumption of authority. 女主人摆出一副权威的样子忙来忙去。

373 scrutinizing   

v.仔细检查，详审( scrutinize的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• His grandfather's stern eyes were scrutinizing him, and Chueh-hui felt his face reddening. 祖父的严厉的眼光射在他的脸上。 来自汉英文学 - 家（1-26） - 家（1-26）
• The machine hushed, extraction and injection nozzles poised, scrutinizing its targets. 机器“嘘”地一声静了下来，输入输出管道各就各位，检查着它的目标。 来自互联网

374 penetrating   

adj.（声音）响亮的，尖锐的adj.（气味）刺激的adj.（思想）敏锐的，有洞察力的

参考例句：

• He had an extraordinarily penetrating gaze. 他的目光有股异乎寻常的洞察力。
• He examined the man with a penetrating gaze. 他以锐利的目光仔细观察了那个人。

375 winked   

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

参考例句：

• He winked at her and she knew he was thinking the same thing that she was. 他冲她眨了眨眼，她便知道他的想法和她一样。
• He winked his eyes at her and left the classroom. 他向她眨巴一下眼睛走出了教室。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

376 imminent   

adj.即将发生的，临近的，逼近的

参考例句：

• The black clounds show that a storm is imminent.乌云预示暴风雨即将来临。
• The country is in imminent danger.国难当头。

377 alpine   

adj.高山的；n.高山植物

参考例句：

• Alpine flowers are abundant there.那里有很多高山地带的花。
• Its main attractions are alpine lakes and waterfalls .它以高山湖泊和瀑布群为主要特色。

378 yearning   

a.渴望的；向往的；怀念的

参考例句：

• a yearning for a quiet life 对宁静生活的向往
• He felt a great yearning after his old job. 他对过去的工作有一种强烈的渴想。

379 consultation   

n.咨询；商量；商议；会议

参考例句：

• The company has promised wide consultation on its expansion plans.该公司允诺就其扩展计划广泛征求意见。
• The scheme was developed in close consultation with the local community.该计划是在同当地社区密切磋商中逐渐形成的。

380 forefinger   

n.食指

参考例句：

• He pinched the leaf between his thumb and forefinger.他将叶子捏在拇指和食指之间。
• He held it between the tips of his thumb and forefinger.他用他大拇指和食指尖拿着它。

381 dreaded   

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)

参考例句：

• The dreaded moment had finally arrived. 可怕的时刻终于来到了。
• He dreaded having to spend Christmas in hospital. 他害怕非得在医院过圣诞节不可。 来自《用法词典》

382 decency   

n.体面，得体，合宜，正派，庄重

参考例句：

• His sense of decency and fair play made him refuse the offer.他的正直感和公平竞争意识使他拒绝了这一提议。
• Your behaviour is an affront to public decency.你的行为有伤风化。

383 measles   

n.麻疹，风疹，包虫病，痧子

参考例句：

• The doctor is quite definite about Tom having measles.医生十分肯定汤姆得了麻疹。
• The doctor told her to watch out for symptoms of measles.医生叫她注意麻疹出现的症状。

384 pensive   

a.沉思的,哀思的,忧沉的

参考例句：

• He looked suddenly sombre,pensive.他突然看起来很阴郁，一副忧虑的样子。
• He became so pensive that she didn't like to break into his thought.他陷入沉思之中,她不想打断他的思路。

385 utterly   

adv.完全地，绝对地

参考例句：

• Utterly devoted to the people,he gave his life in saving his patients.他忠于人民，把毕生精力用于挽救患者的生命。
• I was utterly ravished by the way she smiled.她的微笑使我完全陶醉了。

386 pauper   

n.贫民，被救济者，穷人

参考例句：

• You lived like a pauper when you had plenty of money.你有大把钱的时候，也活得像个乞丐。
• If you work conscientiously you'll only die a pauper.你按部就班地干，做到老也是穷死。

387 brat   

n.孩子；顽童

参考例句：

• He's a spoilt brat.他是一个被宠坏了的调皮孩子。
• The brat sicked his dog on the passer-by.那个顽童纵狗去咬过路人。

388 catching   

adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住

参考例句：

• There are those who think eczema is catching.有人就是认为湿疹会传染。
• Enthusiasm is very catching.热情非常富有感染力。

