Eliza, in telling Higgins she would not marry him if he asked her, was not coquetting: she was announcing a well-considered decision. When a bachelor interests, and dominates, and teaches, and becomes important to a spinster, as Higgins with Eliza, she always, if she has character enough to be capable of it, considers very seriously indeed whether she will play for becoming that bachelor's wife, especially if he is so little interested in marriage that a determined4 and devoted5 woman might capture him if she set herself resolutely to do it. Her decision will depend a good deal on whether she is really free to choose; and that, again, will depend on her age and income. If she is at the end of her youth, and has no security for her livelihood6, she will marry him because she must marry anybody who will provide for her. But at Eliza's age a good-looking girl does not feel that pressure; she feels free to pick and choose. She is therefore guided by her instinct in the matter. Eliza's instinct tells her not to marry Higgins. It does not tell her to give him up. It is not in the slightest doubt as to his remaining one of the strongest personal interests in her life. It would be very sorely strained if there was another woman likely to supplant7 her with him. But as she feels sure of him on that last point, she has no doubt at all as to her course, and would not have any, even if the difference of twenty years in age, which seems so great to youth, did not exist between them.
As our own instincts are not appealed to by her conclusion, let us see whether we cannot discover some reason in it. When Higgins excused his indifference8 to young women on the ground that they had an irresistible9 rival in his mother, he gave the clue to his inveterate10 old-bachelordom. The case is uncommon11 only to the extent that remarkable12 mothers are uncommon. If an imaginative boy has a sufficiently13 rich mother who has intelligence, personal grace, dignity of character without harshness, and a cultivated sense of the best art of her time to enable her to make her house beautiful, she sets a standard for him against which very few women can struggle, besides effecting for him a disengagement of his affections, his sense of beauty, and his idealism from his specifically sexual impulses. This makes him a standing14 puzzle to the huge number of uncultivated people who have been brought up in tasteless homes by commonplace or disagreeable parents, and to whom, consequently, literature, painting, sculpture, music, and affectionate personal relations come as modes of sex if they come at all. The word passion means nothing else to them; and that Higgins could have a passion for phonetics and idealize his mother instead of Eliza, would seem to them absurd and unnatural16. Nevertheless, when we look round and see that hardly anyone is too ugly or disagreeable to find a wife or a husband if he or she wants one, whilst many old maids and bachelors are above the average in quality and culture, we cannot help suspecting that the disentanglement of sex from the associations with which it is so commonly confused, a disentanglement which persons of genius achieve by sheer intellectual analysis, is sometimes produced or aided by parental17 fascination18.
Now, though Eliza was incapable19 of thus explaining to herself Higgins's formidable powers of resistance to the charm that prostrated20 Freddy at the first glance, she was instinctively21 aware that she could never obtain a complete grip of him, or come between him and his mother (the first necessity of the married woman). To put it shortly, she knew that for some mysterious reason he had not the makings of a married man in him, according to her conception of a husband as one to whom she would be his nearest and fondest and warmest interest. Even had there been no mother-rival, she would still have refused to accept an interest in herself that was secondary to philosophic22 interests. Had Mrs. Higgins died, there would still have been Milton and the Universal Alphabet. Landor's remark that to those who have the greatest power of loving, love is a secondary affair, would not have recommended Landor to Eliza. Put that along with her resentment23 of Higgins's domineering superiority, and her mistrust of his coaxing24 cleverness in getting round her and evading25 her wrath26 when he had gone too far with his impetuous bullying27, and you will see that Eliza's instinct had good grounds for warning her not to marry her Pygmalion.
And now, whom did Eliza marry? For if Higgins was a predestinate old bachelor, she was most certainly not a predestinate old maid. Well, that can be told very shortly to those who have not guessed it from the indications she has herself given them.
