1
The problem which was already being mooted1 by such scientific men as Ramsay, Rutherford, and Soddy, in the very beginning of the twentieth century, the problem of inducing radio-activity in the heavier elements and so tapping the internal energy of atoms, was solved by a wonderful combination of induction2, intuition, and luck by Holsten so soon as the year 1933. From the first detection of radio-activity to its first subjugation3 to human purpose measured little more than a quarter of a century. For twenty years after that, indeed, minor4 difficulties prevented any striking practical application of his success, but the essential thing was done, this new boundary in the march of human progress was crossed, in that year. He set up atomic disintegration5 in a minute particle of bismuth; it exploded with great violence into a heavy gas of extreme radio-activity, which disintegrated6 in its turn in the course of seven days, and it was only after another year’s work that he was able to show practically that the last result of this rapid release of energy was gold. But the thing was done — at the cost of a blistered7 chest and an injured finger, and from the moment when the invisible speck8 of bismuth flashed into riving and rending10 energy, Holsten knew that he had opened a way for mankind, however narrow and dark it might still be, to worlds of limitless power. He recorded as much in the strange diary biography he left the world, a diary that was up to that particular moment a mass of speculations11 and calculations, and which suddenly became for a space an amazingly minute and human record of sensations and emotions that all humanity might understand.
He gives, in broken phrases and often single words, it is true, but none the less vividly12 for that, a record of the twenty-four hours following the demonstration13 of the correctness of his intricate tracery of computations and guesses. ‘I thought I should not sleep,’ he writes — the words he omitted are supplied in brackets —(on account of) ‘pain in (the) hand and chest and (the) wonder of what I had done. . . . Slept like a child.’
He felt strange and disconcerted the next morning; he had nothing to do, he was living alone in apartments in Bloomsbury, and he decided14 to go up to Hampstead Heath, which he had known when he was a little boy as a breezy playground. He went up by the underground tube that was then the recognised means of travel from one part of London to another, and walked up Heath Street from the tube station to the open heath. He found it a gully of planks15 and scaffoldings between the hoardings of house-wreckers. The spirit of the times had seized upon that narrow, steep, and winding16 thoroughfare, and was in the act of making it commodious17 and interesting, according to the remarkable18 ideals of Neo-Georgian aestheticism. Such is the illogical quality of humanity that Holsten, fresh from work that was like a petard under the seat of current civilisation19, saw these changes with regret. He had come up Heath Street perhaps a thousand times, had known the windows of all the little shops, spent hours in the vanished cinematograph theatre, and marvelled20 at the high-flung early Georgian houses upon the westward21 bank of that old gully of a thoroughfare; he felt strange with all these familiar things gone. He escaped at last with a feeling of relief from this choked alley23 of trenches24 and holes and cranes, and emerged upon the old familiar scene about the White Stone Pond. That, at least, was very much as it used to be.
There were still the fine old red-brick houses to left and right of him; the reservoir had been improved by a portico25 of marble, the white-fronted inn with the clustering flowers above its portico still stood out at the angle of the ways, and the blue view to Harrow Hill and Harrow spire26, a view of hills and trees and shining waters and wind-driven cloud shadows, was like the opening of a great window to the ascending28 Londoner. All that was very reassuring29. There was the same strolling crowd, the same perpetual miracle of motors dodging30 through it harmlessly, escaping headlong into the country from the Sabbatical stuffiness31 behind and below them. There was a band still, a women’s suffrage32 meeting — for the suffrage women had won their way back to the tolerance33, a trifle derisive34, of the populace again — socialist35 orators36, politicians, a band, and the same wild uproar37 of dogs, frantic38 with the gladness of their one blessed weekly release from the back yard and the chain. And away along the road to the Spaniards strolled a vast multitude, saying, as ever, that the view of London was exceptionally clear that day.
Young Holsten’s face was white. He walked with that uneasy affectation of ease that marks an overstrained nervous system and an under-exercised body. He hesitated at the White Stone Pond whether to go to the left of it or the right, and again at the fork of the roads. He kept shifting his stick in his hand, and every now and then he would get in the way of people on the footpath39 or be jostled by them because of the uncertainty40 of his movements. He felt, he confesses, ‘inadequate to ordinary existence.’ He seemed to himself to be something inhuman41 and mischievous42. All the people about him looked fairly prosperous, fairly happy, fairly well adapted to the lives they had to lead — a week of work and a Sunday of best clothes and mild promenading43 — and he had launched something that would disorganise the entire fabric44 that held their contentments and ambitions and satisfactions together. ‘Felt like an imbecile who has presented a box full of loaded revolvers to a Creche,’ he notes.
He met a man named Lawson, an old school-fellow, of whom history now knows only that he was red-faced and had a terrier. He and Holsten walked together and Holsten was sufficiently45 pale and jumpy for Lawson to tell him he overworked and needed a holiday. They sat down at a little table outside the County Council house of Golders Hill Park and sent one of the waiters to the Bull and Bush for a couple of bottles of beer, no doubt at Lawson’s suggestion. The beer warmed Holsten’s rather dehumanised system. He began to tell Lawson as clearly as he could to what his great discovery amounted. Lawson feigned46 attention, but indeed he had neither the knowledge nor the imagination to understand. ‘In the end, before many years are out, this must eventually change war, transit47, lighting48, building, and every sort of manufacture, even agriculture, every material human concern ——’
Then Holsten stopped short. Lawson had leapt to his feet. ‘Damn that dog!’ cried Lawson. ‘Look at it now. Hi! Here! Phewoo — phewoo phewoo! Come HERE, Bobs! Come HERE!’
The young scientific man, with his bandaged hand, sat at the green table, too tired to convey the wonder of the thing he had sought so long, his friend whistled and bawled49 for his dog, and the Sunday people drifted about them through the spring sunshine. For a moment or so Holsten stared at Lawson in astonishment50, for he had been too intent upon what he had been saying to realise how little Lawson had attended.
Then he remarked, ‘WELL!’ and smiled faintly, and — finished the tankard of beer before him.
Lawson sat down again. ‘One must look after one’s dog,’ he said, with a note of apology. ‘What was it you were telling me?’
2
In the evening Holsten went out again. He walked to Saint Paul’s Cathedral, and stood for a time near the door listening to the evening service. The candles upon the altar reminded him in some odd way of the fireflies at Fiesole. Then he walked back through the evening lights to Westminster. He was oppressed, he was indeed scared, by his sense of the immense consequences of his discovery. He had a vague idea that night that he ought not to publish his results, that they were premature51, that some secret association of wise men should take care of his work and hand it on from generation to generation until the world was riper for its practical application. He felt that nobody in all the thousands of people he passed had really awakened52 to the fact of change, they trusted the world for what it was, not to alter too rapidly, to respect their trusts, their assurances, their habits, their little accustomed traffics and hard-won positions.
He went into those little gardens beneath the over-hanging, brightly-lit masses of the Savoy Hotel and the Hotel Cecil. He sat down on a seat and became aware of the talk of the two people next to him. It was the talk of a young couple evidently on the eve of marriage. The man was congratulating himself on having regular employment at last; ‘they like me,’ he said, ‘and I like the job. If I work up — in’r dozen years or so I ought to be gettin’ somethin’ pretty comfortable. That’s the plain sense of it, Hetty. There ain’t no reason whatsoever53 why we shouldn’t get along very decently — very decently indeed.’
The desire for little successes amidst conditions securely fixed54! So it struck upon Holsten’s mind. He added in his diary, ‘I had a sense of all this globe as that. . . . ’
By that phrase he meant a kind of clairvoyant55 vision of this populated world as a whole, of all its cities and towns and villages, its high roads and the inns beside them, its gardens and farms and upland pastures, its boatmen and sailors, its ships coming along the great circles of the ocean, its time-tables and appointments and payments and dues as it were one unified56 and progressive spectacle. Sometimes such visions came to him; his mind, accustomed to great generalisations and yet acutely sensitive to detail, saw things far more comprehensively than the minds of most of his contemporaries. Usually the teeming57 sphere moved on to its predestined ends and circled with a stately swiftness on its path about the sun. Usually it was all a living progress that altered under his regard. But now fatigue59 a little deadened him to that incessancy60 of life, it seemed now just an eternal circling. He lapsed61 to the commoner persuasion62 of the great fixities and recurrencies of the human routine. The remoter past of wandering savagery64, the inevitable65 changes of to-morrow were veiled, and he saw only day and night, seed-time and harvest, loving and begetting66, births and deaths, walks in the summer sunlight and tales by the winter fireside, the ancient sequence of hope and acts and age perennially67 renewed, eddying68 on for ever and ever, save that now the impious hand of research was raised to overthrow69 this drowsy70, gently humming, habitual71, sunlit spinning-top of man’s existence. . . .
For a time he forgot wars and crimes and hates and persecutions, famine and pestilence72, the cruelties of beasts, weariness and the bitter wind, failure and insufficiency and retrocession. He saw all mankind in terms of the humble73 Sunday couple upon the seat beside him, who schemed their inglorious outlook and improbable contentments. ‘I had a sense of all this globe as that.’