389 deliberately   

adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地

参考例句：

• The girl gave the show away deliberately.女孩故意泄露秘密。
• They deliberately shifted off the argument.他们故意回避这个论点。

390 spun   

v.纺，杜撰，急转身

参考例句：

• His grandmother spun him a yarn at the fire.他奶奶在火炉边给他讲故事。
• Her skilful fingers spun the wool out to a fine thread.她那灵巧的手指把羊毛纺成了细毛线。

391 penetration   

n.穿透，穿人，渗透

参考例句：

• He is a man of penetration.他是一个富有洞察力的人。
• Our aim is to achieve greater market penetration.我们的目标是进一步打入市场。

392 apparently   

adv.显然地；表面上，似乎

参考例句：

• An apparently blind alley leads suddenly into an open space.山穷水尽，豁然开朗。
• He was apparently much surprised at the news.他对那个消息显然感到十分惊异。

393 secluded   

adj.与世隔绝的；隐退的；偏僻的v.使隔开，使隐退( seclude的过去式和过去分词)

参考例句：

• Some people like to strip themselves naked while they have a swim in a secluded place. 一些人当他们在隐蔽的地方游泳时，喜欢把衣服脱光。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• This charming cottage dates back to the 15th century and is as pretty as a picture, with its thatched roof and secluded garden. 这所美丽的村舍是15世纪时的建筑，有茅草房顶和宁静的花园，漂亮极了，简直和画上一样。 来自《简明英汉词典》

394 musing   

n. 沉思，冥想 adj. 沉思的, 冥想的 动词muse的现在分词形式

参考例句：

• "At Tellson's banking-house at nine," he said, with a musing face. “九点在台尔森银行大厦见面，”他想道。 来自英汉文学 - 双城记
• She put the jacket away, and stood by musing a minute. 她把那件上衣放到一边，站着沉思了一会儿。

395 awe   

n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧

参考例句：

• The sight filled us with awe.这景色使我们大为惊叹。
• The approaching tornado struck awe in our hearts.正在逼近的龙卷风使我们惊恐万分。

396 admiration   

n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕

参考例句：

• He was lost in admiration of the beauty of the scene.他对风景之美赞不绝口。
• We have a great admiration for the gold medalists.我们对金牌获得者极为敬佩。

397 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

398 memorable   

adj.值得回忆的，难忘的，特别的，显著的

参考例句：

• This was indeed the most memorable day of my life.这的确是我一生中最值得怀念的日子。
• The veteran soldier has fought many memorable battles.这个老兵参加过许多难忘的战斗。

399 subdued   

adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• He seemed a bit subdued to me. 我觉得他当时有点闷闷不乐。
• I felt strangely subdued when it was all over. 一切都结束的时候，我却有一种奇怪的压抑感。

400 severed   

v.切断，断绝( sever的过去式和过去分词 )；断，裂

参考例句：

• The doctor said I'd severed a vessel in my leg. 医生说我割断了腿上的一根血管。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• We have severed diplomatic relations with that country. 我们与那个国家断绝了外交关系。 来自《简明英汉词典》

401 virtue   

n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力

参考例句：

• He was considered to be a paragon of virtue.他被认为是品德尽善尽美的典范。
• You need to decorate your mind with virtue.你应该用德行美化心灵。

402 grimacing   

v.扮鬼相，做鬼脸( grimace的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• But then Boozer drove past Gasol for a rattling, grimacing slam dunk. 可布泽尔单吃家嫂，以一记强有力的扣篮将比分超出。 来自互联网
• The martyrdom of Archbishop Cranmer, said the don at last, grimacing with embarrassment. 最后那位老师尴尬地做个鬼脸，说，这是大主教克莱默的殉道士。 来自互联网

403 motives   

n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• to impeach sb's motives 怀疑某人的动机
• His motives are unclear. 他的用意不明。

404 heeded   

v.听某人的劝告，听从( heed的过去式和过去分词 )；变平，使（某物）变平( flatten的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• She countered that her advice had not been heeded. 她反驳说她的建议未被重视。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• I heeded my doctor's advice and stopped smoking. 我听从医生的劝告，把烟戒了。 来自《简明英汉词典》

405 rhythmic   

adj.有节奏的，有韵律的

参考例句：

• Her breathing became more rhythmic.她的呼吸变得更有规律了。
• Good breathing is slow,rhythmic and deep.健康的呼吸方式缓慢深沉而有节奏。

