1
I dreamt first of states and cities and political things when I was a little boy in knickerbockers.
When I think of how such things began in my mind, there comes back to me the memory of an enormous bleak2 room with its ceiling going up to heaven and its floor covered irregularly with patched and defective3 oilcloth and a dingy4 mat or so and a "surround" as they call it, of dark stained wood. Here and there against the wall are trunks and boxes. There are cupboards on either side of the fireplace and bookshelves with books above them, and on the wall and rather tattered5 is a large yellow-varnished geological map of the South of England. Over the mantel is a huge lump of white coral rock and several big fossil bones, and above that hangs the portrait of a brainy gentleman, sliced in half and displaying an interior of intricate detail and much vigour6 of coloring. It is the floor I think of chiefly; over the oilcloth of which, assumed to be land, spread towns and villages and forts of wooden bricks; there are steep square hills (geologically, volumes of Orr's CYCLOPAEDIA OF THE SCIENCES) and the cracks and spaces of the floor and the bare brown surround were the water channels and open sea of that continent of mine.
I still remember with infinite gratitude8 the great-uncle to whom I owe my bricks. He must have been one of those rare adults who have not forgotten the chagrins9 and dreams of childhood. He was a prosperous west of England builder; including my father he had three nephews, and for each of them he caused a box of bricks to be made by an out-of-work carpenter, not the insufficient10 supply of the toyshop, you understand, but a really adequate quantity of bricks made out of oak and shaped and smoothed, bricks about five inches by two and a half by one, and half-bricks and quarter-bricks to correspond. There were hundreds of them, many hundreds. I could build six towers as high as myself with them, and there seemed quite enough for every engineering project I could undertake. I could build whole towns with streets and houses and churches and citadels11; I could bridge every gap in the oilcloth and make causeways over crumpled12 spaces (which I feigned13 to be morasses), and on a keel of whole bricks it was possible to construct ships to push over the high seas to the remotest port in the room. And a disciplined population, that rose at last by sedulous14 begging on birthdays and all convenient occasions to well over two hundred, of lead sailors and soldiers, horse, foot and artillery15, inhabited this world.
Justice has never been done to bricks and soldiers by those who write about toys. The praises of the toy theatre have been a common theme for essayists, the planning of the scenes, the painting and cutting out of the caste, penny plain twopence coloured, the stink16 and glory of the performance and the final conflagration17. I had such a theatre once, but I never loved it nor hoped for much from it; my bricks and soldiers were my perpetual drama. I recall an incessant18 variety of interests. There was the mystery and charm of the complicated buildings one could make, with long passages and steps and windows through which one peeped into their intricacies, and by means of slips of card one could make slanting19 ways in them, and send marbles rolling from top to base and thence out into the hold of a waiting ship. Then there were the fortresses21 and gun emplacements and covered ways in which one's soldiers went. And there was commerce; the shops and markets and store-rooms full of nasturtium seed, thrift22 seed, lupin beans and suchlike provender23 from the garden; such stuff one stored in match-boxes and pill-boxes, or packed in sacks of old glove fingers tied up with thread and sent off by waggons24 along the great military road to the beleaguered25 fortress20 on the Indian frontier beyond the worn places that were dismal26 swamps. And there were battles on the way.
That great road is still clear in my memory. I was given, I forget by what benefactor27, certain particularly fierce red Indians of lead--I have never seen such soldiers since--and for these my father helped me to make tepees of brown paper, and I settled them in a hitherto desolate28 country under the frowning nail-studded cliffs of an ancient trunk. Then I conquered them and garrisoned29 their land. (Alas30! they died, no doubt through contact with civilisation31--one my mother trod on--and their land became a wilderness32 again and was ravaged33 for a time by a clockwork crocodile of vast proportions.) And out towards the coal-scuttle was a region near the impassable thickets34 of the ragged35 hearthrug where lived certain china Zulus brandishing36 spears, and a mountain country of rudely piled bricks concealing37 the most devious38 and enchanting39 caves and several mines of gold and silver paper. Among these rocks a number of survivors40 from a Noah's Ark made a various, dangerous, albeit41 frequently invalid42 and crippled fauna43, and I was wont44 to increase the uncultivated wildness of this region further by trees of privet-twigs from the garden hedge and box from the garden borders. By these territories went my Imperial Road carrying produce to and fro, bridging gaps in the oilcloth, tunnelling through Encyclopaedic hills--one tunnel was three volumes long--defended as occasion required by camps of paper tents or brick blockhouses, and ending at last in a magnificently engineered ascent45 to a fortress on the cliffs commanding the Indian reservation.
My games upon the floor must have spread over several years and developed from small beginnings, incorporating now this suggestion and now that. They stretch, I suppose, from seven to eleven or twelve. I played them intermittently46, and they bulk now in the retrospect47 far more significantly than they did at the time. I played them in bursts, and then forgot them for long periods; through the spring and summer I was mostly out of doors, and school and classes caught me early. And in the retrospect I see them all not only magnified and transfigured, but fore-shortened and confused together. A clockwork railway, I seem to remember, came and went; one or two clockwork boats, toy sailing ships that, being keeled, would do nothing but lie on their beam ends on the floor; a detestable lot of cavalrymen, undersized and gilt48 all over, given me by a maiden49 aunt, and very much what one might expect from an aunt, that I used as Nero used his Christians50 to ornament51 my public buildings; and I finally melted some into fratricidal bullets, and therewith blew the rest to flat splashes of lead by means of a brass52 cannon53 in the garden.
I find this empire of the floor much more vivid and detailed54 in my memory now than many of the owners of the skirts and legs and boots that went gingerly across its territories. Occasionally, alas! they stooped to scrub, abolishing in one universal destruction the slow growth of whole days of civilised development. I still remember the hatred55 and disgust of these catastrophes56. Like Noah I was given warnings. Did I disregard them, coarse red hands would descend57, plucking garrisons58 from fortresses and sailors from ships, jumbling59 them up in their wrong boxes, clumsily so that their rifles and swords were broken, sweeping60 the splendid curves of the Imperial Road into heaps of ruins, casting the jungle growth of Zululand into the fire.
"Well, Master Dick," the voice of this cosmic calamity61 would say, "you ought to have put them away last night. No! I can't wait until you've sailed them all away in ships. I got my work to do, and do it I will."
And in no time all my continents and lands were swirling62 water and swiping strokes of house-flannel.
That was the worst of my giant visitants, but my mother too, dear lady, was something of a terror to this microcosm. She wore spring-sided boots, a kind of boot now vanished, I believe, from the world, with dull bodies and shiny toes, and a silk dress with flounces that were very destructive to the more hazardous63 viaducts of the Imperial Road. She was always, I seem to remember, fetching me; fetching me for a meal, fetching me for a walk or, detestable absurdity64! fetching me for a wash and brush up, and she never seemed to understand anything whatever of the political Systems across which she came to me. Also she forbade all toys on Sundays except the bricks for church-building and the soldiers for church parade, or a Scriptural use of the remains65 of the Noah's Ark mixed up with a wooden Swiss dairy farm. But she really did not know whether a thing was a church or not unless it positively66 bristled67 with cannon, and many a Sunday afternoon have I played Chicago (with the fear of God in my heart) under an infidel pretence68 that it was a new sort of ark rather elaborately done.
Chicago, I must explain, was based upon my father's description of the pig slaughterings in that city and certain pictures I had seen. You made your beasts--which were all the ark lot really, provisionally conceived as pigs--go up elaborate approaches to a central pen, from which they went down a cardboard slide four at a time, and dropped most satisfyingly down a brick shaft69, and pitter-litter over some steep steps to where a head slaughterman (ne Noah) strung a cotton loop round their legs and sent them by pin hooks along a wire to a second slaughterman with a chipped foot (formerly70 Mrs. Noah) who, if I remember rightly, converted them into Army sausage by means of a portion of the inside of an old alarum clock.
My mother did not understand my games, but my father did. He wore bright-coloured socks and carpet slippers71 when he was indoors--my mother disliked boots in the house--and he would sit down on my little chair and survey the microcosm on the floor with admirable understanding and sympathy.
It was he who gave me most of my toys and, I more than suspect, most of my ideas. "Here's some corrugated73 iron," he would say, "suitable for roofs and fencing," and hand me a lump of that stiff crinkled paper that is used for packing medicine bottles. Or, "Dick, do you see the tiger loose near the Imperial Road?--won't do for your cattle ranch74." And I would find a bright new lead tiger like a special creation at large in the world, and demanding a hunting expedition and much elaborate effort to get him safely housed in the city menagerie beside the captured dragon crocodile, tamed now, and his key lost and the heart and spring gone out of him.
And to the various irregular reading of my father I owe the inestimable blessing75 of never having a boy's book in my boyhood except those of Jules Verne. But my father used to get books for himself and me from the Bromstead Institute, Fenimore Cooper and Mayne Reid and illustrated76 histories; one of the Russo-Turkish war and one of Napier's expedition to Abyssinia I read from end to end; Stanley and Livingstone, lives of Wellington, Napoleon and Garibaldi, and back volumes of PUNCH, from which I derived77 conceptions of foreign and domestic politics it has taken years of adult reflection to correct. And at home permanently78 we had Wood's NATURAL HISTORY, a brand-new illustrated Green's HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE, Irving's COMPANIONS OF COLUMBUS, a great number of unbound parts of some geographical79 work, a VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD I think it was called, with pictures of foreign places, and Clarke's NEW TESTAMENT80 with a map of Palestine, and a variety of other informing books bought at sales. There was a Sowerby's BOTANY also, with thousands of carefully tinted81 pictures of British plants, and one or two other important works in the sitting-room82. I was allowed to turn these over and even lie on the floor with them on Sundays and other occasions of exceptional cleanliness.