His intelligence struggled against this mood and struggled for a time in vain. He reassured74 himself against the invasion of this disconcerting idea that he was something strange and inhuman, a loose wanderer from the flock returning with evil gifts from his sustained unnatural75 excursions amidst the darknesses and phosphorescences beneath the fair surfaces of life. Man had not been always thus; the instincts and desires of the little home, the little plot, was not all his nature; also he was an adventurer, an experimenter, an unresting curiosity, an insatiable desire. For a few thousand generations indeed he had tilled the earth and followed the seasons, saying his prayers, grinding his corn and trampling76 the October winepress, yet not for so long but that he was still full of restless stirrings.
‘If there have been home and routine and the field,’ thought Holsten, ‘there have also been wonder and the sea.’
He turned his head and looked up over the back of the seat at the great hotels above him, full of softly shaded lights and the glow and colour and stir of feasting. Might his gift to mankind mean simply more of that? . . .
He got up and walked out of the garden, surveyed a passing tram-car, laden77 with warm light, against the deep blues78 of evening, dripping and trailing long skirts of shining reflection; he crossed the Embankment and stood for a time watching the dark river and turning ever and again to the lit buildings and bridges. His mind began to scheme conceivable replacements79 of all those clustering arrangements . . . .
‘It has begun,’ he writes in the diary in which these things are recorded. ‘It is not for me to reach out to consequences I cannot foresee. I am a part, not a whole; I am a little instrument in the armoury of Change. If I were to burn all these papers, before a score of years had passed, some other man would be doing this. . .
3
Holsten, before he died, was destined58 to see atomic energy dominating every other source of power, but for some years yet a vast network of difficulties in detail and application kept the new discovery from any effective invasion of ordinary life. The path from the laboratory to the workshop is sometimes a tortuous81 one; electro-magnetic radiations were known and demonstrated for twenty years before Marconi made them practically available, and in the same way it was twenty years before induced radio-activity could be brought to practical utilisation. The thing, of course, was discussed very much, more perhaps at the time of its discovery than during the interval82 of technical adaptation, but with very little realisation of the huge economic revolution that impended83. What chiefly impressed the journalists of 1933 was the production of gold from bismuth and the realisation albeit84 upon unprofitable lines of the alchemist’s dreams; there was a considerable amount of discussion and expectation in that more intelligent section of the educated publics of the various civilised countries which followed scientific development; but for the most part the world went about its business — as the inhabitants of those Swiss villages which live under the perpetual threat of overhanging rocks and mountains go about their business — just as though the possible was impossible, as though the inevitable was postponed85 for ever because it was delayed.
It was in 1953 that the first Holsten-Roberts engine brought induced radio-activity into the sphere of industrial production, and its first general use was to replace the steam-engine in electrical generating stations. Hard upon the appearance of this came the Dass-Tata engine — the invention of two among the brilliant galaxy86 of Bengali inventors the modernisation of Indian thought was producing at this time — which was used chiefly for automobiles88, aeroplanes, waterplanes, and such-like, mobile purposes. The American Kemp engine, differing widely in principle but equally practicable, and the Krupp-Erlanger came hard upon the heels of this, and by the autumn of 1954 a gigantic replacement80 of industrial methods and machinery89 was in progress all about the habitable globe. Small wonder was this when the cost, even of these earliest and clumsiest of atomic engines, is compared with that of the power they superseded90. Allowing for lubrication the Dass-Tata engine, once it was started cost a penny to run thirty-seven miles, and added only nine and quarter pounds to the weight of the carriage it drove. It made the heavy alcohol-driven automobile87 of the time ridiculous in appearance as well as preposterously91 costly93. For many years the price of coal and every form of liquid fuel had been clambering to levels that made even the revival94 of the draft horse seem a practicable possibility, and now with the abrupt95 relaxation96 of this stringency97, the change in appearance of the traffic upon the world’s roads was instantaneous. In three years the frightful98 armoured monsters that had hooted99 and smoked and thundered about the world for four awful decades were swept away to the dealers100 in old metal, and the highways thronged101 with light and clean and shimmering102 shapes of silvered steel. At the same time a new impetus103 was given to aviation by the relatively104 enormous power for weight of the atomic engine, it was at last possible to add Redmayne’s ingenious helicopter ascent105 and descent engine to the vertical106 propeller107 that had hitherto been the sole driving force of the aeroplane without overweighting the machine, and men found themselves possessed108 of an instrument of flight that could hover109 or ascend27 or descend110 vertically111 and gently as well as rush wildly through the air. The last dread112 of flying vanished. As the journalists of the time phrased it, this was the epoch113 of the Leap into the Air. The new atomic aeroplane became indeed a mania114; every one of means was frantic to possess a thing so controllable, so secure and so free from the dust and danger of the road, and in France alone in the year 1943 thirty thousand of these new aeroplanes were manufactured and licensed115, and soared humming softly into the sky.
And with an equal speed atomic engines of various types invaded industrialism. The railways paid enormous premiums116 for priority in the delivery of atomic traction117 engines, atomic smelting118 was embarked119 upon so eagerly as to lead to a number of disastrous120 explosions due to inexperienced handling of the new power, and the revolutionary cheapening of both materials and electricity made the entire reconstruction121 of domestic buildings a matter merely dependent upon a reorganisation of the methods of the builder and the house-furnisher. Viewed from the side of the new power and from the point of view of those who financed and manufactured the new engines and material it required the age of the Leap into the Air was one of astonishing prosperity. Patent-holding companies were presently paying dividends124 of five or six hundred per cent. and enormous fortunes were made and fantastic wages earned by all who were concerned in the new developments. This prosperity was not a little enhanced by the fact that in both the Dass-Tata and Holsten-Roberts engines one of the recoverable waste products was gold — the former disintegrated dust of bismuth and the latter dust of lead — and that this new supply of gold led quite naturally to a rise in prices throughout the world.
This spectacle of feverish125 enterprise was productivity, this crowding flight of happy and fortunate rich people — every great city was as if a crawling ant-hill had suddenly taken wing — was the bright side of the opening phase of the new epoch in human history. Beneath that brightness was a gathering126 darkness, a deepening dismay. If there was a vast development of production there was also a huge destruction of values. These glaring factories working night and day, these glittering new vehicles swinging noiselessly along the roads, these flights of dragon-flies that swooped127 and soared and circled in the air, were indeed no more than the brightnesses of lamps and fires that gleam out when the world sinks towards twilight129 and the night. Between these high lights accumulated disaster, social catastrophe130. The coal mines were manifestly doomed131 to closure at no very distant date, the vast amount of capital invested in oil was becoming unsaleable, millions of coal miners, steel workers upon the old lines, vast swarms132 of unskilled or under-skilled labourers in innumerable occupations, were being flung out of employment by the superior efficiency of the new machinery, the rapid fall in the cost of transit was destroying high land values at every centre of population, the value of existing house property had become problematical, gold was undergoing headlong depreciation133, all the securities upon which the credit of the world rested were slipping and sliding, banks were tottering134, the stock exchanges were scenes of feverish panic; — this was the reverse of the spectacle, these were the black and monstrous135 under-consequences of the Leap into the Air.
There is a story of a demented London stockbroker136 running out into Threadneedle Street and tearing off his clothes as he ran. ‘The Steel Trust is scrapping138 the whole of its plant,’ he shouted. ‘The State Railways are going to scrap137 all their engines. Everything’s going to be scrapped139 — everything. Come and scrap the mint, you fellows, come and scrap the mint!’
In the year 1955 the suicide rate for the United States of America quadrupled any previous record. There was an enormous increase also in violent crime throughout the world. The thing had come upon an unprepared humanity; it seemed as though human society was to be smashed by its own magnificent gains.
For there had been no foresight140 of these things. There had been no attempt anywhere even to compute141 the probable dislocations this flood of inexpensive energy would produce in human affairs. The world in these days was not really governed at all, in the sense in which government came to be understood in subsequent years. Government was a treaty, not a design; it was forensic142, conservative, disputatious, unseeing, unthinking, uncreative; throughout the world, except where the vestiges144 of absolutism still sheltered the court favourite and the trusted servant, it was in the hands of the predominant caste of lawyers, who had an enormous advantage in being the only trained caste. Their professional education and every circumstance in the manipulation of the fantastically naive145 electoral methods by which they clambered to power, conspired146 to keep them contemptuous of facts, conscientiously147 unimaginative, alert to claim and seize advantages and suspicious of every generosity148. Government was an obstructive business of energetic fractions, progress went on outside of and in spite of public activities, and legislation was the last crippling recognition of needs so clamorous149 and imperative150 and facts so aggressively established as to invade even the dingy151 seclusions152 of the judges and threaten the very existence of the otherwise inattentive political machine.
The world was so little governed that with the very coming of plenty, in the full tide of an incalculable abundance, when everything necessary to satisfy human needs and everything necessary to realise such will and purpose as existed then in human hearts was already at hand, one has still to tell of hardship, famine, anger, confusion, conflict, and incoherent suffering. There was no scheme for the distribution of this vast new wealth that had come at last within the reach of men; there was no clear conception that any such distribution was possible. As one attempts a comprehensive view of those opening years of the new age, as one measures it against the latent achievement that later years have demonstrated, one begins to measure the blindness, the narrowness, the insensate unimaginative individualism of the pre-atomic time. Under this tremendous dawn of power and freedom, under a sky ablaze153 with promise, in the very presence of science standing154 like some bountiful goddess over all the squat155 darknesses of human life, holding patiently in her strong arms, until men chose to take them, security, plenty, the solution of riddles157, the key of the bravest adventures, in her very presence, and with the earnest of her gifts in court, the world was to witness such things as the squalid spectacle of the Dass-Tata patent litigation.