406 marvelled   

v.惊奇，对…感到惊奇( marvel的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• I marvelled that he suddenly left college. 我对他突然离开大学感到惊奇。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• I marvelled at your boldness. 我对你的大胆感到惊奇。 来自《简明英汉词典》

407 marvel   

vi.(at)惊叹vt.感到惊异；n.令人惊异的事

参考例句：

• The robot is a marvel of modern engineering.机器人是现代工程技术的奇迹。
• The operation was a marvel of medical skill.这次手术是医术上的一个奇迹。

408 squeak   

n.吱吱声，逃脱；v.（发出）吱吱叫，侥幸通过；（俚）告密

参考例句：

• I don't want to hear another squeak out of you!我不想再听到你出声！
• We won the game,but it was a narrow squeak.我们打赢了这场球赛，不过是侥幸取胜。

409 flannel   

n.法兰绒；法兰绒衣服

参考例句：

• She always wears a grey flannel trousers.她总是穿一条灰色法兰绒长裤。
• She was looking luscious in a flannel shirt.她穿着法兰绒裙子，看上去楚楚动人。

410 saga   

n.(尤指中世纪北欧海盗的)故事，英雄传奇

参考例句：

• The saga of Flight 19 is probably the most repeated story about the Bermuda Triangle.飞行19中队的传说或许是有关百慕大三角最重复的故事。
• The novel depicts the saga of a family.小说描绘了一个家族的传奇故事。

411 superfluously   

过分地； 过剩地

参考例句：

• Superfluously, he added his silly comments to the discussion. 他多此一举地把自己愚蠢的观点加到了讨论之中。

412 equivocated   

v.使用模棱两可的话隐瞒真相( equivocate的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He had asked her once again about her finances. And again she had equivocated. 他又一次询问她的财务状况，她再次含糊其词。 来自辞典例句

413 glades   

n.林中空地( glade的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Maggie and Philip had been meeting secretly in the glades near the mill. 玛吉和菲利曾经常在磨坊附近的林中空地幽会。 来自辞典例句
• Still the outlaw band throve in Sherwood, and hunted the deer in its glades. 当他在沉思中变老了，世界还是照样走它的路，亡命之徒仍然在修武德日渐壮大，在空地里猎鹿。 来自互联网

414 wildernesses   

荒野( wilderness的名词复数 )； 沙漠； （政治家）在野； 不再当政（或掌权）

参考例句：

• Antarctica is one of the last real wildernesses left on the earth. 南极洲是地球上所剩不多的旷野之一。
• Dartmoor is considered by many to be one of Britain's great nature wildernesses. Dartmoor被很多人认为是英国最大的荒原之一。

415 strings   

n.弦

参考例句：

• He sat on the bed,idly plucking the strings of his guitar.他坐在床上，随意地拨着吉他的弦。
• She swept her fingers over the strings of the harp.她用手指划过竖琴的琴弦。

416 marvelling   

v.惊奇，对…感到惊奇( marvel的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• \"Yes,'said the clerk, marvelling at such ignorance of a common fact. “是的，\"那人说，很奇怪她竟会不知道这么一件普通的事情。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹
• Chueh-hui watched, marvelling at how easy it was for people to forget. 觉慧默默地旁观着这一切，他也忍不住笑了。 来自汉英文学 - 家（1-26） - 家（1-26）

417 guardianship   

n. 监护, 保护, 守护

参考例句：

• They had to employ the English language in face of the jealous guardianship of Britain. 他们不得不在英国疑忌重重的监护下使用英文。
• You want Marion to set aside her legal guardianship and give you Honoria. 你要马丽恩放弃她的法定监护人资格，把霍诺丽娅交给你。

418 guardians   

监护人( guardian的名词复数 )； 保护者，维护者

参考例句：

• Farmers should be guardians of the countryside. 农民应是乡村的保卫者。
• The police are guardians of law and order. 警察是法律和秩序的护卫者。

419 valiant   

adj.勇敢的，英勇的；n.勇士，勇敢的人

参考例句：

• He had the fame of being very valiant.他的勇敢是出名的。
• Despite valiant efforts by the finance minister,inflation rose to 36%.尽管财政部部长采取了一系列果决措施，通货膨胀率还是涨到了36%。