And in the attic83 I found one day a very old forgotten map after the fashion of a bird's-eye view, representing the Crimea, that fascinated me and kept me for hours navigating84 its waters with a pin.
2
My father was a lank-limbed man in easy shabby tweed clothes and with his hands in his trouser pockets. He was a science teacher, taking a number of classes at the Bromstead Institute in Kent under the old Science and Art Department, and "visiting" various schools; and our resources were eked85 out by my mother's income of nearly a hundred pounds a year, and by his inheritance of a terrace of three palatial86 but structurally87 unsound stucco houses near Bromstead Station.
They were big clumsy residences in the earliest Victorian style, interminably high and with deep damp basements and downstairs coal-cellars and kitchens that suggested an architect vindictively88 devoted90 to the discomfort91 of the servant class. If so, he had overreached himself and defeated his end, for no servant would stay in them unless for exceptional wages or exceptional tolerance92 of inefficiency93 or exceptional freedom in repartee94. Every storey in the house was from twelve to fifteen feet high (which would have been cool and pleasant in a hot climate), and the stairs went steeply up, to end at last in attics95 too inaccessible96 for occupation. The ceilings had vast plaster cornices of classical design, fragments of which would sometimes fall unexpectedly, and the wall-papers were bold and gigantic in pattern and much variegated97 by damp and ill-mended rents.
As my father was quite unable to let more than one of these houses at a time, and that for the most part to eccentric and undesirable98 tenants99, he thought it politic1 to live in one of the two others, and devote the rent he received from the let one, when it was let, to the incessant necessary repairing of all three. He also did some of the repairing himself and, smoking a bull-dog pipe the while, which my mother would not allow him to do in the house, he cultivated vegetables in a sketchy100, unpunctual and not always successful manner in the unoccupied gardens. The three houses faced north, and the back of the one we occupied was covered by a grape-vine that yielded, I remember, small green grapes for pies in the spring, and imperfectly ripe black grapes in favourable101 autumns for the purposes of dessert. The grape-vine played an important part in my life, for my father broke his neck while he was pruning102 it, when I was thirteen.
My father was what is called a man of ideas, but they were not always good ideas. My grandfather had been a private schoolmaster and one of the founders103 of the College of Preceptors, and my father had assisted him in his school until increasing competition and diminishing attendance had made it evident that the days of small private schools kept by unqualified persons were numbered. Thereupon my father had roused himself and had qualified104 as a science teacher under the Science and Art Department, which in these days had charge of the scientific and artistic105 education of the mass of the English population, and had thrown himself into science teaching and the earning of government grants therefor with great if transitory zeal106 and success.
I do not remember anything of my father's earlier and more energetic time. I was the child of my parents' middle years; they married when my father was thirty-five and my mother past forty, and I saw only the last decadent107 phase of his educational career.
The Science and Art Department has vanished altogether from the world, and people are forgetting it now with the utmost readiness and generosity108. Part of its substance and staff and spirit survive, more or less completely digested into the Board of Education.
The world does move on, even in its government. It is wonderful how many of the clumsy and limited governing bodies of my youth and early manhood have given place now to more scientific and efficient machinery109. When I was a boy, Bromstead, which is now a borough110, was ruled by a strange body called a Local Board--it was the Age of Boards--and I still remember indistinctly my father rejoicing at the breakfast-table over the liberation of London from the corrupt111 and devastating112 control of a Metropolitan113 Board of Works. Then there were also School Boards; I was already practically in politics before the London School Board was absorbed by the spreading tentacles114 of the London County Council.
It gives a measure of the newness of our modern ideas of the State to remember that the very beginnings of public education lie within my father's lifetime, and that many most intelligent and patriotic115 people were shocked beyond measure at the State doing anything of the sort. When he was born, totally illiterate116 people who could neither read a book nor write more than perhaps a clumsy signature, were to be found everywhere in England; and great masses of the population were getting no instruction at all. Only a few schools flourished upon the patronage117 of exceptional parents; all over the country the old endowed grammar schools were to be found sinking and dwindling118; many of them had closed altogether. In the new great centres of population multitudes of children were sweated in the factories, darkly ignorant and wretched and the under-equipped and under-staffed National and British schools, supported by voluntary contributions and sectarian rivalries119, made an ineffectual fight against this festering darkness. It was a condition of affairs clamouring for remedies, but there was an immense amount of indifference120 and prejudice to be overcome before any remedies were possible. Perhaps some day some industrious121 and lucid122 historian will disentangle all the muddle123 of impulses and antagonisms124, the commercialism, utilitarianism, obstinate125 conservatism, humanitarian126 enthusiasm, out of which our present educational organisation127 arose. I have long since come to believe it necessary that all new social institutions should be born in confusion, and that at first they should present chiefly crude and ridiculous aspects. The distrust of government in the Victorian days was far too great, and the general intelligence far too low, to permit the State to go about the new business it was taking up in a businesslike way, to train teachers, build and equip schools, endow pedagogic research, and provide properly written school-books. These things it was felt MUST be provided by individual and local effort, and since it was manifest that it was individual and local effort that were in default, it was reluctantly agreed to stimulate128 them by money payments. The State set up a machinery of examination both in Science and Art and for the elementary schools; and payments, known technically129 as grants, were made in accordance with the examination results attained130, to such schools as Providence131 might see fit to send into the world. In this way it was felt the Demand would be established that would, according to the beliefs of that time, inevitably132 ensure the Supply. An industry of "Grant earning" was created, and this would give education as a necessary by-product133.
In the end this belief was found to need qualification, but Grant-earning was still in full activity when I was a small boy. So far as the Science and Art Department and my father are concerned, the task of examination was entrusted134 to eminent135 scientific men, for the most part quite unaccustomed to teaching. You see, if they also were teaching similar classes to those they examined, it was feared that injustice136 might be done. Year after year these eminent persons set questions and employed subordinates to read and mark the increasing thousands of answers that ensued, and having no doubt the national ideal of fairness well developed in their minds, they were careful each year to re-read the preceding papers before composing the current one, in order to see what it was usual to ask. As a result of this, in the course of a few years the recurrence137 and permutation of questions became almost calculable, and since the practical object of the teaching was to teach people not science, but how to write answers to these questions, the industry of Grant-earning assumed a form easily distinguished138 from any kind of genuine education whatever.
Other remarkable139 compromises had also to be made with the spirit of the age. The unfortunate conflict between Religion and Science prevalent at this time was mitigated140, if I remember rightly, by making graduates in arts and priests in the established church Science Teachers EX OFFICIO, and leaving local and private enterprise to provide schools, diagrams, books, material, according to the conceptions of efficiency prevalent in the district. Private enterprise made a particularly good thing of the books. A number of competing firms of publishers sprang into existence specialising in Science and Art Department work; they set themselves to produce text-books that should supply exactly the quantity and quality of knowledge necessary for every stage of each of five and twenty subjects into which desirable science was divided, and copies and models and instructions that should give precisely141 the method and gestures esteemed143 as proficiency144 in art. Every section of each book was written in the idiom found to be most satisfactory to the examiners, and test questions extracted from papers set in former years were appended to every chapter. By means of these last the teacher was able to train his class to the very highest level of grant-earning efficiency, and very naturally he cast all other methods of exposition aside. First he posed his pupils with questions and then dictated145 model replies.
That was my father's method of instruction. I attended his classes as an elementary grant-earner from the age of ten until his death, and it is so I remember him, sitting on the edge of a table, smothering146 a yawn occasionally and giving out the infallible formulae to the industriously147 scribbling148 class sitting in rows of desks before him. Occasionally he would slide to his feet and go to a blackboard on an easel and draw on that very slowly and deliberately149 in coloured chalks a diagram for the class to copy in coloured pencils, and sometimes he would display a specimen150 or arrange an experiment for them to see. The room in the Institute in which he taught was equipped with a certain amount of apparatus151 prescribed as necessary for subject this and subject that by the Science and Art Department, and this my father would supplement with maps and diagrams and drawings of his own.
But he never really did experiments, except that in the class in systematic152 botany he sometimes made us tease common flowers to pieces. He did not do experiments if he could possibly help it, because in the first place they used up time and gas for the Bunsen burner and good material in a ruinous fashion, and in the second they were, in his rather careless and sketchy hands, apt to endanger the apparatus of the Institute and even the lives of his students. Then thirdly, real experiments involved washing up. And moreover they always turned out wrong, and sometimes misled the too observant learner very seriously and opened demoralising controversies153. Quite early in life I acquired an almost ineradicable sense of the unscientific perversity154 of Nature and the impassable gulf155 that is fixed156 between systematic science and elusive157 fact. I knew, for example, that in science, whether it be subject XII., Organic Chemistry, or subject XVII., Animal Physiology158, when you blow into a glass of lime-water it instantly becomes cloudy, and if you continue to blow it clears again, whereas in truth you may blow into the stuff from the lime-water bottle until you are crimson159 in the face and painful under the ears, and it never becomes cloudy at all. And I knew, too, that in science if you put potassium chlorate into a retort and heat it over a Bunsen burner, oxygen is disengaged and may be collected over water, whereas in real life if you do anything of the sort the vessel160 cracks with a loud report, the potassium chlorate descends161 sizzling upon the flame, the experimenter says "Oh! Damn!" with astonishing heartiness162 and distinctness, and a lady student in the back seats gets up and leaves the room.