Almost immediately after Eliza is stung into proclaiming her considered determination not to marry Higgins, she mentions the fact that young Mr. Frederick Eynsford Hill is pouring out his love for her daily through the post. Now Freddy is young, practically twenty years younger than Higgins: he is a gentleman (or, as Eliza would qualify him, a toff), and speaks like one; he is nicely dressed, is treated by the Colonel as an equal, loves her unaffectedly, and is not her master, nor ever likely to dominate her in spite of his advantage of social standing. Eliza has no use for the foolish romantic tradition that all women love to be mastered, if not actually bullied28 and beaten. "When you go to women," says Nietzsche, "take your whip with you." Sensible despots have never confined that precaution to women: they have taken their whips with them when they have dealt with men, and been slavishly idealized by the men over whom they have flourished the whip much more than by women. No doubt there are slavish women as well as slavish men; and women, like men, admire those that are stronger than themselves. But to admire a strong person and to live under that strong person's thumb are two different things. The weak may not be admired and hero-worshipped; but they are by no means disliked or shunned29; and they never seem to have the least difficulty in marrying people who are too good for them. They may fail in emergencies; but life is not one long emergency: it is mostly a string of situations for which no exceptional strength is needed, and with which even rather weak people can cope if they have a stronger partner to help them out. Accordingly, it is a truth everywhere in evidence that strong people, masculine or feminine, not only do not marry stronger people, but do not show any preference for them in selecting their friends. When a lion meets another with a louder roar "the first lion thinks the last a bore." The man or woman who feels strong enough for two, seeks for every other quality in a partner than strength.
The converse30 is also true. Weak people want to marry strong people who do not frighten them too much; and this often leads them to make the mistake we describe metaphorically31 as "biting off more than they can chew." They want too much for too little; and when the bargain is unreasonable32 beyond all bearing, the union becomes impossible: it ends in the weaker party being either discarded or borne as a cross, which is worse. People who are not only weak, but silly or obtuse33 as well, are often in these difficulties.
This being the state of human affairs, what is Eliza fairly sure to do when she is placed between Freddy and Higgins? Will she look forward to a lifetime of fetching Higgins's slippers34 or to a lifetime of Freddy fetching hers? There can be no doubt about the answer. Unless Freddy is biologically repulsive35 to her, and Higgins biologically attractive to a degree that overwhelms all her other instincts, she will, if she marries either of them, marry Freddy.
And that is just what Eliza did.
Complications ensued; but they were economic, not romantic. Freddy had no money and no occupation. His mother's jointure, a last relic36 of the opulence37 of Largelady Park, had enabled her to struggle along in Earlscourt with an air of gentility, but not to procure38 any serious secondary education for her children, much less give the boy a profession. A clerkship at thirty shillings a week was beneath Freddy's dignity, and extremely distasteful to him besides. His prospects39 consisted of a hope that if he kept up appearances somebody would do something for him. The something appeared vaguely40 to his imagination as a private secretaryship or a sinecure41 of some sort. To his mother it perhaps appeared as a marriage to some lady of means who could not resist her boy's niceness. Fancy her feelings when he married a flower girl who had become declassee under extraordinary circumstances which were now notorious!
It is true that Eliza's situation did not seem wholly ineligible42. Her father, though formerly43 a dustman, and now fantastically disclassed, had become extremely popular in the smartest society by a social talent which triumphed over every prejudice and every disadvantage. Rejected by the middle class, which he loathed44, he had shot up at once into the highest circles by his wit, his dustmanship (which he carried like a banner), and his Nietzschean transcendence of good and evil. At intimate ducal dinners he sat on the right hand of the Duchess; and in country houses he smoked in the pantry and was made much of by the butler when he was not feeding in the dining-room and being consulted by cabinet ministers. But he found it almost as hard to do all this on four thousand a year as Mrs. Eynsford Hill to live in Earlscourt on an income so pitiably smaller that I have not the heart to disclose its exact figure. He absolutely refused to add the last straw to his burden by contributing to Eliza's support.
Thus Freddy and Eliza, now Mr. and Mrs. Eynsford Hill, would have spent a penniless honeymoon45 but for a wedding present of 500 pounds from the Colonel to Eliza. It lasted a long time because Freddy did not know how to spend money, never having had any to spend, and Eliza, socially trained by a pair of old bachelors, wore her clothes as long as they held together and looked pretty, without the least regard to their being many months out of fashion. Still, 500 pounds will not last two young people for ever; and they both knew, and Eliza felt as well, that they must shift for themselves in the end. She could quarter herself on Wimpole Street because it had come to be her home; but she was quite aware that she ought not to quarter Freddy there, and that it would not be good for his character if she did.