420 likeness   

n.相像，相似（之处）

参考例句：

• I think the painter has produced a very true likeness.我认为这位画家画得非常逼真。
• She treasured the painted likeness of her son.她珍藏她儿子的画像。

421 flicker   

vi./n.闪烁，摇曳，闪现

参考例句：

• There was a flicker of lights coming from the abandoned house.这所废弃的房屋中有灯光闪烁。
• At first,the flame may be a small flicker,barely shining.开始时，光辉可能是微弱地忽隐忽现，几乎并不灿烂。

422 camouflage   

n./v.掩饰，伪装

参考例句：

• The white fur of the polar bear is a natural camouflage.北极熊身上的白色的浓密软毛是一种天然的伪装。
• The animal's markings provide effective camouflage.这种动物身上的斑纹是很有效的伪装。

423 delicacy   

n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴

参考例句：

• We admired the delicacy of the craftsmanship.我们佩服工艺师精巧的手艺。
• He sensed the delicacy of the situation.他感觉到了形势的微妙。

424 procured   

v.（努力）取得， （设法）获得( procure的过去式和过去分词 )；拉皮条

参考例句：

• These cars are to be procured through open tender. 这些汽车要用公开招标的办法购买。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• A friend procured a position in the bank for my big brother. 一位朋友为我哥哥谋得了一个银行的职位。 来自《用法词典》

425 ominous   

adj.不祥的，不吉的，预兆的，预示的

参考例句：

• Those black clouds look ominous for our picnic.那些乌云对我们的野餐来说是个不祥之兆。
• There was an ominous silence at the other end of the phone.电话那头出现了不祥的沉默。

426 forth   

adv.向前；向外，往外

参考例句：

• The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
• He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。

427 nosy   

adj.鼻子大的，好管闲事的，爱追问的；n.大鼻者

参考例句：

• Our nosy neighbours are always looking in through our windows.好管闲事的邻居总是从我们的窗口望进来。
• My landlord is so nosy.He comes by twice a month to inspect my apartment.我的房东很烦人，他每个月都要到我公寓视察两次。

428 invalid   

n.病人，伤残人；adj.有病的，伤残的；无效的

参考例句：

• He will visit an invalid.他将要去看望一个病人。
• A passport that is out of date is invalid.护照过期是无效的。

429 parsing   

n.分[剖]析，分解v.从语法上描述或分析（词句等）( parse的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• A parsing program, or parser, is also called a recognizer. 分析过程又称作识别程序。 来自辞典例句
• This chapter describes a technique for parsing using the bottom-up method. 本章介绍一种使用自底向上方法的分析技术。 来自辞典例句

430 steers   

n.阉公牛，肉用公牛( steer的名词复数 )v.驾驶( steer的第三人称单数 )；操纵；控制；引导

参考例句：

• This car steers easily. 这部车子易于驾驶。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Good fodder fleshed the steers up. 优质饲料使菜牛长肉。 来自辞典例句

431 decorative   

adj.装饰的，可作装饰的

参考例句：

• This ware is suitable for decorative purpose but unsuitable for utility.这种器皿中看不中用。
• The style is ornate and highly decorative.这种风格很华丽，而且装饰效果很好。

432 futile   

adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的

参考例句：

• They were killed,to the last man,in a futile attack.因为进攻失败，他们全部被杀，无一幸免。
• Their efforts to revive him were futile.他们对他抢救无效。

433 discourse   

n.论文，演说；谈话；话语；vi.讲述，著述

参考例句：

• We'll discourse on the subject tonight.我们今晚要谈论这个问题。
• He fell into discourse with the customers who were drinking at the counter.他和站在柜台旁的酒客谈了起来。

434 expressive   

adj.表现的，表达…的，富于表情的

参考例句：

• Black English can be more expressive than standard English.黑人所使用的英语可能比正式英语更有表现力。
• He had a mobile,expressive,animated face.他有一张多变的，富于表情的，生动活泼的脸。

435 embroidered   

adj．绣花的

参考例句：

• She embroidered flowers on the cushion covers. 她在这些靠垫套上绣了花。
• She embroidered flowers on the front of the dress. 她在连衣裙的正面绣花。

436 yoke   

n.轭；支配；v.给...上轭，连接，使成配偶

参考例句：

• An ass and an ox,fastened to the same yoke,were drawing a wagon.驴子和公牛一起套在轭上拉车。
• The defeated army passed under the yoke.败军在轭门下通过。