Science is the organised conquest of Nature, and I can quite understand that ancient libertine163 refusing to co-operate in her own undoing164. And I can quite understand, too, my father's preference for what he called an illustrative experiment, which was simply an arrangement of the apparatus in front of the class with nothing whatever by way of material, and the Bunsen burner clean and cool, and then a slow luminous165 description of just what you did put in it when you were so ill-advised as to carry the affair beyond illustration, and just exactly what ought anyhow to happen when you did. He had considerable powers of vivid expression, so that in this way he could make us see all he described. The class, freed from any unpleasant nervous tension, could draw this still life without flinching166, and if any part was too difficult to draw, then my father would produce a simplified version on the blackboard to be copied instead. And he would also write on the blackboard any exceptionally difficult but grant-earning words, such as "empyreumatic" or "botryoidal."
Some words in constant use he rarely explained. I remember once sticking up my hand and asking him in the full flow of description, "Please, sir, what is flocculent?"
"The precipitate167 is."
"Yes, sir, but what does it mean?"
"Oh! flocculent!" said my father, "flocculent! Why--" he extended his hand and arm and twiddled his fingers for a second in the air. "Like that," he said.
I thought the explanation sufficient, but he paused for a moment after giving it. "As in a flock bed, you know," he added and resumed his discourse168.
3
My father, I am afraid, carried a natural incompetence169 in practical affairs to an exceptionally high level. He combined practical incompetence, practical enterprise and a thoroughly170 sanguine171 temperament172, in a manner that I have never seen paralleled in any human being. He was always trying to do new things in the briskest manner, under the suggestion of books or papers or his own spontaneous imagination, and as he had never been trained to do anything whatever in his life properly, his futilities were extensive and thorough. At one time he nearly gave up his classes for intensive culture, so enamoured was he of its possibilities; the peculiar173 pungency174 of the manure175 he got, in pursuit of a chemical theory of his own, has scarred my olfactory176 memories for a lifetime. The intensive culture phase is very clear in my memory; it came near the end of his career and when I was between eleven and twelve. I was mobilised to gather caterpillars177 on several occasions, and assisted in nocturnal raids upon the slugs by lantern-light that wrecked178 my preparation work for school next day. My father dug up both lawns, and trenched and manured in spasms180 of immense vigour alternating with periods of paralysing distaste for the garden. And for weeks he talked about eight hundred pounds an acre at every meal.
A garden, even when it is not exasperated181 by intensive methods, is a thing as exacting182 as a baby, its moods have to be watched; it does not wait upon the cultivator's convenience, but has times of its own. Intensive culture greatly increases this disposition183 to trouble mankind; it makes a garden touchy184 and hysterical185, a drugged and demoralised and over-irritated garden. My father got at cross purposes with our two patches at an early stage. Everything grew wrong from the first to last, and if my father's manures intensified186 nothing else, they certainly intensified the Primordial187 Curse. The peas were eaten in the night before they were three inches high, the beans bore nothing but blight188, the only apparent result of a spraying of the potatoes was to develop a PENCHANT189 in the cat for being ill indoors, the cucumber frames were damaged by the catapulting of boys going down the lane at the back, and all your cucumbers were mysteriously embittered190. That lane with its occasional passers-by did much to wreck179 the intensive scheme, because my father always stopped work and went indoors if any one watched him. His special manure was apt to arouse a troublesome spirit of inquiry191 in hardy192 natures.
In digging his rows and shaping his patches he neglected the guiding string and trusted to his eye altogether too much, and the consequent obliquity193 and the various wind-breaks and scare-crows he erected194, and particularly an irrigation contrivance he began and never finished by which everything was to be watered at once by means of pieces of gutter195 from the roof and outhouses of Number 2, and a large and particularly obstinate clump196 of elder-bushes in the abolished hedge that he had failed to destroy entirely197 either by axe198 or by fire, combined to give the gardens under intensive culture a singularly desolate and disorderly appearance. He took steps towards the diversion of our house drain under the influence of the Sewage Utilisation Society; but happily he stopped in time. He hardly completed any of the operations he began; something else became more urgent or simply he tired; a considerable area of the Number 2 territory was never even dug up.
In the end the affair irritated him beyond endurance. Never was a man less horticulturally-minded. The clamour of these vegetables he had launched into the world for his service and assistance, wore out his patience. He would walk into the garden the happiest of men after a day or so of disregard, talking to me of history perhaps or social organisation, or summarising some book he had read. He talked to me of anything that interested him, regardless of my limitations. Then he would begin to note the growth of the weeds. "This won't do," he would say and pull up a handful.
More weeding would follow and the talk would become fragmentary. His hands would become earthy, his nails black, weeds would snap off in his careless grip, leaving the roots behind. The world would darken. He would look at his fingers with disgusted astonishment200. "CURSE these weeds!" he would say from his heart. His discourse was at an end.
I have memories, too, of his sudden unexpected charges into the tranquillity201 of the house, his hands and clothes intensively enriched. He would come in like a whirlwind. "This damned stuff all over me and the Agricultural Chemistry Class at six! Bah! AAAAAAH!"
My mother would never learn not to attempt to break him of swearing on such occasions. She would remain standing72 a little stiffly in the scullery refusing to assist him to the adjectival towel he sought.
"If you say such things--"
He would dance with rage and hurl202 the soap about. "The towel!" he would cry, flicking203 suds from big fingers in every direction; "the towel! I'll let the blithering class slide if you don't give me the towel! I'll give up everything, I tell you--everything!"...
At last with the failure of the lettuces204 came the breaking point. I was in the little arbour learning Latin irregular verbs when it happened. I can see him still, his peculiar tenor205 voice still echoes in my brain, shouting his opinion of intensive culture for all the world to hear, and slashing206 away at that abominable207 mockery of a crop with a hoe. We had tied them up with bast only a week or so before, and now half were rotten and half had shot up into tall slender growths. He had the hoe in both hands and slogged. Great wipes he made, and at each stroke he said, "Take that!"
The air was thick with flying fragments of abortive208 salad. It was a fantastic massacre209. It was the French Revolution of that cold tyranny, the vindictive89 overthrow210 of the pampered211 vegetable aristocrats212. After he had assuaged213 his passion upon them, he turned for other prey214; he kicked holes in two of our noblest marrows215, flicked216 off the heads of half a row of artichokes, and shied the hoe with a splendid smash into the cucumber frame. Something of the awe217 of that moment returns to me as I write of it.
"Well, my boy," he said, approaching with an expression of beneficent happiness, "I've done with gardening. Let's go for a walk like reasonable beings. I've had enough of this"--his face was convulsed for an instant with bitter resentment--"Pandering to cabbages."
4
That afternoon's walk sticks in my memory for many reasons. One is that we went further than I had ever been before; far beyond Keston and nearly to Seven-oaks, coming back by train from Dunton Green, and the other is that my father as he went along talked about himself, not so much to me as to himself, and about life and what he had done with it. He monologued so that at times he produced an effect of weird221 world-forgetfulness. I listened puzzled, and at that time not understanding many things that afterwards became plain to me. It is only in recent years that I have discovered the pathos222 of that monologue219; how friendless my father was and uncompanioned in his thoughts and feelings, and what a hunger he may have felt for the sympathy of the undeveloped youngster who trotted223 by his side.
"I'm no gardener," he said, "I'm no anything. Why the devil did I start gardening?
"I suppose man was created to mind a garden... But the Fall let us out of that! What was I created for? God! what was I created for?...
"Slaves to matter! Minding inanimate things! It doesn't suit me, you know. I've got no hands and no patience. I've mucked about with life. Mucked about with life." He suddenly addressed himself to me, and for an instant I started like an eavesdropper224 discovered. "Whatever you do, boy, whatever you do, make a Plan. Make a good Plan and stick to it. Find out what life is about--I never have--and set yourself to do whatever you ought to do. I admit it's a puzzle....
"Those damned houses have been the curse of my life. Stucco white elephants! Beastly cracked stucco with stains of green--black and green. Conferva and soot225.... Property, they are!... Beware of Things, Dick, beware of Things! Before you know where you are you are waiting on them and minding them. They'll eat your life up. Eat up your hours and your blood and energy! When those houses came to me, I ought to have sold them--or fled the country. I ought to have cleared out. Sarcophagi--eaters of men! Oh! the hours and days of work, the nights of anxiety those vile226 houses have cost me! The painting! It worked up my arms; it got all over me. I stank227 of it. It made me ill. It isn't living--it's minding....
"Property's the curse of life. Property! Ugh! Look at this country all cut up into silly little parallelograms, look at all those villas228 we passed just now and those potato patches and that tarred shanty229 and the hedge! Somebody's minding every bit of it like a dog tied to a cart's tail. Patching it and bothering about it. Bothering! Yapping at every passer-by. Look at that notice-board! One rotten worried little beast wants to keep us other rotten little beasts off HIS patch,--God knows why! Look at the weeds in it. Look at the mended fence!... There's no property worth having, Dick, but money. That's only good to spend. All these things. Human souls buried under a cartload of blithering rubbish....
"I'm not a fool, Dick. I have qualities, imagination, a sort of go. I ought to have made a better thing of life.