Not that the Wimpole Street bachelors objected. When she consulted them, Higgins declined to be bothered about her housing problem when that solution was so simple. Eliza's desire to have Freddy in the house with her seemed of no more importance than if she had wanted an extra piece of bedroom furniture. Pleas as to Freddy's character, and the moral obligation on him to earn his own living, were lost on Higgins. He denied that Freddy had any character, and declared that if he tried to do any useful work some competent person would have the trouble of undoing46 it: a procedure involving a net loss to the community, and great unhappiness to Freddy himself, who was obviously intended by Nature for such light work as amusing Eliza, which, Higgins declared, was a much more useful and honorable occupation than working in the city. When Eliza referred again to her project of teaching phonetics, Higgins abated47 not a jot48 of his violent opposition49 to it. He said she was not within ten years of being qualified50 to meddle51 with his pet subject; and as it was evident that the Colonel agreed with him, she felt she could not go against them in this grave matter, and that she had no right, without Higgins's consent, to exploit the knowledge he had given her; for his knowledge seemed to her as much his private property as his watch: Eliza was no communist. Besides, she was superstitiously52 devoted to them both, more entirely53 and frankly54 after her marriage than before it.
It was the Colonel who finally solved the problem, which had cost him much perplexed55 cogitation56. He one day asked Eliza, rather shyly, whether she had quite given up her notion of keeping a flower shop. She replied that she had thought of it, but had put it out of her head, because the Colonel had said, that day at Mrs. Higgins's, that it would never do. The Colonel confessed that when he said that, he had not quite recovered from the dazzling impression of the day before. They broke the matter to Higgins that evening. The sole comment vouchsafed57 by him very nearly led to a serious quarrel with Eliza. It was to the effect that she would have in Freddy an ideal errand boy.
Freddy himself was next sounded on the subject. He said he had been thinking of a shop himself; though it had presented itself to his pennilessness as a small place in which Eliza should sell tobacco at one counter whilst he sold newspapers at the opposite one. But he agreed that it would be extraordinarily58 jolly to go early every morning with Eliza to Covent Garden and buy flowers on the scene of their first meeting: a sentiment which earned him many kisses from his wife. He added that he had always been afraid to propose anything of the sort, because Clara would make an awful row about a step that must damage her matrimonial chances, and his mother could not be expected to like it after clinging for so many years to that step of the social ladder on which retail59 trade is impossible.
This difficulty was removed by an event highly unexpected by Freddy's mother. Clara, in the course of her incursions into those artistic60 circles which were the highest within her reach, discovered that her conversational61 qualifications were expected to include a grounding in the novels of Mr. H.G. Wells. She borrowed them in various directions so energetically that she swallowed them all within two months. The result was a conversion62 of a kind quite common today. A modern Acts of the Apostles would fill fifty whole Bibles if anyone were capable of writing it.
Poor Clara, who appeared to Higgins and his mother as a disagreeable and ridiculous person, and to her own mother as in some inexplicable63 way a social failure, had never seen herself in either light; for, though to some extent ridiculed64 and mimicked65 in West Kensington like everybody else there, she was accepted as a rational and normal—or shall we say inevitable66?—sort of human being. At worst they called her The Pusher; but to them no more than to herself had it ever occurred that she was pushing the air, and pushing it in a wrong direction. Still, she was not happy. She was growing desperate. Her one asset, the fact that her mother was what the Epsom greengrocer called a carriage lady had no exchange value, apparently67. It had prevented her from getting educated, because the only education she could have afforded was education with the Earlscourt green grocer's daughter. It had led her to seek the society of her mother's class; and that class simply would not have her, because she was much poorer than the greengrocer, and, far from being able to afford a maid, could not afford even a housemaid, and had to scrape along at home with an illiberally68 treated general servant. Under such circumstances nothing could give her an air of being a genuine product of Largelady Park. And yet its tradition made her regard a marriage with anyone within her reach as an unbearable humiliation69. Commercial people and professional people in a small way were odious70 to her. She ran after painters and novelists; but she did not charm them; and her bold attempts to pick up and practise artistic and literary talk irritated them. She was, in short, an utter failure, an ignorant, incompetent71, pretentious72, unwelcome, penniless, useless little snob73; and though she did not admit these disqualifications (for nobody ever faces unpleasant truths of this kind until the possibility of a way out dawns on them) she felt their effects too keenly to be satisfied with her position.