There in a stuffy158 court in London, a grimy oblong box of a room, during the exceptional heat of the May of 1956, the leading counsel of the day argued and shouted over a miserable159 little matter of more royalties160 or less and whether the Dass-Tata company might not bar the Holsten-Roberts’ methods of utilising the new power. The Dass-Tata people were indeed making a strenuous161 attempt to secure a world monopoly in atomic engineering. The judge, after the manner of those times, sat raised above the court, wearing a preposterous92 gown and a foolish huge wig162, the counsel also wore dirty-looking little wigs163 and queer black gowns over their usual costume, wigs and gowns that were held to be necessary to their pleading, and upon unclean wooden benches stirred and whispered artful-looking solicitors164, busily scribbling165 reporters, the parties to the case, expert witnesses, interested people, and a jostling confusion of subpoenaed166 persons, briefless young barristers (forming a style on the most esteemed167 and truculent168 examples) and casual eccentric spectators who preferred this pit of iniquity169 to the free sunlight outside. Every one was damply hot, the examining King’s Counsel wiped the perspiration170 from his huge, clean-shaven upper lip; and into this atmosphere of grasping contention171 and human exhalations the daylight filtered through a window that was manifestly dirty. The jury sat in a double pew to the left of the judge, looking as uncomfortable as frogs that have fallen into an ash-pit, and in the witness-box lied the would-be omnivorous172 Dass, under cross-examination. . . .
Holsten had always been accustomed to publish his results so soon as they appeared to him to be sufficiently advanced to furnish a basis for further work, and to that confiding173 disposition174 and one happy flash of adaptive invention the alert Dass owed his claim. . . .
But indeed a vast multitude of such sharp people were clutching, patenting, pre-empting, monopolising this or that feature of the new development, seeking to subdue175 this gigantic winged power to the purposes of their little lusts176 and avarice177. That trial is just one of innumerable disputes of the same kind. For a time the face of the world festered with patent legislation. It chanced, however, to have one oddly dramatic feature in the fact that Holsten, after being kept waiting about the court for two days as a beggar might have waited at a rich man’s door, after being bullied178 by ushers179 and watched by policemen, was called as a witness, rather severely180 handled by counsel, and told not to ‘quibble’ by the judge when he was trying to be absolutely explicit181.
The judge scratched his nose with a quill182 pen, and sneered183 at Holsten’s astonishment round the corner of his monstrous wig. Holsten was a great man, was he? Well, in a law-court great men were put in their places.
‘We want to know has the plaintiff added anything to this or hasn’t he?’ said the judge, ‘we don’t want to have your views whether Sir Philip Dass’s improvements were merely superficial adaptations or whether they were implicit184 in your paper. No doubt — after the manner of inventors — you think most things that were ever likely to be discovered are implicit in your papers. No doubt also you think too that most subsequent additions and modifications185 are merely superficial. Inventors have a way of thinking that. The law isn’t concerned with that sort of thing. The law has nothing to do with the vanity of inventors. The law is concerned with the question whether these patent rights have the novelty the plantiff claims for them. What that admission may or may not stop, and all these other things you are saying in your overflowing186 zeal187 to answer more than the questions addressed to you — none of these things have anything whatever to do with the case in hand. It is a matter of constant astonishment to me in this court to see how you scientific men, with all your extraordinary claims to precision and veracity188, wander and wander so soon as you get into the witness-box. I know no more unsatisfactory class of witness. The plain and simple question is, has Sir Philip Dass made any real addition to existing knowledge and methods in this matter or has he not? We don’t want to know whether they were large or small additions nor what the consequences of your admission may be. That you will leave to us.’
Holsten was silent.
‘Surely?’ said the judge, almost pityingly.
‘No, he hasn’t,’ said Holsten, perceiving that for once in his life he must disregard infinitesimals.
‘Ah!’ said the judge, ‘now why couldn’t you say that when counsel put the question? . . .’
An entry in Holsten’s diary-autobiography, dated five days later, runs: ‘Still amazed. The law is the most dangerous thing in this country. It is hundreds of years old. It hasn’t an idea. The oldest of old bottles and this new wine, the most explosive wine. Something will overtake them.’
4
There was a certain truth in Holsten’s assertion that the law was ‘hundreds of years old.’ It was, in relation to current thought and widely accepted ideas, an archaic189 thing. While almost all the material and methods of life had been changing rapidly and were now changing still more rapidly, the law-courts and the legislatures of the world were struggling desperately190 to meet modern demands with devices and procedures, conceptions of rights and property and authority and obligation that dated from the rude compromises of relatively barbaric times. The horse-hair wigs and antic dresses of the British judges, their musty courts and overbearing manners, were indeed only the outward and visible intimations of profounder anachronisms. The legal and political organisation123 of the earth in the middle twentieth century was indeed everywhere like a complicated garment, outworn yet strong, that now fettered191 the governing body that once it had protected.
Yet that same spirit of free-thinking and outspoken192 publication that in the field of natural science had been the beginning of the conquest of nature, was at work throughout all the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries preparing the spirit of the new world within the degenerating194 body of the old. The idea of a greater subordination of individual interests and established institutions to the collective future, is traceable more and more clearly in the literature of those times, and movement after movement fretted195 itself away in criticism of and opposition196 to first this aspect and then that of the legal, social, and political order. Already in the early nineteenth century Shelley, with no scrap of alternative, is denouncing the established rulers of the world as Anarchs, and the entire system of ideas and suggestions that was known as Socialism, and more particularly its international side, feeble as it was in creative proposals or any method of transition, still witnesses to the growth of a conception of a modernised system of inter-relationships that should supplant197 the existing tangle198 of proprietary199 legal ideas.
The word ‘Sociology’ was invented by Herbert Spencer, a popular writer upon philosophical200 subjects, who flourished about the middle of the nineteenth century, but the idea of a state, planned as an electric-traction system is planned, without reference to pre-existing apparatus201, upon scientific lines, did not take a very strong hold upon the popular imagination of the world until the twentieth century. Then, the growing impatience202 of the American people with the monstrous and socially paralysing party systems that had sprung out of their absurd electoral arrangements, led to the appearance of what came to be called the ‘Modern State’ movement, and a galaxy of brilliant writers, in America, Europe, and the East, stirred up the world to the thought of bolder rearrangements of social interaction, property, employment, education, and government, than had ever been contemplated203 before. No doubt these Modern State ideas were very largely the reflection upon social and political thought of the vast revolution in material things that had been in progress for two hundred years, but for a long time they seemed to be having no more influence upon existing institutions than the writings of Rousseau and Voltaire seemed to have had at the time of the death of the latter. They were fermenting204 in men’s minds, and it needed only just such social and political stresses as the coming of the atomic mechanisms205 brought about, to thrust them forward abruptly206 into crude and startling realisation.
5
Frederick Barnet’s Wander Jahre is one of those autobiographical novels that were popular throughout the third and fourth decades of the twentieth century. It was published in 1970, and one must understand Wander Jahre rather in a spiritual and intellectual than in a literal sense. It is indeed an allusive207 title, carrying the world back to the Wilhelm Meister of Goethe, a century and a half earlier.
Its author, Frederick Barnet, gives a minute and curious history of his life and ideas between his nineteenth and his twenty-third birthdays. He was neither a very original nor a very brilliant man, but he had a trick of circumstantial writing; and though no authentic208 portrait was to survive for the information of posterity209, he betrays by a score of casual phrases that he was short, sturdy, inclined to be plump, with a ‘rather blobby’ face, and full, rather projecting blue eyes. He belonged until the financial debacle of 1956 to the class of fairly prosperous people, he was a student in London, he aeroplaned to Italy and then had a pedestrian tour from Genoa to Rome, crossed in the air to Greece and Egypt, and came back over the Balkans and Germany. His family fortunes, which were largely invested in bank shares, coal mines, and house property, were destroyed. Reduced to penury210, he sought to earn a living. He suffered great hardship, and was then caught up by the war and had a year of soldiering, first as an officer in the English infantry211 and then in the army of pacification212. His book tells all these things so simply and at the same time so explicitly213, that it remains214, as it were, an eye by which future generations may have at least one man’s vision of the years of the Great Change.
And he was, he tells us, a ‘Modern State’ man ‘by instinct’ from the beginning. He breathed in these ideas in the class rooms and laboratories of the Carnegie Foundation school that rose, a long and delicately beautiful facade215, along the South Bank of the Thames opposite the ancient dignity of Somerset House. Such thought was interwoven with the very fabric of that pioneer school in the educational renascence in England. After the customary exchange years in Heidelberg and Paris, he went into the classical school of London University. The older so-called ‘classical’ education of the British pedagogues216, probably the most paralysing, ineffective, and foolish routine that ever wasted human life, had already been swept out of this great institution in favour of modern methods; and he learnt Greek and Latin as well as he had learnt German, Spanish, and French, so that he wrote and spoke193 them freely, and used them with an unconscious ease in his study of the foundation civilisations of the European system to which they were the key. (This change was still so recent that he mentions an encounter in Rome with an ‘Oxford don’ who ‘spoke Latin with a Wiltshire accent and manifest discomfort217, wrote Greek letters with his tongue out, and seemed to think a Greek sentence a charm when it was a quotation218 and an impropriety when it wasn’t.’)