"I'm sure I could have done things. Only the old people pulled my leg. They started me wrong. They never started me at all. I only began to find out what life was like when I was nearly forty.
"If I'd gone to a university; if I'd had any sort of sound training, if I hadn't slipped into the haphazard231 places that came easiest....
"Nobody warned me. Nobody. It isn't a world we live in, Dick; it's a cascade232 of accidents; it's a chaos233 exasperated by policemen! YOU be warned in time, Dick. You stick to a plan. Don't wait for any one to show you the way. Nobody will. There isn't a way till you make one. Get education, get a good education. Fight your way to the top. It's your only chance. I've watched you. You'll do no good at digging and property minding. There isn't a neighbour in Bromstead won't be able to skin you at suchlike games. You and I are the brainy unstable234 kind, topside or nothing. And if ever those blithering houses come to you--don't have 'em. Give them away! Dynamite235 'em--and off! LIVE, Dick! I'll get rid of them for you if I can, Dick, but remember what I say."...
So it was my father discoursed236, if not in those particular words, yet exactly in that manner, as he slouched along the southward road, with resentful eyes becoming less resentful as he talked, and flinging out clumsy illustrative motions at the outskirts237 of Bromstead as we passed along them. That afternoon he hated Bromstead, from its foot-tiring pebbles238 up. He had no illusions about Bromstead or himself. I have the clearest impression of him in his garden-stained tweeds with a deer-stalker hat on the back of his head and presently a pipe sometimes between his teeth and sometimes in his gesticulating hand, as he became diverted by his talk from his original exasperation239....
This particular afternoon is no doubt mixed up in my memory with many other afternoons; all sorts of things my father said and did at different times have got themselves referred to it; it filled me at the time with a great unprecedented240 sense of fellowship and it has become the symbol now for all our intercourse241 together. If I didn't understand the things he said, I did the mood he was in. He gave me two very broad ideas in that talk and the talks I have mingled242 with it; he gave them to me very clearly and they have remained fundamental in my mind; one a sense of the extraordinary confusion and waste and planlessness of the human life that went on all about us; and the other of a great ideal of order and economy which he called variously Science and Civilisation, and which, though I do not remember that he ever used that word, I suppose many people nowadays would identify with Socialism,--as the Fabians expound243 it.
He was not very definite about this Science, you must understand, but he seemed always to be waving his hand towards it,--just as his contemporary Tennyson seems always to be doing--he belonged to his age and mostly his talk was destructive of the limited beliefs of his time, he led me to infer rather than actually told me that this Science was coming, a spirit of light and order, to the rescue of a world groaning244 and travailing in muddle for the want of it....
5
When I think of Bromstead nowadays I find it inseparably bound up with the disorders245 of my father's gardening, and the odd patchings and paintings that disfigured his houses. It was all of a piece with that.
Let me try and give something of the quality of Bromstead and something of its history. It is the quality and history of a thousand places round and about London, and round and about the other great centres of population in the world. Indeed it is in a measure the quality of the whole of this modern world from which we who have the statesman's passion struggle to evolve, and dream still of evolving order.
First, then, you must think of Bromstead a hundred and fifty years ago, as a narrow irregular little street of thatched houses strung out on the London and Dover Road, a little mellow247 sample unit of a social order that had a kind of completeness, at its level, of its own. At that time its population numbered a little under two thousand people, mostly engaged in agricultural work or in trades serving agriculture. There was a blacksmith, a saddler, a chemist, a doctor, a barber, a linen-draper (who brewed248 his own beer); a veterinary surgeon, a hardware shop, and two capacious inns. Round and about it were a number of pleasant gentlemen's seats, whose owners went frequently to London town in their coaches along the very tolerable high-road. The church was big enough to hold the whole population, were people minded to go to church, and indeed a large proportion did go, and all who married were married in it, and everybody, to begin with, was christened at its font and buried at last in its yew-shaded graveyard249. Everybody knew everybody in the place. It was, in fact, a definite place and a real human community in those days. There was a pleasant old market-house in the middle of the town with a weekly market, and an annual fair at which much cheerful merry making and homely250 intoxication251 occurred; there was a pack of hounds which hunted within five miles of London Bridge, and the local gentry252 would occasionally enliven the place with valiant253 cricket matches for a hundred guineas a side, to the vast excitement of the entire population. It was very much the same sort of place that it had been for three or four centuries. A Bromstead Rip van Winkle from 1550 returning in 1750 would have found most of the old houses still as he had known them, the same trades a little improved and differentiated254 one from the other, the same roads rather more carefully tended, the Inns not very much altered, the ancient familiar market-house. The occasional wheeled traffic would have struck him as the most remarkable difference, next perhaps to the swaggering painted stone monuments instead of brasses255 and the protestant severity of the communion-table in the parish church,--both from the material point of view very little things. A Rip van Winkle from 1350, again, would have noticed scarcely greater changes; fewer clergy256, more people, and particularly more people of the middling sort; the glass in the windows of many of the houses, the stylish257 chimneys springing up everywhere would have impressed him, and suchlike details. The place would have had the same boundaries, the same broad essential features, would have been still itself in the way that a man is still himself after he has "filled out" a little and grown a longer beard and changed his clothes.
But after 1750 something got hold of the world, something that was destined258 to alter the scale of every human affair.
That something was machinery and a vague energetic disposition to improve material things. In another part of England ingenious people were beginning to use coal in smelting259 iron, and were producing metal in abundance and metal castings in sizes that had hitherto been unattainable. Without warning or preparation, increment260 involving countless261 possibilities of further increment was coming to the strength of horses and men. "Power," all unsuspected, was flowing like a drug into the veins262 of the social body.
Nobody seems to have perceived this coming of power, and nobody had calculated its probable consequences. Suddenly, almost inadvertently, people found themselves doing things that would have amazed their ancestors. They began to construct wheeled vehicles much more easily and cheaply than they had ever done before, to make up roads and move things about that had formerly been esteemed too heavy for locomotion264, to join woodwork with iron nails instead of wooden pegs265, to achieve all sorts of mechanical possibilities, to trade more freely and manufacture on a larger scale, to send goods abroad in a wholesale266 and systematic way, to bring back commodities from overseas, not simply spices and fine commodities, but goods in bulk. The new influence spread to agriculture, iron appliances replaced wooden, breeding of stock became systematic, paper-making and printing increased and cheapened. Roofs of slate267 and tile appeared amidst and presently prevailed over the original Bromstead thatch246, the huge space of Common to the south was extensively enclosed, and what had been an ill-defined horse-track to Dover, only passable by adventurous268 coaches in dry weather, became the Dover Road, and was presently the route first of one and then of several daily coaches. The High Street was discovered to be too tortuous269 for these awakening270 energies, and a new road cut off its worst contortions271. Residential272 villas appeared occupied by retired273 tradesmen and widows, who esteemed the place healthy, and by others of a strange new unoccupied class of people who had money invested in joint-stock enterprises. First one and then several boys' boarding-schools came, drawing their pupils from London,--my grandfather's was one of these. London, twelve miles to the north-west, was making itself felt more and more.
But this was only the beginning of the growth period, the first trickle274 of the coming flood of mechanical power. Away in the north they were casting iron in bigger and bigger forms, working their way to the production of steel on a large scale, applying power in factories. Bromstead had almost doubted in size again long before the railway came; there was hardly any thatch left in the High Street, but instead were houses with handsome brass-knockered front doors and several windows, and shops with shop-fronts all of square glass panes275, and the place was lighted publicly now by oil lamps--previously only one flickering276 lamp outside each of the coaching inns had broken the nocturnal darkness. And there was talk, it long remained talk,--of gas. The gasworks came in 1834, and about that date my father's three houses must have been built convenient for the London Road. They mark nearly the beginning of the real suburban277 quality; they were let at first to City people still engaged in business.
And then hard on the gasworks had come the railway and cheap coal; there was a wild outbreak of brickfields upon the claylands to the east, and the Great Growth had begun in earnest. The agricultural placidities that had formerly come to the very borders of the High Street were broken up north, west and south, by new roads. This enterprising person and then that began to "run up" houses, irrespective of every other enterprising person who was doing the same thing. A Local Board came into existence, and with much hesitation278 and penny-wise economy inaugurated drainage works. Rates became a common topic, a fact of accumulating importance. Several chapels279 of zinc280 and iron appeared, and also a white new church in commercial Gothic upon the common, and another of red brick in the residential district out beyond the brickfields towards Chessington.
The population doubled again and doubled again, and became particularly teeming281 in the prolific282 "working-class" district about the deep-rutted, muddy, coal-blackened roads between the gasworks, Blodgett's laundries, and the railway goods-yard. Weekly properties, that is to say small houses built by small property owners and let by the week, sprang up also in the Cage Fields, and presently extended right up the London Road. A single national school in an inconvenient283 situation set itself inadequately284 to collect subscriptions285 and teach the swarming286, sniffing287, grimy offspring of this dingy new population to read. The villages of Beckington, which used to be three miles to the west, and Blamely four miles to the east of Bromstead, were experiencing similar distensions and proliferations, and grew out to meet us. All effect of locality or community had gone from these places long before I was born; hardly any one knew any one; there was no general meeting place any more, the old fairs were just common nuisances haunted by gypsies, van showmen, Cheap Jacks288 and London roughs, the churches were incapable289 of a quarter of the population. One or two local papers of shameless veniality290 reported the proceedings291 of the local Bench and the local Board, compelled tradesmen who were interested in these affairs to advertise, used the epithet292 "Bromstedian" as one expressing peculiar virtues293, and so maintained in the general mind a weak tradition of some local quality that embraced us all. Then the parish graveyard filled up and became a scandal, and an ambitious area with an air of appetite was walled in by a Bromstead Cemetery294 Company, and planted with suitably high-minded and sorrowful varieties of conifer. A stonemason took one of the earlier villas with a front garden at the end of the High Street, and displayed a supply of urns218 on pillars and headstones and crosses in stone, marble, and granite295, that would have sufficed to commemorate296 in elaborate detail the entire population of Bromstead as one found it in 1750.