Clara had a startling eyeopener when, on being suddenly wakened to enthusiasm by a girl of her own age who dazzled her and produced in her a gushing74 desire to take her for a model, and gain her friendship, she discovered that this exquisite75 apparition76 had graduated from the gutter77 in a few months' time. It shook her so violently, that when Mr. H. G. Wells lifted her on the point of his puissant78 pen, and placed her at the angle of view from which the life she was leading and the society to which she clung appeared in its true relation to real human needs and worthy79 social structure, he effected a conversion and a conviction of sin comparable to the most sensational80 feats81 of General Booth or Gypsy Smith. Clara's snobbery82 went bang. Life suddenly began to move with her. Without knowing how or why, she began to make friends and enemies. Some of the acquaintances to whom she had been a tedious or indifferent or ridiculous affliction, dropped her: others became cordial. To her amazement83 she found that some "quite nice" people were saturated84 with Wells, and that this accessibility to ideas was the secret of their niceness. People she had thought deeply religious, and had tried to conciliate on that tack85 with disastrous86 results, suddenly took an interest in her, and revealed a hostility87 to conventional religion which she had never conceived possible except among the most desperate characters. They made her read Galsworthy; and Galsworthy exposed the vanity of Largelady Park and finished her. It exasperated88 her to think that the dungeon89 in which she had languished90 for so many unhappy years had been unlocked all the time, and that the impulses she had so carefully struggled with and stifled91 for the sake of keeping well with society, were precisely92 those by which alone she could have come into any sort of sincere human contact. In the radiance of these discoveries, and the tumult93 of their reaction, she made a fool of herself as freely and conspicuously94 as when she so rashly adopted Eliza's expletive in Mrs. Higgins's drawing-room; for the new-born Wellsian had to find her bearings almost as ridiculously as a baby; but nobody hates a baby for its ineptitudes, or thinks the worse of it for trying to eat the matches; and Clara lost no friends by her follies95. They laughed at her to her face this time; and she had to defend herself and fight it out as best she could.
When Freddy paid a visit to Earlscourt (which he never did when he could possibly help it) to make the desolating96 announcement that he and his Eliza were thinking of blackening the Largelady scutcheon by opening a shop, he found the little household already convulsed by a prior announcement from Clara that she also was going to work in an old furniture shop in Dover Street, which had been started by a fellow Wellsian. This appointment Clara owed, after all, to her old social accomplishment97 of Push. She had made up her mind that, cost what it might, she would see Mr. Wells in the flesh; and she had achieved her end at a garden party. She had better luck than so rash an enterprise deserved. Mr. Wells came up to her expectations. Age had not withered98 him, nor could custom stale his infinite variety in half an hour. His pleasant neatness and compactness, his small hands and feet, his teeming99 ready brain, his unaffected accessibility, and a certain fine apprehensiveness100 which stamped him as susceptible101 from his topmost hair to his tipmost toe, proved irresistible. Clara talked of nothing else for weeks and weeks afterwards. And as she happened to talk to the lady of the furniture shop, and that lady also desired above all things to know Mr. Wells and sell pretty things to him, she offered Clara a job on the chance of achieving that end through her.
And so it came about that Eliza's luck held, and the expected opposition to the flower shop melted away. The shop is in the arcade102 of a railway station not very far from the Victoria and Albert Museum; and if you live in that neighborhood you may go there any day and buy a buttonhole from Eliza.