Barnet saw the last days of the coal-steam engines upon the English railways and the gradual cleansing219 of the London atmosphere as the smoke-creating sea-coal fires gave place to electric heating. The building of laboratories at Kensington was still in progress, and he took part in the students’ riots that delayed the removal of the Albert Memorial. He carried a banner with ‘We like Funny Statuary’ on one side, and on the other ‘Seats and Canopies220 for Statues, Why should our Great Departed Stand in the Rain?’ He learnt the rather athletic221 aviation of those days at the University grounds at Sydenham, and he was fined for flying over the new prison for political libellers at Wormwood Scrubs, ‘in a manner calculated to exhilarate the prisoners while at exercise.’ That was the time of the attempted suppression of any criticism of the public judicature and the place was crowded with journalists who had ventured to call attention to the dementia of Chief Justice Abrahams. Barnet was not a very good aviator222, he confesses he was always a little afraid of his machine — there was excellent reason for every one to be afraid of those clumsy early types — and he never attempted steep descents or very high flying. He also, he records, owned one of those oil-driven motor-bicycles whose clumsy complexity223 and extravagant224 filthiness225 still astonish the visitors to the museum of machinery at South Kensington. He mentions running over a dog and complains of the ruinous price of ‘spatchcocks’ in Surrey. ‘Spatchcocks,’ it seems, was a slang term for crushed hens.
He passed the examinations necessary to reduce his military service to a minimum, and his want of any special scientific or technical qualification and a certain precocious226 corpulence that handicapped his aviation indicated the infantry of the line as his sphere of training. That was the most generalised form of soldiering. The development of the theory of war had been for some decades but little assisted by any practical experience. What fighting had occurred in recent years, had been fighting in minor or uncivilised states, with peasant or barbaric soldiers and with but a small equipment of modern contrivances, and the great powers of the world were content for the most part to maintain armies that sustained in their broader organisation the traditions of the European wars of thirty and forty years before. There was the infantry arm to which Barnet belonged and which was supposed to fight on foot with a rifle and be the main portion of the army. There were cavalry227 forces (horse soldiers), having a ratio to the infantry that had been determined228 by the experiences of the Franco-German war in 1871. There was also artillery229, and for some unexplained reason much of this was still drawn230 by horses; though there were also in all the European armies a small number of motor-guns with wheels so constructed that they could go over broken ground. In addition there were large developments of the engineering arm, concerned with motor transport, motor-bicycle scouting231, aviation, and the like.
No first-class intelligence had been sought to specialise in and work out the problem of warfare232 with the new appliances and under modern conditions, but a succession of able jurists, Lord Haldane, Chief Justice Briggs, and that very able King’s Counsel, Philbrick, had reconstructed the army frequently and thoroughly233 and placed it at last, with the adoption234 of national service, upon a footing that would have seemed very imposing235 to the public of 1900. At any moment the British Empire could now put a million and a quarter of arguable soldiers upon the board of Welt-Politik. The traditions of Japan and the Central European armies were more princely and less forensic; the Chinese still refused resolutely236 to become a military power, and maintained a small standing army upon the American model that was said, so far as it went, to be highly efficient, and Russia, secured by a stringent237 administration against internal criticism, had scarcely altered the design of a uniform or the organisation of a battery since the opening decades of the century. Barnet’s opinion of his military training was manifestly a poor one, his Modern State ideas disposed him to regard it as a bore, and his common sense condemned238 it as useless. Moreover, his habit of body made him peculiarly sensitive to the fatigues240 and hardships of service.
‘For three days in succession we turned out before dawn and — for no earthly reason — without breakfast,’ he relates. ‘I suppose that is to show us that when the Day comes the first thing will be to get us thoroughly uncomfortable and rotten. We then proceeded to Kriegspiel, according to the mysterious ideas of those in authority over us. On the last day we spent three hours under a hot if early sun getting over eight miles of country to a point we could have reached in a motor omnibus in nine minutes and a half — I did it the next day in that — and then we made a massed attack upon entrenchments that could have shot us all about three times over if only the umpires had let them. Then came a little bayonet exercise, but I doubt if I am sufficiently a barbarian241 to stick this long knife into anything living. Anyhow in this battle I shouldn’t have had a chance. Assuming that by some miracle I hadn’t been shot three times over, I was far too hot and blown when I got up to the entrenchments even to lift my beastly rifle. It was those others would have begun the sticking. . . .
‘For a time we were watched by two hostile aeroplanes; then our own came up and asked them not to, and — the practice of aerial warfare still being unknown — they very politely desisted and went away and did dives and circles of the most charming description over the Fox Hills.’
All Barnet’s accounts of his military training were written in the same half-contemptuous, half-protesting tone. He was of opinion that his chances of participating in any real warfare were very slight, and that, if after all he should participate, it was bound to be so entirely242 different from these peace manoeuvres that his only course as a rational man would be to keep as observantly out of danger as he could until he had learnt the tricks and possibilities of the new conditions. He states this quite frankly243. Never was a man more free from sham244 heroics.
6
Barnet welcomed the appearance of the atomic engine with the zest245 of masculine youth in all fresh machinery, and it is evident that for some time he failed to connect the rush of wonderful new possibilities with the financial troubles of his family. ‘I knew my father was worried,’ he admits. That cast the smallest of shadows upon his delighted departure for Italy and Greece and Egypt with three congenial companions in one of the new atomic models. They flew over the Channel Isles246 and Touraine, he mentions, and circled about Mont Blanc —‘These new helicopters, we found,’ he notes, ‘had abolished all the danger and strain of sudden drops to which the old-time aeroplanes were liable’— and then he went on by way of Pisa, Paestum, Ghirgenti, and Athens, to visit the pyramids by moonlight, flying thither247 from Cairo, and to follow the Nile up to Khartum. Even by later standards, it must have been a very gleeful holiday for a young man, and it made the tragedy of his next experiences all the darker. A week after his return his father, who was a widower248, announced himself ruined, and committed suicide by means of an unscheduled opiate.
At one blow Barnet found himself flung out of the possessing, spending, enjoying class to which he belonged, penniless and with no calling by which he could earn a living. He tried teaching and some journalism249, but in a little while he found himself on the underside of a world in which he had always reckoned to live in the sunshine. For innumerable men such an experience has meant mental and spiritual destruction, but Barnet, in spite of his bodily gravitation towards comfort, showed himself when put to the test, of the more valiant250 modern quality. He was saturated251 with the creative stoicism of the heroic times that were already dawning, and he took his difficulties and discomforts252 stoutly253 as his appointed material, and turned them to expression.
Indeed, in his book, he thanks fortune for them. ‘I might have lived and died,’ he says, ‘in that neat fool’s paradise of secure lavishness254 above there. I might never have realised the gathering wrath255 and sorrow of the ousted256 and exasperated257 masses. In the days of my own prosperity things had seemed to me to be very well arranged.’ Now from his new point of view he was to find they were not arranged at all; that government was a compromise of aggressions and powers and lassitudes, and law a convention between interests, and that the poor and the weak, though they had many negligent258 masters, had few friends.
‘I had thought things were looked after,’ he wrote. ‘It was with a kind of amazement259 that I tramped the roads and starved — and found that no one in particular cared.’
He was turned out of his lodging260 in a backward part of London.
‘It was with difficulty I persuaded my landlady261 — she was a needy262 widow, poor soul, and I was already in her debt — to keep an old box for me in which I had locked a few letters, keepsakes, and the like. She lived in great fear of the Public Health and Morality Inspectors263, because she was sometimes too poor to pay the customary tip to them, but at last she consented to put it in a dark tiled place under the stairs, and then I went forth264 into the world — to seek first the luck of a meal and then shelter.’
He wandered down into the thronging265 gayer parts of London, in which a year or so ago he had been numbered among the spenders.
London, under the Visible Smoke Law, by which any production of visible smoke with or without excuse was punishable by a fine, had already ceased to be the sombre smoke-darkened city of the Victorian time; it had been, and indeed was, constantly being rebuilt, and its main streets were already beginning to take on those characteristics that distinguished266 them throughout the latter half of the twentieth century. The insanitary horse and the plebeian267 bicycle had been banished268 from the roadway, which was now of a resilient, glass-like surface, spotlessly clean; and the foot passenger was restricted to a narrow vestige143 of the ancient footpath on either side of the track and forbidden at the risk of a fine, if he survived, to cross the roadway. People descended269 from their automobiles upon this pavement and went through the lower shops to the lifts and stairs to the new ways for pedestrians270, the Rows, that ran along the front of the houses at the level of the first story, and, being joined by frequent bridges, gave the newer parts of London a curiously271 Venetian appearance. In some streets there were upper and even third-story Rows. For most of the day and all night the shop windows were lit by electric light, and many establishments had made, as it were, canals of public footpaths272 through their premises273 in order to increase their window space.