The cemetery was made when I was a little boy of five or six; I was in the full tide of building and growth from the first; the second railway with its station at Bromstead North and the drainage followed when I was ten or eleven, and all my childish memories are of digging and wheeling, of woods invaded by building, roads gashed297 open and littered with iron pipes amidst a fearful smell of gas, of men peeped at and seen toiling298 away deep down in excavations299, of hedges broken down and replaced by planks300, of wheelbarrows and builders' sheds, of rivulets301 overtaken and swallowed up by drain-pipes. Big trees, and especially elms, cleared of undergrowth and left standing amid such things, acquired a peculiar tattered dinginess303 rather in the quality of needy304 widow women who have seen happier days.
The Ravensbrook of my earlier memories was a beautiful stream. It came into my world out of a mysterious Beyond, out of a garden, splashing brightly down a weir220 which had once been the weir of a mill. (Above the weir and inaccessible there were bulrushes growing in splendid clumps305, and beyond that, pampas grass, yellow and crimson spikes306 of hollyhock, and blue suggestions of wonderland.) From the pool at the foot of this initial cascade it flowed in a leisurely307 fashion beside a footpath,--there were two pretty thatched cottages on the left, and here were ducks, and there were willows309 on the right,--and so came to where great trees grew on high banks on either hand and bowed closer, and at last met overhead. This part was difficult to reach because of an old fence, but a little boy might glimpse that long cavern310 of greenery by wading311. Either I have actually seen kingfishers there, or my father has described them so accurately312 to me that he inserted them into my memory. I remember them there anyhow. Most of that overhung part I never penetrated313 at all, but followed the field path with my mother and met the stream again, where beyond there were flat meadows, Roper's meadows. The Ravensbrook went meandering314 across the middle of these, now between steep banks, and now with wide shallows at the bends where the cattle waded315 and drank. Yellow and purple loose-strife and ordinary rushes grew in clumps along the bank, and now and then a willow308. On rare occasions of rapture316 one might see a rat cleaning his whiskers at the water's edge. The deep places were rich with tangled317 weeds, and in them fishes lurked--to me they were big fishes--water-boatmen and water-beetles traversed the calm surface of these still deeps; in one pool were yellow lilies and water-soldiers, and in the shoaly places hovering318 fleets of small fry basked319 in the sunshine--to vanish in a flash at one's shadow. In one place, too, were Rapids, where the stream woke with a start from a dreamless brooding into foaming320 panic and babbled321 and hastened. Well do I remember that half-mile of rivulet302; all other rivers and cascades322 have their reference to it for me. And after I was eleven, and before we left Bromstead, all the delight and beauty of it was destroyed.
The volume of its water decreased abruptly--I suppose the new drainage works that linked us up with Beckington, and made me first acquainted with the geological quality of the London clay, had to do with that--until only a weak uncleansing trickle remained. That at first did not strike me as a misfortune. An adventurous small boy might walk dryshod in places hitherto inaccessible. But hard upon that came the pegs, the planks and carts and devastation323. Roper's meadows, being no longer in fear of floods, were now to be slashed324 out into parallelograms of untidy road, and built upon with rows of working-class cottages. The roads came,--horribly; the houses followed. They seemed to rise in the night. People moved into them as soon as the roofs were on, mostly workmen and their young wives, and already in a year some of these raw houses stood empty again from defaulting tenants, with windows broken and wood-work warping325 and rotting. The Ravensbrook became a dump for old iron, rusty326 cans, abandoned boots and the like, and was a river only when unusual rains filled it for a day or so with an inky flood of surface water....
That indeed was my most striking perception in the growth of Bromstead. The Ravensbrook had been important to my imaginative life; that way had always been my first choice in all my walks with my mother, and its rapid swamping by the new urban growth made it indicative of all the other things that had happened just before my time, or were still, at a less dramatic pace, happening. I realised that building was the enemy. I began to understand why in every direction out of Bromstead one walked past scaffold-poles into litter, why fragments of broken brick and cinder327 mingled in every path, and the significance of the universal notice-boards, either white and new or a year old and torn and battered328, promising329 sites, proffering330 houses to be sold or let, abusing and intimidating331 passers-by for fancied trespass332, and protecting rights of way.
It is difficult to disentangle now what I understood at this time and what I have since come to understand, but it seems to me that even in those childish days I was acutely aware of an invading and growing disorder199. The serene333 rhythms of the old established agriculture, I see now, were everywhere being replaced by cultivation334 under notice and snatch crops; hedges ceased to be repaired, and were replaced by cheap iron railings or chunks335 of corrugated iron; more and more hoardings sprang up, and contributed more and more to the nomad336 tribes of filthy337 paper scraps338 that flew before the wind and overspread the country. The outskirts of Bromstead were a maze263 of exploitation roads that led nowhere, that ended in tarred fences studded with nails (I don't remember barbed wire in those days; I think the Zeitgeist did not produce that until later), and in trespass boards that used vehement339 language. Broken glass, tin cans, and ashes and paper abounded340. Cheap glass, cheap tin, abundant fuel, and a free untaxed Press had rushed upon a world quite unprepared to dispose of these blessings341 when the fulness of enjoyment342 was past.
I suppose one might have persuaded oneself that all this was but the replacement343 of an ancient tranquillity, or at least an ancient balance, by a new order. Only to my eyes, quickened by my father's intimations, it was manifestly no order at all. It was a multitude of incoordinated fresh starts, each more sweeping and destructive than the last, and none of them ever really worked out to a ripe and satisfactory completion. Each left a legacy344 of products, houses, humanity, or what not, in its wake. It was a sort of progress that had bolted; it was change out of hand, and going at an unprecedented pace nowhere in particular.
No, the Victorian epoch345 was not the dawn of a new era; it was a hasty, trial experiment, a gigantic experiment of the most slovenly346 and wasteful347 kind. I suppose it was necessary; I suppose all things are necessary. I suppose that before men will discipline themselves to learn and plan, they must first see in a hundred convincing forms the folly348 and muddle that come from headlong, aimless and haphazard methods. The nineteenth century was an age of demonstrations349, some of them very impressive demonstrations, of the powers that have come to mankind, but of permanent achievement, what will our descendants cherish? It is hard to estimate what grains of precious metal may not be found in a mud torrent350 of human production on so large a scale, but will any one, a hundred years from now, consent to live in the houses the Victorians built, travel by their roads or railways, value the furnishings they made to live among or esteem142, except for curious or historical reasons, their prevalent art and the clipped and limited literature that satisfied their souls?
That age which bore me was indeed a world full of restricted and undisciplined people, overtaken by power, by possessions and great new freedoms, and unable to make any civilised use of them whatever; stricken now by this idea and now by that, tempted351 first by one possession and then another to ill-considered attempts; it was my father's exploitation of his villa7 gardens on the wholesale level. The whole of Bromstead as I remember it, and as I saw it last--it is a year ago now--is a dull useless boiling-up of human activities, an immense clustering of futilities. It is as unfinished as ever; the builders' roads still run out and end in mid-field in their old fashion; the various enterprises jumble352 in the same hopeless contradiction, if anything intensified. Pretentious353 villas jostle slums, and public-house and tin tabernacle glower354 at one another across the cat-haunted lot that intervenes. Roper's meadows are now quite frankly355 a slum; back doors and sculleries gape356 towards the railway, their yards are hung with tattered washing unashamed; and there seem to be more boards by the railway every time I pass, advertising357 pills and pickles358, tonics359 and condiments360, and suchlike solicitudes361 of a people with no natural health nor appetite left in them....
Well, we have to do better. Failure is not failure nor waste wasted if it sweeps away illusion and lights the road to a plan.
6
Chaotic362 indiscipline, ill-adjusted effort, spasmodic aims, these give the quality of all my Bromstead memories. The crowning one of them all rises to desolating363 tragedy. I remember now the wan230 spring sunshine of that Sunday morning, the stiff feeling of best clothes and aggressive cleanliness and formality, when I and my mother returned from church to find my father dead. He had been pruning the grape vine. He had never had a ladder long enough to reach the sill of the third-floor windows--at house-painting times he had borrowed one from the plumber364 who mixed his paint--and he had in his own happy-go-lucky way contrived365 a combination of the garden fruit ladder with a battered kitchen table that served all sorts of odd purposes in an outhouse. He had stayed up this arrangement by means of the garden roller, and the roller had at the critical moment--rolled. He was lying close by the garden door with his head queerly bent366 back against a broken and twisted rainwater pipe, an expression of pacific contentment on his face, a bamboo curtain rod with a tableknife tied to end of it, still gripped in his hand. We had been rapping for some time at the front door unable to make him hear, and then we came round by the door in the side trellis into the garden and so discovered him.