Now here is a last opportunity for romance. Would you not like to be assured that the shop was an immense success, thanks to Eliza's charms and her early business experience in Covent Garden? Alas103! the truth is the truth: the shop did not pay for a long time, simply because Eliza and her Freddy did not know how to keep it. True, Eliza had not to begin at the very beginning: she knew the names and prices of the cheaper flowers; and her elation15 was unbounded when she found that Freddy, like all youths educated at cheap, pretentious, and thoroughly104 inefficient105 schools, knew a little Latin. It was very little, but enough to make him appear to her a Porson or Bentley, and to put him at his ease with botanical nomenclature. Unfortunately he knew nothing else; and Eliza, though she could count money up to eighteen shillings or so, and had acquired a certain familiarity with the language of Milton from her struggles to qualify herself for winning Higgins's bet, could not write out a bill without utterly106 disgracing the establishment. Freddy's power of stating in Latin that Balbus built a wall and that Gaul was divided into three parts did not carry with it the slightest knowledge of accounts or business: Colonel Pickering had to explain to him what a cheque book and a bank account meant. And the pair were by no means easily teachable. Freddy backed up Eliza in her obstinate107 refusal to believe that they could save money by engaging a bookkeeper with some knowledge of the business. How, they argued, could you possibly save money by going to extra expense when you already could not make both ends meet? But the Colonel, after making the ends meet over and over again, at last gently insisted; and Eliza, humbled108 to the dust by having to beg from him so often, and stung by the uproarious derision of Higgins, to whom the notion of Freddy succeeding at anything was a joke that never palled110, grasped the fact that business, like phonetics, has to be learned.
On the piteous spectacle of the pair spending their evenings in shorthand schools and polytechnic111 classes, learning bookkeeping and typewriting with incipient112 junior clerks, male and female, from the elementary schools, let me not dwell. There were even classes at the London School of Economics, and a humble109 personal appeal to the director of that institution to recommend a course bearing on the flower business. He, being a humorist, explained to them the method of the celebrated113 Dickensian essay on Chinese Metaphysics by the gentleman who read an article on China and an article on Metaphysics and combined the information. He suggested that they should combine the London School with Kew Gardens. Eliza, to whom the procedure of the Dickensian gentleman seemed perfectly114 correct (as in fact it was) and not in the least funny (which was only her ignorance) took his advice with entire gravity. But the effort that cost her the deepest humiliation was a request to Higgins, whose pet artistic fancy, next to Milton's verse, was calligraphy115, and who himself wrote a most beautiful Italian hand, that he would teach her to write. He declared that she was congenitally incapable of forming a single letter worthy of the least of Milton's words; but she persisted; and again he suddenly threw himself into the task of teaching her with a combination of stormy intensity116, concentrated patience, and occasional bursts of interesting disquisition on the beauty and nobility, the august mission and destiny, of human handwriting. Eliza ended by acquiring an extremely uncommercial script which was a positive extension of her personal beauty, and spending three times as much on stationery117 as anyone else because certain qualities and shapes of paper became indispensable to her. She could not even address an envelope in the usual way because it made the margins118 all wrong.
Their commercial school days were a period of disgrace and despair for the young couple. They seemed to be learning nothing about flower shops. At last they gave it up as hopeless, and shook the dust of the shorthand schools, and the polytechnics119, and the London School of Economics from their feet for ever. Besides, the business was in some mysterious way beginning to take care of itself. They had somehow forgotten their objections to employing other people. They came to the conclusion that their own way was the best, and that they had really a remarkable talent for business. The Colonel, who had been compelled for some years to keep a sufficient sum on current account at his bankers to make up their deficits120, found that the provision was unnecessary: the young people were prospering121. It is true that there was not quite fair play between them and their competitors in trade. Their week-ends in the country cost them nothing, and saved them the price of their Sunday dinners; for the motor car was the Colonel's; and he and Higgins paid the hotel bills. Mr. F. Hill, florist122 and greengrocer (they soon discovered that there was money in asparagus; and asparagus led to other vegetables), had an air which stamped the business as classy; and in private life he was still Frederick Eynsford Hill, Esquire. Not that there was any swank about him: nobody but Eliza knew that he had been christened Frederick Challoner. Eliza herself swanked like anything.