Barnet made his way along this night-scene rather apprehensively274 since the police had power to challenge and demand the Labour Card of any indigent275-looking person, and if the record failed to show he was in employment, dismiss him to the traffic pavement below.
But there was still enough of his former gentility about Barnet’s appearance and bearing to protect him from this; the police, too, had other things to think of that night, and he was permitted to reach the galleries about Leicester Square — that great focus of London life and pleasure.
He gives a vivid description of the scene that evening. In the centre was a garden raised on arches lit by festoons of lights and connected with the Rows by eight graceful276 bridges, beneath which hummed the interlacing streams of motor traffic, pulsating277 as the current alternated between east and west and north and south. Above rose great frontages of intricate rather than beautiful reinforced porcelain278, studded with lights, barred by bold illuminated279 advertisements, and glowing with reflections. There were the two historical music halls of this place, the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, in which the municipal players revolved280 perpetually through the cycle of Shakespeare’s plays, and four other great houses of refreshment281 and entertainment whose pinnacles282 streamed up into the blue obscurity of the night. The south side of the square was in dark contrast to the others; it was still being rebuilt, and a lattice of steel bars surmounted283 by the frozen gestures of monstrous cranes rose over the excavated284 sites of vanished Victorian buildings.
This framework attracted Barnet’s attention for a time to the exclusion285 of other interests. It was absolutely still, it had a dead rigidity286, a stricken inaction, no one was at work upon it and all its machinery was quiet; but the constructor’s globes of vacuum light filled its every interstice with a quivering green moonshine and showed alert but motionless — soldier sentinels!
He asked a passing stroller, and was told that the men had struck that day against the use of an atomic riveter287 that would have doubled the individual efficiency and halved288 the number of steel workers.
‘Shouldn’t wonder if they didn’t get chucking bombs,’ said Barnet’s informant, hovered289 for a moment, and then went on his way to the Alhambra music hall.
Barnet became aware of an excitement in the newspaper kiosks at the corners of the square. Something very sensational290 had been flashed upon the transparencies. Forgetting for a moment his penniless condition, he made his way over a bridge to buy a paper, for in those days the papers, which were printed upon thin sheets of metallic291 foil, were sold at determinate points by specially292 licensed purveyors. Half over, he stopped short at a change in the traffic below; and was astonished to see that the police signals were restricting vehicles to the half roadway. When presently he got within sight of the transparencies that had replaced the placards of Victorian times, he read of the Great March of the Unemployed293 that was already in progress through the West End, and so without expenditure294 he was able to understand what was coming.
He watched, and his book describes this procession which the police had considered it unwise to prevent and which had been spontaneously organised in imitation of the Unemployed Processions of earlier times. He had expected a mob but there was a kind of sullen295 discipline about the procession when at last it arrived. What seemed for a time an unending column of men marched wearily, marched with a kind of implacable futility296, along the roadway underneath297 him. He was, he says, moved to join them, but instead he remained watching. They were a dingy, shabby, ineffective-looking multitude, for the most part incapable298 of any but obsolete299 and superseded types of labour. They bore a few banners with the time-honoured inscription300: ‘Work, not Charity,’ but otherwise their ranks were unadorned.
They were not singing, they were not even talking, there was nothing truculent nor aggressive in their bearing, they had no definite objective they were just marching and showing themselves in the more prosperous parts of London. They were a sample of that great mass of unskilled cheap labour which the now still cheaper mechanical powers had superseded for evermore. They were being ‘scrapped’— as horses had been ‘scrapped.’
Barnet leant over the parapet watching them, his mind quickened by his own precarious301 condition. For a time, he says, he felt nothing but despair at the sight; what should be done, what could be done for this gathering surplus of humanity? They were so manifestly useless — and incapable — and pitiful.
What were they asking for?
They had been overtaken by unexpected things. Nobody had foreseen ——
It flashed suddenly into his mind just what the multitudinous shambling enigma302 below meant. It was an appeal against the unexpected, an appeal to those others who, more fortunate, seemed wiser and more powerful, for something — for INTELLIGENCE. This mute mass, weary footed, rank following rank, protested its persuasion that some of these others must have foreseen these dislocations — that anyhow they ought to have foreseen — and arranged.
That was what this crowd of wreckage303 was feeling and seeking so dumbly to assert.
‘Things came to me like the turning on of a light in a darkened room,’ he says. ‘These men were praying to their fellow creatures as once they prayed to God! The last thing that men will realise about anything is that it is inanimate. They had transferred their animation304 to mankind. They still believed there was intelligence somewhere, even if it was careless or malignant305. . . . It had only to be aroused to be conscience-stricken, to be moved to exertion306. . . . And I saw, too, that as yet THERE WAS NO SUCH INTELLIGENCE. The world waits for intelligence. That intelligence has still to be made, that will for good and order has still to be gathered together, out of scraps307 of impulse and wandering seeds of benevolence308 and whatever is fine and creative in our souls, into a common purpose. It’s something still to come. . . . ’
It is characteristic of the widening thought of the time that this not very heroical young man who, in any previous age, might well have been altogether occupied with the problem of his own individual necessities, should be able to stand there and generalise about the needs of the race.
But upon all the stresses and conflicts of that chaotic309 time there was already dawning the light of a new era. The spirit of humanity was escaping, even then it was escaping, from its extreme imprisonment310 in individuals. Salvation311 from the bitter intensities312 of self, which had been a conscious religious end for thousands of years, which men had sought in mortifications, in the wilderness313, in meditation314, and by innumerable strange paths, was coming at last with the effect of naturalness into the talk of men, into the books they read, into their unconscious gestures, into their newspapers and daily purposes and everyday acts. The broad horizons, the magic possibilities that the spirit of the seeker had revealed to them, were charming them out of those ancient and instinctive315 preoccupations from which the very threat of hell and torment316 had failed to drive them. And this young man, homeless and without provision even for the immediate317 hours, in the presence of social disorganisation, distress318, and perplexity, in a blazing wilderness of thoughtless pleasure that blotted319 out the stars, could think as he tells us he thought.
‘I saw life plain,’ he wrote. ‘I saw the gigantic task before us, and the very splendour of its intricate and immeasurable difficulty filled me with exaltation. I saw that we have still to discover government, that we have still to discover education, which is the necessary reciprocal of government, and that all this — in which my own little speck of a life was so manifestly overwhelmed — this and its yesterday in Greece and Rome and Egypt were nothing, the mere122 first dust swirls320 of the beginning, the movements and dim murmurings of a sleeper321 who will presently be awake. . . . ’
7
And then the story tells, with an engaging simplicity322, of his descent from this ecstatic vision of reality.
‘Presently I found myself again, and I was beginning to feel cold and a little hungry.’
He bethought himself of the John Burns Relief Offices which stood upon the Thames Embankment. He made his way through the galleries of the booksellers and the National Gallery, which had been open continuously day and night to all decently dressed people now for more than twelve years, and across the rose-gardens of Trafalgar Square, and so by the hotel colonnade323 to the Embankment. He had long known of these admirable offices, which had swept the last beggars and matchsellers and all the casual indigent from the London streets, and he believed that he would, as a matter of course, be able to procure324 a ticket for food and a night’s lodgings325 and some indication of possible employment.
But he had not reckoned upon the new labour troubles, and when he got to the Embankment he found the offices hopelessly congested and besieged326 by a large and rather unruly crowd. He hovered for a time on the outskirts327 of the waiting multitude, perplexed328 and dismayed, and then he became aware of a movement, a purposive trickling329 away of people, up through the arches of the great buildings that had arisen when all the railway stations were removed to the south side of the river, and so to the covered ways of the Strand330. And here, in the open glare of midnight, he found unemployed men begging, and not only begging, but begging with astonishing assurance, from the people who were emerging from the small theatres and other such places of entertainment which abounded331 in that thoroughfare.
This was an altogether unexampled thing. There had been no begging in London streets for a quarter of a century. But that night the police were evidently unwilling332 or unable to cope with the destitute333 who were invading those well-kept quarters of the town. They had become stonily334 blind to anything but manifest disorder335.
Barnet walked through the crowd, unable to bring himself to ask; indeed his bearing must have been more valiant than his circumstances, for twice he says that he was begged from. Near the Trafalgar Square gardens, a girl with reddened cheeks and blackened eyebrows336, who was walking alone, spoke to him with a peculiar239 friendliness337.
‘I’m starving,’ he said to her abruptly.
‘Oh! poor dear!’ she said; and with the impulsive338 generosity of her kind, glanced round and slipped a silver piece into his hand. . . .
It was a gift that, in spite of the precedent339 of De Quincey, might under the repressive social legislation of those times, have brought Barnet within reach of the prison lash9. But he took it, he confesses, and thanked her as well as he was able, and went off very gladly to get food.