"Arthur!" I remember my mother crying with the strangest break in her voice, "What are you doing there? Arthur! And--SUNDAY!"
I was coming behind her, musing367 remotely, when the quality of her voice roused me. She stood as if she could not go near him. He had always puzzled her so, he and his ways, and this seemed only another enigma368. Then the truth dawned on her, she shrieked369 as if afraid of him, ran a dozen steps back towards the trellis door and stopped and clasped her ineffectual gloved hands, leaving me staring blankly, too astonished for feeling, at the carelessly flung limbs.
The same idea came to me also. I ran to her. "Mother!" I cried, pale to the depths of my spirit, "IS HE DEAD?"
I had been thinking two minutes before of the cold fruit pie that glorified370 our Sunday dinner-table, and how I might perhaps get into the tree at the end of the garden to read in the afternoon. Now an immense fact had come down like a curtain and blotted371 out all my childish world. My father was lying dead before my eyes.... I perceived that my mother was helpless and that things must be done.
"Mother!" I said, "we must get Doctor Beaseley,--and carry him indoors."
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politic
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| adj.有智虑的；精明的；v.从政 | |
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bleak
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| adj.(天气)阴冷的；凄凉的；暗淡的 | |
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defective
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| adj.有毛病的，有问题的，有瑕疵的 | |
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dingy
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| adj.昏暗的，肮脏的 | |
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tattered
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| adj.破旧的，衣衫破的 | |
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vigour
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| （=vigor）n.智力，体力，精力 | |
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villa
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| n.别墅，城郊小屋 | |
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gratitude
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| adj.感激，感谢 | |
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chagrins
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| v.使懊恼，使懊丧，使悔恨( chagrin的第三人称单数 ) | |
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insufficient
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citadels
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| n.城堡，堡垒( citadel的名词复数 ) | |
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crumpled
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| adj. 弯扭的, 变皱的 动词crumple的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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feigned
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| a.假装的，不真诚的 | |
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sedulous
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| adj.勤勉的，努力的 | |
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artillery
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| n.(军)火炮，大炮；炮兵(部队) | |
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stink
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| vi.发出恶臭；糟透，招人厌恶；n.恶臭 | |
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conflagration
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| n.建筑物或森林大火 | |
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incessant
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| adj.不停的，连续的 | |
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slanting
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| 倾斜的，歪斜的 | |
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fortress
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| n.堡垒，防御工事 | |
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fortresses
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| 堡垒，要塞( fortress的名词复数 ) | |
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thrift
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provender
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waggons
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| 四轮的运货马车( waggon的名词复数 )； 铁路货车； 小手推车 | |
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beleaguered
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dismal
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benefactor
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desolate
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garrisoned
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alas
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civilisation
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wilderness
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ravaged
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| 毁坏( ravage的过去式和过去分词 )； 蹂躏； 劫掠； 抢劫 | |
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thickets
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ragged
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brandishing
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concealing
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devious
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enchanting
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survivors
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| 幸存者，残存者，生还者( survivor的名词复数 ) | |
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albeit
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invalid
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| n.病人，伤残人；adj.有病的，伤残的；无效的 | |
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43
fauna
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| n.(一个地区或时代的)所有动物，动物区系 | |
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44
wont
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| adj.习惯于；v.习惯；n.习惯 | |
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45
ascent
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| n.(声望或地位)提高；上升，升高；登高 | |
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46
intermittently
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| adv.间歇地；断断续续 | |
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47
retrospect
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| n.回顾，追溯；v.回顾，回想，追溯 | |
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48
gilt
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| adj.镀金的；n.金边证券 | |
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49
maiden
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| n.少女，处女；adj.未婚的，纯洁的，无经验的 | |
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50
Christians
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| n.基督教徒( Christian的名词复数 ) | |
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51
ornament
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| v.装饰，美化；n.装饰，装饰物 | |
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52
brass
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| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
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53
cannon
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| n.大炮，火炮；飞机上的机关炮 | |
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54
detailed
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| adj.详细的，详尽的，极注意细节的，完全的 | |
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55
hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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56
catastrophes
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| n.灾祸( catastrophe的名词复数 )；灾难；不幸事件；困难 | |
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57
descend
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| vt./vi.传下来，下来，下降 | |
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58
garrisons
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| 守备部队，卫戍部队( garrison的名词复数 ) | |
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59
jumbling
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| 混杂( jumble的现在分词 )； （使）混乱； 使混乱； 使杂乱 | |
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60
sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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61
calamity
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| n.灾害，祸患，不幸事件 | |
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62
swirling
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| v.旋转，打旋( swirl的现在分词 ) | |
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63
hazardous
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| adj.(有)危险的，冒险的；碰运气的 | |
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64
absurdity
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| n.荒谬，愚蠢；谬论 | |
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65
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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66
positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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67
bristled
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| adj. 直立的，多刺毛的 动词bristle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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68
pretence
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| n.假装，作假；借口，口实；虚伪；虚饰 | |
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69
shaft
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| n.(工具的)柄，杆状物 | |
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70
formerly
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| adv.从前，以前 | |
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71
slippers
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| n. 拖鞋 | |
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72
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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73
corrugated
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| 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) | |
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74
ranch
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| n.大牧场，大农场 | |
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75
blessing
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| n.祈神赐福；祷告；祝福，祝愿 | |
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76
illustrated
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| adj. 有插图的，列举的 动词illustrate的过去式和过去分词 | |
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77
derived
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| vi.起源；由来；衍生；导出v.得到( derive的过去式和过去分词 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取 | |
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78
permanently
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| adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地 | |
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79
geographical
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| adj.地理的；地区(性)的 | |
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80
testament
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| n.遗嘱；证明 | |
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81
tinted
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| adj. 带色彩的 动词tint的过去式和过去分词 | |
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82
sitting-room
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| n.（BrE）客厅，起居室 | |
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83
attic
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| n.顶楼，屋顶室 | |
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84
navigating
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| v.给（船舶、飞机等）引航，导航( navigate的现在分词 )；（从海上、空中等）横越；横渡；飞跃 | |
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85
eked
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|
| v.（靠节省用量）使…的供应持久( eke的过去式和过去分词 )；节约使用；竭力维持生计；勉强度日 | |
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86
palatial
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| adj.宫殿般的，宏伟的 | |
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87
structurally
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| 在结构上 | |
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88
vindictively
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| adv.恶毒地；报复地 | |
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89
vindictive
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| adj.有报仇心的，怀恨的，惩罚的 | |
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90
devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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91
discomfort
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| n.不舒服，不安，难过，困难，不方便 | |
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92
tolerance
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| n.宽容；容忍，忍受；耐药力；公差 | |
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93
inefficiency
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| n.无效率，无能；无效率事例 | |
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94
repartee
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|
| n.机敏的应答 | |
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95
attics
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| n. 阁楼 | |
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96
inaccessible
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| adj.达不到的，难接近的 | |
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97
variegated
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| adj.斑驳的，杂色的 | |
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98
undesirable
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|
| adj.不受欢迎的，不良的，不合意的，讨厌的；n.不受欢迎的人，不良分子 | |
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99
tenants
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| n.房客( tenant的名词复数 )；佃户；占用者；占有者 | |
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100
sketchy
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|
| adj.写生的，写生风格的，概略的 | |
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101
favourable
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| adj.赞成的，称赞的，有利的，良好的，顺利的 | |
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102
pruning
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|
| n.修枝，剪枝，修剪v.修剪（树木等）( prune的现在分词 )；精简某事物，除去某事物多余的部分 | |
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103
founders
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|
| n.创始人( founder的名词复数 ) | |
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104
qualified
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| adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的 | |
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105
artistic
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|
| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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106
zeal
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|
| n.热心，热情，热忱 | |
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107
decadent
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|
| adj.颓废的，衰落的，堕落的 | |
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108
generosity
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| n.大度，慷慨，慷慨的行为 | |
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109
machinery
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|
| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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110
borough
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| n.享有自治权的市镇；(英)自治市镇 | |
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111
corrupt
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|
| v.贿赂，收买；adj.腐败的，贪污的 | |
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112
devastating
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|
| adj.毁灭性的，令人震惊的，强有力的 | |
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113
metropolitan
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|
| adj.大城市的，大都会的 | |
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114
tentacles
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| n.触手( tentacle的名词复数 )；触角；触须；触毛 | |
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115
patriotic
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| adj.爱国的，有爱国心的 | |
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116
illiterate
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| adj.文盲的；无知的；n.文盲 | |
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117
patronage
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| n.赞助，支援，援助；光顾，捧场 | |
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118
dwindling
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| adj.逐渐减少的v.逐渐变少或变小( dwindle的现在分词 ) | |
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119
rivalries
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| n.敌对，竞争，对抗( rivalry的名词复数 ) | |
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120
indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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121
industrious
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|
| adj.勤劳的，刻苦的，奋发的 | |
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122
lucid
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| adj.明白易懂的，清晰的，头脑清楚的 | |
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123
muddle
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|
| n.困惑，混浊状态；vt.使混乱，使糊涂，使惊呆；vi.胡乱应付，混乱 | |
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124
antagonisms
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| 对抗，敌对( antagonism的名词复数 ) | |
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125
obstinate
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| adj.顽固的，倔强的，不易屈服的，较难治愈的 | |
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126
humanitarian
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| n.人道主义者，博爱者，基督凡人论者 | |
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127
organisation
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| n.组织，安排，团体，有机休 | |
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128
stimulate