437 portfolio   

n.公事包；文件夹；大臣及部长职位

参考例句：

• He remembered her because she was carrying a large portfolio.他因为她带着一个大公文包而记住了她。
• He resigned his portfolio.他辞去了大臣职务。

438 eloquent   

adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的

参考例句：

• He was so eloquent that he cut down the finest orator.他能言善辩，胜过最好的演说家。
• These ruins are an eloquent reminder of the horrors of war.这些废墟形象地提醒人们不要忘记战争的恐怖。

439 disturbances   

n.骚乱( disturbance的名词复数 )；打扰；困扰；障碍

参考例句：

• The government has set up a commission of inquiry into the disturbances at the prison. 政府成立了一个委员会来调查监狱骚乱事件。
• Extra police were called in to quell the disturbances. 已调集了增援警力来平定骚乱。

440 ineptly   

adv. 不适当地，无能地

参考例句：

• Unless the tests are ineptly designed, removing tests will just remove power. 除非测试用例是不熟练的设计，否则去掉测试用例就是去除作用力。
• This function is ineptly left to a small voice. 这项任务不适当地交给了一个声音小的人。

441 twitching   

n.颤搐

参考例句：

• The child in a spasm kept twitching his arms and legs. 那个害痉挛的孩子四肢不断地抽搐。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• My eyelids keep twitching all the time. 我眼皮老是跳。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

442 nettled   

v.拿荨麻打，拿荨麻刺（nettle的过去式与过去分词形式）

参考例句：

• My remarks clearly nettled her. 我的话显然惹恼了她。
• He had been growing nettled before, but now he pulled himself together. 他刚才有些来火，但现在又恢复了常态。 来自英汉文学 - 金银岛

443 squire   

n.护卫, 侍从, 乡绅

参考例句：

• I told him the squire was the most liberal of men.我告诉他乡绅是世界上最宽宏大量的人。
• The squire was hard at work at Bristol.乡绅在布里斯托尔热衷于他的工作。

444 dominant   

adj.支配的，统治的；占优势的；显性的；n.主因，要素，主要的人(或物)；显性基因

参考例句：

• The British were formerly dominant in India.英国人从前统治印度。
• She was a dominant figure in the French film industry.她在法国电影界是个举足轻重的人物。

445 pampered   

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 )

参考例句：

• The lazy scum deserve worse. What if they ain't fed up and pampered? 他们吃不饱，他们的要求满足不了，这又有什么关系？ 来自飘（部分）
• She petted and pampered him and would let no one discipline him but she, herself. 她爱他，娇养他，而且除了她自己以外，她不允许任何人管教他。 来自辞典例句

446 outrage   

n.暴行，侮辱，愤怒；vt.凌辱，激怒

参考例句：

• When he heard the news he reacted with a sense of outrage.他得悉此事时义愤填膺。
• We should never forget the outrage committed by the Japanese invaders.我们永远都不应该忘记日本侵略者犯下的暴行。

447 dictated   

v.大声讲或读( dictate的过去式和过去分词 )；口授；支配；摆布

参考例句：

• He dictated a letter to his secretary. 他向秘书口授信稿。
• No person of a strong character likes to be dictated to. 没有一个个性强的人愿受人使唤。 来自《简明英汉词典》

448 inadequate   

adj.(for,to)不充足的，不适当的

参考例句：

• The supply is inadequate to meet the demand.供不应求。
• She was inadequate to the demands that were made on her.她还无力满足对她提出的各项要求。

449 clump   

n.树丛，草丛；vi.用沉重的脚步行走

参考例句：

• A stream meandered gently through a clump of trees.一条小溪从树丛中蜿蜒穿过。
• It was as if he had hacked with his thick boots at a clump of bluebells.仿佛他用自己的厚靴子无情地践踏了一丛野风信子。

450 outgrown   

长[发展] 得超过（某物）的范围( outgrow的过去分词 )； 长[发展]得不能再要（某物）； 长得比…快； 生长速度超过

参考例句：

• She's already outgrown her school uniform. 她已经长得连校服都不能穿了。
• The boy has outgrown his clothes. 这男孩已长得穿不下他的衣服了。