8
A day or so later — and again his freedom to go as he pleased upon the roads may be taken as a mark of increasing social disorganisation and police embarrassment340 — he wandered out into the open country. He speaks of the roads of that plutocratic341 age as being ‘fenced with barbed wire against unpropertied people,’ of the high-walled gardens and trespass342 warnings that kept him to the dusty narrowness of the public ways. In the air, happy rich people were flying, heedless of the misfortunes about them, as he himself had been flying two years ago, and along the road swept the new traffic, light and swift and wonderful. One was rarely out of earshot of its whistles and gongs and siren cries even in the field paths or over the open downs. The officials of the labour exchanges were everywhere overworked and infuriated, the casual wards128 were so crowded that the surplus wanderers slept in ranks under sheds or in the open air, and since giving to wayfarers343 had been made a punishable offence there was no longer friendship or help for a man from the rare foot passenger or the wayside cottage. . . .
‘I wasn’t angry,’ said Barnet. ‘I saw an immense selfishness, a monstrous disregard for anything but pleasure and possession in all those people above us, but I saw how inevitable that was, how certainly if the richest had changed places with the poorest, that things would have been the same. What else can happen when men use science and every new thing that science gives, and all their available intelligence and energy to manufacture wealth and appliances, and leave government and education to the rustling344 traditions of hundreds of years ago? Those traditions come from the dark ages when there was really not enough for every one, when life was a fierce struggle that might be masked but could not be escaped. Of course this famine grabbing, this fierce dispossession of others, must follow from such a disharmony between material and training. Of course the rich were vulgar and the poor grew savage63 and every added power that came to men made the rich richer and the poor less necessary and less free. The men I met in the casual wards and the relief offices were all smouldering for revolt, talking of justice and injustice345 and revenge. I saw no hope in that talk, nor in anything but patience. . . . ’
But he did not mean a passive patience. He meant that the method of social reconstruction was still a riddle156, that no effectual rearrangement was possible until this riddle in all its tangled346 aspects was solved. ‘I tried to talk to those discontented men,’ he wrote, ‘but it was hard for them to see things as I saw them. When I talked of patience and the larger scheme, they answered, “But then we shall all be dead”— and I could not make them see, what is so simple to my own mind, that that did not affect the question. Men who think in lifetimes are of no use to statesmanship.’
He does not seem to have seen a newspaper during those wanderings, and a chance sight of the transparency of a kiosk in the market-place at Bishop’s Stortford announcing a ‘Grave International Situation’ did not excite him very much. There had been so many grave international situations in recent years.
This time it was talk of the Central European powers suddenly attacking the Slav Confederacy, with France and England going to the help of the Slavs.
But the next night he found a tolerable meal awaiting the vagrants347 in the casual ward22, and learnt from the workhouse master that all serviceable trained men were to be sent back on the morrow to their mobilisation centres. The country was on the eve of war. He was to go back through London to Surrey. His first feeling, he records, was one of extreme relief that his days of ‘hopeless battering348 at the underside of civilisation’ were at an end. Here was something definite to do, something definitely provided for. But his relief was greatly modified when he found that the mobilisation arrangements had been made so hastily and carelessly that for nearly thirty-six hours at the improvised349 depot350 at Epsom he got nothing either to eat or to drink but a cup of cold water. The depot was absolutely unprovisioned, and no one was free to leave it.
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mooted
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| adj.未决定的，有争议的，有疑问的v.提出…供讨论( moot的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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induction
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| n.感应，感应现象 | |
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subjugation
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| n.镇压，平息，征服 | |
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minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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disintegration
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| n.分散，解体 | |
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disintegrated
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| v.（使）破裂[分裂，粉碎]，（使）崩溃( disintegrate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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blistered
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| adj.水疮状的，泡状的v.（使）起水泡( blister的过去式和过去分词 )；（使表皮等）涨破，爆裂 | |
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speck
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| n.微粒，小污点，小斑点 | |
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lash
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| v.系牢；鞭打；猛烈抨击；n.鞭打；眼睫毛 | |
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10
rending
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| v.撕碎( rend的现在分词 )；分裂；（因愤怒、痛苦等而）揪扯（衣服或头发等）；（声音等）刺破 | |
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speculations
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| n.投机买卖( speculation的名词复数 )；思考；投机活动；推断 | |
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vividly
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| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
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demonstration
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| n.表明，示范，论证，示威 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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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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winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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commodious
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| adj.宽敞的；使用方便的 | |
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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civilisation
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| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
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marvelled
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| v.惊奇，对…感到惊奇( marvel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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westward
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| n.西方，西部；adj.西方的，向西的；adv.向西 | |
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ward
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| n.守卫，监护，病房，行政区，由监护人或法院保护的人（尤指儿童）；vt.守护，躲开 | |
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alley
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| n.小巷，胡同；小径，小路 | |
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trenches
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| 深沟，地沟( trench的名词复数 )； 战壕 | |
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portico
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| n.柱廊，门廊 | |
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spire
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| n.(教堂)尖顶，尖塔，高点 | |
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ascend
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| vi.渐渐上升，升高；vt.攀登，登上 | |
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ascending
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| adj.上升的，向上的 | |
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reassuring
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| a.使人消除恐惧和疑虑的，使人放心的 | |
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dodging
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| n.避开，闪过，音调改变v.闪躲( dodge的现在分词 )；回避 | |
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stuffiness
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| n.不通风，闷热；不通气 | |
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32
suffrage
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| n.投票，选举权，参政权 | |
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33
tolerance
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| n.宽容；容忍，忍受；耐药力；公差 | |
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34
derisive
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| adj.嘲弄的 | |
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35
socialist
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| n.社会主义者；adj.社会主义的 | |
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36
orators
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| n.演说者，演讲家( orator的名词复数 ) | |
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37
uproar
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| n.骚动，喧嚣，鼎沸 | |
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38
frantic
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| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
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39
footpath
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| n.小路，人行道 | |
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40
uncertainty
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| n.易变，靠不住，不确知，不确定的事物 | |
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41
inhuman
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| adj.残忍的，不人道的，无人性的 | |
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42
mischievous
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| adj.调皮的，恶作剧的，有害的，伤人的 | |
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43
promenading
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| v.兜风( promenade的现在分词 ) | |
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44
fabric
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| n.织物，织品，布；构造，结构，组织 | |
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45
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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46
feigned
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| a.假装的，不真诚的 | |
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47
transit
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| n.经过，运输；vt.穿越，旋转；vi.越过 | |
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48
lighting
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| n.照明，光线的明暗，舞台灯光 | |
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49
bawled
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| v.大叫，大喊( bawl的过去式和过去分词 )；放声大哭；大声叫出；叫卖（货物） | |
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50
astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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51
premature
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| adj.比预期时间早的；不成熟的，仓促的 | |
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52
awakened
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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53
whatsoever
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| adv.（用于否定句中以加强语气）任何；pron.无论什么 | |
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54
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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55
clairvoyant
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| adj.有预见的；n.有预见的人 | |
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56
unified
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| (unify 的过去式和过去分词)； 统一的； 统一标准的； 一元化的 | |
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57
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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58
destined
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| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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59
fatigue
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| n.疲劳，劳累 | |
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60
incessancy
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| 持续不断，连续性 | |
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61
lapsed
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| adj.流失的，堕落的v.退步( lapse的过去式和过去分词 )；陷入；倒退；丧失 | |
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62
persuasion
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| n.劝说；说服；持有某种信仰的宗派 | |
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63
savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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64
savagery
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| n.野性 | |
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65
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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66
begetting
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| v.为…之生父( beget的现在分词 )；产生，引起 | |
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67
perennially
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| adv.经常出现地；长期地；持久地；永久地 | |
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68
eddying
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| 涡流，涡流的形成 | |
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69
overthrow
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| v.推翻，打倒，颠覆；n.推翻，瓦解，颠覆 | |
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70
drowsy
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| adj.昏昏欲睡的，令人发困的 | |
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71
habitual
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| adj.习惯性的；通常的，惯常的 | |
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72
pestilence
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| n.瘟疫 | |
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73
humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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74
reassured
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|
| adj.使消除疑虑的；使放心的v.再保证，恢复信心( reassure的过去式和过去分词) | |
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75
unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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76
trampling
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| 踩( trample的现在分词 )； 践踏； 无视； 侵犯 | |
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77
laden
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| adj.装满了的；充满了的；负了重担的；苦恼的 | |
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78
blues
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| n.抑郁，沮丧；布鲁斯音乐 | |
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79
replacements
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| n.代替( replacement的名词复数 )；替换的人[物]；替代品；归还 | |
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80
replacement
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| n.取代，替换，交换；替代品，代用品 | |
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81
tortuous
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| adj.弯弯曲曲的，蜿蜒的 | |
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82
interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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83
impended
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| v.进行威胁，即将发生( impend的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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84
albeit
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| conj.即使；纵使；虽然 | |
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85
postponed
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|
| vt.& vi.延期，缓办，（使）延迟vt.把…放在次要地位；[语]把…放在后面（或句尾）vi.（疟疾等）延缓发作（或复发） | |
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86
galaxy
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| n.星系；银河系；一群(杰出或著名的人物) | |
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87
automobile
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| n.汽车，机动车 | |
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88
automobiles
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| n.汽车( automobile的名词复数 ) | |
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89
machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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90
superseded
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| [医]被代替的，废弃的 | |
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91
preposterously
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| adv.反常地；荒谬地；荒谬可笑地；不合理地 | |
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92
preposterous
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| adj.荒谬的，可笑的 | |
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93
costly
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|
| adj.昂贵的，价值高的，豪华的 | |
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94
revival
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| n.复兴，复苏，（精力、活力等的）重振 | |
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95
abrupt
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| adj.突然的，意外的；唐突的，鲁莽的 | |
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96
relaxation
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| n.松弛，放松；休息；消遣；娱乐 | |
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97
stringency
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| n.严格，紧迫，说服力；严格性；强度 | |
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98
frightful
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|
| adj.可怕的；讨厌的 | |
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99