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| vt.刺激，使兴奋；激励，使…振奋 | |
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129
technically
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| adv.专门地，技术上地 | |
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130
attained
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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131
providence
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| n.深谋远虑，天道，天意；远见；节约；上帝 | |
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132
inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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133
by-product
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| n.副产品，附带产生的结果 | |
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134
entrusted
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| v.委托，托付( entrust的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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135
eminent
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| adj.显赫的，杰出的，有名的，优良的 | |
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136
injustice
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| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
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137
recurrence
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| n.复发，反复，重现 | |
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138
distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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139
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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140
mitigated
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| v.减轻，缓和( mitigate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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141
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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142
esteem
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| n.尊敬，尊重；vt.尊重，敬重；把…看作 | |
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143
esteemed
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| adj.受人尊敬的v.尊敬( esteem的过去式和过去分词 )；敬重；认为；以为 | |
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144
proficiency
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| n.精通，熟练，精练 | |
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145
dictated
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| v.大声讲或读( dictate的过去式和过去分词 )；口授；支配；摆布 | |
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146
smothering
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| （使）窒息， （使）透不过气( smother的现在分词 )； 覆盖； 忍住； 抑制 | |
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147
industriously
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148
scribbling
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| n.乱涂[写]胡[乱]写的文章[作品]v.潦草的书写( scribble的现在分词 )；乱画；草草地写；匆匆记下 | |
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149
deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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150
specimen
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| n.样本，标本 | |
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151
apparatus
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| n.装置，器械；器具，设备 | |
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152
systematic
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| adj.有系统的，有计划的，有方法的 | |
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153
controversies
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| 争论 | |
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154
perversity
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| n.任性；刚愎自用 | |
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155
gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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156
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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157
elusive
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| adj.难以表达(捉摸)的；令人困惑的；逃避的 | |
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158
physiology
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| n.生理学，生理机能 | |
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159
crimson
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| n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色 | |
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160
vessel
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| n.船舶；容器，器皿；管，导管，血管 | |
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161
descends
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| v.下来( descend的第三人称单数 )；下去；下降；下斜 | |
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162
heartiness
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| 诚实，热心 | |
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163
libertine
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| n.淫荡者；adj.放荡的，自由思想的 | |
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164
undoing
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| n.毁灭的原因，祸根；破坏，毁灭 | |
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165
luminous
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| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
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166
flinching
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| v.（因危险和痛苦）退缩，畏惧( flinch的现在分词 ) | |
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167
precipitate
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| adj.突如其来的；vt.使突然发生；n.沉淀物 | |
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168
discourse
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| n.论文，演说；谈话；话语；vi.讲述，著述 | |
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169
incompetence
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| n.不胜任，不称职 | |
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170
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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171
sanguine
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| adj.充满希望的，乐观的，血红色的 | |
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172
temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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173
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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174
pungency
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| n.（气味等的）刺激性；辣；（言语等的）辛辣；尖刻 | |
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175
manure
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| n.粪，肥，肥粒；vt.施肥 | |
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176
olfactory
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| adj.嗅觉的 | |
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177
caterpillars
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| n.毛虫( caterpillar的名词复数 )；履带 | |
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178
wrecked
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| adj.失事的，遇难的 | |
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179
wreck
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| n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难 | |
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180
spasms
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| n.痉挛( spasm的名词复数 )；抽搐；（能量、行为等的）突发；发作 | |
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181
exasperated
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| adj.恼怒的 | |
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182
exacting
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| adj.苛求的，要求严格的 | |
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183
disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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184
touchy
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| adj.易怒的；棘手的 | |
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185
hysterical
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| adj.情绪异常激动的，歇斯底里般的 | |
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186
intensified
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| v.（使）增强， （使）加剧( intensify的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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187
primordial
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| adj.原始的；最初的 | |
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188
blight
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| n.枯萎病；造成破坏的因素；vt.破坏，摧残 | |
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189
penchant
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| n.爱好，嗜好；（强烈的）倾向 | |
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190
embittered
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| v.使怨恨，激怒( embitter的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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191
inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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192
hardy
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| adj.勇敢的，果断的，吃苦的；耐寒的 | |
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193
obliquity
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| n.倾斜度 | |
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194
ERECTED
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| adj. 直立的，竖立的，笔直的 vt. 使 ... 直立，建立 | |
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195
gutter
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| n.沟，街沟，水槽，檐槽，贫民窟 | |
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196
clump
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| n.树丛，草丛；vi.用沉重的脚步行走 | |
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197
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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198
axe
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| n.斧子；v.用斧头砍，削减 | |
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199
disorder
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| n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调 | |
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200
astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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201
tranquillity
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| n. 平静, 安静 | |
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202
hurl
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| vt.猛投，力掷，声叫骂 | |
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203
flicking
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| （尤指用手指或手快速地）轻击( flick的现在分词 )； （用…）轻挥； （快速地）按开关； 向…笑了一下（或瞥了一眼等） | |
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204
lettuces
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| n.莴苣，生菜（ lettuce的名词复数 ）；生菜叶 | |
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205
tenor
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| n.男高音（歌手），次中音（乐器），要旨，大意 | |
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206
slashing
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| adj.尖锐的；苛刻的；鲜明的；乱砍的v.挥砍( slash的现在分词 )；鞭打；割破；削减 | |
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207
abominable
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| adj.可厌的，令人憎恶的 | |
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208
abortive
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| adj.不成功的，发育不全的 | |
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209
massacre
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| n.残杀，大屠杀；v.残杀，集体屠杀 | |
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210
overthrow
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| v.推翻，打倒，颠覆；n.推翻，瓦解，颠覆 | |
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211
pampered
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| adj.饮食过量的，饮食奢侈的v.纵容，宠，娇养( pamper的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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212
aristocrats
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| n.贵族( aristocrat的名词复数 ) | |
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213
assuaged
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| v.减轻( assuage的过去式和过去分词 )；缓和；平息；使安静 | |
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214
prey
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| n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨 | |
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215
marrows
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| n.骨髓（marrow的复数形式） | |
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216
flicked
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| （尤指用手指或手快速地）轻击( flick的过去式和过去分词 )； （用…）轻挥； （快速地）按开关； 向…笑了一下（或瞥了一眼等） | |
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217
awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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218
urns
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| n.壶( urn的名词复数 )；瓮；缸；骨灰瓮 | |
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219
monologue
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| n.长篇大论，（戏剧等中的）独白 | |
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220
weir
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| n.堰堤，拦河坝 | |
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221
weird
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| adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的 | |
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222
pathos
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| n.哀婉，悲怆 | |
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223
trotted
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| 小跑，急走( trot的过去分词 )； 匆匆忙忙地走 | |
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224
eavesdropper
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| 偷听者 | |
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225
soot
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| n.煤烟，烟尘；vt.熏以煤烟 | |
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226
vile
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| adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的 | |
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227
stank
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| n. (英)坝，堰，池塘 动词stink的过去式 | |
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228
villas
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| 别墅，公馆( villa的名词复数 )； （城郊）住宅 | |
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229
shanty
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| n.小屋，棚屋；船工号子 | |
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230
wan
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| (wide area network)广域网 | |
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231
haphazard
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|
| adj.无计划的，随意的，杂乱无章的 | |
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232
cascade
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| n.小瀑布，喷流；层叠；vi.成瀑布落下 | |
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233
chaos
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| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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234
unstable
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| adj.不稳定的，易变的 | |
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235
dynamite
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| n./vt.(用)炸药(爆破) | |
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236
discoursed
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| 演说（discourse的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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237
outskirts
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| n.郊外，郊区 | |
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238
pebbles
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| [复数]鹅卵石； 沙砾； 卵石，小圆石( pebble的名词复数 ) | |
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239
exasperation
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| n.愤慨 | |
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240
unprecedented
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|
| adj.无前例的，新奇的 | |
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241
intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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242
mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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243
expound
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| v.详述；解释；阐述 | |
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244
groaning
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| adj. 呜咽的, 呻吟的 动词groan的现在分词形式 | |
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245
disorders
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| n.混乱( disorder的名词复数 )；凌乱；骚乱；（身心、机能）失调 | |
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246
thatch
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|
| vt.用茅草覆盖…的顶部；n.茅草(屋) | |
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247
mellow
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| adj.柔和的；熟透的；v.变柔和；(使)成熟 | |
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248
brewed
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| 调制( brew的过去式和过去分词 )； 酝酿； 沏（茶）； 煮（咖啡） | |
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249
graveyard
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| n.坟场 | |
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250
homely
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|
| adj.家常的，简朴的；不漂亮的 | |
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251
intoxication
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| n.wild excitement;drunkenness；poisoning | |
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252
gentry
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| n.绅士阶级，上层阶级 | |
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253
valiant
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| adj.勇敢的，英勇的；n.勇士，勇敢的人 | |