That is all. That is how it has turned out. It is astonishing how much Eliza still manages to meddle in the housekeeping at Wimpole Street in spite of the shop and her own family. And it is notable that though she never nags123 her husband, and frankly loves the Colonel as if she were his favorite daughter, she has never got out of the habit of nagging124 Higgins that was established on the fatal night when she won his bet for him. She snaps his head off on the faintest provocation125, or on none. He no longer dares to tease her by assuming an abysmal126 inferiority of Freddy's mind to his own. He storms and bullies127 and derides128; but she stands up to him so ruthlessly that the Colonel has to ask her from time to time to be kinder to Higgins; and it is the only request of his that brings a mulish expression into her face. Nothing but some emergency or calamity129 great enough to break down all likes and dislikes, and throw them both back on their common humanity—and may they be spared any such trial!—will ever alter this. She knows that Higgins does not need her, just as her father did not need her. The very scrupulousness130 with which he told her that day that he had become used to having her there, and dependent on her for all sorts of little services, and that he should miss her if she went away (it would never have occurred to Freddy or the Colonel to say anything of the sort) deepens her inner certainty that she is "no more to him than them slippers", yet she has a sense, too, that his indifference is deeper than the infatuation of commoner souls. She is immensely interested in him. She has even secret mischievous131 moments in which she wishes she could get him alone, on a desert island, away from all ties and with nobody else in the world to consider, and just drag him off his pedestal and see him making love like any common man. We all have private imaginations of that sort. But when it comes to business, to the life that she really leads as distinguished132 from the life of dreams and fancies, she likes Freddy and she likes the Colonel; and she does not like Higgins and Mr. Doolittle. Galatea never does quite like Pygmalion: his relation to her is too godlike to be altogether agreeable.
The End
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dependence
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| n.依靠，依赖；信任，信赖；隶属 | |
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resolutely
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unbearable
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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devoted
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livelihood
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| n.生计，谋生之道 | |
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supplant
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indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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irresistible
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inveterate
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uncommon
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remarkable
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sufficiently
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standing
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elation
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unnatural
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parental
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fascination
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incapable
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prostrated
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instinctively
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philosophic
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resentment
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coaxing
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evading
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wrath
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bullying
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bullied
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metaphorically
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unreasonable
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obtuse
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35
repulsive
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| adj.排斥的，使人反感的 | |
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36
relic
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| n.神圣的遗物，遗迹，纪念物 | |
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37
opulence
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| n.财富，富裕 | |
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38
procure
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| vt.获得，取得，促成；vi.拉皮条 | |
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39
prospects
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| n.希望，前途(恒为复数) | |
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40
vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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41
sinecure
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| n.闲差事，挂名职务 | |
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42
ineligible
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| adj.无资格的，不适当的 | |
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43
formerly
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| adv.从前，以前 | |
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44
loathed
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| v.憎恨，厌恶( loathe的过去式和过去分词 )；极不喜欢 | |
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45
honeymoon
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| n.蜜月（假期）；vi.度蜜月 | |
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46
undoing
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| n.毁灭的原因，祸根；破坏，毁灭 | |
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47
abated
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| 减少( abate的过去式和过去分词 )； 减去； 降价； 撤消（诉讼） | |
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48
jot
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| n.少量；vi.草草记下；vt.匆匆写下 | |
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49
opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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50
qualified
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| adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的 | |
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51
meddle
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| v.干预，干涉，插手 | |
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52
superstitiously
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| 被邪教所支配 | |
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53
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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54
frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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55
perplexed
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| adj.不知所措的 | |
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56
cogitation
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| n.仔细思考，计划，设计 | |
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57
vouchsafed
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| v.给予，赐予( vouchsafe的过去式和过去分词 )；允诺 | |
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58
extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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59
retail
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| v./n.零售；adv.以零售价格 | |
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60
artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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61
conversational
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| adj.对话的，会话的 | |
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62
conversion
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| n.转化，转换，转变 | |
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63
inexplicable
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| adj.无法解释的，难理解的 | |
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64
ridiculed
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| v.嘲笑，嘲弄，奚落( ridicule的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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65
mimicked
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| v.（尤指为了逗乐而）模仿( mimic的过去式和过去分词 )；酷似 | |
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66
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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67
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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68
illiberally
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| adv.吝啬地，小气地 | |
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69
humiliation
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| n.羞辱 | |