hooted
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| （使）作汽笛声响，作汽车喇叭声( hoot的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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100
dealers
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| n.商人( dealer的名词复数 )；贩毒者；毒品贩子；发牌者 | |
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101
thronged
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| v.成群，挤满( throng的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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102
shimmering
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| v.闪闪发光，发微光( shimmer的现在分词 ) | |
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103
impetus
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| n.推动，促进，刺激；推动力 | |
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104
relatively
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| adv.比较...地，相对地 | |
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105
ascent
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| n.(声望或地位)提高；上升，升高；登高 | |
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106
vertical
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| adj.垂直的，顶点的，纵向的；n.垂直物，垂直的位置 | |
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107
propeller
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| n.螺旋桨，推进器 | |
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108
possessed
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|
| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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109
hover
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| vi.翱翔，盘旋；徘徊；彷徨，犹豫 | |
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110
descend
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| vt./vi.传下来，下来，下降 | |
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111
vertically
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| adv.垂直地 | |
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112
dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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113
epoch
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| n.(新)时代；历元 | |
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114
mania
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| n.疯狂；躁狂症，狂热，癖好 | |
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115
licensed
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| adj.得到许可的v.许可，颁发执照(license的过去式和过去分词) | |
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116
premiums
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| n.费用( premium的名词复数 )；保险费；额外费用；（商品定价、贷款利息等以外的）加价 | |
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117
traction
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| n.牵引；附着摩擦力 | |
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118
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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119
embarked
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| 乘船( embark的过去式和过去分词 )； 装载； 从事 | |
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120
disastrous
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| adj.灾难性的，造成灾害的；极坏的，很糟的 | |
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121
reconstruction
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| n.重建，再现，复原 | |
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122
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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123
organisation
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| n.组织，安排，团体，有机休 | |
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124
dividends
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| 红利( dividend的名词复数 )； 股息； 被除数； （足球彩票的）彩金 | |
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125
feverish
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| adj.发烧的，狂热的，兴奋的 | |
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126
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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127
swooped
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| 俯冲，猛冲( swoop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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128
wards
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| 区( ward的名词复数 )； 病房； 受监护的未成年者； 被人照顾或控制的状态 | |
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129
twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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130
catastrophe
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| n.大灾难，大祸 | |
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131
doomed
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| 命定的 | |
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132
swarms
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| 蜂群，一大群( swarm的名词复数 ) | |
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133
depreciation
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| n.价值低落，贬值，蔑视，贬低 | |
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134
tottering
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| adj.蹒跚的，动摇的v.走得或动得不稳( totter的现在分词 )；踉跄；蹒跚；摇摇欲坠 | |
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135
monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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136
stockbroker
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| n.股票（或证券），经纪人（或机构） | |
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137
scrap
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| n.碎片；废料；v.废弃，报废 | |
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138
scrapping
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| 刮，切除坯体余泥 | |
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139
scrapped
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| 废弃(scrap的过去式与过去分词)； 打架 | |
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140
foresight
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| n.先见之明，深谋远虑 | |
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141
compute
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| v./n.计算，估计 | |
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142
forensic
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| adj.法庭的，雄辩的 | |
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143
vestige
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| n.痕迹，遗迹，残余 | |
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144
vestiges
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| 残余部分( vestige的名词复数 )； 遗迹； 痕迹； 毫不 | |
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145
naive
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| adj.幼稚的，轻信的；天真的 | |
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146
conspired
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| 密谋( conspire的过去式和过去分词 )； 搞阴谋； （事件等）巧合； 共同导致 | |
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147
conscientiously
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| adv.凭良心地；认真地，负责尽职地；老老实实 | |
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148
generosity
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| n.大度，慷慨，慷慨的行为 | |
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149
clamorous
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| adj.吵闹的，喧哗的 | |
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150
imperative
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| n.命令，需要；规则；祈使语气；adj.强制的；紧急的 | |
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151
dingy
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| adj.昏暗的，肮脏的 | |
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152
seclusions
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| n.隔绝，隔离，隐居( seclusion的名词复数 ) | |
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153
ablaze
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| adj.着火的，燃烧的；闪耀的，灯火辉煌的 | |
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154
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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155
squat
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| v.蹲坐，蹲下；n.蹲下；adj.矮胖的，粗矮的 | |
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156
riddle
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|
| n.谜，谜语，粗筛；vt.解谜，给…出谜，筛，检查，鉴定，非难，充满于；vi.出谜 | |
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157
riddles
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| n.谜（语）( riddle的名词复数 )；猜不透的难题，难解之谜 | |
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158
stuffy
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| adj.不透气的，闷热的 | |
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159
miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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160
royalties
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| 特许权使用费 | |
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161
strenuous
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| adj.奋发的，使劲的；紧张的；热烈的，狂热的 | |
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162
wig
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| n.假发 | |
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163
wigs
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| n.假发，法官帽( wig的名词复数 ) | |
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164
solicitors
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| 初级律师( solicitor的名词复数 ) | |
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165
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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166
subpoenaed
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| v.（用传票）传唤（某人）( subpoena的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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167
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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168
truculent
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| adj.野蛮的，粗野的 | |
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169
iniquity
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| n.邪恶；不公正 | |
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170
perspiration
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| n.汗水；出汗 | |
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171
contention
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| n.争论，争辩，论战；论点，主张 | |
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172
omnivorous
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| adj.杂食的 | |
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173
confiding
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| adj.相信人的，易于相信的v.吐露（秘密，心事等）( confide的现在分词 )；（向某人）吐露（隐私、秘密等） | |
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174
disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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175
subdue
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| vt.制服，使顺从，征服；抑制，克制 | |
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176
lusts
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| 贪求（lust的第三人称单数形式） | |
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177
avarice
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| n.贪婪；贪心 | |
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178
bullied
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| adj.被欺负了v.恐吓，威逼( bully的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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179
ushers
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| n.引座员( usher的名词复数 )；招待员；门房；助理教员v.引，领，陪同( usher的第三人称单数 ) | |
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180
severely
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| adv.严格地；严厉地；非常恶劣地 | |
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181
explicit
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| adj.详述的，明确的；坦率的；显然的 | |
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182
quill
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| n.羽毛管；v.给（织物或衣服）作皱褶 | |
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183
sneered
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| 讥笑，冷笑( sneer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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184
implicit
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| a.暗示的，含蓄的，不明晰的，绝对的 | |
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185
modifications
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| n.缓和( modification的名词复数 )；限制；更改；改变 | |
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186
overflowing
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| n. 溢出物,溢流 adj. 充沛的，充满的 动词overflow的现在分词形式 | |
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187
zeal
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| n.热心，热情，热忱 | |
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188
veracity
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| n.诚实 | |
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189
archaic
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| adj.(语言、词汇等)古代的，已不通用的 | |
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190
desperately
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| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
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191
fettered
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| v.给…上脚镣，束缚( fetter的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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192
outspoken
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| adj.直言无讳的，坦率的，坦白无隐的 | |
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193
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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194
degenerating
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| 衰退，堕落，退化( degenerate的现在分词 ) | |
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195
fretted
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| 焦躁的，附有弦马的，腐蚀的 | |
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196
opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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197
supplant
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| vt.排挤；取代 | |
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198
tangle
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| n.纠缠；缠结；混乱；v.(使)缠绕；变乱 | |
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199
proprietary
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| n.所有权，所有的；独占的；业主 | |
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200
philosophical
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| adj.哲学家的，哲学上的，达观的 | |
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201
apparatus
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| n.装置，器械；器具，设备 | |
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202
impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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203
contemplated
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| adj. 预期的 动词contemplate的过去分词形式 | |
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204
fermenting
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| v.（使）发酵( ferment的现在分词 )；（使）激动；骚动；骚扰 | |
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205
mechanisms
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| n.机械( mechanism的名词复数 )；机械装置；[生物学] 机制；机械作用 | |
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206
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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207
allusive
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| adj.暗示的；引用典故的 | |
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208
authentic
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| a.真的，真正的；可靠的，可信的，有根据的 | |
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209
posterity
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| n.后裔，子孙，后代 | |
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210
penury
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| n.贫穷，拮据 | |
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211
infantry
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| n.[总称]步兵(部队) | |
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212
pacification
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| n. 讲和，绥靖，平定 | |
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213
explicitly
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| ad.明确地，显然地 | |
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214
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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215
facade
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| n.(建筑物的)正面，临街正面；外表 | |
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216
pedagogues
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| n.教师，卖弄学问的教师( pedagogue的名词复数 ) | |
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217
discomfort
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| n.不舒服，不安，难过，困难，不方便 | |
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218
quotation
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| n.引文，引语，语录；报价，牌价，行情 | |
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219
cleansing
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| n. 净化(垃圾) adj. 清洁用的 动词cleanse的现在分词 | |
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220
canopies
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| （宝座或床等上面的）华盖( canopy的名词复数 )； （飞行器上的）座舱罩； 任何悬于上空的覆盖物； 森林中天棚似的树荫 | |
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221
athletic
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| adj.擅长运动的，强健的；活跃的，体格健壮的 | |
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222
aviator
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| n.飞行家，飞行员 | |
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223
complexity
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| n.复杂(性)，复杂的事物 | |
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224