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254
differentiated
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| 区分，区别，辨别( differentiate的过去式和过去分词 )； 区别对待； 表明…间的差别，构成…间差别的特征 | |
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255
brasses
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| n.黄铜( brass的名词复数 )；铜管乐器；钱；黄铜饰品（尤指马挽具上的黄铜圆片） | |
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256
clergy
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| n.[总称]牧师，神职人员 | |
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257
stylish
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| adj.流行的，时髦的；漂亮的，气派的 | |
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258
destined
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| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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259
smelting
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| n.熔炼v.熔炼，提炼（矿石）( smelt的现在分词 ) | |
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260
increment
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| n.增值，增价；提薪，增加工资 | |
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261
countless
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| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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262
veins
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| n.纹理；矿脉( vein的名词复数 )；静脉；叶脉；纹理 | |
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263
maze
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| n.迷宫，八阵图，混乱，迷惑 | |
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264
locomotion
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| n.运动，移动 | |
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265
pegs
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| n.衣夹( peg的名词复数 )；挂钉；系帐篷的桩；弦钮v.用夹子或钉子固定( peg的第三人称单数 )；使固定在某水平 | |
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266
wholesale
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| n.批发；adv.以批发方式；vt.批发，成批出售 | |
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267
slate
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| n.板岩，石板，石片，石板色，候选人名单；adj.暗蓝灰色的，含板岩的；vt.用石板覆盖，痛打，提名，预订 | |
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268
adventurous
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| adj.爱冒险的；惊心动魄的，惊险的，刺激的 | |
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269
tortuous
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| adj.弯弯曲曲的，蜿蜒的 | |
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270
awakening
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| n.觉醒，醒悟 adj.觉醒中的；唤醒的 | |
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271
contortions
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| n.扭歪，弯曲；扭曲，弄歪，歪曲( contortion的名词复数 ) | |
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272
residential
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| adj.提供住宿的；居住的；住宅的 | |
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273
retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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274
trickle
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| vi.淌，滴，流出，慢慢移动，逐渐消散 | |
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275
panes
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| 窗玻璃( pane的名词复数 ) | |
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276
flickering
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| adj.闪烁的，摇曳的，一闪一闪的 | |
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277
suburban
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| adj.城郊的，在郊区的 | |
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278
hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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279
chapels
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| n.小教堂， （医院、监狱等的）附属礼拜堂( chapel的名词复数 )；（在小教堂和附属礼拜堂举行的）礼拜仪式 | |
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280
zinc
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| n.锌；vt.在...上镀锌 | |
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281
teeming
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|
| adj.丰富的v.充满( teem的现在分词 )；到处都是；（指水、雨等）暴降；倾注 | |
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282
prolific
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|
| adj.丰富的，大量的；多产的，富有创造力的 | |
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283
inconvenient
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|
| adj.不方便的，令人感到麻烦的 | |
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284
inadequately
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| ad.不够地；不够好地 | |
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285
subscriptions
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|
| n.（报刊等的）订阅费( subscription的名词复数 )；捐款；（俱乐部的）会员费；捐助 | |
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286
swarming
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|
| 密集( swarm的现在分词 )； 云集； 成群地移动； 蜜蜂或其他飞行昆虫成群地飞来飞去 | |
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287
sniffing
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|
| 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 | |
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288
jacks
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|
| n.抓子游戏；千斤顶( jack的名词复数 )；（电）插孔；[电子学]插座；放弃 | |
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289
incapable
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|
| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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290
veniality
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| n.可宽恕性 | |
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291
proceedings
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| n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报 | |
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292
epithet
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| n.（用于褒贬人物等的）表述形容词，修饰语 | |
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293
virtues
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| 美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处 | |
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294
cemetery
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| n.坟墓，墓地，坟场 | |
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295
granite
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| adj.花岗岩，花岗石 | |
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296
commemorate
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| vt.纪念，庆祝 | |
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297
gashed
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| v.划伤，割破( gash的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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298
toiling
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| 长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的现在分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉 | |
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299
excavations
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| n.挖掘( excavation的名词复数 )；开凿；开凿的洞穴（或山路等）；（发掘出来的）古迹 | |
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300
planks
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| （厚）木板( plank的名词复数 )； 政纲条目，政策要点 | |
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301
rivulets
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| n.小河，小溪( rivulet的名词复数 ) | |
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302
rivulet
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| n.小溪，小河 | |
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303
dinginess
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| n.暗淡，肮脏 | |
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304
needy
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| adj.贫穷的，贫困的，生活艰苦的 | |
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305
clumps
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| n.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的名词复数 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声v.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的第三人称单数 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声 | |
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306
spikes
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| n.穗( spike的名词复数 )；跑鞋；（防滑）鞋钉；尖状物v.加烈酒于( spike的第三人称单数 )；偷偷地给某人的饮料加入（更多）酒精（ 或药物）；把尖状物钉入；打乱某人的计划 | |
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307
leisurely
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| adj.悠闲的；从容的，慢慢的 | |
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308
willow
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| n.柳树 | |
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309
willows
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| n.柳树( willow的名词复数 )；柳木 | |
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310
cavern
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| n.洞穴，大山洞 | |
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311
wading
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| （从水、泥等）蹚，走过，跋( wade的现在分词 ) | |
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312
accurately
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| adv.准确地，精确地 | |
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313
penetrated
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| adj. 击穿的，鞭辟入里的 动词penetrate的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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314
meandering
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| 蜿蜒的河流，漫步，聊天 | |
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315
waded
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| （从水、泥等）蹚，走过，跋( wade的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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316
rapture
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| n.狂喜；全神贯注；着迷；v.使狂喜 | |
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317
tangled
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| adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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318
hovering
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| 鸟( hover的现在分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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319
basked
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| v.晒太阳，取暖( bask的过去式和过去分词 )；对…感到乐趣；因他人的功绩而出名；仰仗…的余泽 | |
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320
foaming
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| adj.布满泡沫的；发泡 | |
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321
babbled
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| v.喋喋不休( babble的过去式和过去分词 )；作潺潺声（如流水）；含糊不清地说话；泄漏秘密 | |
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322
cascades
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| 倾泻( cascade的名词复数 )； 小瀑布（尤指一连串瀑布中的一支）； 瀑布状物； 倾泻（或涌出）的东西 | |
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323
devastation
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| n.毁坏；荒废；极度震惊或悲伤 | |
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324
slashed
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| v.挥砍( slash的过去式和过去分词 )；鞭打；割破；削减 | |
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325
warping
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| n.翘面，扭曲，变形v.弄弯，变歪( warp的现在分词 )；使（行为等）不合情理，使乖戾， | |
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326
rusty
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| adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的 | |
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327
cinder
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| n.余烬，矿渣 | |
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328
battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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329
promising
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| adj.有希望的，有前途的 | |
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330
proffering
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| v.提供，贡献，提出( proffer的现在分词 ) | |
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331
intimidating
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| vt.恐吓，威胁( intimidate的现在分词) | |
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332
trespass
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| n./v.侵犯，闯入私人领地 | |
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333
serene
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| adj. 安详的，宁静的，平静的 | |
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334
cultivation
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| n.耕作，培养，栽培（法），养成 | |
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335
chunks
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| 厚厚的一块( chunk的名词复数 )； （某物）相当大的数量或部分 | |
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336
nomad
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| n.游牧部落的人，流浪者，游牧民 | |
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337
filthy
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| adj.卑劣的；恶劣的，肮脏的 | |
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338
scraps
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| 油渣 | |
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339
vehement
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| adj.感情强烈的；热烈的；(人)有强烈感情的 | |
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340
abounded
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| v.大量存在，充满，富于( abound的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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341
blessings
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| n.（上帝的）祝福( blessing的名词复数 )；好事；福分；因祸得福 | |
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342
enjoyment
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| n.乐趣；享有；享用 | |
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343
replacement
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| n.取代，替换，交换；替代品，代用品 | |
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344
legacy
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| n.遗产，遗赠；先人(或过去)留下的东西 | |
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345
epoch
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| n.(新)时代；历元 | |
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346
slovenly
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| adj.懒散的，不整齐的，邋遢的 | |
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347
wasteful
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| adj.（造成）浪费的，挥霍的 | |
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348
folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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349
demonstrations
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| 证明( demonstration的名词复数 )； 表明； 表达； 游行示威 | |
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350
torrent
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| n.激流，洪流；爆发，(话语等的)连发 | |
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351
tempted
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| v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词） | |
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352
jumble
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| vt.使混乱，混杂；n.混乱；杂乱的一堆 | |
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353
pretentious
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| adj.自命不凡的，自负的，炫耀的 | |
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354
glower
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| v.怒目而视 | |
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355
frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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356
gape
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| v.张口，打呵欠，目瞪口呆地凝视 | |
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357
advertising
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| n.广告业；广告活动 a.广告的；广告业务的 | |
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358
pickles
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| n.腌菜( pickle的名词复数 )；处于困境；遇到麻烦；菜酱 | |
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359
tonics
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| n.滋补品( tonic的名词复数 )；主音；奎宁水；浊音 | |
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360
condiments
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| n.调味品 | |
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361
solicitudes
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| n.关心，挂念，渴望( solicitude的名词复数 ) | |
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362
chaotic
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| adj.混沌的，一片混乱的，一团糟的 | |
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363
desolating
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| 毁坏( desolate的现在分词 )； 极大地破坏； 使沮丧； 使痛苦 | |
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364
plumber
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| n.(装修水管的)管子工 | |
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365
contrived
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| adj.不自然的，做作的；虚构的 | |
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366
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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367
musing
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| n. 沉思，冥想 adj. 沉思的, 冥想的 动词muse的现在分词形式 | |
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368
enigma
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| n.谜，谜一样的人或事 | |
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369
shrieked
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| v.尖叫( shriek的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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370
glorified
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| 美其名的，变荣耀的 | |
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371
blotted
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| 涂污( blot的过去式和过去分词 )； （用吸墨纸）吸干 | |
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