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70
odious
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| adj.可憎的，讨厌的 | |
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71
incompetent
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| adj.无能力的，不能胜任的 | |
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72
pretentious
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| adj.自命不凡的，自负的，炫耀的 | |
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73
snob
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| n.势利小人，自以为高雅、有学问的人 | |
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74
gushing
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| adj.迸出的；涌出的；喷出的；过分热情的v.喷，涌( gush的现在分词 )；滔滔不绝地说话 | |
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75
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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76
apparition
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| n.幽灵，神奇的现象 | |
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77
gutter
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| n.沟，街沟，水槽，檐槽，贫民窟 | |
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78
puissant
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| adj.强有力的 | |
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79
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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80
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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81
feats
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| 功绩，伟业，技艺( feat的名词复数 ) | |
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82
snobbery
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| n. 充绅士气派, 俗不可耐的性格 | |
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83
amazement
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| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
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84
saturated
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| a.饱和的，充满的 | |
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85
tack
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| n.大头钉；假缝，粗缝 | |
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86
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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87
hostility
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| n.敌对，敌意；抵制［pl.］交战，战争 | |
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88
exasperated
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| adj.恼怒的 | |
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89
dungeon
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| n.地牢，土牢 | |
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90
languished
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| 长期受苦( languish的过去式和过去分词 )； 受折磨； 变得（越来越）衰弱； 因渴望而变得憔悴或闷闷不乐 | |
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91
stifled
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| （使）窒息， （使）窒闷( stifle的过去式和过去分词 )； 镇压，遏制； 堵 | |
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92
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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93
tumult
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| n.喧哗；激动，混乱；吵闹 | |
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94
conspicuously
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| ad.明显地，惹人注目地 | |
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95
follies
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| 罪恶，时事讽刺剧； 愚蠢，蠢笨，愚蠢的行为、思想或做法( folly的名词复数 ) | |
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96
desolating
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| 毁坏( desolate的现在分词 )； 极大地破坏； 使沮丧； 使痛苦 | |
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97
accomplishment
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| n.完成，成就，（pl.）造诣，技能 | |
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98
withered
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| adj. 枯萎的，干瘪的，（人身体的部分器官）因病萎缩的或未发育良好的 动词wither的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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99
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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100
apprehensiveness
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| 忧虑感，领悟力 | |
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101
susceptible
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| adj.过敏的，敏感的；易动感情的，易受感动的 | |
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102
arcade
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| n.拱廊；(一侧或两侧有商店的)通道 | |
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103
alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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104
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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105
inefficient
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| adj.效率低的，无效的 | |
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106
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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107
obstinate
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| adj.顽固的，倔强的，不易屈服的，较难治愈的 | |
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108
humbled
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| adj. 卑下的，谦逊的，粗陋的 vt. 使 ... 卑下，贬低 | |
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109
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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110
palled
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| v.（因过多或过久而）生厌，感到乏味，厌烦( pall的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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111
polytechnic
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| adj.各种工艺的，综合技术的；n.工艺(专科)学校；理工(专科)学校 | |
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112
incipient
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| adj.起初的，发端的，初期的 | |
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113
celebrated
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| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
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114
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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115
calligraphy
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| n.书法 | |
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116
intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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117
stationery
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| n.文具；(配套的)信笺信封 | |
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118
margins
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| 边( margin的名词复数 )； 利润； 页边空白； 差数 | |
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119
polytechnics
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| 理工学院( polytechnic的名词复数 )； 工艺的，综合技术的 | |
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120
deficits
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| n.不足额( deficit的名词复数 )；赤字；亏空；亏损 | |
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121
prospering
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| 成功，兴旺( prosper的现在分词 ) | |
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122
florist
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| n.花商；种花者 | |
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123
nags
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| n.不断地挑剔或批评（某人）( nag的名词复数 )；不断地烦扰或伤害（某人）；无休止地抱怨；不断指责v.不断地挑剔或批评（某人）( nag的第三人称单数 )；不断地烦扰或伤害（某人）；无休止地抱怨；不断指责 | |
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124
nagging
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| adj.唠叨的，挑剔的；使人不得安宁的v.不断地挑剔或批评（某人）( nag的现在分词 )；不断地烦扰或伤害（某人）；无休止地抱怨；不断指责 | |
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125
provocation
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| n.激怒，刺激，挑拨，挑衅的事物，激怒的原因 | |
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126
abysmal
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| adj.无底的，深不可测的，极深的；糟透的，极坏的；完全的 | |
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127
bullies
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| n.欺凌弱小者, 开球 vt.恐吓, 威胁, 欺负 | |
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128
derides
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| v.取笑，嘲笑( deride的第三人称单数 ) | |
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129
calamity
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| n.灾害，祸患，不幸事件 | |
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130
scrupulousness
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| n.一丝不苟；小心翼翼 | |
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131
mischievous
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| adj.调皮的，恶作剧的，有害的，伤人的 | |
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132
distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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