extravagant
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| adj.奢侈的；过分的；(言行等)放肆的 | |
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225
filthiness
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226
precocious
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| adj.早熟的；较早显出的 | |
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227
cavalry
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| n.骑兵；轻装甲部队 | |
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228
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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229
artillery
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| n.(军)火炮，大炮；炮兵(部队) | |
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230
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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231
scouting
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| 守候活动，童子军的活动 | |
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232
warfare
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| n.战争(状态)；斗争；冲突 | |
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233
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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234
adoption
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| n.采用，采纳，通过；收养 | |
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235
imposing
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| adj.使人难忘的，壮丽的，堂皇的，雄伟的 | |
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236
resolutely
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| adj.坚决地，果断地 | |
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237
stringent
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| adj.严厉的；令人信服的；银根紧的 | |
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238
condemned
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|
| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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239
peculiar
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|
| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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240
fatigues
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| n.疲劳( fatigue的名词复数 )；杂役；厌倦；（士兵穿的）工作服 | |
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241
barbarian
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| n.野蛮人；adj.野蛮(人)的；未开化的 | |
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242
entirely
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|
| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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243
frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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244
sham
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| n./adj.假冒(的)，虚伪(的) | |
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245
zest
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| n.乐趣；滋味，风味；兴趣 | |
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246
isles
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| 岛( isle的名词复数 ) | |
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247
thither
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| adv.向那里；adj.在那边的，对岸的 | |
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248
widower
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| n.鳏夫 | |
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249
journalism
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| n.新闻工作，报业 | |
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250
valiant
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| adj.勇敢的，英勇的；n.勇士，勇敢的人 | |
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251
saturated
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| a.饱和的，充满的 | |
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252
discomforts
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| n.不舒适( discomfort的名词复数 )；不愉快，苦恼 | |
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253
stoutly
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| adv.牢固地，粗壮的 | |
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254
lavishness
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| n.浪费，过度 | |
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255
wrath
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| n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒 | |
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256
ousted
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| 驱逐( oust的过去式和过去分词 )； 革职； 罢黜； 剥夺 | |
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257
exasperated
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| adj.恼怒的 | |
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258
negligent
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| adj.疏忽的；玩忽的；粗心大意的 | |
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259
amazement
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| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
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260
lodging
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| n.寄宿，住所；(大学生的)校外宿舍 | |
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261
landlady
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| n.女房东，女地主 | |
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262
needy
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| adj.贫穷的，贫困的，生活艰苦的 | |
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263
inspectors
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| n.检查员( inspector的名词复数 )；（英国公共汽车或火车上的）查票员；（警察）巡官；检阅官 | |
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264
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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265
thronging
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| v.成群，挤满( throng的现在分词 ) | |
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266
distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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267
plebeian
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| adj.粗俗的；平民的；n.平民；庶民 | |
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268
banished
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| v.放逐，驱逐( banish的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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269
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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270
pedestrians
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| n.步行者( pedestrian的名词复数 ) | |
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271
curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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272
footpaths
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| 人行小径，人行道( footpath的名词复数 ) | |
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273
premises
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| n.建筑物，房屋 | |
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274
apprehensively
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| adv.担心地 | |
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275
indigent
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| adj.贫穷的，贫困的 | |
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276
graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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277
pulsating
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|
| adj.搏动的，脉冲的v.有节奏地舒张及收缩( pulsate的现在分词 )；跳动；脉动；受（激情）震动 | |
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278
porcelain
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|
| n.瓷；adj.瓷的，瓷制的 | |
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279
illuminated
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| adj.被照明的；受启迪的 | |
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280
revolved
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| v.（使）旋转( revolve的过去式和过去分词 )；细想 | |
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281
refreshment
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| n.恢复，精神爽快，提神之事物；（复数）refreshments:点心，茶点 | |
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282
pinnacles
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|
| 顶峰( pinnacle的名词复数 )； 顶点； 尖顶； 小尖塔 | |
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283
surmounted
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|
| 战胜( surmount的过去式和过去分词 )； 克服（困难）； 居于…之上； 在…顶上 | |
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284
excavated
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| v.挖掘( excavate的过去式和过去分词 )；开凿；挖出；发掘 | |
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285
exclusion
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| n.拒绝，排除，排斥，远足，远途旅行 | |
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286
rigidity
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| adj.钢性，坚硬 | |
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287
riveter
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| 打铆机； 铆枪； 铆工 | |
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288
halved
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| v.把…分成两半( halve的过去式和过去分词 )；把…减半；对分；平摊 | |
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289
hovered
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| 鸟( hover的过去式和过去分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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290
sensational
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| adj.使人感动的，非常好的，轰动的，耸人听闻的 | |
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291
metallic
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| adj.金属的；金属制的；含金属的；产金属的；像金属的 | |
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292
specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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293
unemployed
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| adj.失业的，没有工作的；未动用的，闲置的 | |
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294
expenditure
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| n.(时间、劳力、金钱等)支出；使用，消耗 | |
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295
sullen
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| adj.愠怒的，闷闷不乐的，(天气等)阴沉的 | |
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296
futility
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| n.无用 | |
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297
underneath
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| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
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298
incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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299
obsolete
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| adj.已废弃的，过时的 | |
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300
inscription
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| n.（尤指石块上的）刻印文字，铭文，碑文 | |
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301
precarious
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| adj.不安定的，靠不住的；根据不足的 | |
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302
enigma
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| n.谜，谜一样的人或事 | |
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303
wreckage
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| n.（失事飞机等的）残骸，破坏，毁坏 | |
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304
animation
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| n.活泼，兴奋，卡通片／动画片的制作 | |
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305
malignant
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| adj.恶性的，致命的；恶意的，恶毒的 | |
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306
exertion
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| n.尽力，努力 | |
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307
scraps
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| 油渣 | |
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308
benevolence
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| n.慈悲，捐助 | |
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309
chaotic
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| adj.混沌的，一片混乱的，一团糟的 | |
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310
imprisonment
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| n.关押，监禁，坐牢 | |
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311
salvation
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| n.（尤指基督）救世，超度，拯救，解困 | |
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312
intensities
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| n.强烈( intensity的名词复数 )；（感情的）强烈程度；强度；烈度 | |
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313
wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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314
meditation
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| n.熟虑，（尤指宗教的）默想，沉思，（pl.）冥想录 | |
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315
instinctive
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| adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的 | |
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316
torment
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| n.折磨；令人痛苦的东西(人)；vt.折磨；纠缠 | |
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317
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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318
distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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319
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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320
swirls
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| n.旋转( swirl的名词复数 )；卷状物；漩涡；尘旋v.旋转，打旋( swirl的第三人称单数 ) | |
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321
sleeper
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| n.睡眠者，卧车，卧铺 | |
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322
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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323
colonnade
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| n.柱廊 | |
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324
procure
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| vt.获得，取得，促成；vi.拉皮条 | |
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325
lodgings
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| n. 出租的房舍, 寄宿舍 | |
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326
besieged
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| 包围，围困，围攻( besiege的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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327
outskirts
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| n.郊外，郊区 | |
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328
perplexed
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| adj.不知所措的 | |
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329
trickling
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| n.油画底色含油太多而成泡沫状突起v.滴( trickle的现在分词 )；淌；使)慢慢走；缓慢移动 | |
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330
strand
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| vt.使（船）搁浅，使（某人）困于（某地） | |
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331
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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332
unwilling
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| adj.不情愿的 | |
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333
destitute
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| adj.缺乏的；穷困的 | |
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334
stonily
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| 石头地，冷酷地 | |
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335
disorder
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| n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调 | |
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336
eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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337
friendliness
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| n.友谊，亲切，亲密 | |
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338
impulsive
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| adj.冲动的，刺激的；有推动力的 | |
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339
precedent
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| n.先例，前例；惯例；adj.在前的，在先的 | |
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340
embarrassment
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| n.尴尬；使人为难的人(事物)；障碍；窘迫 | |
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341
plutocratic
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| adj.富豪的，有钱的 | |
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342
trespass
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| n./v.侵犯，闯入私人领地 | |
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343
wayfarers
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| n.旅人，（尤指）徒步旅行者( wayfarer的名词复数 ) | |
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344
rustling
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| n. 瑟瑟声，沙沙声 adj. 发沙沙声的 | |
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345
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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346
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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347
vagrants
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| 流浪者( vagrant的名词复数 )； 无业游民； 乞丐； 无赖 | |
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348
battering
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| n.用坏，损坏v.连续猛击( batter的现在分词 ) | |
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349
improvised
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| a.即席而作的,即兴的 | |
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350
depot
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| n.仓库，储藏处；公共汽车站；火车站 | |
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