451 wont   

adj.习惯于；v.习惯；n.习惯

参考例句：

• He was wont to say that children are lazy.他常常说小孩子们懒惰。
• It is his wont to get up early.早起是他的习惯。

452 discoursed   

演说（discourse的过去式与过去分词形式）

参考例句：

• He discoursed on an interesting topic. 他就一个有趣的题目发表了演讲。
• The scholar discoursed at great length on the poetic style of John Keats. 那位学者详细讲述了约翰·济慈的诗歌风格。

453 immortally   

不朽地，永世地，无限地

参考例句：

• Game developer can walk on royal shoulder, bring up class jointly make immortally. 游戏开发者可以踩在盛大的肩膀上，共同造就世界级的不朽之作。

454 meditate   

v.想，考虑，（尤指宗教上的）沉思，冥想

参考例句：

• It is important to meditate on the meaning of life.思考人生的意义很重要。
• I was meditating,and reached a higher state of consciousness.我在冥想，并进入了一个更高的意识境界。

455 asymmetrical   

adj.不均匀的，不对称的

参考例句：

• Most people's faces are asymmetrical.多数人的脸并不对称。
• Folds may be gentle and symmetrical,or sharp and asymmetrical.褶皱可以是平缓而对称的，也可以是陡峭而非对称的。

456 bent   

n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的

参考例句：

• He was fully bent upon the project.他一心扑在这项计划上。
• We bent over backward to help them.我们尽了最大努力帮助他们。

457 dreariness   

沉寂，可怕，凄凉

参考例句：

• The park wore an aspect of utter dreariness and ruin. 园地上好久没人收拾，一片荒凉。
• There in the melancholy, in the dreariness, Bertha found a bitter fascination. 在这里，在阴郁、倦怠之中，伯莎发现了一种刺痛人心的魅力。

458 plagiarized   

v.剽窃，抄袭( plagiarize的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The poem employs as its first lines a verse plagiarized from a billboard. 这首诗开头的几行抄袭了一个广告牌上的一节诗。 来自辞典例句
• Whole passages of the work are plagiarized. 那作品整段整段都是剽窃的。 来自辞典例句

459 withdrawal   

n.取回，提款；撤退，撤军；收回，撤销

参考例句：

• The police were forced to make a tactical withdrawal.警方被迫进行战术撤退。
• They insisted upon a withdrawal of the statement and a public apology.他们坚持要收回那些话并公开道歉。

460 philosophically   

adv.哲学上；富有哲理性地；贤明地；冷静地

参考例句：

• He added philosophically that one should adapt oneself to the changed conditions. 他富于哲理地补充说，一个人应该适应变化了的情况。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Harry took his rejection philosophically. 哈里达观地看待自己被拒的事。 来自《简明英汉词典》

461 lustrous   

adj.有光泽的；光辉的

参考例句：

• Mary has a head of thick,lustrous,wavy brown hair.玛丽有一头浓密、富有光泽的褐色鬈发。
• This mask definitely makes the skin fair and lustrous.这款面膜可以异常有用的使肌肤变亮和有光泽。

462 smear   

v.涂抹；诽谤，玷污；n.污点；诽谤，污蔑

参考例句：

• He has been spreading false stories in an attempt to smear us.他一直在散布谎言企图诽谤我们。
• There's a smear on your shirt.你衬衫上有个污点。

463 wriggle   

v./n.蠕动，扭动；蜿蜒

参考例句：

• I've got an appointment I can't wriggle out of.我有个推脱不掉的约会。
• Children wriggle themselves when they are bored.小孩子感到厌烦时就会扭动他们的身体。

464 demolished   

v.摧毁( demolish的过去式和过去分词 )；推翻；拆毁（尤指大建筑物）；吃光

参考例句：

• The factory is due to be demolished next year. 这个工厂定于明年拆除。
• They have been fighting a rearguard action for two years to stop their house being demolished. 两年来，为了不让拆除他们的房子，他们一直在进行最后的努力。

465 possessed   

adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的

参考例句：

• He flew out of the room like a man possessed.他像着了魔似地猛然冲出房门。
• He behaved like someone possessed.他行为举止像是魔怔了。

466 gilt   

adj.镀金的；n.金边证券

参考例句：

• The plates have a gilt edge.这些盘子的边是镀金的。
• The rest of the money is invested in gilt.其余的钱投资于金边证券。

467 rapture   

n.狂喜；全神贯注；着迷；v.使狂喜

参考例句：

• His speech was received with rapture by his supporters.他的演说受到支持者们的热烈欢迎。
• In the midst of his rapture,he was interrupted by his father.他正欢天喜地，被他父亲打断了。

468 hovered   

鸟( hover的过去式和过去分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫

参考例句：

• A hawk hovered over the hill. 一只鹰在小山的上空翱翔。
• A hawk hovered in the blue sky. 一只老鹰在蓝色的天空中翱翔。

469 inexplicably   

adv.无法说明地，难以理解地，令人难以理解的是

参考例句：

• Inexplicably, Mary said she loved John. 真是不可思议，玛丽说她爱约翰。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Inexplicably, she never turned up. 令人不解的是，她从未露面。 来自辞典例句

470 whining   

n. 抱怨，牢骚 v. 哭诉，发牢骚

参考例句：

• That's the way with you whining, puny, pitiful players. 你们这种又爱哭、又软弱、又可怜的赌棍就是这样。
• The dog sat outside the door whining (to be let in). 那条狗坐在门外狺狺叫着（要进来）。

471 lurked   

vi.潜伏，埋伏（lurk的过去式与过去分词形式）

参考例句：

• The murderers lurked behind the trees. 谋杀者埋伏在树后。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Treachery lurked behind his smooth manners. 他圆滑姿态的后面潜伏着奸计。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

472 tumult   

n.喧哗；激动，混乱；吵闹

参考例句：

• The tumult in the streets awakened everyone in the house.街上的喧哗吵醒了屋子里的每一个人。
• His voice disappeared under growing tumult.他的声音消失在越来越响的喧哗声中。

473 proceeding   

n.行动，进行，(pl.)会议录，学报

参考例句：

• This train is now proceeding from Paris to London.这次列车从巴黎开往伦敦。
• The work is proceeding briskly.工作很有生气地进展着。

474 unfamiliar   

adj.陌生的，不熟悉的

参考例句：

• I am unfamiliar with the place and the people here.我在这儿人地生疏。
• The man seemed unfamiliar to me.这人很面生。

475 corrugated   

adj.波纹的；缩成皱纹的；波纹面的；波纹状的v.（使某物）起皱褶(corrugate的过去式和过去分词)

参考例句：

• a corrugated iron roof 波纹铁屋顶
• His brow corrugated with the effort of thinking. 他皱着眉头用心地思考。 来自《简明英汉词典》

476 hurling   

n.爱尔兰式曲棍球v.猛投，用力掷( hurl的现在分词 )；大声叫骂

参考例句：

• The boat rocked wildly, hurling him into the water. 这艘船剧烈地晃动，把他甩到水中。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Fancy hurling away a good chance like that, the silly girl! 想想她竟然把这样一个好机会白白丢掉了，真是个傻姑娘！ 来自《简明英汉词典》

477 resonant   

adj.(声音)洪亮的，共鸣的

参考例句：

• She has a resonant voice.她的嗓子真亮。
• He responded with a resonant laugh.他报以洪亮的笑声。

478 shrieking   

v.尖叫( shriek的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• The boxers were goaded on by the shrieking crowd. 拳击运动员听见观众的喊叫就来劲儿了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• They were all shrieking with laughter. 他们都发出了尖锐的笑声。 来自《简明英汉词典》

479 embroidery   

n.绣花，刺绣；绣制品

参考例句：

• This exquisite embroidery won people's great admiration.这件精美的绣品，使人惊叹不已。
• This is Jane's first attempt at embroidery.这是简第一次试着绣花。

480 delusion   

n.谬见，欺骗，幻觉，迷惑

参考例句：

• He is under the delusion that he is Napoleon.他患了妄想症，认为自己是拿破仑。
• I was under the delusion that he intended to marry me.我误认为他要娶我。

481 imputation   

n.归罪，责难

参考例句：

• I could not rest under the imputation.我受到诋毁，无法平静。
• He resented the imputation that he had any responsibility for what she did.把她所作的事情要他承担，这一责难，使他非常恼火。

482 investigations   

（正式的）调查( investigation的名词复数 )； 侦查； 科学研究； 学术研究

参考例句：

• His investigations were intensive and thorough but revealed nothing. 他进行了深入彻底的调查，但没有发现什么。
• He often sent them out to make investigations. 他常常派他们出去作调查。